If I were a fairy

If I were a fairy, my season would be autumn, my flower would be sunflowers, I would magic in the harvest and paint the leaves of everything in the autumnal colours and I would play tricks on mortals around Halloween by tickling their ears with my breath!

I would smell like spices and apples and have autumn leaves hairclips in my hair and spiders looping their webs into my earring holes and dangling there as fashion models.

I would help the stork deliver babies in big pumpkin carry cots and corn husks as blankets.

Because, why not?

My familiar would be a fox or raccoon and I’d throw peach pits at people who disrespected nature and magically create an instant tree where it lands to serve them right if they walked right into it!

I love faeries; I could get really into writing a book all about fairy culture etc.  it would be smashing if I could do the art I see in my head as well.

But never mind.

I am overloaded with other projects right now that one can wait.

Thanks for reading!

What is autumn?

What does autumn mean to me?

Beautiful colourful crispy leaves flying through the air, if you catch one a wish will be granted according to legend, or you win a day’s luck per leaf you catch!

It means harvest time where all your hard work in the garden really pays off, rewarding you with sunflowers and pretty gourds, squashes and pumpkins to decorate your home with for Halloween.

Halloween, I love Halloween – I love dressing up, roleplaying, planning things for trick-or-treaters or planning parties when we were fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so.  I love decorating the house for Halloween and planning themes, doing weird party foods with weird twists, but the thing is, sometimes I can go too far that the guests decline to eat things.

I suppose raspberry jelly filled gloves to look like a bloodied hand and frankfurters cut to look like fingers covered in ketchup is a bit too much for the human psyche?

Let alone the stuffed Jack-O-Lantern orange bell peppers with spaghetti Bolognese inside of them looking like some kind of zombie freak meal.

I love horror, can you tell?

I love grossing people out too, love, love, love playing to people’s fears when they are spooked out at this season… am I evil for admitting that kind of joy?

I am the kind of person who knows that someone who is sensitive to horror movies, just watched a movie and I creep around ready to pounce when they least expect it – yes, I have a mischievous side, a very impish side!

I am not like that with children though, I don’t like traumatising kids, usually I end up making plans to do things like this with the kids on sensitive adults – but that depends entirely on the integrity and the bravery of each child!  I am a bad influence sometimes!

Halloween is more fun with kids, because kids make things more light-hearted and sometimes they can influence me in becoming grosser for next year!

Kids are sickos at heart!

What’s so funny is, I always regret what I do – why?  Because I am probably the jumpiest person anyone knows, I am easily spooked!

The start of autumn is my birthday and I don’t have very many happy memories about birthdays because I hate to sound tragic, but I am easily forgotten or pushed aside for a couple of weeks because my birthday is apparently too inconvenient usually.  3^rd of October is apparently a difficult date, I suppose I know why – growing up in a family where four of the major family matriarchs have their birthdays between 15^th September to 24^th September, everyone is spent up!

I like watching the children playing with the leaves on the spinney (a little copse island that sits in the middle of our street, separating my side of the road from the other side of the road by two rows of trees with a path in the middle of it).  The children here aren’t like the ones in London who won’t touch the leaves through fear of bird poop or bugs – here the children will gather all the leaves they can in a pile and sit inside of them making huge and very competitive nests for themselves!  At the end of the day, some of the children take all the leaves home to deliver to their gardening parents for next year’s leaf mould fertiliser.

Autumn can sometimes be scary, very scary; for me anyway – I have a huge fear of windstorms in particular, because of a few incidences that happened to me as a child where I got injured or nearly killed.  Thunderstorms are ok, I like thunderstorms, but windstorms scare the Hell out of me!

It is really hard to make me function properly if there is a bad windstorm, I don’t like going out in them at all.

Thunderstorms though, I am a bit of a storm chaser with those, love taking videos of them and watching them and I have to hold myself back from going out in them!

Though I am scared of windstorms or hurricane backlashes, I don’t have the same fear for tornadoes, I’ve seen and experienced them – yes even here in the UK, they are more common here than you think – in fact it is estimated the UK get about three hundred per year, though they generally are small, some have been known to rip streets apart.

I remember my mother sitting on a hammock with a neighbour I didn’t like and a small one around the size of a big football man ripped right through the garden behind them, knocking them off the hammock and lifting the hammock up into the air and landing half on the fence behind them!

