Never can keep a good author down.

I've been browsing some of my started and never finished projects. I seem to have a fair few of them. I've been looking through 'the pit' (the nickname for the hardrive on my computer where everything writing related for the last twelve years is kept) and have glanced at maybe half a dozen different things. Of course, I'm still working on 'The stars came home' the second short story in the series of four that I planned. However I'm growing interested in finally getting around to writing the second book to follow 'Orb of Arawaan'.

It might come as a surprise to some to find that for the last few years one of my books has been released with no talk of a sequel yet here I am finally discussing it. The truth was that when I created 'Orb of Arawaan' it was borne out of much planning for what would have eventually become at least a trilogy. I wrote the first one very quickly and easily, then I became distracted just after immediately starting the second, and never came back. I haven't exactly done much on it, but the first few little bits, introducing some new charectors and elaborating what old ones were doing. It's all just little snippets from the first part of the second book, but I've got a vague plot mapped out too. It's just, as ever, finding the time to put finger to keyboard and get stuff done. Time seems in very short supply these days.

I kind of like the idea of doing the sequel to 'Orb of Arawaan'. The 'Syndicates' books grew to now total four with plans for a fifth one eventually that follows on at the very end of the current series. So why not have another fantasy fiction series too? Of course, I would like to get finished 'The Stars came home' but again it all comes back to the simple matter of time, or lack of it. I shall have to make some time and actually knuckle down to get some of these lofty plans enacted.

In the mean time, I'm toying with perhaps putting a little teaser up of 'Orb of Arawaan part 2' (it doesn't even have a working title yet) on the website's portfolio page. I'll have to do just a little polishing first though.

Illness and time off for questionable behaviour.

I've not been able to do much writing at all for the last few days. This has been a combination of working hard at the 'day' job, and being ill. It seems that I have come down with some kind of flu-like cold which has really laid me low today. I feel exhausted and weak like I've run a marathon. All I did was get out of bed! I'm hoping that I'll feel a lot better tomorrow, however today was the last of my days off for a while, so it's back to the 'day' job again with still little time for writing. Still, it's nice to occasionally have a break even if it isn't quite a holiday.

Humidity is for idiots

It's been far too hot over the last few days. The thing about Britain is that heat = humidity, and humidity is not fun in anyone's book. Especially at night. So I've not really been sleeping well, and I feel a little sweaty all the time no matter how many cool showers I take. Still, I'm not alone. My biggest hate though is the idiots on the television weather report who always chirp on about how excellent it is the hotter it gets, from their air conditioned studios, when the reality is that less humidity and a few degrees cooler and it would be a whole lot better.

A rant about content specific adverts.

Some of you will have noticed that my blog has adverts on it. Well, the bills for the ISP host have to get paid somehow! They are sensitive to what is written in the blog. That means that the software running it all picks up on keywords in what I write and tailors what adverts are shown from a pool of available adverts as a result, presumably so the adverts are relevant to the people likely to be reading the blog. It just annoys me that they keep on latching on to the fact that I talk about my writing and having stuff published and decide that that means that adverts for vanity presses are somehow appropriate. Silly software. I find vanity presses the second biggest leaches in publishing. They freeload on people's desires and use that to con people out of money. I have never been involved with a vanity publisher and never would be. I can only recomend to anyone reading this that if anyone says that you have to pay to be published then that person is trying to defraud you of money.

Rant over. Jenny will get back in her box now.

"Madam, your personal life is showing"

I saw a heartening thing yesterday afternoon after I posted the last blog post. The little girl who normally sits alone or gets bullied was sat with two other little girls and they were all playing together. I felt somewhat relieved for her that at last she was part of the in-crowd. It would seem to me that there are a couple of dominant children in the street who want to ignore her. But the other children are rather like sheep. They will follow the dominant children until they are not there, then it becomes fine to play with the unpopular girl. It seems that psychology never changes; it was just like this when I was at school. It also is something like this in the workplace too. Of course, when people get older the dynamic changes as sometimes the bullied (like me) realise that the bullies actually have no power and we can fight back a little and even the playing field. People are still like sheep though.

I'm having a few issues with stalkers. Of course, it is true to say that you haven't arrived in the World of media until you've had your first stalker, and I got my first one back in 2005. Actually, I got around three or four back then, but the court order keeps them safely away now. However I've found that it's only a matter of time when you're publishing stuff and making moves back onto radio when the stalkers climb out of their box and come out to play. I've had to purge a few things only after a creepy experience yesterday when some-one I don't know came up to me and announced that he "knew all about [me]" and also told me that my favourite colour was green. Well, that is correct I suppose, but it unnerves me that you knew given there is only one interview where I admitted my favourite colour.

It teaches me that it is still unwise to allow too much of a personal nature to turn up on the ether and in print. There are certain things I have done in my past that really I don't want to forever be the biggest talking point about me. On the other hand, I am not a prude and have no qualms about having an interesting sideline in modelling. So what if I did several shoots for lingerie and fetish pictures? I like to think that it makes me a more interesting person for the fact that I got paid a big wedge of cash to parade around Fflint castle in various Gossard basque sets and get photographed for legitamate modelling reasons. Everyone has to have a hobby, and who wouldn't be proud that they had done professional modelling?

The strangest things trigger old memories.

I'm sat at my computer in my study/office/whatever-it's-called writing the synopsis for a book. I find synopses very difficult to write. How do you sum up 80,000 words of complex story, plot and sub-plots in only 2,000 words at most? I'd rather write a book any time because it is so much easier!

But that's not what is coming to mind at the moment. My computer is next to a window that overlooks the front of the house. There is a little girl who lives nextdoor who nearly every day goes and sits by the lampost at the front of our house and sits and plays with her doll. There are other children in our road, but none seem to ever play with her. At best I've seen them ignore her, and at worst just tease her. It's a little sad to see. I don't know if the little girl is autistic. I think they are somewhat mean though, if truth be known.

Right now there are three girls running around and playing, in between teasing this girl. She is looking to them, and I suspect she actually just wants to be part of the crowd and be allowed to play with them. Why do I find seeing this so upsetting? Because the little girl who is being ignored and teased reminds me a lot of me when I was young. I was very insular, bullied a tremendous lot and had few friends. I remember being so treated by so-called 'friends' who thought it was funny to exclude me from their games. Seeing this happen to this girl brings back unhappy memories of childhood.

It's hard to know what too do. None of these children are my children, so some may argue it is none of my business. I'm also not one for taking sides. However seeing this all acted out just a few yards from my office window is quite upsetting. I'm looking down there and seeing the eight year old me in 1987 getting exactly the same treatment from my peers.

Nothing stranger than reality

Now there's a thing! We've just had the Police out after a 999 call. The reason? A neighbour down the street tried to accuse us of 'stealing' his wheelie bin. He became abusive and violent and tried to first break into our house then our bin alley then threatened that this wasn't going to be the last we heard of him.

Actually, we begged to differ as I do not care for abusive bullies on my doorstep. The Police were over at his house a long while and appear to have at the very least given him a stern warning over his behaviour. We've been advised if he tries anything else to call 999 and quote our crime reference number.

How strange and surreal the little things that some people get all worked up over. I never thought I would live to see the day that some old boy decides to go mental over a wheelie bin. The Policeman said though that he's seen more trivial things result in 999 calls and criminal records because some-ne is an arse.