Blog old & new

I want to bring this blog backwards a couple of years, back to where I used to write; no, not the broken promises every few days of working on this project or that. Back to where I would write snippets and nonsense and short or flash fiction again.

I have consistently turned this blog in recent months into a poetry blog and completely foregone its original state of being a fantasy fiction feed; my old blog name was once FantasyFed.com, but that’s gone now for TardyCreative.com because I thought the title reflected more of what I was than the previous title.

Poetry will still be a daily thing.

It is true in the past four years I have become very tardy creatively, because there is a lot going on in my life that has been gobbling up my brain space and I haven’t had time to breathe.

Things are still ongoing, in fact worsening, but I am learning to cope and I am trying to learn to put more onto myself, than less as a coping strategy.

I have allowed another person’s tardiness to increase my own and that’s never OK.

I’m not going to make promises of finishing novels because recently, although the will is still there – I personally can’t put more stress on myself by enforcing deadlines.  Especially as I am trying to keep to a poetry deal I have been offered and need to concentrate on producing three books of 100 poems a piece.

So more short fiction is coming back to the blog shortly!

I had wanted to write more about what I know about different folklores and mythologies around the world and their superstitions and what not – but I never got around to it and yet that was my intention when I was FantasyFed.com

Recently I’ve got into a state of nostalgia.

Remembering my teenage to early twenties when I was a Goth rock chick! 

I have the ability to play with my style a little more these days as money is improving a little, not much, but enough to indulge in beauty products now and my eyes are turning towards the Gothic culture again, amongst other types… as we all know, I have a mixed bag of desires and styles.

I wake up one day and I am a completely different person to the day before, because I have an indecisive, impulsive and eccentrically creative heart.

For a few days this past week I’ve wanted to be gothic or rock chick style – but part of yesterday evening into part of today, I felt the desire to express myself in Tudor larping style – I don’t have anything like this to actually dress that way – but the desire is still there!

I don’t know what I will want to look like tomorrow.

But, I have been thinking about trying to teach myself to have some kind of patience to learn enough technology to make YouTube videos about my life and journey of expression.

Though I would like to do a gardening and self-sufficiency vlog – or perhaps a spiritual vlog talking about my spiritual experiences and doing pick a card tarot readings for the masses – or anything really… art was another thing…

However, I have considered a few other things for YouTube, but as ever, my indecisive self struggles to decide which I would prefer?

I do know that in my future, I will be many things as my career looks like it could be starting off in the very near future and unlike the past – I won’t be fighting against this anymore.

I no longer fear fame or infamy whichever comes first… Though I admit, I’ve never feared infamy anyway because I was always blamed for things I’ve never done or initiated, I am used to the branding iron; I was raised to be “the whipping girl”.

A heads up for those who think I am easily rattled.

So, writing novels and comics, being a poet, a lyricist, composer, artist, playwright, toy designer, voice actress and ventriloquist are all things I appear to have some kind of future in and therefore – I am going to be one busy woman in my future it seems.

At the moment I am pretty elusive, that’s very self-induced – but I have friends who don’t want me to hide anymore and they’re putting on the peer pressure so to speak, ha-ha!

Yes, the voices – I have a huge gift for that and yes, ventriloquism, I kept that quiet on here – though you can follow some of my videos on Instagram.  There isn’t much on there but you will find a couple of videos where I use my skills openly.

I’m thinking about increasing content on Instagram in fact; like I am thinking about monetising this blog soon, not sure how that will work, but I am not going to charge my readers, so don’t worry!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tina Victoria Cousins (@tardycreative)

This is me with Twinkle, a hand puppet I’ve had since I was 5yrs old and it helped me growing up with the intensive speech therapy I used to have, as when I was a child I had a speech impediment due to being profoundly deaf and a stammerer/lisper.

So that’s the update on what’s going on and my plans for expanding my work and the blog.

Thanks for reading!

New York Swamp Park

I had a dream last night where I was on a hill looking down at white rooftops of a town all around me, I felt like I was in Scandinavia somewhere, the style of the houses were like that.

Three women were looking at me, because it was snowy and I was dressed in something as thin and flimsy as a slip out in the street, in the snow, on a hill, looking about me – they laughed.

They tried to communicate with me but I was awkward and I turned into a gold and white swirly ball of light and flew around them once and up into the air and far away.

I realised I was flying fast all the way over the ocean, everything blurry and the wind dampening my clothes as I zoomed through the air.

Once again I found myself heading towards New York.

When I landed in New York, I landed outside a building that may or may not be a museum that had black statues inside of alcoves of the outside walls.  When I landed I looked younger than I am now, not much younger, but I had the figure I am working towards.  I was wearing pale jeans, pink trainers/sneakers with cartoon characters on and I was wearing a My Little Pony themed T-shirt and cross body bag.

