Just one game…

I’m a recovering gaming addict.

I used to play games for hours when I was bedbound sick every single day, right up until around Easter 2022 when I decided enough is enough!

I am tired of being sick and gaming and doing nothing else – I am tired of pretending to be a farmer on Sims4 because I can’t garden anymore.  I am tired of being a Sims character with a dog, because I can’t have a dog.  I am tired of living a virtual life!

I knew that once I gave up gaming that I might go round the twist pretty quickly because it was the only thing that took my mind off the pain I have every day.

But I came to the conclusion that if I wasn’t gaming as much, then I would be practising art and writing more and for a time that was true.

You have no idea how much I actually miss gaming!

Especially since today I learned that Sims4 updates are becoming cooler than ever!

Sims4 wasn’t the only game I was addicted to when I was a gamer in early 2022 – no – I loved Rome Total war and a Warhammer card game – I loved Bee swarm simulator on Roblox and other games on Roblox too, since I was a toddler I have been a gamer chick!

It was something I held in shame for most of my life, but around the end of 2021 I started to become proud of it and even thought about being a gamer on YouTube doing reviews because of free promotional stuff peeps get on there!

But then I started to try and get mature.

I don’t know why I wanted to do that, because giving up gaming is the only thing that I did – everything else about me is as immature as ever and I am not ashamed to consider myself one of life’s Peter Pan types.

On Twitter today I posted how I want to play Sims4 again today and how I want to eat popcorn and game all night and I really do – but it won’t actually happen… why?

My big gaming machine is downstairs in the living room and we only have heating down there for two hours a day and those two hours are around the time I would eat dinner approximately.  Henry has the habit these days whenever he sees me on that machine he either wants to play himself so I can’t enjoy my time on it – or he will try to control which games I play so he can observe or play with me through his laptop – so it’s never my time anymore!

I am starting to get back into the gaming mind-set for the last three days because Henry demanded I go on Facebook Trainstation to play with him for half an hour because he wants boosts and international trains from me to help him get an achievement.

I don’t particularly like Trainstation because its more or less the same all the time and I am bored of it, I got bored of it around five years ago.

But I have got roped into about an hour of that a day since the weekend and its boring – plus I am a little upset it is eating into the time for the only game I play these days which is FlightRising.

I play flightrising as my writing warm up exercise for about 45 to 90 minutes a day, thanks to Trainstation I am only there for ten minutes just to feed the dragons and turn their eggs and scavenge.

I am upset because I have projects I wanted to do on that; I wanted to gene up some of my baby nocturnes from the Night of the Nocturnes festival and level them all up to 25 in the coliseum to sell, because they are all 1^st generation babies, which makes them extra special to other gamers.

I can earn approximately 300k of treasure in game per day, but at this rate, with Henry’s demands for Train station, I am barely able to get 30k a day now.  Ordinarily that would mean I could splice a gene every two days, but now it could take a month!

I seem to be losing more and more ability to do what I want or need in every manner these days, even eat – it’s all so dumb – everything thing has been taken out of my control!

It’s not just Paul interfering anymore with what I do, it’s now Henry.

I can’t eat most of my dinners anymore, because it’s really stressful.  It’s stressful to sit at the dining table with my family, because of the arguments and when I get tense I can’t eat or I start purging, so oftentimes I am going hungry or eating in vain because I can’t keep it down!

Since Henry has been diagnosed with autism it’s like it has given Henry permission to completely revert back to being a toddler!

I go to the toilet and I am disturbed all the time, because he is demanding attention.  I wouldn’t mind, I would love to give him attention and get him off the laptop and talk with me – but he does it every time I go to the toilet – I am deaf, I can’t hear him through the door and when I finish he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.  This is starting to mess up my system if you get me?

Not that you needed to know that, but this is how highly stressed I am these days living here – I have stomach ache a lot and the only time I can relax toileting these days is after 1am when I know the whole house is going to be quiet and not disturb me!

It’s not right living like this and when I talk to people about their behaviour here, it gets vicious – it gets nasty, I just can’t talk to them anymore, they just won’t be civilised with each other or to me anymore!

I am severely depressed by it all because I feel so trapped here and I am!

I just can’t seem to do anything!

A simple thing like eating a meal, going to the toilet or playing a half hour game on my big machine can cause huge ructions and stress!

I am having nightmares about it – seriously!

The amounts of boring things I used to do day to day is actually becoming something like Ground Hog Day dreams at night time – so I am not getting any respite from reality lately.

I am waking up, thinking certain things have been done, to find they haven’t been – then the realisation it was just a dream starts to eat away at me and I start feeling hopeless and tearful again – because I was pretty sure I swept the stairs last night!

I was pretty sure we bought the new mop.

I was pretty sure the bad neighbour was seen moving out yesterday!

I am pretty sure I found my missing vampire files last night! 

It’s all really sending me around the twist now.

I really feel like I am descending into madness and everything is like déjà vu or repeating itself! 

Maybe I am already dead and I am trapped in limbo like my mum always said I would be, because I am not baptised and was born out of wedlock – I am after all, in her opinion “The Devil’s child” anyway! 

Thanks for reading and pray for my sanity please!

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!

My themes & project AD

Here are the main themes I love to write about and I know it has been published in another post before, but I thought it would be good to have it as a post all on its lonesome as a sort of reference post.

My first favourite theme to write about are vampires and their perspective on life and existence, their lifestyle, the drama that goes on in their societies etc.

My secondary favourite literary choice is stereotypical fantasy stories based on dragons, battle and magic! 

My third one is anthropomorphic animals or seeing things from an animal’s perspective and explaining their lives through adventure or almost journalistic storytelling. 

My fourth favourite theme are anything pertaining to childhood wonder, Christmas and Easter stories, Santa, The Easter Bunny, nursery rhyme worlds, toys coming to life, that sort of thing.

My fifth favourite theme to write is stories about inventors and gadget creators in a post-apocalyptic world or perhaps even a steampunk world!

My sixth choices are giants or little people and how they see the world around them and what their stories are. 

My seventh favourite theme is stories about descent into madness or haunting memories or even haunted places, ghosts of both the mind and the ethereal.

The eighth theme is anything with regards to circus performers, carnivals, fairgrounds, fortune tellers and clowns.

The ninth favourite theme to write about is stereotypical war between gods and the underworld and the battle of control over mortality and or power, I especially like gas lighting stories or stories from a twisted perspective.

