Al Hawkins's Blog, page 3

I had an idea…Al said “No”!

At work, a monthly (I think) newsletter goes out and it’s typically filled with little stories about peoples work and personal accomplishments. I thought this was a fantastic way to get the word out to thousands of potential readers and buyers of the book…and it was free! I was beside myself with excitement and I was dying to tell Al, thinking he would be soooo very much on board; I should have known better… idiot!

Anyway, I announced my brilliant idea to him the next time I “saw” him (online) thinking that it would be a HUGE “high five” session…”this is awesome”, ”this is a great idea”, “who do we need to talk to get this in the next newsletter” Yeah….NO! Not even close. I brought up the idea and with one word…or maybe 3 or 4, he crushed the idea completely “Nope, do not put it in the newsletter” (ok 8 ish words). For a hot second I thought he was pulling my leg, so I said “huh?” and there it was again….”no”. Anyway, not wanting to give up too easily (but knowing deep down that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted) I asked if I were to accidentally hit “send” and an article about the book ended up on the editors desk would it be a bad thing? Al’s response was basically, yes, if he saw it. Well shit, it’s sent to everyone’s email, and posted on nearly every free wall in all the offices, so yes, he would have seen it! So there it was, done! No go on free advertising!! I was sooooo bummed, though not pissed. The one thing I value in any friendship is trust, so I wasn’t going to do anything to take that away… BUT IT SUCKED!!!! HARD!!!!

Knowing that Al is who he is (a massive PITA), I got it and respected and continue to respect his wishes, and didn’t contact the newsletter editor. After all, it’s Al’s book, not mine. As one of the publicists/campaign managers/whatever needed doing gofers, I thought I was onto a good thing with that idea…am I bitter? Nahhhhh….just a smidge…free advertising to a huge audience!! But again, I get it.

So what ideas got the Al seal of approval? Flyers! I was allowed to create flyers for the book AND I was actually allowed to put them up in the offices on my side of the pond. HOWEVER, said flyers were NEVER to show up on his side…GGRRRRRR!!! So if you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, you will find a flyer posted in my cube. There’s one right in our IT guy’s cube, people are forever going to see him…so…score!!  There are other flyers in other areas of the office too. There are some in my grocery store & post office, and I do believe in a pizza place too. However, if you find yourself in Al’s neck of the woods, yeah, you won’t find a bloody thing!!

In addition to the flyers, Al actually created a Goodreads profile; which is great by the way, an author’s page on Amazon, he has allowed me to talk about the book on some forums, cos he won’t; GoodReads, Amazon, Reddit  and a few others who’s names escape me at the moment. Then there’s the FB page, which is getting better and better (or at least I think it is), you should go take a look and like it while you’re there…please. I think Al opened a Twitter account, not sure if he’s used it yet. {Side note: thanks to my amazing daughter I have learnt how to tweet and I can now “speak” Twitter…a little, I think}

Then of course, there’s this blog that, apparently, I have to occasionally contribute to.

So as you can see, Al isn’t completely against putting himself out there but he does come damn close!!

 

-LSF                                                 

 

 

Quick Update!

I have figured out Twitter…I think…with LOTS of help and patience from my wonderful daughter (I promised I would add a link to her food blog as “payment” ;) ), so here it is http://isittimeforlunch.blogspot.com/

You can now follow the book on Twitter @FallNightsBlood and Al @alashawk (though there might not be much to “follow” on Al’s account…or at least, not until he gets back from his wedding and honeymoon).

Stay tuned…

 

 

 

It’s the LSF

Hi there,

And I know that there are, and will be, a lot more than 3 people who will ever read this…

So I am the infamous “LSF”, with a massive emphasis on the “S”

As Al is about to get married in the next few days and go on his honeymoon with his wonderful wife to be, Sarah,  he has left me in charge. I agreed to write a few posts while he is away…not that I want to, but if I don’t I’m not sure Al will continue when he gets back! So here I am…

Some have gotten a chuckle out of Al’s first ever blog post detailing what it took to get here and some have actually figured out who I might be…that was never the plan, so I figured I would expose the inner madness that is Mr. Hawkins and try to answer a few questions along the way.

Some have asked me why I have taken it upon myself to be this involved in something I didn’t create. There are a few reasons really, but here are 3.

