Michelle Gordon's Blog

A Break in won’t Break me

Less than 4 days after I moved the last of my stuff into my storage unit, it was broken into and ransacked.

They were looking for jewellery, so it was just my personal stuff that was trashed, and they took some niknaks and my charms and findings from my jewellery making kit. None of it will net them much, most of the charms were not even silver plated. Nothing in the storage was of any great resale value, just sentimental.

The shock of it all was a lot at first, and having to move everything again, only a week after sighing in relief that I wouldn’t have to move it all for a while, was merely an inconvenience, and actually, with help, I got it all sorted very quickly.

The icky feeling that a group of men rifled through and trashed my personal stuff though, lingers. They emptied out boxes of old love notes from exes, and threw my sewing machines on the floor, and created enough mess that I was sweeping up my belongings with a dustpan and brush.

There was much to be grateful for though. There was much they left untouched, and they could have destroyed more than they did, but their singular focus on jewellery meant that they ripped through quickly then moved onto the next unfortunate victim.

The crazy thing is, they would have got more money working a couple of hours min wage, than they got from my unit. But in a way, I’m glad they targeted storage and not houses. Having someone break into your home is much worse, especially if you are asleep upstairs, but I can’t help wonder if it’s really worth it. Did they get enough silver to melt down to pay for their beers? Was it all just for a laugh? Something to do in the evening? Do they work regular jobs and do this as a side hustle? Have they considered the consequences should they get caught?

Anyway, though at the time it was traumatic, causing a few sleepless nights, it only took a few days to sort out, and though I feel a bit anxious when I go to my unit now, I have mostly recovered from the experience. I just hope it is one that I never have to go through again!

The jumbled mess that days earlier was neatly sorted into boxes

If you want to gain insight into the mind and life of a thief, do check out Burglar to Buddha by Simon Paul Sutton. A funny and fascinating read!

A Fragmented Nomad

This week I have been moving the contents of my print studio into a storage unit. In doing so, I realised that I have not had all my belongings in one place since 2008.

That was when I moved to New York. I got rid of much, putting only the stuff I couldn’t sell or bear to part with in my mums loft. Since then I have moved dozens (yes, dozens) of times, with my belongings spread through homes, storage units, studios and lofts.

For a while, I managed to keep my stuff to a minimum. Once, I even moved to Cornwall in just my tiny Micra! But once I started knitting again (thank you, Outlander!) And then handsewing, and then printing, well, the stuff kind of exploded.

I would say it is near impossible to be a multi-hyphenated creative and be a minimalist.

I’ve had many dreams in my life, many of which I have realised (see previous post) but I think my biggest dream now is to live in a place where I belong, with all my belongings.

Maybe then I could sort them properly, get rid of what I don’t need, appreciate the things I love, and use the materials I have (I know, ridiculous idea).

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve realised the link between ADHD and hoarding, and I genuinely don’t want to end up in a hovel filled to the brim with junk*, but I also don’t want to live in this fragmented nomadic way either.

Crossing everything and hoping that the next time I move, I will be able to reunite all my stuff, and live a more wholesome existence.

The rather stunning view on the way to my storage unit

*I honestly don’t want to end up like the old lady in The Magical Dragon Mirror, but if I ended up with a portal to the dragon world in my hallway, that would be pretty cool!

Dreams come true…

… but they don’t seem to last. I’m beginning to wonder if they are meant to?

I have been most fortunate to have had several of my dreams come true, from seeing my name on a book spine, having my books sold in bookshops, living in America, having a twin flame relationship, and having a studio in one of my favourite places.

But they have all been relatively short-lived, and thus relatively unsuccessful beyond the initial realisation. 

My books are in print, but my sales are low and I don’t receive much income from them. I only lived in America for 10 months, and now I see very little hope of even visiting there again, let alone living there. My twin flame relationship… well, went up in flames. And now after a year of having my studio, I am in the process of packing and moving, again. 

Which got me thinking, were any of these things supposed to last? Or is this pinball way of life just my path? Bouncing from one dream to the next, experiencing glimpses of the life I thought I wanted, but never fully settling into it?

Or is it that realising the dream is the easy part, but maintaining it, growing it, nurturing it, that’s where the work really begins. And that’s where I have typically fallen short.

Perhaps this next chapter of my life will be about the maintenance and growth of my neglected dreams, where I will look at where I went wrong, and perhaps finally experience the success that comes when you really give it everything you’ve got.

