Books vs electronic Not Books

Wow how did a month slip by without me blogging?

A whole lot of real life offline kept me busy and distracted.

I am packing to move house and house hunting. I taped all of daughter dear's spare clothes into the blue wheely bin and her shoes and bits into boxes and green bags and restacked them on her shelving.
 
I have been cleaning walls and ceilings, light fittings and windows and repairing small lumps and bumps of normal wear and tear and I am planning a garage sale (scary) [Yard sale for those in the north]

I do not like moving and considering how many times I have done it in my life you would think that I would be a practiced hand at it but still I find it stressful, especially because this is the longest I have ever lived anywhere and the longest I have ever been in the same street. I have grown fond of my friends and a few neighbours and the town is a lovely place to live. Still I have become a little complacent and need some more energy pumped into the writing career I have chosen. I moved the teens to Melbourne to temporary accommodation to take up studies at Swinburne and it has been very quiet around here without them. They are learning some independent living skills and I intend they continue the trend when we all move back into the same house. They are growing and glowing with their new found studies.
I did have one of my little grandsons come to stay for a while. That was fun and exhausting. I am SO far past nappies and bottles at 3am but we do these things for the ones we love and he is just too cute for words.

I created a vision board (this woman offers a free ebook about vision boarding on her blog http://christinekane.com/how-to-make-a-vision-board/ ). The board is something I have done in the past but not to this extent. My sister had been to an art therapy session in which they painted and collaged their boards and after a lengthy phone call with her I decided it was time to revisit this fabulous technique for visualising my own future. I wanted a was to express the things I want to happen and to focus my new found meditation upon.

Right smack in the middle is the word Believe in little crystals. This is a big reminder to me that I must believe in myself and my talents and my ability to do what is needed to make my goals a reality. It was good to sit and think about what I want from life and what aspect of my life I need to change and improve. I thought about love and family and career, I thought about health and wealth and travel and so much more. I have always wanted to be an in demand motivational speaker and a published author and my vision board was an excellent place to represent these desires so they became more concrete and less vague thoughts. The meditation came in the form of a 7 minute chakra cleanse, a mantra and a huge amount of research into binaural beats and harmonics and how sounds can affect health and well being and then I discovered Headspace with its 10 day ten minute calm sessions. I need calm sessions. https://www.headspace.com

In the past month I had my first and second Write a Novel in a Year class through Victoria University and I missed the second one but have read all the notes and I am implementing the suggested course of action. I am 12k into an idea I came up with 12 months ago and have begun to plan, write character sheets, write back story vignettes and discuss with fellow class mates. It is a futuristic social commentary with horror and romance elements in the drama.I am liking it so far.




 I read a novel, Atonement and discussed it with  two young male students who are studying the novel and struggling with it. I struggled with it and I am reasonably well read with a wide and interesting life of experiences to draw on. I thought it might be a good book for uni students to deconstruct and am in total sympathy with mid teen boys trying to wade through it. I can see how it and its author have generated a lot of positive reviews but fail to understand the choice as reading material for rural students with academia at the bottom of their list of worthwhile things to do.

I wrote several reviews for other authors.

I also wrote some childrens' book ideas and attended a webinar or two and read copious notes for my class and learned to count to ten in Thai. I do sudoku each night before I sleep to quiet my mind and I do them in Japanese and Russian so I learn the numbers.

I also cried for the deaths of Leonard Nimoy and Terry Pratchett (Sir).
Leonard Nimoy as Spock gave me hope that there could be logic and sense to my childhood, his character was a spark of hope in the chaos of my family life.
Sir Terry Pratchett allowed me to understand that I must be well read because I recognised so many of the original stories he so cleverly twisted into his own on the disc world.

These men were very important to me and my sense of self worth.  I suppose Gene Roddenberry as the creator of Spock and Star Trek also played an important role but as a child I didn't think beyond the character on the screen and I idolised Spock.

