Hubby swears he never snores, and so I filmed him. He challenged me to upload it to YouTube, and here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RJ9RA2fk8

Soon after uploading the video, I was contacted by a Brazilian death metal band, Máquina Voadora, who asked if they could use a few clips as part of their forthcoming video to accompany their new acoustic song about sleeping. Richard loved the idea!

View Máquina Voadora's video here:- http://vimeo.com/8676341



I have been busy creating more new Hubpages. I've rather taken to that site... Recent additions include interviews with a Druid, a green witch and artist Pixie Wildflower, plus articles on writing, kombucha, cryonics, reincarnation, the minor arcana and Welsh rarebit - among other topics.

Browse my Hubpages: http://hubpages.com/profile/AdeleCosgroveBray

The organisers of Wirral Bookfest have been in touch, and I've been able to confirm that Riverside Writers will be appearing there again. This will be our third time at the festival. This will take place sometime during the week starting October 11th - and doesn't that sound a long way off?

Also, Parallel Dimensions, the Fantasy and Science-Fiction event which I organised last June for Hadley Rille Books' authors has been invited for a second time. Again, no dates are fixed as yet.

Riverside Writers' forthcoming anthology is coming along smoothly. The material is totally diverse, reflecting the different personalities within the group. We're in the process of putting the MS into PDF format for our publisher, and we're hoping for an April/June publication date. Once we know the date, we hope to organise a launching event for it at West Kirby Library.

With regard to my own writing, I haven't made a start on Fabian yet. I've been working on a few short stories instead, and also giving Rowan another edit. Rowan on paper is now so covered in notes and alterations that some of it's hard to read, so I've been printing a fresh paper copy and have workshopped bits of this at Riverside Writers' meetings.

There are four of us at Riverside Writers who are working on novels now. Two of these though they'd never have the courage to tackle writing anything so long, despite them being excellent short story writers. I absolutely love it when that happens, when any of the group creates something which they'd not tried before - like the man who'd never written any poetry before he joined us, and now his work's been broadcast on radio. Wonderful!

I have decided I won’t be moving to the Arctic Zone. We’ve had one week of freezing temperatures here in Wirral and already the novelty has worn off.

Snow-gowned landscapes look enchanting in photographs, but the trouble with the real McCoy is that anyone brave enough to venture outside needs to be an ice-skater of Olympic status in order to navigate our treacherous pavements.

Even my dogs are bored with it now. When their shiny brown eyes first feasted on their new flawless white world they couldn’t wait to hurtle through it, pouncing and digging and having a merry doggy time. Now they keep looking at the bright sunshine and wondering why the outside temperatures don’t equate.

Fortunately our chickens are largely protected by their coop and run. Inside the coop is plenty of dry, clean hay and straw, and it’s surprising how warm it gets in there. They’ve not even stopped laying their daily egg each, which is a big tell-tale sign that all is well with them.

Maybe I should try putting my feet in a box of straw….

Great Tips to Add Years to Your Life

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An interesting interview with Aubrey de Grey and Dan Beuttner on CNN.

Our hallway is blocked by two huge boxes containing the new chicken house. The blurb insists it will take between ten and fifteen minutes to convert these two flat-packs into the house and run but having experienced the joys of self-assembly before, I remain sceptical.

The chicken house which Mum gave me is made from re-used wood and isn’t as watertight as it needs to be. It soaks up water from beneath, which is very bad for the birds’ health. Plus we wanted to give them a bigger run anyway. So I scoured the internet and found something much better. All I have to do now is assemble it then we can have our hall back and Hattie and Joyce can move house (again!)

I’m just back from a trip into the village. There’s an icy wind coming off the sea today but it’s pleasant once you get walking. I’d tackle the flat-packs now but the light will be fading soon, and so instead I’ll update this blog - which now gets auto-shipped from LiveJournal.

So what’s new?

Well, I’ve now completed the first draft of Bethany Rose, and am happy with where it ended. To explain, I began writing Bethany’s story with the idea that the MS would finish in the present time. Half way through writing it, I knew this was simply not going to happen and so it took me a few days to figure out a way round this. However, the novel now ends at the close of a major, clear-cut phase of her life. And as not much new happens for a few years after this - which would be boring to write and read anyway! - it’s a good place to end. Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done on the MS before anyone could call it finished in the true sense; the first draft is like the skeleton on which editing and polishing hangs the flesh of the book (more or less; the analogy soon heads onto shaky ground so let’s just skip that bit.)

