Carry On Dreaming

About the Book

CARRY ON DREAMING is the sequel to Ward’s earlier novel, PARASITE…joyous flashbacks amidst a crystal meth nightmare. Both books are in the Beat writer tradition; memoirs of the unknown, portraits of the artist, stories of commonplace melodrama, combined with a spiritual quest for life’s meaning, or meaninglessness. All of which he has threaded together into an epic immigrant’s tale. I know Jeff Ward as a writer and a musician, and on both counts I expect the unexpected… Carry On Dreaming is almost as fast-paced as a shot of speed. He not only surprises you, he tricks you, turning dire situations into near comedy, and vice versa. Even with the laughs, there is no glorification. He’s walked the trail that leads to the graveyard or prison bars, and has dedicated his work to his friends who never made it out. Fortunately, he’s lived to tell, and pulls words out of hats like rabbits. Surprise, surprise. —Puma Perl, Retrograde, Knuckle Tattoos With Parasite, Jeff Ward joined the ranks of Bukowski, Lydia Lunch, Dan Fante, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Jerry Stahl, and Hubert Selby Jr. If you wanna see how it’s done, read this book! It’s that good … Anyone interested in modern “Outlaw” underground literature at its best should have this one in their collection. —Jonathan Shaw, Narcisa…Our Lady Of Ashes “Here comes Jeff Ward’s new book. Engrossing and entertaining. A destructive and creative lust-for-life ... I did not want the trip, nor the book, to end.” —Ingrid Rudefors, Meanwhile On A Roof In Chinatown

About the Author

Jeff Ward was born in 1969, and hails from England's Black Country region, near Birmingham. During his late teens and early twenties he played guitar in a rock 'n' roll band called Gunfire Dance, who received fleeting notoriety during the early 1990's. With the intention of becoming a writer, in 1996 he moved to New York City, a place he had become familiar with due to the band's numerous performances there. Following his debut novel, Mac & Beth, which followed a cast of foul-mouthed football hooligan-types who unwittingly re-enact Shakespeare's Scottish play, Ward concentrated on a true fiction, touching closely on his personal experience of his first year in New York City. Parasite is a modern-day immigrant tale set in New York City, amidst the harsh environment of crystal meth addiction and abusive relationships. It is a memoir, a true-fiction dedicated to two lost friends. In a series of back-and-forth episodes, he celebrates the vaudeville cast of reprobate pleasure victims that surrounded him on the dole in England, and on the run in New York: rock 'n' rollers, ravers, artists, escorts, models, freaks, fruits, fag hags, football hooligans, drug dealers, wannabe-gangsters. A sequel to Parasite with the working title Carry on Dreaming is already completed, and bastardizing other Shakespeare plays is under consideration. He remains in New York City, occasionally recording what he calls `agnostic spirituals' for his music project and sometime band, ElectraJet.