Yes, I am Louis Kemp from the novel Taipei Mutt. The writer was a friend of mine during my first stint in Taiwan; or rather, kind of a friend. Fact is he basically stole parts of my life story to make his book, which made me pretty pissed off for awhile, him using my real name especially. I've forgiven him though, and we're on good terms again. A lot of the book wasn't true anyway; though it is true I was changed into a dog. Those who still say it isn't, that I was just suffering delusions, they don't know what the hell they're talking about. This photo of me, taken near the end of my time as a canine, should help prove the skeptics wrong. I have more evidence if anyone cares to ask about it.

Anyhow I’m back in Taipei, I’m well again--the medication has helped a lot--and I’m teaching English like I planned to do the first time. I’ve gotten over my ire about the book, and Mader (maybe as a way to pay me back for stealing my story?) has even agreed to a request of mine. He’s going to let me edit his manuscript so as to bring it closer to my actual memories. So here it’ll be my version of what happened--finally. Mader is also letting me post the re-edited chapters on his blog, since he doesn’t much care about the further few thousands of NT he might make from selling copies of the novel. Anyhow that’s what he claims. Mader’s book, in any case, is pretty heavily fictionalized, though this edited version, I’m telling you myself, is going to be just as it all really went down.

It's kind of strange posting on Mader’s blog though--because most of his writing recently is about gnosticism and theology and the Bible, things quite different from what you’ll find in my own story. But I’ll be sending him the edited chapters, and he's agreed to post them. You can comment on the story as I type it out: I’ll read your remarks as I go along.

Mader’s book was called A Taipei Mutt. My version, sharper, meaner, truer, I’ll just call Mutt. You can check out the first chapter here.