Tag: relationships

Lazy Sunday #47
Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday #47

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Hello, been a while since we sat and had a chat like this but got to be honest things have been crazy here the last month. First, I had an amazing weekend at #Darker in Peterborough, which I have told you all about, then we had a two week delay awaiting the delivery of my grandson, he certainly made hard work of coming into the world. Family, obviously, came first for the next couple of weeks trying to help out my daughter and her partner as much as possible.

We arrive at the first of November and I start #NanoWriMo. I write for one day, yes, you heard me right, one day, before my grandson caused more drama and had a day in hospital. I am not going to go into details too much but let’s just say that a swollen head is enough to give parents and grandparents alike near nervous breakdowns.

So today I take up my #NanoWriMo baton once more and need to play catch up so here are my current stats…

Words written – 1667

Words that should be written by the end of today – 8,335

Words in deficit – 6668

Number of words needed daily to finish on target  – 1880

As you can see not a total disaster as such yet, I am going to update you twice a week, once on a Wednesday, from a purely writing standpoint, and this post on a Sunday, about the actual issues or benefits of fitting this into everyday life. I had signed up for #NanoWriMo once before, but then other things got in the way and I never even started, as I have been struggling to get back into work mode I thought this year was the perfect time to give it a go as a means to getting back to daily writing. I can already see certain days will be easier than others for me, I am probably better off on days where I can work during the day rather than evenings. I have realised if I come home tired that I find it harder to write, and if I am foolish enough to have a bath to unwind after a stressful day, well I can write off any writing at all for that evening, because the most stressful thing I am likely to do is turn the page of a book or hit play on the remote control.

The one piece of advice I would give anyone doing Nano is, don’t get too hung up comparing the number of words you have written to anyone elses. I know people who post their word counts every day, people who hit the target well before anyone else, the thing is everyone works at their own pace. I could sit and type out the menu for our local chinese over and over again and hit a word count target, the fact is, that does not make a book. You aim to hit the targets to help yourself become more productive in terms of writing daily and  to improve your own writing habits but the thing that really matters is the quality of the story you are telling. The grammar etc, yes that will all be sorted in the editing but while people can generally overlook a stray comma or two, they will not forgive a weak plot or storyline. Focus on your own story and though of course we all look at others word counts (let’s face it I just shared mine) the thing is to remember that as long as you are doing the bet you can working in your life then you don’t need to worry about anything else.

Are you doing #NanoWriMo this year? How do you feel seeing the word counts posted all over social media?

Vlog Time #111 – Going Forward
8. Vlog Time

Vlog Time #111 – Going Forward

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I am working on creating new intro and outro segments, not sure I like this intro but please bear with me over the next few videos while I work it out

Getting Ready for Darker
#TheDarkerSideOfFiction2017 · Book Signings

Getting Ready for Darker

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A couple of weeks ago I talked clothes, but this week I want to talk travel.

In an ideal world I would have a car and travel to events would be simple, but at the minute I don’t. In my day to day life, I cannot afford to run a car just for the hell of it and cannot justify needing one badly enough to suck it up and manage the expense. This, of course, means travel to these events becomes more expensive.

The cheaper option is Megabus, for most locations it does involve travelling to Leeds to catch it but there is one huge problem with this method, you can only take one case and let’s face it you need a case just for the books and swag you are likely to be hauling there, and hopefully you will sell enough to fill it back up with books once you are there.

So you are looking at at least one case plus a case or holdall for clothes this really leaves you with only one option the train. I looked at the options for railcards but as I am over 25 but not a pensioner no help there, there is a travelling with friends railcard which means you and a friend can get a reduction when travelling together but it has to be the same friend, so unless your PA attends every signing with you that doesn’t help either.

