Facebook Rudeness

I’m writing this because something happened that I knew would. I’m not mentioning the person’s name because it isn’t my thing, but unfortunately this person’s actions have sent me into rant mode. Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A little while ago I switched off posting on my Facebook wall because I was sick to death of every morning having to clean other people’s promo off it. As in, around 10-15 promo drops while I slept and God knows how many throughout the day. I KNOW writers need to promo, but there’s a time and place for it. Honestly, imagine mine and other people’s walls as our homes, right? Would you walk up to someone’s house, slap a poster on the outside of it telling the world you have a book out, then walk away? Would you knock on the door under the guise that you’ve knocked to shoot the shit, catch up on the latest news with the house owner, letting them think you CARE about them, slap a poster in their face then walk away?

No. You wouldn’t. It would be rude, wouldn’t it? You’d be embarrassed when the house owner told you to take that damn poster off my house, you cheeky sod, and don’t knock on my door again! You’d risk being seen as a complete pig. So why is it acceptable to some to do this on Facebook?

This is utter rudeness. Some people might leave that shooting-the-shit comment along with the blatant promo on their wall because it would seem churlish to remove it when it had a nice sentiment on it, but me? Hell no! I take them OFF. It smacks of the nice sentiment only being written as an excuse to drop promo on the end of it.

Now, I only switched my wall back on this morning so that people in my family who don’t live with me and those friends who don’t slap their stuff on my wall could have the opportunity to wish me a happy birthday tomorrow. I knew when I switched it on that by the end of today someone would drop promo. Already I’ve changed what I want to do in my life by totally switching my wall off, and that annoys me because there are family and friends out there who don’t have the opportunity to leave me messages because of other people’s rudeness. Other people's actions affecting my life.

Do I switch my wall back off now, forcing those who want to speak to me tomorrow to send a note through PM? I shouldn’t have to. My wall should be respected.

I very rarely get arsey, but this kind of thing really does get on my nerves. You promo on your own walls, and when it comes up on the newsfeed, if it catches my eye and I go and buy your book, excellent. I've done this several times. I shouldn’t feel forced into reading stuff I don’t want to read; the people who visit my wall shouldn’t have to see link after link of book promos.

Have some manners!

Now, I just saw my fab friend Rhonda Helms posted on my wall. She said something nice, and THIS is what my wall is for—to connect with friends and family, for them to be able to say stuff they wouldn’t use a PM to say. I’ve denied myself this kind of thing—other people’s actions again. I’m missing out on nice conversation, and to be honest, with my time limited where I can’t natter on emails very often, catching up on my wall is brilliant for me.

D’you know what? It really does stink. I would never dream of dropping links on people’s walls. It just isn’t done in my world.

Another thing that bugs me is getting friend requests from people then as soon as you accept them they slap you with promo. With my wall switched off, those promos came via PM, and every one of them is deleted once I see what's going on. In future, anyone who adds me just to show off their book is going to be deleted from my list. Those in the past lost a sale the minute they promo’d. I won't buy one of their books EVER, just because they were rude like that. Those people clearly don’t want to be my friend, they just want to either expand their friend list or try and get me to buy their book.

Now, I have nearly 5K people on my friend list. I don’t know many of them—those I added right at the beginning were people I wanted to add, people I was interested in. Since then, those added have been people who added me. I may not comment much on your walls, but I read every single status at some point in my day—mainly mornings and evenings. I might not comment, but I do read because I’m interested in what you have to say. People post things that make me laugh or smile, cheer me up on days I might feel a bit poo. I really don’t want to have to sift through everyone and remove those who have offended me with promo in the past, but if it continues, I will. You’re taking up a slot in my friend list that people who actually want to KNOW me in some way will miss out on when that hideous 5K is reached and they try to connect and can't.

Rant over.

Gosh. There Are Cobwebs In Here...

Have you ever had one of those times where you’ve been racing along doing stuff then stopped to see where you’re at and shocked yourself? I’ve just had one of those times. I updated my website today, thinking it only needed artwork adding, and saw how many books and news of them I had to add as well.

Below is a list of books to come for the first quarter of 2012.

