Clare O'Beara's Blog, page 6

July - The Stanford Marshmallow and me

My class will be graduating in September, though I don't yet know if this will be in person. At present I doubt it, because weddings in Ireland are only now allowed to host 50 people, and people need to marry; but nobody needs a formal graduation ceremony that can easily be held online.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972) tested young children to see if they could last ten minutes alone without eating a marshmallow. If they could do this, the experimenter would return and give them two marshmallows. If they ate the single treat, they wouldn’t get any more. The kids were filmed trying hard to resist the lure and researchers noted the cognitive skills they applied (or not). Over the next 40 years, the study found that those who were better at deferring pleasure were ultimately more successful and achieved more aims. Deferred gratification, as this is called, is now considered an indicator of future success in life. The 2015 look at this story:
https://bingschool.stanford.edu/news/...

For four years I have been busily deferring. College came first, whether from a financial or social or activity viewpoint. During summer I would rush through the house, cleaning and decluttering; by the way, I never once missed those old computer monitors and printers. I would read for review some wonderful books which had been stacking up during the semester.

I spent days each summer decluttering electronic storage such as e-mails (having to change subscription due to what we called the great Eircom meltdown) and photos. Delete the bad ones, the blurs, turn them all right way up, delete the doubles. Create folders and name them sensibly for photos and footage, so when you need them, you can find them. Location, date, family, pets, flowers, assignments, college societies, etc. are good categories.

During my Easter break this year, the entire first day was spent in sorting photos and footage, in order that I would find what I needed. As a multimedia journalist, you create and use a lot of visual material. During the rest of Easter, I picked one major project each day and worked straight through that. This meant my lecturers were not available to assist; however, when you only have a brief online class, you can’t get an entire film project or website more than started. All I could do was make the project and look for feedback.

Colleen M Story blogs about writing and wellness, and her latest post encourages us to get uncomfortable rather than comfortable, in order to grow and succeed as writers. She also recommends investing in our writing education.
http://writingandwellness.com/2021/08...


Now I’m gradually unwinding, catching up on reviews again, but also reading physical books. The review ones are electronic. I live in Ireland and many of my review books are published in America; but due to the pandemic, American reviewers are also now getting e-books first and foremost.

I had previously read paperback Wool by Hugh Howey, and we had Shift and Dust sitting here for the past few years. Now I’m reading my way through them each evening. That’s a marshmallow which tastes delicious.


Other marshmallows included putting on a DVD. I’ve done that a few times now. I had not watched a film or entertainment tv since last summer. There was just never time. I found it impossible to understand the young students, many of whom were working, being told not to stream Netflix every evening; who has time? College social events were on Zoom, so I suppose they would turn off one stream and on another. All year, I would get the news late at night. And I’d read a book while it showed. Lately, RTE aired the Danny Boyle film Yesterday. I enjoyed that marshmallow too.

I’ve cut up firewood. I’ve played some computer games. During the year, RPGs were banned, and I treated myself to ten minutes of Solitaire at the end of the day, with a couple of hours of Civilization on Sunday evening (if I’d got through my work). Now my gaming is occasional, but fun, for a longer period. I was passively decluttering (a term I coined to mean using up what products are in the house before buying more) and now I am actively decluttering (going around looking for items to use up or discard). And with easing of restrictions, I have met family and met friends. Great days.

Currently I’m running potential book themes through my head, deciding what to write next. I might return to a long-running nonfic project, or dive in to fiction, or both. This is going to be fun.
In the absence of the Dublin Horse Show for the second year, I'm making Murder Against The Clock free to download and enjoy.

Grab it August 7 – 10.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LTDYFXO

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LTDYFXO


Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store.
All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...
Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie
for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

June – The results are in, and life starts to resume normality

June was exciting! I had an awards night and my college results to sustain the tension. Most importantly on a personal basis, we are all well and lockdowns are starting to lift. I met family recently for the first time in many months, with virtual hugs.
The National Student Media Awards was a fantastic night. Congratulations came in from many countries when we won Blog Of The Year. The judge was a professional multimedia journalist, Pete The Vet, Pete Wedderburn, and the blog had to be edited by a full-time student.

I was shortlisted for the EPA Award for Journalism Relating To The Environment. This was judged by an Irish Times journalist. While I didn’t win this or my other shortlisted classes, I’m pleased with this achievement.

