Henry Hallan

I know I've been quiet but I have been busy. I have the first draft of Jove and the Sea People complete, and will be sending it to my editor in the next few days.
As you can see from following the link, I also have cover art.

There will be one, count them, one free giveaway of Venus and the Sea People on Amazon. It will start on January 1st and go through to January 5th. It is unlikely ever to be repeated, so if you think you know anyone who would benefit, please tell them.

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I've been thinking about what I want to do in 2013.

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Goodreads are giving away a copy of my book. They also have a sample of the first four chapters available for free download.

Today my first book is launched in paperback, in the UK at least.

On Amazon, f'rinstance.

It's the first volume of a fantasy epic. I'm working on the second volume and that should be out later this year.

I have cover art.



(Click for a bigger version: or look on my shiny new website.)

Not quite sure about the lettering, but I'm very happy with the artwork. It was painted by local artist Linda R James.

My aim is to have my first book, Venus and the Sea People in print on or by the third week in December. My editor is working me hard, I'm speaking to my cover-artist at the weekend, and, well, it looks like it might finally all be coming together.

It'll be available in squashed-trees or recycled electrons, through the usual online places, and I'll also have stock to hand for those of you who want to give me actual cash.

I'm even looking at advertising and similar promotional stuff.

Strange days indeed.

I decided to do one of these:-





I fed in various samples of my writing from a couple of unpublished novels, and she was my most consistent result. I also got Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, and for one particular violent scene, Mario Puzo.

Then I tried three short stories, and got Chuck Palahniuk twice, David Foster Wallace, and for a story about a lonely time traveller, Dan Brown. Which ought to teach me.

But when I put in joe_haldeman's latest 'blog entry, it said Vladimir Nabokov. Which ought to teach him to write about "bikini scenery". :-)

This is a drabble I wrote for a competition, but the announcement of the competition didn't give the closing date. Oh well, I'm happy with it anyway, so here it is.

Lucy was thinking about the her new Quantum Omniscope when Carla came in. "They're plotting downstairs: lotteries; horseracing; making money out of your new crystal ball. Where do you get your ideas?"

"This was your idea" Lucy answered. "Remember 'God the Storyteller'?"

"Last night..." Carla stopped. "You invented this to find God?"

"Theism is unprovable. So I looked for the story."

"And?"

"He's a lazy storyteller. Remember Schrödinger's Cat? Almost everything is unobserved, undetermined, like the cat. I saved everything observed in this file."

Carla frowned. "Only 656 bytes? How big a story would that make?

"Oh, about 100 words."

This is somewhere where I'm going to put some bits and pieces of writing. Most of it will probably be character sketches: bits and pieces of writing I use to find the voices of characters that will appear in larger works.

There may be the odd short story, and I may serialise some longer things.

Like most writers, I'm concerned about maintaining artistic control of my work, (and it would be great if one day I was paid for it) and because of this I'm going to keep linking back to my info page, which contains terms and conditions for using this journal.

I may use "friends-only" to control the content with these things in mind. But I'm not decided about that yet. It's probably best not to rely on that.