Riverside Writers meet next Monday (Dec 21st), and this month’s writing theme was suggested by Carol Falaki, and is “The Melting Glacier.”

So is global warming for real or not? Again, I’m sceptical - not just because of the recent questions raised over the honesty of the data which seems to indicate global warming, but because we’ve only been measuring the weather for around 150 years. In the life of this planet, that’s a ridiculously miniscule timescale on which to judge anything.

When Vikings first landed on what became named Greenland, the weather was mild and according to their own records they were able to raise crops readily. That’s why the land was called “Green.” However, the weather changed and they died. They starved and froze to death, and this was apparently part of a cycle which the natives of Greenland already knew about. Who’s to say that the whole Earth doesn’t go through similar cycles of warming and cooling? Some scientists say it does just this, and that we’re about to enter a period of cooling. Time will tell, hmm? Meanwhile, a lot of money is being made peddling “green” stuff.

Also new… Take a peek at Spooky Cute Designs site, as I’ve been adding a huge amount of new items. There’s now a collection of greetings cards, nature scenes taken from our photography files. Plus there’re more designs in the entire collection. Discover what’s new for yourself and let me know what you think!

Spooky cute Designs: http://www.zazzle.com/AdeleCB

Also new… I’ve added a few new Hubpages, which are small non-fiction essays covering a wide range of topics, from recipes to an oil portrait of Vlad Dracula. Rummage around for yourself and see what takes your fancy. http://hubpages.com/profile/AdeleCosgroveBray

If you’re looking for something to read, then I have to recommend Peter V Brett’s The Painted Man which I thoroughly enjoyed. Well written with strong and believable characters, it offers an unusual plotline which places various people in different locations who gradually come together to fight for survival. A real page-turner, this one.

Work on Bethany Rose has kept me busy, as I’m on the last three or four thousand words now. The total word count will run over my intended 100,000 words but as I’ve already decided to delete one minor character completely that’s not an issue. This is only the first draft, of course; there’s a lot of work to be done yet, editing and polishing. Some people balk at this aspect of writing but I thoroughly enjoy it.

I’ve enjoyed writing Bethany’s story. Her character’s an interesting mixture of contradictions; sensitive but strong, creative but practical, and incredibly brave in the face of awful circumstances. She’s a very different person from Tamsin, that’s for sure. But I won’t say too much about her publicly for now.

I’ve also been enjoying our two chickens. In the spring, Mum began talking about having two pet chickens. She gave it some thought, and by early summer they were in residence in her small garden. Richard laughed and told her we’d have them by Xmas. Well he was right, and here they are.

Cute little characters they are, too, with amusing habits and quizzical expressions. They’re not in the least bothered by our dogs. Actually, Ygraine has already lost interest. Emily is more inquisitive, though, having discovered that these new residents produce mini footballs - eggs to you and me.

Richard’s famous. Really, he is. Check him out on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RJ9RA2fk8

October 31st saw an evening or short monologues by various writers from Wirral performed by members of the Carlton Players. The event was organised by Jenny Humphreys. Three other members of Riverside Writers took part, apart from myself: Tim Hulme, Carol Falaki and Peter Hurd.

My contribution was one of my short pieces involving the Caldy fae, The Faerie Tree, which is partly autobiographical. This was performed by Angela Keeler, who has been acting for seventeen years.

My photos are poor, my only excuse being the tricky lighting conditions which my digi isn't clever enough to cope with - sharp spotlights from the ceiling and bar area, and deep shadows. I had to push the highlight option in PhotoImpression 4 to extremes in order to be able to see much of the stage area. With my old and trusty Pentax SLR it would have been a doddle.

Enjoy your All Hallows Eve celebrations, people, whatever your plans for tonight. We're hardly being visited by wild Samhain storms here, though; the garden is flooded with golden sunlight and the French doors are wide open to allow in the soft, warm breeze.

The word-count for Bethany Rose now stands at 91,500 (and I’m aiming at 100,000), which means that the first draft is on its last lap.

