Tarot project

I have been very busy these past few weeks thinking about designing a tarot deck and I have just completed compiling the deck.

Now, it’s time to go on the lookout for printers, so I can start thinking about marketing them! 

Thanks for reading and please do keep a look out for more!

Project goals set in motion

I believe project AD will be finished by the second week of August in three formats; as I had decided to write it in a novel format, a graphic novel format and a screenplay chapter by chapter.

Why did I do it this way?

Because I was afraid that if I finished the novel, I would have been bored with redoing the whole plot again in two other formats over a period of time, so I decided to do them at the same time!

I am known for being easily bored with things, so I believe this conquers any future problems.

Why has it taken so long for me to get this particular project done?

I had a family grief occur, my son was diagnosed a problem and his health deteriorated for a time and I went into a state of severe depression and anxiety over matters happening in my life.

Along with this I was also educating myself how to write graphic novels and screenplays and I am a notoriously slow reader!

But I feel capable enough now and I am on my second draft of Project AD and I have finished the first five chapters thus far, there are forty all told.

I am also writing a non-fiction book about tarot cards, this will be finished by January as well as an anthology of some unpublished poems.

Thanks for reading!

Easter project update 2023

As Easter approaches my Easter project is more thought of, more inclined to be written.  Today I wrote a small snippet towards it, which is more than I have done for weeks if I am honest.

I am quite proud of what I did, even if it was only two paragraphs.  The idea hit me and I had to add it in, the villain has been remastered, he has a more full personality now and seems quite real, whereas my old villain was pretty naff really.

However I am starting to realise that this story, which was planned to be a trilogy could actually have some kind of comic elements to it too and may not be just three books!

As I realised that the two main characters are very hero/villain with magical powers like a normal comic would be.

It was never intended to be another comic, but it is starting to flow that way.  But it is written as a novel, because I prefer to do that with this project.

Thing is, this project is not really in first draft yet, it is actually only in planning mode and note taking whilst I try to visualise the whole world.

I do actually know where I would like the story to go and I believe once I am happy with the whole plan, this will be written down quite quickly.

The story is quite musical in parts, with poems and it is reminiscent of Charlie and the chocolate factory, but it is also poles apart as well.  The storyline is only similar in that it is based on a fantasy candy world; there are no children as main characters, no competitions, no mutations and a lot more magic, myth and legend retelling.

Similarly to project AD, it does have anthropomorphic supporting characters and is set around Easter, with a little bit of Easter tradition thrown in to help the story along a bit.

Why is it musical in parts and has a lot of poetry in the plans?

Because when I write, I write the kinds of movies I want to see – to me this is a musical family fantasy based around Easter, the Easter bunny and candy land. 

I’m actually quite excited about this project because it’s super fun to write.

Project AD is fun to write, but it is less playful if you get me?

Also this Easter project has a better and more energetic playlist than Project AD when I write it, so writing moves along faster – not to mention the language is rather different in project AD compared to this project.

My sense of humour can be very naughty at times and I have to keep reminding myself that I intend for this to be a family audience, so at times I get sad because I think of a hilarious scene and then sit back and realise how would I respond if a young child read or watched this and then I am like – OH MY GOODNESS DELETE-DELETE-DELETE!

No innuendos about gumballs Tina!

Shocking, really I am!

But those things slip in there and I have to be careful and mindful about it and who my audience is supposed to be, so the gumball joke is deleted.

So, you won’t be reading about how you should handle an evil gum tree any time soon!

By kicking him in the gumballs!

Shakes head*

Sorry about that!

Thanks for reading!

Project AD and art

Tonight I have done some art for the first time in ages, sitting on the bed, giving up the idea of using my art table and I did a small A5 page of ink abstract drawings with some metallic inks; it made a nice effect and I plan to use it as part of a collage later on in the week.

I am writing this on the 18^th February around 3am in the morning, but it is likely not going to be posted until Sunday afternoon because there are a lot of things being posted here between now and then.

I decided to do this because I am reading a book about getting back into the habit of doing art and being a creative person again, because I am tired of obstacles.

