Richard Dee's Blog, page 63

Satay Chicken with potato wedges.

There’s no Indie Showcase this week, instead, I thought I’d share a recipe with you.

Here is one of my favourite Chicken dishes, my middle daughter will phone and order this before they come to stay with us. Sadly, we now have to eat it on our own. But we can always think about how good it will taste when we’re all together to eat it again.

I’m using Chicken breast fillets, only because they were half price, you can use any chicken meat, including leftovers from a cooked chicken that have been picked off the bone.

Or why not try the same sauce mixture with lean trimmed pork?

Ingredients

500g Meat

200g Peanut Butter (I used Crunchy)

200ml Sweet Chilli Sauce

50ml Golden Syrup

Dash of Worcester Sauce.

Method

Cut the meat into bite sized pieces and put into an oiled casserole dish.

Mix up the sauce ingredients and stir into the chicken. It looks a bit dubious but stick with it.

Leave to marinate in the fridge for 4-6 hours.

Cook for about 40 minutes at 180°C, turning halfway through cooking.

Make sure that the chicken is fully cooked before serving, if in doubt give it another 10 minutes, the sauce will be crisper.

As an accompaniment, cut some potatoes into wedges,  put them in a baking tray, add thickly sliced onions and coat with oil and Balsamic Vinegar.

Bake for one hour at 180°C, turning once, or until soft. With 10 minutes to go sprinkle with Sea Salt and Black Pepper.

Now all you have to do in enjoy it. I’ll be back on Saturday with some more thoughts from self-isolation. Stay safe everyone.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

 126 total views,  125 views today

The post Satay Chicken with potato wedges. appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

My favourite (Blogging) things

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

I remember the good old days.

I started blogging way back in 2011, on Blogger. The idea was to talk about my life in Devon, my work in Gravesend and share a few recipes. My wife had been following a few blogs connected with her hobbies, I’d taken a look and wondered if I could do the same. It was free to set up a Blogger account so I figured, why not?

Here’s the link to my second ever post (the first one just said welcome).

https://goingmyownway-moontide.blogspot.com/2011/05/bit-of-baking.html

Looking back at my early posts, I can see how much my style has developed over the years, as well as how much more sophisticated the software has become.

I also started a blog for my (new) baking business in 2013, with feedback and recipes.

https://brixhambread.blogspot.com/

I moved to this site on WordPress with the launch of my second novel in 2015. I chose to be self-hosted so that I could have my own domain name and used it to build my author brand.

I still kept the other blogs going for a while but in the end, it was too much work and a lot of duplication. I stopped posting new content to them in 2017. They’re both still there if you want to take a look.

Initially, WordPress wasn’t that much of a step up from Blogger, just a slightly different way of doing things. That was, until the arrival of the Gutenberg editor in 2019. There was a steep learning curve with the new editor but as you got into it, the new editor was a much better way of preparing your content.

I love Gutenberg, the flexibility and all the things that I keep finding out about it. Layouts are so much simpler, you no longer have to worry how a post will look on different devices, the editor sorts it all out for you.

My favourite things at the moment are,

Reusable blocks, great for someone who posts regular features, and for including links. The best thing about it, if you change the content of a reusable block on any post, to include a new link or more information, it automatically changes the information in every old post that contains that block.

The Media and text block, which I use to display my books, with the picture and text all neatly formated and combined, without me needing to make any effort. You can include clickable pictures too. Like this,

How far is far enough? Andorra needs to get away from her ex, but is Saturn taking it a step too far?

When Andorra’s life turns upside down, she decides on a career change. Running a diner on a mining station orbiting Saturn. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

With her best friend Cy in tow, Andorra reckons it’s the best thing for them both. A chance to start again where nobody knows them.

Trouble is, there’s a secret hidden in the café. Before they have a chance to get settled, there’s a queue of dubious characters trying to find it.

While learning to bake and get used to life in space, Andorra has a murderer to catch!

Before they strike again…

“Agatha Raisin meets Miss Marple, in Space!”

