Andrew McEwan's Blog: Words Are the Gravy On the Mashed Potato of Life - Posts Tagged "beer"

For those of us with a thirst at least. For those of you whose tongues are permanently slaked by what I would describe as the sweat of excessive onanism, attend another bar.

Ooh, cryptic.

I'm only using words.

The purpose of this post is to promote an upload to authonomy.com in the shape of Door Handles and Light Fittings (working title); what I'm describing as 'an Ocellus companion'. Essentially it's a volume designed to exploit and extrapolate upon all those plot threads and characters present in Ocellus but without the attendant history and peculiar structure of the parent novel. Go look: http://www.authonomy.com/books/41133/...

A writer's existence is tough. Most of us have to work for a living, and I don't mean writing books. I work as a van driver for a local hospice, collecting donated furniture and sundry items (we've had kitchen sinks, canoes, life-sized papier mâché animals, wives, dogs and children, although obviously we've had to refuse certain of these). Jammed fingers, bruised ankles and the occasional loss of blood are all part of the job. Just don't get any blood on the furniture. Last Thursday, however, I was either bitten or stung by something small secreted in a sofa and shortlly thereafter my entire right arm broke out in a rash. Said limb then became red and inflamed and being too busy to call into a walk-in medical centre it was Saturday before I bothered a slightly scared looking pharmacist in Asda. 'That's quite a bad reaction,' he said before selling my some antihistamines. The rash has quelled somewhat but since invaded my left arm and bubbled up in one or two other places. It looks gross, but on a positive note doesn't particularly itch and there have been no other symtoms. In fact I've been feeling quite perky!

I now have a Facebook page dedicated to Ocellus, which is live on Goodreads since I uploaded the info. Likes, shares, visits, reads, friendings and indeed sales are all warmly invited.

I'm a loner at heart. My soul resides on a moon of Saturn. But you're welcome to join me for beer and sandwiches.

Happy New Year and all that. Out with the old etc. Yeah. Whatever. Like you believe any old crap. Ha. Believe in better, surely. Why not? I'm an optimist with the scars to prove it. Last year sucked big time but here I am positively bursting with positivism. And I'm not even going to check the spelling. My spirit is reckless. My poetry is awful. I could never draw as well as I wanted so I took to writing instead. A man needs an outlet, something to run on his electricity. If only I wasn't so ill-disciplined and lazy.

I aim to write two books this year. The fact I've written two thirds of one already should help. THUMP vol. 2 kind of got caught in that gap between cancer and I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-doing. I was having problems with it and I still am; or will be once I can bring myself to read through the ms again. I last did this in June during a five day chemo session and I wasn't sure which was worse. Probably the chemo, but I'm still finding it hard to locate my writing mojo; although I suspect it is hidden close by with all my other mojos, lost and unrecognised. The second book extends to roughly 1600 words at present and is the third installment of The Great Geordie Novel, following on from Ocellus and The Orange Propeller. Titled The Lost World Of, it has an autobiographical theme but isn't really about me (I know). It's about the other me, namely Swene, who appears in the first two volumes. That Swene and I are related is obvious. He just has more fun than I do. He's fictional after all. He doesn't have a day job. He has an inbetween days job. So much more versatile. There'll be a fourth and final book eventually.

Harking back to my previous post many of my titles are free to download from Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Some fantastic reviews would be welcome. Or indeed some terrible ones, so long as they're well written. You don't have to like a thing to respect it. If it's not for you then move on. Planting bombs is simply a person's way of saying they've failed. Which is about as political as I intend to get right now. There are greater minds turned to such things; hopefully more knowledgeable. The pen, however, remains mightier than the sword.

And that's about it from me. I'm no blogger, as I've said before. These random tracts are just that. Sometimes they go badly wrong, yet I've always reisted the urge to delete. We all have bad days, eh?

Read. Learn. Resist.