Sunday Sesh #19 - One Fifty Lashes Pale Ale

This Sunday's Sesh is brought to you by James Squire's One Fifty Lashes Pale Ale. I can't provide a link because on the Malt Shovel website, the pale ale hasn't been added for some reason, and on the only other site (called The Squires Bounty), there's nothing about the actual beer - just an advertisement for its launch last year.

Anyhoo, the review.

James Squire's One Fifty Lashes Pale Ale

This is another winner from the James Squire stable. It's light and a little cloudy and not much head and smell crisp and fruity. Very refreshing and easy to drink, and went down a little to quickly to be honest.
It's just a little sweet - almost shandy-ish, but not quite. Highly recommend this one.

I think the lesson here is, if its a James Squire, you won't be disappointed.

Continuing on from last week's post about goal-setting for the new year, I've downloaded and read (on my sparkly new kindle) a couple of books that I hope will assist me in building my "author platform". In other words, how to get people to like me and buy my books, and how to get THOSE people to tell OTHER people to buy my books.

It's going to be a hard slog. I'm under no illusions, however, that it will be any different from writing my books - a marathon rather than a sprint - and damn hard work.

If you're interested, the books are How I Sold a Million Books in 5 Months by John Locke, and two books by Kristen Lamb - We Are Note Alone and Are You There Blog? It's Me, Writer.

If you're at all interested in writing and particularly in self-publishing, I highly recommend all three books. John's is very similar to Kristen Lambs, but John gets you fired up and Kristen Lamb sits you back on your rear and tells you like it is.

Anyway, there will be a few changes around the blog over the next few months. As I said last week, the Sunday Sesh's will continue, and that's because I enjoy writing them. And yeh, ok, I also enjoy the beer.

They will be the only blog posts on here for the next month or so though (unless something really takes my interest), as I re-design the blog and the direction I want it to go in. I need to re-focus on my writing as well, and it all needs to start overlapping. I've started the hard slog towards defining who my readers are, and I now need to work out where they hang out after work. That's harder than I first thought, but it has also helped me to decide where to focus my efforts with regards to which of my (currently) 18 ideas I will concentrate on over the next year or two to build my audience.

Enough of my writing plans though, because I want to tell you, if you're after a fast-paced, fun and dangerously addictive read, you need to check out John Locke's Donovan Creed novels. I downloaded and read two in two days, and I am just waiting for my book budget to tick back over into the black to buy the rest of them. They are purely entertainment, so if you're after literary genius, they're not for you. And at 99c a pop for the kindle editions, what's not to like? They're also in paperback, so you don't need an e-reader to enjoy them.
Donovan Creed, Locke's main character, is a gun-for-hire and is strangely endearing, even if he does have better relationships with prostitutes than real women, and even if he is happy for people to get their come-uppance.

My pick of the two I've read so far is Wish List. Without going into too much detail, it's about a group of friends who enter their wishes onto a website, never thinking for a moment that they would start to come true. As always where Donovan Creed is concerned, there are consequences. This book had me cringing and laughing out loud. Very highly recommended.

That's enough from me this week. I have to decide what beer I'm reviewing next week, since the cupboard is bare. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to give them a go. I'm always after recommendations on what to stock my beer shelf (ok, shelves) with, so don't be shy.

Until next Sunday's Sesh,
Cheers!