Creepy 50

Well, Creeper's Cottage is now at 50,000.

I get the sense it's about halfway through. Longer than I was expecting, but coming along nicely.

It's been a strange week for writing. Monday and Tuesday flew past at 3,000 each. I was planning to finish up by Friday and have a long weekend, but then I got swept up with Secret Order and putting it on Inkitt for the competition (please check that out).

It's been getting good feedback from beta readers, but no nibbles yet from publishers. It's extremely experimental, but I still think it has potential. It's really hard trying to write the next novel whilst your current manuscript is getting battered through submissions. Easy to give into the doldrums.

Still, writing continues to happen despite all else.

Creeper's isn't my usual style either, and neither is the next one likely to be, but I think I'll write this off as my experimental phase and if nothing comes of it, I'll return to writing in the style of Rosy Hours and Children of Lir. It has been suggested that I publish the other stuff under a pseudonym, and I have been tempted, after reading the statistics, to try submitting as a bloke. When I was a kid I'd dream up fantastical nom de plumes, but as an adult I'm less willing to try it. Would you really want a publisher who accepted you under a different name but not your own?

All being well, I should have another novel in the next few weeks. It'll take quite a bit of editing, but I'm looking forward to it.

Megalithic Study Group

If you're near Stirling, Scotland on 18 April 2016, The Northern Antiquarian (Twitter/Facebook) are holding their first Megalithic Study Group.

I'm currently the secretary of TNA, but won't be able to attend as I'm in Africa. If you're interested in rock art, ancient landscapes and neolithic monuments, get yourself over there to meet some like minds. Please help spread the word.

Tea and Cake

Lovely post on #FolkloreThursday this week by @thehopeandglory all about the traditions associated with tea and cake, such as:

Tea can be used to predict strangers - If a single stalk floats on top of a cup of tea, it means that a stranger is coming - a hard, woody stalk indicates a male visitor and a soft stalk, a female. The length of the stalk tells you whether he or she will be tall or short. To find out when they will come, lay the stalk on the back of the left hand and hit it with the right. However many hits it takes to knock it off tells the number of days before they will stand at your door.

The site has very small text, but you should be able to zoom in with ctrl & +.

If you know of any other traditions, do leave a comment below.

And if you're looking for excitement with your beverage, check out Emma Newman's Tea & Jeopardy podcast.

DRM Restrictions

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It's the lock on digital media which dictates where you can and can't read the ebook you've downloaded. It's the reason you can't read a Kindle .mobi on a Nook without converting it to an .epub. The idea being you need to buy the software to go with the format, and that format, if it has a DRM on it, can't be converted. 

Last year, I posted about why you don't actually own an ebook. You purchase it, you think you own it, but really, it's more like borrowing, as one Amazon customer found out when her library was repossessed.

I don't think that's fair. 

Neither do many other consumers of music, video games and ebooks:

What Is DRM & Why Does It Exist If It’s So Evil?

So we’ve established that DRM doesn’t prevent piracy – but worse still – it frustrates legitimate consumers. They find their media needs special software to be installed to allow access; an always-on Internet connection so it can dial home and check if your purchase is valid; or that it’s limited to a single device and rendered permanently useless once that device breaks, or the DRM service goes down. If the perfect DRM was invented that couldn’t be hacked, you can be certain it would be the most frustrating and restrictive technology ever. 

Furthermore, DRM prevents many legitimate uses of media – such as a public library lending a book, or being able to use materials from a piece for research and education (which are classified as fair use, and therefore legal).

DRM.info:

Would you like to watch your legally bought movies on different devices? Would you like to backup your DVDs? Or would you like to convert your e-books into different formats? 

Digital Restrictions Management systems place restrictions on your right to do all of these things. Your movies or e-books may even stop working altogether if the vendor goes bankrupt, or no longer maintains a particular DRM system.

There's even a campaing: Librarians Against DRM. Now, who you gonna feel more sympathetic towards, your local librarian, or companies like Amazon who dodge tax, abuse workers, destroy high street companies and offered Rape On T-shirts?

Amazon does offer an Amazon Reader App, which is free, and you can install it on an iPhone or PC. But then, Amazon can still wipe your entire library on a whim. The equivalent of that second hand book dealer you bought a copy off last week, breaking down your door at 4 a.m. to repossess it.

