BristolCon 2017 – Art, Fantasy & Maps!

Last weekend was BristolCon, the largest sci-fi & fantasy convention in the west country, UK and by far my favourite con. For the last nine years BristolCon has flourished at the Hilton Double Tree hotel in the heart of Bristol, a single day SFF convention that always signifies a glorious mix of panels, events, signings, workshops, art, and of course books! Amongst the flurry of bookish activity, one the things that makes BristolCon so damn special is that feeling of inclusiveness, a welcoming family for old friends and new, with no cliques, no judgements, just a genuinely open, friendly and ultra cool ethos of – “come along folks and have a great time!”

What made BristolCon 2017 extra special for me this year, besides being thrilled that my lovely publisher, Grimbold Books (and our leader the wonderful Sammy HK Smith) has subsequently won the BFS Award for Best Independent Press, is that I wasn’t just there as an author and panellist (moderating an uber cool panel on ‘Mapping in SF & F’)…but that I was there as an artist too! 😀

*gulp*

Yes, after being talked into applying to exhibit in the famous Art Room at BristolCon by the lovely vice chair, John Bav, with extra encouragement from Mark Robinson and the lovely ex-chair, Joanne Hall, I actually plucked up the courage and applied and got in! For me this was a huge thing. Although I’ve been drawing and painting my entire life (before I could even walk apparently), and although I did a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art and had won an MA place at the Slade School of Fine Art (which I stupidly didn’t take up), I’ve only actually been illustrating for the last 2 or 3 years. In fact, it’s only since my teaching career ended due to illness that I’ve even had the time to do more art.

So, in the last 2 years, I’ve illustrated about 12 books so far (with a few current ‘in the works’ projects). The highlight undoubtedly had been creating the fantasy maps for Juliet E McKenna and the two HarperCollins commissions for Anna Smith-Spark & Anna Stephens, and now I am busy creating another cool fantasy map for Penguin Random House – Yay! 😀

But actually exhibiting my artwork was an entirely different thing. I haven’t exhibited since my art student days, twenty years ago! Despite starting prep for it months ago, finding and buying the right frames, getting all the ‘s’ hooks needed to hand them etc etc. I’d actually forgotten just how much work is involved! The framing and mounting card alone took ages, the picture prep, sorting out illustration portfolios, transporting the art and putting it up. Thank goodness for Andy Bigwood (Mr Art himself) who runs the Art Room and helped me find my feet and for the vital Friday pre-BristolCon Art Room set up time! I was there at the hotel until 11pm the night before BristolCon, knackered and nervous but I can’t explain how great it felt – being in that atmosphere! A mixture of pure fear, excitement, exhilaration and total imposter syndrome! Lol, when you’re there in the Art Room next to the likes of illustrating greats like Jim Burns and Chris Moore and BFS Award winning Sarah Ann Langton (who did the cool cover for the ‘Fight Like A Girl’ anthology), you suddenly feel very quickly out of your depth!

BUT, despite all those daft fears, the whole thing felt RIGHT. It felt like THIS is what I should be doing, coming full circle, coming home to art – my love of it, my solace, my saviour through mental health problems and depression, my relief, my method of self-expression when I can’t muster the words.

I admit, with only an hour and a half sleep, I was a walking zombie when Saturday actually came. Apologies to a couple of customers as my brain freeze took over a couple of times – so weird that when you’re that exhausted you slip into daft old sayings as your brain stops processing new information. By the end of BristolCon I was so out of it, I honestly can’t remember how I drove home! Oops!

But it was brilliant and I loved every second of it.

I’d decided to show some of my best portraits (30 of them all framed in lovely black box frames) for a cool ‘Game Of Thrones’ idea I had of having them all clustered together for a ‘wall of faces’ (aka GoT season 6) which became an interactive ‘Game Of Faces’ where people had to try to identify as many of the portraits as possible and the winner would win a piece of original artwork of their choice! Cool idea, eh? 😀

Well, it worked beautifully! I had loads of people coming to view my work and participate. I also displayed some of my silk paintings and my maps (all framed in lovely matching black frames) and one of my ‘works in progress’ (the steampunk map I’m working on for the lovely Kate Coe) so people could view my creative process at constructing them. 🙂

In fact, I had so many people coming to visit my art display that I couldn’t finish writing up my art price list! Lol, I eventually finished it after I’d already sold a load of silk paintings and was dragged off by the lovely Robyn Fulton to actually eat something before I dropped.

