Mightier Than the Sword

Balance

2012-02-06T22:59:00.000Z

Like everybody else in this world, I make mistake. I made one that got me upset earlier, confusing my time table and not being able to take part in a workshop as a result of it. I freaked out more than a little bit.

However, I was determined not to let it get the best of me. So I reacted with writing. However good or bad I might be (I don't pretend to be an expert in myself) it's something I know I can do at least a little bit right. So I sat down in my Nerd Corner/Corner of Shame and I got to writing. I won't say what. It's still sooper sekrit. But it had swearing and anger and I got to vent through this story all the little things that were going through my head.

It's a sort of therapy that works on me when I get a bit down, like everyone does. I'm happy writing, because it restores me to some sense of security and comfort and I don't feel like I'm going to mess up tremendously. I wrote a few hundred words, before people started arriving for Drama and I had to stop, but it was enough for me.

Writing wouldn't work for everyone. Some people, no matter how good they might be at it, don't believe in their ability. But there's something everyone can do that makes them happy, and I reckon we just need to find those things for our own emotional balance. It's like a weighing scales; when something bad happens and/or we get upset, we need something to fall back on.

For me, of course, writing a blog or an email isn't going to sort it out. I need to write fiction, something that I can just let loose with. I like to write angry characters, people with problems, people who don't know how to deal with the world, people who are weird and wonderful but don't fit in. I like writing characters that are that little bit like me that I can understand them, but that are so bizarre I still need to do some thinking about them.

And that works for me. I'm addicted to people, and making them up always helps me satisfy my need to vent problems at them.

I'm weird like that. But hey, anything to get an emotional balance right? It stops me making big mistakes (and boy do I make those...). More than that, though, it helps me make the right choices. (Bliss, The Phantom Zone, my website, The Rest is Silence...)

And this post? This was just me spewing up words. Sure it has to happen somewhere.

Subverted the Norm

2012-01-28T19:23:00.000Z

My students described me in two ways, between talking out of turn, working and asking me questions about my personal life (name, college, do I work in X, do I hate them). I'm not sure I agree with their assessment in either case, but here we go. Apparently I am (a) cool and (b) scary. Sorry, what?

What?!

Urban Dictionary (a perfectly citable source for definitions) describes "cool" as: "The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell." However, "cool" is a term that is relative to the observer. (Which is why, when asked if I am cool - happened once - I respond with "No.") My classes consisted of twelve and thirteen year olds. They did a number of things, like play sports, not-read and play X-Box.

Somehow, I don't see how they then came to the conclusion that I am "cool". By their standards, I would need to:

(a) Play sport. Let's just be clear, here: the most physical activity I got in my three weeks in that school was walking to and from the bus stop and to the college. Okay, this amounted to several kilometres a day with what might have been heavy bags in each hand on some days (copies... gotta love 'em!), but I wouldn't call that sport. They even asked what team I supported, and were disappointed when I said I don't. I wasn't going to lie to make them like me. I don't like sports. I don't think people who play sports are "cool". (Correction: I don't think playing sports defines someone as being "cool" - I might think someone is "cool" who also happens to play sports, but the two are as related as myself and the president of Uganda.)

(b) Not read. I think we know by now that I read. More than that, I actually like to read. I also love to write, which is like reading by backwards. And I work in a bookshop, which more or less means I encourage people to read on a daily basis. At this point, I began to wonder if, by being the exact opposite of these kids, I was therefore "cool". I still disagree with the term, and I'm certainly nothing like them.

(c) Play X-Box. Okay, so I have a PS3. Well, I have 1/3 of a PS3. I sometimes get a chance to play it. Sometimes. I was asked if I played Skyrim, and I said yes, because I had to let a student know that I got his "arrow in the knee" reference, but it wasn't funny. He was asked to refrain from referencing the game again, or he'd have extra work. But a PS3 is not an X-Box.

So, I didn't do the three things they did. I was also eight years older than them, had an interest in religion and Shakespeare and gave them homework at least every second day. I gave punishment work and raised my voice at them when they spoke too loudly. I kicked people out of class (but kept them within sight with the door open, as I am legally obliged to). I did everything a teacher does. But I was described as "cool". I am as confused as you, believe me.

(And in case you think I'm being entirely self-critical, I told my friends about this: they laughed.)

As well as "cool", though, I was also "scary". The same student used these two words. I kind of understand the "scary" part, though. I raised my voice a lot. I didn't shout exactly, but when I do that Drama thing of raising my voice without much effort, it can get to a class. The teacher is supposed to shout and lose their voice. Then they lose the class and the students can keep on talking. After all, learning isn't "cool". But God I love learning.

There is a point to all of this, though. For a start, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not think I am "cool". I am relateable and mostly easy to get along with. I am sometimes funny and sometimes smart and I almost always listen when someone needs to talk. I make stupid mistakes and embarrass myself, which makes people laugh. But being annoying, clumsy and in Drama does not typically equate to someone being "cool". Therefore, I conclude that I subverted the norm of social standards in terms of "cool".

The second point is much briefer, and related to this exchange of words:

Student: Sir, will you just tell us your first name?

Me: Why do you even care about my first name?

Student: Because we want to add you on Facebook!

No matter how "cool" they think I am, I would never accept them on Facebook. Ever.

And the third point: I have a kind of catchphrase that I intend to keep ironic: "I'm cool like that." It doesn't work if people start calling me "cool", because then it turns from ironic and possibly annoying to just annoying. I'm annoying enough as it is!

The Secret Life of Teachers

2012-01-23T23:00:00.000Z

Teachers are a fascinating breed of homo sapiens, brought up from a young age to memorise everything about everyone without fail. In my time in teaching, three super important and totally true things have come to my attention:

Teachers never leave the school grounds. Ever. They stay there overnight, thinking up new and interesting punishments for the children that they just have to tell everyone about. They shout it from the noticeboard, laughing maniacally. This is a fact. All pupils have been talked about in great detail. Teachers don't need their spare time during school hours for anything else.
Teachers do not sleep. There is no need to sleep when you have lived for thousands of years. The body becomes changed, less human. Teachers can use this time to correct the multitude of errors found in the homework of their pupils. Teachers enjoy nothing more than repeating the same lessons of 'there', 'their' and 'they're', and so on.
Teachers spend the weekend thinking up new ways to punish their students. There is nothing better for a teacher to do than to find new and interesting ways to make someone suffer. After all, teachers are all sadists.

You can totally trust me on this one. I've been in a staff room, hooked up to the mainframe* and interacted with most of the staff in a school. It's definitely all true.

*Staff rooms are the inspiration for the Borg in Star Trek.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

2012-01-14T11:13:00.001Z

I've been going through a rather reflective period of my life, of late. Okay, so I actually mean for the last six months or so, but who's counting? (Yes, I am... it's actually more than six months.) It's had me look at things in a different way, both friendships and this thing I call my writing career.

Way back in July, I got bored. I started to write a novel called Bliss (Have I mentioned that before?) as part of Camp NaNoWriMo. About half-way through the month, I stopped writing. I figured it wasn't worth it. I mean, I loved the book, but part of me just didn't see the point in trying to write it. To put it bluntly, that part of me considered giving up writing altogether.

I finally got my head on straight towards the end of the month, and in defiance to that niggling doubt ten days earlier, I started to write Bliss again, picking up where I left off. Four days later, I finished the required fifty thousand words for the month. More than half of that was written in the four days.

When I realised I could write pretty quickly and that, yes, things were worth pursuing, my head started going all over the place. I immediately set up the wordpress.com account that would host the foundations of my website. Over the following month and a half, I got to work on articles, poems and a short story to put on the website. I enquired about newsletters and hosting and all the fun stuff that make websites fun, but they had to be free for the public (i.e. the people looking at the site) and affordable for me to justify the expense.

However, it was still only the start of August when a link to an article was posted on Twitter. I read the article, thought 'That was fun', then noticed two words down the bottom of the page: Writers wanted. I tweeted the writer of the article, he told me about the site - turns out he's the editor - and later that day, after my exceptionally nerdy cover letter, I had a job at The Phantom Zone. Go figure. In three days, I had finished an impossible fifty thousand words, begun work on my website and had my first ever writing job.

I thought, life just got pretty strange. And continued on as well as I could.

I wrote a play. Between getting the writing job and writing a few articles for it, and a month into college, I had gotten the whole play written and edited, which was no simple task considering what it's about (you know, depression, suicide... the usual stuff a debut play should be about!). That should have been enough for me, to have written my very first play. But no. I handed it in to someone wanting to direct it.

It's going on stage in a couple of months. What? I mean, what?! That made October pretty strange.

Of course, the fun was only really beginning. I edited a novella I wrote in the summer of 2010, Stepping Forward, and put up a sample download on my website. That same website, with the download, went live on September 11th 2011. The date was significant for the release only because of when I would be going back to the college (i.e. the 12th!). Go forward three months, and Stepping Forward was available in its entirety for download on Smashwords. During that week, I was also interviewed about the book.

In November (yes, I'm going back and forth, but things don't just happen overnight in my life, most of the time!), having gotten back from Taizé in France, I decided I would give NaNoWriMo an attempt. I didn't have a full month, I had a lot of work to do for college, and I had an unfinished manuscript. I resolved to finish Bliss. Thirty thousand words later, the first draft was done.

Come up to January, and I'm teaching. Now, part of this is to write reflective statements, but I don't really care very much for them. The teaching part was significant, though. I didn't think I would be able to do it. I thought the syllabus was much too complicated for me, but when I went into the class and kids began to learn things - and I mean, they were remembering dates and names for Judaism and the consequences of the Schism and taking a huge interest in Islam and all that other fun stuff - I really started to believe in myself as a teacher.

Of course, I did say this post was also about friends. So, significantly, I spent more time talking to friends in college. I have an awful habit of vanishing on people in college, I should add, so I was glad to be able to talk to people properly. Not only that, but taking part in Drama again meant I made yet more friends (the Drama Society has a way of doing that!). Add in the Writers' Soc and my inherent boredom in the morning, and through one mature student in first year I met over half a dozen others.

There's something to be said about mature students. Generally, they don't do clubs and socs. Generally, there are a few who just barely hit the over 23 mark and a lot more who are in their forties. These ones are mostly in their twenties. (Immediately less terrifying, because none of them are old enough to be my mother!) Since they didn't take part in any of the clubs or socs I did, I only really got to know them through proper human interaction. Mostly this was while blocking the smoke from a couple of cigarettes with a cup of tea (what can I say, I favour conversation over health - I just hate the taste of smoke!), but it meant I got to know some people who had a lot of real life experience (which you can only get after leaving school, unfortunately) and who made the decision to come back to college.

What this meant for my social life - which largely doesn't include a nightlife, because of the exhaustion of trying to keep up with third year and everything else I do, while having parents call me to come home for dinner - was that I had about a dozen new people in my life who were all that little bit quirky. (I have a theory that unless you're one of the ladz (yes, with a 'z') or you're a girl who loves shopping and WKD, you need to be a little bit quirky to survive my college. I'm more than a little bit quirky, but that's aside the point.

Now, remember that boredom I mentioned? The boredom back in July? Well, it was because I'd lost contact with a friend. (Boredom was the preferred mood, trust me.) Well, that same friend called me recently (okay, at four in the morning, and then again a couple of days later at twenty to six in the morning) and it's made me pause and think about life (hence this post.) During the first call, he had been watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you're seen the film, you know the iconic line:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Consider me looking around. I can't complain about life. Sure, there's always going to be something that could go wrong, but I've gotten to a point where I can deal with that sort of stuff, where it doesn't have to put everything on hold. (The teaching puts everything on hold, but that's expected when it's worth half my degree...) I'm happy, I've released a book, my play is going on stage, I have a writing job and my own website, and I have a whole load of fantastic friends to give me a reason to do it all, so I can finally show them and myself that I can do this.

Ferris Bueller, you're my hero.

Any Plan But a Lesson Plan

2012-01-04T23:45:00.002Z

The one thing they don't warn us about in college is that lesson plans, being detrimental to banter, craic and "LOLs", can sometimes lead to this horrible form of procrastination in which the sufferer begins to plan everything. Except, of course, for the lessons. The psychosis is known to lead to planning away your youth until you're a withered old man or woman. More commonly, of course, the sufferer is left in a panic.

This, of course, leads to a number of stress related illnesses. Stress is known to lead to insomnia, lack of focus and a number of bowel movements that don't do well to describe. Add this to a classroom situation, and a student teacher may find him- or herself with a nasty case of God-knows-what, and failing to live up to their potential.

And why? Because, as a basic requirement, lesson plans cannot be done too far in advance of the class. However, given the nature of a teaching placement, designed to educate a student teacher in the ways of teaching, but not quite putting them into a full classroom experience in that we never truly know the pupils by the end of the period, it is impossible for the very basics of lesson plans to help.

How can a student teacher be expected to write up a number of lesson plans, never too far in advance, and still hope to maintain a shred of the necessary sanity to qualify teaching in a classroom? While it is capable to keep up with the workload, the real problem is starting.

Is there is a solution to this? Most likely. It would certainly help if one didn't ask so many questions. A proposed solution, of course, is to allow for a period of time, supervised and monitored, in which student teachers must draw up the first three lesson plans for each of their classes. In a supervised environment, with the lesson plans inspected and given construction criticism well in advance of the lessons, the student teacher - a strange specimen, half-way between qualified and stupefied - would be able to relieve some of the pressure.

For this to work, the environment in which the student teacher is being prepared ought to be made less stressful. While it is, of course, acceptable to assume that a degree of education must still take place, the way in which the student teacher is taught and assessed can be changed to allow for a different type of workload.

Back to my original point: planning. Lesson plans, being nigh-impossible to get to work on initially, lead to excessive planning. Holidays are booked, drink plans - a high risk social event so close to the teaching placement - are made and, in an extreme case, narrative plans are drawn out extending some years into the future. With so many plans being made - youth being wished away, while placement in a school situation wastes it away - it is not surprising that, given the insomnia and associated symptoms of stress, the student teacher suffers.

Consequently, the student teacher is not graded as they would be if they were to be inspected with pre-prepared lesson plans and a less stressful lead-up to the teaching experience. No longer in even a relative state of ease, the results of teaching placement, unless in monitoring an especially helpful class group and stress-free lesson, are subsequently inaccurate. The best they can hope to achieve is to monitor the implications of stress on a student teacher and the way in which he or she deals with this stress and still manages to cope.

There is, of course, a nugget of helpful advice within these words: de-stress, stay calm, and pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You might even believe it.

Smile

2012-01-03T11:23:00.001Z

When you download Stepping Forward, it puts a smile on my face. This doesn't seem like very much, but imagine what a smile can do.

That smile on my face will be passed on to someone else. Maybe the girl at the shop having a hard time today because she's stuck there while other people come and go as they please. She sees my smile, nothing about it to say anything but 'I'm happy', and it puts a smile on her face. I leave, the smile stays there.

An old man walks up to pay for his bread and his milk. He sees her smile and decides to pick up a chocolate bar for the grandson he has coming over. He smiles as he walks out of the shop, goes home and waits for his daughter to arrive with his grandson. He smiles when he sees them, hands over the chocolate bar with a childish grin on his face and watches as mother and son start to smile.

She brings her son to the park, where he shares his chocolate bar with other children there. They walk back to their mothers smiling, all of them filled with sugar, and four couples of mothers and children walk off to run their errands.

In every shop, the children are happy and smiling and the mothers are happy for seeing them that way. Everyone smiles: there's nothing like a smiling child to make people happy. The innocence of it, and the excitement at being out and about, rubs off on the shopkeepers.

They continue serving customers long after the children have been brought away, passing along the smile to every person they meet. When they go on a lunch break, they go back to that first shop, pass on the smile again, and make sure that someone's day is a little bit better.

It all starts with one little thing: downloading my ebook for free. And remember, when you go out today, to smile.

A New Adventure

2012-01-02T21:18:00.000Z

Something happened to me a couple of years ago that made me stop and look at my life as boring. I mean, I love writing. I love college, however odd that might be. I even like teaching and working in the bookshop. But I foresee a lot of repetitiveness in this life. Weekends at the shop can get very boring, especially when there are very few customers around. If I didn't need the money, and if it wasn't a handy place to work to get books and keep learning about them, I would like to leave. (In saying that, I love having a job, and I love the people I work with... I just know that I couldn't do that my whole life.)

Even teaching, however different the challenges will be every day, might become boring. (Of course, that does mean I would be doing it wrong...) I just feel that my life might become too much of a career. Yes, that's a good thing for some people, but I don't want to feel trapped by my job.

Writing will let me get away from the mundaneness of reality, but in the end it's not quite the same as living a life. There's more to life than just existing, and that's the problem with working in the bookshop and teaching for a living: there's the risk that all I would end up doing is existing.

I want to live, and that means more to me than just staying alive. I want to travel. I want to see things I've never seen before, meet new people, try new things. I don't want to just hear about life from other people. That's not good enough for me. If I can help it, I won't be staying still for most of my life (you know, unless you discount sitting in a chair to write my books).

And of course, even that life of getting around and seeing the world and meeting new people isn't complete if that's all I do. Then I just become a traveller. I want to write new fiction, push the boundaries of what I'm capable of and deliver new stories to people. Yesterday, two ideas I had for books - one of them a standalone, the other initially a series of adventures - suddenly expanded and grew. The standalone book takes my current Dungeons and Dragons character idea (I'm that cool) and mixes it with an idea for a novel I got many years ago. It's possible the standalone book will become a series or a trilogy in its own right.

The series of adventures has become something much bigger. I can't even talk about it or I'll give stuff away, but it's going to be one of the most enjoyable things I'll ever write, and it has so much potential to keep on growing. I want to write it after the Sam Richards and The Daughters of the Muse trilogies, or at least get a start on it. I couldn't even tell you how many books it will contain, at the moment, because it's just an idea, but it's going to take up a huge amount of my time.

Both are fantasy ideas, I should point out. That's the beauty of the adventure that is writing: every time I write a new story, I'm brought somewhere fantastical. Even with the Sam Richards Trilogy, set in Dublin, I'll be experiencing the world in a new way: I have to create a life I will never lead and look at the city I've known my whole life through the eyes of a different man. It's possible I'll write spin-offs to that trilogy, too, but that's all in the future when I can think about things other than the main books.

This isn't just the wild dream of a young man from Ireland. This isn't just some take on The Simpsons ("I want to live Marge! Why won't you let me live?!") or some flight of fancy that will go away. I want to get published, and not just once. I want to show people stories and I want to escape the trap of life that is repetition. So I won't be rich, not travelling and writing for a living (that's the ambition, anyway), but I know I'll be happy.

And as for teaching... well, that's for when I want to settle down. After all, aren't all teachers as old as the pyramids, anyway?

My Top 13 Books of 2011

2011-12-30T13:08:00.000Z

Stealing an idea from Pinkies Blog I have My Top 13 Books of 2011. Most were published before 2011, but having only read them this year, my experiences with them can be considered fairly new. Why thirteen and not ten? Take a look at book one on the list (which is, otherwise, in no particular order.)

Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson. She was one of those authors I was following on Twitter before ever having read her work. Funny, insightful and responding to tweets from her fans, I had to give her a read. And I loved it. This is one for the YA fans, full of adventure, a bit of romance, an awkward teenager (weren't we all one?) and lots of travelling.

Will Grayson Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan. I'll admit, I was a little bit worried about this one, given I had never read anything by the latter, but that didn't stop me giving it a read and falling in love with it. I love the ideas around friendship, the acceptance of people who are different, the excitement of the idea of the Tiny Cooper's musical and the sense that I wanted things to go well for everyone, if Will Grayson would just stop being an idiot. Again, one of the YA fans.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky. Can I pronounce his surname? No, but I can try! Did I love the book? Indeed I did. I was in dire need of something that might remind me of John Green's books, remembering his other three books too well, still, to read them again. So I Amazoned them, found what other people were buying, and found this one. It's a little bit weird, and the character can be a little bit annoying, but then I realised something: I can also be a little bit annoying. (Understatement?) A good book, though not as similar to John Green's books as I thought it might be.

All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman. I think I found this book in the same way as Chbosky's novel, though I can't be sure. It's a short book about a man who has a lot of friends, all of whom are - you guessed it - superheroes. Except, you know, they're not. Not really. You'll understand when you read the book, and I highly suggest you pick it up ASAP.

Everyman, by Philip Roth. A lecturer of mine, and head of the English Department in my college, recommend Roth to me as an author, just generally. I had seen his latest novel, Nemesis, in the shop where I work, but as much as I loved the look and the idea of the big yellow hardback, I was not willing to spend the money I didn't have on it. So I went looking for another book, and found this. A fairly short read, kind of depressing, but highly enjoyable.

Raggy Maggie, by Barry Hutchison. While he released a couple of books this year (one of which I still haven't even bought! Shame!), this one still stands out for me as his book of the year. Yes, it came out in 2010. No, I didn't get it until February. It was freaky in all the right places, and really made me look at toys in a different light! A fantastic children's horror that will scare the adults in the house! Don't miss out on the fun!

The Warlock, by Michael Scott. Definitely one of the best books in the series. With everything coming to a finish, I was drawn in to the building climax. I love his system of magic, his mix of myth and history, the realism of the settings (since he describes real-world settings as exact as he can). I just really love this series! Plus, I got to interview him about it later and find out his little secrets!

Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern. I'm not one for biographies, really, but I saw this book and had to give it a shot. Easily one of the funniest books I've ever read, without losing the warmth and comfort of the father-son relationship that becomes more evident as the book goes on. You really get a sense of what his dad is like from his little quips about everything in life. I read it in one sitting, which I'd previously only done with Harry Potter books when I was obsessed with them!