Around half-way through writing this, I realised that my intention of telling all of Bethany’s story simply wasn’t going to fit into one novel - not unless I wanted to pen a 200,000 MS, and unless you have Stephen King’s level of assured readership most publishers would probably baulk at accepting that due to costs.

As so often happens with me, the process of writing feels like accepting silent dictation. Or it can be like watching a film projected onto the inside of my forehead; an internal pair of ‘eyes’ watch it play through, and I just write down what happens. I know that probably sounds loopy to most people but your reaction is your own responsibility.

So three-quarters of the way though writing the MS, I was still wondering how on earth I could close this novel in a good place, knowing that the main character’s story continues. If someone had read the other two books from the series, they’d already know her story continues too. Also, while these are part of a series I want it set up so they can be read in any sequence. All I could do, really, was accept more silent dictation and discover where it lead.

Anyway, this week suddenly the final plot was revealed, which has been fun.

And this ending fits in perfectly with the following book - which I hadn’t even thought of until yesterday. Today, not only do I know who the main character is, and therefore the title, but also the loose plot outline.

Yaay!

By the way, if you’re in Birkenhead tomorrow evening, drop into the Little Theatre where a groups of assorted actors will be performing one-act plays or monologues by local writers. Four members of Riverside Writers are taking part, including myself. Angela Keeler will be performing The Faerie Tree, which is one of my series of short tales about the notorious Caldy fae. Doors open at 7pm. Seating is limited, so be early.

You're invited to take a look at my latest painting, which is an oil painting of Vlad Dracula.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Portrait-of-Vlad-Dracula

A quiet weekend, spent pruning back some of our roses in readiness for winter. It seems such a shame to cut away the last of the flowers, and yet the job needs doing before the colder weather makes it much more of a chore. So now I've a vase on the fireplace, filled with mismatched but perfectly beautiful fragrant roses which are already starting to sprinkle petals over the black mirror-like hearth below it. Autumn is already upon us, here - my favourite season, actually.

Tim Hulme


Peter Hurd


Peter Caton


Carol Falaki


Andy Siddle


Adele Cosgrove-Bray

More photos from this event can be viewed on my Flickr site. Either click on the images above or go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/__Adele__

Am I ready for tonight? I think so… I hope so! Yesterday, I was chatting to Julie Mann, one of the librarians at West Kirby Library, and we remarked how the initial planning for New Tales for Old Byways had begun at a meeting a year ago. That was when the Wirral Bookfest had been scheduled for April, before the threatened library closures set everything back months. Julie will be taking photos tonight, just as she did for last year’s Words from Wordsmiths event.

Wirral TV will be filming tonight’s event. This was confirmed only yesterday. It should be an interesting experience to have a film crew moving around.

I’ll be reading Seth’s Basement, which introduces one man’s strange hobby; and also Food, which is one of my series about the Caldy Hill fae. But the program is very diverse, being a group effort.

Hope to see you there!

The Faerie Tree, one of my series of tales about the notorious Caldy fae, will be performed by actress Angela Keeler as part of an evening of short monologues. Angela's theatrical career spans seventeen years, and has included such diverse works as Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale and Frank Marcus's The Killing of Sister George.

This event will take place on 31st October 2009, at the Carlton Little Theatre in Birkenhead. The performance begins at 7.30pm. Seats are limited, so arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Permit me to introduce andysids who is a talented member of Riverside Writers.

Andy will be performing some of his work as part of New Tales for Old Byways on October 14th. Meanwhile, go say hi!

Last night's meeting of Riverside Writers began with our planning the program for the above event. Several of us will be performing more than one piece of work for the two-hour cheese and wine evening. Then we moved on to updating everyone on the progress of our anthology, as Carol Falaki has done wonders in finding an affordable publisher.

Once we'd got the formal stuff out of the way, we returned to our more usual style of meeting which is very much writing-based. We heard the results of two monthly projects, The Literary Chicken (flash fiction, 200 words max.) and Presents to Myself, which generated more poetry than is typical for our group.

Next month's writing project involves creating a short story or poem which feature the following objects: cracked plate; horse; recipe; cushion; daffodil; rag doll. If you'd like to join in, help yourself!