The Coterie Series ~ Lincoln's Woman ~ Release Jan 2012 ~ Natalie Dae

That Filthy Book ~ Natalie Dae & Lily Harlem ~ Release April 2012

Shades of Grey ~ Natalie Dae & Sam Crescent ~ Release date TBA

Rude Awakening ~ Natalie Dae & Sam Crescent ~ Currently in Submission

Minute Maid ~ Natalie Dae ~ Release date TBA

Voices Series ~ Sugar Strands ~ Sarah Masters ~ Release Jan 13^th 2012

Voices Series ~ Queer Rites ~ Sarah Masters ~ Currently Being Written (almost done!)

The Dreaming Series ~ Tools of Justice ~ Sarah Masters & Jaime Samms ~ Release March 26^th 2012

The Dreaming Series ~ Book 2 ~ Sarah Masters & Jaime Samms ~ Currently Being Written

Bad News ~ Natalie Dae & Lily Harlem ~ Currently in Submission

Shadows & Darkness ~ Natalie Dae ~ Release date TBA

As Yet Untitled ~ Natalie Dae & Sam Crescent ~ Currently Being Written

Planned Works for the rest of this year ~ Fight 2, Fantasies Explored 3, The Coterie 2, Voices 3, 2 As Yet Untitled (with Lily Harlem), 7 As Yet Untitled (with Sam Crescent), 1 As Yet Untitled (with Paige Turner). A mainstream novel written as Charley Oweson (started). Any other book that enters my head.

I’m lucky that I can knock out 10K in one day—lucky because I work full-time for Total-E-Bound and being able to write so fast means I can still produce the amount of books I did for the past two years. I’ve actually found that being only able to write at the weekend has helped. I have so much stored in my head from thinking about my books during the week, that it’s brewed and ready to spill onto the page by Saturday.

Work

My job as Head of Art for TEB is still as inspiring and wonderful as it was when I started last year (March 1^st full-time, Jan-Feb freelance). I adore my job because art is another of my loves and it isn’t really like working. I get to go into that place in my head while creating covers where I don’t think of anything in particular. Everything fades away and the time zips by. Before I know it, another day is at an end and I’m shocked at how quickly it passed.

For anyone who ever wondered exactly what I do, I don’t just create covers. I make promotional banner packs for every book (postcard, bookmark, banner and thumbnail), update TEB’s merchandise site, create any promotional artwork that needs doing, send work to the other artists, do paperwork to ensure I know where I’m at and what needs doing next (on Excel to begin with then scribbled notes in several notebooks that are sprinkled with multi-coloured highlights, each colour meaning something different to me but looks a mess to anyone else), paperwork on the images used, uploading my work to the database, checking the release schedule for any changes (in case a different cover needs doing), print book flats, audio covers… Gosh, it all looks rather frantic but I have a little system going where certain things get done on certain weeks of the month and by the end everything is done.

This job is THE BEST for me. I think about it a lot when I’m not working and recently had 9 days off (November). I didn’t fully relax until the Thursday, and by then I felt depressed and very bored without my job to keep me going. I didn’t even want to write. It felt horrible. When I returned to work the following Monday, I was in heaven. I’ve now come to the conclusion, with Christmas as my guide, that having two days off work, including a weekend, is enough for me. Any more and I go nuts.

I realise I’m a workaholic not only with my job but writing as well. I’m happy this way. The thought of time on my hands for an extended period makes me break out in shivers.

Writing

At the end of 2011 I had a strange little book come out as Sarah Masters called I Am the Wind. I say strange because I hadn’t planned to write it and it wasn’t something I thought would sell. A friend from my days on a writing forum challenged me to write a short book with a hacksaw in it—and it had to be written over the course of a weekend. I did it and sent it to one of my publishers, who loved it, said it was “one of the most fucked-up romances I’ve ever read” and published it. Yes, it is a bit effed, but that little bugger has surprised me in how very well it’s sold. I wondered if that was because I hadn’t had a book out as Sarah Masters for quite a while or because readers enjoy books involving very tortured men. Either way, it was one of the highlights of 2011 in that just because you don’t think it will sell (because, let’s face it, we’re steered towards what to write and what supposedly sells), you may be shocked when it does. A kind of write-from-the-heart thing and see where it goes.

