Options most heinous!

Heinous, great word that is – Love it; It’s the sort of word that a lot of people have probably only heard in a Bill & Ted film… Let’s take a moment to look at its varied meanings…

Ohhh… Execrable – Doesn’t that word just make you shudder? Abhorrent! Not enough people use that in polite conversation in my opinion. Abhorrent, abhorrent, abhorrent... Lovely.   I might call my next pet something like that. Well, either that or ‘Unpardonable’ – I can imagine it now, I’ve attracted a new victim, sorry, *cough* willing visitor who would easily pass any drugs test you'd care to administer Your Honour, to Dandy Towers. Perhaps during one of Heckmondswyke’s, sadly under-attended fortnightly tofu and Cuprinol appreciation evenings? I can only assume that the conversation would go something like this:

[Visitor] Oh, look! Isn’t your Guinea Pig adorable? What’s his name?

[Moi] Unpardonable…

[Visitor, only slightly louder] I said… what’s… his… name..?

[Moi, putting the hatchet back] No… I…. Never mind, it’s Tim

Anyway, back to the heinousity (Which is a real word and you can’t prove otherwise) that you were originally promised in the title.

I’ve been approached by a selection of both attractive and mentally stable young ladies over the past month, who have actually stopped me in the street to tell me how much they enjoyed reading my books. Well, not in the street as such – I mean, I don’t frequent streets where ladies tend to congregate… Not since the cuckoo-clock incident in Leipzig.  Some of the descriptive phrases they used, included:

‘Now can't carry on reading “Mumblings” because I'm laughing so much I'm crying’, ‘Pissed my pants, I did!’, ‘Seriously, there are parts that I fell to pieces laughing!’, ‘the author's a bit of a knob-end’, ‘ I sounded like my nan, Alice. I was whooping so much’, ‘I can't stop laughing! It's like reading the inside of my brain!’, ‘Love this book so much! Thank you for enabling its existence!’, ‘I've gone all purple and sweaty’

Actually, at least one of those might have been me… But the rest are 100% Gen-you-wine things that real people have said.

You were still looking for the heinous bit weren’t you? I’ve dragged you here, by the scruff of the neck, like a lonely three-nosed halibut purely by the medium of clickbait and you’re worried that I won’t deliver – Well, I can tell you that I am about to deliver, just like I tell Mrs. Dandy on those very few occasions when she’d much rather be watching something interesting on the shopping channel than submitting herself to my fumbling ministrations. So, here goes.

This weekend, from Friday the 2nd. of September until Monday the 5th. of September I have decided, purely because of the warm, glittery feeling that I have in the bodily area where that snake bit me once and I had to have the poison sucked out by a native bearer in the rear entrance to the food hall of Fortnum & Masons in Magaluf, to offer the Kindle version of my ‘Pangolin’ books for the once in a lifetime price of…

Free and no money… between those dates they will be delivered to your choice of Kindle-enabled devices from those wonderful full tax-paying people at Amazon, gratis!

The three titles available in this offer include:

Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin – Volume 1 - Seventy-Five stories representing nearly a year of irreverent writing, on such various themes as Polar Bears, Motorcycling, Lego, Physical Injuries to Myself, and The Paranormal (woOoOOOooOo)

The Pangolin Yodels – Volume 2 - Still a number of frankly idiotic stories, including the one where he sets an angry goose on a famous sporting personality. But on the whole, it's all a little more considered.

The Collected Children’s Pangolin Primer – a collection of the previous two books but with a lot of the more ‘unclean’ references removed – I think there is still one usage of the word ‘bugger’, but used as an expletive, not a verb.

‘Buy’ them (for free), have them delivered to you almost instantly via the aether (also free), laugh yourself into some kind of debilitating aneurysm or embarrassing moistness episode, then leave a glowing review on Amazon that will make you feel like some kind of Warren Buffettesque philanthropist.

Total cost = Not a farthing – Enjoy them please, tell your family… Addict your friends… You never know, there might even be another Pangolin book in the offing!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

Southcart Book Club May 2016

Let’s just imagine that a couple of weekends ago, hang on, it might have been last week. No, it was definitely… Oh, I don’t know, I’m not Doctor bloody Who (Although I would no doubt, make a bloody brilliant Doctor Who. Admittedly, there’d be a lot less reversing the polarity of the neutron flow and a lot more ‘Hold my beer and watch this’ before all the running and yelling started)

Anywho, 3... 2... 1... back in the room… Where was I? Oh yes, one weekend in the recent past, I was invited down to Southcart Books, the only independent book shop in the Black Country (Where Lenny Henry comes from) to talk about all my books – Past, present and *Whisper* future. You’ve heard me talk about Southcart before – I bang on about it like it’s going out of fashion, you should really go there and spend lots of money. Also, say it was my idea that you go there, I might get a free coffee out of it or maybe some vodka at Christmas – Because everyone knows that that’s what authors live on, coffee and vodka.

