Thanks to everyone who entered the draw to win a copy of E-Maled. The winner (chosen at random by a number generator) was Cassandra. Congratulations to you, I will be in touch with your prize.

Blog Fest 2012

I am taking part in Blog Fest 2012.

All you need to do is leave a 'pick me' comment for your chance to win a digital copy of E-Maled.

If you click here you can see another giveaway from Lisa Renee Jones

E-MALED

My book was published last week and can be found here. To be honest I'm not good with the self-promotion thing so am unlikely to sell many copies. Nevertheless, below is a brief description of the book and if you read it you may just want to give it a go.

Jimmy Gallagher, is a man who has not had a straightforward life. His wife gone, his career as a successful banker in tatters, and a subsequent spell as a HGV driver falling to pieces before he finds his perfect job.

Now his life is back on track but something is missing, a lady, and this is where his troubles really begin to take shape. Jimmy, being a pragmatic guy frequents a dating site and we join him as he is setting off to meet a friend he makes there, Hannah, and she is definitely not simple. For a start she is married, lives in the States and has a homicidal maniac for a husband. Worse, Jimmy has never flown and in his life nothing is ever as easy as you would expect.

Even in the darkest parts of Jimmy's tale you, hopefully, find yourself laughing aloud, as he follows a path he is fully aware will lead him to further distress without really understanding why he is doing so.

So is this a thriller? No, not in the traditional sense.

Is it a comedy? No, it's not that either.

I like to think E-MALED takes a fresh approach to a genre that at times can be quite tired, Jimmy Gallagher is an anti-hero that sometimes you may want to slap but eventually grow to love.

PS if you are in the USA you can find it here.

Reviewing the reviewer?

I've noticed recently that a lot of people post negative book reviews online. Some of these aren't just a comment on the book hidden by the anonymity of the Internet but also a verbal attack on the author. I'm really not sure why they do this but it did get me thinking about if they ever reviewed each others reviews. It might go something like...

NEVER, EVER AGAIN!!!!

Today I read Dilligaf666's review of My Little Pony the Rainbow Years, a vanity published ebook by 9 year old Abigail Spencer-Brown. I'd not read any of Dilligaf666's reviews before but they have a lot of " thumb down" this is not helpful comments so I thought I'd give them a go.

I WISH I hadn't!!!

It started off well enough with a vitriolic bombardment of the 9 year old's double barrelled name. Unfortunately after that the review went downhill. The spelling was atrocious! Dilligaf666 actually spelled count wrong on two separate occasions and don't get me started on the punctuation. In the second sentence in the thirty third paragraph they used a semicolon instead of a coma. There was also a DISTINCT lack of words in underlined bold capitals and a scant amount of exclamation marks!!! How thick is this person? They will give us reviewers a bad name!!!

After I read this review I came away feeling empty. I felt no real hate for the book or Abigail Double-Bloody-Barrelled and now I may even read the damn book. As for Dilligaf666 I will NEVER ever read one of their reviews again!!! I implore you not to either. If you do you know I will hunt you down and kill you in your sleep!!!

A review by Fluffybunnikins99.

My kind of video game.

There is a reason why I'm not a prolific video gamer and that is because I'm not very good at them.

It's nothing new, as far back as space invaders when everyone else was counting shots to get the bonus on the spaceship I was still cowering behind the rock trying to get a shot off. To be honest it hasn't got better with age, my brain knows what it needs to do but there is a difficulty conveying this to my fingers and usually ends up with them mashing all the buttons on the controller. If I play a shoot 'em up with my boys I'm usually just about to lock and load as they kill all my men and capture all my weapons. FIFA is similar while I work out whether to pass or shoot they steal the ball off me and score. To be fair I can't just blame my lack of finger skills as it wasn't that long ago that I pulled a muscle in my leg trying to win in a hurdle race in Kinect Sports and couldn't walk for days.

So what would be my ideal video game? It would be pitting my wills, one on one in a gladiatorial battle to the death. It would be a game of strategy, skill, finesse and would be played at my pace. I know you are thinking there is no such game but dear reader there is. Last week I went to Gamescom and I found it hidden somewhere between tennis and golf in Kinect Sports Season 2 was DARTS.

I played darts and loved it, was good at it and never lost a game. Admittedly one game was with the nice Xbox man who probably let me win and the other was against my 8 year old who really wanted to play golf but hey I have a 100% record. I will be the first in the queue when it's released later in the year. When I get it home and step up to the virtual ocky in the immortal words of darts commentating legend Sid Waddell "the atmosphere in here will be like the Colleseum in Rome with Jews on the menu".

Let's play darts!

I'm not scared of flying part 3

Everybody is now watered, fed, toileted and a calm permeates the cabin. It's about now that I try to settle down and watch a movie knowing in my heart it isn't going to happen. My tv never works properly, either the headphones are faulty, the screen freezes or both. If I do ever get the tv to work the only choice of movie that day will be Passenger 57 or Snakes on a Plane. Neither of which will get a viewing so in the end I watch the oversized airplane on the screen showing where we are, how fast we are going and how high up we are. I can sit there and formulate this information into how fast we will hit the ground and about where we will hit if the worst happens.

