The little bumblebee

Who trusts the little bumblebee that it will not sting?

A little fairy on a bough with brightly shining wings

She trusts the little bumblebee that it will harm her, not.

That is a little fact you know, that we have most forgot

A little bee won’t harm us, to them that’s suicide

Instead we shouldn’t flap our arms; just let them fly right by

The noble bumblebee, what will we do without?

It’s such a shame we forget them, and give them all a clout

Without their grace and charm, we will have no farms

Without their working ways, in the meadow won’t be hay

Without them it won’t be funny, we need more than just their honey

Just think about them as friends, and their life never put an end

Bees should last forever, without them we will starve

Bees should be protected, both near and far

So if you care about the world, just remember this

Bees are there for us, do not treat them amiss

© Tina Cousins 2013

lost in emotions (a poem) ?

Where I go, I feel everything

Where I’ll stay, no one knows

How true is love and miracles?

When there’s no place to go?

I need my friends

I need an end

I need hope

I need forever loving

Don’t lead me astray

Just lead me to a place

Where dreams can come true

I need this, I need you

© Tina Cousins 2013

The above was written just a few moments ago, I am going through a very dark few months.  My family has had a lot of bad luck and a lot of skeletons in closets are starting to fall out, it’s destroying the extensive family and it’s literally killing the younger members of the family.

A fortnight ago I lost my cousin, she was only thirty years old and she had four kids.  My brother was very close to her; in fact they lived next door to each other and shared dinners regularly as he was supporting her as a single mother, despite having his own family to care for too.  I heard news that my brothers depression has got far worse that he attempted suicide last night, thankfully he was unsuccessful but up until two hours ago he was unable to breath independently, unfortunately we live too far apart that I couldn’t be with him and I only got the news an hour ago.  The machines were turned off and he is now breathing without assistance, which is a blessing.

I have also been diagnosed with manic depression a few months ago as well, so my mood goes up and down like a yo-yo and I have been told that it could be the depression which has caused a lot of my long-term illnesses to get worse and I am in a vicious cycle of poor health and depression feeding off each other, if you understand me?

It’s a big blow to me because up until an hour ago I was feeling really happy and I thought I was getting over my depression as I’ve been on a BIG high because of this blog and because I was treated to a new wardrobe of clothes last month and I started to do myself up again, taking an interest in my appearance again, which has been non-existent for a year now. 

Needless to say I’ve been in tears, but I have got to a point in my life I talk endlessly about things as my coping mechanism, I am not one to mope around in silence.  I’ve done that for years, it made things worse; weird enough talking about things so openly is better therapy for me.

I have no idea what the ditty was I wrote above, I don’t know if it’s a poem or a song or a litany and it literally came from nowhere.  This happens at times, it’s like I go into a trance and write poems and I have no idea what I’ve written until it’s finished.

Sometimes I get my best work doing that.  Well anyway, song or poem, I hoped you liked it.

 

 

 

 

 

from above

On scaly wings I fly

Immortal I won’t die

I see the world around me

Nothing can astound me

Precious lives come and go

I see them all below

© Tina Cousins 2013

My work thinks I’m scary!

I have this problem where I believe that most of the things I’ve put on my blog is worthy of deletion.  I have very little confidence that it’s anything interesting, and I am pleasantly surprised at how many people like the posts and are following me.

I find it very hard to not delete posts, I feel very tempted to delete one or two poems and the Kithara story because I don’t think Kithara is going anywhere, even though I do have a game plan for her.

I also feel that some of my personal stuff should also be deleted, yet, I feel that my readers should know me.

This has been my problem my whole life.  I’ve never approached a publisher because I don’t feel I am any good; also I never wanted fame, I am not saying I am fame reaching nowadays, not at all, but I am more comfortable in people knowing me now, because I am more confident in myself generally.

I know a lot of writers aren’t famous, yet they’ve probably done more work than the big pots.  I am also smart enough to realize that writing and being published doesn’t mean you’ll have a stable income, I write for pleasure, I want people to read my stuff, I want people to enjoy my stuff and if I am going to be completely honest with you – I write what I want to read and what I would like to see on the television.  Silly I know, but that’s my fuel.

Now you’re probably thinking that there isn’t much need for televised poetry, well, I know this blog concentrates mostly on my poetry, but, as a rule, I write epic sized novels and series type books because I never know when to shut up, basically.

In the past I’ve been known to write a lot, and I mean a lot!  I used to write enough to pile up knee high every three months on average, the amount of work I wrote, but – because I don’t feel I am good enough, I used to have regular bonfires!  SHOCK HORROR!

That depresses me, because there’s many stories I flung into the flames of hell, that I wished I kept, because actually, thinking back, they were quite good.  Thing is, I forgot most of what I wrote, ha-ha.

I’m a nightmare.

