Dean Martin is Amazing

Seriously, I've been listening to him for loads of late. I love this video of him singing Somewhere There's Someone on his show, and the bit where he waits patiently for the backing singing to finish so he can carry on singing is great.

Anyways, I'm in the process of procrastinating. Its actually taken me about half an hour just to get to write this sentence. Dammit brain!

Wibble

So would you believe I am in work right now. I am bored. I am tired. I am waiting for payday so I can pay for the Cardiff Comic Con 2014 table. Say whaaaaaaaa

Trevor f**king Phillips

I'm so totally obsessed with GTA V right now, and whilst I didn't like Trevor to begin with (basically the first mission) I think he's my favourite character. Aside from the amusing relationship between Franklin and Chop. I have to have something to love since Breaking Bad finished. :(

Right now I am struggling to write anything. I'm currently working on something until my crippling fear of failure goes away, but that NEVER GOES AWAY YAAAAAAY

Here's a picture I drew on the back of an envelope! The horror

Lunch

Apparently it's weird that my lunch consists of pineapple, chips and a poppadom.

It's not weird

Breaking Bad don't leave me

Yeah I got up to date on Breaking Bad, now I have to suffer waiting for episodes to air before I can watch them. Its totally crazy right now, although I died a little inside when a certain favourite character of mine died, the show is still brilliant. Can't wait for the next episode and work is always more interesting in the mornings with different theories on how it might end.

Right now I'm working more on something else, but I don't feel like telling you about it right now.

It does however involve pictures of the drawn variety.

I really need the postman to arrive so I can leave the house without the crippling paranoia that if I go out without him having been I will miss the most important package known to man, even know I know perfectly well that my packages aren't even near this country yet.

Wibble

So the Cardiff Comic Con was great; I got some interest in the books and comic - Scourge more than most it seems, and I'm going to be at the Cardiff Comic Con next year as well!

The next Cardiff Comic Con is in March 2014 - I am hoping to have different things to take with me - specifically The Ashes of Averan as a complete book (hope).

Right now I'm trying to catch up on Breaking Bad. I'm on Season 5 episode 9 - AHHHH

LOUD NOISES

I am on the bus and there's noise. It's coming from my headphones, playing Devin Townsend Vampira - in order to block out screaming children at the front of the bus. Whatevs, DT is way cooler than you and your bus antics, but apparently not loud enough.

Story of Us is available as a Kindle Comic now - it's due to go up free in the run up to the Cardiff Comic Con, and I believe one of my books is free today with the other following suit soon after. 

I don't have much left to plan for the con now, other than making sure I remember I am not in work Friday for the set up nor Monday for the recovery process! Hoping to see lots of people there and potentially steal signatures of real famous people too.

Just over one week

There's only eight days to go until the Cardiff Comic Con! Ahhh! I have things planned for it - all my books are bought and have arrived or are on their way and there should be a few prizes for the tombola. 

I have to be there pretty early on Saturday and Sunday so it's lucky I've got Monday off as it will be a very long weekend for me! Waaah I can't believe it's come around so fast already!

On a lighter note, I made Cage-Cakes today!

GEORGE GOD GEORGE

I'm presently watching Mega Shark in Malibu. George is going to open the gate, and Brian is going to distract the shark with his supple flesh (because his loved one died). HE'S A TRUE (AUSTRALIAN?) HERO.

Anyways ... that aside, I think I may have finished the Averan teaser. I was told it should be a part of the book that's actiony

(Seriously why isn't Brian dead ye .... OH THERE HE GOES)

Shit George is dead too, when the fuck? I liked his beard. He was more hillbilly looking than the guy in Swamp Shark and a better actor too.

The teaser is done, I hope, and its fairly actiony - it takes place during Em's time in actual Averan, a creepy part where there's dead stuff. A bird too.

AAAAAAA THE SHARKS ARE COMING, THEY'RE SMASHING AND STUFF

Its cool, the blonde women and her ex are totes going to get back together, which sucks to be her present boyfriend. Or they'll die together in that waterlogged car. And seriously, the amount of time they spent filming the girl screaming whilst getting stitches was unnerving. So many couples have died too.

