ERB

Over the last couple of days I’ve been reading like a maniac ergo not written very much, I’ve been fortunate enough to have won two goodreads.com giveaways which has kept me busy; Also I have been watching funny rap take outs from ERB. It’s a recommended watch because you’ve got Darth Vader VS Adolf Hitler and Thor VS Zeus that type of thing.
You can find ERB on youtube

Feather Boy

About ten years ago I watched a lovely fantasy series called “Feather Boy” on the television and I was taken by it completely enough to finally read the book; a book I was lucky to find at a charity shop a few weeks ago; such a beautiful tale about a little boy who is bullied and is then asked by his school to do a project at the local care home, where he had to befriend one of the elder residents.
He gets chosen by a lady called Edith Sorrel; this took the boy (called Robert) by surprise as he is the boy that never gets chosen for anything. Little did Robert know at the time that the reason behind Mrs Sorrel’s request for them to work together on the project was because Robert resembled her long dead son, David!
The story starts off like a mysterious ghost story; there is a mild horror element to it for the age range it’s aimed at (9 to 13yrs) and some very mild swearing. However, the gist of the story was that Mrs Sorrel wanted Robert to visit an old house she knew of thirty years ago; a house that is utterly derelict and has a bad history that gives the local children the heebie jeebies. The true story however was less adventurous and in Robert’s mind, disappointing.
The story teaches a lesson, a lesson that it’s easy to make something out of nothing; easy to misunderstand people and have an overactive imagination. The story is written around an old story about a prince who wouldn’t speak and a great firebird. This story is all about rebirth on many levels, it’s quite a spiritual book, very touching and for the first time in my life I have actually cried at an ending I knew would happen.
So, if you love tales about rebirth, revenge, growing up, courage and phoenixes, this book is very much for you.

Wanton woman’s song

Oh my love
My darling man
Come to me
Come and sit
Beside me my man
And adore me
There’s a moon
The moon is lit
It is full
Fill me
Fill me with your love
Your passion
Adore me
Look the moon
It is across the sky
Hold wanton me
Adore me
I implore thee

Vlad Dracula III

Vlad Dracula III image taken at madam tussauds – not my own photography!

Since the 2nd January I have been slowly reading a history book with a fine comb called “Dracula, Prince of many faces; his life and his times”. I am reading this because I have never sat down at length and read an autobiography of the real legendary hero of Romania outside of short documentaries, articles and mentions in other history books.
So, because a lot of the things I knew about Vlad Dracula before I read this book seem to come from so many other sources, I feel that they are perhaps more accurate than this book. I know you probably think I am wrong to state that because the person who wrote the book was a historian, though I dispute it nonetheless; on the ground that according to my research the Florescu family were well known to be enemies of the Dracula’s and this book was no less written by Radu Florescu, possibly a descendant from those enemies.
I found the historian to be a sympathiser of the Turks and the Ottoman empire despite his apparent heritage; he also doesn’t view Dracula in the same light as other historians and other sources that I have read and he seems to have altered certain facts of major events within his life to make Dracula come across as an unstable tyrant who was unpopular from the start; quite the contrary to the fact. OK, I grant you it is tyrannical to go around killing people in the manner that he did, but by and large he is a much loved hero in Romanian culture, not something a lot of tyrants can proclaim.
So, it makes me wonder, if a lot of Romanians hold Dracula up in a favourable light, whether or not Dracula was as bad as this historian claims he was?
Obviously taking his executions into account they were evil and sadistic, but then again the same could be said for a lot of other cultures in the world at those times. He especially learned his techniques in every manner from the decade or so he was held prisoner and educated by the Turks themselves, so, he is as he was nurtured and the Turks certainly did nurture him ultimately for their own gain. They wanted money, horses, food and a certain amount of young boys integrated into the Ottoman empire to form part of their expanding armies as a sort of security against any Wallachian response and allowed Dracula to govern Wallachia for them, something of which didn’t last long once Vlad Dracula established himself back on his home soil; Dracula rightfully denied the payment and tried to juggle diplomacy between the Turks and the Hungarians for a long time, though eventually it was decided that the Turks were taking too much advantage of their supposed alliance and Dracula dealt with them promptly and harshly as would any other good ruler of the times.
The attack on German immigrants however, is a new thing that I’ve learned about him from this book. Because it is the first I have heard of these events, I cannot dispute it as a legitimate fact.
Many of the things I have learned about Vlad Dracula have made me feel in awe of his cleverness in these very tricky treaties and wars. He was very canny and wasn’t easily duped.
His reactions against the Turks taking possession of his land was by poisoning everything valuable such as wells and damaging his own crops and livestock; he also built dams to mire the edges of the Danube to protect his people from the canon fire from the Turks and then ensuring that his own people moved to safer places away from the invaders leading up to the famous “night of attack” was a very admirable feat, and showed how benevolent he was towards his people despite claims from German sources; He was also incredibly lucky, as six years before this event he was in a war where only 8000 Romanian peasants armed with only pitchforks and scythes, ousted 24000 Turkish professional troops, how he mustered that I have no idea, but to me it shows me how great he actually was, I am very taken by the history of this great and unappreciated man!
I am not taking for granted that things within this book are fact – due to the other sources I’ve learned from. I cannot vouch for whom or where those other sources came from, but I do know one of them was about the legend of Dracula in both media, fiction and fact in one of Jonathan Ross’s specials where a baroness spoke of how great a hero Vlad Dracula actually was and how rightfully offended she was of various inaccuracies and the fact that this great man was turned into a successful horror story.
Some of the events in Draculas life seems more altered in this book than from the other sources too, for example, the incident where he killed a man’s wife and replaced her – from other sources it was said that she didn’t iron his clothes properly and that he was a soldier in Dracula’s army, this book claims he was a normal peasant and his wife got the length of the shirt wrong – so there are some questions about who is right or not.
I have no formal qualifications in anything of which I am saying, but I have read a lot and watched a lot of documentaries over the years about this great prince; I am also an amateur genealogist. I like reading books about wars and royal classes from the 11th to the 17th century and all over the world not just limited to Europe. I read and study these independently to assist me to write such things accurately in any fiction I write, I write a lot containing feudalism generally in many of my fantasy works.
I also educate myself on all kinds of superstitions around the world and so-called heathen beliefs, to again, make my worlds seem more real. I have studied the social sciences to help me further, though I gave up my undergraduate qualification when I found my illness and having a toddler very difficult to juggle with university studies.
By and large I try hard to learn about all things cultural and I think if you are making worlds that aren’t based on Earth or are based on an earlier time on Earth, you need to do the same thing too, otherwise everything will seem unreal to the reader.