The Student Awards from my own college, DBS, were mentioned previously. Now you can see the nominations and results on the blogs I run for Journalism Society and Sustainability Society.

Inside DBS
https://insidedbs.wordpress.com/2021/...
Sustainable College
https://sustainablecollege.wordpress....

The college weekly news mail picked up on these posts. I had made a fun little TV journalism video with my friends for the college awards night: see it on YouTube. My cat won the college Zoom Pet Appearance Of The Year Award, so she gets a mention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTVwK...

DBS was runner-up in Ireland’s Education Awards for Green Campus Award, only beaten by University College Cork.

I created an environmental news website for my thesis project. The work has now been graded and I am delighted with my results. One comment in the grading feedback was that this module had clearly given the student an exceptional learning experience. Yes, it did, because of the learning challenges and fun I chose to undertake, as opposed to writing a formal thesis, which would have taken me two weeks.

I have recommended to the college that a module combining all the media should be standard in the final year of any multimedia course; there was none on this course. I could have written journalism articles, with my own photography, or created a news podcast, or produced a documentary film, or built a website with links. I combined all of these, and taught myself to create infographics and jigsaws.

I also had to write a reflective essay with standard referencing, and provide referencing for my articles, so the academic area was covered. The reflective essay was well received too; lecturers see so many of these. I can assure you that having a good standard of English writing goes a long way to getting the desired grades. But I still had to find and write up the news stories, interview the experts, take and select the photos, create the podcasts and the video production. And build them into an interactive website.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with content. Here’s the link.
https://clareobeara.wixsite.com/my-site

During my second year, I covered a college talk given by a Dublin lady who had gained a diploma in Psychology at DBS and travelled widely, before writing her memoir and becoming a motivational speaker. Tracey Ellen Maria’s achievements despite suffering from the rare condition muscular dystonia and being largely unable to speak or use her arms, since the age of eight, had often returned to my thoughts. I’ve now bought and read her memoir, Recommenced: Motivation > Limitation, and I heartily recommend this to anyone who feels they need a boost to motivation.

While restrictions are still in place, the conversations about returning to work in offices or working from home, or indeed changing job, are happening. I read a comment recently from a lady who lectures in business methods; she doesn’t expect to be back in a college campus until 2022. I know if I had nothing else to do, I would rather enrol for an online class than have nothing to show for a year. Some students had already deferred the start of studies for a year.
But many people find that online classes do not suit them, or they need equipment which is not available if the campus is closed. Perhaps the answer is to enrol in something less ambitious, and cheaper, or state funded. DBS is currently advertising a funded course in digital marketing, but since I refuse to use facebook or twitter on privacy grounds, I would not be the right person to enrol on that course.

I expect I’ll spend this year catching up on everything I was putting on hold or doing piecemeal, which in my case of course includes reading and reviewing. And writing more books.

Speaking of which I was absolutely honoured to find a review of my entire Dining Out Around The Solar System series on Amazon.

“This is an amazing quartet of tales about a couple of young men in a near-future alternate London. They come from tough backgrounds, but everybody does in this future London, where corporations rule everything. Working as feature writers for a hugely popular e-zine, they use hacking skills, kindness, and personal charm to make themselves the team to watch, befriending people from other worlds and uncovering plots and prejudices that make real differences in the lives of those they touch. This series is witty, erudite, thoughtful, and very, very funny. There are digressions into how the near-future works, and the truth is that it's a lot like what's happening in our world, with the interesting assumptions that other worlds are populated and space travel is easy. I've read the series several times now and find new things to enjoy every time.”

Thank you.

This month I am making Rodeo Finn free, 10 – 13 July; this Young Adult adventure brings pony-mad Finn from her parents’ dairy farm in Ireland to her uncle’s ranch in Arizona. Enjoy! And wishing a happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OU100W8

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OU100W8

Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store.

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

May - The nerve-wracking, waiting month

Seems like a week ago that I wrote my blog for April. While I’ve been busy, the waiting for results is tough. My work has all been graded and results are ready to release, according to the college site. But I’m still waiting. I also have the honour of being placed on four shortlists so far.
The 2021 National Student Media Awards
EPA Award for Journalism Relating to the Environment
Clare O’Beara – DBS
People’s Choice Award
Clare O’Beara from DBS with DBS Journalism Society blog.
Blog / Vlog of the Year
Clare O’Beara – DBS
Feature Writer – News and Current Affairs
Clare O’Beara, DBS
https://www.oxygen.ie/smedias-2021-no...

https://www.oxygen.ie/shortlist-annou...

