The yellow rose that heads this essay is a rose of friendship extended to all the writers at this site and a rose of admiration that I lay at the feet of one writer here whose writing is in a league all its own. I am writing to ask all those who read my work to take a look at the book that Ian Ayris is currently writing chapter by chapter on Fanstory.
I stand in awe and feel nothing but privileged to be among the first people to get a glimpse of genius.

Ian's novel, The Rise and Demise of Fat Kenny, only in its first chapters, is based on a short story he posted not that long ago, a story that I believe is just as good as the stories found on the pages of The New Yorker or in anthologies of the finest short story writing. The novel is now expanding the life story of Fat Kenny, a boy who grows up in 1950's London, amidst poverty and small prospects for getting out of that poverty.

I have told Ian his story is in the fine tradition of naturalism, of authors like Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane and Edith Wharton, and I am in no way exaggerating. Ian's Kenny is a character much like Maggie, a girl of the streets, whom I wrote of in a recent poem. Kenny is a boy of potential, who sees beauty and possibility amidst squalor, but who becomes oppressed and defeated by that squalor.

All of Ian's characters are finely drawn, the dialect pitch perfect, the settings as real and gritty as anything found in Dickens. This is not writing one reads for reviewer points, but writing one reads for the sheer pleasure of having been transported into a captivating world. This is a gift you give yourself, to be on his fan list and see the notice that a new chapter is ready to be devoured and savored.

Read the short story first and then the first few chapters to catch up. I am alerting people before you fall too far behind. There will be 40 chapters, so you still have the chance to be in on the ground floor. We at FanStory have such an opportunity here to witness this young man's genius unfold. I know I will never approach his talent, but I read him not as someone I envy but as someone I admire beyond compare.

I must warn you that there is violence and abundant obscenity in this novel, but none of it is gratuitous. It is all necessary to the realism of this gripping tale.
I do not ask you to read Ian's remarkable book as a favor to me or as a favor to him, but as a favor to yourself.
This is a work too magnificent to be hidden away for lack of promotion.