The year is 1990. I’m twelve years old. I have just finished writing my first book; 199 crisp pages, spanning two A5-size notebooks, all scribbled by hand.

The year is 2018. I’ve decided to publish this book!

How often does a person get a glimpse of their former selves? Well, if you happen to have an odd photo or a video clip, you are privy to a rare moment or two of your past, and that’s glorious indeed. But what about books?

Not too many people write – especially not full-length novels – and few can go almost three decades back, into the heart of their childhood, and dig out a precious, unspoiled, original volume of their past.

Muzzle Flash is the first book I ever finished. Not the first I’ve written – that happened even earlier. In 1988, I started a Ninja-themed novel, but that stalled roughly halfway through. The 1990 attempt was a proper adventure. And it was done with flair and gusto. I completed the whole thing in one go, during the summer holidays.

The actual word count? About 31,000. Not bad for a twelve-year old writing a book in between rigorous football sessions and seaside shenanigans. It averages to about 500 pages a day for the two-month duration of the holidays, and that’s a nice, respectable pace even for adults!

But the real beauty of this little novel is in its content.

It’s bad.

It’s cliche.

It’s stupid and hilarious at the same time.

Imagine a kid in the pre-Internet era, writing a world-encompassing adventure. The plot is corny and classique: A bunch of tough, ex-military friends leave New York and go to the heart of Africa to take care of some bad guys. There’s a lot of shooting. The end.

I had to invent my characters and the setting based on research from encyclopedia, from TV series, and most importantly, from COMIC STRIPS and ACTION MOVIES. And what decade was the most glorious of them all when it comes to cliches, shooting and carefree violence? Yes, you got it.

In a way, this book is the sum of all cliches of the cheesiest 80s action flicks, transposed through the eyes of an impressionable kid with a penchant for writing. It has all the unsavory, violent, crazy, and silly elements that you can imagine. Just recall your favorite 80s Gung-ho movie, with shady ex-spec ops guys going on an unflinching morality crusade through the jungles of the world, to fight off cardboard enemies of freedom.

Now, double it.

YEAH!

I am going to publish this work soon, and it will be most likely free. But more importantly, it will be controversial, silly, surprisingly brutal and non-YA at all, full of plot holes and inconsistencies, and brimming with that 80s goodness!

WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT:

Zero character development

Absolute good and bad

Supreme cliches and innuendos

Political incorrectness

Political naivete

Spectacular violence

Stupid conversations

Truckloads of cliches

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT EXPECT:

Emotional attachment

Intricate plot

Geopolitical sensitivity to current affairs (LULZOR)

Any semblance to reality whatsoever

And with that, stay tuned …