Book Bargains!

Discover the Artisan-Sorcerer series for 50% less than the usual price! 

For one week only, many of my ebooks are reduced in price on Smashwords, not just the Artisan-Sorcerer series but others too.

Smashwords describes the event like this:  "Read an Ebook Week is an international celebration of ebooks in which thousands of authors, publishers and retailers feature free and discounted ebooks to help promote the joys of e-reading to the world's readers. Each year, Smashwords authors are the most active participants, and our store features the largest selection of participating titles. It's a fun promotion, because the more the participating authors promote their involvement, the more readers then go on to discover new Smashwords authors. It's writers-helping-writers at its finest."

Use the special Read an E-Book Week code found on each book's regular page on Smashwords.

Make the most of this week-long promotion while it lasts!

Wednesday Writing Tips #8: Underestimate Yourself!

Welcome to this series of writing tips. If you would like to pen a guest post for this series, email me at ACBwrites@aol.com.

How many times have you read advice which encourages you to write 1,000 words a day, every day?  The purpose of this seems logical enough - if you produce a steady flow of words bit by bit your novel or short story collection will be finished.

This standard gem of advice works fine if you have the time to write 1,000 words a day.  Perhaps you sprint past this word-count regularly.  If so, good for you.  However, if you aim for the golden number of 1,000 words but find yourself regularly falling short, this post is for you.

Writing 1,000 words a day might be fine for people who are at home for much of the day.  It might be fine for people who work but whose partners are happy to carry the load while the writer's evenings and weekends are focused solely on writing.  But if you have kids who need taking to and from school and various clubs, a dog which wants its walk, the shopping needs to be done and the housework won't do itself no matter how many times you glower at it, then maybe the 1,000 word goal isn't for you.  And that's perfectly ok.  Especially if you don't want to inspire divorce proceedings.

Fixed word-counts provide a handy goal to aim for, but if you repeatedly fail to hit that desired score your own psychology can work against you.  When repeatedly you tell yourself that a job is too hard or the task is too much, and that once again you've failed to hit the target, you create a barrier in your own mind which grows in accordance with the negative energy you feed it with.

So try underestimating your achievable word-count and, in doing so, get your psychology to work for you. 

Try dropping your word-count right down to 250 words.  Producing a minimum of 250 words a day is easy.  You can fit that in between washing the breakfast dishes and setting off to work.  Or you could do that on the train going to work, or in your lunch break.  You might pen your 250 while your family watch a TV show which doesn't interest you. 

If 250 words flow easily, try raising the word count to 300, 350, 500.  Experiment and see what works for you.   Remember that you can always write far more than your set word count, but give yourself a little cheer each time you hit that modest number.  This way, you embed the feeling that you can readily achieve your goals and in doing so make achieving them more easy.

Try it and see how you get on.

Further Reading:
Wednesday Writing Tips #7:  Develop Your Creative Potential by Gemma Gaten.
Wednesday Writing Tips #6:  The Magic Formula.
Wednesday Writing Tips #5: The Challenge of Blank Space.

Happy 50th Birthday, Me!

Adele in The Blue Moon Cafe, Chester.

 

 



Yesterday I celebrated my 50th birthday.  First I took our dogs for a walk round Gilroy Nature Park which is already showing signs of spring.  Buds are swelling on the trees and birds were singing their fluting songs - I saw a robin, green finches, reed buntings and a mistle thrush as well as the usual mob of mallards, coots and Canada geese. 

 

There was a woman feeding some of the horses in the adjacent field and I commented to her about their poor condition;  "Well, it's winter," she said, "so they roll in mud."  I know little about horses but they looked to be in a shabby state to me. Their coats are matted, mud-caked and damp.  While the higher half of the field looks less muddy than by the barbed wire fence, there is no truly dry area for them to stand on.  Some of the horses are wearing coats but these are filthy and damp-looking also.  There is no shelter in the field and the only water comes from a flooded corner of the field also used by ducks and geese, so it's not clean water.  There is no food or hay left in any trough of any kind.  On my way back past the horses yesterday, a second woman was trying to feed one of them and she was swinging a stout, L-shaped metal pole at the other horses to try to drive them away while her own horse seemed too nervous to come forward.