The only real option is to wait until around 12 weeks before the date you wish to travel and start stalking the trainline sites,  if you are lucky you might find a bargain but again you must be careful with this as well, if there are changeovers, check the time between trains, make sure you have time to lug those cases from one platform to another if required, make sure if one train is delayed that you can catch a later one and that you are not tied to one train having to cough up more on the day. Sometimes it will be cheaper to buy single tickets for different legs of the journey, you have to be prepared to research.

Before you start looking at train times you should also double check on your check in and check out times, you don’t want to arrive hours early and have to drag your cases around with you, you then weigh up if there are savings to be made whether they are more than the price of a cup of coffee while you wait around.

I know a lot of this is simply common sense but guess what when you get caught up in the excitement it is easy to forget the little things, maybe you drive and think these things don’t apply but it is worth still checking out trains from your area and the prices you might have to pay because sometimes fate is cruel and cars break down at times that you really don’t need them too.

Like every other aspect of treating your writing career like a business, you have to weigh up all the pros and cons, get the best value for money balanced with ease and convenience. Like the best boys scouts, the secret is to be prepared for every eventuality, personally I know I have made some huge mistakes in the way I have planned and budgeted for this signing but the important thing is I have learnt from them and I am looking forward to being able to let my hair down and enjoying #Darker.

Book Review – The Debt & The Doormat By Laura Bernard
Book Reviews · Monday Musings

Book Review – The Debt & The Doormat By Laura Bernard

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So this is another book by an author I have become friends with on FB and will be seeing in Leeds in March so once more I was nervous when I started reading…

The Goodreads blurb says…

Poppy and Jazz have been best friends from the first week of university. Whenever these two get together trouble isn’t far away and things haven’t changed much. When Jazz gets herself into financial trouble Poppy, being a good friend, offers to help. She instead ends up being talked into swapping lives, with Jazz insisting it will be good and help her get over her broken heart.

Poppy is thrown into a new life, full of crazy housemates. There’s fitness freak Izzy, horrendously beautiful bitch Grace and the slightly gorgeous, if not incredibly grumpy Ryan.

Quickly, with the help of Jazz, her life is thrown upside down. Madness ensues and her need to please everyone gets her in more trouble than she could ever imagine.

Before she knows it she’s got a fake boyfriend and is hiding so many secrets she’s scared they’ll spill out any minute. With a bullying boss, a sex crazed colleague, a mental mother and three brothers each with their own dramas, life has gotten pretty difficult for Poppy. And all of this would be much easier, if she could just stop falling over.

Will she get her life back to normal before her brother’s upcoming wedding? And will she want to?

The truth is I don’t really read a lot of Chick Lit these days, in my early twenties I would read a lot more than I do now (if only there were more hours in the day) so I would alternate the genres I read, one serious book usually fantasy or historical, you know the type things that require concentration, then I would read something lighter, chick lit or comedy.

I have to be honest I picked this up, read the first couple of pages and was not sure I was really going to enjoy this but hands up, I was wrong! Once I got into it I was hooked, I don’t normally read on my breaks at work but this book made me anti-social and two nights running caused me to be laying in the bath long after the water had got cold. If I was going to be super critical I would question whether the main character Poppy needed to have quite so many incidents happen to her in one book, it did push it to the bounds of believability that one person could be that unlucky but in this genre it is pretty normal to go for exaggerated plot lines.

The only real fault I have with this book was at times the timeline got a little confusing, one minute you are jumping forward hours while another it is weeks with no real distinction, a couple of times I did find myself having to backtrack a little to just check how long had passed but overall this is right up there with the books I loved by Freya North and Sophia Kinsella and I will definitely be checking out the next in the series.

So the scores on the doors, well on Goodreads they do not allow for half marks so I will, of course, markup but here on my blog it is a 4.5 out of 5 stars just losing half a point for the fact I had to step out of the moment to check on time frames occasionally otherwise it would have been full marks.

