M.T. McGuire's Blog, page 21

A chip off the old block …

Thanks to everyone who did the survey last week. It was very helpful and much appreciated. This week, I have mostly been running around like a headless chicken. To my complete and utter delight I have managed to do at least 10 minutes of writing every day, which is equating to 400 words plus. Happy joy.

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Sausages are being worn high this year.

Meanwhile, McMini has been given time at school to do creative writing. As a ten year old boy he is obsessed with Killy-Killy-Death-Death. Basically the more wanton destruction and violence in something, the better. Or humour. He loves the funny. The picture (to your left if I can get the formatting to work, below if I can’t) is of a model in a museum. The life jacket caused us endless mirth because of its uncanny resemblance to sausages. The blusher is a little unsubtle too.

But back to McMini, his latest ‘work’ is about a ‘dear fluffy little bunny who is hit by dust from a meteor and turns in to a killer’.

The story is then simply a litany of places where humans frolic and gambol under the illusion they are safe and happy only to discover Killer Bunny though the medium of being graphically torn apart, disembowelled, eaten from the head down etc.

I swear he has never seen Monty Python well, he has now that he’s told me about killer bunny. But you wouldn’t know, would you?

There are now six instalments of Killer Bunny and this morning, in the car, we had this conversation.

‘Hey Mum, guess what? I wrote some more Killer Bunny yesterday and the teacher asked me to read it out.’

‘She did?’ I asked, I can only think that she hadn’t actually seen any of it. ‘What was it about?’

‘It was about this man wandering in the desert and Killer Bunny attacks him, rips out his spine and eats it and throws him into the distance.’

‘I see,’ I said after he had explained this. ‘What did the teacher say?’

‘I did tell her I didn’t think I should read it out loud.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you. What did she say when she heard it?’

‘Yeeeees.’

‘That’s all.’

‘Yep.’

‘Did the other kids like it?’

‘Oh yes, although my fried Mae said that it was not age appropriate.’

I’m never sure how to take McMini’s horror obsession. It’s not something I remember going through and on the whole he is a chip off the old block. As you know, I grew up in a school. One of the features of said school is that it has a very large ‘chapel’ which is about 100ft high and more like a gothic cathedral. I used to have to go there with Mum sometimes while she was arranging the flowers and I remember as a wee nipper, Mr Kendel, the verger, giving me one of the unconsecrated wafers to try. I thought it was delicious and got confirmed as soon as possible. I’m not sure, ‘because the host tastes like a flying saucer sweet without the sherbet’ is quite the right reason to do that, but there we go. At least I never admitted it to anyone.

Meanwhile, McMini’s reaction was extremely similar and he is delighted to be able to take communion now too. He is worse than me though, undeterred by numerous bollockings, he smacks his lips and says, ‘yum, yum’ to wind me up if I am not careful and that is a way dodgy.

Going back to his wayward mother, when I was older, old enough to wander around the school unaccompanied with my friend Lottie, we used to go and write pretend messages in the visitors book in the chapel. You know, Comment: blank, Name: Miss E Likes. Address, The Cock Inn, Tillet, Herts. An other really mature stuff like that. McMini has invented his own form of this.

A few weeks ago at small church, the vicar was giggling in front of the prayer board at the back.

‘Come and look at this!’ he said to me.

I looked at the board, it’s a pin board with ‘Prayers’ written at the top and the cards all say, ‘we pray for …’ on them. You then write what or whom you pray for.  He pointed to one of the cards.

[image error]‘Oh bugger, I’m so sorry, that’s my son,’ I told him but unfortunately, my attempts to sound respectful were ruined by the involuntary guffaw of laughter that came out when I saw it. Thank heavens he has a sense of humour, himself, and pointed it out because he thought it was funny.

So yes, on the whole, the parallels between my behaviour and my son’s are usually similar, but with the added frisson of his death and violence obsession. I suspect I am in for an interesting time when he becomes a teenager.

Calling all readers of humorous sci fi and fantasy …

Want to do a fun fast quiz?

Yep. A really quick one and when I say quick, I mean Usain Bolt quick, or maybe cheetah quick … Lewis Hamilton quick? Thrust II quick? Concord quick, stealth bomber qu- Sorry that’s enough stuff about quickness.

So basically, it’s like this …

One of my current projects is a new humorous fantasy series called Space Dustmen. As I was messing about with an outline for it the other day, I had a bit of a scales from the eyes moment and I have now hatched a cunning plan.

My cunning plan.

My cunning plan is this; rather than spend a couple of years producing something which is a gas to write but has zero market appeal, it occurred to me that I might be smart to ask the people who like funny sci fi and fantasy books what they actually enjoy in a book – and what they loathe – before I start.

The idea is, once I now what kinds of things my readers enjoy, I can produce the kind of stories they love to read and characters they – and other folks like them – will click with.

So, if you read humorous science fiction and fantasy books and would like to help an author write the kind of stuff you will enjoy, please feel free to have a go at my fast five question quick quiz – OK there are seven questions but the other two are stuff like, ‘what is your name?’.

If you like the idea, you can do the quiz here:

Do The Quiz … Yeh!

If you decide to do the quiz, many thanks, if quizzes aren’t  your thing that’s fine, it’s not obligatory!

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Make the dragon happy, do the quiz.

 

 

This week, I have been mostly … writing.

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Wow MTM has finished another short! Shock horror!

A while ago you may remember I talked about an anthology I was involved in called Christmas Lites. The deadline for the next one is looming for August and I want to write something bespoke for this year’s. I sat down to try and do something on 27th June and this last Thursday, I finished the result. Except the maximum is ten thousand words, which I aimed for, like a fool, so it’s now too long dammit; about thirteen thousand. That is exactly what happened last time I tried to write a ten thousand word short. Actually thinking about it I’m pretty sure that one ended up at about seventeen thousand words. You’d have thought I’d have worked it out by now wouldn’t you? but no. Doh.

Anyway, I started on a different short for Christmas Lites yesterday and this time I’m aiming for seven thousand words on the premise that I should end up with about nine if I do that.

The shorts are just one of the many things I’m working on in my new, always have something to write that suits your mood, technique. I sweated blood over the K’Barthan Series and I can’t bring myself to sell those books for $2.99 a pop – not in the volume they sell at because I reckon if you’re going to sell one book a month, you need to crank up the price and make more cash on each sale.

The shorts, on the other hand, are meant to be a bit cheaper so it’s not quite such a gamble to try the longer books, the K’Barthan ones at any rate. So far, the ones that actually are short are all about the male lead in the K’Barthan Series and they are episodes from his life on the run before the events in the series start, although I have one in mind about after the series, but it’s a massive spoiler for anyone who reads it by mistake first so I may just write it and make it into exclusive fan content or something. Obviously, the short series involve some of the other characters who appear in the books as well, like Big Merv, Gladys, Ada and Their Trev and so on. Although sadly, as Ruth’s in London being a normal human being at this point, I can’t really do any about her.

My cunning plan was to write five or six of them and then sell them at $1.25 a pop to introduce the characters to readers. This has, sort of, worked, except that the one I started on at the request of the late, great Kate Jackson – who some of you will know – is now at 60k and promising to turn into the usual MTM 140k behemoth. So that’s something I’m working on, along with Space Dustmen and Tripwires (the non fiction thing).

