Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 59

Motivation: Fake it until you make it

Motivation is a slippery thing. You have it…or you don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find you have motivation to do non-essential, but enjoyable, things, and no motivation to do things that are fundamentally necessary, but probably not particularly fun. If you find yourself in this boat, what can you do about it? Well motivation is a funny old thing, and once you gain momentum, you generate the motvation to continue!

Here are four ways to fake motivation until it appears on its own!
1 – And snap! The job’s a game!

Mary Poppins was onto something with this one. How can you turn the task you need to do into something you want to do? I particularly use this with writing. If I have chapters I need to edit, then these become levels – I can’t progress in ‘the game’ until I’ve successfully completed them.

The mindset of ‘necessary evil’ is a difficult one to break, and sometimes you can think your way around it by telling yourself it’ll be worth it when it’s done and out of the way. If that isn’t working, turn the chore into your Big Boss and go Chun Li on its ass.

2 – Treat yourself.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with incentivising yourself to complete a task. I’m certainly far more likely to do something if there’s cake at the end. Be strict with yourself – only ‘accept’ the reward if you actually did the work, and make sure the reward is appropriate to the task.

I find it difficult to work up the motivation to exercise, but promising myself cake for every successful Pilates work-out is counterproductive at best. So if I won’t let myself buy new make up until I’ve done a month’s worth of work-outs, and I’ll only let myself buy new books when I’ve written so many chapters of my own work!

3 – Make a To Do list that’s actually achievable.

A lot of bloggers advocate the To Do list, and they also advocate that you do the smallest jobs first. It makes sense – the more you cross off the list, the more likely you are to keep going! It also gives you a greater sense of productivity if you can see what you’ve actually achieved so far, which is why I combine a To Do list with an I Did list, so I can see what I’ve done, particularly if I come across something that wasn’t on the To Do list but needed to be finished anyway.

But there’s no point in making a To Do list that you can’t finish. “Do housework” or “Complete research” are so vague, and sprawling, that you could argue they’ll never ultimately be finished. So focus on setting smaller targets that you can actually measure. “Do housework” might become four separate items, like “Sweep floors”, “Put clean laundry away”, “Dust living room” and “Clean kitchen”. That might make your list look longer but it makes it easier to tell when you’ve actually done those things.

4 – Tell yourself you need to be motivated!

This one sounds hokey but it works, I promise! Simply tell yourself that you need to be motivated to complete the task. I often have work I don’t want to do because I’m not in the mood, or I have other things that also need to be doing, but I’ll just make myself sit down and do whatever it is that I’m putting off.

I set aside a time limit, close Google Chrome (unless I’m doing internet-based research, in which case it’s quite handy) and get to work. You can combine this with incentives (“I’ll give myself twenty minutes to get started and then I can check Facebook for five minutes”) but whatever you do, just tell yourself that you need to be motivated, and focus.

Now pick something on your To Do List – or actually write one – and get cracking! Let me know how you get on in the comments below.

Why have a blog anyway?

I was tagged by Bronagh of Bronagh’s Beauty and Books to take part in the Blogger Interview Tag and as I haven’t done many of these on this blog, I figured I’d do one over here at the Cabinet, instead of on one of my other blogs.

After all, why have a blog if you’re not going to use it? Mine’s gotten a little quiet since I stopped posting Friday flashes every week, although I’m trying to keep up to date with useful posts about the writing process. I’ve made these mistakes so you don’t have to!

How did you get into blogging?

I started in about 2009 (I think) as a place to share my fiction. Once I got involved with the #FridayFlash community on Twitter, it became a place to talk about writing and all manner of things related to publishing. It’s been a good way to get to know other writers, and readers, and to explore different types of writing. Now I’ve branched out and I have my make up blog at Wicked North, and my craft blog at IcyHandmade too.

What advice would you give to bloggers starting out?

Decide on your topic and work out exactly what it is that you hope to achieve. If you want to share your passion or enthusiasm for something, that’s great – you can use your blog as a space to explore that, and then combined with social media you can get to know other people who feel the same way you do. If you’re hoping to get rich quick then possibly think about something else which will have better returns in the short term…

What would be your dream campaign?

I think this question was more relevant to the beauty bloggers but I’d love to do something with one of the major publishers.