After a hurried but much needed lunch I went off to my ‘Mapping SF & F’ panel about one fo my favourite subjects – fantasy maps!  I was moderating the panel in the big conference room with the lovely Anna Stephens, Juliet E McKenna, Joel Cornah and Andy Bigwood. It went wonderfully, in fact myself and all the panellists could have talked for three or four hours and only got through half of my questions!

The whole day was a delightful blur of meeting old friends and new – people I’ve been friends with for years on Facebook but who I hadn’t actually met yet (like RB Watkinson, Judith Mortimore and Jessica Rydill) and chatting to the lovely people who bought my art – THANK YOU! ❤

 

 

 

Climbing Mountains – January blues and 31 days of madness!

As we start February I look back at the madness that was January. From the world being plunged into the realities and dangers of Trumpland to the usual January blues. At this dull time of year, after the festivities and fun of the festive period I always think of CS Lewis’s words:

“I’ve always found this a trying time of the year.  The leaves not yet out, mud everywhere you go.  Frosty mornings gone.  Sunny mornings not yet come.  Give me blizzards and frozen pipes, but not this nothing time, not this waiting room of the world.”

January inevitably, is always a pensive time, a time of anti-climax, of looking back at the past year and looking to the future – sometimes in hope, sometimes in anxiety. I suppose now with the turmeric turd (as I call him) ensconced in the White House, there is more reason than any to be anxious about what the future may bring. For me personally, being such a lover of nature, a conservationist and environmentalist at heart, I worry about his ignorant, unsubstantiated (and quite possibly insane) views and denial of climate change as merely a ‘Chinese hoax’. That instead of listening to the independent views of thousands of scientists and climate experts around the world, of proven facts about climate change resulting from human activity, that Trump’s ego and his love of money and power could easily cause unparalleled environmental damage that may take years to reverse, if it can be at all. We don’t own this world, we are merely custodians, another animal species that rely on it for life itself. This world is such a precious place, its eco systems so fragile, its wildlife under so much threat from humanity already, that 4 years or dare I say it, 8 years of Trump insanity, of arctic drilling, fracking, extra oil, gas and coal exploration and pollution, may well be too much to recover from. Only time will tell.

January is also about setting goals especially life goals which are always tricky, the positive vibes of saying to yourself that THIS year will be different, this year you will lose those annoying pounds (or stones), achieve those long held goals and dreams, that this will be YOUR year.

It’s a double-edged sword. Yes you should have aspirations, goals, dreams, things that make you happy, but the reality of not achieving them can be dreadful. January is also a time of year that I often find myself falling back into bad habits and bad thinking – the time when depression often rears its ugly head.

So, as a way to combat those feelings and that awful January inertia, back in November I had an utterly mad idea…

Being Facebook friends with the lovely Children’s Laureate, illustrator extraordinaire Chris Riddell, I’ve been watching his posts all through the year. Every day Chris draws or sketches in what he calls his ‘Laureate Log’, a wonderful visual diary of creativity. Well, as Picasso himself said “The best ideas are stolen!”, I decided to do my own daily art record – what I call ‘The Artmaniac Challenge’!

So I set up a friendly inclusive group on Facebook – the Artmaniacs – open to anyone to draw, sketch, paint, sculpt, create a new artwork EVERY DAY for 365 days, starting from January 1st 2017 – January 1st 2018 and post it online in the group and anywhere else they fancy! It was a way for focusing the mind, being productive and a way of forcing you to be creative every day, even on days when all you want is a cuppa and a duvet to hide under.

I had no idea if it would work, but it has, we already have 27 members and growing! It’s been a wonderfully positive thing, a great way of driving out those damn January blues and giving a real sense of achievement to those participating. So in the mad 31 days of January, I and others have 31 pieces of art to show for it, an ever-growing portfolio – and the lovely thing is that it doesn’t matter if they are rough sketches, finished drawings, doodles, paintings, experiments, photography, anything goes! 😀

For someone like me, who has found it so hard to put pen to paper in regards to writing, doing this daily challenge has actually helped me in my writing too, because, if I can spare a few minutes to draw every day, if I can force myself to create something every day, then I can do the same for writing! WE CAN DO THIS!!!

So, here is the gallery of my first month of art, some good, lol, some not so good! 😀 xxxx

Well that’s it – the good, the bad and the ugly! Let’s see what the next month brings. 🙂

N.B. I will also let slip, that a couple of weeks ago, I had some VERY good news involving HarperCollins… I’ll let you all know once everything is signed and sealed. Watch this space…! 😉 xxx

Perseids and the pursuit of time.

So, September has drawn to a close and with it, the last glimpse of hazy summer days of green, full of the flutter of butterflies and the promise of warmth, long before the trees shed their leaves in time for the frosts of dark winter, I find myself pondering the meaning of time.

I find myself staring at the calendar, October…really? Where did the year go?

The grass will only need another cut, maybe two before it’s growth stops for the season. Mushrooms and toadstools sprout like Autumn flowers from every nook and cranny, pushing their heads through the thick carpets of acorn and horse-chestnuts that seem to litter our garden. I’ve managed to pick a few highly exotic looking pink toadstools which I can’t identify in any of my nature books, with billowing tops like frilly edged bolero skirts!

A few fleeting Speckled Wood and Small White butterflies still linger in the margins, their brief lives coming to a close soon, but delighting in the odd sunny day we still have and the harvest of Autumn fruits to feed upon. Only a few blooms still remain, the odd rose, some Michaelmas daisies, but mostly the garden looks barren now compared to the riotous colour that has dazzled us through spring and summer. Now the golden hues of Autumn are the palette of the day, beautiful in their own right, but a reminder that winter is coming. Time is passing.

I’m not just thinking of the literal meaning of passing time – minutes, hours, years of our lives ticking away as surely as those grains of sand in an hour glass, grey hairs appearing, wrinkles creeping or deepening, a paling of the skin, a yellowing of the eyes, spots on hands, or gravity working it’s inevitable magic. But the abstract form of time as well. Is time our friend or our enemy? A steady hand who guides and follows us through the ups and downs of our life? Enriches us with the experiences we share, that shape who we are? Or a nasty bully snidely reminding us how short our brief lives actually are, no more than a fleeting spec in the cosmic soup of the universe and how many precious years we have wasted…and how few we have left in which to achieve our dreams/goals? Time – friend or foe? I’m not sure where I fall on this one.

Certainly, like so many of us, I’ve always felt myself doggedly pursuing time, much like a hamster stuck on a spinning wheel, trying to cram far too much into every 24 hours and cursing myself when I couldn’t achieve the impossible. Most of our lives are spent in this endless juggling game – juggling jobs, families, life, and the stresses and workloads inherent with them, then trying to squeeze anything else in the few hours left, such as writing, creating or …er…breathing!

My reason for this ‘timely preoccupation’ is simple. Not only was last year the first time I unexpectedly found myself with nothing but time on my hands, and it was not been a welcome companion (thankfully I am VERY busy now and manically juggling things again), but this year is proving to be a pendulum of highs and lows.

From working a very full-time and responsible job, which certainly clocked in excess of 50 hours a week, not counting work on weekends and evenings, after 16 years of juggling my job and constantly chasing time, my body suddenly said, “NO!”. Yes, there were a lot of factors involved in it, and yes, I should have received support and didn’t, especially when I asked for it. Stress and overwork can have devastating results if left unchecked, a year later and I am still struggling to regain my health fully. The last two years have undoubtedly been the strangest and most traumatic years of my life, but as I was looking back over this lovely summer I remembered an event I witnessed nearly two months ago that kind of put things in perspective for me, as well as bringing as smile to my face.

I was fortunate to see one of nature’s true spectacles, through my own somewhat scratched and blurry glasses. I speak of course, of the annual event of the Perseid meteor shower which hurls its cascade of dust and small rocky particles across our atmosphere every summer (July 23rd – August 20th 2014), with the peak usually falling around August 11-13th. The Perseids are named after the Greek deity, Perseus, whose constellation they appear to come from.

I’d been having serious insomnia problems again, and ended up going downstairs. It was August the 12th and I remembered the Perseids were happening, so with my white wolves and a warm fleece, I snuggled in a chair and gazed up at the clear heavens. Living out in the sticks has its definite advantages, no light pollution. Not only do we have the most amazing sunsets here, uninterrupted across the fields, but the skies here are the clearest I’ve seen for miles around. Seeing as my wobbly legs and dizzy head prevent me from standing and gazing up without toppling over, the chair was a great idea. Wow! Apart from the few faint streaks I saw whizzing through the sky, I was amazed by three blazing fireballs, really bright, and only forty minutes or so apart. Truly spectacular!!!

It just reminded me how small my problems are, how vast and beautiful the universe is, how we never truly know what is out there or what life will throw our way and how precious time is…every single second of it. As precious as air, as rare as love, and totally priceless. Every second counts. It doesn’t matter if you think you’ve messed up the last few years, or want to re-run the last fifty years, it’s never too late to make the most of the time you have, every day, every moment of it.

Life is beautiful, don’t let worries or the daily grind make you forget it.

