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Thursday 31 January 2013

Wrong Number

So I managed to write 300 words today. I was ill. I woke up with a headache but still took my wife to University at Leeds. Felt ill in the car and fell asleep. My phone ran out of battery and I was half an hour late for my wife. When I got home I went back to bed.

I managed to do about 200 words in Morrisons but that was part of the 300. Also managed to put some hips and thighs on my android, it really needs to be finished soon for the next OWIA promotion.

What was funny about today? My wife told me to smile even though I had a headache. My excuse for still not smiling was that I had a headache. My wife thought it was hilarious (not) that I didn't pick her up. She was imagining me in hospital or dead by the side of the road. Now if that person hadn't made a wrong number call to my phone then I would have had enough power in it to receive the call from my wife...

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Ivanhoe

I have managed to write about 400 words of FOA today. Drew a little more of the android cover for it in Paint. Spent too much time re-installing windows etc on a new hard drive. At least it gets me back on the internet. Managed my Tweets on my wife's iPad.

Watched Ivanhoe while I installed the software on my PC. My dad was in Ivanhoe, but not the colour version. He met John Bentley at the Pier in Cleethorpes after the actor had performed in a play. My dad introduced himself as being in Ivanhoe with the actor. John Bentley had played Ivanhoe and my dad was in the crowd scene smoking a fag with a flat cap on at the back. John never came to our house for tea as my father expected.

Tried looking for the black and white version of Ivanhoe on the internet. It is not in John Bentley's filmography. However somebody else mentions a film that is not listed in the database that he was an extra in with john Bentley. Somebody might find an old copy and stick it in the list, you never know.

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Broken again

Managed to write 500 words of FOA really early in Tesco at Tadcaster Road. Also did scan disk on PC and got printer working again. But the PC crashed while I was running Malwarebytes. I had managed to make copies of most of my files but had changed a drawing a couple of times and didn't save it to my memory stick. Now the PC is hanging at the welcome screen. That sounds like a lynching at the hello ranch. Trying to reinstall Windows but seem to be having a problem.

I may have to put another hard drive in it.

Had some Illy coffee today, it didn't make me illy but it did have coffee grinds in the bottom of the cup afterwards. Silly illy.

Monday 28 January 2013

Do not judge.

Managed to write 500 words of FOA today at the Central Library in York. Also did a bit of planning for TST. I read a blog article on Saturday where a published author upped her daily total from 2,000 words to 10,000 words. There were three main things she did. She planned what she was going to write that session. She ran it through and if she couldn't resolve the things she needed to in her mind then she started again. She made sure she wrote the things that made her interested, the quirky chops and changes. If it didn't interest her to write it then why should it interest anyone to read it. She got rid of distractions and spent a good few hours writing. People have been clamouring to her for her method. So I tried it today, only the planning bit, and at least I figured out what kind of job the heroine has and where she works and who she works for.

"Do not judge and you will not be judged, for in the same way that you judge others you will be judged."


Saturday 26 January 2013

Wet Feet

Managed to write 500 words of FOA in the morning and about 100 words of The Sun Thief. Cleared the car of snow for my wife. Retweeted early but still am going to bed late. Started drawing the cover of FOA into the Paint package on the PC. Played some Batman Lego with my son. The funniest thing that happened today was that I thought I could go safely over to the post office in my slippers. The snow was too slushy near the corners and I got wet feet!

Friday 25 January 2013

Mivvied triple dip

Wrote 500+ words of FOA today as well as nearly 800 of The 24. Had a sugarless coffee with Ellie from the Leeds Uni Chaplaincy, she told me her sister is on Goodreads, I may have to sell something on there.

So the snow is bad, I have swept up three times but it just gets covered again. I bet if I sweep our path at 2 in the morning it will be nice and melted by tomorrow afternoon!!!

So we are probably in a triple dip recession, that sounds a bit like something that might happen in a mountain peaks race or something you put on an ice cream just after you score it with your scoop. Now if we only repented as a nation...

