Welcome to the official blog of Paul D.E. Mitchell - Author and Publisher
26/12/20 Forgive the lack of updates due to the utter lack of interest in my work. A grim COVID year has ground out almost to its end. I have rewritten Light-Father as City of Crows and may withdraw my books from Amazon due to their charging policy. I am half way through City of Glass but the enthusiasm is waning. Still, each book is a line in the sand that few people achieve. The music is going well as I have left the four bands I was in to concentrate on writing my own material on a 12-string gifted to me by the late Martin Medcalf. 43 originals this year - 3 albums worth! To any lost soul who stumbles across this, may I wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2021.
23 Oct 2019 Finally, I have City of Gargoyles back from the printers and I am stoked - my best work ever. I am searching for an agent and need to step up my game a little! I still play in four bands and do a lot of solo performances and double-bass work now as well as working full time. Creativity is life!
14 May 2019 - Still alive at 62 and still in FOUR bands and we have recorded two albums. Since the last blog I am still working in Blackwood in Wales as a caseworker. I am earning around $1300 in royalties from Smashwords and Kindle and book sales via the POD LightningSource. I have completed two albums: "The Inn of the Sixth Melancholy" and "13 Songs About 7 Deadly Sins" both on www.reverbnation.com/pauldemitchell so please check them out. Email me if you want a CD. FINALLY restarted my sequel to Light-Father after a hiatus due to ill health and overwork! 18 Chapters down and going strong and super dark in places - I love a good dystopia. Catch you soon. Be well!
Nov 01 2017 - I am now a caseworker in the Welsh Valleys which I am enjoying as I love helping people but 10 hour days are a killer. Believe it or not many councillors start off full of good intention but many fall prey to temptation and lose themselves and the communities they represent. Fake News is a powerful tool for slander when you have dozens of trolls all over Facebook and Twitter. Still, these pond-dwellers are an inspiration in their own vicious and vacuous way. For those of you seeking a site to try poems and writing, the UKAuthors site is struggling for recruits but is still worth a shot. I am 30% into City of Gargoyles - the sequel to Light-Father - man, I wish I could be paid to stay at home and write! My new album, The Inn of the Sixth Melancholy, is now nearly completed - catch my latest tunes on www.reverbnation.com/pauldemitchell.
A big thank you to all who've written to me saying they like my work and some useful constructive criticism too. Ka-Ching is also getting 5-star reviews and some serious royalties are coming in off Amazon and Smashwords. Onwards and upwards!
May 15 2017 - sadly, I lost my council seat to a vile and personal Nationalist campaign marking a new low in local politics but it was a privilege and a pleasure and a headache all rolled into one. I am still in four bands and have finished my fifth album - the Bicycle of Fifths. I will also shortly resume work on The Ghost Army and the final three novels in the Nexus series. I have also started the sequel to Light-Father after being nagged by teenage fans. So many ideas - so little time. RIP Chris Thomas - the curmudgeonly old author from Swansea who encouraged me and bequeathed me Wuggles Publishing as a micro-publisher with LightningSource accounts.
Nov 11 2016 - It has been over a year since I've updated this site. I have recorded three albums since then and all my music is available on www.reverbnation.com/pauldemitchell and videos on YouTube. I am playing in the Big Slouch Collective which has four original bands in four original styles but finding venues willing to support original music is impossible. Illness continues to dog me as I gear up for the next council election in May 2017 but it is a win-win: if I win I get to help people as a Councillor and if I lose, I get to be more creative. Thanks to everybody who has supported my work!
I am playing in four bands with the musicians of the Big Slouch collective and get to perform my own material too. I am liaising with CLIVE HORTON PHOTOGRAPHY whose excellent and copyrighted images you see on this site. Please do not copy without his permission!
Sep 02 2015 - It has been a lot of fun playing with five bands and writing three albums worth of original material. I am currently no 1 on www.reverbnation.com/pauldemitchell. The politics are arduous as are the activities of vile nationalists but that, as they say, is another story and living proof of the old adage: "what goes around comes around". I miss writing the novels but as retirement looms and the ideas multiply, I look forward to completing the nanology althought the readership is small at the moment - but greatly appreciated. I also remember one of the poker school in the novels which was based on real characters in Tylorstown in South Wales - on the last page of Book 6, the character, Snibs, gazes at a sky full of falling stars but sadly the real Snibs took his life on a railway and is sadly missed by all. Rest in peace, mate, as your story lives on as a major character in the last three novels of the Shrines nanology. I have also started a sequel to Light-Father but two chapters in, i find time fleeting and short.