It wasn’t just me that got invited. Well, it was that time, but… Well, what happens is that every month, on the lunchtime of the last Saturday, they hold a book club in the shop. It’s where they get a local author, or other person of note, to pop down for a couple of hours and chat about stuff and things, maybe do a reading, maybe recount some funny story from their past and generally hold sway with their feet on the table like a cut-price Tyrion Lannister until it’s time for them all to leave so that they can pick their kids up from ballet, or football, or organic weasel plaiting or whatever it is that passes for children’s weekend entertainment in the West Midlands nowadays. The punters also get the chance to buy copies of whatever book the author’s hawking at the moment. It’s like the thing that Waterstones do with authors you’ve actually heard of, but without all the nasty queueing out of the door and not being able to eat an ice-cream while you’re looking around the shop.

I got there early, spread out some signed copies of ‘The Pangolin Yodels’ and sat on one of the shop’s comfy sofas to await my audience. Before long, Lucy, the organiser of the whole book club thing arrived – Calling her an organiser is selling her short really, she’s a successful author too, and a musical photographer (in that she specializes in taking photos of bands, she doesn’t spin around whilst whistling the Sugar-Plum Fairy as she works – Although who am I to judge? She may well do that too.) and she’s the lead singer of a massively popular soul band – I hate her actually, she’s so bloody talented that it makes my teeth itch.  She let me know how these things usually played out, and confided that usually it followed a pretty strict timetable of five minutes of the author bigging up their book, then a break for cake, then the remaining hour was reserved for random knob jokes and comparing favourite flavours of crisps, then a couple of people would buy a copy of your book and we could all go home (via the Organic Weasel Plaiting Foundry Est. in Walsall December 1749, obviously)  

So then the fine upstanding members of the book club started to arrive and some of them talked for a while about the damage caused to their boobs by rabbits, (Plus other famous local author James Josiah whom I may have mentioned in passing before - Wait, no, I don't mean that James Josiah caused them some boob damage too... Oh Christ I can see the litigation now!) I sat at the head of the oversized oak table, with a line of completely normal people down each side, some with more damaged boobs than others. They looked at me like jackals in a kebab shop, ‘Go on,’ I could tell that they were thinking, ‘do something literary, I dare you.’ I started off with telling them who I was, just to let them know that they were in the right place. And gave them a quick five minutes of why I do what I do, and where I stared and stuff like that. Then I was asked for a reading… I’d prepared some stuff, but I was requested to read the Gullible Steve story ‘The Concussion Chilli with Rottweiler Sauce’ – I read it, stopping every few minutes to wait for people to stop laughing, and told them that this story wasn’t actually in the book that was available for sale, it was in my previous one (Luckily, I’d bought a copy of it with me for advertising purposes). I got through ‘Thermodynamics,it’s the law’ about my Dad and a pigeon from the 60’s and I think that there might have been one other, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

Then I read ‘Bek’ – Now, I can’t tell you what ‘Bek’s about, because it’s a story from my next book, which includes both some extended versions of existing (fiction) stories and some completely new stuff – I’m trying to get it out for Christmas (2016 before you ask) – I’ll keep you in the loop.  This is the cover:

Yes, that's my daughter there, well spotted

It promoted some interesting reactions, there were yelps, there were covered faces and various cries of ‘No!’ from people.  At the end there was a stunned silence for a few seconds, and one person asked, “How can that story have been written by someone who writes things like that.” (Pointing at ‘The Pangolin Yodels’) another remarked that it felt somehow comfortable and horrific at the same time (I’m paraphrasing as I can't remember exactly what words he used, but I know that I was quite pleased)

I looked up at the clock and we’d over-run by about half an hour. I inscribed some books for people, and every single person who was there bought a copy (apart from the people who already owned it, obvs) – We even had a Viking film director come in off the street to buy a copy (And by Viking film director, I don’t mean someone who directs Viking films, I mean he directs films, and is also a Viking)

(Don't tell anyone, but there has even been talk about the possibility of one of the stories from 'Forever Girl' being made into a film - Remember, Mum's the word. Shh...)