Which leads me to wondering whether I ought to create more tortured men just to see if that is why I Am the Wind sold. It’ll be an interesting study anyway.

On another interesting note, I received a message from a reader a couple of months ago regarding Mane Attraction. That book got a bit slammed on Goodreads (I don’t want to sound a bitch, but that place…Gawd!), with people saying the quest wasn’t explained, among other things. I sat here and thought: The quest is there for all to see. Man has to get lion shifter back to Africa. I frowned, wondering how something that is so obvious wasn’t picked up by certain people. Also, when someone states they couldn’t finish the book, you question what you could have done differently, what you can do in future books to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and, me being me, I also think: Okay, you didn’t like it. Sorry about that, but I loved writing it, other people have enjoyed it, so we’ll put it down to that particular book coming off as total crap to you and move on, shall we?

However, going back to the message from someone on Goodreads… He asked if there was going to be a book 2. I told him I doubted it because I didn’t think anyone would be interested, and he said he would be. Well, that was enough for me. One person wants book 2, so that person will get it at some point—complete with content the man wished to read about. I explained about my other projects and that I’d try to get it done and received an excited response. Okay, so I may only be writing it for that one person and myself, but if it makes us both happy, I’ll do it.

Thank you, reader.

I’ve been busy with co-authoring too. I started writing with Lily Harlem last year after meeting her in real life at a TEB function. We got along so well and writing with her is an absolute dream. We have one novel contracted so far—That Filthy Book—and another in submission—Bad News. As we’re both so busy at the minute, we’ll be starting two new books later, one she has in her head and one I have in mine. Who knows where the hell they’ll take us, as the previous two have turned out to be quite the crazy ride!

I also began writing with the lovely Sam Crescent. We penned a Texas werewolf novel last year which has been contracted—Shades of Grey—and have just submitted our second novel—a BDSM called Rude Awakening—while writing our third. I write the male POV, Sam writes the female, and it works well for us because I prefer writing about blokes. Our books seem to take on a life of their own, and we get them done with alarming speed—we both write fast, so this is a bonus.

And then there’s the delightful Jaime Samms. Our second co-author is due out at the end of March—The Dreaming: Tools of Justice. This novel is about 90K, and we realised we still had so much more to say about these men and their world so decided to make it a series. We’re currently writing book 2, where the plot thickens and new characters have been introduced, as well as keeping those from book 1.

Sugar Strands, the first in my Voices novel series is out on Jan 13^th. I love the guy in this one—Oliver—who hears voices from the dead. His relationship with Detective Langham was a joy to write, and because these two got right inside my head, I decided to write a series. I’m nearing the end of book 2 at the moment (5K left whoo!)—Queer Rites—and have a vague idea of what book 3 will be about. With this series, I started with Oliver and Langham. In #2 we have O & L plus two new men, Dane and Adam. In #3 O & L will feature, possibly D & A as very minor characters, but the other main POV will be from a serial killer. Needless to say, me and my penchant for horror… I’m really looking forward to writing #3. Obviously, with the series title being Voices, that is the main theme. Oliver hears the dead, Adam hears the living in his head, and the serial killer will hear…a different voice entirely.

As Natalie Dae, I have a couple of books I need to write before the end of this year’s first quarter. #3 in the Fantasies Explored series, coming from Jack’s POV, and #2 in The Coterie Series, entitled Cormag’s Woman. Best get busy then…

Reviewing

Last year was a good one for Miz Love Loves Books. We weren’t able to review every book sent in, and sadly some had to be deleted as they’d been in the queue for more than 4 months, but we reviewed a good deal of them. The inbox/genre folders are currently bursting. There are more books than we can handle right now, so inevitably some aren’t going to get picked up this year and will be deleted. I hate doing that but it’s the only way we can keep on top of things if we stick to the 4-month-in-the-queue rule. We’ll plod on, cast the guilt of deletion aside, and concentrate on trying to get a new review out every day of the working week. Sometimes, due to my schedule, this doesn’t happen and I have to put up a wedge of reviews on one day, but such is life—it intrudes so rudely sometimes.