But the point of the shorts was that they are, by their very definition, less complicated, so they take less mental capacity at a period in my life when my grey matter is sub par a lot of the time. They’re also good because if I only have an hour to write in, it’s not going to take me that entire time catching up, and they tie in with my new writing regimen, which is to attempt to write for ten minutes every day (it often turns into more but on days when I’m struggling, I can usually manage to squeeze ten minutes in somewhere and that makes it easier to keep track on where things are going and it makes it easier for me to feel good about myself because I’ve ‘done writing’ and kept things moving).

All in all, this month, things are looking good. My social media presence is dropping, I haven’t run an ad for a sod of a long time and my mailings are all going out late but I have something to show for it; another complete work of fiction, which means I now have two in the bag, and with the Christmas Lites one, it’ll be three. Woot.

Batching editing, covers etc of all five or six will help me to keep production prices down, especially on the cover art work, which I’m hoping to sort in a way that makes it useable for ads and publicity and stuff like that. However, I appreciate it is a pain in the arse from my readers’ point of view. Sure they’ve been waiting three years for me to release a new book and they’re probably used to it by now but even so. It’s a long time. Which is why I’m a bit nervous and sweaty today as I’ve decided to do something unusual and share some.

CAVEAT: This is extremely raw unedited shizz.

Here’s the link: http://www.hamgee.co.uk/shortexcerpt.html

Enjoy.

Online lobotomy anyone?

There was a nice surprise this week when this blog was named as one of the top ten humour blogs on Feedspot! Have a look https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_humor_blogs/ ! Yeh, I know! Thanks to all the lovely folks at Feedspot for that.

Now, having won this splendid accolade, the smart move would be to post something funny. It’s probably quite unwise for me to veer into satire or, the saints forefend, a humorously presented rant. But I’ve never been one to act wisely so here I am. Yes, heaven help me, I’m going to open myself up to all sorts of horrors by talking obliquely about politics. Well, not politics, as such, but our new and sudden blindness, as a nation, to editorial bias.

A long time ago (yeh, yeh, in a galaxy far away) when I was living in London I worked for a sponsorship agency which specialised in the arts. The arts are an amorphous thing that are difficult to justify – especially dance, which we did a lot of. It’s clear that a thriving arts scene is a sign of a thriving and healthy society but at the same time, I appreciate that not everyone thinks this, as did my bosses at the agency. Therefore a lot of the sponsorship work involved public relations efforts in making sure that The Entire World knew about the events we were staging.

As the office gofor, I used to go through the papers every day, cut out relevant articles mentioning our clients; sponsors or sponsees, so to speak – or news bites of interest – and make a cuttings sheet to be circulated each morning. Cuttings were also sent to clients to prove that we were Letting The Entire World Know about their corporate philanthropy. We also had a cuttings service for this and I would open the daily envelope from them and add their contributions to mine. Obviously, because it was me, I’d add an ‘and finally’ to stick on the end if I could find something silly enough.

After two years or so of doing this, it became very clear to me that different newspapers, radio channels and yes, TV channels would present the same news in wildly different ways.

As an example, I remember one particular article about some poor chap who left the keys to his car in a locked office. He climbed out from the window of the office next door and along a ledge to the open window of the locked room containing his keys with a view to climbing in and retrieving them. Unfortunately a gust of wind caught him and he slipped and fell to his death. He fell 30ft (The Telegraph), 60ft (The Independent) and 90ft (The Times) I may have muddled who said which, it’s a long time ago, but those were the differences. Obviously, though, the key facts in this story were that the guy fell to his death. Incidentally, all three newspapers agreed that the car was a Porsche.

This variance in news presentation did not strike me as wrong, or strange, since each news organ (phnark) reflected its own editorial bias and this did mean variations. In those days, most people living in Britain were smart enough to understand that news events are always going to reflect the bias of the journalist or news outlet relating them to us, even if the staff are trying to present them in a neutral, factual way. The closest to factual thing around at that time was Ceefax – the BBC TV text news service which was amazingly bald about stating the facts and not much else because it needed to be low bandwidth and there simply wasn’t room to extrapolate.

Recently, I was thinking about this in relation to a friend of mine, who gets a lot of his news from Breitbart. To be honest, I can’t read that site easily, partly because the articles tend to be a bit preachy and I don’t appreciate that, but also because the comments on some of them tend to leave me with a little bit of vomit in my mouth. BUT it did occur to me that for the main part, my mate who reads that site, is reading it as I would have read the newspapers in the 1990s, with a strong feel for the editorial bias in a way that, perhaps, I can’t. But it made me think. Where and when did we lose the ability to read editorial bias into what we see?

Thinking about it, I guess it may have sprung from the internationalisation of everything with the internet. Which, basically, if you’re English, means Americanisation. And the Americans are really weird about the way they do news. Most of it’s regional, there doesn’t seem to be the same breadth of national newspapers, for example, and it seems that everything has to be presented as right or wrong, there appears to be little room for grey areas. This seems to result in a very simplified, sound bitey version of events. Some channels also seem to like pointing out which side is right or wrong rather than leaving us to judge for ourselves. It is the antithesis of impartial reporting.

People like this, of course. They like simple. They like not having to think for themselves. Grey is a difficult colour. Right versus wrong is nice and simple. We Brits have taken to this sound bite reference system like ducks to water, and for some reason, in this process of simplification we appear to be losing our understanding of, and tolerance of, editorial bias. These days, that variation in the news story about the fellow looking for his keys would be used by the alt right, far left and religious nutters as a reason why mainstream media is run by liars and, therefore, not to be trusted because, look! They can’t get their facts right.

On top of that, we have marketing being applied to news, because it’s all driven by economics now because our nation’s leaders appear to believe the American way is best for everyone (because they have vested interests mainly).  Nowadays, news services want customers, faithful customers, who source their news from one outlet alone. And people have less time and less cash, so they’re happy to pick one and go with that. They don’t necessarily realise they are missing the full picture.

There’s the internet. If you’re good at the internet, you can go a long way and the nutter fringers are very good at the internet. But the way the internet is constructed means we don’t usually see them. Our internet is our own little bubble of friends, relations and customers who all think like us. We graduate to others like ourselves and the way we believe becomes normal. More loss of balance, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the lunatic fringes gain ground – far left, far right and religious nutters – who are traditionally very good at propaganda and have embraced social media with open arms and a skill and precision that has caught the traditional world napping. Holocaust deniers, creationists, flat Earthers and other complete mentalists are finding like-minded crazies on the internet and creating social media bubbles of their own where everyone thinks like they do. They’re realising they aren’t alone that there are hundreds and thousands of people out there as crazy as them and their views are becoming normalised. They are becoming bolder about expressing them. People are expounding viewpoints that Pol Pot might have baulked at with fearless abandon; views that would have been considered so evil that it was laughable back in the 1990s when I was scanning the newspapers.

These folks are calling for ‘balance’ so that when there is a political debate, along with single issue parties who may well have a valid case for inclusion, we have, not only the main parties present but the Scottish and Welsh bits of the main parties and minorities, too, are given a platform ‘for balance’. This is clearly a two edged weapon, as, while many single issue parties have something valid to bring to the table, others, whose views would have been regarded as evil/laughable (0r both) are suddenly being given air time and with it, credence and credibility, which means people are starting to take them seriously in a way that we probably shouldn’t.

Then there are our laws.