Grudgingly, I think The Fall of Night’s Blood is a very good book.
I want to make Al famous cos I know just how much he loves the idea of fame…the thought makes me laugh….really hard….hahahahahaha! (FYI. He abhors the idea).
And finally and most importantly, to prove that I was right! I will admit, this is my biggest motivator :)

…so let me explain.

REASON 1

I have known Al for a short amount of time really, when I think about it, and it has only been in recent times that I’d actually call him a friend…god help me! We are/were colleagues who typically had different ideas on how to tackle anything that came up at work. If there was ever a debate about how to handle something, you could be guaranteed that Al and I would have VERY different ideas on how to solve the issue which would lead to long and drawn out emails and IM’s about why I was right and he was wrong, or something like that. Whenever I saw one of his emails hit my inbox I would mutter under my breath, or not, take a deep breath and start reading. Then the steam would start to vent out of my ears, then the head spinning would start and occasionally a “choice” word or two would escape. Don’t get me wrong, I have learnt a lot from those back-and-forths, a lot, but they were always long, drawn out and painful…usually.

Anyway, I was having a casual conversation with Al about….I have no idea….probably work, it’s all one huge blur now; and he casually says that he wrote/was writing a book. Of course I thought he was blowing smoke as is his habit. Well it turns out he wasn’t, he had actually written a book! Idiot that I am, I asked for more info and regrettably he obliged.

He said it had taken him a while to write, 5-ish years, I think, and that he was thinking of publishing it as an ebook. Oh! I remember now; he knew that I had worked in the book industry and was curious about how certain things worked, that’s how this conversation started…I think!

Ok, so where was I… so, as he knew I had worked in a bookstore in a former life, he was talking about his thoughts and his next steps. While he threw ideas out there he asked if I wanted to read it, or did I offer to read and proof it (god it feels like forever ago, I don’t remember!)

Anyway, I did end up reading and proofing it (though obviously I did a poor job with the proofing)….but I’m jumping ahead a little.

So at some point he tells me what the books about…VAMPIRES!!! My first reaction was “ah crap!” You see, I don’t do horror in any form; I’m a wuss and a proud one at that. So here I am thinking… I just told Al that I would proof a genre of book I have absolutely no interest in at all, how the hell do I get out of this?! The agreement we struck was that I didn’t have to read it at all and if I didn’t he would feel bad. Others had read it and had given their opinions, so it wouldn’t be that big a deal if I backed out.

Since I am a person who, at least, tries to do what I say I will, I thought that I would give it a shot and throw in the towel after I got to page 3… I didn’t tell him that, but in his defense, he really didn’t want me to read it if it wasn’t my thing.

Ok, so here I am having agreed to read a book about vampires; what could be worse? Well, I will tell you what could be worse… the book was over 1400 pages long!!!! Unbelievable!!! Who writes a book that long? Al does!!!

Anyway, I had committed to this, so I was going to at least give it a shot, even if it killed me.

You can imagine my HUGE skepticism when I got the PDF of the book and I saw the cover he had drawn for it!! My first thought was “What the #!@*&^, he was blowing smoke!”

Note: I have seen a piece that Al has drawn and it is impressive, so why the PDF had this POS as the cover is beyond me!

I took a deep breath and swiped the first page.

Something to note here, cos I am a wuss, I read this book in full daylight and only when the hubby was home…so yeah, it was a longgggggg endeavor, but one that shockingly (and I hate to admit this) ended up being well worth it!

Al had always stipulated that if I did choose to read it I had to give him feedback. I told him I would only do it if I could be honest…this he insisted on. So I did! Like I said, the book is over 1400 pages long, so it was a long process, what with having to take notes, ask him questions and also with only a limited amount of daylight.

So I swiped that first page and by the end of the prologue…I was hooked… I kid you not…hooked! This was a vampire book, why the hell did I want to read more? I kept going, remembering in the back of my mind that I knew the author and thinking, crap, this is a really good book! After I while, I actually forgot Al wrote the book! Yet again, my reaction was “what the @*$!”

So I read, and asked questions, and read some more, told Al how much I hated one particular character, and would he please kill said character, immediately (the answer was always no…ugh!) I think my hatred actually amused him!

