Jane Thomson's Blog: But I'm Beootiful!, page 27

Fear of anger

Dunno about you but I’m scared of anger.

Maybe the Universe knows this.  Otherwise, why would it have hooked me up with so many Angry Men?  For instance, my ex-hubby.  He’s angry because..he just is.  Also, maybe, because he’s on the short side.  Then there’s the exes.  Angry Cokehead – pissed off because he’s black in a white man’s world.  Angry Womaniser – pissed off because women, like, have needs.  Angry Madman – pissed off because his mummy and daddy didn’t love him enough.  Then there’s the man I went out with not long ago who’s annoyed because his family ignore him.

Thing is, I don’t like anger, and I shrink away from it.  I will go a mile around to avoid an angry person, and an actual fight makes me sick in the stomach.  Normally when someone’s angry at me, I pour oil on troubled waters – as much as it takes.  That works, until the next hurricane.  With Angry Madman, even the oil used to make him angry.  He’d just get more and more abusive, until even I got angry.  When I finally get angry, things can get very nasty.

Ms M was asking me a couple of weeks ago if there’s anything I regret about the way I brought up my two little teenage angels, and I said – well for one, if I had my time over again, I would have never bought that bloody computer!  Or tv. Or X Box…Or anything electronic.  Ms M snorted in disgust.  Anyway the other thing I said was that, if I could, I would’ve found a different way to be angry with my son, other than smacking him.  I mean, he was INCREDIBLY irritating.  If you could be a career irritator, he would be at the very top of the tree, an Alpha Irritator.  But still, I always remember the time when he’d worked me up to a pitch of frustration, by hitting his sister and banging walls and throwing stuff etc etc etc…and I whacked him as hard as I could on the bum, with him going ‘THAT doesn’t hurt!” and “I’ll hate you for ever and EVER!”…and then I stormed out, leaving him sobbing and sulking.  And then half an hour later I hear this ‘Mu-uum.’  So I go back into his room, feeling kinda guilty, and he lifts his tearful little 11 year old face, and says ‘Muum, do you still love me?’ in this small trembling voice.

“Of course I do, I love you more than anything in the whole wide world, it’s just that sometimes I get..angry.”  I still feel bad about that.  I wish I’d thought of something else to do, when the red rage came over the mountain.

Anyway.

Saving wasted

Ever had a birthday meltdown?

I used to have them EVERY birthday.  The big day would come around and I’d just want to stay in bed all day and think bad thoughts, like ‘How come nobody likes me? and ‘Why do some of my family members act like I’m speaking in ancient Yiddish?’.

Anyway the other day, Ms M turned sixteen, and SHE had a birthday meltdown.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY M darling!!!”

“…Mmmm, yeah, guess so..”   CLICK. That’s the sound of Ms M hanging up on me – she was at her dad’s at the time.

So I wasn’t that surprised when I picked her up from the movies and she began to cry in the car, because, she said,

“I’ve wasted everything! I’m so stupid!”

Hmm, I thought, that sounds like a bit of an overstatement.  I know you’ve missed a few deadlines at school.  You probably don’t walk the dog as often as you should.  But everything, wasted?   I mean, at fifty, that could make sense.  At 16, there’s plenty of time to turn the boat around.

So we bought some Turkish takeaway (sniff, sob, wipe) and headed home on Birthday Night, in full crisis mode.  But then things started to go better.

The cure?  Take one electrically warmed bed, one mother & daughter, 2 slices of baklava, 2 half-empty miniature bottles of liqueur (doesn’t matter much what sort), a bowlful of hugs, a lot of listening and a sprinkle of bad jokes – combine, and voila!

Turned out it wasn’t Life that had been wasted – merely Dad’s birthday present money.  On Essence of Female, which I have really GOT to try, and a few other odd things Ms M and her best friend picked up at the herbalist for – well, about all the cash she had on her.

There really aren’t many things in life that can’t be fixed by an electric blanket, a small amount of alcohol, and cuddles.

