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!

Fandoms? More like Fangdoms!

Here is the subject of fandoms.

I have been asked in social media a few times over the past few weeks about why (other than horror and vampires) my fandoms are not more widely shared and why I haven’t narrowed them down to specifics?

I haven’t the clue to be honest.

But it’s an interesting thing to think about sharing. 

I think I have made it clear in some of them, but there are a few which I think would even surprise some of my most dedicated followers here.

I think almost everybody knows by now that I have a huge passion for Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the looking glass books and anything pertaining to it, their adaptions and generally collecting stuff that has the characters on them?

This is because I have a huge passion for nonsense, nonsense rhymes, absurdism and surrealism and therefore this also means that I like those kinds of art, I also like abstract art and impressionism.

Another widely known fandom I love is The Wizard of OZ and the whole series of fourteen books and the adaptions of those too. 

I like Peter Pan and all their adaptions too.

But I like other things too, not just fandoms pertaining to classical literature, because I am also a fan of Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Bronte sisters and their adaptions.

Everybody knows I have a passion for vampires, I love the vampire diaries but I am also mad keen on Vampire the Masquerade since a friend introduced me to them fifteen years ago because they felt I was copying them – which I couldn’t have been because I knew nothing about them before they told me!

Actually there was a lot of similarities that I had to rehash a huge amount of work for, because I too, was afraid of the coincidences.  This had meant that literally after I learned about Vampire the masquerade I had to totally re-edit about thirty whole books I had finished and stashed, waiting for the time I found my courage to send them off.  Luckily I didn’t, is all I can say!

Since finding them on YouTube two years back, I have been trying to watch Vampire the Masquerade L.A by Night and its so much fun! 

I’d totally love to be on that show!

I have only got through season 1 episode 10 so far, that’s an epilogue, so I have to finish the epilogues before I move onto season 2; I’ll get there eventually!

I also love Anne Rice, naturally.

Another fandom I like has been The Sandman Comics from Neil Gaiman.

I also like mafia movies and series such as The Sopranos.

I am a huge fan of Stephen King and have been since I was a kid; I started horror young, thanks to my grandma!

I also love anything to do with the Froud family, their puppets, their artworks I absolutely adore their works!

I love the muppets too and sesame street! I love puppets, but I am scared of certain types like the traditional ventriloquist wooden dummies and Pinocchio, Pinocchio freaks me out!

I’m huge keen on Queen, the rock band I got into them with another one of my big fandoms “The Highlander” movies, TV series and books!

I am also a huge fan of Batman, have been since I was 5yrs old and all their villains.

I like the original Star Trek too – one of my exes is such a big trekkie he is actually a famous lifestyle Klingon these days – seriously, he speaks fluent Klingon and works day in and day out purely entertaining his hobby with other fans, it’s his day job!  I am not such a huge fan to do that myself – but hey Star Trek is pretty cool!  I never missed an episode growing up!

I also love anything to do with the Lord of the Rings.

Both Henry and I are huge Lady Gaga fans as well or little monsters!

I personally love Monty Python and Mr Bean too.

I will never grow up either, so I love Trolls and Winnie the Pooh and I still collect things to do with them!

I also love musical theatre and operas as well, so I have quite a few passions for some of those – such as Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Witches of Eastwick, Carmina Burana, various Shakespeare plays too.

I am mad keen on anything to do with circuses, fairs and carnivals and I have a huge passion for masquerades!  With this being said, I love Pierrot, jesters, harlequins and these days clowns too – I used to be terrified of clowns and now I love them – go figure!   

I love anything pertaining to the occult as well, I do a lot of research in that and love learning new things about superstitions and other stuff – usually because I write horror and love horror.

I am also involved with several horror fandoms, mostly pertaining to Stephen King but I do like other stuff too, things from Susan Hill, Edgar Allen Poe and Max Brooks.

I like anything to do with fairyland and gnomes and things like that as well.

So I would say my fandoms are broad, I do spread myself thinly – but I am mostly just horror, vampires, batman, absurdism and that sort of thing.

I would also include dogs but do they count?  I think they do!  Also goats and guinea pigs, but hey there you go!  People don’t acknowledge those as fandoms!  LOL

I love Rome Total War and Warhammer games too, but I am too poor to enjoy them when they are new out and that sucks!

I like war games and anything to do with strategy – I also love learning about ancient warfare.

I also love Victorian or regency dramas.

I really love Discworld too!  Terry Pratchett is amazing!

I liked, but didn’t want the whole thing – Once Upon A Time a TV series, that was cool too – just didn’t have the time to see all of it and then the DVD player broke down halfway through the box-set in fact right at the part they first met Captain Hook!

