Penny Hooper's Blog, page 14

Coming up with Character names…

I’m quite new to being an indie author, so I’m still learning, I do read a few blog posts from others or do a LOT of researching on the internet into best ways to do it, but most of the time I learn along the way.

But one thing I do find that irritates me is coming up with new character names! I wonder how other authors do it, so I figured I’d write about how I personally come up with new character names.

Well, first off, I have a few ‘names’ that are my favourites, don’t ask me why, as some are just random and just stuck with me for no reason, others there are a deeper story that I cannot go into depth about in a simple blog post!

But some names that stuck with me are ‘Alex’ – I love the idea it can be used as either a female character or a male character and I also love the idea of the character being thought of as male and then, whoops, no she’s female! My mistake!

‘Jason’ stuck with me, that’s a long story! But that name probably features a lot in my work – he’s a main character in my book “It’s My Mistake” and he’s also a small character in my upcoming “Rose Garden Sanatorium”. Different people though of course.

Maybe.

New Indie Author…

So, last night I decided to go through my novel “It’s My Mistake” one last time and I finally committed to posting it up on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing!

I had to go through it a few times (in preview mode) to make sure the formatting was kept. As apparently a few times it didn’t like a page-break or a line-break. But hopefully after a third attempt it should be okay!

It’s now currently in a Review stage, which I was told can take up to 72 hours, so hopefully by Friday evening it should be ready to purchase and download!

It’s currently only in e-book format – so it can be read on a kindle app. But if it does well, I will be looking at putting it on Amazon in paperback format!

My new book “It’s My Mistake”

I had some sound advice a while ago, about publishing my book.

If you don’t know what’s been going on with this book I was writing, let me just summarise quickly… since January I have been writing, editing, developing, sleeping, eating, breathing.. this book idea which I named “Rose Garden Sanatorium”. I was so invested in it that I’ve come up with such a plot that it spans 5 books.

BUT, after realising that a story is judged by it’s cover, I approached a British Company that design covers and they recommended that I should start my venture by publishing it online in e-book format first.

The problem is, I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing that just yet with Rose Garden Sanatorium. And because I’ve put so much effort into it, I don’t want to mess it up! So, I’ve started writing another one, although ‘slightly’ different to Rose Garden Sanatorium, I’ve (nearly) written a book called “It’s My Mistake.”

“It’s My Mistake” is about a woman; Alice, (I’ll admit, she’s loosely based on me – but the old Penny when she was naive and slightly vulnerable) who decides she wants a career change. Of course, she would love nothing more than to work in a hotel! She’s not been having much luck of course, since she has no experience, but she ends up getting an interview with a company called ‘Global Elite’. Although, she messes up the interview and rushes out! Deciding that she maybe should just go back to care work, she get’s a mysterious call from someone, and it turns out to be that hot guy on the interview pannel at Global Elite! And what… he actually offers her the job? And… there’s more! Alice, realises that this guy actually has the hots for her! And not only that – he’s the manager not just of the hotel, but of the whole Global Elite Enterprise! She realises that her bad luck has finally stopped and she not only has a new job finally working in a hotel, but she’s now seeing one of the most successful men in London! But… and of course there is a but… things come crashing down for Alice, when she thought they couldn’t get any better… her relationship with this man, Dan, isn’t exactly what it seems and her world turns upside down again! Especially after accidentally bumping into the mysterious and alluring handsome guest at her hotel!

Trying, one day at a time…

So, today I’ve been swinging my feet and biting the inside of my mouth and waiting…

Waiting for the day that I can finally make a decent headway with my business idea! Owning my own hotel.

I’ve been doing a bit more deliberating lately about it. I think it was the second to last cold and windy day trudging through the outside weather trying to get outside because I’m isolated in this village that made me realise that spending anymore time in the United Kingdom is probably not in my best interest.

If you don’t know already, I have a keen interest in Forensics, Science, Psychology, etc, but I also have this huge dream to one day own my own hotel. And when I say dream, I mean – I literally dream about it!