Plague, by Michael Grant. With this series getting creepier by the instalment, the FAYZ is falling apart. Well, not literally. But you get the point. Dystopia is just about all it's cracked up to be, when hunger, power-outages and bad politicians are the least of your problems! This is a series to watch, as society is pulled apart piece by piece.

One Red Paperclip, by Kyle MacDonald. Again, a biography. I saw this one when it first came into my shop, way back when, and did't buy it. It went off the radar, I could never find it, and then my brother got it for me online. It's a fantastic little book, full of enthusiasm and excitement, adventure and Canada. God I love Canada! This one's worth checking out just to see how someone goes from a paperclip to a house in a year!

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Yep, a graphic novel! I loved the film, and then I found the book, so I had to get it. Had to. Literally. I couldn't stop myself picking it up and paying for it. Some dark, nerdy force had taken over and made me buy this book, then made me laugh with all the humour of the film in book form, with hilarious looking characters and a whole load of crazy. And chords to the songs. Oh yes. It's that cool. Definitely read it and watch the film. It will change your life.*

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This was on my reading list in first year in college (and I'm old now - third year!) but I couldn't get into it. Then John Green (yes, that guy who wrote the book mentioned above) encouraged all of Nerdfighteria to read it. And I did. And I loved it. And I John agreed with the points I made about the American Dream in the comments section of the video on YouTube. And I am aware that there are far too many conjunctions in this paragraph. But that's enthusiasm for you. Loved this book, and even though the ending can be a little bit odd, it's worth the read (even if you just want to read about the worst case of drunk driving in literature.)

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. Unlike Pinkie, I have no problems mentioning a book I read for college. It was on our Gothic module, and while it took me a long time to read (because of the plethora of assignments popping up throughout the year... and a trip to France) I loved every bit of it. I made a point of reading it every morning with a cup of tea on the bench outside the college as a way of starting the day, until it got too cold and wet to continue doing that. Once you get used to the way it's written (there's a narrated story, within a narrated story, within a letter), it's a very enjoyable book, and it's no wonder it's lasted this long. What surprised me most was the way in which Hollywood has distorted the idea of Frankenstein over the years, making him out to be a blood thirsty monster from the off-set. To really understand the monster, and to get an insight on humanity that's as true now as it was when Shelley wrote the novel, you have to read this book.

Next year, I'll have lots of books to read that I've been really looking forward to. Expect a lot of excitement online when John Green's latest book, The Fault in Our Stars arrives at my house, as well as a look at Michael Scott's adult horror, Barry Hutchison's Doc Mortis, Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Maureen John's The Name of the Star, just to name a few. 2012 is going to be a big year!

*May not actually change your life.

2012 Calender Portfolio

2011-12-27T00:30:00.000Z

My parents broke one tradition this Christmas: they didn't get us a calender. Every year for as long as I can remember, we have received some form of calender from our parents; usually this means we get a Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy or Doctor Who calender. This year: nadda.

So, I'm compensating for the lack of on-the-wall calender by doing something different with 2012: I'm making a portfolio. I will be purchasing a large a4 binder (one of the thick ones that hold more pages than you usually need to include...) and putting in it the basic calender pages. That file is almost ready: I just need to choose 12 awesome pictures to put on it, to make it special for myself.

But it doesn't end there. Every time I get an assignment, or assign something to myself, the brief will be printed and added to the Calender Portfolio. Why do I call it that? Because everything I write or do in the year will end up in this folder. Every short story, every poem, every essay, possibly even the first chapters of every novel I work on. The full scripts for the play and mini-series I will be writing will find their way into the portfolio, mixed in with photographs from nights out with friends.

Why all of this? Because I want to be able to say to myself that I did something worthwhile in 2012. I want to be able to show that something significant happened at some stage, because I will probably forget what happened when. Events have a way of blurring from one year to another, particularly if they happen in the winter months (since the academic year isn't over). I want to record my work, just for myself.

Also, I'm insanely weird.

I like a good project, and anyone who wants to join me in this is more than welcome. I have the file saved in .doc format. I have a contact page on my website. If you want to avoid the trouble of putting together the calender file yourself, just ask me for it. Simple as that.

Whatever happens, I know that if I stick with this I'll have something to show for myself at the end of the year. Or rather, something to show to myself. I have an awful habit of not giving myself enough credit for what I do during the year, because of the lack of things to show for it all creatively (since I always forget about assignments in college...)

I'll be back with more on this in January, when I can see if it's actually going anywhere. Sure, I know I'll be busy then!

In 2012...

2011-12-22T23:41:00.002Z

Look after yourself. You deserve more than heart ache and struggles. You deserve to smile more than "once in a while". You're better than that.

Love yourself. (But not too much: that's a sin, so they say.) Remember, though, that other people love you, too. Even if they don't say it.

Look after others. It's hard, I know. They might not want to let you. You might not realise who needs you. You might feel overwhelmed by them. None of that matters.

Be happy. Not just for yourself ("Your health is your wealth") but for other people. Smile. It's infectious.

Talk to people. Talk to friends about everything happening in your life, the good and the bad. Talk about nothing in particular. Talk to strangers. But:

Listen. Everyone has something to say. Keep talking and they won't get a chance.

And always remember what's important to you. When you say "I love you", mean it. When you care about someone or something, show it. When you believe in something, do something about it.

Never forget that you matter.

Life and the World to Come

2011-12-19T23:29:00.001Z

Way back in July, I made a few decisions that would, inevitably, change the way I lived my life. Almost five months have passed since I made the choice to do a massive writing challenge to finish Bliss's Camp NaNo 50K. That, in itself, wasn't massively life-changing, except that it made me realise how much I could do if I stopped messing about, and if I put aside whatever was happening in my life that might distract me from my work.

In that same week, I made the decision to set up a website - which I worked on from then until the middle of September, when I launched the site. That involved a lot of planning, of course, and a lot of mulling over what would eventually end up on my site on Day 1. Over the next month and a half, I edited Stepping Forward, fixing up a novella I was already pretty happy with to give away for free.

That's been the first big change in my life: I now have a book out in the public domain.

The website has, since, been host to a number of articles, poems and short stories. While these haven't exactly changed my life, they have gotten me thinking about the different ways I live my life, and the way in which I write. I also decided to use the website to play host to a couple of projects in the New Year, one of which is an X-Men story I've been planning for some time. (I've checked, and given the fact that Marvel pick up writers and stories from self-published works - and that's the only way they will now consider someone new - I am perfectly within my rights to release this story as I see fit.) That one doesn't have any immediate effects on my life, though it will at least encourage me to stick to creative deadlines.

The other project is an adaptations ezine, which will help me (a) hone my critical writing and (b) review books, films and the adaptation process. Again, no immediate effect, but it will involve, once again, sticking to deadlines.

Aside from my website, I also decided to apply for a writing position at The Phantom Zone. While the rush of college work has stopped me writing for the site in some time, I still have this job. More than that, I still have my first ever writing job. It was something for me to be proud of.

In the two months that followed, I wrote and edited a play, The Rest is Silence. This is where things took another big turn: as a result of this play, I'm going to have something performed on-stage. More than that, it will, hopefully, raise some money for a worthwhile cause.

At the same time, I've set up an ezine in college, which has gotten someone else writing. He's a good friend of mine, and he's decided to put his quirkiness to good use. The immediate benefit for me? I can have a good laugh reading his blog when I'm stressed; he has all of these really funny observations and stories that aren't as noticeable in a group of ten (yes, there are ten of us... we're a bit of a mob.) It's also fun to be able to talk about writing with someone who's only just started to think of it as having potential to be more than a hobby.

The driving force behind a lot of this work was an old friend of mine. Whether I was trying to make him proud or merely using that as an excuse to make myself do something with my life, I mustered up the courage to finally put my name out there. As I said in my dedication in Stepping Forward, he taught me there's more to life than just existing. No matter what happens between us, I will always remember that I was too scared to do any of this on my own. Having a reason to get going has made the past few months some of the best of my life.

That's the immediate effect of knowing him; after so many years writing, and so many years living the same mundane life, I ceased to just exist. As a result of that friendship, I started to live.

Stepping Forward and Smashing Words

2011-12-15T23:14:00.001Z

It's the release day for Stepping Forward (as if you didn't know, with the amount of times I've mentioned it), and I can officially report back that I love the e-publishing site I'm working with. Smashwords.com is definitely a recommended site: easy to use, brilliant guide and, best of all, human workers.

For their Premium Catalog (is that how Americans spell "catalogue"?), an author needs to have everything perfect. Everything. A computer could do a quick scan of a document to make sure it's correct, but there's only one way to guarantee it: there's a whole team of people hired to check that the books sent for inclusion in the catalog are formatted correctly.

A fun fact from Smashwords... they have 80,000 books on the site and around 60,000 of them are in the Premium Catalog. 60,000! That's how many books people have had to look through since they set up for business in March 2009. Yes, 2009. They're fairly young and they've already had 60,000 books put through for examination.

Wow. Just wow.

And the best part of all of this? They write a little note saying what needs to be changed and end it with "thanks". Thanks! Not "thank you" or some robotic, impersonal way of expressing gratitude, but a very simple and human "thanks". Love it!

Yes, this whole post about how much I love the service at Smashwords. I suppose it helps to mention where you can get the book! It can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114692

Even better, it can be read on your computer or on your e-reader (I believe there are file formats suitable for all the major ones!). I hope you like the book, and I look forward to hearing what you think of it!

Free Book Out Tomorrow!

2011-12-14T17:06:00.000Z

We're literally hours away from Stepping Forward going live on the Internet. Hours. I plan on staying up to sort out getting it available as early as possible on December 15th (local time, of course...). The best part, of course, is that the book is free to download. This has a number of advantages:

It means that you, the reader, do not have to pay to read a longer work of fiction that I have written.
It means that there is literally no point in anyone pirating this e-book: all someone has to do is go to the Smashwords page and download themselves in whatever format they want.
And yes, I did say in whatever format. This is keeping in mind the available formats from Smashwords, but what it boils down to is that most, if not all, e-readers will be able to support the file.

One thing people haven't asked me is why I'm releasing the book for free. For a start, it helps me get my name out there. I plan on editing Meet Sam a lot over the next few weeks to get it ready for submission to a publisher, and this will be something I hope people can enjoy in the meantime.

There's also the fact that I've wanted to give a Christmas present out for a very long time: this is that present. Free for me and free for you. Simple.

I enjoyed writing the book, and the few people who have read it have enjoyed it, so with any luck it will appeal to the wider audience of the whole of the Internet. (I jest, of course...).

And why Smashwords? Aside from hearing a lot of good things about them, I wanted to get the book away from the little corner on the Internet I call my website. While I love my website, and while I loved the idea of having the free chapters there to download, it wasn't practical. While the server would have been able to deal with the traffic, I had no way of knowing how many people were actually downloading the book. Smashwords should fix that problem, while also putting the book in the market.

Mostly, though, I just want to have fun with this, and I want to have a book available for people to read. So many people in college have heard me say I'm a writer and aside from the website, there's nothing there for them to really base that on.

I do have a request, however: I want people to read this book. I want honest feedback on the book. What did people like? What did they not like? Would they recommend it to a friend? Is there a glaringly obvious typing error I missed in my edits? (That one's a joke... I've done everything I can to make this as perfect as possible in terms of spelling and grammar!) Mostly, I want to know if people enjoyed the book. Reading should be fun.

Remember, though, that this isn't the last book I'll be releasing. I have a project in mind that I have told people on various social networking sites, and I aim to publish things to do with that in the same way, while aiming towards the traditional publishing route with other books. I don't believe authors should restrict themselves to one or the other, especially not today.

Readers who still buy paper books should be given the option to read something extra by an author if they really want to. At the same time, readers who have only read the e-books might be encouraged to go for a paper book if they liked the author enough. This isn't just me I'm talking about. This is how I believe the publishing industry might survive in an age when e-books are getting stronger. Readers need more options, but not authors shouldn't be restricted to one market or the other in order to give a reader these options.

With that said, this is my first step into the publishing world. This is the first, but not the last, free book I publish. I can't say for sure what's coming next or when, but I will do my utmost best to ensure that there will always be new material out there by myself for people to read. This is a lot for myself as it is for people who genuinely love to read, and given the economic climate, I'd like to offer something for free to make sure that, so long as people have Internet access, people always have options of books to read.

So, quick recap, back to where this started: Stepping Forward is out tomorrow, December 15th 2011, for free. The first step of the longest journey of my life begins then.

Must Be Christmas Soon

2011-12-11T23:13:00.001Z

It's that time again: we've had out Christmas party at college, we're off for a month... and we've all got to get lessons prepared for January. God I love December.

But seriously, I've been trying to find ways to make it neither boring nor stressful. I'll settle for it not being boring. With a Gothic Journal due in tomorrow, along with revised plans for lessons, I've got my work cut out for me. However, we've got some plans in place to make sure we don't completely ruin Christmas with work. Basically, dinner plans in Westmeath. Nom nom nom? You betcha!

But that's not all. Oh no, not at all. This coming Thursday, December 15th, will see the release of my novella Stepping Forward. I wrote it last summer in a mad rush, and I'm delighted with the result. I'm still thinking of what to do to celebrate. A free copy of the book to the first X people won't really help: it's going to be free to everyone as an ebook!

It's a fun book, mostly. I mean, it has a lot of elements that might completely confuse some people if they're not used to me, but I hope that doesn't happen. It's a learning experience, anyway. I've never seen a book like this in the shop (you know, that book shop I work in...) so it's either because no one wrote one like it, no one known well enough wrote one, or publishers deemed the idea and format too bad to even consider. We'll see.

I've also got an interview lined up because of the book. That's fun! I mean, I've answered the questions already, but it's not online yet. It was only a short little piece, but it's a fun bit of publicity. I'll be sure to link it just about everywhere I visit on a regular basis (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and Google+), so you can't miss it!

And yes, while I am aware that the holidays will be hectic, I'm really loving the idea of getting a book out. I won't have to worry about costs or anything like that, or about selling enough copies to make end's meet. This is published for fun and to get something out there. I want to share my work, and I really believe in the book.

Now, I need plenty of rest before the madness of tomorrow! God I love college work...

Scheming, the Boring Kind

2011-12-02T19:35:00.001Z

They don't tell you, before you sign up for teacher training, that the workload is both too high for a social life, and too boring to make you want to stay in college. Over the past few days, I've had to produce four detailed lesson plans and five schemes of work. This isn't the fun kind of scheming like EDGI. This is more like doing a whole lot of work that you then have to get even more specific about later, that doesn't really make much sense by itself.

Consider this a warning for those thinking of being teacher: the paperwork is really boring. Really, really boring. I mean, I think my lessons will actually be fairly enjoyable. Some of them, anyway. Others are the stuff I need to pretend is interesting to stop pupils falling sleep.

But I look at the schemes and I think to myself, I would not like to sit through a lesson like this. Because if all you do is look at the four lines about a lesson on a scheme, you don't get a good idea of what it will be like.

It's like planning a novel, only less creative. When I plan a novel, I get to think about all think fun things that will happen, all the meaningful things, all the in-between parts that have to carry some significance... when I think of schemes, I have to think of the content and how best to teach it so that pupils will remember, only I can't be very specific about it because of character limits.

What this boils down to is making something far too vague to really work with in a month's time. This means that when I do my lesson plans, I'll have to rethink every lesson all over again. That would be more difficult, but at least more fun. I would get to think of the different ways to show the same info so that the listeners and the observers both learned, and give tasks that would allow the active learners to still be included. And none of that is possible when doing so many schemes of work in one go, because with all the other work we're expected to do, we literally do not have the time to get all of this done.

This is the flaw with my college's Education department. They gave us a lot of work to do over a three week period, ignoring the fact that some modules required us to have work during this three weeks, too. I had to make a video for last Monday, and while it only took a couple of hours, it meant I wasn't able to work on my lesson for Tuesday. I have to do a project for Monday, which has been messed up by having to do nine assignments for the Education department. I will have gotten everything out of the way by Wednesday with the Education department... only to have a massive journal due in on Friday. Worth 50% of a module.

So, if I die and/or remove someone's limbs over the next week, you know why. It'll be boredom, stress or both. Best leave me to my shame corner in college and approach slowly with tea and chocolate if you really want to talk to me.

An Open Letter to the Faithful and Faithless

2011-11-26T20:57:00.001Z

To all those who believe in God, and those without a faith at all,

Today, I read something online that gave me chills; you might have seen it too, if you were looking. A woman, a paralysed cyclist, revealed she can now walk after thirteen years. One of her team mates used the word "miracle", and the Internet exploded into a two-sided debate. On one side, the Christians who believed her recovery - previously thought impossible until an accident in a race - to be a miracle and proclaimed that. On the other side, the atheists who provided the majority of the comments. Many claimed the woman's paralyses had been fake, many more began to throw insults at Christians in general - not just those who were commenting, but any person who believes in God.

Let's get some facts straight here: I am Irish, I am Catholic, I believe in God, and I accept the Bible as true. I also love science, accept the truth of evolution and I attempt to understand the gist of quantum theory in as much as it is possible without studying it in any detail. This is not a contradiction of terms.

The atheists who commented, not all atheists, are small minded bullies. They do not justify their words with scientific proof; they only wish to insults anyone with an ounce of faith in their life. One commenter said, and I paraphrase here, that anyone with a brain knows there is no God. Another said to let go of the "sky daddy" and "come back to reality." Another referred to people with faith as cretins.

Is this how society functions today? Is this really how discussions takes place and people communicate? It is not. This is the form of insult that exists only on the Internet, behind anonymous comments. These people do not pay the consequences of insulting someone. They may not even realise how much they might have insulted someone by what they said. Perhaps they did, and they are all the worse for it. Whether they believe in God or not, there are certain standards of ethics we all must adhere to, certain social standards that ought to be followed, if only to make sure we don't cause yet more harm to ourselves and this planet.

There have been religious wars before. This is a fact, we must accept it. But we live in a rational age. Christians Churches are coming together in dialogue, they reach out to people of other faiths - not to convert, but to talk - and they have put aside their differences for the good of their own beliefs and the strength of their own faiths. So why do the atheists in question and those like them start an online war of their own? Are we the fools for talking about faith, for using the language of the article? Are we the ones launching an attack? We're not out to convert, but to express our faith.

I will accept, maybe there were some who commented replying in as equally an insulting manner from a Christian perspective. This is also wrong. This is how people get hurt, and were this to happen on a larger scale the world would face a crisis.

Here are the facts about people: we are free to make our own choices; we are free to voice our own opinions; we are free to have a religion and equally free not to have a religion; our choices and our opinions, our faith or lack thereof, make us neither greater nor worse than those around us. We respect the pope because of his position and insight into religious affairs, just as we respected Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie because of their contributions to computers and technology.

Mindless insults pass back and forth, but the majority of the insults come from those who think that by not believing in God they have a right to insult anyone who does. While I hate to disappoint however many of you there might be, let me make this clear: you have no right to insinuate you are smarter than anyone else because of your own beliefs.

We'll make certain things clear, shall we? Evolution: it happened, it is still happening. Charles Darwin wrote about it. It didn't make him an atheist. What made him an atheist, what began to sway his belief in God, was the death of his daughter. Read Origin of Species before you make any remarks about my faith or the faith of other Christians, and pay particular attention to the closing paragraph. They are not the words of a man who does not believe God exists.

The creation accounts in Genesis: they are true. Does this contradict evolution? Absolutely not. The Bible is not a scientific document. While the Church at one stage may have insisted on the literal interpretation of the Bible, this isn't where she stands now. Of all the genres contained in the Bible, science is not one of them. We respect that, we acknowledge that, we move on.

The truth of Genesis lies in its meaning, not what the facts that might be interpreted out of it - the Earth was not made in 7 days and Adam and Eve were not created as described. The truth of Genesis's creation stories is that God created the world, that God gave us life and that God's creation is good. This does not mean we did not evolve.

We are smart enough to understand our origins. While some people refuse to accept science, this is not true of a majority of people in the world who believe a God exists. No one has the right to insult us on the grounds of that belief, not when we accept the same science as you do.

As to the specifics of what has been said? Let it first be said that God is not the "sky daddy". My image of God, the image of God accepted by the Church, is not that of an old man with a long white beard sitting in the clouds. That image of God creates God in our image, when we believe we were created in His. We will forget that image.

Think instead of the symbol of Christianity. Even the atheists among us know this one: the cross. Who died on the cross? Jesus Christ. Whether you believe he was the Son of God or not, he existed. There are historical documents aside from the Bible that show this.

From a Christian perspective, Christ is God. The Holy Trinity helps us to understand this; it's a message of love, and while it can get complicated, I shall sum it up as I was told. The Trinity consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; one to love, one to be loved and one that is love itself. This is why we ought not to fight back on the same grounds as the atheists who insult us.

This Trinity shows Christians that Jesus was God on Earth. He died for us on the cross. This is where the question of "Where was God when...?" is answered, and why the omnipotent God, the all knowing God and the good God exists as we believe: He is there with all those who suffer. It is not for God to rid the world of suffering, not now.

I will accept, this is not a proof for God; I merely stand by the belief in God and rebuke the arguments against Him. No one has the right to say God does not exist simply because they do not believe in Him or because science has shown us so much of the universe. No one.

The reason we have no proof for God is because He is a mystery. For the very same reason, we enter dialogue with the other religions of this world: to understand our own faith better. Just because we believe Jesus is the full being of truth does not mean we understand that truth. The Holy Spirit is not under our control, and so people can understand the world in ways we did not think of before. An openness to new discovery is precisely why the Church hasn't been abandoned by everyone, why I haven't turned my back on what I believe. There is meaning to be found where I have not looked.