If you are the BBC for example, you have to adhere to the law, which is that there are certain political stances which are regarded as hatespeak and you are not to legally meant to broadcast them. Therefore, no matter how much balance the BBC wants to present, inviting someone from say, the far left or far right or a religious extremist on to a panel programme is going to be dicey if they start talking about how refugees, Asians, coloured people, LGBT+ [insert name of minority here] and moderation in politics are the root of every single problem we have in Britain today. Hint, our problems are caused by our inability to get along with one another, as exacerbated by the far left/right/religious extremists and the intransigence of people with ‘strong views’ when they drift over the dividing line from strongly held belief to bigot (yes, bigotry and intransigence, self actualisation through beliefs so they can’t be rethought at any time, another thing that’s considered more OK nowadays).

And the result seems be twofold. First, we seem to be slightly in the grip of some kind of paranoia that ‘The Man’ is manipulating all our newspapers. I confess I think people like Murdoch do have more power than they are entitled to but at the same time, if you’re able to appreciate the editorial bias of what you’re reading, or choose to read more than one news source you can usually sort out the key issues. Second, idiots who think it’s OK to beat up people because they’re a different colour, sexuality or gender can suddenly pitch themselves as a persecuted minority when they aren’t allowed to propound their views on mainstream TV, thus gaining even more credibility.

Meanwhile our mainline news sources are ‘censoring’ and ‘gagging’ these poor unfortunates, folks like Abul Hamza (hook-handed hate-spewing cleric, I may have spelled his name wrong. I don’t care.) by not allowing them air time when originally, these folks wouldn’t have been allowed air time because it was about the same as inviting the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. into your studio, only less sensible.

And we seem to be conflating editorial bias, with something else. Suddenly the Torygraph is lying, yet it has always been the Torygraph and the spin it puts on everything has always been right wing. From where I’m standing, it looks as if it’s doing what it’s always done. Likewise the Mail which speaks out often and forcefully about letting refugees into Britain, just as it did in the 1930s. It was a hateful rag then and it still is now. I’ve always believed in the right to free speech, but for a while I began to believe that if you preach hatred, you forfeit that right. Now I’m beginning to wonder.

Maybe we don’t need to censor the free press, maybe we just need to relearn our ability to take the things we are told by anyone, even those we trust, with a pinch of salt. Maybe it’s time we began to entertain the idea that a trained journalist might be more qualified to bring us news than a bigot who is pissed off about the proliferation of women characters in gaming and has moved from banging on about it on gaming forums to becoming an alt right activist – alt right because they believe the same things as Nazis but they aren’t Nazis, obviously – a pepperment is still a peppermint, darling, even if the brand name on the wrapper is different to last time.

And it’s all just distraction tactics anyway. Because this week, a major, major nation dropped quietly out of the United Nations Human Rights accord and no-one seems to have noticed. And that’s a bit of a worry. If you see pictures of Mussolini, one of the things that is striking is his puffed up pomposity. We have two world leaders like that right now.

Once, I read that the British political party that has been the first to adopt the highest number of policies into its mandate to eventually become law is the Monster Raving Loony Party. That’s because equal opportunities and concepts of that ilk were considered laughable when they did it. Maybe that’s just what I’m seeing here, the laughably evil Dr No types at the extreme right, left and religious fringes of this world becoming credible. But while giving men and women, black and white, gay and straight equal pay is reasonable, decreeing that gay or coloured people or yes, women, should e treated as inferior is clearly not reasonable, surely? (I know, there I go, ‘thinks me’.)

Recently, I heard that, like the Monster Raving Loony party, the place that a lot of real political news starts in the UK is the satirical newspaper Private Eye, where it will run for months or even years before suddenly hitting the mainstream media. What Private Eye does do is cast a splendidly cynical eye over news, politics and any over pomposity among those in power be it in politics, big business, media or sport.

As you can imagine, it gets sued a lot. It’s worth a read.

As for the rest of us. Well, at the moment, it strikes me that the way news is disseminated, consumed and understood by folks is mostly on the internet. And in larger part, as a historian, I keep seeing parallels with the way news spread in medieval times, cf the first 1.5 minutes of this video. And since we do seem to be reverting to the kind of malleable unintentional idiocy of medieval society, I guess we can’t really be surprised if we end up with the political equivalent of the second half this vid!

Uh oh. The Chaos Fairies are back …

Blimey, it’s been all go this week. Last night McCat caught sight of another cat in the garden and went nuts, I was alerted by the sound of a plant being knocked from a windowsill. Things  went downhill from there, with McCat moving to the cat flap. He smashed it two weeks ago trying to get at this cat – then it was the extraordinary growling and yelling noises he was making that alerted me to the problem. Last night he ran from the conservatory when I arrived, and the cat outside fled, too. McCat tore after him through the kitchen, with Strange Cat taking the parallel path outside. McCat had already started on the cat flap by the time I got there. In a few short seconds, he bent and broke my fabulous framer’s tape mend and got half the casing off the front.

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Mended cat flap. Note my blood all over the surround on the right hand side. Mmm nice.

When I grabbed him and hauled him away, I caught a claw up the side of one finger and began to bleed profusely all over everywhere.

McCat kept going back, all the while howling in impotent fury, and I kept dragging him away and trying to lock him in the utility room, where he sleeps. But I couldn’t get out of the door quickly enough and he was getting back out with me every time. It was like some comedy parody of a night club punch up with the fighters, shouting,

‘I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill you!’ While the girls scream and their drunken friends try to drag them apart shouting,

‘Leave it mate, leave it. He ain’t worth it.’

And all that malarky.

Eventually I managed to persuade McCat to stay in the utility room long enough for me to shut the door by the time honoured method of bribing him with food. Then I sellotaped a magazine over the cat flap and let him out into the kitchen for a quick cuddle before both of us, and McOther, went to bed for the night. This morning I bought a new cat flap just in case but I think I have managed to get away with fixing up the old one again. Still, the new one will come in handy if we want to do something like say, sell the house, for example.

Then I came to use a voucher some kind friends had bought me last year, to have a go in a flotation tank. It was fab, however, while I was drying my hair afterwards, there was a kind of thump and I found the lady in charge of the tanks, so to speak, in a bad way on the floor. She was feeling sick and dizzy, which I recognised as shock. Nurse MTM (phnark) proscribed deep breaths and that she should take her time before getting up. She said she heard something click and I suspect she’d either cracked her collarbone or knackered some shoulder ligaments. She thought she was fine. I didn’t. Her shock symptoms were very similar to those displayed by my sister in-law when she fell down my parents’ stairs and broke her ankle. So I suspect there was a fair bit of pain.

It was a while before I felt she was OK to leave but when I could I went and got someone to come and help her. Then when she, and they assured me she would be alright if she just sat outside in the garden on a bench, I left, which involved going through several security doors to reception, where I realised I’d left my coat. So then I had to get someone to come and let me back in through all the security doors to pick it up again. I never found out how much it would be to float again, but it was a very pleasant experience so I think I will at some point, when I have the time.

On a different note …

Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails …

Yes, I can confirm this actually is be what little boys are made of. It’s high time you heard some more instalments of McMini. Just because I haven’t had time to put them up here, it doesn’t mean his eccentricity has abated in any way, nor his ability to negotiate, at length, over everything, or that he has become any less disgusting.

