New Look Blog

So I decided it was time for a new look. As I’m starting to think seriously about publishing, I want to gear the blog a bit more towards being a platform for my writing, rather than just a place where I babble. There will still be babbling for some time yet, but I’m starting with the look.

The banner above is my first attempt at manipulating a photograph taken yesterday – photos that will eventually become front covers for the books I’m hoping to publish. It is, those of you who have been following the blog for a while (or who read the last post) may recognise, Taylor, posing as Cadence, the main character of my book. She is, in my cousin’s words, a ‘ninja police officer.’ Okay, maybe not so much the ninja part. But she does have a flaming sword. Making the fire was hard.

As I get closer to being ready to publish, I’ll post a bit more about the characters and stories on here, but for now, I hope the new look is good, and for those interested – here is the original picture:

No tutorial for this one. I honestly can’t remember what I did and forgot to save my ‘stage by stage’ pictures anyway. When I get round to making the front covers, I will endeavour to be better.

P.S. Photo taken by the very talented (and generous of her time and talents!) Kirsty Warner.

Green Screen

The Insane Summer Holiday Project hasn’t gone as swiftly as I hoped it would. Family issues and impromptu holidays have eaten into a lot of my time, but before work starts up again next week, I was really hoping to get one last thing done. The writing I can do on my own in my own time, but other things relied on certain individuals who will be off to Uni soon and therefore not at my beck and call.
In designing the front covers, I realised I would need to use green screen technology to achieve the effects I desired. I’m good at using photoshop and have a trained photographer who has volunteered to take and pose the photos for me. But I don’t have the funds to hire a photography studio. However, I do have a spare room that isn’t being used for much at the moment.

With help from Taylor, I used masking tape to mark out a nice big square on the wall, then painted it the most obnoxious green I could find in Homebase – which wasn’t, I was disappointed to find, as obnoxious as their own ‘Homebase green’ colour they use in all their signs.

One coat is done, but it probably needs another. We tested it anyway, with a terrible camera and terrible lighting, but even this quick bodge-job test was quite successful.

Taylor in front of the greenscreen becomes…

Taylor very badly photoshopped into New York.

The actual book covers will obviously have a better starting photo taken by Taylor’s friend with the photography qualifications, and I will spend much more time actually making the photoshopped end product, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to achieve the effects I want. Now while I wait for a convenient date for photographer, models and me, I will keep adding words to the current installment.

365 Project, Weeks 26+27

So, rather than repeat everything I’ve said (or am going to say in the next couple of posts) and to avoid running into a three week roll over (busy on Sundays… it’s a right pain) I’m just going to post a selection of photos from the fortnight today. Which is not Sunday. But never mind.

Make of these what you will!

An Unexpected Holiday

With all the house excitement, and money draining repairs and renovations, the Boyfriend and I weren’t planning on going abroad anywhere this year. So it was a lovely surprise and treat to be flown out to stay with relatives in Portugal.

It was our first time in the country, and we were thoroughly spoiled to have people who knew the area well to show us round and where to find all the best historical and cultural places, along with recommendations for the best places and things to eat.

We were in northern Portugal, not far from the city Porto. It’s less touristy than the Algarve, but full of beautiful architecture.

As well as some gorgeous historical buildings.

It also boasted a cafe that’s one of the best in the world: Majestic.

We had a freshly squeezed orange juice here, while having a good nose at some of the ornate decorations inside.

It was a week full of much needed relaxing and recuperating from the housework, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Although, as a combination of a nasty run in with a mosquito, the antibiotics I was taking, and a bit of sunburn, I did manage to come up in a rash all over my body and had to stay out of the sun for a couple of days. The Boyfriend thought it was sunburn until it started responding to antihistamines and steroid cream.

I’ve never had anything like that before – and I’ve been sunburnt far worse than the little bit of sun I caught on the first day. My immune system was clearly overworking that day. I didn’t get any pictures…

Strange, that.

The Day Bomb Squad Came Round

Our unofficial writing club has had a bit of a staggering start. Between Carole’s Gamesmaker shifts and various other commitments, we’ve rarely had the full contingent, and we’ve rarely all achieved our goals. I was doing well until the week before last. I’d written an entire 30000 word novella in one week, and planned to continue with my word rate.

I didn’t achieve my goal. But, I had the best excuse. Ever.

I’ve talked before about working in our back garden. Basically, the previous few families had covered up the Victorian courtyard that was originally out there, building up layers of stuff over time. When we got the house there was decking and an area of soil covered by bark. The decking wasn’t well installed and it had been left to go slimy with moss, making it treacherous to walk on. We ripped all that out (I say we, I didn’t have much to do with it!) discovering the original brick work underneath. Unfortunately, it was very damaged, and there were pipes everywhere – half of which were redundant, the other half going places they shouldn’t have. The Boyfriend, on advice of friends and builders, decided to dig it all out and build back up again with proper brick laying foundations of hard core and sand, then have someone put the nice Victorian style blue bricks re-layed.

