Beating Bullies Under A Blood Moon

Well it's been a couple of weeks since my last musing, so I thought I would take the time to catch up with the world of Michael Andrews.

In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to hit the marketing trail, learning more and more how to make an impact on twitter (which you can follow me @forthelostsoul ) and in 5 days I have over trebled my followers, and am gaining new ones daily.

For me, this most important event in the last two weeks was the contact that I had with the UK anti bullying charity, BeatBullying.org.   I am in the process of finalising my poetry collection for release on Kindle, called "The Empty Chair", which aims to highlight the effects that bullying can have.  I wanted to have a section of the book dedicated to the help that victims of bullying can receive and BeatBullying is the largest charity in the UK dedicated to this.  I had found a superbly powerful poster that they produced some time ago and I want to use it within the book, but of course, the big thing is permission.  Hence the desperate need to make contact and on Thursday this week, that was achieved.  I am still thinking about price, but as I will be donating a big part of my royalties to the charity, I am hoping that people will look to this as a way to donate while still enjoying my poetry so I will be looking at around the £3.99 mark.

The next project is also underway.  I have been throwing ideas around for what I want to write next in terms of my fictional writing and having taken some advice from the author forum that I am on, I have decided that rather than a full length novel, I am going down the line of shorter, novella style books, but in a series.  Sort of like a TV series where each book is a separate story, but there will be a series plot running across all of them.  As well as the main two characters, there will be reoccurring minor characters, both good and bad!  The first book has the working title of "Under A Blood Moon" and the series currently is called "The Alex Hayden Chronicles" although that is still in the air.

I have also got a publicity meeting arranged on Monday with a local publication that has a readership  of around 10,000 people so this should also help promote the poetry.  It will also be interesting as Gail, the lady I'm meeting, has bought and read "For The Lost Soul" so will be nice to get some face to face feedback!

That's it for now!  Peace, love and chocolate marshmallows!

A comedown after the excitment!

Hi everyone,

I did say I was going to update weekly but to be honest, not a lot has happened in the last week that I thought you guys would be interested in.

I managed to pull my left thigh muscle on Sunday and then topped it off with getting an infected finger after biting off one of those annoying bits of skin down the side of my nail.  Ended up at the walkin clinic yesterday for the Doc to cut it open to relieve some of the pressure and give me a prescription for anti biotics.

All of this has curtailed into my writing so I only managed around 5000 words last week on another experimental piece of short fiction, just to sharpen up my skills.

Other than that, in terms of writing, I've spent some more time looking into the marketing aspects and picked up a couple of hints which I will be trying out in the near future.

The rugby season got off to a good start with Leicester Tigers beating Worcester with a bonus point win, but that has now been overshadowed by the long term injury to Tom Croft, who is now out for the season!  Unlucky mate!

Still loving Wentworth and Under The Dome and beginning to get excited now for the forthcoming release of Ender's Game at the cinema.  It's going to be an exciting November for sci fi fans with that, and the 50th Anniversary special of Doctor Who..which features the return of David Tennant and Billie Piper.

Well, I really ought to try to get on and write a little more so laterz........

Most exciting week for me!

Well, the most amazing things happened to me this week.  Good and bad, but that’s life isn’t it!

Firstly, I soared past the three hundred AND four hundred downloads mark on my kindle books, the links of which I will add at the bottom of today’s post in case anyone fancies giving them a try.

Then, I actually received my first bad review!  I know, I probably shouldn’t share that with you, but I look on it as constructive as it was on an experimental story so I’m not too down hearted.  It certainly doesn’t counter the six excellent reviews that I have received.

But then, the biggie that happened is that I have received official recognition that my anti bullying poetry might actually be pretty good.  I have been submitting a few of them to various magazines and on Wednesday ‘The Cannon’s Mouth’, a 30 year old publication, accepted and published my poem ‘My New Phone’ in their September Quarterly edition!  Look at this!!

 

Not only is it great that someone in the industry actually liked my poem enough to include it, but it does now start my ‘publishing c.v.’ which a lot of agents and publishing houses look for.  One of my novels is a 90,000 word self proclaimed epic, ha ha, but seriously I would love to get it accepted and published in physical form rather than just be available on Kindle.  I am also nearly finished writing my collection of anti bullying poetry and hope to publish it to help raise awareness and funds for the charity, beatbully.org.  I have also started my second full length novel, so who knows.  Today I am still in my small, little village on the outskirts of Birmingham, next step, Hollywood!

Other than that…I’m loving the series ‘Under the Dome’ at the moment.  A combination of Stephen Spielberg and Stephen King..surely it can’t go wrong?  Also started the new series called ‘Wentworth’, which is a remake of the old Aussie soap ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’.

The rugby union season starts as well, so a big shout out to Toby Flood, who was stretchered off against Ulster in the final warm up game for Leicester Tigers.  Get well soon Floody!

Thanks for reading my ramblings and have a great week.  Here are the links

Feature Length Novel

For The Lost Soul - UK

For The Lost Soul - USA