I'm going to try to figure out how to do the teaser - I could have put it in with stuff, or maybe I can put it in with purchases - free in fact. WHO KNOWS? NOT ME!

Here's a little something I drew when the power was out in work.

OH NOES COLIN splooooosh into the water

Three weeks isn't that long

Three weeks until the Cardiff Comic Con, and I'm like WHAT. I mean seriously, its three weeks - I get paid in the middle of these three weeks, but not as much as usual because I went on holiday to Germany, but still STILL three weeks isn't really that far away.

I just ordered more copies of The Story of Us because I'm worried I won't have enough. See now, the Con will be cancelled and I'll be peddling them on street corners for £1m per copy.

I also found this random site called WhoSay. I signed up, followed James Franco and quickly wondered why the fuck I was bothering because I barely look at Twitter properly in the space of a month without getting bored.

I then noticed that my feed was completely full of James Franco's posts - completely full, everything he'd ever posted - some cool pictures of a bathroom done up to look like a crime scene and some other stuff. But it made me look like an obsessed stalker, because his photos were all that filled my feed, whereas on a site like Facebook I'll have loads of posts by lots of different people and I have no interest in the vast majority of them, because a bird just flew past my window.

Anyways, stalker vision off, here's a something or other.

That's a drawing what I did of a bloke and his magnificent beard who works in my office on the day the PCs all broke at once and we were left sitting around for hours with nothing to do waiting for them to be fixed (they weren't fixed and they had to send us home). As a miserable clown. He's sad because his flower is sad.

Wuh

Its about three weeks until the Cardiff Comic Con. I am currently working on previews for Ashes of Averan, although I'm not sure how I'm going to do that still which is infuriating. I want to give them away free, but my paranoia is probably what's the issue right now.

So I had a weird dream last night; Id drunk some orange squash before bed then this is what I experienced in dream town:

I dreamt that I was doing something, something like WORKING FOR VOLDEMORT because I was dating him or something. He was doing evil things, and we were cool and evil together. Can't get much cooler than Ralph Fiennes, really. Anyhow, so I was out doing evil shit or something and picking up stuff in a building, then I needed to be able to fly.

No worries, because my co-worker Stacey was on hand to help me out - she tied dead pigeons to my arms and told me it would work. I asked her why they weren't living pigeons, and she made a comment about how hard it would be to tie dead pigeons to my arms. I understood this, and it didn't work. Obviously.

So then I was sitting with some people, and someone from Facebook I didn't want to see (I don't know who) was coming to see me, having previously told me how brilliant they thought I was. There was a get together I think and barely anyone had come, so it was cancelled.

So I was talking to this person waiting for the Facebook guy, and I said "he likes Iron Maiden. I despise Iron Maiden."

I turned and the Facebook guy was there and pretty bummed that I hated Iron Maiden with a passion that seemed to be hotter than the sun, and I told him to tell this other Facebook guy not to come because it was cancelled.

Then I believe I woke up deeply confused. I don't hate Iron Maiden. I don't really like them, but really - I said I despised them! :|

Anyways, all this considered I came up with a fancy pants new character. Presenting:

I'm probably going to call him the Vampire King, and he's a pretty cool guy. He currently looks a bit like Voldemort with a nose, but I still like him.

BACK TO WORK, HARDING-ROBERTS

I am the table

Hey guess what? Yeah, you there, the internet. Scourge and Collected Shorts right, they're both available as ebooks exclusively for Amazon. And right now, since Mondays really suck, they're both free until Tuesday, which an old manager of mine once told me was the worst day of the week, because it wasn't Monday, wasn't the middle of the week and wasn't near the end. It sucks.

But this offer doesn't suck, and I sound like a sleazy salesman!