The tenth theme is stories about magical water/sea creatures or sea life, such as pirates, mermaids, kelpies and sea monsters or travellers of the sea.

Many of my stories will contain at least one of the above in order to keep me interested in writing them, sometimes they may have more than one theme going on for example; my project AD has five of the above themes in it.

There is a small vampire scene in it, with anthropomorphic animals in a post-apocalyptic, steampunk world that experiences a huge gaslight to their existence and in one characters case a descent into madness and a fight for reality and a real battle as well – along with this there are inventors of gadgets and a new way of life for everyone involved in the story!

It’s a project I am really excited about and this particular project has saved my creative life – because without it I very nearly gave up writing altogether.  It is rare for me to have more than two themes in any story, so when I get one that has this many themes in it – it really gets my heart singing!

Thanks for reading!

My forsaken vampires

One of the most painful things about being a creative is the idea that you love to write things that the world tells you time and time again, they are sick of seeing around!

I love writing stories about vampires and for the past five years there is a lot of discrimination against vampire authors.

I join new creative communities and as soon as I mention that vampires are a third of my creations, well, let’s just say the respect is dropped greatly, shall we?

So, around five years ago I lost my confidence in writing about my vampires, which put a huge hollow in my heart virtually overnight – I used to write my vampires with excitement and pride and now when I do venture to write them I kind of do it with apathy and shame.

I mean why bother writing about vampires when you know the majority of the world is growing sick of them?

It hurts, it hurts a lot because up until this realisation a few years back, my vampires meant everything to me – I mean the reason why I wrote anything at all was because my primary focus was my vampires and I have been writing them since I was ten years old.  I know them, like long lost family, it is part and reason for the emotional experience I have known as “Hiraeth”. 

Hiraeth is Welsh for a longing or a home sickness for a place that doesn’t exist or a place you want to find in order to feel emotionally whole again.

I spent a third of my daily daydreams in my vampire stories, trying to ignore them and think of something the world would like.

It has got so bad my avoidance of writing for them that I have forsaken the movies and books I used to consume pertaining to vampire mythology in order to train myself not to want them anymore.

It is a huge upheaval and it is a little emotionally damaging as stupid as that sounds!

Literally, vampires were everything to me growing up.

It was more than an obsession, is there a stronger word for that?

Since last month, the urge to write anything pertaining to vampires has got out of control – yes, I have a children’s story I am working on where there is a small vampire scene so I haven’t completely given up on them – but I miss the focus on vampires as a whole theme.

Today in particular is really bad, today I have the energy and the emotional space to write and potentially write at length, but all I can think about are those vampires I have abandoned.

Finishing their stories, seeing new scenes, writing stories for minor characters within the books and just generally getting them out there; I am trying so hard to ignore it and as dumb as it may sound to you, it brings me to tears to think it would be a waste of time writing them like I really want to – because nobody would want them and I only write because I want my stories to appear on TV someday – there is no other motivation for it, other than the pleasure of it.  I can’t waste three hours a day on my vampires if it were to affect my writing for other things that would be published and adored.

Because I would hardly write towards those other things, so I have to choose my secondary and third loves.

But my secondary choice is getting to the extent where people are getting tired of those too – dragons.

I will now share my main ten themes with you, that I enjoy, the first and second have already been mentioned above.

My third one is gaining popularity right now and I am hoping that society won’t be bored of them before the series is published and that is anthropomorphic animals.

My fourth favourite theme are anything pertaining to childhood wonder, Christmas and Easter stories, Santa, The Easter Bunny, nursery rhyme worlds, toys coming to life, that sort of thing.

My fifth favourite theme to write are stories about inventors and gadget creators in a post-apocalyptic world.

My sixth choice has never really been a hugely popular theme, giants – but I am hoping my style will change that.

My seventh favourite theme are stories about descent into madness or haunting memories.

The eighth theme is anything with regards to circus performers, carnivals, fairgrounds, fortune tellers and clowns.

The ninth favourite theme to write about is stereotypical war between gods and the underworld and the battle of control over mortality and or power.

The tenth theme are stories about magical water/sea creatures or sea life, such as pirates, mermaids, kelpies and sea monsters.

Those are the themes I love the most to write.

Before I got self-confident about writing my vampires, I would write my vampires a third of the time I wrote per day and I wrote every day because I really looked forward to spending time with my vampires and it was what got me up every morning!

Nothing else excites me in the same way anymore and it’s really disheartening.

As idiotic as I may sound, to me it is like I have betrayed my whole existence and theirs by not paying attention to them (the vampires) anymore!

My vampires in my opinion are sort of unique to the world of fiction, but sort of already done in other parts too – but I can’t help but think that they are getting old-fashioned or they are overdone and that not many people would want them.  My vampires are not violent enough or are too unethical to be wanted so it leaves me in a state of overwhelming confusion.

I am fortunate enough to have friends who love vampires and demand them from me, but hey they are friends and they are gothic, of course they would – but I am not dissing my friends, but just how many people would want these vampires?

I know the vampire fandom is pretty big, but the vampire fans that are occurring these days are less and less about traditional vampires and more and more into what I regard the slasher kind of vampire and I am sorry to say but my vampires are far more refined than that and romance with mortals is rare or unheard of in their world.

So there it is…

I have said what has been on my mind for months – I want to write vampires.

But they will have to come after Project AD and the Easter project now.

Thanks for reading!

Land of the mortal blue

In my garden I play with the blackberry dragons

They sing songs to me

In my garden I swim with the mermaids of my pond

They sing songs to me

They sing “we know you’re not free, we will keep you company”

They know what life is like for me

A prisoner of mortality

The fairies too they sing their songs

They say we will protect you from the wrongs

The satyr too, sings a song

About justice and freedom and truth

Drink from the fountain of youth and you’ll be free

Come and dance with me

Says he

And I do

And I am released from the deep blue

And I am free again

And now I’ll mend

Because I am forever young and happy

True

Now I am a part of you

My fantasy land

And I feel grand

Because I have left the land

The land of mortal blue

And I’ve learned that all the magic is true

Top 10 beliefs & superstitions

Top 10 favourite beliefs, spiritual stuff and traditions!

