The Desolation of my Writing

Lego The Hobbit was released on Friday. It covers the first two films: An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. The third instalment will be available as downloadable content after the film is released.

It’s the first time in a few years that a Lego video game hasn’t become a member of our household on the day of its release, mainly because we hadn’t finished the Lego movie game and we don’t like to leave any Lego game less than 100% complete.

My other half got up early on Saturday and spent 7 hours finishing off the game so we could run out and buy the new one.

Ah that feeling when you start playing the intro level, with its tutorial elements, showing us what is new about this Lego game and what we already know from the last one.

The problem now though, is that having just made an attempt at starting novel number two, every time I get going, there’s a PS3 controller dangled in front of me and all my attention is diverted to getting a Lego Richard Armitage to smash up bricks and stuff.

So please forgive me if I veer away from my quest for realism and Olivia and Steven find themselves fighting dragons in the sequel.*

* I promise this won’t happen!

The Desolation of my Writing

How do you go about writing a novel?

One of the most common responses I get when I mention I’ve written a novel is this:

“wow, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

I spent a lot of time before I started writing, reading blogs and hints on how to structure a novel, how story arcs should be developed and common examples.

But in the end I decided that the best way for me to approach it was to just start writing.

I did plot out a vague timeline but the finished story barely represents those initial notes because I found that as I got into it, I got to know my characters and how they behaved together started to dictate the story. The plan I started with, just didn’t quite work; it was too contrived and I really wanted to try and create something that felt real.

There are huge parts of the book that just happened without me having planned them previously. But those parts are actually my favourite plot lines and I’m so glad that they naturally developed in the process of writing.

In all honesty, when I started writing Inspired by night, I had no intention of submitting it to any publishers because I didn’t imagine I could write something worthy of publication. I am absolutely terrible at grammar and punctuation, and I’m not even particularly imaginative. But novel writing is something I’ve wanted to do since I was 9 years old (too many years ago to calculate) but I had never had the confidence to just do it, because of my terrible grasp of the written English language.

My biggest fear at the moment, is that I won’t be able to do it again! And because I didn’t really follow a particular plan, I am desperately hoping I can remember how I wrote this one so I can try and emulate the process and create a smashing sequel!

So how do you write a novel? I don’t really know, but I’m hoping that with enough practice I’ll work it out!

How do you go about writing a novel?

A long absence

It's been a long time since I did any blogging on here, and for that I apologise.

I haven't been completely absent from writing, however. My business has been pertty busy over the last year or so and I've concentrated a lot of my writing time on the company blog, talking about all manner of digital, IT related things and promoting the services we offer.

But I also decided to have a go at writing a novel. I've tried and failed on many occasions to write a novel, but following some feedback I got on here from my Fifty Shades of Grey post, I was inspired to have a go at it myself.

I finished my first draft about 18 months ago and I sent it off to a few choice friends to read, in the hope of gaining some honest feedback - either 'you should totally send this off to a publisher' or 'oh dear, this is truly terrible, let's never speak of this again.'

I got a few really constructive bits of feedback and made some significant changes to the story line and then sent it out again to the same people and to some new guinea pigs, because I wanted to see if my improvements had made the final plot twist more surprising than it had been first time round.

But no one got back to me. I didn't want to appear desperate so in the end I stopped asking people if they had read it and decided that, rather than waiting to see if my friends thought it was good enough for publication, I'd ask the experts and I finally plucked up the courage to send it off to 3 publishing companies, fully prepared for a long wait followed by 3 rejections.

Less than 6 weeks later I was offered a publishing deal.

I still can't quite believe it. But my debut novel, 'Inspired by Night' will be released on 22nd August 2014 by Xcite Books.


I love saying that!

*skips on the spot*

I like to sing, I like to chant

I love going to Anfield to watch Liverpool play. Especially in the Kop end with all the singing. I also love watching games on tv when Liverpool are the visitors but all you can hear is the red army singing. 

I have often wondered how songs come about. I often hear season ticket holders say "we need a song for..." a new player or manager and then they try to come up with an appropriate tune to fit their name. Some players names are almost made for a song like former Brighton striker Bobby Zamora and That's Amore. 

Liverpool fans have a reputation for coming up with some great songs and puns - remember;

"who let the reds out hou hou-lli-er"

Current songs for Gerrard and Lucas are really enjoyable to sing along to.