And, if you don’t know already, I did try to purse that dream by contacting a few companies that help people like me set up my own business (especially social enterprises) and I ran into a bit of a brick wall. The fact I live in such an isolated village with very limited public transport (I sold my car as I couldn’t afford to keep it) means getting to meet these people and go to events was, to say the least, difficult. So, I decided to wait until I at least moved to the city.

BUT – after going back and forth from the Job Centre and getting Universal Credit, I have realised that not only is it difficult for me to find work (even though I’ve started searching in Edinburgh as there is a posibility to get there in the week!) I’m panicking about working full time, renting a house (the dreaded housework!), writing a book (or two, or three…!) AND university work! So, I’m worried about that now too!

I then said to myself, that I would wait until I’ve finished my Degree – but then I thought, I want to do that Master’s Degree at Cranfield University, so that another year of studying on top of this last year of studying, and then what? I at first wanted to find work in that field, big companies head hunt at Cranfield see, so in my head I was thinking about getting an awesome job in London working for an Intelligence company (like the National Crime Agency), but is that what I REALLY want, or is that just because it looks cool?

Anyway! Long story short, after that last straw walking in the cold wind (in June I might add), that I realised it’s pointless going to Cranfield and I’m not happy here in the UK (especially after today with results in from the General Election, but I won’t go into politics!) I realised that I should just focus on my health and happiness.

So! I have decided to focus on starting up that business! Yes, I might not be able to start it up right now as I am still going to be finishing my degree (I’ve got this far already!) I don’t have any business knowledge! I don’t have the funds! I live in the middle of no-where. But I’m going to chase my dream.

And I’m starting by a small e-commerce business. Selling my prints/photography to begin with, and working my way from there – although I am going to have to think it through properly. Selling my prints is just a beginning – and I don’t expect to sell many. I tried it before and I think I sold about 1 or 2! But, it’s a start! Also, going to be looking into broadening my understanding on business – so, lots of research in the next few months while I’m on summer holidays!

Health gone downhill again…

So, last week I went downhill in health, feeling weak, tired, exhausted, headaches, heart fluttering, to name a few. It was scary how weak I was! So I went to the doctors, he took bloods, took my blood pressure (it was a little low), suggested I have an ECG (I already had one at the end of last year) and then suggested I start taking beta-blockers for my high heart rate.

I noticed this happened not long after I got extremely cold after taking my dad to the train station last Monday, he decided to have the window open to have a fag and the wind blew right onto me and was freezing!

Today, my health has gone downhill again… I originally put it down to just having low iron, being a vegetarian, so I started to take iron tablets again, and ate more leafy greens and had more vitamin C to help absorbtion. But today, there are no excuses, I just went downhill after getting cold.

Where I live we don’t have gas to the house, so we have oil instead, but our oil tanker ran out of oil (someone forgot to check it!) and the heating stopped working… I got so cold I was sat at my computer in a jumper AND dressing gown.

I started off with just weakness, my heart was fluttering a lot in the morning, so I decided to go back on the beta-blockers (I wasn’t sure I liked the idea being on them so didn’t take them) but now I’m exhausted and achey! Shoulder aches, abdomen aches, back aches, neck aches, jaw aches and I get a few twinges in my arms, hands and legs too.

I really do think I have Fibromyalgia or something similar! May be booking an earlier appointment at the doctors, I have one on the 21st but that is ages away to me!

Plus, I seem to think I might have something wrong elsewhere, these pains in my abdomen I’ve had before, and they’re worse now than they were when I first started getting them. I have other symptoms too, which don’t match up to Fibro, but I think it might be polycystic ovary syndrome. Doctor mentioned it last time I was there too when I mentioned my symptoms.

Anyway, going to have a bath… hopefully this will warm up and sooth my aches!

