“I got sacked from my job at Equine Bank,” grumbled Horse.
“Aww, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Red. “What happened?”
“Well, some old lady came in and asked me to check her balance,” grumbled Horse. “So I pushed her over.”
Now I know there’s a fear of horses! Equinophobia!
The only fear I have of ponies is that my hands getting sunburned and a pony mistakes my fingers for carrots. Shetland ponies are lovely until they see orange. Then all bets are off!
I wonder what that’s called… Carroponyfingerphobia?
‘HELP’ was spelt out across the floor in giant letters pulled off a cinemas signage. “I thought if anyone flew overhead…” sighed Copper.
Iron cleaned the dust off the letters. Copper gave her a thankful nod.
Above the entrance was a list of films and times. At the bottom of the sign was a sombre message. ‘The owner of the Hulley Cineplex has passed away. His funeral service will be held at 2:10, 4:20, 8:30.’
Iron smirked. “You like puns too, aye?” asked Copper.
In 2003, I went to the third Lord of the Rings preview. We were a couple of minutes late, but front row seats. The projector malfunctioned during the adverts. The manager came in and said the screening was cancelled. I heard a grown man/passionate orc scream “I’ve waited 10 years for this!”
As I laughed out loud, my mate grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the cinema. I realised on the way out, the whole cinema was filled with people dressed as orcs, elves, dwarves, goblins and whatever else is in Lord of the Rings. We were the only people dressed in jeans and shirts.
I don’t know if the cinema owner survived. We got a refund from the box office and were out of the cinema before anyone else emerged from the screen. Do orcs eat humans? RIP cinema manager guy.
I think that was the last time I went to the cinema… Yikes…
The Little Fears presents: Grey Moon, has now been released! Boom! And in case you missed the post title, the ebook is free for five days. The fifth book in the Little Fears presents series follows an all-female cast of Little Fears as they figure out their place in the world in-between, explore love and discuss picnics with alpacas. All within the confines of the Grey Moon bar. A wee bit of shpiel for you.
If anything is going to save the Little Fears from awful punch lines, it’s not an alpaca with a duck on its back. In Grey Moon, Great British groaners are the order of the day as the assembled Little Fears make their way through 84 tales of ornithology, penguins, rum, love and splinters. Reala offers an Animal Cracker; A pigeon races an aunt; A Roman makes a scene; Yuffie gets hitched; Fuen walks 500 miles. Written and posted with scruffy illustrations daily on LittleFears.co.uk. These brief vignettes (50 to 100 words) chronicle the continuing adventures of the Little Fears. With only a sense of whimsy and a deep love of old British comedy, Grey Moon will make you groan, cry and laugh until a bit of wee comes out, in a truly original, unoriginal, work of art and fiction.
Sounds typical Fears aye? This is the last book I wrote without thinking in terms of writing a book. If you’d like to grab a copy, go to the Kindle edition, it should show as £0.00 to buy. Grab it at that price and its free forever. If you enjoy it, please do leave me a review. Y’all know a 5 star helps an author.
OK, so, it looks like the sale of my house falls through after four months. ShitBuggerBumFart. I wasn’t prepared for my run of bad luck to continue into 2018. No worries. I’m now plotting out where the Fears, work, finances and I go or the next six to twelve months.
On the upside for the Fears fans, a series of plans that I had been delaying will now be crashing into effect this next couple of weeks. We have a Threadless free shipping sale. Digital rewards for my Patrons. The Little Fears studio, in which I offer design work. Including logos, book covers, website banners and anything else the Fears can help with. A new shop on this site where you can purchase my canvas paper Little Fears art prints. More Skillshare classes and of course, the release of the next Little Fears presents book, Grey Moon.
Hold your horses before you dash off to Amazon. As always, with the release of a new book, I will be giving the ebook away free for five days. The free ebook is intended for Little Fears followers and subscribers, a thank you for the continued support you all give me. You ladies, gents and those in-between are fecking awesome. Grey Moon is officially released, and free on Amazon, from Friday the 9th of February. I will post links to the Grey Moon ebook on the day.
One of my main complaints with Kindle Direct Publishing vs Createspace was that you couldn’t order proof copies to check over from KDP. Proofs are essential. Not only do I need to see the way the images come out in print, but reading a paperback version of my tales always helps me pull up the odd mistakes I miss on the screen. What I usually do is create and release a paperback book without saying anything. Order a copy. Once I get the ‘your order has been dispatched’ email, I unpublish the book until I am ready for a proper release.
My editor has just finished going over the next book. On to Amazon and KDP, I go, and as I get to the last page, I see this.
Ahhh, do you see it? Down the bottom. Beta proof copies. Yes, yes and yes. I am a happy Fear. I click to request a copy.
Submit proof request. Now, there are a couple of caveats here. First being, you pay the print price. For me £5.47. Something I need to double check there as it goes. My earnings from a £12 book are £1.73. You can see that in the screenshot above this. I can’t recall why my earnings are so low compared to the print cost. I need to go double check where the rest of the money’s going.
The price doesn’t include post and packaging. In the UK we don’t get free delivery options on less than £10 of an order. The post and packaging for this bring the price to £9 as opposed to £12 for a proper copy of my book. That’s a tad frustrating. I know in the USA shipping costs are a lot cheaper. But if you’re writing a novel, surely the P&P is going to make this discount rather small?
One other thing to bear in mind. With Createspace, I believe the proof copies of the book have no barcode or ISBN. They also have not for resale written unobtrusively on the back of the book. That suits me as I’m a visual person and my books look lovely, I need to take photos of them.
Aren’t they sexy books? Yeah, I need to take sexy photos of my sexy books to sell them.
In addition to that, I take the original copies I order with me when I need to show them off somewhere. The odd spelling mistake makes no difference to me when it’s a display book on a market stall. But you still need them to look darned sexy sitting there, being all fearful.
But, from the page above, a snippet of text.
Proofs are different from regular copies. They have a “Not for Resale” watermark on the cover and a unique barcode but no ISBN.
Huh, what? Can’t be too bad right? Something small and unobtrusive like Createsp…
WHOA! Seriously? Damn! That isn’t going to look sexy in any photo or sitting on display. Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
I get it, I do. Amazon is selling you a book at a lower price. They don’t want you reselling an unchecked copy of the book. But feck that. It costs me £9 instead of £12, and I can’t use it to promote my book at all. So then I have to pay £12 again for a copy after the release before I can even take a photo of it? That makes no sense. I want the pictures before I release the book so I can tease it and promote it. That’s backwards in every way.
Damn you Amazon KDP! So close, yet so far! I’m back to a quiet release and order before releasing the book properly at a later date.
If you think my books are sexy and want to put a couple of quid my way for all the info, you can purchase the print and ebooks I have released so far from the link below.
Little Fears 