[KICK THE BALLS: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey]
Fever Pitch meets Trainspotting in this laugh-out-loud, caustic account of one man's attempt to coach a peewee soccer team in California. For a start, his team the Dragons, lack one major skill - the ability to play soccer. And to add insult to injury, they are pampered, spoiled little babies.

Despite his best attempts, the kids are no good at the game, earning nicknames such as 'Potted Plant' and 'Cheeky Wee Bastard', 'Two Left Feet' and 'Def Not Beckham'. And on top of the bad players, Black's coaching methods are constantly questioned by the overprotective, pampering parents who maintain that "winning isn't everything" the polar opposite of Black's philosophy.

Through drills and bombast, Black attempts to turn this hopeless team of suburbanite kids from wimps to winners. Along the way, and with wildly funny results, he tries to make sense of this strange suburban land of SUVs, organic fruit and late-night TV evangelists, all of which lends to his feeling alien. Told with Black's hilarious Scottish sensibility, this is a modern memoir like no other. KICK THE BALLS will delight fans of well-told, laugh-out-loud memoirs.

[Alan Black author of KICK THE BALLS: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey]
Alan Black is a bartender by trade. He co-founded the Scottish Cultural and Arts Foundation in 1995.

In 1996, he produced the American premiere of the hit stage play version of Trainspotting. His involvement with the Scottish literary renaissance in the nineties allowed him to introduce to an American audience many of the new writers emerging as part of that influential wave. He has worked with major U.S. publishers in promoting writers at the Edinburgh Castle Pub in San Francisco.

In 1999, he was around for the formation of the annual Litquake Festival, San Francisco's biggest writers' festival. He sits on the Executive Committee of Litquake.

"A hilarious and utterly irreverent tale of a Scotsman coaching in the junior 'soccer' leagues in the USA. It is the funniest book you will ever read about what the insignificants in the rest of world call 'football'. This tale of cross-cultural chaos also shows you why America,and most of all, Scotland, will never be succesful on the world stage of the beautiful game."