I know it’s messy to paint on the bed, but I have very little choice as the only room I can guarantee will be exactly how I want it to be is my bedroom, since Paul has been put into the spare room and I am fierce like a cave bear about what goes in and out of my room now!

There is a little area in my room that if I got rid of a small cabinet and a footstool, I could put an art table there and paint there instead, but Paul told me not to buy anymore furniture because it seems likely in his mind that I won’t be here for long anyway.  He seems sure there is some mysterious man ready to sweep me off my feet, but I’ve told him stop being ridiculous, who’d want someone like me and why would they tell you and your friends and not me, eh?

It’s getting rather silly; Paul is getting obsessed with the idea.

There is enough room for an art table there, good light too – I could get one.

I told him I am getting the table in March if this mysterious man hasn’t turned up by then.

Paul is angry about that for some reason.

I don’t see how – I have after all promised everybody I would start a home business or art business by the end of this spring, is there any wonder I’d want to do this now?

I promised myself by the end of spring 2023 I would start my business up so I can get us out of this poverty as I am not sitting on my arse anymore, just having handouts – especially when I am not as sick as I used be!  Paul is not very supportive of this at all!

I have a lot of art projects I want to do – namely practise for Project AD as I want to do the art for it as I can clearly visualise exactly how I want those characters to look.

I am upset because earlier this week I found a movie trailer on YouTube called “Shimmy, the first monkey king” and I thought Oh no, one of the main supporting characters in my project has to be changed.  It was a small tamarind monkey girl called Shimmy, I thought – people would say she’s a rip off!  She was called Shimmy, because in Italian Scimmia (pronounced shimmy ah) means monkey and it was also in memory of a cousin of mine who loved to shimmy, but she died aged 16.

She was going to be a girlfriend to an inventor ape which assists the main character in his lair with gadgets and weapons etc.

She was so cute too – she would go “Ooh shimmy” and shimmy sometimes and she was going to wear a pink glittery dress and have really cool hair.

Things like this happen a lot over the years and it upsets me and makes me feel like I would be seen as a fraud if I ignore little things like this and just carried on anyway.

Paul is also kind of trying to make me self-conscious about a pack of dogs in my story too, which in his mind seem to have very similar personalities to another movie coming out called “Strays”.  I said, I doubt it, my dogs are child friendly!

Anyway, so that’s what’s going on here right now…

Thanks for reading!

Art & poetry books

I really miss doing art.

I am glad I am getting supplies again, but it’s not just the supplies that is the problem, it’s the where I can do art that is.

I’ve mentioned before my private spaces are just not respected in this house, my art table is getting messier and messier over time with other people’s junk and nobody is making effort to tidy up after themselves so I can use my art table for what it supposed to be used for – ART!

Henry has been given a project at school to complete by his birthday in May – this is to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle on his own at home to then take to the school to show the teacher his project has been completed – this is entirely doable, however, this means I have to dismantle my puzzle for him to start a new one so he can do this and this means that he will now need to use the art table to do it.

We used to have a decorating table for my puzzle, but the piles of junk around the house have hidden it and we can’t find it.

Life here is getting above a blooming joke now.

Instead, I am contemplating making a cushion fort in the corner of my bedroom to sit on the floor cross-legged with my pooh board covered in cling film so I can use that as an art table and paint in the bedroom – not ideal, because water and paints on a carpet protected only by old magazines is not ideal and my position will be behind a door. 

Whenever people come into the room to tell me anything they literally bust into the room and the door usually bounces off whatever is behind it, which when I do my art fort will be me and the jar of water no doubt!

I want to start painting some covers for my poetry books I am going to start making to sell on Amazon.

I am desperate to compile several anthologies of my poetic works as eBooks and paperbacks through Amazon publishers.

I also wanted to start my self-employment before Easter and a major part of that was selling my artwork in various formats and selling things via SquareSpace.

Some of my previous artworks I wanted to find a way to send the images to a company in order to create toys from the characters I’ve made.  I don’t know how to do that yet, but I am learning as I go along.

I’ve always wanted to design toys like this; I have a big love for soft toys.