The awards will be announced on June 2nd, so between the two sets of results, it’s quite nerve-wracking for us students right now! I am certain everyone on the shortlists has completed a fantastic project or created an excellent blog, and whoever wins a prize will deserve it.

If I had known earlier in the year that the SMedias included prizes for road safety writing, of course I would have held a contest for that in my Journalism Society blog, to get people ready with entries they could submit. As it was, I held a contest for fire safety awareness. And the SMedias don’t have a class for that one.

The blog mentioned above, Inside DBS, is not just my content, it includes all the Journalism Society and everyone else we interviewed, or whom I persuaded to send in a piece. This really reflects the whole college and the activities and aspirations of the students. So I am hopeful. I’m the editor, and I submitted the entry, and that’s why my name appears. Wish us luck.

Since I’ve had some time available I have been doing decluttering of various sorts, including online. I’m recycling, I’m gardening a bit, I got my van through the mandatory vehicle test with flying colours – well, she was barely on the road all last year. All tasks I needed to clear up – and I got a haircut yesterday, the last time I’ll get a student discount for a while.
I hadn’t had a haircut since the salons were briefly allowed to open last December. Having a head of hair made me very warm, so now I’m sleek again.
Ready for summer! Enjoy your summer and read great books.


I’m making a book free this month from June 11 – 13.
Murder At Kildare Mensa will get you out and about in Ireland over summer, with racehorses, stud farms and ill deeds. Solve the mystery with Cara Cassidy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E79D9K8
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E79D9K8

Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store.
All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend. I recently wrote up an article about how to cover an international conference over Zoom.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie
for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

April - the end of my college year

I have submitted my thesis and final assignments. Life is suddenly different. I don’t have exams to invigilate as in previous years; the computers have taken my job. Who would have imagined this would occur so swiftly and entirely?
Students now sit at home and complete the exam in the required time, then upload. Some may be monitored via webcam to check they don’t leave the room or get assistance, but some exams will be open-book, and of course copy-pasting is still not allowed and will be uncovered by plagiarism-checking software. I advised some of the younger students that when they graduate, whatever job they do, try to look for a job the computers can’t take.

Lucky me, no exam was to darken my door this year. My thesis project is a multimedia website. Author and environmentalist Ryan Mizzen kindly responded to my Goodreads mail and provided an interview on the offshore windfarm industry, and I surprised everyone, myself included, by making this into a short film, then a podcast version.
Ryan gave permission for the film to be released on YouTube so watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-Jr...

The NGO Brooke, which helps horses, donkeys and mules and their owners in developing nations, also provided me with great assistance through footage and photos, and an interview with Megan Sheraton, their Media Officer.

Aside from this, I visited a Virtual Reality planning consultation, covered a United Nations conference and an African conference, investigated Dublin’s rubbish, looked at coal mines and brick kilns in South Asia,
photographed wonderful dogs, and read science papers about how relaxing outdoors is beneficial for us during the pandemic.


The website topics are:
The Dublin Array proposed windfarm;
Sea of Solutions the UNEP Conference;
Working horses and donkeys in developing nations;
And finally, a look at people relaxing in the park.

Website: https://clareobeara.wixsite.com/my-site

I also had to write a reflective essay, which might give future generations a good laugh. I started by quoting a Tom Stoppard play, Travesties, in which James Joyce is fictionally asked, “What did you do in the Great War?”
Joyce replies, “I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?”

The worst effects of lockdown – boredom, confinement, illness – have chiefly not affected me, due to being in college. Yes, this had its difficulties, chiefly technological ones. But we made it through the year. I took employment classes with a group of film and media students, some of whom assumed I would be writing a formal thesis while they were planning to make a group film. I enlightened them about my chosen multimedia journalism project option. But I could at any stage have written a thesis.

I found that of the previous students on my course, nobody else had created a website. The most popular choice was the thesis; I expect this was because the writing was easiest to fit in around third-year’s learning and assignments. Next choice was a series of five written articles, and third most popular was a podcast. One final-year class collaborated on a class magazine, which won an award.

I have been recalling a series I watched on TV as a child, called The First Years. This was based on The Paper Chase about a set of new students in Harvard law school. (We didn’t have all the options for young viewers now available, so the whole family watched all evening’s entertainment.)
When the students worked together, they helped one another and provided moral support and advice as well as practical essay-requirement help. This series seems to have been forgotten and replaced by the more recent film Legally Blonde. But I found a YouTube film in which an actual American law professor views and comments on the original. I don’t remember everyone’s hair being so long. But I do recall Prof. Kingsfield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SEZD...