“a tale that has everything – humour, suspense, a strong but struggling heroine, a fantastic sci-fi setting, and a truly universal story.”  

or even like this

There’s a body in your hotel bathroom, What’s your next move?

It was only supposed to be a hotel review, all Miles Goram wants to do is finish up and get off Reevis as quickly as he can.

It’s an airless planet where everyone lives under a giant dome, not the sort of place he wants to be stuck on. The body in his bath has really fouled his plans up. Then he discovers the dead man’s secret.

Miles gets drawn deeper into life on Reevis, he finds corruption and mistrust everywhere. Balcom Industrial treat the place like their own kingdom and discourage any questioning incomers. As a journalist and ex-convict, Miles is top of their most unwanted list.

If the death threats and the fact that everyone trying to make him leave wasn’t enough, there’s the added distraction of a missing heiress thrown in.

Suddenly his life has got very complicated, Miles wants answers.

If only he can live long enough to find them.

“Brilliantly crafted sci fi”
“Starts out fast and keeps going. A wonderful read.”

The Link preview block, being self-hosted on wordpress.org, Jetpack doesn’t work. Which means that reposting from a wordpress.com site is very difficult. This block makes it easy, just enter the link and it does it for you.

Visual Link Preview

here’s a post explaining how I use it

The gentle art of Re-blogging – made easy.

And the best bit about all of the blocks, are the options for customisation, just about every value or piece of the display can be tweaked to fit your desires. In every block, independently.

At first, I thought it was a pain, having to change each one, then I discovered the clone tool. This copies the block you’ve just written, with ALL its attributes and allows you to start again, secure in the knowledge that it will be an exact replica.

And the list goes on, when I look back at Blogger, my first post, I can see just how far we’ve come.

How about you, what are your favourite blogging tools? Let me know in the comments, then go and check out the other great blogs in this hop.

Just follow this link.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/615e1815c4ee4fa98fc4ac59d4f95426

 209 total views,  209 views today

The post My favourite (Blogging) things appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

Week three update, I have some big news.

A place I haven’t been for a while, I can’t wait to go back.

Another week has passed in self-isolation here in Devon. What can I tell you?

A pretty good routine has been established. We both do things we enjoy, I write while Yvonne sews, knits and crochets. I guess we’re lucky, we’re both quite happy with sitting at home, so there haven’t been any problems with the physical side of being in the house. While the weather has been good, we’ve been gardening and doing all the jobs that needed doing outside. If it should rain (this is England after all), we have inside work, the kitchen needs decorating, my study needs a tidy.

To be honest we still see a lot of people, we have been sitting outside for coffee and tea breaks, shouting over the garden fences at neighbours as they do the same, all from a safe distance.

My family members continue to work for the NHS, for which I’m proud, grateful and slightly worried, all at the same time.

We had our first online grocery delivery on Tuesday, which turned out to be the highlight of the week.

Just about everything was there too, which was a relief, I was half expecting the Beer and Gin to be substituted with Spinach and Tofu!!

There is some big news to announce today.

One of the things that I have been working on is a revamp of my book covers and marketing set up. I’ve had some fantastic help, not just with cover design but also with descriptions, categories and keywords. My thanks and appreciation go out to Gill Trewick.

As you have to start somewhere, we decided to start with my Andorra Pett series of crime mysteries. I have been marketing them as Sci-fi cozy crime when, in reality, they are cozy crime which just happens to be set in space!

As Captain Kirk famously said,

With this in mind, new covers, more in tune with that message, have been created for me and I’m pleased to be able to show them for the first time.

The new editions are on sale now,

Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café

Andorra Pett on Mars

Andorra Pett and her Sister

Are we There Yet? An Andorra Pett short Story

Just click the titles to go to the Amazon page, all of the books are in Kindle Unlimited as well. Paperbacks with the new covers will shortly be available, although I do have a few with the old covers left at home, I have to decide what I’m going to do with them, they may well become collector’s items in the future.

I hope everyone who reads this is coping and that your families are OK, stay inside and stay safe.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

 270 total views,  269 views today

The post Week three update, I have some big news. appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

The Indie Showcase presents, Sue Johnson

Please welcome this week’s guest to the Showcase.

