Moledro what’s that?

Moledro

“n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.”

A beautiful notion I’m sure, it is a new word I learned through an acquaintance on Twitter the day before I left the site for good. 

It’s interesting and inspiring to think that some artists and authors have the skill to be read and noted centuries down the line like this, but it seems only a small margin get the opportunity to have that effect on the world and we will never know if we will be one of those people, for life is cruel and short like that.

Some people are very fortunate in that they could predict they’d be like that someday, because they have been made a big thing of before they die – but most teeter on usually without the vain slither of hope that it will ever be them.

Some, who experience this kind of fame during life, often remain in denial of their talent and so they don’t get to enjoy it whilst they can.

I have experienced moledro with a couple of authors who aren’t widely known or popular – I found their books through Goodreads giveaways before they closed them off to the UK and I found them on kindle really cheap – attempts at vanity publishing, I presumed because they gave up trying traditional publishers after many years of failure.

Here’s one that I can remember Alex Weinle, his book The Decapaphiliac: or love in the time of cappuccinos, it is an anthology of fantasy stories and in my opinion he is very similar to Neil Gaiman, though more macabre.

There are many others that have never been traditionally published where their stories have gripped my imagination so much so, that I still cannot believe why they are not huge household names by now?

An amazing short story I read in a magazine once by an author I can’t remember the name of – where an angel was attacked by a demon on Earth and she had her wings ripped off her and she was found by a mortal man who took her in and had a relationship with her – suffering from depression as she pretends to be a troubled mortal.  Eventually her stepdaughter found her wings in the closet and the story had ended and I thirsted for more.  Why was it so short, why wasn’t this writer known?

Moledro, do you have an infatuation with an author?  Are they still alive?  Are they traditionally published yet?  Let me know in the comments below about any gems you have found and let’s help these people build their confidence as a writer and get them to try again shall we?

Thanks for reading!

Getting fast again

I have written 1600 words towards my AD project since last night, I am now onto the second draft and I have also done 1400 words towards a screenplay and about 400 words towards plans.

Not doing bad and I did all of these in two short hours between midnight and 2:30am last night – I hope today to do more.

Project AD is really coming along now, so proud, a lot more new and fuller ideas which work better than before in my opinion and a lot of questions have been answered and gaps filled.

I strongly feel if I continue how I have done last night this first book of the series will be done before Henry’s birthday, because I am more or less working at the same speed and way I used to, when I lived with my mum.  If I continue like this, it would be more than plausible for me to finish this project before March and that wouldn’t be over optimistic.  I used to write fast back then.

When I lived with my mum a slow book took six to ten weeks, an average one a month.

You can definitely see that writing fast is in my genes when you consider that I am reputed to be a fifth or so generation cousin to Dame Barbara Cartland and she wasn’t the only author I am related to either – but she was definitely renown to be the fastest!  Another author I am related to as a many times cousin is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I forget the approximate generation unfortunately.  But he was cousin to I believe my 7x great grandfather, but unsure.

Tragically I have read nothing from either of them.

I really ought to get around to it.

Thanks for reading! 

Horror discrimination

One thing I have found very true about being a blogging author is that there is a lot of discrimination about horror writers.

You write poetry, fantasy and other things, even lifestyle things and your blog has a healthy flow of new followers daily and you grow and grow and no sooner had you mentioned just the once about going back into horror, you lose twenty to fifty overnight and you are left stumped as to why?  Until you realise what you have done.

This has happened to me the other day.

I am not complaining because I have made it abundantly clear in several of my previous posts that I was first and foremost a horror author who lost her mojo and was always endeavouring to rediscover it.

You wouldn’t have me as an author if it wasn’t for horror, that’s how I started out.  Ten years old writing the goriest stories I could muster to the extent a proud English teacher at school wrote to my parents about my amazing writing talent and how gory it is for a child and whether or not they knew I wrote such ghastly things?

They said that they did and they were thoroughly open about me watching horror movies since I was five years old!

I stand by what I’ve said – horror is still in me and although currently I have more fantasy projects than horror ones, you must expect horror to pop out now and again because it’s a large part of who I am.  In social media I have joined several online fan clubs specifically in the horror genre, it’s me – sorry!

I have even made a couple of celebrity friends who are pretty big in the horror industry and no, I won’t drop their names!  I don’t do things like that! 

