From student to author

Turns out that life as both a student and an author is very busy. I might be doing a talk about it in a few months but let's just says that you have to go around the place, doing talks at schools and festivals and still hand in essays on time. I've been loving it of course but I think I'm only still in university by the skin of my teeth.
But that's all behind me now. I've submitted the last piece of coursework for this year and unless I fail something I'm free for the summer. And that means I can switch from being a reluctant student to a reluctant author (I don't like work, even when it's fun).
So what will I be doing with my new free time? Well I've got a few projects on the go, most of which can be found on the relevant page on my website. I also have one or two secret projects that I won't be revealing until I know they're doable, because I don't want to get hopes up and because I like being able to say I have secret projects. If they work it'll be very exciting though.
And I suppose it's  time to start the long standing tradition of starting to update this blog, do well for a short time and then lose steam. I'll try a couple of reviews a week and we'll see how it goes from there.
And on that note I watched Godzilla today so here's a review on that.

Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens by Alex McCall

Ok. So I'm not going to review my own book. I'm fairly self centred but that's something else. But who care? I'm published! I have a book out, I've held it bound in my hands and people have read it.

And now the real work begins.

The launch party was a success and it sounds like I've sold a reasonable number of books since but I can't let it stop at that. I need to keep working, keep promoting the book and just raise awareness.

So...Watch this space. I'm not going to promise anything because I'm already running late on a lot of my promises but just keep watching. It might be cool.

And on the note I have to tease you a bit more and get back to it. Until then thanks for reading and buy my book here.

Happy New Year

I'd love to say that I've been super busy in the last month and a bit, that something vital was keeping me from posting, but honestly there wasn't. I did have a coursework and an exam to get done but that was a few weeks ago and nothing has happened since that would keep my from posting something. However that does mean that I've got a news that I can share now.

The main news is that my book, Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens, has had it's release date moved forward. Originally it was coming out on the 20th of March but now it's coming out on the 20th of February. Which is significantly closer. Suddenly it's almost here and very very real. And scary. This is something I've been working towards for a long time and now that it's nearly here I'm not quite sure how to feel.

There may be something else that I'm forgetting but I don't think so. My university term is starting again so I'm sort of looking forward to that. And I guess I'm going to start putting up reviews again. I've read a good few books over the holidays and I'll be putting up what I think about them over the next few week. Unless I forget. Again.

So to start us off here's a review of Redshirts by John Scalzi.

The quiet month

It's probably about time I did a small blog post, just to catch everyone up to where I am now and what's going to be happened. I should really be doing these more often but being a writer means that things don't happen very fast. The next time you pick up a book and skip through those 300 odd pages it's probably worth considering that it took about a year to write that book, get it fully edited and then presented to you. Which doesn't present you with a lot to talk about until after it's done.

So I managed to finish NaNoWriMo on time. Just. Most of the words were done in the last four days. Hopefully next year I'll be slightly more organised over it but I doubt it. Still there's 50,000 words done that can be edited down into something more usable. And then stuck in a cupboard for years until I remember about it and use it. That's not really important though. I do NaNoWriMo just to keep me sharp and to increase my typing speed in case of emergencies. I was over 3k an hour at some points this year. That was pretty cool.

Things with Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens is pretty much wrapped up. I've got to proof-read the manuscript two more times and then that's it. I'll be completely done. It's...interesting. Part of me still can't really accept that I'm going to be published. I think it'll only be when I hold the finished book in my hands that I'll really believe it. But I'm now on both Amazon and the Waterstones website for pre-ordering. And that is so cool I can't properly describe it.

There's not really going to be much happening on this blog for the next month. This is usual for December. I'm usually pretty tired after NaNoWriMo or I'll be more focused on editing what I have. This year I've got a lot of coursework that has to be finished and handed in. And I can't buy and new book in case I get them for Christmas. So basically don't expect much up on here for the rest of the year. Any books I do review will be older ones that I've read a few time. I will have a new one (for me) up just before Christmas but apart from that I'm not promising anything.