Events listings leaflet for Wirral Bookfest 2009; reproduced with permission. To view larger, simply click on either image, then click on 'All Sizes' in the menu bar.

The countdown to this year's Bookfest begins! We will be presenting New Tales from Old Byways at 7pm on Wednesday, October 14th at West Kirby Library.

All our stories and poems will have a local Wirral theme, which means they will be set locally or have some link with the area. This is the second time Riverside Writers has taken part in this week-long festival, which will see twenty-one events taking place in libraries across the peninsula.

The head librarian at West Kirby Library, told me there has been a lot of interest in New Tales for Old Byways already.

This photo was taken during a recent walk along the sand dunes, at Red Rocks in Hoylake. The solitary figure sitting on the sandstone outcrop, gazing towards Middle Eye and Hilbre Island, reminded me strongly of Rowan. This exactly captures the pose which Rowan would fall into, and in one of his favourite locations too.

Editing Rowan is coming along well. I’ve almost reached the end of the MS, and my next task will be to put all my alterations onto disc and reprint the hardcopy so I can clearly see what I’m looking at. I’ve gone over the existing paper MS five or six times already.

If you’d like to see some of the places where my stories are set, then I’ll invite you to visit http://hubpages.com/profile/AdeleCosgroveBray

I’ve been creating a few non-fiction articles there, illustrated with either my or Richard’s photography, or my art. The subject matter covers a fairly broad range, and it has amused me to watch the viewing stats for these Hub Pages. To date, the most popular by far is the page about how to make jam. Weird!

No-one is obliged to go along with everything--or, indeed, anything--that a critic or editor says. If several people say something similar then they may have a point. Then again, consider the actions of lemmings.




However, in the case of The Karens I agreed with the editor who told me the story didn’t really begin until six pages into the MS. I hadn’t noticed that until he’d pointed it out. I’d been too busy enjoying the flow of my own thoughts on a pet topic to notice that what I’d produced was, effectively, an info-dump.

The simple truth is that if a person wanted scientific information, they’d go to a scientist and not to someone who can just about tell the difference between a Bunsen burner and a Petri dish.

This is why so much Science-Fiction is written by real-life scientists. (You don’t say…!)

So it’s a pet topic--and if some future reader of the story is prompted into further research of the subject, great. Meanwhile, the story needs to be publishable. (Is publishable a real word? Oh, who cares; it’s 5.30pm gone and I’ve had enough for today. This is my blog; I can be semi-literate if I want to.)

So I cut 1,000 words from The Karens, and from those opening pages I kept only two small paragraphs which I segued separately into another scene.

Here’s hoping that when I read it through again in a few days, the pace seems improved without loss to the overall tale.

Ah, yes, every rainy Sunday afternoon when I was a child, my father's vinyl record collection would emerge from the gargantuan radiogram - a prized object the size of a sideboard, with a radio and record player built into it. A crackly loudspeaker was at either end, and inside was a slot intended to house the average person’s entire record collection, (probably around twenty LPs at the most.)

So the rain would fall, and the house would smell of the remains of Sunday dinner - a traditional roast, followed by a somewhat solid rice pudding - and rolling out of the prized loudspeakers would come such ‘delights’ as Delaney’s Donkey (as in the YouTube vid above) and Paddy McGuinty’s Goat, the theme music to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Paint Your Wagon and, just when it seemed things could not get worse, the dreaded James Last Orchestra.

Ah, yes, the trials of youth…

Truly, parents have no mercy.

http://insidethemiddleeast.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/18/video-1m-reward-for-mermaid-photos/


Pliny the Elder, in the first century AD, was apparently sure that mermaids existed. According to him, their bodies were rough and scaled all over. A fifth century bestiary by Physiologus describes them as beasts of the sea, shaped as a woman from the navel upward and a fish from the navel downward, and added that she especially enjoyed stormy weather.

In a thirteenth century work, De Propietatibus Rerum by Bartholomew Angelicus claimed that mermaids lulled sailors to sleep then kidnapped them for sex. If the sailors refused, the mermaid would kill then eat them. Then in 1739, The Scots Magazine reported that the crew of the Halifax, short on rations in the East Indies, had caught and eaten several mermaids. The sailors said mermaid flesh tasted like veal.