Vlog Time #106 – Three Weeks To #Darker
8. Vlog Time

Vlog Time #106 – Three Weeks To #Darker

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Book Review – My Love Forever (The Night Movers Vampire #1) by Helen Bright
Book Reviews

Book Review – My Love Forever (The Night Movers Vampire #1) by Helen Bright

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Okay I am going to put a disclaimer here that I am friends with this author on FB, I am also going to say that I hate reading books by people I like as people because it is horrible to face the fact you might not like what they have written, but I promise you this will still be an impartial review, I am nothing but honest and will admit if I had really hated it I would have just pretended to have not read it yet and said nothing, so with all that said let’s get to it…

We begin with the Goodreads blurb as always…

Alex knew Julia was meant to be his when he saw her fourteen years ago with her father at a party thrown by his company Night Movers.
She was a young innocent eighteen year old and off to university shortly, so he decided to let her live a little before he made her his. After all he was a nine hundred and fifty year old vampire living and working in his company, alongside the humans he employed in modern day Yorkshire. He had waited this long to find love so he could wait a little longer.

Not quite a year later Julia is engaged and later married.
Alex thought his chance at love with Julia was gone.

Fourteen years on and a terrible accident leaves Julia with a devastating tragedy that no parent should have to go through, and her marriage breaks down.
Julia then finds herself back home in Yorkshire and applying for a Job with Night Movers.
Will Alex convince Julia to be his after all she has been through? And can she accept the fact that he is a born immortal vampire?

Gina has sacrificed her happiness to stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of her family for many years. But now they are grown and she’s still unhappy but won’t leave because she feels like a failure.
Nik, a vampire and co-owner of night movers is in love with Gina, but she lacks confidence in herself and can never accept that someone like Nik could love her.
Will Nik convince her that she’s all he needs?
This new paranormal romance takes you to the village of Barrowfield where the Night Movers transport company, owned by three vampires is based.
Sadness, humour, friendship, love and sex, makes this series a must read for fans who like their paranormal romance with extra bite.
Due to adult content this book should only be read by persons aged 18 or over.

So as you see a vampire story, so we have worry number one, as my daughter would say I am a vampire snob, I love the Anne Rice and Brom Stoker style of classic vampire, so I was a little worried how I would fair with this story right from the beginning but actually I really enjoyed this, the author creates a mythology for her vampires backgrounds, while not exactly an origin tale for the species she begins intertwining a historical element I hope will be revisited and explored later at a further time within the series.

She quickly develops the personalities of the main characters and with the clever use of humour, she allows you to connect with them as individuals. Of course, there are characters you warm to more, and I have to say that I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series in the hope the character and plot development continues and we see each of the vampires receive their own lead role in a book. I love the setting, again I was nervous about a rural setting for this in terms of the credibility for a vampire living there long term but this is again dealt with plausibly within the plot.

The final thing to discuss is, of course, the adult content, and although I still have a few personal reservations about vampires having sex, the scenes themselves are incredibly well written and realistically written also, the only possible worry is certain scenes are so well written that it makes you wonder if the author is writing from personal experience which is fine with an author you are never likely to meet and slightly different with one you are seeing in a few weeks.

So I think you can tell I loved this book, despite all my reservations, the facts that counted against it before I started reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I recommended it to my daughter and downloaded the rest via Kindle Unlimited. I am going to start leaving links for the books of fellow Indie Authors after the scores to make it easier for you if you want to check them out after. So I guess we need a score, I could hardly put this down so it gets the full 5 out of 5 stars and a hearty recommendation for anyone looking for a great paranormal romance to read.

You can find the book here

If you would like to learn more about the author then you can find her on FB here and be sure to say hello, she is lovely.

Lazy Sunday #46
Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday #46

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I have decided that this series is going to undergo a little alteration, I will still share the odd post I have read during the week, but for the main part, this will be a quick fun personal catch up. That said let me explain my absence, it was due to a few reasons, first summer holidays here in the UK so of course I wanted to spend a little more time with the monster, he taught me to play his Xbox one Lego Dimensions game and I kicked his butt playing LOTR Risk, sounds like a fair exchange right? Then had a little drama with my dad ending up in hospital, I am sure my parents are allergic to summer as last year it was my mum who spent the best part of August in hospital.