 

I reported their condition to the RSPCA about three weeks ago but nothing seems to have been done.  Maybe this is an acceptable way to keep horses?  It seems a miserable life - but again, I'm no horse expert so I could be wrong.

 

 

 

 

On Sunday, my day-job colleagues presented me with a birthday cake with "Happy 50th Birthday, Adele" piped in icing on the top.  They all sang Happy Birthday while I blew the candles out, which made me smile like the big kid we all are at heart.  They presented me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a huge box of chocolates, and a birthday card plus a wad of money "to get yourself something".  It was lovely of them.  I felt so spoiled!

 

Most of Monday was spent in Chester, which is one of our favourite places.  One of our favourite eating spots looks like it's come under new management, as all its cosy olde worlde charm has been replaced by 1990s minimalism in lugubrious shades of battle-ship grey.  Even the lovely gleaming-wood bar had been hidden beneath a coating of ugly tiles.  The place used to be very busy.  Yesterday there were far more staff than customers.

 

The new menu made us chuckle.  Everything had been given complex descriptions, such as the ground meat compress topped with a locally sourced golden-yellow artisan cheese in a crusty country roll sprinkled with toasted poppy seeds and served with oblong-cut deep-sauteed potatoes garnished with freshly ground black pepper.   The words "locally sourced", "country" and "rustic" were sprinkled liberally throughout the menu.  Even the ketchup had been rendered as "rustic tomato relish".  Once Richard and I had stopped giggling we were tempted to give the food a go, but the party who took the table next to ours had a member who blew her nose in a trumpet solo fit for the Hallé Orchestra then repeatedly coughed and hacked with truly rustic relish, and as we didn't wish to be liberally garnished with locally sourced bacteria, we chose to dine elsewhere.

 

So how does it feel to turn 50?  Yay, I now qualify for Sun Life Insurance after all these years of them dedicatedly sending me junk mail!  No, seriously, turning 50 feels fine.  When I turned 40 I remember feeling down about that, as if I'd slipped into middle-age and all life was downhill after that point - which is total nonsense, by the way.  Did life begin at 40?  Life begins the minute any person chooses to start  living as opposed to merely existing - and the definition of "living" is 100% an individual one. 

 

But here I am at 50...  Wow, how did that happen?  Tempus fugit, and you'd better believe it.  What have I done so far?  Got born; went to school then college; got my first real job (editor); swapped the parental home for a haunted house; entered a secret order; was employed as a freelance writer/illustrator; wrote my first novel; moved to a microscopic flat in Aigburth; did various other jobs; left the secret order and went to art school; ran a fanzine with a cult following so exclusive that - to the best of my knowledge - only one person (Nick Fawkes!) still remembers it, apart from me; was unemployed for years; got a job (writer/photographer/listings editor); joined OBOD; married Richard; worked in a pottery; began writing seriously; became a cryonicist...  And then it was Now!

 

And now this flesh-and-blood vehicle is 50 - and I feel great!

A Random Ramble about Clothes

As I rapidly head towards my 50th birthday, I'm a tad bewildered by 'How To Wear...' fashion articles (pun intended).  Are methods of wearing clothes really a mystery, when all any person need do is stick their head through the neck hole, their arms through the arms holes or sleeves, pull the garment into place around the body then use any fasteners supplied.  This season's trending item will be next season's disparaged rag - assuming a person actually cares about such stuff.

Thomas Joseph Walton used to say, "When I'm out, the wardrobe is out."  He was referring to his habit of wearing same clothes year in, year out.  When something finally fell into undeniable shabbiness his wife would ensure it vanished into the bin.  I saw him wear the same trousers for seven years, and they were already old when I met him.  Yet he did have better clothes; I once saw him dressed in a very smart evening suit with matching raincoat and trilby hat, when he hadn't been expecting to see me.  The shabby gear was a uniform of sorts, worn deliberately - perhaps so he could move around cities without drawing unwanted attention to himself, and perhaps also so his image became imprinted in the memories of his circle of pupils as one way of creating mind-links, (think of the person, visualise their image clearly, and the link is made).

My husband has a lot of clothes - far more than I do - yet they're virtually the same.  He has countless black t-shirts and black polo shirts, jeans, white sports socks and dark, clumpy walking boots - and little else.  When he goes clothes shopping, he goes into one store and buys an armful of the same thing.  That's a far as his interest goes.

My father was similar; he wore brown cardigans, white shirts, brown or beige trousers, brown or beige jackets, and his mandatory brown flat cap.  He refused all Mum's decades-long efforts to get him into a trilby, saying they were for pretentious snobs. 

Mum herself has vast wardrobes and chests of drawers full of clothes, hardly worn, all waiting for the right occasion.    She has maintained a life-long determination to Wear Things Out, which means she's spent years plodding around in ill-fitting, down-at-heel knitwear which once belonged to her own mother.  She's saving her good clothes for when Someone Important comes to visit, whenever that might be.  Some of these precious items have been waiting so long that they don't fit her now, as advancing age has reduced her size considerably.

As I child, I was dressed in clothes which my older sister had outgrown after our even older sister had outgrown them, and these had been bought second-hand.  No-one else was wearing 1940s dresses in the early 1970s.  Now we'd call it retro.  Back then, it was embarrassing.  Later on, after I'd fallen in love with Marc Bolan, I recall being incredibly proud of a pair of crimpolene trousers with an elasticated waistband, bought on Newton-le-Willows outdoor market.  They were black with knee-high triangular  side-inserts of canary yellow, with three big white plastic buttons stitched up the yellow. 

When I was fourteen, my mother declared that now I had a Saturday job in King Street Market, in Leigh, I would be buying all my own clothes, toiletries, school supplies and paying for my own high school bus fares from then on.  I'd also give her half of the £2.50 I earned.  Later, with Hazel's help, I got a better Saturday job on Leigh Market where she was working on a toffee stall, and I learned to lie about how much my earnings had increased just so I could get through college, otherwise I'd have been in rags - and I mean that literally.

Earlier this week I saw a teenaged girl wearing a pair of black and white stripy peddle-pushers like the ones I'd worn some twenty years ago.  I loved those pants at the time!  I have photos of me wearing them with big white wooden clogs and a silky, flowery shirt which I'd thought was very LA Guns/Dogs D'Amour.  Well, sort of...  The clogs hash-up the look but they were actually really comfy.  (And now I'm playing Malaria for old time's sake).

Mark Twain said, 'Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.'   So often we hear the PC chant of "Appearances don't matter," even though we all recognise this to be perfect bunkum.  If we all truly believed this, the clothing and cosmetics industries would have an annual turn-over of billions. 

New-Look Website!

What do you think of the new-look website?  The aim was to simplify the layout, reducing three columns to two so there was less visual clutter.  There's also a new colour scheme to consider; apparently some people using an old monitor found the previous one a little difficult to read.

The temporary hiatus which Riverside Writers' meetings have undergone will end soon, as West Kirby Library have nearly finished repairing the interior after bits of the ceiling fell off.  The next meeting of Riverside Writers will take place on the 27th of this month.  Tim phoned to pass on the news about the library being ready to re-open, so my next little job is to zap an email round to everyone on the group's mailing list.

Speaking of mailing lists, did you know I have a free emailing list with Yahoo Groups?  To sign up, use the clickable box in the side column.  Membership brings a number of privileges, such as having book release dates or events dates sent straight to your usual email box.  Members can also communicate with each other through the mailing list.

And speaking of events, now the library is set to re-open I will be able to arrange a date for a public reading.  It's been a while since I've done this, so I'm looking forward to sharing my work with a live audience again.

The first snowdrops are in flower!  Our hazel tree is festooned with fluffy yellow catkin tails, wobbling gently in the breeze.  Squirrels have surely eaten the last of the tree's nut crop by now, but a few keep visiting the tree in the hope of another find.  Needless to say, my two Jack Russells bark themselves into frenzies each time they see one flick of a grey bushy tail.  Some people moan about squirrels, calling them vermin; I think they're cute even though they're partially responsible for the decline of our native red squirrels.

Mum gave me a pond pump but it's probably too big for our pond.  As the pond is intended for amphibians a pump isn't really needed.  The solar powered fountain I bought off eBay turned out to be tiny, and it only works when the sun's directly overhead and dazzling; so in winter it doesn't work at all, as our skies are the shade of an old and well-scarred plastic tub.  For now, the pump is stashed at the back of the cubby-hole under the stairs.  I'd better make a decision as to what I'm going to do with it, otherwise it'll still be stashed there "for now" in a decade's time with the excuse of "it'll come in handy".  There must be some weird law of physics - Prof. Brian Cox would be the chap to ask about this - which explains why stuff which might come in handy never does until after it's been thrown out.

Wanted! 50 Volunteer Bookworms!

ISBN: 9781476124902



Fifty copies of Bethany Rose have been set aside for volunteer bookworms. 

To qualify to receive one free digital copy, you will need to have  - or contribute to - an active blog site or to be an Amazon reviewer.  In return for your free copy, you will pledge to write and publish your honest review of the novel, ideally within one month of receiving your copy.

Apply by sending an email to ACBwrites@aol.com and write BETHANY ROSE REVIEW in the subject line.  Please provide an URL to your blog or reviews so that your claim may be verified.

About the book: "Selkies, Ghosts, Terror and Romance!  Morgan seems perfect, but he is a member of a mysterious occult order. Can he protect Bethany Rose from power-crazed assassins?

 

"Horrified by visitations from a black-robed spectre, Bethany Rose runs to Morgan - and straight into danger.  They want to be together. But will love keep them apart?"

Sorcerers and Dog Coats.

The Faerie Pond, Stapledon Woods

I've been busy writing Fabian, and was wondering how many further books this series might run to.   The answer suddenly popped into my head, which is something that tends to happen if I don't block the process somehow by trying too hard to make this work.  If I set out thinking something like, "Ok, I now want the answer to X" regards my writing, nothing happens.  If I just open my mind to possibilities, ask the question and then immediately let it go off into the ether - to use a term which is vague but sufficiently useful - and forget about it, then more often than not the answer flashes back.  Is my brain a cosmic postbox?  (That might explain the amount of 'junk mail'...!)

So, the Artisan-Sorcerer Series will run to seven books in all.  I have the titles of the last three.  Each is named after the main character in that particular novel, eg. Tamsin, Rowan, Bethany Rose and the fourth, which has around 30,000 words left before it will be finished, being Fabian.  I'm not going to announce the last three titles yet, as I don't want to give away even the slightest hint about unfolding sub-plots, but now I have a clearer structure to work with I feel more confident with where the series is heading.

While America is experiencing major snow and blizzard conditions, here in Wirral the weather has been mild - save for a storm which co-incided with a hide tide, causing some flooding and structural damage along the promenades at West Kirby and New Brighton in particular.  While the storm offered some striking photographic conditions, I felt bemused by how many people risked their lives just to make a YouTube video or a Facebook photo update.  Some people seem to underestimate the tremendous power of water, which can easily bowl an adult off their feet.  If the waves you're filming can throw around a four-wheel drive Range Rover as if it's a paper box - as was shown in one video - is it wise to be standing in them?  Perhaps this is my inherant cautiousness showing; even as a child I was always very aware of potential hazards re. personal safety. 