Today’s Indie Review

It’s hard to know what to expect of the afterlife. Even, whether there IS one.  I tend to think not.  But, suppose there is.  And suppose,when you get there, that whatever problems you had in life are still waiting to be confronted? This is the theme of Karen Wyle’s Wander Home.  It’s about a multi-generational family who find themselves in ‘heaven’ but still have to work through some of their family issues – the abandoned daughter, the moody, restless single mother who walks out on her, the peripatetic parents and the crazy-in-love grandparents.  It’s actually quite a cohesive picture of how an afterlife might work, in practice, and well-written, without the stylistic issues you find (sadly) in a lot of e-books.

The Bonobo and the Atheist

Is she a good dog?  Sure she is -  but is she a GOOD dog?

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Why doesn’t the idea of a sinful dog make sense?  People can be good, bad or indifferent, but dogs are just…dogs.  When they sit on command we say ‘Good dog!’ but we don’t really mean “Good” dog.  We mean, obedient dog! Well done, dog! Not bad,for a dog!

Are people really the only animals with a moral sense?  Where did it come from, this whole right and wrong thing?  Was it implanted by God or gods, or do you need a certain size cerebellum to manufacture it, kind of like religion and physics?

If you’re interested in this kind of thing – and lots of people aren’t – try The Bonobo and the Atheist.  It’s by Frans de Waal, a celebrated primatologist with an office overlooking the zoo.  As he sits in his office, he sees things, like a group of younger chimpanzee girls helping an old lady chimp with arthritis onto a tree branch to sit with the others.  He sees an ape recognise another’s coming death before the veterinarian does, and grieve for it.  He conducts experiments, and finds that non-human animals have a deep sense of what is fair and unfair.  He finds that they will look after the sick and disabled, and that they don’t like clan members who break the rules.  When I owned a few horses, I noticed this myself.  Horses don’t like bullies and the bad-mannered – they chase them out of the herd until they’ve learned to play nice.

What are morals really but a complicated form of ‘playing nice’?  When you read this book you realise (if you didn’t know already) that we humans aren’t so different from the rest.  On the flip side, the ‘atheist’ part of the book is a complete red herring.

INDIE BOOKS

Recently, being an indie author myself, I’ve been reading other indie authors trying to make it, and have promised to do some indie reviews.  My first review is of Charles Yallowitz‘ Beginnings of a Hero: Legends of Windemere.  It’s a sword and sorcery novel set in Windimere, a strange and dangerous world full of elves, gods, half-elves, dwarves, soul-eating lichs and zombie gangs.  On my first read, I thought, hey, this is like a really good set up novel for a Dungeons and Dragons convention (the third person present tense gives it a ‘playing now’ ambience).  On my second read I got the tongue in cheek humour.  To wit, my favourite line in the book ‘More importantly, I came here to train and I will not get kicked out because I got caught with a naked girl who has the personality of a rampaging dread boar’!  Although I’m not a fan of this genre, I liked it.

Black and Red, by Sarah Jayne Nantais, is also a sword and sorcery novel.  It’s about the magical adventures of Terentya and Kalan, in a world full of beautiful sorceresses and powerful warriors vying for dominance and return to their native worlds.  The novel’s strength is in plot and imagination, while the writing is direct and naive.  If you enjoy the work of Emily Guido and her Lightbearer series, you’d probably enjoy this novel.

Here’s the thing. If you’re publishing as an independent author, it’s very hard to get people to read your work unless you’re REVIEWED. And guess what, it’s very hard to get reviewed if people haven’t read your work. Not all reviews can be good reviews, but at least they can help you become a better writer.  So if you’ve read a book by an indie author on Kindle or Smashwords, leave a review – we need it!

Don’t let the Turkish government get away with this

I remember Istanbul.  Just two years ago – wandering around lost, random people took extraordinary trouble to help me sort it all out – looking up their phones, ringing the hotel, buying a bus ticket, walking with me through the maze of narrow streets.

Walking home in the dark through the old city, I never felt in danger.  Once a guy sitting on his porch with a couple of friends stopped me with the usual ‘Speak English? Where you from?’.  I patted his cat, chatted to the friends (male and female), got invited to a party.

Turkey is not the Middle East. No looming men in white robes and black beards looking down their noses.  No scary laws against holding hands or drinking beer.  No autocratic, theocratic government breathing down the necks of its people.  And yet….