I plan to start with my books. After doing an event at a bookshop recently, where I met a few of my youngest readers, it lit a spark of excitement to return to writing the Magical Doorway Series, and get the rest of the books written before my audience is old enough to read the Earth Angel Series!

What is your neglected dream? Perhaps it’s time to dig it out and dust it off.

Pausing the Magic

For the last year I have been blessed to have a letterpress studio at The Fold in Bransford. I have been printing magical cards, prints, posters, bookmarks etc, and running workshops. But my funding is coming to an end and it’s not making enough to sustain itself and me, so I shall be closing on the 7th July.

I am making as much stock as possible so I can keep selling online (magicletterpress.co.uk) and at markets, but from July onwards I will be back on my laptop focussing on publishing again. I have a few clients waiting for me to do their books, and I hope to resume the 4th Magical Doorway book, as well as book 12 of the Earth Angel Series!

I will still be at the Fold for the epic Magic Print Fair on the 28th June, so if you are a printer and want to sell, click here, or if you fancy coming for a day out to buy all sorts of printed art or print supplies, all the info is also here!

Slow down you crazy child

One of my favourite movies when I was younger was 13 going on 30. My favourite bit was when this Billy Joel song is playing, and she realises that by wishing to be older, by speeding things up, she has missed out on so much, lost so much. And luckily, she has the chance to go back and do it over.

But we are speeding through life at the moment, with no opportunity for do-overs. We now consume more content and information in a day than people used to consume in a year, and we are burning out.

Well, I know I am.

There has been a slow fashion movement, moving away from fast fashion apparel created by slave labour in cheap fabrics, to more slowly made clothing, made by smaller brands that will last.

There has also been a slow food movement, moving away from empty calories that come in cardboard boxes to food homemade and more slowly consumed.

And slowly, I feel we are approaching a slow socials movement. Moving away from the junk food that is social media and moving back to email lists, blog posts, even phone calls, letters and, dare I say it, real world interaction!

I know that’s where I want to go. I want to stop scrolling and start thinking. I want to stop consuming and start creating. I want to appreciate the people and things I have in my life instead of constantly coveting what others have.

I need to do this in order to be able to focus enough to write. And funnily enough, the theme of a book I have in mind is about exactly this – slowing down and unplugging, in order to find ourselves again.

I think I’ll make a plan to unplug from March onwards, and see how things go.

Turquoise Quill Press

Our poetry imprint at Not From This Planet has five titles from four authors, and there are more titles planned for 2025.

We have two books by Catriona Messenger, life dealer and hope dealer. (She as since published love dealer, under her own imprint) They are beautiful poems of love, hope, grief and sadness, and are illustrated by Catriona too. Catriona is a beautiful soul who used poetry to get through a tragic event which changed her life forever.

We have two books from Elizabeth Lockwood, and another on the way in January. Waves of Stardust is a breathtakingly sad yet beautiful book filled with illustrations and poems about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, birth and loss of her beautiful baby boy, Osian. After the loss, Elizabeth continued to write poetry to cope with the grief while she continued to care for and raise her three other children, and that became Rain and Leaves. In January 2025, her latest collection will be available, called Ghosts of the Water.

The fifth poetry title is Duelling Poets, by myself and a poet and retired journalist, Victor Keegan. For 30 days we both wrote a poem each day with the same title, and in the book, they aren’t credited, so you can vote for your favourite, then at the end of the book, see which poet is your winner!

I wrote a lot of poetry as a teenager, mostly to process emotions I didn’t know how to cope with, and to explore concepts and ideas of other worlds or dimensions. Sometimes the words would just arrive and I would jot them down, not really sure of their meaning. Poetry has got me through some tough times, and I know for Elizabeth and Catriona, it has done the same. On our NFTP Instagram, we post monthly poetry prompts, and because we love a haiku, we also do a haiku competition with them. So if you fancy having a go at penning a poem, do check out the prompts and join in!

Here’s one of my haikus that I wrote for one of the October prompts. Keep an eye on my stories for more throughout December.

Amber Beetle Books

The latest book from Amber Beetle Books, the children’s imprint of Not From This Planet, is called War Bear, and has been written and illustrated by Matthew Wiggans. It tells the story of war refugees through the eyes of a teddy bear left behind. The illustrations are stunning, and the story is inspiring, and we at Not From This Planet are very proud to have published it, and to have partnered with the charity War Child. For every copy of the book sold, £1 will go to War Child. You can get your copy in paperback, hardback or on Kindle here!

