… I didn’t read a new book this week. Or write a book review. Oops. As such, I’m going to review a book I read some time ago today, and for the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to read two books a week to make up for this week and last week’s slips.
Now, the book I want to talk about is one very close to my liver, in that I have a lot of bile related to it: “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that before I published my first poetry book “Under the Tree” via CreateSpace and Kindle, I published a first edition using Blurb!
Here’s a comparison between the two versions. The current Kindle cover is on the right; the first edition, the left!
Well it’s been rather quiet and empty here for a while, hasn’t it? I meant to update weeks ago, but what can I say? Life’s been incredibly busy for me recently. I graduated from university with a First, I moved into a new bedroom, and I’ve started a Master’s Degree. But that’s no excuse for going completely silent here, and for that I apologise. On the plus side, though, I’ve got three big bits of news to share with you. So let’s get going!
First of all, I shared on my Facebook recently that I’d written three articles for International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom (IPW:UK), a Kent-based wrestling company, to use in their show programmes. I’m happy to announce that this has now become a regular thing and in all likelihood, I will be contributing to their programmes for the foreseeable future!
This includes: event reviews (like the one of Future 8 in the second 11YA programme); match previews (like the one for Sammy Smooth versus Tommaso Ciampa in the Just Too Good programme); and focus pieces (like the one about the GZRS in the Supershow 2015 programme).
IPW:UK do programmes at most of their main shows and they’re available free with a VIP ticket purchase or for a small fee at the event. If you’re interested in reading some of the stuff I write about wrestling these days, check it out!
Zillion Press bought a piece of flash fiction from me for their anthology “Polychrome Ink: Volume II”. It’s a little piece inspired by my own struggles with writer’s block and depression called “That Dreamy Girl”.
The entire anthology can be bought online from the publisher’s website or from various other places including Amazon and Createspace. To find all the purchasing options, click this link to Zillion Press’s Store page and give it a look.
And finally, the big news I’ve been taunting you with for quite a while.
You may remember that for my Final Year Independent Study for my BA, I created a playlist of ten poetry videos. If you enjoyed those, celebrate: I have poems written for five more.
Yes, you read that correctly: I have five more poetry videos ready to be made. But these won’t be going on YouTube! Instead, I’ll be putting the these five new videos, plus the ten from YouTube and some “Making Of” type features, onto a DVD!
Right now, I still have to undergo the filming process for the new videos, so this probably won’t be happening until somewhere around the summer of 2016. I’ll keep you updated on the progress as I start filming and let you know how everything goes.
Oh, and here’s the playlist for the old videos in case you never got around to watching them!
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that I post a lot of selfies. And those selfies tend to be tagged with things like #IAmVeryPretty or #IAmCuteToday.
It occurred to me that if you don’t know me, you might assume I’m conceited or big-headed.
I’m not. There’s another reason I tag my photos that way.
I’ve been posting on Readwave for almost a year now. I’ve submitted articles, poems and stories. And they’ve all found a good number of readers.
But none of my articles have been on the homepage before.
I’ve written about bullying. I’ve written about annoying television adverts. And I’ve written about comparing myself with other people.
But if I could only have one article go the distance, I’m so glad that it’s #FakeItTilYouMakeIt.
I believe that everyone deserves to feel happy about the way they look. Good self-esteem and body positivity are vital in a world that tells us we’re ugly so they can then sell us things.
And the thought that my journey towards self-acceptance is helping others is so heartwarming to me.
And you might think that’s not true for a writer. After all, we have it easy, don’t we?
Don’t we spend all day sitting around, making up fantasies in our heads? Aren’t we lucky to do what we love for a living? Shouldn’t we be grateful for what we have?
Yes and no.
Most writers don’t spend all their time writing. I know I don’t.
Yes, the people who create it are using characters that belong to other people without permission.
But we’re not making money from the things we write. So we’re not technically breaking the law.
So why do we write fanfiction?
Because we love the original stories. It’s all about love.
So that’s why fanfiction isn’t bad. But I’d like to go a step further.
I think fanfiction is good for us.
When we write fanfiction, we can focus on putting together a plot. We can experiment with new formats of storytelling. And we can do things we would never dare do in an original piece.
