Jane Lovering's Blog, page 9

I mention the C word.

Go carefully.  You may want to look away from this blog. I am going to talk about a subject that might have you wincing, shouting 'NO!', running away with your head under a blanket or vowing that now and forever more you are going to live up a bare mountain with only a small goat for company.  And, bear in mind, this is coming from a woman who showed you pictures of slugs WITH NO WARNING AT ALL...

Are you ready?

Here it comes...

Those of a sensitive nature - look away now....

I've been Christmas shopping.

I know! I know!  There's x amount of days left (depending on whether you count up until last posting day, last possible delivery day or Christmas Eve), the weather is unseasonably warm and I haven't even had my birthday yet.  But, even so.  With so many family members (and that number is increasing day by day), I need to get a head start on buying things, so as to avoid that last minute panic, where I dash into a shop and sweep things from the shelves with little or no regard for who might receive said gifts and end up with nine spare socks (I know, I can't work it out either) and people outside the family get things like snow shovels and blankets embroidered with the name of NOBODY THEY KNOW.

So, this year - no more.  Controlled, contained panic instead.
This screenshot is for illustrative purposes only and does not mean that anyone is getting anything from any of the indicated sites. Or...maybe they are...?

So, DD1 and I sat ourselves down at the table, armed with laptops, and opened loads of sites, and then spent about an hour staring at one another and saying things like 'Does Blank like Coal Mining? There's a really nice Coal Mining present on Amazon...' (name and present likewise for illustrative purposes only, I don't know anyone called Blank, let alone anyone who might be sufficiently interested in Coal Mining to welcome a thusly themed present, which I am not certain that even Amazon could supply).

Some One Clicking resulted.  Largely motivated, I have to say, by panic.  But I have hopefully, and with my pathetic and meagre budget, managed to choose things that I hope people will like.  And, of course, shopping early enables me to have many more 'panic' days, when I clutch my heart in the middle of a York shopping street, convinced that I have forgotten someone, dash into a shop and do the 'shelf sweep'.

If you get nine, non-matching socks this year, you'll know it was you I forgot.  Sorry.

 


Whoops.  Still, if I have to suffer, so do you.

NaNo..no, that's not the size of my brain...

I've never done NaNo before.  Guess what, I'm not doing it again...

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo (to give it its full name) is National Novel Writing Month (to give it its even fuller name).  During the month of November, anybody can sign up (it's not an 'offical' sign up, they don't give you numbers and a sponsorship form - it's more of a declaration of intent and a way of measuring your achievement) and write.  It is, apparently, a great way of forcing your bum to the seat - and there's a lot of mutual encouragement that goes on, it's all very friendly, you're only competing against yourself, etc.

So why don't I join in?

Deep breath.

Because I would sabotage myself.  I know I would, I do it already.  And I can't bear the thought of doing it whilst being watched.  Although, saying this, I did, informally, 'attach' myself to NaNo a few years ago, so many people were posting their word counts that I was inspired to try to beat them (or at least keep up), and I ended up writing the book now known as 'How I Wonder What You Are' in six weeks.  But that was cheating slightly, as I'd already got the idea, the characters and most of the storyline worked out in my head, NaNo was just my excuse for actually sitting down and writing the bloody thing.

 For some reason, as soon as I hear the phrase 'NaNoWriMo' I discover that the inside of my wardrobe MUST... MUST and I cannot stress that too heavily, be cleared out.  Or, whilst I may have started, full of good intentions, there is a SOMETHING UNAVOIDABLE that simply cannot be put off any longer and must be attended to.  It's like procrastination taken to the nth degree, in that, not only do I have to clean the bath, but I have to clean the bath and spend all month doing it.
Just one of the ways I arrange to sabotage my writing
So.  Whilst it is NaNo month, and whilst I am writing as fast as I can in order to try to finish this novel by the end of November, I want to stress that I am not doing NaNo, and any appearance to the contrary is merely an illusion.

And good luck to everyone out there who is NaNoing. DO NOT CLEAN THE BATH!

Some Interesting Things about my book, I Don't Want to Talk About It, that you probably didn't know.

