I have not slept for 21 and a half hours
Plus FICTION FRIDAY and TWO BITS of good news.
Posting tiktoks about my writing, whilst deprived of sleep is probably unwise, but so were most of my best decisions as a kid, so here we are.
Not sleeping for a while used to be a hobby of mine, but now I’m nearly 31, it feels increasingly like I am taking a big cleaver to the slab of time that is my existence every time I make a silly teenaged decision. I can feel my wiggly timeworm (thanks Donny Darko) screaming in pain every time I forget to go on a walk or eat an entire cake at 4:37am.
Luckily for the feelings of future me, this time my lack of sleep was not a choice.
I didn’t want to miss this week’s Fiction Friday, but I must admit that at present, I am not very well. To cut a boring story short, I’ve been put on Sertraline for PTSD and it has fried my brain. I just checked the word ‘fried’ seven times as it looks wrong. Doesn’t look like a word.
Anyway, in order to get back to my old, more interesting self before my Manchester Fringe comedy show, I stopped taking the drug.
Abruptly.
Which they don’t advise. They advise slowly taking less and less. Because otherwise your brain turns into cheese, grows legs, and joins a political party which it will later regret joining.
But I’ve done enough reading in my life, so I ignored the paperwork.
The result is that I can’t sleep and I’m dizzy a lot, but I’ll live.
Anyway. Fiction Friday is here. I did indeed move some FF posts over to Halfplanet, but the Sci-Fi stuff is staying here. When I join more general promos (such as when I’m doing my poetry promos again) those will be on Halfplanet, as well as reviews of plays I’ve watched. The idea is to keep this particular substack about weird worlds, comedy, and sci-fi. Hence the title.
Thanks for being here!
The promotion I have joined today is called
AMAZING WORLDS.
And conveniently, it does what it says on the tin. Weird worlds and weirder characters. I know at least one of the authors here, John Coon, who you’ll have heard of if you have been here a while or if you mooch through the bestselling sci-fi on Amazon on your work break. Because he’s usually there.
Beyond John’s weird worlds, there are some great short stories by other authors in this one. There’s a full collection, some sci-fi romance, a touch of horror.
All in all a good mix.
https://books.bookfunnel.com/amazingworlds/57kos5hzxi
And whilst we’re talking of free promotions.
Alien Minds (my first self-made promo) went so well I want to make another one.
ON WITH THE GOOD NEWS CARTER
Yes, good news time.
I sold one book to a bookstore, potentially. It sold through a distribution network that supplies to books, so maybe somebody ordered it in for a customer, or are checking it out to see if they want to buy more for their store? Who knows? Not me, I never lost control. You’re face, to face, with the man who sold a book.
BWOW BWOW BWOWOWMAOW, BWOW BWOW BWOWOWMAOW
THE GOOD NEWS, PART 2
I moved 71 eBooks during the free promo week!
THE GOOD NEWS, PART 3
Aside from the obvious amazing news that I’ve got my own comedy show (which I am inviting reviewers to as we speak), there is more. I have had a big talk with a very professional friend or six, and have fixed my ancient, dusty, stinky Patreon.
It’s good news because following me there is going to be free, owing to Patreon’s new structure that allows for free stuff now. The paid stuff will be early-access things, top secret comedy, special privileges in my discord chatroom, and some other bits. I’ll even be doing writing coaching on there, which I’ve missed dearly since I left my self-made writing society behind in 2017. It’s been far, far too long.
But the main emphasis is on stories and comedy, as always.
It’s going to have its own eBook store as well. Same stuff as on the payhip, just more ways to get hold of it.
Here’s my banner. What do you think?
To be honest, could use it for this Substack too.
And here’s a new pic or two for my show. I have decided to allow concessions to pregnant women, provided the baby isn’t listening.
I like being silly.
EVEN MORE STUFF
You may have noticed a lack of THE STEPHANIE GLITCH content recently. That’s because I’ve been prepping a submission to Unbound books, meaning most of my work has been in polishing, not the writing (oh, how I wish I had my own editor. I would call them Barry and feed them jam sandwiches). So Stephanie is indeed being worked on. In fact, I’ve been writing her in front of a live audience. And in my first livestream I wrote 3000 words, reaching 81505 words of the manuscript.
Stephanie is about to go through some weird stuff.
See you later! I’m going to go play with Lego robots until my body decides it remembers what tiredness is.
Ha!!!!!
Abd the rest is awesome too! As long as the baby isn’t listening!