Thanks to my husband for his support and good cooking. Thanks to all at Dublin Business School, especially my lecturers, the librarians and the friendly Student Services students who kept us all entertained and supported.
During the Student Awards ceremony, hosted online, my cat won Zoom Pet of the Year Award. Here she is on YouTube making a Zoom call.

https://youtu.be/A6R4fXoZnGI

I was honoured to be nominated in several categories, either as a Peer Mentor or Volunteer, or for being part of a committee running events and producing blogs. Sustainability Society won Most Improved Society of The Year, and I was awarded the title of Volunteer of The Year.
This may be due to my blog editing, in which I gave many students their first published article to put on their CV; but it could also be because I kept showing up on Zoom calls and bringing my cat. Students like cats in meetings.

This month I am making a book free for the first time: May 13 – 16, grab a download of Dogs of Every Day: New Edition. This is turn-of-20th-century poetry and art republished by me with my own updated information and photography – all concerning British and Irish dog breeds and the countryside. Enjoy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08CJG12SP

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CJG12SP

Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store. All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend. I recently wrote up an article about how to cover an international conference over Zoom.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

March – a strange alternate universe

College work proceeds despite the strangeness of lockdowns. Ireland is rolling out vaccines to the most elderly and vulnerable, so I don’t expect to get offered a jab before the end of summer. My coursework continues, so I am now in the position of taking modules in sound and film (over Zoom, but we’re getting there) one day and the next taking a philosophical module aimed at preparing me for graduation and employment.

Yes, it feels like a weird alternate universe, but it’s an easy year compared to earlier years when I had to do the advanced film making. And podcasting. Life is still busy, full of pleasant people and interesting things to learn. My thesis website work is prospering.


I am getting my daily walk or two walks. After my assignments are all submitted the restrictions should be eased, and my husband and I can go out a bit further than at present.
The weather has picked up, the flowers are bursting forth and birds are singing mightily. Any time the sun shone, I downed tools in the house and went out to take photos in the park. The next day and week, clouds and rain would dominate, but I had my images for my project.

Editing the Inside DBS blog, I have the great good fortune to have a co-worker who organised a co-operation with the DBS Language Exchange Society. Loreto Magaña has been interviewing one member at a time and sending me their written interviews and photos which are almost drop-in ready. Not only that but she then publicises the published articles. I get to learn about language and cultural exchange from some of the great students from Mexico, Germany, Ireland, Turkey and Brazil to date. Why not check the articles out today.

https://insidedbs.wordpress.com/2021/...

No time for writing books I am afraid, but I have ideas stored up and look forward to returning to fiction over summer. At present the book reviews are also piling up, but lately I did read a few nice ones, some for Fresh Fiction.



I spotted the offer of free seed kits from libraries in Ireland and a garden store chain in America, so either take advantage or make the effort to buy some seeds or young plants and get started on growing something. Nothing beats watching your food grow, or your flowers bloom to delight your room. My various amaryllis bulbs have been producing flowers at different times, a really cheerful way to colour our home.

This month I am making Dining Out Around The Solar System Part One free from April 8 – 12.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SONOGF0

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SONOGF0

Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store.

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend. I recently wrote up an article about how to cover an international conference over Zoom.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events.

We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

February - Sustainability Week

This will be short, because unaccountably someone ran away with my month of February. I remember daily walks and photography any time the weather allowed. Sometimes the cold and rain were too much so I exercised indoors.

I made it into town once and that felt like the Great Escape. Trouble was, most of the places I frequent (yes, they do sell books, how did you know?) were closed. I made do with getting some nice photos, including a flower box on O’Connell Bridge, which I have made into a jigsaw on Jigsaw Planet. And a herring gull obligingly perching on the head of James Joyce. I say obliging because I needed a photo for an article about shore birds in Dublin. The statue of Joyce doesn’t look best pleased.

If you want to try the jigsaws, I put a page together for the Green Campus as we ran a college Sustainability Week.

Trinity College Dublin now has a wildflower meadow at the front gate.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

Think sustainable and enjoy!
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

Signs of Spring. This flower is called a crocus, and it also appears in white or yellow.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

I photographed two swans on a small lake in a park.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

Here are two Irish Setter dogs, a native Irish breed.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

This is a complex version of a flower box with 90 pieces.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

And this is a simpler version of the same photo with 35 pieces.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play...