As you may or may not know, depending on how relentlessly you stalk me, 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' is shortlisted in the e-book category of the 2015 Love Stories Awards.  This is all the provocation I need to tell you some Interesting Things about the book.  You may or may not know some of them already, because I am well known for my inability to shut up about my books, but anyway.  Here goes:

The churchyard setting was inspired by the view from the side of my house.
It's the shadow of a post and rail fence, not an enormous ladder propped against my house. In case you were wondering.The church has a Saxon sundial, you know.  I'm not quite sure why, perhaps they consider that time was more accurate back then and just refuse to come into the 21st century.  But anyway. I have spent a lot of time walking through that churchyard (which is actually tiny, and you can't really walk through it, there's only one way in.  So more...around). A lot of the names on the graves are local (as are the graves themselves, we tend not to import dead people round here. There's no call for it, you see), and the whole place is what set me off thinking about Winter - the girl writing a book about gravestones.

The setting of Great Leys is based on Stokesley, about 30 miles north of where I live.
As far as I am concerned it is a positive metropolis - having a supermarket, two schools (primary and secondary), a whole host of shops and lots of houses.  Which is why I am baffled when the book is reviewed and the reviewer starts with 'Winter Gregory has moved to the remote little Yorkshire village of Great Leys'.  Because Stokesley is neither remote, little nor a village. It is, however, in Yorkshire, so...points for that.

There is a strong theme of sibling affection running through the book.  Winter is an identical twin, separated from her sister Daisy by a lot of miles. Daisy, you see, lives in Australia, and Winter struggles with the distance between them.  I, too, have a sibling, however we are not twins, nor are we identical, on account of him being nearly bald.
This is he. His name is David, and we are separated by a lot of miles, which is probably for the best because I smell.  He lives in Exeter, and is, as far as brothers go, pretty wonderful.

In the book, Scarlet gets a guinea pig called Bobso. We had, during the children's growing up years, many many guinea pigs.  My eldest daughter was quite a dab hand at sexing them, but even she would occasionally get it wrong and we ended up with about twenty at one point.  But, on the plus side, I didn't need a lawn mower.  Or a burglar alarm, because if anyone approached within twenty feet of their enormous run, they would all set to squeaking like tiny little cars being broken into.
So. There you have it. Some Things you Probably Never Knew about I Don't Want to Talk About It. Ironically titled, since I just did...

I am inundated and I need a plastic bin to hide in.

There is only one creature on this planet that even the thought of makes me go all shivery and 'urgh' and want to run away or set about myself with a can of 'Everything killer' whilst making little squeaky noises of disgust and unpleasantness.  And no, it's not Michael Macintyre.
a man I know annoys many, but I think it's mostly his poshness and wobbly hair they find irritating, and, as someone who was once accused of being 'posh' (ha!) and who has, on occasion, been the possessor of wobbly hair, I feel for him.

Actually, it's cockroaches.  Blurgh.  Even typing the word makes me want to go and have a shower, then spray myself with flykiller, then have another shower. I'm not sure what difference the flykiller will make, but it's the only anti-bug stuff I've got.  I could spray myself with Pledge, on the grounds that any attack-cockroaches would just slide off me, but then I'd have to spend hours buffing myself up and, since I can't be bothered to polish the furniture, the chances of being sufficiently arsed to polish myself, are remote.

Anyway. Cockroaches. Blurgh.

But, coming in a close second on the 'things that I am going to eradicate from the surface of the planet and I don't care how bloody much that affects the food chain thank-you-very-much'.... slugs. Now, I've always been fairly amibivalent towards slugs, never had a particular problem with them, wouldn't want any of my daughters to marry one mind you, but since none of my daughters are invertebrates that's probably not going to happen anyway.  Until. The day I opened the dog biscuit cupboard and found....
this. Gah. You have, I put it to you, never known true horror until you shove your arm into a sack of dog biscuits, only to retrieve said arm with a handful of sluggy biscuits and your arm covered in slugs.  AND DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKES TO GET THE SLIPPERY STUFF OFF?  DO YOU??  They could market slug slime as a non-water-soluble lubricant, is all I'm saying.  I scrubbed, people! I scrubbed with scourers, with Fairy Liquid, with hot water...and still the slime stuck.  It took days before I could pull my sleeves down without my cardigan sliding off my arms.

And yes, this is indoors.  Yes, it is in my kitchen. I don't use poison because I have a stupid terrier who would only eat it. But these things are in my house...

