I Am Not A Wolf by Dan Sheehan

You know how it is in the office man,
we’re just a couple of big ol’
alpha dogs buttin’ heads.

In all honesty, I thought Dan Sheehan, author of this feature-length-thread version of his popular Twitter profile @SICKOFWOLVES (but with fewer adverts for his fine human clothing range), was one of the founders and contributors to The Idler magazine, but I find that I was thinking of Dan Kiernan. I’d say mea culpa but that would make me sound like a total prat.

Dan Sheehan is also not an Irish rugby union player. 

Third Google lucky.

Having found and read the About page on his website, it turns out I don’t care who Dan Sheehan is. What is interesting is that he clearly has nostalgia for the classic Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure books of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. This time, instead of navigating the dungeons below Firetop Mountain, the main character of I Am Not A Wolf is a coffee lover, graphic designer, and definitely not a wolf, who is desperate to navigate his way through the complex human world outside of the woods. We start with a shower and casual confrontation with Caleb, the malnourished room-mate, and then head to work – but how to get there? At the end of each short chapter you are offered choices of how to proceed, one of which occasionally leads to some sort of cathartic but costly murder and subsequent fleeing back to the woods. As in life, and unlike Fighting Fantasy, there is no correct choice, unless you consider being eaten by bugs any less desirable than running a semi-successful video store or chewing off the face of your boss. 

In any event, your choices take you on a meandering path through office politics and email etiquette, past competitive colleagues and awkward social occasions, around family issues and even into the murky pool that is online dating. You get to decide whether to indulge or deny yourself your animal urges, whether to take an Uber or get the bus, and whether to let Gary, Brett and Brent live or feast on their entrails, and running alongside it all is a faux-naïve commentary on how self-awareness has estranged humankind from the natural world and how we’re all martyrs to the cause of acceptance, debasing ourselves worse than any wild beast in order to fit in.

As a fan of a good hook, I was always going to support this Unbound project, and the Twitter feed was worth a giggle every now and then. In fact, I’m pleased that Mr Sheehan went non-linear with his format because, in all honesty, I think this would have tired quickly over a few pages had it been a straight forward left-to-right narrative. However, it means that, should your story end too soon, you can go back and choose another path, until you do finally massacre your arsehole colleagues or reclaim a shopping mall for your woodland friends, or settle down in the suburbs with another wolf-in-office-worker-clothing and raise a litter of ungrateful little cubs all the while dreaming of running carefree through the snow….

It’s not subtle, but it is cunning and entertaining, and I now own a ‘NOT BLOOD’ mug and a t-shirt that says “I AM BEGGING YOU TO STOP EMAILING ME”. If all Dan wants is a book to act as vanguard to a successful apparel empire, then it might just work.

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