So sucky – I loved it and I want to know what happens – but NO SPOILERS PLEASE!

So, yes that’s me in fandoms… I wouldn’t say I am hard-core in much except vampires and Alice in Wonderland though.

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…

A silly dream

One thing I didn’t realise or remember about having an Alexa Echo Dot thingy, is that I can get to hear my kindle books on it, spoken aloud by Alexa herself!  I am excited about that because my Kindle stopped working around two years ago I had loads of books on it, downloaded a load of free classic literature.

Today I sat through and heard the first three chapters of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, for the first time – it’s quite a good read actually.  I have wanted to read that story for years!

I can totally understand why so many classic horror novelists have owed their inspiration to it!

Because of the book and because of the music, I have found myself daydreaming about my vampires again – yes I know there are no vampires in the story, but still, the thought is there.

The music I have been listening today have been my vampire playlist, but I have started to create a new vampire playlist now, one that concentrates mostly on classical music because of the time period I am thinking about.

My music tastes are more than just a little bit eclectic; I do in fact listen to classical music about half the time actually and my paternal family has always been into classical music and that side of the family has always been musical and involved with entertainment in some manner of speaking.

I for example, was classically trained in opera as a young child, until my mum got fed up forking out the money for something she didn’t find productive, my dad and his family were very distressed at her stopping this.

I love a lot of different types of musical interests, Jazz, soul, rock and alternative with classical or classical fusion and world music.  I have never been to a music concert before, unless you include local classical orchestra that is and nobody really wants to hear that I have gone to those, because they expect you to say some cooler like a rock band or something.

But I have always been a huge fan of Vivaldi, George Gershwin, Beethoven, Vaughn Williams and Tchaikovsky to name but a few.  I even like modern classical from John Williams, Alan Silvestre and Brad Fiedel which are movie composers.

I am one of these strange people that when she watches a movie, she lets the whole thing consume her – the visuals, the acting, the audio – background music, it is all taken in by me.  I am not happy to just watch a movie and enjoy it; I like to know where that music came from in scene whatever and well that’s just me, I am a geek, what can I say?

Since I was very small I had loads of dreams about being some kind of composer myself, lyricist, but also a director or something along those lines.  But the thing is I could never narrow down what I wanted to focus on, because I like the whole caboodle. 

I want to be an artist, I want to do the music, I want to design the costumes, I want to help the props, I want to write songs, I want to write the stories and for a good few years as a child I used to roleplay being a radio DJ too!

But because I can’t focus which one, I never threw myself into it, because I would literally run around trying to do the whole thing!

I have so many interests and I let a project consume me, I remember when I was in college I was part of an amateur dramatics group and I couldn’t choose my focus and my friends loved me, but found my lack of focus on one or two aspects very frustrating and distracting!

They loved my dedication but would often cry into their hands about “Tina, please just focus”!

Most of them pushed me into the acting, writing or prop making as they felt those things were my best strengths.  But I wasn’t keen on the acting, though they kept trying to steer me into it as they believed I was amazing.  But I didn’t want that, I knew that, I knew that I didn’t want that part of it, but I wanted everything else, lol.

In the last few weeks of being in that group, I was primarily writer and they enjoyed it – but then they started to try and shift my genre focus.   “You do better horror and psychological thrillers than anything else” they said.

By that time I knew my time was up, because my mum didn’t like me doing this in my spare time after college, she wanted me home in the evenings and didn’t like how many friends I was making and didn’t like me leaving the college to go into London with my friends to do things like street miming.

I love mime artists.

Recently I have new desires and I am not taking myself seriously over it, because I am starting way too late.

This new desire is one of the reasons why I am losing weight and trying to get good fitness levels back.  I want to join an adult beginner’s gymnastics class, as silly as that sounds.

Because my whole life I have wanted to do something and I had never confessed it to anyone because of how stupid it is!

I am one of these people who want to run away with the circus, kind of – but not quite!

Since I was a child I would often find myself listening to classical music and imagining myself as a circus acrobat, primarily trapeze, trampolines or tight rope walking.  I often saw myself in the circus glamour and doing my stuff – but more recently, as silly as it sounds, I have thought of myself doing this in a comedy sketch form.  A clown in fact, but I am not interested in any circus.  I am inspired by the Cirque Du Soleil.

I know it will take me around fifteen years to get to the standard they would hire, so this is why I am not taking myself seriously.

It’s just a stupid big dream of mine.

I have even thought about the clown design I would have for myself.

I don’t want it as a long term career, I just want to do my show on tour for a year and then give up, because it is something I would have worked hard to do and ticked off my bucket list – one of the BIG dream tick offs!

