Way back in the eighties I recall my first introduction to No Smoking Day. I was working for the local Health Eduction Department at the time as their ‘Media Resource Officer’. Amongst the variety of stuff I did one of them was organise and mail out locally the publicity material from national campaigns to our local Health Centres, GP’s etc.

I can still remember the image on that poster and the leaflets. A blue background with a large ashtray and some anonymous hand stubbing out a filtered cigarette. Why do I remember it so clearly? Well it had me practically chain smoking in my office. Yes smoking in ones office was allowed even in the NHS back then.

Oh dear even thinking of it now makes me want a cigarette. So really not the best choice of image all those years ago.

Its been five days or 120 hours since I stopped. Not the longest I’ve ever managed. I gave up for eight weeks with the help of acupuncture once.

This time I’m using nothing but willpower, and a hypnosis CD every night to lull me to sleep.

I tried nicotine replacement once, many years ago and I’m convinced they pumped more nicotine into my body than I would have got from smoking. They’ve refined them since then. Recognising light smokers don’t need the full on patches but I’m still leery of them. If I’m pumping nicotine into my body then I’d prefer to do it the old fashioned way.

I have noted my weight, and shook my head at it, causing wobbling the length and breadth of my body. 177 lbs  is not good.

I’m going to need to exercise, I have no space left to diet. Think everything really fatty has been banished from my diet.  Look one packet of Pringles a week is banished compared to the five I was getting through a while back. The cookie dough ice cream on Friday was a bit of comfort food for three days not smoking. It shouldn’t happen again. Well not without pulling out the calculator and figuring out how much exercise I need to do to achieve a “zero growth situation vis a vis calorie intake”.

120 hours without a cigarette – Go me!

I haven’t given up I’ve simply handed the whole thing over to my right brain and asked it to see what it can come up with.

In a very loose sense I know the “bad guys” lose.  Or do they. If the ‘bad’ guys won then  the world would change. London and Europe would disappear beneath a forest of new growth. The whole world would return to one where the forces of nature rule. Next to no technology unless you wanted to be fried by lighting. Unless its made from non-conductive materials like wood, only good luck chopping down wood when the nymphs and satyrs are guarding the forests from harm.

That has a certain appeal, but it isn’t where I wanted the story to go. The ‘good’ guys are meant to win so they can go on and have more adventures in this world. Well not quite this world, but close enough that most people can continue to deny the presence of such childish fancies such as faeries.

Its a shortcoming of mine when it comes to writing, I am fine with beginnings and middles but endings elude me. I’ve got round this before by using someone else’s plot, from mythology not from novels.  Greek drama relocated to outer space. I’m pretty sure Aeschylus won’t come back and sue me for plagiarism.

Then there is the retelling of the Arthurian story from the viewpoint of the next generation.  Arthur did have sons. The evidence may not be enough for historians but its more than enough for fiction. There is around 50,000 words already written of that particular WIP.

I couldn’t use it for NaNoWriMo and this original idea of the  mysterious Coelbren really wants to be written. It just doesn’t yet know where its going.

So maybe I’ll blow the dust of the House of Atreus myths and plays I have sitting around and let left brain plot out that particular storyline and see where it goes. I may never be Shakespeare but if taking inspiration from myths and legends worked for him I’m sure I can make it work for me.

Hmmmm.

King Lear updated to the 21st Century with two of the daughters  being vapid WAG’s while the third proves herself by being her own woman. Or maybe that’s been done as a TV series  already.

Ten rules of writing 1

Ten rules of writing 2

There are a lot more than ten by the time they’re all done. Some are useful

Margaret Atwood

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

Probably says something about how rarely I fly. Not once this century; last flight I remember was sometime in the eighties to one of the Greek islands. I have been abroad once since 2000 but we used the Channel Tunnel.  I think I can just file those as useful advice for after I become a world famous author and go on world tours

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

This one from her is very sound. I suffer from back pain, better dust off that book I have and start doing the exercises. Though my computer space at home is set up to minimise pain. Very high tech I have a big bolster type cushion I have to hold in place with my back while sitting.

When I say big a cat will often sleep on it while I’m pushing it back against the chair.

Then give me dirty looks when I stand up and they tumble off it.

Philip Pullman

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

You go Phil! Oh wait reading and then blogging about them is giving in to the same temptation. Oops.

The truth is I got overwhelmed by life.

In the same week the bank chose to tell me I was overdrawn on my overdraft. Work sent out emails warning they might be considering redundancies to help meet a ridiculously large deficit (I’d tell you how much but the figure changes from between 6, 16, and 60 million depending on who’s  doing the guessing).

• The lights went out all over the house. Fuse box fuse had given up the ghost.
• Bathroom light switch broke. Needs replacing
• The microwave died. It just went from working fine to doing nothing.
• The dryer broke. On investigation it was only the door latch that has gone, if the door doesn’t latch the dryer doesn’t start.
• Teens PC died. It’s still dead, best guess is processor, he’s going to sort that himself.