Do you have a plan for your blog?

I want to keep using it to connect with people, to continue offering advice to writers who are just starting out, but to share my interests with people who enjoy my writing. Expect a lot more Gothic posts in future!

Now that’s done, I tag…

Nadia of Abso-knitting-lutely

Nerine Dorman

Adam Byatt of A Fullness in Brevity

Katherine Hajer

Monica Marier

Restart Your Stuck Novel

You know what it’s like – you get an idea for a story and, full of the excitement of new plots, you feverishly start writing. For a few days, even weeks, it all seems great. You’re enjoying the story, it’s fun, and everything’s going well, but then you hit The Wall. If you’ve been pantsing, you can’t work out how to make the story work. Dead ends crop up everywhere you turn, and you’re no longer sure where you were going with it. Even if you’ve been plotting, characters won’t behave the way you want them to, and you can’t work out how to get from where you are now to where you want to be.

In short, you’re stuck. You put it to one side, promising to go back to it, and you abandon it to a corner of your hard drive while you chase after the latest plot bunny to grab your attention. Thing is, the idea you had might have still been a good one, and with a bit of work, you can finally reach The End with it. You just have to go back to it, teach it whose boss, and continue.

So how do you get back into a project that stalled months ago?

Step One – Re-read it.

This might sound like a no-brainer but it’s amazing how much of it you will have forgotten. Print it out (to avoid the temptation to edit as you go), or email it to your Kindle, and just read it. Re-experience your idea. You’ll probably get new ideas, or you’ll see connections between previously unrelated dead ends that will allow you to continue. Note them down.

Step Two – Give it a polish.

If you’re anything like me, your writing style will have evolved even in the space of a few months. Maybe you’ve realised the way to fix your story is to change from third to first person. Maybe it needs to be present tense instead of past. Whatever you’ve figured out during step one, fix it now before you go any further. I’m doing this right now on a novella for the Bloody Parchment novella competition – I’d written it in third person in 2013, which just didn’t work, so now I’m converting it into first person before I complete it.

Step Three – Get writing.

Now you’ve re-read it and polished it into something resembling your idea, you can get on with writing the rest of it – but stick to any notes you’ve made along the way, and make sure you know how each chapter will end before you close the document down for the day. You might only know the plot day-to-day, or you might have your entire structure planned, but try to avoid that feeling of helplessness that got you stuck in the first place.

Happy writing! Do you have any tips or tricks that help you rescue an abandoned project?

Location, location, location

Writers often spend a great deal of their time concentrating on developing authentic dialogue (spoken by fleshed out, 3D characters), and on creating a coherent plot, contained within a sensible structure. All well and good, but how often do we give setting, or location, only the most cursory of nods?

Setting is by far one of the most important parts of storytelling. Think how many stories begin with “In a faraway kingdom…” or “In a galaxy far, far away…” Location, or setting, not only helps define genre (‘the Wild West’ informs the Western, while noir is often set in grimy or shadowy urban landscapes), it also gives us a sense as to why things happen the way that they do – The Thing just wouldn’t work outside of the Arctic, and nor would Twister be even remotely plausible if it was set in the Home Counties of England. Beyond that, the setting can almost become a character in itself – Mordor is a physical manifestation of the otherwise absent Sauron, while the island and its moods in Lord of the Flies reflects the transformation of the boys.

So how do you go about writing a good setting, or choosing a location?

If you’re writing fantasy, you essentially have carte blanche to write whatever you want. Alice in Wonderland would be a perfect example! Science fiction in space is open to almost boundless possibilities, and even science fiction on Earth can be bent whichever way you want. Futuristic settings, or alternate realities, let you go crazy with the invention. I’d recommend Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books for a good example of alternate realities. Swords’n’sorcery-style fantasy requires the kind of geography associated with the likes of Lord of the Rings – think castles, forests, plains, etc. Fairly generic, but as you don’t need to have visited, you get to decide what goes where.