Despite being the prime male in the house McOther is the least gross of all of us, while McMini, at the top of the vile-o-metre, way outstrips anything I can even imagine for grossness if only for his approach to personal hygiene (and that approach goes like this: Why?’) while I come in a very creditable second for grossness, but nowhere near his epic yukkiness on the personal hygiene front, I’m pleased to say. Even the cat comes ahead of McOther as he proved the other night, as he sat on my lap, by actually lifting himself a little and then releasing the most abominable fart on earth. But I digress we were talking about, McMini. First, here’s what we are up against negotiation-wise.

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Let the negotiations commence …

Points for lateral thought.

The other day, McOther found McMini reading in bed at stupid o’clock at night. He laid down a firm diktat that McMini must not read in bed. The next night, at about half past ten, McOther and I came to bed only to discover McMini on the lavatory, reading.

‘What are you doing? It’s way past your bed time!’ wailed McOther in despair.

‘You said I couldn’t read in bed, but you said nothing about reading in the loo,’ said McMini.

Unbounded vileness; gross factor nine million.

Then there’s this … conversation late at night when we had said good night and were just about to turn his light out and go downstairs for an hour or two of crap TV.

‘Dad, can I go downstairs and get my penknife?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to cut my toenails and eat them.’

Mummy shudders, ‘Ug. I thought you bit them off and ate them.’

‘I did but I can’t do that anymore. I’m not so bendy as I was.’

‘Well, you can have it tomorrow morning. You can cut your nails and eat all the toenails you like,’ Arnold’s bottom! Am I really saying this? ‘before I drag you to church.’

‘Yes,’ McOther chips in, ‘You can have a whole bunch of crispy toenails.’

‘I can’t eat toenails in the morning. I will need something much more substantial! Toenails are an evening snack.’

McMini then proceeds to bite his own big toe nail by way of demonstration.

‘Look mummy! I can do it after all.’

‘Ug,’ says McOther and wisely, he leaves.

‘Mmm yummy!’ says McMini.

‘Surely it’s cheesy if it’s off your feet.’ I say. McMini doesn’t like cheese.

‘Not really. The nails are crunchy, the toe jam can be a bit cheesy sometimes.’

‘You eat toe jam!?’

‘Of course.’

‘And when you say “toe jam,” you really mean toe jam? You know those little cheesy bits under the corner of your toenails.’

‘Yes it’s delicious,’ picks a bit off and eats it. ‘Mmm lemony. Hey Mum, do you remember when you used to cut your toe nails and I grabbed them and ate them*.’

‘I am really, really trying to forget that.’

* I’m afraid this is true he really did grab my toenail clippings and eat it. It’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen anyone do.

The bonus …

So on one level, my boy probably needs Special Help. On the other, we were playing Monopoly last night which involves sitting on the floor. I am not at home on the floor anymore, pretty much any position I can think of hurts my knees. McMini looked at me thoughtfully for a moment.

‘Mummy, you’re not comfortable there, are you?’

‘No, not really but it’s not too bad.’

‘Hang on.’

He ran upstairs to his bedroom and came back with a pillow.

‘Here you are Mummy,’ he handed me the pillow. ‘That should be more comfy.’ I thanked him and he went and sat down.

I cling to the fact that McMini may be quite eccentric, he may have difficulty remembering what day of the week it is, when his home work is due, about that thing he was supposed to bring into school for science, etc and he may be pathologically unable to tidy his room. Ever. He may keep wiping his nose on his shirt even though he’s been told it’s not OK and he may have some weird idea – like James Hunt – that smelling rank is a good thing. But he is thoughtful and he is kind and I guess if he takes care of those two, the rest is gravy.

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And finally … something completely different.

Yep, if things are a bit chaotic down your way, never fear. I can thoroughly recommend the use of a humorous book to take your mind off it, or cheer yourself up.

Mission Improbable, by my cyber author buddy J J Green is still on sale for a hugely cost effective 99c. If you think it sounds interesting you can find links to grab it from most major retailers here.

Meanwhile, my first in series, Few Are Chosen, is also 99c at the moment so if you want to give some of my stuff a whirl you can find out about that on a similar page, with links to the major retailers (and an offer) here.  You can also discover more about each book by clicking the cover pictures.

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Read any good books lately?

Time is short this week. I’m trying to set up a new iThing and it’s taking ages. I’m also having to sort out some stuff with Mum and Dad’s neighbours – bit of a misunderstanding about a hedge and now, it seems a fence. Anyhoo hopefully I’ll get it sorted but quickly before I rush out for my first of two surprise birthday weekends … well … you’re only 50 once. To give you a feel for just how chaotic it is, I caught sight of a football under one of our patio chairs this morning without my glasses on and said hello to it because I thought it was our cat.

Yeh, you get the picture.

This month I have two lovely things for you; the first is a giveaway of free books, some in return for sign up to the authors mailing lists, some not. The other thing I have is a recommendation for a really good book.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction from Ebookaroo 23rd May – 14th June

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Not everyone has the time to read full on novels so this giveaway features a selection of short stories. All are sci-fi and fantasy. There’s a pretty wide selection there, so hopefully you will discover some interesting authors. Some will want you to join their mailing lists as well as downloading the book, some won’t. The dynamic of that approach has kind of changed now, in that you sign up for the mailing list and are given the book rather than downloading the book and being put on the mailing list.

The giveaway is on instafreebie and it runs until 14th June. Click here, or on the picture, to see all the books. Hope you find some good reads.

Grab some free shorts at the giveaway here.

[image error] Mission Improbable reduced to 99c 14th – 24th June

This one’s a bargain as it usually retails for £2.99 or thereabouts. I read it a while back when I was taking part in Comedy Ebook Week. I loved it and am now half way through the series, although I’m eeking out reading the rest of them because I don’t want to finish. If you like a bit of light humour and some wildly imaginative ideas, this book is for you. Here’s the blurb to give you an feel for what it’s like:

If you like Doctor Who you’ll love Carrie Hatchett’s Space Adventures.

Carrie Hatchett’s been a dog walker, ice cream seller and birthdaygram girl—the clean kind. All she wants is a proper job. But Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer isn’t what she had in mind. And neither is saving the galaxy.

Carrie’s a low-achieving daydreamer. After providing a good home for her butt-ugly dog and crazy cat, her biggest challenge in life is to avoid being fired, again.

But a strange green mist sucks her beneath her kitchen sink, and an unusual clerical error leads to an offer she foolishly doesn’t refuse.

In settling a conflict between the mechanical placktoids and the mysterious oootoon, Carrie reveals a threat to the entire galactic empire.

Has she bitten off more than she can chew?

Join Carrie on her adventures today!

Mission Improbable is book one in the comedy sci-fi romp, Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer.

Mission Improbable comes highly recommended (by me). If you think it sounds fun just click here or on the picture. You will be taken to a page on my site with links to grab a copy from all the usual stores and also direct, from, the author’s own website.

Mission Improbable

However, remember that Mission Improbable will ONLY be 99c between 14th and 24th June. Peak too soon and it will be full price. Patience, Grashopper.

I intend to try and post about a few more books soon, I grabbed the new one by fellow humorous sff author Will Macmillan Jones and so there should be something about that in a month or two!

What I know now, that I wish I knew then …

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The advice kettle is sage and wise and also keeps the water hot, like an urn, only not.

