Good morning, Readers.

Today in the Magic Thermos™... Ginger coffee!  The Amazing Flatmate woke up early this morning to make it.  Thank you.

And this after a night of putting up with the sookiest, most miserable flatmate ever.  I'm really sorry about that, by the way.... and not a little bit embarrassed.  There were tears.  In my defence, after teaching Intro to Self-Defence last night, I developed an earache of epic proportions.  It came on really fast.  It was unexpected.  And it was absolutely horrendous.  It reduced me to useless, pointless, irrantional tears.  I literally sat in bed and wept.

I hate crying.

My poor flatmate ran herself ragged getting me hot compresses to put on my ear to ease the pain and hopefully unblock it.  And then she brewed up some sort of weird witches brew that had in the ingredients cayenne pepper, oregano, cloves, whiskey, honey and other things I can't remember.  Surprisingly enough, it tasted rather nice and I wouldn't mind making that as a soup on the regular.  In fact, it is exactly what I imagine spice soup from Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule would taste like (watch the Nights at the Round Table review of that book HERE).  I know it sounds icky, but it was actually really good.

That, along with two fast-acting Advil (unusual, I normally only take one) and I was at last, through the tears, able to get to sleep.

This morning I am able to move without crying.  My ear still feels wrong, but it no longer hurts nearly as much AND I can hear out of it again.  Granted it's a little delayed and weirdly tinny-sounding, as if a miniature Dalek is sitting on my shoulder repeating every noise back at me through it's silly robot voice filter.  It's amusing, if nothing else.

But I'm tired.  I am so very tired.  All I want to do is go home and crawl into bed.

It doesn't help that, of course, the bus showed up thirty minutes late this morning.  I decided to take the bus instead of walk.  I should have just walked, damn it.  I don't know what I was expecting.  The bus is never on time.  It is always very, very late.  So, of course, I got to work late.  And I'm writing this post late.  Which means that I'm going to be far behind everything today.  And that makes me grumpy.

Also, I'm out of cheese.  This is a disaster.

So, if you happen to meet me on the street any time this week, and I look like I'm about to murder someone or explode buildings with the hate in my eyes, please know that it's not you, it's totally this stupid cold and that bloody awful earache.  Holy crap.  Even the memory of it is making me cringe.

Gah!  Enough of my whinging.  Let's talk about something else.  Books!

Editing Human is going pretty well.  I went through four chapters yesterday and it should be ready to send out in a couple of weeks to Beta Reader Two.  Apparently Beta Reader One thought it a fun read.  So, that gives me some idea how to market it.  Some.  Oh, I hate marketing.

No complaining!  I have more editing to do, obviously, and I really should go do it.  So here is a pretty picture:

Right, I should go do things and stuff.  I might just pack it all in and try to find times to nap.

Ciao.

Good morning, Readers!

Today in the Magic Thermos™, nothing.  I forgot to make coffee this morning.  Don't judge.  I'm ill.  Getting better, though!

Sort of.  Whatever.  I'm out of bed and at work.  I recovered some of my energy yesterday afternoon, and so decided that it was time I left my bed and joined the real world.  I am no longer infectious and while still not well, I'm not longer so unwell that I can't move from my bed.  Actually, despite the runny nose and the still sore throat, the blocked ears and the cough, I'm feeling much better than I was.  A good thing too, I have a self defence class to teach tonight.

In celebration of my being functional, have a pretty picture:

Today I was going to blog about something deep and meaningful.  I'm saving it though for when I can more coherently develop thoughts.

What I'm going to do instead is get back to my Welsh lessons.  I'd be on a new lesson today were it not for the crappy cold I had, so I feel like some serious catching up is in order.  And then I have to edit some stuff.

I received the first draft of Human back from Beta Reader One.  It needs some (probably considerable) work before I send it off to Beta Reader Two.  Sigh.  It must get done if I want this book out this year.  Double sigh.

Alright, I really need to get to work.  First, Welsh.  Then editing.  My least favourite thing in the world.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers.

