Hello World

My new novel, Hello World is out today. (I actually announced it back in October 2015 as coming out the following year, so it’s only a year late!)

It’s a story about growing up in the 1980s, the new and exciting world of home computers, and living with the very real-seeming threat of nuclear war. Unlike my previous novel, The Fantasy Reader, it contains no fantasy elements, but has the same basically comic tone, while dealing with similarly serious topics. But there’s a connection with my last Mewsings entry, on Walkabout, as in part it looks at the idea of rites of passage in the modern world. But it’s got silly jokes about school, too.

You can find out more in the book’s mini-site, and I also did a book trailer:

Also, I’ve recently changed the cover of The Fantasy Reader, which never quite looked how I wanted it to. That was an oil painting; this new version was done digitally, in Painter, though based on the same original sketch. There’s a book trailer for that, too, now:

Finally, I’ve been adding a few poems to the main site recently, including Mr Was, The Sad Pirate, and I want to be on the moon. More to follow!

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The Fantasy Reader

My novel, The Fantasy Reader, is out today!

TFR_fan

At the end of last year, I said I’d be bringing it out as an ebook, but I really wanted a copy sitting on my shelf, so I started looking into getting a print version out, too. This blog post by Karen Inglis was enormously helpful, and pretty much determined how I went about it. (Short version: using Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing for the Amazon print and Kindle versions, and IngramSpark for everywhere else.) The whole thing took a lot longer than I’d expected (not helped by my decision to paint the cover myself, something everyone says authors shouldn’t do) — the above picture is actually the set of proof copies I accumulated on the road to getting the finished product.

You can read about the book (and read an extract) at The Fantasy Reader mini-site.

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More updates

Following on from my recent Mewsings revamp, I’ve completely revamped my main site. The new-look site is not only mobile-friendly, but focuses on various creative projects I’ve done, and is hopefully more fun to browse. Most of these projects aren’t new to the site (new stuff will follow), but they’ve been given a bit of a polish. So, all the poems that have featured in this blog now have their own proper page (see the poetry index), and The Laughing Ghost has its own page, which even allows you to download the sheet music, for a proper Halloween sing-along!

Meanwhile, I’ve finally got my novel The Fantasy Reader ready for publication. It will be out, as an ebook and a paperback, on the 2nd of November. The book should have its own mini-site by then, but at the moment there’s just a blurb. On the other hand, despite my announcement at the end of last year, I’m going to have to put off my other novel (Hello World) till next year. I really didn’t expect it to take this long to get The Fantasy Reader ready, but I like to do the job properly.

Anyway, hope you like the new-look site, and thanks for reading!

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