Now if they had spread themselves out over five weeks instead of three days I would have just kept trucking. As it was while I didn’t quite curl up in a corner I did withdraw from the outside world.

I didn’t stop writing but what I wrote is for personal consumption only, exorcising demons mainly.

I started coming out of the funk last week and looked at my novel. Realised the whole second chapter is an info dump and the main villain just isn’t going to work. So have been  trying to find a new one and create a backstory and a motive that works.

I’ve also decided the only place I can save money to stop the bank writing me letters is if I finally stop smoking so once my  Quit Kit arrives from the NHS this might become a journal recording my attempts to achieve healthy lungs.

I’ll just repeat that: London being bombed by Germany in 1919.

I don’t need to tell you what is wrong with that do I?

I did read far enough to check there wasn’t some alternative time line being created. As the action jumped almost immediately to 2009 and mentioned in passing other major events that mark the 20th Century  it would appear not.

So I scanned the comments, someone else would have spotted the gaffe wouldn’t they? Not one comment even touched on it. I contemplated joining the site to make a comment, something simple, like “the Great War was from 1914 to 1918″.  In the end I decided against it. The site boasts a large membership already, one of it’s existing members will catch it eventually, and I’m not into ‘hit and run’ site joining.

It did irritate me though. The year WWI ended isn’t some obscure fact that is hard to find, or under any sort of dispute.

On a completely unrelated website, that I am a member of, we’ve been debating the “rules of opening paragraphs”, as provided by writing guru’s.

Oddly “Check your facts” isn’t one of them.  It should be.   Being confronted with something so obviously wrong is more of a turn off for me that any  animal MC waking up and describing the weather opening  would be.  All of which, individually, are listed as DO NOT’s

It’s the third  year in a row I’ve had to take time off work because of snow. Now you might think that means more time for writing , but it appears my creative juices freeze over when it’s cold.

A snow bound Britain may look very pretty from space but it’s much less fun when you’re in the middle of it.

We of course still have our great British eccentrics who think swimming in the Serpentine is a good way to start the day. *shiver*. I’m more inclined to reach for the Ready Brek  (porridge) and hope that ‘central heating for kids’ still works on adults.

It’s snowing as I type, and more is forecast over the weekend meaning work is looking dodgy next week too.

Meh said I had brain freeze. What I meant to write about was that back on the 19th of December I ordered “Writing Fiction for Dummies” from Amazon and they still haven’t dispatched it. Some of which is Christmas and some of which is the book itself  but now we’re into  ”Severe weather conditions are affecting deliveries across the country. Some deliveries could take 1-2 days longer than usual to be delivered.” and it still hasn’t even been dispatched.

I’m considering cancelling the order and selecting something that might actually turn up as I’ve been dithering a bit waiting for this to give me some structure to plot and edit around, but that’s a lot of days dithering. Of course whatever I order will probably get caught by the severe weather too but at least it may be in stock.

Oh well browsing the site looking will give me something to do until  midday when in the warmth of the noonday sun I’ll brave the roads and get in some food to keep us going for another week. Our cupboards are looking somewhat bare as we eat for heat.

1st Line: “When I say run, run”
Last line: “I’ll round up the bar staff and some of our more atheist regulars and distract the choir for you”

So I’m well chuffed. According to Dictonary.com that means I could be

1. delighted; pleased; satisfied.
2. annoyed; displeased; disgruntled.
3. making a noisy puffing or explosive sound, such as one made by a locomotive.

Can’t say I’ve ever used it as 2. though. The picture that’s a chuff too, though its a bit posh so we spell it chough. (and for many of my formative years I was unaware of that and thought the chough and being chuffed were somehow related)

This entry is a tad late, but I was busy reading yesterday. Have you ever heard of Modesty Blaise?  She was the lead character in a syndicated newspaper comic strip running from 1963 to 2001. As the blurb on the re-issued novels says

Well I spent yesterday getting re-acquainted with her, reading the first novel. Originally  published in 1965, when I was much, much too young to be allowed such racy, by the standards of the day, material.

Wait could I even read in 1965? Hmm just about but I’m not going to start re-reading the Ladybird Peter and Jane series if I want a dose of nostalgia.

Off the point ramble: I changed schools in 1966 and while both schools used the Keywords scheme my first school had let me off it at something like 2C because I was reading ‘proper’ books in my free time. The new school was more insistent that its pupils finished the scheme. The indignanty  of having to return to the scheme when I was way past needing it. Well I probably  chuffed (3) a lot  at the idea as I sped through to number 7  -or wherever the scheme ended then – to get the all important permission to read what I wanted.

So back on topic. I’m not sure why I was thinking ‘whatever happened to Modesty Blaise?”  Though it had something to do with reading ‘Day of the Triffids’.  Oh yes some silly passage about the best women could expect was a good man and babies, (okay it actually made sense in the context of the novel) which coming after an abortive attempt to re-read Robert Heinleins’  ”Number of the Beast” which has ’look after your man’  female leads in it I really needed to lose myself with a kick ass female lead and  Modesty came to mind.

