Tag Archives: wrestling

January 15, 2023 · 11:15

My authenticity as an author

What is my authentic self as an author?

What are my passions and experiences which seem to flow into my work effortlessly?

Basically, what makes this author, this author?

It’s not unknown if you have been following me for some time now that vampires are a huge passion of mine and that once they were all absorbing and my main if not ultimate focus?

They are still in my mind but is now swept away into a corner and regarded with a sense of guilty pleasure nowadays, which is a shame. 

But other than my vampires who am I as an author?

I like anthropomorphic animals (human like animals) and animation movies which have animals as main characters or heroes; to me I can’t get enough of movies like that!  I love reading books on the perspectives of animals, such as The Animals of Farthing Wood, Fluke, Charlotte’s Web, that sort of thing.

Being shamanic off and on throughout my life, I regard myself as having an unusually deep understanding for both nature and animals and anything primal really and yes, that does make me a Walt Disney fan.

I am a deeply spiritual person too with very philosophical ideas – this can be seen in some of my work but not all of it.

I do believe in miracles and magic, I believe in soul connections and spirits, so this belief of mine goes into my work a lot.

My work can be very profound and intense; it’s what I’ve seen in past reviews on my blog, in emails and from other people who were fortunate enough to get snippets from me in private.  Because I tend to throw in my philosophical thoughts, my spiritual education and I forget that sometimes for some people, they’re not ready for that kind of depth yet.  It’s a part of me, it’s a part of who I am and mostly I don’t realise I do it.

That’s my magic, that’s unique to me and when you follow your authentic path in your own writing, you will discover things about yourself you never knew too, it’s a kind of therapy a kind of gas-lighting oneself.

I love dragons and monsters, I like seeing them as misunderstood creatures, creatures that aren’t bad at all and in fact could be rather helpful but have their boundaries and they expect respect.

I like characters that are inventive and quirky, a little strange, maybe forgetful and definitely misunderstood by societies they live in, because they reflect who I am.  I am proud to say I am an air-head with little understanding of logic, that has an interest in science though not a brain to really fully grasp it and a memory of sieve – put all of this into a pot steaming with spirituality, creativity and free love and you’ve got me… a messy soup.

I am a mixture of Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Carl from Van Helsing 2004, Miss Bat from Worst Witch, Miss Trelawney from Harry Potter, Lucille Ball, Wendy Froud, Bjork and Bob Ross!  You get the message… I’m a mess!

I love writing lengthy descriptions of natural scenes and observations including as many if not all of the five senses all at once.

I have a deep sense of decay of both mind and matter, I understand the damaging effects of humanity on the Earth and I write plenty of dystopic sceneries in some of my stories.  I love the idea of nature taking back the world, after humans sought to destroy it! 

I love characters like Poison Ivy, Pocahuntas and The Lorax for this.

I have a deep sense of survival in me, from both being raised semi-feral in a North London garden with a violent family and because I have a Girl Guides attitude of “Be prepared” and a deeply seated understand of impermanence – that you can often see survival as a theme in a lot of my stories.

This is why I love characters such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, the TV series The Tribe, Rambo and so forth. 

Because I have experienced severe mental health issues over the years and lived with several people who have far worse issues than I do (I have never needed to be medicated for example, like they have) I can fully understand what it means to live in an asylum and how the public treats people who have a history of that environment.  I also understand and have witnessed several times people literally descending into madness to the point of both murder and suicide.  Yes I have seen a person killed in front of me that is something I’ve kept to myself until now.

I have also witnessed several people trying to take their own lives, dying of a stroke right before my eyes and other horrible things.

Experiences which are hard to write, but can’t be wrote properly unless you’ve truly experienced it.  I am not saying try to experience that sort of thing, goodness no!  But you can understand how an author’s authentic self can further their writing by putting in their life experiences into it!

Characters such as Jack Torrance from the shining, John Kramer from Jigsaw, Janet Frame from Angels at my table are reflective of very similar people I have known as well as several characters from the movie The Crow.  I’ve known very edgy, scary people who don’t hide the aspect of who they truly are to anybody!  A few of these people have been put into isolation by the authorities but there are others that have evaded this somehow!

In my experience it is the weak ones that get caught and dealt with, the really nasty buggers never are!

Injustice is another thing that crops up in my stories from time to time based on this.

I am afraid to say some readers may find some of my darker materials frustrating as justice are rarely served in a fair way; I tend to take people to a very primal place.

Some of my characters are kooky, childish and fun, but should really be responsible as they are adults but they struggle with that reality – therefore I like characters such as Mr and Mrs Luxury from the blue bird, God from Dogma, Brennan and Dale from Step Brothers and Sarah Sanderson from Hocus Pocus. 

I have a passion for characters with big egos and sarcastic humour so I am often drawn to personalities which are played by actors such as Alan Rickman, Tim Curry, Glen Close and Robert Downey Jr.  Those characters seem to be fighting against the odds with a pack of brainless lucky heroes who are out to ruin their plans or gas-light them in some way in my stories.

Comedy is becoming more prominent in my stories as time is going by as I am no longer hiding my sense of humour from the world; this is a transition that is not welcoming from Paul.  He prefers my more serious stuff, but that’s not being authentic to myself!

There is even comedy in my darker stories and horror these days, lightly thrown in.

I was given an article to mull over by Paul the other week about how dark humour is an early sign of dementia; I am not paying any attention to that!

Societal changes and upheaval are a theme in several of my stories, hence my love for dystopia.

I dislike romance, so that is at a minimum – but there are some saucy scenes now and again in my adult works, in fact I have been known to write full on erotica in a past blog as short stories, but I deleted them after a while and that blog – I also did it here for a short time too, in the early years of my blog as I was told I was too graphic and should really have it as a subscribers content.

That is something I am thinking about doing actually, subscribers short stories of both my erotic works and vampires, as well as a subscriber incentive of giving 50% off the purchase of poetry anthology E-books I am planning to publish by the end of summer.

I love certain sports and you can see which I am into by the books I write, I love wrestling and combat sports in general so there are plenty of fight scenes in my stories as well as ancient warfare.  I am very keen in ancient warfare history and gaming.  I know a lot of the terminologies and so there is little research needed for me when I write those scenes because it’s a passion of mine.