😀

http://youtu.be/KQlOAXF4T60

http://youtu.be/vTXA5gYWtXs

For more meteor showers coming your way, here are some dates for the next of nature’s spectacles! 😀 xxxx

Thanks to Meteor Watch for this: http://www.meteorwatch.org/

Farewell my Dragon Friend, Lindsey J Parsons.

*deep sigh*

This is the hardest blog post I have ever had to write, and it breaks my heart in the writing of it. Two days ago, I heard the shocking news that one of my dearest friends, Lindsey J Parsons, had suddenly and tragically passed away.

Shocking is the word…at a time when words seem to fail. I simply cannot believe it and I cannot understand it.

Lindsey was not just one of my closest internet friends, she was one of my closest real friends. We talked and laughed almost every day, messaging each other back and forth like a couple of idiots, just being daft on the internet. http://lindseyjparsons.com/

She was one of the first people I’d share my woes with. One of the few truly wonderful people on this planet.

I met Lindsey back in 2010, along with my other AWB friends (Alliance of Worldbuilders) – a group of geeky fantasy and sci-fi writers and the largest group/thread on the HarperCollins writing site, Authonomy. We immediately clicked. Not only were we fantasy writers with a passion for the fantasy genre, we both obsessively and childishly adored dragons! It was true to say that neither of us ever grew up, and I loved that free spirit and lack of cynicism in Lindsey. She never had a bad word to say about anyone. She was always, ALWAYS, helpful, supportive, positive and encouraging of fellow writers. There was no ego with Lindsey. She shared openly and gave freely of her time and her talents.

Our mutual love of dragons was clearly evident in our dragon pictures and internet avatars, though Lindsey’s dragon passion was even greater than mine, with an impressive collection of dragon statues and mementos at her home and a fantastic stone dragon on her roof!

Lindsey soon became the beating dragonheart of our Alliance, keeping the thread fresh, funny and going when many of us (especially myself) were less than frequent in our attendance.

She was always on hand to share her experiences, share information, knowledge, advice and to encourage others at every opportunity.

Lindsey demonstrated that incredible support and friendship when on the 6th October 2012, she travelled all the way from her home to a small little bookshop in Cirencester, for the launch of my debut novel. All that way to support a fellow dragon friend, someone who at that point, she had never actually met before!

I knew instantly that it was her. The bookshop was very busy, packed in fact, the launch was a big success but was also all rather overwhelming. I didn’t know where to turn, between chatting to customers and children and signing books…all very surreal. Then, amongst the milling crowds, I saw this seemingly quiet and small dark-haired lady, a petite figure with an unmistakable twinkle in her eyes. She waited patiently while I ‘did my thing’ (whatever that was), but we both instantly shared that, “Wow! It’s you!” moment.

Lindsey being Lindsey, stayed for quite a few hours. After the event, Lindsey, myself and my very good mate, Will Macmillan Jones (also another great AWB pal), all went next-door for a coffee, cake and a natter. It was SO lovely to finally meet her face to face after nearly two years of internet friendship, emails, and messages etc. It felt so special, being there with my two close friends talking about writing, our plans for the future and each other’s books. Lindsey was so generous, so excited for me and for herself and her new life as a writer. She had such ambitions and dreams and it was wonderful listening to her and being a part of it all.

More than that…Lindsey J Parsons WAS and IS a BRILLIANT writer! I’m a hard bugger to please, believe me. I’ve read so many awful books, badly written, boring, nonsensical, badly edited, trite, dull, clichéd etc. But with Lindsey it was easy and a sheer delight, because her books truly were and are wonderful!

She was a truly amazing writer. As a reader, I really am like Marmite, I either love something or I hate it, I can’t be indifferent or ambivalent. No sitting on fences here, that’s how you get splinters in your arse!

When I first picked up Lindsey’s debut novel, Vortex, Book 1 of her Return of the Effra series, I had my doubts. Afterall, I’m not a big fan of paranormal romance. I love my fantasy epic and I guess, a little traditional. But WOW! The moment I started reading it, I was hooked. In fact the only other recent book which had me transfixed like that was Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games. Vortex really is that good. I’m a slow reader, by osmosis I think, but I read it in just two days, I simply couldn’t put the thing down. I then proceeded to re-read it several times after that, something I never do, unless it’s a really good book.

Vortex certainly deserves all of its many 5 star reviews and I was thrilled for Lindsey, that it was doing so well, and so proud of her. She wrote and produced that book on her own terms. She set up her own publishing company, AFS Publishing http://www.afspublishing.com/, and produced a book that had the quality look and feel of any mainstream publication and quite frankly, beat the pants off of many indie publishing houses. Her daughter’s boyfriend, Greg Barons, did the amazing covers, but the book was pure Lindsey. What a legacy!