May 20 2015 - It has been a very long time since I have updated this site. I started out with high hopes but, as with many others, the response to my work has been minimal with a few strange exceptions. Last year, Radio France contacted me as the books had made it to Paris. I was expecting a Cardiff special but the interview was conducted in Llandaff Cathedral graveyard and they accused me of setting up a blueprint for a new religion - I was to be the new Ron L Hubbard but instead of Scientology, the model was to be the House of All Faith. I miss writing but I am busy as a Councillor since 2012 and Chair of Environmental Scrutiny and I still write poetry and I am currently working on my third album. All my music is on www.reverbnation.com/pauldemitchell amd my band Funhouse, Jumpin' Jimmy and the Nice Guys, Joytown Gypsies and the Goodfellas can all be googled.
IN MEMORIAM. My associate, Chris (Wuggles) Thomas has passed away after a brief illness. You can see his books on the Ka-Ching tab. He was right-wing in his politics but right on in his support of struggling authors and allowed me to POD my books via his Wuggle micro-site. I enjoyed a long and often wicked e-exchange and collaboration over many years and he will be sadly missed. Rest in Peace, Chris!
August 21 2013 - It has been a long month. I am performing open mic poetry at the Andrew Buchan Bar in Cardiff (check out the Facebook pages) and several videos of me playing double bass with Captain Hawkins and the Goodfellas are now on YouTube. The album 'Neon Pretty' is finished and is now available for streaming on www.revernation.com/pauldemitchell and will shortly also be on iTunes. I hope you find theses poetry-driven acid jazz numbers intersting as they were a lot of fun to record. The Radio France interview is now scheduled for September. My band Jumping Jimmy and the Nice Guys is also on www.reverbnation.com/jumpinjimmyantheniceguys.
July 24 2013 - It has been a long time, folks. I got elected in May 2012 as a Labour councillor for Cardiff County Council during a period of austerity where a Tory-Liberal Democrat Coalition government is ripping money from the poor and the local authorities that protect them to give billions to the richest 10% in the country as tax breaks - no austerity for the wealthy then! I have been engaged in rather disagreeable and time-consuming disagreements with the two Nationalist councillors also elected to my ward of Pentrebane and Fairwater. We cannot possibly get along as I have a deep distrust of certain kinds of Nationalism. Away from that, we are the ruling Group and I am enjoying the politics and my new job as Chair of Environmental Scrutiny in the capital of Wales but, typical of every Fulcrum we face, our reality sometimes takes a left turn while our aspirations take another route. I have tried to respond to every book enquiry but I apologise if I forget to get back as I simply don't have the time with all the case work and committees and bands such as depping for Funhouse and playing in the Goodfellas and Jumping Jimmy and the Nice Guys
However, I have been writing songs and poems - a few more on poetfreak . The fan-mail has been great so thanks to all of you but I have only sketched out the start to the Light-Father Sequel called Milverburg / City of Gargoyles and I have had over 30 calls for me to write it. Royalties are climbing slowly so thanks to those of you who bought the books. Last Wednesday, I was interview in a graveyard next to Llandaff Cathedral by Radio France which is truly surreal - they got pissed off with me selling Cardiff like a good little councillor and said they were here to interview me which totally blew me away. They said the books had reached Paris and, tongue-in-cheek, they accused me of trying to set up a new religion via science fiction. Are you a Prophet, they asked. Weird but quite flattering in a way. I have a new studio and hope to record some of my latest songs and will put the music files on a new page one I untangle the cords and chords and work out how to sing in tune. That's all for now but to mention that Studio Ghibli are also looking at Light-Father but again I hold out little hope of Light-Father ever appearing as an anime despite the homage to that genre in the story lay-out.
April 06 2012 - It has been a pleasure to play double-bass with the Goodfellaz and campaigning for the Fairwater ward in Cardiff local elections against the Welsh Nationalists who, I must say, really do scrape the bottom of the propaganda barrel. I apologise to those of you who have had delays in deliveries but the PayPal accounts are not registering payments. If you have any problems, simply e-mail me with the details. I've checked the mechanism of payment widget and it seems to be working so I'll have to double check with PayPal. I will also be taking on Wuggles Publishing in the near future (once the local electiosn are out of the way) then I will try and transform it into a Welsh e-bookshop. The site will have to link directly to a POD (Print On Demand) company such as Lulu or LightningSource so that the shipping details and postage can be handled by them. Light-Father is still in limbo after reviews and suggestions by proof-readers (big thanks to Tina and Matthew Dunn) and teenagers but I hope to have it published in May and also many thanks to DeadStar Publishing who have also shown an interest. So much to do - so little time!