I am not afraid of killing off characters but I am not a maniacal character serial killer like George R.R Martin, but not far off it either! 

Death sells as good as sex in my opinion.

I like hard-core no nonsense and dominant characters that don’t like a lot of fuss, so there is at least one in every story.  My favourite character is a wild hermit woman from the Dragon project I am writing; a sort of mix of Miss Trunchball meets Nanny McPhee and Tarzan!  Again, crazily based on people I’ve known, as I have said before… I’ve known some strange people in my time and exaggeration can go a long way, especially when story writing!

So you see a lot of my ideas wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for life experience and a knack for exaggeration for entertainment value.

Though I keep my non-fiction as honest as possible, I can use that experience and exaggerate it for fiction!

This is how we writers do things; it’s how we give you the books we write.

Or those who have actually given their work to an agent to get published, that is!

I’m not far off to be honest.

I won’t give you a deadline or update until I send my work to an agent, but for now – let’s just say, I think it’s going to be sooner than you think – a lot sooner!

So there you have it – my experiences, my passions and my work and why it is uniquely mine and why you will struggle to try and copy it!  You are not me and even if you were to go off and research the character references and include the subjects I’ve mentioned in this blog – you won’t ever reflect me, but only I can be purely me and only you can be purely you!

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 3, 2023 · 18:45

Memories of granddad

On Twitter today someone randomly asked that if I were fortunate to have known any of my grandfather’s what is the first thing that I would think of when I think about them!

I wanted to say a lot more than I did, because I doted on my granddad!

So I thought it would be a lovely post to share here and I can get to talk about him in more depths, these memories are happy memories, probably some of the few I had growing up – but there are only two things that I remember which were not so happy and none of them were my grandad’s fault at all!

Up until I was six years old I lived next door to my maternal grandparents, Granddad Leslie and nanny or nonna Dolly! 

Between the age of six and nine I never saw them, not once – because my mum moved us away due to a vicious argument which broke into a physical fight she had about my brother and aunt.  The physical fight was in their living room between my auntie Julie and her, it was quite a scary physical fight I never saw because I was at school at the time and honorary auntie Sheila (which is rumoured to really be a third or fourth cousin to us) had to pick me up from school because mum was in hospital over it. 

Both my mum and my aunt had scarring to their faces over that fight.

Before this fight my grandparents were part of my everyday life, I lived in an area in North London where I had a relative almost on every street and there were at least thirty households related to me within that small square mile, everyone else it seemed was some kind of family friend who looked out for everyone!

My granddad was an avid gardener and was always out in his garden talking to me about the flowers and nature and giving me updates on his breeding hobbies of tropical fishes, budgerigars and love birds!  He loved gardening so much he rented four plots at the local allotments (a gardening community) where he’d grow lots of food to share with the whole family. 

My granddad was a greengrocer once, before he lost his business to thugs and he met my grandmother when he was a farm worker on a farm her parents worked on in Enfield.

Sometimes granddad would pass over step ladders for me to climb up high enough for him to reach me to carry me over into his garden to help him with the fish and the birds – mum knew if she couldn’t find me in the garden that I’d be with him or passed onto Sheila who lived on the other side of my grandparents to play with her daughter who was only a year younger than me!

In my street there were four other households of family and only thirty yards away from the house was a shopping complex of ten stores, which whenever we’d pop round the corner for milk you’d have to anticipate forty five minutes before you got home again because of the amount of people you’d meet and talk to on the way!

I remember sitting in the window waiting for people I knew to walk pass the house and telling mum who was there, especially if mum wanted to talk to someone, she’d rush out immediately and they’d talk.  Most of the time she had hoped my older teenage cousins would be passing so she could bribe them to take me to a park or go swimming with them at the community pool nearby!

All of this ended when I was six, from the time mum moved away from all of that I was in pure isolation and I didn’t cope well at all with that arrangement!

My mum was ostracized by most of our family when the fight happened, but there were still people who spoke to us and visited, but only a small margin from that point onwards!

It’s funny to think that because three households crammed together in a line became the forerunner of huge family Christmases – where everyone visited those three houses and kept swapping and changing dining rooms to socialise with as many people as possible on Christmas day, literally eighteen people per house and then going from that to just me, my parents and brothers and a cousin until I was twenty years old.

You can imagine the culture shock and to be honest… no, I have never recovered from the loss.

When I was nine years old I was thrilled to be back in my grandparents lives again, but I didn’t realise at the time it was only meant to have been temporary because my granddad was diagnosed with lung cancer. 

So I have got the horrible bits out of the way now, now it’s time for me to show you what my granddad was like as a person!

My granddad came from Greenwich and he had a very strong husky East End accent, he was a short stocky and muscular man who was half Jewish and half catholic and had tattoos all the way up both arms!  He had a widow’s peak hairline and silver white hair, when I was little I used to think my granddad looked like a mesh between grandpa Munster and Pop-eye! 

Because my granddad smoked a pipe, had muscles, ate spinach had a rough husky voice, and loads of tatts!

He was the most muscular man in the whole family and quite a formidable character too!

He was a true man’s man but he was a man who was out of his time really, because my nanny Dolly didn’t have a domestic bone in her body – he did all the laundry, all the cleaning and all the cooking!  My granddad always said it isn’t my Nan’s fault, she isn’t lazy cocker, he told me – she has had a hard life with her heart troubles so she got spoilt and I am mostly to fault for that he said.

I remember my granddad having two large 6ft fish tanks in the living room and he put them like an L shape to each other and he placed his armchair in the corner facing the TV directly in the opposite corner of the living room he had so he could watching every wrestling show on Sky TV he could!

I would always sit on his knee watching the TV with him, even when I was as old as ten, even when he was dying, I remember that.  Clung to him for dear life, I loved my granddad!  I couldn’t do that with anyone else, he was the only one who’d let me snuggle with him like that and so it was a novelty I relished every time I visited him!

I remember when we had to go home I was often kicking and screaming as I didn’t want to leave him.

My mum was a J-witness off and on growing up, so I didn’t learn much about the families catholic ways, so granddad always tried to put in lessons every now and again for me and got his rosary out and showed me that we moved the beads in prayer, look see…

I wondered how my granddad kept his faith with the Catholic Church when he experienced so much racism growing up – the nuns at the school he went to often gave him a hard time and caned him regularly because they said he was born in sin because his mother was Jewish! 

