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.

7 days was all she wrote...

Reference to a Sting song there, because I exist at the cutting edge of popular culture!
Zeitgeist is my middle name.

Anyway, the reason for the song reference - it is a mere seven (7) days, one singular week from the time of writing this, until Heroes Wanted, my hilarious new fantasy novel, is unleashed into the big, wide world! Just in time for Christmas!
It's an interesting, stressful time, especially if you're as neurotic as me.
Will people like it?
What if no one likes it?
What if it sucks?
It sucks, I know it does, I should have set fire to my hard drive and forgotten the whole thing.
No, it's awesome - pull yourself together and have some self-confidence, man!
You can do this, you can totally do this.
...I need a drink.
Repeat until comatose.

So please pre-order it, and get your friends to do the same, if only to stop me turning into a gibbering wreck. Although if more people buy it, that's more people who might not like it - oh gods!
But this is marketing (or a feeble facsimile of it) and I'm meant to be encouraging you to buy it and spread the word so please just ignore that last bit.
Here's the animated trailer I made in which I butcher an American accent. 

So that was November

Did it rain? Yes, yes it did, though I saw no sign of Slash standing on top of any nearby hills with his guitar.
Obscure joke, right there. Well done/commiserations if you got that.

Anyway, November's done and it is now December! How the hell did that happen? It can't be December already, I refuse to accept that it will soon be 2015.
NaNoWriMo was a success! All fifty thousand words! They're not great words, honestly - it's very evident that it's a first draft. It will need much rewriting before it's fit for general consumption.
Which might be part of the explanation as to why my plan to tempt people into donating to my Movember page (which is still live - click here if my dumb moustache pics have entertained you enough to sling a few quid there way!) by letting people read the first draft as I was writing it was such an abject failure. Ah well, you live and learn.
Still, I think there's a good story lurking inside Ironheart and I'll drag it out one way or another.

Onwards and upwards though, and coming up next we have the release of HEROES WANTED, my new fantasy novel filled with fun and hilarity!
There's even a slightly dumb launch trailer, complete with a heinous attempt at an American accent, and here it is!

Loins being girded!

Or maybe lions being girded. Can you gird a lion, and is it any more effective than girding a loin? Does sound like it might be quite dangerous.
Anyway...
It's almost NaNoWriMo time again, and once more I find myself trying to put together a novel plan that I will almost certainly end up ignoring within the first two hundred words. So it always seems to go but I swear I'm going to try and stick to the plan this time. Really.

My novel this time is tentatively called Ironheart and that is all I'm telling you for now. Sorry, I'm a terrible tease! It should be good though, I hope. 
I think I'm going to let people read what I've done each day, probably in a Google doc, a bit like I'm doing on the Live Writing page (which I swear I haven't given up on, by the way, I just got distracted and kind of forgot about it. I will write that story one day, I vow it).
As long as you all promise to buy it when I finally release it!

In other news, I'm desperately trying not to suck at marketing (and failing, by and large) - to that end, allow me to mention that Heroes Wanted, my hilarious (I think so anyway) fantasy adventure, is available for pre-order for $2.99 and will be released on 19th of December. Hit the link below!

CLICK ME!

I'm also going to do Movember. Which means that the extensive facial fuzz that currently adorns my ugly mug will have to removed. All of it. The world will see a sight not seen since 1995, my chin (seriously, I've been a bearded idiot for nigh on 20 years) - I'm not sure you're all ready for that. I might video the removal for posterity.
I'm going to donate half the profits from the sales of Crystal Eyes during November (which might very well amount to sweet FA but it's the thought that counts, right?) to the Movember charity.
Note: since Crystal Eyes is just 99 cents I only get 35% from Amazon. Thought it was worth making that clear in case you all rush out and buy it (which you should totally do) and you end up wondering why the donation amount isn't as much as you might have thought.