We had a Best of 2011, where we nominated our favourite books from last year. These books were chosen by us rather than going down the public-vote route because…well, I don’t think I should go into the vote-rigging scenario here. I asked the reviewers to pick books that stood out to them the most, the ones they could remember still, regardless of the score they gave. If we went by scores we’d have chosen all Golden Nib books, which wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted books that had stuck in the mind, books that will probably still be in the mind for various reasons this time next year, and here are the results. The site has also had a revamp, so it now looks less cluttered and more…refined? No idea, you be the judge of that.

So…

After that huge waffle, which will possibly remain here at the top of my blog posts for some time to come because I’m such a shitty blogger, I wish you all the very best for 2012 and that many of your dreams and wishes come true.

Until next time, loves!

A Little Before and After Artwork

1, 2, 3 Rants!

Apologies for any foul language that is present in this post. Some is bound to slip out because I’m annoyed.

Rant #1

I don’t usually get pissed off. Well, I do, but not with cold callers on the telephone. I used to get really arsey with them but realised I was fighting a losing battle so started either ignoring their calls when an unrecognised number came up on caller display, or, if they caught me out by making their call display “withheld”, which could be any of my family or friends who’ve opted to keep their number private, I began just putting the phone down.

To save me typing it out again, I’ll just paste my Facebook status here so if you haven’t seen it you’ll get the idea of why I’m annoyed:

Umm, just had a phone call on my mobile (how did she get that number?) from someone trying to get me to do a survey, and I was incredibly polite in saying I didn't wish to participate and could she take me off her calling list. She argued that I didn't know what she was going to ask me yet, can I just spare her a minute, so I said I couldn't, that if she wasn't any of my creditors, could she please take me off her list. She said: There's no need to be rude, Michelle. WHAT? If she wanted rude, she'd have heard me call her an effing mofo. Silly cow. DISLIKE BUTTON!

So then, while letting off steam on Fb, I realised she’d used my real name. So she knows my name, my phone number and most probably my address. This bugs the hell out of me. I’m a private person. I don’t like people knowing my shit. If they need to know, I’ll tell them. And what happened to privacy? What’s with feeling like you have to explain yourself to some turd caller who won’t take no for an answer? How do they manage to make YOU feel guilty for asking them to not call you again?

It’s their job. I get it. But when they call me, they’re interrupting MY job or my spare time. I don’t want to buy their sodding awnings. Yes, let’s talk about the guy who called me about awnings. Did I want one in my garden? They’re very good for keeping off the sun and rain if you want to sit outside. Never mind the bloody fact these awnings STARTED at two grand each… This call came back in the day when I’d politely tell them no thank you and try to get off the line. So I told the guy to ring me back in six months, hoping he’d bugger off.

He did.

For six months.

The phone rang one day, and he spoke to me as though I should have remembered him.

“Hi, Michelle, it’s Clive.”

Clive? I don’t know any bloody Clives.

Laughter. “You know! Clive! Clive from Awesome Awnings!”

Awesome Bloody Awning

That wasn’t the name of the company, but it may as well have been the way he ranted on about how awesome those awnings were. I fobbed him off again by saying my finances had taken a nosedive and I couldn’t afford an Awesome Awning.

“Nooooooo problem, Michelle. I’ll give you a call in six months again.”

“Um, no. My finances won’t be any different by then.”

“Okay then, what about…hmmm…let’s say a year?”

“Okay.”

A year later…

“Hi, Michelle, it’s me, Clive!”

Fuck me sideways.

It was at this point I realised I needed to grow some hairy balls and tell these kinds of people no, that I mean no, and that’s that. I did.

Hubby registered us with this company—

There is a pause in this post for me to tell you I’ve just burned my effing dinner. And not only that, I originally typed “borned” my dinner, which set me off wondering how on earth I was supposed to have given birth to a cow.

—whereby when you quote their name the caller immediately disappears. It was instant magic. They were scared of this company. I think it was something to do with them getting caught for making unsolicited phone calls.