Growing up with him telling me things like that and he was making excuses for their behaviour and being generally nice about it all – surprised me.  He told me that it never bothered him you see, because Jesus was a Jew and he thought that those nuns were ridiculous for what they were saying about him.  I told mum what he said and she didn’t receive that very well!

But it always stuck in my mind; Jesus was a Jew… wasn’t he catholic then granddad?  That made him laugh so hard it bought on one of those deep dense and awful coughs of his!

My nan would look over and laugh too and then say “Out of the mouths of babes hey Les”?

My nan was in every way similar to Catherine Tate’s nan depiction, honestly, anyone who knew her said that they were sure that the character was based on her!

It still sticks in my mind today… Jesus was a Jew and it was only recently that I learned not only was he a Jew but he was also a fierce rabbi who tried hard to steer people back into the old faith of Judaism as he felt people were losing their way – food for thought I can tell you!

My granddad was a backstreet wrestler and boxer in his youth to earn extra rations and money for the family, he told me. 

My granddad and I had a very similar life to each other in some ways – both of us were into combat sports, both of us were stocky in comparison to the others in the family though only 5ft 4, both of us were deaf due to the same condition (mastoiditis) and both of us were discriminated against for our mixed religious heritage and deafness and both of us loved our gardens!

Granddad was the only person I strongly connected to in most things in the family.

He would often sing to me all kinds of traditional London songs, some for kids and others not!  Bouncing me on his knee and he always greeted me as “Cocker” whenever I visited him – “alright cocker”?  He’d ask as I walked into the room!

Cocker means many number of things to an East Ender – mostly “Mate” or “little cocky one” or “fellow cockney” or something you called your descendants, usually aimed at personal favourites rather than generic – well in my family it was!

He would regularly give me cash in hand money to go the local shops with so he could have private chats with my parents, knowing I’d be gone for up to an hour because the family and extended family would watch out if a kid was going to the shops alone!  There were lots of eyes in those streets and you always felt safe as you knew almost everybody down there!

There was one particular shop I used to love going to a lot and it was a health and safety nightmare for how the candies were stacked in piles around the whole store, but it was a great store with every kind of candy you can think of, chocolates, crisps, sodas and ice-creams – it was called Lucky Sweets and was run by a really lovely and elderly Hindu lady.

My granddad would often talk about the wrestlers on TV and we are related to a wrestler who now has a wrestling family and that was my granddad’s pride and joy in pointing that out to me!

My granddad often bought dinner from the fish and chips shop as well when I visited him; it was always cheaper than it should be because there were rumours that the owner was a distant cousin from our Greek roots as we also have Greek in us.  In fact our Italian relatives from Naples are mostly Greco-Italians they say, but we have had family in Naples since 305BC on both sides of my family actually.

But I do know when I was growing up and visiting my nan a lot when granddad died, that the local teenagers who were not associated with my family in anyway were really nasty to me in the school I went to purely because of the knocked off price of our fish and chips dinner because of family discounts.

My granddad gifted me his budgerigars every couple of years and one of them I loved so much lasted for nearly three years called Bobby.  The other, funnily enough was called Henry.

But when I talk about Henry on my blog, be sure to know it is my son I am on about and not some record breaking old budgerigar – lol!

He is also the reason why I love tropical fish keeping, because to me a house isn’t a home without a tropical fish tank and a dog.  I don’t have a fish tank here… tell a lie… I do… but there is nothing in it because Paul won’t help me set it up.

I always felt safe with my granddad because nobody messed with my granddad and I could tell him anything my mum did to me and knew he would be the retribution she’d get!

When he died she got more cocky about things and wielded it like a power.

I moved in with my grandparents when I was ten years old, for a few months whilst granddad was dying of cancer, until his death.  Then my nan was required to come and stay with us whenever she felt lonely, which was about four times a week until she was hospitalised and died fourteen years later.

When I got the flu when we lived with him, granddad wanted to know how mum took care of me when I was at home and had the flu in the past and I was brutally honest with him about it.  He was not happy and he rang his bell which always sent mum into a panic running into the room to him.  He said, cocker over there isn’t well; she needs a drink of water, not Lucozade!  She went and made a drink, he then rang the bell again and told her that I was hungry and not to just pass me candies but to get some chicken soup into me!  She got angry at this point, but he kept ringing the bell for me and made sure I was cared for properly and not dumped with bags of candies and bottles of Lucozade and left for hours on end like normal!

He defended me even though he hardly had the breath to do it; he had a mischievous nature which I adored!

He got told off really bad by my nan when he used blackmail on my mum by switching his own oxygen off to cause a panic and stir when mum tried to tell him off!  As he did it he winked at me but it really scared me to see that!

I had a nightmare the day before granddad died, I woke up knowing that that day would be his last – even though the doctor said he would have four months at least before that stage came, I was right.

He died three days shy of his birthday and it was supposed to have been a huge family reunion party too – the party still happened but it was more morose than it should have been!

My granddad would be 100yrs old on August 15th of this year.

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under Home and Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 27, 2022 · 15:33

The 80s

I grew up resenting anyone who was a teenager or an adult during the 80s and early 90s because in my opinion, that was a cool time to be a teenager or an adult in!

I know a lot of people look back in the 80s with disdain for the fashion and hairstyles, but you know what?  I thought and still do think that it was a cool time for fashion!  Except for maybe shoulder pads… but everything else I loved!

Particularly the music!

I love the Eurhythmics

Bon Jovi

Queen

Meatloaf

Duran Duran

The Madness

And a whole bunch of others!

I even found most of the fantasy and horror movies were much better then, but then again a lot of people think I like crap – so, whatever…

What’s more is I love garish colour and vocally, I suppose I am a bit outdated as I still spout the words “Cool” and “aw man” and others… I can’t get into all this new stuff where saying “sick” means great – to me, well, you don’t wanna know what sick means to me!

This is another reason why I have confined myself to the bedroom recently – Henry is tired of my retro to the 80s playlist.

Ho hum.

Professional wrestling was at its greatest too! 

If I had a time machine I would go back to the 80s so I could go to several wrestling events and go to the music concerts of all the above!

