Category: Other

For those of you who have somehow escaped the endless updates and pleas for your hard-earned (for most of you) cash, I am walking 100km of the Sahara desert in aid of The Prince’s Trust – you can still donate here. As you can imagine this involves a fair amount of training.
While I’m not necessarily unfit (I walk four miles a day and go running three times a week) there are always improvements to be made and the thought of walking up to 18k in a day, in the desert is somewhat daunting.
A couple of years ago I couldn’t have imagined heading off on an adventure like this, and I’m so pleased the stars aligned or whatever else occurred that is now making it happen. It’s an incredible feat and a story I know I will cherish.
I’m not the only one heading out on this adventure though, there are around ninety others, who are hopefully breaking in their walking boots and running up the stairs in the office instead of taking the lift as I write this. The only one of my fellow trekkers I know, aside from email contact and jealousy of fundraising abilities is Terri. As she lives on the cusp of Epping Forest (very much like a troll) she invited me for a day of wandering about in the woods while she cheerfully called ‘I think it’s this way’ over her shoulder.

I turned up on her doorstep just before eleven o’clock with spots in front of my eyes and a stinking hangover. After rehydrating my brain and checking our provisions we took off for an epic walk.
The joy of wandering around the E4 woodlands with Terri is that she is an excellent storyteller and traveller. She told me about petting tigers in Thailand, about her bucket list and about the ring of grime that collects around one’s ankles after walking distance.

After four miles we made it to a pub. After five miles we had somehow looped back round to be at the pub again. We stopped to have an awesome picnic, comprised of goodies I had bought before the sleep was even out of my eyes. After seven miles we were at Waltham Abbey. While the names of towns weren’t completely alien to me, I didn’t realise the distance it meant we had covered until we came across a map at the start of a woodland trail. It felt like we had just been ambling but the map proved different. There was a mighty area of trees on the map between the two points Terri was highlighting. We had actually accomplished something.
After 9.9 miles Terri decided to make an Instagram video (because she’s such a hipster) and the iPhone app we had been using to calculate our distance stopped as the phone shorted out like we had crossed the streams. She quickly started it up again to reach our grand total of 12.64 miles by the time we made it back to her humble abode for Rekorderlig and a sit down. We burnt over 800 calories and felt like we had made something of our Sunday.

I know the Sahara is going to be a different beast altogether but with just over eight weeks to go, I think we can tame it.

So I’ve run this blog for a year and a half now and I realised last night I was about to hit the big 4-0-0. If I hadn’t twigged, it may well have gone unnoticed, as I’m sure it will for most people but 400 is a big deal for me. I like a good milestone. It just makes me think of the achievements I’ve made along the way; recorded two EPs, written two books, published one, been to Amsterdam, Paris and Devon. There are achievements made by everyone, every day and it’s easy for them to pass us by, so I am taking a moment to congratulate myself.
Job well done Paul.

I just dropped submission packs of my novel Visions Of Violet at the Blackfriars Post Office. I’m hoping this becomes the thing I do that sets everything else in motion, that spells the end of my worries about my writing, and sets me off to do what I have dreamt of since I could first hold a pen.
All I have ever known is to write, and I want this so badly I have to try and suspend myself before the fall if it goes wrong. I believe in this story. I love the characters and it was just the kind of feverish writing experience every young writer wants.
I wrote the first draft in just three weeks, whilst commuting between Rayleigh and London and finding corners in fast food outlets, public houses and even a radio station to put fingers to keys. It was a pleasure but now I want to reap from a story I sat on for over a year without writing a word.

I’m excited about getting this done because I have similar ideas I have been sat on for too long. I told myself I couldn’t start anything new until Visions was in the post. Now it can start all over again. I’m ready for new characters and new adventures, to sit chewing pen lids and wonder how long it has been since I ate and what the rest of the known world is doing as I get lost in my own. I’m ready to re-immerse myself in the one man culture of writing.

Also, thanks to Simon for fronting the money for envelopes. I’m impoverished you see.

I’m on a train. Nothing new there. The key difference is I’m going in the opposite direction. My body is dealing with it in strange ways. Each day I pull it out of sleep just after six, ram it into gear with exercise, breakfast and coffee and then squeeze it onto a train to commute to London.
This morning I am returning home. I was out last night and didn’t make or couldn’t face the return journey. I forget which. I’m still in the clothes I set out for work in yesterday morning, but I don’t feel horrible, and I don’t feel like I’m performing the walk of shame.
It feels as though enough intoxicating liquor was passed into me last night to just hush the parts of my brain that usually run at a million miles an hour. Instead I’m left with this empty vessel and it feels quite beautiful and zen.
I wonder if this is how most people feel, those who can switch off, and drift. Is this normal?

I spent nearly an hour travelling across one of my favourite cities in the world and I am in love with the world. At six am there is no buzz, there are no suits, there are barely any people in fact. Due to the work on Bank junction this morning there was a serene and unusual peace in the air, the likes of which London rarely sees.

I just wanted to take the time to address this sensation, and tell you to stop and take a while to appreciate wherever you are and whoever you’re with because it could be dragged out from underneath at any point.

I went to check on the statistics for my blog this morning, only to find I have hit the 100 sales mark. That’s one hundred physical copies of my book in existence. One hundred people who know I accidentally, a little bit and through no fault of my own _______ in my own _____.
(No spoilers here)
Oh the shame, the shame of it all. Plus the joy, the joy of it all. Oh the shame and the joy of it all.

I’m honestly overwhelmed and humbled at the response from people. Everyone has been very kind or else kept their mouths shut. I would like to once again thank anyone who made those stories happen, anyone I pissed off whilst being a reclusive genius, and everyone who has a copy. You’re all golden.