The calls stopped for ages. Bliss. Then they started again, with a new breed of arsehole calling who wasn’t scared of this company. They rattled on like they had before, only worse, like they were daring me to threaten them with some other company who’d frighten them into hanging up.

The latest spate of calls have been the pre-recorded ones. The one that starts, “Did you know…?” in an irritating monotone really drives me up the damn wall. No, I didn’t know, and whatever it is I’m supposed to know, I don’t want to. Ignorance is bliss, love. So the other new one lately starts with bank names: “Natwest and Halifax—“

Can knob off.

Rant #2

It isn’t often I buy decent steak. The only reason I did the other day is because Tescos supermarket had a special offer on. Peppered steak. So, after being pissed off by that phone call, I decided to go and make dinner. I got the steak out of the fridge. Tescos had laid the three steaks in the packet overlapping one another. “Oh yum,” I muttered to my damn self—it’s becoming a bit of a freaky habit, that—and began opening the package. Only to find this so-called peppered steak only had the pepper stuff ON THE BITS OF STEAK THAT WERE SHOWING TO THE CUSTOMER THROUGH THE CELLOPHANE LID!

Cheeky, peppercorn-stealing buss-tards!

I have been defrauded of several bobbles of peppercorns and feel affronted in the extreme. Mumbling that Tescos is a pig of a supermarket who have taken over our nearest town, not only with TWO large supermarkets but several of the wanky little express shops, I rammed the steak under the grill. Switched it on. Huffed off to have a cigarette in order to calm down. After this, I returned to the oven to check how the cooking process was going, only to find, as usual with me lately, that I’d just switched the bloody oven light on and not the grill.

I piss myself off.

So I switched it on, making sure the electric element glowed red before I walked away to begin this post. And, as I stated above, I borned the effing things.

Today was going absolutely fine until that bloody phone call. I think the survey lady has secretly hexed me.

I’ll just state for the record that I hate Tescos. I hate their greed, the fact that every time another supermarket bids to build a store here, Tescos make a complaint and have the build stopped. I resent just having Somerfield—which smells of old lady’s pissy knickers (not that I’ve gone up to an old lady who wee’d herself and took a hefty breath) and doesn’t look very clean at all—or Iceland, which attracts a certain element, shall we say, as other shop alternatives. I hate the fact we have to go around 20 miles to shop elsewhere or buy it online—and I ALWAYS fuck up my online food shopping so that idea is slowly going out the window. If it isn’t me messing it up, it’s them.

Don’t get me started on their “alternatives” if what I want isn’t in stock on the day the pickers pack my shopping. What part of hand WASH says hand CREAM to a picker? What part of MENTHOL cigarettes says NORMAL cigarettes? What about the most recent one: “I’ll just forget to pack your deodorant, your shampoo AND your hair conditioner today”? Oh, that’s okay, love. I really enjoy going around smelling of B.O. and having hair so greasy you could fry chips on them. And then, when I called customer services to say some of my shopping hadn’t arrived, and I gave them the product numbers, and she told me how much they would refund…why, oh sodding bloody why, did they only refund HALF of it, making me have to ring them again?

Barforama

And what about when I was online shopping the other day and I wrote "Asda frozen potato lattices" in the search box. How the HELL did their computer throw up CHICKEN LIVERS? How come, when my daughter looked for this carpet freshener stuff they had it, but when I went to look they didn't? Don't they want me to buy Shake 'n' Vac with the scent of summer-shitting-breeze? Do they know it's me shopping and they devise some trick every week to test my patience?

I’ve decided I also hate Asda.

Rant #3

At present, I am enduring:

1. Middle Son rapping beside me. Yes, he's rapping some insane garbage about body image or something, and I wonder what the hell has happened to music these days. As I type this, he is listening to a rather irritating song on his phone by some guy who is an ultra-fast rapper who rapped ultra fast because people didn’t believe he could rap ultra fast. He put his ultra-fast rap on You-Tube, God bless him.

He can rap the hell off, because his voice is getting on my nerves.