Top 10 traditions I have

Decorating the Christmas tree on December 1^st (as in UK we don’t have Thanksgiving)

Cinnamon French toast & plum compote for breakfast on Christmas morning

Decorating the house for Easter & having an Easter tree

Because I am multi-faith I do acknowledge small aspects of the Jewish Sabbath, not much but there are things I do on Friday nights if nothing gets in my way! Paul doesn’t like a lot of it he is completely faithless; Henry likes it, but if Paul doesn’t like it we don’t do it. I like to light a candle and acknowledge the sabbath in prayer, but that’s all I can do here and usually in the bedroom not at the dining table where its supposed to be! Two years ago Henry and I was seriously thinking about going back to the old family faith entirely, but we didn’t have the support from his dad. My friend Lizzy who is quite Frum in the Jewish community was thrilled and supportive. In fact its because of this, that Henry and Paul’s relationship has suffered, because Henry really wanted to go to the synagogue and learn more and he is upset he won’t be getting a bar mitzvah in May 2023 when he will be 13! -I know it sounds counter to the belief, but visions and spiritual guidance has improved a lot since deciding about exploring my Jewish ancestry.

On New Year’s Eve, you should clean the house as much as possible, open all the windows and doors as close to Midnight as possible and sweep the old year out of every door you can and sweep in the new year – if you are partying that night, don’t worry, do it first thing in the morning! 

Dressing up on Halloween and giving candy to Trick or Treaters – or if I am lucky and able to go to or have a special Halloween party! 

A special family meal on all Equinoxes and Solstices!

Sprinkling magic dust for the reindeer on Christmas Eve with Henry on the path of the house and putting up the magic key for Santa to get indoors and hanging it on the wreath of the door!

Putting a silver coin in the Christmas pudding for extra luck for the lucky person who finds it Christmas day!

Prayers to the full moon about what you need in the coming month with a silver coin in hand flip it 3 times and spin 3 times.

Top 10 superstitions I have

As a woman I shouldn’t pick up a dropped or crossed knife (it’s an old Romany belief)

Shouldn’t cut a person’s hair if they are sick and when you cut your hair it should be buried or burned!

You must always leave a food or drink offering to house spirits before you go to bed, in a specific place in the kitchen for them!

My grandma always told me to stick a knife or a piece of sharp wood under the cradle of all babies to protect them from Lilith – not sure if this is a Jewish belief or not, but it’s in my family!  Henry still has his sharp wood under his bed, I don’t let go!  Lol

If you are having a period of bad luck in your life, bathe in sea salt water in the bath, get out the bath, dry yourself off and before you do anything get your clear quartz crystal and circle yourself, do this for 3 days.

Black cats and the number 13 ARE VERY LUCKY POSITIVE symbols to me and my family, not the normal beliefs others have!

I can’t identify yellow chrysanthemums but when I find out that someone has bought them into the house and told me what they were, I get upset because in family tradition, those flowers denote death and mourning and if nobody has died, they’ve no right to be inside your house!

A robin visiting the window or coming too near me in the garden means that my ancestors need me to talk to them and so I should go and meditate at my earliest convenience.

Don’t talk ill of the dead.

Don’t go out of your way to contact the dead, it’s disrespectful you can talk to them if you like – but don’t actively disturb them!  I am clairvoyant, but I don’t force communication!

Top 10 spiritual things I do or believe

I believe in the God of the Old Testament and no presumed messiah, yet; but I also ask for advice from angels, spirit guides and animal guides or my higher self that looks like prayer but isn’t – totally different ball game!

Though I consider myself mostly a believer in the Old Testament, I do believe in some aspects of revelations in the New Testament, primarily because of my upbringing – but also because of unexplained visions and dreams which have come true over the years and I continue to get these visions at times and I am too shy to talk in depths about them!

My family believe they are descendants from all sorts of things – Vietnamese ancestors believe they’re dragon shapeshifters – my Irish ancestors believe we’re descended from the tuatha de danann, fairies and Celtic Gods, part of my Greek ancestry believe we are descended from Dionysus, the Romans believed they were Sons of Mars and my grandma said we’re related as distant cousins to the families Vakarelski (I have found this to be true on Genesreunited) who were accused of vampirism and are also cousins to Vlad Tepes the III!  As well as many Salem Witches and Aleister Crowley – phew, so I definitely believe I have magical blood.  Especially as my grandma told me that I have green eyes which instantly strengthens all magical powers tenfold!  Along with this whenever I get angry, power cuts occur or electrical appliances die!  Paul never believed me until he witnessed my first fury living with him!

I believe in the healing energy of the earth – I like to walk barefoot in the garden to soak up the energy, when I don’t do this for a while I get sick.

I believe in crystal healing magic.

I believe animals can and do communicate with people, only most people are not attuned to hear them or bother understanding them and their ways!

I believe you need to be careful at whatever you say, you can’t be flippant in your words as what you say has a way in actually manifesting – so choosing your words carefully is vitally important.  Because the more energy you put into your words, especially if it’s a heightened energy like anger, because it will work faster and hit you on the nose later on!  Consistency in thought word and deed is essential!

I believe dreamtime is every bit as real as the awakened world and that you can shift realities after a while of practising and trusting things.

I believe in the balance, to be totally for dark and totally for the light is bad – you need both or everything will be destroyed!

I believe everything is interconnected to everything else, you can’t exist as a lone entity and so what you do and say is important, not just for yourself, but others.  You need to be mindful in your life, not do things constantly for selfish reasons as what you do and say can affect many people around you – it’s like a butterfly effect.

Top 10 faiths I have enjoyed learning about and practised in the past and present, present is indicated with *

Judaism *

The Kabbalah (a Jewish mysticism) *

Native American shamanism  *

Nordic shamanism

Romany witchcraft *

Buddhism philosophy, though not lifestyle yet

Taoism *

Sikhism

I will confess I learned a lot in the dark side of the occult in my youth and it made me research harder than anything and bought me back to basics and learning a lot more than I would had I of just stayed influenced by the J-witness movement my mum got me involved in!  Long and arduous path, but it made everything I was taught by religion more sense!  Basically the darkness taught me how to see the rainbow and appreciate the light and balance!  Ultimately, it taught me that there is nothing to fear spiritually, all things I must fear are within humanity and other people, not spirits. 

Mormonism – they accept people like me who are seers and clairvoyants.

Spirit guides & dream time

This post is going to be about my spirit animals or animal spirit guides, since this blog has been showing you a lot about my spiritual side; I thought I’d give you more insight to me as a spiritual person.