But they are very supportive of my work and one of them likes to cajole me every few weeks and remind me not to forget my original genre and that I scare them to death at times!

From March my finances will stabilise hugely, especially when I can get my online business starting off.  This means I can do a lifelong dream of going to Horror Con, Comic con and Fantasy con events some day!  Wonderful, it’s very exciting I could practically live at those places from what I have seen of them!

But to stop reading my blog because I mention horror on a one off is a bit drastic in my opinion.

But never mind.

Thanks for reading! 

A little disappointed

There is nothing sadder than realising you’ve worked hard on a project for nearly two years only to find it so similar to a recent movie or a book that has only just been released and you realise that if you were to continue your project, you could be blamed for being a rip off of that successful project of another person!

This has happened for me this week, I recently learned that there is a new horror coming out and it looked brilliant but then I realised there was a lot of things in that movie which seems almost identical to my project called Horror 17 – yes I have in excess of seventeen horror projects on the go!

It’s a little sad but it is OK, I am not giving up the project, I am still going to write it, but I will be cautious about giving it to anyone to publish.  It may end up being published on my blog, then trolls can tell me how much of a rip off it is – when in actuality it is just a coincidence!

For your information I have over seventy projects on the go but I try to primarily work on just three at a time.

I have a long list of things I am currently doing and I put their genre next to the title of the stories I am doing along with the pseudonyms I use on my blog for that project. 

My main genre is fantasy of its various descriptions including dark fantasy it would seem, horror being a close second (specifically vampire horror) and dystopian the third.

It helps me keep track of what I am as an author primarily.

Thanks for reading! 

My authenticity as an author

What is my authentic self as an author?

What are my passions and experiences which seem to flow into my work effortlessly?

Basically, what makes this author, this author?

It’s not unknown if you have been following me for some time now that vampires are a huge passion of mine and that once they were all absorbing and my main if not ultimate focus?

They are still in my mind but is now swept away into a corner and regarded with a sense of guilty pleasure nowadays, which is a shame. 

But other than my vampires who am I as an author?

I like anthropomorphic animals (human like animals) and animation movies which have animals as main characters or heroes; to me I can’t get enough of movies like that!  I love reading books on the perspectives of animals, such as The Animals of Farthing Wood, Fluke, Charlotte’s Web, that sort of thing.

Being shamanic off and on throughout my life, I regard myself as having an unusually deep understanding for both nature and animals and anything primal really and yes, that does make me a Walt Disney fan.

I am a deeply spiritual person too with very philosophical ideas – this can be seen in some of my work but not all of it.

I do believe in miracles and magic, I believe in soul connections and spirits, so this belief of mine goes into my work a lot.

My work can be very profound and intense; it’s what I’ve seen in past reviews on my blog, in emails and from other people who were fortunate enough to get snippets from me in private.  Because I tend to throw in my philosophical thoughts, my spiritual education and I forget that sometimes for some people, they’re not ready for that kind of depth yet.  It’s a part of me, it’s a part of who I am and mostly I don’t realise I do it.

That’s my magic, that’s unique to me and when you follow your authentic path in your own writing, you will discover things about yourself you never knew too, it’s a kind of therapy a kind of gas-lighting oneself.

I love dragons and monsters, I like seeing them as misunderstood creatures, creatures that aren’t bad at all and in fact could be rather helpful but have their boundaries and they expect respect.

I like characters that are inventive and quirky, a little strange, maybe forgetful and definitely misunderstood by societies they live in, because they reflect who I am.  I am proud to say I am an air-head with little understanding of logic, that has an interest in science though not a brain to really fully grasp it and a memory of sieve – put all of this into a pot steaming with spirituality, creativity and free love and you’ve got me… a messy soup.

I am a mixture of Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Carl from Van Helsing 2004, Miss Bat from Worst Witch, Miss Trelawney from Harry Potter, Lucille Ball, Wendy Froud, Bjork and Bob Ross!  You get the message… I’m a mess!

I love writing lengthy descriptions of natural scenes and observations including as many if not all of the five senses all at once.

I have a deep sense of decay of both mind and matter, I understand the damaging effects of humanity on the Earth and I write plenty of dystopic sceneries in some of my stories.  I love the idea of nature taking back the world, after humans sought to destroy it! 

