The Word Cloud

The Winner of our Joke Competition has only recently been subjected to a rather in-depth 'probe' from the gorgeous Debi & Emma. It has left his work in a near perfect state but unfortunately he is still quaking in a corner and not up to another session with them!

With the blessing of Guero Davilo the Cloud is passing the prize to the next best joke...so the new winner is Steve for his tattoist joke:
Bernard goes into a tattooist’s.
“I’d like you to tattoo my girlfriend’s name on my penis. Can you do that?”
“I can,” says the tattooist. “But it’s very painful. I’ll have to give you an anaesthetic. What’s your girlfriend’s name?”
“She’s called Wendy.”
So the tattooist does his stuff, but when Bernard comes round all he can see is a ‘W’ and a ‘Y’ on his cock.
“Don’t worry,” says the tattooist. “When you get an erection, your girlfriend’s name will be there in full. If you like, go into the toilets in the back and check it out.”
So Bernard goes into the toilets, does what he has to do, and there is his girlfriend’s name in all its glory. He’s very pleased. But just then another chap walks into the toilet and he’s got ‘W’ and ‘Y’ on his cock as well.
“Is your girlfriend’s name Wendy?” Bernard asks.
“Naaaah, mine say Welcome to Jamaica and have a nice day.”

Brace yourself Steve - Debi & Emma will be heading your way!

Thanks for all your variously silly, cheeky and witty entries for the joke competition. After much guffawing and chuckling the office has decided that the joke from Guero Davila was the one that tickled us the most!

 So Guero, you now have the absolute pleasure of a Prose Probe from our fab duo Debi & Emma.

Special mention goes to Steve for his Tattoist joke and Barb for her Four Fonts... we really did like them all.
For all those who weren't so lucky don't despair, Emma and Debi's fabulous self-editing course is still bookable, still has space enough for you and still stars the gorgeous gals themselves  just pop along to their super-fandabulous SELF-EDITING course

I received a great book for my birthday, one that helps get your paranormal ducks in a row so that your created world and creatures behave with logic and are consistent. Lots of guidelines that help to stop your reader going "huh?' when something that wasn't possible in chapter 2 suddenly is in chapter 14.

For anyone interested in this genre, I can highly recommend it. Some of the exercises make you answer questions that then trigger off plot ideas. For example, if you're going to write about vampires:
1. How do they become one?
2. How can you kill them?
3. What does the sun do to them?

Garlic? Crosses? Holy water?

There's some of these that almost feel prescribed - as if you have to stick to a certain lore. But where is that lore coming from?

It's a popular "belief" that vampires combust and turn to immediate dust in the sun, but this is a more recent development. The myth stories had them not coping with the light as they'd been buried in a grave for a while. If you're creating a paranormal world, then the rules are whatever you say they are: human torch, slight discomfort, sparkling. (Calm down, calm down).

Once you have these rules, they have to be communicated to the reader. This is hopefully without an info dump. Which brings me to something I've seen which I thought was a great way to go about it.

A recent work avoidance technique I have been employing is to watch back to back episodes of the series "Moonlight". The interview scene at the start of this is a very clever device for setting the rules of this world.

Here tis:

Such fun meeting up with Debi again this afternoon at the Fox in S London where she was leading a workshop for the East Dulwich Writers' Group.

The Group has produced not one, but two anthologies of their own short stories all thououghly edited and illustrated by themselves - a tallented group. This is born out by the fact that their first volume came second in a national anthology comp, only to be surpassed by their next volume which came first!

The group's other claim to fame is that it inspired Debi to start writing about a decade or so ago - and as we all know she has never looked back.

It was good to see Whisks there, too, floating in from te Cloud and to meet Debi's other half and a crowd of other lovely folk from the writers' group. Maybe we'll see a few of them looking in here soon (Come on in East Dulwich; the writing's lovely!).

Needless to say everyone agreed that Debi gave us plenty of food for thought. A great workshop, and it was free! Thanks Debi and all my other new friends. We must do it again.

Quandary alert!

