My Lovely Blog Award

A Lovely Award for My Blog

Thank you to Juliet Greenwood author of 'Eden's Garden' for nominating me for this lovely blog award.

The Rules for this Award  are as follows: 

1.Thank the person nominating you for the award:

Once again, many thanks to Juliet for not only nominating this very 'young' blog, but also for being a warm, supportive, helpful and encouraging writer-friend on my journey. Check out Juliet's books, and her exquisitely beautiful author site at: http://Juliet Greenwood.wordpresss.com/ It is like walking into the cool green countryside.

2. List TEN things about yourself:

And

3. Nominate SIX blogs that you think deserve the Kreativ Blogger Award

So:

The Grand Canal

1. My favourite place in the world is Venice

Magnus, my Roman Snail

2. I belong to the Conchological Society of Great Britain: my area of expertise is Helix Pomatia (Roman Snails). I have 2 in my garden.

Don't do this at home!

3. In February, at the age of 61, I had my first tattoo: I have the words: Be not afeard  on the inside of my right arm. These words are spoken by Caliban in 'The Tempest'. I had the tattoo done 'live' on air on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme as part of their 'Leap for Leap Year' listener project.


4. All my father's family, except for one brother, perished in the Holocaust.

5. My pink 1988 customized Citroen car is called Annie-Rose. I am a member of 2CVGB. I show Annie-Rose at car meets.

6. In 1966, age 16, I helped organise an anti Vietnam War demonstration in my home town. As a result, I was on the American Embassy blacklist for many years.

A sunbathing flute

7. I play the flute, rather badly. I failed my Grade 8 flute exam by 1 mark!





8. I have an allotment in my back garden. I grow lots of Charlotte potatoes.

Yummy Charlottes

9. When I was 47, I went back to university and re-trained as a secondary school English teacher. I was the oldest student in my cohort.


10. In my spare time (!) I  make patchwork
 quilts.

A Sampler quilt

Finally:

My 6 nominees for their amazing, creative, inspirational blogs are:

Nikki Goodman: http://nikkigoodman.wordpress.com


Cara Cooper: http://caracoopers.blogspot.com

Chris Hill: http://songoftheseagod.wordpress.com

Sheryl Browne: http://sheryls-ramblings.blogspot.co.uk

Mandy K James: http://mandykjameswriter.blogspot.com

Kate Hardy: http://katehardy.blogspot.com

The Day I Became an Alien

Imagine the picture: I'm hanging at the bus stop with my crew: Jo, Mo, Flo* and Allan**. We are the Free Bus Pass Gang; twice a week we gather at 9.35am to wait for the 657 bus to take us into town. (It used to be the 620, but Uno, the bus company, recently changed it to the 657 and now it comes 8 minutes later. No, don't ask, because we don't know either.)


The crew are OK about the fact that I write letters to the local paper; they all know I am the Chair of a community action group, that is trying to stop the local town council from selling our urban green space to a developer. Thus I fire off a lot of what I like to think of as wry, witty, urbanely Swiftian epistles, which always get published in our local paper.


This is because the editor knows my stuff will generate rude responses from people with humorectomies and irony bypasses, who live in the posh bits of town, and see no reason why our urban green space shouldn't be covered in tarmac and Tesco School of Architecture housing because, hey, it isn't their urban green space. Over the years I've  developed quite a following, and am apparently referred to colloquially, and locally as 'that redhead who writes those letters'.

But the crew also know that there is a darker, more perplexing side to what I do, known as 'The Writing', words usually uttered in the same cautious tone of voice that one might use for other words, like 'shark' or 'cockroach'. Thus it is that Jo eventually plucks up courage and asks, 'How's The Writing going then, Carol?'

And that's when it happens. Without even thinking, I sigh deeply, roll my eyes and say: 'Last week, I lost all my toolbar widgets! And Google spammed my blog and I had to go into a chat room and talk to a Techie, and then I had to download Chrome to sort it out.'

There follows a long silence, that hangs around in the air in the way that bricks don't. The crew study the ground carefully. Then Flo murmurs, 'Didn't understand a word of that, sorry.' And Allan agrees. And Jo and Mo step away from me, as if I might infect them with whatever I've got. And then, thankfully, the bus arrives. We scramble on board, showing our passes to the cheerful Polish driver.

Nobody sits next to me, all the way into town.



* Names changed to protect identity.
** This is his real name.

