Halfway to NaNoWriMo!

Except not quite cos I'm several thousand words behind!
Hey all!
It's the 15th of November, the halfway point of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so I thought I'd do a progress report. 
There is progress. Slow, painful progress. I'm at a point in Ironheart that I didn't plan out beyond a vague "put some stuff here" type of description and I'm having a bit of a hard time finding the words. I'm also, as mentioned above, quite a long way behind. It should be noted that this is absolutely not my fault - a friend came to visit and, when faced with the choice between writing or drinking and playing computer games... I was weak, internet, and I lacked the willpower to resist.
You can spot the days this occurred quite easily in this NaNoWriMo widget from their site:

Hint: red = bad
Anyway, I'm trying to play catch up now. The mathematicians amongst you will have realised that I really ought to be at 25,000 words at the halfway point, as opposed to the 19,000 I currently have.
You know, you can actually read what I'm writing if you want. The first chapter of Ironheart is here. It is only the first draft though, please bear that in mind!
The reason for this is that it's also Movember so, as well as producing some fine facial hair, I've made my novel available in the hope that you'll find it enjoyable enough to make you want to donate via the links on the pages. So far...not the most successful strategy. At all. In any way.
Still, hope springs eternal and I'm sure I'll get a donation any day now (hint hint).
I mean, look at this magnificent moustache. How can you not be tempted?

And yes, if you're wondering, that is a stuffed Paddington Bear teddy behind me.

Leaving aside books I've not finished writing yet, it's only just over a month until Heroes Wanted comes out - guaranteed (though not in any legally binding way) hilarity with swords and dragons and irate innkeepers! You should totally pre-order it! And then tell your friends about it!

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.

What, Christmas time already?

I swear we just had one of those. Anyway, hello, brave traveller, and welcome to another brain splurge from the depths of my, for the want of a better word, mind.

NaNoWriMo has been and gone - this is basically all I think about during November and other stuff that would probably be a lot more useful gets shunted back. But it's done now, I got my 50,000 words done of a fantasy novel that could be pretty epic - there's a long way to go on it yet so you'll not be seeing it for a fair while.
Well done to everyone who took part in this year's NaNo, and congratulations to everyone who hit their target!

The continuing saga of Heroes Wanted. I got my report back from the editor I hired - overall they liked it, found it funny, but they had some good feedback for me as well. My current focus is polishing it up based on what they said to try and get it into a publishable state. If I can get it done by the end of December then I might take a punt at sending in to Angry Robot's open submissions. We shall see!

I've made a tentative start on going over my first draft of the sequel to Crystal Eyes but that's taking a back seat to Heroes Wanted (I will get that thing out if it bloody kills me - it's been at least a year of trying by now!).
In related news, I'm setting up Crystal Eyes on Amazon's CreateSpace print on demand service. It's not quite ready to go yet but I've got a proof copy - something very cool about seeing a physical manifestation of your work like that. As nice as an eBook is there's still something ephemeral about it.
So, if you've been thinking "Oh man, I'd love to read this cool sci-fi book but I don't have an eReader", well then I've got you covered. Or will have in the next few days...just in time for Christmas, in fact! It would make the perfect gift.

A thick, inanimate object...holding up a book!

A quick hello

Well now, well now indeed. This has been a stressful couple of weeks!
House moving, avoid it if at all possible unless you can pay someone else to do it for you while you go on holiday.
That hellish nightmare aside, I'm talking to an editing company for Heroes Wanted so things are moving forward, albeit slowly. I'm still letting the sequel to Crystal Eyes marinate - I'll give it a while longer so I can come to it fresh. In the meantime I've had an idea for a short story or two that I'd like to put out.
I'd like to get stuck into the Live Writing story but since I'm writing it in Google Drive I really need to get a more stable net connection than my iPhone provides out here (I'm in the middle of nowhere!)
Also starting to put some thought into a story for this year's Nanowrimo - I'm thinking some epic fantasy might be just the thing this time. I hope that there are plenty of you joining me!

Outside of writing, due to the fact that I'm actually in a holiday cottage this week with no real internet, there won't be a Bake Off Challenge video. I still plan to do one for each episode so I'll just have to play catch up when I get into my new place.

This has been ludicrously hectic and I am, not to put too fine a point on it, knackered. It's tempting to just get rid of all my stuff and buy a mobile home but then I think, "would I still be able to play Guild Wars 2 and Warcraft then?". Priorities, people, I have them. Not necessarily good ones, but I do have them.

Midge sends her regards, by the way. I suspect she thinks all the moving around and stressing that humans do is silly. She is probably right.

Right, time for some minimum effort dinner - pizza and a baked spud!

Allen