She went on to write and publish her second novel in the Return of the Effra series, Wicked Game, which I have started to read and absolutely LOVE. Another 5 star book and another much deserved and roaring success for Lindsey.

But as well as being a terrifically talented writer, Lindsey was also my good friend. A lot of our friendship also centred around the fact that we are both dreadful insomniacs. While all our other friends had gone to sleep, Lindsey and I were almost waking up! We’d speak nearly every day, but often, we’d be chatting til 2, 3 even 4am in the morning. Constantly messaging each other over how daft we were that we couldn’t sleep. But it was so lovely, knowing that when midnight struck and most of my friends had gone offline to bed, me & Linds were only just starting! There was a wonderful comradeship in that, in sharing our insomnia, our idiot ideas at 3am in the morning when both of us had to be up early the next day. Like me, Lindsey seemed to come alive at night, something about the witching hour that got our creative juices flowing. I cannot even begin to express how much I will miss that, how much I will miss her.

It’s fair to say, that I have been in a constant stream of tears these last two days, in fact, quite incapable of not crying. Last night was the worst, not having my friend to talk to through the night. But…this post isn’t about me, it’s about Lindsey and what an extraordinary person she was.

The terrible irony of all this, is that only a matter of weeks ago, Lindsey re-blogged my post about the ‘Passing of a Legend’, namely the death of Nelson Mandela, and then this happens. Lindsey J Parsons may not have been as well-known a figure as Nelson Mandela, but nonetheless, she shared many similarities with him. She was a truly kind and wonderful person, who always thought of others before herself, and she did, in so many ways, touch the lives of not just those around her, but everyone she came into contact with. THAT is a rare gift, but then Lindsey was a rare lady.

She lived life to the fullest, something so many of us fail to do (myself included). Despite her small frame, she really did have the heart of a dragon – an adventurous and daring nature. She loved pushing herself, seeing what she could achieve and boy, didn’t she achieve a lot! She loved walking, nature, her doggies and horses, being on her farm, horse riding, including bareback riding and, like everything she did, she loved archery and was brilliant at it! She was part of a long bow archery club and competed to a high standard, even winning medals. I SO wish I had made it to her last archery competition in Cheltenham, where she proudly won the bronze medal. She’d certainly give Katniss Everdeen a run for her money!

Lindsey threw herself into everything she did. She was a vital and much-loved part of her rural community, even organising events like cinema night at the local village hall. Everyone who knew her loved her, how you could not?

This was no ordinary woman. This was a cowboy boot wearing, dragon-loving, snow-loving, fantasy writing, archery medal winning, awesomely talented author and mother of three children! Apart from being a wonderful friend to me and so many others, Lindsey was also an amazing mum to her three gorgeous children, Cat, Amy-Jane and Tom, who must be utterly shattered by the shocking and sudden loss of their lovely mum. My thoughts and love go out to them and all of Lindsey’s family at this terrible terrible time. None of us can fathom what they must be going through. 😦

Another example of Lindsey’s incredible bravery and zest for life, was when last year she decided to go off to America by herself, to attend a Romance Writing Convention. I did want to join her, but couldn’t due to ill-health, but nonetheless, little Lindsey got on that plane and headed for the bright lights of Las Vegas (or Las Vagas as she called it)! I would have pee’d in my pants, but Lindsey took it all in her stride and had a fabulous time! She sent pictures of herself, sitting like a pro at this enormous table in the convention hall, with all her books and booky swag around her. She’d organised everything, things she could take on the flight and things she had to get printed and shipped in the US. Then, she even attended the convention ball, where everyone dressed up, and Lindsey, of course, went in a stunning silver and blue dragon dress, complete with wing flaps!!!! What a girl!

While she was over there, Lindsey also met up with another two AWB members and fellow fantasy friends, Susan and Richard Wentworth, who were thrilled to meet her.

Yes, Lindsey was truly a one-off. She was utterly fearless and had so much more to offer this world.

Over the Christmas just gone, we chatted about going to America together this year and we were both thrilled at the idea, excitedly talking about our plans for 2014. Lindsey wanted to show me the sights and I know we would have had a blast, two dragons together! She also had an Authorcon arranged up in Manchester with fellow AWB friends, Andrea Baker, Hazel Butler and Will Macmillan Jones, a great forum in which to launch her third novel in the Return of the Effra series, Shegal, due out this year.

Of course now…all those plans are gone, as is our beautiful Lindsey. The world really was her oyster and I truly believe she could have achieved anything she put her mind, heart and talents to.