More mermaid info: http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/mermaids/1.html

You're probably wondering why I shared these gems of fishy authenticity. It's largely the consequence of having hubby upstairs, snoring through another of his migraines. Having written myself to a (temporary!) stand-still, I went web-wandering while part of my brain tinkered around with the more-detailed formation of a particular character. I couldn't write more of his story until I knew how he would react to the situation and the other people in it. I needed to know his motivations for being involved in the first place. Anyway, those details have been sorted out now.

Recently, I posted a short piece about Riverside Writers which ended with a off-the-cuff quip about my writing a Hub Page about how to start and run a happy writers' group. Qute a few people (on LJ and elsewhere) asked me to go ahead. And so, for those who are interested, here it is:- http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Run-A-Writers-Circle

The first draft of Bethany Rose has now reached 75,000 words, and there’s plenty more story to be told yet. I’ve already decided I’ll delete one character who appears fairly near the start of the book as she slows the pace down and doesn’t contribute enough to the plot, and there’s a particular scene which will probably be deleted too - again for reasons of pace.

All that can wait. The whole point of a first draft is to get the story onto paper. That it’s rough and flawed doesn’t matter. The important task is to get it written. Editing, re-writing and polishing come later. In Gabriel Marquez’s book, Living to Tell the Tale, the author quotes an older, more experienced writer who tells him the only person who should hear a first draft is the writer’s dog.

Maybe my neighbours think I talk to myself. (Well, actually…!) However, I’ve found that if you read your work aloud, rather than just read it silently, you’ll spot errors much more readily. If you stumble over the same sentence twice, there’s probably something wrong with it. My dogs don’t mind my reading aloud. Even if the story bombs, they’ll still love me.


By the way...
There will be an author event for Footprints (pbs. Hadley Rille Books) at Waterstone's in Dorchester on Thursday, the 27th of August at 7.30pm. Kate Kelly and David L Clements will be there to read from it and sign copies.

Riverside Writers’ meeting last night was unusually well attended, largely due to the coverage given in the local press. We were joined by Gary Smailes from Bubblecow http://www.bubblecow.com who delivered an information-packed talk about today’s publishing business and the value of social networking.

First Gary talked about the pros and cons of self-publishing, and the various options available. These roughly fall into two categories - the kind you pay for, or the web-based sort where you upload your MS to a print-on-demand site.

Self-publishing is really only a valid option if you plan to sell a limited number of copies to a pre-established audience, such as friends and family or a circle of acquaintances who share a specific interest relevant to your book.

Increasingly, mainstream publishers instantly reject any self-published works unless they have sold an absolute minimum of 3,000 copies, and very few achieve this.

Gary then moved on to discussing the emerging importance of small publishing houses, many of which actively welcome new authors who show promise.

A writer seeking a deal with a big-name publisher, however, really does need an agent, and Gary spent a considerable amount of time explaining the importance of finding an appropriate agent and how to approach them through email, cover letters and MS submissions.

Cover letters should not be dashed off in a morning, he said. Set it aside for a week then come back to it. Comb the letter through for errors in punctuation, spelling and grammar. Get someone else to look at it and find faults. This letter is likely to be your first-contact sales pitch, so you need to get it right.

Then Gary moved on to the subject of traditional publishers and what they’re looking for. The big-name houses are inundated with unknown or barely-known writers hoping for attention, and many of these have false ideas about the business.

One of the first things any agent or publisher does these-days, when looking at a promising MS, is run a Google search on the author’s name. If little or nothing results, it will probably be assumed that the author has no audience - which translates into minimal prospective sales. Gary encouraged everyone to develop a central site, such as a blog, and then add two or three social network sites. (Riverside Writers’ members have heard me tell them this numerous times!) Twitter came highly recommended - in fact it was via Twitter that Gary and I met.

Gary had invited questions from the audience throughout, and I think it’s fair to say that everyone enjoyed his talk and learned something new.

Thanks go to Gary Smailes for his hard work.

Thanks also go to West Kirby library staff for rapidly finding us a bigger room to hold the meeting in, as numbers exceeded expectations.

And here’s hoping the next meeting of Riverside Writers will see a return of some of the new faces who came along. That will be at West Kirby Library, 7.30pm on Monday, September 28th.