The Word Cloud

My face dropped, blood drained to my feet, “Go on, it’s only 15 minutes” they said, “It’ll be fine, we’ll be there to support you” they said. “Go on, go on, go on” they continued until all I could see in my mind was Mrs. Doyle pushing a tray of cakes into my hand but instead of a delicious ice bun I was being offered the chance to perform my writing in front of…other writers and performers.

 I tried desperately not to look them in the eye, scared that their extreme enthusiasm would jump out and bite me on the ass, infecting me with a sudden desire to embarrass and possibly scar myself for life. There were 3 of us and 2 of them.

 One by one they fell, until I was the last woman standing. The word ‘Yes’ eventually prized itself out of my mouth, falling upon a table of very satisfied people. My only saving grace is I have until June to write something that can warrant an audience and luckily I won’t be alone.

 This has led me to ponder the question “Am I a face or am I a voice? Can we actually be one or the other to make it as successful writers or do we have to be both?”

Dyslexia – aMAZEing Words.

 

At age seven I could barely read and couldn’t read at all. The words on a page held endless fascination for me but they remained a mystery. I couldn’t understand why everyone else had so little difficulty. I failed every spelling test and had become used to such teacher utterances as:

“Oh Orla! You really must put more effort in.”

“Orla-Jo, miss”

“Well I’ll get you’re name right when you hand me up an exercise that looks like it’s written in English”

 

But just before I turned eight my life was saved by a two Wizards and a Hobbit.

 

My brother also had trouble reading. He had hidden it well but at thirteen, people were starting to notice. My mother bought a copy of Harry Potter because she had heard it was good for boys Sean’s age. I went with her to the book shop and stared in confusion at all the kids my age reading pages filled with black symbols that seemed to move around the page like little ants.

The older of my two brothers was with us too. I followed him quietly to his favourite section, fantasy and science-fiction. Miserably I watched his face light up while flicking through the shiny paperbacks. On spotting me staring Eamon sighed and called me over. He picked a book at random and started to tell me the story.

“Dragons, Eamy, really?”

Eamon clipped the back of my head.

“Don’t call me Eamy, boy remember stupid.”

“Eamon don’t hit your sister!”

My mum had reappeared. She caught my longing glance at the shelf and spotted something good. A graphic novel version of ‘The Hobbit’ by JRR Tolkien, which was mainly pictures and speech bubbles with only some narrative writing which someone could read to me but I could follow the story without.

I gazed in wonder at the beautiful drawings of dwarves and wizards, trolls and goblins, hobbits and giants. Best of all I like the Elves in forests and the dragon Smog. I would go through it hundreds of times a day. Slowly working my way through the dialogue a speech bubble per reading. But the fantasy universe had captured my soul so completely that I could never have been satisfied at that.

 

Every night during this time my mother and Sean would sit on the sofa reading Harry Potter. She would read half a chapter, then Sean. I would sat and listen to the story, totally captivated.

 

Then one night in the lead up to Christmas I was sitting in the sitting room of my mother’s friend while they had a very boring conversation. It was then I noticed a copy of Harry Potter on the coffee table as it was on every coffee table at this time. Out of sheer boredom I picked it up.

“What the hell” I thought.

At first it was as it always was. The words ran their ant-like race in all directions, but soon my memory of the story helped me decipher their magical code. Two hours later when my mother realised how long she’d been talking for she nearly died of shook to find me pouring over a book with no pictures in sight.

From then I read every fantasy novel I could get my little eight year old hands on. All three Lord of the Rings, Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingermen, Moon of Gomrath and The Owl Service flew beneath my hands as my reading level; much to the shock to all my teachers began to surpass that of all my class mates. When at ten I sank my teeth into Sense and Sensibility but still couldn’t spell “orange” with writing “organge” my mother took me and my brother to get assessed for dyslexia.

 

I remember that grey waiting room well. My brother and I holding hands for the first time in five years as if our very lives were at stake; I remember his furtive whisper too.

“What if we’re not dyslexic? What if we’re just stupid?”

I was too nervous to answer so I just gulped.

To no ones surprise we were dyslexic and extremely dyslexic at that. Various patronising remedial classes later I found myself with a called Mrs Nixon and a free government laptop.

 

Every now and again I would have nightmares where I couldn’t read and write anymore and no one thought I was clever anymore. I would wake up in cold sweats but it was just a dream.

 

I learned how to touch type and learned the wonders of the Spell Check.

And so writing began…and whole new path to the fantasy dreams of my muddled youth.