We spoke on the net on New Year’s Day, wishing each other a wonderful 2014. Hours later that day, while walking, she felt very unwell. She was rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed as having had a burst brain aneurism and was placed into a medical coma. She had an emergency operation which was thought to be successful, but deteriorated and passed away on Sunday 5th January, surrounded by her family.

Words really cannot express the horror and shock of what has happened, or the hole she has left behind for those who loved and cared about her. The random cruelty of nature, life, whatever you call it, is simply abominable and unfathomable. For someone so young and vital, with everything going for her and an incredible writing talent…goodness only knows what else she could have achieved if her life hadn’t been so tragically cut short.

For myself, I mourn the loss of a dear dear friend, my other dragon half, my insomniac confidant, my Lindsey. But for her family, they mourn an incredible sister and a wonderful wonderful mother. I am so SO sorry for their loss. My heart goes out to them.

Lindsey J Parsons, the beating dragonheart of our Alliance, the most talented, kindest and sweetest person I have ever known, who I am privileged to call my friend.

I will miss her every time it snows, every time I write, every time I can’t sleep, every time I have good news to share, or troubles, and every time I see a picture of a horse, a dragon, or a unicorn, I will think of Lindsey. 😦

I’m not a religious person, and I know my tears are inadequate, but I wish you a thousand thank you’s and blessings. If there is a heaven, I’m sure you are there with your cowboy boots on.

May dragon wings soar you to the stars, my friend, where I will see you again one day. All my love, Sophie xxxxxxx

Lindsey J Parsons

R.I.P. xxxxxx

PLEASE support Lindsey and her family by buying these FANTASTIC books and helping Lindsey’s Legacy – getting her the recognition she deserves. http://www.amazon.com/Lindsey-J-Parsons/e/B008D7RXQ6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Han Solo, Passing 14,000 and The Liebster Award!!!!

Okay, first I’d like to say a massive THANK YOU to all my amazing talented followers for pushing this little blog past 14,000 hits!!! That’s truly humbling and astounding. So, whether you’re regular visitors, weekly watchers, new to the site, fly-by, one-stop-shop, pop-in pop-out kind of visitors, or hang out pull up your chair and relax visitors, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! This blog would be nothing without your support! 😀 xx

Right, before I get too gushy on you, I’ll get on with the post.

As I mentioned in my last nomination, The Versatile Blogger award, I’ve been very forgetful regarding the awards which have so kindly been bestowed upon me, but, I’ve now caught up with this latest one, the Liebster Award. Again, huge thanks must go out to the gorgeous, talented and thoroughly lovely Kay Kauffman (http://suddenlytheyalldied.com/), who nominated me for this award in May. Kay is an extraordinarily gifted fantasy author with a love of nascar, a gift for cooking and a huge heart!

Apart from being a fellow member of The Alliance of Worldbuilders – http://theallianceofworldbuilders.weebly.com/index.html & http://www.facebook.com/TheAllianceOfWorldbuilders along with myself and a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi geeks, Kay Kauffman has also established the most amazing blog which I highly recommend you all checking out! http://suddenlytheyalldied.com/  – Thank you Kay! 😀 x

As usual, there are a few rules for this:

The Rules:

1. List eleven random facts about yourself.
2. Answer the eleven questions that were asked of you by the blogger who nominated you.
3. Nominate eleven other blogs for the Liebster Award and link to their blogs.
4. Notify the bloggers of their award.
5. Ask the award winners eleven questions, to be answered upon acceptance of the award.

Umm…I’m noticing a pattern in the number 11!

Okay, so here is where I bend the rules a little…ahem…okay, break the rules again. Rules are made for breaking, right? The Liebster Award is supposed to be for blogs who have 200 followers or less. Well, as the lovely Kay Kauffman (http://suddenlytheyalldied.com/) suspected, I am very lucky to have more followers than that, first rule broken. but since she was kind enough to nominate me, I’m gladly accepting!