Gerrard:

"Steven Gerrard is our captain

Steven Gerrard is a red

Steven Gerrard plays for Liverpool

A scouser born and bred"

(To the tune of the whistling song from Robin Hood)

and Lucas:

"His first name is Lucas, is Lucas, is Lucas

His 2nd name is Leiva, is Leiva, is Leiva

That’s why we like him, we like him, we like him

In fact we f#@king love him, love him, love him

Woooahh Wooooooahhh”

But I'm a bit disappointed with Agger's song. Singing his name to the tune of Bananarama's Na Na Hey Hey doesn't even work properly there's too many syllables in Danny Agger to replace Goodbye (even with the dodgy additional syllable the girls through in - go-od-bye)

Come on Kopites surely you can do better than that?? 

My other half likes to sing his own tribute to Agger to the tune of the Black Lace classic(?) Agado -  

Agger do do do Danny Agger we love you. 

Much better don't you think??

Reality takes the biscuit...

I had a bit of a reality check this afternoon as I got on to the Victoria line tube at Euston station.

After feeling quite frankly a little smug at my successful weight loss over the last 2 months I was reminded that I've still got a long way to go before I'm happy with my figure.

My weight gain started when I was 20 heading into my 3rd year of university and moving in with my boyfriend at the time, I decided to go on contraceptive injections. I piled weight on going from 8 stone 3lbs to 10 stone 8 lbs in just 6 months. And the weight naturally congregated in one place.

I got stretch marks - vivid red angry lines across my lower back which shocked me when I caught them in the mirror and my sister advised me that she had only seen stretch marks like that when she was pregnant.

Everyone thought I was pregnant " the girl behind the bar is pregnant" my fellow students whispered amongst themselves and some even asked me outright. One guy, when I said I wasn't expecting pointed at my stomachs and said "then what is that?"  "ma big fat belly"  became my usual response. I'm not pregnant it's just ma big fat belly.

Over the years I got used to the fact that I had a weird body shape. I didn't like it but I accepted that while the rest of my body had stayed pretty much the same my belly looked that much more out of place and I totally understood the reason people assumed I was expecting. 

Social occasions became a nightmare because I could never find a nice dress to wear that didn't look like maternity wear on my odd shaped body.

I thought that I could work it to my advantage however in public places, buses, over crowded tubes etc...surely I would always get a seat, but I don't know what happened to the youth of the last 10 years, but not a single person offered me a seat on the bus...my inner mother to be was outraged while my common sense berated me for being outraged at not getting something I didn't need anyway. I was lazy...as well as fat!

Finally I met someone who didn't notice or care about my odd shaped body and we settled into a fabulous relationship. But we ate lots of takeaways and watched a lot of TV and the rest of my body caught up with my belly...at least I was in proportion! 

I made a few attempts at losing weight, tried various diets but even if I lost a bit of weir I lost interest and piled the weight back on.

2 months ago  I decided I truly wanted to do something about it. I'm not aiming for 8 stone 3lb but something a little less maternity would be nice. I started counting calories thanks to a brilliant website and iPhone app called My Fitness Pal. I started swimming too - to earn extra calories to eat at the weekend. I calculated my calories and set my limit to 500 less a day.  3500 calories is roughly the equivalent of 1lb of weight loss and I've been losing 1 or 2 lbs a week.

I also started doing strength  exercises with free weights to tone up my arms and legs and stomach muscles. When I was 8 st I looked Ill, skin and bone, my head was too big for my body and I looked pale and withdrawn with hollow dark eyes. I don't want to look like that again but I was always afraid that in order to lose my belly I would have to return to that type of figure. But I realised that I could tone and strengthen my muscles while working on the fat loss and hopefully I can gain a nice shape rather than go from chunky to bony.

So I've been feeling pretty good about my weight loss, I can see some improvement myself and I feel healthier, more energetic and stronger. I was particularly excited about visiting friends in London who have been encouraging and advising me on exercise and weightloss because I hoped they would notice a difference better than I can, seeing myself in the mirror everyday and not really registering the change. 

So I arrive in London during rush hour and I get on the tube at London Euston and shuffle down the carriage and hold onto the hand rails when a youngish guy attracts my attention and offers me his seat. I frowned and said " no you're ok thanks" then I pondered why he'd offed me a seat and not the clearly older woman in front of me...and then it clicked. 13 years of looking pregnant and the first time someone offers me a seat is when I look slightly less pregnant than before... Actually the incident made me smile for the duration of the tube ride because it reassured me that there are still a few gentlemanly type young men in the world.

But even so, 12 pounds lighter is great and everything but I've got a long long way to go yet.

Fifty Shades

Well seems that everyone else is talking about it, and if you can't beat them...

I was completely unaware of the Fifty Shades trilogy until last Monday (2nd July) when I was driving to work listening to Radio City and the DJ was playing a game called Fifty Shades of Andy Grey, where a listener called in and had to correctly identify whether the quotes they were reading out came from Fifty Shades of Grey or Andy Grey's autobiography.