It is not in the insults of the arrogant and the attention seeking, the conformist cowards who bully others from the safety of their own homes. Bullying is not okay. Religious persecution is not okay. If you nobody accepted these ideals then the Jewish people would have been eradicated during World War Two and thousands of children would be left to fend for themselves in schools across the world, picked on for being different to the bullies.

It is not okay to pick on people. It is not okay to call them cretins, to mock their beliefs or to belittle them. You don't have to accept what they say as being true. No one will make you. You need only accept that they think about things differently than you do, and let it rest. Or, do what someone with brains would do who still wants to respond: discuss their statement, don't just dismiss them as a person.

The woman who can walk? Her injuries are healed. Is this a miracle? I don't know. I would like to think it is, but that doesn't mean God has chosen to grace her with something other people don't deserve. This simply means she was given something back she once had. We are not to question why, as Christians. We cannot understand God.

And if you don't accept it was a miracle, we will go for the scientific answer: her second injury may have undone some of the previous damage to her spine. While I wish her all the best in life, two spinal injuries, even if they appear to be healed, will come back to affect her in years to come. For now, though, her spine has twisted back in just the right way that she has feeling in her legs again.

Let us not make a mockery out of this blessing, religious or otherwise. Let us not dismiss how great this must be for her by darkening the situation with arguments that may well insult her too.

Let us not argue over who is right or wrong when there is literally no way of knowing, and let us keep the insults out of the equation. No one deserves the abuse that has been shared today and repeatedly in the past. There is more to this faith than certain atheists give it credit for, just as there are more to atheists than the ignorant fools who insults on dismissing other people openly. I know people, not just friends, who don't believe in God, and the key to us getting along is that we never insist the other person is wrong or stupid. Let us at least do that.

Yours,

Paul,

A believer in God and science.

Middle Class Poverty

2011-11-19T19:09:00.001Z

First thing's first: when I refer to "poverty" in this post, I'm really just talking about not having any money in my bank account. I know there are people in much worse situations. This is relative poverty. With that said...

I've been tracking my poverty since the Christmas hours in work were given out. It's fair to say I'm going to be poor with the presents I have to get and the various social gatherings I'm expected at (one a week for three weeks in a row). While I'm not complaining that I have plans (for once), I'd like to at least be able to say I have money afterwards. I don't think it's going to be a possibility.

It's one of those times when I really wish I had more hours in work. While I like working only weekends, the 1-5 shifts I get on Saturdays (yes, a whole four hours...) really don't do it when it comes to saving money. I have the same sort of expenses every week. I have to spend around ten euro a week just getting to college - not a massive amount in and of itself, but it adds up every week. On top of that, I have my own particular buying habits... I've been buying comics a lot, lately, but I'm cutting down on the number I get now. Aside from not really enjoying some of the stories, I can't afford fifteen euro a week every week.

Anyway, in order to actually track how little money I would have, I've had to write how much I'll be getting each week and write in the costs for the days involved. It will work a lot better if I can plan it more expansively, but I don't really know how much certain things will cost. The way things have worked out, I've had to spread out the buying of presents over a number of weeks. I literally cannot afford to buy them all in one go, like some people. It also doesn't help that I don't know what I'm getting some people yet, either.

I write about this, of course, because it's an insight into what I can only determine as being a first world problem. I very much doubt that people in poorer countries worry about the extras at this time of the year. For them, it's more about survival.

For me, survival means having the money to go out with friends, to get something for my parents and brothers at Christmas, to maintain the same sort of life I led before the holiday season came in. I'm glad we don't exchange presents in college, or I'd be in trouble. (Read as: they wouldn't get anything...)

Every year I tell myself it will be different, but then something new and shiny comes along and steals my money. Though, in my defence, the main thing that cost me a lot of money this year was my trip to Taizé, which I had to go on for college. (I didn't have to do the module, but in choosing it I had to pay up.) I paid for this trip myself (what was left of the cost, after the college subsidy) and that pretty much drained my bank account. Suffice to say it hasn't yet forgiven me.

There are things I could do to try get more money, obviously, but they're mainly based on chance and a lot of hard work. I could have tried to get some freelance writing work, but that goes on the assumption that (a) I get the job, (b) that I'm good enough, (c) that I had an idea in the first place and (d) that I wouldn't be overwhelmed with college work at any particular time. I could have set up ad-based material on my website but that wouldn't pay off quickly, and it would have required a lot of work in itself.

Long story short, I'm going to be repeatedly poor until my pay-days over the next month, I might have been able to do something about it, and this is very much a first world problem related to a middle-class student with a weekend job, living at home. Also, poverty sucks.

After a few days...

2011-11-12T11:16:00.001Z

So, I started NaNoWriMo. It was originally my intent to pull out of the competition, but Bliss got the better of me. I'm now over 7000 words into the novel (added onto what I wrote during the summer - only a slight cheat in picking the same novel!) and, thankfully, less than 13K behind what I should be on. I have time to write this weekend, since I don't have anything I need to do any of my college work, and I have a rough plan. More importantly, I know where the novel is going outside of this rough plan, which has been ignored for the most part up to this point anyway.

The novel has taken on greater depths since I started writing it. For a start, the characters are a little more believable, there are more of them (the original plan called for four characters; I now have seven main characters) and they have more interesting stories behind them. Braddock is trying not to follow in his father's footsteps, while also trying to make himself known in the scientific world; Lyo is trying to start a family after leaving her own behind to marry Braddock; Alastair is trying to prove himself as a scientist in a city that praises Braddock's family; Michelle is trying to continue the research of her late parents into solar and nuclear energy; Andy is trying to prove himself to his community; Bliss is trying to find her place in whatever world she ends up in; and the Mother Muse is trying to give the world her greatest gifts, through a warped sense of delivery.

Add to that the ecological and ethical issues that various characters face, the struggle of faith in the world, and the impending desecration of a world without love, and you've got Bliss. I was proud of my ability to actually plot the novel, initially; the first plan was based on the singles of Muse played in order. That has, obviously, changed, since most of the elements of that plan no longer make sense: Lyo wasn't part of it then, and she's important now. That's what I'm more proud of: actually altering my novel to write something worth reading, something more creative than the novelization of twenty four singles.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, though. As much as I love the novel, it will require a lot of perseverance to actually write 50K in 20 days. 30 is difficult enough! However, I think I've already beaten my fail of a 2010 attempt, so that's a plus.

Building on my Camp NaNoWriMo experience is definitely the only way I'm going to get this done. I have to take advantage of the fact that I get into college about two hours before lectures, bring my laptop in every day with my charger and my plan that I will ignore, and block out all sound with music for at least an hour. Every day I have Drama or a workshop, I have to stay behind in college, anyway. At lunch time, I will go to the library and get my assignments done. There are only three for the main modules left, so that won't be too bad.

The real problem is this teaching programme we have to do in college. That'll take up a lot of time, I think. Especially since I can't find anything about the assignment we're expected to do. No deadline date, no details on what we're actually supposed to do, nothing.

Can I scream? I think I'm going to scream. Or drink tea.

Anyway, back to the novel. After a few days, I'm well under way to getting this done. If I'd started at the right time, I wouldn't be in any trouble. With So much to write before I'm even caught up, I have to write an average of 2250 words per day to finish on time. Otherwise, at the rate NaNoWriMo think I'm writing (as in, if I'm writing from day 1), I'll finish in January.

That feature is always fun for me. The more I write, the closer than date gets. It makes it look like I'm doing a lot more work when an hour of writing knocks off a month of time it should take for me to finish.

Anyway, my plan is to just keep on writing. I want to finish, mostly because I wanted to finish the book before Christmas anyway, and partially because I want to get the five free copies CreateSpace are offering to winners. I love incentive, I really do.

I'll still be writing my pep talks - Week 3 is the week people hate their novels and feel like giving up - but I'll have to focus a lot more time on writing fiction. If I can catch up, I'll also have to write a short story for something in college. There's a day of NaNo gone out the window! I might write it on my way to Croagh Patrick on Wednesday.

Only a few hours before I can get back to writing Bliss. It's going to seem like such a long time...

PS You can track my progress here.

Workload Overload

2011-11-08T18:58:00.001Z

Nobody ever said college would be so much work. I have to write two essays for Thursday. That's not really too bad. I mean, I've done the research for one (and the other is about a film), but I have to do other projects for college. Still, not too bad. Except we're going to get more work.

No, the real problem is that I want to do NaNoWriMo. Really want to.

This is a problem because, to start, I have to wait until my essays are out of the way. So, Thursday night, or on Friday. That gives me twenty days. Nineteen if you take away the day I'm going to Croagh Patrick next week. I'll have a teaching programme coming up soon, too. That'll delay me a lot. And I have to write a short story for a book in college, while also running the magazine.

But I really, really want to give it a shot.

Am I crazy? I mean, I'll be pushed to the limit every day. I'll have to write every single morning in college and every single night, and I'll need to get about a 1500 words done per session. That's possible, but exhausting. This is also probably the last time I'll get to do NaNoWriMo until I graduate, unless I can get most of my thesis work out of way early next year.

Ha!

I'll probably still give it a shot. I've wanted to finish the book, and I wanted to do NaNoWriMo before I realised I wouldn't be around for five days. I just don't want to let that get in the way. With Drama, I'm going to be stuck in the college for a couple of hours each audition day before auditions even begin, so I'll need to do something to fill the time, and working all the time on college work will just drive me insane.

So, all of this is why I am going to be facing a workload overload. I don't know whether this will cause me any serious problems. I know I can stop writing if I have to, because the college work comes first, but I don't think anything is guaranteed when it comes to NaNo.

Madness it is then. I'm going to do it, until I finish or I reach the point where it really is too much work to attempt anymore.

An Experience of Taizé

2011-11-06T11:07:00.000Z

I won't be writing a whole four-day journal of my trip to Taizé, but I can at the very least give you a brief overview of it. It started in the airport, with thirteen of us meeting at half four in the morning on Wednesday. Tired, groggy and a little bit cranky but excited, we made our way through Terminal 2 towards tea and breakfast. Shortly thereafter, we were on a plane to Geneva.

Yes, we had to go to Switzerland to get to Taizé. This confused us for a while - not as much as getting lost in the airport confused two of us when we got there, mind you - but it soon became clear that the two hour bus journey to Taizé was still an acceptable mode of transport. By the end of the trip, it was a blessing - the Germans have to, today, take a bus home; it will take them about sixteen hours.

We stopped for lunch along the way, which really helped, considering we were too late for lunch in Taizé. If you don't know, by the way, it's a tiny little village in central France where about 100 Brothers live in simplicity, visited by thousands of people every week for prayer and work. There were only about 500 people there when we arrived, since the busiest period of the year had passed.

Our rooms held six people each: six students per room and the lecturer in a room with other people. It was literally a case of there being enough room for a single square shelf, three bunk-beds and space to walk to each bed in relative comfort. Of course, knowing we would need pillows would have helped. Pillows, knives, forks, wellies... okay, the list goes on a bit.

The daily routine was actually okay. I expected a lot worse, to be honest. We had prayer three times a day, which consisted of singing a lot of songs, mostly in languages we didn't understand, and a reading by a Brother. Following morning and afternoon prayer, there were meals. Supper was before evening prayer, but after a workshop.

Between ten and twelve, we worked. For some, it was easy - very quickly cleaning the bathrooms or making signs - and for others it was a little more strenuous - raking up ten bags' worth of leaves or putting tent floors into storage, piled ten foot high and weighing more than we would have liked. But it was fine. Except for the rain and the German splashing us with muddy water.

At three, there was a Bible study meeting. It wasn't fun, to be honest. We've already studied the Gospel of Matthew in college, and we arrived half-way through the week, so we were in a group by ourselves. Still, it was fine. We survived it.

When we weren't praying or at work or at a workshop or Bible group, we were free to do as we wished. This consisted of going to see Brother Roger's grave (the founder of Taizé, killed in August 2005 during evening prayer), visiting the Source (a very lovely lake), going to the Crypte (where there was an altar for mass), going to the two shops (one where we could buy hot drinks and chocolate, one where we could buy books and postcards and, in one case, a dozen pieces of pottery) or just resting in the dormitories. There was also a lot of music played by The Moceans, who found a lot of excited German and Swedish teenagers to adopt as fans.

Work and the hot drink shop gave us a chance to talk to new people. I got to meet a lovely American girl, Cristina, who's travelling around Europe at the moment. We're meeting up when she gets to Dublin, for milkshakes, or possibly something a little warmer. Dublin's a little colder than Taizé... There was also a friendly Canadian called Tom, who I didn't get to say goodbye to. Thankfully Cristina agreed to give him one of my business cards, so maybe we can keep in touch when he gets back home (he's going to be in France for another four weeks, though!).

Then there was the Germans. They were only outnumbered by the Swedes in Taizé, but they were a lot easier to talk to (mainly because they had befriended Cristina already and had become fans of The Moceans). So, we got to talk to a lot of them. I don't know half their names, but there's always the chance I might get an email from them, or they might add me on Facebook. I'd like that. Aside from the sign made for the band, the Germans also supplied another great memory: Haribo. They love them. Michael, Laura and Dorithia were hilarious when they got to eat them. They also sang at (yes, at) Cristina and I in German. That was hilarious! I love the Germans!

So, yes, it was a fun trip. We're all exhausted, and we had a highly emotional Friday evening prayer, but we got home safely. Now we just have to write a whole project about it. That'll be fun, too, right?

Guest Post: A Paranormal Pit-Stop Interview with Barbara Dole Pt 1

2011-10-31T11:52:00.000Z

A good friend of mine, from the magical land of Canadia, has written a book, The Watchtower. She's self-publishing this paranormal mystery, which means I won't have to wait for it to come over to this side of the lake to get my hands on it! Thankfully, I'm not Barbara Dole. In what is sure to be a fantastic book from Darke Conteur, some people aren't just people. This interview will give you a taste of that, I'm sure. Details on part two can be found below.

Story Blurb:

His first day of work wasn't what Martin Cunningham expected. A sultry boss, a classy receptionist, the drama-queen foreigner, and a painfully shy techie who prefers hiding to human interaction, was the oddest group of characters he'd ever met. When an assassination attempt is made against his new boss, Martin comes face to face with the stuff of nightmares.

Now he and his new co-workers must race to prevent another attack, but where do they start? There's very little to go on, and the only solid piece of evidence escaped through the u-bend in the toilet. By the end of the day, Martin becomes one of the privileged few who really understands what lies in the shadows, and what it means to work in THE WATCHTOWER.

Take it away...

Thanksfor the intro, Paul!

WelcomeHumans, to another addition of The Paranormal Pit Stop. Your one-stop E-zine onthe Ethereal-net for everything in the paranormal world. This week, we're privilegedto have the other woman in the line-up at Terin Global. Psychic, and personalsecretary to Jezryall--Barbara Dole.

Paranormal Pit-Stop: Hello Barbara, so nice of you to join us!

Barbara: Thanks, Ithink.

P.P.S.:So tell our human friends a little about you?

Barbara:Well, I was born in Nice, but my parents came to Toronto shortly after I wasborn. We lived in Mississauga for a few years before moving into right into thecity.

P.P.S.: Living right in downtown Toronto is expensive,but you're family has money, don't they?

Barbara:My father had the money, not me. He reminded me of that every time I asked him forsomething. Even if it was something for school.

P.P.S.:Is that why you ran away at eighteen?

Barbara:I didn't really run away. I was an adult. I had every right to leave home, butyeah, that was a big part of it.

P.P.S.:When did you first realize you could receive information by touching things?

Barbara:I'm not really sure. Seems like I've been able to do it all my life. I'd touchpeople and learn who they were, what they were like. Do that a few times andyou learn how to act like them. I used to do it all the time when I was ateenager. It was fun pretending to be someone I wasn't. Then I realized I couldtravel through their life. See places they'd visited and things they'd done. Nowthat was cool.

P.P.S.: Isthat when you decided to become a criminal?

Barbara:I didn't do it on purpose. Wasn't like I made a conscience effort or anything. Ikinda fell into it.

P.P.S.:You kinda fell into scamming rich, old men?

Barb: Iwasn't scamming them and I didn't force them to give me anything. They're theones who offered to give me stuff. I never asked them too.

P.P.S.: Toobad the cops didn't see it that way. What were they going to put you away for?Ten years? Good thing you were able to cut a deal as a witness in the de Jont murdertrial?

Barbara:I thought it was a good idea. If I testified against Louis de Jont, they would reducemy charges to timed served and put me on parole. The cops were desperate. Theyneeded me as much as I needed them. I tell you, I was never so scared in all mylife. He kept staring at me the whole time I testified.

P.P.S.:It was your run-in with him that changed your career path?

Barbara: Yes. He thought I was a rich debutant and wasgoing to kill me for my money. At least I think it was for my money. When I touchedhim, I traveled down his time-line. All I saw was blood and death. I never feltso much anger or hatred.

P.P.S.: Yousaw the killings through his eyes. What was it like watching those people die?

Barbara:Horrifying. I can still see their faces when I close my eyes, but the worst wasthat I could feel what he felt too. He enjoyed killing them. Fed off the powerit gave him. He knew he held their life in his hands, and he took pride intorturing them.

P.P.S.: Didyou know he escaped?

Barbara:What? Are you serious? When? Why didn't you tell me sooner? I gotta get out ofhere…

Well,that's all the time we have for this week's interview. We would like to thankour host Paul Carroll for allow us to post this interview on the humaninternet.

If you'dlike to learn more about Jezryall and her staff, you can find more informationat the links provided below.

MoreCharacter Interviews:

http://darkeconteur.wordpress.com/paranormal-pit-stop-blog-tour/

NovelInformation:

http://darkeconteur.wordpress.com/novels/

Join usnext time when we invade the blog of foodie Marlene Dotterer, with the secondhalf our two-part interview with sexy Barb Dole. So, until next time, this is The ParanormalPit-Stop saying; just because it's dead, doesn't meanit's not alive!

Bio:

Darke Conteur is an author at the mercy of her muse. Writing in severalgenres, she prefers to write in paranormal and science fiction, and has storiespublished in Brave Blue Mice, Bewildering Stories, and The Absent WillowReview. When not busy writing, she looks after one wannabe rock-star, one husband,two cats, and one ghost dog.

Inspiration and November

2011-10-28T18:45:00.000+01:00

This seems the sort of post that belongs on my website, but this is more subjective mumblings as opposed to an objective advice article. I had lectures, this week, on Keats - you know, the great Romantic poet who died young, that guy. There was nothing especially inspirational in terms of stories in the poems that we looked at, not for me, anyway, at that particular moment in time.

The inspiration came from the lecture's choice of words. I won't reveal them. See, he used an expression to describe what Keats might have been writing about, and the four words he used have inadvertently given me an idea for a novel. The idea sort of clicked straight away, but I have a rule: leave it a day.

So, yesterday morning I thought about it properly again. I looked at those four words, which I wrote down separate to my notes, and the whole thing came flooding back in more detail. My head works weirdly that way, and I took advantage of it. Over a cup of tea and listening to The Saw Doctors on the bench just outside my college in the smoking area, I started to plan the book.

This is one of those books that would be categorised incorrectly if it was in a bookshop. It's a paranormal. It has some romantic elements. It would be classified as a paranormal romance, but it's not. Paranormal romance implies that the romance is paranormal, when the book has wholly independent paranormal and romantic elements. There are no vampires, werewolves or any other Gothic clichés that have been overdone in the last six years in the world of teenage fiction.

I am tempted to write the book for NaNoWriMo, but it occurs to me that actually taking part in NaNoWriMo will be impossible with college this year. While I do have a lovely break from college at the very start of November, I will be in France with no Internet connection, laptop, or privacy. This is part of my course.

When I get back, I will need to have two essays written by the following Thursday. Towards the end of the month, I will need to have written a journal of at least ten pages on Gothic films and books. Before the end of the semester, I will need to create two podcast-type documents - one audio, one video - for another module, while also getting a project about France done. This project will need to include more information than I currently have on a number of religious figures and movements.

I will also be taking part in an intensive, involuntary teaching programme. I will need lessons plans and I will need to teach. To add to this, I will need to get schemes of work done for my teaching in January. I'll also have to visit the school, and though it's local, this will take up a whole day in itself.

I have no problem doing this work. I accept that it is part of my college course. My problem is that I don't also have the time to write a novel, especially not if I'm losing several days at the start of the month. I have to run my college's magazine, The Scribbler, while also writing a short story for my website and another for the book I'm putting together in college. In short, I will be busy with these minor extra curricular activities.

And guess what? That's not it. While running The Scribbler and while writing two short stories, on top of all of the work I have to do, I will also be part of the play the Drama Soc are putting on. I don't yet know how much time that will take up. I also have two more poetry writing workshops to attend during the month of November. That's more time gone.

The simple fact of the matter is that, because of the sheer volume of work I have to do, I will not be able to partake in NaNoWriMo this year. I will still be writing various things, like essays and short stories and articles for my website, but I will not be able to focus on writing 1667 words a day, particularly not when I will be losing so many days. I won't even get into the climb of Croagh Patrick (again) in November.

What I will be doing is writing about NaNoWriMo. I plan on adding a "pep talk" to my website for each week in the month. I may write about characters and plots and settings and making things believable, and how to avoid stressing out, how to stop your family from annoying you and how to live with a writer (for the families that are cursed with one of us!). I just can't focus on a novel with all the work I have to do that is suddenly three times as much work as we'll have had to do since third year started.

