Anna Bloom's Blog, page 17

Nashville Crush

My name is Anna Bloom and I am an addict…..

….

…Of Nashville.

Have you ever?? Oh lordy above, that program is so ridiculously addictive I cant stop myself. My sister is reading this, thinking, “hell I told that woman to watch that months ago.” But you know I have been busy writing and stuff so I am only catching up now.

Last night I sat up till gone eleven screaming at the telly and randomly texting my sister quotes, for example. 

“He just said ‘I’m done talking’!! Squeal.”

When I started watching there was one character I really did not like, at all, to the point I had to fast forward all scenes with him in. By the end of my marathon last night he had completely grown on me, then he sang the song I have linked in below and I was done for.

Why oh why did I not have this song when I was writing The Uni File Year Two. It would have been perfect for the big Easter Scene??

This song perfectly captures all the emotions I have been trying to get down on the page. I hope I have succeeded.

 

And if you have not been watching, why the hell not?

The Saving of Benjamin Chambers

 

So it’s official. The Uni File Novella: The Saving of Benjamin Chambers has been picked up and is going to be released in time for Christmas.

I am so ridiculously excited about this. I loved writing from Ben’s perspective and also giving a glimpse into the back story behind Ben and Lilah’s love thing.

Even more exciting is that there is going to be a teaser / glimpse at the end of The Uni Files Year One when it comes out in September so everyone can get a  little sneak peek early.

So without further ado here is the blurb for The Saving of Benjamin Chambers.

Benjamin Chambers needs saving, he just does not know it yet. Bored of his life of repetitive gigs with a band going nowhere fast and one night stands with girls who are only interested in his role as a lead singer, something has got to change. It’s just what do you do when the only life you know involves messing around with guitars and attempting to run away from any female attention that comes your way.

Ben has a New Year’s resolution and one that he is determined to keep, quit the band and get a life of his own. Little does Ben realise that on his last night with his band Sound Box he is going to meet a girl who will turn everything he knows upside down.

As Ben sets himself the challenge to find ‘The Girl’ again, he may be about to learn that in an effort to rescue her, he himself will be the one to be saved.

My Boyfriend Post

Tomorrow is the big day, the one I have been waiting for since Christmas when I opened up the bestest Christmas Present ever given to me.

It was my sister who provided the gift of a life time, possibly because she knows what I want more than anyone else, or possibly because she was just as eager for what tomorrow is finally going to bring.

Yes that is right. Tomorrow I get to see my boyfriend!

Obviously I don’t mean a real boyfriend because I am married and that would be a little on the wrong side of things BUT tomorrow I get to see my imaginary boyfriend.

Brandon Flowers bring it on! After six and half years of waiting tomorrow my sis and I will be having a girls day out in London including lunch and drinkies whilst working our way to Wembley Stadium to see The Killers.

In case you can’t guess I am just a little bit EXCITED!!!!

Very, very, very, very excited. As in, this has been the longest week of my life.

You see six and a half years ago I had tickets to see them when they were not a stadium filling world renowned rock act. I can’t even remember where the tickets were for; all I do know is that it was not Wembley.

However there was a monumental spanner in my The Killers swooning plan and that came in the form of a baby bump and some serious vertigo and an inexplicable pregnancy related aversion to loud noise.

So I sold my tickets. What a dumb ass.

A friend told me at the time that I would never forgive myself and do you know what she was completely right because every time they have toured since then I have been so busy being ‘mummy’ that I have not been able to go.

Until tomorrow that is.

Tomorrow I will be watching the band that have been with me my entire adult life. After Uni when I moved into a flat with my sister and was bombing around in my mum’s old Clio that smelt of mould listening to All These Things I have done. At wedding’s where I have danced like a complete nutter to Mr Brightside. All the times I have sung along to the radio playing Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll (a song which I hold very dear as I do believe it may have been written for me!) The afternoons spent spinning my daughter around the living room to Human and more recently watching my son and daughter perform a spontaneous dance to Battle Born (the re-mix – which was bloody hysterical.

But tomorrow I will be listening out for one song that means more to me than any other at the moment. It is the song that I have listened to the entire time I have been writing my second novel.

Of course it has the one immortal line, the one that makes me listen again and again.

“I knew it when I met you, I’m not going to let you, runaway.

I knew it when I held you I wasn’t letting go.”