I love characters like Poison Ivy, Pocahuntas and The Lorax for this.

I have a deep sense of survival in me, from both being raised semi-feral in a North London garden with a violent family and because I have a Girl Guides attitude of “Be prepared” and a deeply seated understand of impermanence – that you can often see survival as a theme in a lot of my stories.

This is why I love characters such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, the TV series The Tribe, Rambo and so forth. 

Because I have experienced severe mental health issues over the years and lived with several people who have far worse issues than I do (I have never needed to be medicated for example, like they have) I can fully understand what it means to live in an asylum and how the public treats people who have a history of that environment.  I also understand and have witnessed several times people literally descending into madness to the point of both murder and suicide.  Yes I have seen a person killed in front of me that is something I’ve kept to myself until now.

I have also witnessed several people trying to take their own lives, dying of a stroke right before my eyes and other horrible things.

Experiences which are hard to write, but can’t be wrote properly unless you’ve truly experienced it.  I am not saying try to experience that sort of thing, goodness no!  But you can understand how an author’s authentic self can further their writing by putting in their life experiences into it!

Characters such as Jack Torrance from the shining, John Kramer from Jigsaw, Janet Frame from Angels at my table are reflective of very similar people I have known as well as several characters from the movie The Crow.  I’ve known very edgy, scary people who don’t hide the aspect of who they truly are to anybody!  A few of these people have been put into isolation by the authorities but there are others that have evaded this somehow!

In my experience it is the weak ones that get caught and dealt with, the really nasty buggers never are!

Injustice is another thing that crops up in my stories from time to time based on this.

I am afraid to say some readers may find some of my darker materials frustrating as justice are rarely served in a fair way; I tend to take people to a very primal place.

Some of my characters are kooky, childish and fun, but should really be responsible as they are adults but they struggle with that reality – therefore I like characters such as Mr and Mrs Luxury from the blue bird, God from Dogma, Brennan and Dale from Step Brothers and Sarah Sanderson from Hocus Pocus. 

I have a passion for characters with big egos and sarcastic humour so I am often drawn to personalities which are played by actors such as Alan Rickman, Tim Curry, Glen Close and Robert Downey Jr.  Those characters seem to be fighting against the odds with a pack of brainless lucky heroes who are out to ruin their plans or gas-light them in some way in my stories.

Comedy is becoming more prominent in my stories as time is going by as I am no longer hiding my sense of humour from the world; this is a transition that is not welcoming from Paul.  He prefers my more serious stuff, but that’s not being authentic to myself!

There is even comedy in my darker stories and horror these days, lightly thrown in.

I was given an article to mull over by Paul the other week about how dark humour is an early sign of dementia; I am not paying any attention to that!

Societal changes and upheaval are a theme in several of my stories, hence my love for dystopia.

I dislike romance, so that is at a minimum – but there are some saucy scenes now and again in my adult works, in fact I have been known to write full on erotica in a past blog as short stories, but I deleted them after a while and that blog – I also did it here for a short time too, in the early years of my blog as I was told I was too graphic and should really have it as a subscribers content.

That is something I am thinking about doing actually, subscribers short stories of both my erotic works and vampires, as well as a subscriber incentive of giving 50% off the purchase of poetry anthology E-books I am planning to publish by the end of summer.

I love certain sports and you can see which I am into by the books I write, I love wrestling and combat sports in general so there are plenty of fight scenes in my stories as well as ancient warfare.  I am very keen in ancient warfare history and gaming.  I know a lot of the terminologies and so there is little research needed for me when I write those scenes because it’s a passion of mine.

I am not afraid of killing off characters but I am not a maniacal character serial killer like George R.R Martin, but not far off it either! 

Death sells as good as sex in my opinion.

I like hard-core no nonsense and dominant characters that don’t like a lot of fuss, so there is at least one in every story.  My favourite character is a wild hermit woman from the Dragon project I am writing; a sort of mix of Miss Trunchball meets Nanny McPhee and Tarzan!  Again, crazily based on people I’ve known, as I have said before… I’ve known some strange people in my time and exaggeration can go a long way, especially when story writing!

So you see a lot of my ideas wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for life experience and a knack for exaggeration for entertainment value.

Though I keep my non-fiction as honest as possible, I can use that experience and exaggerate it for fiction!

This is how we writers do things; it’s how we give you the books we write.