Back on topic this week, I was asked for some advice by a writer who is just starting work on her first book. Even though she appears to be of sound mind, she was dead chuffed with what I wrote and asked if I’d share it on my blog so she could send people to the post. As a result, by special request, here is my rambling view on er … some of the aspects of writing that popped up.

BEFORE YOU START ….

1. What do you want to do?

a) have fun writing a book.

b) have fun writing a book and maybe make a bit of side cash – or at least get the cover artwork and editing costs back.

c) Rule the world: Yeh, move over JK, I am on your tail.

2. Decide on a target genre, who your reader is and what genre/store category your book fits into. Are there other books for the kind of reader you are aiming at. What are they like? What do their covers look like? Hint, you do NOT want your cover to stand out, you want it to be slick, well designed and exactly the same as all the others so readers know what they are getting (I so didn’t do this). Are you going to mash genres? Say you’re writing Sci-fi, is it something else too? Is it funny? Is it also fantasy. Are there other books like yours? Who writes them?

Your answer to question 1 will affect this as if you’re looking to make a living you need to totally conform to the standard tropes. Unless you are going to be an outlier. I thought I was going to be an outlier. It didn’t work too well for me. I write because … actually, I write because I can’t walk away from it and to be honest, walking away would be the sensible option right now.

Pantser or Plotter?

I was firmly in the pantser camp to start with – as in I’d just write and see where it went. It went to lots of good places but my first book took 13 years. Pantsing may well slow your rate of production so if a fast output is your aim plotting is good. Likewise, if your daily existence is the equivalent of having someone opening the top of your head and stir your brains about, constantly, with a wooden spoon, some kind of plot outline is going to be a huge help. Especially if you have menopausal brain fog on top (yes apparently that really is a thing and yes, of course I have it).

I find that even though I now write an outline, there is plenty of wiggle room. The key thing is to experiment and find what works best for you. I find that if I get too confined by an outline I stop enjoying it as much, I quite like the whole wondering around and seeing where it will go aspect, but when I relied solely on that I got frustrated with having to keep stopping while my brain sorted itself out. I really enjoyed the learning process – even though it was trying at times.

However, these days I am very light on time so if I want to produce a book every five years, I do need to plot a little bit so I don’t waste time. On the last two books of the K’Barthan Series I wrote 60k words I didn’t need. Right now my year’s output stands at about 40k so I can’t afford to waste a year and a half’s writing time on plot bunnies. Hence I now plot, but with enough wriggle room for the characters to act on their own initiative. This works for me – and that’s the important take away from this one: that what works for me may not work for you.

Write in whatever way suits you best.

Try to avoid being too rigid in your approach
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My brain and my life.

To put this in perspective, basically, I pantsed my first novel and I wrote three versions that I sincerely wish I hadn’t written and one half cock novel (which I managed to tidy up and turn into something decent: my fifth published novel) before I managed to produce a book that measured up to my Quality Standards.

In that time, the male lead had appeared out of nowhere, one character had changed from a mechanic to a ganglord, the first book had ended up being the third and fourth ones and the other two were the backstory that popped up out of nowhere at the same time as my getaway-driving male lead. By the time I’d got to the last book, the plot was so complicated my brain was just about melting out through my nose – oh no wait that was hayfever.

What I mean is, you don’t have to stick too rigidly to the plan but you may have to shake things up originally and see what falls out to know if your book is going to work, or if it’s two books, or a series of short stories, or if the character who has just turned up in prison really is the male lead. Sometimes you get too many characters. Eric, from Escape From B-Movie Hell was actually in the K’Barthan Series to start with. Obviously he was human in that, but he was also telepathic. I just made him into an alien for his new world, his character didn’t changed much.

Likewise, at the second short in a series of five, I discovered that what I was writing was a novel. We’re 60k in and yes, I’ve already binned 40k. I’m not learning from my mistakes am I? But at the same time, the short was not a short so there was no point in forcing the issue. Now it’s a long. So what? It will be what it will be. Just try different approaches and you will find a number of different things that work.

Grammar and Punctuation

Bollocks to it. It’s the editor’s job. As you write you learn more, as you work with a decent editor you will learn loads. The point is, you will need an editor unless you are a very and I mean very rare breed. Most of us are too close in to self edit. Additionally, the only thing I really know about grammar and punctuation for sure, is that there are no right answers.

It doesn’t matter what you do, someone, somewhere will always complain so a lot of it is about having faith in your editor. I do edit my work but that’s more word choices, and tweaking stuff so it makes sense; structural things. It also helps me to do this if I need a bit of re-orientation with my giant sprawling novel. Also I have regular read throughs of what I’ve done so far so I can zoom out to the overall big picture. Otherwise I can get kind of lost. Am I a grammar nazi? No, that’s the job of my editor.

Also there will be points where you really dislike your book or think, ‘blimey this is a bit meh.’ That’s all natural. Everyone does it. Sometimes, a good way of getting round that is to work on several projects at the same time. I do that because my life is hectic and I can’t afford to not write something when the stars align and the grey matter is fired up because it happens so rarely. But working on multiple projects also helps you to ensure you’re always working on something you’re up for and enjoy.

Learning Your Craft

I never bought any how to write books – actually, I tell a lie, I have a Chuck Wendig Book on writing which is epic.

However, mostly I’ve learned to write by reading a lot of work by authors who write the way I want to; Pratchett, Adams, Woodehouse and Bryson, notably, along with Tom Holt, Robert Rankin, Nick Hornby, Spike Milligan and Tom Sharp but also non comic writers like H E Bates, Graham Greene, Neville Shute and Asimov. There’s the odd dash of historical fiction, Moonfleet when I was a kid, the Children of the New Forest and The Three Musketeers, Jane Austen. In addition my work has gained a lot of influences from TV; Dr Who – check my non violent hero who never thumps anyone – the original StarTrek, StarWars are the three big ones but also a lot of the 1960s TV shows like Get Smart, the Man from UNCLE, the Avengers, Thunderbirds etc.

This is where I confess that I am the only living person in existence who is not going to bang on about To Kill a Mockingbird or Moby Dick in this section. I have never read a word of either.

The point is, I’m guessing there is a similar list of relevant books to mine for each genre.  A list of must reads which any author would look to for inspiration if they wanted to write in it. If you don’t have one, make one.

The most important thing is patience. Nailing the whole write a book thing usually takes a long time. You are probably a faster learner than me, most people are, but it took me ages to write a book that measured up to my QS. On the upside, when I did, I knew at once that I’d cracked it.

Setting Deadlines

I don’t do this. It would kill me because if they were realistic I’d be in tears about how long each project was going to take and if they are unrealistic I’ll be beating myself up over failing to meet deadlines. I just set a long term goal and short term, realistic, targets and then creep slowly along. One of my friends got stuck a while back when we were at the same stages in our first book. I was stuck, too, but by telling myself it was temporary, or writing other scenes from other parts of the book, or, indeed other books entirely, I managed to keep on creeping slowly forward, I now have 5 books out, she’s just completing her third novel. Other writer friends have twice as many books out as me after two years in the game. So much of writing is a case of having a firm word with yourself and just getting on with it in whatever way you can. You may find deadlines work for you. I find they don’t but a handful of defined and doable goals, with no done by time, they do help. Like all this, you probably need to experiment to get your own happy medium.

In a nutshell, then, bollocks to deadlines; set targets.