Never been to a music concert before!

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under Brain Drain

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 25, 2022 · 17:17

The lady brawler

It’s ok, I get it, a lot of people think that I am nice and sweet and I am gentle and ladylike; lots of people think that because I am kind to them and I always generally try to choose to have a passive stance that they can walk all over me.  They don’t believe for one second I’ve had the life I have had, they can’t see how I can be Lady Penelope one minute and then a backstreet brawler the next and I get it, I can see why that’s hard to chew!

Because I have transitioned so far away from what my mum made me into, deliberately.

I’d love nothing better to sit back and be a lady and never to have to use fighting talk again, but when I do that – people take advantage and I am not going to let that happen!

I have had enough of being subdued by people who think that they are better than me, when obviously they are not if they can be mean to someone.

When I used to be thin and I used to be fit, I had a lot of admirers; I had a lot of people wanting to be in my crowd; did I bully them?  No, because I am nice.  The only people I ever said an unkind word to, was those I heard saying things to others, to put them down because they thought I wanted to hear that – because they thought a pretty girl is always like that and they’re not!

I remember my closest friends were bullied a lot by other pretty girls and some wannabes – my closest friends had a lot of problems, such as physical disabilities and one had a particularly bad stammering problem.  A couple of my friends were pretty, but too poor to spruce themselves up – I was a kind and fierce protector of those girls. 

This is one of the reasons why I don’t make friends with women easily, because I hate to say it – there is a lot of body image discrimination and I am not somebody who sits back and lets someone be mean at those who are disadvantaged – I am one of those who will be mean to anyone who tries to be mean in general to a person’s disability or physical bodily appearance. 

Fashion wise, yeah, I can snipe because why on earth would anyone want to wear cowboy boots with a Charleston cocktail dress?  I mean… come on!

But this post isn’t about me being a defender of friends or a fashion critic – this post is a little more of an insight to how I have been raised and partially why my life had been so full of violence regularly, even outside of my family circle.

My parents were rockers, part of the mods and rockers conflict. 

My mum in particular, in her first marriage was the leader of the gang’s wife!

Even when she left the rockers, there were still old memories sticking around even to this day some people will still challenge her, if they remember her and recognised her!

This isn’t all, my granddad was also a backstreet boxer and wrestler to earn extra money over the years and we have associations with others which I won’t name.

Amongst all of this, quite a lot of my family have been alcoholics or substance abusers and well anyone who knows about that sort of thing, can more or less tell, what comes into a person’s life once that happens!

So with all of this going on, there was always a reason, sometimes many for why people would boulder into my family home and beat the crap out of someone.  There was always some kind of reason for it.

Growing up I had to take a lot of scapegoat beatings from people who merely attacked me for my association with my family, some backed off when they found I was the good apple of the family and not like the others – but others used me as a target sometimes to provoke my family into reigniting their wars!

This is what I had to live with and accept!

I think partially this is why during my early adult years I became afraid to go out alone and I still am – I am happier and feel safer in small groups of people and this is a huge part of my PTSD.

But it doesn’t slide away from the fact that my own mother wanted to shut me away too – funnily enough not to shelter me from it all, but just because.  Because wherever possible, my mum used to try and push me forwards into any fray that was happening because it’s great life experience, toughen yourself up and oftentimes she’d leave me fighting her battles alone whilst she sneaked off!

She told me never to phone the police about these things, the last time this happened, I did, because the person tried to set three dogs onto me, whilst mum snuck back off to sit in her car watching it like some kind of blood sport and did so with noticeable relish!

So when people think they can challenge me for my looks or personality, or even think that they can get one over me by slapping me across the face – they are often left in a state of shock!

Because, this nice sweet, polite, timid exterior of a girl – fights and fights hard when challenged and I don’t back down, because to back down shows weakness and I have had harder beatings from my family for showing mercy and weakness, than I can ever get from an adversary!

I remember when I refused to hit someone with a stick once, four of my own relatives turned on me and beat me with sticks to teach me a lesson and I was 7yrs old, two of them were adults!

That’s what things were like for me, so don’t think you could ever knock me down and keep me down – I am too much of a fighter for that and I have a huge amount of resilience and stamina when the instinct to survive is turned on!

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About Me

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 23, 2022 · 14:14

The animal in me

What animals are in my soul according to how I see it… what quirks and personality traits do those animals have that I see in myself?

This is my honest opinion about who I am, in my animalistic side.

My strongest personality I believe is the spirit of the dog or the wolf, which I believe are the same animal really! 

I consider myself very friendly and easily excitable around my favourite people, people I trust and the better I know somebody the more playful I tend to become.  I am also very emotionally insecure and always out to get affection of some kind or another, or give affection and be amongst my pack in general.

I am a pack animal who is outcast as it were, right now – I am without a pack and it is killing me inside, it really is!

I mean it when I say I am excitable around my favourite people!  I exuberate the energy of “oh my goodness, you’re great, you’re this and that, I love you, come here, give a hug, who hurt who?  Let me at them”!  It’s quite funny to see me at times…

Yes I am needy I suppose, no shame in that I guess?

I want to be everyone’s friend but the world seems to fight back against people like me, fiercely it would seem!

I can easily adopt people if they are nice to me, it’s my nature but also like a dog or a wolf I don’t forgive others who bite or bark at me if they’ve been too fierce!  But boy can I be a bitch (pun intended) if you hurt the ones I love and who mean a lot to me!

Like a dog, I can easily feel shame and guilt about the slightest thing, rolling over trying to win back the favour of those I have disappointed if I love them, like some attention seeking hussy!

The other animal I am like is a squirrel – in the right places I tend to have a lot of excess energy and excitement, a bit like a hyperactive dog – but it can be more extreme.  Like a squirrel I love nuts, to eat them but also I like nuts as in people who are considered oddballs of society or Bohemian. 

Like a squirrel I am a bit of an airhead and can forget a lot of things, because I store away knowledge and items all the time and what’s worse, I move them around in case other people borrow them a lot, so sometimes those items can be lost to me… forever… so it would seem!

Also squirrels plant trees, I plant trees too, lots of trees, I like trees.

Give me caffeine or candy or a combination of them both I start talking like a horse racing commentator and speed walk everywhere at high energy for several hours, laughing my head off!

