Allen Donnelly

Artist, Author, Whimsy Merchant

This is the official website of the artist and science-fiction/fantasy novelist, Allen Donnelly.

Filtering by Category: Whingeing

Of sneezing and gaming

I have a cold.  An absolute stinker.  My head is filled with cotton wool, my eyes are bleary and tired, my nose runs like a neverending waterfall and the phlegm, oh the phlegm.
In short, bleh.  It is not unexpected though.  Every year, at about this time, I can generally be relied upon to be slumped on a sofa, coughing and feeling sorry for myself.
There has been one positive side-effect though - my horribly ravaged throat does mean that I sound like Rytlock Brimstone from the trailers for Guild Wars 2!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YEdr8HHJ-zU#t=65s

Compared to me, this morning, before I'd had my first Lemsip of the day

http://soundcloud.com/allen-donnelly/rytlock-take-2-at-grimsargh 

See, ArenaNet!  You don't need any fancy recording equipment or skilled voice actors, just a guy, lying in bed, with an iPhone and a knackered throat!

I'm still playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (known, somewhat clumsily, as SWTOR).  It remains a good, solid, if uninspiring and old-fashioned MMO.  I will enjoy my 30 free days with it but, when that expires, I can safely say that I will happily turn my back on it and not subscribe.
If you are thinking of getting it, it's worth a shot but don't expect to be blown away.  Play as a Bounty Hunter as well, by far the most engaging of the classes when it comes to the mechanics of actually playing - Death From Above is worth the price of admission alone! 

As for writing?  Well, between Christmas and this terrible malady, it has not been a productive few days.

Pants!

It's ready to go, all set to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world, released into the wild!
But...
I had planned to set the price for free for at least the first month.  No one knows who I am, why would they risk real money on a novel I've written?  So I was going to give it away to try and get a bit of decent rep (assuming people actually like it) but, alas, Amazon won't let me set the price lower than 99 cents (about 75 pence in real money!).
There are already a ton of books on there that are free that I'm trying to compete with for the attention of prospective readers.  This is going to make things tricky...