Building an Audience

It’s well worth doing this as you go along rather than waiting until you’re ready to launch your first book. If you can manage a free short story you can give to folks in return for mailing list sign up that will help you to start growing a following. Open an account at instafreebie and bookfunnel to deliver the free book to folks. Join promos with other authors. Find websites and Facebook groups where you can chat to other writers in your genre and exchange marketing tips and ideas. For mailing, it’s up to you but I use Mailerlite – they’re cheap and do all the things I need them to do as an author.

This might sound a bit premature but if you can start getting people invested in you even if it’s only to share your journey, you are more likely to start off with some decent book sales.

Big caveat on your give away short though, it has to be your best stuff because it’s your shop window.

Working Out Who Your Audience Is

This is going to affect what you do considerably. For example it is really, and I mean really hard to reach young people or children online. I’d call my book Young Adult. When I wrote it, as well as me, I was thinking of my nephew, who was 12 years old at the time. When I do events, my books sell exclusively to 10-14 year olds, with the odd adult Pratchett fan thrown in. The buyers are usually parents who want to encourage their children to read books. Online, no matter how well your ads or your site piques their interest, kids will not be able to buy your books without their parents’ say so and you run into a whole heap of legal headaches if minors start signing up to your email list. The folks who buy my books online are 45 and over, more women between 45 and 50, more men over 50.

So, if you are going to sell your books, think long and hard about who you are selling to. You may need to concentrate on libraries or making a print version – Ingram Spark are good for this if you are looking for world wide sales and will get your book distributed far more widely then Createspace or Amazon Print and for far less per copy than LuLu.

Here are resources which might help focus your thoughts on production and marketing, anyway …

The first is a series of books about how to format paperbacks using word and publishing indie books. They are by this guy here:

Aaron Shepard

Mr Shepard’s books, From Word to Kindle and POD for Profit might be useful. The amount of information he is dealing with has increased so where I bought one book: Aiming at Amazon, which dealt with the process of making print books. I would have never got my paperback stuff sorted without them. If you are looking at children’s books it might be worth looking at Adventures in Writing for Children and The Business of Writing for Children and the ones he has written about making a useable kindle file using word!

The three other essential ones that will give you an idea of how you can go about building an audience, indie musician style, and sell your books are a three book set by Patty Jansen. I heartily recommend these as they also propose a way of working that is not reliant on any one bookseller and with a work rate that is realistically attainable. They are:

Self Publishing Unboxed
Mailing Lists Unboxed
Going Wide Unboxed

Links to buy them from all retailers can be found here – scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Or you can buy them, direct, from Patty’s Website here

I realise I’ve probably given you way more information than you might want and about stuff way further down the line than the point at which you are now. It might look daunting but the thing is, if you enjoy writing and work at it, you will get there, and when you do it won’t feel nearly as daunting, putting your work out there. It is like putting your soul on the table and inviting snide comments but somehow it works out OK and the more you do it the more your confidence builds and the more you begin to believe in your work. Not everyone will like your stuff but that’s OK. I have one star reviews and that’s fine, and if it isn’t fine, avoid reading the reviews!

And on the up side …

Just a quick one today. First of all, report on Dad. This week he was so much more himself it was unbelievable when I visited. Turned out that after about ten days of not sleeping the doctor came to see him and gave the carers a light sleeping pill. This has worked wonders. Dad had not slept for ages and as you will have gathered from my previous post, he was behaving abominably. I had started to worry as to whether or not he should go into a home. However, all the carers have reassured me that it isn’t necessary, what we have to do, as the changes in his temperament happen, is ensure that Mum spends more time doing other stuff. She needs to get out and away from the atmosphere at home when it’s charged. The time she spends with Dad needs to be batched and in smaller high quality doses.

That all made excellent sense to me, but what I was overjoyed by, was Dad’s return to form. He was saying please and thank you, there was no swearing, no spitting. His continence has improved again so he knows when he needs to go to the loo. His whole outlook is breezier and sunnier. It’s amazing what a little thing like a good night’s sleep does for a person. The carers also raised a good point which was that he is a very intelligent man and his mind needs to be stimulated. Dad loves a trip out and they have combined this with … well … basically they use him, and his wheelchair, as a shopping trolley. He loves this because instead of saying, ‘would you like to go for a walk,’ they can say, ‘John, would you mind coming to town and helping me do the shopping?’.

One of the biggest things about dementia is that it makes people feel useless. Giving them things to do, or finding ways to spin pursuits dementia sufferers enjoy doing as helping others is great for the person’s self esteem. It was so lovely to see Dad back to cracking jokes and taking the piss out of me about my trousers.

‘I must buy you a new pair of trousers. Those ones are terrible.’

‘Thanks Dad.’

It’s amazing how sometimes the answer to a problem that seems insurmountable turns out to be simple. Oh how I wish the rest of my life was that straightforward! I am drowning under a mountain of admin at the moment and every time I finish one thing, another one comes in. All of them are ten minute jobs that go wrong and end up taking hours. But hey ho, it could be so much worse.

Since things are better, I’d like to share one of Dad’s favourite jokes.

The Statues and the Wish

Two statues, male and female, spent a couple of hundred years in a London park, their plinths facing one another. Come rain, or shine they were there and gradually, they fell in love. One day, God turned up and said to them,

‘Righty oh. I’ve seen what’s going on down here and I’d like to give you an hour of life, you can do whatever you like.’

A look of perfect understanding was exchanged between the male and female statues.

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‘It’s not just the bastard pigeons either!’ said Churchill. ‘Fucking Banksy!’    *

‘Come on!’ said the male one. He took the female’s hand and they rushed off into the bushes together.

There was a lot of rustling and much giggling. God whistled a tune and nonchalantly made his way to a nearby bench where he sat and enjoyed the sunlight, very much ignoring the continued giggling and rustling from the bushes, while he answered some prayers using the app on his celestial smartphone. He was surprised when, after forty minutes, the two statues emerged from the bushes, breathless, dishevelled and still giggling uncontrollably.

‘Wait a minute, you haven’t used your whole hour yet,’ said God.

‘Really?’ asked the female statue her eyes shining with joy.

‘Really,’ God confirmed. ‘You have another twenty minutes.’

‘Oh good!’ The female statue gave the male a sly look.

‘Shall we do it again?’ he asked her.

‘Yes please!’ she said, ‘Only this time, so it’s fair, why don’t I hold the pigeon and you can shit on it?’

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I put this one on because George IV’s horse looks completely gobsmacked. *

* I have no idea who owns these pics, I got them off Pintarest. No infringement of copyright is intended and I will happily remove them if required.

That’s Alzheimer’s not Dad.

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The post is a bit grim but at least this picture is pretty!

A couple of weeks ago, someone shared one of my posts of dementia-related whinging on Facebook – this post if anyone’s interested – and it got an interesting comment.

There is ample opportunity for me to have misconstrued here but, as I interpreted the comment, I think it basically said something along the lines of that we don’t really know why some folks get to die suddenly or well and others get something a bit more operatic; by which I mean they get the real world equivalent of twenty minutes of singing and an encore after a wound that should have killed them instantly. The gist was that ours is not to reason why.

The poster went on to say, if I’ve understood correctly, that if it was God’s will that they linger who are we to argue, and to just have faith that it’s all happening for a reason, that it is not our place to judge or begrudge them their time in the twilight zone, and we can give them that time. That this process of slowly withdrawing from one world and preparing to step into the other is clearly of spiritual importance in some way and we should accept our part in it with grace. Thinking about it, I should probably post what was said. This is the comment in question.

