The new King Ruin cover is in and done- yet to be applied to the book itself, but this is what it will be as soon as I get time to update the book file:? Wow, right? I said it was sexy. I think it may look a little more cartoony than the Mr. Ruins cover, and I have mild concern that with a title of King Ruin, it is a little confusing to see a woman on the front, but other than those which I think are mild issues, it is fantastic. Sex and blood and twin red suns …
Hoo ha with the gardener
We had a gardener, and now we do not. She was my mom’s gardener, a lovely older lady who both SY and I had worked alongside in my mom’s garden- both of us kind of hired help for the day- with whom we got along very well. Her son is teaching English in Japan right now, which I did for 11 years, so we bonded over that. A month back we invited her to our new garden, to pick her brain about our sick eucalyptus and to potentially design our garden for us. A ballpark figure of 500 pounds ($750) …
The perfect tonic for your frustrations.
SY went to a sewing class in Seven Sisters only to find nobody there and the phone number unresponsive. So… we went to see Spectre instead. James Bond is the perfect tonic for such frustrations. He just gets it done (every girl kissed and every guy killed). I enjoyed the movie very much (and will probably review properly soon). Writing My artist finished the new King Ruin cover. It is very sexy- I’ll show it here soon. He’s starting work on the Cerulean cover and God of Ruin too. I’ll be much more confident promoting these books now I think- …
My new Dancehall pedestal desk!
Last weekend we finally got around to painting the study- the color is called Dancehall. The pedestal desk and old filing cabinet thing were antiques bought online, while the desk at right was the one I had as a kid, which SY uses now. Originally I believe it belonged to my Dad. The room prior to painting. Post painting. Yes, that is Canadian Mike’s painting of Killin Jack above the desk. Pedestal at left, my old desk at right. Right now there are fireworks popping somewhere off to the left through the window, 9pm. It is after all Bonfire Night. …
The Blue Door
Do you recognize this blue door, with yours truly so humbly posed before it? That’s right, it is the fabled Blue Door from the movie Notting Hill! Here is Hugh Grant running over to it in the title sequence of Notting Hill. Of course it is not as blue now as it once was. Maybe this still is the only shot where we see Hugh actually in shot with the blue door. There are plenty of Spike, of course, standing there in his underpants posing for the papparazzi, but none of Hugh. We went to Notting Hill two weeks back …
New Mr. Ruins cover!
I had a fresh cover update made for Mr. Ruins a few months back and have been waiting for the others in the series to be completed before unveiling it or doing any kind of promo, but what the heck- here it is 🙂 Why have I done an update? Several reasons: The old one hasn’t sold in months, and if I pay for another promo for it, I want to get a bit more traction. Though I loved the old one, on reflection I was certain it wasn’t communicating the genre or feel enough. The old ship held no …
Clash with a social conservative at church
The church I go to seems to never have the vicar himself preach- but rather a ‘lay’ preacher from the congregation, who gets up there and gives us what for. Our favorite lecture (sermon?) is still the first one we attended, where ‘meekness’ was contrasted with ‘weakness’ as the prerequisite for getting into heaven. Then there was yesterday, and the social conservative who got up to speak the good word. He started off well, with a joke, then got in talking about the persecution of Christians (by way of Daniel in the lion’s den). I’m aware of this riff from …
Hastings Castle and Lowry
This weekend SY and I went to Hastings, a southern coastal, town 50-odd miles south of London, to meet my Dad and Ailz, do sightseeing, see art, go antiques shopping, eat fish and chips and check out the ruins of Hastings castle. Hastings was the landing site for the 1066 invasion of England by the Normans (French), which saw King Harold getting his eye done in by an arrow, as enshrined in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. William the Conqueror became William 1, King of England, and three years later had Hastings castle built on a cliff overlooking both the bustling …
A future without teachers…?
Last night I went to a panel discussion at Regent’s University titled ‘The Future of English’ featuring several luminaries (the ‘great men’) of the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) world. TEFL is my day job. David Graddol was there, who inspired my MA thesis. He writes about the megatrends of the world, like demographics, economics, military, culture and so on, and how they affect the role of English in the future. For example- if China became the dominant cultural outputter (surpassing Hollywood in amount and quality, perhaps), then will we all be more likely to learn Chinese? Of …
That breakeven point I was talking about…
The stats from Amazon are in and I can finally represent, in hard-data graph form, the beautiful surfacing of my books net earnings- up from the depths of debt and into the dizzying clear sky of profit. It has been a long time coming (two years self-publishing now) and there was never any certainty I’d get even this far. It is a great positive milestone, of which I hope there will be many more. The green line is cumulative total revenue (not total profit as the key says), the orange line is cumulative total costs, and the blue bars are …