And like a squirrel I can often freak out about things, like the worry wart I am!  When I am stressed or worried, I talk so fast and so high pitched that people just stare at me wide eyed and think rightfully so… “What the fuck”?

Paul has got into the habit of grabbing me by the shoulders after I’ve told him things and then looks at me calmly and says to me…. “Breath, now tell me again… SLOWLY”!

So sometimes I start off again at the same speed and he patiently says “tut tut tut, slowly and focus”… to see us together like this makes you think I am demented or something, but sometimes even I feel I might be at times!

It’s more fun when I have had caffeine and candy and I am worried or have been recently affronted by something… its full steam ahead then, won’t get sense out of me for hours!

An ex of mine had the right idea when I get like that – just snog my brains out and I calm down and become passive almost immediately and then I manage to talk like I have actually got a brain instead of a hamster on a wheel in my head!

Another animal I am like is self-explanatory – rabbits.  You must know me enough by now to know what I am on about here!  The innuendo of what rabbits representation to society is enough for your imagination – but it is also one of the major things which boost my energy!

I am definitely an energiser bunny!

You can also see the rabbit in me when I garden as I often like to kneel on the ground and dig deep holes like I am making a warren… I don’t do it aimlessly, I am not insane!  There is always a purpose for the hole, such as a plant.

I lied.  I am insane, don’t you believe otherwise!

A cow is another animal, I am very nurturing by nature and I tend to graze rather than eat meals, because my body struggles with volume these days, a sandwich is a huge meal to me of late.

If we had the budget my diet would be reminiscent of my grandma’s advice, 7 small meals a day, no bigger than a tea plate (sandwich plate), because volume is an issue!

I remember I thrived when I lived her, it meant of course I seem to constantly eat – but I was thinner for it and I never had stomach ache!

Like the dogs, cows like to go around in herds or packs and I do miss having people in my life.

I miss having a nurturing role, Paul has made my ability as a mother almost obsolete since I’ve become ill, he has taken over everything and there is a huge power struggle for me to become an active mother again with Henry!

I can’t even nurture this family in other ways, such as baking or cooking because of finances but also because Paul has kept the kitchen in a manner that things I need are out of access for me or the kitchen is in such a mess that it takes me three hours of cleaning before I am happy to do anything in there!  It’s not as simple as pop into the kitchen to make a tuna sandwich, because the tuna is in a section of the cupboard I can’t reach because of a mound of boxes in the way and Paul is much taller than I am – I am 5ft 8 and still struggle to get things!

Even on tippy toes I can’t reach the highest shelves of a cupboard and that’s where most of the snacks are stored, so Henry doesn’t binge behind our backs, but it also means I am heavily reliant on Paul to reach them for me as he has forbidden me to use the step ladder, due to my vertigo issues.  I don’t have a fear of height; I have vertigo because of ear damage.  I am fine using them, but he is over protective.

Like a cow, I like to be around children as much as possible and I love to mingle with others in nature.

Another creature I am like is a peacock, though it strongly depends on who I am around.  I am heavily influenced by other people who are in my life the most.  If I am around people where image doesn’t matter, I fall on the wayside with them and don’t make an effort because it’s never noted or appreciated when I do.

I absolutely adore people who are vain, narcissistic or believe that image is everything… they are my kind of people; they are the kinds of people who keep me to my standards!  But I don’t like the ones who make things too personal.  Yes, nag me to take care of myself, my hair, and my fashion, give me tips and advice, but don’t go getting personal about weight and things I can’t change like nose shape and eye shape etc.

I know I am overweight, I am working on it, I don’t need to be told, I am already deeply ashamed about that aspect about me without being reminded or judged for it!

There is nothing I can do about my nose and eyes other than surgery and I don’t want to be the Bride of Frankenstein, no offence.  Though I do need surgery on my nose, because I have broken cartilage that has never healed, but it’s not aesthetic. 

Also I don’t like the ones who think there is something I can do about my big scars.  Yes I know make up works wonders, but some of my scars go into my hairline and messes my hair up if I use cosmetics in those areas!

Always be kind in your advice, never vitriolic.

I love glamour, but I am not well versed in using make up – I never had a feminine influence who taught me things like that.  It’s something I need to learn!

Like my mother never made a point about hygiene, I learned from other people who took care of me over the years.

I remember when I had my first menses as a child, I was unusually early, 8yrs old – my mother gave me sanitary towels but never told me how to use them and for the first few months I wore them with the glue attached to my vagina and not the underwear – when I got my first hairs I learned I had been doing it wrong, because I complained to her about it one day and she called me a fool!

But anyway, I love fashion and I like to stand out a little.  But I do love my baggy comforts and rough and ready looks in dungarees and what not on a day to day basis.  But generally, I love to play with my looks whenever possible because I am a suppressed attention whore, I know I love attention if I can get it and showing off my latest outfits is one way to get attention!

I know when I was a lot younger I was very much the “notice me, notice me” type – but I got beaten pretty badly off my pedestal over the years.

I refuse to believe that as I get older my ability to be a peacock is less and less obtainable, I mean just look at some of the classic stars in Hollywood still bombing around at their best at ninety!

There’s life in the old dog yet, lol what am I saying?  I am only forty!

Growing up I loved the egotistical and I have a playlist called “Vanity” where I have all sorts of songs on it, one of them happens to be the theme tune “Sexy boy” from the wrestler Shawn Michaels – “eat your heart out girls, hands off the merchandise”!  I had Shawn Michaels as a pin up in my bedroom but the bigger poster I had was his quote rather than him “IMAGE IS EVERYTHING”!

Gosh, if I hadn’t of been brutalised, what would I have been like right now as a person?

Though I say all this, yet I am nothing like how I want to be right now – I am a shocking mess, enough to make the true inner me heave whenever I look in the mirror.  But I do feel – why bother when nobody cares and you’re just spending money on your looks that you can’t afford?

I spruce myself up occasionally but it doesn’t get a reaction from anyone around here, not even Paul.

I am embarrassed to say, my depression got so bad in 2016 I found it hard to get the motivation to do basic things like brush my hair etc. around the house – I wasn’t going out as I was bedbound and so often times I didn’t bother.  It made me go around the twist a bit and I think I went stir crazy, because one day I woke up and decided to literally buzz cut my hair clean off!