Got Scourge FREE today and tomorrow on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078ERD1K/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

Get Collected Shorts FREE today and tomorrow on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E1U3RVY/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

THESE PRICES ARE INSAAAAANE

If you're from another country, like the EU or India, I believe you can just change those links up there - alter the .com to the .co.uk or .in for wherever you are in the world, and it should work (as long as your country has an Amazon assigned web address suffix) :)

I'm in a fairly good mood today. It might be because I looked at a bottle of alcohol sideways, or it might be because I enjoy conversing with awesome friends. Maybe it's because I'm staring directly at a while screen and it hurts my eyes.


Also! There will be postcards. At the Cardiff Comic Con NEXT MONTH, I'll have postcards galore of The Story of Us - there's four prints to choose one. One is of Nicola and I on an elephant. Oh, the hilarity. I also just got a delivery of (the first series of Frasier) some posters for the con - they're pretty fancy! YEAH

Right now I'm eating a Rice Krispie Square! Its deeply unhealthy! YEEEEEAH

LIFE EXISTS

Yo ho ho

Wow I've posted quite a bit this month it seems. Its probably due to the fact that I'm at present at the tail end of two weeks off work (it feels like forever though) and because a number looks big to me if its above 1.

Aaaaanyway

I was having issues with CreateSpace yesterday and today what with the formatting and nonsense I have to go through just to get something past the uploader (seriously it had no issue with the word docs I was pushing into it, but the second I uploaded a PDF and it screamed at me). BUT I persevered and managed to finish it which was something.

I even had time today to write a birthday card for a great friend two months in advance. I am SO on top of things.

Or maybe the antibiotics are messing with my brain. Whichever.

Here's a picture!

That's going to be the cover of my collection. Sadly I decided that it was too difficult for me to even attempt at making the books myself, so I opted for the Amazon CreateSpace avenue and put them all together. Luckily they are currently coming up as fairly inexpensive as I've not set the UK prices by America so they shouldn't change. See there's even a fancy mushroom cloud that doesn't look like a goddamn clown on it (serious Google Images, WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL).

Hey now, here's another photo!

That's me right there, expertly riding a hippo in Berlin Zoo. I am so cool.

My feets

I had to have antibiotics from the doctor because a door tried to assassinate me in Germany. Something to do with feet, and I try not to think about it because I despise feet.

Anyhooo, its half way through my second week off work and I came to the terrifying conclusion that I may or may not have forgotten my passwords. Woot. Two weeks off and my brain has turned to jelly.

Also I made this just now - there's a startling amount of gravestone generators out there it would seem...

That's just something I'm working on right now. I am still no closer to the whole CreateSpace/collections of shorts conundrum, but it is looking much more likely that I'm either going to have to resort to CS or desperately attempt to bribe the library to print stuff on A6 paper. Libraries man, they be all 'what's A6 paper'.

Also, fuck moths. I apologise to any moths reading this, but seriously my lampshade isn't the fun place you should hold your 'lets fly into things inside things' parties. Take it outside, guys.

Berlin is awesome

Yeah it is, I came back from there on Friday and it was pretty amazing. They have underground AND overground trains. My mind was officially blown the moment I stepped off the plane.

Either that or it was my ears popping EVERY FIVE MINUTES

Anyways, before I went away to Berlin I got copies of this in the post - in a giant white sack from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Story-Us-Sarah-Harding-Roberts/dp/1490466266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373918781&sr=8-1&keywords=the+story+of+us+sarah+harding+roberts

Its now available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com (copying that link and changing the .co.uk to .com totally works) and will be with me in a limited capacity at the Cardiff Comic Con. Now all I need to do is get paid and I can buy everything else I need and my plan will nearly be complete...

I'm also working on short stories which may or may not become full stories depending on reception to them at the con. I really don't know whether or not I ought to make them free, or to make them available as a bundle - such as a bundle that is also called a book, but how I would print said book (I could do CreateSpace but the turn around on the copies I order from the US would take too long for me at this point) is beyond me, so I may end up running around like a headless chicken in Central Library on August 29th on my lunchbreak printing copies. I'd like for that to not happen though. I run more like a mentally ill penguin rather than a headless chicken and it's just sad to watch.

Wut wut wut wut

Yeah I finished CreateSpace. I mastered CreateSpace. I became LORD AND MASTER OF GODDAMN CREATESPACE.

