‘The Free’ now has almost 2800 ‘friends’ on Farcebook, and has had over 130,ooo visitors to this site (but mostly to read the news blog posts page). You can now also order and buy the physical ‘dead tree’ edition . . but in reality it’s still a rare and hardly known ‘Indie’ publication, lets see if more people discover it in 2013..
free eBook DOWNLOAD and Book Orders page, click HERE
see the Picasa SLIDESHOW, 96 illustrations of 2012 edition of The Free https://picasaweb.google.com
for Posts Page click: http://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/
Welcome every and any body
about the book
Adventure/Thriller.. Maxie rebels and runs away, with the anarcha feminists, squatters and gays.. Capitalism is going bottoms up. The climate is revolting.. our heroes live through the social and permaculture revolution, and the dawn of a money-free world…
Best on Fullscreen..select at top. And then Scroll and Book in View Mode, bottom left. When it works this reader is READABLE !
see free downloads page to get free pdf, ipad, epub, kobo, etc editions
and here’s the Scribd Reader
You can read it now on its BLOG below(wear sunglasses)
^^^^you can also download here but I think they ask you to join Scribd (free). When reader fails go to ‘View on SCRIBD’, above.
- Friends of ‘The Free’
‘The Free’ has no commercial distribution. It relies on its friends to do that. And since the eBook is ‘money free’ that’s simpler..IF readers help.
ways you could really help
1) Become a friend of The Free on Facebook, and share any ideas on how to publicize it http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=100001284179241&sk=wal2) Check out this blogsite, (see the Blogthemes).. Think how else we/you could distribute,
2) Download free copies, pdf and ePub for android etc… You could send a gift of The Free to a friend, it fits in an E-mail without problems
Its also available here..http://www.scribd.com/doc/25577340/The-Free- and in the Anarchist Library and Google Books. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/. Also on Issuu here , which has a cool reader , http://issuu.com/mikegilli/docs
What it’s about..
Accompany Linda through her hilarious, terrible day, as she:
-escapes her useless school and abusive daddy,-changes her name to Maxie and falls in with the anarcha feminists, squatters and gays.
The State is going bottoms up, the Climate is going crazy, we’re living the collapse of capitalism, blow by blow, with a rainbow.
Maxie and her new friends get free of their traumas,and get into dealing subversive death blows, to a skinhead gang,a bankrupt school and the testerical special police. Next thing they flee to Ragwort CoOp Pool,in a big safe occupied working class area. We play the adventure live through their eyes, laughing and lamenting… inventing social revolution.
The PIF soldiers eventually arrive, to restore capitalist chaos, Macker and Maxie are missing, the hunt begins, while the spaced out invaders get subverted, corrupted, swallowed and (burp) digested.
Our odd family puzzles with the pieces.. finding a fun lifestyle,a coppice farm, and bright ideas for saving The Planet, but keep your hankies ready, folks.. click on your giant wings, for the fantastic FLYING finale!
about the writer
…..’here I play around with gardens and mechanics, and, um, look after children and horses. I can cook a deadly vegetarian paella and my hobbies include solar-powered internet and, er, rooting in bins’….
Thanks everyone for your help with this project..Please add a comment at foot of page
for Posts Page click: http://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/
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Latest News and Views
‘The Free’ now has almost 3000 ‘friends’ on Farcebook, and has had over 130,ooo visitors to this site (but mostly to read the news blog posts page). You can now also order and buy the physical ‘dead tree’ edition here ..but in reality it’s still a rare and hardly known ‘Indie’ publication, lets see if more people discover it in 2013..
Hey, I think your blog is good
More news
You can read extracts from The Free on The Anarchist Black Cat,
a popular forum with over 400 views already
hers the slinky link: http://www.anarchistblackcat.org/index.php/topic,8168.0.html
Imagine you’re at a water park and that there is a great flume to shoot down awash with a rainbow of fluorescent colours and you jump in and are swished down, churning and turning, and it doesn’t stop and why would you want it to stop, it is such a riot of experience, so wild, funny, tragic, exhilarating, radical, outraged, whatever, and that you are flushed right out only at the end of the book. It’s like that and I like that a lot. Child abuse, police brutality, parental brutality, school brutality, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, off-beats, revolutionaries and a life of mandatory adventure have rarely been better than this. The pitch doesn’t really do it justice. It should be a blank space with only a three word exhortation in the middle ‘Jump right in!’, and then you should. Don’t forget to say thank you at the end. It is an unforgettable ride. Tim Roux .