Or those who have actually given their work to an agent to get published, that is!

I’m not far off to be honest.

I won’t give you a deadline or update until I send my work to an agent, but for now – let’s just say, I think it’s going to be sooner than you think – a lot sooner!

So there you have it – my experiences, my passions and my work and why it is uniquely mine and why you will struggle to try and copy it!  You are not me and even if you were to go off and research the character references and include the subjects I’ve mentioned in this blog – you won’t ever reflect me, but only I can be purely me and only you can be purely you!

Thanks for reading!

Being an authentic author

Great literature comes from the heart.  A great writer put their heart, their soul and their experience onto the paper.  They write what they love and are passionate about and they ensure to put as much emotion into their piece as they could possibly muster!

People want to read amazing literature, people want to write it too; but some people seem to think that they can’t trust themselves, their passions, their ideas because they have a low self-esteem and value for what they believe they are worth – so these sorts of people tend to be what I call “the idea stealers” and then they wonder why they aren’t as successful as Joe Blogs down the road and to me it’s purely a matter of just being you.  You weren’t being genuinely yourself when you are writing and that’s why you aren’t as good as someone who has their own path, their own ideas and put their heartfelt passions into a word format, like a book.

You’d be surprised at how many people would read a book about a character that is passionate about stamp collecting, if the author has the same passion – because the spirit of the author leaks onto the page and makes it feel genuine and fresh regardless of the subject matters general popularity in society.

I’ve read books with such a boring synopsis but were riveting reads, because I believe the author had done that – put their spirit into the pages of that book, by being themselves!  After researching the authors I find out that they do have similar lives to their characters and that’s why they are a success – even fantasy authors, though magic isn’t real, the power of belief and imagination is so strong in them as a person, they can trick you into believe it is!

Trend chasers do not tend to be very successful authors or at least not authors with readership longevity.

Don’t chase trends, don’t think that one author is doing really well on her blog or her sales that you must try and copy the frame of her work as your own in order to succeed as you think that’s a trend – you are not harming that other author, but you are harming yourself and your authenticity.  If there is nothing more that can sell better than talent it is a person’s authenticity – their brand. 

You being your authentic self is your brand.  Can you really keep up the pretence for the rest of your life that you love fairy romances when you by your very nature is a conservative person who doesn’t believe in magic and dreams coming true and love at first sight?

There is a time when it will become a grind for you and your mental health will suffer.  I have seen this happens to many authors over the time I’ve been online and befriended a few.

They tend to crash and burn out and give up.

The catalyst is usually the time when they choose a prompt and they are led by that prompt and the stealing of multiple ideas of other authors which reflect similar subjects of the prompt.  This is a thing, I’ve seen it time and time again and I actually have friends who are the writers of these prompts and they’ve cheekily used some of my ideas in their prompts to prompt other writers to write.

This has caused a surge over the years of certain subjects swamping the publishing industry with the same old subject and similar storylines, which gets old for author agents very quickly and it is why many book trends come and go erratically fast!

Trend chasers exhaust the idea pot because they are frightened of their own authenticity.

They feel that others will judge them as harshly as they judge themselves and that is not the case at all.

I am not sitting here being all high and mighty, I have succumb to this kind of pressure myself and I have sat down and seen the industry exhausted by vampires, so I have chased the other trends, witches or werewolves or demons and I wasn’t as happy as I was when I was writing my vampires and it is clearly seen in my works.

The heart isn’t there.

So where is my heart?

Where is my authentic self?

That’s another post…

For now, I want you to ask yourself the same question.

Thanks for reading!

Beauty, dance, and gratefulness

A handful of friends have sent me DMs recently about my deadline.  I have to agree to take their advice and not push for it, because in the past two weeks in particular life here has been hard on me and I have found it difficult to focus on reading anything, let alone writing anything.

Henry is has recently had an emergency assessment to test for autism because his behaviour is worsening at school, at the moment they decline to say much about their findings because they feel they need to do another one or two assessments on him before they are sure.

Along with this, as you all are probably aware of, Paul and I are separating; which is a surprise really, because around 2015 we more or less decided to stick with each other, despite our relationship only meaning to be temporary.

We don’t know when we will decide to live apart as I have discussed recently, but it is on the cards.

Along with this I am trying my hardest to get into shape and lose weight, so I have more confidence in myself when I start a new relationship.