I was glad I was twenty feet away watering my mum’s flowers at the time, no one was injured – but I had never seen my neighbour move so fast before!

Autumn is generally my favourite season of them all – I am very much an autumn person.

Thanks for reading!

Tattoo & felt

It’s a very autumn day for me; I want to wear thick and warm materials again with all the autumn colours; probably felt skirt and top with leaves applique and shiny mahogany knee high boots and a cute felted beret.

But alas, I don’t have anything like that here, but never mind.  I do however have a nice warm cardigan, but my trousers are too thin as the warmer ones are too big for me now.  Whenever I stand up in the warm trousers and walk across the room, they are down by my knees in seconds.

Nice image for you there, or a nightmare, whatever your persuasion.

I understand that a lot of my fashion ideas would look ridiculous on someone with my body shape and size right now, but I like to visualise the slimmer me.  I am no fool in understanding that certain materials and styles will exasperate my size – therefore, I would not have felt now if I were in the same sized body and could afford it.

Since I was a teenager I have always wanted a tattoo of a raven, but where I want it wouldn’t suit any formal occasions if I were to get back into them again.  I sometimes wonder if I should design it myself and send it to a temporary tattoo place so I can have them as temps – that’s a nice idea if I could.

Why did I mention the tattoo?  Because I am really loving the idea more and more as I am getting older, but I don’t want to be hasty and make it permanent.  Though a YouTuber I love called Jeffree Star showed on a video that tattoos can be covered up by make-up, but I am still unsure if a permanent one is for me or not.

Also ravens are my main spirit animal and have been for a long time. It has a huge spiritual importance to me, especially with the symbolism around the main image.

Thanks for reading!

Short n spiky

Today I don’t feel very graceful at all, I feel clumsy. I have also woken up feeling like I want my hair to be short and spiky for the day and it’s definitely a day where I feel a bit masculine, but not enough to be totally boyish.

I have a meh attitude to being feminine today, which is a little unusual for me as I generally try to be graceful.

I have lost my jewellery box so I am a little upset I can’t wear a mass of rings on my fingers.

I like autumn colours all the more too, with a baggy white shirt.

Happy reading…

Corduroys and weight loss

I really wished I had a pair of brown corduroys with some sunflowers embroidered on them as I like the idea of this today.  I feel a little like an autumn cottage pixie I suppose. A nice bohemian top would go nicely with those style of trousers  I miss corduroys and I am nearly able to look good in them again soon.

I found out today that I have surpassed my weight loss goal for the week, I am aiming to lose one or two pounds a week, but I found out this morning I have lost 4llbs and 2 ounces!

I think it has something to do with the new arm exercises I’ve been trying to do every two days, it’s approximately eighteen minutes, I say approximately because I struggle to do thirty solid repetitions on most of the exercises, so I am pausing around every ten reps for about thirty to forty five seconds.  I know it’s not ideal, but the main place where my arthritis is, is within the shoulder.

The facial exercises to tone down my chin and define my jawline also seems to be working wonders, in fact, according to Paul, he feels the exercises have knocked seven years off my looks.

I have also found a suitcase filled with some of my old clothes of when I was a size 18/20, most of them are starting to fit again.  So wow!

Happy reading everybody!

When am I sending work to an agent?

Because of the Covid I had at Easter my plans to send work to any publisher by the start of Autumn 2022 has been shifted now to late winter 2022/2023; this is because I know that the current finished products are not ready to be sent to the world, but there is one that I am confident will be finished by the end of this year because it is so fresh in my mind and the most unique of the stories I have planned to send.

Basically I want my first published book to be special, who doesn’t?

Also I am in a quandary about one of the two books I am thinking about sending out – because one of those books I really want to make as a comic series, but I have little knowledge in creating comics and though I have studied a lot of “how to” books and watched a lot of “how to” YouTube videos, I am still not very confident about shifting a novelisation I have made into a comic book format, especially as I am not confident as an artist!

At the moment it is being written as a series of novels, I hope that eventually I will gain confidence in breaking it down into comic book form, because I think making this particular idea a comic book series would do better for it, than novels.  I doubt I would get advice on this from my future agent, but I hope it is something I could talk about with them eventually.

It is the second idea that is likely to be published first, the pure, simple, traditional novel with no comic book planning whatsoever.

Though I am sure that someday there may be comic book adaptions written by fans as it could work as that eventually too, but then again, most books of this particular genre end up in comic book format eventually.

