https://unbound.com/books/themotel/
A huge thank you for everything you’ve done for us over the last few days regarding our memoir ‘The Motel’!
Your response and support has been wonderful heart warming stuff.
Already 37% funded and it’s not even gone public yet.
Riffling through the archive we came across the first published work of a current New York Times and Sunday Times best selling author – on a Manumission flyer 👀 and thought it quite apt to share!
During the mayhem that was the summer of 98, the hot summer when we opened the Motel, I insisted on writing the stories that were printed in ‘The Daily Bugle’ on the back of the weekly flyers – sequentially as the weeks passed in ‘real’ time – as a kind of fantasy diary of life in The Manumission Motel. Name checking Dj’s and characters as part of the story.
As time wore on, we fell deeper into a narcotic haze – so immersed were we in the fantasy we had created – we started to believe what was written on the flyers.
A male guest would go missing each week, ingested in a highly implausible murder mystery by ‘female catkillers out for kicks any way they come’.
But one week when I failed to meet my deadline someone else was contracted to write the text.
That someone was the boyfriend of Andrea, the office manager, he was a Manumission ticket seller and also an aspiring author – his name… Matt Haig.
Matt did his best to imitate my style but perhaps unaware of the story thread that I’d been weaving wrote about the murder of the engaged couple in room 10 (- that was us!) being bumped off by the assailant on the flyer who just happened to be my sister.
I broke down in anguish, an argument ensued. My ears rang as Mike drove at high speed across the island to the house on the cliff top then swiftly disappeared over the huge electric gate. I’m not sure exactly what happened but it involved Mike breaking his wrist punching the wall (and the contractor) in front of a bewildered Matt Haig who was politely asked not to write any more flyers.
Reading it back today – the first time since it went to print almost 25 years ago, I was in tears again – but this time they were tears of laughter.
A Manumission Life 
Can’t wait for this book!