cricket with balls

The competition you have been waiting for has arrived.

To go into the draw to win a signed (by me and only the Iain O’Brien) copy of seminal cricket classic “Ashes 09: When Freddie Became Jesus”, all you have to do is click on this link and leave a comment at Iain O’Brien’s site.

It is that easy.

You can leave a comment, can’t you?

So get over there and read the review, try and get a free copy and tell IOB what wonderful feet he has.

Win, win, win.

Coming over here.

Taking our jobs.

Taking up our bandwidth.

Breathing our air.

Marrying our women.

Taking our blogs.

And, now, threatening to take our awards as well.

I didn’t even know that there was a category for ‘Greatest Number of Expletives Per Column Inch’, or ‘Most Gratuitous Mention of Bryce McGain in an Article’, but apparently Jrod has been nominated for some kind of award by the National Sporting Club. Which makes the rest of the socially inept munchkins who inhabit this place very proud of him indeed. Especially as it is for Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards.

Of course, when the old buffers who nominated him realise that (a) being a Victorian doesn’t mean you are over 100 and (b) he doesn’t own a suit, let alone a tie, he’s toast. But we’re very happy for him and hope that this might actually push sales of The Book into double figures.

Writing a book is cool.

Finding a publisher is pretty cool.

Selling more than 12 copies is cool as fuck.

Getting nominated for best new sports writer by the British National Sporting Club is kinda fucked up.

But, I did.

I am not sure how, or why, but for some reason the mainstream is letting me sleep in the pornographic cupboard they pretend they don’t have in the guest house.

My book won’t win, you can’t make jokes about killing Richie Benaud and win, but, as they say in the cliches, it is nice to be nominated.

Weird but nice.

Unfortunately my book is not nominated in the same category as Stuart Broad’s book, best illustrated ( I didn’t even know Broad was a photographer).

Also, and you should chuckle a little about this, somehow I was not nominated for best publicity campaign.

If by some chance I do win, I promise to snob every one of you in my acceptance speech, but i will quote something from a film or song that has no relevance to the award at hand.

If one of you hasn’t bought the book already, go get your hands on this award nominated piece of ass.

For years I’ve been told to have a donation section on the site, I’ve always decided against it.

But now I think, fuck it, I would rather have a donation section on the site than the many bullshit ads I am offered.

So if you want to donate, click on the button, if not, no problems.

While I am in pimping mode, I might as well mention that I’ve had a couple of reviews on my book now, one on The Village Cricketer and one on Amazon.

The book is coming up as not available on Amazon at the moment, even though they have copies of the book, it is probably an error.

But the book does seem available on the book depository.

End of pimp.

Today is the day my book is out, printed and available.

To mark this occasion I have recorded a reading of the first chapter in podcast form.

You can’t ask for more than that, well you can, but I’d ignore it.