One of the very first spirit animals that ever showed themselves to me came to me when I was around 4yrs old in the garden.  I was playing by myself when three lizards came out of the cracks of the crazy paving patio and started to climb all over me.  They were very friendly and playful creatures which became tame with me very quickly.

Nobody in my family believed me when I told them that I have baby dragons in the garden who likes to play with me and that they live down the holes.

Because to me at the age of 4, they were baby dragons, I didn’t know them as lizards at the time!

It was thanks to these baby dragons that I developed a love for dinosaurs and dragon movies and anything connected to that sort of thing.

I avidly watched the movie “One Million Years BC” so much it wore the VHS out by the time I was 8yrs old and dad had to buy a new one!

Lizards didn’t stay in my life for long as a physical presence, because by the time I was 6yrs old we moved house and I never saw a wild lizard since.  But they followed me into my dream time.  Protecting me from things that often chased me, they would jump in front of whatever was chasing me have those epic dino fights whilst I got away.  This was a regular dream for me throughout most of my life in fact, as I got older the lizards got bigger and more ferocious in protecting me in dream time.  By the time I was a 11 those lizards became T-rex then after I had watched Jurassic park, they became a pack of velociraptors.

The lizard usually shows up early in childhood with people who are supposed to be magically or spiritually strong, they come into peoples lives during intense spiritual growth spurts.

It is funny to note that a similar animal “The Wolf” came into my life when I was around 9yrs old, they have a similar meaning to lizard, though they tend to join people who feel they are without a pack or who are victims of some kind of abuse, living under constant threat or for people who could easily lose self-control and generally feel unloved by those around them.

The wolf became my main spirit animal for a long time, it vanished almost completely as a dream time spirit guide by the time I was eighteen.  I even had dreams where I was an arctic wolf, running with the pack, where the leader was double the size of the others, scruffy and black.  In my dream time we occasionally turned back into our human forms, he’d be an almost Italian looking young man, with black scruffy or slightly spiky hair, dark eyes and an orange varsity styled jacket.

What I find weird is, when we weren’t running as a pack through a dense dark woodland on the edge of an army barracks in the dreams, I’d be riding behind this guy on his (for some weird reason) a yellow Yamaha motorbike.

Weirdly enough motorbikes were a big thing in a lot of my dream times growing up and I have never actually ridden one in my life!

When I was around 10yrs old, two new temporary spirit guides came into my life.  Robins and bumblebees, but they come and go in my life a lot.  Though at the time the bumblebee first made an appearance to me, they were a shadow animal, it was only in the past 12yrs that they have become more of a guide than a shadow creature now.

Robins came into my life when my grandad was dying of cancer, a robin would visit the family a lot and my grandad said that there is a family legend that we reincarnate as robins to give messages to each other; “I’ll do that for you cocker when I am gone, I’ll be like a little robin postman coming to give you messages.”

It’s strange how whenever there is a big family event coming up or a death that an unusually large male robin comes to visit the garden wherever I live and will peck at the window until I notice it.

I never ignore robins when I notice them, because their behaviour tells me what is going on – though I won’t know who they indicate, I can tell by what the robin does, what kind of event will be taking place soon.

When the bumblebees first arrived as a spirit guide when I was 10yrs old it was a terrifying experience for me; it came in the form of a nightmare. 

I was playing in an adventure playground and it becomes cloudy and dark, I thought it is just a rain cloud coming over head, but it got darker and darker and I couldn’t see anything anywhere, so I left a little play house to go and see why it suddenly became night time.  When I left the little play house, I looked up to see a giant bumble bee, bigger than a house and it stung me and my whole body blew up big and popped!

It was around the time that my dinosaurs and lizards were getting more and more fiercely protective of me and were even starting to sometimes turn against me in some dreams – it was a scary three years in dream time.

When I was 12yrs old I started to get dreams of sitting on the edge of a cliff, singing out loud to whales and they were responding to me and dancing for me in the sea below.  In many of my new dream times, I started to run off the edge of the cliff to dive into the sea to be with them – but when I get to the sea they were rarely there.  The lizards and dinosaurs used to try and stop me jumping into the sea and would try to block my path by waiting at the cliff edge for me to fiercely make me turn back!

After about a year of doing this in dream time, the lizards became desperate, as I found ways to get into the sea time and time again – so the lizards became alligators and crocodiles and they ended up waiting for me in the sea and used their tails to swish me back to the shores again.

When I was around 14yrs old I realised that the invisible energy I was running away from was actually love.  Someone who intensely loved me was chasing me and I was running away afraid of them because they seemed too enthusiastic.

Up until I was 14, I didn’t know what I was running from.

But I evaded this loving person until I was 17, this loving person had a blurry image, an outline or silhouette, I couldn’t see them properly until I wanted to get to know them properly. 

When I was 14 my dream self-developed wings – I think it was my spirits way in overcoming the blockages from the lizards and dinosaurs – I started to dream that I was a raven.

It is around this time that the local rooks, crows, ravens and magpies became very protective of me.  They still are, they’ve never left me.  The corvids are very loyal to me, both in dream time and out of it.

I dreamt almost every night and remembered most events without fail that I would always start my dream at my bedroom window and I would open the window and jump out into the night and fly away as a raven.  I don’t dream that since living with Paul, because our windows are too high up and my spirit has never felt at home here.  I often spiritually revisit my old house in London.

The guy with the spiky hair in the wolf pack also started to develop wings with me around this time, because he felt dejected that I no longer ran with the pack, but flew above it.

He often tried to get me to consider being a wolf again with him, but I was more interested in being the raven as it was more convenient.

It wasn’t until I was around 17 that I realised this guy was the love I was running from, when I realised he was the silhouette person, I started to see the spiky haired guy a lot.

Once I realised he was the same person, I didn’t have dreams of being chased again, until recently, when I asked my spirits about this – as it was the same feeling as before, they told me, who do I think it is?  When I said, is it the spiky guy again?  The silhouette faded and it was him again, but older and with facial hair that seems to come and go, like his colouring, grey to black to peppery, to black, to grey, to black again.

Nearly forgot that squirrels have been around me a lot since I was around 7yrs old too, they tame around me really easily, particularly the grey or black ones.  Some people who know me can definitely see squirrel qualities in my personality!  Lol

Some squirrels were so tame they’d come and go in the house like pets when my bedroom window was opened.

