Isabel asked pleasefindthis:

Did the authors dad pass away ? Because when I read the beginning of this book , the copyright page or something said for dad ?

pleasefindthis Yes, my father passed away in January two years ago. I write a bit about him in How To Be Happy, it's not a happy subject and so the whole thing smacks of irony.

Here's a poem about him from the book.

"It’s been a while

But I still remember the way

Your brother turned away

At the funeral

As if there was somewhere to look

That didn’t hurt."

There's a lot of that, in that book and quite a bit of him in me. We had the same name except my "Iain" has the extra "i" in it. I can't really remember him being able to walk, as he had Multiple Sclerosis from the year I was born, and at the end he couldn't read either, so he never actually read any of my books. Although my mother read some of my poetry to him and apparently he said to her once that he understood that I was successful, but not what any of it meant. Which is ok. I still love and loved him, just as he loved me. He was the strongest man I ever met.

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