I really wanted to debut a book by summer, which is why I wanted to approach an agent on the 21^st October, however, I have too much going on right now to do it and along with it all, the idea of YouTube may also be a failing start for January too; because my future is very uncertain right now.

I am also very confused by people behaviours online recently.  Since alerting my readers of my separation with Paul, I have been getting a lot of attention in DMs.  I suppose it’s not so confusing as I have more or less announced my availability, but what is confusing is the dominance some people are portraying in their emails to me from the off-set.  Like whom do they think they are?

It started with the email from a well-known author to Paul, I won’t mention names, but he is pretty big as far as authors go.  According to Paul this author had asked him outright whether or not we genuinely are in an open relationship and if it is OK for him to approach me for a relationship someday?  Paul said of course.

Though this author has not approached me in any other way other than being a sort of friendly online acquaintance, I felt it was cheeky to do that and especially behind my back!

He has a blue tick on twitter, so it’s the genuine article, but he is not the only person who has approached this recently with me. 

Unfortunately I feel some pressure by this person to finish my AD project in particular as they believe they’ve cottoned on to my plot with my hints and has got inspired to make something very similar if I am not quick enough; unfortunately, they’ve kind of guessed correctly what my story might be. or so, Paul has told me someone who is associated with this author has told him.

I don’t know whether or not Paul is just rocking the boat telling me these things, because he was initially afraid of losing me, but more recently he has found a new lady himself and doesn’t seem to think that what he told me in the past is anything to worry about, now.

I really don’t like cloak and daggers and underhanded stuff and I am getting rather uncomfortable with it all.

But if what Paul has said is true, then this author will be starting the idea around March apparently, which is why I feel the pressure to write this quickly, because its a series.

For now, all I want to do is focus on is my fitness, trimming down and getting my head together, whilst still trying to write a tiny bit per day towards any current project.  Maybe read a book once a fortnight, the reading has slowed down immensely.

But I am trying to find my true self. 

My true self, since a very young child – kindergarten almost, has always had a massive love for fashion and glamour.  For short bursts throughout my life, I have tried to get into it all big time – but there was always someone getting in my way and stopping me, usually my mother.

My mother is out of my life right now, so I feel free to be as vain and beautiful as I want, in the manner I want.

I loved the book “Matilda” by Roald Dahl as a child and in there is a quote where they say that there are two types of women in the world those that choose looks and those that chose books. 

Most of my life I chose books, purely as a means of escapism.  Had I have had a more stable life I would be more focused on looks and entertainment of other kinds, such as singing or acting.

All I know is that I am a huge daydreamer. 

I can’t help but think of great stories all of the time, often at the drop of a hat – but I have little interest in making them books, I want them to be on the screen somehow.  It has always been my primary goal.

My idea of the best kind of entertainment is visual and audio.  I read a lot, yes, but mostly to learn, I don’t really read for the amusement of it – I am just knowledge hungry, that’s all.

I really don’t think I’d be as much of a gaming or science geek as I am today, had I have been raised primarily by say – my honorary auntie Sheila or my grandmother for example.

I know had I of been raised by my paternal grandmother she’d have made me go into the equestrian gymkhana groups and gymnastics and all sorts of things like that.  She’d have fully supported my sports goals in swimming and judo and would have pushed me into other things to socialise a lot with the better classes as she’d put it; Potentially making me become a singer or an actress along with it, because she often tried to encourage me to go with my aunts to their amateur theatres to be a part of their little comedies, but at the time I was bullied out of it by being fat shamed by my mum.

I really wanted more of the life my grandmother wanted for me, as it reflected what my dad wanted for me too, but mum never supported any of it.

All my life I have envied women in gymnastics in particular.

As an adult my grandmother learned I had a passion for watching dance shows and that I really wanted to learn to dance and she arranged for me to go to Ealing to become taught by a famous dancer called Anton Du Beke.  When my mum found out I was going to go to it, she gave me a nasty ultimatum, go to this school for dance or lose the internet.  At the time I had an Ebay business and I had a lot of online friends, so losing the internet was not an option for me, so she had got her way.

I have always wanted to learn to tango, especially with a life partner, because I have a lot of passion in me and I really would love a relationship like Morticia and Gomez Addams. 