When I was 15yrs old I learned seals get distressed whenever they see me leaving them – they love me, they stalk me, they screech and panic and get very upset when I leave them.  It’s weird and embarrassing when I am in zoos.

Aged 20 I found that cows like me too much too and to this day, cows can be bothersome with me.  They try to kidnap me, seriously.  I can’t walk past a herd of cows without them following me and circling me and trying to keep me.  Paul can testify that we live near a canal, where across the other side of the canal is a herd of cows, whenever they see me, they enter the canal to get to the other side and have been known to follow me and get lost from their farm, just because they won’t leave me alone.  I can’t go to that particular area of the canal pathway anymore, because of the amount of runaway cows that I seem to cause there!

What is weird is that I have the symbol of Hathor the Egyptian goddess on my hand as part of my palmistry lines.  She was a cow goddess – perhaps they think I am her?  I don’t know it’s blooming weird whatever the case may be!

The cow is one of my strongest spirit guides too; those the raven, grasshoppers and the butterflies are the strongest and longest serving for me.

Butterflies tell me about productive ideas and new births within the family, they told me every time I got pregnant, before I even did a pregnancy test.  I’ve been pregnant three times in my life and every time I have got pregnant, a blue butterfly has flown between my legs or landed on my hand just as the pregnancy was only 2 weeks in gestation.  It’s weird that it is consistent. 

Also butterflies turn up whenever I have new story or art ideas or when Brain Hurricane season is about to set in or if I am about to undergo a huge change in my life or transformation.

The Grasshoppers tell me about travelling to new places or moving home.  They don’t really contact me for anything else and they always do so via physical manifestation, rather than dream time.

Whenever I am without a pet, I notice ginger cats try to adopt me in the street or garden, then they leave as soon as I have any kind of pet in the home again.  It’s like a stop gap pet and it’s always a ginger cat of some description.

Another queer thing about zoo animals is whenever I go to a zoo with cheetahs or snow leopards, they seem to love me and will try to get as close to me as possible.  They seem to love me, whereas they are aloof with everyone else.

Field mice are also attracted to me for some reason as are frogs, toads, bats and herons.

Most recently my dreams are getting lots of flamingos, ibises and peacocks, as well as cockerels, rabbits and puppies.

I also remember around 2003 to 2006 can’t remember exactly when but stags became a huge thing in dream time, and at the time the spiky hair dude was there, but we had a little misunderstanding about things.  The dream was surreal to me, because he started to tell me that he is real and did I know that?  He also told me he wanted me in his life and he is going to find me outside of dream time.  I told him, you have some issues to sort out first though; I won’t like it if you come how you are right now.

He made a vow to change himself.  Around this time he was wearing a lot of stag symbols and even nicknamed himself The Buck.  I don’t know since I woke up, what it was he needed to change, but I do know it is something I wouldn’t have liked about him if we knew each other back then.  But whatever I don’t hold grudges, people change and you got to let them move on – it’s not healthy digging up their pasts if it is behind them.

I do know that he became worried around early 2004 because an ex of mine hurt me so much, that for nearly five years I didn’t want to consider any new healthy relationship with a man again.  I think he thought even if he did find me in reality, I wouldn’t welcome him anymore.  He’d been right until 2008.

Took a lot for me to heal that wound!

I was going through a very unhealthy time as far as other relationships were going too.

It’s weird but dream time to me is like another reality – like a parallel.  Because when I got pregnant with Henry in 2009 it also caused a bit of emotional turmoil for this guy when he found out – he became almost lost until 2013, until he started to try harder to connect with me and over the years since then, he appears to be getting spiritually stronger.

Almost obsessively so in the past two years in particular, to the extent he can tap into my chakras from time to time in the past month now – Paul told me, it sounds like whoever this guy is, must be adept at transcendental meditation.

Even Paul has been getting a spiritual instinct that someone is telling him to “back away from their girl”.  Which coincidentally started around two weeks before Paul met his new woman.

Even Paul keeps telling me, he doesn’t believe this guy is a dream – he truly believe this guy is imminent and will be coming into my life sooner than I think!

I kind of pooh pooh it off, because I think I am nuts to be honest with you.  But Paul is like… if you are nuts, then so am I, because you know me!  I am not spiritual at all – but this is strong enough that even I can feel it and you’ve got to get ready and when he comes, you say yes and you go with him if he tells you to!

I thought woah, OK, that’s a bit much!

But he reckons it’s going to be like that.

It’s too surreal and too weird and I am not sure I am going to fully embrace the speed of it all, if Paul is right.

But if it is real – gosh… the idea makes me cry, because I have wanted that kind of love for too long now, that I am not sure if I can get used to it and I am scared that I would push them away, as I may not be comfortable with how nice they’re going to be, as stupid as that sounds!

All I know is, when they turn up, it’s not going to be conventional… something tells me he is a tricky one – safe… but tricky…

Thanks for reading!

The workings of my brain

So I demanded room for my writing in the house, away from all of the noise and I have won; I have said this before, but I am proud of this little victory, it means a lot to me and my writing.

I have made peace with my body too, I am no longer trying to control its habit of dominating me but now working along with it, going with the flow; I’ve learned to go with the flow because my Chinese astrological sign is the water dog, when I go against the flow I get into all sorts of problems.

So instead of forcing my body and mind to do things it doesn’t want to do, I have decided to see what my body wants from me instead. 

So, when my brain is most likely to be active creatively, instead of forcing myself to stay asleep or go to bed at a semi-reasonable time; I have decided to let my brain do what it needs to do in order to get things done. 

Doing things this way has proven that I am losing the habit of procrastination, because I am not using up my energy fighting against my flow.

This is all well and good, but when I have deadlines to fulfil for my publishers in the future, how will I fare then?  My brain has to get used to the idea of doing some things it doesn’t like at times that might not be suitable for it.

So far this week I have started to write as soon as Paul goes to bed, this is the best time for me, because once Paul is in bed, the whole household is still and quiet – except for me, I look like a ferocious grim reaper tapping away at night in dim light with the strange gnarls of steampunk in the background.

It is autumn and I am getting cold in the night, so I am wearing hooded navy blue fleece pyjamas, with the hood up and a hot water bottle stuffed up my vest.

A grim reaper using Morse code to contact the dead or at least that’s what comes to my mind when I see myself in the mirror as I glance up.

Half in my bed with a little adjustable table, typing away; with ten books at the foot of my bed and a note pad, chamomile or green tea at the side table and the sound of a windy steampunk world all around me; it is as cosy as it sounds, or weird, whatever your persuasion.

