'A wonderful creative catalyst' Seb Bailey, co-founder of The Mind Gym

What's TAOL?

Tell An Outrageous Lie is a book of beginnings. A book to stretch your imagination. A hand held bundle of intriguing, mischievous prompts to get you writing, drawing, telling stories, making movies, or just staring out of the window and pondering in an interesting way.

Playful and quirky, Tell An Outrageous Lie invites you to look more closely at the world and to ponder the mass of stories that run through everyday life. It also suggests you might like to consider the consequences of an ill-fated fortune cookie (page 24), to open the Book of Lost Ideas (page 89) and to draft your application letter to the Association of Space Explorers (page 102).   (In truth, there aren’t any page numbers; getting lost is part of the fun.)

The prompts take a variety of forms: curious questions, found photographs, unfinished letters, images, thoughts, overheard snippets of conversations and story starters. Each prompt has a page to itself and each is given its own visual treatment to complement, or sometimes to confound, the text. And that's it. Tell An Outrageous Lie contains no lessons, no research, no acronyms, no tests, no ‘tips’ - just a bunch  of ideas and images to give your imagination a shove.

And who is it for? Writers, designers, and everyone else. Tell An Outrageous Lie is an excellent travelling companion, a perfect conversation starter, a permanent cure for boredom and, perhaps, the beginning of your next novel. Anyone can have fun with this book. There are no entry requirements for being imaginative, we can all do it. All we need is a little inspiration and a nudge to get us going. And that is exactly what this book provides.