It’s a goal I have still, once fit enough I will go to find a school for the tango.  Or if I become a published author and famous enough I’d practically beg “strictly come dancing” to let me be a celebrity contestant!

But ultimately, my stories should be on the screen and should also be merchandise as a lot of my ideas are not only horror, but mostly for the family entertainment industry.  Horror is lessening these days as I am thinking of more light-hearted fantasy stories.  Sure, project AD is a dystopian, but it has anthropomorphic characters, children and comedy in it, which lightens the mood immensely.

Even if I am only writing a paragraph per day at least it’s getting done.  But for now, I can’t do much more than that because there are a lot of explosive arguments going on about me, mostly between Henry and Paul but lately, Paul is starting to drain me with his noticeable irritations, because he feels as trapped as I do.

I am just in the way.  That is not something I want to feel when I am still quite emotionally vulnerable and could at any moment decide to seek out the medicine box.  I mean, other than Henry and a rabbit, what I have I got to live for?

Paul and Henry have already decided between themselves that Henry will stay with Paul not me, so I won’t even have Henry as an excuse to stay alive soon; Just the rabbit, and he is 5yrs old on his next birthday.  He is also the last birthday present I’ve ever received since we fell into poverty, that’s if I am not including the regular chocolate bars I’ve got between then and now.

Still, shouldn’t be ungrateful.

Happy reading!

Big Magic of Roger Zelazny

I have never picked up a book by Roger Zelazny before last week, I wished I had years ago, The Chronicles of Amber is amazing and it is a great learning curve for any writer who wants to learn how to write descriptive battle scenes cohesively.

I at least, learned a new word through this book “parried” which is something I find useful since I am a fantasy and adventure author myself!

I have never found a book that wrote battle and fight scenes as good as this before, I highly recommend it to any author who wishes to write adventure or war stories!

I can see why Neil Gaiman has been inspired by this author, I can see a little bit of Stardust in the book, but I can also see that J.K Rowling might have been influenced by him too, the tarot cards for instance.

Though both might be exactly like me that it seems rather a strange fluke that some parts of these chronicles are so much alike to two of my novels, one finished and the other part finished.  In fact one of them is so much alike to this story, I have to make a few adjustments, because it could almost be a direct copy and what is rather strange about it is that the main character in my novel is called Amber.

I know in the chronicles Amber is a place, rather than a person’s name, but you get my drift? 

It’s weird, I have never read these novels before, nor heard many reviews about it, yet one of my novels is so alike it’s amazing and I have only got one hundred and ten pages into the first novel at the moment, what else will I discover about the chronicles in the next nine books?

This really makes me believe in Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept that ideas are alive, that they have souls and they find people who will bring them to life – you’ll find more about this in her book “Big Magic”, it’s a highly recommended read.

Are the Amber chronicles truly finished?  If ideas are alive and have a soul of their own, then they must have chosen me to continue their story a little – that’s scary and this is why I have to change so much!  Because I honestly was completely unaware about these chronicles until I picked up the book a couple of weeks ago!

Though I loved the story I was writing and though Paul kept pushing me to send it away to an agent, there was something nagging me in my instincts not to send it out, because there was something I needed do or something I needed to learn first.  It’s very strange.

I picked this book up because a friend online who knew a small amount about my plot grew concerned I was copying too much of one of her favourite novels from Roger Zelazny, I told her I have never heard of him nor the chronicles and that was true – I am so grateful to have such kind friends who tell me these things!  Imagine if I had published this book?

It has been an eye opening experience.

I actually though some of my story seemed reminiscent of Highlander by Gregory Widen and perhaps a little bit like the stories of Merlin and Edmund Spenser’s fairy queen with a little bit of time travelling thrown in, but I thought it was original enough. 

It might still be original enough, but I am not sure, hence why I won’t delete what I have done to the story, but I will copy my story and adjust things and keep all of the drafts, so one day, when I make friends I can trust with sharing unpublished works, I will show them and ask them which draft they prefer and see just how much of the Amber chronicles are really in them. 

Because I am a nervous creature and I hate coming across as a fraud, so it’s important to me to try and be unique; see the try there, it’s virtually impossible to be unique anyway as everything has been done, but ultimately it hasn’t been done by me.  So maybe, just maybe my work is far enough removed not to cause eyebrows to become raised?

