This year...

I can't even make jokes about 2016 being awful any more, it's just taken too much and given back nothing but misery, sadness and fear (unless you're a Leicester City/Chicago Cubs fan).
Seriously, fuck this year.

Since the results of the American elections came in, in between bouts of incoherent screaming, I've come up with several pieces of searing, scorching rhetoric, all of which I've deleted because what the hell's the point? I have no real insights to offer, nor any solutions, and many better writers than I am have already laid out everything I wanted to say.
I'm an utterly obscure sci-fi writer and mediocre artist who lives in the arse end of nowhere in northern England, as middle-aged, middle-class and white as they come. All I can offer is support and sympathy and maybe a distraction from the awfulness that is the world.
For what little it's worth, I've made The Salvager free on Amazon from now until the end of the weekend. It's a fun, lightweight sci-fi story about mechs, friendship and a boisterous, bisexual Irish woman in a wheelchair who pilots a mech. It's not going to change the world at all but it might help you forget about it, at least for a couple of hours.
It does feature, as one reviewer noted, a lot of sand. Lots of sand. It's set on a planet that is largely desert, sand is inevitable. If sand is not appealing then this may not be the book for you.
It's normally priced at 3 bucks (or, the way the British currency's been going, about £100 by the time you read this). If you read it and it think it doesn't completely suck, consider donating the money you didn't pay to one of the many American charities set up to help the people who will likely suffer the most under the rule of the racist orange fuckwit with a ferret nailed to his head.
Here's a non exhaustive list of possibilities, there are many others you could choose from:

The Human Rights Campaign
The Trevor Project
Trans Lifeline
Planned Parenthood
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

And even if you don't have the cash to spare, just give someone who looks like they need it some support, even if it's only a smile or a hug (if they want a hug - I'm not suggesting just leaping on people).

On the day after the election, I saw on twitter that it was also the anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh writer. These words from one of his most famous poems seem apposite for these dark times:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Right, I'm going back to my NaNoWriMo novel, I've fallen behind on my word count.
Stay strong, be good to one another,
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.

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.

Share My Ink!

An unusual battle cry, to be sure, but relevant in this case!
It's only been a little over a month since Sorrow's Herald was released to literally no fanfare but already we move on to the next one!
Allow me to introduce you to Aimee Westmorland, THE SALVAGER!

A new, light hearted sci-fi adventure about mechs, friendship, booze, mechs and evil big businesses. And also mechs.
Did I mention the mechs?

Anyway, the reason for the odd heading is this: rather than my usual method of self-publishing, I'm trying out the relatively new Inkshares site. They're a crowd-funded publisher - you list your book on their site and people pledge a pre-order (no money is taken yet), if the book gets enough pre-orders then Inkshares publishes it in much the same way as a traditional publishing house would, including providing editing, proofing and cover designing services at no expense to me (I like this bit in particular).
Right now, there's also a co-promotion thing running with the Nerdist which could be pretty cool.

So here's the begging bit (you knew it was coming, right?). I need people to pre-order The Salvager, and then get their friends to do the same.
I should note that you get $5 credit just for signing up to Inkshares so if I do manage to get enough pre-orders it'll barely cost you a bean! You can earn even more credits by using the links on the project page to refer people - in fact you might even end up getting it for free (for more details see the page for The Salvager)!
It would mean a huge amount to me to get that kind of help.
You can expect me to bang on about this an obnoxious amount over the next couple of months, to the point where you might even get sick of it. I've tried very hard to avoid being a spambot on all the social medias but if that's what it needs then, well, that's what I'll do. Whatever it takes! Performing monkey mode: ACTIVATE!
Seriously though, nothing's off the table here.

While I'm abandoning what little dignity I have left (there are people who know me who laughed out loud when they read that) and begging, I'd love to see more (some?) reviews for Sorrow's Herald and Heroes Wanted on Amazon or Goodreads. Good reviews, for preference, but I'll take what I can get.

That's it for now. Still decorating (I am sooooo slow at it), still writing, still playing daft games, still wading through the masses of hair that the dog's shedding. All good fun!

Until next time!
Allen