The DJ could barely read some of the quotes for laughing - particularly the Andy Grey quotes which had been chosen to try and confuse the caller - things like "He always has great control over his balls" and such like. Of course I assumed at that point that the other book was a bit pervy, although I'd not heard of it and yet from that moment on I noticed my Facebook news feed was littered with people  referring to it.

Curiosity got the better of me - why haven't I heard of it if everyone else has, although admittedly I don't watch the news and I don't read papers and most of what I know about current affairs is told to me by my other half or my family - so I fired up Wikipedia and searched for it. I've not read any of the Twilight books although they have been recommended to me. I am however a big fan of the Sookie Stackhouse books and I love True Blood so I was quite interested when I saw that it had originally been written as fan fiction and I assumed that the Christian Grey character was initially a Vampire.

But still I wasn't particularly tempted until my sister called in the next day and waxed lyrical about the whole trilogy. Now my sister has good taste, she's older than me by 16 years, and is sophisticated and smart and doesn't suffer fools gladly. So I was even more curious that she was completely taken with this book which sounded pretty trashy.

So that evening I searched the internet for it and downloaded it. "What are you downloading?" my other half asked, "urm just a book..." "Oh not that Fifty Shades book?" Even he'd heard of it!! But he understood my curiosity under the same curiosity I have about occasionally watching X Factor just to keep up with the office gossip - not that I have office gossip anymore being self employed but there's always small talk to be made with suppliers, customers etc.

So I finished the third book yesterday morning. Yep it took me less than a week to read the whole trilogy. Now I am a fast reader but I was quite taken with it because it was easy to read and although its hard to find the story line in the first book it does develop in the second and third books. However I think the genius of this book and the cause of it being so popular is not necessarily the sex scenes, which are abundant, but the simple root of most women's fantasy - finding the most attractive, richest single man who has no interest in finding love until he meets you because you are the only woman in the world he could love. Oh and he also has a huge cock to boot!

It's Pride and Prejudice with handcuffs.

Chistian Grey is actually a bit dull. I mean on the one hand he sounds a bit like a young woman's shopping list;

• Tall - tick
• Dark - well he's ginger but he's dark on the inside - tick
• Handsome - only the handsomest man in the whole universe, obviously - tick
• Rich - tick
• Likes music - tick
• Can play a musical instrument - like some kind of rock star - tick
• Knows about stuff like wine and art and the world in general - tick
• Kind - well he wants to feed the world and try to make sure no one goes hungry - tick
• Generous - he's filthy rich and likes buying presents - tick
• Good in bed - well he's apparently had a lot of practice but he never loved any of the others only me - tick
• Well endowed - tick

Not only is he this perfect man character he also happens to fall in love and propose within 6 weeks. I mean I've had a few boyfriends in the past and I'll admit that in my younger days when I would meet someone and fancy the pants off them because they were tall, dark and handsome and played the guitar I would think "oh my God I would marry him tomorrow if he asked me" but a few weeks later the novelty has worn off and I'm very much relieved that normal blokes wait a few years or even forever before they consider proposing marriage. It's a bit of a fantasy in fact for a woman to be proposed to and say "I need to think about it" as opposed to the "Oh My God yesss!!!" that most women say when their beloved gets down on one knee (I imagine, I don't know, it's never happened to me - I imagine I'd laugh and find the whole thing a bit embarrassing.)

Then again I also believe that when you know, you know and who's to say 6 weeks isn't long enough to be dead sure you've met the person you want to tie up and whip everyday for the rest of your life?

Of course the other thing that's worth pointing out is that Mr Grey has an amazing libido and the pair of them together have an amazing recovery time enabling them both to have countless orgasms within the same session. I think there are few people who would read this book and say 'I don't know what all the fuss is about, doesn't everyone have sex 6 times a day with riding crops and butt plugs?' Because - and maybe I'm on my own on this one but - I tend to just fall asleep after sex. But weirdly while Mr Grey likes his 'kinky fuckery', he is only doing all this for her pleasure - expanding her sensations and opening her up to a whole world of pleasure...he doesn't get anything out of it other than the pleasure of seeing her experience mind blowing sex. 

I mean what a guy. He's all over her like an octopus all day long but only so that she'll have the joy of multiple orgasms.

Brilliant...and while I'm quite a big fan of orgasms I'm also a big fan of watching TV, cooking, going swimming, hanging out with my friends and you know generally not being tied to a bed and endlessly molested all in the name of my pleasure. Make me a cup of tea and I'll be more than happy!