Coffee with Carol, Tea with Jane

Juliet Archer

Juliet Archer and I go way back. We first met as dinner ladies at our children's primary school. Then hooked up again when I tutored her son for his A level English. Juliet writes witty modern novels based on Jane Austen plots. Her two books: The Importance of Being Emma and Persuade Me are published by Choc Lit and have received rave reviews and won several prestigious awards.

Persuade Me

Readers of this blog will know that Juliet always leaves a comment - even when I started out blogging, and she was the only one to do so. That is what she's like. If you have not sampled her books, I recommend that you read them. 
A prior knowledge of Jane Austen is not necessary, but does add to the enjoyment. Beloved Husband, who NEVER reads 'romance' (but loves Jane Austen) devoured The Importance of Being Emma. That's how good she is!

The Importance of being Emma

Juliet has chosen to tell you about what we get up to on the Saturdays we meet in town: 

''We meet in the usual coffee shop where, if Carol doesn't know the waitress already, she will do by the time we've ordered. She has a double espresso; I opt for a normal coffee with hot milk, wondering if there is such a thing as 'normal' in these Costabucks' times.

From then on, we share. Toasted teacake, warm and buttery, divided between two plates; family news - particularly our children, now officially adults and moving swiftly through various life stages, and writing: a broad discussion from guest blogs to letters in the local paper and work in progress.

Carol is a shining example of 'Never say never'. A successful children's author, she could have accepted her fate - the widespread culling of  publishing contracts has particularly affected her genre - and resigned herself to a glorious past. Instead, she is taking control of her publishing future and reinventing herself online.

Later, at home, I sit down to tea with Jane. Or rather I drink tea, while Jane (as in Austen) provides food for thought on several levels. First, because I am bringing her six published novels bang up to date, in a series called 'Darcy & Friends'; second, I always learn something from her writing, and finally, she is such good company - like an old friend.

I'm climbing on an already crowded bandwagon: Jane's fame has grown rapidly in the last few decades, assisted by wet shirts and tight breeches, and there's no end in sight to the proliferation of prequels, sequels, modernisations and what-ifs. But this is currently where I find my writing inspiration, and I hope I'm adding something original with fresh, 21st century insights into the hearts and minds of her irresistible heroes.

Coffee with Carol, tea with Jane. Time well spent.''

Juliet can be found at www.julietarcher.com. Tweet her @julietarcher or friend her on Facebook

Ebook Virgin At Large!

OK, so I was going to have a proper online Facebook Launch Party. You know the sort of thing: you get an invite, you accept, and then at a specified time, you rock up online and wonder where all the cake is and who drank the sparkly white wine.

Only, here on what I like to think off as Planet Stupid, it didn't quite happen like that. Instead, I got a text message from Talented Daughter early on the Saturday morning after we'd uploaded Jigsaw Pieces saying 'Your book's on Amazon. Just downloaded a copy.' Bit of a shock, as I thought it would take a couple of days.

This was followed by a second text message: 'I've put it on my Facebook page, and sent the link to yours. Going back to bed.' So that was it. Not so much a launch, more of an escape. After I'd got over the shock, I checked, in case she'd made some sort of mistake, easy thing to do at 8am on a Saturday morning, but no, there it was. 

And when I checked my Facebook page, there it was again. And someone else had downloaded a copy. Which meant that in the space of 6 minutes, I'd made enough money to buy ... ooh, half a small espresso. Which was very exciting.

And the excitement just kept on coming. I tagged Jigsaw Pieces - actually, I put in so many tags that I might just as well have copied out the whole plot into the tag box. I think the only thing I didn't tag it under was 'fairies', although I could have got that wrong.

Following on from that, several kind members of the writing community generously stepped up to the publicity plate, and are recklessly closing their eyes and letting me loose on their author sites, thus saving me from issuing one of those sad ads you see at the back of newspapers: 

Ebook Publicity Virgin 62, GSOH, and cake, needs help, advice, and guest blogs. All offers gratefully accepted.


To you (you know who you are) I say a massive 'thanks'. To everyone else, I say: please check the sad ad! Better still, download Jigsaw Pieces and read it for yourself, because as you can see, I am to self-promotion what fish are to cycling. Proof: I have reached the end of another blog without telling you anything constructive about the story, like who Billy Dunne really was, and how I became, temporarily, a World War 1 poet. Another time, I promise

Meanwhile my series of Great Guest Blogs continues with my very good friend, writer Juliet Archer. Do not miss her!