The week was packed with activities from Zoom talks by experts about thatching and sustainable homes, or trees and customs and stories associated with them, to contests and a fun nature quiz on Kahoot. College staff and lecturers were welcome to attend the talks but the quiz was just for students to relax. I won a t-shirt prize!

Previously the Journalism Society hosted a talk by sports journalist Thomas Lyster, which we found interesting and helpful.

In one of my classes we were discussing film media and the one-shot film 1917 arose, I said I had not seen it but I had seen the crowdfunded parody 2020; turned out I was the only one, so I dropped the YouTube link in the Zoom chat box. Nice to be ahead of the game for once.

My camera is now filled with spring flowers daily, and I’ve snapped a bumblebee queen. I have been potting on basil plants from the seedlings in the supermarket herb pot. Potting on was shown in short videos made for our Sustainability Week by a garden expert. She also recommended planting herbs in tubs so students, who may be in rented accommodation, can bring them when they move home.

I also attended an online conference hosted in Africa by Brooke, the international charity which helps horses, mules, donkeys and their owners in developing nations. I’ll write more about that another time, but I was highly impressed and learned a tremendous amount about how families rely on equids for work and daily needs.

Come to think of it, that was a busy February.

This month I am making Silks And Sins free for Kindle download. Grab it: March 3 - 6, 2021. This is an adult romantic suspense tale set around the flat racing world.
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EGXYKR6
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EGXYKR6

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

January - Reasons to be cheerful, and a free book too!

I’m in the last half of the college year now, only three months to go and the time already flying. I’m working on my thesis, which for multimedia journalism is flexible and exciting. Late last year I covered the UN Environment Programme’s conference,
Sea Of Solutions, which deals with marine plastic waste. I’ve written that up and while I get to pretty up the work, I have moved on to the next articles.



My lecturers introduced me to Adobe Spark. This is a great platform for creative people and blends images with movement and text, allowing for endless variation. Not all images work well so I have had to take new ones to freshen up articles. I am learning how to use the medium to best advantage.

Check out some of my journalism articles on Spark:
The Road to Being Irish.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/JGXuYbS9...
Science Fiction.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/QmGxCRVD...
Decline of Eurasian Curlew.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/yswxYdab...

Yes, online college is different. We mostly felt tired coming to the close of the autumn semester; Zoom burnout was cited, as well as general lack of social life. In that my younger friends are suffering more than I am. I’m finding
concentration more difficult than usual, which I counter by writing a note of anything I need to do and logging everything that I do. If I don’t feel I can dive into a lengthy piece of work, I at least get a few small items out of the way, which cheers me immensely and gives me a feeling of efficiency. Still, I am thankful that I am in college, and learning with every class. My lecturers are pleasant and helpful, and student officers are busy keeping us all busy.

As President of the Journalism Society, I have been asked to come up with an event each month, and can invite other societies or the whole college to participate. I have planned a fire safety event - I’ll be asking students to send in photos of fire doors, fire extinguishers and the like. I believe now is always a good time to plan your exit in case of fire.

I also have a guest speaker lined up; sports journalist Thomas Lyster has kindly agreed to talk to us on Zoom.

And I am posting a short series of articles about how to write for the web, complete with photos to illustrate dos and don’ts of featuring images in your posts. Find these on Inside DBS. I’m keen to pass on the lessons I have learned over several years to younger, upcoming writers.
https://insidedbs.wordpress.com/

January also brings us to Multicultural Children’s Book Day. I’m thrilled that my 2020 book A Pony For Quarantine was nominated for this festival by educator Carolyn Wilhelm of The Wise Owl Factory. Carolyn is also the author of Climate Change Captives and other books.

Meanwhile, a signal honour; author and reviewer Jemima Pett chose A Dog For Lockdown as her Middle Grade book of the year. Both the Irish Lockdown books made it to her shortlist.

According to Goodreads I managed to read over 300 books during 2020. Around the Christmas holidays, as always, I was privileged to review several seasonal offerings for Fresh Fiction. Each and every one of these books would lift the spirits of a melting snowperson. Here are some of the covers.