What now? I’m redrafting at the moment. It’s not the next book but it may well become the one after, although according to reliable sources (Stacy), this is going to be ‘the one that breaks through’. I have faith in everything I write but WDATMG is a bit of a vanity project. I can write outside of the autobiographical lad tales, I have and I will continue to, just grant me a bit of time.

Below are a selection of the photos I have been sent by people in the last two months.

Last night I gave my first public reading of part of my book of short stories.
To say I was nervous would be an understatement.
I get nervous about any kind of performance, in fact I said to Sadie who was co-co-hosting the night that if I wasn’t nervous before I performed I would worry.
So I did my Eminem in 8 Mile bit, ironically a reference used in the very story I decided to read from, and then I sat and listened to brilliant people perform poignant and delicate and beautiful and poetic and perfectly comedically timed and balanced readings and performances and started to lose my Glastonbury tan. I hate the person I become before I have to get up and do anything, I always try and bargain my way out of it, usually to Kate.
Fortunately she told me to stop being a baby, and that I would love it once I was up, and I really did.

It was such a cool thing to be asked to be a part of, and I truly felt the love in the room. Everyone was very nice, and I sold four copies of my book, and met some cool people and I would love to do it again. Going home was somewhat sobering, and work today was even more so, but it’s just a little step, and one I’m very proud of, and I thank Sarah & Sadie & Jo & Ray for putting the night on, and whoever thought of me for thinking of me, and the receptive audience and that’s enough of my nonsense, watch it:

I just wanted to take the time to thank everyone who has bought or downloaded my first book, Where Did All The Money Go?
I finally got my filthy little paws on some download stats this morning. There were over 170 downloads in the UK alone, a further 50+ in Amerikey, and then various pockets of sales across Europe. That’s on top of the 80 physical units sold.
I’m not much of a businessman and I would never choose to be, however, I call that a rip-roaring success.
You can tell I’m not much of a businessman because I’m making 6% of each physical sale.

I have made very definite plans for the money though, and I wanted to take the time to tell you where all your money went.
I’m in the process of redrafting my second novel (Visions Of Violet). Once completed, I plan to send it out to agents and publishers across the land in the hope of snaring the elusive deal my first novel didn’t quite manage to cop. I’m going to use your money to pay for the printing, packaging and posting of those copies to agents and publishers. Your purchase has become an investment and I thank you for it.
Once I’m done redrafting Visions, I will be redrafting my first novel Situation One. I plan on self publishing that little guy as no agent would touch it. It’s essentially the novel WDATMG spawned from and it is very good. There are more adventures from Michael, Oliver, Eli and Ross, but in the redraft I am hoping to rope in all the new characters added to the short stories. I believe a number of you have a soft spot for Madcat now.
I’ve checked up on him, he’s doing fine and Lucas has informed me there is another story to be gleaned from their relationship. So I guess it makes sense to follow the publication of S1 with another book of short stories, which I have already started drafting in my head while running.
I’ve also re-opened the case file on my three-part fantasy series, Coppypock, and am planning on writing a Palin-on-acid type book on the Sahara later this year.
Basically, I’m running myself into the ground between this, improv, gigs etc. so I’m going to take a week off.
My week off will be a couple of days in Amsterdam with my favourite, followed by Glastonbury 2013. I’m stockpiling material right now, and I can’t wait to share it.

Thanks again.
Peace & love.
Be safe.

This week my book is free to download for Kindle. 

I don’t care if you have a Kindle, you have some way of downloading it and reading it, whether it’s on your iPhone, iPad, generic smart phone that wants to be an iPhone, or just on a computer. Even if you just download it so I get off your back about it, download it now, here.

At the moment it is sitting pretty in the Top 20 free Kindle books in the Humour category. 
This is what I have been working towards for the last couple of years, or to be cliche about it all, what I’ve been working towards all my life. The blood and sweat and tears inherent in this book is something I am immensely proud of, and any success it gains is as a result of the incredible people who believe in me. I don’t know what I would do without each and every one of you. 
Please keep pushing it. Keep spreading the word. Good things can happen if you work hard enough. 

This morning I am in pain. I noticed it when I tried to sit up in bed. It was as though there was something jarring the movement in the upper half of my body. The reason being I spent yesterday doing a hard day’s graft.

If you know me at all, you’ll know I am not one for physical work, it not being my vocation nor something I was built towards. I have more physically in common with the tools themselves. This was different.
I spent yesterday at Little Havens children’s hospice digging up their grounds and allotment patch. You may remember I did this last year. The sense of a job well done was so good I had to offer my services up again.

Little Havens offer care and support for children with life limiting illnesses and their families. As far as charity beginning at home, this is probably as close as I can get as the complex is based just a ten minute drive away.

I know there is no selfless good deed, and in taking time away from work I not only got to spend the day out of the office and away from the computer screen but am also filled with a sense of achievement so great it feels as if I was paid for my labours. What I have taken away from working at Little Havens is that there are a lot braver people than me, a lot more caring people than me and that there is always something anyone can do to help.

I just wanted to let you all know that I have checked the statistics page for my book this morning and discovered I have sold fifty copies. That’s fifty actual copies of something I wrote. I can’t get over how awesome this is. 

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who has bought it so far, and sent me pictures of their copies, and asked me how it’s going and everything else.

I’m living some kind of surreal dream existence. I didn’t think I would ever get to a point where people were actually reading something I had written. I honestly appreciate every single one of you for taking the time and spending the money on something I have made. 

I love you all.