The Ebook has Landed

''This year Amazon has launched the technology to ensure that self-publishing a novel is now only marginally more complex than uploading a Facebook update.'' (Good Housekeeping, Sept 2012 pg.63)

Pain comes in many forms. There is physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain. To which let me now add another category: Amazonal pain. Yes, we (Designer Dave and I) did it. We finally uploaded Jigsaw Pieces. My very first ebook. Ta-daa, roll of drums, waving sparklers in the air, but boy was it tough.
Very, very tough.

So bad did things get, that at one point we found ourselves transferring my entire Google account, including my password, to DD's email address. We do not know why we did this. It had no relevance whatsoever to uploading the book to Amazon. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, I can only put it down to the red mist of madness that descended upon us over the two days it took to achieve upload.

Yes, of course it goes without saying that the writing community rallied round and tried to help. It gathered outside our cage and tossed virtual buns through the bars. We needed to download this platform; we ought to file everything here. Or there. Or somewhere completely different. We needed to indent by a certain specified amount of pixels.

Ah, the pixels. They were a thorough nuisance from the start. I ended up envisaging them as small malevolent wispy things in pointed hats and curly ankle boots. Not sure why they were there, or what exactly they were about, but apparently without a sufficient number of them, nothing could go forward. They appeared to be the digital equivalent of the Lib Dems.

The trouble was that, helpful as all these suggestions were, as was all the stuff we downloaded from various sites, they could not fix the primary problem, which was, in a word: us. Two picky perfectionists determined to bend a second-rate system to our exacting requirements.

So have we finally done it? We think so. You will be the ultimate arbiters of course. One caveat: if you use the cheap version of Kindle, the title and author is slightly offcentre. PLEASE don't tell us. Similarly if you find anything else amiss. Family members and pets have only just emerged from their hiding places, and I am relearning how to use words of more than one syllable.

Sadly, I now realise I have got to the end of this blog post and have not told you a single thing about the actual story. Nor any of the amazing stories behind the story. Another blog, I promise. Meanwhile, why not download Jigsaw Pieces and read it for yourself. It will make all our pain worthwhile.

Sue Moorcroft is my guest

Sue Moorcrof: A  pensive moment

Sue Moorcroft is somewhat of a polymath (no, not a mathematical parrot!) She is a writer of short stories, a novelist, a teacher of creative writing and article writer. She also writes a regular Formula 1 column and is judge for Writers' Forum. Sue is a Katie Fforde Bursary Award winner. 


She is also a really good self-publicist, which is no bad thing. Hearing that I was offering guest blogs to other writers, Sue seized the opportunity of a lifetime to favour us all with her witty observations on life. Her blog is entitled: Ten ways to cheer me up.
Take it away, Sue:


1. Ask for a multitude of copy documents. Insist you haven't received them and ask for them again. Then ring back and say you have them all - hooray! You don't even have to apologise. If you have them, I forgive you.


2. Arrive to fit my carpets, on time and with everything you need. Make a lovely job of it. Don't mark my walls.

One drink good; two drinks better

3. When I advise you of my holiday dates, hold back all the work you have for me so I have the illusion of being able to relax whilst I'm away.


4. Reply to my emails, especially anxious ones, promptly - even if you're trying to take six weeks off over the summer.


5. If you're a weather forecaster, tell me that the sun is coming. Be right.


6. If I save up for something special, ensure that it works when I get it home.


7. tell me that you have read all of my books and you didn't buy them second-hand.


8. Tell me you enjoyed my books and are buying them for all your friends for every birthday and Christmas,. (or that you've mentioned them to your movie producer friend and he wants to make them into films. That's good too.)


9. Bring a bottle of ice-cold pinot grigio and tell me funny stories in the sunshine when we drink it.


10. Love my favourite authors as much as I do.


Sue can be found at www.suemoorcrft.com. She blogs at http://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com/ Friend her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

How Not to Launch an Ebook

So, this is the current state of play: the cat has recovered from her cystitis. Talented Daughter has handed over the sword she came across in her new cycle shed to the police, and I have finally managed to fit the very complicated state-of-the-art seat covers in the 2CV - I'm sure the tips of my fingers will regrow in time. Anything else to report? Nope: you're up to speed.


Meanwhile I'm sure that it hasn't escaped your notice that there is a plethora of 'How to do it'  advice out there. How to become a millionaire in a year; How to have a beautiful garden; How to stuff your face with pies and cakes and lose weight at the same time (sorry, I made that last one up).