Hi to everyone! Let me share to you my thoughts and plans about my career because I also want to get suggestions or what other people think about it.
Ever since I was a child, I loved and really liked reading books and fairy tale stories. When I was already in college, my liking of reading books has never stopped and I kept on reading and reading many books especially fictional books which I really adore such as Harry Potter and Twilight. I've also been quite fond of writing my diaries, custom essay, quotes and practicing a little bit of article writing back then.
Right now, I've been working as a Quality Analyst in a private company and doing freelance writing services. I've also been disciplined to myself so I really loved my role and at the same time I can pursue my passion in writing by doing extra work at home.
Recently, another company has offered me a job of being a creative writer of their company. The salary is a bit lower than my previous job and the company is quite new so the crowd is still quite small but there are benefits that are really good for me. So I can't really decide whether should I take the offer or not. I'm balancing both the pro's and con's of each job but it is still quite hard for me to decide. I really don't want to make a bad decision so I'm hoping whether I should really follow my passion of becoming a writer or not.
I'm hoping to get suggestions from other people or comments about these. Well, wish me luck too!

Well, after quite a bit of hassle, we're now back in Germany on a lovely campsite.

It was our wedding anniversary yesterday, so we went for lunch in a nearby restaurant.  I had pork fillet with 'spatzle' - noodles to you and me.

Why do the Germans eat such a lot of pork? Everywhere we go there's pork on the menu. I haven't seen lamb at all, and only seen beef once!

On the way through Germany, we drove along the Mosel, which was beautiful with miles and miles of vineyards. We've also driven along the Rhine, been through the Black Forest, to the Argau, down to Bodensee, then through Bavaria and into Austria, which was great fun - not!

Because the motorhome is over 3.5 tonnes, we had to buy a 'Go Box' for Austria, which bleeps everytime you go past a gantry and you have to pay for the roads you use. The problem we had was, when we crossed the border from Germany to Austria, we had to find a filling station who sold the bloody things, then when we did find somewhere, they wanted us to pre-load it with €80, which was enough for about 500 kilometres. We wouldn't be doing anything like that amount of miles, so, we tried to find another  place to get one. The next station didn't sell them. The next one did but they also wanted €80. Apparently, that's the minimum you can put on it.

Now bear in mind we are doing this trip on a budget, that's a lot of money to us - we could have 6 nights camping for that. We had no choice but to buy it though, because without one we could be fined, so after coming out to discuss things, hubby went back in, only to be told their power had now gone, so they couldn't sell us one. So, we drove to another station, who didn't do them.

I'm a great believer is 'signs'.  In other words, if something seems to be conspiring to stop you doing something, you should take note, and I was beginning  to think that maybe we weren't meant to be in Austria.

Anyway, the next place after that did have one, so we got it, put it on the windscreen and drove on looking for our campsite. It was a bit weird when the box thing bleeped every few minutes.

We finally got to the campsite at 7:00 pm, only to find they had no wifi or internet and we couldn't get a TV signal. Great! 

In the summer when the weather was good and it stayed light until 11:00 pm, no internet or Tv didn't bother us too much, as we sat outside with a glass of wine - or two - watching the world go by and chatting. We were also in Spain and Portugal, and there were other UK people there too.

In Austria, it was raining, dark, and we were the only UK people on the whole campsite, so we were stuck in the van with nothing to do - well we have books, but we've done a lot of reading already!

So the next morning, we decided enough was enough and we headed back to Germany. We made sure we stopped on the way and got our money back for the 'Go Box' though - we got €56 back.

The site we are now on, has free wifi, we can get a TV signal and the weather is good.

See, I knew we should have taken notice of the 'signs' and just gone back to Germany!

The Austrian government don't make it easy for tourists that's for sure. Even cars have to have a Vignette sticker, which you pay for on a monthly basis, so we won't be going there again.

The plan now is to stay here for a bit, then maybe go back to France for a while, then we'll decide what to do after that. We're trying to work out what to do for the winter, but I think we may end up going back to England.

One advantage to being stuck in the van is that I get a lot of editing done, but even that gets to be a chore when you're doing it night after night.

This trip has certainly been interesting so far - we've been travelling since 6th April, and had a super time, but all good things must come to an end I suppose. Gosh it will be weird living in a house again after spending months living in a motorhome! 

Well, TTFN, catch you later,

Kat x

We're staying at Longleat - there's a campsite right in the grounds, so we go to sleep at night to the roar of lions and other animals!

We woke up at 3:00 am yesterday morning, and heard all sorts of weird noises, which was a bit scary; I imagined a lion lying in wait for anyone stupid enough to leave their caravan/motorhome.

We spent the day in Longleat yesterday. We took a safari bus round and got some fantastic photos of one of the tigers - she was really close to us, then we got the boat around the lake and saw the gorilla, who is on an island by himself, but he doesn't get too lonely as he's got satelite TV - honest, it's true. Apparently he watches it in the mornings and before he goes to bed. Wonder what his favourite programme is?

Lord Bath was also in his house, signing copies of his latest book, but we didn't bother popping in for afternoon tea!

This travelling lark's giving me too much time to think. I've been pondering on the most bizarre things, like why does all my favourite food start with 'CH' - like chips, cheese, chocolate, cheesecake, choritzo, and why do my dishes have an awful smell after I've washed them sometimes?

I have managed to get quite a bit of editing done though, and I'm waiting to hear if a recent short story has been accepted, so it's not all wasted time.

