Dane Cobain's Blog, page 6

The Joy of Audio Books

We in the reading community love to talk about audio books and whether they count as “real” reading. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of them, perhaps because my dad used to like to listen to them on road trips and because my grandparents used to record themselves reading children’s books from the library on to cassette tapes.

Audio books are great because they help you to squeeze in a little extra reading when you wouldn’t normally be able to. For example, I’ve been reading them on my daily walks while I play on my phone. It might not quite be as motivating as listening to music, but I don’t need the motivation. I need the books.

I’m a little different to most people when it comes to audio books because I only ever listen to them as re-reads. That said, I very rarely re-read these days, which means that audio books have effectively been my main way of revisiting books that I’ve enjoyed in the past. It helps that I’ve been taking part in Catalyst Reads’ rereadathon which involves re-reading a different book every month throughout the year.

The rereadathon basically opened up the floodgates and made me determined to listen to more audio books, and so that’s what I’m going to do. In fact, after finishing I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, I immediately downloaded 11/22/63 by Stephen King so that I can listen to that. I figure it’s long enough to keep me going for a little while.

I crunched the numbers to figure it out and I’m pretty sure that by listening to audio books, I’ll be able to increase the number of books that I read by 2-3 per month depending upon their length. Of course, they’re only re-reads, but then I read 20+ books for the first time each month anyway and so I’m not complaining. And who knows? Perhaps it’ll give me that extra little edge I need if I want my books to become bestsellers.

We can only hope.

A Holiday!

Hi, folks! Today, I wanted to talk to you about my holiday. I’m off to Spain (via Tamworth) from Monday 8th October until Friday 19th October, and I’ll be out there to help my dad to do some work on a property he has.

Of course, this means that I’m not going to be online as much, either to work for my clients or to keep up with people on social networking sites and on my BookTube channel. I’ll check in where I can, but I’m not going to kill myself trying to stay up to date with everything.

I’ve done that in the past, and I think it does me a disservice. I’ve started to realise that I need to take some time for myself, to relax my mind a bit and to try to take it easy. So that’s what I’m going to do, although if I manage to do some writing as well then I’ll consider that a nice little bonus.

Mostly, I plan to read some Stephen King books and to explore a bit of Spain while keeping up with my daily walks and trying to get my sleeping pattern sorted. I feel like I’m at a pretty good place in life and I’m humaning well, but there are always ways to improve and sometimes you need to take a step back to figure out where you’re going before you decide what to do next.

So if you don’t hear from me much in October, don’t worry. I’m still around and I’m still writing, I just might not be online much because I’ll be busy, you know, being in Spain. My laptop is a lot slower than my computer is and it doesn’t have as many screens, so I can’t multitask as well as usual. But I’ll be there.

In the meantime, thanks as always for reading and be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for furthter information. You can also click here to check out my books on Amazon. I’ll see you soon!

Chillin’ with Oli Jacobs

Hi, folks! Dane here, and today I wanted to give a little shout out to an indie author friend of mine by the name of Oli Jacobs. He lives in High Wycombe, which is where I’m from, and we’ve crossed paths several times before. I’ve read a few of his novels and he’s picked up a few of mine, and he even penned a piece for Subject Verb Object, the anthology that I worked on last year bringing together eighteen indie authors.

At the moment, Oli is promoting the crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming novel, Deep Down There. It’s set to be published through Unbound, who also publish fellow Wycombe author Stevyn Colgan, and it works a bit like Kickstarter but for books. He’s made a good dent towards his goal but he still has further to go, so click here to check that out.

 

All of the beard

 

Anyway, the reason I wanted to give a shoutout to Oli today is that he very graciously invited me along to a little shindig at his house. Beers were drank, dogs were petted and books were exchanged. In fact, he gave me three of his Kirk Sandblaster books in exchange for three of mine that were on his wishlist. I’ll be reading and reviewing them soon.

Oli is also a fellow anxiety sufferer, and in fact he went out of his way to make me feel welcome at his house considering I was around a bunch of people that I didn’t know. But he needn’t have worried because they were good people. It was a super happy fun time.

So thank you, Oli, for inviting me over to your house and for swapping books with me! And thank you, reader, in advance for checking out Oli on Facebook and Twitter and supporting his Unbound campaign. And if you’d really like to, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter too and grab some of my books right here. I’ll see you soon!

The Time Capsule

Today, I want to talk to you about a time capsule. That’s because I’ve decided to make one, and I’ve even bought myself a stainless steel capsule to keep it in. The idea is for you to bury it in your garden, but I don’t have one and I move too often anyway, so I’ll keep it buried in the pile of stuff underneath the stairs and behind my guitar rack.

The plan is for me to fill the capsule with stuff that’s important to me and then to seal it and to keep it until my 40th birthday in 2029, when I’ll open it up and see what I put in there. I already have a few ideas of things to put in there and I also want to write some poetry and some notes to myself.