I don't regret this decision. Yes, it means I won't reach my own personal deadlines, but I can still work on things, like editing Meet Sam, during the month, especially if I'm going to be stuck on a plane and on buses for three of the thirty days in the month, between France and the mountain out west. I would like to actually get that done properly, so I could finally move on with the damn thing. I'll probably need to print out a few different parts of the book, get a blank page or two and draft the additional details and scenes that will not only bulk up the book, but also make it better - there's so much depth not yet explored in it that a lecturer of mine was kind enough to mention when she read it, and I think the book will benefit greatly from this stuff.

I just need to actually get myself to do it. On that note... *reminds self to copy the post-it notes onto less sticky paper* It's something I can work on in France and on the bus to and from Croagh Patrick and in the mornings over a cup of tea. This novel is important to me, having evolved from an idea adapted from a film and a vision of this city I live in to something more and greater than that. It's a novel that doesn't draw on the lives of those around me. It's a novel I can be proud of, having written it in the November before my Leaving Cert exams. Even since then, it's stuck with me. I can't just abandon it now.

Is it foolish to imagine a dedication for the book already? Possibly. That's another little secret of mine, that tiny little message to go in the front of the book that not everyone takes notice of. I guess, of all the people I can think of dedicating my début novel to, this one just feels more right. Suppose I just have to make sure that happens by finishing and then submitting the book, eh?

Drama all over again!

2011-10-17T21:25:00.000+01:00

So, Drama starts back nice and proper tomorrow with auditions for the play. I've got to find my acting mode first (switch off one type of crazy for another, essentially), and then try get the director's drunken words out of my head.

There's something oddly dis-settling by "I am going to mould you" that I can't quite place my finger on...

The play won't be my own (I wouldn't act in that anyway), but The Rest is Silence has been read. If we have enough actors and money, both might go ahead. This is one of those times when "We'll see" isn't a straight no. I really would love for my play to go on this year (or at all!), but obviously there are certain constraints. I can't steal the cast for the play that's already been decided on and told about to the rest of the college!

I'm taking a bigger interest in the Drama Society this year, though. I didn't plan to - I was going to limit myself to writing one play and acting in another - but duty calls: I'm standing in as PRO (Public Relations Officer) until such time that the appointed PRO shows up or gives up. This means I have all the fun of doing a poster to advertise auditions tomorrow and Wednesday. Fun!

I think the real fun will be in performing monologues. I picked one from Doctor Who, The Big Bang Two. I didn't think I'd get the chance to do something like that, but there is a very definite monologue there.

SPOILER

You know, when he's going to disappear...

END OF SPOILER

Also, you know, seeing the director again will be fun. I should probably tell my parents I won't be home until late, though. I suppose they need to know that for dinners and all that jazz. Going home then going back just won't do it, not when the bus takes half an hour to get anywhere in rush hour traffic and there's a fifteen minute walk home from the stop! So, it'll be a bit of a long day for me. Lectures start at ten (but I'll be in earlier!) and end at half four, but the auditions don't start until seven.

Fun...

Still, I'll bring Frankenstein and everything will be dandy! But I will be hungry. That's the real trouble. I don't exactly have the money to buy extra snackage while I'm staying in college (thank you trip to France...).

This is going to be my life, isn't it? All work and no play. No hang on... it's the other way around, isn't it?

Neglect

2011-10-07T20:35:00.001+01:00

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I neglected you of late. Things have been busy and strange in varying proportions lately, and finding the time to come and write something has been at the bottom of my list. But then I decided, even though I have a dozen other things to do (okay, four, three of being read a book), I'm writing now. Are you happy?

So, the website is going well. I thought it wasn't getting as much traffic as I'd wanted it to, until I accidentally clicked "Old version" on Google Analytics, and it showed me a pageview total. So I added that to the New Version and now I'm happier with the amount of traffic I got. It's certainly a lot better than just visits. I do feel like a bit of an idiot for not noticing this sooner, of course.

College... well, college is college. I've got this trip to France coming up in a month, but I don't know for the life of me how much it will cost. I'm guessing my bank account will hate me for it, though. It won't talk to me for weeks, I'm sure. In the meantime, I've got to read lots of books. Those three I mentioned earlier? Well, one is God is Love Alone. The guy who wrote it set up the community in France we're visiting. The other two are novels on our Gothic module, but we get to pick which two we write about.

But I did set up a Writers' Soc. I think I mentioned that before. The problem, initially, was that no one really contributed to the meeting much. So Pinkie and I - that's her blogger name, not some kinky and/or strange nickname I'm giving her - set out a full plan of deadlines and whatnot. We have another meeting on Monday, when we can tell people writing for the new magazine - The Scribbler - when the first deadline is. That'll be fun!

Everything is pretty much going well. The Rest is Silence is almost completed fully, and I have a deadline to hand it in by, so that will get me working better than usual. The only real problem I have in life is with one friend who doesn't really see me or anybody else as a friend. That sucks, right? I mean, that's downplaying it an awful lot, but it sucks. I wish I could make this friend see some sense, but that's not really possible when I'm not allowed say anything. It makes me feel like I did a couple of Mondays ago... when I threw up on the bus.

I won't tell that fascinating story again.

So, there you have it. Mostly life is good, and aside from the sucky situation with the friend who doesn't see me as a friend being the saddest thing ever, I'm happy. The first years are now finally around long enough that they're not just miscellaneous faces sardined into the building. Some of them stick out from the crowd now. Some of them are curious people I feel I should be talking to more but won't, because that's the sort of person I am (shy and timid, not stuck up and pretentious). I had that same experience last year, and when I started in college, and I think the only way to let those sorts of people into my life is to either (a) join a club or society they're in or (b) just let it happen. That's pretty much how I spoke to every single friend I have now.

Now, blog, if you'll excuse me, I have to pretend I have plans for the night.

Neglectfully yours,
Paul.

At Least an Hour?

2011-09-25T23:38:00.000+01:00

So, I'm writing a play? Did I mention that enough? Did I mention it's called The Rest is Silence? What, several times? Well, I finished writing the first draft of it on Thursday. I've been typing it all up, since. With one scene left to type, I have discovered that it's a lot shorter than I had envisaged it being.

One word: frick.

It needs to fit the standard length of a play, which equates to at least an hour. The Rest is Silence is nowhere near that long, I don't think. I mean, I still have to do a reading of the play to see how long - in terms of time, not pages - it is, but it's still too long. I need to flesh it out a bit.

Thankfully, I have a couple of things to help me do that: my first NaNoWriMo experience, and the original not-written-down plan for The Rest is Silence, when it was just 'that play I'm going to write soon'.

The first NaNoWriMo experience was for Meet Sam. My initial plan left a sizeable gap in the timeline of the book, and it was something I was okay with leaving. Until it came to writing and I was way behind the desired word count for where I was in the book. So I had to fill in that timeline with some more events, though the actual plot of the novel never actually changed.

The original plan of the play had a couple of things that didn't make it into the written plan. Of course, mostly I had just forgotten. But I still remember what I planned with them. I'll have to call on them and write these scenes as soon as possible. I think that means more disappearing tomorrow morning! I have a habit of doing that.

The problem is that I need to listen to the play once or twice, after recording it, to make sure that (a) it sounds right and (b) it looks right in my mind's eye when I look at the stage with the dialogue being spoken. I'm a very visual writer, in that sense. If I can see somewhere I'm going to write about, I will. With the college plays, that just means locking myself up in a particular lecture room when no-one's there, because the plays go on there.

If I can finish writing the additional scenes tomorrow and finish typing it all up shortly thereafter, then I'll be fine. Ish. I'll also have to record myself reading the play tomorrow night to have any hope of finishing up on time. Then I'll have to do the play-back sessions, most likely long after lectures on Tuesday. Wednesday, I have plans. Tuesday morning, I have plans. But I need it all done to print off on Thursday morning and hand to the head of the Drama Soc and say: 'Here it is, it's done, please show the director!' At which point I will run away as far as possible, until I collapse from exhaustion.

But that's college for you.

In other news, I found out about a new museum I can include in the Writers' Soc plans. The Little Museum of Dublin was discussed on Twitter, earlier; it contains artefacts (can't say that word without thinking Warehouse 13...) from 20th century Dublin, tying in perfectly with my plans to try and see The James Joyce Museum. Which reminds me... I need to arrange a Writers' Soc meeting soon, don't I?

Third year is tiring and we've barely even started!

Clubs and Socs 2011

2011-09-21T20:09:00.000+01:00

Today, the first years got their first taste at Clubs and Societies at my college, though there was a lot less space than usual. They recently renovated the canteen to separate it from the entrance, but that's given us a lot less room to put up tables and whatnot. We made do with what we had, and though it was a little squashed, we got by with it.

While the first years got to have a look at a lot of the older societies, like the soccer team, the GAA team, the Trad Soc (I think it was there again, this year!) and the History Soc, I was one of the people to set up a new society: a Writers' Soc. The apostrophe is intentional: this isn't just a society of writers, it's the society owned by writers. On the list of new societies this year, I was joined by: the Dancing Society, the Running Club, and the Tea Society. Yes, tea. They want to get people together to drink tea. Plain and simple.

I was in a tiny little table in the corner of the room with the Drama Soc representative (Pinkie). We competed over sign-ups, even though we're both on the Drama Soc and we're both running the Writers' Soc. We started a trend of people putting posters up behind us on the glass, while I shouted things like "We're cooler than we look!" See, I can act.

The fun part was when one of the new first years came up and said "I was hoping one of these would be set up", and proceeded to sign-up for the Writers' Soc. Fantastic.

Of course, a lot of people were curious about the Writers' Soc. We're new, it's understandable. We didn't even have anything to show them to say how frickin' awesome we really were, except for our plans for the society. I say we... I mean me. Like I said: competing with Pinkie. Everyone got the same answer:

We're going to put together a book of short stories and poetry by the students of the college
We're going to (hopefully) organise workshops for students
We're going on museum* visits
We're going to run a competition or two
We're going to set up an online magazine

The latter will be free. Entirely. The only thing it will require, aside from articles, is the time involved to run it and write it. I'll be setting it up on Wordpress, which will also help to show people how easy it is to do something like that themselves. I was considering an ad-based magazine, but that would be too tricky and it would mean adding to our already tight budget.

On that note, I spent last night and today emailing printers and museums for prices. I found a couple of printers in Ireland that I liked, but so far the cost of them is too high. The museums are also cheaper than I first anticipated, so that will be of a huge help to us in our budget. While I have no doubt that the Student Union will support a new society with absolutely nothing to show for itself, there's also a sense of having to be realistic about this: the soccer team need new jerseys (and have needed them for years), the Gaelic players keep stealing the jerseys they use, the History Soc wants to organise a potentially expensive trip and there are two other new societies this year that may or may not require a lot of money. Drama always needs enough for costumes, ISDA membership and stage requirements, and transport (of the set, cast and crew). The budget for everyone will be tight.

Hopefully, we're not asking for too much. I'd like to have a college-specific workshop, rather than go for free open-to-the-public workshops. I will need to inquire about what happens if our book actually makes a profit when it's printed, of course. Will we get to use that money ourselves for the society? Will it help us next year when we look for (at least) the same amount of funding? I would like to think so. Thankfully, the enthusiasm of the writers who really wanted to join the society seems to be a display of real interest in making it all work.

* Okay, time for a silly little mistake I made. You'll notice it's beside the word 'museum'. Somehow, I managed to spell it wrong on my little sheet to say what we're doing in the society. A lecturer pointed it out. I can spell museum. I always spell it correctly when I type. But I hand-wrote it, and suddenly my inner-editor went into NaNoWriMo mode and I didn't seem to care enough (at eleven at night) about correct spelling. So I messed it up (just the 'e' and 'u' the wrong way around). All I can say is... oops.

I'm really looking forward to getting this society going properly. Once I have the budget submitted, I'll be calling a get-together type meeting to see what people want to do, where their interests lie, and generally get to know them. My experience is that writers are awesome people, and that's not meant to be self-flattering. Every writer I've met has been interesting, relatively easy to get along with and they tend not to shy away from my somewhat confusing eccentricities. Would it be too weird to wear my Pizza John Green or NERD t-shirts to the first meeting?

One thing I can mention, of course, is that I have a lot of experience in this field. While I may not have a novel published, I have written a lot. I also set up an online writers' group when I was sixteen, which later produced a book of short stories for charity. I edited a poetry book for charity. I've been keeping a blog for over three years and I just launched a website. This is pretty much the type of things the society needs to launch properly: a neurotic, writing-obsessed oddball like myself. Yes, I realise that may sound like a weird way to describe myself, but you know what: I embrace this weirdness. Hopefully it'll help a few people follow their writing dreams!

One Week In

2011-09-17T10:41:00.000+01:00

So, I'm a week into the website, and a week into college. Well, third year of college. That makes me feel older. A lot older. The past two years have gone by so quickly, and so much has changed since then. But that's a story for another day.

So, the website hasn't had much added to it since the novella excerpt, the short story, the poems, the articles and the Doctor Haik-Who. I've added two more haiku and one more poem, but right now the list of new material on the site is lacking. This will change, over time. There will most definitely be more short stories over the next few months. For the time being, I'm trying to get a couple of them submitted to different publications. Others will find their way directly online. That's just the way it is.

Quick question though: what genre of story would people like to read?

Fantasy? (Including Urban Fantasy)
Science Fiction? (Including Speculative Fiction and Superhero Fiction)
Horror? (Including Dark Comedy - something that should both make you laugh and disturb you a little)
General fiction? (Like the story already on the website, Dear World)

Cast your vote for the genre of your choice and I'll write the story. Voting closes September 29th. I have a few ideas, so I'll just go with whatever people want to read with this one. (Vote in the comments below, please. You don't need a Blogger account to do so.)

Poems and articles will find their way to the website more easily. Some articles will require a lot more effort than others, so they will take a little bit longer to write, but they will make it there!

As for college... When did it get so tiring? This further emphasises the pain of feeling older. In first year, I was able to sit through lectures quite easily. Now I'm struggling to stay awake. While I have all 10am starts (much better than a 9am start!), I'm also in quite late. The earliest I'm off, aside from Fridays, is 4.30pm. But then other days I have lectures until 6pm. We haven't even started with clubs and societies yet!

I think my main issue is my sleeping pattern. I'm staying up too late, even if I still go to bed relatively early. My other issue is laziness. Fact.

It's been a good first week, back, though. While I haven't been able to talk to some people as much as I'd wanted to, I've survived our first assignment (that felt like homework...) and I'm very happy with the optional modules that I got. I'll be off to France for a few days later in the year for one of them! How cool is that?

Of course, everything will get even busier once the second week starts, but with the way everything is timetabled, it'll be Christmas before we know it! Which is frickin' scary, on account of Teaching Practice in January. Before I know it, then, it'll be my birthday and I'll definitely be old! (Or, eh, old enough to legally drink in the US...)

A good first week overall, for the website and college. I'm hoping more people will find their way to the website, soon, though. I think it's getting lonely. For now, cast your vote for the story and if you have time, download the sample chapters of Stepping Forward! I'm looking for reviews! There may even be a competition in that, sometime soon!

Website is a Go!

2011-09-11T10:42:00.000+01:00

My website is launched! It can be found here: http://paulcarrollwriter.com

It's been a relatively long road. Well, six weeks. I decided, at the very end of July after finished Camp NaNoWriMo, to set up a website. The idea was simple: I would write articles on the website, I would post short stories and poems, and that would be that. I would run it through Wordpress.com.

That's how it started. I set up a Wordpress.com account, and I got things on the roll. Then I thought, I could run other things through this! And that's what I will be doing. I have ideas in place, some of which will appear sooner than others, that will be ad supported. I'm not a fan of ads on my own personal space, which is what this blog and the main part of the website will be, but when it comes to these other ideas, ads will be fine.

But that's way into the future (in one case, but not necessarily another). For now, I've got a set list of features on the website.

It functions like a blog, categorised and organised neatly so that it represents the two sides to how I work: with my head and with my heart. The "head" work is the articles under Writing Advice. The advice ranges from (very) basic legal advice to the basics of writing that I picked up over the years to a guide to what I call 50K in 30 Days, which is essentially NaNoWriMo. I've done it enough to know how to do it properly, and my "win" this summer in the Camp version was the final piece of encouragement I needed to try help people do it too. First drafts are important.

The "heart" work, then, is the Writing Samples section. This includes short stories, poems and Doctor Haik-Who. The last one is for a bit of fun and variety. I have specific niche talents and especially nerdy hobbies, and if I hide that fact from the world I'd be lying through my teeth (or fingers...).

Two ideas I have for expanding on what I offer the world - the ad based things I mentioned - also play on the "head" and "heart" of my writing. One will be an article site, the other a fiction based site, both attached directly to my website. For now, they will remain hidden (though I think some people can already guess the fiction based site!).

Combining the "head" and the "heart" is the Free Downloads section. I'll be adding downloadable pieces to the website through this section. Already there are opening chapters from a novella I wrote in Summer 2010, called Stepping Forward. I won't even attempt to explain it to you. The .PDF file features the opening five chapters, which should give you a pretty good idea of what the book is about, without giving away too much! It's short, of course, being a novella, but it's a fun book as far as I'm concerned! It didn't bore me in the editing process, anyway, and I normally can't stand to look back on things I've written!

There will be other things added to this section of the website, which you can find out about through my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages (links in the sidebar!), as well by checking out the News section, part of About. This About section has an author bio (er... my bio), the News section and a Writing Progress section. That last one is just a short page on what I'm working on. It's generally for larger projects than, say, my latest article for The Phantom Zone.

Aside from that, though, the website is like any other, right? I mean, the Free Downloads section isn't on every website, but it's not unique. I wanted this to be a new type of experience. Yes, there are plenty of ways to get in touch with me that make me a little more accessible than some authors, but I wanted to personalise my website more. So I set up a Skype account.

Yes, Skype.

In the sidebar of my website, you'll see three buttons. The first is to add me to your contacts list. I will generally accept all requests. The second button is to see my status - you'll know when I'm online just by looking at my website. The third button is to call me. It's as simple as that.

This enables people to meet the author! I'm not published, but I've seen lots of people who aren't published and who have websites and one thing you can't do is meet them unless you know them. I've spoken to dozens of authors online, but rarely face-to-face! I want to give people that option. My face is already on the website, so I don't have to worry about that aspect of it. And I only have to appear online when I'm free to talk. It's as simple as that.

One last thing about the downloads, though. They're free, but they're password protected. The passwords will be available on the website. The point isn't to stop people accessing the writing, but to stop spambots accessing it easily. I figured this was the best way to do it. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully you think it's worth it!

So there it is, my website is launched and ready to go. I hope you enjoy it, and feedback is appreciated!

Once More With Feeling

2011-09-06T22:55:00.000+01:00

The past couple of days have been... well, different. Finally getting a chance to talk to somebody (albeit only through Facebook mail), we came to a conclusion that for the time being we need space. There's too many things that need to settle before we can really talk properly, again, but it didn't feel like I'd lost a friend. I don't think I did, anyway. We've done this before, but this time it's really necessary. Yes, I was upset when it happened, but once I calmed down... well, I've been happy. It feels right, this space between us - we set it up, it didn't just happen badly and for no reason. Things didn't end.

To keep myself busy, last night, I started to edit a novella I wrote last summer called Stepping Forward. I'd planned to edit the first three chapters, but I discovered that when the time came to do it they were much shorter than I anticipated! So I just kept on working. And working. And working. And I finished editing the book.

I'd been fairly happy with the first draft, when I wrote it, and the one person that actually read it (the friend mentioned above) liked it, so when I finally tidied it up I was delighted! It's been over a year since I wrote it, first, and in the space of a single night I got the finished book together! I will probably be doing a cover for it at some stage, as I'm wont to do, but for now I'm calling that book finished!

This morning, I then wrote a scene of The Rest is Silence. I have a lot of work to do on that play, but my ideas for it are exciting. This morning's scene was probably one of the more challenging ones... though there are still some major things to happen that will require a lot of emotional energy from the actors! I hope they get what the play's about!

To bring the day to a close, I made a banner for my website. As I write this, there's a badly-done version sitting on the website. The lovely Lisa Sills is redoing it for me, and the results so far are great! I can't wait until I have something to show the world as being my official banner for my website. Sure, I didn't do the finished piece, but the idea behind its design was mine! People have given it some good feedback, so clearly I did something right.

Between now and Sunday, I have to finish up with everything on the site - that means hosting, a domain name, the finished banner and getting it all set up properly. It's going to be an exciting few days. The plan is to release the website on Sunday, when people will have access to everything I've been working on the past month and a half. This is my gateway into the world wide web, going beyond what I've ever set up. All the little bits and pieces of my life are coming together on this site.

Feedback on everything will be greatly appreciated! Until then... my thanks go out to:

Rebecca Woodhead, for her advice in everything I've done of late. This is both advice she's given me personally and things she's written about in Writing Magazine. I couldn't have done this without her.
Lisa Sills, for her help in the banner and her continued support in this project.
The aforementioned friend, for everything before this website. I couldn't have put together so much if there wasn't someone out there who made me feel like it was worth it. No one else continually gave me the encouragement to write and to be myself like he did, without greed, malice or spite. The very last thing he said to me was the final bit of encouragement I needed.
The friends who continually make me happy; the smartest girl in college who I can tell pretty much anything, the comic book girl who gets my little eccentricities, the Ninjas who make me laugh even when being in a bad mood is easier and the long-time friends I kept from secondary school who never fail to offer new and interesting insights into the world, none of whom have even begun to bore me after all these years!

This website is everything I could want it to be; parts of it were put together with my head, and parts of it were put together with my heart. Sometimes I fail to use either one of them, but not in this case. This feels like something has finally been done correctly.