I love my space.

I fought hard for this space and it is pretty here, the best room in the house.

I have a trio of different coleus plants in a huge pot in the window with a crystal hanging down at the centre catching rainbows to throw at me as I work during the day; because sometimes I do write during the day, usually around 1pm to 3pm as that’s the quietest time of day for me when Henry is at school and lunch is done.

I have my purple fleece blanket, my Alice in Wonderland and dragon collection all around me – to see my bedroom you’d think I was a teenager; you know, that girl from the movie Labyrinth Sarah? My room is like a homage to the movie, with the Brian Froud artwork here and there and the amount of fair folk and goblin books I have in the room, you wouldn’t know I am forty tomorrow.

Yes, I am forty tomorrow.

So that’s when my life is going to start, I’ve always planned it.

Just because tomorrow I will be forty and my life starts doesn’t mean I will grow up however, I will never grow up and you can’t make me!  I will still keep my strange and dorky childish things and I will still lack a sense of responsibility and I will always need a daddy figure in my life.

I won’t change that about me, it’s something I made peace with a long time ago and it is the thing about me that I am most proud of, more proud than any of my accomplishments to date.

Strange I know, but at least I know who I am and who I want to be in the future.

I didn’t choose to lock away my childishness because it didn’t suit other adults around me, I didn’t choose to lie to myself and regret it for the rest of my life.

I chose to be me, the best and most honest version of myself possible.

But I digress.

My post was about what my brain gets up to, or at least that’s what I think this post is about?

My brain is the most creative between 8pm and 6am, but I tended to try and relax with books or YouTube from midnight until I sleep around 3am, just because it’s more reasonable than sleeping at 6am.

So I thought, OK, give into the brain and work as soon as Paul goes to bed at 10:30/11pm and write until 6am, but get this… my brain works only until around 2am before it actually decides it is sleepy now.  It never does that.

In giving into my brains demands, I am now sleeping three or four hours earlier than when I chose to ignore it – are you baffled by this?  I know I am!

Though saying that, twice this week I have woken up because my brain had a random idea I had to write down – but ultimately, I am sleeping earlier and longer.

My brain is a funny old thing.

You know if something is complicated I will breeze through it, if it’s easy I fail.

Take eggs on toast for example, I burn the toast and break the egg yolk with egg shell in it, but make me do cakes, soufflés, pies and whatever I am a champion in the kitchen!

I am the same with sawing wood, it takes me twenty minutes to cut an inch into the wood with a saw, but I can carve any piece of wood into a pretty statue if you give me a whittling knife!

Don’t ask, because even I don’t get it.

Well, there you are an introduction to the ways and habits of my brain – I hope you enjoyed the somewhat weird insight.

Thanks for reading!

My writing plans

How many novels am I working on?

I try to focus on about three at a time mostly, the same three, but I have more on the go than I admit.

Nobody will believe me if I said I have approximately one hundred and fifty unfinished works and about forty works stewing because I am pernickety and a perfectionist that just can’t seem to decide on the plot or another version of it.

It has been some months since I last said this, that when I whine about not finishing the project in time for my deadline, it is that one specific novel I am on about – project AD.

When I say I haven’t written anything I often mean to say towards the main project specifically – because in all honesty, even on my hardest of days, I am still writing something; be it poetry, songs, short stories, snippets of ideas or other novels, you can bet your bottom dollar I am still producing roughly three thousand words a day elsewhere.  But for me, it’s the main project that counts.

Along with my approximate 3k words on other works and approximately 3k words toward my main project on a good day, I am also in working mode whenever I watch YouTube, socialise on twitter and read books – which means all in all I work longer than anyone should!

There isn’t a time in my day where I am not working, unless of course I am eating, because I usually use meal times as a way to socialise with my nearest and dearest and all focus is on them.

When I read a book, it’s usually educational for me in some way.  I rarely read fiction books, but that is a habit that’s slowly changing.

I was asked on twitter recently, what would I call my writing niche?  It got me thinking, because I couldn’t answer straight away without thinking about it for about ten minutes and when I thought of what it might be, I had to google it to see if it was a thing and it is; abstract fantasy.

I suppose it is abstract fantasy because a lot of my works have a lot of abstract ideas, such as anthropomorphism, breaking down the boundaries of what is stereotypical of fantasy creatures and even breaking down the boundaries of societal norms as there is a lot of gender fluidity in some of my works.

Often whenever people ask me what I mostly write I give them a long list as a reply, something akin to; I write dark fantasy, or things of a dark theme such as descent into madness survival, anthropomorphism, dystopia and a bit of steampunk and vampires.  Those are my usual go to replies – however, it says nothing really of the giants and dragons I write about and it totally bypasses the fact that it is an abstract idea not the general run of the mill fantasy everyone is cosy with.

For example, I might have dragons who dress in regency clothing having afternoon tea picnics discussing the barbarism of humanity; or beautiful faeries with butterfly wings, heavily tattooed with shaved sides of their heads in intricate patterns getting ready to wrestle a badger as a ride to go to the summer solstice party.  You get what I mean here, though lovely and fantastical it can be a little dark in the way I write things, but still not too dark for family entertainment, that’s important to me!

So I have grown comfortable in understanding I am an abstract fantasy author with mild horror thrown in here and there.

Abstract fantasy is more doable than you think – although most people would consider Douglas Adams work “Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” as a comedy sci-fi it is often marketed as abstract fantasy. 

Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, Clive Barker and Garth Nix are also considered abstract fantasy authors, to name but a few.

My current project AD is definitely abstract fantasy but it does have some steampunk elements to it too, so the marketing here can be difficult unless I decide which niche it’s actually going to be and personally – I think it’s going to be marketed as a YA science fiction because I think the steampunk elements are quite big, the anthropomorphism is due to genetic mutations, the animals are building a world out of the scraps of junk humans have left behind and they are building weapons to fight each new rising faction that is occurring out of the dust. 

I think this project screams Tank Girl, Mad Max and The Fly so this is why I have chosen to market it as YA Science Fiction rather than abstract fantasy, because science is quite a large theme in the series and yes, this is going to be a series of books and eventually I plan to make them into a graphic novel, but at the moment I am not confident in doing that – so they are novels right now.

