Heide Goody's Blog, page 5

10 ways to fight Blue Monday

Blue Monday – a fake media construct?

Blue Monday used to refer to washing, but in recent years it’s the day that the newspapers tell us that we are all supposed to be at our most miserable.

The combination of weather, dark days and debt culminates specifically on the third Monday in January, we are told.

For everyone who resents the idea of media-hyped pseudo-science telling you how to feel, we’re suggesting ways to fight it.

What better day than this to seek out some small bookish pleasures? They are all free!

Real or not, 10 ways to fight it
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Seek out the smell of books, whether it’s old ones or new ones!

Visit a library. With so many of them struggling to stay open, there’s  a movement to max out your library card in a show of solidarity.
Only got a few minutes? Listen to a free short story.
Read a book from your childhood that brings back warm and fuzzy memories. Tell us what your favourite is!
Visit a bookshop and take a look around. If you’re not buying, have a good sniff at the book smell instead.
Do something creative. If you like to write, get some words down. However you like to express yourself, find some time to do it.
Talk books with people who love them. If you visit a bookshop, the people who work in bookshops love to talk books. Alternatively join a bookish community on the internet. THE Book Club on Facebook is one that Heide and Iain recommend.
Give in. Decide that you want to be miserable, just for a while, and re-read a self-indulgent weepie. Share your favourites with us!
Remind yourself just how lucky you are. Read a book about people who endured real suffering. Recommendations welcomed.
Look for free comedy ebooks. Naturally we will suggest that you start with Satan’s Shorts.
Play a word game with friends. In real life or on the internet. Find inspiration at pun generator and tell us your best Blue Monday puns!

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If you’re unhappy about the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump, we can’t make it go away, but people have told us that reading this comedy novella made them feel better about it.

The post 10 ways to fight Blue Monday appeared first on Pigeon Park Press.

How a writing workshop led to comedy editing gold

Halloween Writing Workshop

I went to a writing workshop on Halloween. It was my birthday so I decided it would be a fun way to pass the day. It was a flash fiction workshop at the University of Leicester, held in the David Wilson Library.
Our hosts were Simon Dixon, the Special Collections librarian and Selina Lock, a Research Librarian and writer. I’d met Selina at various writing events, so I was looking forward to seeing what Halloween themed fun she had found for us in the Special Collections as inspiration for the workshop.
A group of eight of us were briefed on the rules for Special Collections. We left our bags and coats outside, and were allowed only laptops, phones, pencils and paper inside. We were shown how to handle the manuscripts and books to make sure that we didn’t damage them. This was made easier by having special book cushions to support the spines of the books, and “book snakes” which are flexible weights to hold the pages open.
The books that were out had all been chosen to tie in to the Halloween theme.

Books and Manuscripts for Inspiration

There was The People's Periodical and Family Library from 1846 which featured the first appearance of Sweeney Todd in the story The String of Pearls.

There was The Every Day Book, a nineteenth century almanac describing customs and rituals for each day of the year. A great many of these seem to involve maidens’ attempts to foretell who their husbands will be.

I briefly looked at The Ingoldsby Legends, a book of ghost stories, with some lovely illustrations.

The Book of Martyrs was a bloodthirsty and terrifying work with many lurid woodcut images. Its purpose was to remind sixteenth century Church of England congregations of past tortures inflicted by the Catholics, in case they might be tempted to convert.

But far and away my favourite thing was a manuscript from the Sue Townsend archive. This is still subject to copyright, so I have no photographs. Hand written on A4 paper, it was the manuscript that would become The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.
There are lots of techniques for writing comedy. Since Iain and I have been writing together, we’ve amassed quite a bit of knowledge on these. Some are techniques that we’ve stumbled upon instinctively, some have been instilled in us by our editor, Keith Lindsay and some of them we've learned from observing the work of experts. Sue Townsend was an expert, and it’s clear that she applied some of these techniques herself during a revision of her own work.
I only studied a short extract, as I didn’t want to hog the manuscript, but examples leapt off the page.

Comedy editing as practised by Sue Townsend

Here are three examples of Sue Townsend's self editing that I made a note of:

Immediacy of action.
This applies to drama as well as comedy. A line about children who “kept running up to me” was changed to “ran up to me”. This is much stronger, and easier for the reader to visualise.