Near Death Experience

2011-09-04T23:41:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was worrying. For the fish in the work. Yes, the fish. They almost died. Like, actually almost died. The pump stopped working. No more air was going into the tank. Sometimes people forget that fish need to breathe oxygen. And when the pump stops sending it into the water, that spells trouble.

First thing to do? Check the fusebox. The electrician's-brother in me did that first. The switch was down, and it wasn't staying up. (No innuendos, please.)

Next step? Check to see what's wrong. The fuse might have blown, or something else stopped working. It wasn't the lights, anyway. They would have just gone off. So we got an extension lead from the centre security guards, plugged the pump in and... nothing.

That gave us a new problem. It wasn't just a fusebox problem. It was a pump problem. An expensive pump. The natural reaction was to call the local (very local) pet shop for help, but they could only help us with the fish. So a fish-tank company were called. They arrived right before closing time, meaning someone had to stay behind (thankfully it wasn't me, because I wasn't in the shop at that stage!)

The new pump was installed, with the little note that if we'd waited a single day... well, the fish would have asphyxiated. You know what that means, right? We saved their lives! Super booksellers to the rescue! And we had our pet shop, security and pump-installer friends to help us! Hip-hip hurray!

The madness of the fish's near death experience was surrounded on all sides by screaming children, pouting adults and books being put in the wrong place... none of which were connected to the fish, of course, but they didn't help. It was an eventful weekend, to say the least! But it wasn't all bad. The fish were alive and well when we got into the shop (and when we left!), various assorted problems were sorted out and now my co-worker gets to enjoy a trip to Japan. I got almost everything ready for my website, so it won't be long before I'm ready to launch it! I'm hoping for a September 11th launch (I may have already said that a dozen times...).

In the meantime, I've secured my wordpress.com username for my X-Men story. I figured it was best to do that now, rather than wait and risk it being taken. Now I just need to actually write the story. I still think it's going to be amazing. Probably less disturbing than the fish almost dying, too. At least I'm in control of who lives and dies!

Deadlines Approaching!

2011-09-03T11:42:00.004+01:00

My website is, hopefully, being launched on September 11th. I have a lot of stuff to do between now and then, but I chose the date for one reason and one reason only: it's the day before I go back to college. I want to have the website up and running with content to view (and share?) before then, but I'd be too pushed for time to try get everything done before then.

Because I slacked a little the past couple of days, I have to play catch-up on my workload. I've got to write four scenes of The Rest is Silence, which will be no small feat, and that's only one of the many things I have to do. Thankfully it's also the only explicitly creative goal for the day, the rest being website work, editing, etc.

I have to finish editing a short story - the first short story that will be going on my website. That's my primary concern, because I don't want that section to be blank when I launch. The story is called Dear World, but I can't tell you much more about it without spoiling it. It's something I hope people like, that they can maybe connect to, but that I mainly wrote upon seeing a publication opportunity. It wasn't accepted, but then I didn't really believe it would be. I still like the story, though, so I'm posting it online. I just don't believe in posting on a website someone else set up. This is my baby, so it's staying in my house.

Once that's all done, I have to get some poems selected for the launch of the site. I'm not the best poet in the world, but some of the stuff I've shown people has been liked, so I'm going to share it through the website. I sometimes write with particular people in mind, other times I find the connection with a person after it's written. (Classic example in my novel Meet Sam was realising how much like Nick a friend from college was, who I didn't meet until ten months after the novel was written!)

To finish off my day, I have to type up articles for the website. I have five categories for non-fiction on the website, and each one needs a piece written in it by launch day. Of course, I need more pieces to post in the future, which is where next week's workload comes in. I have to write more articles, edit something, get more poems ready, and work on the banner. Still working that one out, mind you!

See, I have deadlines for a lot of stuff. All the basics for the website need to be ready by the 11th at the latest, but preferably the 10th. My play, The Rest is Silence, needs to be written, typed and edited by the time college starts back on the 12th. I'm not in until the afternoon, but I don't want to be working on it, then. I have a deadline list, and the play needs to be finished so I can write my novels throughout the college year, while continuing to work on the website and for The Phantom Zone, and then I'll get into the heavy planning stage of my X-Men story that I've been talking about on Twitter and Facebook; that needs to be planned in some details by December 10th.

I might be mad with the amount of work I'm taking on, but I wholly believe it's possible to do all of this. And hey, there's a reason I chose December 10th - Christmas break! I will finally be able to collapse, then, after a tiring first semester! (I'm not entirely sure of the date I'm off, but that's my deadline, anyway!) In the meantime, I have to get a lot of other stuff ready, before I even go back to college. I don't think I'll ever stop working, you know that? It's like I'd heard on the radio, and mentioned a short while ago, a professional does the work even when he doesn't feel like it. Thankfully I happen to know some amazing people who will make the winding-down periods in my life so much better!

A Pottermore Experience

2011-08-28T22:11:00.000+01:00

I've spent a bit of time on Pottermore today, after I was given the go-ahead to enter yesterday. At first, I was unimpressed. Actually, that's the understatement of the century: Pottermore sucks when you first enter. You have no wand, no house, nothing to do and no one to talk to, and it's all very boring. The only thing to do is to follow the story and read about a few different things, but otherwise it's the most useless thing in the world.

Nothing at all good happens until you reach Diagon Alley and get to buy some things. You follow Harry's buying path, meaning the wand is last. The wand is the first thing that makes Pottermore fun, to be honest. Following a series of questions, I was assigned my official wand of wizardry: ten and three-quarter inches, alder, slightly springy and with a unicorn core. I was really rather happy about this. There's more info on the Pottermore site about the different cores and woods used, and for the first time the website adds something extra to the Harry Potter world: detailed information on the very basic tool all witches and wizards carry with them, and a first-time glance at some of the secrets behind their maker.

Once you visit Diagon Alley, you're also able to brew potions. My advice: use the free test run to give it a try, but then wait until later when potions will earn you house points. I don't know whether or not the potions you make before house assignment (if you can even do it!) will count towards your score.

Come Chapter Seven, you get into a house. Again, questions are asked and it's a little more interactive again. Plus, you know, you get into a house. Nevermind the questions: now you can boast about being in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, cause panic about being in Slytherin or hide the fact that you're in Hufflpuff (kidding!). What house am I in?

Um... rawr?

So, I'm in Gryffindor. It's fun knowing that, and while it doesn't change the experience of Pottermore, suddenly I'm a part of something bigger than just myself along on this little island in the midst of the seemingly great Pottermore. Also, you know, Dumbledore was in that house and he's friggin' awesome. (Along with Harry and whatnot... but let's face it, Hermione and Neville really are the best people in the house!)

What I have yet to experience is a wizardry duel, and with a lack of any lessons on how to do this I remain pulled back into the story. I'm enjoying the idea of reading along to the "moments" in the book that are highlighted on the website, so it'll take me a while to get through it all, but it's allowed me to rediscover the wonderful storytelling in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It's not just the magic: there is genuine humour in this book that I might have missed as an excited child waiting for the climax and possibly skipping sentences to get through the book quicker.

That's what Pottermore really has to offer for older fans, like myself: a chance to rediscover the books, if they're put them down for a few years (yes, years!)

The website doesn't open to the public officially until October, so it's still in the Beta testing stage. But it will be worth it, in a way, when people start flooding in. Just be a little patient in the beginning: it will be boring, but it gets better. The novelty of wands and houses really does add to the excitement a bit. Also, I've got this lovely boil removal potion brewing at the moment. It requires my attention, soon. When I discover some more of the magic of Pottermore - and I hope it doesn't end at novelty - I'll add a brand new post for that. And who knows, mayhaps I'll make some friends on the site!

Little Bit Busy

2011-08-27T11:06:00.000+01:00

I heard on the radio yesterday that the difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional does the work even when he/she doesn't really feel up to it. With that in mind and with three times the hours I normally have in work to exhaust me and subsequently less hours to actually do anything, I did some work.

Okay, "some" might make it seem like I've been busy all morning. I haven't. Really I just wrote a couple of reviews, neither of which have been read by the editor yet. But it's a start, right?

See, I know I'll have a lot less hours in work come September, but I'll be starting college again. And the joys of college also come with the assignments and tutorial work and lectures, and that alone is going to take up a lot of my time. You know, before I even talk to my friends. So I figure I have to get down to working even when I'm tired and even when I don't really feel like working on reviews or anything else remotely like work.

But hey: I want to be a professional! I already have plans for a project in the new year, the planning of which has begun, and that'll be occupying a lot of time in my life and a lot of space on my website. Thankfully, there's already some interest in it from some lovely people on Twitter. So that'll be fun.

In the meantime, I actually have to set up my website. It still feels weird saying I'm working on a website, and it's even weirder to say I have a writing job for The Phantom Zone that I will, at some stage, be getting paid for. Things couldn't be more bizarre.

Oh, and I have a Pottermore account. It's not great. Unlike Google Plug sayins, I don't think it's going to get better with more members. I've looked at the comments: people are just saying "interesting". Maybe I need to get access to more of the features, but if things aren't immediately available for testing by the Beta testers, it escapes the point of the website. More on that when I get a chance to look into the site more, but so far I'm calling it a let-down.

Why You Found Me

2011-08-22T10:30:00.000+01:00

Since hearing the Chameleon Circuit song Everything is Ending in the middle of July, I've had this thought in my head, based on the line: "And this must be why you found me." We find each other. But, you know, it doesn't seem like it happens on purpose. The most unlikely friendships in the world seem to be of some benefit to the people involved, but there's no real way of planning their existence.

I've been through a lot of crap in my life. That's undeniable, with some of the people I went to school with. (It's not just that, but it's one of the things that stands out that I feel comfortable enough to share with the Internet - friends know the rest.) But it seemed to me that because of all the crap, I just couldn't trust people straight away. It takes a lot for people to earn my trust, even if they don't realise they're doing it. It's not malicious and it's not because I'm not friends with people, I just don't trust very easily.

But then... well, I suppose I was found. The very first time I thought about telling someone what was going on in my head, about some of the crap in my life, it just felt right. It had nothing to do with anybody else I was friends with: I just felt like I could trust this one person without really knowing for sure that I could. For the first time in my life, I could trust someone completely without them needing to earn it.

Something like that is special. I've never met another person who, the moment I felt like I should say something, I did. I was able to come out of my shell a bit, do things I'd never done and I never felt alone. That's weird, isn't it? I mean, there were plenty of times when this friend wasn't around, but even just talking on the phone or getting the odd text or seeing comments on the Internet, just felt right. Everything in my life just seemed to fit properly because I had a friend I could trust.

Mind you, I never thought I would trust him. I never once thought about telling him anything, because I didn't feel it bothering me. My whole life I'd been looking for a friend like him, though (very clear memories of primary school trying to make friends with different people... none of it seemed right!). I stopped looking a very long time ago, but then it just happened.

Things like that don't happen all the time. I know that. But the point of all this: when you're found by a friend (or otherwise) like this, don't let it go. It'll be one of the most important relationships in your life. It will change you for the better, without you even meaning it to. It will just happen.

Mutant Babies!

2011-08-18T23:03:00.001+01:00

On Twitter, a discussion got going between myself and @Darke_Conteur about X-Men. It took a turn for the better - and strange, when taken out of context - when we started to talk about next generation mutants. The Mutant Babies, we thought, would make for more compelling stories in the X-Men comics. We've all seen the various incarnations of Scott and Jean get it on, and Scott and Emma, and Wolverine and Jean, and Gambit and Rogue, Rogue and Magneto, Iceman and Polaris, Polaris and Havock... you know what, I'm getting sidetracked. The point is: there are lots of mutant couples in the X-Men comics, and lots of possible pairings, and the on thing that doesn't last most of the time: the children.

Okay, so Scott and Jean technically have three children together: X-Man, Cable and Rachel Summers. Except X-Man was grown by Sinister in the Age of Apocalypse universe and Cable is from the future, and they're basically the same person. To make things even creepier, Jean's clone Madelyn Pryor had a child with Cable, called Stryfe. So, they have four kids whose powers range from: telepathy (from Jean), telekinesis (from Jean), superhuman strength and durability (cybernetic in nature), technopathy (cybernetic in nature), precognition (from Jean, if enhanced beyond her capabilities) and, er, cross-dimensional travel (that one bewilders everyone). Scott's part in the powers seems to be in enhancing what's already there - X-Man seems to be able to focus his telekinesis into an eye-beam. Sound familiar? (It should: Scott is Cyclops!)

Rogue and Magneto also have a child, resulting in the phrase, "Yeah, scientific sex!" making its way into the World Wide Web. He manipulated her bio-magnetic field to allow him to touch her skin... anywhere. So, they have a relationship and a baby. A baby that has telepathy. This raised the question: how are the children of Rogue's powers determined? One source on Oliver Raven, the child of Gambit and Rogue, says that Oli has his mother's powers, to the extent that he has permanently absorbed telepathic and flight abilities from unknown sources.

Nightcrawler's children all seem to have powers that link back to his biological father, Azazel, just as Nightcrawler's siblings share the same trait. This is likely due to Azazel not being entirely human - beyond the extent of being a mutant. It's suggested, a lot, that he's a demon. Go figure.

Examples out of the way, we started to wonder: what sort of powers would different couples' children have? Havock and Polaris - radiation and magnetism. She took her father's powers, his are similar to Scott's, his brothers. But would there be a cancellation of one parent's powers, like Scott and Jean? Or would there be more devastating effects? Remember, Polaris's siblings have powers completely different to her own: Quicksilver has superhuman speed and Wanda can alter reality for frick's sake! There's no telling what Havock and Polaris would produce. The same goes for Kitty and Piotr, both of whom alter their density in one way or another, and the list keeps going on and on as the writers attempt to add new twists to the tale.

I'm not even going to go into the matter of Legion, Xavier's son with the multiple personalities and abilities. Lets just call it complicated and move on.

The basis of the discussion resulted in the big questions: why haven't the writers utilized the children more? Why are they telling the same stories of the same characters over and over again? We get it: Scott's not exactly faithful. We get it, Logan likes Jean. We get it - they're adults, they have sex.

But for God's sake, why can't the writers let the children take the stage?

Think about it for a second. Say you take Rachel Summers. She's essentially Jean, in terms of abilities. Complicated. Cool. Take the child of Havock and Polaris. Rachel has a cousin. Maybe that cousin is a villain. Lets face it, someone has to be. Suddenly you have a new and complex story, because maybe the cousin - the grandchild of Magneto - hates humans. We're going somewhere. You might have to kill off Havock and Polaris for the story to work, but it's going somewhere.

Kitty and Piotr, say they have a couple of kids. They already have Michael together, though his powers and most records of him are missing from the Internet from what I can see (he was in Astonishing X-Men). So, their kids also have half-brothers and -sisters. (Fidelity... not the X-Men's strong points...) They don't all have to appear, but the ones with powers - and complicated powers, at that - would add to the mix.

The list goes on, of course, because the X-Men have been in circulation since 1963 - that's 58 years of sex they could have been having, and they haven't aged much. But with all of those stories told, the writers just have to pick the ones that can match up: stick to a story and keep it that way. One that's over, mind you, not one that they will decide will contribute to the same database of cannon as others.

Would I like to see this comic? Of course I would. It would be dynamic, exciting and it would add to the development of the comics. But it would have to be done correctly. A World War X type situation might help: they've been delving into mutant hate since the beginning, so making a war out of it won't be going too far. The set-up in the upcoming X-Men: Destiny is ideal - people hate mutants, so new mutants pop up along the way. Having the children struggle in this war-filled world, perhaps sent off for safety before puberty like English parents did during World War 2 and therefore separating them from their parents just as their powers pop up, would be a new and interesting story.

Once they don't bring in the frickin' aliens again. God, I hate the aliens in X-Men, especially the Brood.

Anyway... thoughts on that? The development of the comics seems to have gone from What If to What If, and it's possible people might get tired of it all. There's a reason people aren't liking the look of Destiny - I will still be playing it, because I love X-Men games! - and it's because they're not doing it right. But I do like the set-up of it, with new mutants and anti-mutant riots picking up. And let's face it: Marvel could do with some fresh blood. And the family drama? Well, try explain to your four-years younger half-sister why your shared daddy isn't around while the sky lights up red (and green, and blue, and then goes black... mutant wars will be colourful, obviously).

Oh, That Play Thing

2011-08-15T17:47:00.000+01:00

In college I'm known for two things (aside from always attending lectures and being kind of annoying... latter might be an understatement): writing and drama. Thankfully, there's way to combine those two joys - I'm writing a play. So far, the details of the play are quite secretive. I've been describing it as "complicated" to avoid giving anything away.

The briefest and simplest explanation I can provide for the play is this: It's about mental health. Yes, that's possibly one of the vaguest statements someone can make about a play, trumped by 'It has characters and a climax or two'. But that's all I'm saying about the topic of the play.

I'm hoping that it will be put on in college - during brief talks with the VP of the Drama Society I indicated that, if we don't have a director with a play to put on, I'd like the society to consider my play. Of course, given the fact that rehearsals generally begin quite early, I have to have the play written before college starts back. That's four weeks to the day.

Lisa Sills assures me that I shouldn't have a problem doing it. She wrote a 120 pages screenplay in a week, I can do a 60-ish page play in four weeks. Plus, you know, I do have experience writing a lot in a short amount of time.

The reason I'm writing this post, of course, is simply by means of an update. It's easier to explain the play in one place than to try explain it in four others, each with their own character limits. Too messy.

Moving on... If we don't have a director, I've expressed interest in directing the play. This is mainly because I don't want to act in this play. I've written it so that the Drama Society can put it on, but also so that any other theatre groups can. I'll be explaining that better closer to the opening night (if there's an opening night).

In the meantime, I have a title for the play. Finally. After weeks (if not months) of trying to come up with one. Ready? Comfortable? Okay: The Rest is Silence.

I'm not going to go all English student on you and explain its significance, but I will extend my thanks to Nancy and Kate on Google+ for the feedback and discussion, and to my brother for giving his opinion on the options available.

Now I just have to write the play. But I never start without a title! That is Rule Number Uno for me. If/when the show goes into production, I'll be announcing those details. Though probably not here. See the links in the sidebar (those colourful buttons to the right) for announcements of various sorts.

Perks of the Job

2011-08-09T21:56:00.000+01:00

Unless you're new here, you know I have writing job at The Phantom Zone. It's what I sum up as being a geek website. That doesn't quite do it justice; essentially, it's site for articles and reviews relating to science fiction, fantasy and horror across film, comics, books and games. This covers quite a lot of what actually makes it into the mainstream media.

The job, for which I merely have to contribute somewhat regularly - recent delays are about to be explained - enables me to write about the films I go to see every weekend (well, almost every) because mostly they fall into one of the three above-named categories. The job also allows me to review books I love, because there's no exclusivity to "adult" market books, given the fact that kids and YA books are now being read by adults more freely. They're simpler and easier to get through, and that can make them more fun for a busy reader.

But the perks of the job get better, and this is what has delayed recent posts: I get to interview some of my favourite authors. I don't think The Phantom Zone has had too many interviews in the past, but General Zod, my editor, gave me permission to seek and publish interviews on the site. Following my review of The Warlock, I was able to then interview the author, Michael Scott, via Skype.

Now, that's why I've been so inactive on the site. The Skype call went on for a while. I recorded it, but I had to get the actual words of the call written down. I still have to put together an article around the quotes I'll be taking from the interview. But overall, it was a fun experience. Michael's very charismatic and he had a lot to say about his books and about writing. I have two more interviews lined up so far - one via email, the other unconfirmed. I've received a free copy of the first author's book, and I will be receiving a copy of the other author's. The fun part? The latter is one of my favourite authors. I can't wait to get to interview him for The Phantom Zone!

So, two free books so far. That's a plus. So far I haven't been paid - payment is, as advertised, based on ad-revenue - but that's okay for me, for now. I know I won't be cheated out of money from the editor. In the meantime, I can review books for the site and I've been given permission to do a number of different articles for the site, so it's simply a matter of picking and choosing when it appeals to me/when the time is right.

Even better, still, I get to call myself a professional writer. Yes, I'm still working at a slow rate - too slow to make a living if I was writing for print magazines or papers - but I will be getting paid for the job. I'm an actual (going-to-be) paid writer. That feels pretty damn amazing to say!

By the by, just so we're clear: unless Zod disapproves a book to be reviewed on The Phantom Zone, all my sci-fi, fantasy and horror reviews (including YA in those genres) will be posted there. I'll still have other book reviews of my own, here, just not in those genres. So... keep that in mind. My tastes haven't changed, I just have a job that I can use those reviews for. Also, because I'm now doing reading for two places, my reviews may not be as regular as usual (i.e. once a week on a Wednesday) but I will always attempt to write a couple of posts a week, unless I'm away from the blog entirely (for personal reasons, a holiday or an overload of college work, including teaching practice).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to collapse from exhaustion after having watched several hours of the riots last night and being woken up early this morning. Until next time...

It's Not Okay

2011-08-08T21:29:00.000+01:00

I'm sure people know: London is burning. Fires, riots, looting; it's a scene from dystopian novels, and there are no police around to stop any of this going on. I'm hearing on the news that it's not just the people living in the areas: people are coming in from different areas of London and acting up. Buildings are burning, both homes and businesses.

One of the people I follow on Twitter retweeted something important: Europe is just coming out of a recession. Money is still tight. And no one can afford to pay for all of this damage. These places will remain burned for a while. That's an unfortunate truth London may have to face.

And here's the thing: it's not okay.

It's not okay for people to loot and steal and take everything of value in buildings.

It's not okay for people to burn down these buildings.