This isn’t the first time a piece of work has been very close to my own and I found out after I wrote them and I doubt it will be the last.

Happy reading!

Watery writer

I’m going to throw caution to the wind and publicly admit via this blog, that I am not a confident person and I feign intelligence. 

I am a writer but I am uneducated, everything about me is self-taught and I am not a good teacher. 

I blunder my way through life, please take that seriously, because I really do!  Blunder Woman was a character that was in Russ Abbot’s show, but I am pretty sure someone saw into a crystal ball and knew that Blunder Woman might someday be a real person… me!  I think I might look like her when I am eighty; actually, we’re kind of alike!

But anyway, I digress!  So easily distracted like a dog with a… SQUIRREL! 

Right so, now that’s out of the way, I think it has something to do with my Chinese astrological sign – I am a water dog, a poodle or a Labrador I am not sure which, but a water dog nonetheless! 

Water goes with the flow, I always go with the flow, I am always flowing somewhere and even I never know where I end up or what I am about to do; I am true to my element, I am spontaneous, usually best at peace and generally calm but occasionally turbulent and rarely tempestuous!

But generally I am like any water, that if I am not in the right environment I go stagnant – and who wants stagnant water around them?  It’s quite easy for me to flow into stagnation, I am very much affected by those around me and if I choose the wrong sort of people to flow with, I do generally stagnate a lot or become tempestuous.

I am very self-aware, I know it’s my nature to be like this because my astrological element is water and this has helped me a lot to understand myself.  I love Chinese astrology and since I found it, I have found my life has been working more towards what I want from it, rather than just having life happen to me outside of my control.  But as a water element, I don’t like to control too much as I love going with the flow and I am easily dejected when the people I choose to flow to, aren’t good for a water spirit like me!

It’s easy to get me flowing into the right things, with gentle persuasion, love, conversation, I am easily motivated to flow anywhere and that does mean I am occasionally prone to finding manipulators that like to take advantage of my nature.

My main life partner Paul is a fire elemental (fire monkey), you are right to think that this sounds like chaos waiting to happen, because there are many times where I feel that I flow around him and dry up a bit.  Contrariwise he suffers as I can over suffocate him when I try to calm him down and he is easily exhausted by my high energy and my spontaneity.

My Henry, my son, is a metal tiger.  I consider him a huge support but I can’t help but think I am not good for him, as I sometimes feel I corrode him, like water does to metal over time.  Perhaps I am overthinking things, but this is how I feel!

Perhaps I should try and help balance him more by making lemon drizzle cakes and homemade lemonade to help maintain his metal spirit?  Lemons are good with corroding metal restoration!  Thing is, the boy hates lemons, so what is a water mother to do?

You may think I wrote this entry in jest, but it is my life, it is quite serious for me.  An insight to my brain like this can often terrify the sensitive, but at least I am honest!

I am drying up, or becoming stagnant, I am not quite sure which it is yet;

I say this because I am wanting to write more than ever these days and I am – but I am not focusing too much on novels anymore, because I can’t flow how I want to or how I used to, when being creative.

I used to brainstorm with a close circle of family or family friends, before I moved in with Paul and it would be good energy for me to make me want to write so I can tell them what I have done and what I might plan and to see what they have to say about it all!  But Paul just isn’t into my genres or my sense of corny humour.  I have no one where I can do this to, without the worry that they are going to steal my ideas and use them because I am too slow as I am a meticulous planner.

Because I have no one to share my thoughts with, I am being boiled within the inch of my life and becoming despondent with my storytelling, because, well, what’s the point?  If I don’t have someone who wants to share my creative journey with me on a personal level and talk about things as I do them, how else can I get the fuel to want to finish what I started?

I am easily downcast; I am easily demotivated by other people’s disinterest and I am a worry wart, who is fearful of anyone new who wants me to talk about my work – I have trust issues because I have been bitten a lot in the past.

I need a mentor or a friend I can trust, preferably a small group of them – but how can I find them?  I am at a loss… I had thought about joining a critique group, but there is a problem with that… I am a slow reader, I can’t read three or four extra novels in a week as well as my usual two books I need for research and my own pleasure reading, I just can’t read that fast!

So what is a water dog girl like me to do?

Flow into stagnant waters again I guess… I don’t like it there, it’s too murky and stinks and it’s a bit boring to be frank.