It has been such a busy time that I have barely lifted a pen or pencil to the page so my pinterest has had no new uploads for six weeks and my folders have not been filled with colourful depiction of the world around me and I have neglected my online art groups.  Here is my landscape painted with coffee on water colour paper.

One of my favourite authors. Lois McMaster Bujold, has announced she is writing a new book for one of the characters in her Vorkosigan series of books and I am incredibly excited by that. This woman has been writing her series for almost 30 years since 1986 when the first was published. I realised as I perused the shelf I have dedicated to her work that I have been influenced by many women writers. Enid Blyton and May Gibbs from my very early years, Ursula K Leguin, Dianna Wynn-Jones, Zenna Henderson and Anne Mcaffrey through my teens, Isobelle Carmody in my twenties and beyond and so many many more, I had not realised until I was looking through my books and deciding to pack them that I had so many women on my shelves. Not just fiction either and not simply science fiction although right after fairy tales from around the world, science fiction is my second love. I lost many of my books in the '09 fires along with art but it never takes long for me to refill my shelves.
The first novel I wrote was so English it was embarrassing, especially as I have never been to England except through my reading, but it was also a good way for me to begin to understand the influences these authors have had on shaping who I am as a writer. I sent it out eventually to two large traditional publishers who wrote me two very positive and encouraging rejection letters.

I love my books. I love the scent of books. I love holding them and tucking a book mark in them. I love sharing books and writing little codes in the back. I love editing a book with a pencil I keep tucked behind my ear. I love giving the gift of a book. I love that I don't have to scroll through a book and be dictated to by the program on my computer. I love that my pages don't skip ahead. I love that there are over a thousand books in my bedroom and all of them are mine and no big company or remote prude can decide what I can or can't have on my bookshelves and take them away on a whim. I love that I can throw a book in an emotional upheaval because of the words on the page and I don't have to worry that the screen will crack. I don't have to put a battery in my book or charge it up or keep it cool. I can take a book to the beach or on a picnic and if it rains well I can dry the pages with my hair dryer. I love that if I am ever stuck in a remote location with my book and there is no toilet paper I can sacrifice the end pages. I love snuggling in bed with a good book, or into a huge armchair and reading on a cold day. I love seeing my books all stacked and lined up and feel a sense of pride in ownership of them. I feel like my books are a display of me. Not streamlined and generic that's for sure.

There are times when an electronic reader is preferable to carrying an extra suitcase of reading material. An electronic reader is a useful way of storing works to be reviewed and when the budget is tight and there is a strict no no on purchasing, a little ebook can be snuck in past the vigilance of the household harridan holding the purse strings(that would be me). I think I would prefer my newspaper in e form but I can read the news online now. A friend has a screen enlarger for her diminishing eyesight and of course I read every day on my PC for a whole range of reasons. There are many good reasons to have some form of electronic reading device. Those clever people who invented them are marvelous but -

 -In my incredible and crazy life, books have been my stabilisers, my strength, my teachers and my friends. They have been my places to escape into so I could escape from. Books have been my furniture and my door stops. Books have kept me from starving and have given me travel and riches beyond measure.  Books are my first choice of reading material.

  To the thousands of authors out there who have been part of my life journey, thank you.
To the aspiring writers yet to be published. Keep writing, don't ever give up your stories until they are on the printed page, you just never know whose life you will change.

What do we leave out?

This is the colour of my daughter's hair. I have to share. I simply love it.

It was an accidental colour but it suits her so much. The only other person I have ever known to pull of this particular shade is the character Lilu (Scarlett Johansson) in the fifth element,

 My daughter can wear just about any colour. She has that pale pale vampire skin, the kind that used to be referred to as alabaster (like the statues).

She has been colouring her hair since grade five in primary school(equivalent of grade four elementary-USA) when she landed a role in a play called The Seal Wife. She had the softest blondest hair imaginable before that and then changed to a brassy red to fit the role. All the females characters were Celtic and red headed in the play.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/03/26/2200016.htm 

Next year she went black to be a pirate. That was henna and it never seemed to come out of her hair.

