A bit about me...

Hola! I'm Karl Perry, just a bang average, middle-aged bloke who grew up in Humberston, a small village near Grimsby and Cleethorpes in North East Lincolnshire, but now find myself living in Bramhall, a similarly small village, south of Manchester.

My educational and early sporting achievements stand out for their lack of being worthy of remark. Something which carried on into early adulthood with my greatest sporting achievement being a second-place go-kart trophy on a stag do.

I currently have absolutely no idea how to describe my occupation, except to say, I seem to have a knack for helping smaller businesses grow a bit bigger. Along the way, I've set up a promotional marketing agency, a property development company, and an event management agency. Only one of these may be still talked about in the present tense.

My playlists rarely leave the 1980s which is reflected in my astonishing dance technique and retention of musical trivia related to the 82-86 era. I don't have a dog, which is mentioned for no other reason than I’d really like one, but as compensation, I do feed my neighbour’s cat. (In addition to them.)

I'm married to Karina, who, when we were students, was attracted to my unique interpretation of céili dancing one St Patricks night, and who has now saved my life, twice. I promise that, should the opportunity ever arise, I am committed to returning the favour.

We have two sons who are legally able to have their own families by now but still require feeding, sometimes hourly, so would appreciate it greatly if you purchased this book.

I just want to make one thing very clear. When I first started to write in December 2020, I had absolutely no intention of writing a book. It had never crossed my mind to write a book and if it had, I wouldn’t have known how to write a book. So, having never written a book before, I had no idea about the process or if there was some secret technique authors use.

Do they plan everything out and know exactly where they’re going before they start or just write what they’re thinking at the time and put it all in some sort of order afterwards? But all of that was irrelevant - because I wasn’t planning on writing a book.

The undeniable truth though, is you appear to be on a website promoting something bearing a remarkable likeness to a book, which unquestionably has my name on the front. So how did we get from one state of affairs to the other? 

A good question and one I’ve frequently asked myself. The honest answer is: this book is simply the by-product of a process I needed to work through. It was never the goal. The goal was to get a lot of stuff out of my head and the easiest way to do it was to write it down. 

You deserve an explanation...

Congratulations! You've just got through the first 222 words of my debut book,

You Only Live Thrice. I hope you feel inclined to get through the rest of them! 

I'm told it has an easy and informal tone, despite some of the places it goes. A sort of Yin & Yang. Consider it the literary equivalent of smart-casual. Although if you saw my attempts at getting that right at weddings...   

I've discovered that writing a book is a huge undertaking. Who would have thought it? Retro-fitting your memories and rambling thoughts into something complete strangers would find vaguely enjoyable, is another thing altogether.

I'd say 25% of the project was writing, 25% editing, 25% working out how to market and publish the thing, which left 25% to ponder all three of the above, on a loop, at four in the morning. 

So why? Why do it? Well, I won't be joining Jeff Bezos into space anytime soon so it's not for the money.

My hope is that you'll enjoy the honesty of a very human story, parts of which are tough, but also that it may offer some positivity to anyone who has had similar experiences. In fact, for anyone facing any kind of difficulty, especially if it's a serious health issue. And apparently, they can spring up at any time. Just like waves of panic buying. And Vape shops.

That said, health scares or other difficult times are not a prerequisite to getting something out of this book. I hope you'll find my take on challenging situations through a mostly positive lens, as an enjoyable alternative to what can sometimes feel like a never-ending negative news narrative. Afterall, Perspective is a Superpower! As that famous philosopher, Albus Dumbledore once said, "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”  

  And if by chance your life is perfectly curated and straight out of the Insta playbook, that's fantastic. Bully for you. You'll get to laugh at the confusion, uncertainty, frustration and shredding of dignity of someone whose life operates without the use of teeth-whitening filters.