Tractor and Bygone Rally

O.K. here's the report on the Tractor and Bygone Rally last weekend.

I'm paying for it.

That's the simplest way of summing up the whole thing.  Not only did I fail to make back the pitch fee which is always a serious disappointment but I haven't been truly without pain since.  My left leg particularly is not giving me any rest, quite literately.  I'm waking up several times every morning with my left hip cramping up and to say that it is making me more than a little tired is putting mildly.

This is the joy of living with Asperger Autism and having to try as hard as I can to sell stuff to become self employed.  Standing around for six to eight hours a day HURTS but if I don't stand around for six to eight hours a day I'm going to have no chance of selling anything.  This is the awful situation that my condition puts me in and the way that there are rumblings in the corridors of power, it is not going to get any easier for me.

However, on a good note, I managed to sell three more copies of my book, so that is three more readers out there, which in turn will hopefully feed into three more buyers in future years as my editor and I are working as hard as we can to polish up the second one.  We managed to hammer down another dozen pages of the second chapter just yesterday so this chapter is going a lot faster than the first one did.  I am hoping that if I can keep up the pace then I may be able to complete the second one before the original deadline set for next year.

If I can get it done sooner I maybe able to publish early.  Any body looking for an extra Christmas present?  I'm half joking as I doubt that I will be able to make that deadline but at the same time I can dream that I make that deadline.

In other news, work on 'Gloomlight', the RPG sci-fi gothic setting that I mentioned in my last post, has begun.  The setting description was just beginning to flow from my pen when I realised that if I was going to have thirteen tribes of things that creep in the dark (O.K technique fourteen but one of them is so bestial that even the 'ugly faces' of the other thirteen don't recognise them as anything save monsters) then I need to start a list so that I could straighten out names, general geological location, basic history and attitudes to humans and the other tribes.  That is the greatest part of being an author, making sure that all your continuity is in a straight line.  If its not then, I'm afraid, you are a bad writer.

I have also managed to unearth my most recent painting and a moment of luck struck.  We had a friend over who has offered to remodel the garden at a cut back price and when he saw me working on it he said 'I'd love to have that bit as a tattoo'. Hence, why I spent most of today tracing and re-sketching 'that bit' to make a tattoo design.

I have to admit that I'm not keen on tattoos myself, however, it is a market that I haven't explored and I'm wondering how one breaks into being a tattoo designer. Anybody have any ideas?