"Whew!" whewed Arthur with a kind of whewiness.
"Silliness if you ask me," asked Sid. Then rebuking me he said, "I did not ask then but possibly commented or even said."
Arthur was a bit miffed, not mivvied, which is a British ice lolly, (or possibly being attacked by a Mivvy.) "Are you going to listen or what?" he asked me as I ignored him.

Thursday 24 January 2013

Flubble

"Flubble!"
"Is a funny word."
"Binkgo?"
"Is not so funny."
"So what makes flubble funny and binkgo not?"
"Bingko is a little funny."
"So it's a bit like me then," said Sid the dwarf.
"You know, before that last sentence described you as 'Sid the dwarf' I didn't know who was speaking," said Arthur the King of the Britons.
"Bubbleburp."
"That is quite funny, a bit like me."
"Not."

So I managed to write 500 words of FOA today at Leeds University. Changed my Wattpad and Twitter profiles. All Hallows was closed until next Wednesday.

Today was the day when a ball boy made the national news for withholding a football from a player and getting kicked or nearly for it. Now if it had been Ball Boy from the comic strip then Beano readers would have been up in arms about it. As it was Charlie Morgan's Twitter following went up by 84,000 after the incident! I wonder if I can get kicked by an international football star to increase my Twitter following?

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Memory stick

I managed to write 500 words of FOA earlier this morning. Also typed in about 380 words of The 24, I am really concerned that I will not be able to make it 30,000 words. Wrote another 500 word of it. Also did about 250 words of The Sun Thief and thought about some ideas for it.

So today, while I was half way through saving my work on my memory stick my son sat in my place and bent the memory stick. I managed to bend it sort of back into shape and it still works but I will probably need a new memory stick to be safe. I will have to remove my memory stick each time I get up from the computer.

"Stop complaining," said Sid, "at least you have a son who cares about you enough to bend your memory stick."
"You are cheeky Sid, appearing on my blog when It's not even a piece of flash fiction."
"Well I had to make it funny for you seeing as you failed so miserably today!"

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Assaulted by Ice Wielding Thugs.

Managed to catch up with what I never did yesterday, so yesterday and today's total is 1,000 words written and typed in. Only another 5,000 to go. Was thinking as I was snoozing how to transport people to my new world. It will be a tunnel like steam driven transport device (although it could be electric as that was invented then.)

So as I was walking town Fifth Avenue at about 6 O'Clock 5 lads were throwing ice balls at each other and passers by. They missed the fellow twice who was walking towards me. I prayed that they would miss me and six times they did. After I crossed the road they hit me. Now if they had missed me seven times then I probably wouldn't have mentioned it on my blog. However they did assault me, with ice. I also heard one of them say that another had gotten points for hitting me. I suppose it was a bit like Death Race 2000 or something. It scares people when gangs of older lads are throwing things at them and you can't stop them. Now if it had been Death Race 2000 then I could have turned my machine guns on them, but they also may have had some machine guns themselves! They would have got 2,000 points for getting an old disco dancer!

Monday 21 January 2013

Ugly cats

Managed to write and type in 270 words of FOA this morning. Played Lego Batman with my daughter.

Photographed one of those ugly cats today that are doing the rounds. It was not a fully grown ugly cat, but a largish kitten. Poor thing, fancy knowing you are going to grow up to be an ugly cat. He probably doesn't though, know. Has ugly become the new beauty? Probably not, there will always be seekers after beauty. I wonder what will happen to ugly cats after the fad dies out, will there be a sudden influx of ugly cats to ugly cats homes?

Saturday 19 January 2013

Tea cosy?