I have also changed the species of a rival group, which is why I am falling behind on the project, because I had to rewrite four chapters depicting the new species which set me back about a week, I am happier with the idea that this rival clan is sheep rather than rats as I felt that rats are overdone as bad guys.

Also the main character has a disability, which I felt is often underrepresented in literature, so I am proud of that and it really makes the story, it really works well.

This story has bought back the fun in writing for me, which is something I haven’t felt since 2015, it has a lot of wacky ideas which work and I am so proud of.

But Project AD is definitely not my only project, no worries there.

This is part of a series, but it is not my only series I am working on and there are plenty of standalone novels too.

I have a vampire saga I am working, this is probably going to be my longest series of all my books and again I would market them as science fiction because of the fact that my vampires are not originally from Earth and they do space travel from time to time.

Another series I am working on has twelve defined stories and there will absolutely never be more than twelve books in this series because it would defy the plot, there is a specific reason why the number twelve is important to this series.  I have mentioned this story before as Steampunk 1 and this story will be marketed under steampunk because it’s quite rigid in that genre.  It is a lesbian romance of travel companions who explore new cultures and debunk science together.

Another is a dark fantasy about ghost children, this is a standalone book and I won’t say much else about the plot just yet.

There is another dark fantasy about a haunted teddy bear, which I’ve vaguely mentioned two years ago approximately.

There is a dragon trilogy I am working on.

A series of stories about giants in the same world, but all different characters, with their own stories, but it is a specific world; so far there are five planned, two half written.

A werewolf novel, which is a standalone – the plot isn’t exciting enough yet and needs a lot of work!

There is so much more than this, there is no need to worry about me being a one trick pony, honestly!

I can’t focus on one thing for too long it triggers my ADD really bad and I am always juggling ideas, some for years being remastered time and time again – but there is more to me than just anthropomorphic mutant warriors having gang warfare and vampires flying around in spaceships and lesbian balloon riders debunking science… much, much more!

I am also working on a series of books based on angels and demons and the bible etc., there is just so much fighting to get out of my head!

In my next post, I am going to be talking about how I structure my stories and how long my ideas can take to write on average.

Thanks for reading!

Witchy roots & faeries

What got me into fantasy and horror as a genre?

My family history is really to blame for me loving fantasy and horror, because my family history is pretty unusual in fact, absolutely overrun with weirdness.

It mostly stems from my maternal line all this weird stuff, my grandmother is half Romany and my grandmother once told me that there are witches within the family; I never really truly believed her though I liked the thought that we had such a weird and diverse family history – but in 2017 I found out the truth when I did my own genetic research.

It turns out that my family had cousins who were victims of the Salem witch trials not only on my grandmother’s side of the family, but also my grandfather’s side of the family as well – her husband. 

My family names which were involved with these trials are Howe, Bishop and Crawley – though Crawley managed to escape from her persecution by running away in the night to a different town, here in the UK, around one hundred years after Salem, because our family fled back to the UK after their cousins were lost to the Salem trials.

My grandmother was rather good at telling me about family traditions and taught me a lot of things, which my mother thought was a load of old tosh and old wives tales; but I followed my grandmothers advice on more than one occasion and things always worked out for me whenever I got stuck in life – so it is something I have learned to live by these days.

Witchcraft and gypsy magick seems to run in my blood and there is a lot of weird things I’ve been taught over the years about what it is to be a true witch, with real witch heritage!

My grandmother held off teaching me anything before I was seven years of age, because a true witch understands that before the age of seven spirits can over take a child and make them act like changelings – non-humans and they will never get back their former child if they allow them to mess around with magick sooner than this!

You can tell if a child is meant to be a witch for several reasons within the family – the most significant thing is having green eyes, which is probably why green eyes are rare, it was common knowledge back in the witch burning days.  The next significant thing is being able to remember their dreams and being a sickly child; because the magick messes up our bodies and because we’re young we’re not strong enough to control it. 

Some people believe that green eyes is a sign we are descendants of the goddess Hera and some say it’s where the word heretic comes from, but I can’t vouch for the truth of this, because I don’t know! 

But what I do know is, there is a section of my mother’s family who believe we are descendants from Dionysus, but again, I can’t vouch for the truth of this either!  I know the Italian side of my family believe we are mixed with Greek and Jewish too, but that’s one of the four lines in the past five generations where I have Italian blood.

But that’s another conversation.

The family name Crawley is linked to the family name Crowley too, as the Crowley’s changed their name to become more distinctive and I’ve yet to find a link to the man himself – you know who I am talking about!  My grandmother is sure however he is a second or third cousin to her as she met him at a family reunion around 12yrs of age – she was born in 1932.  Again, I don’t know whether this is true or not, because I haven’t found a link in my research to him.

Why would this influence my love for fantasy and horror?  Because it was part of my bonding process with my grandmother or nan as I called her!  She taught me that in order to be safe going out you need certain trinkets, her particular favorite is the Cornish pixie, if you have that on you and people cause mischief with you, the pixie will ensure they get into mischief too!

I wasn’t inclined to believe about the pixies too much.  But something strange happened when I was twenty five and I went out to a local woodland with a boyfriend (of whom I was having doubts about) – he was being his general obnoxious self and then there was a big rustle up in the trees above us – acorns fell on his head hurting him, when he complained about it there was cheeky maniacal laughter coming up from the tree and the acorn pellets got worse and worse until he grabbed me by the hands and ran out of the woodlands with me!  I laughed and warned him of my heritage once again and how he shouldn’t be so bloody cheeky with me!  We broke up four months later.

She got me into the habit of leaving an offering out to the spirits of the house; because if they are not fed often enough they’ll make the house fall into disrepair!  They will also protect the house from burglary and other things.  I believe this, because I am paranoid about forgetting to do the offerings and I have had two near burglary’s happen, one occasion a burglar tried to break in and the garden gate fell on them as they ran away – the burglar was someone we knew, because they couldn’t help saying that there are weird freaky things in the window and when he decided to leave – the gate fell on him!  But we noticed the back door of the house looked meddled with and we had to change the locks because of issues with it.

This person also claimed that the joker soft toy in the bedroom window waves at him from time to time, but that’s not a mechanical toy, so it must be the Nisse (my gran never called it Nisse, she always called it the hearth folk) playing about!