It’s really difficult to explain what the book’s about without spoiling it. Though it does have vampires; it has some really cool and unique concepts too. I figured it would be the typical “vampire meets human, vampire kills human, etc.” Nope, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Yes, there are the inevitable vampires “eating” and all that but there is so much more. Though, in this book, there are no witches, fairies or werewolves, there are definitely things that go “bump in the night”. There’s a scroll that had me asking Al “whyyyy???”  At times I wondered if Al and I should even be friends…what kind of mind thinks this stuff up?

Funnily enough, I didn’t have any nightmares when I read it, that surprised both me and my husband. Horror is guaranteed to keep me up and when I do fall asleep, wake me right back up from the nightmares. But with this…nope. Don’t know why really, cos there was a fair share of “creep” factor in there and gore too…eww!

Anyway, by the time I finished it, I knew that Al had created a really really good book and no matter how much I wanted it to suck (I mean come on, Al wrote it for crying out loud) it didn’t even remotely suck :(

And I told him too; every time I sent an email laced with hatred for “that character” he would say, “are you still enjoying it” and I would grudgingly have to say yes!

Why grudgingly? like I said earlier; I work with Al (or I did) and he was and remains,  a massive PITA for the reasons also explained above! (It’s a good thing there’s an ocean btw us, one of us might be dead or mortally injured if we were even remotely closer!)

So there I was reading this book that this massive pain in my backside had written and I had to admit that it is an awesome book, so I told him “this is a damn good book…who wrote it?” :)

Sometime later he published it, and I have been on a mission ever since…

 

REASON 2

….stay tuned.

Hi Sarah! (Since my parting words to Al are nearly always  “Love to Sarah” or “Say hi to Sarah” why not here too?)

PS. Sarah is Al’s wonderful fiancée, who I’m dying to meet :) – Al, not so much, but Sarah? Definitely!

 

ROADKILL

Hello you three,

In case any one of you was beginning to feel sympathy for LSF, here is a timely glimpse of her true nature:

 LSF: Morning Al!

Me: Afternoon.

LSF: Oh, sorry – afternoon Al!

Me: Oh, okay – good morning then.

LSF: Oh god. You’re in one of those moods again…

LSF: Anyway, I just wanted to catch you before you log off and say thanks for coming in early to cover for Minal.

Me: No problem – but you should know that there have been terrible consequences.

LSF: What do you mean?

Me: :-(

Me: I ran over a bird on the way in.

LSF: Hahahahahahahaha!

Me: :-(

Me: It’s not funny. I’ve never run over an animal before – I’m always really careful…

LSF: So what happened then?

Me: I’m not sure… it was just sitting in the road.

LSF: Were you speeding?

Me: Well, no, but I was accelerating away from a roundabout. I just didn’t see it in time :-(

LSF: Hahahahaha! What a dumbass bird!

Me: It was a pigeon – and it was 5am. It was just sitting there in the road, camouflaged in the grey light of dawn.

Me: :-(

Me: And it looked at me just before I hit it. We both knew it was too late.

LSF: HAHAHAHAHA

Me: It’s not funny! It was awful. I looked in the rear view mirror and there were feathers everywhere…

LSF: Gos Al! Stop!

LSF: Am laughing so hard I’m crying! Can’t even see my keyboard!

Me: IT’S NOT FUNNY!

LSF: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA But it is! You’re a vegetarian!

Me: :-(

Me: You are evil.

Me: And I’m not a vegetarian – I just don’t eat meat unless I am prepared to kill an animal.

LSF: What’s the difference?

Me: Sarah has issues with my vegetarianism after what happened in France.

LSF: Why? What happened in France?

Me: We went to stay with her friends, who live a pretty much self-sufficient life in the middle of nowhere – and it was basically explained that I would either have to eat meat or forage for my own food.

LSF: Is Sarah a vegetarian?

Me: No.

LSF: So what happened?

Me: So I thought: okay – at least they raise and kill their own livestock… and if I am ever going to eat meat again, it seemed right that I should at least bear witness to the entire process… I have always believed that if I eat an animal I should be prepared to kill one… so I helped kill two chickens.

LSF: OMG! You killed 2 chickens?!

Me: No… but I assisted…

Me: He told me that he’d been to one of the local farmers to find out the most humane way to kill a chicken…

LSF: You cut their throats, right?