With the alopecia I have, I am near wanting to do that again, but scared I’ll regret it, especially as my hair is long now and it’s becoming a pacifier for me to brush my hair through with my fingers when I feel insecure.

I think I am also like a snake – it hurts to admit this, because my mother used to call me that a lot when I was growing up and made me feel guilt, shame and disgust for it. 

Why do I think I am like a snake?

Because when someone hurts me, I am quieter than I used to be – I am more observant and I tend to strike at their weakest moment and strike hard!

I think I am a snake because like a snake I sit in the grass watching my attackers, seeing what they are doing to me or trying to do to me and I am calculating… calculating their next move, then WHAM!  I find out their weakness and it’s not pretty. 

I have always been the quiet observer – as my auntie always said “you’ve got to watch the quiet ones”, she kept warning people not to push me too far as I am one they’ve got to be more careful of!

A snake isn’t untrustworthy; it’s a misunderstood creature because it has a superior intelligence for survival, which is unique in the world.  Because they do strike when you least expect it, because you never respected the snake, you underestimated it – you thought it was small and helpless and an easy touch – but the snake will always show you!

If someone criticises me and I give a small strained smile and go quiet, just understand, you’ve hurt me more than you think.  I tend not to be vocal about my hurt feelings too much with people I hardly know.

But also that same smile can be confusing I guess – because it is the same smile I have when I feel anxious or not very confident.

I am also like an elephant… I never forget – I forgive sometimes – but I never forget and I will always make sure you never forget either, if you’ve ever hurt me!

I am also big and a klutz and I survive with my hearing loss because I rely on vibrations, like elephants do!  I also don’t know my own strength, I am unusually strong really.

I mean, before I got sick I could carry a two hundred a fifty pound man over my shoulder!

I used to have big aspirations as a glamazon strength contest woman, this was a thing in the early 2000s in the UK – like the strongest women in the world contest but they were also glamour pusses too!  Not all of them had grotesquely huge muscles; some looked like normal women, but could bench press three hundred or more pounds.

I got out of that ambition when I was 21 because men found it a turn off.

I still kind of dream about doing something similar again, like I used to dream about being a gladiator or a contestant on that show or a female professional wrestler, yes, these are genuine past ambitions I once had!

I loved fitness a lot and it is something I really want to get back into again in a big way – but again, without other like-minded folk in my life, it’s hard to motivate myself!

I like to think that I could get fit enough again where I could potentially do those things in the future and maybe go on the new show Apocalypse Wow too!

But I can be a bit rough with people and I have been known to break the stems of wine glasses by holding them too tight – really I sometimes wonder if I am half orc or something!

I look big and muscular whether overweight or not and people are often shocked when they hear me talk when I feel anxious or shy, because… yeah… my voice doesn’t match my physique and no… I do not have an annoyingly high pitched voice… I have a really strange calm, soothing voice by all accounts that sounds slightly young, but it’s not high pitched unless I am excited or angry.

The closest British actress I can think of that has a voice similar to me is Camille Codari, she is definitely a close sound alike – Americans will probably know her from the John Goodman and Peter O’Toole movie King Ralph!  But also Jackie Tyler from Dr Who; I can be a sociopath at times and put on voices depending on the situation, I am self-conscious of my childish common natural voice, so I do try and suppress it a lot.

My grandma did a lot of elocution lessons on me as I was growing up and so I do know how to talk more mature and aristocratic when I need to and keep it up for quite some time!  It was an essential survival tactic I needed as I was growing up in mixed religious and class cultures.

I can put on a voice that does suit my looks but it is the kind of voice that gets you noticed in public and I don’t like that – it’s a rough and ready school ma’am type of voice, that sounds like I won’t have any funny business!  Lol!  That voice can sound reminiscent of Pam Ferris or Martita Hunt, scary contrast if you ask me!

But there you go me in animal form.

Leave a comment

Filed under About Me

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 12, 2022 · 11:15

Dystopian 1

This idea has been around almost forever with me!  This idea originated when I was fourteen years old, back in 1996!  It was only really thought of seriously though from 2003, after I had made friends who loved wrestling and were training to become wrestlers themselves!

It was originally thought to be a planned gimmick by my group of friends, but they abandoned this idea as many of them didn’t make it into wrestling professionally.  They all gave me permission to run with it still if I wanted to, but I changed a lot of their plans to create this story to make it feel more unique and mine.

What will you find in this story?

Gender identity challenges

Wrestling

Fight for survival

War

Bio-punk themes

Anarchy

Fallen Civilisation

Close female relationships

Mother and child relationship

Martyrism

Freedom fighters

Coliseum style fighting

Cage fighting

Animalism

Feral children being shown humanity

What influenced this story?

My friends had a huge part to play in the basics of the story.

Various professional wrestling companies, characters and their gimmicks

Mad Max beyond the thunderdome

The cage fighting scene in X-Men with wolverine

The hunger games (eventually influenced later drafts and adaptions to the plot)

The movie Amazons and gladiators!

In particular the female wrestlers Luna Vachon and Chyna, as well as the WWF/WWE wrestling stable Legion of Doom!

The movie – Escape from New York

Spartacus stories

World war Z (in later drafts and adaptions)

I have been slowly working towards chopping this story down a lot as it became a huge series of books and I am unsure I really want this to be a series after all, not deleting anything, but chopping it down into becoming a standalone with potential to then expand later on, if the publisher wants it.

I have a passion for wrestling shows and dystopia and so this is a longstanding love affair and it’s going to be difficult for me to finalise the edited version.

Happy reading everyone!

3 Comments

Filed under Current Projects

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 5, 2022 · 11:15

Gender pressures on children

People who write for children often presume that children are contemporary creatures and that anything retro they recoil from, I think that couldn’t be further from the truth – in fact, in my experience the children I have known and I have known a lot, especially as I used to work with children, they don’t really develop a sense of time and past until around the age of ten or eleven.

Children do have very prominent likes and dislikes that are very unique and different with each child, it is usually around the age of ten that they allow their peers and other influences dictate what they start to like and dislike, in other words, I believe around the age of ten they become more aware of other people and factors in life, they start to broaden their minds and often lose themselves in trying to be accepted by others.