On the other hand,  one minute he's being a massive perv and the next he's talking to her like he's her dad. If I was about to marry someone I wouldn't expect to have to ask his permission to got to the deli in my lunch hour to buy a sandwich. I wouldn't expect my boyfriend to buy the company I just started working for so he can keep an eye on me and I wouldn't expect him to get angry with me and fantasise about tying me up and beating me to within an inch of my life just because I didn't tell him I was going to visit my mum.

But it's an easy read, I can see why everyone is going crazy over it and perhaps if the sex wasn't quite so full on it would just be yet another adult romance novel - however I don't get the fuss about Christian Grey. When I invite a man to watch TV with me he better damn well watch TV and keep his hands to himself!

Well the singer's frowning...

Miles Hunt & Erica Nockalls at St Helens Citadel Saturday 12th May 2012.

The first time in the 25 years Miles Hunt has been touring that he's played in St Helens. He may not be back again after an incident with the sound. Luckily it was towards the end of the show which had up to that point been brilliant.

As with the previous gig they worked their way through the Never Loved Elvis track list swerving Sleep Alone and Size of a Cow. I'd be willing to bet my house (if i had one) that they've never had to play the Cow song on this tour - everyone is going to cheer for Golden Green given the option which I'm sure they know already. I'd also be willing to bet my life savings that if they did somehow have to play the cow song they'd still probably play Golden Green anyway because it's one of those songs that just has to be played!

During the show Miles talked about their old local pub where there was no mobile phone reception. People go there to be together not sit together communicating with the rest of the world... while I was sat up in the balcony on facebook...

For a very good reason - I was having a facebook conversation with Henry Priestman (ex Christians, writer of "Ideal World", solo artist and all round Legend) because we are doing an event together tomorrow to celebrate Adult Learners' Week in Merseyside and because he was asking me to pass on a message to Miles.

I'm contracted by the national charity NIACE to coordinate Adult Learners Week on Merseyside. This is an annual, national celebration of adult learning, the achievements learners have made and to demonstrate the impact learning has on people's lives and try to encourage more adults to get involved with learning opportunities. NIACE do a lot of work all year round to ensure that adult education stays on the government's agenda and continues to be funded at a local level.

So Sunday 13th May sees us holding a lecture at the Museum of Liverpool delivered by Henry Priestman about the music industry and an insight into songwriting and all that kinda stuff. It's going to be amazing!

14 months ago I was planning an event for the 20th Adult Learners Week and NIACE wanted us to make it BIG. Try and get some celebrities, they said... getting celebrities isn't easy. I know they're sort of ten a penny these days thanks to Big Brother and so called reality TV, but would we really want any of those types of celebrities endorsing adult learning when all most of them can do is get boob jobs and walk around town with curlers in their hair?

Then one day Miles Hunt posted a link on Facebook to Henry Priestman's album on spotify saying he was going to see him that night and 2 things occurred to me 1) The Chronicles of Modern life had been played constantly for about 6 months in our house and 2) a friend of ours had messaged Henry through Facebook and got him to play at his community centre. So inspired, I sent Henry a message and a few weeks later Henry Priestman opened the launch event for us in St George's Hall.

So naturally I asked him back again this year. Although it's slightly daunting working with someone you're a fan of, Henry is a lot of fun to be around and makes it easy to forget that you're working with someone you happen to have a signed picture of on your wall at home.

So I'm sat in the Citadel cyber-chatting to Henry about whether we've got enough XLR leads and such like and he admits he's working on his lecture notes. I told him I was dealing with my nerves by coming to see Miles and Erica in St Helens and he said "Oh if you see them afterwards please send my apologies for not making it and tell them I will definitely catch them next time they're playing locally"

Now of course you may recall from my last post about the Wonder Stuff that I believe there's a sizeable  chance that speaking to Miles Hunt will unleash my 14 year old self and result in me skipping on the spot excitedly and no self respecting 34 year old wants that. So I decided that it would be for the best if I got straight in the car after the show, came home and blogged about it!

Anyway it wasn't far into the set before I switched off the phone and enjoyed the show. If you haven't had the chance to catch Miles & Erica I would certainly recommend it, I really enjoyed seeing them on a larger stage than the one in Liverpool where they had more space to move around. I also must confess that I really liked seeing Erica in sensible shoes... I don't know how she stays upright in those sparkly high heeled boots! Really enjoyed hearing Save it For Later too. We are off to see the Beat next month also at the Citadel - which is where I saw them for the first time and fell in love with them...Let's hope the sound holds up!

Incidentally there's a few places left for Henry's lecture - it's called "Long Player...surviving 33 1/3 years in the Music Biz" if you're in the area and want to come, please pop in.

There's also loads of other stuff happening across Merseyside for Adult Learners Week - visit www.alwmerseyside.co.uk for more info.