I finished uploading and editing and finishing the comic, and its now on it's way to me - 20 copies (because I couldn't really get any more right now and seriously, there needs to be a CreateSpace UK so I can order them from the UK and not the US of A to get them cheaper and faster) for me to take to the Cardiff Comic Con.

Things man, they be happening all over the place.

Additionally, I came up with a new character called Cake Radge. Here he is:

Other than this terrible news, I am doing other things but I don't feel like telling you about them now.


Like thinking about doing some more short stories. Dammit, my plan failed!

CreateSpace makes me spit blood from my eyes

I'm having a few issues shall we say with Create Space, Amazon's book creating website which users are able to upload their work to, then have copies printed on demand by Amazon in America/the UK. I created my book Scourge there and it took a while (also the realisation I never included page numbers), but it worked.

Comics however are a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooole different thing all together. I didn't know what a DPI was so I Googled it - only to have the internet laugh snarkily at me as it said "DPI doesn't exist".

IF IT DOESN'T EXIST WHY IS CREATE SPACE SHOUTING AT ME ABOUT IT I HATE YOU INTERNET AND YOUR STUPID FACE

So after a while some less snarky websites told me something about PPI (at which point I broke out in a cold sweat, felt very dizzy and blacked out) which is apparently not the type of Payment Protection Insurance I may or may not have to deal with on a goddamn daily basis, but something to do with pixels per inch or some such balls.

Anyways, long story short the internet failed to help much at all, because whilst I managed to get some of my images for the comic to the correct (apparently non-existent) DPI number (which is 300 in case you weren't wondering), ten of the images still aren't DPI 300 enough for Create Space so its still shouting at me. I don't know what else I am supposed to do, short of screaming at people on the street and handing them crumpled copies of the ten comics Create Space doesn't appear to like.

What's not to like?

This one has a foot in it (sidenote: I HATE FEET)

Stuck on the train

 On my way to get a new passport because mine expired in 2009, but the train is delayed because of an accident between Cardiff and Newport.

They are trying to switch tracks for the train and go the other way to Newport waah.

This is my view now

I've never had sunburn before

Seriously, how do people cope with this? I went out with a friend to an anti racism demo last weekend, and apparently caught the sun - something I've never managed before because when I was a child my dad made my sister and I wear so much sunscreen we looked like ghosts, and as I got older I never really wore little enough to catch it (I was such a goth) or it wasn't nearly sunny enough.

Its very strange. People were giving me funny looks in work and everything. I bought some stuff when the aftersun another friend gave me didn't really work, which was okay but it started to peel and I'm like WHAT IS HAPPENING whilst everyone else just thinks its normal.

Anyhow ...

Other than this strange development, I have been also working more on the comic. I downloaded the Kindle Comic Creator which is very good and I plan to use it once the comic is complete. It looks a bit crap on a normal £69 basic Kindle (the kind I have...) but I'm sure for all those people who were willing to pay way more money than I was will enjoy the colours and everything.

Here's an accurate representation of how I felt when I got sunburn:

I only have myself to blame - I was wearing a vest top and absolutely no sunscreen. Although I did only manage to get burnt on my shoulders and part of my chest, because my hair was apparently covering the rest. Fast times at Sarah Harding-Roberts High!

Parp

So I am trying to juggle right now. Not literally otherwise this would be written like "dnclwoekwldmms l lamdlalskdkclslsk äääööfmwnxlenel 아이들은 남아있지만 d mflflcmfäsääföpüüü" (I also have German and Korean keyboards so I assume I'd have accidentally knocked them on).

Juggling projects? I have the comic and the book as well as short stories to put together and there's another thing I'm working on so things feel like I am literally juggling.

I also started the 30 Day Shred and holy Jesus' unitard it was painful. I learnt after day two (yesterday) that the woman said recently its not intended to be done every day ... After I'd done it two days straight. Seriously my legs would scream profanities right now if they weren't in so much pain.

Anyways here's a drawing of me claiming to be a kung fu master.