My 5th and 6th book respectively have been published! If you like this post you will be put into a draw to win a paperback copy of one of my other books.
These books are available on Kindle only at the moment, this is my Amazon page if you want to see my reviews for the other books so far:
“Pornography – and pornographic actors – have had negative stereotypes for as long as I can remember. There is always a stigma behind pornography, so much so that most people are even ashamed to admit that they watch it, let alone enjoy it. So how difficult would it be to admit that you were actually in the industry itself?
Abby was your typical shy girl who was tricked into bed by a sleazy guy, and from that she decided she was worthless, and reluctantly decided to become an actress herself, however she was about to find out that the industry was not what she was expecting at all.
See Abby’s whole life change after becoming an actress in ways she could never have imagined. But once she is too deep in the industry does she want to stay forever, or is she desperate to break free?”
Click below to go to the Amazon page and read a sample:
“Wouldn’t it be great to go travelling around the world…?
Everyone has a friend who has incredible stories when they have been travelling living a carefree life. Every time they post a picture you always feel quietly envious, but what if the dream trip doesn’t go as planned for these people?
Jay decided to pack up his life in Suffolk to go on a trip of a lifetime travelling from The Philippines to England without using a plane. He then found a beautiful island by the name of Paesa, an island where he suffered horrendous misfortune that would change his life forever.
When anything bad happens in life, you have to adapt. But how much can you adapt when it is something extreme that happens in a foreign country?”
Click below to go to the Amazon page and read a sample:
On Saturday I will be publishing not one but two books. However this process has not been easy by any means. There have been a lot of roadblocks in the way (Much more than usual) where most people would have said ‘something is telling me not to publish these…’. However you can call it stubbornness, but I refused to quit and kept working around the problems. Even if it meant hours or sometimes days of extra work. This post is to talk about how many obstacles were thrown at me, sometimes in the private parts, and hopefully to inspire others who are thinking about giving up when they have come so far…
OK, so let’s start right at the beginning: in Early 2016 I was living at my sister’s house. I’d just come back from living abroad for five years and had no idea how to function in England anymore. I said to myself I was going to write a book despite having crying babies in my ear constantly and feeling uncomfortable as I wasn’t in my own house anymore.
Back when I was living in Suffolk
It turned out that this was going to be the easy part…
The lease ran out on the flat we were all renting, and I knew that I simply couldn’t afford to take a one bedroom flat on by myself. I could break even, but I would have to work seven days a week working two jobs. That – and Brexit – forced my hand (Because I wanted to travel around Europe, but wasn’t sure what was going to happen to the visa situation. So I decided to go quickly just in case it got difficult in a years time.). I wasn’t mentally ready to travel again yet, and had nowhere near enough savings. On top of that, my book was only half finished. So I spent many a day on buses, rickety trains and random hotels hunched up trying to get something vaguely compelling down on my Chromebook. Which brings me to my next point:
FUCK CHROMEBOOKS!!!!!
When I bought my new laptop I said to the guy I literally only need it for Microsoft Word. I said I write books and I may occasionally go on Facebook and angrily stalk ex-girlfriends, but my main focus was to write books on Microsoft Word. Salesman Stan recommended the Chromebook to me, except I soon found out it didn’t have Microsoft Word, only Google’s version which was called Google Docs. It didn’t seem like a huge problem, it just meant that it was going to be a slight hindrance, but boy how fucking wrong I was…
Me posing in Guildford
The writing wasn’t an issue. Well, it kind of was. Google Docs doesn’t have a save option, just a download option. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to download every file on a daily basis and have the final first draft be called ‘first draft (396)!’ So I couldn’t save the file and send it as an email. There was one moment in Greece when some guy came in to the hostel steaming drunk and nearly trod on my laptop while it was charging in the corner. I had emailed most of it to myself at that point, but I still would have lost 10,000 words or more. I would have thrown him out of the window had he done that…
Then in Bulgaria the book was done. It was a monumental achievement because it meant I could work and travel anywhere despite all the distractions of travelling and being in hostels. The main issues started when I went to give to book to my editor to be edited.
You have an option to save a Google Doc as a Microsoft Word file. However I found out that when you do this, a few conversion problems happen. Mainly random new paragraphs mid sentence about twice a page, and a border that you can’t get rid of unless you have Microsoft Word. The Chromebook has a Microsoft Word editor, but of course the options are limited and you can’t change these problems. So basically most of the editing my editor had to do was paragraphing, and when he gave it back to me I was relieved that the worst part was over…
Exactly, HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!! The file he sent back to me didn’t open up properly because he used Microsoft Word options that Google Docs doesn’t recognize. So I had to use the computer at work whenever there was a chance and edit the document there. It took me two weeks but the edits of something that should have taken two hours were done. Except when I sent it to my computer again for the final edits, more issues happened with the formatting. On top of that, when I saved it as a Microsoft Word file (Which I have to do to upload it onto Amazon’s KDP site) the borders and the random new paragraphs appeared again!
Something was telling me to give up, but I hate making excuses so I kept working around it. I tried uploading it as a PDF file but it wouldn’t convert. Then I decided, ‘Fuck it, upload it as a Microsoft Word file anyway and see what we are dealing with.’ My logic being once it’s on, I can see how it looks and what I need to change…
Except for some unknown reason which wanted to make me snap my own neck, When I uploaded it from the Chromebook Amazon somehow recognized it as a ZIP file, and wouldn’t upload it. I’d already had issues putting the book covers on because the Chromebook would somehow shrink the files so they were too small to upload. So naturally I swore at the computer for a while, then decided to do the whole conversion process (another 3 1/2 hours) on the work computer, then upload it from there.