I saw newspapers all over the floor of the street and the streets seemed quiet to me, there were people around, but not as many as I would expect in New York.

I knew that a long way away somebody I wanted to meet was there, but I didn’t know how to get to them. 

I decided to walk to what I thought was a park over a little brook. 

When I got there the path became narrow and had wooden sheets here and there along the path and I realised that either side of the path there was lots of water and big gnarly trees and the water was shallow and had big and I mean massive goldfish, some so big they swam so slowly because of their size.

What was confusing was this park looked too much like what you would find in Florida, as the water was shallow, swirling with grey misty like substance in the water, the whole park covered in moss and gnarly trees, reeds in the water and small crocodiles.

One of the crocodile was attempting to eat one of the huge goldfish but the goldfish was actually winning the fight and I was confused by that and told an old man about what I was seeing and all he said was “yeah, they give as good as they get here”!

I continued down the path and things were getting darker and more mossy and slippery and there were more wooden sheets along the path that made the path really rocky and I kept on for some time until there were small gaps in the path which meant I had to jump over to the other side or fall into the water which was scary as there were crocodiles around and then continued for a little way and then I abruptly came to a dark red door. 

I opened the door and there was a scruffy large old man balancing on a tall stool in the corner of the room but in a section of the room that was in the water and there was a small crocodile in that water.

In the other corner by him, the old man who spoke to me about the fish pushed passed to sit in the other stool only he wasn’t balancing so good on his stool and I was afraid for him.

I saw there was a larger stool in the middle for me which was lower down near the water by about 6 inches and I had to hop from this platform, covered in brown newspapers and wooden sheets to get to my much larger stool – the stool was so large in fact, three adults could stand on it with elbow room.

I stood there and felt confused why I was there and there was a little murky window covered in algae and grey substance around the edges of it I was peering out of – the men was like – no point looking out there, you won’t find anything.

I was looking once again in the direction at a different point of where I felt I needed to go to see this person I wanted to see.

I turned around when I heard a noise behind me and a guy in his 40s entered the room with sheets of paper on a binder all messy and falling apart – he looked like a stereotypical rock fan, in a rock of the 90s T-shirt in burgundy colours and he had thick black curly hair to his shoulders.

He spoke like a proper dude and was about to introduce himself, when I hopped off my stool to be back on the first platform with him – he said to me, aren’t you staying to let me read you your past so you can determine your future and see what’s there because of your past?

I said, um no thanks, I don’t want you to pry into that as its personal and there are a lot of people in my past I don’t want you to read as its confidential for them and wouldn’t be fair to them!

He said, but you haven’t decided to live yet – let me read something to help you decide.

I said, no thanks, I will be fine; I need to go over there and find someone.

He looked through the window confused and looked at me and said, he isn’t so sure I should and he was upset he couldn’t read to me.

So I ignored him and went out of the room, jumped over the gaps in the wooden sheets and literally ran as fast as I could all through the whole narrow park and there were people on the path moaning at me and saying I could knock people into the water or fall in myself and it would be my own fault! 

I ran till I got to the edge of the park and at the park gates, where there seemed to be a very posh looking man in a suit with white gloves and I had to wait to leave whilst he checked a crystal – when he checked the crystal he opened a black box and held a red book in his arms and looked inside – he said well done, you may leave and he gestured I could go.

I walked to the left rather than the middle path he was expecting me to take and I walked down the street till I came to a market stall and I was looking at stickers – when the person I wanted to meet found me looking at things at the stall with a friend of theirs and they came over to me astonished I went to find them.

They hugged me from behind and were talking excitedly to their friend about who I was.

I pointed and I said I was going to come looking for you over there, I pointed to the far left of the city and they said, but I live over there, pointing to the far right!

I literally woke up right the realisation.

Hippy child & hedgehog invasion

A lazy day today, real lazy, I slept something like five hours longer than normal and didn’t realise the time at all when I woke up – it’s frustrating because I went to sleep four or five hours earlier than I normally do because I want to get into a new routine!  Ironic really!

Though I think I’ve caught the cold Paul and Henry has, as I am achy and bleh!

If I could dress however I wanted to today how would I?

A light cotton dress made useless by a hugely thick knee length fleece cardigan, white dress potentially and rainbow cardigan – I want to wear large beaded jewellery, so I would probably have three different length necklaces on, wooden beads with copper or brass and bracelets to match.

It’s not summer and it’s not a warm day, but I am crazy enough to wear sandals with this because I know I will be warm with that cardy. 