So think of me tomorrow when they sing this because I will be going banana’s of that I am completely sure.

For those of you that take the time to watch the video below…what is that with his hands when he sings “I have a tendency to slip when the nights get wild,”??

Good grief, I can’t deal with that level of suggestiveness it’s too much.

Announcements

Don’t panic, I am not expecting another baby. Although saying that it does feel a little like I have just been through some Bella Swan-esque speedy pregnancy and horror birth nightmare.

The last couple of weeks have been crazy busy which is why there has not been a post for a while. I have not even looked at twitter in ages, that is how banana’s my life has been of late.

So what’s been happening? Well three weeks ago I decided rather spontaneously to write a Uni File Novella; this time from my main man Ben Chambers perspective (and yes he is mine). It was a project that I started last year sometime and then shelved because it was not going anywhere and I knew I was time wasting. For some reason my brain was in the right mood for it this time around and I was able to craft a story for Ben with relative ease. The surprising bit was the fact that i genuinely enjoyed writing it, it was great to see things from a guy’s perspective but also it fun to see a major scene from The Uni File Year One re-written from a different point of view. 

I am not sure when I am going to release it yet, I am awaiting feedback from the publisher but as soon as I know be shouting it from the rooftops. The big discussion is whether to push it out before the September release of Year One or whether to save it for later in the year. It does have a Christmassy feel to it, so I may well keep it as a little Uni File Christmas surprise … My kind of Christmas surprise: Six ft Two, black hair, blue eyes, guitar playing and downright scrumdidliumptious. 

So The Uni Files series is growing; whilst it is a still a three novel series there will be shorter books released alongside them.

Another novella is already underway to tie in with Year Two and this has been great to write. Zoe Benedict, steps up to help Lilah McCannon in a sticky situation and in her short story we get to learn not only about Zoe herself but also a little more about the other main characters in The Uni File.

This novella is partially tied in with another one of my announcements, in fact it is tied in with a giveaway. It was always my intention to give away two character names in the series, a kind of ‘become part of The Uni Files’ giveaway. 

One of the spaces has already gone to Zoe from The Book Lovers (lovebookreviews.wordpress.com – check her out if you haven’t already) just because she is so ridiculously awesome and supportive that I just had to have her in one of my books. BUT I do still have one space up for grabs. I am going to be arranging a giveaway raffle thing over the next couple weeks so keep an eye out and you too could also find yourself in The Uni Files.

So what else have I been doing over the last week or so? Oh yes that’s right, I finished writing The Art of Keeping Faith the second full novel in The Uni Files. If you had asked me a couple of months back if I was ever going to manage to complete it I probably would have bashed my head against the nearest hard surface and told you that no it was never going to happen and could we never talk about it again.

But here we are; it’s done. I finished at some ungodly hour last Wednesday and then spent the rest of the week feeling like I had been run over by a steam roller. Exhausted both mentally and physically and also feeling a little bit strange because for the first time in a year I did not have the same story floating about in my head.

I feel an odd combination of both euphoric and deflated at the same time. It’s all happening now, the roller coaster has left the starting point and I am on it. I can’t believe that all of this is happening. In two months I will have a novel out that people can read, should they wish! I have a number of other titles under construction or in development, and every time I think about it I can’t quite believe that it is happening to me.

I am waiting to fall, but then I am hoping I don’t.

So I am going to end this post with some Taylor and the song that I listened to repeatedly as I finished writing The Art of Keeping Faith last week. If any song can explain right now exactly how I am feeling then this is it.

 

 

 

All or Nothing Kind of Girl

I’ve just been out for a coffee with a friend of mine and as we sat there drinking our two-handled gigantic coffee’s we had a little laugh about some the things that I have done of late.

I’ve been have been having a few crazy months which pretty much define my character and personality.

All or nothing. That’s what I am, an all or nothing kind of girl. Always have been and always will be. I am either 100% in or I am not.

My friend assures me that this is because I have a creative personality and it means that that I don’t have too much time to think about things before I move onto the next ‘big thing,’ therefore I am in a perpetual state of motion. Forever jumping from one thing to another wherever my created tendencies take me.

I am inclined to agree with the latte psycho-analysis.

Here is an example of my crazy.

On Saturday I decided that I was a little inspired by a conversation that I had had with someone and decided to write a short story based on it. So I did.

