The Twenty-Five Deeds of Hanson Drake

INTRODUCTION, November 2016Nearly three years have passed since I wrote "Hanson Drake". Three years, and more than eight million readers. Three years, and more than a million letters and emails sent from people around the world asking questions about Hanson Drake's life.What can I possibly tell them? Tell you?BLURBHanson Drake has five hundred million in the bank and a house on the beach overlooking the ocean. As the writer of the world's favourite song, he hasn't had to do a day's work in his life.Stung into action by a derisive article in a national newspaper, Hanson Drake decides to change his life by becoming a volunteer at a country house.He vows to do at least one good deed every day in the twenty-four days leading up to Christmas, hoping to secure salvation and redemption for his wasteful life.In helping others-and learning to celebrate the ordinariness and eccentricities of the people he meets-he finally understands his place in the universe.But what does fate have planned for Hanson Drake?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
London-born author Briar Kit Esme is best known for the prescient and allegorical novel The Twenty-Five Deeds of Hanson Drake. Published in 2013, the story follows the enigmatic songwriting starman Hanson Drake-a fictionalised stand-in for the late David Bowie (1947-2016)-during the final weeks of his life. Through critical and popular acclaim, Hanson Drake has attracted favourable comparisons with a number of award-winning novels, including Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, for its simple feel-good narrative; Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, for its epigrammatic literary style; and Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World, for its wide-ranging philosophical ideas.

Briar Kit is also the author of the operatic plaria Hathaway-Eight Arias For A Bardic Life, written to mark the quatercentenary of William Shakespeare’s death in 1616. Commissioned as a co-production for Helios Collective, Buxton Opera, and Copenhagen Opera, Hathaway received its much-lauded world premiere at Buxton Festival in 2016.

Briar Kit now publishes under noms de plume, while also working as a scriptwriter and librettist for opera, music, theatre, film, and television companies, and as a ghostwriter, editor, and consultant for world-renowned authors.

Contact via Briar Kit’s website at briarkitesme.wordpress.com