Ok so I used to work in Darlington as a Building Surveyor/ Architectural assistant. I left in 2005 after 1st child because I found out the 2 peeps they hired to take over my work load while I was on maternity leave (note it took 2 people to do my work) were both getting paid more than me. I found a job closer to home that paid a lot more money. Unfortunately that job disolved after 6 years when I was made redundant in April 2011.

So I have been unemployed for 6 months. In that time I have resolved myself to never go back into the building industry ever again. I have applied to do a PGCE next year so that I can train to be an Art teacher. I am in fact awaiting confirmation of my interview.

This morning I got an email from an ex colleague from the Darlington job, saying that one of the guys has left the building department and that they have been trying to contact me to see if I want my old job back.

I don't know what to do. I'm working 16 hours a week in a shop at the moment. The job's great but it's minimum wage. My old job pays more than what a newly qualified teacher makes *but* - it's going backwards isn't it? Or is it? Plus the commute was 45mins drive each way- which isn't a killer but I'd need to get the kids to school in the morning. Ah but I'd have a real wage coming in.

I don't know what to do.
What should I do?

When you plan your ‘Bestseller’ you can do it in one of two ways: write the story you want to read in the bathtub or write the story everybody else wants to read in the bathtub. Occasionally, for example, the wonderful J K Rowling and her Harry Potter books, the two coincide, but usually, 99.999999999% of the time, they don’t. So, which to choose? Well, it depends on you and why you decided to spend the next year or so torturing yourself at a keyboard. If there’s a wonderful but totally unmarketable story in you and you think ‘Hell to it! I’m gonna write it anyway!’ then I think ‘Good for you’ and ‘Go for it’ but sadly, the hard, inescapable truth is you probably won’t sell very many. But maybe that’s ok. Maybe to you the book is simply a trophy, to sit happily on a shelf in the front room just over the TV so anybody who visits will spot it, particularly Cousin-Alfred who always seems to have a much bigger car than you. But, if you decide to check out the market and try to write a book that fills a niche, then, in my opinion, you’re not just a writer, you’re an author too.

When I wrote my latest children’s novel, The Gullfoss Legends, I decided to spend a lot of my time pouring over the primary school curriculum for English and consequently I discovered the importance of myths and legends, historical setting and understanding a different culture, to teachers responsible for stocking the book cupboard. Consequently my novel is based on a legend in Iceland in the early 1900s. BINGO! My book fulfills three of the key elements of the school curriculum. Now, when I market my book to schools, parents and even the odd library, I can explain this to them. The result: I pre-sold 90% of the 500 books initially planned to be printed before they had even been printed! I sold thousands of my first set of books all about a girl called Felicity Brady who finds a magic bookshop (Felicity Brady and the Wizard’s Bookshop), and I realistically plan to sell 6,500 Gullfoss Legends in the next academic year. But to do this I must do a colossal amount of marketing. This is helped by the fact I already had a market in mind i.e. schools, prior and during the writing of the novel.

But if you too wish to market your children’s book to schools then STOP! THINK! There’s an awful lot to do. You can’t just pop in the school, set up a table in the hall and sign away. First, you must persuade the literacy co-ordinators to allow you to visit. This is no easy task! I offer free literacy workshops - this gets me in the door - but I’m an ex-secondary school English teacher so I (sort of) know what I’m doing. Also, if you suffer from stage fright, this might not be the route for you. I visit approx. 200 primary schools in the UK a year and I talk to small groups of children (20 or so) and large groups of children (up to 1,000!) so it’s important you enjoy being stared at by so many critical eyes. And my job in these workshops is not just to educate; I must entertain too. Basically, my job is to get them to laugh, and by doing so, get them to learn (and buy a book too).

I no longer teach; I’m a full-time author, so I guess my workshops must be a success. I think (hope) they get better and better. Last year I spoke to over 27,000 children just in London. My secret formula to a good workshop for kids: energy, lots and lots of energy. I do get fantastic feedback from teachers and pupils and they do buy a lot of my books. And doing this: writing and giving workshops; well, I would not give it up for anything. Half of my life is spent writing and half in front of a hall full of kids. Wonderful fun!