I enjoyed a fabulous walk through Stapledon Woods with my two dogs, though it was a bit boggy underfoot in places.  The Faerie Pond is full now, reflecting the skeletal trees all around it.  In the photo you can see Poppi trying to pluck up the courage to have a paddle.  I'm glad she didn't as she's wearing her new coat.  The dogs' old coats were totally worn out, with ragged hems from several years of mad adventures in the woods.  Poppi had been wearing-out Ygraine's old coat, and it was too big for her really.  Wearing it, she looked like a coat on feet.  Anyway, now they've cute pink tartan coats which fasten with Velcro straps and which hopefully will wash easily enough.  Here's hoping some fruit-cake doesn't invent a dry-clean-only dog coat.  Well, they can if they want to, but just don't expect me to buy any.

Goals for 2014

Following From:
Goals for 2013
Goals for 2012

For the last two years, I've started the year by making a list of goals - partially for fun, and partially because it's a way of tracking my progress with projects.

So, here were my goals for 2013:

1. Complete 1st draft of Fabian.
2. Complete NVQ Level 3 in Customer Care.
3. Publish a 2nd free ebook anthology (with Riverside Writers and maybe other writers too).
4. Write one short story per month (minimum).
5. Write one poem per month (minimum).
6. Add one new design to Spooky Cute Designs per month (minimum).
7. (...And last but not least), have more fun.

Let's see how I did... Ok, Fabian is not finished; approximately 30,000 words are still to be written, so while the end is in sight clearly there's work to be done.

However, I not only completed the NVQ Level 3 in Customer Care but also achieved an NVQ Level 2 in Business Skills, and an NCFE Level 2 in the Principles of Dementia Care. This goes some way to explain why Fabian isn't finished!

The second free ebook anthology, City Stories, was published in November and contains original stories and poetry both from Riverside Writers members and from some non-members too.  It follows on from the previous year's Seaside Stories.  My contribution to this collection was a story inspired by my cosplay-loving niece, Catherine, and is called Role Play.

I've only written four poems and six short stories, but one of these stories was published as a childrens ebook called The Grumpets. 

New designs were added to Spooky Cute Designs for seven months out of the year, often several new designs at any one time.  This is my online gift shop which offers several ranges of exclusive items, including one range specifically created for writers and another for cryonicists.

'Have more fun' has been important, too.  I've always loved dolls and already had a small number which I'd collected over the years.  I decided to put these on display so I could enjoy them, rather than have them buried in the back of a cupboard.  The collection grew!  It all began with an adorable vintage 1940's baby doll with a sweet expression, and it went on from there as other vintage dolls came to live here, such as an OOAK pink-haired Blythe and an adorable Pedigree Walker black doll with sideways-sliding eyes, and a re-rooted Pippa with fabulous long red hair, and some Bleeding Edge beauties.  And for Xmas, Richard bought me five Monster High dolls - a howling werewolf, a lights-up ghost, and a lights-up Frankenstein's Monster's daughter, plus two others - all quite gorgeous and multi-jointed and fun to pose.

In late spring, I took up swimming.  This has become a regular fixture in my routine.  At first, I couldn't even swim one length without having to grab for the pool-side while frantically gasping for breath.  Now I swim forty lengths twice each week (without any gasping!) and am really enjoying this.  For some mad reason, the swimming pool is closed for the better part of two weeks over the Xmas/New Year period - a dumb idea if ever there was one.

During 2013, I've been listening to quite a variety of jazz, a music form which I hadn't anticipated getting into.  I've been enjoying this little journey of discovery of music that's fifty years old or more but which is brand new to me.  I hadn't realised the term 'jazz'covered such a broad range of music; previously I'd assumed it mostly sounded like a pile of pans falling down a cliff, all ratt-tat-tat drums and frantically-tooting trumpets but that's not how all of it sounds, so i've discovered by experimentation.  Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck have become firm favourites.

So, my goals for 2014:-

1. Finish Fabian!
2. Publish a 3rd free ebook anthology (which will be called Travel Stories - the submission guidelines are already available on Riverside Writers website).
3. Write one short story per month (minimum).
4. Continue to collect dolls, swim and have even more fun!

The list is shorter this year.  That's because I want to make Fabian a priority and also because I don't want to put myself under quite so much pressure to achieve things.  I am not my material achievements; they're what I choose to do, not who or what I am.

Bargain Tattoo Offer!