I'm writing from bed.  Again.  I'm still unwell.  I don't want to harp on about it, so I won't, but I must say I really miss being able to write.  I've had bit os the story of Daughters of Britain constantly floating through my head... and since I was so unwell yesterday, it was a bit of a triply experience.  I can't wait to get back at it.

For now, however, I'm going to drink the coffee the Amazing Flatmate so kindly made for me because I had wanted to go to work today, and I'm going to take another Advil and try to sleep some more.  I am getting my energy back, so I think I'm over the worst and will be back to work tomorrow.

And then everything should be good again.

Right, I'm off now.  Time for another nap.  Because I haven't been sleeping enough in the last four days.  Sigh.  Here's a pretty picture:

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers.

Sort of.

I'm typing this from my bed with a very confused cat staring at me.  I'm not supposed to be in bed, see.  I'm supposed to be out of the house.  At work.  Gone.

But I'm unwell.  My throat feels like razor blades are having their way with it. Breathing is uncomfortable.  Talking is downright impossible.

On the bright side, I had a long sleep in this morning.  On the downside, there is nothing in the Magic Thermos™, which I so love to use, and there was no epic walks to work.  Nor do I have my current WIP on this computer.  I knew I should have saved it on my USB.  And lastly, I can't practice Welsh today because I can't speak.  All of today will be spent wallowing in misery in bed.

With a cat staring at me.

I guess this was bound to happen.  I had been doing so well, health-wise that I was starting to get suspicious.

But I'm not going to grumble at you any longer.  I'm instead going to go back to sleep, curled beneath my blankets and cursing the heat there, while not daring to stick a limb out because it is too cold there.

While I might be miserable in bed, I hope you're all having a great day.  Here is a pretty picture.  I'm going to sleep now.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

In the Magic Thermos (TM) today: just regular old coffee, piping hot and delicious!

So.... I'm in a really good place right now.  I'm sorry if this is going to come off as sappy, but it's a rare occurrence for me to feel this content.  Don't worry.  It'll all change soon.

Yesterday I had a great run - I did really well endurance wise and managed a sprint at the end, so I'm pretty happy about it.  I almost achieved a pull-up on Tuesday before training.  I'm hoping that means an actual one is not far behind, so I'm happy about that.  I've also managed to start lifting heavier weights (in most things, there are still some things that I can't do with anything more than baby weights).  Physically, I've never been stronger or fitter.

I'm writing regularly, and I'm writing a story I love with characters I adore.  And I'm doing well with this story.  I am as of writing this post just shy of forty thousand words, which is awesome because that means I am roughly a week's worth of writing away from the halfway mark.  This is exciting and I couldn't be happier about it.  The problem, of course, is figuring out what to do with it once it's completed.  I know what to do with my science fiction and fantasy manuscripts.  I have a list of agents that accept those.

I don't have a clue what to do about historical fiction, though.  There is going to be some serious research happening when this novel is finished.

Next on the writing scene is the heavy edit of the You're Very Own Adventure into a more coherent story.  That needs to get done pretty fast, as I have a book cover all liked up and I would like to pay the artist for it sooner rather than later (though I need to know the size of the book first, hence the editing and formatting that needs to happen).  And then... I think I'm going to work on releasing The Great Man.  I need to get that story out into the world.  It is high time, I think.

Speaking of The Great Man, it reminds me that this story is one of the worst writing experiences I've ever had.  This is not in terms of struggling to get the words out, it's actually all in how horribly it affected me on an emotional level - the nightmares, the tears (over fictional characters), the sleeplessness and all the mood swings that went into this series... the shite I dragged my flatmate through... 

Yesterday on Facebook, a friend pointed me towards this video:

As it turns out, reading a book and relating to the protagonist can make it seem, to your brain at least, that you are actually living the life of the protagonist you are reading.  I imagine that it would be much the same for writing those protagonists.... which goes a long way to explaining the emotional toll of The Great Man series.  It's a dark, dark story, my friends.  So. Dark.