There are lots of things like this that happen over and over again in my life and many things I won’t talk about here, because if a witch reveals too much about their actual family spells it makes the spells null and void for all future generations.  This is how you can really tell a true witch from someone who just likes to play about.  It is also the reason why certain famous spell books don’t work for some people, but some people they do, because the spirits can sense the bloodlines, but some spells still don’t work or work as effectively as they did for those who originated them, because they get weaker with corruption outside of true magick circles.

Earlier on in the life of the internet you could tell real magick from fake, because magic, magick and magyck – had different significant meanings, which no longer stand in today’s society, once again, thanks to corruption… usually corruption of the wannabes rather than religious intervention! 

No spirit will hurt a true witch, but they do hurt those who are not pure in heart with their spells or who are not part of spiritual bond that blood gives; they will particularly hurt those who intend to do spells based on selfish reasons and revenge.  Because a true witch has no reason to make revenge spells, because their protective spirits and the spirits of their ancestors would already be enacting a vengeance plan for them, if they feel that the witch truly suffered innocently.

Also witches never charge for their skills in spell making or fortune telling, because the spirits will work against them as their skills are a gift and should not be abused for financial gain – however, a true witch and true fortune teller will ask for a donation, this is better than to outright charge.  A donation is acceptable to the spirits, charging for your ability is not!

This is why you will know a true witch, if she asks you to pay for your own spell ingredients so that she can use them to help you, and then you know she is genuine!

Spells from a true witch work faster than those who are merely wannabes!

Also a true witch knows that if a witch curses another witch, that within twelve years they will feel the nasty effects of what they have done, because witches have a code of protecting each other which must never be broken!  Also a true witch can feel the spells as soon as it is cast on them, though they won’t always know where it came from!  It is rumoured in my family that we were the originators of the idea of witch bottles and four thieves vinegar, but again, whether that’s true or not I don’t know! 

My nan told me that a witch is a witch not because they worship devils, that’s just carnival games to excite the masses for some – they are witches because they are descendants from supernatural beings such as pagan gods, faeries and even dragons – because in the far east they believe dragons can live lives like a human and that they have special magical abilities.

My nan also told me that I had Chinese in my ancestry, she was wrong, I found the link she meant, they were actually Vietnamese.  My grandmother is not very clever or academic, she never read books outside of supernatural or occult memoirs – but she knew a lot of Vietnamese traditions purely by word of mouth through the family.

My grandmother on my father’s side of the family also had some fantastical stories about our family history too – though she is not from witch or gypsy lines.  She is from quite a pronounced aristocratic line, a contrast to my mother’s family entirely!  Though her father was Irish and once spoke of tales of how the family is rumoured to be descended from the Tuath Dé Danann.  At the time I had no idea what that was, but I learned it was fairy folk of Ireland! 

My grandmother from this side of the family also spoke of a family banshee, but I was terrified of those stories and I wouldn’t acknowledge them as true, until my first ever death in that side of the family – when I did, indeed hear a distressed long cry and screech outside all night, the night before I learned that Great auntie Edith died!

I learned over the years that you can talk to the banshee and even comfort her, something I never found in myth as possible – she now only softly whimpers, whenever a death occurs and she gives a longer warning of three days before now.

I love weeping willows, but it is not wise for me to be under them for more than a minute, because of their reaction to me.  I always find myself tangled up in their branches and leaves, like the tree is trying to embrace me – I laughed about it when I went on a picnic with my gran, she panicked and because she was disabled and couldn’t walk over to me, she screeched at my cousins to get me away from the tree quickly!  When I settled back down with her, I told her I was fine, the tree didn’t hurt me.  But she said, no, if I hadn’t of got them to get you out of there, we would have lost you! 

I called her silly, but she looked at me with the most serious and stern look I’ve ever seen in her eyes and she said – never go under a weeping willow if you can help it, not all of them, but some have a spirit in them that can sense where your blood is from and the tree will hold you tight until you go back to that world!

Back to what world?

Fairyland!

I laughed at her, but she hit me with her walking stick and told me not to be foolish about it, because if I had got trapped in fairyland a minute is a century if I were to come back and what will happen to me then?

Amongst my skills of being a writer, musician, gardener and poet, are also skills in clairvoyance, clairsentience, healing and fortune telling!  I don’t like to touch people unless I know them well, because if they are sick and I touch them for more than five minutes at a time, I can sense their illness and take it within myself for a few moments, whilst they get relieved of symptoms.  But I have learned how to alleviate that for me in the past few years.

I remember once when training at work – a method of bonding with our colleagues I was made to hold hands with two people and hold their hands for ten minutes straight as part of the exercise and I fainted within three minutes; it was not apparent until fifteen minutes after I collapsed when I asked the two women I held hands with, if they have any serious health problems?  When they asked why?  I said because if I touch someone over a certain period of time I take on their health problems, she was terrified because she had a heart problem and she couldn’t apologise enough, I calmed her down and told her, she wasn’t to know this sort of thing could happen, it’s highly irregular!

Weirdly enough my dad is the seventh born and my mum had several pregnancies in which she is sure I’d be her seventh child too, so it’s no wonder my powers are more significant than other members of the family who chose to stay true to our heritage!  I know according to the other practising witches in the family they believe I am the strongest of the lot – whether it’s to do with the significance of my birth as a seventh child of a seventh child we’re unsure, but I was also born on a full moon!  3rd October 1982 if you want to check!

With all this in my heritage, all these strange tales and occurrences, how else was I to spend my life but wanting to learn more about the supernatural and absorbing myself into it all?

I have to admit a lot of my family stories and experiences will be found in my novels, but I won’t share too much about the magick, because of those reasons I’ve already explained above.

But as I have said in previous posts, my life has been very spiritually enriched and blessed and I am happy to have such a life, no matter how lonely it makes me!

What bought this post on? 

I was scared of my witchy roots for a few years because there have been one or two discriminating people in my village, so I swept it under the carpet.  But like always the spirits have a way in keeping their own safe; so those discriminating people left the village to go to retirement dream spots away from here and they were replaced by likeminded folk.  It’s a funny old world isn’t it?

If I hadn’t been an absorbed writer, I probably would have followed my cousin and nans encouragement in trying to be a fortune teller, healer and clairvoyant of donation only and struggled on through life trying to make ends meet that way – outside of my normal day job – a history of my former occupations will be another post.

I have restarted my crystal and tarot card collections again recently, you know it’s a myth that you can’t use your own tarot if you buy it, don’t you?  A myth to deter Christian children from partaking in witchy pursuits! 

Thanks for reading!