Ailsa Abraham's Blog: Ailsa Abraham, page 60

Oh grow up!

No – don’t! Yes we all have to deal with jobs, mortgages, kids, elderly rels etc but … please keep a part of your soul that is still five years old (or less)

My best friend was going to celebrate (or not) his 60th birthday so we invited him over here and we made it a real proper, cake, pop and ice cream kid’s birthday …

As you know I am the matron of an orphanage for homeless teddy bears so they all turned out, put their party hats on and we had a ball. It may sound odd to some of you but we need it. Just occasionally we need to turn the clock back and watch ants in the grass, leaves floating on a puddle, slugs doing the four minute inch across a path …watching with amazement at the world around us.

Here are the bears, party hats and balloons (one for each decade and a hidden one for the next in his fave colour)

We didn’t go mental – there were only the three of us and it was fun. We were little again. Spike’s birthday and nothing could go wrong. Jelly and ice cream optional. I baked a cake. We had so much cake we didn’t have room for jelly and ice cream.

Just sometimes – be little. It does one the world of good! Do it with your family – if you aren’t comfy like that, do it with friends who SHOULD have been family, like we did – as Titch would say “same litter people”.

Above all – find some time to enjoy xxx

Wearing pinny – didn’t have time to put Rev. Mother costume on.

WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW – Book Marketing on Social Media.

WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW – Book Marketing on Social Media..

 

REALLY REALLY useful advice on marketing – if you want to sell your books and not get up noses – read it!  Thanks again to my dear friend Ape for this.

Monday Funnies with GARFIELD

Monday Funnies with GARFIELD.

credit and copyright www. fanpop.com

Happy Monday through my dear friend Ape.

The Problem of Pain

ailsaabrahamwp:

Insightful thoughts from my dear friend Vivienne – we all have pain of one sort or the other.

Originally posted on Zen and the art of tightrope walking:

The Problem of Pain

There is a problem with pain. Other than that it hurts, that is.

The problem is that we each experience pain in a personal and unique way. My pain is not your pain. Pain tolerance and pain thresholds are different for every person.
Not only that, our experiences are different. A man cannot fully understand the pain of a woman in childbirth; a woman cannot fully comprehend the pain of being kicked in the balls. We don’t have comparable parts. Not only that, every birthing experience is different too (for example). I’ve heard of women who have had a pleasurable and even (gasp!) orgasmic birthing experience. I’ve heard of plenty for whom the pain was enough to make them pass out, and scream for days. My own experience of giving birth was one of unimaginable agony. People say you forget the pain when you hold the…

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One Witch Abroad

Have you ever noticed that when abroad, even very normal things, like going around the shops or sitting at a café, people-watching, is much more fun? It’s different.

Yesterday I went up to Paris (not a very frequent event for me) to meet a friend and bring him back home for a week’s holiday. I forget that Paris is so different from my rural corner. It’s so lively, so cosmopolitan, so noisy!

My friend is from London and although they are both large cities he noticed a big difference too. Mind, he was with the world’s greatest “talk to strangers” champion. We sat outside a café where the owner came and stood by our table chatting all through the meal. The taxi rank just by it provided endless amusement as a very patient, very large, black driver finally lost it and had a shouting match with an extremely unreasonable customer. The Parisians all took this in their stride, raised their eyebrows and said “Quel cinema!” (what a performance!)

An accordian player aged about 92 turned up and made some noises until he was told to go away. The next taxi driver with whom I’d got chatting asked what I thought so I said, “Oh go on, I’ll pretend to be a tourist and love it” then turned to my friend and shrieked “Oh my God, this is just so French!” Everyone doubled up.

Stopped by American tourists and asked for directions I did the only sensible thing and shouted out in French “Oi! Anyone know where Rue Margot is?”’ One chap caught my eye so I trotted over, showed him their slip of paper, got directions, shook hands and went back. Everyone slightly shocked but everyone happy.

Final yell of the day was Starbucks – no I don’t normally go there but it was the only place with coffee AND seats in Gare de l’Est. The charming lady serving me offered me a bucket of coffee for my friend’s Americano (whatever that is when it’s home) and I replied that I’d like a small one.

“That IS a small one”

“Bloody hell, he is going to be pissing for England!”

