Because You’re A Rebel: Why I Made This Book For You

Office work sucks. At least it can. Do you ever wonder what it might be like to just not turn up? Yeah, I know the feeling. I can also guess the answer: Who would pay the bills? Who would feed the kids? Who? Who? Who? You want so desperately to break free, to rebel, to do something else, but you have to stick at it. You have to buy things and feed people and pay for holidays and the work’s not that bad after all… is it?

I’m the same as you. I used to work in an office – a grey-walled, flickery-strobe lit, open-plan coffin of an office without real air. I regularly dreamed of sunlight shimmering off blue water, of bare feet running through fields of fresh flowers. (My feet, obviously.) In short, I did all the things most of us do when we need to escape and be free. I daydreamed. You daydream. We all daydream. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just took it one step further. I imagined someone in the office brought a small bottle of poison in with them in their coat pocket.

You see, I had a terrible manager. Not everyone does. Some people like their boss; some tolerate him; some can’t stand the bastard. For me, it was the nasty, twisted, bitter, competitive, downright cruel piece of corporate shit in charge of operations that inspired me to convert the daily grind into a fictional maelstrom – a laugh-out-loud, fuck-up of a story so sick and devious that anyone reading it who also feels they’ve drawn the short straw will undoubtedly feel better about themselves and life in general. Because if you can laugh at Maxwell D. Kalist – the character I put together based on my conniving boss – you will be able to laugh at anything and anyone. No questions asked. And if you can see that your colleagues aren’t as spineless, dull-witted and suck-up as Ridley Obelmäker and Gottfried Baumauer, the fictional co-workers in my story, you’ll go back to work tomorrow or the next day and even the day after that with a spring in your step and a “nothing can shake my foundations” attitude.

That’s why I wrote this book – for YOU.

From the Horse’s Mouth is a rebellious short book that’s punishingly nasty, verging on the grotesque at times, but it’ll make you split your sides laughing and turn your next day at work into a breeze.