Neil Gaiman’s snippet at the back of one of his Sandman comics about how to write comics has been a big help, as well as Peter David’s book “writing for comics” and a YouTube channel called Serkworks Art Lab.  Without these, I’d be even more clueless about what I am doing.

The thing is, I want the comic series, more than I want the novel idea out there first.  But, I am just so nervous about presenting a novel to an agent as a book, then saying, I can eventually break it down as comics, which was always my intention… how willing are agents to take on work like that?

I have to admit I am a little too afraid to approach them on that even as a question as I hate wasting people’s time!

The comic book I am writing has a lot of characters and action, but it is focused particularly on a group of three characters which work as a team together against a common evil, though the evil is from the same source, they too are different groups – it is like a gang warfare dystopian comic series with mild horror elements, to allow it to be sold to a young adult and possibly an older child audience.

To make life easier in explanation I will call this on my blog a dark fantasy side of my work, which would likely be under the pseudonym of my family entertainment side of my work.

Because I don’t want it to be too dark for family enjoyment!

It is about as dark as Watership down meets a tamer version of The Suicide Squad…

Just to tease a little there…

My actual novel which is likely to be sent out by the end of the year is more Warhammer meets Robocop, there are cyberpunk and fantasy elements in that story.

So there you have it, my plan for the year in writing.

flaw clean

I have written 1277 words towards the novel today, but I have to say I am unhappy to continue without going back and finishing up the flaws I can see in the plot thus far.  Therefore tomorrow, I am unlikely to continue going forwards in this novel because I need to go back to the first chapter and add a few scenes that I feel will make the current scenes seem more complete. 

I am unhappy to just write the entire draft and then edit afterwards in a few weeks’ time, I am seeing flaws now and it is eating away at me and grating.

So I am still writing the 1k a day towards the same project, but I really need to be able to go back and add things, rather than just waiting and moving forwards.

This draft is meant to be completed with as few flaws if any by the end of it, because I want to polish it up and look for an agent for representation by autumn.  I know I can finish a whole draft in three to six weeks, but I like the story to stew before review for a month or two.

So with that being said, I hope that this story will be done and dusted by the end of June, I know however, that agents and publishers may require yet another draft overhaul and I am more than prepared for that – I am no idiot and research intensely everything I do, I am a bore and stickler about perfection and professionalism.

Along with all of this I am also trying to hone new skills in comic book writing and graphic novelisation – I am not confident in this yet, but I am hoping to gain in confidence shortly.

At the moment, the main idea I have for a comic is currently being written as a novel, just to get it out there and written and then I can adjust the whole thing for a comic.  I know it’s a long way around, but I am doing things how I know to do them for now.

Happy reading everyone!

Life’s Pace

A sharp cold wind hits me in the face

An array of orange, gold, red, brown swirl around me

I hear the clickety clack of the railway track in the distance

Today life has a fast pace

A squirrel runs circles around the big oak tree

A crow cries out loud as it chases it away

The children rush home in their hats and coats to avoid the bitter wind

Life has a fast pace today

I watch in wonder as the grey skies gradually clear for golden shards of light

Then the clouds close again

A dog snuffling with its nose in leaves

Will life slow down again?

A warm rush of air as I reach my home, welcomes me to my hearth

I turn the taps in the bathroom on, a lovely soothing bath

A hot chocolate warms my hands by the fire

I have found the object of my desire

Life is slow here in this place

Life has all sorts of pace

Inktober Day 4

Nearly forgot to post this…

 

My giraffe done with sharpies for Inktober Day 4

 

Henry’s autumn day with autumn leaves for Inktober Day 4

 

My dragon coloured in from yesterday.

Autumn is the crisp morning dew

Autumn is the crisp morning dew followed by golden sunshine and rains of multi-coloured leaves

Everything crunching under foot with a satisfying crunch, scrunch, crunch

Delicious spices fill the air with pies, casseroles and soups

Harvest time for all, pumpkins, squashes, apples and more

Cheeky children knocking at Halloween’s door, begging for candies and little treats

You have to give it to them, they are so sweet

Dew drops start to freeze in the cooling air

Summer is gone without a care

Soon it shall be winter

Bonfires burn and glow, fireworks emblazon the night skies

The fire is filled to the brim with wood, hear it snap, snap snap to a crisp in the heat

Winter shall be here in a heart beat