Okay…er…first eleven random facts about me:

1. I’m a terrible insomniac and have been since I was about 14.
2. I’m petrified of spiders but okay with snakes.
3. I’ve nearly died at least 4 times, drowning, car crash, decapitation, run over, and that’s not counting all the times I fell twenty feet out of trees with hardly a bruise or scratch – I’ve never broken a bone!
4. I have dreadful eyesight yet can see amazing details close up, like microscope vision, great for drawing and I ADORE looking at maps!
5. I could talk before I could walk and was writing and drawing before 3yrs.
6. My first crush was on Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, I even posted an airmail love letter to Jackson Hole, Wyoming!
7. I am very much a country girl, born and bred and love nature and wild landscapes – preferably with no people around, just the elements and me!
8. I love animals and detest cruelty of any kind. I’m anti all ‘blood sports’ like fox hunting.
9. I love green vegetables and have a real thing for runner beans!
10. Star Wars was the very first film I ever saw at the cinema. It got me totally hooked on science-fiction and fantasy, but it also seeded a deep desire in me, ever since I was 4yrs old, to be an astronaut. To this day, I still have vivid dreams of flying my own spaceship!
11. When I was 17 I went to Communist Russia on a school trip. Our plane was diverted to an airstrip north of Moscow due to a storm and the KGB boarded our plane and took our passports. It was very scary. I was frisked by one of the guards and we were all detained for four hours in a blizzard. It was an amazing trip though. We went to Lenin’s tomb – incredible. It was like a dream. Although he’d been dead for over 70 years at the time, he looked like he had just fallen asleep! Seriously freaky!

The questions Kay Kauffman (http://suddenlytheyalldied.com/) wanted answered:

1. If you could have lunch with any one person, living or dead, who would it be and why? Probably my personal hero, David Attenborough.
2. What is your favourite song and why? Mull of Kintyre by Wings. It was the first record I ever bought and even though I know it’s cheesy as hell, I still adore it. Something to do with being a soundtrack to nature I think.
3. What is your dream job? Besides being a writer? Probably a film director. I love telling stories and being a highly visual person that would be ideal. Weirdly enough, my career’s advisor said ‘writer or film director’ as two of my best most suitable jobs!
4. What is your favourite season? Spring, everything awakening, coming back to life and the promise of Summer yet to come.
5. Why did you start blogging? Oops…I read this as ‘when’ – 26th January 2012! Why? Umm. To be honest I don’t know, I just kind of fell into it and found I loved it!
6. What is your favourite comfort food? Bread and Marmite.
7. If you had a time turner like Hermione’s in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, what would you do with it? Sorry, I’ve never read any HP more of a Tolkien girl, so don’t know what that is. I’m guessing it’s a time machine device or something? Uh…I’d probably go back in time and undo some mistakes, do a few things differently given the choice. I don’t live with regrets, but I’ve often made choices for other people and not for myself.
8. If you could have lunch with one of the captains from Star Trek or one of the characters from Star Wars, who would you choose and why? Ooh, that’s hard. The 12yr old me would definitely go with Han Solo, now though, I think I’d pick Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk, he’s kinda cute and I think he’s a funny guy. It would be a fun lunch!
9. Do you use your cell phone mostly for talking or mostly for other things? Mostly for texting, but mostly not at all. I’m an email girl not a cell/mobile phone girl.
10. What makes you dance? Most music.
11. And the follow-up, what makes you sing? “You’re Just Too Good To Be True…” & “Sweet Caroline…ba ba ba”, the classic drunken sing-a-long songs!

There you go! Now for my eleven nominees, as always, these really are in no order at all!

1. Tricia Drammeh – http://blog.triciadrammeh.com/ &  http://theclaimingwords.com/
2. Lindsey Parsons – http://lindseyjparsons.wordpress.com/
3. Susan Finlay – http://susansbooks37.wordpress.com/
4. Kate Jack – http://kateannejack.wordpress.com/
5. Andrea Baker – http://www.andreabakerauthor.com/ & http://rosewallauthor.wordpress.com/
6. Will Macmillan Jones – http://willmacmillanjones.wordpress.com/
7. Jane Dougherty – http://janedougherty.wordpress.com/
8. Lisa Scullard – http://lisascullard.wordpress.com/ & http://hardinkcafe.wordpress.com/
9. Emily Mckeon – http://theabsenteeblogger.blogspot.com/
10. Joanne Hall – http://hierath.wordpress.com/
11. Ashen Venema – http://courseofmirrors.wordpress.com/

Wow…there are a LOT of lists on this post! Okay, now for the last fun part…he he he!

Eleven questions I would like my nominees to answer, should they choose to accept the award. Here goes!

• What was the first book you ever read, and the last one you read/are reading?
• What superpower do you wish you had and why?
• Better to burn like a comet or fade away? Quick and bright or slow and dull? How best you do live your life?
• If you were transported into a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or one of G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones stories, which character would you play and why?
• Joss Whedon or JJ Abrams?
• Favourite movie and why?
• Favourite all time character from fiction and why?
• DC or Marvel?
• Guilty pleasure?
• If you were granted one wish, what would it be and why?
• What book has had the most profound affect upon you and why?