Specifics.
It’s a fact that specifics are funnier. Gorgonzola is funnier than cheese. If you have a word that contains the letter “k” then even better! At the Halloween party that Adrian Mole attends, he tells us that “The warlocks and me danced in the pumpkin light to Duran Duran records.” The phrase “in the pumpkin light” is inserted as an edit, and is a delicious, specific image. It even contains a letter “k”.

Stretch things as far as they will go.
Adrian Mole complains that the dog has ripped up his old Beanos. The words “priceless collection” have been inserted into the sentence, to increase the size of the dog’s transgression.

Flash Fiction

After looking through the collection, we spent some time discussing flash fiction. Selina shared some six word stories, and then some longer pieces, to show what might be possible. We had a short while to compose something inspired by the things we’d seen. There was even enough time to hear some of the stories, which were as varied and colourful as the subject matter we’d seen.
I very much want to go back to examine some more of Sue Townsend’s manuscripts. The Special Collection can be accessed by non-students, and I am so grateful to Selina and Simon for opening my eyes to this astonishing resource.

Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank the Estate of Sue Townsend and the University of Leicester for allowing me to use the information above.
If anyone would like to reference the Adrian Mole manuscript that I mention above, it is University of Leicester Library, Sue Townsend collection, ST/1/2/1, Incomplete holograph manuscript of 'The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole'.

Festive Excess. Can you recognise it?

This is a handy guide to festive excess. If you find yourself doing the things described here over the Christmas season, you are almost certainly overdoing it. Be warned.

Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook

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This book is for you if you want to emulate the lifestyle of a 1960’s action hero. Len Deighton is most famous for writing blockbuster spy thrillers, but before that he was a food columnist. Written for old-school blokey types who want to see themselves as bon viveurs, there is a fascinating chapter on drinks. Deighton’s advice for providing drinks at a party is that you should allow half a bottle of spirits per person for the first two hours. If the party extends beyond that, he suggests that consumption will go up, so you’ll need more. If you do insist on drinking like an action hero, then please make sure you bear your inevitable hangover with the fortitude of one too.

Cocktails with names like “The Hurl Hurl”

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This should be obvious, but we’ll spell it out. If a cocktail goes by a name like this then it’s probably worth avoiding. It is an unsubtle mixture of those dodgy fruit liqueurs that lurk at the back of the drinks cupboard. The only non-alcoholic addition is a dash of cranberry juice, which is fooling no-one.

Could it be named twice because it looks the same on the way in and on the way out? Don’t be the one to find out.

Drinks that the supermarket / style magazines urge you to buy.

[image error] If you find yourself flicking through the glossy magazines given away by supermarkets, or perhaps the ones that come with your Sunday papers then at some point you might start to panic because you haven’t got any of the drinks they are calling “Christmas essentials”. You need to ask yourself a couple of searching questions before you succumb to the urge to buy them:

Would anyone drink this when it’s not Christmas?
Would anyone drink this when it is Christmas if a magazine hadn’t told them to?

Drinks associated with infamous boozehounds

Ernest Hemingway favoured a cocktail called “Death in the Afternoon”, which is a mixture of absinthe and champagne. There are many stories about Hemingway and his drunken eccentricities, including the one where he tried to flush a toilet but instead pulled a skylight down on his head, getting himself an enormous scar, so maybe you should find a more sober role model.

And it’s not just the alcohol

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Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, died in 1771 after gorging himself on a winter banquet of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers, FOURTEEN servings of cream-stuffed pudding, all washed down with Champagne. Another monarch who died from eating too much of the wrong thing was England’s own Henry the First who, against the advice of his physician, sat down to a meal of eels and famously died of a “surfeit of lampreys,” popping his clogs in the winter of 1135. So, watch how many mince pies you eat this festive season and be very mindful of dodgy seafood.

So how about a quiet night in instead, reading some free fiction? If you’re stuck, you might like to try Festive Treats, a free kindle anthology

The post Festive Excess. Can you recognise it? appeared first on Pigeon Park Press.

