Category: News

Crystal Balls

Recently, I finally got to see the band I’ve been writing for play live.  If their debut gig was anything to go by I am very optimistic about the future.  It also gave me a chance to meet the rest of the band and learn of their plans. Regarding the album I have been working on, the bad news is that it won’t be recorded until summer.  The good news is that it looks as if I will have three more songs to write.  They plan to launch the album in autumn, so we have quite a wait ahead of us.

In the meantime I am beavering away on my next novel.  I am probably 40% done.  Editing is a lonely, thankless task which I am particularly slow and not particularly meticulous at.  I can’t wait to finish this part.  Next I shall pass it on to a very good friend of mine who worked on ‘Existence Is Futile’ and ‘The Story of Albert Ross’ with me.  Then and only then, after his hyphen-addicted eagle eyes have given the text the once over will I decide what I will do with it.

Thankfully distractions are never hard to come by, and I have had plenty lately.  I recently received an awesome review from K.S Marsden, author of ‘The Shadow Rises’.  I did something I seldom feel compelled to do and wrote a review of a book entitled ‘The Birdman Cycle’ by Thomas Rose-Masters.  Additionally, I have seen the first illustrations for my book of ‘new-age’ fairy tales, and am very impressed.  And finally I have been helping a certain Senor Elbuho move into his brand new internest.  He still has a few things to unpack, but as soon as he is ready I am sure he will post something on Facebook.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to introduce you to Alejandro Jorge Pedro Maria Elbúho, a humble Menorcan owl, who has wisely devoted his life to hunting adventures.  I know what you are thinking, it rhymes with hot da duck.

We met Alejandro in Menorca where we holidayed last summer.  The moment we saw him on a market stall we were immediately dazzled by his awesomeness.  The first thing was how handsome he looked, hanging from a peg and swaying in the breeze.  We were immediately struck by a wave of inspiration.  The inspiration came from ‘Up In The Air’ literally.  The hollywood film of course.  One of the subplots involves George Clooney travelling around America with a cardboard cutout of his sister and her husband, taking the honeymoon snaps they could never afford.  With that in mind we decided that for the remainder of our holiday we would take pictures of Alejandro everywhere we went.  We were quite unsure why, and most certainly concerned that we had both perhaps lost our minds.  Simply put, we had a vague idea that we would use the photos for some kind of travel blog.

After experimenting with different blogging sites we settled on a layout on posterous.  Where for sometime we quite regularly added pictures along with short explanations of Alejandro’s story in ‘Owlglish’.  We also created a Facebook group for him.  Initially we wanted to see if the power of the internet would turn Alejandro into a celebrity.  However for reasons we could never figure, it didn’t.  As our complete failure came home us, we slowly lost interest in the project and stopped updating his blog.  We simply left him hanging on the coat rack of failure, waiting for a better day.

Recently we have decided to reactivate his blog.  And to publicise him too.  As we feel he is just too damned awesome to be forgotten.  We still have a stockpile of photos from Menorca and a few other places and it seems a shame to waste them.  So Alejandro is back and as he would say ‘ready for big adventure’.

Alejandro Jorge Pedro Maria Elbúho’s travel blog on Posterous

Alejandro Jorge Pedro Maria Elbúho’s fanpage on Facebook

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Today will go down in my own personal history as notable for two reasons.  Firstly, because today I failed my driving test.  And secondly because today is the day that I launch the next phase of my plan to take over the world, albeit by public transport.  I hope that this day will be as memorable as the day I met a man who claimed that he was Jesus, at Cheshunt railway station, as either its special, or a sign of madness.

A quick glance at your browser will confirm that you are visiting my new home in cyberspace, scottandrews.co.uk. Take a look around, feel free to let me know your thoughts on the new design and layout by clicking on one of the comment bubbles.  Not only have I launched the new site today, but I have also launched a new official Facebook page.  I know what some of you will be thinking:  Do these changes have a point? Or are these the actions of a man on one hell of an ego trip?  The truth is quite probably a little of both.

The reason for this reinvention is the fact that I am now involved in a number of different projects and I needed to redesign the blog to accommodate all of my future masterpieces.  As wonderful as the ‘Existence Is Futile’ Facebook page is, I don’t want to spam the likers with information which doesn’t relate to the book.  That’s why I have started an author page.

At this point I cannot say too much about my new projects.  As each of them progresses I will be able to provide more and more details on them.  For now I can say that I am engaged in editing my next novel.  Presently, I do not have an agreement to publish it with anyone, so it still is a while away.  I can tell you that I have written lyrics for an album for a rock band.  Currently, they haven’t yet been recorded.  I have appeared in a podcast with someone much more famous than me.  At the moment I have no idea when it will be released.  I have started developing a film with a Polish director.  And in the coming weeks I expect to begin work on revising a collection of modern fairy tales in co-operation with a Danish illustrator, aswell as reactivating a humourous travel blog of sorts.