My son has very narrow ideas about what he likes and dislikes and for the majority of people, they find him strange, but to me, I find him quite normal for a child.  My experiences with children show me that children generally are retrospective and like things from historical resources.  Some children gain the awareness of others earlier, some later, some keep true to themselves throughout their lives, but they are rare creatures.

Therefore some children become shy when you try to get to know what they really like, because adults and older peers think that it is either outdated or rather unusual, so they feel insecure in being honest with you about it.

For me, I remind Henry almost on a daily basis that everyone is individual and unique and therefore have different ideas about everything, that the only person you should ever please in your life in regards to what you enjoy, should be yourself!

Here is a little idea of what Henry loves and is motivated by, it might surprise you; Dolly Parton, Doris Day, Lady Gaga, Riverdance, steam engines, robots, wrestling of the 80s and 90s, British comedy of the 50s to the 90s, royal history of Europe, math and physics, cooking, baking, pink and fluffy things, tortoises and sea turtles (is an obsession, he cries whenever he sees them on TV), litter picking and sustainability, robot wars, cyberpunk art and lifestyle and current affairs. 

Henry also likes long hair with bangs for men or feather layer cuts.  He is also angry at the world for not accepting boys who wear pink and bright yellow, he is often shouting about why the fashion industry insists that boys must always wear black or blue or camouflage and denim, and he wants cotton suits and button up shirts and tailored clothing for everyday wear. 

He also wants to know why boys can’t wear perfume and use moisturiser and make up etc (I told him they can, but he raises his arms above his head, shrugs and says, but society says no)!

Henry was very upset once and had a meltdown when he won a prize at the school fete and was given a choice of two prizes, one was a rainbow unicorn soft toy or a cream rabbit, he chose the unicorn but the lady said, but you are a boy and the girl after you would want this and he got the rabbit – I agree with him that was totally unfair and against freedom of choice. 

Henry has a very hard time understanding why there are defined ideas about boys and girls and from what I understand he is not the only one at his school!  He best friends are a group of four lesbian and tomboy girls, they are very open about it even at the age of twelve and thirteen. 

At least half of the above are things he wouldn’t ever share with his peers for obvious reasons – he has given permission to talk about it here because he feels it could raise world awareness.

I had similar problems as a child, with the things that I liked – for example, they were mostly for boys and not little girls like me or were completely age inappropriate!

I loved dinosaurs, vampires, 1930s to 1950s fashion, monsters and bats and insects, comedy horror, Barbie, Lego, wrestling, gardening, writing, arm wrestling, marbles, woodlands and shelter building, helping dad with cement mixing and carpentry, roleplaying, super heroes like Batman and Superman, hard rock and metal music, glam rock, classical music, opera and medieval history, particularly ancient warfare and torture/dungeon procedures. 

I was considered an anomaly and my mother though she was a tomboy herself always tried to make me dress tomboyish but maintain feminine charm.  I never liked being forced to wear trousers because it was convenient for my mother to maintain my modesty that way!  If I had the choice my clothing would have been flowing skirts and dresses and I would literally look like a little gypsy running around as that was me, I was a nature’s child!

My mum wasn’t used to that as all my siblings were techno-heads who shut themselves away in their rooms and were obsessed with the latest gadgets and all I wanted to do was gardening, fort building and digging holes with the dogs, whilst scrumping from my neighbours overhanging our fence apple tree!

Yes the majority of the things I loved were boyish, but I wanted to be feminine nonetheless.

My niece is another example of how society shouldn’t try to define gender roles – my niece had an obsession with soccer and wanted to be a soccer player as her career, but society talked her out of it and told her to be a good catholic girl and calm down.

I just think that humanity has advanced so much in their diversity and acceptance of various things, but they are still supressing their children and it really shouldn’t be that way anymore!

So what if your son loves pink and rainbows and fluffy bunnies?  At least he isn’t interested in killing anyone and has a good sense of pride, justice and respect!

So what if your daughter loves soccer and dreams of being world champion at boxing whilst still maintaining the notion that, yeah, I want kids too!  Women aren’t as docile as you make out anyway!  Stop trying to pretend!

My son has mental health issues, he doesn’t want to exist anymore, because he feels the world will always have a problem with who he chooses to be, no matter what he does!

This post exists because I wanted to share with writers for children, that you shouldn’t think that kids are contemporary or actually want to conform with society ideas about what normal is. You should write for the kids you know, not what you think the general kid population might be like today!

A majority of the kids I personally know do cling to their devices, because it is the only thing that gives them attention, many of these kids explain that they feel refreshed when they find an adult who engages with them and their hobbies away from technology, but they are hard to find… please think about that!

Happy reading everyone!

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 26, 2022 · 11:15

Combat sports and feminine culture

Combat sports is another big influence in my stories; being a former judoka from the age of ten, I was just six weeks shy of the Commonwealth games trials of 1998 when I was rushed into A&E with a serious mastoid infection that literally ended my career before it could even begin, because I couldn’t do any kind of self-care for two years after the life-saving surgery I had to undergo.

This devastated me totally on a mental health level, because I used judo as a means to train my body for the hard knocks I was preparing it for as a professional wrestler, when I left school for college.  My grandfather was a backyard wrestler in the early 40s and 50s and he was a huge wrestling fan and I wanted to make him proud of me as he looked down from heaven and saw his “little cocker” as he called me, as world women’s champion!

But that was never meant to be, because my surgery meant that I had lost certain bones at the back of the right side of my head, which meant any future impact could be life threatening, so all dreams of combative sports had to end right there and then!

I love combat sports of all kinds, judo, karate, cage fighting, boxing, you name it, and I love it.

A lot of the various gimmicks in professional wrestling and other forms of fighting, whether it is combative entertainment or real, had influenced a lot of my characters and sceneries in some of my books – particularly those of the dystopian and cyberpunk genres.

I have a lot of background knowledge in fighting terminologies that can help with understanding the jargon, but I do know that a lot of my readers will not be au fait with the sport jargon that could be in the books, so I have honed in my skills as a very good describer of action scenes – of which a former English tutor is rather impressed with and says is a rare talent.

Along with my love for combat sports, I have a massive love for war history and battle games such as Rome total war, Warhammer, Medal of Honour and such the likes.