Collapse of entire staff…. it’s the way I tell ‘em.

We’re back. Now it goes quiet again as my friend from London has a relaxing time in the country…which is nothing like Paris. Shame. I like my odd visits to Paris. Somehow people seem to remember me.

Cameron’s Soapbox: Civil War Tale

Cameron’s Soapbox: Civil War Tale.

 

Another of Bro’s short stories which I love – no erotica, but very atmospheric. Glad he is coming back to writing.

I Never Told Anyone

I Never Told Anyone.

Shared because Mark and I understand each other. We both have mental health conditions and I know exactly how he feels.

TO DIE FOR

I shift quietly so I don’t wake the hairy giant asleep next to me. I got what I wanted last night and now I just need to slip away without being noticed.

“No, wait!” I think. “He’ll remember! What can I do? When he remembers he’ll come after me and…” The thought makes me shiver.

Poor Ivar, he was a big lump of muscle-bound putty in my hands when I started paying court to him and pretended to be getting shit-faced on that Viking ale. He didn’t stand a chance. He’d have told me anything I wanted to hear. Well, he did actually. He gave me the recipe that my dad, the brewer, would kill for.

Kill for? Good idea. One look tells me that Ivar’s stonking great battle axe is propped up by the door. Shame, really but needs must.

One blow cleaves his head in two and I creep out, the list of ingredients clutched in my hand.

We’ll call it something in his honour, poor Ivar. How about “Skull Splitter”?

Unseen Influence

Readers! One of the fun bits of reading is visualising the characters in your own mind. Some people don’t like too much description or loathe photos on the covers because their “own” picture is much better. I tend to agree. Do you ever, though, picture a character and think “Ooo it’s that bloke off that series on TV”?

I’m an author and I have just made a terrible discovery. While I freely admit that I take unpleasant people from my own life and wreak revenge on them in my stories (such as the frightful Medical Officer in Cancel Christmas who was based on a woman I met) … my hero and heroine have been exposed as having rather a lot of similarities with TV characters.

This was done without my knowledge or consent. I must be so influenced that I didn’t even notice what I was doing. However, given that I wanted my two lovers to be complete opposites, chalk and cheese, I think I did rather well.

This is not to say that Alchemy and Shaman’s Drum are fan-fic (done that, it was enormous fun) but I wonder.. anyone can guess where they came from?

Clue – both Iamo and Riga resemble lead characters (not the actors) in two different TV series.

Go on -have a guess.

The Writing Process – What Next?

I’ve been tagged by my good mate Jeff Gardiner to pick up the baton on the topic of “ My Writing Process”. As I’ve already covered this in an earlier blog post, I’d like to take it a stage further and talk about “so you finished, huh?”

If you are a first-time author, having typed “The End” and done more editing than you ever thought possible, bribing, forcing and threatening your friends and family to proofread, you then look for a publisher.

Hint here – should your friends and family be completely dyslexic or illiterate, upload your m/s onto your e-book reader. I find it very much easier then to read as if it’s someone else’s work and the errors leap off the screen, shouting at you.

So you have a publisher? Wow! Great! Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there. Now the really hard slog begins because

a) you will need to publicise your work – that is the same for all of us, self or traditionally published except the big 5 and if you’re with them – why are you reading my blog? Not that I’m ungrateful, just flattered.

b) your publisher will want more so that satisfied customers will continue to be satisfied. This makes good business sense. If you go to the supermarket and buy a brand of breakfast cereal, you’ll be disappointed if you can’t find it again.

More advice. If the book that was burning to be written was an off-the-wall, genre-defying bit of iconoclasm, you are in deep doo-doo. Not only are readers going to have to “take a punt” to buy the first book if they aren’t sure of the genre, doing it a second time is murder (believe me). Then when the third is required you can book yourself into the Priory because a nervous breakdown and/or substance abuse may become a real possibility.

Do me a favour. “Everyone has a book in them”. Well just make sure yours is the kind that can be replicated or you are a one-trick pony. There are plenty of examples of famous authors who wrote the same novel several (hundred) times over and made shed-loads doing it. Tolkein, if you remember, very nearly wasn’t published at all.

Final advice? You will be writing in a genre (it has to slot into some pigeon hole to be classified on the selling sites)…choose with care, you only get one go.