I'm now hunting for a bin to keep the dog biscuits in. But I'm afraid that, deprived of their usual diet of dog-food, the slugs will come looking for a new target, and. given the slime, they will be able to slide me out of bed and transport me to some sluggy backwater without me even waking up!  One day, I'm just going to open my eyes and find myself face-to-eyestalk with some kind of sluggy Godfather figure, and then it's a very short hop to one of those horror films you see on late night telly...
'Don't call me 'slugface''...

Snow-Globe blindness and non-weeing characters in latest book shock!

Oh it's been a busy old week, what with the metal cages trying to kill me, writing a book during which I suddenly realised that a scene was in completely the wrong place, and doing a workshop...

The workshop, it must be said, was lovely.  Rhoda Baxter had found a fantastic place in mid York (when I say she found it I don't mean that she fell over it while out walking, she actually went looking first), and it was in a little attic room in Millers Yard, where we all sat around a table and Rhoda and I talked about Character-building (in novels, obviously, we didn't make our participants hang from trees over lakes full of crocodiles whilst shouting up at them that it was good for them.  That would have been expensive and probably not allowed - damn you Health and Safety!), Three-Act structure, Show Don't Tell ( we were quite forcible on this point, I believe) and Point Of View.  There were, for those of you concerned about such things, HobNobs.


In other news, my latest book 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' is still only 99 of your earth pence, it's a Kindle Monthly Deal (which I always think sounds suspiciously like the world's slowest card player), and it's selling really well.  So, you know, if you fancy a cheap read with a lovely cover, then go on over and buy it.  And, as if that weren't enough excitement for one person, my Christmas Novella will soon be available for pre-order!


It's a snow-globe.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's a snow globe.  For some reason known only to me and a few chosen friends, I suffer from snow globe blindness. I am physically unable to recognise a snow globe when I see one.  Others will see a snow globe when they look at the beautiful cover of my novella - me, I see a crystal ball with an inexplicable christmas tree inside it.  There are no crystal balls in the novella.  To be fair, there aren't any snow globes either, but snow globes are far more in the spirit of the story.  And there are christmas trees aplenty.  So why do I persist in being unable to see it as a snow globe?

Also in the story are (in no particular order), a man in tatty socks, artwork (some of it very valuable), snow, mince pies, and a dog called Frodo who looks a bit like this..
and whose main contribution to the story is to wee up a stairwell.

And now I must go back to the WIP, where nobody wees at all... well, obviously they must do, or they would explode, but there is no graphic weeing anywhere. *thinks*.  Although there may be a small case of pooh to take into consideration...Not a case of pooh, that's quite a lot of pooh, like, nearly a crateful, but...yes. Definitely some pooh.

The Co Op and the Killer Cages of Doom

I'm sorry, this post is a bit late.  Weekend working and writing are not compatible it seems...

I know, I know, you like to imaging me lounging in a negligible on a chaise longee eating grapes peeled by my own personal..err...grape peeler, or Tony Robinson, whoever's turn it is to pander to my whims...
but, in reality, yours truly has to put her shoulder to the wheel of commerce and give it a hearty shove every now and then.  For which, read manning the tills at the local Co Op for between sixteen and twenty five hours a week.

I've no idea where this image of writers as 'loungers on loungers' comes from. Most of the writers I know have day jobs, whilst writing novels is extremely fulfilling in a creative kind of way, it does not in any way at all pay the bills to run a household.  So, there I was today, striving for National Minimum Wage by wrangling metal carts that want to kill me up and down narrow aisles, or being trapped in the milk chiller by other metal carts which also want to kill me.

The Co Op has sentient shelf stacking equipment, you see. Vendables (those things we are about to vend, and not to be confused with Venables..

...because there are almost no points of contact between the Co Op and upper echalon football) are placed in metal cages and pushed around the shop floor to be decanted elegantly onto their appointed shelves.  Only in my case, the cages gang up, circle around and pin me to the Ambient Produce, from where I have to be rescued by patient co workers, armed with stun guns and whips.
A cage in its natural state, before loading commences.  They also bite.You know how badly behaved the average supermarket trolley is?  Well, these cages are like shopping trolleys that have been extended, had what little element of steerability they once had removed, and then they have been given toothache and the general temperament of a wasp.  AND they have access to freezers, chillers and the horrors of Ambient Produce, so I think you can imagine the terrifying nature of my job.