We're off to Europe Friday, I hope the weather's better than it's been here recently.

Well, that's all for now, be good and keep writing!

Kat x

Finally got a delivery of books, only took 3 weeks!!

At the moment I feel that I'm doing lots of different things - none of them particularly well - and that writing is always coming last.  I mean, I spend most of my day writing - emails, newsletters, blog posts - but not the stuff I really want to write.

It's always: "once I've finished this", "as soon as I've got through my emails", "when that's all tidied up".  I'm starting to think the real writing time is never going to come.

The bright spot on the horizon is maternity leave - 6 months to write!

Or 6 months to lose sleep and wash nappies.

I guess it depends on whether I'm a nappy half empty or half full kind of girl...

So this is my last blog entry for the next two weeks, based on the fact I'm heading to Frances for two weeks (But I'm guessing the title might've made that clear), so this will be the last one I'll write....so for now I leave you with a link to my Triond page letting ya take a gander of some of the articles I've written.

Also got my mind onto a new idea about a little of a Wolf and Cat beginning with a healthy dose of humour and slowly progressing into darker areas on the idea of isolation, pain and fear. So if you like the sound of it, leave a comment on it.

Link to Triond: https://www.triond.com/users/Meta+Tam+When+Hi+Non

No goodbyes since I'm coming back.

So, today is officially the publication day of the paperback of my second novel, A Secret Alchemy. And bugger-all is happening, except for a lovely card from my editor and her assistant. But then I knew it wouldn't be. For a start, 'real' publication was back last November: it's the hardback which garners reviews (you hope); is waved at the book trade; given, lovingly inscribed, to your granny (the rest of the family and friends should bloomin' well shell out); sold to the libraries. But the big sales push has been for the paperback, newly garlanded with those review quotes, and just in time for the festival season.

And such are the peculiarities of the book trade that, actually, A Secret Alchemy has been available for a couple of weeks online and in the shops.  Best of all, last week it was The Times' Recommended Read, available in W H Smith for £2.99, if you bought the paper. It's the kind of promotion you hope and pray and try not to murder your stablemates at your publishers' for, because it can do magical things to sales: according to Bookscan, last week A Secret Alchemy was officially the 14th biggest selling paperback fiction in the UK.

Now that's a one-week-only appearance, obviously. I may be wedged between Katie Fforde and Val McDermid, but they'll still be there in quite a few weeks. But though the promotion costs my publisher a fortune, it means that there are now several thousand people with copies in their hands, who might buy my first novel The Mathematics of Love, or seek out my third. I'm not a total newbie in the sales charts: TMOL made no.7 in the Heatseekers chart, which is made up of the bestsellers among books by authors who haven't appeared in the main charts. But to have my second novel - "that difficult second novel" - an official bestseller, however fleetingly, is amazing. On the other hand it's also disconcerting. What you can't see is that I'm not really blogging here, I'm actually slap in the middle of writing the first draft of a new novel. It's bare, it's bony, I've just realised this chapter has no plot, and I'm not at all sure I like one of my MCs. So how the f***k am I going to get it higher than no.14? And now that ASA is out there, it's no longer - I'm no longer - private. Until now, the only people who held opinions about me and what I do were people I knew. Not any more.

So, what's A Secret Alchemy about? This is my publisher's blurb, so I'll turn away and blush in private, because is there anyone who can take standard booktrade hype without blushing? To quote Four Weddings & A Funeral, "if there is, they're not English":

"Powerful and utterly convincing.'"- Daily Mail

"There is historical fiction - and there is historical fiction... It takes real skill - and devotion - to bring characters blurred by the passage of time into focus, to breathe real life into them... Emma Darwin has managed such sorcery... Passion is the key to the success of this book... Spellbinding" - The Times

Two murdered princes; a powerful queen betrayed; a nobleman riding towards his certain death...

The story of the Princes in the Tower has been one of the most fascinating - and most brutal - murder mysteries in history for more than five hundred years. In a brilliant feat of historical daring, Emma Darwin has recreated the terrible, exhilarating world of the two youngest victims of the War of the Roses: the power struggles and passion that lay behind their birth, the danger into which they fell, the profoundly moving days before their imprisonment, and the ultimate betrayal of their innocence.

In A Secret Alchemy, three voices speak: that of Elizabeth Woodville, the beautiful widow of King Edward IV; of her brother Anthony, surrogate father to the doomed Prince Edward and his brother Dickon; and that of present-day historian Una Pryor. Orphaned, and herself brought up in a family where secrets and rivalries threaten her world, Una's experience of tragedy, betrayal and lost love help her unlock the long-buried secrets that led to the princes' deaths. Weaving their stories together, Emma Darwin brilliantly evokes how the violence and glamour of past ages live on within our present.

And if that hasn't put you off, you can buy it in all good bookshops now - really truly, they should have it - or online at The Book Depository, (miles the cheapest) Waterstones, or Amazon