If you’re writing the kind of fantasy wherein weird stuff happens to ordinary people, then you’ll want to ground your story in a more realistic setting. After all, the weird happening becomes all the more weird when set against a mundane background. In this case, you’ll need more of a grasp of where your story is taking place. You can set it in your hometown and just change the names, or you can keep the setting intact. It helps to keep things believeable – one of my many problems with 28 Weeks Later was how wantonly they screwed with London geography. Two of the characters are supposed to get to Wembley from Westminster via the tube tunnels, despite the fact that they’d need to change lines on the way! Once you annoy someone in that way, it’s difficult to persuade them to further invest in your story. You’ve broken the ‘suspension of disbelief’. These issues equally apply to other genres outside of fantasy.

But what if you want to set your story somewhere that you’ve never visited?

I’m a big fan of using Google Maps and Street View. When I wrote The Guns of Retribution, I spent hours exploring the ghost towns of the Old West that actually show up on Google Earth, and there are a myriad of photo posts on sites like Urban Ghosts Media, not to mention images on Flickr, that help me to build up my mental picture of the location. Sure they won’t give you a feel for what it’s actually like to live there, but you’ll get the spatial dimensions and the aesthetics right.

You could always go down the Neil Gaiman route, and give your location the Neverwhere treatment – translate place names into their literal meanings (if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it as a masterclass on location). It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been as the places are given a whole new meaning by you. Alternatively, you can take settings you’re familiar with from visits, film or TV and combine them in a new way – I smashed together subterranean Edinburgh, Victorian London, and snippets of other cities to create the Underground City and the City Above in The Necromancer’s Apprentice.

Of course, you could always treat yourself to a holiday and visit that pretty Alpine town you want to use as a backdrop to a 1920s murder mystery…

Write What You Know, But What If You Don’t Know Enough?

It was the 145th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens this year, and while much has been written about his life and work, we can still learn a lot from his methods. His depiction of a supposedly-fictional London was so realistic – he clearly drew a lot from how people lived in worked in Victorian society. Some of this he would have just known, but he would have learned a lot from going out to observe the world around him.

Last week we discussed how to write what you know, but sometimes we need to know more. So…

Write what you can find out!

Walk The Streets

Explore places you might not have had occasion to visit before – this even goes for your hometown, or a city you know well. I managed to come across a whole part of my hometown that I’d never visited before, purely because I’d never had reason to be there.

If you find a building that catches your interest, find out about it. Who lived there? What was it used for? Has it always stood on that site, or was it once relocated from elsewhere? The streets are probably no safer than they were in Dickens’ day, so either take a friend, or let someone know where you’re going. Try to have a paper map of the area on hand in case Google Maps sends you down a blind alley, or your phone runs out of battery.

People-Watch

Even if you write horror or sci-fi, you can find the seeds of interesting characters in the people you see going about their daily lives. Why is the man on the Underground looking so furtive? What could that woman have in the oversized handbag? What if that scarf was actually a pet dragon draped around its owner’s neck?

It’s not eavesdropping – you’re not actually interested in the content of the conversation, just those little offhand phrases that might be just what you needed to ’round out’ a character, or spark an idea.

Consume Local News

I heard an anecdote that Dickens once heard a story about a man who lived by a river, who would pay for the burials of the unfortunate people fished out of the water. Dickens was so impressed by the story that he wrote the man into his own work as a character. The phrase ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ clearly meant a lot to Dickens, and it can mean a lot to you too – if a real person has actually done something, then it will hold more water to your readers than a complete fabrication.

Discover The Stories

Different parts of London were specific to different trades – for example, Spitalfields was once a centre for silk weaving, while mudlarks operated along the banks of the Thames. Your own city is probably no different – in my hometown of Newcastle, the Castle Garth area boasted a doll-making workshop, while the dockyards were a thriving industrial area for shipbuilding. Find an area of your town or city and investigate its history – you might find colourful local characters, infamous scandals or touching tales that could provide inspiration for your own stories.

Never Underestimate Your Local Library

They may hold archives of information, either as old maps, newspaper clippings, or photographs. Any, or all, of these could prove to be useful no matter what genre you write. You can easily get melodrama or ‘human interest’ stories out of photographs of bygone times, while newspaper clippings will provide you with story ideas whether you write steampunk or crime thrillers. Old city maps can be invaluable if you write fantasy and you’re in the ‘world building’ stage. Libraries are a fantastic resource beyond lending books – so use them!

