Warrick Mayes and Sleeping with God

It’s time to introduce you to my little secret, the wonderful Warrick Mayes. 

The world had become such a dark dreary place and this man came charging along like my knight in shining armour and offer his noble services to me. He took my novel in his armour cladded hand and sifted through my stubborn spelling mistakes and for that I’m truly grateful.

But his talents are never ending and Mr Gallant Prince is also a pretty darn amazing author and poet. You can find his work by following the links below.

Sleeping with God

Holy Shit

Erotic Shorts

Eggs-Cell Files

Little book of Rhyme and Reason     

In Warrick Mayes words explain “Sleeping with God” to us.

Sleeping With God:-

An ordinary man discovers that he is married to God, a very beautiful and sexy woman - two things that are difficult to reconcile.  Add the realisation that, as God, his wife knows what he is thinking, and you have a worried man.  Is it OK for a man to find God sexy, have fantasies about her, and have her know all these things?  This starts to cause problems with his sex drive and with his whole system of beliefs.

He then discovers that she, God, owns a strip club, a porn business and other less than reputable businesses.  He starts to wonder if she might be the Devil rather than God.  He bumps into another man, who is sympathetic to his problem and seems to be more God-like than his wife, and have similar powers. Add in an exotic dancer, and other temptations and our ordinary man is tested to the limit.

Sleeping with God’ could be seen by some people as a rather controversial read, and a risky project for you, (however I think it’s a masterpiece) how did you come up with the idea for this story?

I'm not worried by controversy.  I also think that religion would do better if it were prepared to discuss such controversial concepts instead of simply condemning them.  If God exists, then when we first tried to explain that which we didn't understand by the existence of a god, man did so in terms of his understanding at that time.  If we had to draw similar conclusions today, God would probably be described in completely different terms.

I also think that God is not so far removed from nature as we believe.  Thus he/she (and why not a mother God) would actually be in favour of procreation, so participation would be a natural extension of that belief.

I'm sure there will be lots of religious people who will avoid this book because of its title.  However, religious people still enjoy sex.  And, this is not meant to be an argument against the existence of a god, but is simply a fictional story for people to enjoy.

I love the way you put temptation in Alex’s way and the internal struggle that he faces to stay on the correct path. Do you think this is what happens in life? That we humans are simply pawns in a game of chess been played by forces so much bigger then we are?

Temptation:

You used "been", so that's a smacked-botty coming your way. (you can edit that bit out! - or were you tempting me?)

No, I don't believe that God is placing temptation in our path.  However, we all face temptation and it's how we deal with that temptation that determines our path in life.  I believe that giving in to these temptations will lead to short-term happiness; bit will eventually lead to greater unhappiness.  Thus it's better not to give in, and the benefits will be greater. 

The question all author’s get thrown at them, how much of Mr Mayes is actually in Alex?

Ha!  There's quite a lot of me in Alex.  I think this is natural.  We all know that it's easier to explain an emotion we have experienced than one we haven't.  Thus, it's easier to make Alex respond in ways I can imagine myself responding - so I become Alex and he becomes me.

Have you met your own Mogdia?

To avoid any embarrassment for people I currently know, I will answer this in terms of people from my dim and distant past.

When I was at college there was this girl I met at a party.  We were both friends of the host, I was at West Kent College and she was at East Kent College.  Her name was Susan.  We enjoyed a wonderful evening together, exchanged telephone numbers and spoke a number of times on the phone together in the days that followed.  Then something changed and she didn't want to see me again.  She was perfect in just about every way.  We never got to the stage that Alex and Mogdia reached but I was heart-broken when I couldn't convince her to see me again.  

I know you have a few projects in the pipe line but as we speak what are you currently focusing on?

I have several things in the pipeline.  A second book of rhyme will be released in January "Below a Tree..."  It's complete, but I'm waiting for proofs to arrive in the post, and will release it if they look good.

I've just finished writing a story-rhyme called "The Wizardry of Bentley Sluff".  I have sent it to some agents who specialise in children's books and also to some illustrators as I'm not up to illustrating it.  It may be some time before it's released because it really needs some nice pictures to compliment the story.

I'm writing a fairy story, a modern day frog-prince.  I have a real-life princess to thank for the idea, and I'm about half-way through the write, with all the re-writing and editing to follow.  

As I work on these other projects I'm also continuing to write more poetry, so another book of rhyme will probably be complete some time in 2016.

What book/author shaped you into the writer that you are today?

I can't say there's any one author who has influenced me more than any other.  However, I would say that I draw on three authors for inspiration, not that I'm like any of them.  Joseph Heller, the author of catch-22 put so many ideas into that book, he virtually exhausted all his writing talent in one go.  It was a masterpiece.