Knowing the market for your book also helps when you’re looking for a publishing contract with the ‘Big Boys!’  Often a publisher wants to know how you, the author, see the market for your book. If you can confidently tell them you planned and wrote the book with an affluent market in mind then Bob’s y’ uncle and y’ best pal too. Even better if you self published your book and now with so many orders flooding in you need help!

I understand many authors believe a book is sacred and the idea of a marketing plan prior to writing it is sacrilege. I guess Tolkien did not have multi-million dollar films in mind when he wrote The Lord of the Rings, and nor did C S Lewis when Aslan growled in his mind. But we live and write now, and now is a much more competitive world with wild, hungry packs of authors all juggling for shelf space and a publishing contract. So think market. I knew prior to writing The Gullfoss Legends that there was a tourist centre by the waterfalls. Now, there’s my market, I thought, and happily, they ordered a truck-full.

Just a note on bookshops. Personally I think most of them want too big a cut and frankly, unless you do a book signing or your novel hits it big, your book will be lost on a tiny shelf in a dusty, slightly cobwebby corner of the shop. The trick to self publishing is to sell direct and the trick to selling direct is to identify a market you can tap directly in to. No greedy middle men!

Finally, the title of the book. These days, think Google and think Amazon. Do not choose a title that will get lost in the vast world of the internet. For example, if you decide to call your new fantasy book, ‘The Wizard and His Magic Wand!’ then anybody looking for your book who puts the title in Google will be met with an eye-popping 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 hits (most of them probably rather unusual and very creative porn!). With The Gullfoss Legends, Gullfoss is a word which is only associated with the waterfall in Iceland I’m writing about. Consequently, there are hundreds, not trillions of hits for ‘Gullfoss’ on Google so my book has a chance of being discovered on the first page or two of the results.

So, if you want to self publish your novel, wonderful! The very best of luck to you. But if you want to sell it and sell it ‘BIG!’ then you can’t just be a writer, you must be a very enterprising entrepreneur too. And the time to be that entrepreneur is when you plan the book. Basically, first think ‘Market’ and then think ‘Book’.

Billy Bob Buttons, the pen name of Edward H Trayer, is the author of six independently published books and the organizer of The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards (www.thewsa.co.uk), the first independent book award based in the UK. His next YA book, TOR Assassin Hunter, will  be in the shops in February, 2012.

Visit his website: www.felicitybrady.co.uk.

Honeysuckle Trace

 

A gaping hole is all I see, where lately honeysuckle spread.

A sweet smell with a memory, intoxicated with dread

The light is fading and the shadows call

The dark invading, colours pall. 

Is it really time to make that call? and put sanity on the line.

 

I pause, the calm before the squall.

But, I cannot hide forever – not this time.  Could I ever?

My delusions are fading.  Can I sever their intrusions, degrading?

A voice makes me turn and shudder.

He speaks softly, but I recognise his stutter

 

Another chance - is it worth a go?

"The honeysuckle - all cut down?" The answer a resounding no.

"But - I saw the gap. And why the frown?"

He reaches out to dry a tear. 

Familiar scent, warm embrace - let me forget the place...

 

My honeysuckle mind erase - Memories lost without a trace

 

 

Composed by: Kate7, Islander8, Panther & Tony

A very interesting thread on the ever-wonderful (albeit sometimes in a car-crash kind of way)  and very necessary Absolute Write, thrashing out a good many of the myths which are peddled about self-publishing, and the truths underlying them.

http://ht.ly/5Xe1o

Emma

I find that I write scenes from my book which I don't intend to include in it. These are usualy back story, which I need to explore but wont necessarily end up as being more than a one line reference in the finished book, if that. I just find it helps to develop the motivation of my characters.

Below is one I wrote today, which happens in the boyhood of one my secondary main character. As the book is told from the POV of my female MC, who wasn't born when this took place, I don't think I can use it in my book - although I am tempted to have it as a kind of after thought at the end, as it lays out the fundemntal reason why the character reacts as he does in later life. Anyway, here it is - would be interested to hear what you do for your book, which remains unseen.