It's a wonder this blog gets written at all, quite honestly.

An Author's Bits. With pictures.

This week I have found myself thinking about authors' bits.

Not like Neil Gaiman's dangly parts or J K Rowling's sit-upon, because that would be strange, and what possible reason could I have for such musings other than a strange sexual preoccupation, which I quite clearly don't have and no I don't need any more approaches from men on Facebook, thank you very much.

Anyway.  No.  The authors' bits that I was thinking about, are the bits that go in the back of books (or sometimes the front), where you get that heading that says 'About The Author'.  This is where the author (or, if they are a rich and successful author, their 'people') try to make up something that makes the author in question sound approachable and fun, yet wacky and interesting enough to have come up with a book that you might want to read.
Yes, it's a wetsuit.  For 'weekend pursuits'.I'd guess, if you're the sort of author who has 'people', that you'd need to be quite nice to those 'people', just in case you suddenly find your books out there on the shelves bearing an 'About the Author' that says something like 'Blah is an author of inadequate comprehension, who spends his/her weekend at Interational Bitchathons and is regularly to be found naked and drunk in local gutters.'  Of course, since nobody reads the Authors' Bits, it's quite possible that my books already have this in, but I like to think that someone would have told me by now.

Right.  So my Author's Bits, mostly mention my animals, so I thought, what with 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' being on 99p Kindle Monthly Deal and my Christmas Novella coming soon, you may want a little insider peek at my bits.
Teal, the puppy, Cal, the stripey cat, and Zach the black and white one

Quentin, Helga and Helga...
Ignore the 'author in her slippers'.  Corvo the black and white cat, Abraxus the black cat, Big Dog Dylan, and yes, Teal the puppy again. She's photogenic, what can I say?
Tiggy, the terrier of such unmitigated scruffiness and grump that she rarely features in family photos. From her expression you can tell that she knows this.

So, there you have it. My bits.  And next time you pick up one of my books and read 'Jane has four cats, three hens and three dogs', now you know what they look like.  I'll be asking questions later, so I'll leave you to memorise these...

Oh, and anyone who came here for pictures of an author's...you know...bits... I'll see you later. Just have the money in used readies....

So, you could write a book, could you? Better stock up on noodles...

I had another one the other day.  All writers have had them, sometimes you get a lot of them and sometimes you are lucky and get away with only the odd one or two, but writers with a few books published tend to attract them in a similar way to the way that a horse attracts flies...

People who say 'I could write a book.'

Well, of course they could.  Anyone with a  working knowledge of words, and the ability to put them together one after the other into sentences could.

But let me tell you something about writing a book.  In fact, I shan't tell you, for, in the spirit of 'show don't tell' (one of the first Principles of Writing), I shall illustrate it for you.  Only I'll illustrate it in words, if that's all right with you, because my drawing skills are whatever a lack of skill is called.

Writing a book is like this:

Doing a jigsaw puzzle, in the dark, with only a tiny little torch that you got in a Christmas cracker.  A cat is sitting on the box lid, you very much suspect that the dog has eaten one of the corner pieces, and, very often, you are wearing boxing gloves.

The inside of a writer's brain
Someone will pay you for the completed jigsaw, which needs to be finished to a deadline, and the telephone rings every fifteen minutes - when you answer it, a very angry man wants to talk to 'Roger'. Who doesn't live there.

And all the time you are doing this, your well meaning friends and relatives will tell you how lucky you are to be living the life of a writer, how relaxing it must be to be at home all day and how they are sure they could never write a book, except that they've had a really interesting life and one day they will write it down and get it published.

In the meantime, you get letters about unpaid bills, your family complains about the number of meals you cook that consist entirely of noodles and the cat that isn't sitting on the puzzle lid has left home and only comes back occasionally to stare through the window at you in an accusatory manner.

Still want to write a book?  I'll lend you a dog that's already eaten several of my pieces...

In your own time...

Christmas Novella News, Doctor Who and walking on stubble

This week I've mostly been writing.  Well, I say mostly, I did do some other stuff too, although most of it was quite dull and there was a lot of hoovering.  But several things enlightened my week.

1) Novella News!  I am just in the editing process for my Christmas Novella, which has been retitled to make it more 'christmassy' and is now called (drumroll please).... The Art of Christmas!!  And it's got a cover and everything! Hopefully it will be out as a natty little e-book just in time for you to sit down with a festive eggnog and forty five mince pies and get into the spirit of the season, but since I know you start doing that in October, it might not be.