SUE JOHNSON – A LIFE-LONG OBSESSION WITH WRITING

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” my teacher asked when I was seven.

“I want to write stories and draw pictures.”

She turned a dull brick-red colour. “I don’t think that’s a proper job, dear. You’d better write about being a nurse.”

I did write about being a nurse – it was probably my first commissioned pieces of work – and it was put on the wall and much admired on Open Day.

I continued to write. I had a more encouraging teacher the following year and she let me carry on writing, even if the rest of the class were going off to do something different.

I wrote a weekly newspaper held together with glue and sticky tape and charged my friends an old-fashioned threepenny bit to read it. It taught me the value of writing a story with a cliff-hanger where they had to wait a week to find out what happened. The one week I didn’t do this, my earnings dropped dramatically.

I loved my ballet classes and used to take part in stage productions. I wrote a couple of my own which were performed in my Dad’s garage. I used to persuade my friends to take part and then invite friends and family to come and watch. They included dances, songs, poems and short plays.

I still prefer to work on a variety of things at the same time – typically a poetry collection, a novel or short story and some non-fiction. I’ve never suffered from writer’s block. Art and music are important to me. My novels and stories begin with poems and collages. I am a hybrid writer – which means that some of my work has been conventionally published and some self-published.

Life became less creative as I got older. I hated school, didn’t know what I wanted to do (a sign of lack of character according to one teacher) and I was also quite shy.

When I left school I did an apprenticeship with Times Newspapers in London. I learned shorthand and typing and loads of other things that I’m still reaping the benefits of.

I got married, had three daughters and ran a small business making patchwork items (everything from pincushions to quilts). I developed ‘streams’ of income – talks for the W I, party plan, workshops for adults and for school groups, writing articles for craft magazines.

Unfortunately, the guy I was married to didn’t like me writing. “Don’t tell people you write,” he used to say. “They’ll think you’re weird.”

After my divorce, I met my partner (poet Bob Woodroofe www.greenwoodpress.co.uk) and we’ve been together for 22 years. He encouraged me to write and keep going. I did a course with Birmingham University. A story a lecturer told me to rip up because it was ‘fatally flawed’ got shortlisted in a competition and was published in ‘Woman’ – the first of over 100 stories that have been published worldwide.

I worked for two colleges running writing and art workshops for people with mental health problems. I still have a keen interest in mental health.

Yoga and meditation also form part of my creative process. This is a picture based on the chakras that I created a few years ago. It’s on the wall of my writing room.

The income stream idea came into play again – I went self-employed in 2005 and still run workshops in various locations in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. I have been a Writing Magazine Creative Writing Tutor since 2005.

I am published as a poet, short story writer and novelist. I also create books aimed at taking away other people’s excuses for not writing.

My first two novels ‘Fable’s Fortune’ and ‘Yellow Silk Dress’ were published by Indigo Dreams. They also published my first poetry collection ‘Tasting Words, Hearing Colours.’

Novels three and four ‘Fortune’s Promise’ and ‘Apple Orchard, Lemon Grove’ were originally published by Endeavour Media. I now have the full rights back and have republished them under my own imprint Toadstone Press.

‘Apple Orchard, Lemon Grove’ was shortlisted for the Romance Writing Life Competition in 2015, organised by Mills & Boon, W H Smith and Kobo. (I didn’t expect to be shortlisted and wrote most of the book in three weeks in case it won!)  It is currently being recorded as an audiobook by narrator Martin Hussingtree (www.hussingtree.carrd.co)

Back cover blurb begins: “When Gemma Lawrence inherits a share of her Great Aunt’s restaurant, she is dismayed to find that Stefano Andrea, a moody Italian chef, is her new business partner. Gemma and Stefano have broken relationships behind them and dislike each other on sight. They have to work together for six months to turn the dilapidated restaurant into a thriving business. If they fail, they will lose their inheritance.”