It was in the digging everything up that we made our discovery.

The Boyfriend’s dad, who’s been helping us out with all the garden stuff, was trying to shift what he thought was a rock. When he couldn’t work it loose, he hit it with a sledgehammer. Another day, this could have been a very different story.

The first I knew of this little discovery was when the Boyfriend’s sister came round as she walked the dog and picked one up, shaking it experimentally.

‘What’s this?’ she said.

‘It looks like a grenade,’ I said, not realising how right I was.

Because we were going away that week, the Boyfriend left calling the police until the day before we left, hoping they would come while we were away and we’d miss all the drama. No such luck for him, and a day of hilarity for me, as the first police officer who came over was ex-army and able to identify straight away that the charges in the grenades were still live. It was only the degraded detonator that meant the Boyfriend’s dad still had all his body parts.

There were three pineapple grenades and one rifle grenade, leftovers from some Homeguard movement in the Second World War. Apparently they were all live and the rifle grenade was the most dangerous. That meant the army was belting over to us from over an hour away to dispose of them.

To the Boyfriend, this was mortifying. To me, it was great writing research. And the funniest thing that ever happened.

Of course, all this writing ‘research’ meant I wasn’t actually getting any writing done. But it was definitely a legitimate excuse.

Bomb Squad came and put the grenades in a box, took them off to a field and disposed of them in a controlled explosion.

As we drove down to London the next day, we got a call from the policeman in charge of talking to the media. They wanted to put the story in the paper. The Boyfriend was so glad he was getting on a plane out of the country (which given his fear of flying is something!) and told the media officer firmly he did not want his name publishing in the paper.

The story gave my family much cause for mirth while we were away. The Step-Dad even went so far as to sweet talk a checkout girl into giving him the promotional poster from the newspaper board, which he sent us a photo of, grinning gleefully as he held it.

At Writer’s Club, Ivy said she’d not done much as she’d had a really weird week. I don’t know what she thought was weird, but I’m fairly sure it had nothing on mine!

J is for Bond, James Bond

Okay, that title doesn’t quite work, but never mind.

For our J date, I got really excited when I heard about the 50 Years of Bond Style exhibition at the Barbican in London. The Boyfriend is a huge Bond fan, and with my penchant for movies with more explosions and car chases than plot sense, it’s something we can enjoy together. With glee, I told him about it, expecting him to be very pleased with my efforts, only to find out he’d heard about it on the radio that same day. It spoiled the surprise a little, but talk about synchronisity!

The problem was getting down to London. We aren’t exactly flush at the moment, with all the work happening on the house, but we both needed the break. Fortunately, an impromptu holiday with family gave us the opportunity to stop over in London for the night, and the kind offer of a bed in my Godfather’s house meant it didn’t even cost us enormously.

We caught the train then the Underground from Sunbury to the Barbican, testing my knowledge of the Underground systems. A short walk took us to the Barbican, where we had the opportunity to take a photograph of a Sean Connery waxwork posing by one of the many iconic cars. Unfortunately, that was the last chance we had to photograph, as pictures weren’t allowed inside the exhibition.

It was a good selection of props and costumes, and had something to please everyone. I enjoyed looking at the dresses and trying to match them to characters. I got to oggle at Michelle Yeoh’s outfit from Tomorrow Never Dies (my favourite Bond film, in part for the entirely ridiculous motorbike stunt but mostly because of my enormous girl crush on Michelle Yeoh).

Meanwhile, there were plenty of gadgets, clips and props for the Boyfriend to look at. There were several different areas, including the ice palace of The World is Not Enough – an area dedicated to all the snow scenes. We could have spent a lot longer in there than we did if we’d bothered to read all the information, but as it was we just enjoyed wandering and looking at the different displays.

After, we headed back on the Circle Line to Embankment. We wandered across the footbridge towards the London Eye, enjoying some live performances in the Jubilee Gardens there as we waited for my Godfather to arrive. We then went together for some Japanese food in Wagamas. A perfect end to the date!

Confidence Wobbles

Book three is not going as quickly as books one and two. I aimed to have it finished by tomorrow, and that is not likely. Not unless I can magically produce 20,000 words in the next twenty-four hours, between sleeping, eating, packing for my holiday and babysitting a plumber who’s coming to sort out our leak.

In other words, never going to happen.

