1. The Darkness Beneath - Free Copy
2. It's All About You - Read All About It!
The Darkness Beneath: Sex, Death and Trains, all Yours For Nothing (still!)*
*Terms and Conditions apply: you can get a free copy of my first novel, The Darkness Beneath, by following this link - but hurry! Only the first 100 people to sign up can claim a free
copy.
It Is All About You!
Well we got off to a flying start with the first IAAY with a brilliant contribution from the irrepressible Maureen Hovermale, and nearly 800 people reading her piece, plus several comments. Thanks for being the cutting edge Maureen!
The next IAAY will be out Wednesday 27th June, and will feature one of the USA's top artists, Rebecca Venn. She paints and draws exquisitely and I'm looking forward to introducing her to you.
If you're a writer, painter, musician or any other kind of creative person, and would like to take part, please have a look at the guidelines. You can contact me via the comments here or on Twitter: @mickdavidson.
Where Did All The Time Go?
I stepped rather niaively into having a guest contributor - for instance I hadn't though about the extra time needed to gather up new contributors and organise their material, and then add all that to the blog. But it's been worth it as I've had a lot more people visiting my blog and websites, I've made some new contacts with a variety of creative people (some of whom will be featured in IAAY - hurrah and thanks!), and one of whom described my idea as 'innovative'. Which I like a lot.
I like it because I've toyed with the idea of having a guest contributor for a while, but wanted to do something a little different to either a guest blog or a straight interview. Cutting out the middleman (me) and letting the contributor strut their stuff in their own way seemed like a good idea. Judging by the reactions I've had, a lot of other people agree.
For me, creatvity is one of the most important things in life: it fires the imagination and takes us to places we never knew we would or could go to. It also forces us to expose our inner selves to the world, which is often very challenging. Despite this, I know that all the difficulties we experience are worthwhile. Not only that, we get to join a group of people who are fantastic to know, supportive, helpful and full of wisdom gained by travelling the same path. We might work alone, but we are not alone.
One of the things I hope comes from IAAY is that others will read it and become inspired to create as well. And if that happens, I'll be very happy indeed.
Cheers.