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It’s a kindly, wise comment and clearly meant to give comfort but instead, reading it, I feel as if I am being chided for my lack of faith, and for my selfishness in feeling that fourteen years of this is a tad fucking long. I found myself wondering how much of the poster’s own care/worry marathon they had completed, two years? five years? seven? ten? I’ve reached the stage, now, where I worry that the pressure of worrying about my folks may do me in; that I may not out live my parents. I mean, I can’t die! It would kill them. Then there’s the whole cancer thing. Have you noticed how many people who have been through a tough patch like this one end up going down with cancer just as they get right again? I dearly hope I avoid joining them.

Clearly the commenter has a great deal more grace and faith than I, but I confess, the thing about the comment that really threw me was that I had no idea that anyone could so completely and utterly miss the point of why I post all this stuff.

Bearing that in mind, I thought I’d better explain to clear things up! Because I accept my father’s fate is clearly not a swift and merciful death, trust me, there is no mercy in dementia. Indeed, if this is the greatest mercy they can wish for I shudder to think on the horror of any alternatives my parents have missed. Likewise, if they have to suffer this now I hope they have manifold blessings in store. My father has been losing his memory the whole of my son’s life. Even when my lad was born in 2008, Dad couldn’t really be left alone. It began before that, in 2004. Fourteen years is a fuck of a long time in anybody’s book. It’s probably my fault and I’m the one being punished. I expect I snogged too many boys or wanked too much as a teenager or something, but I digress.

It’s no good my railing against fate, it merely wastes energy. I just have to bite the bullet and get on with it. I will endeavour to give my parents as much quality of life and freedom of choice as possible, and I am trying to make this twilight time for them a time of gentleness, peace and compassion. That my brother and I aim to do that, however painful it may be for all of us, is moot.

But you know what? Just because my brother and I are doing what we hope is the right thing, it doesn’t make it any more fun. And I doubt the feelings I have experienced as I’ve watched my father lose his mind over fourteen long years are any different to those of other people in my position. And that’s why I write about this.

When I write about Dad’s sickness on my blog, it isn’t about my brother and I doing the right thing by our parents, it’s not even about our efforts at trying to. That’s a given.

No.

This is about what tenderness and mercy to one member of a family costs the others.

Similarly, I doubt the dismay I felt as I realised, three years ago, that my mother also had dementia, is unique. If there is anything merciful in this perhaps it’s Mum’s dementia. Because I do not know how she finds the strength to endure some of the stuff Dad says to her and at least if she forgets, she won’t know what she’s lost.

The posts I write about my father’s Alzheimer’s and my mother’s dementia are not here to give you answers, they’re here to show you my reactions. Because I think I’m very average and I suspect most of us feel the way I do but may not admit it, not even to ourselves. Well if that’s you, I’m writing this so you can see that your reactions are normal. The things you think about the situation that are so dodgy and shameful that they almost hurt? You aren’t alone.

That’s the only gift I can give to people suffering through this. Thousands of people have come before us, doubtless many thousands will come after. You’re not alone, I’m not alone, we are united in this trouble.

When the dementia patent in your life does something that completely shocks and repulses you, it’s OK to recoil, to feel sad, hurt, horrified and angry. It’s OK to feel those things because it’s natural, and yes, it’s OK to feel trapped by their neediness. The key is not how you feel but how you act when you are with the person affected, the key is not whether you are disgusted but whether you show it. They no longer understand or even realise that their actions are unacceptable. Much of what they are doing is caused by them feeling frightened and alone, you can reduce the number of melt downs, if you can get alongside them and have them working with you not at you, but if you fail, well that’s OK, because there’s always next time, when you can try something else.

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Showers, but also sunny intervals.

Also, attitudes to dementia are changing and I write about things that happen to us which reflect that change because I want people to see it and know about it. I want people to realise that if they want to take a dementia sufferer out somewhere they should go right ahead. It’s just a disability. You don’t have to hide them like a shameful thing but at the same time, you need to have an idea of what you are all facing. I describe our journey to help you understand what is coming as you embark on yours.

When I was a kid, if someone got Dementia it usually went something like this. Person gets dementia. No-one is allowed to know it’s all kept secret because it’s a Bad Thing. Person does something a bit strange in public which a handful of folks hear about but which is not ever passed on but is just mentioned as, ‘that time at …’ or something similar. Person disappears from all social life. Five years later, you attend their funeral. I used to wonder what happened in between. Now I know. And I want other people to know and understand. That, yes, it is horrible, but it can also be uplifting. I want people to know that they needn’t feel afraid, that it is unbelievably harsh but they will cope.

While Dad can still enjoy the company of others – and he can most days – I want my dad to be active and social. To be able to go out and Mum with him. I want him to be able to go have lunch at the pub or whatever. Amazingly, they attend a huge number of social events but it is getting more and more difficult now. Bless them, a decent number of his friends now come to him, or if they’re no longer mobile, ring him.

As I said, attitudes are changing, although it takes a certain brazenness to be a carer. For example, back in 2011 when we were on the ferry to the Isle of Wight. Dad went to the loo and got a bit disorientated while he was in there. He came out with his zip open and his cock out. A lady sitting nearby rushed over to him, just as I noticed and ran over to him, too.

‘Oh thank you, I’m so sorry,’ I told her when I got there.

‘Is he yours?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said as I turned to Dad. ‘Dad, we need to pop back in there for a moment.’

‘Oh dear, do we?’

‘Yes,’ I leaned over and whispered, ‘You’ve forgotten to do your flies up.’

He guffawed and we thanked the lady and went back into the loo.

‘What am I coming to? I left my cock out,’ he said when we got inside. We giggled some more and he made some joke about Winston Churchill’s reaction when someone pointed out his flies were undone, ‘The dead bird does not leave the nest!’ my Dad said in his best Churchill voice. Giggling, we sorted it all out and we started back to our seats. We passed the helpful Lady so I thanked her again. She gave me a big smile and said,

‘Not to worry, we have one of our own at home!’

It was all done with a wink and a smile at Dad, too, to include him. Naturally he joined in. People are kind these days, when you rock up somewhere with a dementia sufferer.

Likewise, when your father clears his throat, leans over the side of the chair and gobs a massive steaming greenie onto the kitchen floor in front of company, as if that is the most normal thing in the world, a certain brazenness is required. I reckon it’s fine to use graveyard humour to make light of it, or any other form of tasteless joke that will get you through the surreal horror you’ve just witnessed. We avoid jokes at Dad’s expense in his presence and we avoid them where we can if we are not in his presence. However, if treating your father with the decency and compassion his humanity affords him to his face means laughing at his child like antics, and calling him Spoilt Bastard after the well known Viz character behind his back, I say knock yourself out. Because if you can’t do both then do what it takes behind the scenes to achieve compassion and kindness where it matters, when you’re with the person.

Recently, a couple of visits have gone badly and my father has been unremittingly vile to me, not to mention Mum. Some days, he doesn’t know who we are any more. He doesn’t remember that he loves us. Except that he is always pleased to see me initially. However, my gentle, good-humoured, loving father – with the wicked sense of humour – is now, quite often, just wicked. He refers to me as a trollop, or a fucking stupid woman, or sometimes, for variety, a stupid fucking woman. I take no offence since he refers to nearly all the females around him like this.

