A mixture of a week

Monday is such a boring day, not really helped by a mind that's gone on strike and is now being stubborn, won't negotiate and is heading for another 'winter of discontent'.

Yesterday was a sad day, one of the greatest literary influences of my younger days, Alan Sillitoe, passed away.  It seems that most of the people that I grew up admiring in one way or another, are disappearing and moving on to the after life.  Such events, perfectly natural ones in the great scheme of things, simply bring home the nature of human mortality and time to do all the things you want, growing evermore limited as the days pass by.  It makes you think.

Of course life wouldn't be life without its little episodes, such as my bed collapsing at 2.30am last Thursday.  Needless to say I awoke with a brutal start, on top of the mattress which had imploded into the centre of the bed frame.  Such times are very trying, particularly when you're full of cold and the last thing you need is to be strangled by the continental quilt.  Being English, and having recovered my composure, along with making a very drowsy note never to buy another bed from MOMA, you should never trust MOMA, the best solution to a sudden crisis is go and make a cup of tea.  An hour later I'm back in the land of nod, comfortably lay on the IKEA sofa, happily dreaming of making....the bed.

I've no real desire to keep moaning on about my dose of the flu, but having started repairing the bed on Friday, and managing to finish yesterday, Sunday, progress was drearily slow and tedious due to copious amounts of perspiration cascading from the body beautiful.  I have to begrudgingly agree that causing the bod to sweat was no bad thing at the end of the day.  This morning I awoke feeling much better, at least the coughing has stopped for the moment, which is always preferable in the cold light of day.  Despite this the sleep was a bit haphazard last night, mostly waking every hour to check that the bed hadn't collapsed again, and I hadn't disappeared up my own bottom.  I'm happy to report that my repair job was magnificently done and eventually I had a better night's sleep than I first anticipated.  It was somehow pleasurable to get up at 6am, listening to the birds outside chirping away; I'm pretty sure that they were complaining at the falling rain, which was preventing them from making love to their partners in crime.  It was surprising how much noise male German birds make at 6am, and even more surprising how masculine their chirps sounded.

As you're all well aware by now, unless you're a first time visitor to this blog and then you won't know but welcome anyway, it's always to good to have new fans, my novel 'Nick & Jenny' has been published and even though I say it myself, a damn fine read.  Ok, I know that might sound a tad on the biased side, but what do you expect when I'm head of marketing and publicity, and also the author to boot.  Anyway, the point is that it's come to my attention that people are waiting for the paperback version, before buying.  Now I know that's a nice thought, and I thank those in question for thinking in such a wonderful way, but the news is that there are no immediate plans to publish in paperback form.  Yes, it will happen in the future, but for now it will only remain on sale in e-book form.  I know to some of you this is a bit annoying, and it's not my intention to annoy my small but growing readership, but there's not enough time in the day to do everything I want to. 

At the moment my time is taken up with trying to publicise the e-book, trying to put together an audiobook, setting up a small company and numerous other things; so I simply don't have time to search for a publisher to print the paperback and offer it at a reasonable price.  In addition to this, I'm also aiming to publish my second novel, 'Danny's navel adventure', in June or July time, again in e-book form.  One of the reasons for concentrating on the e-book form is because it's a growing market and growing much faster than the paperbook market, which according to reports is beginning to decline.  As a first time novelist, who's responsible for their own publicity and marketing I need to concentrate on one particular segment of the market.  I will admit that I'm on a very steep learning curve, and I feel like a whale out of water, thrashing around trying to get back on course, but one of the things I can do is ask you to let people know the book is out there.  I'm not asking people to buy the book immediately, although thanks if you do, but download the free sample so you can get a 'taste' of the book.


I know that I've gone on a bit, but sadly that's part of being a salesman, something which is utterly foreign to me; how I suffer for my art!  Having got that out of the way there's more good news.  I've been asked to be a guest blogger and write about a subject close to my heart, you'll find out more by visiting http://completelymentalblog.blogspot
and I would ask you to take a little time out to read it and even subscribe to it.  As blogs go you can also visit my new occasional blog  http://tonibryan.wordpress.com which is going to become more focused on my creative side.  As with both of my blogs please subscribe to them if you're a regular reader, or even a new one!

Finally, congratulations go out to that dear, lovable rogue of an Austrian, sorry German, friend of mine and others, dearly missed but who remains nameless, I didn't want to name you Stefan just in case you became embarrassed but that's between us, don't worry only you and I read my blog so it's not an issue, he's become a permanent US resident and got his 'Green card', brilliant news it has to be said, whichever way you want to view it....just joking matey!