In short, I no longer feel like a freak for going through all the rubbish I went through.  It's actually kind of a relief, though it does make me hesitant to tackle the story again.

Anyway, this has been a long rambly sort of post.  All I really wantted to say was that I'm in a great mood, and I'm hoping it stays around longer than these good moods usually do for me.  On that note, I'm off to destroy my good mood with some Welsh lessons...

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Today in the Magic Thermos (TM) ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon spiced coffee.  Yum!

Do you ever wonder at some people and their reactions to things?  I certainly do.  This morning as I was eating breakfast, I happened across THIS article on Facebook.  I tried to feel sympathetic to this woman, I really did.  I just couldn't.

Now don't get me wrong, this woman is entitled to feel how she feels.  Often times you can't control how you feel.  In the same vein, I am entitled to how I feel about this article:  Indignant, amused and not a little bit like rolling my eyes so hard they tumble out of my head.

Full disclosure, I have a tattoo, and I plan many more (but they're expensive, damn it!  Donations welcome...  Ahem).  I like them.  I think they are beautiful.  I also think they're not a big deal.  But then, I am not a mother nor do I have any kind of weird and wrong association with tattoos.

I am impressed with the author's self-reflection.  She can see how she might be seen as irrational or wrong... but she does nothing about it.  Instead of seeing her prejudices and working on overcoming them, she sees them and does nothing.  In fact, she clings to them.

This kind of thing really irritates me, particularly when it comes to tattoos.  There are still some people who have very strange prejudices against them.  The author writes:

Aaaaaaaaaand no.  Just no.

Or rather, sort of.  It is true that modern day criminals often do have tattoos.  Yup.  Very true.  It might also be true that sailors would get tattoos so that they can be identified if they lost their lives at sea.  But if we open our eyes a bit, we see a multitude of cultures for whom tattoos are a symbol of high status, of wealth or great honour/reputation.

South East Asia - the Philippines, Indonesia and Southern India and even Japan - all used tattoos to display rank.  These body decorations had no connection to crime (though in Japan now they are connected to the Yakuza), but did often to people of high rank or people who embarked on heroic quests (or heroic head-hunting if you're in Borneo).

Samoans were tattooed, as were the Maori of New Zealand.  In fact, most Polynesian cultures all practised tattooing.  In Samoa, tattooing ceremonies were performed for young chiefs as part of their move to a leadership role  Leaders, not criminals, were tattooed.

The same is true of Persia, where there survive sculptures of Persian kings and warriors of the Achaemenid Empire proudly sporting all kinds of piercings (not quite tattoos, but burdened with the same prejudices)..

In Taiwan, facial tattoos on men signify that he is believed to be capable of defending his home.  Women with the same are considered qualified for keeping that home; weaving cloth etc. They are a mark of achievement.

That's all well and good, I can hear some people say.  But people who aren't Polynesian, or Persian, or South East Asian are getting tattoos!

Yes, and us Caucasian people have been doing so since the dawn of man.  Ötzi the famous ice man has sixty-one tattoos.  Sixty one.  For those of you not up on your archaeology, Ötzi is a 5,300-year-old mummy discovered by hikers in the Ötztal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border in 1991.  Granted, the theory is that they are theraputic rather than symbolic, but the point is he had tattoos.  Sixty one of them.  You can read about the find HERE.

Then there is the Princess of Ukok, a beautiful woman in her early thirties, who was given a very grand burial indeed.  This woman of obvious high rank had many beautiful tattoos all over her body.  And I mean beautiful.  I want some of them on my own body.  You can read about her and see the tattoos for yourself HERE.  Again, she was a woman of remarkably high rank, given that she was buried with six odd horses.  Oh, and there were male mummies found in the same region who also had tattoos.  These men were not criminals, but high-ranking warriors.  They were men of high regard.