Me: No, you psycho! That’s a slow and painful death!

LSF: Okay, so what’s the most humane way?

Me: (sad face)

Me: Beating it over the head with a stick, apparently.

LSF: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Me: NOT FUNNY!

LSF: SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!!!!

Me: It was carnage! He just picked the chicken up, smacked the shit out of it with a stick, and handed it to me.

Me: IT WAS STILL ALIVE!

Me: Then he did the same with the other one.

LSF: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Me: STOP LAUGHING!

LSF: That is so funny!

Me: It’s not!

LSF: It is! And the rest of the team think so too!

Me: What?

LSF: They’re all gathered around my laptop now…

Me: What? Why?

LSF: Sorry… but I was laughing so much that I kinda drew attention…

Me: O

Me: M

Me: G

Me: You are evil

Me: Evil

Me: Evil

Me: That’s it, I’m logging off now.

LSF: Look out birds! Al’s about to get back in his Murdermobile!

Me: :-(

LSF: HAHAHAHAHA

LSF: Thanks for the laugh!

 

ROMEO AND JULIET

Hello you three,

Having received literally two requests to expand on my ‘The Legend of the Fall’ post and furnish you with further tales of its conception, and the involvement of the mysterious second party known only as ‘Vicky’, I am compelled to bow to such intense pressure and oblige.

Firstly – what happened to Vicky? I thought I’d already closed this off, but the answer is: Nothing – I didn’t murder her and steal her genius plot synopsis or anything. She is (to my knowledge) alive and well. That said, when I say nothing happened to her, I don’t actually mean nothing – Vicky stuff happened to Vicky and that’s all I can really say.

In terms of pages, paragraphs and sentences, her contribution to the book that the three of you have read is, regrettably, none – but I am in no way trying to play down the part that Vicky played in the book’s conception.

As previously mentioned, we outlined the core plot together, but there was one crucial difference: the book was to centre around two main (yet separate) characters – a man and a woman – a Romeo and Juliet…

I was to write the part of ‘Romeo’ and Vicky was going to write the part of ‘Juliet’ (who we’d actually given a proper name – Seneyna), and although she did start writing her part, I was already so far ahead that her inclusion in the plot became untenable and so, sadly, I had to kill Seneyna off completely.

However, as I have said, the basic structure of the plot that we devised remains unchanged – the prophecy of the ‘two kings’ (which I did and still do think is a bit clichéd) – the Council and the four Houses (which I didn’t think was very clichéd but now realise so totally is). And at some point in this process we came to the realisation that some of our vampires would literally have to been born, they would be families – which gave rise to the Akakharu.

In my continued ignorance of all things vampyric I do not know whether this is an original idea or not, but the concept of the vampires being an immortal race distinct from humans was perfect for the vampires I wanted to write. Vicky, on the other hand, had a much more challenging task – writing Seneyna as an Akakharu who’d forgotten her immortal life and lived in the modern world, not knowing who she truly was…

Perhaps Vicky is still writing Seneyna’s story, I don’t know, but it would cool if she is – maybe I’ll ask her next time I see her. However, it would have to be and remain a separate story – for our Romeo and Juliet will never now meet…

FLYERS

Hello you three,

Great news! The US advertising campaign for The Fall of Night’s Blood is now underway! My thanks to LSF, Head of Design and Logistics for the entire campaign, without whom none of this would even have happened.

An extensive brainstorming session went on over the design of the flyers and I thought I would share with you some of LSF’s trials and tribulations to demonstrate just how much passion she has for this project.

Thus the final design for the flyer was decided:

 

LSF: Hey Al!

Me: mORNING

Me: sorry caps

LSF: So, did you get a chance to look at my new flyer design yet?

Me: I did. I like the little tear-off tabs, but I think it’s too wordy.

LSF: What? Seriously????

Me: Yes.

LSF: YOU are accusing ME of being too wordy?

Me: Only in respect to your flyer. And I still think my design was better.

LSF: FFS! Al, we are not using your damn vampire drawing! It’s terrible! Why are we still talking about this dumb cover??????

Me: :-(

LSF: It looks like it was drawn by some psycho adolescent – so people will think it was written by a psycho adolescent.