As for why I’m doing it…well, why not? The idea came to me one night when I was lying awake in bed and I ended up thinking about it for half an hour or so and deciding there and then that it had to be done. I’ve been trying a lot of new stuff recently in an attempt to broaden my mind and to push myself out of my comfort zone, and so it seemed like I might as well give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen?

Besides, it’s bringing back some memories of an old university project for a module called Fiction and Innovative Form. We had to hand something in that told a story but which wasn’t just a traditional piece of writing, so I made a time capsule for a fictional little kid. I still have that thing lying around somewhere. I think it’s in my mum’s loft.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to tell you about my time capsule, and if you want to see what’s inside it then you’re going to have to wait until I turn 40. In the meantime, why not make a time capsule for yourself? It’s a lot of fun to do, and that’s without the payoff you’ll get if you’re patient enough to wait until it’s time to open it. Besides, it’s something to do. That’s the only excuse I needed.

On Being the Best You Can Be

2018 has been a year of self-improvement for me. I quit smoking, adopted a plant-based diet and started walking up and down the hill each day to get into shape. I’ve also started loosening up a little bit and spending more time doing nothing, which might sound counterproductive but which seems to be helping with my mental health.

It’s something that I’m making a concentrated effort to do. I want to improve both my physical health and my mental health, but I also want to continue to improve my mind by learning as much as I can. That’s why I’m getting into cooking, but it’s also why I’ve bought a tie-dye kit and why I’m looking forward to one day living somewhere with a garden.

I’ve always been pretty driven to accomplish the things I set my mind to, but I think I’ve spent most of my life so far focusing exclusively on my writing. Now that I’m getting a little older, I’ve realised that if I spend some time taking care of my health, I’ll be able to write for longer anyway, and I’ll be happier while doing it too.

As part of all of this, I’m trying new things and doing my best to open myself up to new experiences, even if I don’t think I’ll like them. But I’m also trying to change the way I think a little bit by focusing more on the positives and less on the negatives. Part of this is because of a client I’m working with who I’m learning from at the same time as I’m writing for them. But part of it is just way overdue.

Being the best you can be doesn’t have to be hard, you just have to make the effort. If you can discipline yourself enough and you know what you want to do, you can do it. It might sound simple, but it still took me 29 years to realise it. Don’t laugh.

On Cooking

I never used to like cooking much. I always looked at cooking as a minor inconvenience, something that I had to do if I wanted to eat and live perhaps but not something to look forward to. And then I went vegan.

There’s something about cooking plant-based recipes that brought back my love of food. It makes me feel like some sort of druid when I’m in the kitchen, and it’s good to see great food coming together from plant-based sources. It’s also helped me to get a much better idea of what I’m putting inside my mouth and into my body.

When you can see exactly what’s going into your food, it’s much easier to fall in love with it. Now, instead of being something that I need to do to stay alive, cooking is something that I look forward to, and I also like dipping into my leftovers when I have them.

What I’ve learned is that cooking is an art form, and you can have a lot of fun with it. It’s a way to express yourself, but it’s also one of the rare art forms where you get to share it one on one with another person. Although I’ll admit that I also take a lot of photos of my food so that I can share them on Instagram.

Ultimately, making food gives me another way of being creative, which is why I like it. But at the same time, I also get to enjoy the fruits of my labour in a different way. You might be able to hold a book after you write it and you finally have a copy of it, but you damn well can’t taste it.

I’ve only been cooking seriously for a couple of months, but I’ve been enjoying it. It’s a skill that I’m glad that I’ve learned and I can’t wait to keep learning in the months and  years to come. You should come over sometime for dinner. It’s on me!

Why I Keep All of My Books

I read a lot of books, and the chances are that if you’re here, you already know that. In a typical month, I read around twenty books, and I keep every book that I read. I also have a couple of hundred books on my to be read (TBR) shelf. In total, I reckon I own over 1,500 books, spread across ten different bookshelves.

Most people who read as many books as I do can’t keep them all, mainly because it starts to take up a lot of space. My girlfriend tells me that the bookcases in the bedroom make her feel a little claustrophobic, although that’s partly because of how small the flat is, too.

So far, I’ve been lucky enough to continually upgrade my living situation, moving to increasingly bigger houses with more and more space. The house I live in at the moment isn’t huge and only has two main rooms, so assuming I move into a proper house, preferably with multiple bedrooms, I can continue to grow my collection as long as I don’t mind spreading it throughout the house.

I don’t often re-read books and so that’s not really why I keep them, although I sort of wish it was. I just like having them around, being able to look at them and to wander around my house and to reminisce. Most of the books have at least some sort of memory associated with them, and so it’s almost like keeping a copy of my past around.

But mostly, it’s just a way that I express myself. In the same way that some people tell their stories through the tattoos that they have, I tell my story through the books I own. I’m proud of my collection, in the same way that other people might be proud of their stamp collection or their Pokemon cards.