Went with my wife to sit in the car while she taught piano so I could turn the car around in the snow. I sat in my hat and had a hot water bottle. Managed to write 500 words of FOA which just about finishes short story 4. Last night I was trying to come up with names for the alternative earth, Terra seemed good but has been used a lot before, it is the Latin for earth. Gaia, etc. So you can suggest names for an alternate earth below. I was also thinking about it being a phased earth so that we cannot see it from our earth. I got taken to Morrisons for breakfast after but, after trying to keep my teapot hot by using my woolly hat as a tea cosy, I spilled the water on the hat and soaked it. I thought it was such a good idea. I wonder how many times people mess up because they think they have a good idea? Mine would have been a good idea if I hadn't tried to put two pots under one hat. Trying to keep my wife's hot as well. We shall call this the tea cosy incident!


Friday 18 January 2013

Sisipherian task

Wrote about 650 words of FOA, also about 250 words of The Sun Thief and 150 words of The 24.
If I write another 500 words tomorrow then I have finished short story 4. Got to the number one spot for science fiction on the Kindle, in Germany. At number 12/13 in America.

Swept up the snow on the path leading to the car. Swept up again. And again... and again. Now I know that once it starts to melt, as long as it doesn't refreeze, then my path will be clear in the morning. If I hadn't swept it four or five times and it froze then we would have to negotiate ice or I would have to get the shovel out to chip the ice away. This reminds me of the Proverb 'If good men do nothing then evil prospers.' Is this why there is moral decay in our society, because good men stopped doing good? Or is it that all the good men have died off leaving the unregenerate behind? I know someone with an unregenerate behind, but that's another story.


Thursday 17 January 2013

Inimpolite

So I managed to write another 400 words of FOA this morning. This means I caught up with yesterday. This afternoon I have written (typed in) 280 words. Just another 220 to go to be on target. OWIA 8 is now up and running with the FREE promotion and Again America beats the British downloads.

I have had to send my printer's toner cartridge back. I sent the second one back even though the first does not work properly either. Once I have the second one replaced I'll send the first one back. Were they damaged in the post? Or filled incorrectly, we shall never know.

Watched 'I'm British' a song by Professor Elemental on YouTube. He portrays us as apologising too much, using too many words and having lost an empire. Steam punkery is in evidence, and dancing with his fans.
Do we apologise too much? Maybe when we're in polite company. What about when we're in impolite company? Inimpolite company, sounds like a business that produces a range of hard wearing saucepans and tea spoons. Maybe I'll use it as the evil company in my #amwriting steam punk extravaganza!

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Wednesday 16 January 2013

Dead TV

I only wrote and typed in 100 words of FOA today, started off really well and then got into a TV dilemma.

Our newish PlayStation 3 came today so I was trying to make another shelf under the TV for it to stand on. I decided to look at the TV to see why the sound kept going funny.When trying to look at the insides of the TV my son came down and was really grumpy about the dog eating his chocolates. I had found them half open and rescued them. Why did he have to start moaning at the exact time I was trying to fix the TV? As it was I got so stressed that I accidentally broke off the just hanging on part that was for the sound. I rang the wife and told her, she looked on Tree of Mums, and put in an offer for a TV. We didn't get it. But then the original person who wanted it didn't turn up so we were offered it.
After a few hurdles we have a better TV and the PS3 set up. Now if my son hadn't wanted some chocolate at the same time as I was fixing the TV then we would have tried to struggle on banging the old one to try to get the sound to work. I will keep the small bit that broke off as a memento to our dead TV.

So now my blog is late and I haven't finished Tweeting and haven't written enough words. And, because the new telly is a flat screen, the cats are getting angry because the old TV was their favourite place to sit. At least now we won't get a ginger tail hanging down while we are trying to watch 24 on DVD!

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Pulling Out

I managed to write and type in 350 words of FOA and then an extra 190 on my writing pad. I painted and drew a picture of my granddaughter and started on a cover for FOA. I have also put OWIA 8 on at Amazon which comprises of The IPP Time Code and a sample of The Time Backwater Anthology. It will be live tomorrow and FREE on Thursday. (So today I also changed the IPP Time Code Field Guide to include the words 'Only When I Arth 8'.) I do need to find my fonts disc because I am having problems finding the same ones I used for the original books.