Novel number five ‘The Girl With Amber Eyes’ was originally published as a My Weekly Pocket Novel (available in supermarkets and newsagents). I have self-published this and am also hoping to get it published as a large print book. It has also been recorded by Martin Hussingtree.

Since 1st January 2013 I’ve written a poem every day. I also aim for a minimum of 1000 words on anything else I’m working on (this increases when I do NaNoWriMo).

I have no shortage of creative ideas and am on my second Year of Living Dangerously. This means saying yes to every project that sounds interesting. It has led to very productive collaborations with other writers and artists. I have long since stopped worrying about failure. I concentrate on diving into the magic – and then picking myself up and doing it again.

Links

I can be found on Twitter @SueJohnson9

My Facebook page is: http://www.facebook.co.uk/suejohnson/7758235

I can be found on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sue-johnson-16264642

My website is: www.writers-toolkit.co.uk

There are Amazon buttons on the Publications page of my website which take you straight through to my page.

Thank you for reading this. Happy writing – and don’t stop until you’ve achieved all your creative dreams.

My thanks to this weeks guest for a great post. I hope you all enjoyed it.

While you’re here, why not have a look around the site? There are FREE things and a whole lot more, just follow the links at the top of the page.

You might also like to join my team. I’ll send you a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with news, updates and extra content, as well as more about me and my worlds. You’ll also get a free short story and offers on my novels. Subscribe by clicking HERE

If you want to be
featured in a future Showcase, where you can write about whatever
(within reason) you want, then please let me know. Use the comment box below
and I’ll get back to you.

You can catch up on
previous Showcase posts by clicking HERE

Don’t miss the Saturday Rewind, next Thursdays Showcase post, and my musings every Monday.

Have a good week,

Richard.

 184 total views,  183 views today

The post The Indie Showcase presents, Sue Johnson appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

Another use for your spare Sourdough starter, biscuits

As you’ll know if you’re regular readers, I used to bake a lot of sourdough bread when I was running Well Bread! my commercial bakery. 

Sadly that’s all in the past now, but I’ve kept my sourdough starters going, refreshing them weekly and keeping them in the fridge. 

I have White Wholemeal, Spelt and Rye and keep 150g of each. Each week I discard 100g of each and refresh with 50g each of flour and water.

I add this discard to whatever I’m baking, usually yeasted bread and rolls, it gives the loaf more flavour.

You can do other things with the discard as well, here’s a recipe for biscuits.

Sourdough digestive biscuits.

Ingredients:

80g oats

100g wholemeal flour

50g dark brown sugar

Generous pinch of salt

110g unsalted butter at room temperature

100g recently refreshed starter at 100% hydration – whatever you have to hand; you want it to be lively but mild. I fed some starter straight from the fridge that had last been refreshed a couple of days previously and fed 50g rye starter with 25g water and 25g white flour and left it for a couple of hours until it was starting to puff up a bit.

1 tblsp whole milk

Method:

Place oats in a food processor and process until they turn to fine powder. Add flour, sugar and salt, pulse a few times to combine and then put butter in the processor and turn on briefly until the mix looks damp and comes together in a rough dough. If you don’t have a processor use oats that are already fairly fine in texture and combine with the other dry ingredients in a bowl before rubbing in the butter with your fingertips.

Remove mix from food processor to a medium bowl and stir in the starter and a tablespoon of milk gently, until well combined. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate until firm – an hour or so, or until you are ready to make the biscuits.

Roll the dough out evenly on a lightly floured surface until it is approx. 3-4mm thick. Cut circles of dough with a cutter and place on parchment/silicone paper lined trays. They don’t spread much but leave a little room between them. I made 25 from this recipe. Prick all over with a fork and put them back in the fridge for 15 – 20 minutes or so while the oven heats up.

I baked them at gas mark 4/ 180ºC for 25 minutes turning the tray once during baking, though check them at the 15 and 20-minute mark – they don’t go very brown as there is not much sugar in them so you are looking for them to seem dry and firm and browned slightly at the edges and underneath. The longer you cook them (without burning them, obviously!) the crisper they will be.

They are slightly soft when they first come out of the oven and firm up when cooled. Transfer to racks to cool down and then keep in an airtight jar or container.