With bitter or wet weather, I have been continuing my daily walk as best I can, but since the lockdown resumed and travel to college is currently off the agenda, I decided to do more. I am exercising at least twice a day, before lunch and before dinner. Nothing beats getting out in the fresh air. I walk around local parks and talk to the dog-walkers, pat the gorgeous dogs and photograph trees.

My second stint is on Wii Fit Plus at present. This game platform has been here for years and is going strong. Recently my husband discovered that it works best with non-rechargeable batteries, unfortunately. I used it for stepping with hand weights this morning (wet day)
and yoga followed by balance games this evening. This is not a patch on what I would be doing if I was heading in to college each day with my backpack and netbook, so I owe it to myself to keep fit. I return to the computer invigorated.

Activity floods the body and brain with oxygen, which is required for health and energy. If you are feeling blue (today is Blue Monday) make yourself move. Put on lively music and walk around the room, loosening up your arms and shoulders. You might even dance. Cortisol is a hormone which is released when we are stressed, and which causes us to put on weight around the middle. Once you know this, you can start to do something about it. Generally, stress is caused by feeling an inability to change our situation. But you can move more, and play great music, and help yourself.

This month I am making Murder At Scottish Mensa free for Kindle download. Grab it: January 22 – 25, 2021.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E78J0W0

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E78J0W0

Follow my published articles on my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie
for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events.

We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

December – Year review, Christmas and a Virtual Reality recording studio

Year review… This year I released four books, the first to be illustrated with my own photos as well as covers. Dublin People newspaper has just publicised A Pony For Quarantine, which has been gaining all good feedback.
Lockdowns affected all our lives. College has been on Zoom since February, leading to some complications as I wrestled with software and hardware which doesn’t work as expected when running Pro Tools First. I’m working on my thesis journalism articles and engaging with the employment skills class, generally hearing positive noises from the helpful lecturers.

I’ve also taken on the role of Vice President and blog Editor of the Green Campus / Sustainability Society. Dublin Business School has been doing this work for a couple of years now and this is a joint staff / student movement. I’m a Peer Mentor, and President and blog Editor of the Journalism Society.
I attended the DBS Diwali celebrations and wrote that up. I attended and reported on the United Nations Environment Programme conference called Sea of Solutions, about marine plastic, hosted in Viet Nam. On Goodreads, I have been co-moderating Green Group, and have taken on the role of Moderator of Horse Lovers Central Group. But I get to wind down a little over Christmas.


Christmas story about growing up in Ireland: my mum used to give a Christmas tip when the bin men called - there were no women in the job in those days, though I insisted on saying binperson and postperson. Then the council decided the practice was corruption and potentially intimidating when some householders did not have spare money at that time. So they ordered the bin men not to ask for tips. Whereupon the bin men would come around collecting the bins and one of the cleaner men (it was a dirty job before wheelie bins) would knock on every door and take off his cap and tell the lady of the house the date of the first collection after Christmas. Habit, or fellow feeling, often produced the desired result.

This year for once I did not hit 366 books but according to Goodreads my reading total will be over 300.

Crowdfunded short film, apparently one shot (though we can see at least two obvious potential breaks) about all of 2020. As I am learning film making, I found this well made and interesting, as well as funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skgcr...

Virtual Reality Recording Studio
Here is an excerpt from my notes on the 6th Feb 2020 VR/AR Meetup.
Paul Cullen, musician and developer. Leitrim. Creating virtual objects to simulate real world objects with Skywatcher VR studio.
VR – drumkit, percussive instruments, piano, electric, acoustic and bass guitars, 6 separate haptics, chords, vibrations. World’s first VR recording studio with support from Oculus.
Musicians from Relish, an NI band, shown playing on BBC, helping to test and record.
App launched Dec 2019. Approval from Oculus.
Reducing audio latency – lag.
Audio zipping – when you play notes too quickly. Optimising, etc.
Frame rate - 90 frames per second required to be believable.
Slides and talk on challenges he faced and progress. Oculus Start program in March 2017 helpful. Playing virtual instruments in empty space is harder than the real thing.
VR Recording Studio - Demos on screen and for anyone to trial, using Oculus Rift headset and monitor with laptop. Now in Oculus Store, can be found on YouTube.

Follow my published articles on my JournoPortfolio page.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.
Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie
for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

November – Free YA dog story, and the college scene

To help all the young people enduring lockdowns or other restrictions, I’m making my latest YA fiction, A Dog For Lockdown, free for a few days. See below for the dates. This up-to-the-minute tale covers Covid restrictions, cyber-bullying and canine care. Photos include dogs and local scenes from my daily walks. Grab it now!

