The Raving Lunatics Guide to Life Love and Happiness
Sample Chapters: XXXXXX
This was a book I wrote two years ago (completed mid 2005). It was at the end of a very bad phase in my life. My mother died in a fire, and I felt alone for the first time in my life. My father died of lung cancer. I was having a series of disasters in my department at work, my wife divorced me, and I lost most of my money. The worst blow was when I fell desperately in love with a beautiful woman, who I thought was my true soul mate. I was convinced we knew each other from past lives. We had a short, brilliant, exuberant affair, which blew my mind to smithereens. After that she dumped me. It is always traumatic, getting dumped. Getting dumped by someone whom you love so desperately, after you connect so deeply, is an unbelievable nightmare. I attempted suicide a couple of times. I started thinking about life. About the core truth behind happiness and sadness. About the purpose of life. This book is the result of all that thinking.
Writing this book helped me overcome most of my trauma, and reading it should help anyone else who is depressed and suicidal. It still didn’t help me get over that girl. Writing my second book and my T-bird helped me do that. I have since managed to move on in life and grow spiritually, and this book doesn’t connect to me as deeply as it did two years ago. But I believe the vision I had at the time was a valid vision, and the book contains an essential truth. It is just that the vision has been ingrained into my psyche and lifestyle, and I take it for granted now. But it will be of use to others who have not reached this stage yet.
It doesn’t contain any simple formula or magic trick. It is just a different way of looking at life, and understanding what is really going on out there. Stuff which your priest or mullah or guru can’t tell you, and which a New-Age pseudo would rather tie you in knots with verbiage than tell you.
It is a kind of a New-Age spiritual, a vaguely Deepak Chopraish, Neal Donaldish kind of stuff, but with a humorous touch. It is written in plain English, without all that maddening mumbo-jumbo you get in New Age books. It is also cheeky and irreverent, and happily punctures all sorts of egos. It also has a lot of controversial ideas and statements and is completely politically incorrect: I hate any kind of hypocrisy and double standards. A lot of people are gonna get very annoyed with me when it comes out!
I discovered a surprising ability to draw nice cartoons, and I have drawn a funny cartoon to go with each chapter.
It also has bits of autobiography in it, so it is a very personal book, in some senses. It also has bits of creative writing, and most of it is written as a piece of literary prose, rather than as a preachy here-I-stand-on-a-pedestal-and-teach-you-lesser-mortals self-help book. I rather fancy myself as a novelist than a Deepak Chopra/Robin Sharma clone.
I like to think it doesn’t fit into any one genre, and straddles multiple genres like a big floppy indefinable ‘thing’.
Current Status: I am still trying to get it published. I have sent it to numerous Agents and publishers without much success. I still haven’t discovered what those weirdoes look for. I know I am saying it myself, but looking at the kind of junk that gets published nowadays, I can’t believe this stuff is not considered good enough. I’ll try for another few months and then self-publish it on LuLu.com or something. Come back in Dec 2006, you may be able to purchase it here as an e-book or as an on-demand book. Until then, you can read the sample chapters.
Sample Chapters: XXXXXX
PS: If you are an agent or a publisher, and would like the full MS, or would like to like to get in touch with me for any other reason, please post a comment. Comments on this blog are moderated, I get to see them and choose if they are to be displayed. Naturally, I will treat such comments in confidence