Yes, but the Altai Mountains where she was found borders Mongolia.  There's no proof really that she was Caucasian... Except that DNA actually puts her and her people as Samoyedic and Iranian-Caucasain.  She shares no connection to the Mongols currently inhabiting the region.

Still not Western enough for you?  Try the Celts, the westernmost people in Europe, who are widely reported to have been tattooed.  There are bog bodies found in Ireland sporting skin art.  The Picts were frakkin' famous for it; their name meaning, literally, the painted ones.  Vikings?  According to an Arabic scholar who met Rus Viking traders in Russia, they were tattooed.

The point is, the prejudice associated with tattoos and criminals is just that - a prejudice, and it really needs to stop.  Non-criminals, like myself, have tattoos.  Some of them have tonnes of tattoos.  Getting a tattoo does not immediately make one a criminal.  The woman in the article, bless her soul, cannot seem to get past the tired and inaccurate notion that tattoos are evil by association.

That was not the point of her article, I know.  Her point was far more disturbing to me; that this tattoo symbolised the 'cutting of my apron strings'; a proper cause for grief.  At risk of appearing too internet-meme-y...  Wut?  Her son is a grown man.  Those apron strings should be cut.  Good grief!  It seems her son was viewed as property, as if the right to his skin was somehow hers and not his.  I'm touchy about this for many, very feminist reasons, but I won't go into it.  I didn't even mean to give much heed to the apron strings thing, because that wasn't the point of this blog (but it is very disturbing).

The point is, a tattoo is nothing to throw a three-day to life-long hissy fit about.  It's a tattoo.  It's art.  It is often very beautiful, and it has nothing to do with criminality.  You're welcome to disagree about the beauty of tattoos.  Opinions and all that.

But It's high time we lost that ridiculous notion that tattoos equal questionable moralities.  Can we just let it go now?

Right, that was my rant for the day.  I'm off to study Welsh.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Today in the Magic Thermos (TM), ginger coffee.  It's awesome.

News about yesterday's little breakdown... It's all resolved.  I have the Amazing Flatmate to thank for her help in getting the issue fixed.  It turns out that a corrupted video clip was the issue.  She confirmed this by removing the clip and exporting the file to a hard drive.  It worked.

I skipped training last night to get home and fix the video a bit and upload it.  As of 11pm last night it was uploaded.  I fixed up the thumbnail etc this morning and it is now up and ready for viewing.  To spare you a click through, I've embedded it below:

But that is not the point of today's post.  Last night I received a question from someone and I thought it was a great question.  With her permission, I'm going to answer it here in case there are other people wondering the same thing.

Oh boy!

Yes...?

Let me explain my hesitation to describe this particular path of publishing as 'hard' or difficult.

It's actually not hard to self-publish, really.  It is extremely difficult to be successful when self-published.

I really enjoy the whole self-publishing process.  I really like having all the creative control.  *sinister voice* All of it.  I get to decide how the book looks.  I get to decide the cover image and layout.  I decide which scenes stay and which go (which is a double edged sword, I'll admit.  Sometimes a scene you are really fond of would be best deleted from a story in order to make the narrative stronger).  I control everything and so if the book does well, I get all the credit.  *sinister voice* All of it.  Likewise, however, if the book doesn't do that well, I bear all the blame.  All of it.  I have also made some wonderful friends on this path of self-publishing.  I am quite good friends with my cover artist (whom I cannot recommend enough), Laura Miller.  She's a fantastic cover artist and a wonderful human being.

Yet for all the enjoyment, none of it is particularly easy.

In fact, the easiest part of self-publishing is the writing, and that is saying a lot, because writing is bloody hard work.  Even when it comes easily, it's hard.

One of the most obvious difficulties is the expense, and I am not especially wealthy.  It takes me a while to save up to get the services I need, actually.  In traditional publishing, the publishing house is the one who pays the cover artist, the layout artists, the editors and does the majority of the marketing (including ads, if you're extremely fortunate).  When you're self-published you are responsible for shelling out the money to get these things done.  You could, of course, do it all yourself, but alas I have not the technical know-how to whip up an even half-decent book cover, let alone one that is on par with traditional covers and I am a terrible self-editor.  Even if you could do all of it effectively, it takes time and it's all time and effort you spend not writing when self-publishing.  It's all time you can spend on writing when traditionally published.