Douglas Adams, who I first heard of when listening to radio 4 in the 1970's, wrote the wonderful HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy.  I loved his ideas and would be so proud if I could write something that captured people's imagination in the same way.

Finally, Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels and much more besides.  I always chuckle when I read his work, and strive to create worlds that mirror our own in the amazing way he manages to do it.

Do you have writing ritual? 

I don't have any writing rituals.  I also don't make any commitments.  When I sit down to write I might end up working on a poem or writing another chapter of a book.  I get side-tracked by other ideas, hence the reason I have so many books on the go at once.

Give me your top 3 dinner guest and a brief reason why you’d invite them?

The first person I thought of was Putin.  It's not that i would particularly enjoy his company, but I would like an opportunity to tell him what I think of his expansionist policies.  

Secondly, and in contrast, I would like to invite Nicola Adams.  I was so impressed by her performance in the London Olympics when she became Britain's first ever female olympic gold-medal boxer.  I swear she was smiling all the way through the final.  She was so bubbly and enthusiastic I thought she was a teenager, but it turned out she was nearly thirty years old.  I'm a sports fan and there were so many possibilities for this slot.  I considered Kriss Akabusi, Sebastion Coe, Peter Osgood or Didier Drogba.

My final guest would be my grandfather, Dennis Walter Mayes.  He was very influential in my early years, but I would love one more dinner now that I have so much more life experience.  He fought in the Spanish Civil War, but before that he flew on the R33 airship as part of the crew.  He was one of the skeleton crew that was on board when a storm caused the airship to break free of its mast.  The crew brought it back to the base despite some considerable damage to the nose, and were awarded gold watches for their effort.

Quick Fire Round:-

Favourite film - Monsters Inc

Tea or Coffee? - depends what you're offering.

Next country to visit - Cambodia (having been to Egypt and Cancun in Mexico)

well its time for you to jump on board your charge and ride off into the the sunset, thank you for joining me on my humble blog.

My Book Cover Uncovered,

My wonderful friend Eric Wilder, the founder of the grimmreport and the author of I’Humpty is also a pretty darn good designer. Eric has produced for me the book cover for my first novel ‘Loved and Lost’ 


Eric designed this cover for me as a surprise without any input from me so i can’t take any credit for any of it. 


I feel that he has captured the theme of the story brilliantly, I especially love the way that the hands form a heart shape and that the two lovers are losing the wording symbolising the lost love Its cleaver and its eye catching what more do you need from a cover page.

Should you wish to commission Eric for your design work, please visit his web site ericwilder. where you will find a showcase of other projects that he has worked on or find him at grimmreport.com for a consolation. 

All that I really have left to say now is I owe you big time Grimmy, thank you so very much for your friendship and your skills.

AllisonSarah: To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish?I’ve decid...

AllisonSarah: To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish? I’ve decid...: To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish? I’ve decided to self-publish my romance novel Loved and Lost.  If you’re considering whether to...

To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish?

I’ve decided to self-publish my romance novel Loved and Lost.  If you’re considering whether to go this route, here are the things I took into consideration. I hope my process can make your decision easier.

I found the whole publishing process to be daunting. One of the biggest issues is a certain kind of snobbery throughout the entire process, the whole “if the synopsis isn’t good enough then we will not even open the attachment…the first grammatical error that I hit I will stop reading…we don’t consider work from unpublished authors”…but…but…how does one become a published author if no one will consider your work?

Before I looked into any kind of publishing, I was under the naive impression that if you had a good strong story base then the Agent/Publishing house would pick up your work and guide you, helping you with the plot and the grammar and then to assist you with the marketing of the book.

But apparently not.  You now need to have a strong social media base so that you can conduct your own marketing.  You also need to be an editor, and a proof reader.  So if the author is doing all that, what’s left for the Agent/Publishing house? Only to collect whatever meager profits there are,  it seems

So after taking all of that on board, and the fact that even the likes of great authors like JK Rowling get turned down, it seems like there had to be a better way.  That’s when I decided to follow the self-publishing route of authors like E.L James. The ‘50 Shades Of Grey’ books were initially self-published.  

Don’t get me wrong I’m not under any false pretense that this will make me rich.  I’m fully aware that that will not be the case, but I do feel that the way forward is to cut out the middle man and just go for it.

Here is my process:

‘Loved and Lost’ was tested by neutral readers.  I offered it out on twitter to strangers so that I could get true feedback on what I had written. This helped me a lot.  