I then sent it over to the person without even checking it; typo’s and spelling mistakes and all.

Okay, you may say, that’s not too bad. Well yeah it kind of is because the person I sent it too is a book reviewer and now more than likely thinks that all my work is going to be completely random and look like it is written by a ten year old.

Okay, so apology sent on that one. Note to self don’t send emails when you have consumed three quarters of a bottle of white wine.

Last week I woke up in a panic at two in the morning because I decided that I did not like my final version of my novel that I had sent to my publisher.

Thing was, it was not my actual official version, it was a version that I had already panic amended on another morning at 2.00 a.m. (I panic in the middle of the night; it is one of my things). So I then had to send an email to the publisher to say “hey there, remember me that crazy woman you gave a contract too, by the way I sent you the wrong file and could I send you the right one?”

The return reply was – yeah sure, but hey we have already started editing so it may be too late.

AAAAAAGGHHH!!! Noooo.

The publishers are now editing a book that even I am not sure about! Someone hit me over the head with something heavy quick.

Two days ago I decided to finish another novella I had started to work on a while back – this is written from my main male characters pov and actually quite a good idea – so I finished it and decided to contact my publisher to see what she thought I should do with it from a marketing perspective. She told me to send it over and she would let me know what she thinks.

So I did. Without checking it for typo’s and spelling mistakes, many of which I found after pressing send.

Seriously! Twice in one week!

I can’t help it, it’s part of my impetuous nature that I have to do things right now or I will not do them at all.

It’s part of being an all or nothing kind of girl.

I will write the email and send it without checking it.

Or I won’t.

I will write an entire story in one day.

Or I won’t.

If I meet you and like you then I will be your friend forever even if I don’t get to talk to you often.

Or I won’t.

I will do all the housework in one hit including deep power clean bleaching.

Or I won’t.

And I will write a blog post about being an out of control fly by the seat of my pants head case and post it without checking it.

Or I won’t.

Writing to Music. Or. My Life Lived to Music

My life is lived to an ongoing soundtrack – a playlist of tunes that fit my mood and emotions, or maybe I fit my emotions and mood to the songs. I don’t know. What I do know is from the moment I wake up in the morning until the moment I switch off my laptop in the evening and finally give into my drooping eye lids I listen to music.

Sometimes I am in the mood for track skipping, sometimes I am in the mood for singing, sometimes I am in the mood for contemplating and sometimes, just sometimes I am in the mood for remembering.

It’s all day every day, I can’t drive the car without plugging my phone in first and choosing the right song, I don’t blow dry my hair or plaster on my war paint without the appropriate song in the background.

Hell; I am sitting here writing a blog post with my song of my day on its tenth rendition in my ear.

I wonder when this started? I am trying to remember but the truth is I cannot recall a moment of my life when I have not had music on in the background.

During my teens it was Prince, a stage my parents were not overly thrilled about. My god I loved that man, his lyrics are pure poetry. Poetry in its finest form, set to tunes you can remember, enabling even the most verbally repressed audience to understand every single emotion in a line.

My sister tells the story of the Sunday Lunch I refused to come down too when I was eighteen because I was up in my room with Prince blaring through the ceiling.

“Come down stairs now.”

“No.”

“Come down stairs now!”

“Never!”

Cue dramatic slamming of bedroom door and the cranking of Purple Rain to its absolute max.

I think now, how will I feel when my daughter comes home and tells me about this great song she heard, or I can hear her playing it through the wall. ‘I Can Never Take the Place of Your Man.’ She’ll say “Mum have you heard this song before?” and I will turn to her a with one of those adult sardonic shrugs and say “Honey I have not just heard it, I’ve bloody lived it.”

Then of course she will look at me like I am a foreign species because there is no way in the world that I could understand a single thing she is experiencing.

Yeah right.

But Prince was not the start, not the beginning of me living my life to music.

Maybe it was the summer before, the first year of sixth form; a platonic friend and I were sitting in his dad’s garden. There we were countless empty green Carslberg cans smattering on the lawn and we had raided his dads CD collection until we found ‘But Seriously’ – by Phil Collins. Yes I know it is not cool to say his name any more but back then in 1995 that man was a legend and we sat and listened to ‘Wish it Would Rain Down,’ at least ten times in a row thinking we understood it, but of course we didn’t, not back then anyway.