February 25 2012 - Light-Father is now on Kindle and Amazon but there are still minor typos in the story so I am grateful for the mother and son team of Tina and Mathew Dunn for another proff (sic) read. I am increasingly annoyed with the royalty arrangements from Amazon and Smashwords which are not as good as they try to make out. The American IRS paper work is especially tedious. I have TEFL contract work to do for the Chinese, songs to write and election campaigning so I do not expect to start work on Mute until May so be patient. The Nexus series is proving too vast for the e-sphere so I am considering condensing the last three volumes of the Three Great Revelations into one volume called the Nexus - let me know what you think!
The Lewises are fleeing on the road and Gemma is in love as the UK descends into political chaos after the little stunts in Shrines. I have so many great characters andinterlinked plotlines - how do they rescue Jillsy from the Movement, how does the Child of Dark resurface (Golem)?, Abel (aka the Book of All Faith) takes form and falls in love with Gemma(Book), what traps has Siobhan left?, does the Lady in Black become flesh again? Does Tamsin's Beasts take her over? Will Amy ever meet up with Freidh, her one true love? Does the band take off or does Heather get dragged back into her reality? Does the House tempt the Divine Design to act and prove the existence of the Creator by becoming the world's greatest ever religion? The concluison of Nexus is awesome so I must struggle on to get this monster fable finished!
February 14 2012 - I've been very busy - so sorry to Jake et al for lack of blogment - I know it's important for authors to keep their readers up to date! My broken hand has healed to the point where I am able to play double bass and sing my own songs on guitar at the Rockin' Chair, Lower Cathedral Road in Cardiff, every Thursday evening at 8pm-10.30pm. I must make sure not to get so badly injured when saving someone from a beating next time! I am also involved in charity work and looking after elderly relatives as well as standing for Cardiff Council which keeps me busy!
Okay - the second wave of edit of Light-Father has almost finished which is the continuity edit - the sweep through where you make sure the action and the characters don't appear in the wrong places or characters speak out of character etc. Next will come the grammar and punctuation edit which will take another month so I've missed the Welsh Book of the Year 2012 deadlines - not that science fiction and fantasy ever get a look in that is. If anyone tells you they can dash a book off in a month is lying through their teeth or they've just written an essay. Shrines is still not available as a hard copy as poor Chris in Wuggles is not in the best of health and has been snowed under. People baulk at the £1000 it takes to get a book up and running, edited and promoted and letting him down after he's done most of the work for them. Keep the faith, Chris! Take care, folks , and keep well.
January 04 2012 - The Year When it All Ends if you believe the the doom-sooth-sayers. There is now a couple of positive reviews appearing on Kindle and Smashwords at long last and some books I edited are selling well such as Living with Siamese Cats. Ka-Ching is also shifting by the shed-load after I fixed a glaring typo on the first page - D'oh! Grid-lock on Light-Father finally broken as chapter 23 explored Schimrian's increasingly paranoid relationship with the Order. It took ten rewrites to get the atmosphere in the Great Abbey right. Harold is arguing with Mother Fern about taking the children to the Great Abbey and certain death while the Phoenix is made ready while the storm rages all about them. My health has not been good and it has slowed the writing rate down and I have more tests on Friday but i was still able to walk ten miles and enjoyed real ale in the City Arms in Cardiff with an old friend who had a drunk suddenly lunge for his throat outside! A real Jekyll-and-Hyde character who will end up in the Nexus at some point!
December 23 2011 - I am 180 pages into Light-Father and the story is flowing but my health has not been good lately - I get SAD and tend t o humbug and handbag Yule. On the 5th of December, I led a delegation from the charity I chair (Riverside Advice) to Cardiff Council and we made contact with the new CEO to ask that the council treat Advice providers fairly. In the UK, the Tories are about to remove all legal aid and advice from the poor and vulnerable so this was a crucial result. Afterwards we went for a drink and on the way home, I dragged a drunken bully off one of the Occupy Cardiff protestors and broke up the fight. Then the original thug jumped me from behind and being 20 stone, he broke two metacarpals in my right hand when we keeled over. I didn't feel a thing then after separating everyone someone pointed out my little and ring fingers were at right-angles to my hand! To add insult to injury, I was told that this cretin was a TEACHER. Pah - in vino veritas - the drunk face is the true face! I went to the Rockin' Chair last night and met so many friends from the 80s and 90s music scene - some like saxophonist, Pete Kelly, I haven't seen for years!