The Turkish government has just squashed a peaceful protest in Istanbul with horrific force, killing several people and critically injuring hundreds.  Gas bombs in locked metro subways.  People blinded by tear gas.  Apparently, no Turkish news outlet has been allowed to report it.  For more details, see Neil Garman’s moving post.

So please share if you can and if you want to.

A story of love, betrayal…and fish: FREE on Amazon for next 5 days!

A dark, modern fairytale of love and revenge, FREE ON AMAZON  from midnight Sunday 7 July to Thursday 11 July!

Some fairytales are meant to be broken.  Especially Disney fairytales – like The Little Mermaid – that tell of button-nosed sea princesses who fall in love with handsome, kind princes and end up living happily ever after in their multi-turreted castles by the sea.

DEEPER is the story of what really happens when a curious mer girl rescues a self-obsessed writer, living alone in his lighthouse by the sea.  What happens when she makes a pact she can’t go back on, for love of a man she barely knows?  If you think you know how it ends, you probably don’t.

Deeper is available as an e-book on Amazon and now as a paperback at CreateSpace.  If you read it, don’t forget to review it – it helps!

An excerpt

It’d become very important to me that you not be dead.  Partly for your sake, partly because of everything I’d already invested in you.  A whole night away from home, the long weary swim across the black fearsome sea.  What a waste, if you were already dead.

I saw the tiny silver strip, and heard the hiss of surf on sand.  The sea was warmer, too, as we came closer to land, rising shallow.  The Trapped Moon glanced down at the ocean, lit a path for us, and turned away.  A wall of rock stood behind, a few stubby green things growing from it at an angle. The tide was going out, which didn’t help me at all, pushing myself and you up the beach.  But I let the waves wash us as far as they could.

It was hard work getting you up on the sand.  When it became too shallow to use my tail, I had to drag you with my arms, pushing myself, then you, further up onto the Dry. I didn’t want you to be sucked out again like flotsam.  It was like trying to move a rock, only you weren’t hard but soft and waterlogged.  I wriggled out of the water and pulled and slipped, and still you only moved inches at a time.  It took me a long time to get you to the shadow of the cliff, beyond the tide mark.

You were so still.  I turned you on your stomach and you spat out water, but still you didn’t wake.  I lay close to you, my head against your wet, sea-forest chest, and listened to your heartbeat.  It was weak and not regular.  That wasn’t a good thing – I remembered from when my mother died in pup, and I cuddled up against her, how her heart also jumped, and limped, and then stopped.

With my fingers I combed through your lovely human hair, so fine and thin, and put my warm lips against your eyelids, almost transparent and stuck together now with sand and salt.

I untied the swollen covering that had kept you up, and pulled it off you.  Underneath, you were bare like a merman, and not so different, to look at.  You were softer and leaner, though.  In curiosity, I ran my fingers over your skin, from the base of your throat where the hair began, down between your nipples, down to your navel framed with long dark strands.  I felt how frail you were.  I could count every one of your ribs as I drew my hands over your body.  Below the navel, you were covered with some thin bright stuff, which clung close to your two solid legs…..

You were drying out now in the night heat, but you were still too cold.  I scooped the dry sand onto you to try to keep you warm, and moved up close beside you, my skin against yours.  I breathed warm breath on your neck, hoping it would help.  You shivered and twitched.

Lying beside you, I drew my sea-cold lips and my warm wet tongue over your face, tasting your skin.  You smelled of sea now, all the smells of the Dry washed off, but you tasted of human too– a rich, strong, blood-warm taste.  I murmured, wake, human – wondering what I’d do if you opened your eyes, those dark-brown eyes with their big whites – but you just coughed out some more water, and lay sleeping.  I put my arms around you, as my mother used to around me, my tail over your limp legs, and felt your human-ness seep into me and infect me, as you slept.

Dawn was breaking when I left you there and slipped back into the sea.  You were alive but limp as a corpse.  As the sun broke red over the sea, I started to feel frightened.  What if there were more humans high up on the rock?  What if they came down and found me, and grabbed me and took me away to be skin or food?  What if you woke up, and looked at me, and were disgusted by me, as Azura and Dayang and the rest would have been by you?

It was so much easier going back than it had been coming.  The water welcomed me, smoothing over my cuts and bruises, and I sped through fast and free, relieved because I was able to use my shoulders and arms at last.  I swam for home as fast as I could, afraid and tired and thinking all the while of you.  How delicate you were, how beautiful.  How like mer and not mer.