Then my son accidentally shut the cats in the living room together when we went out, we returned to a scene out of a cartoon chase, you know when Tom chases Jerry,  result two dead cacti, a broken router and a couple of hours cleaning to do. I guess the main thing to be thankful for was the fight took place at the far side of the room away from the guinea pig cage so at least there was no blood and fur to clean up.

So I am back now, I have a hectic month getting ready for Darker next month, I have had to accept the third part of the trilogy is not going to be ready before then, but right now I am focusing on one task at a time, so today I am writing blog posts ready for the rest of the week. I have a mason coming on Tuesday to fix my fireplace so fingers crossed I will have a fire again before Winter hits, even though I have central heating there are some days you still need a fire to curl up in front of. The monster also starts back at school Tuesday, which I am looking forward to more than him, but it does mean I can get back to my normal routines, it also means I will get back to getting a little exercise and I really need it, while Spanx may save me for Darker I am not sure they will help for the next event lol.

Rght I am going to get off and get some work done starting with a book review for tomorrow.

Audiobook Review – The Vanishing Witch By Karen Maitland
Audiobook Reviews · Monday Musings

Audiobook Review – The Vanishing Witch By Karen Maitland

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I picked this up as part of a two for one offer so was not sure what to expect other than it sounded interesting from the blurb…

The Goodreads blurb says about the book…

The reign of Richard II is troubled, the poor are about to become poorer still and landowners are lining their pockets. It’s a case of every man for himself, whatever his status or wealth. But in a world where nothing can be taken at face value, who can you trust? The dour wool merchant? His impulsive son? The stepdaughter with the hypnotic eyes? Or the raven-haired widow clutching her necklace of bloodstones?

And when people start dying unnatural deaths and the peasants decide it’s time to fight back, it’s all too easy to spy witchcraft at every turn.

First, let’s deal with the facts

I really enjoyed this book, first, the narrator, though many of the characters were female the actor reading the book was able to perform each part in a way which allowed you to differentiate between them and not be distracted by the fact it was a man. He read it was enough passion to draw you into the story without distracting from the actual words and I have to say that is something I am discovering to be incredibly important when coming to audiobooks and have already changed my mind about buying some books based on listening to a sample of the narrator’s voice.

I love the overall all story, which I am not going to spoil by telling you, let us just say it is a nice tale of witchcraft. lust and murder. The balance between historical influence and plot is nicely done, I especially like the snippets of witch lore at the beginning of the chapters. The perspective switches from one character to another as you go through the chapters but at no point do you feel like it is repetitive as it can be telling a story from multiple viewpoints, the fact that the speaker is named at the start of each chapter also aids in keeping the story straight.

So the score, part of my wants to give it full marks, but there is something which holds me back, I think it is in part pacing, there are periods where the story moves slower, then you reach the end and it seems to fly through complex revelations, there is a lack of resolution regarding certain characters, which though not affecting the storyline you do wish you had more knowledge of their fates. I decided, in the end, to log it as a four on Goodreads but for this blog, I am going for 4.5 stars out of 5 and would recommend this in audiobook form.

 

June & July Resolutions
Resolutions 2017

June & July Resolutions

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I know I said I would be back to the proper resolutions set up but to be honest the last couple of months have been a nightmare.

First, there were the issues with my son which I discussed in a post you can read here, then my dad was in the hospital.

There have been times the last two months where I have felt like throwing the towel in, my writing has suffered, most of what I have written over the last couple of months has basically just not been good enough which leaves me two months to complete two novels before Darker. Can it be done? Well. yes, but it is going to take a lot of focus

Can it be done? Well. yes, but it is going to take a lot of focus because it is the school holidays on top of everything else. The reality is this means so much to me that I really don’t want to fail. I have worked out if I write 4k a day then I can still do it, this will mean some late nights no doubt, as given the speed I can type it will equate to around three hours a day on top of other things I need to do.