Thing is, I am in the situation of having very supportive friends and family these days, family as in my husband’s side of the family, not my own.  So, instead of having my regular bonfires, I am now considered a paper hoarder and it’s driving me nuts.

I have an old cot that used to belong to my son, it is the paper holder these days, in a disorganized filing system (if that’s what I can call it) it’s overflowing, I promised myself to sort through it all and try filing it properly, but to be honest, that will take me a few years.  Gosh, I can’t believe I am admitting this so publicly.  Well anyway, I am in the terrible situation that I’ve been told at the end of July one of my husband’s nieces need to move in with us and needs that room, so GAH!

I feel tempted to light the flames of hell again, but my husband is the knight on guard duty for my work, so it seems.

Anyway, I decided that I will try and squeeze all of that work onto the computer somehow and whatever I write from now onwards will be stored on memory sticks and only printed when I need to read it out loud to someone.  The idea is giving me headaches.

So that is a little journey into my never-so-spotless-mind.

Scary, huh?

forums & plagiarism

In an earlier post I mentioned I like to use some forums to help me research spirituality to write books based on the supernatural; I use this as research only but I use my own imagination based on those things I’ve learned.  I have just discovered that one of my favorite forums has had another author do the same thing, however, they lack imagination of their own accord and have completely plagiarized a lot of individual story themes so much so, that I can actively point out who she has copied from, she has changed the names, but subtly, for example Melissa is Melony, Camilla is Camille, a little too noticeable don’t you think?

It is fine to pick up ideas from forums but give it a little more imagination and don’t blatantly outright copy an entire person or few from the same place, it’s too obvious.  My reason for putting this up, is because on that forum I have spoken a lot about spiritual things and even placed ideas for stories there in the past and I have found out this plagiarizer has focused on my posts as her main theme for stories.

I thought at first it was only one or two books she has did this on, but no, in the last two years she has been busy and published forty books all by herself, she is a self-published author.

Needless to say she had trouble being accepted in publication because a publisher would have done their research and would have found that it was massively plagiarized.

Also, the author of these books has not done her research in that her main character’s name was a well-known German comic from the 1970s of which I had took as my forums username, a character which helped German girls grow up as empowered and confident women.

If you’re going to go on forums for ideas, don’t be so bloody obvious, of course I am going to read those books and pin point the plagiarisms over the next couple of months, because I think this could lead to a court appearance.  Forums are also protected by copyright, so be very careful what you take from them.

Do your research before you’re confident or stupid enough to self-publish your work, in case you’ve either deliberately or inadvertently copied from someone.

I am really flabbergasted at how much she has used from one forum and from a few people, I have never seen such blatant outright copycat work before.

It’s obvious to me that she simply copied down a lot, and changed some things subtly; there was no indication whatsoever from what I’ve read so far, that she’s used her brain at all in these writings.  Each book is an average of 330 pages, and as I said, she’s written forty in two years; who can do that and be original work?

I’ll keep you posted, but it may be a few months before you get an update.

Trends

I am one of these people who don’t follow big trends when they’re new or very big.  Lady Gaga is one, I heard a lot about her and there was a lot of people claiming they loved her etc, but I never felt compelled to find out who she is or what she does and one day I heard something interesting about her.  In fact it was in 2012 when I decided, hey, I’ll actually look into her.  My reason?  I was in a spiritual website and there was a lot of Christians worrying over her lyrics in Judas, of which it turned out, they misheard; to be honest, so did I initially.

I thought I heard Lady Gaga sing “May the fury of Satan arise” so did all these Christians, but as any Lady Gaga fan would know she actually sang “With the fury of the saints in her eyes”.  Easily misheard but also very subtle.

This clever use of words made me admire Gaga, I must admit.  Very ballsy character I thought, but at the time I didn’t know her fashion sense, wow, she’s me in another life, I’m sure!  Anyway, I decided to listen and watch a few of her youtube videos with amazement, I found out to my luck  that a fortnight after discovering her she would be having an interview with Paul O’Grady about her latest video Hair.  After that interview was aired I got hooked on her, big time and so did my little boy.  I don’t normally follow trends, I’m usually seen as the trend setter, but I adore this woman, she’s great.

Also talking of trends I discovered “The Big Bang Theory” after season two and I stumbled upon it accidentally when channel flicking on one boring night and wow, that’s a great new comedy.  I love it and own all the series now, I am very much like several of the characters there.  I am the worlds biggest geek, as you’ll soon find out.  I have to laugh because most of it is true, and I tend to deliberately go out with geek guys because they are the only ones who seem to semi-understand me, on the downside, some geek guys don’t get imagination and as you know, imagination is pretty big in my life.

