Category: News

Jul 18, 2012 by

Amazon Author pages, and other promotional tools

You have to be seen to be heard online these days. Apparently you need 40 likes on your Amazon page to increase visibility (visibility to who?) and 400 likes on your facebook page for the same reason. Of course, most people won’t see your facebook page’s updates anyway, simply by dint on not being online at the right time, and many of those that aren’t won’t because facebook has determined that they don’t look at them enough. Even I (under my personal account) don’t get to see all of my page’s updates!

I feel like this ought to be some kind alternate promotional tools post, but frankly, the only thing I’ve found that sells books is writing books, so I’ve mostly been getting on with that. I’m not above a little pandering, of course 🙂 For every ten likes I get on my Amazon page by the end of the month I’ll write 100 words of smut.

Here’s 100 from something I’m working on to get you started…

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Jul 7, 2012 by

Have you seen the rain recently? I was hoping to have a barbeque for my birthday (on our tiny balcony), but now instead of mourning my lack of garden I’m relieved we’re two storeys up! A little worried a lot of my guests won’t be able to make it without building some kind of Arc.

The day job is also doing an outdoor based event today, next to a river. Fun for all the family! The soggy, soggy family. Luckily I’m tucked away indoors for the day, so all I’ve got to keep an eye out for is leaks. We get a lot of those.

(if you’re not in the UK – Yeah. It’s quite wet. Like it has been for the last few summers.)

It’s all starting to remind me of Pluvial, which is one of my favourite stories I’ve written. I’ve got another story on sub with RPP at the mo, and a couple of ghostly ones over at Spectral Press. Now all I can do is wait. And watch the rain.

And open my birthday presents. ^_^

In Writing
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Jan 16, 2012 by

Beat Blue Monday

So, in the UK there was this TV channel called Sky Travel, which ceased to exist in 2010. In order to promote January holidays, they paid a scientist to come up with the idea of Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. The idea stuck, even though the channel didn’t.

Ben Goldacre dissects the nonsense here. But, like I said, it stuck, and when I was nosing through the Indepedent on Sunday earlier today (Sunday papers take me at least a week to get through  – there comes a point where the news ceases to be new) and they had “Don’t let Blue Monday Get you down!” and a bunch of feel good lists.

I like a good list, I do, so here’s some of my top five fee goods!

Music

Pull Shapes – The Pipettes
Perky, cheerful, bouncy, (but not too twee) and gauranteed to make you wanna dance. Actually, pretty much all of The Pipettes early stuff is great fun and gauranteed to put you in a good mood  Musician Man, Judy, or Dirty Mind are all good too)

Nellie the Elephant – Toy Dolls
I grew up with Nellie the Elephant. It was one of my favourite childhood songs because Nellie was the closest you got to Natalie in a kids’ song. The Toy Dolls cover is great: loud, shouty, stompy, and a good excuse to pretend to be an elephant at a gig.

Ain’t Got No, Ain’t Got Life – Nina Simone V Groovefinder
The original’s pretty perky, but Groovefinder kicks it up a notch. Real feelgood song, reminding you what you have got even when you’ve not got everything you want.

Maybe I’m Wrong – Blues Traveller
Smart and sly, lots of harmonica, lots of guitar, great travelling music.

(I) Can, Can (You) – Vanessa Mae
Even faster than the normal Can Can, it’ll raise your heartrate and fill your minds eye with swirling skirts and cheeky knickers. Pick those knees up!

Books

Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen
This has been my go-to feelgood book since we studied it in school, over a decade ago. I still have the same copy, covered in notes and highlighting and archaic symbols and coded corner folding. Just one of the best love stories every written.

Maurice – EM Forster
A gay love story with a happy ending, that was kept from publication for precisely that reason until the 1970s. Posh Edwardian boys fall in and out of love, and the ‘bit of rough’ comes through.

The Trouble with Lichen – John Wyndham
I can’t list favourite books without bringing up Wyndham, and this one’s the best for the blues, I think. A tale of a smart woman creating a feminist nation using the tools of the patriachy. Or: how anti-aging cream could change the world.

Sweeney Todd, or The String of Pearls – James Malcolm Rymer
A penny dreadful horror about cannabalism might seem an odd choice for a feelgood book, but it’s fast-paced, witty, with a plucky girl detective, two naval officers in a ‘romantic friendship’ and really makes you want a meat pie. Or maybe that’s just me.

Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
How better to celebrate a national day of pseudoscience if not with the greatest pseudoscience novel of them all. Dinosaurs! And an elephant small enough to fit in a cat carrier.

Films

Finding Nemo
Probably the best adaptation of 101 Dalmataions I’ve seen. No, seriously. I mean it’s missing 100 puppies and replaced the last one with a fish, but it’s basically the same story.

8 Women
Charming, stylish French film about a dead guy and the eight women who might be responsible for his death. Oh, and it’s a musical. Utterly beautiful.

Star Trek (the new one)
Well written, fast paced, funny, and manages to please both old school fans and complete newcomers. What could more could you ask for from a film full of explosions?

Some Like it Hot
Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the perfect romcom. Funny, charming, and one of the best film endings I’ve ever seen.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
I limited myself to onto two musicals, be proud of me! Dolly Parton plays a whorehouse madam, Burt Reynolds her cop lover. College Football players linedance in their jockstraps. It’s based on a true story.

What about you guys? What are your feelgood go-tos?

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Jan 15, 2012 by

Veneto

I think I have discovered the best way to beat the January Blues. Take one fairy tale city, place under the light of a full moon, add two planets in alignment, and some beautifully clear weather.

I give you my Venetian holiday.

Venice under Venus

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Jan 3, 2012 by

Nearly time to take the tree down again

I don’t do resolutions. I never keep them, and I’m not very good at self-flagellation.

Last year ended with a trip to Cornwall, dropping my phone in the ocean, and helping a friend butcher and skin a rabbit. Which… sort of sums up the year? It was a very transitional year, in which I got tired to standing still and threw myself into things for better or worse. And my reward was falling in love! And a promotion at work, come to think of it. However, it didn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

This year has begun with a large roast dinner (not the rabbit, though I’m angling to be in on that one too!), two adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, and in the coming weeks a holiday to Venice and moving in with said person I’ve fallen in love with. Now I’ve shaken off the inertia it looks like things are going to change bigger and faster and more often. It’s all very exciting.

One problem with the inertia was the number of half finished manuscripts I’ve collected over 2011. A contemporary romance that requires serious editing. A steampunk romance halfway through mutating from a short story to a novella. The roughest of first drafts of a science fiction romance (that will hopefully become a rather smoother second draft shortly). So while I may decry resolutions, I do have a goal or two: I’m hoping all this change will change the statuses of these manuscripts, from drafts into complete.

paddling in the atlantic in december

Some things never change: paddling in the Atlantic Ocean in December, shortly after dropping my phone in the same

Oh, going back to the phone thing: I shall be slightly less easy to get hold of on twitter, tumblr and facebook until the end of January, when I shall get a new one.  So nothing really changes, I guess 🙂

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