All this helpful advice is written by experts in the various fields for, gentle blog-readers, we want to learn how to do things properly and well. We want to think of ourselves as successful 'can-do' sort of people. Except, it appears, for one particular intention deficit disordered individual among us. So allow me, as an 'expert' in the art of  'How not to do it' to share the following advice with you:


1. Do not launch your ebook at the same time as a major sporting event. It is the Olympics. Nobody is reading books. Nobody is buying books. Nobody is in the remotest way interested in books. Everyone is glued to the TV.


2. Do not launch your ebook during the summer holidays. See above, but with added sea.


3. Do not think that just because you write books, you can also write blurb. Professionally qualified sub-editors earn good money  doing this. You are not one of them.


4. Do not write the only book in the whole history of fiction that does not seem to fit into any perceivable category on Amazon Kindle. You will inevitably categorise it wrongly. Readers will notice. And they will say so. Publicly.


5. Do not believe all those people that say uploading to Amazon is a breeze. They are lying in their teeth. Think childbirth: hard work, bewildering and messy.


6. Do not totally neglect to organise a publicity schedule. Faffing around on Facebook and Twitter is not a publicity schedule. 

7. Do not do a great long blog about how not to launch an ebook when you haven't actually launched the ebook yet because you are still struggling to sort out all of the above.


You see: I told you I was an expert!




This is the cover. Like it?

Jean Fullerton is my guest

Today I am hosting Jean Fullerton on my blog. Jean writes beautifully lyrical historical fiction, set in the East End, where she was born, and where her family has lived since 1823. I met Jean for the first time at a RNA outing to the River Police Museum in Wapping. I remember apologising to her for not being a member of the RNA, nor writing romantic fiction. Her reply, I think, sums her up: ''Carol, we're all (insert mild expletive) writers, so you're welcome.'' And we are. And I was.


I asked Jean to share about the influence of her roots, her writing methodology, and her latest novel. Here is what she said:


'' I write because I have to, and the best thing about writing is someone telling you how much they loved your stories and characters. I fell in love with historical fiction because I read Anya Seton when I was 13. I'm still passionate about history, but have moved away from an interest in the nobility of a period to much more the social history and the lives of ordinary people.


I am hugely influenced by the place I was born and feel connected to its past so strongly. To me it's a place of folklore and memories I feel I've assimilated into my bones and flows through my fingers as I write. I've been told my description of the East End is so vivid you can smell it.


It takes me six months to write the first draft, and another two/three to get it into shape. Then it goes to my agent who might suggest some changes and then on to my publisher. So in all, it's nine to ten months from writing 'chapter one' to writing 'the end' punctuated by edits for the next book getting ready for publication and publicity


 I think of the premise for a story, then develop the characters. I have to get the hero and heroine right in my head and then let them start on their journey. I stick absolutely to historical facts and do a great deal of research to get the period detail right. I have hundreds of books and like to go back to primary source if I can. For my Victorian books I've made great use of Henry Mayhew's and Charles Dickens' journalistic accounts of East London. I only live four stops on the tube from where my stories are set, so often visit to soak up the atmosphere. I visit museums too.

Jean's latest book

My recently released novel Hold onto Hope is the fourth of my Victorian novels and follows the fortunes of Kate Ellis, the sister of Mattie, in my last book. With her husband in prison, Kate has fought hard to give her two children everything they need. Her path crosses that of Captain Jonathan Quinn, who has resigned from the army and seeks work as headmaster at a local school.
The attraction is instant, but as Kate is a married woman, they know it can never be, and Kate is left to wonder if she will ever find true love again.


At the moment, I am editing my book Call Nurse Miller which is due out in February 2013. Millie is a district nurse and midwife in post-war East London. Her story starts on VE day in 1945 and runs through until a few months before the introduction of the NHS in 1948. Having worked as a District Nurse in East London for almost 20 years, I have not only used my nursing experience to bring Millie's nursing experience to life, but I have been able to delve into my profession's history to discover how my predecessors cared for their patients.''


You can find out more about Jean, her books and her East End roots on: www.Jeanfullerton.com. Friend her on Facebook, and follow her on twitter @EastLondonGirly

Txt me, 2 bizi 2 chat

Look, I'm a tolerant driver. If you drive pink and vintage, you have to be. But that doesn't mean I'm a patsy. Doesn't mean because some pushy female in a black people carrier overtakes on my side that I'm going to back uphill so she can get by. Ain't happenin' lady. Luckily, not only is my car eccentric, but I'm good at assuming a ''mad oldie with unsuitable hair who might have attack zimmer frame in boot'' expression. Good. Got that out of my system. We move on.