Since then her hair has been every colour under the rainbow. For plays and cosplay. Sometimes dye and sometimes wigs. Often for charity.
Two years in a row the school she attend refused to allow her to have her photograph taken because her hair was coloured, regardless of the fact that she was raising money by colouring her hair for a cause. The message the school was sending was very clear. Uniformity is more important than good citizenship.
I think My daughter has light brown/dark blonde hair as her natural colour but it never stays undyed long enough to be sure.

Generally when I discuss my family on my blog it is in very broad and vague terms because I have limited control over who does and doesn't read my blog and I wish to preserve their privacy. I leave out details. I generally leave out many of the small daily challenges of my life such as estrangement from sons, dying parents, illness, babies, being a grandparent along with all the usual mundane things like my dishwasher making the most abominable noises or the foibles of my washing machine or the huge amount of money my car repairs are costing my budget. Everyone has little quirks and  challenges in their daily lives and it would become very boring and dull to be reading about them unless written by a very good story teller. Hmm there is an idea in that...

A tin foil hat is a hat made from one or more sheets of aluminium foil, or a piece of conventional headgear lined with foil, worn in the belief it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_foil_hat

I will share this though. Some time ago my landlord reacted to my tin foil hat neighbour who was worried about twigs falling on his two four wheel drives, two station wagons, two boats, trailers and various other wheeled assets in his front yard. He was concerned the once a year visits from the fruit bats would ruin his paint by dropping half eaten fruit and what if the 30 year old tree suddenly fell on his house.

 These are the old trees.

So the neighbour squealed and whined and the knee jerk reaction of the landlord was to remove not only the tree beside the neighbours fence but the one on the other side of the front lawn, no where near the tinfoil hat neighbour or his precious assets. I  offered to make my neighbour a tin foil hat to protect him from alien invasion and falling elephants which were more likely than the trees falling.I had begged and pleaded and even became angry that they would destroy two perfectly healthy trees filled with nests, birds, insects and life. Trees that provided shade and cleaned the air around us. Trees that cooled the temperature and protected the house from the fierce winds we experience. No they were cut down and turned into wood chips. So I planted new trees and shrubs. Sixteen of them.  Here they are.

 The pots lined up on the front lawns. selecting placement is an important step.

 They are all native species which will be wonderful for encouraging insects and birds.

 They look like mere twigs now but I can imagine the magnificence of these plants in a few years time in full bloom. The scarlet and gold of their flowers will be such a delight.

 I could not get this one to stand in place until it was planted.

Look at those lovely red leaves. This little beauty will be tall and shady and fill the space where a canopy should be.

 A native grass with an added self seeded prickly acacia hiding in the fronds.

 Look at this sweet little flower peeping out of my garden. I have some very learned friends who could spout off the technical and common names of all these plants but I don't care so much about the paper work I just care that they grow.

 another little stick almost camouflaged by the twigs around it.

 Just wait until this little stick is forty meters high.

 and this lovely frond with the golden flower fills me with delight

each mound of dirt is a future patch of shade and colour.   I am so happy they are all in and well watered with plenty of mulch from what was left of the previous trees. They don't look like much now but in a few years time it will be lovely to sit on the grass for a picnic in the cool shade.









My little act of rebellion. One score for mother nature!



So what of my writing and art? I am writing every day. I am on the eighth draft of a picture book and have had some very good feedback from my critique group and the 'first 250 words' forum in the 12 x 12 group. The story has become much better since the original idea and changed a lot.

This weeks theme for the 52 week challenge is TOY. I am yet to produce a piece for the theme.

I am booked in for a class in using Illustrator. I am looking forward to that and seeing what I can achieve in the digital art world. There is a big difference between cutting and pasting someone else's work and coming up with original concepts and art and I want to be able to make original work.
I recieved my membership card for the F project and I am keen to explore what my options are for studio space at the Artery. So many good things coming up for me I can hardly turn around without another opportunity.
I spent a great afternoon talking writing and story ideas with a friend of a friend which was such a buzz and I have been reading and reviewing other writers work. I like encouraging other writers and artists.