Guest Post – Hilary Mortz looks at Christmas Films

Today’s post is written by Hilary Mortz, who wrote one of the stories in Festive Treats (the free Christmas anthology, have you got your copy yet?)

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Christmas Films

I got my ultimate guilty pleasure FESTIVE TREAT today – a glossy shiny 14 Day What’s On At Xmas TV Guide. Christmas is finally here – forget the Star of Bethlehem, there’s nothing like the arrival of the festive edition of your chosen TV guide that heralds the birth of little Baby Jesus. And no, this time an on-line edition just won’t cut it, thank you very much.

I love flicking through the 14 Day Guide. What treats have the channels got in store for us all. Aren’t they being really nice to us? It almost makes up for the rubbish they churn out the rest of the year, doesn’t it? Festive editions of Call The Midwife, and Doctor Who, repeats of much loved comedy classics, and then there’s the Soaps. Don’t get me started on the Christmas Soaps. I have to admit that I only watch Coronation Street, (I toyed with the idea of starting to watch Emmerdale a while ago but felt unable to ‘take on’ another such commitment) but whatever your soap of choice, you have to admit that they all come up trumps for the big day, if it still appropriate to use that phrase. Explosions, premature births, weddings, stolen kisses, the festive soap has it all. If Shakespeare was alive today he would probably write a Christmas special where the ultimate tragedy occurs, someone has gone off the rails so badly that he (and it is always a ‘he’) knocks over the Christmas Tree; this is the very worst thing that can happen in a Christmas Soap, the ultimate betrayal of all the festive season stands for. Advice for soap villains: kill your mother, decapitate the family pet, sleep with your wife’s sister, vote for the wrong side in Brexit, JUST DON’T KNOCK OVER THE CHRISTMAS TREE. It’s that sort of thing that stopped me from watching Eastenders back in the 1980’s.

Anyway as you work your way through the 14 Day Guide, excitement growing, you finally get there – The Bumper Family Film Guide. I don’t know why this is such a thrill in these digital days when you can download anything and don’t have to wait ten years for the movie you couldn’t afford to see at the ‘pictures’ to finally hit your screen, but it just IS, right? Its Christmas time and you have to try and find your pleasures where you can.

We all know about Christmas Films, don’t we? They roughly fall into two categories: films that are actually about Christmas, and films that have sod all to do with the festive season but without which the whole holiday would be an empty travesty.

The non-festive (let’s call them ‘secular’) films are all timeless classics that go really well with chocolate Matchmakers and a glass of Baileys. Some of these films work equally well with Easter Eggs, so they are excellent value, holiday wise. You know the ones I am talking about, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, THE WIZARD OF OZ (which is more an Easter Egg movie for me, actually), JAWS, HARRY POTTER and so on. Then there’s the animated movies, like SHREK, KUNG FU PANDA, FROZEN and the brilliant TOY STORY 3; I suppose you could add TV classics like THE SNOWMAN and WALLACE AND GROMMIT to the same list. My favourite ‘secular’ film is the mighty GALAXY QUEST (a spoof on Star Trek) starring the late great Alan Rickman (from Harry Potter and Love, Actually) and Sigourney Weaver. And talking about Sigourney (gosh I hope that’s spelt right), she’s been in some other great ‘secular’ Christmas movies, like ALIEN, WORKING GIRL, and GHOSTBUSTERS. See how it works? You take your favourite movie, only watch it at Christmas when you’re relaxed and the house is full of food and drink and hey-presto it is a ‘Christmas Film’. Well in your house anyway. Real Christmas films are a completely different kettle of fish.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of films about Christmas. If you have Freeview on your tellybox you will find there are entire channels dedicated to playing nothing else. Sadly most of these productions are utter tripe; they have titles like ‘A BOYFRIEND FOR CHRISTMAS’ or ‘MIRACLE ON SANTA CLAUS MOUNTAIN’. The majority of them are American, but don’t hold that against our trans-Atlantic friends, because most of the all-time greats are from there as well, Americans are proper geniuses at Christmas when they try, but more of that later.

Some people would say that the greatest Christmas film ever made is ‘IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE’ and I’ve got to admit that for a long time it was in the running, even though the bally Americans stole the original idea from A CHRISTMAS CAROL which was written by our very own Charles Dickens. No, the greatest Christmas film ever made by a long chalk is of course ELF.

“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane Forest, then through the Sea of Swirly-Whirly Gum-Drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“Don’t eat the gum on the street. It’s not free candy.”

“I’m in love! I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it!”

ELF has everything. It is everything a Christmas Film, or indeed any film, could ever want to be. It all works on different levels. Kids love the magic and the slapstick elements – Buddy the Elf arriving in the big city and playing on the revolving doors, his first ride on an elevator, the bit when he pulls over the massive Christmas Tree (he was trying to put a star on top of it – he wasn’t drunk like poor Arthur Fowler from Eastenders), the thrilling snowball fight in Central Park. ‘Big Kids’ love the wit and wise-cracks, the pulling of the heartstrings as Buddy’s workaholic, bread-head Dad embraces the Christmas Spirit and finally accepts his long lost son; the bit when the hard-bitten New Yorkers save Christmas by spontaneously starting to sing ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’; the fabulous quotes. ELF is funny without being crass; it is sentimental without being sickly. It is perfect.

“Whenever I get gloomy about the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport….”

My other candidate for essential Christmas Film viewing (and it’s a controversial one, admittedly) couldn’t be more British if it stood in a queue for hours waiting for a bacon and egg breakfast and then said ‘sorry’ when somebody kicked it on the ankle. It is, of course the rom-comtastic LOVE, ACTUALLY. What’s not to love about this little modern classic? It features an all-star cast including Colin ‘Mr Darcy’ Firth, the brilliant Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman (again), Bill Nighy as a washed up rock-star, Ant’n’Dec as themselves and that guy from The Walking Dead. It has all the best Christmas Film ingredients, the humour, a bit of pathos, romance (durr) and a big city (London) all lit and waiting up for Santa to arrive. But best of all it has HUGH GRANT as Prime Minister. Who wouldn’t rather have Hugh Grant than our current shower, eh? Who wouldn’t like the sort of Prime Minister who can give an obnoxious American President an earbashing to remember by pointing out that we invented Harry Potter, Shakespeare and David Beckham? If 2016 has taught us nothing else, it should be that all politicians could be like our Hugh if they tried. And he gets the girl in the end, even though it’s only Tiffany from Eastenders (who must have surely seen a few Christmas Trees knocked over in her time). You see? It’s all interlinked. We are all one big television family at Christmas.

Pass the Quality Street, Grandma!

About Hilary Mortz

Hilary Mortz is the official biographer of rock legend and reality star, Geordie Selwyn.

The legal Restraining Order placed on her by Mr Selwyn’s management after she published the sensational exposé of his private life in her previous books, ‘APPETITE FOR CORRUPTION’ and ‘NEVADA MIND THE BOLLIX’, has now been lifted and Hilary is currently busy working with Geordie on his official memoirs, ‘THE SELWYN FILES’.

Hilary splits her life between working at her tattoo studio in the holiday island of Cyprus during the summer and travelling the world watching heavy metal in the winter.

She should have grown out of it all a long, long time ago.

https://amazon.com/author/hilarymortz

The post Guest Post – Hilary Mortz looks at Christmas Films appeared first on Pigeon Park Press.

Fantasycon by the Sea

Fans of genre fiction will be congregating in Scarborough, North Yorkshire between September 23rd and 25th
for Fantasycon by the Sea

1:30pm Saturday 24th September 2016
Heide will be reading

5:00pm Saturday 24th September 2016
Heide will be chairing the discussion panel "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Celebrating Women in Genre Fiction

Cover reveal for new 10 person novel

The cover reveal for Circ will take place in 1 hour!
Circ is published by Pigeon Park Press and was written by 10 authors from all over the world.
Circ

Birmingham Independent Book Fair

If you're in the UK midlands on 12th April, you'll want to know about the Birmingham Independent Book Fair.

Heide Goody and Iain Grant will be there, and so will lots of other small independent presses, self-pubbed authors and interesting people.

Come along, meet everyone and buy all the lovely books!

Goodreads event page below for the details:

https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...