Earlier this year, we also published another children’s picture book, written and illustrated by Christina Chard, called Verity Soap and the Silver Candle Snuffer. Christina has been writing and creating the illustrations for this gorgeous book for years, and I think it would make an excellent Christmas gift with the wintery theme and all the wonderful animals in the story. You can get your copy in paperback and hardback here.

The Magical Doorway Series is my own children’s novels, and there are three so far, with more on the way! (Soon, hopefully!) The Magical Faerie Door, The Magical Mermaid Portal and The Magical Dragon Mirror are stories of brave young children who venture into other worlds and dimensions to help magical beings. They are suitable for any age, but have a reading age of 8 to 12. You can get them on Kindle and in paperback and hardback here.

I look forward to expanding our children’s imprint in the next few years, so do keep an eye out for new releases in the future!

Not From This Planet

As I mentioned in my post a couple of days ago, in 2018, my oldest friend and I started our publishing house, Not From This Planet. But that wasn’t our first business together. Before that, we ran Purple Self Publishing, and helped authors to publish their books. But Not From This Planet was different, because we wanted to create a new, collaborative model of publishing. (Which consequently, many other publishers have now used a similar structure, realising that working with the author, and paying fair royalties, is a lot better than trying to rip them off.)

We had big plans for NFTP, and set about creating our imprints, of which there are seven (although not all the imprints have books published under them yet) and one of our very first books was Elizabeth’s memoir, Little Something, which we published under our non-fiction imprint, Labradorite Press. All of my Earth Angel novels created the spiritual fiction imprint, The Amethyst Angel, and in total across the imprints we now have 31 titles.

During this time, we have both gone through quite a bit! Elizabeth has been growing her family, she now has four living children, and a beautiful Angel child, and I have had many more jobs, house moves and relentless relationship ups and downs!

So I am very proud of the books that we have brought to life together, of the authors who have joined our publishing family, and I am very glad that I didn’t listen to the naysayers who said it was a bad idea.

The imprints that we have books under so far, are:

The Amethyst Angel (metaphysical/spiritual fiction)
Labradorite Press (non-fiction)
Turquoise Quill Press (poetry)
Amber Beetle Books (children’s fiction)
Jasper Tree Press (general fiction)

And over the next few days, I will do a post on each imprint, and the books under them, because been so long since I shouted about them.

Just as a fun bit of info, the reason there are 7 imprints is to reflect the 7 chakras. So each imprint is a crystal of the right colour. Starting at the crown, Amethyst (purple) then third eye, Labradorite (dark blue) then the throat, Turquoise, then the heart chakra will be our romance imprint (coming soon!) then the solar plexus is Amber (yellow) the sacral (orange) is TBD, and then Jasper (red) is the root.

So there you are, the ultra-spiritual explanation for our imprints!

As well as publishing books under our imprints, I have also published a few dozen books for authors under their own imprints, and I will be featuring them over the coming weeks too. Needless to say, though I may not have been blogging for the last 6 years, I have certainly been busy, so I hope you forgive my absence, but I’m hoping to be back here more often now.

Oh and kudos to my amazing sister, Liz, at Madapple Designs for all the many covers she has created for us, and for the logos for NFTP. I will feature her soon too, I promise

Fake it til you make it

I might have said too much in my post yesterday, but as I said, my ability to pretend has gone. Whether it’s because of hormones or just getting older, or just being so tired, I don’t know.

For a long time I have presented to the world a version of myself who is happy, successful, and has their shit together. But goodness that couldn’t be further than the truth. A friend asked me how my book sales were going, and I was honest – they’re terrible. I stopped marketing and posting six years ago, so of course my sales have tanked, and if I make £30 a month from the sales of all 23 books, it’s a good month.

She was surprised. She had assumed that my sales must be amazing. I don’t know what gave her that impression, maybe it was because I had just launched book 11 in my series, or was posting positive stuff.

I am a believer that it’s better to focus on the positive, to attract more positive, and I’m not a fan of the ‘poor me, please buy my book’ posts, that seem particularly prevalent on Threads at the moment. But by pretending I’m doing well and selling loads of books, I also cut off any possibility of people helping me by sharing my posts or recommending my books to others. Because honestly, who thinks to help a successful author? Clearly they don’t need it?