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What about you? How have you ‘written where you are’ in the past?

Images courtesy of Andrew Warran and Swamibu.

#FridayFlash – I Am

I am the voice in the dead of night that whispers of the things you might yet achieve, if you could only relax your grip on fear and doubt.

I am the voice that soothes and offers placation when the world turns away its cold face.

I am the voice that calms and cajoles, that brings peace to your inner turmoil and spurs you to greatness.

I walk with you in the eye of your own storm, and offer you shelter when the fury grows too much.

I keep you warm in the shadows, and hold loneliness at bay.

I offer you love when those around you banish you to a silent place of ice and solitude. I alone see your value, and remain by your side as you make your ascent above all others, inspired by my loyalty.

And I demand a sacrifice.

“Write What You Know” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

If you’ve ever read anything about writing, chances are that at some stage you’ll have encountered the maxim that you should ‘write what you know’. It’s at this point that some writers will throw up their hands and declare that nothing interesting ever happens to them, so what can they possibly write about? It can also lead you into dangerous territory if you decide to turn real events into fiction – if you don’t disguise your characters well enough, it can land you in hot water with the real life protagonists if they don’t come out of the fiction in a positive light. So how on earth can you navigate this treacherous terrain and write about what you know without upsetting, or boring, anyone?

I’ll let you into a secret.

Writing what you know is not as black-and-white as it first appears. If you’re a receptionist in a busy office, you don’t have to write about the drudgery of admin. If you’re a mechanic, you don’t need to set all of your stories in a garage. What you can do is transpose situations in which you find yourself into fictional settings, regardless of genre!

Take those characters and situations and put them in a different context. Use events from your life as the basis of events for your characters. We’ve all been to weddings and office functions, and we’ve all had a first day at school or in a new job – those are experiences you know but, more importantly, they’re experiences a reader can relate to.

Deeper Implications of ‘Write What You Know’

Don’t take it so literally – I’m pretty sure Tolkien didn’t have to go to Middle Earth, and JK Rowling never went to Hogwarts! The fundamental fact is that what you know is humanity, and how the world works, and human nature is fundamentally the same. While we all have different drives, desire, fears and goals, we have the same basic needs. The setting is just window dressing – as in the first two points, the characters need to be believable, even if they aren’t based in our reality.

Put Everyday People into Unusual Situations

Maybe you see the same people on your daily commute, and you’ve invented back stories for them. You could write a story about bored commuters, with the themes of apathy and ennui in the modern city, but that’s too obvious. Think sideways – those characters could be downtrodden victims of an oppressive state in a post-apocalyptic dystopian tale, or maybe they’re robotic workers in a science fiction adventure.

Maybe you went to a wedding recently, but you don’t want to write about an average twenty-first century wedding. That wedding might have taken place in the sixteenth century, or perhaps it took place in a fantasy setting, attended by warriors and elven priests.

Use Yourself as Your Protagonist

One of the stumbling blocks a lot of new writers face is that of characterisation. Lead characters can appear as composites of well-known characters, or they appear as ‘Mary Sue’ characters, those figures that are too good to be true. A good example of a Mary Sue character would be Twilight’s Bella – instantly popular at a new school, inexplicably attractive to all males and possessed of a special ability that grants her immunity from vampire powers. That makes for a dull character.

However, if you use yourself as a basis, you can include character flaws you might not admit to in real life, and you can base your character’s reactions to an event on how you would react in the same position. The character will be more believable because it’s based on a real person – you.

Use a Hobby to Inform Your Writing

If you’re an amateur artist, or you have a passion for 1940s social history, then use them to inform your writing. Lawyers tend to write legal thrillers and medical professionals are more likely to write scientific dramas than chick lit but it doesn’t have to stop at your profession. Interesting or unusual hobbies can be a goldmine of ideas, and if it’s something you know well, then yes, you are writing what you know. If you give your character the same unusual hobby, they’re more likely to stick in a reader’s mind than a character who likes watching TV or chatting over dinner.

Location. Location. Location.

It’s true that a lot of fiction is set in major or famous locations – consider the number of books set in LA, New York, London or even Paris. Even if you’ve never been, you probably know enough from movies to be able to write something set in a generic New York neighbourhood, or involving London’s West End.