Another funny thing happened, all the people who were there, every man-jack of them, are now my friends on Facebook – I’m very social you know – And one of them has given me permission to screen-grab something she posted so that you can see that, despite your better judgement, it’s not just me that enjoys my books. (I also enclose a picture of her preparing to read the book, for science reasons *cough*) I’m going to be there again probably on Saturday the 25^th June, so that people can ask me questions about the book – You could come too, it’ll be fun. There might be a bouncy castle*

Not gratuitous in the slightest...

Frankly written and beautiful? Open? Me? Surely some mistake... Anywho, Southcart might have some signed copies left, or if you get a copy of whichever book/s you want and get in contact, I'll scribble something unintelligible in them and send them back to you, free of charge (inc postage within reason) when I remember.

And what do you get for nothing nowadays?

*There almost certainly won't be a bouncy castle.

As Johnny Depp once said:

"I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it."

No, really, he did... But the poor bugger still has to sit on a big pile of money $400 million high and repeatedly have sweaty, monkey sex with Amber Heard (The blonde girl off of Zombieland) 

Amber Heard

So I'm guessing that he considers his life a massive failure. What with all the fame and the money and having to spend 14 years gettin-jiggy-wid French popstrel Vanessa Paradis previous to that.

Vanessa Paradis

I mean, just look at the quality of his taste in available women, the poor little fellah.

But anyway, enough of comparing myself to this professional pirate impersonator.  Let us concentrate more on our differences...

I was going to do a table and be all scientific and stuff, but I wrote it out on paper first and... to be honest, I couldn't read what I'd written after most of the ink had been washed away by my uncontrollable tears.  But suffice it to say, I am not 'Best buds' with Tim Burton, I do not have Alice Cooper on speed-dial and I do not own a vineyard in St. Tropez.

But the main difference is that I would love to be famous.  I know it changes you. I know that there wouldn't be a portion of my life that was private anymore (<remember this bit for the big reveal later)

And I don't mean fairly famous... I'm pretty sure that I'm 'fairly famous' already - I mean, you guys have all heard of me, Michael Sheen (Yes, THAT Michael Sheen) wished me Happy Christmas last month. I also count Yvette Fielding, Dr. Karl Fielding and Rufus Hound as close, personal friends (As long as you don't tell them about it - I'm not sure that it's 100% reciprocal - I mean, they like and retweet a lot of my stuff... Well some of it... maybe a couple each, tops... I'm so alone.)

and Scott Page, the saxophonist from Pink Floyd, thinks I'm cool - No, really he does.

But I want a gold plated helicarrier with a giant naked picture of myself on the bottom, I want Vin Diesel to walk everywhere behind me just punching his left fist into his right palm every time i talk to anyone, whilst wearing the sunglasses from 'Pitch Black'. I want whistling lobsters as shoulder-pads.

Am I ever going to be that rich?

Not on my own, no... What I need are followers (No, not 'Drink the Coolaid' type followers - put that straight-jacket down) I mean, like a regular audience who can spread the word and increase the numbers of the Dandy Nation.

To that end, I have done the unthinkable... From tomorrow, 28th January, to 1st February 2016 All three of my Chimping Dandy books will be FREE to download onto your Kindle, or Kindle compatible device from Amazon.

Here are the Links:

Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin - My First book... Read the reviews if you're unsure as to whether to download it FOR FREE - All five star, all of the time

The Pangolin Yodels - My second book... All five star reviews again (except the one four star review). You don't need to have read 'Mumblings' before you read this one - But you know, there's no reason not to because you can download it FOR FREE

And finally...

Do you have children, are they of an age where they're not so easily scared and/or overawed by life on this big ball of snot that we call 'The Earth'? Do you read them bed-time stories, or throw a book at them and say "Read this until you fall asleep"? Well, if you do, then you should totally get this:

The Collected Children's Pangolin Primer - This is a collection of volumes 1 and 2 from above, but with all the drugs, sex and swearing taken out (I think it might say 'bugger' once... But it's used as an expletive, not a verb) - It has a picture of my Son on the front... It's pretty dim, it's a bit like those 'The longer you stare into the fog, the more zombies you will see' type thing, but he's definitely there. This can also be downloaded FOR FREE

So, if I want to be rich, why am I giving my books away?

Well, in all honesty, I'm trying to get you hooked, so that when my fiction books come out (And the Pangolin books contain some of the stories that they're based on if you need a sweetener) you'll dive onto them like an extra from 'Breaking Bad' dives onto anything blue and translucent.

Just think of me as your friendly neighborhood drug dealer - only hairier, and possibly fatter with a slightly less casually racist Hispanic name.