But I do need help, and I am terrible at asking for help, or accepting help when it is offered, though I am improving a bit on that front. I might initially resist, but often I can switch tack and accept the help. Because the thing is, I love helping others, and am always quick to offer my time or support, and I would be upset to think that someone is rejecting my help because they don’t believe they deserve it, or will feel weirdly indebted to me. I help others because it brings me joy, not because I expect anything in return, and I would hope anyone offering me help would feel the same way.

Why do we feel the need to ‘make it’ on our own? Or is that a neurodivergent thing? Clearly, any major success is the work of many people, a team with the same goal. For one single person on their own the big dreams or goals just aren’t possible.

My dreams? To sell millions of copies of my books. To have the adapted for TV and cinema. To create audiobooks. To make a living from my own creations.

But I can’t do it on my own. I need a team. I need support. So that’s something I am working on, because my stories deserve to be read, and heard, and seen.

If you have ideas, drop my a line. Or if you just simply want to share your dreams with me, I’d love to hear about them.

One of my very first fairs. I had four books and three oracle decks. This was just 12 years ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself just how much I have managed to achieve so far!
(And that maybe it’s time to get a new tablecloth?)

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

What do you do when your motivation, your very reason to create, disappears? When your drive and excitement just dries up overnight, because there’s nothing pushing you onwards?

You stop.

In 2018, that’s exactly what happened for me. I lost my reason to write. But to explain what my reason was, I need to go back to the start.

I distinctly remember, in my early teens, when I had already read hundreds of books, and had been writing short stories and poetry of my own, the moment when I decided I wanted to be an author.

And why that was what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be an author and sell millions of books, so that I earned enough money so that my dad could pursue his passions, his dreams. As an artist, or a musician, or a photographer. Because back then, he worked in corporate jobs that meant we never saw him, and he didn’t appear to enjoy them very much. He was miserable, quite honestly, and I somehow thought that it was my responsibility to make him happy.

So that was my reason, to free him from the prison of exchanging his time for money. So he could be happy.

Of course, my writing was also one of the only things we connected over. And though he was fairly critical of my writing, he was encouraging enough that I didn’t give up. And I clearly remember, at 15, when I had given him my novella, Heaven dot com, that he was away in Italy, working, but he called me one evening. On my mobile phone (which would have been a stupidly expensive thing to do at that time). He called me to say that while reading my story in a restaurant in Italy, it had made him cry.

We weren’t close, and that kind of feedback was enough to carry me for many years, and even when my parents split up in my early 20s, by which time I’d no relationship with him at all for a few years, I still sent him the very first printed copy of that novella. Because I wanted to make him proud. Because although I had told him I didn’t need it, I still wanted his approval. I still wrote for him. To try and give him a better life than he had.

When he got the copy, he called me. It was the first time we had spoken in a long time, and it sparked a new chapter, whereby we got on enough to see each other once a year or so. He met someone, and I went to meet her, and stayed with them. She told me that he was proud of me, and this second-hand praise was enough to keep me going.

Then in 2010, I met someone who encouraged my writing, and encouraged me to publish. I had written my first novel just before we met, and I published it two years later, having decided to take the Indie route, right at the dawn of the Kindle, and print on demand publishing. The very first copy, however, I printed on my home printer, and hand bound it in leather, and gave it to my dad. I have no idea if he read the whole thing, but the only feedback he gave on that one was, ‘the doors disappear and reappear too much.’

Still, he read it.

And so, over the years, I accepted that he wasn’t likely to read them, but he was proud of my books. And now I had someone else to write for, my partner. Again, much like my dad, he didn’t read them all, but there was one that was his favourite, and that praise was enough to bolster me, to keep me motivated. I had dreams of selling millions of copies, so I could help him pay off the mortgage, or help him to realise his dreams.

Sounds familiar, huh?

Of course, that never happened, but I gave him all my love and attention and support, to try and make up for my lack of financial success. But we parted in 2017, just as things were starting to take off.

By this time, my dad and I still had a distant relationship, and I found that he was weirdly competing with me. He was making something of his music, which was great, but any time I managed some success with my writing, he would say he had to up his game, so he could win. Because it was all about who got famous first. I went along with it, all the while hating it, still hoping for just one, simple, straightforward – ‘well done’.

