Bulldog
By Claudio Corbisiero
Owen Treadwell has a bad habit of focusing on his past. Soon it will be time for him to finally focus on his future
Publication date: December 2018
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Owen Treadwell is lazy, vain, a coward made a millionaire by a one-off act of brilliance in his childhood, who reaches thirty-four years old to find that he has never made a firm decision in his life. Guided by chance, he flies to a remote Pacific island to escape his living room, his limitations, and, most of all, his high-flying corporate lawyer girlfriend.
Once there, he dabbles in the island’s paradise, and then he is drawn to the island’s other visitors – people just like him: deluded, idealistic, self absorbed - who frustrate and fascinate him until he snaps. A local family on the island take a shine to him. They invite him into their home to share in a bereavement they have suffered, and Owen cannot fathom why. Perplexing him also is the agenda of the promiscuous and athletic alpha male, Ledley, who claims that he will be joining a Benedictine monastery on his return home. Throw in the Girl in the Green Bikini, and Megan, who can pull off the best impression of a German duck (“Qvark”) and Owen finds his fidelity increasingly tested.
Music is also beginning to have an effect on him; music that is inexplicable yet somehow deeply moving. His girlfriend’s twin brother Malakye has a score to settle with him as soon as he gets back home. His inheritance is dwindling. He wants to remain just where he is but feels the urge to make a terrible mistake. And then there is the issue of the killer sea creature patrolling the island’s waters. Will he have to remain on the island indefinitely because of the creature’s threat, or can he simply up and leave, a different person, completely of his own accord?
Bulldog is a tale of trading on your former glories, of embracing life’s complexities and learning finally how to confront what’s right in front of you. It’s a tale of growing up, of facing your imperfections, and of learning how to live outside yourself. It’s about the self imposed difficulties of travelling from A to B and it is a tale about those who refuse to accept the simple, recommended path in life.
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Claudio Corbisiero
Claudio lives in Crouch End, North London and writes, if such a thing is possible, for fun. He owns an S.S. Lazio home jersey from 1999 signed by legendary Argentine midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón, Hulk Hogan’s autograph from his visit to promote Summerslam ’92 at Wembley Stadium, and he (believes he) still holds the record for the number of crowdsurfs executed during a Silverchair gig at Brixton Academy (c. 1997). He also insists that he is absolutely nothing like the anti-hero in his story. Honestly.
Bulldog is his first finished novel and he agrees to keep on writing them as long as someone out there agrees to keep on reading them. Deal?
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Coincidence or not, when Sylvia Browne, that fraudulent psychic from The Montel Williams Show, walked on to give a reading of two Puerto Rican former lovers who were squabbling over the paternity of their daughter, vibrations sent my phone in second-long repeated fits across the coffee table. I saw Melody’s name and number clearly. She was touching base, a phrase she’d made unbearable from overuse. Never mind. I’d already seen this episode of Montel anyway. It had been repeated in the early nineteen nineties, when the influx of American networks raised the picture temperatures on gloomy English screens, and all those gaudy reds and oranges of Hollywood had me California dreaming of a world I really thought existed. That was the summer when our satellite dish arrived, when every night revolved around the adult channel fifteen minute previews that I’d stay awake to watch till midnight, bug-eyed and bristling with adolescent sexual intent.
“Hello my little chicken foot.”
“Owen? Owen, are you at home right now?”
“I’m watching TV. You after something?”
“Just touching base.” Traffic in the background, both human and mechanical, betrayed a brimming urgency. “Well, actually…” The line was bad – the price for all this prodding and swiping in place of good old fashioned analogue communication. “Have you got access to a computer?”
When facing Melody, a liar fights a losing battle. Answer honestly and you’ll confirm what she already knows, and she already knew, through periodic speculation, guesswork, cynicism, and the time she caught me, Kleenex at the ready, perched on top of the grab bar in the bathtub, that I’d have my hummus encrusted MacBook cooling by the window following a matinée of Ebony Betrayal.
“Give me a second to fire it up,” I said. “Right, what was it you wanted?”
- 10th December 2018 Blue Fairies
By now, you all should have received your digital and paperback copies of Bulldog. For those of you overseas, it will take a few more days to arrive, but I wanted to mention a few things now, so you know what happens next.
Firstly, the obvious: thank you. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but seeing my book in print, after nearly 5 years of false starts, 3 laptops, 7-8 drafts (I forget exactly), re-written…
10th July 2017 The BookTime I told you more about the process you have all agreed to be a part of. The book, as those of you who’ve seen me recently will know, is fully funded. Thank you all so much. What you have set in motion, to be continued by the Unbound team, will take the book from a 12 point digital babble in Times New Roman to a 200 and something page throwable object printed in proper ink.
To clarify: you have…
26th May 2017 Nobody Calls Me YellowWe have reached a watershed. The word is that 75%, like the windmill on Coyote Pass in Back To The Future III, is Bulldog’s (unofficial) point of no return. That means we are fully committed, strapped in. The locomotive is headed for the precipice. To borrow from the Doc on this: “Once we pass this windmill, it’s the future or bust,” and I am sure that you, as well as I, would rather vanish safely…
25th April 2017 Our SnowballAt the time of writing we are now at 54%. So well done me . . . I mean you. The response so far has been amazing, and anyone who has ever done a bit of self promotion will appreciate how shameless you become at slipping “I’ve written a book and wondered if you want to buy a copy” into every conversation. Thank you to friends and family who have had to be cameramen, script editors, PR consultants,…
These people are helping to fund Bulldog.
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Rhel ná DecVandé
Carlo Navato
Paolo Macri
Octavius Douglas-Hamilton
Vera Laun
Colm O'Shea
Hugo op den Dries
An anonymous donor
Alison Campbell
Rajini Vaidyanathan
Alexandra Lamboura
Paul Azevedo
Joshua Evans
Timothy Dewberry
Chris Dodds
Pietro Corbisiero
Kate Denison
Anna Templeton
Paul Mitchell
Ros Corbisiero
Claire Baker
Coco Corbisiero
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