A quick check on Amazon uk and to my surprise the books and graphic novels are in print. So I ordered the first in the series and it arrived yesterday. If I like a book a tend to gobble it up, which is what I did with Modesty yesterday, and into the small wee hours of Sunday. I’m useless at reviews but to quote Willie Garvin  ”bloody good caper”.

As finances allow I will be adding to my collection, and ignoring the faces my son is pulling at the very idea there were any kick ass females before Buffy.

He wasn’t impressed. Between my inability to explain and his lack of interest in fantasy it sort of fell flat. Not surprising really we lived together for five months  back in the early noughties and he never once  read any of the novels I have, the management self help stuff is more his speed, but it did make me realise I haven’t done a synopsis. So to avoid actually writing anything I spent time today on a cover and a very short synopsis

Becca Morris gets caught up with the Children of Annwn and a mysterious group of people called the Coelbren as they race to save 1950′s London from the threat to both realms posed by the Earl of Fog and his cronies.
But Becca holds a secret that could be more damaging to the Children of Annwn than anything the Earl plans.

It is just a first stab but its a lot more articulate than the “well erm there’s this group of people trying to stop this fog fae from using the fog to erm do bad stuff.”

I need to go back to work, having all this free time isn’t helping with working on anything but I’m certainly honing my procrastination skills, and yes the sudden upsurge in blog posts counts as procrastinating

I also ended up tweaking the banner I’m using on the nanowrimo forums. Battersea Power Station is just going to have to have four chimneys. I’m sure they’d have built them first

Another company has joined the e-book market Kobo eReading: anytime. anyplace I decided to have a look and maybe tip my toe in the e-book world as one of the things offered by Kobo is multi-platform use. So no having to  shell out  £161 ($259)  for a special reader.

On the up side they have an interesting back catalogue, 500 hits for  Andre Norton. Or as it turns out anything with Andre,  it narrows down to six when  quotation marks are used. All six are free (she surely hasn’t been dead that long yet has she?) and I may read them as my  paperback copies threaten to fall  apart these days if I open them.

My paperback copies are very old, even got a couple that have old money on the cover 2/6 (or 12.5p in decimal).

I’ll have to read them on-line; either from a PC or a smart phone.  Not that I have a smart phone my mobile is as dumb as they come. Last time I had anything clever enough to surf the net the cost was so exorbitant  that once I’d downloaded a ring-tone I never used it for surfing again. We are talking in the days when the screen for the mobile was still black on grey admittedly

So what about the more up to date  stuff like Laurell K Hamilton and her Meredith Gentry series. Seeing as I have the first six of those already and its now on its eight volume

number seven: “Swallowing Darkness” list price is $7.99 reduced to $6.39  = £3.99*

number eight: “Divine Misdemeanour’s” is $26.00 reduced to $9.99 =£6.25

Amazon.co.uk will give sell me a copy of No.7 for £5.48 ( paperback) and No.8 for £11.59 (hardback)

So e-books are cheaper.  Why though is an e-book using the hard-cover price as the list price to make the reduction from?

I rarely buy hardbacks, combination of cost and space considerations; with over 1000 books space is a big consideration which is why e-books look so tempting.  If I want to take an e-book on the train with me I’m still going to need a reader, even if its just a smart phone with its monthly contract. At least I have a net-book for reading in bed, or the garden come summer, but the bath is completely on the no-go list

Now the latest volume is cheaper than a hardback but still more expensive than a paperback yet the medium for both is the same; electronic. I’m guessing when the paperback comes out there will be a cheaper e-version on Kobo

Indeed they have a ‘hardback’ version of one of the earlier volumes available on Kobo, same title, twice the cost of the ‘paperback’ edition they’re also offering of the same volume. Now that’s going to get confusing for people. After all there’s no cheaper paper, smaller pages or less resilient binding on cheaper e-versions to make it obvious why it costs less.

For all the grumbling I do like Kobo. I like the free  e-books (who wouldn’t) and I like that I can create an on-line library of what I purchase. I mentioned the 1000 books already didn’t I. Some are repeats because of cover changes (not many I usually pass them on to friends when I blunder like that); but it’s hard keeping track of all the books you’ve bought over forty years. Especially when its only a fraction of what I’ve actually read.

I also like that they are prepared to offer first time authors a break:  guidelines for submissions . Though it’ll be a while before I’m anywhere near brave enough to submit something.

For now though I’ll be getting those Laurell K Hamilton’s from my local library for free and feeling unfettered as I read them anywhere there’s enough light for my eyes to work

*I’m assuming those are American not Canadian dollars on their website otherwise the savings are a bit more due to current conversion rates

I’ve finally found the title I want for my blog.

Twirling Words was an anagram of Working Title , or more truthfully it was part of an anagram that I tweaked so as not to overly confuse anyone stumbling across the blog as to its purpose; or lack thereof.

I’ve always loved Classic by Adrian Gurvitz and I’ve always thought it was called “Classic in the Attic” Turns out I was close the actual lyrics are: