Susan Mac Nicol's Blog, page 43
March 13, 2013
Thanks for following me back. I like your post about cyber stalking. I like celebrities but, even if I have the money to do sth crazy to meet them, I won't. Anyway, the reason I follow you is because of your post about things to do when you're dead. I want
Hi glad to meet a fellow kook who wants to be set on fire. It’s just sounds a great way to go. You’re in Mexico hey? Cool. Yeah I think stay away from the sacrifice thing. Sounds painful and a bit messy lol. It’s great to meet you ,Random! I hope you find other things I post as interesting.
Devoted Fan or Crazy stalker- Where does ‘celebrity’ end and ‘privacy’ begin?
In my book, Cassandra by Starlight, the hero, Bennett Saville, finds himself eerily stalked by someone as he travels around the world in his profession as an actor. He encounters them at the theatre he owns, outside the film studios he works in, in the garage basement where he parks his car, in his hotel room in Paris when he’s there for an Awards ceremony, and when he’s with Cassie in Venice. The result of this is a very violent and intrusive sexual abuse event that leaves him vulnerable and traumatised. The man is forcibly restrained and raped by a woman.
(I’m not getting into this old chestnut here though, that’s not what this blog post is about. If you want to see my views on this, check out the Rape Posts on my blog www.susanmacnicol.com)
As a celebrity you are used to a certain amount of public adoration, curiosity and downright nosiness. It’s the price one pays for being in the public eye. But lately, things appear to have been spiralling out of control with people thinking they have a right to ‘own’ celebrities and broadcast anything they do to all and sundry.
Take this case below for example. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch has been ‘cyber stalked’ with a close neighbour tweeting about everything he was doing in the comfort of his own home.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9925578/Sherlock-star-Benedict-Cumberbatch-is-cyberstalked.html
Now as a Cumberbatch fan girl myself, I can understand the interest in the man; but this is just downright creepy and dangerous. The man is in his home, for God’s sake. He has every right to expect privacy. God forbid he was doing something he shouldn’t, like having a Roman orgy. While I’m sure there are plenty of fans who’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one, even participate in it, that’s not really how things work. What someone does in their own home is entirely their business and shouldn’t be subject to public consumption.
There are even apps you can get like Gawker Stalker that track celebrities movements on a map. I’m not promoting the use of these in any way, but they are out there and if you are a serious fan or stalker, you’d know more about them already than I do.
http://gawker.com/160338/introducing-gawker-stalker-maps
There’s one called Starspotter that ‘is perfectly designed to find your much loved celebrities, events and gossip in real-time, closer to your location or anywhere you travel in the world. StarSpotter captures your favorite celebrities, politicians, musicians, athletes and models on the go in your pocket
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/starspotter-app-takes-celebrity-stalking-to-the-next-level_b33250
A property website in New York , Rentenna, has a new ‘feature’ for their site - “Find Your Celebrity Neighbor.” You register/login, type in your address, and a list of nearby celebs pops up, with links to their Wikipedia bios.
Here in the UK we even have our first-ever National Stalking Clinic, based at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, north London. It rehabilitates stalkers and tries to get them out of the mindset they find themselves in by fixating on another person and causing ruin not only to their own lives as a stalker, but to the ‘stalkee’ as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/17/how-to-rehabilitate-a-stalker
And new legislation has even had to be passed to manage this ever growing threat. As of 25th November 2012 amendments to the Protection from Harassment Act have been made that makes stalking a specific offence in England and Wales for the first time.
http://www.stalkinghelpline.org/faq/about-the-law/
With all of this going on, how are celebrities supposed to protect themselves against the ever present threat of not only a physical stalker, but a cyber-stalker? I can assure you cyber-stalking is an easy pit to fall into. I see it every day when I’m online. I see tweets and information passing cyber hands and I sometimes wonder, “Has this one maybe crossed the line or am I just being too bloody hardnosed? Give the man/woman a break and leave them alone, just for a moment.”
Most fandoms and fan bases are very protective of their chosen celebrities. They would never step over the line and infringe on the person’s privacy. They tend to get extremely upset with people when they do, as is the case with the Cumberbatch fandom. They cut people off if they feel uncomfortable; send them to ‘virtual’ Coventry. But there are still unscrupulous people out there who don’t see what they do as an invasion of privacy but more of a right.
I suppose there are two schools of thought –
He/She is a celebrity. They chose to be famous so they should just shut up and live with it. If they don’t like it, they shouldn’t have got famous in the first place. They whinge when we don’t talk about them, they whinge when we do. What the hell do they want? They are a public figure – they have no rights to privacy and if it means I sit in a tree overlooking their front yard and snap pictures, or spy on them through the window, that’s fine. If I want to tell the world where they are, what they’re doing, who they’re with, how many times they picked their nose and where they’re going next – let me.
He/She is a celebrity. They worked hard to be famous (most anyway, some are just undeservedly catapulted into it by the advent of cheesy reality TV shows but that’s another blog post and I expect a lot of hate mail when I put that one up) and they expect a certain amount of public acknowledgement and recognition. But they are also private human beings and deserve their privacy when in a private environment, a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy like with a partner or family member in a quiet restaurant, or in the gym, or quietly watching a film in a cinema.
The question is – which one are you?
A Sad Day For Male Rape Victims In India
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the Indian government's reaction to lobbying for changes to their rape statutes. I noted in the piece that women's groups in India opposed changing the statute from "rape" to "sexual assault" because it included women as potential rapists. Their argument was that rape is an expression of patriarchal power, therein making it impossible for women to rape men, and that men accused of rape would simply accuse the women of rape, both of which are typical feminist arguments against acknowledging male victimization.
Always such a contentious isue and this makes very sobering and disturbing reading. Take a look at my own website
http://www.susanmacnicol.com/category...
for how I feel about the whole situation and how I got involved in this in the first place.
March 12, 2013
Things to do when you're dead
This is not a particularly cheery post so if you don’t like talking about death and dead bodies, don’t read it. Or if you have any very religious views. Again, I suggest you leave now.
My family and I had the most entertaining dinner time conversation the other day. It started off with us all sat around the dinner table deciding how we wanted to go out into Never Never land when we were dead.
I have this predilection to have a Viking funeral. I want to be laid on a wooden pyre, set on fire and pushed out to sea/The Thames/or wherever they’ll allow this to happen. I really do. I don’t want to be buried as I have an aversion to things eating me. I have a dislike of people coming to visit me at my grave when I can’t talk back. I have a horror of people visiting me in Perpetua with sickly smelling flowers, when they should be getting on with their lives.
Cremation is good, but ever one for a bit of flair, I like the Viking idea very much. Naked or clothed, I don’t really mind, just lay me down on the wooden thingy, light a match and let me go. I’d love someone to build a proper Viking boat and fill it around me with chocolate and crisps, just to put me in the right frame of mind when I get to Valhalla, but I doubt that’s going to happen. So my family have been given their orders and I hope they manage to pull it off –somehow.
My seventy eight year old mother wasn’t too sure. Cremation was definitely her choice, but it was the old ‘ ooh, just shove me in a cardboard box, burn me and then scatter my ashes over Table Mountain in Cape Town, that’ll do me’ conversation that led us in a different direction.
My son came up with the idea of making her into a diamond. (He was short of money at the time and I have a feeling he might have pawned her the minute she was ‘diamondised’ for want of a better word.)
She thought this wasn’t too bad an idea (being diamondised not pawned) but then things spiralled out of control and suddenly, we were running a Mafia like family empire made rich by the bodies of dead people being stolen from morgues and crematoriums, being converted to precious gems and sold on the black market.
My family can sometimes go to extremes when we talk about stuff, going from the sublime to the total ridiculous in five seconds flat. I think it’s the writer in me coming out in them.
Of course, there’s always one in every family. Another member of the troupe decided they wanted a Parsee ceremony where the dead body is placed in a place known as ‘The Tower of Silence’ which is open to the air in a high place, there to be consumed by vultures as they slowly decomposed.
Just in case you’re interested in any of these scintillating possibilities as how to dispose of your dead body, take a look at the links below. You might get some ideas.
Me? I’ll stick with the old heave ho down the Thames, warm and toasty in my very own funeral pyre.
http://www.heart-in-diamond.co.uk/diamonds/what-is-heart-in-diamond.html
Author Interview: Susan Mac Nicol
I was fortunate enough to have a spot on Tom Hobb’s site www.kindlemojo.com. This is an exerpt of the interview but if you click on the link, you’ll be able to read the whole thing.
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Tell us about your book(s).
I got the inspiration for the Starlight series of books when I read about a nasty incident in my local newspaper. Some idiot – one can only call him or her that – threw a concrete block off a motorway bridge which landed on a woman’s car below. She ended up badly hurt in hospital.