2. Smallest shouts from the garden that she’s painting the back door with water. I ask why she’s doing this and receive the response that it’s fun. I don’t argue with that. I’d like to paint with yellow water right now, if you know what I mean. I’d like to pain the faces of every cold caller with it so they smell like those old ladies I mentioned earlier.

My mum said I'm a greedy wanker

3. The cats are yowling from the garden telling me they want some of the meat they can smell. They’re not having any. But they come in anyway, sneaking about in my kitchen while I’m in here, and when I just went in there to turn the meat they scrabbled outside so fast it was like their arses were on fire. Yes, they’d better run. If they even THINK about stealing any of that food there’ll be trouble. I confess I called him a terrible name.

I am a nasty pet owner.

4. The TV is blaring some horrible tune on the opening credits for a film called Gone in 60 Seconds. I dislike this film because it has Nicholas Cage in it. He gives me the creeps.

My ire is mounting.

While I’m at it, on the back of a Fb conversation last night, I may as well admit here that cherry tomatoes also give me the creeps. I have no clue why they bother me and normal tomatoes don’t. They are hateful, tiny little balls of creepiness. I wonder if I’ll have a nightmare later. Murder by cherry tomato. A dream where I’m running in syrup to get away from a horde of angry-faced cherry tomatoes and I try to fly and can’t until they’re nipping at my heels with their pippy little teeth.

5. I’m slowly going mental with all this going on.

6. I’m telling myself there are far more important things going on in the world for me to rant about, but I’m too far gone.

7. I just had a cherry-tomato-induced shudder.

8. I just had another phone call. Hubby is very in tune with me even when we're apart. He isn't allowed to use his phone at work, so he can't have seen my Fb status.

"Hello?" I said.

"Did you know...?" he said.

"No, I fucking didn't!" I said.

It's time for some calming camomile tea, I think...

Long Hair is a Pain in the... by Larion Wills

Please welcome Larion Wills to The Ellis Herald, where she talks about long hair and what a nightmare it can be. Take it away, Larion!

How many times have you read a line similar to ‘he couldn’t wait to run his hands through the long silken stains of her hair’? It sounds so romantic; I’ve seen such references in every romance novel I’ve read. No one mentions what a pain in the rear long hair is to the wearer. I, no doubt affected by the façade, always wanted long hair. It’s sexy, right? I envisioned myself giving a long dangling curl a flip over my shoulder along with a coy come here look. In my younger years I did manage to get it to grow a little past my shoulders, just not quite long enough for that sexy flip. Then about ten years ago I stopped putting perms in it. Lo and behold, it started growing. My light auburn glory, well tinged with natural highlights—yes, I really mean gray—hangs to the middle of my back. Anytime I lean forward it does fall over my shoulders at a time when there isn’t a man alive, except my husband, who would remotely think it’s sexy when I throw it out of the way. ‘She leaned forward and her hair fell in a curtain to hide her face.’ That means she’s blinded, has hair in her mouth and eyes. Not sexy or romantic.

You want a reality check on what it’s really like to have long hair? I had this project, a very simple one: build up a rock wall around a small pond in my yard, following an example seen at good old Home Depot. Once the rocks were in place, work I supervised, simply use an aerosol can of spray insulation foam to set the rocks in place. I, of course, had to show my helper, a 19-year-old grandson, how to do it. Try not to get ahead of me here. You’ve probably already guessed. I leaned down and somehow one of those sexually falling strands of hair came in contact with the blob of foam at the end of the nozzle. AGHHH! Followed by panic. Holding the contaminated strand away from my head to prevent the foam from drawing more hair to it like a cancerous magnet, I ran into the house. What will take it out? ran through my mind. Gooey, sticky. What takes gooey sticky out? Fingernail polish remover takes off gum left behind from labels. I tore the bathroom cabinet apart. It got it wet, but didn’t help the sticky. Must have been one of those non-aceton kind for false nails. I still had a wad equal to a three piece mouthful of bubble gum. Acetone! That takes off the glue used to put Formica on a counter top.