So back to the books : I am still awaiting the hard copies of Shrines from Chris who is snowed under at Wuggles. I have Fulcrum on free offer on Smashwords which you can't do on Kindle who are trying to bribe people to use them exclusively with their KDP offers - read the small print, people! I am receiving more feedback and more typos pointed out in Goddess which I need to correct - that was down to deadlines so if you have an e-copy, bear with me and download a later version. Apologies for that! Light-Father has reached the second part where the Mothers and Ferals appear and Shield takes down a helicopter with a crossbow and agonises about losing her friends once they realise she has the craft. Saul finds his two abducted cousins were taken by the Mothers because they were regressing only they are now Ferals - mutated and largely mute, they still remember him. Harold finally realises that Britannica is a sad, drowned version of the UK which I've based on a Google-Earth projection of a 60m sea-rise (i.e. Greenland and part of Antarctica melts suddenly) - check it out. With the Keep destroyed and a storm raging, the Scatterlings help Harold repair the Phoenix, the steam locomotive which is their only means of escape from the forces of the Order and Harold is shocked to learn what Mother Moss had in mind for her Scatterlings and why these Children of Exodus were such great survivors... so many twists and ideas...
December 02 2011 - Halfway through the Light-Father which will be a much shorter book at 300 pages and aimed as a 13-18 age group. The story is basically how the world was devastated and the impact is has on children inspired by those in our blood-soaked world such as the child-soldiers in Africa. The Wiccans are fleshing out nicely and one of the Scatterlings (also known as the Children of Exodus) may be a Wiccan as well! Harold found a train virtually untouched in the rail-yard and plans to leave but first he has to heal the illnesses and injuries of his new family. Attacked by dogs and watched by the virus-mutated Ferals and hounded by the surgically altered Tally-Men in a world of ceaseless rain is proving a challenge for this overweight and unhealthy technician - a truly unlikely hero in all senses of the word! It has the feel of M Night Shymalan's 'Unbreakable' - it's a pity his later movies from Signs to the Happening were truly awful. I put Fulcrum for free on Smashwords until the end of the month so take advantage - a hundred downloads this week. I am also busy with my election campaign and trying to say the Cardiff charity that I chair as well as being a carer - a busy life but a rich one!
October 22 2011 -
Shrines ends on a strange confrontational note I did not expect but it
will be another month before hard copies are available so Rob, Steve, El
et Al - you will have to be patient! The Chinese who tried to kidnap
Doctor Smith try again only they bring about a confrontation with the
Child of Dark on a lonely mountain top in Wales by kidnapping Derek
Lewis. Amy comes to the fore as her translocation powers develop
and she and Gemma go on a spree, relocating officers from the ships of super-power fleets threatening the UK and dumping them back in their bases! The real tragic heroine in
Shrines is Siobhan O'Grady who finally embraces her full power only to see the
true natures of the terrifying creature fouling their future timelines (even I didn't see
that coming!) and realises that there is only one possible way she can
save the others in that final confrontation with the Child of Dark.
Well, phew, there we are! The Book is on Kindle and Smashwords and I'm
reducing the price of all six to boost sales. Ka-ching is selling well
in Germany for some weird reason but not here yet I've had a lot of
positive and constructive feedback from musicians. The Long Grin has
sold its first 50 copies but plateaued now and Imust do some work on the 100+
poems I have in progress. It's going to be difficult - apart from my caring for an elderly mother, I've also been
selected to stand for Cardiff Council in May 2012. Interesting times!
September 22 2011 - 530 pages are done and only another 67 to go to give 245,067 words but Shrines is an incredible journey and another character gives another memorable quote: "There is no greater demon that a righteous soul with the wrong information." To those of you asking when the sixth book is online - I'm hoping by the end of the month! The paperbacks will take a little longer so be patient, guys! Thanks.
September 15 2011 - The Shrines edit proceeds apace with 400 pages down and some kick-ass action in the Maeth Research facilities in Oxford where Gemma, Charren and Amy are hunted by six seeker-devices out to kill them. Thanks to Google-Earth the street walk-through helps map out the action in the fictional buildings which would surprise the current residents of Becket Street and Mill Lane. I also have a minor TEFL contract to complete and another four poetry books to read (thanks to Amy Wack of Seren for that). One of the characters, Sifford, gives a quote: "When you twist truth into a double-helix - you end up with the DNA of tyranny." I can't decide which to do next: Light-Father, Ghost Army or Mute! Oh, a big up and thanx to Jim (Jim-Jam) Nettleton for his feedback and promotion and to Mike Thomas and others for promoting my guitar book - greatly appreciated!
