It's Christmas Time!

And this Christmas, why not give the gift of Crystal? My critically acclaimed (by at least a couple of people on Amazon and Goodreads - that counts, right?) first novel, Crystal Eyes, is now FREE!

Unless you want it from Amazon, that is. They won't let you set the price of books to nothing so it's stuck at the exorbitant price of 99 cents on there.
I mean, I have no objections to you going to Amazon and giving me money for it - quite the reverse, in fact - but you can get it for nowt from pretty much everywhere else.

Am I not generous? Am I not benevolent? Am I not desperate for attention? The answer to one of those questions is definitely "Yes", I'll leave it to you to decide which one of them it is.

In other news, I've sent The Salvager in to Angry Robot's open submissions thing. As always, throwing anything at the world of publishers is a long shot, but so it goes. We'll see in a couple of months I guess. 
If that doesn't work then I might try an agent, or maybe I'll just put it up myself like I have with the last three.
I think it's a cool story (I'm biased, obviously) and Aimee, one of the main characters, is definitely a favourite of mine.
Right now, I'm still working on the sequel to Heroes Wanted, tentatively titled...erm...I got nothing so far. Heroes Wanted 2: Hero Harder. I dunno, it's a work in progress.

As for Christmas itself, I've done nothing. Well, that's not completely true - I've bought some food and sent some Christmas cards. The festive spirit is really something that happens to other people.
Also, I understand that some film or another has just come out that people are excited about. Tragically, thanks to my ancient, decrepit dog and her knackered heart, I'm not going to be able to go to the cinema to see it as I'm reluctant to leave her on her own for that long.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that I might be able to avoid spoilers until it comes out on disc or streaming but let's face it, the odds are not in my favour on this one.
Ah well, I look forward to seeing it in a few months. I'm talking about Star Wars, by the way. Did that need saying? Probably not but I thought I'd better be clear.

Finally, let me leave you with the traditional farewell for this time of year...
May the Force be with you!

And a merry Christmas as well, I guess.

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.

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.

Off we go again!

 Greetings, all!
How the very devil are you?
Time, I think, for an update.

First of all, I have completed the first draft of the sequel to Crystal Eyes (still available at all good eBook retailers)! It's now marinading nicely, resting for a little while before I return to polish it up and try to correct some of my mistakes. I like it, I think it's a good story, I hope you will agree!

Secondly, I'm in touch with an editing company who I hope will give Heroes Wanted a look over and help me make it as good as it can possibly be. It will appear this year, I am determined!

Thirdly, I'm about to move house! If I'm lucky, I'll actually have somewhere to move into - this is still slightly up in the air. I may end up sleeping on the back seat of the car. The dog can have the passenger seat.

The side effect of this is that my online presence may be diminished for at least a couple of weeks while I try and get broadband connected. It remains to be seen what the mobile signal is like. I may have been premature announcing the whole LIVE WRITING! thing if I can't get online to actually update it. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed (@BigAlien) and the LIVE WRITING! page for updates.

There may also be a slight hiatus in my Bake Off Challenge videos - a new one of which has just gone live (also embedded below) - if I can't upload. Plus, you know, the time-consuming business of moving house may also interfere a little. I'm still going to try and bake something off each episode, they just might not appear in any kind of reliable way.

That's it for now - a short update for quite a lot of stuff.

Until next time, my friends, I bid you a fond adieu!
Allen

Wait...is this still on?

Hello, world!
It has been far too long since last I graced these pages and I can only apologise for that, but I'm back now and I swear I won't neglect you any more. We're still friends, right?
So, what's been happening?
 As you can see I've changed the design of the website after upgrading to the newer version of Squarespace's templates. I like this new look, it's all swanky and sleek.
As part of the move I have also got the domain allendonnelly.com, so that's cool.
What else...oh yeah, sometime in the next couple of days I'm gong to relaunch my first novel, Crystal Eyes, with a stylish new cover, bonus deleted scene and fewer typos than there were before. Here's the new cover:

View fullsize

I've also been working on the sequel. Yes, still. I had written quite a lot but decided I didn't like it much so...into the bin (figuratively speaking). Some parts of it may resurface in the newer version, we shall see.

Finally, I'm about to launch a Kickstarter project for Heroes Wanted. This will, hopefully, help me cover the cost of getting it professionally edited and allow me to provide cool swag like signed hard copy versions and t-shirts and so on!
It's almost ready to go, just need to sort a couple more things, so keep an eye out over the next few days.
Not that you'll be able to miss it, I'm going to be pimping the hell out of it once it gets going...