 

The ice cart guy comes round the corner of the street. It’s hot, and the lull in the afternoon has been waiting for him. Heads pop up from their refuges in the shade, and there is a flurry of activity as kids run in to beg for quarters. Those with enough foresight to be prepared, clutched coins in hot fists and start to gather on the sidewalk.

            ‘Lemon ice,’ the shout goes up. ‘Lemon ice, cherry lemon ice, I got lemon ice.’

On another day, Gregory might have done the same. He looks up and watches the man make his entrance into the street, but he’s not getting up today. The arrives of the iceman, makes him stiffen and tense on his stoop. Next to him, his friend Petrov stiffens also, giving himself away as his foot jiggles nervously on the step.

            Gregory is too old to show his desire for ice so freely, but it’s not just that which makes him grit his teeth, rather than run down. Two days ago, he fought Michael Savo for the right to walk Mary O’Toole home from school, and he’d won. The Italian boys all loved her, because she was Catholic but fair, with her cascade of red curls and the freckles across the bridge of her nose. Gregory wasn’t a Catholic; his mother was Jewish and his father drank, but that didn’t stop him wanting to walk Mary home and carry her books. When he did, had been king for a day.

            Michael had older brothers, as did Gregory, but Michaels older brothers were going to be told of the insult. Michael and his older brothers, Paul and Andrew, could now be seen, entering the street behind the lemon iceman.

            Petrov wasn’t going to be much help. He was younger than Gregory, he only tolerated him because he was another Russian boy in the block; and his older brothers were off on their own concerns. He looked grimly down at Petrvo, thinner, lighter and fair as an alter boy. Petrov tried to give him a reassuring grimace in return, but his face was bleached with fear.

            ‘Yo’, you there?’ Paul Savo shouted as they passed the ice seller and came closer to Gregory’s stoop. ‘Yo’, red, you up there?’ Gregory looked at Petrov again, and, clasping his firsts to his sides, stoop up to face them.

Gregory had begun to grow at an alarming rate since the start of the year, his mother was always telling him how shocked she was at his increasing height. He was taller than Michael Savo, and looking down on the three of them, he tried to imagine that he was as tall as his oldest brother, Demitre, who was not there.

            ‘You – you knocked my kid brother down.’ Paul stated; his thin, adolescent arms crossed across his chest, in the manner of a man much older. He was wearing a red shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, and his thick, black hair was collar length at the back.

            ‘So?’ Gregory said, hoping that his monosyllabic response would indicate confidence, not the fear he felt inside.

            ‘He’s just a little kid, what, you some kind of animal, you commie bastard?’ Gregory was momentarily impressed to hear Paul use such an adult word. Bizzarely, he drew strength from it.

            ‘So what? I knock you down too.’ Paul’s voice was lyrically Italian, in comparison; Gregory thought his voice sounded stilting and guttural. He could speak English pretty well, better than his parents, but still he couldn’t understand most of what was said by his teachers at school. Still, he sat at the back, and looked out of the window, unless Mary was reading to the class.

            ‘You come down here and say that!’ Paul demanded. Drawn by the noise, some of the neighbourhood kids were starting to wander over, some with ices in hand. Gregory folded his arms now, to mimic Paul, and stated as boldly as he could.

            ‘I hit you, wop.’ He uses the word his father had used, and he could see Paul and his brother’s flinch at it. He expects them to rush him now, drag him from the stoop and start to beat him. He braces himself  - but their upturned faces go from outrage, to submission.

            In the same second that Paul un-crossed his arms and, flapping the air with is hand, turned away from Gregory; in the same second Gregory felt a rush of exhilaration at his assumed victory; a great hand closes on his shoulder.

            Petrov jumps up, and half trips himself down the stoop with the scramble to get away, and Gregory turns to see his father behind him.

            ‘Get in here boy!’ His father snarls, and, knowing that it’s too late to run, Gregory gives the stoop, the street and the watching chorus of kids a final glance, before submitting to his fate.

            His father drags him from the asphalt heat, into the dim, stuffy hallway, which smells of wood polish and paint. He can’t see much in the gloom, his eyes have been sun washed half blind by the stand off; but as he stumbles up the stairs, his vision returns.