September 04 2011 - I am editing Shrines whilst trying to include some of the constructive feedback I've received. Some fan-mail is positive and say they enjoyed the books ('I was gutted when you killed off Thomas Lewis in Rotation but to see him reappear briefly in Changeling was a beautiful surprise' - T Dunn & 'I took the books out of the library three times - I've never done that before not even with Herbert and Heinlein' - Rob Perry) some critics suggest that such a massive project with so many ideas is beyond the capacity of many readers - basically the complex interlinking of themes; the temporal duplicity of God; a religion devouring all others; the Book of All Faith becoming sentient; the world's first cyborg; the Three Fates, ghosts and living goddesses all make perfect sense to me but may overwhelm readers new to this genre (i.e. 'This is a series that should have been separated into 20 books, my friend! Each was okay but the interwoven plots require way too much concentration fotr the 'average' reader IMHO' - M. Fenn). So there you go! Food for thought.
August 23 2011 The revamp of all my book covers on Kindle and Smashword has been a success but book revenues are slightly down - due to the special offers in July. Some feedback suggests the Nexus series may too over-ambitious (200k words per book) for the e-market (where some people consider a measly 5k words as a book) so I am considering suspending the Nexus series on Book 6 (Shrines) which Chris Thomas has kindly agreed to print that book before Wuggles Publishing is retired. The promised bursary for my novel, Ghost Army, blowing the lid off domiciliary care (I was a care worker for two years), has also not materialised yet. Once Shrines is finished, I will work on the compact standalone spin-offs Light and Mute before completing the Nexus. I will keep these to 300pp single books and focus on less characters rather than the town that came to extraordinary life in the Nexus series. The Ka-Ching guitar guide I knocked out in May of this year is selling well with sales in Germany picking up. I am pleased to say that two of the Wuggles Books (Sacred Welsh Waters and Living with Siamese Cats) I e-edited are picking up a few sales too and last but not least, I have 100 pages done on my poetry anthology The Long Grim Book of Thin which I hope to launch later this year.
July 28 2011 - I spent many weeks in April and May launching my books on Kindle and Smashwords and encouraging others. Comments via Kindle Author boards is that my covers needed an upgrade and so I spend several days redesigning them. I am also coming to the conclusion that blogging on message boards is a massive waste of time better spent writing! I also had the pleasure to edit and e-launch Sacred Welsh Waters by Chris Thomas and Living with Siamese Cats by Jenny Bass his wife and look forward to adding his huge repertoire to the e-sphere.
Mar 20 2011 - It has been a long journey so far and this page will now function more as a blog. I wrote Fulcrum in 1995-9 and it evolved as aversion therapy to an MSc Transport degree. I self-published it along with Hissing Missionaries - my first small poetry book and edited and published Spears of Clouds by Garrett John, a local Cardiff poet and friend of mine. Fulcrum was heavily criticised on a BBC Radio review program and I allowed myself to be discouraged and gave away the rest of the print run to charity. The covers were poor but as only 100 existed, I have seen them change hands for over $100 on the internet! I was a councillor until 2004 until I resigned, a single father sickened by greed in politics. When the property boom collapsed in 2006 and Bernard R, the dodgy builder, destroyed one of my two houses, it took down my second business leaving me penniless. I was looking after 4 elderly relatives at one point as well as being a domiciliary carer but to counter depression, I began to write in 2008 and realised that, after many years, that Fulcrum wasn't that bad and it expanded into the Path Transcendent Trilogy. and beyond.
Again, I self published and in hindsight, the covers were not the best I could do! Libraries took copies eagerly and the round of distribution began. I was too small for book signings and the monopoly in Wales, the publicly-funded Welsh Book Council, only services large publishers and has zero tolerance for micro-publishers. Slowly, I got to meet similar souls and Chris Thomas appeared to play the Knight and offered to publish my Shrines trilogy using his Wuggles company and connections with LightningSource - my first experience with Print on Demand. I was also trialling chapters on www.ukauthors.com and poems on www.poetrycritical.net and finally the much friendlier www.poetfreak.com - grateful for the feedback, guys!
Thus the Path Transcendent Trilogy (Fulcrum, Lever and Rotation) was completed and released in Feb 2009. Goddess - the first book of the Shrines Trilogy was released in Feb 2010. Changeling - the second book in the trilogy - was finally completed in Dec 2010 having driven me half-insane with proof-reads! Shrines was put on hold temporarily as I was inspired by nephew Matt to complete a guitar tutor book project I began began in 2007.
NOTE: Each Path trilogy limited run book is signed and of the highest quality. Free e-chapters are downloadable on the Samples page. Many thanks to Chris Thomas, Alison Stormwolf, Amy Wack, Jodi Showers and many others who have commented on the works and the site!