Thanks for reading…

Second draft

I have worked out a lot of flaws in the plot called Project AD and although the first draft is not complete, I am going to jump right in and start the second draft as I am feeling more confident about it now.

I know where I am going and I have seen the weaknesses.  Knowing these and actually deciding upon the middle and the end of the first book and can even see the second book already in my mind, I should fly through it easily and have it done in a shorter time frame than I expected.

If I am rambling or my words aren’t making much sense, I apologise; I have had a migraine off and on for two days now and my concentration is not good.

It’s a moderate tension headache that I believe is really due to my ear, but it is quite bad.

Anyway project AD hasn’t been my only focus this week.  My vampires have been getting a lot of attention from me and so has Steampunk 1 – unfortunately I have thought about scenes for the Easter project but they have not been written down as of yet.

My intention is to get work out for an agents viewing before Henry’s birthday, which is May 15^th – but we will see.

My productivity in the last couple of days has certainly increased because of my access to music whilst I write now and a nice warm environment which is comfortable and clean and doesn’t stink of stale air, like downstairs does.  It also helps that the background noise isn’t Paul’s conspiracy theory documentaries droning in the background all the while too!

I have gone back into an old writing technique I had back in London but for some reason or another there is less wall space here for it.  I have gone back into the old habit of using index cards to plan out stories and keep them around me whilst I write.

Because Paul can’t afford to replace the ink in the printer as often as we need – so I have to do it the old fashioned way now.

I need an index card storage box with tabs or like everything else that’s paper in this house it’s doomed to get destroyed by the carelessness of others!

I came into this house with 20 box files and 3ft high stack of papers of finished works and over two thirds of that has been damaged purely by living here!

I live with careless people who slob around, literally!

It’s going to be a nightmare when I move out – the stuff I need to try and fight to find so I can keep my work on them going on – I won’t abandon them!  I am thinking about selling all my DVDs, CDs and giving some of my books to charity to make things easier.  But the mess here… the mess is going to make it hard to find my stuff amongst the ocean of trash – literally trash!

I cry because I clear a 3ft square space by throwing things out or giving them to a charity van that comes around, only for Paul within hours to move things from another place to it and I don’t get the satisfaction of waking up the next day to see a job well done!

A cleared space never lasts that long!

Is it any wonder I have gone into severe apathy and depression?

Why I have a give up before you even try attitude these days?

Thanks for reading…

Art project for tarot

Over the next few days I am drawing up a plan for a relatively big art project, an art project I am hoping to put out into the market to sell; the project is creating my own deck of tarot cards!

It is something I have always wanted to do, but until recently I have had little confidence in both my ability to read the tarot without referencing to books and even less confidence in my artwork.

I am now a little bit better off where I can afford to replace art supplies again as I use them, so there are no more excuses in me not doing art anymore.

There is only one true thing against me and my art now that is doing the art in a stress free environment away from the icy cold.  My art table is used for other means most of the time and so it is a fight to get the space used for what it should be and I can’t move it to a warmer location because it is currently being used as a dining table in order to make room in the house.

The art table was also my jigsaw puzzle table, needless to say I haven’t touched a jigsaw in nearly three years and you’ve guessed why by now haven’t you?

So, being as my art table is being used, I have to try and consider doing art elsewhere… the only other option is to use my adjustable laptop table in the bedroom, but then that risks getting ink and paint on the bedclothes and the table rocks a lot whenever I tap on it, which could ruin the art consistently.

My other option would be to sit on the floor and place a dragon box between my legs whilst my Pooh board balances on the top of it and I cover the board with cling film so I don’t ruin the art of my Pooh board.

What is my Pooh board, you may ask? 

It’s a board with Pooh on it – Winnie-The-Pooh, I once had this board downstairs and Henry was around 3yrs old and drew a scribble on the board, or so Paul thought it was a scribble – I looked at it and I said – OMG IT’S AMAZING LOOK WHAT HE’S DRAWN PAUL!  Paul nodded and smirked and I said, can you see what he has drawn?  No, he said.  I said, look, there is a snout here see?  And an eye… to me this is the very head of Winnie-The-Pooh!  Oh yeah said Paul vaguely… I am still not sure he saw it.  But after a few months went by I decided I was going to thicken the outline with a sharpie, exact to the lines Henry made and then Paul saw it!