A story of love, betrayal…and fish

Some fairytales are meant to be broken.  Especially Disney fairytales – like The Little Mermaid – that tell of button-nosed sea princesses who fall in love with handsome, honourable princes and end up living happily ever after in their multi-turreted castles by the sea.

DEEPER is the story of what really happens when a curious mer girl rescues a self-obsessed writer, living alone in his lighthouse by the sea.  When she makes a pact she can’t go back on, for love of a man she barely knows.  If you think you know how it ends, you probably don’t.

Deeper is available as an e-book on Amazon and Smashwords.  If you read it, don’t forget to review it – it helps!

Here’s an excerpt

It’d become very important to me that you not be dead.  Partly for your sake, partly because of everything I’d already invested in you.  A whole night away from home, the long weary swim across the black fearsome sea.  What a waste, if you were already dead.

I saw the tiny silver strip, and heard the hiss of surf on sand.  The sea was warmer, too, as we came closer to land, rising shallow.  The Trapped Moon glanced down at the ocean, lit a path for us, and turned away.  A wall of rock stood behind, a few stubby green things growing from it at an angle. The tide was going out, which didn’t help me at all, pushing myself and you up the beach.  But I let the waves wash us as far as they could.

It was hard work getting you up on the sand.  When it became too shallow to use my tail, I had to drag you with my arms, pushing myself, then you, further up onto the Dry. I didn’t want you to be sucked out again like flotsam.  It was like trying to move a rock, only you weren’t hard but soft and waterlogged.  I wriggled out of the water and pulled and slipped, and still you only moved inches at a time.  It took me a long time to get you to the shadow of the cliff, beyond the tide mark.

You were so still.  I turned you on your stomach and you spat out water, but still you didn’t wake.  I lay close to you, my head against your wet, sea-forest chest, and listened to your heartbeat.  It was weak and not regular.  That wasn’t a good thing – I remembered from when my mother died in pup, and I cuddled up against her, how her heart also jumped, and limped, and then stopped.

With my fingers I combed through your lovely human hair, so fine and thin, and put my warm lips against your eyelids, almost transparent and stuck together now with sand and salt.

I untied the swollen covering that had kept you up, and pulled it off you.  Underneath, you were bare like a merman, and not so different, to look at.  You were softer and leaner, though.  In curiosity, I ran my fingers over your skin, from the base of your throat where the hair began, down between your nipples, down to your navel framed with long dark strands.  I felt how frail you were.  I could count every one of your ribs as I drew my hands over your body.  Below the navel, you were covered with some thin bright stuff, which clung close to your two solid legs…..

You were drying out now in the night heat, but you were still too cold.  I scooped the dry sand onto you to try to keep you warm, and moved up close beside you, my skin against yours.  I breathed warm breath on your neck, hoping it would help.  You shivered and twitched.

Lying beside you, I drew my sea-cold lips and my warm wet tongue over your face, tasting your skin.  You smelled of sea now, all the smells of the Dry washed off, but you tasted of human too– a rich, strong, blood-warm taste.  I murmured, wake, human – wondering what I’d do if you opened your eyes, those dark-brown eyes with their big whites – but you just coughed out some more water, and lay sleeping.  I put my arms around you, as my mother used to around me, my tail over your limp legs, and felt your human-ness seep into me and infect me, as you slept.

Dawn was breaking when I left you there and slipped back into the sea.  You were alive but limp as a corpse.  As the sun broke red over the sea, I started to feel frightened.  What if there were more humans high up on the rock?  What if they came down and found me, and grabbed me and took me away to be skin or food?  What if you woke up, and looked at me, and were disgusted by me, as Azura and Dayang and the rest would have been by you?

It was so much easier going back than it had been coming.  The water welcomed me, smoothing over my cuts and bruises, and I sped through fast and free, relieved because I was able to use my shoulders and arms at last.  I swam for home as fast as I could, afraid and tired and thinking all the while of you.  How delicate you were, how beautiful.  How like mer and not mer.

Out now – a story of love, betrayal…and fish

Ok, I’ll be upfront with you.  PLEASE BUY MY BOOK!!!!