There! Isn't it lovely!  It's about an artist who runs a graphic novel and Sci Fi shop, his dog Frodo, and a lovely lady who's lost rather a lot in her life... and it's a bit sad, and a bit funny and features a mis-shapen Christmas tree, lots of snow, a mysterious child and dog wee.

2)  The Doctor is back!  Lovely lovely Peter Capaldi, being all Rock God and then scaredy and then fabulous.
Everyone needs a bit of suspension of disbelief, and I sat on the edge of my sofa, with a dog (not sure which one, it was dark, but there was definitely a dog. Or a furry ghost) watching.  I was agog, I tell you. A Gog.  Handmines...

3)  Fabulous weather, during which I wandered out for walks with the dogs.  It's that wonderful time of year when there are stubble fields everywhere, which nobody much minds you walking around on. 
I'm very very lucky to live in such a lovely part of the world, where I can let two mad terriers run about without having to worry, and the big dog can lope along behind if he is so inclined (he has a wobbly back end.  I'm sure, after a late Saturday night, we can all sympathise).

4)  I started my new job today.  Lots to learn, and I may never get properly to grips with the lemons, and I'm not allowed to sell alcohol or cigarettes yet and have to get someone else to come and authorise them.  I think my till thinks I'm 12 or something.  But, hey, it will stave off the worst of the bills, although I don't think I'm going to be able to afford a pair of Manolo Blahniks just yet.  However, plimsolls are not out of the equation, so it's all good. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, Tony will be on soon, it's Time Crashers night, and I have to go and make myself beautiful in order to watch him.  He's a God, you know.  A veritable God.
True fact.

My latest book and its connection to Haim, and how to know if Taylor Swift finally gets to me.

I like to write in total silence.  Environmental silence that is.  No background sound at all.  There's already enough noise in here, what with me tutting, randomly shouting 'what did you do that for?' and eventually slamming my laptop shut with the resounding cry of 'well that's a complete bunch of crap, where are the biscuits?'  I struggle to work when, from next door, comes the sound of the garden-landscapers radio, if anyone is talking outside or even if a cat is purring too loudly, which is why I often work wearing a pair of industrial quality ear-defenders.
My secret shameAnd I am puzzled by people who say they write to music, what with me getting annoyed by the fridge for making random 'brrrrrrr' noises.  I know it's each to their own and everything, but...HOW?  Whenever I listen to music, and by 'music' I mean songs not classical because if you are the type who listens to classical music whilst writing then you are highly unlikely to be reading my blog, although I must admit to quite liking a shot of Ride of the Valkyries whilst hoovering, I find myself getting caught up in the lyrics. And, from there, there is a high probability that I will abandon whatever I was writing up to that point and start writing whatever story the lyrics of the song dictate. So, if I suddenly start producing a lot of books about women being deserted by their no-good, cheating boyfriends, you will know that Taylor Swift finally got to me.
I'd like to think I could take her in a fist fight, but if she starts singing I'm a gonerHowever, I do find myself sometimes getting inspiration from songs. Not directly, but sometimes there will be a 'mood' or a tone or even just a base line that makes my brain go off in a certain direction.  Random bits of lyric or melody get stuck in my head and my thoughts just seem to go off and do their own thing with it, and before you know it there's a book that's come out of one particular song. The instrumental break in Snow Patrol's 'How to be Dead' gave me ideas which found themselves in Star Struck, for instance. 

My youngest daughter is a huge Haim fan.  I mean that she likes them a lot, not that she's like seven feet four or anything. But this means that I have been subjected to many many tracks by the band, and, gradually, things have worked into my subconscious, so I now blame Haim's track 'Falling' for inspiring many of the ideas in I Don't Want to Talk About It.  Not the melody, not the words, but something about the general mood of the song ('Never look back, never give up')....


Currently I've got Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain' stuck in my head, providing me with mood-music for the current WIP - it's the phrase 'Running through the shadows' that's doing it.  I just can't actually, you know, listen to the music while I'm writing, so I have to hum. Or sing to myself. And given my total lack of musical ability, I'm even annoying myself....
 I do not look like this. Unless you factor in the onesie, the biscuit crumbs, the coffee stains and the cats.