Back in 2004 I became an online player of Rome Total War’s original game that was based on my favourite TV show “Time Commanders”, as an avid devourer of history books, this was a massive thing for me and I soon became one the top five best generals in the world on their game leader board for two years!  Under the name Raven Warrior!

More recently I follow the artist Jazza which lead me to finding his brother’s channel of which I enjoy immensely “Shadiversity” which talks about the history of weapons and how good they are or not.  This is another tool which has helped me a lot in writing action scenes and accurate war scenes in my books.

You will find that there is a lot of fighting in my stories usually, but it is not constant mindless violence, I hope you will agree someday.

I’ve never been a girly girl and seeing ultra-feminine and helpless women in fiction is rather irritating for me, my characters tend to be female lead, strong-minded and independent women that save themselves because of hard times dragging them through into survival mode; usually they don’t have time to sit back and daydream of their perfect love life, they are usually dreaming about freedom and where the next meal is coming from! 

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under What inspired me?

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 2, 2021 · 11:00

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

For the past two weeks I am getting used to typing on my laptop on my adjustable table, it is slower than I would usually be however, but it is at least getting things done again.

Paul is not coping very well with shingles, so the move around of the rooms won’t be happening for a few weeks.  He has said come what may by my Birthday, which is the 3rd October, he had hoped to have done the living room at least – but I am not happy that he wants to try and push himself to do that, when he can barely do basic other things.

I may allow him to move things around his own birthday, if he is better, which is six weeks later – the 11th November.

I am planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I may have to tolerate doing most of it on the laptop or by hand.

I have new ideas, which I really didn’t need, but they are dominating my thoughts at a huge scale lately. A subject too, which I ordinarily wouldn’t do… aliens.

The alien story is a comedy and it will be focused as such, as I have said before, I am trying to get out of my comfort zone and embrace the humour that’s within me.

This alien story has now made a total work in process of eleven stories, which will be called these things when referring to them on my blog…

Alien story

Giant story 1

Balloon story

Vampire story 1

Dragon story 1

Cat story

Boat story 1

Ship story 1

Historical fantasy 1

Warrior 1

Apocalypse 1

There are only four stories though that is being worked on more than the others.  Why did I add 1 to the story names?  Because in actuality I have ideas which far exceed the number eleven and many of them have those things as a main theme or character.  I sometimes think that I should name the stories for you; the name of the main character, but that won’t tell you much on the potential theme.

My main passions from the above are the Dragon story 1 – Apocalypse 1 – Warrior 1 and Vampire story 1.

Apocalypse 1 is the main reason for my religious studies. 

Warrior 1 makes me nervous to write when Henry is around because it is based on a character that does wrestling for a living in a war torn kind of world and he often wants to chip in and have more fight scenes than I can cope with!  He also doesn’t like the fact that the main character is female because of course; this story must be based on Henry!  But no, I don’t want to do that.

Dragon story 1 is currently going through its approximate thirtieth draft since it was first thought of in 2003!  Also around twenty original characters have been scrapped since the start of the project entirely and the whole story line has been completely remastered at least six times. 

In this current draft I have completed seventeen chapters and I am near the climax of the story, which I am sort of happy with so far, but the first three chapters may well get remastered again to suit the rest.

Vampire story 1 is the oldest project I have ever had!  This has only been remastered three times and I am struggling to decide if some major cultural aspect is doable or not and have been thinking for the first time in my history as a writer, in looking for beta readers… but not yet!  This idea has been with me since the 90s!

Which story will be the one I choose to focus on in NaNoWriMo this year?  Potentially Giant 1, this story has never got out of the extensive planning stage, so it would be good to give it a proper first draft.  As I am now embracing humour, this will be a fantasy comedy and to be honest, the humour will work well with the landscapes planned.  My main problem with the story is, should I write specifically for everyone and be family friendly?  Or should I have a no holds barred attitude on it? 

Happy reading and let me know your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 30, 2021 · 11:00

Henry the creative researcher

My Henry is eleven years old and this post is going to be about him.

Henry has wanted to become a chef since he was eight years old, before that he wanted to be a doctor, he still wants to be a chef, but he also wants to be an artist and writer and understands that life as a creative can be hard so he will need to find a more stable job until his creative career takes off.

Henry has a love for learning, particularly culture and history.  Henry knows that his family history is rich and he loves to learn about it all, from the deepest darkest depths that we can find through the assistance of places such as GenesReunited etc.

Learning about family history has prompted Henry to want to write his own novel.  Henry wants to write a novel about the late Edwardian into early Windsor times (if that’s a time period?).  The only thing I am allowed to say about the novel is that it is about two friends who live in the countryside and have a love for trains and is surviving through the throes of the dreaded Spanish flu.

I have no idea what made Henry interested in writing such a book, but I am proud that he is doing it, complete with his own illustrations and is determined to get it published once finished.

He is obsessively learning about life from 1900 to 1925 as this is the era he is writing about.  This is an obsession I can live with, because before that, his obsession was what he calls “The golden era of professional wrestling”.  Now I love wrestling personally, but when my Henry gets an obsession, believe me, it is a total war type obsession!

Henry, working on his novel.

Henry has been telling me how the poorest of poor in those days ate mostly rabbit, he told me this whilst giving awkward glances to our house rabbit Ray, who was quick in thumping his foot at hearing this, which was both spooky, funny and very apt!

Henry’s art is really good and at school most of his house points come from the art class and design technology.  Henry’s school is attached to the performing arts college, so he has been doing a lot of art, dance and drama in this school.

Henry has been noted for having a natural talent for entertainment, but has recently refused an audition for Matilda, down to the fact that since he has been bullied, he is losing his confidence slightly.  He also feels that the jealousy could increase his risk of being bullied, if he were to be successfully accepted in a role.

I have noticed that Henry tends to write and do art more when he has visibly seen me do this in front of him myself – so it is my duty, as his role model, to work when he is around instead of avoiding him like I have done in the past.  Because I personally work better alone, but Henry is influenced by what I do, so as I said in previous posts, I have to get out of my comfort zone and do work, regardless of who is present with me at the time.  I have to work it out for Henry’s sake!

Happy reading everyone!

Leave a comment

Filed under Home and Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,