Speaking of taking up way too much time, I would absolutely love it if I didn't have to stress about marketing my books and could just focus on the writing.  Also, not going to lie, I don't do half the things you are supposed to do when marketing a book (press releases, anyone?) because I don't know the first thing about marketing and I much prefer writing to anything else involved in the publishing process.

I'm a terrible marketer, so I find that aspect of self-publishing extremely difficult.  SO VERY DIFFICULT!  Seriously, I look at the stuff I'm supposed to do, and then I go to a corner, sit down and rock myself back and forth whilst blubbering incoherently.  It's for this reason I also don't chase up publicity.  I have no idea how to get that interview, or interest a local paper about my writing or any such thing that would help boost my exposure and thus sales.

On a related note, it is getting increasingly difficult to get noticed on the book blog circuit.  Unfortunately the terrible behaviour of some self-published authors when they receive a mediocre or bad review on a blog has led to many book bloggers who were previously open to self-published books create policies where they simply will not review self-published books any longer.  Furthermore, trying to get noticed amidst the sheer volume of self-published books is nigh on impossible.  It is really, really hard.

Another thing I find hard on a more personal level is not seeing my book in actual physical stores.  I would love to be able to travel, walk into any book store and see my book on a shelf beside the authors I admire so very much.  I crave it so.  I want to be able to sneak into a book store and (with permission, of course) sign my own books so that random people can get signed copies without having to travel to whatever convention/signing event I may be attending.

Also, if you're good enough and you sell enough, traditional publishing houses may help you out in creating and executing a book tour.  Oh that is such a dream of mine!  Meeting readers is one of my favourite things in the world - the sole reason I love to sell at ComicCon etc is that I get to chat to readers.  How cool would it be if I could travel to meet them and not worry about the expense?

Which leads me to another difficult aspect of self-publishing.  You get no validation.  There is something special, I feel, about a publishing contract in hand; that moment when someone who deals specifically with books all day every day says that yes, you are worth taking a risk on.  This story is worth taking a risk on.  I want that so badly it sometimes reduces me to tears (especially when that next rejection comes in).  It's equally as awesome when you get a good review, though not everyone who reads your stuff is going to review it, and not everyone who reviews one of your books will do so favourably.

Since it is so difficult getting noticed in the publishing world few people typically read any self-published author.  More people will not touch a book that does not have a traditional house backing it (sometimes for good reason.  I mean, there is a lot of self-published drivel out there).  That means you have a smaller pool of readers, a smaller number of reviewers and a smaller number still of people who will review favourably.  That's a tiny number (often zero), actually, and it means that acquiring new readers is next to impossible.  New readers will check to see how a book is reviewed when making their decision.  If there are no reviews... well... chances are the new reader will pass your book over for something else.

So, you see, yes, being self-published in incredibly difficult.  The writing is hard, the production expensive (if you want it done right), and the marketing is downright terrifying.  It can all also be incredibly rewarding.  I've met so many wonderful people, and I'm now friends with a whole bunch.  I love writing so very much, and I would whither into a dessicated ball of bitterness if I didn't have this creative outlet.  Seeing my stories become actual physical books is wonderful.

But trying to be successful at self-publishing.  That is some difficult shit right there.  I'm by no means a successful self-publisher.  I do hope, however, that one day I will be, and I will be able to make a decent living from my work as a writer.  It's a long way off, however, and every day is a struggle to get myself one step closer to achieving that goal.  They key is, I think, to keep at it.

And maybe get that traditional publishing deal.  Fingers crossed!

Anyway, I hope that answered your question, Angelina.  It's a bit of a rant, I know.

Now I'm off to attempt Welsh again.  Have a great day, everyone!

Ciao!