And besides, there are worse things I could be spending my money on.

Why I Keep Climbing the Hill

I’ve got a new hobby, but it’s nothing glamorous. I just pull on my headphones and my hat, boot up the Zombies, Run! app on my iPhone and walk to the top of the hill and back. I’m trying to do it every day.

I’ve never been the fittest of people, and smoking for half of my life probably didn’t help, but I used to be pretty skinny. I played a little football here and there perhaps, but mostly I stayed in shape by walking.

But there’s a problem: I don’t walk much anymore.

That’s because I work from home, and so I have no need to walk to work every day. I have a pretty good diet now, especially since going vegan, and I’ve also quit smoking and so my breathing is pretty good. But I’m still a little overweight, and now I can’t blame it on cheese.

Climbing the hill is pretty difficult, and the data from my Fitbit shows that it makes my heart rate shoot right up from a relaxed rate of around 60 bpm up to highs of 170. But it’s a little easier on the way down which makes it all doable, and there’s also a shop at the top which I can go to if I need to give myself a reason to walk in the first place.

Zombies, Run! is helping, too. It’s basically an iPhone app that’s almost an interactive audio book. As you walk (or run), it plays parts of the story to you, and you can even listen to music and it’ll turn it down when the next part of the story is ready. It’s a lot of fun.

Walking to the top of the hill and back each day only takes half an hour or so, but it’s pretty good exercise. On top of that, though, it also gives me time to just clear my mind a little bit and to think. And exercise is good for your mental health and for regulating sleep, too.

I also like the discipline of it. It’s just another way in which I’m trying to better myself, or more accurately to just be the best version of me I can be. I think walking to the top of the hill and back is a good way of working on that. And who knows? Perhaps it’ll even help me to shed my beer belly.

New reviews and stuff!

Hi, folks! I just wanted to share a quick update today with some of the lovely feedback that people have shared for some of my books. I update my website every couple of months or so to add the latest reviews from Amazon UK, Amazon US and Goodreads, and you can check them out on each of the product pages as you go to learn more about my books.

I’ve also embedded a few of them below so that you can take a look at them there. And of course, I’d super appreciate it if you shared a short review of your own after you’ve read one of my books. Indie authors feed off reviews, so if you like someone’s book, you should review it.

Other than that, it’s a pretty slow news day today, but rest assured that I’m hard at work behind the scenes on a bunch of different projects including my memoirs, which I’m already at about 70,000 words of after just a month or two. Driven has also been picked up by a small publisher and so keep your eyes peeled for news there, as well as on other books in the series.

In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by and be sure to give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube. I’ll see you soon!

Impostors Syndrome

“Impostors Syndrome” seems to be a hot topic at the moment, and it refers to the feelings of inadequacy that people sometimes get in life and at work. For example, if you’re promoted at work but you don’t feel as though you’re qualified, you might start to second guess yourself and wonder if you really deserve to have the authority you’ve been given.

When I’ve seen it written about online, it’s mostly been used to talk about women, partly because of a lot of the inherent sexism that’s a part of society. There are a lot of women who have proved their worth and climbed up the ranks in the workplace because of their ability to do their job, but who still remember when they were younger and were told that “science isn’t for girls” or “women can’t be CEOs”.

But there’s also a lot of impostors syndrome amongst writers and other creatives, especially those like myself who are indie, self-published authors and who haven’t necessarily received the publishing industry backing of mainstream authors. It’s a natural thing to think about, especially when you’re having a bad day or you get a bad review. That kind of negative thinking can eat away at you.

But I think that impostors syndrome is just as much of a problem for mainstream authors and creatives. Unless you have a massive ego and automatically believe that you deserve the world, it’s only natural to feel doubt whenever you experience either a failure or a success.

 

Impostors Syndrome

 

Creative people are always under pressure to keep creating, and at the same time it’s easy to downplay how much time, effort and expertise goes into something. I know that I still find it awkward to talk about my books in a social situation, and I’ve been writing for half of my life. It’s also true that every time I see a review of one of my books on YouTube or in a Google Alert, I start to panic because I don’t know if it’s going to be bad or good. I should have more confidence in myself, but I don’t.

So I think that everyone has some form of impostors syndrome. My goal has always been to be the “best” writer in the world (because why not aim for the stars?), but even if I made it by any metric, I’d still doubt myself. I’m only human. And I’m sure that people like Stephen King and J. K. Rowling feel the same sometimes. They’re also only human.

Perhaps I’m wrong, I don’t know. But it seems to me as though impostor syndrome isn’t really a syndrome because we all have it. That’s not to belittle it in any way, because I know myself how it can affect confidence and hold you back from achieving your full potential. I just think it’s something that all of us suffer from, to at least some extent.

So now I want to hear from you. Have you ever suffered from impostor syndrome? And what do you think about what I covered in this blog post? Let me know what you think with a comment.