What does this mean, for me overall, first less time messing about doing other things, I am also guessing a build up of house work lol and less chatting on social media, though I will still be around for various events and to promote #Darker. You will probably get shorter blog posts, though there is a good chance you might get more on time as it will be in my interest to be organised and schedule ahead. There are times I find I work better to a deadline and right now life has given myself a bloody tough one.

I have put some weight back on, so that is something else I need to address, when I am stressed I eat or rather I don’t eat properly and nibble on crap, I lose faith in myself and look for comfort in the wrong ways, it is also school holidays so I don’t have the school run for exercise, struggle to find time to swim and dancing is sporadic. I need to make a point of getting up every half hour/hour and walking about even if only a hundred steps or so at a time.

The last few months life has run away with me but now it is time to grab hold of the reins and regain control.

Let’s Talk Clothes!
#TheDarkerSideOfFiction2017 · Signings & Events

Let’s Talk Clothes!

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Okay so you are lucky enough to have got a place at a signing event, you have the books, the swag and are ready, so what is left? Well, what are you going to wear?

So the night do is usually easier, it is normally formal and many times has a theme to help you decide on your outfit this was me with my daughter at the Leeds Event last year…

But it can get expensive, as you start attending more events you will meet up with the same people numerous times which means you cannot invest in one little black dress and re-wear it.  On the other hand, unless the day job pays really well or you have hit the jackpot with a best-selling novel you probably don’t want to be buying new dresses every few months that you can only wear the once or at least only once for now and then put to be rotated in a wardrobe. So the alternative as I have been looking into is eBay,  as I mentioned on Sunday I have found it to be a treasure trove of dresses bought for weddings, cruises and other suave social occasions that one has the excuse to dress up for. Worn once or twice these end up going for a fraction of the price of the new dress, likewise new clothes with tags show up in abundance, I am guessing like some of the clothes in my wardrobe these are bought but don’t fit and kept with the intention of fitting them one day or they just don’t get round to returning them within the correct time frame.

However, it is not just the ball/evening dress you have to consider, let’s start with travelling, you obviously need something comfortable but also some thing that will make the right impression at the hotel when you show up, then the evening prior to the signing you will need to eat, probably meet a few of the other authors in the bar or just hang out with them.

Then the big one your signing outfit, now I am pretty sure smart casual is the standard, it has to be comfortable enough to wear all day and practical, you don’t want to wear linen and look all crumpled after five minutes. There is though a secondary consideration, and that is your brand, does the way you dress reflect your work and personality? I am not for one second suggesting fancy dress, but if you write medieval fantasy would your readers really expect to see you in a floral, floaty dress. just as you work to bring your image together in terms of covers complementing each other, business cards matching other PR materials then you want to present an image of yourself that will both stick and be engaging. In some ways, it seems to me that it is almost like creating your own personal work uniform, it is the clothing you wear to put you in author mode when you are public.

I have bright purple hair, or to be fair this week it is the end of a dye cycle so it is more a mix of lilac and grey, so I am not what you would consider to be conventional, however, being plus size I am also acutely aware that not all clothes suit me or look good on me,  I am also aware that some of the things I might like the idea of wearing would not fit with my writing. While I am not saying that you should role play your characters I do think common sense comes into play, I write medieval fantasy, wearing Steampunk style clothes would possibly send confusing messages even though I love the style.

So what am I going to wear? For me I think it is looking like trousers suits with shirts or blouses, I like the idea of the traditional tweedy look against my purple hair, it allows me to show my personality with my hair but the suit gives a level of professionalism, and, rather than go for plain black, the idea of the tweed or possibly brown pinstripe appeals because it is the twist on the expected.

Of course, I don’t rule out the thought that I am over thinking this, but for me, I like the idea of having separate mix and match type items for wearing to signings.