Apparently I'm trending

Someone just pointed out that my Three Hoodies (1) book is trending on Koobug.

   Anyone who hasn't stumbled across Koobug yet should definitely have a look. Not because I'm trending but because its a good site with many bloggers. They're a good bunch. It hasn't resulted in any sales yet but trending is a first for me. The first, in fact, since some girl told me I was cute once. For about ten minutes in July of 1974. That doesn't matter, because being cute even for a moment is better than never being cute at all.

   I've finally re-re-re edited The book of Pain and now I'm going to leave it alone for a few weeks while I begin re-re-re editing the second of my Kongomato books. I've already finished the third Hoodies novel but aren't sure if I'm ever going to publish it. I think it's the best yet but I haven't actually found a niche for Y/A SF comedy yet, so I'm going to reawaken my Old Geezers from their slumbering flatulent doze.

Here's a piece from Kongomato two: a small section of light heartedness preceding blood, mayhem and terror. I'm worried that I'm beginning to like the sound of those words.

Steve Garner was not a villain in the real sense of the word. He was a chancer; a peculiar colloquial expression which described him perfectly. Below average in height and build and despite a clear need, financial circumstances and pride had, and never would allow him to seek an optician. Thus his life and world were an indistinct blur amid which he plotted his many but always hapless strategies towards untold wealth; none of which ever included an honest day’s work. Paid labour was the reserve of weaklings born to sloth and anonymity. This was not for him. Only one good strike stood between him and a yacht in the warm climes of the tropics. That he had no idea exactly what or even where the tropics were made little difference.

     This lack of worldly knowledge was due in part by his premature departure from official education or, more precisely, his forceful eviction from his fourth and final senior school by the police at the age of fifteen. Thus his nine subsequent years had been a monotonous procession of failed robberies or burglaries and on one unfortunate occasion a mistaken attempt to rob a bank, only discovering at the last moment that it had been abandoned three weeks earlier, to the amusement of the guards whose sole job was to protect the lead atop the ancient Victorian roof.

    Steve never planned his jobs, as he called them. If something caught his eye, he did it, or took it. As in his first real crime: car theft. If some old biddy was stupid enough to leave her motor burbling away at the curb outside Tesco then whose fault was it if it got nicked? Certainly not his, a bored sixteen year old with wealth on his mind. So he had, driving jerkily away as learning the workings of a manual gearbox was just another job he’d failed to master. Pursued firstly by a screaming, hobbling pensioner and finally by a bored police driver guided by a thick cloud of burning smoke from a quickly roasting clutch. That the engine had irretrievably seized twenty minutes later allowing the smiling copper to arrest him and a harried magistrate to imprison him for six months, was simply a downside of the “profession.”

   You can tell that it's going to end badly for someone this stupid; especially when there's monsters about.