Anyway, I'd best get back to work. Busy, busy, busy.

A little something about writing.

So I think I should put something about my writing process. More specifically about procrastination.
I love being a writer. Really, I do. I find writing a very fun activity and burst writing (putting out a large amount of words in a short space of time) is a huge rush. Some day I hope to be able to inspire the same emotions in others that authors have inspired in me.
The only thing is...I'm lazy.
Distractions on the internet are an easy way for me to be entertained and I have a hard time getting myself to focus. It's always been that way with writing for me. Before I had internet access I'd stop writing to read random sections from random books. Once I'm in the zone I can output words at an fantastic rate but getting into there is really hard for me.
And ok, I'm writing this news post instead of doing NaNoWriMo.
Apart from the chronic procrastination things aren't going badly. I wrote 8000 words yesterday, bringing my total up to 10,000. That's me a fifth of the way there. I'm hoping to write 10,000 tonight, which will leave me with a total of 20,000.
I guess I should stop wasting time. I'll post an update on Wednesday. Hopefully it'll be all about how I succeeded and how I reached the 50,000 words well ahead of time. But we'll see.

A late beginner

So if you've been following this blog for any length of time or even if you've just flicked back through my posts you'll know that November is NaNoWriMo. It's the month where you have to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I look forward to it every year.
Sadly, due to some hefty time constraints I haven't started it yet. I'm going to change this tonight.
Everytime I do this, or try burst writing novels, I tend to tweet pretty heavily. You can follow the ranting here if you do so choose.
7 days, 50,000 words. Let's jam.

Apparently not the end.

Low and behold, it's two months later and I'm back. Turns out leaping onto a new platform while knowing nothing about that platform is a terrible idea. It's not that Tumblr is a bad platform for what I was wanting to do, it's just that it wasn't quite what I thought it was. The main problem was that Tumblr usually uses short, snappy posts and my reviews, the shortest things I do, average about 700 words. So yeah. That was dumb.
So what happens now? Well I want to say that this day mark the dawning of a new age. And it sort of does. The reviews won't be coming as fast as I'd have liked and I'm not sure when I can start putting up short stories again but they will at least be more regular. This will be helped by me putting all the reviews that were on Tumblr on here over the next few weeks, just to make them more visible. I've got a few ideas for other things I can do that I'll be messing about with over the next few weeks. But none of this will be happening fast. My university course is getting busy and I'm still working with editing the chicken novel, though I'm almost done with that. Lastly it November and you know what that means. NaNoWriMo is back. So any spare time I might have will be devoted to writing the next novel.
But it's nice to have this going again and I can promise at least a moderately regular update schedule. To start with here's a book review. Have fun.

The End

I've had a long think about things and I think it's time this blog came to an end.
It's not exactly unexpected. I mean it's been slowly dying for the past year and more. I've not been posting stuff to it and I've hit too many consecutive posts saying that I will update, just as soon as I've got time. No reviews are getting done, no short stories are getting written and I'm not writing about my journey to become a published author. Even when I got invited to the Kelpies Prize award ceremony as one of the nominees I didn't post anything.
Well the journey is at an end. Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens is set to be published by Floris Books in the early Spring of next year. I've made it. Which is a good time to draw this blog to a close.
And start up another one.
All in all it would probably suit my style better if I moved over to Tumblr. I've loved doing this blog but one thing that has really bugged me is the lack of feedback it allows. I mean I can see the x amount of people has seen it and where they came from but that's about it. I think with Tumblr I'd be able to promote myself better and get more feedback about what people think. So please, come check me out. The link is here. I'll look forward to seeing you.


Though I did try this before so chances are I'll be back in a few months.

Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens

Two week last Thursday, on the 22nd of August, one of my dreams came true. I won the Kelpies Prize and that means that I'm going to become a published author.
Since then news of this has spread. I've so far appeared in at least two newspapers and on a number of blog and press released. And this would be great and amazing apart from one thing. A large number of them mention this blog. This blog that I haven't really done anything with for ages.
Ho hum.
I want to start putting stuff back up on here. I really do. I just can't right now. I've just moved back to university and do't currently have much internet. What I do is being carefully rationed.
But I get hooked up to the internet permanently on Tuesday. So if you're visiting please wait patiently and come back then. Thanks.

When things don't go according to plan

Well. Exactly two months ago I posted that I was going to update this blog every day with massive amounts of new content. This has obviously not happened.

Big things have been happening though. Just nothing I can actually talk about right now. In the meantime I'm working on the problem of not updating that often and in the meantime here's a movie review. The next post will be in a few days. This I can promise.

A break for work

I have been crazy busy lately.

Before doing this university course I never realised how much goes into making videos. The writing of the script, the rewriting of the script, getting everyone together, getting the equipment. Even the paperwork. It all takes a lot more time than I would have thought. I mean I always knew that it wasn't easy but I never thought it would be quite this...intensive. And film making is only one of my modules. I had two others as well. So lately I've been so busy I haven't really had a chance to work on trying to get work published or even to write much. But that's about to change.

The first year of my university course is almost at an end. Tomorrow I'll do the last bit of paperwork for the last module and then I'll be finished. But I won't be going home. I'm paying for this accommodation until the 8th of June and I'm going to be getting my moneys worth. So that leaves me with a rare opportunity. I'm finally going to have the time to really try cracking into this profession.

And so begins my Month of Being a Writer. 

Unlike NaNoWriMo this won't just be about writing as much as possible. This time I'll focus on improving the general quality of my work and getting published. Maybe even, (dare I hope?) getting paid. My main goals will be to find a publisher for my novel and to start the Kickstarter for Undead Getaway, which has been flagging recently. I'm giving a public reading of part of it on Friday and you never know, there may be a publisher in the audience. If not then I'm just going to send it off to one. I'm tired of waiting. This novel is ready. 

Until then I've got editing to do. Which is my least favourite part of being a writer but it is essential.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'll be posting on this blog every day until the month is up. Hopefully by the end I'll have gained something. If not, at least I'll have finally started updating again.

Undead Getaway

Ok, I'm not going to lie, I forgot I still had this.
In my defence I have been pretty busy. Since my last update I've written another novel and submitted it to another competition. I've had university work and have been working on about three videos. I've entered a few competitions and started writing scripts. And all the numerous other things that make up life.
And yet for some reason this site continues to have traffic. According to the analytics it was viewed by 72 people last month, mostly from the United States and Germany (Guten Tag!). It's been almost five months since my last post and yet 72 people have visited this site? I honestly want to say thanks. That just seems amazing to me.
So I want to tell you about the project I'm working on right now. It's called Undead Getaway (because we suck at names) and will basically be a travel show. With zombies. Because why not?
However traveling costs a fair bit of money and we're all students and basically broke. So here's our plan. We're going to try Kickstarting it. Kickstater (for those of you who don't know) is a crowd sourcing website where people put up ideas that they have and ask people to give them money to fund it. They give incentives so that at certain pledge levels you get stuff like t-shirts, posters or stuff like that. If they manage to raise the amount of money that they're asking for then they get it all. If not then they get nothing.
My group and I believe that this project has merit and that it can work. We're working on a pilot episode set in Ayr, Scotland, and that should be finished within the next few weeks. We've got a Facebook Page, a tumblr account and a Twitter feed or whatever it's called. If you think this is interesting please check it out, like, favourite, subscribe, share. All that stuff. Lot's of information will be coming out soon. It's going to be an interesting time.
Well I'd best wrap this up, now that the shameless begging is done. I've got to film a music video tomorrow and a lot of stuff to do before then. So goodnight. And thank again for continuing to read this blog.