If you are reading this, it is entirely courtesy of BlogTec Man. Yesterday, I lost all my toolbar widgets, not a nice thing to happen to a pensioner with a bad cake habit. So, in some trepidation, I went into the Blogger forum and asked for help. Which I got. And this morning, I downloaded something called Chrome. Slightly tense moment when I clicked on 'apply', and the screen went completely blank. Wondered fleetingly if that's what God felt when He installed the 'Create World App' on the eternal computer in the sky, and pressed the 'download now' button.

So to the title of this blog. It appears that we are now sending more texts than we are making calls. We are Tweeting more than actually talking face to face.We prefer to do short and vowel-less rather than long and chatty. I am appalled. What is civilization reducing itself to? Long chatty conversations are the lifeblood of friendship. You can't get to know someone unless you spend time talking. Texting is not talking. (Unless you're one of my students, when it sooo is). How long will it be before we get 'txtd bks'? Save us having to read the whole thing, we can just flick through the reduced version. P&P bi Jn Astn. 

The next step will be the losing of all vocal communication. We will just grunt at each other in a primal manner. And move into caves. Until that occurs, though, I will continue to chat on buses  and in the street. I will also talk to complete strangers, and to the elderly.You have been warned!

Win,win,win:! Some Olympic musings

Last week, the Olympic torch relay passed through St Albans, cause for much excitement, and a few snarky letters in the local paper about the mysterious filling in of potholes along its route, and the levelling of controversial speed bumps. Didn't attend its passing, I confess, as a certain Scot and an equally certain Swiss were battling it out on the tennis courts.

In the original Games, held in 776BC, the torch was lit on Mount Olympus, home of the Gods, and carried down to Athens as a signal for the Games to start. The purpose in those days was not for this or that country to grab as many gold medals as possible, but more as a showcase for the athletes' various skills. It was the taking part that was important, not the winning. And anyway, they only got laurel wreaths to celebrate their success, not medals, sponsorship and big bucks.

How things have changed! I guess when the 2012 Games are done, success will be judged solely upon how many Golds and Silvers Team GB has scooped, and how much money the various multi-national sponsors have garnered on the back of the event. Now, I'm not a massive sports fan: my idea of exercise is jumping to conclusions, or letting my imagination run away with me. So I won't be glued to the TV all that often. But I have been very moved by the torch relay. To see all sorts of people: famous athletes, ordinary men and women, the disabled, children, people of all ethnic backgrounds, the old, and the young, carrying the Olympic flame, seems to me to embody far more what the Games were originally meant to be.

Have we writers, become too success orientated, I wonder? Are we sucked into a mentality when winning awards, rave reviews or that coveted place on the Amazon top 100 list is more important than anything else? Sadly, I sometimes find myself inching towards that way of thinking. It's insidious. I read a gushy author interview piece about someone who has received a huge advance for writing a story with a plot so banal that my cat could have come up with it, and all at once, I start questioning my validity. Unless my book is reviewed in the Sunday papers, unless I win one of the Prestigeous Awards, I can't be a real writer - can I?

Interestingly though, it's not just me. A couple of years ago, I 'did' the Edinburgh Festival (see dodgy video on my Facebook page). In the writers' yurt, I observed many of the Really Big Writers at close hand. Those of you who do not write for a living may be unaware that most writers spend a lot of time terrified stiff that they are actually writing complete rubbish, which someone will point out one day (or is it just me?). It's the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome. I sat and watched a whole yurt full of twitchy famous writers, many who were household names, mentally peering over their shoulders, waiting for somebody to sidle up and murmur: 'You're not really as good as you think you are. You're a fraud, aren't you? You don't deserve to be here, and you know it.' They looked like the sort of people you hope won't come and sit next to you on a long train journey. It was reassuring, in a slightly unnerving way.

Still, sometimes I forget. I forget what an amazing gift it is to be able to write; I forget how much I enjoy it. How I'd be devastated if I couldn't do it on a daily basis. I become goal driven, medal hungry, chart focused. So this is where I pause, step back and think about all those wonderful individuals who carried the Olympic torch round the country. Most will never take part in an Olympic event, let alone win gold. Not important. It was the taking part that mattered. And maybe I also need to remind myself that I carry the same flame inside me as every other writer, famous or not, published or unpublished. Because in the end, isn't that why we all write...?