How boring.

Why not use an area you know well instead? Perhaps you were raised in a small village, or you currently live in a quirky, bohemian neighbourhood. You can change the names if you want and turn the location into something more inventive, or maybe you want to make the place famous. Other people who live in or know the area will read your story due to the local interest, and those unfamiliar with the place will get a good feel for it – and may even want to visit. Even if you hate the place and expose it warts and all, you’re still writing what you know – which means writing with conviction.

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What about you? What do you understand by the phrase ‘write what you know’, and do you do so yourself? Please share your thoughts!

Images courtesy of Matthias Rhomberg and WriteByNight.net.

An App Guide to Editing Photos

Images have become one of the most common currencies of the internet, and with smartphone cameras able to at least match most point-and-shoot cameras, there’s really no excuse for having poor photos online! While you can find good quality free stock imagery on sites like Wikimedia Commons and Free Images, at least you can guarantee you haven’t accidentally infringed any copyright if you take the photos yourself.

But taking the photos is half the battle (and taking decent photos will be the subject of another post). How do you edit them so they don’t look so flat and lifeless? I’d always use Photoshop, and have done since around 2003, but it’s extremely pricey (unless you get the less powerful Photoshop Elements), and there is a learning curve. A good free alternative for a desktop PC is Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition, and I hear good things about GIMP, but what if you just want to edit and upload a photo direct from your phone?

There’s always Instagram, with its inbuilt editor and filters, but how about dedicated photo editing apps? I gave a few a go, and I’ve decided that these four offer the best experience – and they’re all free!

Pixlr

Made by Autodesk, this app is available for both iPhone and Android, and is probably my favourite because I’ve been using it the longest. You can retouch photos (the Heal function works like the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop), alter brightness and contrast, adjust the hue and saturation, and so on, and it also comes with a host of built-in filters and effects, such as light leaks, textures, and vignettes. You can also add text to images, and though you can choose the font, you can’t alter the text size. Some of the filters or textures are a bit naff, and you soon find yourself using favourites, but it’s a pretty solid app.

Here are a couple of examples using what’s on offer.

The Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna

Vienna

Leadenhall Market, London

VSCO Cam

This app is available for both iPhone and Android, and it’s a relatively recent addition to my arsenal. Again you can apply filters, and apply image adjustments, but as the name implies, it also acts as a camera. You can upload photos to your library and share them, and you can even create journal posts that let you essentially create a blog post including your images, which is great for travel photography. It’s also a community as well as an app so you can search for individual photos or people, and do a spot of visual networking. It’s a lot more powerful than Instagram and at the moment the photos are a lot more artistic than the cat pictures and food photos on the ‘Gram. If you’re looking for visual inspiration or you want to share your pictures with more serious photographers, then give this one a go.

Waterstones in Newcastle

Lemon and poppy seed muffin

Oily puddle

If you want to follow me on VSCO Cam, then go here.

Snapseed

This app is available for both iPhone and Android. As with the others, there are the usual image editing options like Brightness/Contrast or Temperature, as well as a series of filters with names like Lens Blur, Glamour, or HDR. It’s a solid app but it lacks the ‘network’ functionality of VSCO Cam. There are a series of tutorials here for helping you to get the most out of the app! The one advantage of Snapseed over the other apps is the fact you can also use it to correct vertical and horizontal perspective problems. It also allows you to target specific parts of the image for adjustments, meaning you can just fix problem areas.

Here are examples using what’s on offer.

Mozart in the Burggarten, Vienna

Prater Park, Vienna

Inevitable selfie

Photoshop Express

This app is available for both iPhone and Android. I had this app a while ago and ditched it because it wasn’t brilliant, but I decided to give it another go. Now you can sign into it using your Adobe ID (if you have one) and as with the other apps, you can edit your images, apply filters, crop and so on. It’s a powerful app and offers way more filters than the others, but then you do risk your photos look TOO edited if you only ever throw filters at them.

Here are examples using what’s on offer.

Imperial War Museum, using the Summer filter

Imperial War Museum, using the Sepia III filter

Which app you use will pretty much depend on what you want to use it for, but as these are all free you can download them all, try them out and see which ones suit your requirements the best. Just remember – no amount of filters will disguise a bad photo, so make sure you take the best photos you can in the first place!

