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This month I'm going to be doing something slightly different and instead of droning on and on about what I did last month I'm going to be droning on and on about something I did for the last twelve years. So forget everything you think you know about GTA: Online because it's actually a really complex and deep multi-layered experiment in social interation, and yes, I am serious. GTA ONLINE: A RETROSPECTIVE Or My Love Letter to a really complex and deep multi-layered experimen

THE PRISONER OF ZARAGOZA Ok, so this didn’t technically happen in April, but I don’t want to leave it a whole month to mention the launch of a new book by the Leicester author Daniel Ribot. The launch party was on Friday and we were treated to a detailed backstory of the development of the book and a reading of some of the highlights by the author himself. The tale is set in the late 16th century, against the backdrop of the Spanish Armada. The main character is a sailor name

Easter Eggs Q2 The end of March marks the conclusion of Bellmason Books' second quarter, and I'll have to admit that I have not been as active in this space as I was in Q1; mainly because I'm still in the process of moving house. The Quanta-B Tales is our first book and I'm still using it to learn about marketing and self-promotion. In March, for my birthday, I decided to offer the book for free for one week, and I asked everyone I know to put a review up on Amazon if they c

I have been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft lately, from a giant book of his collected works that I bought last year. This book is huge, by the way, and weighs enough to take down an elk. It's best read at night, in bed, in an old house at the top of a hill in a village with a churchyard, which is how I have been reading it. February is definitely the perfect season to read Lovecraft, with the rain lashing the windows, and it is made all the more relevant by my current situat

Last Day (Night) on the Job A lot of writers say that they fear the blank page, but not me. The page is very rarely blank for long anyway. If I can’t think of anything else to write down I put the date in the top left corner. Then I write the name of the project I’m working on, and underline it. This year’s project is simply called ‘2026’, which is a date anyway. As last year was all about launching the Quanta-B Tales, this year is about filling in my time with something else

Q1 REPORT At the end of December Bellmason Books completed its first quarter as a publisher, and with only one title currently in our catalogue the sales results are very surprising. When I first uploaded The Quanta-B Tales to Amazon I was worried that I wouldn’t sell a single copy, but I am pleased to announce that I have sold a single copy. Added to the three hardback books sold at the launch this makes four copies of the book sold, which averages out to 1.3 books per mont

INTRODUCTION I wrote most of this story while I was cleaning my teeth, which is usually quite boring. You can’t really listen to the radio or concentrate on music when you’re brushing your teeth, so I find it helps to think about something else. After brushing, there’s plenty of time to think about what you were thinking about while you were cleaning your teeth, but you tend to concentrate better when you’re lying in bed in the dark. The idea for this story really goes back t

CRAFTING Many years ago, I was given a set of Enterprise models by a friend who was having a clear out. The ships were all to scale and went from the original NCC 1701 all the way through to the Enterprise-E. None of the models were painted, and there was a single sheet with all the decals on. I used to make model aeroplanes when I was a teenager, but my set of paints and brushes had long since dried out, and I never really felt the urge to go out and spend money on new paint

Luke Bellmason and Daniel Ribot at the launch of The Quanta-B Tales After the success of the book launch for the Quanta-B Tales in September, October marks the start of Q1 for Bellmason Books. This is new ground for me, having never run a publishing house before, but every journey begins with a single step. So far I have sold a few copies of the launch edition hardback, though I did give most of them away to my guests. PROJECTS QBT : Now that the Quanta-B Tales is on Amazon a

I had been under the impression over the last several years that blogging was something people did in the first decade of the 21st...