I dash off to the pantry. I know we have some left from taking the excess glue off the counter top. Leaning over the kitchen sink, I work in acetone with fears of frying my hair and ending up looking like I’m wearing a clown wig after sticking my finger in a light socket. Whoa. The funds are astounding. Hair held out as far as I can, head turned to avoid the fumes as much as possible, I’m relieved to feel the sticky subside. Alas, relieved too soon. Must have been the fumes. After washing the acetone out, the paper towel used to blot out the water sticks and the hair is still a bird nest wad defying efforts to separate. Oh, no, what am I going to do? There has to be something to take it out. Back to the pantry. Ummm, Goop Off. Can’t be any worse than acetone. Back to the sink. That round I didn’t relax until the paper towel didn’t stick and I could separate the strands. I’m also happy to say, I didn’t fry my hair. I did go back outside to see how the project had progressed in my absence. Little side note here, don’t let a 19 year old loose with a can of aerosol foam without supervision. Seeing the mess he’d made and thinking of the clean up, I wondered if the directions on the can tell you how to get it out? I know, I should have read the directions before I ran into the house, but I did tell you I panicked. After all, it was a threat of my ‘crowning glory’ and if you don’t understand now what a pain in the…long hair can really be, you will forever be blinded by words of glamour and sexy in fiction. I still am or I’d cut the stuff off.

Click for:

Larion's Books

Website

Blog

Facebook

Oh, My Dear, I Feel Like a Tart!

Last Saturday night I discovered I really don’t “do” pubs anymore. Well, not pubs the younger generation frequent anyway. I don’t mind going to the pub for a meal with the fammo, but to be honest, my days of going out on the lash are well and truly over. This particular night was my friend’s hen night. For those of you who aren’t UK and don’t know what a hen night is, it’s a night out for the bride-to-be, usually the week before the wedding (or even a weekend break away), with all her friends. The men have stag parties.

Anyway, I wore a dress and my lovely red shoes—and promptly felt like mutton dressed as lamb. A tart. I mean, okay, I know I live in my jammies, and on the days I do get dressed it’s leggings or jeans, but wearing a dress always makes me feel so…RUDE. I can’t explain what the hell I mean. Hmm. I always feel exposed, but not in the fleshy way. Exposed, as in, vulnerable, that I’m not comfortable with what I’m wearing. So, with this feeling going on, plus the fact I hadn’t been out with the girls in yonks—not counting the TEB “do”, which was different anyway—we got the bus into town. After having a quick drink in a pub—Disaronno for me because anything stronger and I’d have been all over the place as I don’t drink much these days—we got on another bus to Oxford. Aaaand sang a lot on the way to tunes on my iPhone. Hilarious to get funny looks from the other passengers, but instead of feeling young and groovy like I would have done once upon a time, I felt like the other people saw me as some silly old granny on a day-trip to the seaside, swaying to the music, except we weren’t singing Cliff Richard songs.

Hmph.

The meal in Oxford was delightful, a really nice time had by all, and then we returned to our home town. I’d told myself to go home at this point because I knew I wouldn’t like the pubby bit to come, but I went along anyway. In the first pub, I felt uncomfortable but it wasn’t a feeling that nudged me to the door and made me call Hubby to come and get me. But the second pub? Good bloody LORD! The minute I walked in I wanted to turn right round and walk out again. The young people looked about 12—they can’t have been, but that’s how they seemed—and it was so blatantly obvious who was gazing at who, who had a raging need to approach who, that I was amazed at how apparent it was now that I’m older. I never noticed this going on at ALL when I was younger. Probably because I wasn’t looking and no fucker ever looked at me anyway HA HAAA! But you get the idea.

Testosterone filled the air along with giggly girls trying to look older and sophisticated by prancing around on the dance floor as though they worked the poles every other night of the week.

I was quite disturbed.

Now, I know this goes on, I’m not stupid, but to see it like that when the days of me having anything to do with such shenanigans—God, I’m even using old lady words now; effing great!—are over, well, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I turned into a woman who tutted a lot and rolled her eyes.