            His father is wearing check pants and a white vest, and Gregory knows he has been drinking. He always drinks, what matters now is how much. It’s three o’clock, so things were either going to be good, or they weren’t. Any later in the day, and he would have been doomed, but there is still hope.

            His father shoves him into their apartment, and Gregory sees his mother’s pale, concerned face for an instant, before he’s in the lounge.

            ‘Have you been doing it again?’ His Father demands, speaking in Russian as he always does.

            ‘Doing what, papa?’

            ‘That old Irish bitch upstairs, she said that Russian boys have been knocking at her door again. Russian boys she said, like we were niggers!’

            ‘No papa.’

            ‘No?’ His father jabs his finger in Gregory’s face.

            ‘Sasha, Sasha he’s said.’ Gregory’s mother puts her hand on her husbands arm. She’s wearing a blue dress with a white collar and she looks tired. ‘He said it was not him.’

            ‘Who was it boy? Was it your brothers?’

            ‘Yes papa, it was them.’ Gregory knows it was them. They should be too old for such childish stunts, but they had done it anyway. His father starts unbuckling his belt. All the bravado of the stoop leaves Greogory, his face is like Petrovs.

            ‘No papa, please, it was them, it was!’ He cries.

            ‘Sasha please!’ His mother tried again, but his father pulls away from her and shouts,

            ‘That old Irish bitch thinks we are no better than niggers; she thinks I have no control in my house.’ Now he’s pointing at himself, ‘I come here, to be called a Polack and a nigger by these peasants?’

            ‘But it wasn’t him!’ His mother says again.

            ‘No,’ his father pushes her, so she staggers back a few steps, ‘but he is here.’

            ‘Don’t you lay hand to me!’ his mother pushes her husband back, though the impact hardly moves him.

            ‘Go to the shop!’ Sasha retorts, ‘and let me be man in my house!’

His mother looks at Greogory, and then she fetches her purse from the side table, and leaves. The apartment door slams shut behind her. Turning back to his son, Sasha lowers his voice and says.

            ‘Listen to me, boy. You never forget, we are Russian. We never betray our brothers, and we never run from a beating.’ He takes his belt out of his trousers, and wraps the buckle end round his fist. ‘In this country, we are guilty.’ He says, ‘but if you are a man and take a beating, then the blows will always be less, than the ones your brothers give you, for betraying them.’

            Gregory turns his back on his father, and balls his fists to his sides again. He bites down as hard, as the belt sings through the air and cuts across his back.

            ‘Remember boy,’ his father’s effort makes the words catch in his chest. ‘The informer,’ Slap, ‘always,’ Slap, ‘gets whipped,’ Slap, ‘first.’

 

            After it’s over, his father gets him a soda from the icebox, and gives him a quarter to get a lemon ice. But the iceman has gone, when he gets back to the stoop.

 

 

In the real world, I am inching toward débuting my first childrens clothing collection at a large trade fair, at the Business Design centre, Islington.

 

The world of clothing being pretty much the same no matter whom it’s aimed at; I am preparing for a photo shoot this weekend, which means getting a sample collection made up and sent to me in time.

 I’m not going to go into the long winded and nearly year long process it has been to find manufactures who will work with me, as I am a small (read poor) business at the moment; but yesterday I had a delivery from a company who produce organic cotton clothes, and my England contact had arranged to come over with the silk bridesmaid outfits, produced in India by her fair trade factory.

 

On opening the cotton box, I discovered that, although 2/3 rds of the pieces were perfect, the rest had all been made in the wrong fabrics and colours. Hmmm.

 

Then Lucy arrived with the silk dresses, and we discovered that every one of them had been made with a part on backwards, despite the fact that I had already approved a sample which was accurate, and which they had for reference.

 

To add indult to injury, Lucy’s 2-year-old daughter did a wee on my rug.

 

Such is life.

 

Today, I will be sewing on labels, and trying to re-make one of the silk dresses so it might be ok in a photo. And my number one model has chicken pox.

 

Bet Richard Branson never had to deal with people peeing on his rug!