Good luck!

The post An App Guide to Editing Photos appeared first on Icy Sedgwick's Cabinet of Curiosities.

7 Gothic Characters Penny Dreadful Could Consider

I finally managed to watch the finale of Penny Dreadful season two last night, and my, Rory Kinnear certainly knows how to wring every last drop of nuance out of Frankenstein’s Creature, doesn’t he? I’ve certainly enjoyed the second season more than the first, and according to Den of Geek, writer John Logan has hinted that he’ll be adding another ‘classic’ character in season three. Most people assume it’ll be Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, although DoG have also pointed at Dr Moreau and The Invisible Man as being interesting alternatives.

Horace Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill

Really, this is where my one problem with Penny Dreadful actually lies – the supposed belief that Gothic literature begins with Frankenstein in 1818, and then does nothing as a genre for a few years until The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and Dracula (1897). The genre actually dates back to the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764, and had become so popular that it was ripe for parody when Jane Austen published Northanger Abbey in 1817.

Name checks have been given to infamous characters, both real and fictional, such as Burke and Hare, so which other characters could make an interesting addition to future episodes of Penny Dreadful?

Sweeney Todd

It’s amazing how many people think the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was a real person but he was in fact a product of the original Victorian penny dreadfuls. Odd that he’s so far been neglected by the series. I’m not sure how he’d fit within a story arc but he would make an interesting background character – and these people clearly need haircuts from time to time.

Spring-Heeled Jack

Spring-Heeled Jack wasn’t a character so much as an urban legend that sprang out of the popular tradition for ghost stories, such as the Hammersmith Ghost of 1803/04. The first alleged sighting of Jack was in 1837, after a serving girl claimed to have been accosted on Clapham Common by a strange figure with claws and cold flesh. He gained his nickname from his ability to leap over 9ft high walls with apparent ease, and he did make his way into the penny dreadfuls of the era. Opinion is still divided as to who, and what, he actually was.

Lord Ruthven

The famous night at the Villa Diodati that birthed Frankenstein also led to the publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori, although Lord Ruthven has been hugely overshadowed by another more famous vampire from Transylvania. With his aristocratic air, this distinctly Byron-esque bloodsucker would be a welcome alternative to the rather tedious Dracula. Besides, Vanessa needs a distraction now Ethan has left for America, and Sir Malcolm has gone to Africa again.

Ambrosio the Monk

Possibly one of the reasons the writers have stuck to later characters is the fact that pre-Frankenstein, Gothic novels are often unwieldy and ponderous, and they’re largely unfilmable. The later, so-called Decadent Gothic is more reader friendly, and so we’re more familiar with the characters. That said, Ambrosio from The Monk (1796) is the prototype of Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. When The Monk was first published, it was considered so horrific that it caused a family scandal for author MG Lewis, which is hardly surprising since Ambrosio commits murder, rape and incest in the same book. No reason why he couldn’t be updated to a London priest, eager to reaffirm Vanessa’s faith for his own devious ends.

Roderick Usher

Vincent Price as Roderick Usher

So far the writers have only plundered English Gothic tales, which ignores the Gothic literature written elsewhere in the world. Two of the genres most famous names were American, and if they’re going to include the Wolf Man, who was only really invented for the cinema, then I see no reason not to include the work of other Americans. While I think the show is weird enough without a detour into Lovecraftian shenanigans, it’s surprising that Edgar Allan Poe has so far been ignored. I’d love to see Roderick come to England seeking a cure for his sister’s condition, and premature burial hasn’t really been featured yet, despite being a major fear of the time.

The Phantom of the Opera

Given series one quietly relocated the Grand Guignol Theatre from Paris to London, there’s little reason why the masked impresario couldn’t do likewise, though I suspect he’d be more of a cameo than a recurring character due to his nature. With Erik’s flair for the dramatic and ingenious inventions, he could certainly be an interesting figure – and he’d be bound to appeal to Vanessa’s better side, given the way she showed such humanity to the Creature.