‘The Free’ can now also be read on ‘ISSUU’ with a rather nice reader
and various formats.. downloadable from May 1st.
here’s that link http://issuu.com/thefreemikegilli/docs/the_free_
I read a book about some Anarchist Commune called the Free. It was supposed to be Ireland I think and it was crushed by the capitalists if I remember correctly. It was back in the 1980′s.
please contact me (via mail or IRC) if you’re interested to have the book archived on the library. Thanks.
The Free on Facebook
here’s the link
http://www.facebook.com/?tid=1707650903460&sk=messages#!/profile.php?id=100001284179241
22nd Dec
The Free has been posted as a discussion topic on the Money Free site
hers the link
http://money-free.ning.com/forum/topics/the-free-brilliant-novel-by?xg_source=activity
The Free… Printed version canceled….
PM Press have pulled out of their contract to publish ‘The Free’,
saying it’s too long and un-commercial.
But they’re doing longer less popular works (like a 848 page bio of William Morris, out soon!), and refused to consider the short version,
so we don’t really know why. They suggested doing it in the 1st place!
This is your chance to help publish the printed version.
If you like the book you can urge Ramsey to keep his word with a message here:
http://www.facebook.com/?tid=1745707841684&sk=messages#!/pm.press.
Hi
I bought an early version of your book in white chapel in 1986.
It meant loads to me and I have managed to hang onto it.
I’m pleased you made it here.
Thanks for the book
Jr
love the premise of this book. It looks like it dove-tails nicely with “dancing in your bubble”… which is about awakening and connection to self and nature… i’m looking forward to giving this a good read, and would be interested in reciprocal links for web pages.
Teri http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=5d326930-79d7-45ed-bbc7-b396bf56396d
Allen Lyne. Author of ‘A Handicap For The Devil’
Good writing here. You are a born storyteller; I can feel that from the opening chapter. You choose a tough topic, getting into the underclass in an apocalyptic scenario of collapse and decay. I have a strong feeling that we share a political philosophy.
This is a book I will buy if and when it hits the bookshelves. That’s the highest praise possible from me!
…
…I love the idea of her living in a goldfish bowl!
Your voice is mystifying! It is clever, emotion wrenching, and never ever dull.
Well done. This deserves to be published.
–Rin
Author of ‘Protected’
Latest news…
The Free backed by 99 authors simultaneously on Authonomy writers site!
New Chapter 10 is up…after a dozen revisions. Called Sliding Thru Walls.. main theme is smashing anti gay bigotry in schools.
Now rewriting later chapters to put Maxie´s part in 1st person. Due to popular demand.
Scribd viewer now working, at least here, but the colours are blinding!
Catcha later……..M
You’ve done a great job with this. Linda is so real and her story so compelling. I not only want to know what’s going to happen to her next, I want to hear how she’s going to say it, and describe it and react to it.
I can’t wait to meet Maxie and will be reading on.
I’ve backed this over on authonomy. Best of luck!
Leah Petersen – Mourn the Sun
Hola Mike !!
No se cuando voy a tener tiempo para leer-lo, pero pinta interesante….Algo va por correo convencional a Kan Pascual,
para ti y la familia. Creo que lo vas a apreciar!!!
FROM CHICHESTER WITH LOVE. XXX
Here’s the thing – I was reading through the Table of Contents, like all good OC’s, every last one, and got to #6-Testerical Morons and started to laugh so hard I damn near choked to death. And that was before I’d hit a word of text. Anyone with big brass ones who can compose such a sexy, exhilarating, satirical and lyrical tome has wandered into Work-of-Art territory.
Backed with WILD ENTHUSIASM. Publish NOW – I want this on my shelf.
Diane
The Guardian Chronicles: Seduction
Finish Line from Mounted Exercises
http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=4def2396-15c5-4770-99c4-34946d23b3d4
Very upbeat and fun style. You can’t half tell it’s written by an Irishman – LOL. Fantastic lighthearted feel to the whole thing even though it deals with the less than lighthearted issues. Easy to love characters….