15 minutes of fame review

The notion that everyone has 15 minutes of fame must to a greater extent be increased due to the use of social media and self-promotion these days, surely?
I am not incredibly famous yet, but I do know that there are over 10,000 people who know who I am from various sites and what I stand for, possibly more.
I think therefore, there should be a new study on just how many minutes of fame a person has today.
I believe it can be limitless if you know how to self-promote on the internet and that is a skill that’s fast increasing around the globe, especially because other people will promote you too, if they like you. So, to me, it should be easy to be famous in almost anything if you run a blog, use social media sites a lot and focus on forums and communities that stand for the same or similar things as you do.
Obviously for more success, you should aim to socialise and broadcast something interesting or skilful; otherwise you might become famous for being an idiot, like Katie Hopkins.

Hollow feelings and death

I am feeling hollow
Surrounded by death
Though no one wants to hear my thoughts
They say I am selfish if I declare my pain
Feeling for strangers, that’s insane, they say
But I look on
Numb
Torn
Forlorn
Reborn
Like from the ashes of the cadavers around me
I form a new life within my self
For them
For me
That’s how death can set people free
Sometimes
Like now, that doesn’t work
Perhaps soon it will
But now I am still
Cold and worn
I need the warm
I need life
No more death
Just let me be
Free

Song of lost souls

I hear the echoes of the songs of the lost souls
Captivated I cannot move
I only listen
Their cries sound like music, though there’s pain
Indeed they are the cries of pain
It would drive some insane
But me, I remain
Silent, still, listening on to the tune that chills
Deep into my very soul
They are familiar to me, those singers
Those words that they sing
So familiar it stings
I try not to think “why” to such things

Iced Podium

 

I’m freezing in the cold damp grey winter morning
The chilled wind wraps around me like an inescapable cocoon
Will I freeze to death soon?
I’ve lost my mind and I still stand
On the cold wet floor of the prairie lands
I can’t move, I can’t talk
All I do is stand or walk
Lost in the frozen land
I’ve lost my mind
For I’ve lost my hand
How heartbreak makes us numb
I stand dying on an iced podium

Peter Pan Review

I finished reading Peter Pan in November 2015 because it is one of the children’s classics I’ve never picked up to read before; I liked it a lot and the characters seem more real, solid and not as passionate in their hatred for one and other like I thought because of various movies.
I was told by a fellow reader of the book that “it is a book about dead children”, though personally I don’t see it; because then you would need to explain to me why Wendy remembered Neverland and grew up and had a grandchild who took her place with Peter in Neverland at the end of the book.
Anyway, there are many things to note about the tale. Peter Pan was more of a bully than a hero in the book, unlike what media portrays and Hook is more of a softy than you are initially told. Perhaps I see this because I am a sympathiser of villains in most books and movies? Though from what I got from the book, Wendy and her brothers were more or less bullied into staying in Neverland for much longer than they wanted, until eventually Wendy put her foot down and went home with her brothers in tow.
I am also surprised at how young Peter Pan is supposed to be in the book, he had all of his milk teeth still, this puts him around three to six years of age, yet it’s a very popular idea that he is between nine and thirteen.
Also, my husband gave me some information about Peter Pan, because I noticed that the dog, Nana, was a Newfoundland in the book, not a St Bernard which again, is a very popular notion in movies – this was apparently popularised by the fact that Walt Disney’s artist for Nana in his Peter Pan adaption didn’t know how to draw Newfoundland’s properly, whether or not this is true or not I have no idea, but it is funny how easily lead society is with new notions, isn’t it?
The closest movie to the book in my opinion is Hook with Robin Williams, because it focuses on the most forgotten aspects of the book; such as the sheer conceitedness of Pan to Hook and how Hook was very noble and proud and despised Pan’s arrogance and the fact that he felt a little guilty fighting him because of the age difference. Then there is the fact that Wendy grew up and Pan reacted badly against her aging and developed a relationship with Moira her granddaughter. I personally think that if J.M Barrie had ever written a sequel to Peter Pan then this movie adaption would be the closest thing to what I think Barrie would have written himself!
I enjoyed the book much better than the movie adaptions out there and I have often thought of my own stories regarding the characters, which I suppose should go into my fan fiction blog, whenever I am ready to set it up.