I didn’t announce this while I was writing it.
I didn’t tease it.
I didn’t drip-feed chapters for applause.
I just finished it.
The Boot is now available in paperback via IngramSpark:
It’s 124 pages. Cream paper. Proper spine. Proper weight.
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It isn’t a downloadable idea.
It’s a physical object.
And that matters.
I didn’t set out to write a football story.
I wrote about something I’ve been watching for years.
How power doesn’t take — it replaces.
How craft gets reorganised into process.
How improvement becomes a polite word for removal.
How people only realise what was valuable once the system no longer needs them.
That’s what The Boot is about.
It’s fiction.
But it isn’t accidental.
I started writing it during COVID, when the world went quiet. No movement. No noise. Just time and a head that wouldn’t switch off.
I’m dyslexic. I’ve got ADHD. Writing 124 pages wasn’t the obvious move. It took longer than it should have. I rewrote sections more times than I can count. Some days it felt like pushing a machine uphill.
Finishing it matters more than releasing it.
This wasn’t a content play.
It wasn’t a funnel.
It wasn’t built for reach.
It was built to see if I could hold a story long enough for it to become something real.
Now it is.
There’s a bigger universe behind this book.
The succession arc is already mapped.
Characters who haven’t fully surfaced.
Power structures that haven’t yet revealed themselves.
What happens when visibility scales beyond control.
That story exists.
Whether it becomes public depends on what happens next.
If this resonates, I build.
If readers want more, I expand.
If it lands, this becomes deliberate.
If it doesn’t, it stands as a contained strike.
I’m not chasing validation.
I’m not waiting for a publisher to decide whether it’s allowed.
Stories outlast systems. That’s why systems try to standardise them.
If you read it and it moves something in you, tell me.
That decides what happens next.
— Matchmaker