NaNoWriMo HeRe I CoMe!

It usually takes me ages to write something a little longer than a short story, I am very undisciplined and envious of writers that can get up in the morning and write to order, each and every day. I have no self control, look! I'm blogging now when I could be writing! So, in an attempt to gain some discipline and kick the habit of procrastination I've enrolled in this year's NaNoWriMo event. That means starting November 1st 2009 I am going to attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in thirty days... yes, you read it right, thirty days. Okay, you can stop laughing now, I know it will be probably more like thirty months than days! But I'm going to give it a go.

The story I have in mind is a zombie one, the working title is

'They Feast On Flesh'

and it's hopefully going to be a compilation of individual stories with an anchoring thread running through them all. Then in the final chapter I hope to have them all tie together... we shall see!

If you're interested in my progress or just want a laugh at my pitiful attempt at reaching the 50k target then you can check in on me here:

They Feast On Flesh

A cloud of madness - SF Novella now available

I've had a SF novella floating around for a while and a few people wanted a printed copy of it so I thought I'd have a go at doing it myself and the results are much better than I expected!
Amazon now offer a POD service via their sister company Createspace. You write your masterpiece, convert it into pdf format and upload it to their site. You have to be very careful to stay within the parameters that they require or they bug you with emails explaining that your file isn't 'quite' right... yeah I had a few *cough*
Then you have to design a cover (which I gave up on as my graphics looked like a five year old's) and so I trawled the web for something suitable. I found what I wanted on deviantART , an abstract design of a comet (the story is about what happens when Earth encounters a possible KT-Extinction Event - like the one around the time of the dinosaurs) the artist is Jan Mullins an Australian lady who kindly did not ask for payment (who, however, will want a share of proceeds if the book is turned into a film by Spielberg)

*please insert your flying pigs here*

Thanks Jan!

So, once you have your pdfs sorted out and Creatspace no longer bugs you with emails saying that you dpi is too low etc, then you are ready to apply for a proof. Mine came last week and I was thrilled with the quality (well, of the production at least, my readers will have to decide on the story... ahem...) and gave them the go ahead to commit to print. Within hours the ebook version was available here and a few days later the print one went live here.
At the moment the only drawback I see with the system is that it is only Amazon.com who do all the printing and stocking of titles, awkward for UK customers, but from what I can understand they will be extending into affiliate countries in the future.
So, if you like end of the world scenarios, comets, mad killer robots, Navajo Indians then this might be for you!
You can always read the first two chapters here and see what you think.