Life, The Universe And Everything

Hello dear, dear friends! And you as well.
I hope that you are all having a fantastic day, or at least a day that is better than the recent average.
In a couple of short weeks, I shall discover the secret to life, the universe and everything. This is my roundabout way of saying that it will shortly be my birthday, my 42nd birthday, to be exact, hence all the Hitchhiker's references...
God, I feel old.
Anyway, in celebration of this most auspicious of occasions, I'm making all of my books FREE for the weekend of my birthday, which is the first weekend of March (my birthday being on the 4th).
So that's all 4 of my books, for free, for anyone who wants to download them over that weekend!
They're quite good as well, and don't just take my word for it, positive reviews all round!
And if you'd like to give me a birthday present, I wouldn't object to some more positive reviews and it wouldn't cost you a penny/dime - just saying!
American Author's page
UK Author's page
Goodreads page

I'm currently writing the sequel to Heroes Wanted, which should be released later this year barring unforeseen catastrophe.

I've done a few more paintings, visible in my gallery, and I've opened up an Etsy store where you can buy prints and originals directly from me - check it out here!
If you fancy a commission, just get in touch through the Contact Me page or email ADonnellyArt@gmail.com

There are time-lapse vids of some of the paintings up on my YouTube channel, including my latest effort, a portrait of Chadwick Boseman from the just released Black Panther film, which I'm very excited about (and which I won't get to watch for several months at least).

All of that aside, I've spent altogether too much time watching the Overwatch League on twitch (ESports!), playing Overwatch, and breaking my nose (not an interesting story, I just slipped and face-planted like the clumsy dumbass I am).
Currently also watching Altered Carbon on Netflix - fine bit of cyberpunk sci-fi business, if you like that kind of thing. And don't mind nudity. So much nudity.

That's all for now.
Be excellent to one another, and happy birthday to me!
Al

Salvaging some pride - New Book!

Another hilarious blog title, because my next book's called The Salvager. And the blog's title is "Salvaging some pride". Salvaging, see?
It's a gift, it really is.

So, The Salvager, a fun and exciting tale about friendship, adventure, giant robots, human consciousness and beer, can be yours to own on July the 25th!
In fact, you can pre-order it from Amazon right now and I would greatly appreciate you doing just that. Ah, go on now!
Also, please tell your friends if it sounds like the kind of book they'd be interested in.

I really like this book. Obviously, I'm biased, but I think you might like it too. It was a lot of fun to write and I love the characters.

What else has been happening? Well, not a lot. Once I finally heard back from Angry Robot that they didn't want to publish The Salvager (more fool them. I'll show them, I'll show them all!!!11!one!) I've been working on getting it ready for self-publishing. 
Other than that it's just been slowly walking the dog (oh so slowly, poor old bag of bones - her, that is, not me), trying my hand at watercolours and playing Overwatch (man alive, I'm addicted to that game, but please, for the love of all the gods, nerf Torbjörn!).

That's it really. All that remains for me to say is BUY MY BOOK! Please?
(Man, I've got the hard sell down to a fine art)

I'll leave you with a painting of a, er, whale? Probably? Something like that anyway.

World Book Day (oh, and some other day. Let's not dwell on that)

It's the 3rd of March, 2016, and it's World Book Day according to the hashtag on twitter. So happy World Book Day, everyone! Buy a book, read it, love it, leave a nice review, hug the author and tell them everything's going to be okay - don't worry about lying to us, we're very gullible.
You could even get one of my 3! Hell, you can even get the first one - Crystal Eyes - for free from Smashwords, iTunes and Barnes & Noble!

It is also, as I write this on the 3rd of March, 2016, less than 24 hours away from me, Allen Donnelly, exiting my 30s.
Tomorrow will mark the fortieth anniversary of my birth, way back in 1976.
God that sounds like a long time ago...
I remember thinking that forty seemed so far away, so oooold, as to be almost inconceivable. And yet here we are. Or rather, there I will be tomorrow.
Here's a pic of me at about age 4 or 5 I think. With some rhubarb. Not sure why...
I don't actually care about turning forty, it's just another number and, hopefully, we'll all get there eventually, but I do tend to get a bit maudlin around birthdays - I enjoy wallowing in existential angst too much not to indulge when give such an opportunity.
If nothing else, it offers an opportunity to look back at what you've accomplished over the last decade...

Moving on.
Let us save the wallowing for tomorrow, when I intend to do nothing but play video games, eat unhealthy food and probably drink some wine, and today focus on the here and now.
I'm still working on the sequel to Heroes Wanted. Some books, Heroes Wanted included, flow like water, the words all but tumbling out of me. With other books, like the sequel for example, every sentence is a battle, every word has to be dragged out as if it were blood from a stone. Every time you think you've got a hold on it, it twists in your grasp and you need to shift directions.
This one's been a battle and I'm still not done.

I've still not heard anything back about The Salvager from the Angry Robot open submissions thing. I desperately want to get that book out there because I think it's awesome but it's going to have to wait; tough for an impatient old man like myself.

Away from literature, I'm trying to get better at the arting and the drawing (which I tend to post on my Tumblr and DeviantArt pages). This drawing is supposed to be Furiosa from Mad Max, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.
I might try sticking some of the less crappy efforts on Etsy or something. Can't make any less money from it than I do from the book sales...
Ahem.

Well, I've managed to avoid doing a morning's work by writing this blog post so I guess it's lunchtime and I'm a couple of hours closer to being 40.
FORTY!

Have a great day!
Al.

Woah!!

It's been how long since I last updated this? I am a bad, bad man!
I honestly hadn't realised so much time had passed since I last posted anything.
So...how have you been?

What have I been up to? Well, I finished the first draft of my sequel to Crystal Eyes, and then wrote another entirely unrelated book (both of these will be out in 2015). I've also been tinkering and tweaking and generally dicking about with Heroes Wanted.
It's time to let go of that, however. For better or worse, I hereby declare myself to be done with Heroes Wanted. It is time to set it free. To be more precise, it will be time to set it free on Friday the 19th of December! Yep, that's the release date, but it will be available to pre-order from, well, now actually.
Behold, links!
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Smashwords
iTunes

More to follow!

And I heartily encourage you to pre-order it because every pre-order sale is counted as occurring on the release date, which in turn gives it a higher chance of increasing its visibility on places like the Amazon charts.
By the way, if you're a book reviewer, run a book review blog or anything like that, drop me a line and I'll send you a free copy.

I've also permanently reduced the price of my first novel, Crystal Eyes, to just 99 cents (or the local equivalent)!

In other news, I've added a new short story to the website - a piece of World of Warcraft fan-fiction called The Last Farm In Lordaeron. 
I've also added a gallery of the sketches I've been doing for Inktober.
I'm also in the process of trying to arrange a house move and gearing up for this year's NaNoWriMo. It's possible that by the end of this year I may just collapse into a heap on the floor, and not just because of too much wine.

A Merry Crystal Christmas

Overall, this has not been a terribly productive day.  Meant to do more work on the sequel to Crystal Eyes, ended up accomplishing almost nothing - apart from making a Christmas card from Crystal!

Yes, this is how I spent a good chunk of my day, faffing about with an art program called ArtRage!

It's meant to be in a kind of anime style, not sure I pulled it off...
And if you're wondering about the burning building...well it makes sense if you've read the book (still available, hint hint) 

Anyway, my dad's coming to stay tomorrow so I doubt I'll get much more writing done before the new year.
Here's to a more productive 2013!

Oh, and have a Merry Christmas!

(also posted at my other blog of randomness - A Thousand Words)