But I miss my dad. I miss my mum. There is much more of Mum there but we have still lost enough to miss. Dad, is still there too, but we have to dig hard for those precious shiny glimpses of treasure. And I’m raw about it at the moment because at my Uncle’s funeral last week we prayed for the sick and when we did that we prayed for Dad and Mum. And it was the sweetest, kindest thought, a truly lovely act on their part, and so touching, and I nearly lost it, and I realised how much grief there is; an enormous, bottomless black pit of the stuff at the centre of me. Too much to look at head on. Too much to acknowledge. I can see it all the time out of the corner of my eye. Look it in the face and I am undone. And as the male lead says in one of my books, ‘I can’t be undone.’ For the sake of my parents and also the rest of my family, I have to hold it together.

And the weird thing is that even with this huge bottomless grief, this mourning that will end in death, but which, without a death, cannot end, even though it’s fourteen years old and huge and dwarfs me somehow, I do hold it together. If I have any kind of faith, I suspect that’s where it counts. Because I’m no saint. I have no grace. I’ve never been one to cope well with a long drawn out process. I do not know how I keep my grief about my parents in its box, but it happens, and I doubt the strength required is all coming from me.

In the face of this, I’ve come to believe that there are really only two things that matter when dealing with dementia:

Number one. Trying to hang onto who the patient was and what it was in him we loved. We look out old photos, read letters, memories from the boys and girls he taught. We do whatever it takes to keep in touch with the real person who is living under that disability. We do it because it’s the only thing we can do to hold onto him.

Two. On the days when Dad is vile to me; like the time when he grabbed the wee bottle from my hand on Sunday and tried to throw his warm piss in my face, shouting, ‘Get that thing off me you bloody trollop! I’ve finished, you stupid fucking woman!’ Or yesterday when he did the same thing to the carer in the loo, all the while continuing to wee copiously down his trousers and onto her foot, proving conclusively that he was NOT finished, not by a long chalk, it’s important to keep a sense of humour; to laugh about it – and we did laugh because what else can you do? I mean, it could be worse, it’s not as if I had to hide behind the sofa while he searched for me with a knife (genuine dementia story, luckily, not mine). It’s also important I keep a firm enough grasp of who he is. I will always try to treat him as the man he was. Dad is in there, somewhere. I refuse to believe he is wholly the man he’s become. Because that is not my father. That is Alzheimer’s.

How a battery charger saved my bacon …

…And the danger of over confidence when coupled with good intentions.

This week, I was going to talk a little more about happiness being a state of mind, but I only have a few minutes to do this in so it’s more of a dump it and leg it!

It’s been a busy week with a bank holiday at the beginning, a weekend away and a trip to my Uncle’s funeral today. It began with a bit of a dodgy start. Up at 5.30 expecting to leave by 6.00 but cocked it up and was late, finally leaping into the car at 6.15, I was not a happy bunny when pressed the starter and it turned over once and died. Tried again and it went ‘click’. I pulled the lever to open the boot and the cable snapped – for the second time in a year, I’ll have to book it in to be fixed. Luckily, it wasn’t all bad. Before snapping, the cable had actually unlatched the boot lid so I was able to get it open easily enough and access the battery to put it on charge. I was already fifteen minutes late departing, fifteen minutes too late to be able to take McOther’s car – it doesn’t go fast enough when there is quarter of an hour to recoup. As you can imagine, there followed a very tense ten minutes while I waited for the booster to charge the battery enough for the car to start. Yes. There was swearing.

On the upside, it did work, the car started and I was there just after nine because I missed the worst of the traffic on the dicky bits, i.e. the entire M25 which was uncharacteristically clear. Sure it was an hour early but that wasn’t a problem; there were cousins to chat to by ten past! I am so glad I got there. It was a lovely service, planned by my Uncle, himself, and it spoke eloquently of what I gather was a very peaceful and ‘good’ death. The priest was a lovely chap and spoke well about him, too. I did cry, and the bit that got me was the point where we said prayers for the sick and the list comprised Mum and Dad, while the prayers for the dead, apart from my uncle, were for my aunt, his wife. It was very moving, and a positive and uplifting, if sad, experience. It was wonderful to see my other uncle and aunt, and my cousins and my brother and all my cousin’s children who have grown into splendid young people, one with a microdot in tow. Well worth braving the roads.

However, there’s not much to say after that, at least, not in thirty minutes, so instead I’m going to share a story from Setting Tripwires for Granny and Other Tall Family Tales.

Learning to throw and missing …

This is a story about the disastrous consequences of having a sport obsessed older brother and the dangers of learning to throw, over arm. When my brother and I were little and lived in the school we used to run with the other housemasters’ kids. The amazing thing about it was that we probably had the kind of upbringing our parents, or grandparents, had rather than our contemporaries. We walked around the school, which was the size of a small village, and the adults kept an eye on us. If Mum wanted us home for tea she’d just ring round the other housemasters, starting with the most likely, to see if we were playing with their kinds and then the housemaster’s wife would come and tell us it was time for tea. This was standard procedure for all of them so we got to play alone much more than we might have done.

During this time, most of the kids I hung out with were my brother’s age so they were boys. As a result, their first priority was to teach me the most important things in life, how to kick a ball properly and how to not throw like a girl.

Actually, I used to be able to throw reasonably well but I’ve never managed to get a chuffing ball to go that far overarm, maybe it’s the bingo wings interfering with it or something, there seems to be a bit too much flexion in my arms and not enough … um … hurl. Yeh, whatever it is, they failed. My nine year old can throw as far as me. Anyway, on with the story.

My brother decided, when I was four, that he must teach me to throw over arm. After weeks of intensive coaching, I did finally crack it and could do a very passable overarm throw for a four year old girl. The day came when one of the lads had his birthday party. There we were, a massive group of kids running riot on the lawn and I was anxious to show my throwing prowess. Anxious but nervous. Some of the boys were throwing a lump of wood about, the foot rest from one of those turned wood chairs (check name). The point came when it landed at my feet.

‘Hey, I can do this!’ I thought and I picked it up. Flung my arm back over my head to get a really good overarm lob on it and … oh dear … let go. The wood flew up into the air, hit a window, which broke and landed back at my feet in a shower of glass.

The others stared at me in silence.

I had no idea if they were horrified at my pathetic attempts at throwing properly, or just thought the way the glass had showered down on me was really cool. All I could think of was how surprised I was that the throwing had gone so badly.

Never mind, I’d remembered how it felt to throw, muscle memory and all that, I would be able to throw over arm.

The window belonged to the house next door and the housemaster of said house came striding across the lawn looking a bit stern.

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You did what???

‘Oi! You’ve just broken a window.’

‘I’m very sorry, I said.’

He looked up at the window and down at me and the piece of wood.

‘What on earth were you doing?’ he asked.

With complete confidence in my newly acquired throwing prowess I replied,

‘I was just trying to do this!’

I picked up the piece of chair and threw it, over arm, towards the assembled crowd.

Except I didn’t.

I did exactly the same thing again. And guess what?

Yep, you’d better believe it.

I broke another window.

Which just goes to show that even when you are absolutely sure of yourself, and have the most well-meaning intentions, it’s sometimes best to be cautious, engage your head as well as your heart and think before you act, otherwise, it can all backfire horribly.

In light of the storm rocking the independent publishing world this week, it seems that’s still an important lesson.