I can’t believe we’re so late in the year already. On the other hand, a great deal has been accomplished and I seem to have packed a few years’ worth of work into one. This is partly because my husband and I could not travel after early spring, and we could not socialise at gallery openings, book launches and lectures as usual.

Online Octocon was great fun and I was kept so busy I didn’t even get to chat with everyone I knew. We were hosting the Con on Discord, with a myriad of themed chat rooms and staff rooms. Staff were wearing virtual red jerseys. Talks and interviews were on Zoom, and panel talks were filmed that way and streamed live (a second’s delay) by a producer, on Twitch for the audience to watch and comment. We staff picked up questions from the chat and fed them back to the panel host to ask of the guests. We also had to moderate the chat, but I can safely say almost no modding of antisocial behaviour was needed.

Another brilliant experience of fandom. Next year I’ll share my notes, because of course I scribbled notes as usual. Thanks so much to all the tech and production staff who made this free event possible, and to all the guests for participating. We raised funds for charity and had a great time.

Happily, I was able to keep up my walk almost every day, with a half hour of yoga or ten minutes of stepping while carrying weights, any day the weather was too wet. I think I only missed one day due to being too busy, which probably gave me enough exercise. My husband has been providing fantastically healthy and great-tasting meals for us.

During September and part of October, at level three restrictions, I was able to get into college one day a week as a Peer Mentor. As ever I am hugely impressed by the level of talent I find among my fellow students, and this shows more in a one-to-one conversation than in a class Zoom session. I can ask a lady about her MBA thesis on the new virtual banking system and blockchain, I can ask a gentleman about how students afford college in his home country. We
also helped to support the college café, providing a livelihood to the lady running this great value service. We kept the buildings germ free and gave helpful advice to anyone who needed it – and I was given some excellent advice on the poster ad I was making for the Journalism Society.


Then the level five restrictions were reimposed, meaning almost total lockdown. Courses are almost all on line at present. Graduation day was online. We keep hearing that many people are being adversely affected psychologically, and I’d be foolish to think it wasn’t happening to me. But I’ve got the Journalism Society under way, and I’m editing the news blog site and inviting copy submissions. We’re holding fun meetings and planning events. We are getting to classes and the lecturers are helpful, so that’s working well.
We’ve got Christmas to look forward to when restrictions are lifted, which will be in early December. I’m working on my thesis project. Young graduates have got a job, or got a job that is in suspension, or got no job and no socialising, no sports. I could be a great deal worse off so I am delighted to be attending college.
Check out the Dublin Business School official blog site.
https://insidedbs.wordpress.com/

Download my free book this month, November 12 – 15. A Dog For Lockdown
https://amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08H2...

https://amazon.com/gp/product/B08H2C4...

Follow my published articles on my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/
All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.
Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. I blog here about disability access including my Top Ten places to visit. You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.

October Means Online Octocon

This virtual science fiction convention idea sounded interesting, and I’d staffed the last few Cons, so I agreed to help again… luckily people with more experience of virtual Con hosting are setting up everything, and I am staff for the weekend. Getting started at present, and this looks like fun.
Most years I sit and scribble notes on the panels, then share them here the following year. Next year’s post will be decidedly different, but to get in the mood, here’s the 2019 Octocon. We had a much reduced Con due to having hosted a Worldcon in the same year. Still great company. I have necessarily omitted contributions for space.

Early chat room on Worldcon We each mentioned what we’d loved and generally agreed we’d do it again.

Fae panel wings on fairies arrived in the time of Shakespeare, because during performances of Midsummer Night’s Dream the audience had trouble telling the fairies apart from the mortals. The costumer came up with the idea of putting light wings on fairies. The idea stuck.