I started thinking ‘What if that had been someone jumping off the bridge?’ And what if the suicide jumper had an older brother, who wanted to find out how the injured woman was doing? Then of course, the two would meet, the sparks would fly and BANG! Romance is the name of the game.
So I developed this plot and I have to say I think it turned out rather well. ‘Cassandra by Starlight’ was born. Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Wallace is the unfortunate lady in the car and Bennett Saville, actor and theatre owner extraordinaire, is the concerned older brother of the now unfortunately deceased jumper. And of course, to add some intrigue to the plot, Cassie is ten years old than Bennett, beautiful and feisty and Bennett is a sexy, handsome and rich up and coming mega star. The books are set in my home city of London.
I got so carried away with writing Cassie and Bennett’s story that I went on to write a trilogy, found a publisher – Boroughs Publishing Group in the US -for the first one and the rest , as they say, is history. I now have another three novels waiting to be published with Boroughs over and above the current Starlight trilogy.
March 11, 2013
Don't Let Fifty Shades Of Grey Pee In Your Wheaties, Writer Types
A wonderful satirical post on how, as a writer, you need to just focus on your own work and forget about trying to live up to anyone else. Each writer has their own unique voice. We are not the same. We have our own audiences and our own way of seeing the world. So just keep writing whatever you write and enjoy it as you do so.
March 7, 2013
BENNETT’S ‘CAMBRIDGE CHAT’ INTERVIEW –SEEN FROM CASSIE’S PERSPECTIVE
Cassie Wallace snuggled into her duvet and settled herself on the couch. She reached for the TV remote. She was having a quiet night in on her own while her fiancé, Bennett Saville, appeared on a local TV show in Cambridge. He was due to give a short interview in a few minutes and she was looking forward to it.
“Right, buster,” she murmured as she flicked the ON switch and the television flickered into life. “Let’s see what you have to say tonight. “
She leaned over and picked up her wine glass, now filled for the second time. She took a sip as she readied herself for the programme. She was just in time. The intro music for Cambridge Chat started and the camera swept to the presenter. Beside her sat the tall and very alluring figure of Cassie’s man. She felt a prickle of pride at seeing him there, so obviously confident and looking extremely sexy.
God, she was one lucky woman.
“Good evening. I’m Leslie MacIntyre for Cambridge Chat and with me is the wonderful Bennett Saville, star of the TV series ‘Gabriel’, winner of the ‘Best Actor’ Film and Television Award for his performance in the same show and stage star extraordinaire at his very own theatre back home in London. Welcome, Bennett. It’s lovely to have you on the show and in my home city of Cambridge.”
The soft Scottish tones of the attractive woman sitting opposite Bennett filled the room. Cassie smiled as he acknowledged the interviewer’s comments. He was so bloody assured of himself, accepting the compliments with a wry smile even as he said he wasn’t really sure they were deserving.
“You love it, darling,” she muttered to the screen. “You know you eat it all up. I could eat you all up the way you look tonight. God, you look good in that suit.”
She took another drink of her wine and turned up the volume. She watched the presenter and grinned slightly. The woman certainly seemed to be appreciating her fiancé. Her eyes were looking at him as if she wanted to nibble slowly on his ear lobes and undress him. Cassie knew that feeling well. She’d been the same when she’d first met the man. He’d an aura about him that was definitely supersonic in the sexy stakes. Their first kiss over two years ago, when they’d had their first date, had been a kiss that had been initiated by her when she could no longer stand to keep her mouth off him. It had been a fairly inflammable event that led to a rather raunchy night of love making at her house. She wasn’t normally a first date first bonk kind of woman but this man had left her no option with his smouldering sensuality. She raised her glass at the screen.
“Leslie, you have good taste, I have to say. But he’s all mine.”
Cassie felt a smug sense of satisfaction as she watched the interview. There was a time when she’d have felt fairly insecure about other women ogling her lover. Since then, they’d been through so much together. She’d also grown as a person and learned that their ten year age gap honestly meant nothing to Bennett. Cassie had come to terms with the relationship and even though she had the occasional flutter when women threw themselves at them, she’d learned to take it in her stride. To his credit, sometime Bennett seemed to be totally oblivious to all the swooning admiration sent his way. It had caused one or two arguments between them in the past.