- Lis
http://www.alissaanderton.wordpress.com
http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=b7ef854e-1438-4813-a40c-d178d5fd6844
This is Social Science Fiction not attempted since Survivors on BBC in the Seventies. Are we back there, yet?
I love this book. As satire, it works superbly showing up the inevitable consequences of Western Free Market Rapacious Capitalism as well as giving us a taste of Good Old Days English Humour.
I’m loving the central conceit and your ‘back to the land’ theorising where ordinary folk – God I’m writing like a Yokel! – come up with the low tech, non policy solutions. The Free has the potential to be a very, very important book.
The use of differing narrators is also brilliant. Each opens a different perspective, depending on their personalities and prejudices. Popping the self conscious writing bubble beautifully. If only the likes of Martin Amis, Will Self, Rushdie et al could actually define their characters in the simple, no nonsense way you have. Who needs drawn out internal monologues and socio-political rhetoric when you can do this?
Interesting. The first chapter itself is very grabbing. The style lively, fast paced and with plenty of punch. You write well. Your heroine’s voice is quite clear, and we like her right off. I do think it would help us grasp the situation better if we knew how old she was. I think she’s in her teens, but where—thirteen or sixtee? I think this knowledge would help us better appreciate her feelings towards her dad and his infidelity, as well as the hints you give of sexual abuse by her father and her freezing up when confronted with sexual advances.
You might stick the words “Table of Contents” just above Act One. That would make the long listing more intelligible and inviting rather than, as I sort of found it, a bit annoying.
The glossary feels like overload—too much to absorb and not relevant to the action we’ve been so vividly witnessing. Ideally the book itself should provide its own context. At most I’d include only the words that appear in the chapter that need glossed. Here “de School” and CLANS.
http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=1b270796-2481-49a8-860a-3ef876cf6d10
Thanks to Gerry for her great comments from Authonomy.
I’m specially inspired to have the support of a famous
Irish writer……….m
http://www.gerrymccullough.com
This is such a lively, rollicking book, both in its racy style and in its dialogue and swift moving action, that it comes across at first as a comedy. And it is certainly very funny, especially in some bits. But this is so much more than a comedy. It is a book with very serious depths, with so much to say, with such real characters. Maxie, Macker, Barney – they are people who have been deeply hurt, who have experienced tragedy in their short lives, but who don’t let it drag them down. They are people determined mostly to live life to the full, to fight and keep on fighting. They are, as the title tells us, The Free. An unbelievably exciting book, not because of its stupendous pace and action filled plot, but because of the depth of character revealed continuously, holding us breathless as we explore one after another of these amazing people. Really well done, Mike. You’re an exceptional writer.
Gerry McCullough,
Belfast Girls. http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=9ce001a3-0575-4ccf-a2ed-b95ac81bfbbe
http://www.gerrymccullough.podOmatic.com
Thanxalot for the first comments.
Why not paste a link to your books,like Haley above.
In case a horde of readers magically show up.
CHEERS…………..mikey
Hey this is very cool! Good job. I’ve bookmarked you and will come back and check things out periodically. I’m rooting for you. Loved this book!
Shannon
Sex on a Beach
Damn I’m third
never mind.
Yep i also did the backing thing for you. It was a swap read I seem to recall.
Keep plugging away with this blog and you will start to get regular followers. You do need to keep it updated though. Use it as a thought machine and have fun.
Teresa
Eye of Erasmus
I backed you on Authonomy and will back you on here. I hope The Free gets published and good luck to you. It was already good so any improvements will turn it into a great read.
Hi Mike!
What an amazing read. I’ve read the first 10 chapters and I feel hooked! Even though I have to stop, I find that I just don’t want too!
From the very first chapter, where the color and font made me sit up straight and go ‘huh?’, I just kept reading. The changing colors are a great idea, makes you stand out a little more and it’s a soothing change for the eyes. The dialogue is wonderful (for lack of a better word) and it seems to simply roll of the pages. I am going to read a little more but I am backing this right now, because I fear that I might forget in the wonderful madness that is your book.
Haley Brite – Hart LINK TO SEE ‘HART’… http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=05e03c19-dfd3-4392-a8d4-157c164ef00d