It's not okay to do it in the name of a man who was shot by the police.

It's not okay to put people's lives in danger in the name of false justice.

It's not okay for London to suffer.

It's not okay to blame all of London's youth.

This is a strange situation. There's no denying that. People are acting out and I don't see how they can excuse themselves of it when they're caught. Rioting is not cool, no matter what these people think. Bored? Angry? Annoyed at the government? None of those are reasons to endanger lives and damage the financial futures of so many people. Can't get a job? Don't steal from shops. Not in school? Don't make it so people can't afford to go.

Don't just talk about the events going on, contributing to the mass of information filling the Internet: spread the word that it's not okay. And whatever you do, remember that it's not every teenager and young adult in London that's doing this. There are limited groups of people doing this damage.

Hopefully the people of London can get through this. The next great fire that city should see if the Olympic flame coming in. How the guilty youth can forget that their city has so much to offer in the next year is beyond me. Good luck, London.

Incentive

2011-08-06T22:56:00.000+01:00

So, I found a way to make myself do some work: incentive. In this case, it was Incentive Fudge. I bought a tub of fudge in work (don't ask why a bookshop sells tubs of fudge, please...) and I decided that for each of the four items on my list of tasks to do for the day, I would get a piece of fudge from the tub.

It's simple, though you don't have to use fudge as your incentive. Tonight, despite being tired, I got two of the four tasks done already. I will be doing a third one before bed, in my notebook, but I won't be able to do the fourth. It requires more time than I have, so I'll just move it along a day.

My tasks were:

Review Super 8
Type 7 questions and answers for the Michael Scott interview (by the way, I interviewed him yesterday! The review of The Warlock can be read here.)
Write a piece for my website (I have an actual piece in mind, but I don't want to spoil it!)
Write a piece for Pinkie's Blog

I have done the first and fourth on the list, and I will be doing the third, but the interview is recorded on my digiphone, so I won't be able to write that up tonight. It requires playing back on the interview a lot, and there was a lot said in it.

That said, I think if I hadn't procrastinated earlier, I would have gotten my list done. The only thing left to do instead of doing the second piece is to make a new list for tomorrow and include it on that. I have a little more time, tomorrow, since I'm in work later, so I can probably get a couple of my tasks done early on.

FYI, I learned this trick on Google+ and in reading my magazines about writing. An article in Writers' Forum spoke about freelancing and prioritising time. The G+ thing was someone's writing diary. It's a good idea and I'll be writing about it more on my website, I think. It's not something I have time to do because I'm running a website, a blog and submitting to The Phantom Zone, and I'll be going back to college, but for people who don't already have a boatload of things to occupy their time, it's useful for making sure you do your writing for the day.

Me, I just use a tub of vanilla fudge.

Writing Magazines and Why You Should Read Them

2011-08-04T23:11:00.000+01:00

If you want to write and you don't think you can get all the info yourself through trial and error or from the experiences of your friends, you need to check out the writing magazines in your country (Ireland and UK share most magazines). These magazines are not only a good read, and they not only provide work for writers, they contain information across genres and formats that writers can afford to miss. As well as that, there are valuable submission opportunities in the pages of many writing magazines that would likely get lost among the years-old search results Google spews out every now and then (it's not their fault those pages are still popular!)

In the UK and Ireland, the two magazines that stick out for me on the shelves are Writing Magazine and Writers' Forum. While the former is my favourite of the two, WF does have it's benefits, especially given the fact that editors take different directions each month and have different writers. Even if both magazines covered the same topics, most of the time the writers will be saying a lot of different things that readers can make use of.

Unfortunately, the latest issues of both magazines had the same sort of articles on women's magazines. The market for women's writing is stronger but more competitive, and both magazines focused on the decline in magazines accepting short stories. There's not much else you can say on that, except for the writers to offer advice on submitting to the remaining magazines - and identifying what they want!

Both magazines also offer features on using the Internet as a writer. For Writers' Forum, Alison Baverstock occasionally takes up the position, but not every month. Baverstock's articles are also limited to a page most of the time, so they're more of an overview than anything else. Over the past few months, Rebecca Woodhead has been taking over two-three pages of Writing Magazine with in-depth guides on how to use Blogger, Wordpress, Twitter, Facebook and more; each network is divided by issue, making them valuable and still short guides to these sites. For these guides, WM is the one to look for. (As a side note, Baverstock does have three excellent books to check out, on publishing, marketing and whether or not you have a book in you).

If you can spare the money - £3.60 for WF and £3.75 for WM, though it's longer and has more submission opportunities - these magazines are worth getting from the shop. If you want to subscribe but can't afford both, your best bet is to look at an issue of both and pick one after seeing how you like the writers and the content. Couldn't be simpler.

And, just in case you're wondering if you've read Rebecca Woodhead's articles: yes, I did use her tips to make my website, set up my Facebook page and set up my LinkedIn profile. The only thing I haven't done is a book trailer. I think I'm missing the word "yet" from there. Whatever the case, they were in-depth enough to teach me almost everything I need to know about using the different sites, and that's just one reason to go looking for these magazines. (There's also the tips from different writers on all genres and, in WF, a magazine-submission guide for different topics each issue: Law magazines, Religious magazines, Parenting magazines; consider what you want to do as a writer, then see which magazine is most helpful to you!)

Review - The Great Gatsby

2011-08-03T22:37:00.000+01:00

Back when I was in first year of college and infinitesimally younger, our lecturer put F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby on our course for us to read. Now, I do my best with college reading material, but there's something about being told to read a book but there being no obligation to read the book that just puts me off it entirely. I tried to read the book, and failed miserably. Then John Green decided people should read it, and suddenly I had an interest. I think that says more about my willingness to follow up on a recommendation of a book than it does about my interest in college.

Anyway, by far the biggest highlight of the reading of the book - aside from finally doing what I'd set out to do before, and failed - was to discuss the book with John Green. He made a video talking about the first chapter, and I seized upon the opportunity to answer his question about Gatsby's 'American Dream'. More on that at the end of the post in a "spoiler" zone. Until then: the review!

So, what did you think of the book when you finally got around to reading it?
I was honestly and pleasantly surprised by how funny it was. I think a major problem with the great classics in literature is that many of them are portrayed as exactly that: great and classic. Classic implies age, and age reminds us of our grandparents laughing at stories that are only funny to them and no one else. But this, while being a "classic" was nothing at all like that. The humour was full of wit and intelligence that seemed like a product of the great modern minds, not just in books but on television in talk shows and the like (Stephen Fry immediately comes to mind.)

Beyond that, there was also a great story to fill a relatively short book. There were characters of varying complexity, scenes of places that, while being dated, felt right when I read them and relationships that were imagined perfectly. It was an old book, yes, but a story that can still be read today. (In fairness to it, actually, it's not even ninety years old. If I'm half as interesting at that age I'd be delighted! If I aged as slowly as the book, too, even better.)

What's your favourite aspect of this book?
I don't know whether this is because John Green recommended it or whether I just noticed it, but I like how there was a clear comparison between The Great Gatsby and Paper Towns; in each book, the characters all mis-imagined people expertly, so that Gatsby was a whole number of different things and only some of that true, like Margo was a different person according to everyone else. How we imagine people complexly and how we get it wrong is by far one of the most interesting messages that I can take from the book (both of them, actually). It's a book that can teach us a lot about not only fiction but the people who surround us, too.

Who would you recommend this book to?
If you like John Green, this is a good book to pick up next. The humour is similar (if a little older) and the style of writing is different, but the messages in the book are familiar and worth picking up. For lovers of American literature, for people who like to read the classics, for people considering studying English in university and for people who love good stories and/or strong messages in books, this is for you. It's a fantastic book and once you get into it you'll fall in love with it. Unfortunately, it's only nine chapters long, so it'll be a short lived romance. Some of the best ones always are.

The "spoiler" section, featuring the comments on The Great Gatsby

I apologise for turning all English-student on you, but this is actually what I said in the comments section of John's video. I'm such an incredible nerd sometimes.

Me: It seems to me that the continuing search for wealth and monetary success is surrounded not only in a growing sadness, but in a mixed sense of morality (seen clearly in Tom's mistress in New York). Daisy and Tom are rich, young and good looking, they have a beautiful little girl, and neither one is happy. Combine that observation with the snobbery about East and West Egg and we see that all they value in the Great American Dream is wealth and not the happy lives meant to go with it.

John: I agree with everything you say here: Somehow we've managed to divorce success from happiness, which leads to a larger question: Is being happy the goal of being alive? Or is there some greater goal? And is the greater goal served by the ambition to wealth and luxury? (I think this is not such a clear-cut question, and I think Gatsby explores the question in all its complexity.)

Me: I think we can imagine that Gatsby's American Dream changes throughout the novel. He's achieved what he first set out to do - getting wealth by any, even scrupulous, means - only to find that he wants to be happy. He hopes to use his wealth to get the girl he loves. Maybe one of his greatest flaws is not realising that he can have happiness in being honest (demonstrated by his friendship with Carraway) rather than trying to prove his worth by the value of his house.

And with that, I bid you adieu. I have a website to work on and articles to write for The Phantom Zone.

Recent Developments

2011-08-02T19:17:00.000+01:00

It's weird to think that in a matter of days I've gone from being a Twitter user and a blogger to having a website in development, a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile. What's weirder is the even more recent development: I've offered my services to help people set up websites of their own through wordpress.com. For free. So long as I know the person and can arrange a time with them to put together the website as they want it to be from what's available, I'll do it. I won't supply content - the stuff that makes up the website - but I will do the actual putting together of the website.

It wasn't that I had intended to do it, but when I realised that it might come in handy for some people and that I could get it done pretty quickly for them, it made sense to help. I've already started referring to them as clients (actually, I've been saying "clients" all day, inverted commas included, because that's just the closest word to what actually describes them.) To make things even more frighteningly professional, I've started to make appointments for my "clients".

So far I have two to do in September (this will be after my website has launched, so they'll have a few days to see the finished product before finalising on all of their choices). I won't say who they are just yet, but I'll be linking to their websites when they go online. I also plan on giving a crash course in marketing to them, if they're interested, since I'll be right there with them. It's all optional and entirely free of charge. The only thing they'll ever have to pay for is the optional stuff offered by wordpress.com. I don't believe in making money from my friends with something like this, because really all I'm doing is saving them time. The websites are just put together using the basic functions on wordpress.com.

What makes this service helpful is that I actually have experience with wordpress.com. I've used a few times over the years for different projects. I'm fairly handy with it. I may as well save people some time by setting this up for them. It'll look professional but it will have required little effort for myself or my "clients".

The reason I'm mentioning this is to offer the service to anyone whom I know personally. It took me a day to set up my website (it doesn't look like much right now, but that's because the actual technical stuff has already been done to hide the website that's been made - it's a magic trick.) And I mean a whole day with tips from somebody else to guide me along the way, having already used wordpress.com before. I know that I could do it all in the space of a couple of hours again, and all I need is the content to add to it.

So, if you want a website and if I know you (especially or even if you're still in the same college as me), drop me an email using the Contact button on my website (use the red P button in the right-hand sidebar to get there) and let me know. It's advisable for bands/musicians, writers, illustrators, photographers, actors and, if they're interested, societies in college. I'll gladly help. I'll be putting together a check-list of things for websites so that people can see what choices they have to pick from from wordpress.com. And remember, it's all free.

Also, if you read this far, I can reveal what my exciting announcement from yesterday was: I'm now an official writer for thephantomzone.co.uk. I can't wait to get started with it properly!

The Bank Holiday Weekend

2011-08-01T22:21:00.000+01:00

In Ireland, there's a certain air of excitement for some people when it comes to the bank holiday weekend. I think for most it's the day off and the extra chance to drink. I remained entirely sober this weekend (the weekend includes Mondays on these occasions, if you don't know already) but that didn't stop me having a good time. For once. Only that I had the time off work did I actually enjoy myself.

There's been some excitement for me over the past three days. To begin with, I got my 50K written by Saturday. That ended a massive writing spree that left me exhausted, but the weekend had only just begun. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I started a new project. My novel isn't finished, of course, and I will return to writing it shortly, but I had some stuff to do.

Badge for my website!

Sunday saw the rise of my website. There's a fanciful link to it in the sidebar. I've written quite a bit of content for it already, but that's for the grand launch in a few weeks' time. But that story's already been told.

Today, I set up more sites to link to the blog. My official Facebook page was first to show up to the world. I was reluctant to set one up, because I thought it might seem pretentious, but Rebecca Woodhead set me straight. It's now there - and linked to in the sidebar - and thanks to the support from Rebecca, it's gotten over 25 likes already! It doesn't look like much, but I'm delighted. I'll be using it to ask daily questions (or at least only one question a day) and to link people to the articles and other content I post on my website.

To follow up on that, I set up a LinkedIn profile. This one terrified me. While a website was a handy way of spreading content that wasn't all just me-me-me, and a Facebook profile was something I was used to from experience, a LinkedIn profile is so much more. It's the professional side of my website, but in social network form. If you don't know already, it's where professionals go to meet and exchange contacts and connections and it's all extremely terrifying when you don't feel as if you belong. I'll see where it takes me.

The real fun of the BHW is something I'm not even sure I can tell people about yet. It's extremely geeky and exciting, and so far only four people know about it - two of them being my parents! Hopefully I can make that announcement soon. When I can, it'll be on my Google+ account, Twitter and Facebook, with an update in my positions on LinkedIn. Blimey, I feel so professional with all of this going on, now! I'm geeking out!

Website in the Making

2011-07-31T22:44:00.000+01:00

For the past couple of weeks, I've been annoying people on Twitter and Google+ (still amazing) about what they like to see on writers' websites. When most of the people who read my posts didn't answer, I decided to follow Rebecca Woodhead's advice in Writing Magazine and draw up a rough plan for a website. Her article also demonstrated the use of some of Wordpress.com's features to make a website look great and professional.

While the site is still under construction, you can see it by clicking here. I've spent the day working out how to build the website and still hide it from view, and the result is what you see. I've already posted two articles on the site for the grand launch, but they won't be viewable to the public until that time. I've got a bunch of ideas I need to work on before I can do that, of course, but I've got most of the tools I need to do that already. There are some things, like the banner, that need more work than the rest, but overall I'm looking at maybe six weeks before I launch (yes, conveniently right before I go back to college... I wonder why that is. *cough* bragging rights *cough*)

I can't reveal the exact contents of my website just yet (don't want anybody stealing my good ideas!) but I can say that it won't just be about me. The content will all be mine, yes, but it won't be just about me. I think that's bound to make it more interesting to people who haven't heard of me (subtract about 1500 from the population of the Earth). I'm hoping this website will be set apart from others I've seen; yes it will look quite a bit like many websites and blogs, given that it's hosted on Wordpress.com and using one of their templates, but it will have the small touches that I hope will be unique to my site. I've been thinking about them for some time, and to date only one person knows about my big secret to go on the blog.

What I'm still looking for is suggestions about what to include. What makes a personal website personal but doesn't make it a blog? I'll still be here, writing away on Blogger (even have a fancy button to send people here!). The website is going to be for news and announcements and the more professional side of my writing life. While that feels extremely weird to put into words, it's exactly what I want, and I'm getting excited for the launch already.

But before I launch, I need to set up a couple of things - only one person knows the specifics of one of them - and I need to get a proper banner designed and ready to upload. I also have one final goal: have something in each of the categories on the blog. I don't want it to be bare when I launch. There'll be things for people to read, to comment on, to (hopefully) enjoy, and they can't just be trickling online slowly while the headings go to waste. Everything needs to be online and ready to go for when I make the switch from one menu (the one that currently only says "coming soon") to the finished site, complete with all sorts of posts divided by category to make it so much easier to follow.

Also, if you're wondering about the "g" stuck write in the middle of the website's address, it's for my middle name. Or I can say it's a special effect. Or that Google has stamped its identity into my existence. You pick one. Mainly I just want suggestions about what people would like to see on the website.

Excess Writing

2011-07-31T13:11:00.000+01:00

I'm sure many of my readers know, because I've spoken about it before, about NaNoWriMo and the new summer programme, Camp NaNoWriMo. If not, here's the gist of it: you have one month to write 50,000 words. In regular NaNo land, that's 30 days and an average target of 1667 words. In the Camp version, you get 31 days with an average of 1613 words to write each day. Sounds simple enough, if you're used to writing a lot.

Now pretend you didn't write for most of the month. Say, for twenty days of the month.

Okay, have you done that? That was me. I started on July 3rd. I then proceeded to only write on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 12th, 23rd, 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th of the month. Last night, I finished.

Happy dance time? I think so.

The book is far from finished, of course. I'm not going to pretend that I wrote the whole novel in the month. But I managed to do what I thought would be impossible and I'm happy with the results. I met a lot of great writers when talking about the book on Twitter and I got to develop the idea I'd had brewing in my head for nearly two years, now.

I wouldn't have done it if the plans I'd had for the weekend didn't fall through. Unless I'd kept writing early on, this book never would have reached the fifty thousand word mark this month. I should have been in Mitchelstown in Cork at a music festival, but the person I was supposed to go with wasn't able to follow up on our decision to go. I'll admit, I wasn't entirely happy about that given that I had gotten the weekend off work, but I did what I could and made the best out of a bad situation. Only that I had the time off work and I wasn't at the festival, I wouldn't have finished Camp NaNoWriMo.

I could bore you with the details of how I did it - statistics and whatnot from the month - but the main key to my "success" was tea. Lots and lots of tea.

I imagined I'd have more to say on the matter today, but I think the last four days have taken their toll on me. I wrote over 25,000 words between Wednesday and Saturday, which just about knocks any previous writing sprints on the head. The closest I got to that before was writing a novella in a few days last summer, but that book was about 5,000 words shorter than what I wrote the past few days.

I don't think I'll be doing that again soon, to be honest. Next up for me is to finish the novel, then to finish edits of Meet Sam and then to write a play to hopefully be put on in college (a man can dream!). I'm also planning on launching a website too, soon. It'll be filled with some sample writing, tips about writing (it'll be low-key, easy to read stuff that I learned over the years, and not a comprehensive guide on how to write a bestselling novel - I don't have that sort of expertise) and the obvious writer's bio that is necessary for a personal website. Don't laugh. (Okay laugh, but at least laugh to my face so I know who's not getting a Christmas card!)

I'm still mulling over some stuff to make it stand out as a website. Given that it'll be hosted on wordpress.com, there's only so much I can do in terms of design. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them! I'll gladly read every suggestion, and consider the ones I deem most suitable for my particular set of skills. (Name that movie!)

PS Sorry about the very poor quality writing in this post... in my head it was much grander.

Review - Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

2011-07-27T23:19:00.000+01:00

A while ago, there was a film called Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. It starred Michael Cera, it was hilarious and it made me want to read the graphic novels that it was based on. I didn't know then that I would enjoy them so much, or that the six graphic novels were made into one film - that was kind of a bummer, because I really wanted to up my dosage of Pilgrim. Still, I've only read one of the graphic novels, so I have five more to keep me amused. As always, start with volume one: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.

It's in these pages that we first encounter Scott, his Rating (note: I will probably end up giving everyone I know a Rating if I get really, really bored) of Awesome and the two girls he dates: Knives Chou and Ramona Flowers. And, you know, the League of Evil Exes. They're sort of the bad guys. Basically, if he doesn't defeat Ramona's seven evil exes, he can't date her. And by defeat, I mean in a battle to the death. And they're weeeiiird.

What did you think of the graphic novel?
I don't think the word hilarious even does it justice. I would have to give it a rating of Awesome for being so funny, easy to read and bringing me back to the days when I would play computer games all day (wait... I still do that...). Also, seeing as Scott lives with his gay friend who owns everything of value in their apartment, it makes me feel better about my current living situation (the smallest room in the house, living with my parents... my windows froze over on the inside on Christmas morning!)

Also, the series is set in the magical land of Canadia. Love it!

How do the characters compare to others you've encountered?
Scott is unlike anyone I've ever read about. He's hopeless at relationships, mostly clueless, but he plays bass and can kick just about anyone's butt. Ramona reminds me of Margo Roth Spiegelman, except she's somehow cooler. Also, she skates through an interspace highway. That's awesome.

How does the book compare to everything else...ever?
Considering its size, it packs a mighty punch. Yes, there are mighty works of literature that speak a whole lot more about wider subjects, but nothing quite tells a love story in video game format via graphic novel like the Scott Pilgrim books. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a book like these ones. And I work in a bookshop.

What did you think of the film adaptation?
Based on my reading of volume one, I can say easily that the film sticks fairly closely to the books. Most of the same lines are used, the actors cast look remarkably like the drawings and they deliver the comedy and the heart of the graphic novels perfectly! As far as adaptations go, it was one of the best I've ever seen (and I've done modules in college where we look at the original text and compare it to the adaptation!). As a film by itself, it was still brilliant. Neither of my brothers read the graphic novels and they still loved the film. It has its own unique, quirky charm that you just don't get in most films. And I go to the cinema almost every week, so I'm fairly sure of myself when I make that claim!

Who would you recommend this too?
People who like graphic novels are obviously the first people I would suggest this to if they haven't already read it. Aside from that, teenagers and young adults who like a good laugh when they're reading will enjoy this if they can get over the fact that it's a comic. Anyone who enjoyed the film is bound to like the book, too. It's an easy read, not too long and given they're only published in paperback, it's fairly cheap, too!

