Exclusive: Bloc Party's Kele Okereke Reveals New Book Details
Get ready to update your descriptions of Kele Okereke to "author/singer," as the Bloc Party frontman confirmed to Fuse that he has finished writing his debut book Midnight on a Bicycle.
"I’m just editing it now with my agent, so in the next few months it should be done completely," says Okereke. "And that’ll be good because [Bloc Party's new] album [Four] will be out by then so I can sell it. I won’t have anything to be focusing on, so it’ll be good to get the book out then."
In early 2011, it was reported that Okereke was working on a collection of short stories rumored to be about his sexual experiences over the past five years. But Okereke says living in New York forced him to turn the book into a novella and change its focus. "I was in New York for a year as a complete alien and observer," says Okereke. "I wasn’t working; I was just walking around meeting strangers and talking to people in bars and the book is inspired by things that I was overhearing and conversations I was having.
"I was previously working on a collection of short stories that I started in 2009 and part of the reason for going to New York was I wanted to finish them. When I was in New York, I realized I needed to make it about New York, so it’s a kind of real shift, but I think the translation went very well."
Okereke hopes to release the book either this year or in early 2013 ("I don't know how long these book deals take"), but he's already begun work on his next book—his first proper novel. "I think that’s going to be the real test," admits Okereke. "It's in my head and now it’s going to have to come out. I don’t know how long it’ll take, it might take years and years, but I know that I have to do this."
Bloc Party's fourth album Four is out August 21.
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