But as I said, I don’t think it will ever happen and it is just a silly dream after all, I can barely walk two miles without coming to my knees right now – still recovering from eight years of bedbound sickness, this is why I am not taking it seriously.

But I am totally in love with The Cirque Du Soleil.

I sent an email to a local disabled adult beginners gymnastics tutor today, she said twenty hours a week for ten to fifteen years and I could do my dream and no, forty years old is not too old to be accomplished in that!

There are many silly dreams I don’t share.

Thanks for reading!

My authenticity as an author

What is my authentic self as an author?

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

Basically, what makes this author, this author?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death sells as good as sex in my opinion.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not far off to be honest.

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

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

Thanks for reading!

Being an authentic author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They tend to crash and burn out and give up.

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

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

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

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

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

The heart isn’t there.

So where is my heart?

Where is my authentic self?

That’s another post…

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

Thanks for reading!

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!

Top 10 obsessions, hobbies and collections

It’s top 10 time again, today I will be talking about my obsessions, hobbies and collections – things that I don’t just like but really love and love a lot!

Top 10 character/people or story obsessions

Anything pertaining to Alice in Wonderland and its world– this is a huge one for me!

Anything regarding The Wizard of Oz or the world of that!

Anything about the concept of Candyland in any way shape or form, such as Charlie & the chocolate factory, Easter bunny etc;

Anything about vampires and the mythology of them, especially the Karnstein trilogy & Dracula!

Batman stories and villains

The Addams family

Anything pertaining to Peter Pan

Anything regarding muppets and puppets (but not traditional ventriloquist dummies) so anything like The Muppets and Sesame Street I love as well as Fraggle rock, The Froud’s and Jeff Dunham!

Anything to do with Jurassic Park and dinosaurs

The minions!

Top 10 things I love in general

Anything with dogs on it

Anything with any of my favourite characters on it

Zebra print

Anything fluffy

Crystals

Perfumes

Plant life

Anything with dragons on them

Anything with butterflies on them

Anything with peacocks on them

Top 10 lazy hobbies

Painting with watercolours

Ink drawings

Jigsaw puzzles

Tarot reading

Reading

Practising a musical instrument (proficient in nothing)

Writing poetry and songs

Board games

Junk journaling

Online or console gaming

Top 10 energetic hobbies, things I used to do and miss

Training and walking dogs

Swimming

Tae-bo

Netball

Air hockey

Walking including power walking

Belly dance – when I lose weight I’d be more confident doing this again, needs to loosen up a bit

Rowing

Trampolining

Bowling

Top 10 things I collect

Crystals

Dragon ornaments

Books

Tarot cards

Oracle cards

Perfume

Soft toys & cushions

Fairy ornaments

Poster art I keep in files

Hardback notebooks

Upon conclusion… yes I know I am a big kid – get over it lol.

Top 10 dreams or imaginings

Top 10 of dreams or things regarding my imagination

Top 10 favourite scenes to imagine

Anything with caves or subterranean

A world made of candy

Dark street scenes

Scenes with rain

Scenes with fire

Vampires

Lost souls fighting against the odds

Spooky children

Circuses and carnival life

Ballroom and parties

Top 10 favourite movies to imagine replaying in my head but differently

Charlie and the chocolate factory with Gene Wilder

Disney’s Funny little bunnies

Rise of the guardians

Mad Max movies

Tank Girl

Hook

Batman movies

Labyrinth with David Bowie

Mr Magorium’s wonder emporium

Alice in wonderland with Martin Short as The Mad Hatter

Top 10 favourite books or stories to imagine and do differently

Gregor the overlander series by Suzanne Collins

Fool by Christopher Moore

The man in the picture by Susan Hill

Smoke and mirrors anthology by Neil Gaiman

Tales of the peculiar by Ransom Riggs

Charlie and the chocolate factory by Roald Dahl

James and the giant peach by Roald Dahl

Engelbert Sneem and His Dream Vacuum Machine by Daniel Postgate

The spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien

Top 10 repetitive dreams I have at night – whether I like them or not!

Going back to my mum’s house in London packing over and over again!

Being chased by something but all it is, is love

Reptiles protecting me from something or shepherding me into places

Swimming in clean water and being pulled out of the water by crocodiles or alligators

Walking or running through a woodland with large lake and streams that is situated behind an army barracks

Sitting in a car talking to the man in a black suit

Putting up or taking down Christmas decorations, usually Christmas is cancelled

Visiting the dentist who takes out the wrong tooth or did something wrong

My pets in the garden falling into a muddy pond or being swept away by floods

Visiting a candy stall in a market but it’s all free because a mysterious person paid for it for me