The Story of John Nightly by Tot Taylor @tottaylor1 BLOG TOUR @unbounders #Giveaway #Win #TheStoryOfJohNightly

The Story of John Nightly is a novel about the nature of creativity at the level of genius. It mixes real and imagined lives in the tale of a young singer-songwriter.

John Nightly (b. 1948) finds his dimension in pop music, the art form of his time. His solo album becomes the third best-selling record of 1970. But success turns out to have side effects.

After a dazzling career, John renounces his gift, denying music and his very being, until he is rediscovered thirty years later by a teenage saviour dude who persuades him to restore his quasi-proto-multi-media eco-mass, the Mink Bungalow Requiem.

Can John Nightly be brought back to life again?

The Story of John Nightly by Tot Taylor was published by Unbound on 19 September 2019

As part of the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour today, I'm delighted to be able to give away one copy to one lucky reader.
Entry is simple; just fill out the competition widget at the end of this post.

UK Entries only please.

GOOD LUCK! 

One Print copy of The Story of John Nightly by Tot Taylor

Tot Taylor is an author, composer, songwriter, curator and record producer. He works in music, film, theatre and the visual arts. His theatre work includes the eight hour play with music 'Picasso's Women' (by Brian McAvera) for The National Theatre in London. He released an album of 'Music for the Left-Handed'. He co-founded the Riflemaker art space in London, whose artists have featured at Tate Modern, MoMa, LACMA, the Pompidou Center, Paris and museums worldwide. He lectures at Sothebys Institute, London.

From 2007 Taylor has curated an international feminist art program, with exhibitions dedicated to unsung female artists from the 1970s and '80s, including Judy Chicago, Penelope Slinger, Liliane Lijn and Yoko Ono – artists work is now being re-appraised in the 21st century. He is the author and editor of several books about art; Gavin Turk 'Me as Him', a history of The Indica Gallery & Bookshop, a look and the changing world of Digital and Analog and an investigation into the heightened state which is 'Voo-Doo' (published by Riflemaker London).

'The Story of John Nightly' (916 pages, published by Unbound, 27 August 2017 | Hardback & eBook) is Tot Taylor's debut novel (below).

"BEING A GENIUS CAN COMPLICATE THINGS…"

What happens when we press RECORD
Then PLAY
Then DELETE 
Then REWIND
And FAST FORWARD … all at the same time?


'THE STORY OF JOHN NIGHTLY' is a novel about the nature of creativity, specifically at a heightened level - the level of genius. A level with which many of you may well be familiar. It mixes real and imagined lives in the tale of a young singer-songwriter briefly active in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The artists Bob & Roberta Smith have produced a painting specially for the book’s cover.

John Nightly (b. Cambridge 1948) finds his dimension in ‘pop’ music - the art form of his time. 
In previous decades, he might have been a novelist or poet, a painter or a playwright. In previous centuries, a grand chef or gardener, astronomer or plant-hunter, when these occupations were revered as highly as that of ‘Artist’. The book follows his rise and downfall, from Carnaby Street to Carn Point in Cornwall. His growing up and development as a musician, the tragedy of his ambition and success, followed by his subsequent withdrawal from everyday life. John Nightly’s period of creation, his ‘spirit-wind’, lasts a mere five years. 

We meet him first as a child prodigy in 1950s Cambridge, finding fame in the London music scene of the mid-60s, then supermaxed at various retreats in Los Angeles during the ’70s. John Nightly sleeps through most of the 1980s until he moves to his ‘saven-heer’ on the coast of Cornwall.

In 1986, after too many ‘lost years’, John begins a new life as a cultivator and exporter of exotic plants but his past comes back to haunt him via the rediscovery by a superfan of his magnum opus, the Mink Bungalow Requiem - a pseudo-quasi-multimedia eco-mass which was to have been his parting shot. Meeting this teenage saviour dude, can the Master be brought back to life again? 

A tangled love story, the recording-studio as creative hub, the entertainment industry as dramatic backdrop, ascent and downfall, astronomical tables, Methodist hymnals and surfer culture as well as some serious ‘gardening notes’ play important parts in this 916 page novel. 

'THE STORY OF JOHN NIGHTLY' is a work of pure fiction.