Around about the time I think I'm just getting used to this flying thing the pilot,or if he is busy eating caviar from the bellybutton of a stewardess, his second in command announces that we are about to begin the descent. De scent sounds like something you would use to get rid of a smell which I suppose would be apt around about now in my case.

Descending usually stirs up the hoards and the cabin becomes a hive of activity again. Bags down, up and down again as people search for their belongings so they can escape the plane as soon as it lands. Me, I just pull my belt a little tighter and search out for hands to grab. This is not so easy this time as the recently bruised appendages are usually hidden from view so as not to have the punishment inflicted for a second time. I can generally coax them from their hiding place with confectionary which I have saved especially for this occasion. When the under carriage goes down this scares the crap out of me and my neighbours wish they weren't so bloody greedy as their fingers begin to turn an angry shade of blue.

Then we are down. I can now return the rosary beads and the lucky rabbits foot I borrowed from the air steward and let go of the hands. It is about now that the captain makes an announcement somewhere on the lines of: "ladies and gentlemen the plane has now landed. Please keep your seatbelt fastened and stay in your seat until the plane has come to a halt. Also please do not turn on your mobile phone until you are in the doors are open. Thank you for..." I never get to hear the last bit of the annoucement as everybody is unbuckling their belt, getting out of their seat and turning on their phone.

The final part of the plane journey is nearly upon us and this is departing the plane. By the time the plane has halted and the steps are attached most of the passengers have crammed their way into the aisle and are deciding which door will open first and will that be the fastest way to exit. Me I'm still to unbuckle my belt and will probably be the last off the plane.

That's it all over until the flight home!

I'm not scared of flying part 2

So the plane reaches it's cruising height far too far from the ground and levels out. To my mind this would be an ideal opportunity to dim the lights, pipe through some whale noises and encourage the passengers to go to sleep.

But no.

Instead they decide to bring round the drinks trolley. The rowdy people who have been in the bar for the last 2 hours can now top up their alcohol level and be more rowdy and the hyperactive kids who are already over excited can drink fizzy pop then run around the plane with a sick bag on their head pretending to be a superhero. Just as the cabin crew seem to be losing control the captain decides to regain it and suddenly drops the plane by a couple of hundred feet. The fasten seatbelt sign comes on and people are ushered back in their seats and strapped in. He drops it a couple more times for effect pretending it's turbulence, I dont have to fasten my seatbelt as it's never been unfastened though i do tighten it a bit more. Everyone is strapped in now apart from one idiot who can't wait for the toilet and is arguing with the steward.

Now would be a good time for the dimming of the lights and music of the whales.

But no.

They bring round food.

I don't have any problem with airplane food, I actualy quite like it but is there any real need for it on a short haul flight? Especially as one of the options is going to be curry and the plane already stinks of feet and farts. Having said that I like eating the food there are a few things that I would like to point out at this stage. The portions are perfect, that is if you come from Lilliput and aren't Gulliver. The meal is always heated to the temperature of molten lava. You get two sachets of pepper and no salt. And then there is the roll. The rolls you get on the plane are unique to airlines. It's always a small but perfectly formed roll with a crust that is impossible to break with your hands so you have to use the plastic knife. After sawing with the knife for the best part of an hour you penetrate the crust to reveal the soft centre onto which you try to spread the butter. The butter is as hard as the centre of the roll is soft and no matter how long you keep it under your armpit it doesn't get any softer. Eventually you get fed up with it, shove it in the roll then chuck it at the idiot in front who has finished his food and drops his chair back in your lap closely followed by everything left on your tray.

So now when they have cleared away the debris of the meal they dim the lights with a distinct lack of whale music and expect everyone to go to sleep. What everyone wants to do now is use the toilet, two of which are already blocked up and there are queues snaking around the plane.

I try and avoid the toilet as long as possible, being crammed into the plane is bad enough but being crammed into a tiny box on the plane that is very noisy and stinks is even worse. If anyone reading this has had sex in a airplane toilet can you please let me know in the comment box how and why? I should imagine that you would be quite easy to spot as half your body must get covered in blue stain as you'd never be able go avoid dipping into the toilet water. My big mistake is not using the toilet when I first get on the plane as I presume then it's clean and smells reasonable but due to a small bladder and a touch of IBS this never quite works out. By the time I come to use it the toilet resembles a festival portaloo on the final day which has been turned upside down and shaken vigorously. I usually get in there just after someone with an upset stomach who has obviously read the signs wrong and has filled the toilet up with paper and has tried to shit in the bin and as soon as I shut the door the pilot drops down a couple of hundred feet and the fasten seatbelt sing comes on.

To be cont...