My confidence has taken a huge bashing recently; I feel lame in my sense of humour and I feel alone in my creativity because I am overly cautious and don’t trust the internet very much – sorry people!

But recently I am starting to feel a little bit ashamed of the comedy aspects of my work, because it’s too corny, stupid, over the top and it hurts!  It hurts a lot.

The only genre I can openly talk about without boring the only person who will listen to it, is dark humour in my horror or some dystopian works, outside of that, I don’t have any support.  I wrote a list last week of all of my current WIPs, there are nearly two hundred novels and eighty nine are fantasy mostly, half of which are comedy.  There are only thirty seven horrors that are not vampires or dystopian based.  I have to admit, this person is trying to make me refocus mostly on horror and I am more fantasy and family really.

My main project – the anthropomorphic dystopian is really loved by my listener and only one fantasy novel about dragons and magic is loved by them too – the rest gets a meh or a snore, if it’s not traditional horror.

I prefer fantasy because it heals me from remembering the crap in the world; horror was originally written because my life was horrible, I experience intense violence and been in survival situations that were horrid and I was excellent at writing nasty things like that because of experience.  But I don’t like reliving that kind of thing all the time, fantasy is more healing for me.

I need the pretence that life can be utopian and magical and miraculous and lovely, but I also know that leads to a boring story and I know there are always people out there who wants to destroy a perfect thing for someone else because they are jealous of it, so that is seen in my fantasy a lot, but it is more tame than my horror because my fantasy is written for a family audience.

I’ve personally had enough of pandering to ogres and monsters and being submissive to them and their demands – my horror stories have been developing more and more into revenge style plots, where nature gets its own back on humanity for tearing apart paradise bit by bit.

My reader has noticed and he misses the horror I used to do, the gore for the sake of gore, the horror where anything is possible just because it is meant to be horrible!  Although he likes my new take on horror, he doesn’t like it nearly as much as when I used to write descriptive body horror and taboo scenes.

At the moment I feel like my watery self is forming a whirlpool and it is getting scary, because I have never been a whirlpool before and I am not quite sure what’s going to happen if my instinct is right!

Thank you for reading and hopefully understanding *love you all*

I must become selfish, sorry

Life is drab and cruel at times, you have so many plans and they end up failing into nothing and it’s not your fault, it’s never your fault!  You try to rise above it, but you can only keep your head above water for so long, its tiring to fight the tides.  I know I have been there, I am still there now, it is a day to day slog for me, and it really is!

I have endless lists of plans that have deadlines and I am lucky to have accomplished three or four of those things, because my immune system gets another hit, or my migraines decided to come back or the family are having intense emotional breakdowns again and need to take up your time in order for you to comfort them – there is only so much you can do isn’t there?

I am fighting not just my own personal health and mental health issues, but that of my son and other relatives and along with that I am trying to cope with it all alone and along with the demands that complete strangers put on me.

Whilst trying to maintain some kind of professionalism in my life, so I don’t get completely absorbed in just surviving on every level that a human needs! 

It is selfish and I feel tremendous amount of guilt for it, but recently I have had very long words with Paul about all of this… about how everything is affecting my productivity and the lack of creative release is sending me around the twist – that I must, now become selfish, I must now make harsh demands and say – until my daily writing goal is done, to Hell with everything and everyone and shut myself away in a room that I will guard like the crown jewels!  Because, the work isn’t getting done and it isn’t entirely my fault! 

I have to do this, because I want this career and I can’t get it unless I become tougher and more selfish.  I can’t keep putting my own needs on the side-lines because I am terrified my family is falling apart, because it looks as though, from my standpoint that they are determined to fall apart whether I am there helping them or not and I can’t feel responsible for it anymore!  Because it is not my fault, they have chosen to be the way that they are!

I need just two hours of professional life daily, that is all, it is not asking for much – especially when there are full-time mothers out there that do a lot less for their kids than that!

I am only asking for two hours.

That is rarely got at the moment – this is why I am decluttering the big spare room this month, giving stuff away to charity and moving my computer out of the lounge with Alexa (for amazon music reasons) and putting it all up there – I am going to start closing the world out… for two hours a day, whether it is school holidays or not, they have to get used to it… and though I know it needs to be done… I still can’t help but feel like an evil bitch for doing it!

I care too much me thinks!

Happy reading