There you go, a mixture of absurdly silly, shallow questions with a few sensible ones thrown in! 😉

How would YOU answer these? Eh? Huh? Wanna give it a try? Yes, you sitting there in the corner, yes YOU! Come on over here and ask yourself these questions, come join our little nerdfest! 😀 xxx

Hot Insomnia

The silver shimmer slid away,

Light dancing on water,

Heat haze above the roads.

As dusk falls, and the air cools

I think I hear the sigh of the sea.

Hot insomnia abounds

Winding, clinging sheets

And suffocating downs.

Wet behind ears,

Stingy eyes, sticky arms,

The closeness of thunder without the storm.

I dream of sparkling oceans and their breeze

The cascade of waterfalls,

The tinkle of ice in glass

And tender coldness under foot of grass.

These stifling sleepless nights,

And breathless airless days,

Sun baked earth, windless sky,

So uncommon to our verdant shores,

This ancient rain-soaked isle

So used to washed out summers,

Now sizzles in July.

Sophie E Tallis © 2013

Manically juggling and Hitting 3,000!

Like so many of us, I find myself constantly juggling and always trying to squeeze yet more precious time out of each day. It’s a common malaise nowadays, when we are all working longer hours with heavier workloads and we find the work/life balance completely out of kilter.

For me, between a VERY full-time job, a hectic career with all the usual and unusual stresses and workloads that that entails, writing my second novel, writing other projects and short stories, promoting and marketing my first novel (White Mountain, published 30th September this year), doing my artwork and a busy home life…I find that manic juggling game increasingly more difficult.

With so many balls flying through the air, how do we keep going without dropping the odd one?

For some, it becomes a daily routine of list writing. Charting out each event that needs attending to and prioritising the most important. I must admit, that despite my fierce loathing of anything too organised and too routine, as I’ve always loved ‘flying by the seat of my pants’ so to speak (for me spontaneity IS life), even I have had to grudgingly adopt this formalised structure. I’m sure for those fortunate few to be ‘ladies or gents of leisure’, the choices in life are perhaps easier, but for the rest of us workers, you HAVE to list and prioritise your life to some extent, if you are to prevent those balls from crashing all over the place!

My advice? If writing IS your life…give yourself time to do it! MAKE time to do it…even if that’s at 2 in the morning!

KEEP WRITING!

To that point, I work during the day but am a night owl and DO ensure that I write everyday, whether it’s a section of narrative, some scribbled plot ideas or some poetry.

So, amidst all my frantic juggling, despite my considerable absence of late and the very sporadic blogging from my initial, ‘Daily Hello’ intentions, my little blog has now passed the 3,000 hits mark!

Wow and wow!

I am genuinely amazed and very touched. A HUGE shout out to all my friends, supporters and family who have been utterly amazing in their kindness and support, and who have kept me laughing and inspired in equal measure! I owe you all a great debt.

THANK YOU!

😀

 

Monday madness!

Well, it is true what they say…never eat cheese late at night and never work just before bed.

Having been somewhat of a snotty flu-ridden mess yesterday, in celebration of finishing my play in a day, I decided to do some serious writing.

Staying in bed for most of the day, watching the dogs play wildly outside while the buzzards enjoyed swooping on them, a tantalising display of ‘Catch me if you can!’, I completed my Year One play – full of silly skits and cheesy jokes, then proceeded to do more work on Book 2.

Oh dear! What a mistake! Got so wrapped up in what I was writing, I didn’t stop til nearly 2am, then, of course, couldn’t sleep and had some alarming dreams when I did! What an idiot? Think I dropped off somewhere after 3 before the alarm went at 6:20!

Seriously, MUST try and write earlier in the evening! Why oh why does inspiration have to strike at such ridiculous hours?

To all fellow insomniacs, I wish you a goodnight’s sleep! 😀

 

The midnight owl here again!

Now, I’ve always been a night owl…

But why oh why, despite having a very full on and full time job, which starts at a ridiculously early hour, do I become most animated and most creative after the witching hour? It’s not that I’m unable to write earlier, but my best ideas and creative juices just go into hyper-drive once it’s stupidly late!

Despite my best efforts, I have at last accepted that it is physically impossible for me to go to bed before 1am, unless I am sick! Burning the candle at both ends, seems a permanent feature of my daily life. At least now I can manage 5 hours sleep, maybe 6 if I’m lucky, which is a lot better than the 4 hours I used to have!

Brain…let me sleep! Give me ideas to jot down while the sun’s still shining! Arghhh!

Off to scribble some more…nite nite! xx