But why should I? (you ask)

Because fairytales are meant to be broken.  Especially Disney fairytales – like The Little Mermaid – that tell of button-nosed sea princesses who fall in love with handsome, honourable princes and end up living happily ever after in their multi-turreted castles by the sea.

But that’s not how it works.  DEEPER is the story of what really happens when a curious mer girl rescues a self-obsessed writer, living alone in his lighthouse by the sea.  When she makes a pact she can’t go back on, for love of a man she barely knows.  If you think you know how it ends, you probably don’t.

NOT CONVINCED?  Then buy a copy for Melissa’s of Iamnotshe‘s beautiful original artwork, painted especially for this story!

STILL not sure?  Well then, read the book, review it  (you don’t even have to like it), and I’ll put your name into the draw to WIN one of five signed copies.  Just THINK how much these will be worth in fifty years (when the world’s run out of scrap paper, that is)!

But that’s not all!  I will also (if you’re an author) review YOUR book in return and showcase it on this and my other blogs.

DEEPER has already got RAVE reviews from those in the know…

“Just finished it! Fantastic! And so good for the teeth!” (Gucci, Canine Review)

_________________________________________________________________

“Definitely one of the great literary masterpieces of our times….although I WAS hoping for more fish…” (Puss, Better Beds and Gardens)

______________________________________________________________

Deeper is available as an e-book on Amazon and Smashwords, and  (in a few days) as a REAL LIVE PAPERBACK (watch this space).

Goodreads?

Reblogged from :

Should the aspiring self-published author try to get on Goodreads?

In a week or so I'm going to make a real pitch to sell my self-published book, Deeper (which isn't linked, as it isn't out there yet).  So I'm doing what authors do, sniffing around all the sites where I can promote my book.   I've become a member of Goodreads, joined an author/blogger 'group', and rated all the books I can think of.

Read more… 109 more words

Goodreads - a good way to go? Or...not!

Women: The Manual

Normally you’d have to pay HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for this kind of advice.

But I’m giving it to you for free.  Yes, in this post I will answer once for all the burning question – how do I get women to sleep with me??

Trailer Trash Deluxe – who obviously I would date in a moment if only he lived in Australia – complains in his seminal post I Trust You’re Happy with Yourselves!!! that even for a well-set up man of means such as himself, it’s very difficult to get women to put out.

What’s the secret?

Inside (almost) every woman is a sand goby, looking for a male with enough resources to see her eggs to adulthood.  Luckily, she can often be satisfied with POTENTIAL resources.  Like, if you are ABOUT to write the next great novel, sometime.
(Most) women like to talk. Problem is, so do most men, louder, harder, longer. Practice the art of acting fascinated (better yet, of BEING fascinated).  Only 10% or less of men have mastered this art, so you’ll be way out in front.
Everybody likes things that other people want.  BE one of those things. If you’re not, pretend (you’ll notice this word comes up often).  I remember when some deadbeat boyfriend of mine said he was planning (one day) to become a DJ.  Instant images of him wowing a crowd of hand-waving cool people, and ME his chosen one, beaming smugly up by the mixer. Done deal.
Some people say women aren’t shallow.  Don’t believe them.  Drape that paunch.  Get rid of the dandruff.  Yellow is a beautiful and cheerful colour but not on teeth.
(Many) women are credulous (see ‘pretend’).  Personally I’m incredibly credulous.  I can be had (almost) for an admiring whistle and a couple of well-aimed compliments ‘you’re so beautiful’, ‘you’re the most intelligent woman I’ve ever met’, ‘your writing is ineffably moving!’.
Women fall in love with whingers, but only after the main course.  If you’re not happy, PRETEND you are (or at least reasonably stable) for a few weeks at least.  Then you can introduce her to the real you – otherwise known as ‘depths’.  Whatever you do, don’t start off on the pointlessness of life and the unimaginable stinkiness of your ex, work, or life (leave that for later, when your tears will make her want to kiss it better rather than invent reasons to be somewhere else).

Trailer Trash of course already KNOWS all these things – I would never teach him to suck eggs (I mean solicit them).  I realise people are hugely variable, and can’t be stereotyped.  But his post made me think about what it is that men can do to entice the opposite sex.