Waiting to hear from The Princes Trust

So, I sent an email to The Princes Trust today. After speaking to a good friend of mine who said my idea was fantastic, it really encouraged me to make my dream a reality.

So, within 5 days, I should get a call from someone at Princes Trust to discuss my business plan. They might be able to help.

If you haven’t read my previous blog post, I will explain briefly. I have this big and very ambitious idea of opening up a hotel chain which has the sole purpose of helping the homeless population.

It saddens me to see people living on the streets, by probably no fault of their own. Yes, I know, some of them are probably drug addicts, but we need to stop pointing the figure of blame and recognise that drug addiction is a mental health issue or at least a form of escapism. I escape reality by diving into a good book or writing my own, but everyone has their way of dealing, and sometimes people turn to drugs and then get themselves stuck!

Anyway, I won’t go into too much detail here, but my aim is to help these people. And if I cannot go straight into the hotel business, then I’ll start off somewhere else and smaller. A hotel is rather ambitious, especially for someone who doesn’t have business knowledge let alone knowing how to run one!

So, for now, I’ll leave that there, I’ll keep you posted with what happens!

Business/Charity idea

I was reflecting open this social enterprise company in Scotland this morning, they’re mainly based in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but are hoping to expand; they’re called Social Bite.

Click here to go to their website.

For those of you who don’t know, Social Bite is a social enterprise which sole purpose is to change social issues, mainly homelessness in Scotland. They’re a cafe/sandwich chain of shops in these cities, where people can just go to get a bite to eat, but people can also donate money to put aside for homeless people so they can go in and get something to eat. They also stress that 100% of their profits go towards charity, they’re soely driven on making social change!

One of my favourite celebrities gave them a visit once; Leonardo DiCaprio.

I think it’s a fantastic idea, I’m always worrying about our homeless population, and I feel that our government isn’t doing enough to help them, so my heart goes out to the founder of Social Bite.

Other musings I’ve had in the past, in terms of helping our homeless population, usually end up with me saying, “If I get rich, I’ll buy a hotel to home the homeless!”

But I thought this morning, why do I have to be rich to be able to do this? Yeah, I’ll work hard on my book in the hope that it becomes successful and maybe I can use the profits of this to this advantage, but I cannot just assume that I will be a successful author. Besides, I don’t want to be driven to write a book that is soley for making money, it’s for a hobby.

Anyway, back to the point, I know that it’s possible to set up a charity and I could go about it that way to make a change with homelessness (oh, it doesn’t stop with homeless, by the way, I have other areas I’d love to help in, environmental issues, mental health, animals, etc, but I can’t focus on all of them at once, I’ll go mad!) but everyone does this, and in today’s world I see there are too many charities, and some exploit an issue just to pocket a £200k+ yearly wage and then give charities a bad name! So a social enterprise may be a better idea.

So my idea…! Skip right to the point here, what if I were to get a loan (yeah, not a bank loan, I know, they won’t help!) and just buy a hotel business, and turn it into a social enterprise where people can pay to stay at the hotel, and if they want, put money aside for a homeless person for a night. I could offer employment to the homeless people too, work in the kitchens, work in the bar, work in admin, etc, train them up. On the premise that they move on to bigger and better things!

Only, the issue is, I have no experience working in a hotel, let alone running one!

BUT… I am seriously considering this! I can even see potential areas of expansion, a school/university for homeless, hair dressers on site, give a free space to social bite on site too to help them, a joint effort to tackle homelessness.

Although I start thinking up other ways to help other issues, mental health issues, drug addictions, reducing crime, climate change, refuges. But these are all possible ‘expansions’ upon the initial idea.

If there’s anyone out there who know much about running a business, a hotel maybe? Or can offer advice, support or ideas? Feel free to message me! PennyRoseHooper@gmail.com

Off to make this book a worldwide best seller for now…

I’m abseiling 165ft for Barnardos!