So some things I leave out and others I share, I think we all do that to varying degrees and depending on who we are sharing with.


I like your new fence palings Shirley and your green fairy is part way done. :)


On that note it is time for me to find a good book and curl up to read. Hugs and warm fuzzies.

satisfactory finish

Last night I completed the manuscript for a novel that has taken more than four years from first idea to the 80693 words that ended up on the page by the end of the epilogue.   It was an incredible feeling and I was buzzing as I sent it out to my wonderful team of beta readers. Beta readers are the people who first get to read a manuscript and their job is to encourage and support and yell that the writer has messed up with some serious continuity issues or just plain wow statements. Sometimes the Beta's give critiques or grammar and spell checks but mostly they read it through and say yuck or yay.  I wrote the first 50k of it last November during NaNoWriMo  but it started much earlier over cuppas and cake cuddled up cozy with my cousin as I told her my idea and we threw the idea around for hours. Every few months she would ask me if I had "written that story yet?" and I began to tell other people about the idea. I researched things like transport and telephones, jobs and wages, ultrasounds and accents. There is not one thing technical in the story that I made up, I consulted experts on everything from hypothermia to search and rescue at house fires and all that research gurgled around in my head and began to formulate the story. This month I wrote the other 28,000 words which works out to about 3000 a day and I hardly noticed it flying by. I did sprints in the RWA sprint and support room  where the ladies were there to cheer me on and ask me questions and compete just a little bit for word counts.

My sister asked me why this story has given me such a huge sense of satisfaction and after thinking about it I explained that when I write a flash fiction it is like opening a packet of biscuits and having it with a cup of tea made with a tea bag. Pleasant and quick. Writing a short story like all the ones I put in anthologies over the last year is like baking a cake and making a pot of tea, setting the table with all the nice things and having afternoon tea with a friend. Writing a novella feels like inviting friends over for lunch and pulling out my favourite soup recipes and cooking up  a nourishing meal for two or three people and spending time in their company. This novel is a four year plan to have dinner with a dozen friends. The menu is planned and anticipated and there is a huge build up and when it all comes together it is a gastronomic delight and I feel completely sated and have a huge smile on my face.

I have another epic novel in the planning. That one will be a banquet with a thousand people in attendance and I haven't done that kind of catering for a long while. It is in its early stages even though I already have 75k of it, I expect it to be monumental and I don't want to rush the planning.

 The 52 week challenge has an art swap going on at the moment. Those of us who participated were given a secret recipient to send a piece of original art to. I received this wonderful frog from Kelly Artist (nom de plume) and I am so excited. The post man came very late in the afternoon so I wasn't expecting any mail and what a delightful surprise.

My art is packaged ready to send in a few days. I sure hope my recipient likes this piece too.





All of my other smaller writing challenges have been on hold while I finished the novel so I need to get back and complete a few anthology pieces and certainly some art.

This week the theme in 52 week art challenge is Octopus. That could be fun. I have also promised some spooky pictures for an anthology so I might be on the blog for a day or two.

Thursday Thinking

Today was less weepy than yesterday which is a good thing but it was also a thinking day. A fairly busy day. I took Lucky Luke to an appointment and entered the lair of the age challenged youth workers, visited two government departments, dropped the darling daughter off at her band practice, saxophone practice and an appointment. I was bitterly disappointed to have ti confirmed that the housing people are going to remove the perfectly healthy trees in my front yard because they MAY drop limbs at some stage and the neighbour doesn't own a tin foil hat to protect him from twigs. I am going to lose the shade, the sound of the wind in the leaves, the birds and the bats and saddest of all, the cicadas hibernating beneath the bark of both trees.