Me: Oh, to be a psycho adolescent again…

LSF: Al, I am not going to put that flyer up ANYWHERE, EVER! And especially not in the office. That vampire is giving the bird!

Me: Yes – it’s controversial, so it will draw attention. And then there’s the catchy slogan to convey it’s not just some ‘young adult’ gothic romance. That’s all you need.

LSF: No, Al. Just, NO. PERIOD.

Me: I believe ‘period’ means full stop – so you technically typed ‘NO, full stop, FULL STOP, full stop’ – three full stops make an ellipsis, which may indicate that you are open to persuasion on this…?

LSF: OMG! Not even for a moment! Al, that picture is terrible – it makes your book look like a joke.

Me: I have to disagree. Look at him – he sums up the entire book perfectly. He’s dressed all in black – which suggests its gothic. He wields a bloodied sword – which suggests violence and bloodshed. He’s an angry vampire – which suggests drama. Also, it is a humorous sketch – which suggests it is a book that does not take itself too seriously. And there is a punchy slogan – which suggests it’s not just another teenage angst/vampire romance.

LSF: Are you actually being serious? REALLY!

Me: Yes. That flyer encapsulates the entire book with one simple image and one catchy slogan. It’s perfect. And I made a range of them – all especially tailored for the US reader…

Me: What do you think?

Me: I know how much you guys love your god and your guns…

Me: That’s drama right there…

Me: I could do another one that says: 50% of the Americans in this book are serial killers.

Me: And then in smaller text add: the other 50% is a good guy.

Me: Basically, I don’t think my book will find success in the US – there aren’t any American vampires in it.

Me: Are you still there?

LSF: In a meeting

Me: Oh, sorry, I didn’t know.

LSF: If you look at my status it says ‘IN A MEETING’…will catch up in a bit.

Me: Oh yeah.

(Some time later).

LSF: Caught up….You are STILL going on about those godawful covers! STILL NO Al, I am not going to put any of these flyers up. They are, in all honestly, shit. You’re supposed to be PROMOTING your book, not condemning it.

Me: I think that is a rather harsh criticism.

LSF: You want honesty right…I know they say never judge a book by its cover, but….

Me: Fair enough.

Me: Okay, am sending you a new design. Let me know what you think.

LSF: OMG, STILL SHIT! AL!!

LSF: EVEN SHITTER THAN SHIT!

Me: Caps lock still on.

LSF: I KNOW!!!!

Me: But this is perfect – and now it’s clever too. People will think ‘ooh, should I judge it by its cover or not? I guess, there’s only one way to find out!’

LSF: NO!

LSF: NO!

Me:  I think the lady doth protest too much :-)

LSF: WITH MY LAST FUCKING BREATH, NO!

Me: Okay, stop swearing. You’re scaring my laptop.

LSF: Al, that flyer is so bad that I wouldn’t even line the dog basket with it!

Me: Oh, I never knew you had a dog. What kind? What’s its name?

LSF: I don’t have a dog Al, it was an expression.

LSF: But I would get a dog and print out a load of your flyers and then deliberately not line its basket with them!

Me: So what would you do with the flyers then?

LSF: I’d bury them in a very deep pit!

Me: But I drew that picture myself… it’s like the original, original cover…

LSF: I don’t care. It is shit – and does not represent how good your book is. I nearly didn’t bother reading it when you sent me the version with that cover! Now can we PLEASE drop it?

Me: :-(

LSF: Anyway, it’s too late now. I have started putting the flyers up already.

LSF: Am so excited! Just sent you a pic. What do you think?

LSF: See… someone has already taken a tab!

Me: I so know that was you.

THE LEGEND OF THE FALL

Hello you three,

So, having explained why I am writing this blog I should probably explain why I wrote the work of epic awesomeness that is The Fall of Night’s Blood – and also, I suppose, a bit about myself.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I should state with all sincerity, that I do not expect this book to be a much of a success (sorry, LSF), and I’m not even sure if I want it to. Bullshit! I hear all three of you cry – but hear me out, for it is the truth, I think… I mean, perhaps I did once, in the beginning, but now it is written I find that all I really want to do is get on with the next book, that and shoot zombies, oh, and spend time with Sarah, my wonderful fiancée, of course.