The general response was that I had something with this book, a story that, especially women, could relate to and I used my readers feedback to continue to make improvements to Loved and Lost.

So what’s stopping more people like myself from joining Amazon and pushing that self-pub button? There are some important steps that need to be done first and some of them can be costly.


1.    Editing.  The cost of getting that final edit done.  This I have found can be a right sticking point.  It will cost you money but it needs to be done.  It does seem to be the biggest reason stopping people from going for it.
2.    The book cover.  Again a cost unless you are design savvy yourself.
3.    Marketing. One of the best marketing tools today is social media and guess what? This is free. Follow a few simply rules like tweet a lot and retweet. This helps to build up connections worldwide and whilst you are at it, it also helps to build some really great friendships.
4.    Proof Reading.  Again this can be costly but again I have used social media for this. I offered ‘Loved and Lost’ out to readers for constructive feedback.  I had a good response and I used that help to improve ‘Loved and Lost.’
5.    Printing.  Again, this costs, but nowadays, this is an extra.  Most people have kindles or e-readers so do we need to have to have the book in print? While I would love to have ‘Loved and Lost’ as a hardcopy, for now I’m willing to settle for an e-book. After the book has been out for a while and generated some sales, then I can add on the print version.

One of the larger issues (and this goes back to the snobbery of publishing) is whether you can yourself a published author if you self-publish?  

Here’s the thing, you don’t need the publishing industries permission anymore.  If you publish a book, you’re a published author.  Just ensure you have an ISBN number and you’re good to go. Or if you chose to publish on Amazon then a an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is not required to publish content with Kindle Direct Publishing. Once your content is published on the KDP web site,Amazon.com will assign it a 10-digit ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is unique to the eBook.


The world has changed and the publishing world is quickly changing with it.  If you have a story that’s worth telling… then tell it.

AllisonSarah: The witty and intriguing I, Humpty by Eric C. Wild...

AllisonSarah: The witty and intriguing I, Humpty by Eric C. Wild...: The witty and intriguing I, Humpty by Eric C. Wilder I, Humpty is a collection of mock tabloid style short stories, mixing classic chil...

The witty and intriguing I, Humpty by Eric C. Wilder

I, Humpty is a collection of mock tabloid style short stories, mixing classic children’s fairy tales with modern day life. I Humpty flows easily and is fun to read, starting and ending with the story of Humpty himself.

Through the pages we visit the quirky world of many of the charming fairy tale characters that we all grew up with, discovering the dark truth behind our old time favourites with just the right fusion of adult humour bringing the works to life and providing you with endless belly crunching laughs.

Uncover the reality behind the Hansel and Gretel scandal, be a fly on the wall of some of ‘Fairy Tale Lands’ most prestigious marriages and will we even discover what part of Pinocchio’s body grows when he tells a lie...

Treat yourselves to a copy of  I,Humpty

As it is my friend Eric Wilder is not only a fantastic author, but he has many projects under his belt, so it is with my great pleasure that I introduce to you this great guy.



So Eric let’s get to know you, tell us about Mr Wilder.

Well, I could tell you that I’m an author, a designer, or a blogger. What I should say is that I spend the majority of my time responding to the whims of my adorable children. You can follow my exploits at the following social media sites:



Twitter: @grimmreport

Tumblr: grimmreport.

Google+: +grimmreport

Ello: @ericwilder



In Mr. Wilder’s words tell us about I Humpty.

I, Humpty is a collection of mock-tabloid satire marrying the reality of everyday life with popular elements from fairytales, folklore, and nursery rhymes. Rejoice with the Beast as Belle grants him permission to convert the den into a man-cave. Learn why the third little pig grows weary of his live-in brothers. Follow the courtroom drama of Rumpelstiltskin’s indictment in the Straw-To-Gold Scandal. I, Humpty covers all of these stories and more.



Have you always had a passion for mixing up fairy tales with modern day life?

For the last couple of years I’ve run a fake news site called the Grimm Report, from which all the articles within I, Humpty were selected. There were many reasons why I created it. Much of which was fueled by my time spent working at home while raising my two children. There is a great immersion in fairytale and nursery rhyme with this scenario, and great longing for more mature subject matter as consequence. Somewhere along the line, those two items merged in my brain, and I started spewing it out onto the Internet.



Is I, Humpty your first published book?

Yes and no. This is the first book I have published comprised solely of my own work. I have published an anthology of other people’s writings, as well as collaborated on comic



What are you currently working on?

After spending over a year writing fake news reports I’m trying my hand at writing a mock biography. I love satire. I’d like to take the writing style that I developed with I, Humpty and really blow it out.