As I hope you can see from the list above, I am entering a very busy period of my life.  It’s for exactly this reason that I will be cutting back on blog posts.  Instead I will be blogging a kind of working journal regarding all the different baskets I currently have eggs in.  Additionally, I will be maintaining the ‘Existence Is Futile’ page aswell as updating the new official page when relevant.  And finally, yes, the ego has landed 😛

The End Of The World Is Coming

Friday heralds yet another apocalypse.  For the second time in recent years there will be some idiots somewhere expecting the world to end.  First I survived the Millennium, then I survived the rapture, and if I survive the weekend I will have lived through Doomsday. Given how successful the first end of the world was, I am not holding my breath for this one.  Not only that, everybody knows that the only thing worse than a sequel is a trilogy.

This time the fault lays with those sneaky Mayans.  That civilisation that flourished around a thousand years ago conveniently utilised the tools at their disposal to predict that December 21st 2012 would herald the end of the world.  Except that they didn’t.  At any point.  The idea that the Mayans predicted the end of the world is an absolute fabrication.  The misguided belief that the Mayan calender ends on Friday is so far from the truth it’s astounding.  If you want to learn what the Mayans actually have to say about the matter check out this article on the Huffington Post .

I am supremely confident that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will never appear in my lifetime.  For those of you that aren’t familiar with the story, the Four Horsemen appear in the Bible, in the book of revelation.  Basically the arrival of the Four Horseman is meant to signify the coming of the apocalypse.  The Four Horsemen are Conquest, War, Famine and Death, who are, incidentally, released from a scroll by Jesus.  They are the first in a number of judgements given by God to wipe out the vast majority of the Earth’s population.  What the hell happened to ‘love thy neighbour?’

To put it into perspective, according to the Bible the signs of the impending apocalypse are ‘War,Famine and Death’.  Three things which have been omnipresent throughout my entire existence in some corner of the globe.  To be honest they weren’t really taking much of a gamble.  ‘Roger what will the end of the world look like?’ ‘Well Dave I reckon people will be dying, killing each other and bloody hungry.’ ‘What like now you mean?’  Yet ancient prophecies formed on nothing other than rational guesswork still incite considerable excitement today.  It is astounding that human beings are so insanely blinkered.  We are living in the information age and incredibly a number of Christians are still getting excited about an impending rapture and New Age idiots are babbling about Mayan calendars which don’t actually say anything about the end of the world.  Personally I think it is a magnificent example of the innovative age in which we live.  Whilst Rapture Radio are asking for donations to help prepare for doomsday, and New Age Hippies are paying extortionate amounts of money to go on ‘Doomsday Bike Treks’ through Central America, they are all oblivious to the fact that they are victims of marketing.  They are living proof that there is nothing the human mind cannot squeeze a profit from.

In all honestly I feel inspired, which is why I have decided to start my own campaign.  It’s called ‘Tits for Jesus’.  Now I just need to figure a way to turn a profit on it.  Sadly the world isn’t going to end this weekend.  But don’t panic.  Remember if the world doesn’t end this weekend it won’t be the end of the world.

No News Is…

Right, first up I want to let you know that like Lazarus, I have arisen.  Turns out it wasn’t my deathbed after all, it was just my bed.  Therefore it’s safe to say I’m not dead.  However it’s -7 degrees outside, so even if I was dead it’s so fucking cold that I probably wouldn’t notice.  I know what your thinking.  How charmingly British?  First post for ages and he is already talking about the weather.  I’m not.  I’m talking about not being dead, got it?

Not much has happened on the ‘Existence Is Futile’ front, apart from 1,500+ people liking the book’s Facebook page.  Which is pretty awesome.  What would be more awesome is if some of these people bought themselves a copy of my book.  If you’ve already read it, I have something for you to do.  Review it.  The best way to support my book is to share your opinion about it with the world anywhere you can.  If not the story of Professor Henry Tomlinson will never be anything other than a silent and deadly fart trapped in the anus (yes anus) of history.

In other news I have been sidetracked again from editing my other novel.  It is difficult to return to a project which has been put to one side for so long.  Still I hope to pick up the pace after Christmas (bah humbug) and have it ready to send out in spring.  There is a legitimate reason for this delay.  Recently I was offered the chance to embark on an exciting new project in an entirely new and unforeseen direction.  For now I am loath to say more about it, until it is officially completed.  What I can say is that I am sure it will surprise a lot of people.  Incidentally it is not a sex change, I am not learning the bagpipes, and despite what the Russian newspapers say I am not the new prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet.   For now you’ll have to remain patience, I will reveal more here when the time is right.