True, it would be great to earn my living from writing, but I perceive a major drawback to this: If I didn’t have to get up every morning and stay sober all day, I’d suffer terminal liver failure within six months. Yet at the same time I see a very appealing silver lining: Six great months!

To further demonstrate just what an idiot I am, I will explain how I came to write The Fall of Night’s Blood.

Being quite a lengthy tale, and much longer than I ever intended it to be, the story was conceived in August/September, 2007, and writing commenced soon after.

As you may recall, at around the same time a number of banks (who I can only assume employed sufficiently qualified and clever people) were beginning to realise that giving mortgages to millions of people who never really stood a realistic chance of paying them back probably wasn’t such a good idea after all. In addition to this, I was facing redundancy.

Funny time to start writing a book you might think – and you would be right. Unfortunately for me, I suffer from a chronic allergy to reality which prevented me from realising this. So, when fate decided to deal out a really bad day to Vicky, an unlikely chain of events were set into motion…

Vicky worked in Sales, and one evening we were both in the office much later than expected. Unlike the Production Department (where I worked), the Sales Department were not being given redundancy, but higher targets and more stress. Vicky had also recently made the mistake of accepting promotion, and to compound her newly acquired problems, not only had she just missed the deadline she’d stayed back to meet (causing a run-in with our fearsome Production Director), but she’d also missed her last train home. This was the final straw and she was unable to prevent herself from crying.

Obviously I felt bad for her and, being about to leave myself, offered to give her a lift home. This was actually quite an awkward prospect for me because I didn’t really know Vicky that well (and actually still don’t – even though she is a friend of Sarah’s and we now live in the same town). Being a socially inept and shy type of person, I would happily sit in comfortable silence rather than feel compelled to strike up mundane conversations – but Vicky lived a half hour drive from the office, and that is a lot of silence when you’re sitting in a car with someone. Doubting that she would be content to sit there listening to my rather fine selection of extreme metal albums, I feared that we would have to spend the journey talking about work, or my approaching termination of it, or that subprime mortgage bubble that had just exploded somewhere…

As it turned out, Vicky was actually very cool. Once she’d stopped apologising for subjecting me to the hitherto unseen spectacle of her tears, I discovered that we shared a surprising number of interests (although, sadly, extreme metal was not one of them).

Then, nearing the end of the journey, she spoke those fateful words: “You know, I’ve always really wanted to write a vampire novel.”

For some reason – and I only realise now, as I write this, that I have never really stopped to wonder why – I replied: “We should write one together!”

Perhaps it was the kind of epiphany that only a reality-adverse idiot with obsessive tendencies can have. Right there and then, faced with the certain prospect of being cast out into the rapidly swelling ranks of the unemployed, I knew that there was not a single better thing I should be doing than writing a vampire novel. I knew it in the very core of my soul.

For some equally strange reason (now that I think about it) Vicky also appeared to be quite keen on the idea.

It wasn’t even something I had ever contemplated before – but I knew about vampires. Vampires were cool. I had read most of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and at least half of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and I loved Cradle of Filth’s early albums. That was some good vampire pedigree right there! And though I knew it had always been a popular genre, there hadn’t been any really big vampire novels for years… or so I thought at the time.

Yeah, I know, I really should have stopped to research that – and I still haven’t. Even when I started writing and all the other vampires came creeping out of the night and onto the TV and cinema screens. Even when I wanted to call my book ‘The House of Night Song’ only to discover there is already a vampire series called ‘House of Night’ – even when I changed it to ‘The Fall of Night’s Blood’ and discovered there was a vampire novel called ‘Fall of Night’ (at which point I stopped trying to come up with another title). Not once have I really bothered to actually find out what any of them are like – it turns out that I am embarrassingly ignorant when it comes to vampires.

Nevertheless, I got home that evening, immersed myself in those cool old Cradle CDs, and thought of nothing but vampires.

And so, over the next few weeks, Vicky and I outlined the basic plot. Much of it is still intact, though I cannot now remember exactly whose ideas were originally whose. I would say more about this here, but won’t in case it spoils the plot for anyone (even though I know all three of you have already read it).

