First-time author Wez Thompson hoping for Kindle best-seller
01 Mar 2011
How To Say Boo To A Goose is an hilarious autobiographical adventure
A DJ from High Wycombe who decided to track down his childhood friends after 20 years is now hoping to turn his experiences into a best-selling book.
Wez Thompson aims to follow in the footsteps of authors such as Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace with "autobiographic adventure" How To Say Boo To A Goose.
Like Wallace's Friends Like These, the book chronicles Wez's "life-changing" mission to reconnect with the classmates he left behind in Guernsey at the turn of the nineties.
Incredibly, the budding author, 27, finished the memoir in less than a month and has now released it electronically through Palamedes Publishing as a Kindle ebook.
Speaking yesterday, Wez said: "This last year has literally been an adventure and one that has transformed my life.
"Ever since I left Guernsey for the mainland I'd wondered what had happened to the friends I'd left behind. Had they married, started families, invented a perpetual motion machine? You know, the usual.
"How To Say Boo To A Goose is the result of me finally deciding to do something about the situation, retold in a humorous way."
Wez was inspired to find the class of 1990 after receiving a spam email this July promoting cheap flights to the Channel Islands.
Armed only with a faded form photo and "fond" memories, he went on social networking sites such as Facebook to seek out and invite his old classmates to a reunion party.
Wez admits that at first he was "shooting in the dark" but things quickly came together after one of his best friends got back in touch.
The friend still lived in Guernsey and was in regular contact with the rest of Wez's year.
"It snowballed before my eyes, which was impressive considering it was the height of summer," said Wez, who works for the British Forces Broadcasting Service.
"We hastily arranged for everyone to meet one weekend and excitedly I booked the flights for my first journey back to Guernsey in two decades."
In the end 16 out of 20 classmates made the reunion, which was held at Vauvert Primary School in St Peter Port last July.
Wez was even able to persuade his former teacher Liz Mahy to attend and got everyone to re-enact the old school photo on the school yard.
He added: "It was a wonderful day and one I'll never forget. It just goes to show that if you put your mind to something, you'll succeed."
In addition to the reunion party, How To say Boo To A Goose covers the rest of Wez's life, which he describes as being "peculiarly eventful".
After graduating from university he beat 1,200 people to win a trainee presenter/producer role with the BFBS which saw him travel the world, staying in Germany, Gibraltar, the Falkland Island, Cyprus and Afghanistan.
Things, however, took a dramatic turn for the worse in 2004 when Wez was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
He describes it as a "dark period" but one that he came through with a "renewed drive" to pursue life to full, realising ambitions such as forming a band and trying stand-up comedy.
How To Say Boo To A Goose is available to buy from Amazon UK, priced £8.04. For more information, visit www.howtosaybootoagoose.com.
ISBN: 9780956796103
By Jason Taylors
Categories
