Shameless self promotion

If any of you (and by any of you I mean the two people who occasionally visit) have read the About bit of this site you will notice that I refer to myself as a struggling writer among other things. Well you’ve read my posts so you’ll understand why I’m struggling however I also mention how I intended my blog to be used for shameless self promotion.

Well due to the constraints of time, being the busy chap that I am, the self promotion has wained a bit but not anymore. Here at last I am sharing a taste of one of my many projects.

The below extract is the blurb (the bit on the back cover of a book which tells you basically what its about) from my finally completed (if I can stop editing it) novel.

The story is aimed at late teens to adults, anyone who reads Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin or Terry Pratchett, anyone who used to watch Red Dwarf and those of you with a naughty sense of humor.

Please let me know your thoughts. Anything positive will be passed to my agent along with a stern request for him to get his finger out of his ass.

Negative comments are of course welcome however only leave these if you’re not likely to be offended by my replies. 

Enjoy and thanks in advance.

And now the blurb…

Galactic disaster!  

Ambassador Trilley is an eccentric pervy old alien. He is also the only creature in the galaxy that can prevent wholesale war, mass destruction and a win for Belgiumin the Galactovision song contest. So when he is abducted by unknown beings, the race begins to find him and avert certain disaster not to mention the aforementioned war and mass destruction.

  

Only one man is up to the job. Ex-Space Marine turned Secret Agent ‘Z’ is given the task but will he cope against weird aliens that pop up out of the blue, giant slugs and a trainee on a foreign exchange scheme?

  Everyone gets to have a bad day once in a while, but ‘Z’ had had the mother of all of them. Within the space of twenty-four hours he’d been shot at, thrown from a tall building, half drown, had his car stolen, his yacht attacked, been arrested, been involved in a high speed chase and ultimately lost his life. They say it’s the hardships in life that make us who we are. Most of the above would have made the average Joe a nervous, nail chewing wreck, but not ‘Z’; he was made of sterner stuff and as long as he had  breath in his lungs, a gun in his hand and his lucky red thong then nothing, not even death, would stop him.

…blurb ends.

Happy holidays

The holidays are a time for taking a pause in the maelstrom of our brief but tempestuous existence. Time to have a break from the norm, to relax and to spend time with the family or in quiet introspection. It is indeed a happy holiday.

Unless your name happens to be Freddy.

Recently I have been experiencing pain in my feet. I say recently however the problem has persisted for about 18 months now but because I’m a man, a British man and British men are capable of putting up with all kinds of pain with a firm resolve and a stiff upper lip (unless it’s a man cold… that’s an entirely different thing), I have resisted going to the doctor.

The issue came to a head however when I was wrenched out of bed for the third time in as many days with excruciating agony and cramps in my feet and calf muscles you would not believe. Off I hobbled to the quack only to find that the pain disappeared the moment I entered the surgery and the doctor failed to find anything wrong. By the look on his face I could tell he suspected me of being some kind of hypochondriac loon. He sent me on my way with a bill for the consultation and a prescription for laxatives.

The problem persisted though and was compounded by an acute bout of the schlits. Finally after having the first day of my well earned holiday ruined by laxative induced diarrhea and the inability to walk without wincing I went to a different doctor for a second opinion. Again, the moment I stepped into his surgery the pain disappeared. Thankfully though he decided to give me a full examination after which he informed me that my feet are deformed and that I’ve been walking incorrectly for the past 26 (I wish) years. Great! Mutant spastic feet. Why couldn’t the deformity have been to my benefit, you know like the X-Men. My mutant feet could have made me run faster or leap higher. I could have been a super hero capable of catching a speeding bullet with my toes but NO!!! Instead I hobble around like a man in his eighties with the doctor telling me that I have to learn to walk again with special insoles in my shoes. Aaaarrrgh… me… special as in weird.

Somebody please shoot me now.

To add insult to injury, I must have picked up some kind of infection at the doctors because no more than ten minutes after returning home my eye lids inflated to Asian proportions resulting in yet another visit to the doctor.

The remainder of the holiday was spent hobbling around on painful feet with my arms outstretched feeling for things because I couldn’t see due to swollen eye lids. Honestly, I must have looked like something out of a crappy Jappy zombie movie.

Still, the holidays are now over and I’m back at work where its safe and the only things to contend with are stress and miserable old clients.

     

Tea with Stalin?

I’ve always considered myself as conservative but as far as voting is concerened tend to maintain a neutral stance. However, yesterday I took a quick test on the internet designed to identify which way ones political wind is blowing. I was shocked at the result. 

You are a Social Conservative (26% permissive)and an… Economic Liberal (38% permissive)You are best described as a: Totalitarian

Me??? Totalitarian??? Shurley shum mishtake.

http://www.okcupid.com/politics

Is that a bottle of beer in your pocket or just a huge election

After a long weekend away from work I finally ventured out of the house on Tuesday, and down into St Julians on my way to the office. As I approached the little square at Spinola I had to stop. The reason? The road before me had turned green, bottle green.

No this was nothing mysterious like some alien plant, aggressive grass growth or spillage from a Swarfega delivery truck. The entire road was half an inch thick with broken glass beer bottles.

This brings me to the reason for the long weekend off work. Malta has just had it’s general election. Big deal you may think and what’s so special about that, you may also think. Well the big deal is the way the whole island seemed to get caught up in election fever.

Leading up to the polling day there have been mass meetings, parades, roads blocked with flag waving traffic all blasting their horns in, what I expect is support for their political party. Then on Sunday after the voting was done the results came in. The existing government gets to stay in for another 5 year term. Suddenly the place went crazy. Parties were thrown in the streets, cars and trucks carrying beer swilling revellers were seen driving around the towns and villages. At one point a convertible came along the road where I live with no less than 20 drunken kids crammed into it waving flags and beeping the horn. A DJ was set up in the middle of the road in Spinola along with beer tents and excited bodies. The fun didn’t just last ’til the wee hours of Sunday morning but carried on all day Monday hence the reason for the broken bottles, beer cans, boxes and crates littering the streets. It was also the reason for my extra day off and the closure of other businesses and even banks.

In fact Spinola was not the only place. As I continued the journey to work on Tuesday hoping I didn’t get multiple punctures it became apparent that the same sort of mayhem had taken place all along the sea front round to Sliema.

Now I’m not criticising or saying its a bad thing. It seems to me that there are three things at play here. 1. The Maltese run high with emotions when it comes to their politics; 2. They give a damn about their politics; and 3. They don’t need much of an excuse for a party.

Personally I cannot vote on Malta because I’m Johnny Foreigner here and probably wouldn’t vote anyway because I have electile dysfunction and have always tended to be a floater (and I don’t mean the little poop bobbing around in the toilet bowl). A lot of my attitude in this respect comes from a background in the UK where hardly anyone bothers to vote because the parties are all the same; as bad and as sleazy as each other. In this regard people in Britain have something to learn from Malta. 1.Get emotionally involved in politics; 2.have a say with the vote; then 3. get rat arsed and legless afterward.