At the end of 2017, Where’s My F**king Unicorn? was published by a traditional publisher. I hadn’t gone out to seek the deal, it had pretty much landed in my lap, but it was still a big moment for me. It had taken a year to publish the book and to celebrate the release, I held a small party at a local art gallery. It started in the morning, and finished at 3, and at ten minutes to 3, my dad and his partner came in the door, exclaiming loudly –

“Where is everyone? Where are the posters and the balloons? Why aren’t you out in the street telling people to come in?”

Up until that point, I’d had an amazing time, so many friends and family had come to support me, some had driven a fair way to do so. And yet in that last part of the party, my dad and his partner ruined it. They talked about themselves, my dad bragging about how many musical instruments he had (over 400) and his partner about her marketing skills, and how I had done everything wrong.

My friend did ask them, well, if you’re so good at it, why didn’t you offer to help Michelle?

To which they had no reply.

I walked my other friend back to her car, leaving them to gab about themselves (not once did they ask to look at the book, to buy a copy or to congratulate me on it) and she turned to me and said – “What the actual fuck was that?” (I might be paraphrasing here, but it was along those lines)

What the fuck, indeed. But still, they had come to my launch, and that was just enough to make me believe that they were proud.

Then in 2018, after being on national TV, releasing the tenth book in my series, and sales were doubling year on year, I was feeling like I was actually getting somewhere, when I finally received it.

I can’t remember what it was in relation to now, but on the phone to my dad, I got that elusive, straightforward, unprompted, ‘Well done.’

And I felt nothing. That was it? That was what I had been waiting for? Somewhere around that time, I had been working on starting Not From This Planet with my best friend, and when I told my dad and his partner about it, all they did was tell me what a bad idea it was, and that I was making a mistake. His partner was particularly good at backhanded compliments that confused me. She told me that my writing was so good, that I should get an agent, not start a business with my best friend.

So somewhere in 2018, I stopped wanting to make my dad proud. I stopped craving his approval. I stopped wanting to make him happy. And I definitely did not want to compete with him on who got famous first.

So I stopped writing.

Of course, if you read my books, you will know that I have written a few since. But up until then, I was writing and publishing two a year, and since then, in 6 years, I have only released five, and those were a struggle. Of course, in the last six years I have also discovered I have ADHD and have entered perimenopause, so those things have also impacted my ability to focus and get things done. (Along with the continuing saga of the on again/off again relationship, which I gave another 5.5 years to)

But it’s not just the writing that stopped. I stopped everything related to my books. I stopped blogging. I stopped doing FB lives. I stopped posting. I had a fan club that I ran, where I made handmade things sent to readers who subscribed. That stopped and never restarted. I stopped trying to sell my books altogether, which of course, meant that sales have steadily declined, because they are no longer visible. You have to consistently post stuff, or you just disappear into the abyss. I stopped doing events and workshops and talks. I just, stopped.

So that brings us to where I am now. A writer who barely writes, in search of a new motivation to write. I love my readers, many have become cherished friends over the years, and I want to write for them. But they don’t really need me, they could easily find other reading material. I would like to write for myself, but I find that when it comes to things that are for myself, they will always be at the bottom of the to-do list. I’m much better at prioritising others over my own needs or wants. I have told my dog I will write for her, to keep her well-fed and always surrounded by toys and treats. She just farted, so I think that means she loves this idea.

But anyway, that’s where I am in this moment. I won’t promise that my next book is coming soon (though I really do hope I will finish it soon) and I won’t promise to blog all the time (although I hope to do so more often), to start going live again or post consistently, because those will all likely be promises I cannot keep, as just keeping afloat at the moment is taking up all of my bandwidth.

But I can promise that I am working on things. That I am trying to get back to what I love. That I am reprogramming a lifetime’s worth of bad thoughts and beliefs. That I am trying to become the best version of myself. That I am trying to figure out who I really am, when you strip back all the bullshit.

And I hope that’s enough. I hope you will stick around to see what happens. To see what I create next.

If it’s not enough, then thanks for sticking around til the end of this post. It feels both liberating and terrifying, to lay all this out there for everyone to read. But it is time.

Because the thing is, I have been trying so hard, for so long, and now I am done with that. The mask is fully off, I can no longer pretend to be okay when people treat me badly. Because I’m not. I deserve to be loved and supported by those closest to me, not criticised, ridiculed or shamed. (That job is surely for the reviewers?)

I wasn’t going to add any photos to this post, but I found this one of the cupcakes from my Unicorn party. Just to add a bit of joy to this otherwise quite serious and slightly depressing post.