What's next?
Well, I have to write twenty three thousand words over the next four days, so I won't have a new review until next week. I do have books lined up to review, though, so there shouldn't be many/any delays in getting it online. If you're wondering what the writing is all about, it's Camp NaNoWriMo. I stopped writing for a while, so now I have to play catch up to finish the challenge. I'll be writing this book at a fast pace until it's finished, too, so people who are used to seeing me online a lot may not have the pleasure of my company. Or the displeasure... let's be fair, not everyone likes me (of those, most just don't know me very well). So, until next time (hopefully my victory blog post on Sunday!), happy reading!

Review - Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes

2011-07-21T23:09:00.000+01:00

Remember Maureen Johnson? She's that author I quoted in my last review who said hilarious things. Up until recently, I referred to her as 'my favourite author whose books I hadn't read.' Not anymore. I took a risk (admittedly, a very low risk...) at buying one of her books, Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, at the end of May, and I read it very recently. What can I say? I was missing out.

What did you think of the book?
First of all: I loved the concept of the story. I don't have a mad aunt who sends me all around the world with very little instructions to guide me along the way, and rules that stop me bringing guide books, money or anything else that might be useful going across continents and oceans. Second of all: I loved the characters. Ginny was a great protagonist. She was friendly, she was funny and best of all: she was ridiculously bad at being a popular girl stereotype and everyone still liked her. I loved the ensemble of new and weird people entering her life, the mad little ideas her aunt had, the opportunistic letters and the feeling of everything needing to work out for Ginny, from a reader's perspective.

How does it compare to other books you've read?
If I am being perfectly honest - which I aim to be in my reviews - the only other books close to this one that I've read are those by John Green (er...all of his novels that hit the shelves) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Johnson wrote a book that was much more light-hearted than Green does. This isn't to say either one of them is better than the other; rather, the happy feelings you get from Johnson's book are marred by much less sadness (especially when you compare it to Looking For Alaska, which made me an awful lot more.) Yes, you read that bracket right: more.

More? What do you mean more?
Let's be clear: a book that is only filled with happiness, with laughter, with strange people, can be good, but not great. To be great, the book has to inspire a lot more emotions from the spectrum. I laughed a lot while reading this book, but it does have its sad moments. On top of that, you really want Ginny to succeed in whatever she thinks her quest is. Oddly, you don't necessarily want her to ever go home, even when she first arrives scared and lonely in London. This would ruin the story, but aside from that you just want her to keep following through with the quest her aunt sent her on.

What was your favourite quirky moment?
My experience of Maureen Johnson is that she's a little bit quirky. If you saw her commentary on the Royal Wedding, or if you looked at my last review, or if you follow her on Twitter, you'll know this is definitely an understatement. So, I'll attempt to keep this spoiler free, but I definitely have to say that the play she made up for the book is definitely one of my favourite quirky moments in the book. Maybe not the best play in the world, but definitely good for what it is.

Who would you recommend this book to?
If you like young adult literature, the works of John Green and/or travel fiction, this is a good for you. It's funny, heart-warming and that little bit of delightful that every reader needs every once in a while. The characters are likeable, weird and interesting, the plot equally so. I couldn't put it down.

What next?
Well, I have another Maureen Johnson book to read, but not quite yet. Next week we've got another triple-set of reviews (compensating for the lack of reviews this summer) and I've got to write a helluva lot of fiction. Also, I think I want to travel everywhere now. Thanks Maureen, my bank account and job will love you for this... I may have to postpone it for a little while. And I don't think I'll be following Ginny's aunt's rules - I need money and guidebooks and stuff when I'm going anywhere. (Seriously, I once got lost on the way home, but that's a tale for another day...)

Review - Writing A Children's Book

2011-07-20T22:37:00.000+01:00

I picked up this book, Writing A Children's Book by Pamela Cleaver, way back when I started working in the bookshop. We’d ordered it in especially for our Reference section, and I just bought it straight out. I didn’t read it. The sticker on the back says it came into three and a half years ago. So, bear that in mind, then also bear in mind that the original publication of this book was in 2001. This is an old book (as far as books go, yes, this is old). This book will be filled with inconsistencies in how we do things these days. It uses words like Postcard instead of Email. And it has a couple of errors in it that some wonderfully helpful YA authors helped me deal with. The corrections are at the bottom of the review, so you don’t get caught out.

What did you think of the book?

Okay, two things: it was easy to read (I got through it in a day... a day I was also in work for six hours with only a half hour break for eating!) and it did contain lots of helpful advice on writing fiction for children. It went through the basics of what different stories there were to be told (genres, etc) and it warned against a number of different things when submitting (like looking at the current market and thinking it has to be the same... or avoiding the market completely and thinking you’re revolutionising it; My book is so much better than every other book on the shelves at the minute, even the stuff you commissioned. That’s a big NO. If you take anything from this book it’s that you should read more. I advise checking out my reviews, which split Kids books up into categories – you might not have heard of some of them.) In saying both of those things, I will also advise you to check out the corrections department at the end of this review to make sure you don’t do the very, very stupid things Cleaver advises. 2001 or not, she was just wrong, and it almost spoiled the book. Twice.

Have you found the book useful?

Like all books I read about writing, it has given me an idea. Or three. So, yes, I found it useful. I have yet to actually write anything on these ideas (I’m still waiting for a way to start them to work its way to the front of my brain, which is currently on backlog with various other types of fiction), but the book has given me a way of sorting through the ideas easily enough. And, in researching the faults in the book (one in particular), I have a better idea of how to plan these books properly. The tips Cleaver gives are actually quite useful, and not just for children’s books (just especially for them.)

Who would you recommend this book to?

The obvious target market is the large group of people who think they want to write for children because it’s clearly so easy. Let’s smash that illusion right now, shall we? It’s not easy. It’s damn-well difficult. Picture books, despite their size are hard to write. YA books, despite being closely related to the more advanced books in the adult section (i.e. general fiction, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and occasionally Crime Fiction), are even harder to write than their adult counterparts, because they have to limit themselves to the maturity of the audience and, if they’re really daring, try to teach the reader something without being preachy (think John Green and every one of this books!) and entertain without being too creepy (think Twilight, minus Stephenie Meyer making a guest appearance as Bella Swan and the 120 year old stalker looking at the minor...)

As well as that, though, anyone who wants to write any sort of fiction can benefit from this. Nowadays, many adults are reading books from the children’s section without realising it such as Twilight, The Hunger Games and His Dark Materials, to name but a few. Getting to grips with how stories are aimed at different ages and interests can help with developing ideas for different markets in the adult world.

Now, what were those dreaded corrections?

Cleaver makes two big mistakes that I saw: one on the word count of teen fiction, and one on submitting to publishers/agents. Nevermind the outdated use of the word ‘postcard’, we’re talking stuff that will really change the way you use this book. And this is bad change, we’re talking about.

My problem, in tweet form: What's the average length of a YA book? @realjohngreen @maureenjohnson @barryhutchison - a book I'm reading says 35000 words.

Ken Armstrong's response: It's a piece of string question - 35k sounds awful short to me. Would guess 50-60k min. I know nothing obv. You could flog that length as a novella perhaps

Barry Hutchison’s response: As long as it needs to be. Fiends are all about 45k. Horseman is 60k. Think Dept 19 is 120k+. Depends on the story.

John Green’s response: I'd say 60-100 thousand. (Alaska is 228 pages--very short--and it's 65,000 I think.)

Maureen Johnson’s (hilarious) response: YOUR BOOK IS WRONG!

So, that was kind of vital. Hutchison’s books are aimed at slightly younger readers, hence the lower word count on the Invisible Fiends books when compared to John Green’s book (Looking For Alaska). If someone followed Cleaver’s advise, the result would be a book that is far too short for publication. Do not follow her advice. Mine is clearly better (and that is to listen to Hutchison, Green and Johnson, even if the latter isn’t so much helpful as comical – that’s helpful in its own way!)

But Cleaver wasn’t done ruining your career. So, without further introduction:

My problem, in tweet form: On submitting the MSS: book suggest putting the copyright notice at the end. Thoughts? @realjohngreen @maureenjohnson @barryhutchison

Barry Hutchison’s response: I've never done that. The fact you wrote it means you have copyright and pub knows that.

Brendan McLoughlin’s* response: I think if u [sic] submit to agents, they'll be able to make the copywrite [sic] decisions

Maureen Johnson’s (hilarious) response: Okay, what is this crazy book?

*Brendan went on to make the point of this all being pretentious, particularly for unknown authors such as myself and him. The last thing we need is to insult the publishers we're submitting to.

Again, follow my advice: leave out that nasty copyright symbol (©). Publishers are not thieves nor are they stupid. If you really feel that insecure about your work, you shouldn’t be submitting it anywhere. Get over your insecurities about someone stealing your work by doing the smart thing: print a copy for yourself and put it in an envelope. Go to the post office, a very old form of email for those of you who find the concept alien in its entirety, and send that envelope with your complete book (and your name, details, etc...) to yourself or a trusted friend. Hold on, we’re not done. When it arrives, DO NOT OPEN IT. Look at the top of the envelope. There is a postage date. This is government approved. This is guaranteed, 100%, proof that this envelope was in existence at this date. When you submit, no one can steal your work, because if they do they’ll have a nasty law suit on their hands for breaching copyright – you have a date to prove when you had it, they don’t. No matter how big they are, you win.

A word on that, before you go mad: ideas can’t be copyrighted, and someone may have had an idea very similar to yours that was accepted when yours wasn’t. This does not mean the publisher stole your work. Do not sue everyone who publishes something similar to what you wrote. Do the mature and smart thing: write a book that is even more unique and amazing than your other book, and keep writing to get both published.

A further note on copyright: once you write it, it’s yours. The copyright symbol (©) is just clarification of the year of copyright. The envelope in the post is just your proof that you are the author. They do not seal the deal. They are essentially irrelevant, until someone challenges the authorship of the book. (This also applies to music, paintings, and pretty much everything that people create, though products require patents to prevent theft – I am not a patent expert, ask me no questions on it.)

So, what next?

Again, lots of reviews to come from me. And lots of writing. I have to catch up on Camp NaNoWriMo. It’s not a children’s book, though. I couldn’t figure out how to start Brilliant Idea 1 or Brilliant Idea 2. I’ll figure them out while I’m writing my fantastic Science Fiction novel. (They say self-praise is no praise. That’s stupid. It’s just not worth anything to anyone else, which is why modesty is preferable.)

Review - The Age of Apocalypse (X-Men)

2011-07-19T18:28:00.000+01:00

One thing quite a few people know about me is that I have a lot of interest in comics. Truth be told, I know more about them than I have right to: I never really read them. I decided to change that, and ignoring my reading list altogether I read The Age of Apocalypse epic in the X-Men series of comics from Marvel, including the Prelude. Originally I had planned to review each of the four volumes in turn, until I realised that they were almost impossible to distinguish between.

They’re broken down into individual stories, following the likes of Cyclops, Havock and Sinister, Magneto and Rouge, Gambit and the Xternals, and a whole cast of characters taken from the comics and thrown into a new story. Everything changes in these comics, the logic behind it all explained in the Prelude. Introduce time travel and things are bound to change. And in the words of my fellow comic book nerd from college, ‘This is their masterpiece.’

How did you find reading comics to reading regular fiction?

It was...different. Essentially, the storytelling falls into two categories: the dialogue and the pictures. It’s literally a case of showing and not telling (except when dialogue and narration has to fill in the gaps for readers). One of the hardest things is getting used to looking at everything on the page in different orders – some scenes spread over two pages, the images being that big, so the whole layout of the comic changes.

As well as that, there’s the issue with reading dialogue and following what’s actually going on. It took me a while to get used to reading what was being said in the right order. This is no fault of the people who wrote the comics, of course; I’m just not that used to reading them. For me, the writing goes right across the page, no pictures.

What did you think of the story?

As I’ve said, this is their masterpiece. Each of the books (Prelude, and Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4) fills us in on the little details: what caused the Age of Apocalypse to come about, how the X-Men planned to stop it, once and for all, what Apocalypse was doing to the world, what was happening to the universe and how they ultimately hoped to stop that, too. I won’t drop spoilers. For fans of X-Men, this is the must-read series of comics. They break open the whole world of X-Men and answer the question: What would happen if Charles Xavier never formed the X-Men?

This really is the ultimate ‘What if...’ story, and it certainly let down a lot less people than House of M and its particular affect on the Marvel universe...

What was your favourite arc, and what was your least favourite?

My favourite would have to have been that which followed Rouge. She was always one of my favourite characters (I know, the outsider being my favourite character... har har har). Again, no spoilers, but there’s a whole new set of stories being told in this group (which still keeps the old favourites around, too, like Storm).

My least favourite... Wolverine. My experience with Wolverine – known in these comics as Weapon X, I might point out – is that he’s the angry, distant type. He fights and he’s looking for answers and God help anyone who tries to get in his way. Well, with certain changes that still follow his character’s general story, he’s a bit annoying in how much he gets down in himself. And he’s missing a hand. That may have attributed to it all (because, you know, his hand is supposed to grow back..?).

Whose story were you happiest with?

This one is difficult... Cyclops has an interesting story, but he still maintains a lot of his usual morals and all that stuff that eventually wears him out. Beast is even more...delightful, we’ll say. I think they did a great job with him in these comics, taking him to an extreme they couldn’t have gotten away with in a different reality. Best of all, though, was Nate Grey. I stumbled across Nate in my extensive reading about X-Men a few years ago and never really understood where he came into the story. Well, AoA answers the very important question of his origins, and goes into some detail on his powers, his life and his personality. And he’s one of the coolest looking characters that isn’t grossly mutated beyond recognition as a human. (The white flick in his hair and the glowing eye certainly did the trick!)

Saddest part of the whole series?

This one would call for a spoiler. No spoilers. Just wait until you get to Volume 4 and you’ll see it all happening. You just have to wonder what made them do it. Then you realise it’s genius, if a little too tragic. You’ll see!

Who would you recommend this series to?

A few groups... firstly, if you like X-Men but haven’t read this series yet: this is for you. Do I have to say it again: It’s their masterpiece! Secondly, to people who generally like comics and haven’t read this series, even if you’re not especially a fan of X-Men. Thirdly, if you like a good story and think you can manage the images (and, can I just say, the artwork is brilliant, so it’s totally worth it), then you should give this series a try.

What’s next?

Well, I can’t possibly answer that for Marvel... they have the most convoluted plots in the world that I will forever be out of my comfort zone with them. I can only hope to catch up on some of the amazing stories they tell. As for me, I’ve got reviews coming up of a children’s book, a graphic novel, a Young Adult novel and a book about writing for children, none of which were on my list. (I think the list is cursed, because I chose too many big books and started reading too many of them at once...)

Internet Connection is Back!

2011-07-14T13:12:00.000+01:00

I don't know if I should feel guilty about not posting reviews or not over the past couple of weeks, but I am here to tell you that this little problem I had is now over! I have two shiny reviews to post, probably on Tuesday and Wednesday next week (and I'll probably write a third review to fill in Thursday as well).

The reason I was gone from the reviewing world is that our Internet provider here at home - i.e. the only place I have Internet access that isn't in work (where I definitely should not be posting reviews to books) - failed to let us do anything. Over the past couple of weeks our connection has been done almost every hour. We've had little bursts of activity every now and then, but never on Wednesdays when I was going to post reviews. It was very annoying. I was up until midnight last night hoping the signal would come back. It did not.

We have since received a new modem - it arrived this morning - and I have done some fiddling about, so we have now have Internet access. I just had to sacrifice the house phone. We don't have another cable available to plug the modem into the wall. Also, our desktop no longer has Internet access. I know how to fix this problem (fairly sure of it, anyway) so I'll use all those skills in computers they teach us in coll... no hang on, not in my college. God can fix anything but the incompetence of technicians, and DSL cables.

The truly annoying thing is that we had someone out in the house to look at it all, who then recommended a new modem. If my guess is right, we didn't even need a new modem. It was the wires hooking it up to the wall that are the problem. Our set-up - the one that doesn't work, but not the one I'm using right now - sends the wire from the computer upstairs, through the landing, into my room, into a little box. This box then has another cable that goes through my floor, down into the hallway by the door and into the phone box.

That didn't work.

One of the two wires or that little box on my floor doesn't work. One of those three things (at least one...) has stopped working. That is a plain and simple fact. The connection should work from the computer like it used to, but it doesn't. So I have to be right. I may be socially awkward and a little bit weird (and I sometimes under-estimate how weird I am...), but I know logic when it comes zipping through my brain. The current set-up works. The old one used to. The only difference is the wires used.

I win at Internet.

(That was an example of me being weird, wasn't it? It's for things like that that I wonder why I have any readers... or friends. I think it's so people can feeler cooler by comparison. That must be it. It makes perfect sense, because it's entirely true. Everyone is cooler by comparison to me. Enjoy being cool. By the way, I don't believe in cool, unless we're talking about a scientific measurement of heat. Why am I studying Religion?)

Anywho, long story short, I fixed our Internet connection, I will be posting reviews next week, and I am better at fixing the problems in this house than the people who will most certainly charge us for not fixing anything. And me? I'll have to clean up after dinner by way of payment.

System Failure

2011-07-09T20:23:00.000+01:00

The past few days have been...boring.

Yes, this is another one of those woe-is-me-rants that I'm so annoying for. Well, not really. Okay, did you ever just want to talk to somebody and you can't because they've disappeared off the face of the earth? That's kind of what happened. That's made the week a lot less fun.

Also, my Internet connection keeps cutting out. We lost it four times since Monday, which kind of put a dampener on writing up a review on Wednesday. We've been trying to get it sorted. Every time the provider gets involved, things tend to get worse. Also, they're only giving us 1.8 MB broadband, when we're paying for 8. They really should have realised that a few years ago when they started receiving money from us. Now they're overcharging us and providing crappy tech support.

The biggest problem with the week is that I stopped writing. Just suddenly. No reason at all. I think I'll go on a mad one tomorrow and write a few thousand words (I am so very exciting all of the time...) Bliss, my Camp NaNo novel, is currently standing at 16000 words, while Dignity has a few thousand more (though less typed...) I want to get Bliss done quickly so I can get back to Dignity. Just needed to write something a little less...real? A Sci-Fi pretty much filled the bill, anyway.

Related to that first thing I mentioned... did you ever almost do something you might regret then have to force yourself not to be an idiot? Just me then. No matter how many times people call me smart, intelligent or any variation of the word, inevitably I will disagree with them because of one point: socially, I'm a bit of an idiot. If the various problem I've caused myself over the years aren't evidence enough of that, I almost used a loophole to get around a rule set for me on a list of things I am most certainly never allowed to do. A loophole. A God-damned loophole. They're great for some things, but not for this. So I went against the loophole, and that means I'm still stuck here wondering what on earth has made someone disappear.

Basically, it's all become a bit aggravating; the boredom of the summer is settling in as the list of things worth doing dwindles down into nothing (hence wanting to talk to the one person who has vanished). I'm still not at the stage where I'm so bored I want to go back to lectures, but I'm getting there. I think once I can get out of this slump (bad mood and exhaustion) I can get back on track to writing and to not having to resort to a blog to vent frustrations over little things in life. (I'm not frustrated at any of my friends, because I know they have lives; I'm frustrated with our Internet provider and with myself for being Sleepy and Grumpy and possibly two or three of the other dwarfs... Dopey?)

If I didn't have work tomorrow, and if my body didn't outright refuse to stay in bed, I would just sleep all day. Nothing beats Sunday morning in bed when you're tired, except maybe sleeping in your own bed after being away for a few days. Or sleeping on the ground.* I'm completely drained, I'm going to the cinema tonight and I'm fairly certain that I won't last another week of losing sleep (because of the heat and the constant muttering in my head wondering why I can't seem to make plans with the people I've seen the least all summer).

Hopefully my Internet connection won't die (again) before Wednesday so I can put up a review. And mayb,e just maybe, my slump will be gone by then.

* Yes, I have slept on the ground before. We did it in Connemara (Galway) during Transition Year. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable, though the sunrise was less of a rising sun than the sky gradually turning more bright blue, because of the altitude and the trees. Yes, we slept among trees. We were warned about badgers. That scared a couple of people. We were told to carry sticks to break if a badger bit us - they don't let go until they break a bone, apparently. Fun...

Two Years Ago

2011-07-05T22:58:00.000+01:00

When I was eighteen, I made a decision that would change my life. Most Irish teenagers make a similar choice at this time of their lives, sixth year in secondary school, Leaving Cert leering its ugly head on the horizon and one form to fill in that would decide everything we did for the next fifty-odd years of ours lives: the CEO form.

I still remember it all, the going to different colleges for different open days. Except, for me the choice was never one that included leaving home. I wanted to go to college in Dublin. I wanted to stay close to what friends I had; at that age, I was even more socially awkward than I am now and I mostly got close to a limited number of friends in school, most of whom I still talk to on a regular basis. And of course, I didn't want to have to wake up unnaturally early to attend lectures. This also cut out Maynooth.

I went to two Open Days, looking at English courses, Journalism, Marketing, Business; really, my options were limited to my specific tastes and the subjects I was studying. Mostly. I didn't want to go into further study in design. I didn't want to study Science.

When it came to filling in the form, then, it was all to do with one of the above-mentioned courses (with the addition of Philosophy and Psychology each combined with English at Trinity College, both of which I had my reservations about because (1) I wasn't sure I was cut out for the courses and (2) I wasn't sure I would get the points.) My top three included the college where my friends from then are now all studying (the aforementioned friends I still talk to) and the college I am attending now.