So, this weekend I came across this event, it happens every year apparently, and when I read that this event involves abseiling down a 165ft UNESCO World Heritage Site and a famous landmark in Scotland, I said to myself; “Am I mad enought to do this?” When I realised I was more than crazy enough… tap tap… register interest.

AND TODAY… I have officially signed up to do it! So on the 21st of May I will be going up the Forth Rail Bridge and deliberately climbing over the edge and pushing myself off to abseil (free-fall, like the SAS!) down onto the beach below. Crickey!

If anyone would like to donate, I have set up a JustGiving page…

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Penelope-Hooper1

And of course, I will be blogging about it. Hopefully I’ll get my hands on a go-pro or something so that I can film it too? We shall see.

Is Feminism discriminating?

I have these random thoughts sometimes, I might be sat watching a boring go-compare advert with the sound off like usual (I’m not discriminating go-compare, I hate all adverts equally!) while drinking a cup of tea wondering about the etymology of the word ‘tea’, or I might be staring at a bar of soap in the shower and wondering how they get the colour into it.

So, I had one today, while thinking about discrimination, as that’s something I’m extremely interested in, as I hate any form of discrimination, gender, race, belief, and don’t even get me started on age discrimination! And I had a thought to myself, we focus so much on the discrimination of women, girls, and currently gender-fluid and trans-gender people, but what about men?

I looked up the word ‘feminism’ in the dictionary after this, and this is what my ‘Concise Oxford English Dictionary’ said: “feminism (n.) the advocacy of women’s right on the grounds of sexual equality”.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic that women’s rights are now held in high regard, but shouldn’t we be focusing on all gender rights? Not just women’s? I don’t mean to say that we should focus on men’s right separately, but combine them all and say gender rights.

Of course, there is already ‘gender equality’ and the WHO regard these rights as ‘Gender and human rights’. So I’m not suggesting that we create one already, as it is already a thing! I’m suggesting to move away from the idea of feminism and focus on gender as a whole.

I know Feminism has been shrouded in negative light in some cases, some women go the extreme and suggest that women are ‘better’ than men, and this is wrong. I am a woman, but I do not see myself as ‘better’ than anyone, just because I have breasts and the female reproductive organ! And I also know that not all feminists think like this either and have to fight their way through the negativity given to feminism.

But maybe we ‘should’ focus on all gender equality, and move away from this notion of feminism? So that we do not lose sight of the whole idea of gender equality and how women’s rights came into power. It’s to be seen as equal alongside men.

Yes, there is still discrimination out there for women, I’ve come across it myself, first hand. Working as a fitter at Halfords and men telling me they do not want to talk to me because it’s a ‘man’ thing. Yet I probably knew more than most of the guys who worked there!

Anyway, back onto male discrimination. I’ve heard stories in my time about men’s mental health issues (another topic I’m extremely interested in!) or spousal abuse. Looking mostly at spousal abuse, the first thing that comes to mind, and I hate to admit it but it comes to my mind too (I guess this is the power of social ‘normality’), you immediately imagine a man hitting a woman. But it is KNOWN that women can hit men too, I’ve seen campaigns, been enthused on the idea of raising awareness for men. And yes, it is being tackled, but is it enough? I’ve seen shelters for women who escape domestic abuse, are there any for men?

Of course, there are campaigns to raise awareness for male mental health issues, and spousal abuse, and I know one recently in the UK has been endorsed and that is car insurance for male and female drivers. Originally it was cheaper for a woman to get car insurance because they’re classed as safer drivers (*coughdontmentionmyaccidentcough*) but eventually it was deemed discriminating and they changed the car insurances so that they match regardless of gender. Aside from the idea that they might have only put up the female driver’s costs and not lower the male drivers, nor a mixture of the two, as that’s a whole different subject!

But this is one good example that has shown that male discrimination is being tackled, so well done UK. Hopefully it’ll improve!

My love to all genders, whether your male, female, gender-fluid, trans-gender, or if you are a whole new gender yet to show your beautiful self to this world (alien?) ❤