So if you have starter to discard, don’t throw it away, have a go at these, you won’t be disappointed. If you need any more information about the process, just comment at the end of this post, I’ll be happy to help.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

 79 total views,  79 views today

The post Another use for your spare Sourdough starter, biscuits appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

What did you want to be?

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

What did you want to be when you grew up, vs. what you are today?

In some ways, I’m still waiting to grow up.

I might have grown old but I still feel about 18 inside.

Back when I really was young, I wanted to travel, to see the world. Maybe that’s where the desire to write about other worlds came from. I’d still like to see other worlds. I’m sure that one day part of my D.N.A. will travel to the stars, inside the cells of one of my descendants. In a way, I’ll be there.

I spent my career on ships. I saw other worlds. OK, they were on this planet but back in the days before instant communication and the internet, they were as other-worldly as any of my subsequent creations. There was no homogenisation of culture back then, foreign meant different, not McDonald’s and all the familiar places and things from everywhere else.

Hardly anyone spoke much English in a lot of the places I visited, you had to communicate with signs, gestures, a piece of paper with an address on it. For a young lad from Devon, it was a revelation.

Today,

I’m a retired Master Mariner and Thames Pilot, sitting in my house in Devon, five minute’s walk from the sea. In my seagoing life, I did most of the things I always wanted to.

I went around Cape Horn, voyaged six-hundred miles up the Amazon.

I sailed through storms, saw volcanoes, felt earthquakes and stood watch at three a.m.; with a million stars overhead and the smell of Sandalwood on the breeze.

Later, I piloted over 3,000 ships on the Thames, from yachts to supertankers.

I went through the Thames Barrier, pushed through the mud and reeds in Barking Creek. I backed the largest passenger ships to visit London at the time through Tower Bridge, reversed a warship into the West India Dock.

I amassed a brain full of stories and characters, good and bad, funny and tragic. When I cast my mind back to all the places that I’ve been there are so many things that I can pick out; to modify and retell in a new setting. My job travelling the world had set me up for a second career as an author.

Would I change a moment
of it?  NO!







Did I achieve what I
wanted? More than I ever could have imagined.

That’s my story, my
novels are really only based on things in my life, with a little bit of
license, taken and placed in a new setting. Because when we boldly go, we will
take it all with us. All the humanity, the emotion and all our vices. The story
will be the same, it will all play out on a new stage.

How about you, where are
you compared to where you thought you’d be? Let me know in the comments, then go
and check out the other great blogs in this hop.

Just follow this link.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/26f755cb0e0940648258ad243a7a5be8

 411 total views,  411 views today

The post What did you want to be? appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

Another week has passed

A place I haven’t been for a while, I can’t wait to go back.

Another week has passed in self-isolation here in Devon. What have I learned so far?

That we are a lot better off than we think. I hear that my daughter (the midwife) is having trouble getting food delivered where she lives. Here I went shopping on Tuesday and there was plenty of choice and enough to go around. Menu planning has gone out of the window anyway, In the end, I just bought enough food for 8 days meals and we’ll make what we can from it. Any leftovers will either be eaten on the next day or will go in the freezer. In a way it’s good, we were having the same old stuff every week and now we’re trying things we haven’t eaten for a while. I’m making sure that I get a few treats as well, as we can’t go out for lunch.

My family all work in the health service. Daughter one is a nurse, now working on I.T.U., her husband is a Consultant. Daughter two is a midwife and Daughter three is in her second year of nurse training. I’ve always been incredibly proud of them and what they do, even more so at the moment. I make sure that they know.

I’m resuming friendships on social media with people that
I’d not seen for ages. Thanks to all the gloom and doom on Facebook, I’m
searching out people who have something cheerful to say.

Every day is like every other, there is no more distinction
between weekdays and Saturdays.

I’ve got some jobs done, things that I was putting off. Do you know what? without exception, they all took less time than I thought they would. Maybe that’s a function of having all the time in the world to do them in. As soon as the weather breaks and we can’t go outside, I’ll start decorating the kitchen.