What is your writing routine? (do you listen to music, eat sweets, drink coffee?)

Lot’s of coffee. I write down what I can when I can. I have to watch a two-year-old the majority of my time, so I have to pick and choose my moments. I’ll grab whatever scrap of paper I can find when I think of something to write down or I’ll forget it. Sometimes I’ll dictate ideas into my phone. When I can, I’ll compile the jumbled mess and hope for the best. Usually that’s sometime after 9 pm.

What is the next book on your reading list and what are you currently reading?

Currently I’m reading Becoming Josephine by Heather Webb. I read a little bit of everything, but a lot of memoirs and historical fiction. The style of I, Humpty, and my next project, combine fantasy with a news-based narrative. It takes a great deal of influence to develop that. I could be reading a science fiction one day, and a senator’s battle against the mortgage crisis the next. Follow that with a movie star memoir. It’s a pretty broad range, but it keeps the ideas flowing for what I want to create.



Name your five fantasy dinner guests.

Let’s see…

Hmmmm... (you hear the cogs turning) 

Belle, Quasimodo, Mad Hatter, Puss N’ Boots, and The Easter Bunny.



The dish that you would supply to the fantasy dinner party?

Scrambled egg.

As always Eric or Grimmy as I like to call you, you have been amazing and such great fun. I really can't thank you enough for giving up some of your precious time to join me on my blog it really means a lot.

Thank you Karen for including me on the blog hop path. I have been following the chain and reading with interest why other people write and it appears we all have one thing in common and that is because we have to.

So I don't think my reason is anymore unique then anybody else's instead I'll give a little insight into me, my processes and when the urge started.

One thing I would like to ask is how many of my writer friends had imaginary friends as a child? As I think this is when my story telling began, I would squeeze behind the sofa and according to my mother talk in a range of different voices to my invisible people acting out my games. Hum yes okay that now sounds strange ... but I think it was just my way of releasing the story's before I could write...

Okay moving on.

Once I learnt to write there was no stopping me, little bits of story's emerged and on any little bits of spare pieces of scrap paper. Some of which I still have today (*cough cough* although my childhood was not THAT long ago)

Every school report was the same Allison loves to read and has a very vivid imagination but her spelling is a problem, she spells how she speaks...thus been a big issue as people from Hull have a strong accent and pronounce words very differently to how they are spelt in the Oxford English Dictionary. As this was a constant struggle for me I lost my confidence and only ever wrote my story's for my best friend and this is how Perditor was born.

I wrote the story from a game that we played together and she illustrated the book, we planned that one day we would get it published by working in this way. To this day Perditor still sits on the shelf. Bless it...it's still there only it's need to be told was not as strong as "Loved and Lost" and the second book "Twisted Love" they were much more impatient.

Back onto the WHY.

Nagging - I'm sure many of you will feel this too, the constant niggling of the characters and for some reason the more you ignore them the louder they shout.

Day Dreaming - Then the take over. Until I give in and start tapping away I find that I fall into a constant state of zombie like day dreams acting out scenarios in my mind.

The Actual Writing - I'm not a writer that needs to plan the plot, I just write as it comes out, I scribble down parts of the story as they develop in my mind and then I slot those parts in as the story develops and yes as wrong as it is I have also written a story ending when I was only part of the way through the story. I can't explain why I tend to "scatter" write it's just the way I work.

Well the above is my take on WHY I write and now I'm going to introduce two amazing lady's to the chain.

My good friend and supporter Serena Louise and the author of the brilliant "Madeline" Serena has helped me no end with Loved and Lost and for that I'm eternally grateful

"I'm a writer. At least, I'd like to think so. I write. I think about writing. I'm in love with my characters, and they are my first thoughts in the morning and last at night. I'm obsessed by people that don't exist. By that little analysis, I like to believe that I am a writer, unpublished or not. The unpublished bit might be over one day, but even now in the trenches of an unfinished or unedited novel I think that I am exactly that."

Serena's blog http://serenaswritingroom.blogspot.co.uk/

Introducing Miss Scarlett Fslame I'm not sure if Scarlett will remember but her blog was my inspiration to blog and I'm honoured that she agreed to take part in the blog hop with me.

"Flame haired girl writing her second novel...Well hello there and come on in and take a seat. Let me introduce myself, my name is Scarlett Flame and this is my Blog. I will share books, reviews and my adventures (when I have them) so please visit often. Writing and reading are my two main passions and I hope to share them with you"

Scarlett flames blog http://missscarlettflame.blogspot.co.uk/

Over to you lady's I look forward to your post.