As lazy as I feel I’d actually make more effort with my hair today and have them done with curling tongs, so I have a cute but scruffy rainbow dolly look to me.

I may even do something I really love and wear one of my knitted plaits in my hair and maybe attach a couple of feathers to it.

Basically I want to look like a child from Peter Pan’s lost boys or like something that fell out of my all-time favourite TV series, The Tribe, today.

It’s an OK day to be gardening, dry at any rate – so I’d have probably have been out there today if it wasn’t for the bad neighbour.  Especially as I seem to have window trained a great tit to befriend me in the last few days, I have a feeling he’d actually sit on my lap or something if I were outside he doesn’t seem afraid of me when I am at the window and he has come up to look at me within 3 inches and I move and he doesn’t flinch.

As I said before, when it comes to wildlife, I am a bit of a Disney Princess.

Talking of which I had a dream last night that six hedgehogs came into the garden one after the other and walked into the house and wouldn’t leave and as I was trying to encourage them to get out, they hid.  When Paul felt that they can’t live in the house, he went to chase them out and as he did so they all slowly morphed into porcupines instead and aggressively tried to defend themselves from being man handled. 

Paul was so upset in the dream he phoned up a specialist to get rid of this very problem, the man came and said that the hedgehog/porcupine problem is down to him not remembering things for me and not taking care of me properly, so the porcupines are trying to fill in his duties.

Paul sarcastically said what like doing the washing up etc?  This made the entire four little baby porcupines become bigger than their largest parent and they all chased Paul – I don’t know what happened to Paul in the dream after that, but I was confused and went into the garden.

I nearly trod on a frog and the frog was sitting in a crack in the patio looking at me.  When the hedgehog/porcupine specialist came out into the garden and was on the phone to somebody – he then turned to me and said that someone special has arranged a party for me and that they are going to be coming soon.

I was confused because nobody visits us.

So, when people started letting themselves into my house to set up the party in the garden I was amazed to find loads of people there, mostly celebrities, like Queen, Whitesnake and a bunch of others.

I never did find Paul again in the dream.

I woke up when someone behind me kiss me on the cheek and cuddled me from behind, whilst Brian May was about to start on his guitar for me.

Weird dream, but fun!

I think that the hedgehogs is something to do with my inability to do art because of my art table being used for other things – hedgehogs are one of the main animals I tend to paint and draw with confidence.

Thanks for reading!

Demonic Orchestra

I miss composing music, but there is no space to set up my equipment amongst other things – I lost Cubase around ten years ago and I can’t afford to replace it.  I have learned in the past two years how to read music, but I am still not au fait with it to the point of any real confidence. 

In the past few weeks I have wanted to compose music more than anything because my mind is literally torturing me with tunes and songs that need to be made – particularly instrumental music.

It’s getting very loud in my mind and there is nothing I can do about it right now.

I love instrumentals and the kind of music that is in my head is tango music, circus waltzes and similar sounds to my biggest musical inspirations Nox Arcana and B&B Project!

I did do composition for rock music and alternative too, but it is mostly classical or instrumental for me really.

I have four tunes that keep repeating themselves in my head and they do so at length and they get excessively loud at times and give me really bad headaches because I am ignoring them.  It is exhausting to hear it, it tires me out and it comes to me mostly when I am in bed trying to get to sleep – that’s when it is their loudest!

What is even more annoying is the visuals I get when this happens – I don’t mean real visuals, nothing like hallucinations or anything like that, no – what I mean is, the scenery in which the music wants to be played.  The music seems to demand being played in my stories, as parts of movies or something, it shows me what must happen for the perfect habitat for my music to reside.

I sometimes wonder if I am crazy…

“A perfect habitat for my music to reside”, that’s crazy talk right?

My compositions are like living breathing demons, well, if you heard the music and saw the imagery, you’d wonder if they were demons too…

The music that wants to be born in recent weeks sound like Halloween background music for Halloween waltzes or tangoes… it’s not something you’d usually hear at say The BBC Proms.  Instruments such as the accordion, bandura and violin lead the music here. 

Some of the music sound like a demonic nursery lullabies or music boxes, instruments such as glockenspiels, glass harps and glass bells lead the orchestra.  This tune in particular has decided to set its scene in my horror story which you’ll know as boat 1, this story is about ghost children.

I need to compose again, I need these tunes to be heard, but it’s difficult right now.  So I guess, I will let the demonic orchestra from Hell send me mad then?

It perhaps would be fun to do collaboration with other horror writers about a musician being sent mad by demonic music that he must compose; a sort of musical Arabian nights meets the devil! 

Stop, no more ideas brain, please, I am drowning in ideas!

Maybe this is the devil’s idea for a certain writer? 

Happy reading!