As a man, how do YOU entice and delight?  As a woman, how do YOU sort the duds from the dudes?

Saved

This is an excerpt from Deeper, my novel which is NEARLY ready to publish online.  And THIS is a painting by Mel of Iamnotshe, which she painted for my book.  Mel is SO talented – and I am SO lucky to know her.

I swam, holding your head up as high as I could, my fingers wrapped in the coverings around your thin neck.  I swam with my tail alone, and it was hard work, even for me.  At first it was like swimming through sand – the sea threw itself at us from all directions, and when we fell from the top of each wave, I had to struggle to keep your face from going under. 

If I’d been on my own, I would have swum under the storm, where it was always calm and green.  With you in my arms, I couldn’t do that.  At last I saw your floater, tossing past.  I thrust towards it and held on to the wind-tree with one arm, and you with the other.  It helped, a little.  I could see why you humans stayed on your floaters – even up-ended it refused to sink.

After a while, the clouds cleared to the west, and the wind began to fade.  The storm spirits, racing each other through black clouds above and casting their spears of white lightning into the sea, put down their weapons and went to rest.  The sky glowed sunset-blue.  The water calmed.  As I swam with you, easier now, I could see the moon rise, a thin broken shell at the horizon.  I felt the great current guiding us both towards the Dry.

It became night.  It was hard now to tell if we were above or below the surface, grey-black both – but I made sure that your head was always in the air.  Even we mer need to breathe the air.  Your bleeding had stopped long since.  That was just as well, because I didn’t think I could fight off a shark for you, now.  I was dead tired.

I heard the Trapped Moon, and felt it, before I saw it.  Around us the waves of Deep Sea rolled for long hours, uninterrupted, but in the distance I heard them strike rock and roar in spray.  They don’t like to be slowed and thwarted in their travels: it makes them angry and stubborn, as it does me.  They strike out and spit and claw at anything which gets in their way.

We reached the tip of the long beam, bouncing on the dark water.  I stopped to stare at the white moonlet, high up but not so high as the other.  It crossed my mind – if humans were so weak, how could they do these things that no mer could?  Put the moon on a rock, for instance. Were we mer really the clever ones?

I swam in place, listening to the words of the waves.   I couldn’t bring you in on the rocks, you’d be cut to pieces and I’d be hurt too.  I’d have to swim round and listen for a beach.  We circled the island.  You were slack and heavy, my arms ached from dragging you.  It’d become very important to me that you not be dead.  Partly for your sake, partly because of everything I’d already invested in you.  A whole night away from home, the long weary swim across the black fearsome sea.  What a waste, if you were already dead.

I saw the tiny silver strip, and heard the hiss of surf on sand.  The sea was warmer, too, as we came closer to land, rising shallow.  The Trapped Moon glanced down at the ocean, lit a path for us, and turned away.  A wall of rock stood behind, a few stubby green things growing from it at an angle. The tide was going out, which didn’t help me at all, pushing myself and you up the beach.  But I let the waves wash us as far as they could.

It was hard work getting you up on the sand.  When it became too shallow to use my tail, I had to drag you with my arms, pushing myself, then you, further up onto the Dry. I didn’t want you to be sucked out again like flotsam.  It was like trying to move a rock, only you weren’t hard but soft and waterlogged.  I wriggled out of the water and pulled and slipped, and still you only moved inches at a time.  It took me a long time to get you to the shadow of the cliff, beyond the tide mark.

You were so still.  I turned you on your stomach and you spat out water, but still you didn’t wake.  I lay close to you, my head against your wet, sea-forest chest, and listened to your heartbeat.  It was weak and not regular.  That wasn’t a good thing – I remembered from when my mother died in pup, and I cuddled up against her, how her heart also jumped, and limped, and then stopped.

With my fingers I combed through your lovely human hair, so fine and thin, and put my warm lips against your eyelids, almost transparent and stuck together now with sand and salt.

I untied the swollen covering that had kept you up, and pulled it off you.  Underneath, you were bare like a merman, and not so different, to look at.  You were softer and leaner, though.  In curiosity, I ran my fingers over your skin, from the base of your throat where the hair began, down between your nipples, down to your navel framed with long dark strands.  I felt how frail you were.  I could count every one of your ribs as I drew my hands over your body.