She giggled at his reply to her question about his Gabriel Lockwood persona, the one he played in his TV series. It was the story of a university professor at Cambridge University who finds out he’s descended from a long and rather esteemed line of wizards. The naughty professor in him comes to the fore as he learns more about his abilities and his powers, leading to him being accused of being (in the TV presenter’s words) a’ cad and a charmer’.
Bennett’s dry reply at being asked whether he was like him led to his observation that it all depended who you asked as to whether he was like his alter ego. Cassie could definitely vouch for the charmer part but she drew the line at calling her fiancé a cad. A sexy, stubborn, mercurial and passionate prima donna, perhaps, but never a cad. And as for the comment about not being like Gabriel and going ‘haywire’ with the ladies’- well maybe not now. He was right-she would kill him. But he’d certainly had his share when he was younger. She was forever hearing stories about him from friends she met who each had their own special little bit of ‘Bennett smut’ to tell her.
Cassie finished her wine and poured another one. She watched as he leaned forward, hands waving all over the place as he told Leslie about his up and coming role in the new play being performed in his theatre. ‘Lonely Dove’ was a ghost story set in the 1600’s and was actually based on real life events that had occurred in the theatre they owned. The Val was Bennett’s passion when he wasn’t away filming TV shows or big screen movies. He loved performing on the stage and missed it when he wasn’t able to. Cassie had no doubt this new play would be the source of many a late night and an argument or two between him and his producer and best friend, Dylan. It also probably meant a little less sex that she was used to as his focus changed onto his role as Granton Thorne and this would consume both his mind and his time. That bit she wasn’t looking forward to.
Cassie sipped and her wine and nearly spluttered it out again in giggles at the interviewer’s next question about Bennett’s fan club, Savillicious, so called because he was ‘Bennett Saville and he was delicious.’ She had to give them a nod for their sense of creativity on that one. Last year Bennett had been accosted by a small group of young ladies in his changing room at the film studio. Given that he’d been undressed at the time and clad only in his boxers, his sense of indignation had been fairly understandable. But the thought of her haughty fiancé standing there facing what he’d called ‘a group of rabid young women who should be locked up by their dads’ still gave her a fit of the giggles. Cassie herself was very partial to all the social networking and she’d kept tabs on the group. Sometimes she thought they knew more than she did.
The interviewer’s next question seemed to throw him a little.
“I have to say I’ve Googled you a couple of time to prepare for this interview and some of the things I found online were fairly – shall we say- extreme?”
Cassie saw him do his ‘comfort’ thing, the thing he did when he was thinking what to say, stroking a seam or an imaginary crease in his trousers.
“Bennett, darling, if you only knew what I do,” she giggled as the third glass of wine started to take hold of her senses. “Those nude photos and all those marvellous fan fic stories out there –it’s like having my very own Bennett porn stash.”
Her lascivious thoughts made her groin tingle. Cassie tended to get fairly amorous when she was tipsy.
At this rate Bennett won’t know what hit him when he walks in.
She nearly choked on her wine at his reply.
‘Yes, I have seen those pictures. My fiancée takes great delight in finding them all and then moving them to her own personal ‘Inbox’ for posterity.”
How the hell did he know she had all those dodgy pictures on her computer? Had he been snooping?
She scowled a little fiercely. The man had no bloody shame.
She knew for the most part he ignored the rather sexy and often extreme photos of him in various compromising positions and state of undress, as well as the ones that showed him as being very well endowed, but it did irk him sometimes.
She snuggled back under the duvet, finishing off the last of her wine and putting the glass on the table. The interviewer was starting to wrap it up. Bennett was telling her about the lack of time he’d have for any holiday and she could see he wasn’t particularly happy about it. He’d promised her than when Lost Horizon had finished filming, they’d go away someway. But the way things were going it didn’t look like that would be any time soon. The only time they’d get away from London seemed to be when they went to Devon for Ian and Gabby’s wedding.
Cassie watched as Bennett stood up, stretching. She smiled fondly.
“Hurry on home, sweetheart,” she murmured sleepily. “I’m in the mood to jump your bones. And the way that woman is looking at you, so is she.” She frowned and switched off the TV, cuddling into the blanket and closing her eyes.
Just a catnap, then when she woke up, Bennett would be home.
March 6, 2013
"Creativity, in my opinion, is contagious. If we keep writing and reading, the world will keep..."
-
Haven Hunter (x)
This is a great philosophy to live to.