During that time I also went on holiday to Sicily (it had, of course, been booked long before the redundancy thing – I’m not quite that much of an idiot). My head was still swimming with vampires and I saw them everywhere I went – perched on the walls of the Saracen Castle, creeping through the alleyways of Taormina, and in the narrow streets of Castelmola…

When I returned home I began to write in earnest and found I enjoyed it so much that, for a time, it overtook my entire life. I didn’t even think writing was a viable alternative to finding a job – I knew very well that I needed to find a job, but I was having so much fun that I just didn’t care.

Unfortunately for me, a very astute friend, who I daresay knows me well enough to see the reality of my situation, decided to inconvenience me by getting me a job.

So as it turned out I only ended up being unemployed for about a month – in which time I’d forgotten to attend both my appointments at the job centre and had blown the majority of my redundancy payment on the red wine that fuelled my fevered writing. Ah… but what a great month that was!

And what happened to Vicky? Sadly, our situations at the time were so different that I simply overtook her. While I spent the last two months of my employment with little to do other than write, she was busy with work – and also had a social life. The joint venture became unviable and simply ceased to be.

Whether or not it could have worked is something I will never know – yet, whether this book ever achieves any kind of success or not, I shall be forever thankful to Vicky and that shitty day that she had.

PROBLOGUE

Hello, my name is Al and you appear to be reading my blog. In the unlikely event that you did not end up here by mistake and intend to persist in this ill-advised reading exercise, I should probably set about explaining why I am doing this.

So, it has been suggested by a long-suffering friend (henceforth referred to as LSF), that I should write a blog to (somehow) generate interest in my book – The Fall of Night’s Blood. I am not sure how this is supposed to achieve said goal and, being generally ignorant of most forms of social media, remain sceptical and rather clueless in regard to what I should actually blog about.

However, as you can see, LSF has persuaded me and how she managed to do this is most succinctly captured in the conversation I had with her…

…Actually, before I relay the ensuing conversation, I should point out a few things about LSF:

1.       She is of the opinion that what the world needs is yet another vampire book series and thinks that my book will be a huge success.

2.       She is also a work colleague.

3.       She lives in the US and owns a gun.

Thus the conversation (conducted via instant messenger) generally went as follows:

 

LSF: Hey Al, can I ask a quick question about your book? Well, 2 questions.

Me: Sure.

LSF: Okay… so I’m designing some flyers to put up around the office.

Me: Oh cool, thanks!

LSF: I will send you a copy when it’s ready, but is there any point in me asking you to print some out and do likewise on your side?

Me: Nope.

LSF: Okay… and I suppose you still don’t want your book to be included in the global newsletter?

Me: Yep.

LSF: Whoa! Does that mean you do?!

Me: No, I was confirming that your supposition was correct.

LSF: So you don’t then?

Me: No.

LSF: But that goes out to everyone in the company…

Me: Does it?

LSF: Yes! That’s great exposure!

Me: Oh, I never knew – I just delete them as soon as they hit my inbox.

LSF: So… if I included it on your behalf you wouldn’t even know?

Me: True, but if I ever found out about it you would suffer the terrible extent of my furious wrath. I’m talking angry faces sent to you every day…

LSF: I won’t do it if you don’t want me to…

Me: Cool.

LSF: Ugh! Fine! But I think you should be more active on twitter then.

Me: What would I tweet about?

LSF: Your book.

Me: What would I tweet about my book?

LSF: Well, what it’s about.

Me: i THINK TWITTER HAS A CHARACTER LIMIT THOUGH

Me: sorry caps

Me: It’s like sending texts out to the world – that sounds like a very bad idea to me. It’s just people spouting the first things that come into their heads. I would be like this:

Me: Monday morning – back to the office. :-(

Me: Monday evening – work over! Off to get wine! Woohoo! :-D

Me: Later on Monday evening – wiritng coming on a teat :-D

Me: Monday night – rwally goos wwime a,m prwry drumnk noww :-S

Me: Tuesday evening: Noooo! I forgot to save my changes AGAIN!

LSF: Okay Al, I get it…

LSF: So what about writing a blog then?

Me: What would I blog about?

LSF: Sighhhhhh…

LSF: Your book…

Me: What would I blog about my book?

LSF: Well, you could talk about what you went through writing it…

Me: What? The 10000 bottles of red wine?

LSF: I SWEAR TO GOD, AL, I WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE!!!!!

Me: Okay… I’ll write a blog then.