I hadn’t paid much attention either to “The Game of Thrones” never seen one before, but I am taking the plunge and buying the box-set to see what it’s like, if I don’t like it I will just give it as a gift to someone who does.  I have never seen Merlin the new BBC series either, though I say new it’s probably been around for five years now, but it’s new to me.  For someone who loves the alternative and fantasy, I am not doing a very good job in keeping up with the latest around me, I don’t even know the top new fantasy books or new authors within the last five years either, so better get on top of that hadn’t I?

waste no time for misery

The citadels of time come and go like the waves of the sea

Ever enfolding, ever releasing, goodness and badness at ease

Locked in a time warp of uncertainty, we control things, not.

Fate encircles and declines whether we like it or not.

Time is of the essence, which one we won’t know

But time is forever lasting, it will never go

Dream of the good things and of the bad

Hope that you’ll get your wish and hope to never be sad

Graceful is its entrance within your waking life, bringing you happiness or strife

Waste not the time you have, keep it for all it’s worth

Moping around in misery will only make things worse.

© Tina Cousins 2013

The carnivorous guinea pig

A lot of writers over the years have got famous because their stories came to them through dreams; if this is the case then several of my dreams should have become stories at some point, however, last night’s dream I think would be a little too silly to write and publish!

My dream was about me looking at my guinea pigs and one of them (Autumn) became predatory and attacked me, finished me off completely, I was dead as a doornail as a result of a carnivorous guinea pig.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re dinner is a couple of hours late and gives you stomach ache just before you sleep?

Now this could make me famous I guess, for producing a weird comedy horror, but generally I don’t think people are into carnivorous cute little furies these days are they?

 

robotic limbs

 I had an idea for a sci-fi but not sure where it would go.  The idea was based around humanity living in a worldwide single leader dictatorship with advanced medicine, the dictator wanted full control of its residences so he organised for everybody to have all their limbs removed and replaced with mechanical body parts, so if there were ever any trouble with an individual a law enforcer could use a special gun to point directly at the limbs to stop them from mobilizing at a distance, rending the person completely disabled.

But personally I don’t think I’m smart enough to write sci-fi so I think I’ll stick with fantasy and let this idea fall on the wayside.

If my son found out he’ll never let me live this down, I really should write this story for him because he is absolutely in love with the idea of robots and machines.

Kithara (part 1)

Kithara knew this barren land like the back of her hand, it might seem like one endless desert to anybody else, but she knew every little thing about it; where to hunt for lizards, where to find grubs and underground water, and more importantly, how to tame the wildlife surrounding it.

When you looked closely at Kithara’s land, you’d notice it wasn’t as barren as you’d first think.  It was brimming with life and that life fed Kithara’s body, mind and soul.

Kithara was barely fourteen and running through the desert, hopping from rock to rock hunting with her cheetahs, she was very handy with a knife too.  She was the talk of her camp.

You see, Kithara didn’t have a village; she came from a nomadic tribe deep within the wastelands of Banouro, they’d travel the entire desert and occasionally would settle just outside big cities and citadels, the stretch they’d travel regularly was at least a thousand miles in diameter, yet nothing was new to Kithara in any place they’d stay.

One particularly afternoon after Kithara had gone fishing in the oasis she noticed a group of men on horseback all clothed in black and dark purple in thick layers from head to toe, some wore head wraps and others wore fur square hats and just one man chose to wear nothing atop his head, he was an unusual man, one of red hair, quite rare, especially in this country, he must have been a foreigner.  The other gentlemen he was with were semi-local, settlers from the edge of Banouro on the North to North West side.

She’d noticed that the strange men were lining up her tribes people, picking at them and pointing at them and rearranging them quite aggressively.

Then amongst the crowd, she saw her father, a big lump of a man, with a bald head, and large mouth and nose.  He must have been preparing to butcher some meat before the arrivals because he was wearing his leather sleeveless top and it was too clean for him to have been working on something.  Then he saw her mother being taken away with some other women and they were made to stand in a circle around three men and a very old woman dressed in purple and jewels that were looking at them.

Kithara didn’t know who these people were, but she could guess.  She had heard years before of people just like her tribe, people taken away from the barren lands and made to work, whole families forced apart, never to be seen again, or, until at least, they’d leave the workplace.

Suddenly, there was a commotion over by the female circle, Kithara had noticed her mother screaming, shouting, ranting and raving at the old lady.

The old lady looked at her mother in disgust, then did some motion with her hands and her mother was immediately pulled out of the circle and lined up next to other old people from her tribe, the old people were chained together to a carriage of horses, yet no one seemed to have tied her mother in the same way, instead, the red man was called over to seemingly talk to Kithara’s mother.

Kithara’s mother looked up at him doe eyed and silent, then forthwith he took his sword out of his left sheath and sliced her throat open right before her eyes, her mother fell immediately bleeding to death staining the red man’s felt shoes and soaking them through, replenishing the already red dye.

Find out another time what Kithara will do…

© Tina Cousins 2013