Troy Dennison's Blog, page 18

For the record: AAAAAARGH!

Three whole weeks without a working landline.

Three weeks of phone calls to my provider, engineers visits etc.

It's an equipment fault, it's THEIR problem, it was MEANT to be sorted last Friday.

But true to form it's Tuesday, it's still not sorted and to add to the fun and games they've managed to kill my internet too.

Can you imagine trying to promote your new novel or network without the internet?

I may as well lean out of the window and shout for all the good it's doing me.

But it's fine, it's cool. I managed to get myself to my library to use their free internet to send some messages out and let the world know that I'm not dead - yet!

The computer is slow. Jurassic slow. It uses IE which I loath. It has unsecure networking which makes me paranoid about accessing my accounts.

The guy sitting next to me is talking to himself as he uses FB - I'm not sure if he's crazy or a serial canibal or what. The keyboard I'm using feels horrible and I can SEE the germs and contamination eating into my fingertips with every press of a key. I'm not even going to mention the piece of tissue that was stuck between the keys. If I start thinking about what MAY have been on it I may be physically sick!.

The mouse (what's a MOUSE?!?) is optical, but glitchy.

All in all I'm NOT a happy bunny right now.

The only bright spots to an incredibly dreary and frustrating day are:

The writing is progressing nicely as I hammer away on the first of a series of chap books - I hesitate to use the word novella.

What IS a novella? Too big to be a short story, not enough fizz in the tank to make it to novel length. I like the idea of a chap book much better - deliberately short and part of a serialisation.

The other bright point has been some very, VERY nice Spanish quisine that I've been treating myself to all day - more tapas to come this evening - I need something to do if the bloody internet persists in staying dead.

I may just end up using my mobile internet tomorow - THAT'S gonna be SO much fun.

Hunters - The ultimate biological terror. The ultimate reality...

Hunters - The ultimate biological terror. The ultimate reality television.

A deadly virus, a city under quarantine and a team of highly trained soldiers sent in to eradicate those infected. The Hunters are fighting for their lives against overwhelming odds and the whole thing is being televised in all its high definition blood drenched glory.

If you like action, thrills, survival horror, nail biting tension and bloody carnage then Hunters is the book for you.

Available for download now in a variety of eBook formats including: Kindle, Epub, PDF, PTF, lRF, PDB.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96165

geekrest:Custom Hand-Painted Super Mario Heels - by...

geekrest:

Custom Hand-Painted Super Mario Heels - by MagicBeanBuyer

Shoes are a size US8 with a 3 1/2 inch heel.

via GeekRest

For those of you who prefer something visual rather than reading...

For those of you who prefer something visual rather than reading it here's me reading Retail Therapy…

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Robot Dinosaurs?

Schitzophrenic writing

I'm  feeling a bit like a literary butterfly at the moment - flitting from one project to the next - writing a paragraph here, a short passage there.

So many irons in the fire, so many things that need completing and I just can't seem to zone in and focus.

My first novel is sitting in digital Hell awaiting final approval for release into the world - Borders, Barnes & Noble, all the usual suspects. At least Hunters is done and dusted and I can look at other things.

Dark River Press have picked up Last Train Home - a nice short I wrote a while ago that I'm rather happy with - I'm waiting to hear whether it will appear in their magazine (fingers crossed) or on their website. A second short, The Body in the Shed has been submitted to a children's horror magazine and I'm waiting to hear back on that one.

On the digital download front The Day the Earth Died is doing rather nicely over at Barnes & Noble, but I'd really love to see some movement on the iStore and Sony's website. I guess I'm just being greedy - but I do know I've had my work downloaded in more than thirty countries around the world - that's a rather cool thing when you think about it.

I really should get on and start scribbling again - off to the home made ginger and vanilla tea with some old skool Appetite for Destruction blasting in the background and then on with the mayhem.

T.

Retail Therapy

They say that retail therapy is good for you.

I suppose that at some point in their lives everyone has mindlessly indulged in a spending spree with the sole purpose of self gratification. For a few brief moments they allow themselves to go a little crazy with no regard for the consequences. They spend the rent, or the weekly shopping money or some other sum of cash that was earmarked for something important. Just for that chance to forget about their worries and woes they splurge and consequences be damned.

It saved my last relationship you know.

Honestly, I'm not lying.

There was a girl; isn't that how all the best stories start? We were young and foolish and in love and in the beginning everything was perfect.

But then something changed.

Maybe it was her, maybe it was me, or perhaps it was the world around us. I'm not sure really how it happened; only that it did. There was no single moment or event that you could point your finger at and say "That's when it all went wrong" it was a gradual process. We went from happy to complacent to miserable; one state of being flowing effortlessly into another. I used to argue with her all the time; about my hair, my weight, my lack of a job, anything and everything would set her off on another endless rant. Nothing I did was good enough, everyone else she knew was better than me. That sort of thing can get you down, especially if it begins when you wake up and rarely slows down until you fall asleep again at night.

So I indulged myself and went on a shopping spree.

Of course the shiny new shovel I brought set her off on another lengthy tirade. She went on and on and on, her voice rising and falling like the swells of the ocean, reaching an almost tsunami like state of verbal abuse. Right up until I hit her in the head with my recent purchase; clang, thud, argument over. Then I used the shovel to bury her in the basement; problem solved.

We almost never argue any more, and when we do she very rarely wins.

Memory - a short story.

Memory - a short story.

Going Global

A very strange thing happened to me yesterday, but the story begins last December.

I decided that it would be a brilliant move to publish some of my writing. I chose Smashwords to publish through because it would offer the widest range of downloadable formats for people to read my work on.

So far, so good.

Things went well and people responded in a positive way to my stories. I watched the download figures rise on a daily basis as more copies were read. I was pretty pleased about that. It was nice to know that people were reading the characters, situations and worlds that I had created.

Yesterday that took an interesting left turn.

I found out that I could view the locations where my stories were being downloaded and it blew my mind at how far away some of those places were:

Iran, Iraq, Canada, USA, Japan, Nepal, Russia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, New Zeland, Thailand, Turkey…the list goes on and on.

The thing that really amazed me was just how different these countries were. I was expecting the obvious English speaking countries like Canada and Australia but knowing that somewhere in the Peoples Republic of China my stories were being read…that's an incredible thing to me.

SO I would just like to extend my thanks to everyone that has downloaded and read my work. Your support means a lot to me and I hope you continue to read and enjoy my writing for many years to come.

Monsters Are Real -a short audio story.Children believe that...

Monsters Are Real -a short audio story.

Children believe that monsters are real; the vampire, the werewolf, the thing under the bed. Horrible creatures that only exist in our heads. As we grow up we forget. And sometimes there are real monsters that wear a benign face and a friendly smile - monsters do exist.

Monsters Are Real was first published in the eZine 13 Human Souls.

This audio version is read by me and if you enjoy this then why not check out some more of my short stories on Smashwords.com - they are all free to download and are available in a wide variety of formats.