His neighbours must have hated us.

I don’t think it was the Phil phase and I don’t think it was the Prince either. Something else, something earlier.

Now I remember. I remember sitting in my sister’s Care Bear bedroom in our second house – so I was under seven – and I remember our little tape player we had. I used to steal all mum and dad’s cassettes and hoard them upstairs and spend my time winding forward and back trying to perfect the art of stopping at the beginning of a song (it’s a life skill that you just have to learn). The cassettes were those orange and black BASF ones and they were filled with Abba, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, The Eagles, a real eclectic mix and every single song I listened to had a story to tell, a tale to imprint on my subconscious so that the best part of thirty years later I still remember them in every detail. It’s what I live by and it what I write by, a million emotions all set to music.

So what do I look for in the perfect song, my favourite song? I look for one line, one line which makes perfect sense to me and makes me believe the song.

I only have one favourite song, it has been my favourite since 1996 and it will be probably forever. Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits; the lyrics are so sad and understated and of course it has the one immortal line, the one line that every time I listen to it (daily) my heart gives a little squeeze.

“I can’t do everything but I’d do anything for you 
 I can’t do anything except be in love with you”

Okay two lines but you get my drift!

 So what’s my song today? What’s driving my emotions and my writing today? Well I have to admit is another Train song…I am a bit stuck on them at the moment. Why do I like it…Because it is simple and understated and downright sad…and what’s The Line, the one that makes my heart ache?

“You’re the only thing I’m ever gonna miss
We were made for this”

 

That sound you can hear? That’s my heart giving it’s little squeeze.

Some Ben and Lilah love on a Bank Holiday Monday

The Art of Letting Go…..

The Wedding Anniversary Post

So tomorrow is my six year wedding anniversary. Sorry obviously I mean ‘our’ six year wedding anniversary.

Six years, how did that go so fast? Oh yes that’s right we have been bringing up our crazy kids and living our busy lives; before you know it six years has passed in the blink of an eye.

I worked out this week that I could have probably ‘accidentally’ tripped in the kitchen whilst holding a carving knife and finished him off and I probably would have been out of jail by now. Or I could have had one of those ‘moments’ where I was getting a heavy based stainless steel saucepan out of the dishwasher and accidentally hit him with it on his right temple lobe and I still would have just been  getting released from the crazy hospital. (There is actually a story to tell …and yes it hurts…)

But no. Here we both are, another year notched on the limitless span of our marriage and do you know what? It feels great.

Now Mr B and I have never really celebrated our anniversary before, something to do with having our first child two months exactly after the nuptials has kind of put the celebrations on the back burner for the last few years, actually leaving the house to go out for dinner just the two of us always felt like way too much effort in the grand scheme of things.

This year, there is a different atmosphere in the build up to the weekend. This year our children are old enough to not need to be parented every thirty seconds and this year Mr B and I actually get to have those things lots of single adults or at least couples without children get to do frequently (no not that you dirty beasts) we get to have conversations. More and more conversations with every day that passes and after years of snatched snippets of each other’s day and passing moments of coupleness this is a nice place to be.

I would not change the last six years at all, I love our family and everything that comes with it but right now I am excited for the next six years and what they are going to bring.  It’s going to be great.

My sister mentioned a song to me this morning that I then went on to listen too. It made me a bit emotional because behind the offbeat tune and the perky lyrics there was the most romantic sentiment I have heard in a long time.

It kind of sums up for me how I am feeling this weekend and how I hope to feel going forward. That I could spend every day until I die as we are, and when it is over and my time is done I will still look for him again and want to spend every day of whatever comes next with him as well.

The title of this song is also particularly apt and I know that Mr B will appreciate it.

 

So why am I writing this…..

 ….well I forgot to buy a present of course. So this is my gift instead.

It’s another musical inspiration post

So it’s December (in my head obviously) and Lilah McCannon is having a bit of a rough trot….again. 

Lets throw some vodka in, some random drunk texting, and of course some painful singing of a kick ass power ballad.

Me on the other hand am sharing her pain by participating in a midweek glass of wine (shh don’t tell anyone) and having a good old perv sorry look through You Tube looking for the perfect song for her to be singing.

Can I just say that if they don’t sing this at Wembley on the 22nd of June I am going to be mighty upset.

I’ve posted the live one, just because, well why the hell not.