Form filled in, I "only" had to sit the exams and get the points. No biggie, right? I'd be in college with my friends in no time at all. Except, when I tried to picture myself in college, the green grass I sat on wasn't in that college, and it wasn't with those friends. I never suspected I would stop talking to them, it just didn't feel like I would be spending the next four years of my academic life with them. In my mind it was a scene out of a brochure: me, a guy and a girl sitting on the grass at the college I'm now attending (my classmates will know that there are only two areas of grass in the college I have ever acquainted myself with, neither of them being the football pitch - it was the larger of the two, opposite the library.) The sun was shining, the atmosphere felt good, and I knew deep in my heart that this was what I wanted, that this would be a reality, if not so literally.

Two years ago, when I was eighteen years old, I knew that when I was studying to become a teacher I would meet two people who I would definitely be happy to spend the rest of my life talking to. (Turns out it's more than two; go figure.) Two years ago I knew I would find my best friends in a college I had yet to earn the points to get in to, had yet to receive my place on my course of choice and had yet to actually see. I just knew.

I've never told anyone that before. In my head it was going to be a dramatic speech made if times ever got hard. Literally a few hours ago I was going over it all in my head. I knew who I was talking to and I knew why it was important. Times have been hard, on and off, over the past few years of my life. I've been bullied, I've been drawn completely within myself, I've felt completely cut off from the world (last summer was horrible for that one!) and every time of late, the people in my brochure photo of an idea of college were there to help me through it. Two years ago, I knew about the cups of tea and the long talks on the phone and the hardships of starting over, and the joys that would follow, and all the happy times I would have that let me know that no matter how hard it all got, things would get better.

I don't get to see my friends so much during these months when college is out, but I always know these great and wonderful truths that life is always so much better when I can be with them. And when I can't, I fantasise, make a cup of tea and look back at all the photos taken that serve as story I've been waiting to happen to me my entire life.

A Life of Its Own

2011-07-03T23:28:00.000+01:00

Earlier this evening I allowed my brain to decide what I was going to write, rather than writing what I had been writing all summer. It chose to write Bliss. I've had the idea for Bliss for about two years now, and when I started writing it today, it decided it was going to be a bit different than I'd planned.

See, originally it was going to be just a simple story of cross-dimensionality, neuro-transmission, androids and love - sometimes all at the same time - and now its taken on new characteristics. Without meaning to, I introduced an eco-system of poisonous cloud and venomous journalists, made a society of long-living archetypes of perfect humans, and gave my protagonist a wife who is more than just a bossy bitch as I'd originally planned. Now she's a hot blonde model. Who cares about stuff. Who thinks. She's actually amazing. For now.

The reason I'm writing this, of course, is as a warning for people who think they decide what goes into the book in the end. No, as writers we're just the people who have developed typing skills and whose brains act as the hyper-dimensional gateway for ideas to make it from the Realm of Forms into the world we live in. Essentially, I'm my book's bitch, if you want to get ghetto about it all.

But it's not just the book that takes control of the final product, and that's where this gets serious. When entering the world of publishing, first time novelists will be astonished to find out that someone wants them to change their book. Yes, it's true. There are these people called Editors who, if they existed alongside God, would have made sure things ran smoothly before we were release into the world.

Using the all powerful Red Pen, the Editors are what get a book from the submitted draft to the book on the shelves, and its entirely out of the hands of the writer. Well, they still have to do all the work the Editors suggest - and they're quite pushy, so really it's an order, not a suggestion - but they don't get to put their foot down. If they do, they generally do it without a publishing contract. C'est la vie.

Anyway, midnight is staring at me. It's giving me a threatening look, like it knows I should really be in bed by then if I want to do anything productive tomorrow. With 3440 words written on Bliss - just tonight - I think I should be able to manage Camp NaNoWriMo. I hope this book doesn't decide to take control and shut down...

Ideas Worth Keeping

2011-07-02T23:20:00.001+01:00

I've read a lot about writing - a lot - and one thing that comes up every time is what to do with ideas when you get them. I have seen two different suggestions, and I don't agree with either one as being the best reaction to my brain churning out ideas that may or may not be of any use.

I couldn't tell you the specific books that take each side of the argument, but the two suggestions are this:

Write down your idea the moment you get it in a little notebook so you don't forget it
Do the exact opposite, because if you forget it it wasn't a good enough idea in the first place

The problem with the first is the very reason the second is a good suggestion: you could write down any old idea and assume it's going to be a good one. You won't know the difference when it comes to looking back over your notebook between the good ideas and the bad ideas. Of course, the problem with the second suggestion is that you may actually forget a good idea! Not everyone has a perfect memory. I generally consider myself to have a good memory, but I don't remember everything that happens all the time. Life has a habit of making thoughts become a blur.

My suggestion, while maybe not the best one, incorporates both: keep a notebook, but don't write everything down immediately. I have a small hardback notebook that I bought it in work; it fits in my pocket in work, which is perfect when I'm doing menial jobs like packing books away, if I get an idea or see or hear something that may be of use, and fits in any bag I might have with me wherever I go. But I don't just write down anything. I usually wait a day, unless it's something to add to an existing idea, or specific words I want to use, or details for somewhere to submit. If, the next morning, I can remember the idea I had the day before, I will write it down in my notebook.

This is useful for ensuring the bad ideas don't stick around - if you forget them overnight, they weren't that great - and for keeping the good ones - that really shouldn't be forgotten so quickly. Any and all opinions on this method of idea-keeping are appreciated.

Which of the two suggestions do you follow, or are you a half-way kind of person like me?

A Year in Blog Stats

2011-07-01T00:21:00.000+01:00

One year ago, Blogger introduced stats. These allowed for people to track how many pageviews we received, where they came from, what they viewed, stuff like that. I thought it'd be fun to share stuff like that, so here's the run-down:

I posted 151 posts since July 1st 2010 (not including this one)
I received over thirteen thousand pageviews (I'm still shocked that anyone bothered to read anything I wrote)
I took a two week "holiday" in August, another break at the end of September into the middle of October, then a two month break in December until February
I posted 37 reviews of books and CDs
I discovered several new authors
I caused a stir with tantrums, pottermore.com and NaNoWriMo
I was linked to a lot by two popular blogs

That's just some of it. If it wasn't midnight I'd go through more of it. However, IRL I've gone through my second year in college, continued to make amazing friends and realised how great the friends I had really were. I wrote a lot of fiction, read a lot of books and I think once or twice (or five or six or seven times) I lost my mind. (I think I found it again, somewhere.)

So, I can face another year like that, I guess. I'm still reading away, and Lord knows I have a lot of stuff to read for college next year, I have a head full of crazy ideas (really, really crazy) and I know that time and time again my friends will show me that they're even better than I first thought. Also, something really mad: I'm going to turn 21 within the next year.

Permission to feel old?

Granted. It's weird to think that this blog will be three years old in August, too. Everything's getting older, everything change, and I'm sure I'm not the same person now than I was back then. I've done Big Important Exams, met Really Cool People, changed my outlook on life and I've written more than I thought I ever would.

Do I have plans for the year ahead? Nothing's set in stone, a lot of stuff actually depends on chance. Except for the fact that I'll be reading and writing a lot. That's a guarantee.

Review - One Red Paperclip

2011-06-29T20:36:00.000+01:00

It's not often that I read non-fiction for pleasure; sometimes I want to learn things, yes, but I don't specifically pick up a book and think it'll be full of laughs and giggles and actually be enjoyable to read. However, in saying that, it also took me several years to acquire a copy of Kyle MacDonald's One Red Paperclip. I'd seen the book way back when I started working in the bookshop I'm still in - four years ago! I didn't buy it then, and it disappeared from our shelves shortly thereafter, never to be seen again. That was until, after much searching in bookshops in Dublin - even in the second hand sections, I was that desperate - I was handed a copy by my brother. I suppose that's how many good stories start, isn't it? One person gives another something they were looking for. Such as... One fish pen?*

So, was it worth the wait?
Well, you see all that stuff I don't go to non-fiction for: the laughs, the giggles, the enjoyable read? That's what I got from this book, and more. I was taken away into this wonderfully strange land called Canadia**, where this unemployed guy began trading until he got a house. I knew the ending, mostly. Everyone knows the ending (mostly everyone, and mostly the ending). But the journey? Well, it's like they say: it's not the destination that counts, it's how you get there! After years of trying to find this book in a shop so I could buy it and read it, I can proudly report it was a search much justified! The book was funny, engaging and it gave me that feel-good sensation you get when a friend achieves something after so much hard work. That's really what it felt like, like you could get so close to the author that you wanted him to succeed! (And, you know, he did... that's kind of why the book got published.)

How does it compare to other books?
Well, I'm no expert on travel books or autobiographies or anything like that, but in terms of telling a good story, it was right on par with the best of the best, even if the writing came across as more personal than professional. But that's the point, right? It's not a case of One corporation's journey to world domination but One ordinary man's journey towards a house, with lots of interesting and wonderful people to meet along the way who (mostly) live ordinary lives and see the fun in being part of his journey. MacDonald makes that point a lot, actually - it's not about the trade, it's about the person behind the trade! All the best stories let you get emotionally attached to the characters, and while this may have been a true story, I definitely wanted him to do well, to get through all the little struggles, and even though I knew he would succeed, I was still leaping for joy (okay, not literally) when he actually got through each trade. Not the most professionally written book, no, but definitely one of the easiest to relate to and to cheer for!

What was your favourite part of the story?
I think it had to have been when people really started to notice what was happening, when the news stations thought, There's a good story! It definitely made me realise how big this all was. It was so big, in fact, that when I mentioned the book to my mum, she knew what I was talking about! That barely ever happens! I can't remember the last time I started a conversation with my mum about something obscure and my mum actually knew what I was talking.***

Who would you recommend this book to?
You know how I usually say "everyone"? Yeah, that. Okay, not if you're going to say that it's not that interesting a story. There are some people who just don't do autobiographies. But if you're not one of those people, try this book! I mean it. It's all totally worth it and you'll feel so much better for having read it! I know I did!

What's next, then?
For Kyle, lots of stuff. He still keeps the blog alive. You can see what he's up to there. For me, I have a review next week of something entirely different to anything I've ever reviewed, ever. That'll be fun! I also have to keep on reading at least one of the four or five books I've started that are on my list... I have two weeks to finish at least one of them!

Until then, thanks for reading! I hope you'll take the time and money to read the story of One Red Paperclip. It's so worth it.

* The first trade item.
** American - America. Canadian - Canadia. Simples.
*** We have completely different tastes in pretty much everything. Fact.

The Mind Boggles

2011-06-28T11:53:00.000+01:00

Before I begin, can we just confirm that we've established I'm insane? Okay? Good.

So, I was lying on my bed yesterday - as you do - and a weird thought came into my head. Why do I feel like I had a neglected childhood? I know I didn't! So, obvious conclusion must be that I had a past life as an orphan living in a horrible home where the walls were growing new things and the food was barely edible. That would explain my discomfort with mould and my unwillingness to try new foods. New foods might be barely edible. Like grey gloopy soup.

Of course, as I thought about this orphaned past life of mine, I began to feel quite sorry for the me that was dead. What had happened to my parents? How old was I in my memory of mouldy walls and gloopy grey food? Why was someone allowed to keep orphans essentially locked up in a building where the walls might eat them, given time?

Then, of course, the author in me decided it was going to go crazy, and I've come up with an idea for what I think will be a series of short stories that can be read individually without any prior knowledge of the others, except for the last one. I incorporated ideas I'd gotten through the day yesterday (as I wandered almost aimlessly throughout town waiting for the time when I would meet up with a friend for delicious noms and catch up on all sorts of stuff). So, now I have a series of stories going through my head, no time to write them, and only the main character's name to go by - it's in the title of the series. I will not be revealing it.

Of course, this all seems a bit all over the place until I tell you that the stories are past-lives in themselves. Hence the connection between orphaned me with the mouldy bedroom walls and the main character of my story. I do intend to write these stories - maybe throughout my college year - and have friends read them, but for now they remain a maddening idea of fantastical proportions. I have no idea how many stories there will be, who any of the other characters will be, or what sort of adventures my protagonist will get dragged in to in his various lives. I only know why it's all significant, and maybe, just maybe, this will turn from a series of short stories into a collected series of short stories that functions as an erratic novel.

So, I can add this to the list of books I have to write... fantastic.

Thankfully, with this series of stories, I don't have to worry about one thing: time travel. As my character's past lives are all important for the series, having himself travel back into them would create certain paradoxes. It would drive him insane. Because he cannot, ever, be allowed to see himself. The memory of it would rip his mind apart. (And that's why people who remember their past lives in fiction or - ha - in reality, should not be allowed to time travel. Nevermind the space-time continuum, they wouldn't survive the ordeal of viewing themselves! Most people wouldn't, anyway!)

Okay, enough teasers for a series that hasn't even been started. Tomorrow I'll have a new review. And next Wednesday, too. I come prepared this time. I've read ahead. Which is just as well, because I am currently reading several books, all of which are too long to finish soon while also writing. So many stories going through my head at the moment... YOU ARE TEARING ME APART LISA!*

*This is a thing we've picked up in college. To understand it, see this video.

P.S. if any of my friends/relations would like to design cover art** for any of my books/stories, please get in touch via Facebook/Twitter/email/age-old-device-called-a-phone. I have a mixture of commercial fiction (i.e. nothing too strange), science fiction and fantasy... and at some stage horror. I'll obviously let you read the story first... (Rude not to...)

** or photography, if it's not just a plain ol' photograph I could have taken myself...

Pottermore Announcement

2011-06-23T12:21:00.000+01:00

What is Pottermore? From what I can establish, it's an official Harry Potter online experience. It's a glorified forum, maybe. It's a way to get more involved in a series of books that have taken the world by storm, been adapted for cinema, had games made from them, Lego, and turned a whole generation of children to reading. There's been music about Harry Potter, and a musical. There have been parodies. There has been fanfiction jumping up all over the place about Harry Potter since the books began.

And none of that tells us what we can do in Pottermore when the site launches to the public in October. Only minutes ago, JK Rowling made the announcement of Pottermore, saying a select few who "follow the owl" will be able to begin the experience early. No one knows how many will get in, how to get in, or what to do once they get there. No one even knows why they want to get into the site, except they're curious and it's Harry Potter.

Rowling's announcement had many excited. Some so excited they stayed up all night for the announcement - that's the American readers. And still no one knows what to do.

To be honest, the message released today was a let down. A nice "thank you", but a let down nonetheless. Will I be checking out Pottermore? I don't know. I will be in college. I will be writing. I don't know if I will care enough to spend my days talking about books I had finished reading when I was sixteen. By the time I get around to checking it out, the whole place will have become established, and maybe the people on-board will have formed exclusive groups. This is what happens on the Internet. The original readers of Harry Potter aren't children anymore. They're adults, and they've lost the innocence that once made Harry Potter so great, even if that innocence was itself limited.

Follow the owl? It brought me to the same site I had gone through to find the announcement. I suppose that's the magic of JK Rowling, isn't it? Tell the world to go somewhere to see a message that sends them right back where they started. More importantly, tell the world to read her books all over again. This assumes most of her readers haven't grown up. This assumes that people have time. This may assume incorrectly that people want to get involved as much as they hope.

But maybe I'm cynical. Maybe this will be a great website when it's started up. Maybe people will really have a great time, and maybe they'll be extra encouraged to pursue their own dreams. Maybe that will be the magic of Pottermore.com.

Review - The Guide to Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

2011-06-22T22:19:00.000+01:00

It's not often that I review a non-fiction book on my blog, and even rarer that the book be about the writing craft. But I figured, what good is a list of books about writing without a review of books about writing every now and then. I read The Guide to Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy a few weeks ago, after a compulsive buy of it. I swear, neither the dragon breathing fire nor the buxom girl on the front cover had anything to do with the purchase. I was looking for education. Of a sort.

So, was the book of any use?
Well, I'm yet to apply it directly to anything, but in terms of specifying certain aspects of the craft of writing science fiction and fantasy, it certainly helped. It goes through everything in terms of world building, character building and telling a story using these elements. It helped me pick up on some key features of stories I was planning and expand on them, and pointed out the major flaws with the very first book I ever wrote, in that the fantasy worlds weren't all that great (nevermind the quality of the writing... we'll leave that one sulking in the shadows).

What did you think of the book's style?
The book is many things, and complicated is not one of them. All the details, of which there are many, are given in a friendly manner from a guy who really knows what he's talking about. He's also funny as hell. I literally laughed out loud at some of his examples. This is a rare thing to do when reading a book about writing. Non-fiction is not usually laugh-out-loud funny. His wit and humour certainly help to make the book a more enjoyable read. It's very straightforward, follows a pattern and with that handy contents page at the front, you can locate exactly what you need when you need a refresher - I advise actually reading the whole thing, first.

Who would the book be of benefit to?
Okay, obviously writers. That one goes without saying. It has some stuff that would be helpful to writers as a whole, but this book is mainly specific to the genres in its title. If you plan on writing anything in the genre, you ought to read this book. The insider information is truly remarkable, and while it won't help you with the business of writing - for that, see books such as The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook or Writers' Market. This book covers a whole range of things you need to know, and even if you're focusing on short stories rather than novels, it helps to get some tips. You're not just writing a story, you're making a world. Or changing one, at the very least.

What makes this book different from other books?
Nothing I've read to date has been specific to a genre in fiction. Nothing. All the writing books assume you're doing one thing and one thing only: writing. Many branch off into Drama, Plays, Articles, Novels, etc. You'll find them everywhere. Getting a genre specific book means you can hone your skills. Most general books about writing don't get genre specific. You need to get genre specific, especially if you feel like you could do with a bit of an education.

So, what's next?
Very simply: I keep on reading, and I keep on writing. I'm almost finished another non-fiction book - a travel/biography book. That'll be my next review. And for writers reading this... well, all I'll say is, when you've read this book, you then have only one thing to do: write. There's nothing that will hone your writing skills better than actually writing. Books can teach you things about the genre, sentence structure, grammar, etc, but nothing can teach you your writing voice. You'll find that by writing. That's my advice for the day. Write and write some more, maybe take a break to go to the bathroom, get a drink and, if you really feel like it, take a sleep, then write more. After all that, maybe then you'll have made a dent into your 100K word high fantasy novel set in a realm where the world is made of sandpaper.*

Good luck and happy reading!

*If anyone ever writes a book where the world is made of sandpaper, I will read it. Definitely. Without a doubt. When I get time. If I'm not dead.

This time last year

2011-06-21T21:22:00.001+01:00

When I compare this summer to last summer, one thing is definitely clear: I am less crazy. Or more crazy and it just doesn't get to me as much. Definitely less bored, though.

This time last year, I was at my wit's end. It had nothing to do with my results going up online (or somebody telling me every minute that they were up, when they weren't!). It had nothing to do with anything, really, which was precisely the problem. I had nothing to do. At all.

This year... well, I've been writing Dignity, for a start, after several failed attempts to get anywhere in this story. The first attempt was terrible. Got barely anything done. The second attempt at it, I made my plan for the story (the plan in my head) slightly longer. The third time, even longer and I completely changed the perspective of where the reader was seeing all of the action from. This time around, I've gone back even further and I'm incorporating a lot more material from the alleged "real life" that has been led and doing something quite strange with it... I'm giving it a plot. Life doesn't have a plot. The things we do each day aren't a plot. If you wrote a novel detailing even three months of a character's life and having every day being interesting and worth reading, it'd be the most unrealistic three months ever. Or the most adventurous.

(Little secret, though: even grand road trips across America can be boring to do, because from the stories I've heard of them, most of the time there's nothing to do. That's why America has so many tourist attractions along the highway.)

Okay, so with Dignity well under way, it's even not enough to keep me interested all the time. Thankfully, I've been given a day extra work each week. Rather than just work the weekends, I work a mid-week day, too! It's very handy for making the weeks seem less boring. When you have breaks in the week of two days each, it feels like school used to before I started working, only with twice the weekends - school, weekend, school, weekend - only in this case instead of school it's working in a bookshop, and instead of a weekend it's Mondays and Tuesdays, and Thursdays and Fridays. The extra work is also great for having that little bit more money.

To fill the days I'm off, I've done a number of things. One of these was a road trip across the country, looping down south briefly before taking the N7 back to Maynooth, and a train home. This day was occupied with chats with the driver, the radio, rain in every county we drove through, rail-way superstitions, music from 1994 and the accompanying dance moves, a new love of The Saw Doctors, Supermacs in Galway (because we're fairly sure it's illegal to not have a Supermacs when you go to Galway) and a double-rainbow on the drive home. Other less adventurous things that have filled the days between shifts at work have been: trips to the cinema, a trip to Balbriggan to see a friend off to Switzerland for the summer, trips to the comic book shops and bookstores in Dublin and a gig, at which I saw The Shoos play, got their autographs and a photograph with them.

Between these miscellaneous adventures in Dublin and around the country and writing Dignity and working in the bookshop, I've been reading a bit. I've read children's books, books about writing, adult fiction (not erotica... I just mean the books that aren't children's books but are fiction) and comics (hence the trips to the comic book shops!) Of the comics I've been reading... well, they've all been X-Men. Because I'm that cool.

Last year... last year had some adventures of its own, the best being a 21st party, but it also had lots of boredom and a bit (understatement) of moaning down the phone at the same person who drove me around the country (and repeatedly called it a boring day). It was a truly unremarkable summer last year. I making up for it this year by writing the book I've been trying to write for over a year (and writing an ending to Meet Sam that I'm actually happy with!) and arranging different odds and sorts to occupy my time between working on the book and working with books (and people... there are people in the shop, too.)

Maybe, just maybe, this won't be as much a bad summer as last year. Maybe.

PS my favourite line I've written so far today:

The context: the main character is essentially referencing himself in the narration in third person, though he's not the narrator... that description makes it sounds weird... okay, it actually is weird, but the description is worse... I'll just give you the line.

"He was too good to be arrogant."