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

I've put the title in inverted commas as possibly it belongs somewhere else. My usual mode of coming up with titles is to wait for one to alight on the adhesive perch of my imagination, but now and then one flutters in from outside. Thus...

I've received a hardcopy of my novel Ocellus, which looks mighty fine - only two typos spotted so far; not bad, will be a subsequent revised edition. It's available now from feedaread.com and should emerge onto Amazon et al. in a couple of weeks. In the meantime I hope to persuade my local Waterstone's to stock the book. As it's themed largely on the history of Newcastle (where I toil) I'm fairly optimistic this will happen. Currently however I'm waiting for a further five copies to land so I can supply an actual paperback to Waterstone's and one or two other outlets, local listings mags etc. More than anything I really need some feedback. The novel is unconventional in its way but I believe well worth reading!

Door Handles & Light Fittings, the follow up, is two thirds complete and will be out early next year. Although its two main characters both appear in Ocellus the novel itself is pretty different. A third volume should complete the cycle, create a universe or fill a grave.

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.