The Words. They come for me.

I am shattered so I'm going to make this very quick.

My schedule seems to have got very full very quickly. NaNoWriMo starts on Thursday and I'm planning on entering it. Before that happens I want to have got last year's novel, which I think its ok and might actually be publishable, into a good enough state to send off to some friends for editing. I'm currently in the 'improve what you've got' part and will shortly start on the 'add in as many words as you can.' This part is important because my book is currently only 168 or so pages long. And it needs to be much, much, longer. So I've got to write about 16,000 more words.

But that's not all! I've also got four, count em, four competitions that have to be finished at about the same time. I have to enter these because I have still to get a job and though I'm managing perfectly well at the moment eventually I will need money. And they offer money. So I'd like to enter them. But if I submit each story with the max amount of words I'll need to have written 23,500 words plus 40 lines of poetry before NaNoWriMo begins. Which, might I remind you, is Thursday.

Also on Thursday is my creative writing class. I have to also submit a short story for them, running to no more than 2,000 words which brings us up to a grand total of 25,500 words in the next five days. Which works out to about 5,100 words a day. Plus 40 lines of poetry.

I am so not going to sleep any time soon.

There's other news. What was it? Oh yes.

I'm in yet another competition! Because of eating and stuff. How I managed to finally get into it is a story in itself but one for another time. In this one a short story of mine plus a dozen or so others has been published (yay) on a mobile app. The one who has the most downloads before Halloween wins. The app is free and called Ether Books. You have to be on a iPhone or an iPad to get it. Android users might also be able to acquire it but that remains unconfirmed. Once you have the app you search for my name (Alexander McCall) and my short story should come up. It should look like this.


If you download it then it'll be one more step towards me being a published author and fairies will clean your dishes. Or something.

I am actually starting to see sentences highlighted in yellow floating in front of my eyes so I'll stop now and go to bed. It's going to be a long few days.

Pumpkins

I haven't posted anything in a wee while so I thought I'd throw together a blog post, just to make it look like this is actually an active blog. Also I fell asleep at five o'clock, woke up at midnight and now I can't get back to sleep.
A fair amount has been happening to me lately, though not much that I can post on here. I've been trying to write some stories for some competitions but I'm a bit rusty. To solve this I've decided to enter NaNoWriMo again this year. It's only eight or so days away and I don't know what I'm doing yet but it's not like that's stopped me in the past. I've also been working on last years NaNoNovel. It's actually looking not too bad, though very rough and ready. I'm planning to get it into a better state before starting the next one. Then again I plan a lot of things so who knows what will actually happen.
Although I don't have much chance to get books these days I do have a copy of Oblivion by Anthony Horowitz. However I've not really got into it yet. Mostly it's because it was so long since I've read the others in the series that I'm having trouble remembering who is who and what exactly happened. There's also the issue that the setting for this book is very different to the others. I'm going to get round to it eventually but it's not exactly been compelling me to read and I have other things to do.
On the subject of books, though I don't think we're ever off the subject on this blog, I've just been published again. In the Spring I entered a poetry competition with a prize of £1000. While I didn't win that, and honestly the winning poem about chickens was so good I don't care, I did get published in the anthology. It's called 'Animal Antics 2012' and while not quite as prestigious as Poetry Rivals it's still nice to once again be in print.
As a last piece of news filming just finished today on a short film for a university project. I mention this because I wrote the script (and was the general errand boy but that's not as prestigious.) The video still needs to be edited and put up on a YouTube channel, the name of which has not yet been decided, but it was still pretty amazing to see everything coming together. Hopefully there will be other videos in the future but for now I'm delighted in what we've achieved. When it is uploaded I will link it for your general perusal.
I think I'm finally feeling tired again so with that I bid you goodnight.

So. It's been a while.

Blah, blah, blah, excuses. Blah, blah, blah, exams. Blah, blah, blah, laziness.

