You know me right? Living on the edge, Lone Wolf, loose
cannon, Maverick, One shot Trevor, The shiniest haddock in the shoal.
What I mean to say is… Everything I’ve ever done, every
success I’ve had, every award I’ve ever won and achievement I’ve ever unlocked on
the Xbox and Steam has been totally down to me and the sweat of my brow.
And if you do know me, if you have had the honour of meeting
me in the flesh at one of my tremendously infrequent public appearances, you’ll
know that the previous two paragraphs are complete balls. Firstly, I’ve not achieved very much at all,
and those things I have, have been with the help of people who have a lot more
faith in me than I do. Don’t get me
wrong, I’ve done a boatload of things – I’ve even done some things that didn’t
have the capacity to kill me if my faith in blind luck had ever petered out
even a little. (Which is why I have a
large tattoo of a blindfolded lady on my back. Her name is PISTIS (Πίστις)
and she’s the Ancient Greek
personification of faith… Blind Faith in this case)
I’d never have written a book without the support of my
friends, I’d never have published it without my family, (I’m writing my fifth,
sixth and seventh books at the minute, all at the same time – Go me!) And I’m
sure that most of you guys are the same, easy stuff is easy… The clue’s in the
name, but to get the difficult stuff done, you’re gonna need help. I consider myself really lucky that I’ve
managed to surround myself, both literally and figuratively, with people who
are willing to help me do some massively stupid things, purely because they’ll
probably be funny.
One such institution has now asked for my help in return –
And it’s only fair that I pass that burden on to you people, because you’re
friendly types and probably have a lot more money than I do.
Southcart Books in Walsall. Run by the odd, but tremendously
friendly, Scott & Amy. Because of their tremendous financial skills (And the
fact that their landlord is doing his best to sell their shop out from under
them) are trying to move to larger premises avec le grande vitesse.
They’ve set up a Crowdfunder to cover the cost of fitting
out the new place, having a decent frontage installed and helping towards the
deposit. There are any number of pledge levels with rewards, from £1 - £500
(Although they’re almost halfway to their £4,000 target already, you see – it really
is the type of place that has loyal customers – If only BHS had been so lucky.) There are many more fine photos like the one above on their Crowdfunder page, but you'll notice that none feature me, those pictures are saved for specialist customers and there is a waiting list as long as my... Well, let's just say that there's a waiting list.
But here’s the rub… If you pledge an amount, any amount,
they will give you that amount back, in books, it’s as if you’ve not spent any
money at all!. So, if you were to pledge, let’s say, £20.00, not only would you
get free coffees AND your name painted lovingly on the outside of the shop, you’d
also get £20.00 worth of free books. If you were to pledge £500.00, you’d get
to run the shop for a day AND get £500 pounds worth of free books – I don’t
know, you might get to name a bookshelf after yourself and hold your own Pagan rituals there
too, I’m not really involved in the decision making process (for good reason, probably).
So, you lovely, lovely munchkins, click on the link below and
swap a pledge for some books, and coffee, and the warm, tuberculosis-like tickle in
your chesty-box that comes when you help good people do a nice thing. Remember, without them, there’d be no me…
Actually no, forget that, I am the Captain of my own fate… I did it all on my own *cough*
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