Hot Soapy Water

So, I see you’ve picked up Hot Soapy Water, a bubble bath that’s not for kids. It’s okay, no need to look over your shoulder, I’m not there, I’ve never been there. Well, you’ve taken the first step. I suppose the question is, are you really going to do that old cliché and judge? “Hot Soapy Water, someone’s fetish with bath time?” Nope.

I haven’t diluted the contents of this book with fragrant bath bombs, candles and Barry White playing in the background. It’s mustard gas in the eyeballs, salt on an open wound. It’s utter modern-day carnage. Stories within stories, short poems. War, death, destruction, a chef’s journey, addiction, hedonism, mental health, trauma, the cold dark blanket of suicide, bravery, courage, bewilderment and some funny shit.

It’s a book you will not put down if you are brave enough to start. Why? Because I’m the voice in your head telling you this. My name is Auguste Knuckles, and you will ask yourself a question when the last page is turned: ‘how am I alive? Am I alive or has an alien written this nuclear bomb narrative fired into a volcano?’

It feels very strange to consider myself an author. I didn’t set out to become a writer let alone achieve the impossible. Believe it or not, I actual wet myself as I sat my English GCSE exam during the endless summer of 1986. My exam paper resembled wet toilet paper that had been trampled on by a hedgehog, sweating like a dyslexic on countdown. Children who are subjected to neglect, physical and mental abuse inevitably have issues at school. I write because it heals the many wounds of childhood trauma. I write because it heals the scars of war, addiction and my endless struggle with mental health.

My life thus far, incomprehensible. I contemplate the simple question many times? how and why I am alive. My birth name I left in the sand dunes of Iraq, the man I became would be the personification of my tormented childhood. The individual I have struggled to be for decades is a man blessed beyond measure. Once you have turned the last page, you decide what you think about this author. My name is Auguste Knuckles, father, husband, friend, chef, soldier, recovered drug addict author and urban poet.