Phillip Donnelly was born in Birmingham in 1970 but grew up in Dublin. After completing a psychology degree, he realised that he was profoundly misanthropic, and set about travelling the world looking for aliens to take him to another planet.
Unable to speak any foreign languages and almost incapable of holding a conversation in his own, he decided to teach English as a foreign language because this was the only job that would allow him to travel widely without any marketable skills or noticeable intelligence.
He has unsuccessfully searched for life from outer space in classrooms in the following countries: Spain, China, Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong, the UAE and France. He feels certain that a language classroom is the first place an alien would go to, English being the dominant international language on this planet, but almost certainly unheard of on other planets. In the future, he hopes to continue his search for alien life forms in different countries, and he would be most obliged if any aliens reading this novel could tell him where to go next.
He has ‘published’ two novels (The Inaction Man and Zoo), two travelogues on India and China, and a book of short stories (Alien Short Stories, or A.S.S.). All of these books have been written or largely rewritten over a five month period in 2008; a prolific period in the author’s life. It has been rumored that he has signed a deal with Alien Press Enterprises (APE) to deliver six books on the ‘human experience’ in return for a one-way ticket off Planet Earth; a world with no use for his inimitable skills.
He has also gone beyond the written word and ventured into the moving image, uploading 41 short videos to YouTube, but he has been equally unsuccessful in that field. This has convinced him that not only will the world not listen, but it also refuses to read or watch.
He currently lives in Paris with his patient and long-suffering wife, who never gives up hope that his condition might improve, but is continually disappointment by the lack of signs of improvement. His hobbies include waiting for death and paying taxes, and he has also been known to read, swim and ride a bike, but never at the same time.
He should be approached with extreme caution because while not physically dangerous he has been known to bore people to death. He can also be insufferably rude, arrogant and impossibly listless, but he can also be, on occasion, almost bearable. Like a dog, he responds well to kindness, and will demonstrate a canine sense of loyalty to all who even slightly praise his writing.
More information on this strange but relatively harmless creature can be found on his website and his YouTube channel.