But seriously Buy... I mean, GET FOR FREE, my books, make me famous, I'l buy you a chinchilla or something when I am. Totally, you will probably have to remind me though.

Remember when I said that I wouldn't be worried that none of my life would be private? Well, if you get these books, you'll know pretty much everything there is to know about me anyway - And that's got to be worth at least nothing at all... Hasn't it?

Ding!-Ding! Round Two!

No, this isn't about that Mr Groves being taken down in the eighth by a 'Georgia Peach' delivered by Carl Froch.

It's about me... Because: My Blog.

Some of you will know that in early November of 2013, I published a book called 'Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin' Volume 1 of the Collected Chimping Dandy- The link will take you to Amazon UK, where, if you have no financial or literary sense whatsoever, you can buy a copy.  It looks a bit like this:

Yes, I know it looks a bit amateurish, it was my first go.

But, I hear you say, "I've already got a copy!"  Well, you both have and haven't. You see, this is the second edition, it has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat on the frontespiece and some spelling mistakes and grammatical errors have been removed.

(Not all of them though, as the nine year old MicroDandy informed me last night... Technically it's considered 'Bad Grammatical Form' to end a sentence with both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis, as you're finishing what you're saying with a *bang* but implying that there's more to come.  My considered reply was "Just go to bed." which may sound a bit draconian, but in fairness it had been a long day.)

Anywho, back to me.  On Friday, I released Volume 2, 'The Pangolin Yodels' (Again, the link points to Amazon UK, go now, buy many copies.) Which looks considerably more professional, which is odd, because it was thrown together by the same person, i.e. me.

Can't you almost smell the professionality?

It's pretty much more of the same really, lots of idiot things my younger self has done, some rants about idiot things other people have done and continue to do, a couple of serious essays that I wasn't actually going to include (But I had to really, because they were so popular.) and even some fiction.  If you enjoyed the last volume, you'll probably not completely hate this one... Well, not completely.

This one also has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat in it, and this is important.

You see, this book wasn't as much of a one-man-band affair as the first edition of 'Mumbles' was.  It was produced with the assistance of 'The Penguin's Head' <-- This link takes you to their Facebook page, you should go there and like it immediately, you'll be glad you did, in the long run. 

Who are The Penguin's Head?  Well, they're a group of friends for whom writing is a real passion, I mean, you might think that bacon's important, and it is, but for them, writing is like having a bacon sandwich, but replacing all the bread with bacon, and the brown sauce, and probably the bacon itself too - It's like bacon cubed (Which is different from cubed bacon - which I call lardons, because I'm posh)... They're sort of a 'Writers Collective', if you like, but without all the post-gulag socialist ideals and scruffiness that that usually entails.  Currently, there are three of them:

James Josiah - Founder of the tremendously popular The James Josiah Flash Project, which launched the careers of many popular young authors. And has, spookily, also spawned a couple of (Kindle only) books Which you can download Here, that despite what it says, wasn't written by me & Here, which wasn't written by me either, but I did illustrate the cover 

Neil Sehmbhy - Who gets all of his writing published in massive anthologies written on real paper and keeps winning writing competitions and making me feel inadequate.  He is hugely prolific and was one of the main contributors to TJJFP - A couple of my favourite pieces of his flash were 'Derailed' & 'Finding Danielle' If you like your writing dark, you'll like his stuff.

And... Erm... Well... Me really.  I won't bore you with any more links to my stuff, but if you troll through the pages of TJJFP you'll find plenty of my flash fiction there. Plus, you know who I am already, right?

Here is a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat (Yes, it took ages to get the suit on it, and it panicked as we tightened the tie, and none of us are allowed to go to the Antarctic anymore, but it was definitely worth it):

The excellent logo of The Penguin's Head

This is the sort of thing that you can have displayed in your book if you decide to let us help you with it.  Did I mention that we help people write books?  Well, we do.  If you have an idea for a book then we can probably help you get it in print - Whether you just need someone to talk to about the process involved, or if you need a proofreader, or an editor, or you'de just like to hand a full, but scabby, notepad to us and eventually get a stack of stylish 6x9 paperbacks shoved roughly through your mail-slot then we're your men.

We're reasonably cheap and reasonably good at it.  Well, pretty cheap, considering...

Anywho, get in touch with us, it costs nothing.  You never know, you might be the next E.L. James. (Please note: Proofreading erotic fiction can take slightly longer than the more vanilla subjects, you know, when you take into account cramp and having to stop for a bit of a lie down and stuff)

OK, that's it for today... Hopefully, I'll have more news for you all tomorrow.