I’m writing regularly again. After the initial phase of being distracted and devoid of inspiration, I’m starting to get tuned in. I was hoping that life would return to normal within a few months, I now accept that we’re in this for the long haul. I’m joining in a daily writing challenge in one of my writer’s groups and sharing my totals with everyone else, it all helps to foster a bit of community, the feeling that we’re all in this together. Our writer’s group can’t meet, but we have a virtual meeting arranged.

I’ve decided to update a lot of my marketing efforts, as they are becoming tired. With so many titles (27), it always seemed to be too big a job, now I have time on my hands and with no new books to promote, I can concentrate on getting my backlist in order. That means new covers and descriptions, the works.

I have two books on sale at just 99p (99c or 0.99€), first is my debut cosy crime novel, with reluctant amateur detective Andorra Pett.

second, a tale of betrayal and megalomania. When disaster reveals a person’s true worth, what chance is there for those caught in the crossfire? Get the cheezy cover before it vanishes forever.

with more to follow. Just click on the cover image to get your copy.

It’s nice to sit in the garden and drink tea or coffee.
People chat to you (from a distance), the air smells cleaner and you can hear
the noises of nature, without the low-level background noises of civilisation.

I’ve started exercising a bit more. I have an exercise bike that I didn’t use as much as I do now. In a lot of ways, it’s easier than going for a walk, there’s no need to practice social isolation. I can put some music or a video on and escape for half an hour (or until my legs give out).

I hope everyone who reads this is coping and that your
families are OK, stay inside and stay safe.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

 198 total views,  197 views today

The post Another week has passed appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

The Indie Showcase presents, Kay Castaneda

Please welcome this week’s guest to the Showcase.

From the desk of Kay Castaneda:

The title of my first novel is Emmie of Indianapolis. The idea for this book came about when my nieces were visiting me. They were teasing me about living in the last century. Casey, who was eight at the time, wanted to know if refrigerators had been invented yet and did I have one way back then. Ten-year-old Frankie asked me about vacuum cleaners and stoves. Jamie, thirteen, wondered how I did my hair. Did they have hairdryers and even shampoo? The list went on and on until the subject of popcorn came up. Microwaves weren’t invented yet, so my mom, their grandmother, cooked popcorn on top of the stove in an old metal pot. Their eyes became very big and were so amazed as I demonstrated with my hands how you had to shake and keep the pot moving over the flame or the popcorn would burn. The girls were thrilled that they caught me with evidence of being old.

I told them other
stories about when I was a young girl in Indianapolis. Even though they lived
in the suburbs of Indianapolis, they’d only been downtown a few times for
football games and Christmas shopping. I think it’s important for people to
know their family history and the place where they live. I began by writing
down a list of names, birthdates and other information of our immediate family
members. As I created the list, the idea of turning the list into a book became
something I felt called to do.

I always wanted to
write a book, but I never had a clear idea what it would be about. The
character of Emmie came to mind as a way to tell stories in a novel format.
There were some memories that were painful to recall, but I wanted to tell the
truth so I could be faithful to the times and family history. I knew I couldn’t
write very personal details, but I could convey a general idea.

The 1960s was a historic and unique era in Indianapolis and the country. All eras are historic, but I felt it was crucial to preserve some of the times gone by as experienced by a real person, not just as in a textbook. Emmie, the protagonist, is a twelve-year-old girl which is the age I was in the novel’s time period. I used ‘poetic license” to add fictional elements to the story. Many of the characters are modelled after friends and people from my neighbourhood back then. I also wrote detailed descriptions of landmarks in the inner city and the way people interacted with each other then. I plan to continue Emmie’s story as a series that will take place in the same time period in Indianapolis. Emmie will be a teenager and have various adventures with the same friends in the city plus I will explain how it was for young people in that time.

I think I’ve changed in many ways since I wrote this book. I’m not nervous now to let people know I’m a writer. Before, it embarrassed me to let anyone find out about my writing because I was not certain about my abilities. Now that I completed a novel, at least I can believe in myself and my writing. It’s one thing to tell people that you plan to write a book, and another to actually do it. I always had doubts about wanting to be a writer. Now I know that I can write a book with all the research and planning that it takes.

Being an author doesn’t involve just creativity, it takes practical business skills. I am really thankful that I was able to see it to the end.

Kay’s Bio

            Kay Castaneda is retired from a career as a college writing instructor and special education tutor. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at Indiana University. Her publications include poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction in literary journals plus articles about education for reference books. She published a novel based on her experiences growing up in the Midwest, Emmie of Indianapolis. Kay also contributed two stories to Death Among Us: An Anthology of Murder Mystery Short Stories which was published July, 2019. She is currently researching the history of Ireland for a novel based on her ancestors.  Her work in progress is a mystery novel with an amateur female sleuth. Her hobbies include reading, especially Russian novels, biographies, watching crime shows on TV and genealogy. Kay’s talents include daydreaming, inventing characters for future writing and baking. She loves to eat at Mom and Pop diners and browse in antique stores and flea markets. Kay lives in Mexico with her husband Tony, son Richard and dog Buddy.

Emmie of Indianapolis blurb

In 1963, a young teenage girl moves with her mother and sisters from the suburbs to the downtown of a Midwestern city after her parents get a divorce. Emmie, a naïve, curious and intelligent girl, wants the security of her suburban life but has always dreamed of adventure in faraway places. She must take risks, meet new people and become independent. The change is difficult for all because of her mother’s alcoholism and lack of a steady income. When Emmie’s mother takes a job, she cares for her sisters at night. In her new neighbourhood, Emmie meets people from different cultures and who are both good and evil. She defends her sisters and herself each day by confronting the evil, thus awakening her courage and inner strength. But she never gives up.     

Book buy links

https://books2read.com/KayCastanedaAuthor

Social Media Links

https://www.facebook.com/EmmieofIndianapolis/

https://twitter.com/kay_castaneda 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13851635.Kay_Castaneda

https://www.instagram.com/kaycastaneda90/

https://bookplaces.wordpress.com

https://womanreadingabook.wordpress.com

https://kaycastaneda.wordpress.com

https://www.amazon.com/author/kaycastaneda

https://www.pinterest.com/Kay-Castaneda

My thanks to this weeks guest for a great post. I hope you all enjoyed it.

While you’re here, why not have a look around the site? There are FREE things and a whole lot more, just follow the links at the top of the page.

You might also like to join my team. I’ll send you a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with news, updates and extra content, as well as more about me and my worlds. You’ll also get a free short story and offers on my novels. Subscribe by clicking HERE

If you want to be
featured in a future Showcase, where you can write about whatever
(within reason) you want, then please let me know. Use the comment box below
and I’ll get back to you.

You can catch up on
previous Showcase posts by clicking HERE

Don’t miss the Saturday Rewind, next Thursdays Showcase post, and my musings every Monday.

Have a good week,

Richard.

 118 total views,  118 views today

The post The Indie Showcase presents, Kay Castaneda appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

When you have to bring the curtain down

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

How do you feel about killing off one of your major characters?

As I was
writing, I knew it was coming. Then it arrived. This was the bit that I was dreading.

A while ago,
I had created a character, fashioned her out of nowhere. I gave her a mind, a
personality, she was like a friend as we adventured together with the rest of
the cast.

As her story
developed, I came to realise that she was fated to die, in order for what came
next to have any real meaning. Her passing would give purpose to another
character’s life, make him who he was supposed to be.

I agonised about her impending demise; how would I fashion it? Now that I knew her better, I didn’t want her to suffer, didn’t want a long, drawn-out scene with tears and angst. I knew that it would make me well up to write it, even the thought was enough to get me started.

I put it off for as long as I could, left a blank page in the document and wrote around it.

But it had to be, I think (hope) that on the day, she was blissfully unaware of what was to come. In the end, the story decided how it would happen. She placed her trust in another character to keep her safe. He based his decisions on incomplete information with the inevitable consequences. I honestly don’t know which one of us was more upset, him for putting her in danger or me as I wrote it all down. Of course, through his guilt and despair at being unable to save her and the self-loathing he felt as he blamed himself, a new man was forged.