It’s partly because the impromptu holiday that was only booked a few days ago has eaten into my writing time. Though it was largely sorted for us, we still had to organise suitcases, spending money, cleaning enough appropriate clothes etc. Plus we had to sort out an extra day in London so we can go and see the Bond exhibition for our J date, which turned into a right carry on.

I know all this, as well as knowing that, despite him being supportive of my ambitions, I generally find it harder to write when the Boyfriend is around. Because I want to be spending time with him, not locked in my study. We get so little time together most of the time, that when he has days off, I feel I’m wasting them somehow if I’m not glued to his side.

But, despite knowing this, the slow word counts over the past few days have made me question myself. I start imagining the criticisms that might be levelled at me by fictional critiques of my as yet unfinished, let alone published works. I even go as far as imagining the negative comparisons that might be drawn between other books that I’ve written, that are equally far from being publishable.

It’s all writerly anxiety, and I’m sure I’m not alone in suffering it, but it got me thinking, because my biggest concern was my characters.

I was worried that the main character of my current series, Cadence, is too similar to the main female character of the previous book I wrote, Caitlin. See, their names even begin with the same letter!

The reason for my concern was that there are a lot of surface similarities – both women have pasts that they’ve tried to leave behind, but also define them as people, both of them are gutsy and brave. Both have a strong dislike of being talked down to, or treated badly. Both are involved in some sort of job where they face good vs evil type scenarios. Both of them kick ass, albeit in different ways.

It was thinking about this kicking ass business that made me realise how different they really are. Cadence lives very much in the now, something I subconsciously reflected by choosing to write in the first person present tense. She is reasonably intelligent, but she’s less a thinker, more a barrel in head first kind of girl. She’s got a flaming sword, and she’s not afraid to use it.

Caitlin, on the other hand, is much more manipulative. She would think of a way to gain the advantage in a situation so that she can move the players like chess pieces without actually getting her hands dirty. She’s reflective, analytical and only comfortable when she’s at least ten steps ahead of her opponents.

To procrastinate from writing a little more, I imagined what would happen if I swapped them over. Technical difficulties of two completely different worlds aside, I imagine Caitlin would fair pretty well in Cadence’s shoes in terms of solving the Big Mystery that runs throughout the series, though she would never have chosen he job – it’s far too physical.

Cadence, on the other hand, would never have been able to save Caitlin’s colleagues at the crucial moment like she does. Cadence would fit the job and the people, but the particular skill set needed to get them out of certain situations, Cadence just doesn’t have.

And the love interests? I ran the thought experiment of swapping them over too. And while I could totally see Cadence and Caitlin’s love interest going out for drinks and having a good time, I doubt they would ever be more than just mates.

Caitlin with Cadence’s love interest? They wouldn’t even like each other, and if they did there would be far too much thinking and analysing going on – hardly ingredients for a passionate relationship.

All this, of course, has been a rather large waste of valuable writing time, but thinking these things through has at least left me feeling that I have two rounded, interesting, and most importantly different characters.

(And yes, I am aware I talk about them like they’re real people. Living with them in  my head long enough makes them feel pretty real at times!)

365 Project, Week 25

I have spent a lot of time here this week, peeling paint off the stairs, using a steamer to soften the paint up. It is killing my hands, and eating into my writing time, but there’s actually something quite therapeutic about it.

This is just the first three stairs though, it’s going to take a looong time at this rate to do the whole staircase!

After the lovely weather, we finally had the thunder and the break in the humidity. And some pretty spectacular downpours.

The Boyfriend was in the process of putting those bricks into the skip when it came down in earnest, turning our road into something of a river.

Which meant he had to stop and come inside, and got some help with the stairs. I think my pink gardening gloves rather suit him.

Today, while looking for bathroom cleaner in our cleaning cupboard, I found no less than 6 bottles of toilet cleaner. Plus a couple of bottles of bleach, which to me is essentially the same thing. I think the Boyfriend has a cleaning product habit.

(Just in case anyone thinks I can’t count, the sixth bottle is upstairs in the bathroom by this point)

August Reading List

It feels like such a long time ago that I started July’s reading list. Having just looked over it, almost all the books on it I thought I’d read months ago! I have actually read this month: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, Love at Second Sight by Cathy Hopkins, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, Sourcery by Terry Pratchett, The Night Sky in my Head by Sarah Hammond, The Drowning City by Amanda Downum and just this morning finished  The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow, so I’m going to count that for July too.

I had set myself a separate reading list to the ones I’m reading here, but I think I’m going to have to combine them, because I’ve been so busy with writing, I won’t have time to get through all those books and another load on here, so here is August’s list.

August Reading List

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Lani Taylor

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

Trash by Andy Mulligan