So today we were following a police car as it wended its way through The Groves in York.
A cyclist cycled down a one way street the wrong way with no lights on right in front of the aforementioned police car. Then, at the roundabout, the police car nipped out in front of another car. The other car flashed him. Two crimes within 5 minutes of each other in front of a police car that did nothing about them. Which led to my wife and I discussing about not having lights on bikes (They had a crackdown three years ago for about a month then things went back to normal.) Especially after the accident I saw last night. An adult cyclist was riding on the path on the wrong side of the road in the dark with no lights on and pulled out in front of a car which was just pulling out of a junction. The car hit the cyclist who immediately swore profusely and got angry with the driver. The fellow at the shop said the driver should have been more careful. I said the cyclist was breaking the law twice, no lights and riding on the path (on the wrong side of the road). My wife agreed with me but the man at the shop did not.
Lights cost a pound for one of each at the pound shop, £3 altogether with 10 batteries. It costs nothing to ride on the road. As a point of interest One of Each means fish and chips in York. So somebody could misunderstand me and think that I meant you could buy fish and chips and some batteries from the pound shop for £3!

Monday 14 January 2013

Morning 14/1/13

I have Sunday off, so no post for Sunday. Played Mount and Blade: Warband, BFME 1 and Black Ops online with my son. We got slaughtered as noobs :( .

Read a good article by C L Withers, one of my Twitterers, in which he basically said that book sales have gone down on Amazon because people can get too much free stuff. He and his wife have filled their Kindles with it. He is probably right, who wants to buy stuff when you can get talented writers giving it away for free. My free giveaways last year were in the order of 350 downloads, this year it's down to about 100, they don't even want free stuff now! There is a glut in the market, or non-market.


Saturday 12 January 2013

Facebook Friends

Get Only When I Arth 7 FREE by clicking on the picture above.

Wrote 500 words and typed in 100 of FOA today, 100 words in bed, 100 in the bathroom, 220 at McDonalds and 80 at Sainsbury's (while being looked at by the security guard!) Didn't type in the 2,000 words I was planning to, played on the XBox instead.

I was mentioned and shared in a post by both Danny Kemp and Roy Murray. It had a big effect on my downloads, keeping me in the top 100 for humour/humor for both countries! So Facebook friends are important, I do share things a lot, but am now convinced that I need to help share other authors on Facebook instead of just pictures that make me laugh. One of the other things shared by Roy was that 'Cuddling literally kills depression, relieves anxiety and strengthens the immune system'. Which is great but just imagine if he had put the commas in the wrong place! 'Cuddling literally kills, depression relieves anxiety and strengthens the immune system'. I wonder if he would have had as many likes with that one!

Friday 11 January 2013

Retweeted

Wrote and typed in 500 words of FOA, if I do another 500 words tomorrow then I am half way through. Managed to get to number 75 in FREE humour in the UK Amazon chart. The OWIA7 promotion finally started but about 3 hours late. I had put a piece of flash fiction on Smashwords to help with the promotion but I think it went on too early.


So all day has been spent with tweeting and re tweeting and following people on Twitter. Which doesn't really seem to have worked any better than if I just re tweeted normally. Retweeted normally, sounds like a bird who has finally got over a bout of flu.

Thursday 10 January 2013

Only When I Arth 7 FREE!

Only when I Arth 7 is Free for the next five days from Amazon, just click on the picture above to be sent straight to the Amazon web page! 

Stalin

I wrote just over 500 words of FOA today, that means I am about one third of the way through the fourth short story. Typed in A DaVinci Flash last night to put on Smashwords tomorrow morning. OWIA 7 is FREE from tomorrow morning. Decided not to section the FOA short stories into 5,000 words, each has a separate theme and it would get mixed up if I cut them shorter.