In a hostel in Macedonia. I’d already finished my book by this point but just to give you an idea how manic it was when I was trying to write…
Thank every God and Billy Idol, it worked. I had to spend an extra hour tweaking the files to make sure it was done properly, but I had the book on there. Something that should have taken a day or two tops ended up taking well over a month. But at least I could take a huge sigh of relief and say it was all over..
Yeah…No… I’m publishing two books at the same time, so as soon as that book was done I had to go through the whole bloody process again! Not only that, the second editor used an Apple computer, so when he sent the file back to me it looked OK, but would randomly freeze for an hour when it was having a hissy fit. This normally happened at two in the morning, and I had to wait for the computer to unfreeze, otherwise I was worried I would lose my work. This meant I had to mess around online until way past three in the morning so the laptop didn’t go onto screensaver mode. The third time this happened I thought ‘Fuck this, I’m not waiting an hour!’ and closed the laptop.
Yep, bad idea. The file completely disappeared somehow and refused to load up if I clicked on it from my computer. So I had to redownload it from my emails and start again. Two weeks later this farce was done, and all that was left was the final edits, saving it as a Word file, reediting all the BS that happened on the conversion, then finally uploading it on the computer.
In Italy. I was still writing my book at this point
The last couple of FU’s happened at work. The day before I went to do the edits, someone screwed the computer monitor on the wall, which made it very difficult to concentrate and do the edits. I got it done, but it took an hour longer than expected. And finally towards the end of the edits the receptionist walked it and asked for my paysheets. I told her that I’d already given the paysheets to the other secretary. When we confronted her she giggled like a schoolgirl and declared happily that she’d lost all of them, and said that I had to write all of them out again (For some reason we have to write out separate paysheets for every class for the month, this normally takes between 20-30 minutes. When you complain, the solution is normally more paperwork so it’s best not to say anything for your own sanity…) To which I bluntly said no, and that I would do it once all my book work was done. It took a few minutes to get back into the swing of things again but at least I could get it done.
My six books, including the two books that will be published on Saturday; ‘The Pornstar’ and ‘Stranded’
So that was pretty much it. I’m exhausted just writing this so god knows how you lot feel! The point is that despite everything that happened, I can still say that on Saturday I will be publishing two books. It was really tough, but now I can bask in my own glory. Right, now to get shitfaced. Sorry if I don’t reply to any messages. In fact, do leave some comments. It’ll be hilarious to see what I end up writing in my massively drunken state!
I’m a self confessed carnivore and a chocoholic. I also have a ridiculously high metabolism, which means I eat pretty much whatever I want without any repercussions, so I would be the last person you’d expect to announce that they are going vegan…
Most vegans (Not all, but a high percentage) I have met are simply intolerable. They have an air of arrogance about them that you can literally feel through their energy. They also are quick to announce that they are better than you because they are vegan, and then list ridiculously obscure facts that are impossible to prove in everyday conversation. And when you are understandably so confused to the point where you have no idea how to react, they smugly look at you as if to say, “See, I’m right, you have nothing to say to that, do you?” Surely I don’t want to become one of those people…?
I’ve always said that veganism makes a lot of sense if you present it the right way. For example, in what world would you see someone drink another animals’ milk? Of course it makes no sense, but the way that most vegans come across puts most regular people off even listening to what they have to say, so even if they had valid points no one would listen to them…
However there is one thing that everyone can agree on; the suffering of animals is unnecessary and unfair. Yes, we are omnivores, and meat is a natural source of protein so I do think eating animals is perfectly OK in a world where we need to survive by eating. (Just because humans’ brains have evolved so much that we don’t really need to fight or hunt to survive anymore, we still have to survive by consuming food…) But capitalism has created mass slaughtering of animals in inhumane conditions, and in some cases genetic mutation (e.g. Chicken breasts for chicken nuggets), solely for profit. Which is very easy to ignore it because:
(a) We don’t directly see anything happening, so it doesn’t affect our daily lives. and
(b) There’s not exactly much we can do about it anyway
So what is the answer? We all want animals to stop being tortured, but we all need to eat. Veganism makes sense in some ways but ultimately we are omnivores as previously mentioned. We can consume animals and gain natural nutrients. I can’t eat wood from a tree and get nutrients, so where is the middle ground?
So I came up with an idea: Go vegan, but not forever. Of course I’m not saving the world, but let’s call my own bluff and see what the fuss is about. Let’s see how it affects my body (good and bad). And above all; let’s see if this chocoholic can physically do it…
If it goes well then I plan to do this every year for a month. I can’t go vegan cold turkey (pardon the pun), but this tiny little sacrifice isn’t that much on the grand scale of things. The dream is that this catches on, and more and more people start going vegan for a month. Then the knock on effect can lead to less animals being slaughtered. In theory if everyone went vegan for a month every year (as long as the months are scattered) then that would lead to 1/12 less animals being killed for profit.
I’m very aware of how hard this is going to be, not to mention how expensive (Even in Thailand, as a lot of these vegan places are aimed at middle class hipsters) and there’ll be a few horrific meals being consumed by yours truly. But I’ll be documenting it here on WordPress and on my Steemit account (https://steemit.com/@lewisjfclarke) for you all to point and laugh at me, cry with me and hopefully cheer me on.
I need to make sure that I have a one year visa for Thailand before I begin this, but if everything is fine on the visa front then I will be going vegan for the whole of October. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
I have to admit, out of all the places on our preplanned travel list, Slovenia wasn’t high on my list of places that I have always wanted to visit. Hell, ok I’ll admit it, I did not want to go! I think I actually said those words, or something to the tune of….’it doesn’t interest […]
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