Long story short, I'm back.

I've not been up to much writing wise and, I'll be honest, I was hoping to move all this blog onto YouTube so more people could see me and so I might end up getting money. Weirder things have happened. But for whatever reason my main computer, with all its video-editing specialness, is not connecting to the internet. So I decided to just start this up again.

I'm currently at university studying creative writing among other things so I can't promise a regular schedule. Though I don't think I ever promised that. I will try to put up short stories and I'll certainly be doing book reviews, if I can afford any books, but I don't have a job right now so most of the short stories I'm writing I'm submitting to competitions in the hope of getting money. I'm also trying to get a novel finished and in a state where I can send it to a publisher, writing a radio play of my time in Borneo and doing any other writing I can possibly think of that will allow me to eat.

So.....basically that's what you're going to get. I'll continue to update any successes I manage and try to put actual content up. I'll put up short stories I've written for a joke or I don't think I can get any money for. And until I get my life more structured I can't promise anything else.

Why exactly do you follow this blog again?

Interesting things continue to happen

Time is passing way too quickly and my exams are right around the corner. Which is bad. However it does mean that Poetry Rivals Grand Slam is almost here. Which is good. A week on Saturday I'm heading down to Peterburgh to take part. If you're interested, though why you would be I can't imagine, I'll try and film it to put on my youtube channel.
In other news I'm in yet another competition. If you could go here and vote up the poem called 'The Troll,' then that would be great. It says it's written by Alexander McCall. Turns out they don't accept entrances by people called Skald.

Interesting things happening

This is my blog and so I'm going to start with some bragging.

I like to enter competitions from time to time and I've had some success in the past. Last October(ish) I entered a competition called Poetry Rivals. Nothing happened and so I then forgot about it.

Two days ago I arrived home to find a parcel on my doormat containing three copies of a book, my poem beaming up at me from the pages. I have to say right now that I don't think that the poem is that good but it's published so who cares.

Then yesterday I got a letter through the post, telling me that fifty of the poets published in the book are invited to an event in April, where they get to read their poem in front of a panel of judges. And the best one wins a laptop.

So, yeah, published and in with the chance of a laptop. I'm pretty happy.

Well while I'm here I might as well go over what else is happening in my life. Basically, I'm coming to the end of school and realising that I'm about to be spat into the real world. As such I'm going haywire on revision and also entering every competition I can find, mostly because I'm too lazy to get a real job. So you won't be hearing from me until halfway through June at the very least. Unless I win some of the aforesaid competitions. In which case I'll be right on here to brag about it.

Yay. We're all going to die

Or in other words, happy New Year. It's 2012 and will the world end? Who knows.
Right, so the story I'm putting up now I actually wrote a few years ago while waiting for a plane in an airport. It's based in the Guild Wars universe and signal a small change in the way I'm going to be doing things. What I'm going to do with it is put it up here and also on some other websites, ones actually dedicated to the game. Hopefully that should generate more interest. I'm also going to do something else with it but that applies to the secret project that I've been babbling on about for ages and should now be coming to light. Well, we'll see.

I survived. Somehow

So it's now December and NaNoWriMo is now over. And I made it, if only just. Still I'm proud of what I achieved. It was, however, very last minute. As you can see if the picture that will hopefully be included in this post.

Anyway, that's what I've been doing for the past month. Now let's look at the next one.
I'm going to focus primarily on my studies as there's a very real danger that I might not make it into university. And I want to make it to uni, so that I can get some good degrees and therefore get a job that'll let me do writing for a living. As I'm basically bone-idle lazy this means I'll have to take a good look at how I use my time and shape up quite a lot. This means that I probably won't be able to go back to the whole 'write-one-story-per-week' thing.
However I don't want to let this blog just die. I enjoy it too much. So I'm going to be working on something else for it and should have two of these things up for Christmas. Hopefully.
If I don't get kicked out of school first.