Queen Tera

So far the only Egyptian references have been regarding Dracula’s nature, or the prophecy which foretells Vanessa becoming the Mother of Evil, but a possible use for Ferdinand Lyle’s character could be as the discoverer of Queen Tera, the Egyptian mummy from Bram Stoker’s largely forgettable The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). The novel itself concerned fears around powerful women, which would tie in nicely with Lily’s newfound quest for dominion over man.

These are just the ones I could mention, and they don’t even take into account the other Gothic staples that could appear in passing. Someone could buy a house named Udolpho, and I’d love for someone to discover a mysterious whistle on the beach that calls up a mighty wind – and something else besides.

Who would you like to see in the next series?

An App Guide to Editing Photos

Images have become one of the most common currencies of the internet, and with smartphone cameras able to at least match most point-and-shoot cameras, there’s really no excuse for having poor photos online! While you can find good quality free stock imagery on sites like Wikimedia Commons and Free Images, at least you can guarantee you haven’t accidentally infringed any copyright if you take the photos yourself.

But taking the photos is half the battle (and taking decent photos will be the subject of another post). How do you edit them so they don’t look so flat and lifeless? I’d always use Photoshop, and have done since around 2003, but it’s extremely pricey (unless you get the less powerful Photoshop Elements), and there is a learning curve. A good free alternative for a desktop PC is Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition, and I hear good things about GIMP, but what if you just want to edit and upload a photo direct from your phone?

There’s always Instagram, with its inbuilt editor and filters, but how about dedicated photo editing apps? I gave a few a go, and I’ve decided that these four offer the best experience – and they’re all free!

Pixlr

Made by Autodesk, this app is available for both iPhone and Android, and is probably my favourite because I’ve been using it the longest. You can retouch photos (the Heal function works like the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop), alter brightness and contrast, adjust the hue and saturation, and so on, and it also comes with a host of built-in filters and effects, such as light leaks, textures, and vignettes. You can also add text to images, and though you can choose the font, you can’t alter the text size. Some of the filters or textures are a bit naff, and you soon find yourself using favourites, but it’s a pretty solid app.

Here are a couple of examples using what’s on offer.

The Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna

Vienna

Leadenhall Market, London

VSCO Cam

This app is available for both iPhone and Android, and it’s a relatively recent addition to my arsenal. Again you can apply filters, and apply image adjustments, but as the name implies, it also acts as a camera. You can upload photos to your library and share them, and you can even create journal posts that let you essentially create a blog post including your images, which is great for travel photography. It’s also a community as well as an app so you can search for individual photos or people, and do a spot of visual networking. It’s a lot more powerful than Instagram and at the moment the photos are a lot more artistic than the cat pictures and food photos on the ‘Gram. If you’re looking for visual inspiration or you want to share your pictures with more serious photographers, then give this one a go.

Waterstones in Newcastle

Lemon and poppy seed muffin

Oily puddle

If you want to follow me on VSCO Cam, then go here.

Snapseed

This app is available for both iPhone and Android. As with the others, there are the usual image editing options like Brightness/Contrast or Temperature, as well as a series of filters with names like Lens Blur, Glamour, or HDR. It’s a solid app but it lacks the ‘network’ functionality of VSCO Cam. There are a series of tutorials here for helping you to get the most out of the app! The one advantage of Snapseed over the other apps is the fact you can also use it to correct vertical and horizontal perspective problems. It also allows you to target specific parts of the image for adjustments, meaning you can just fix problem areas.

Here are examples using what’s on offer.

Mozart in the Burggarten, Vienna

Prater Park, Vienna

Inevitable selfie

Photoshop Express

This app is available for both iPhone and Android. I had this app a while ago and ditched it because it wasn’t brilliant, but I decided to give it another go. Now you can sign into it using your Adobe ID (if you have one) and as with the other apps, you can edit your images, apply filters, crop and so on. It’s a powerful app and offers way more filters than the others, but then you do risk your photos look TOO edited if you only ever throw filters at them.

Here are examples using what’s on offer.

Imperial War Museum, using the Summer filter

Imperial War Museum, using the Sepia III filter

Which app you use will pretty much depend on what you want to use it for, but as these are all free you can download them all, try them out and see which ones suit your requirements the best. Just remember – no amount of filters will disguise a bad photo, so make sure you take the best photos you can in the first place!

Good luck!