This board was shunted around the house without any real value or meaning, never to this day did I know why we kept it, but it became useful when I became sick around a year later – because it became my sandwich board!

Meaning, as I was too sick sometimes to leave the bedroom to eat, I would rest my plate usually sandwiches or a bowl of soup on the board whilst I sat in bed and I ate alone.  Over a time this board developed more and more pictures as in the boredom of being mostly bedbound I started to draw all kinds of various images/crap on it.

Some aspects of it positively scream street art or graffiti, other aspects old style cartoons and yes, some occult images too and affirmations.

Paul told me, one day, when I sell my book and people hear or even see this board, they’d want to buy it!  I should frame the board in a manner it can be framed double sided, so you can choose which side you want it on the wall.  I said nobody will be interested in my sandwich board!

He said nobody will see it as your sandwich board; they’ll see it as art – put it up online for sale and see what I mean! 

I AM NOT SELLING MY SANDWICH BOARD!

He told me if I died he would!

So yeah, that’s what I am doing over the next few days, planning the art I want to do for each tarot card, then it will take me one day per picture to create on average, maybe three depends on what medium I intend to use – I think I intend to use ink personally.  So there are usually 78 cards to a tarot deck, this means that the project should be finished around 90 to 100 days after I start the plans. 

So I am going to presume that it will take me two days a picture which gives me an estimated time frame of the finished product being around the 1^st August to the end of August 2023.

This is achievable if my work is done at my usual pace of 3 to 7 hours per picture every two days.  Really the 1^st August is 201 days away from now – and I only really need 156 days to do it, but I know I procrastinate and have sick days so I’ve made allowances for that and a couple of down and out failures and restarts as well as artistic lethargy! 

Thing is, I want to do more than one deck in the future, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

Let’s do one deck first and let’s see!

The art for the tarot will be used to sell prints, pins and stickers as well as a bunch of other items and I plan to sell them via square space.  I also plan to start a paid subscription service here on my blog where my users will get a huge discount voucher and a bunch of other stuff. 

Yes a paid subscription for extra material is coming up sometime in the future, not sure when I am trying to figure all the technical stuff out first and I am procrastinating because technology outside of games is just boring to me!

So yes, that’s what I am up to now.

Thanks for reading! 

Rekindled love

I am really very excited today, so excited in fact, that I have decided to write a second post for today that has been written today!

I am reeling over the work I have done for project AD; never before have I trusted my instincts to write a story like a pantzer, project AD was definitely planned, but it’s being pantzed a lot as I am going on, I am not sticking to my normal rigid formula and its working, it’s working wonders!

I am so happy, for the first time since 2015 I am beginning to love writing again!

I was scared that I might have to announce an extra month for the project deadline, but I am pretty sure that now I know what I am doing and what the characters want from me, the faster this story is going to be finished. 

My deadline is still October but maybe not Friday the 21^st October as I didn’t realise when I randomly chose the date that it’s the end of the week – so I may post it a couple of days later for the Monday or perhaps even a few days earlier, who knows?

All I know is, that this story is making me feel energised and happy again – I no longer dread the process of writing, just to silence the muse, I am now loving it again.  It’s an amazing feeling I can tell you.

I believe 100% that the love for writing has come about because there are vampires in the subplot and it is those vampires that are making me love writing again.

Now does that mean all my stories will have a vampire subplots?  No, but there is more to me than just vampires, I love most dark mythology and this project was always intended to have some of those.  I never planned for dark fae in this storyline nor did I plan to have children which the protagonist is protecting, but it is all coming together and it is doing so, very nicely!

Thanks for reading!

Writing stealthily failure

I am having to write with stealth in the past few days; around the 28^th August, I discovered that the only way I can continue writing towards my projects when my family is at home is to do it like I am doing espionage!