Tonight, a week later, is the wedding. I’ll be wearing a dress again, but one that doesn’t show my chest, thank goodness. And Hubby and Smallest will be with me, so I suspect I’ll feel more comfortable. The bride looked absolutely stunning this morning when she climbed into the silver limo outside her house, and there I stood, with Smallest, another friend and her daughters, all in our bloody pyjamas, crying and seeing our friend off.

She’s waited ten years for this, and I know she’ll be so happy today. Sigh. I can’t wait to see her later, see how radiant she is. Sometimes, life really is bloody wonderful.

Revamp and the Pissy Old Lady

THE INFORMATION BIT: I got bored. The blog wasn’t making me want to come here and post. So I revamped. Again. As you can see, it’s a newspapery kinda place now, where I hope people will want to guest here in order to spread the word about their books. You want a spot here, just email me your article or whatever, and I’ll post it if the day is free, and if it isn’t, I’ll let you know which day it’ll go live to the masses! If you want to be in Celebrity Squares, just email me your web link and I’ll do the rest.

THE SHOOTING-THE-SHIT BIT: Now we have that out of the way, I wanted to talk about my mentalness. I doubt that’s even a word, but who cares. It is now. For the past year I’ve been getting increasingly forgetful with regards to things non-work related. With work, I have my notebooks—three of the buggers—my highlighter pens with each colour meaning different things. Yellow means the cover is complete. A squiggly black line through that means the banner pack is complete. A tick beside that means I’ve uploaded the cover and pack to the database. A cross means the author has their artwork.

Scribble on that chicken baby, yeah!

If only I could use pens to sort the rest of my jobs out. Just think, when I need to remember to carve the chicken, I can scribble all over it in luminous green pen. When I need to remember to cook the bloody thing, it can be red. Sorted.

Earlier, I made a salad. I’m miles away, as per usual, mind on the workday just gone, what’s left from this week’s list to complete next week, then my tasks for this weekend—writing (whoo!), housework (effing hell), reading (can we have a hell yeah?) and a Hen Night. Yes, one of my pals is getting married next weekend, and tomorrow night is her last night out with the girls as a “single” woman. She hasn’t been single for the past ten years (bugs the shit out of me that people are classed as single even when they’re in a relationship), but they’re finally tying the knot.

Anyway. I went off track. I wanted to discuss onions. I was making the salad, musing away on everything above, one after the other. (Also how I thought I’d lost my red sandals I bought to go to the TEB bash in May—I wanted to wear them tomorrow night—when, in fact, I’d put them away “securely”. So securely I couldn’t find the sodding things, and after gutting the whole house in a late spring clean, with Hubby finishing off with searching in the cupboard under the stairs, which is a veritable nightmare of coats, shoes, bags and umbrellas, I saw the shoe box sitting on top of the fridge...but that’s another story, and I’ve bleedin’ well gone off track again.)

See, this is what I’m on about. I go off on tangents.

You beige-haired buss-tard!

Onions. Salad. Chopping away at the lettuce. Slicing off the ends of the onion. You know the bits, where it looks like they have thick, coarse beige hair growing out of them. I’m talking red onions. So I lop off the ends, put the ends in the bin and go to cut the main onion that’s left. Only, I see I have the ends still on the chopping board. I go to the bin. See a whole onion sitting on top of all the other crap in there. When did that happen? How did that happen? It took a moment’s pause for me to come to grips with the fact I’d done this. I’d acted like “one of those mad people” you read about on the news, where it starts with small things like hairy onion ends on your chopping board and progresses to pissing your knickers every time you sneeze or laugh. Wait, I’ve already accomplished that stage…

I’m 38. I dread to think what I’ll be like at 48. I can’t even begin to imagine. Maybe I’ll cook the highlighter pens instead of the chicken. Maybe I’ll go outside to piss, thinking I went upstairs, swearing blind I was in the bathroom. The kids in the street will all laugh, calling me Smelly Ellis because after I pissed myself, I forgot to go and change.

The future does not look too bright.

Still, I’ll hope for a miracle cure. A tablet that will stop this crazy business before it even really begins. Please share your senior moments with me. I feel terribly alone and wibbly (*wibbly - word taught to me by the fabulous Jaime Samms).