Being a writer involves doing a lot of things that I really hate to do, speculatively pestering people, promoting myself. That sort of thing. And it feels like I’ve been doing more of that over the past couple of weeks than I have of actual writing. I’m getting back to work on the novel now, so this is going to be a short entry to the blog with a 6-point checklist of things that you could do to really help me (and your second favourite authors!) out.

1) Buy my books – kind of a given, but let’s start here just in case. A work colleague recently complained that he couldn’t Torrent my books and I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally or only accidentally being a dick

2) Review my books – These are so important to an author that I’ve recently started writing reviews for every book I read. Only on Goodreads at the moment, but I should really start transferring them over to Amazon too. Read my blog about it here

3) Retweet tweets about my books – ‘Liking’ them is great, but if you like them then why not share them too?

4) Tell people about my books – As above. Word of mouth is currency. Black Library does promote, but the number of people who only read Dan Abnett’s books is, anecdotally at least, awesome. Seek out these people. Explain to them why they need to read Headtaker. Convince all those lovers of fantasy put off by the 'Warhammer' logo above the title that Gotrek & Felix really is for them.

5) Mention my name – You never know when an editor might be listening...

6) Vote in the Gemmell Awards – I’m not sure if having Gotrek & Felix: Slayer voted best fantasy novel in the 2016 David Gemmell Legend Award will change my life, or even lead to a noticeable surge in sales, but hey, it can’t hurt. And my author picture is due an update and I could do worse than one of me brandishing Snaga. Vote here

That’s it for this week. Time to plug in.

The flesh is weak.