He went on to have more adventures but his life was never the same. There was always a hole in it, which is how it should be when you lose someone important.

As you can see from what I have written above,

the simple answer to the prompt is yes. For me, It’s a terrible feeling. To all intents and purposes, the characters that populate my worlds are real. They share their lives with me and I tell you all about them. However you view my creative process, I am omnipotent in it, I have the power. And with that comes responsibility. I don’t go around slaughtering them on a whim, whether they are the hero or one of the supporting cast, the life of each one is special to me, for the reasons I’ve given. The passing of each is a source of pain, even if they only had one thing to do, even if they only occupied a page, it was important to the plot, or I would not have brought them into being.

And, having done that, it’s hard to just dispose of them.

I’ve tried other ways of removing characters from the action, by either ignoring them once their job is done; or by having them escape to live another day. It doesn’t work. Sometimes you have to do the deed, as painful as it is.

All I can do is offer them rebirth in a story of their own; set in the days when they still had breath in their bodies.

Over to you, fellow authors, let me know how you deal with this. Please leave your thoughts in the comments, then make sure that you check out the rest of the great blogs on this hop.

Just follow this link.

 https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/21262415d37149ef9da30fea4b14f875

 100 total views,  99 views today

The post When you have to bring the curtain down appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..

Other things on my mind

A place I haven’t been for a while, I can’t wait to go back.

There have been some changes, some good, some not so. In my little corner of England, everyone is talking to each other more, from a safe distance. We shout over the garden fence, exchange more conversation on our infrequent trips to the shops, offer to help in different ways. There’s a spirit of community, it’s nice. On the negative, being unable to visit family is a bit of a pain, at least there is video calling.

In a lot of ways, it’s like being on a cargo ship with a crew of 17. There are a few people around you that you see now and then, the rest of the world is remote, accessed only by what you see and hear on TV, radio or the internet.

With no idea how long things will stay like this, I’m rationing my jobs. I have a shed to tidy, a kitchen to decorate and my study needs a spruce up. But there’s no sense of urgency, a little bit each day will leave me with something to do long term.

I also thought that the changes in my lifestyle brought on by you-know-what might mean that I would do a little more writing.

On my current job-list, there are some graphics projects I
need to complete and a couple of blog posts to write about my upcoming
audiobooks.

Additionally, I have seven or eight half-completed novels. I
was rather hoping that a spell of enforced isolation might lead to me finishing
one or more of them. Or at least, getting a bit closer to that point.

And yet…,

Maybe it’s uncertainty, there are other things on my mind at the moment. I guess I’m not alone in that. Because of it, I can’t settle to writing much more than a few words here and there. In case you were wondering, I’m not out all day scouring South Devon for toilet rolls, the shops here are well stocked, the other shoppers civilised and sensible. We have all we need and there appears to be no sign that the situation will change. The garden needs attention there are other jobs, so in that respect, we have plenty to occupy us. Ironically, now we are staying at home, the weather, which had kept us in for months, is now beautiful.

Meanwhile, the novels languish, sequels to Jungle Green, A
New Life in Ventis, Survive, Life and Other Dreams, The Hitman and the Thief, The
Sensaurum and the Lexis and Andorra Pett and her Sister are all sitting
on my desktop and currently show no signs of growing. Nor does any more of the
plot of In the Wilderness suggest itself.

I also have two short stories that I want to extend, The
Orbital Livestock Company and Passing Thru. One of them could well
become this year’s NaNo project.

All I need now is some inspiration, motivation; call it what
you will. My get up and go has got up and gone. In an ideal world, if I worked
like other authors and was able to plot, maybe I could outline the novels and
fill in the blanks later. Unfortunately, my mind doesn’t work like that. I’m
stuck waiting for the voices in my head to give me a clue as to what happens.

Why won’t they tell me? Perhaps they too have other things on their minds?

Stay safe everyone.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

 182 total views,  182 views today

The post Other things on my mind appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..