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!