I also managed to do paint another piece of art for the 52 week challenge (Eyes)

 

There must be some weird stuff going on inside my head. I like the art of Guilliamo del Toro and the costumes of the cirque de soliel and of course I am a SF fan from way back so I expect they all had an influence on where this piece came from but I don't know exactly why it evolved today. I painted it with water colour and touched it up with gel pens and a little bit of copic marker.

It was a very beautiful day here in Warrnambool. Mostly sunny and a lovely temperature. The neighbour wants to put some sheep in my back yard to eat the grass. I told him he was welcome to do so as my lawn mowers wont be coming for three weeks. I am off to Kyabram for a funeral on Saturday and that has had me in a very thoughtful mood for several days and of course weepy yesterday. Leaves me thinking about how many times we don't say things we should until it is too late.

I wrote a small piece for the mid week blues buster and completed another chapter on my novel. I managed to burn the sausages for dinner though. I should never cook and create at the same time really.

here is my MWBB 2:11 which means it is the prompt for the second year it has been running and the 11th week. The prompt music is

Gary Numan - Here In The Black

302

Absence of light.

In the beginning the absence of light seems the most cruel of punishments.

Some die quickly, some cry out to earless Gods and some more hardy souls survive. For a while. They are unmade and all their hopes are lost, they fade, here in the black.

Up at the top of this city world the verdant foliage of the lungs of the world decorate the skyline and act as the alveoli of the planet, pumping oxygen into the stratosphere, glistening wet in the warmth of the sun, messing with the equilibrium but down here in the foetid bowels deep beneath the lowest layers of infrastructure there is only the black bleak darkness.

Down here is where the human detritus is sent to die. Down here other things lie, in wait.

A blind man would have more time to contemplate his crime and perhaps avoid the bleak future that awaits the fools and criminals sent below but no blindness now exists in the gleaming world above and those who end up here live out their short span of days or hours in perfect fear as what their eyes cannot perceive presses hard against the ear.

Breathe soft lest the things below hear your breath and come for you.

Here in the black.

What is out there who knows but it comes for me.

I hear the whispers, the slithers and groans.

I feel the chill seep into my bones. I want to hide but where could I go?

Here in the black there is nowhere.

I stumble

I kneel

For one stupid moment I pray to the earless heedless gods

Something brushes against my will, against my skin and stillness fills my very being seeping into every pore. The blackness oozes inside me, outside me and it comes and I am no more.

Wednesday whipped by

but I did manage to write the next scene in my novel AND  produce some art for this weeks theme of EYES in the 52 week challenge.

 the eye of the storm which looks quite intriguing when I stand back from it. It is water colour and gouache on primed paper.

 

The eyes have it. Pencils of various sorts also on primed paper. My eye, an insect eye, spider eye, hawk eye, oscelot eye, Asian eyes, reptile eye, frog eye, cartoon eyes, manga eyes, oscelot eye, goat eye and Thorin/Richard Oakensheild/Armitage eye. I am quite pleased with teh improvements in my art over the past half year of constant practice. 

the 38 week challenge submission is a dark piece and prompted by some sad news I received today. I suggest not reading it if you wish to remain in a pleasant mood. 

week 12 Proof

Proof

I waited for weeks for the promised phone call.

When I finally received a call it was the wrong one.

Instead of spending time having a cup of tea and conversation I will go to a funeral.

 I don't want to go to a funeral, I want to spend time with a real breathing person and say all the things that were never said. I want to ask questions and get answers.

Inside my chest a small girl is screaming in pain demanding to know why she left.

Why they all left?

What poison did that monster pour in their ears?

What did the small girl do so badly that they didn’t come back?

I cannot comfort the child within. I don’t know the answers for her and now I can never ask.

 It is too late.

My anger is seething acid bubbling under a thinning crust of proper and acceptable.

I need proof of the poison.

When I find it, the crust will dissolve and I will have my own Pompei.

I make a call. I promised myself I would. I promised the child within.

I will keep that promise.

The monster will answer for the questions.

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