Keeping several internet tabs up, so they think I am getting addicted to Paper-Io, Ovipets and twitter.

Stealthily changing the colour of the background I am writing on so they don’t suspect if finally caught in the act, because there is no bright shining white background they can see which would indicate to them that she’s using “Microsoft word”.

I don’t know why I need to do this, if they know I am not writing they are all well behaved, Paul included!  But as soon as I say “I think I am going to write today” all Hell breaks loose and they argue about the slightest thing – or worse, they feign extreme love for me by coming over every ten minutes for long hugs whilst peering over my shoulder to look at the screen.  Sometimes they give me running commentaries on the life of our rabbit, Ray.

Oh god, I was caught in the act just now and Paul just came rushing into the room because I laughed hysterically at the irony and timing! 

Because no sooner had I written the full-stop to this sentence = “Sometimes they give me running commentaries on the life of our rabbit, Ray.” Did Henry actually say to me;

“Mama, Ray just honked and then scratched his bum”! 

Oh dear, I have to stop now, they are arguing now over how to use Alexa properly – it was such a peaceful day before they knew I wanted to write.

The laugh was hysterical because living like this is driving me nuts!  I am in all seriousness becoming neurotic over this! 

A lot of my stories are about descents into madness, you can understand how I can write that – voice of experience and all that?

This post was written on the 30th August, I was really excited, I thought I had beat the system!

Happy reading, because I certainly am not happy writing today!

AD project update

I am conflicted with my main project AD (anthropomorphic dystopian idea); I had wanted this to be the one that goes out to agents in October and that might still happen, but I feel I am not ready for that on a personal level.  What I do feel ready to release in October potentially could be another project I am halfway through, which is my Christmas story.

Why am I so conflicted? 

Because I want my AD project to be a graphic novel and I also want to do the art for it too, but my art is not good enough for what I want it to be yet.  So, I am making it something I don’t want it to be – a series of novellas.

I want to stay true to my heart, but some friends who have had big hints about the work want this project out there now!  I feel I owe it to them; so many people are excited for this project.

But do I want to renege on my plans for it to be a graphic novel and make a series of novellas out them at the risk that someday I might re-write it in graphic novel form and get it published again in that format, or should I wait?

My heart tells me two things – hurry up and practise your art work and how to write graphic novels professionally and get the work out there ASAP, but it also says, it’s not realistic just yet, give yourself another year, you can always send out your other works which don’t need so much from you!

The problem comes with the fact that one of my friends is so excited about the idea, that it has stirred a desire in them to make something similar, based on hints I’ve given them about the plot.  They can’t plagiarise it, as it is very vague, but the vague outline I have given is enough that it could be a direct competition.  They have promised not to create their urges just yet, but they have said to me that they may not hold back after spring 2023 if I haven’t sent it anywhere – because they have to presume that I am not really interested in a career by then, if I hold back for a few more months… yet again.

I am serious about starting a writing career at the end of this year.  In October I am going to turn forty and I am determined to get something out there at least.

If an agent doesn’t want to represent whatever work I put out by January 1^st, then I will personally publish an anthology of my poems through Amazon and start looking towards writing magazine articles and short stories whilst still on the lookout.

I am very interested in approaching a British gardening magazines because of my in depth knowledge about gardening organically and so on; this is something I have wanted to do for a few years now.

Paul wants to collaborate with me as well for wildlife photography magazines etc.

So all of this starts by the end of this year, I wasn’t ready for it before now, but now I am – particularly as my health is stabilising and I am getting more good days.

Another friend knows my dream is mostly to write for movies, that although I love books and being creative, my dream is for my ideas to be televised in some way.  They’ve put me into contact with someone who has put me on a free screenwriting course and so that’s on the go as well at the moment!  Henry is honing his skills with the computer to create special effects etc., so we can make snazzy YouTube art movies together, based on my ideas and a friend has suggested I start attending short film festivals.

All of the above will be documented here in this blog as it happens, so expect better content in a few months’ time!

So for now, project AD is still being written, but it is in a state of limbo – should I or shan’t I send it to an agent in October?

Who knows what I will do!

Happy reading!