When I went for breakfast at All Hallows church in Leeds, the vicar and a male helper were discussing Stalin. Neither of them had seen the programme on BBC 3 last night about him. It made me remember, when both they and the programme had said that he was the biggest mass murderer there has ever been. The one thing I said though is that, after the murders Stalin is purported to have said that he could, "Finally talk to God again."
The vicar said he was obviously not a Christian or mad. We are quick to judge who is a Christian and who isn't based on what they do. And so many Christians are criticised for being hypocrites. The only person who really knows who are His is God, the final judge, who will separate the sheep from the goats, reward the faithful and stop the unfaithful Christians from receiving the rewards they could have had.


Wednesday 9 January 2013

Ereaders down?

I managed to write 430 words of FOA today so far. Put OWIA 7 on at Amazon and it could be free by tomorrow (but probably on Friday.) Gave four of my advertising slips out. I heard that Amazon was flat over Christmas. Does it mean it had a puncture or that sales were down?

Is there going to be a backlash against the ebook? I saw room 101 the other day and John Craven suggested that ereaders be put down into the chute. A lot of the audience agreed with him. I don't think Frank Skinner did though, he liked the way he could fit hundreds of books onto it to read while travelling. But it shows that there is something going on that I can't quite place my finger on yet. Maybe it is Amazon doing the tax evasion thing in the UK that caused the audience to gleefully wish for the demise of the ebook. Maybe people do really prefer a real paper book. A paper book = a book about paper? Or maybe a newspaper book? Sales of ereaders were down and sales of tablets were up. I wonder what the chemists think about this?

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Scaramouche

I managed to write 500 words of FOA today, need to type them in. Also wrote a piece of flash fiction Flash DaVinci Co-Ed which is also about 500 words.

One of my author friends on Facebook was talking about madness. I knew there was a good quote from Scaramouche when he is in the bedroom talking to a man before he goes to try kill the Marquis de Mayne. The only quote I can find on the internet is, "I also believe in laughter and I know the world is mad." Which is also similar to the opening line of the book. My wife bought me the DVD a couple of years ago but I cannot play it because it is for the wrong region (silly ASDA there buying in the wrong stuff!) So all day I have tried to find the quote somewhere and this is now what today's piece is about. Laughing keeps us healthy which is a quote from Proverbs. But also being acting cheery when you are not can put a strain on your heart and you die younger. So what does this mean? We need to "Praise the Lord at all times," as King David said, to take our minds off our troubles and to enjoy laughing without lies to keep us healthy and alive longer.


Monday 7 January 2013

Will I have time?

I managed to write and type in 431 words of FAO short story 4. Have started proof reading Goblins Versus Yetis and am about a third of the way through. I have figured out that I will probably be able to finish FAO next month but will not have enough time to do another 4 short stories.

Nothing seems to have happened yet that I can comment on. Been to Leeds and to a couple of charity shops. While I was at the last one I saw a football PS1 game starring Ronaldo. In the paper today it said he was coming to London to study. The fellow in the charity shop said, "Is he going to pay for his study?"
I said, "Unless he has lost all his money and is coming here for free."
It has been said he's going to study advertising.
I wonder how people will treat him? They might treat him quite normally if they don't follow football. Now I don't follow football but if Patrick Stewart or William Shatner were going to do a degree in York...

Sunday 6 January 2013

Will Rogers

I have finished writing the third short story of 'Factory of androids', need to type in the last 1,500 words though. Started a new story with the characters from the Victorian Adventure games I used to run with my kids. Lizzy McBean is the initial protagonist. I need to look up her character sheet though because I cannot remember what job she had.

I did write a little of 'The 24', about 750 words. I re-wrote the part at the Rock of Morpeth because I didn't like it. Once the final two short stories of FAO are finished I can get on with the end of The 24.

Just watched the life story of Will Rogers on TCM. I had a dream last week where somebody advised me to write my blog every day. I saw a cloud picture with something similar a couple of years ago. Seeing that Will Rogers wrote about a paragraph a day for his newspaper column I think I can keep that up.

So today's musing is :- After seeing the Will Rogers life story it has parallels with what's happening today. He used humour to get American politicians of both parties working together to help get themselves out of the Great Depression. I wonder if I succeed in this venture whether I can get out of my Great Depression?