Looking for a Kiss is an 80s post-punk London novel.

Set in Camden, Camberwell and New York, the book is a fabulous chronicle of speed, madness and flying saucers (Warhol/Edie Sedgwick reference) – acid, pop art, teenage perversity, the nature of melancholy, breakdown, breakup and breakout, the Spectacle, bathroom functions, clairvoyance, personality crises, primal scenes, screams and schemes, the eternal quest for cool and the endless search for redemption. And much more.

Complete and unexpurgated.

‘Looking for a Kiss is cool, clever, magical, literary and very, very exciting – the author has found his distinctive voice and train of thought/ideas – it’s a novel of insight, wild characterisation, and statement.

‘For those who remember the gritty Camden Town/London and the East Village/New York of the 1980s, the novel is a trip back to view an unravelling tapestry of moods and images that depict the convulsive and compelling meaning of the times.

‘But Looking For a Kiss is not a book of the past: rather its territory is the past, present, and future moulded into a timeless and ongoing form.

‘There’s some considerable skill and talent here – a contender for book of the year,’ – Gregory Hesse, photographer.

‘Brilliant. Amphetamine sharp,’ Johny Brown, Resonance FM radio host and vocalist with the Band of Holy Joy

‘It’s not post punk, but Proust punk,’ Johny Brown, Resonance FM radio host and vocalist with the Band of Holy Joy

‘A Jarmanesque journey in Vivienne Westwood heels, to love’s shrine,’ David Erdos, International Times

REVIEWS

‘A masterpiece… collapsing temporal sensations in a manner evocative of the postmodern condition, seeking transcendent meaning within punk, acid, sex and living in squalor in Camden. Blew my mind.’ Adam Lehrer @safetypropaganda

‘Totally fabulous. Saturated colour. It’s brilliant. One of those rare books that brings, via the lyrical arc of prose, lost futures into the defiant present. My book of the year.’ Author/poet Jeremy Reed

‘Like a bittersweet Coltrane solo crashing into Einstürzende Neubauten. Books like this are a flare in the dark.’ Malcolm Paul, Expat Press.

‘A drug-fuelled beat/punk, love/hate story. Like (say) Kerouac, it’s shot through with sadness. Not just the comedown, but the inability to bridge the gulf between the enlightened moment of Beatitude, and the bleak surroundings you exist in the rest of the time.' Paul Gorman, writer.

‘Reminds me more of US post-punk writing… Kathy Acker … Richard Hell… it is raw, cold, desperate, fucked up.’ Michael Gratzke, academic.

'Cool, clever, magical, literary and very, very exciting.’ – photographer Gregory Hesse.

‘Looking For A Kiss’, a tale of doomed punk youth, teenage perversity and post-punk faded chic.