Environment Peadar O’Guilin said as a species we are short term vision beings. Stephen Baxter wrote in the Orion novella that humans used up all resources in human space and had to keep expanding. At war with many species.
Noelle - carbon tax, electric cars would not be clean in Poland, as they use coal for power. Her car runs on 30 – 40% green power.
Dr. Fox Purcell from Santa Barbara said he sees fires every ten years and people are required to have fire training. But what started fires every ten years in the past now starts them every few months. Power lines were cut off for a couple of months. He is running a new shop on solar. Believes society is so tied to fossil fuels it will be ten generations before we can get off it.
Xander – young people, protests, need to understand ecological collapse, climate change affecting the least advantaged first.
Carol Connolly – stories like The Hunger Games, overthrow a regime and replace it with one suspiciously similar; the Irish overthrew British rule and reimposed the Catholic Church.
Peadar – a cause of short termism is cynicism – comes with age – we need youth and energy.
Dr. Fox is writing a series about space travel to new world, strip-mining.
Carol – watch The Good Place. We have built complex systems, the world is better for people but causes problems.
Xander – KSR’s Red Mars series – responsible.
Peadar – cli-fi, 1979 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up. Short term – voting for someone who gives a tax break rather than generates clean power.
Noelle – Avatar.
Xander – we see narratives that we reach balance only after WW3. We could probably fix it now, but fiction likes to wait for it to get really bad. Judge Dredd – over the top fascism.
Carol – Mad Max. Help 17 year olds vote as soon as 18.
Dr. Fox – write cli-fi, or give the idea to one of us and we’ll write it.

Panel on spoofing science
Dr. Edmund Schlussel, Marim Siljak, Michael Carroll, Carol Connolly.
Michael – school, told religion teacher about mass = gravitational attraction, not just what goes up must come down. Had to fetch the physics teacher to explain. The religion teacher refused to believe him.
Ed. Resonant frequency of space elevator cable – pluck it to the right note, you can make planet explode. Nobody will believe this when he puts it into a story.

Carol – The Martian – no mention of the light levels involved in potato growing.
Marim Siljak – if you can’t keep my attention with the plot I will focus on the science so it better be good.
Michael – likes more science in SF but the story is most important. The War of the Worlds. The more you have to explain the slower the story gets.
Dr Ed – Another Life has virus that is boron based – he wants to know where all the boron is coming from.
Carol – Dr Who falls in to myth and legend rather than SF.
Q. Do we do bad science because it’s cooler?
Michael – yes. May nudge science to make story work or may nudge story to make science work. In 1970s Harry Harrison wrote Skyfall which was going to be picked as Book Club of the Month – but a publisher said they didn’t do SF. So instead they picked The Andromeda Strain. No peer review in movies. We like dinosaurs and cowboys, put them together.
Dr Ed – Film script has beats to be hit.
Carol - Star Trek occasionally requires an info dump. Sometimes a character says ‘tell me how this works’. Women are apparently confused by science in those old films and books.
Dr Ed. – if we are not conveying meaning through writing it isn’t writing. It’s just putting characters on a page.

Adaptations panel Diane Duane, Peadar O’ Guilin, Ruth Frances Long.
P – Brothers Grimm very dark. Adapted means telling in a different form or for a different audience.
DD - who are you adapting for? Children or their parents who will read it out?
P – Disney versions have become canon. People now adapt not just originals but Disneys.

DD - you do licensed work, take the king’s shilling. One project they wanted Victoriana spruced up, made cute.
P – new culture. At a conference in Birmingham convention centre he saw over 100 little girls dressed as princesses. Disney on ice. Also a group of teen gamers/ cosplayers and one girl came out in her skimpy tribal costume; she felt nervous among shoppers, but two princess girls ran up to her and she was their hero.
DD – part of being human is to want things to turn out all right. Mostly they won’t, we think in more adult process, but we are entitled to read / see a happy ending.
RFL - her kids, the things she would expect them to be upset about, they barely react to but get upset about other things. As they grow up they get to see subtexts they never saw before.
P – Kids generally don’t think they are going to die. Tree climbing, risks etc. You should do whatever you like as long as it makes a great story. People prefer to read SF that is near to our world; if it is massively different you drop ¾ readership. People say a cyborg in a Cinderella tale is original, but they would never read something completely original.
DD – she has seen and dislikes taking a fairytale and making it into a kill the monster movie. A French woman used to hold salons and fairytales were told – female empowerment. Later, morals were added.
Q. Rejected Princesses. A book of short tales of strong girls.
DD - 1001 Nights – some adult, some child friendly, many deeply nested in each other.
P – 3 or 4 literary canons are being used and Irish, Decameron are not being told.
DD – How to re-introduce others?

Follow my published articles on my JournoPortfolio page – a site I highly recommend. Most recently my article about returning to college during Covid restrictions was published.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

All my books are in Kindle and the Kindle Unlimited programme too. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie
for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. I blog here about disability access including my Top Ten places to visit. You can find my podcasts about Octocon on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher.
I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.