So, I'm not too fond of the DRM idea, and - having looked into it - I'm not overly worries about piracy, either. I think it's used as a very big scare word to prevent ordinary, law abiding citizens from managing their media in whatever way they see fit.

If you are interested in reading your ebook in a different format, but you're being hampered by DRM, check out this article: 

When you pay Amazon some money for a Kindle eBook, you probably think it’s yours now. I mean, you paid some money, you got some content, and now you have it, just like any other book you buy at a brick-and-mortar store. Well, that’s wrong. Actually, you didn’t buy anything, and you don’t own that book you just paid for. 

If this sounds wrong, and if you think you should actually own a book after clicking a button that says “Buy now with 1-Click” and paying some of your hard-earned money, read on and I’ll show you how to take ownership of your Kindle eBooks.

I'm not advocating you do this, but I'm not unhappy the information is available. Piracy is one thing. Accessing goods and services you've paid for feels like quite another. And I'm curious that UK's Trading Standards don't seem to have picked up on the issue. Only, in this case, you're not being 'misled into buying a product,' you're being misled into not buying one. 'Buy Now' seems far clearer than it actually is.

The Secret Order of the Literati

Hi everyone.

I need your help.

A while ago, I finished writing The Secret Order of the Literati. It's an experimental urban fantasy. Not the type of fiction I usually create, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

Because the story itself is a little experimental, I've decided to take an experimental approach to publishing it.

I've just entered SOL for a competition on a new author site called Inkitt.

The more people who read the book on their site, the greater its chance of getting noticed.

Here's a short introduction to how it all works.

Please pop over there before 7th June (closing date) and have a read through, and tell everyone you know. There are options on the left to share via social media (please do!), and to change the reading backgrounds and font size.

READ SECRET ORDER ON INKITT

Much appreciated.

Playing With Love

A big shout out to my friend Tiga today.

Tiga and I first met in Rwanda as VSOs. I'm still here, seven years later (with a break in between), but Tiga's recently moved to Thailand, where she works as a life coach.

Her company is called Playing With Love (Facebook) and you can book a sample session for free.

I must admit, I was a little unsure what to expect to begin with. My favourite self-help books are Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking and The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k .

If it wasn't for the fact I know Tiga, I'm pretty sure I'd never have booked myself in.

On the other hand, that thing about writers craving experience is also pretty true.

I've had two sessions so far and they were extremely helpful.

Each session begins with a gentle meditation, then you get to lead the way with whatever it is that's on your mind, resulting in follow-up exercises with inventive, playful ways to explore those themes.

Colouring pens at the ready. 

Tiga has a great sense of humour, she's extremely professional, and she's passionate about what she does. Whether you're at a crossroads in your life, or just mulling things over, it's well worth trying her out.

Favourite Five Words

I was asked at a book talk last year what my favourite word is. Here's my current top five favourites.

Dichroic

This is the answer I gave. It's a word I first learned about at a craft shop, in relation to dichroic glass jewelry. The word has specific meaning when filtering light in laboratory conditions, but it comes from dichroism, the ability to split colours. The reason I like it as a descriptive term is that it is the perfect word for describing the rainbow effect of an oil spill, or any colour that appears to be more than one colour. I really like extremely specific words for things you can't otherwise explain succinctly. Especially when those words are short.

Petrichor

I don't particularly like the sound of this word, but I really appreciate what it stands for. Like dichroic, it's another of those single words that can sum up a sentence. In this case: a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. You'd know it if you smelled it.

Threnody

I happen to think this is one of the prettiest words in the English language, right up there with ephemeral and diaphanous. It means: a lament. Which in turn means: a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. It sounds so much softer than dirge, almost a whisper. There is another word in Arabic, ghazal, which, although not as beautiful on the tongue, imparts a similar sentiment: a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.

Ejo

This has become one of my favourite words of late. Pronounced more as ay-joo. The reason I love this word so much is that it means two completely opposite things at the same time. Such a small word capable of causing utter chaos. It's Kinyarwanda for both yesterday and tomorrow. I've spoken before about the issue of polychronic time, where things happen all at once instead of in sequence. This just makes me laugh as an explanation for why no one turns up to meetings on time: "When is the meeting?" - "Ejo". The person thinks it was yesterday and doesn't turn up tomorrow. The only way to be certain which ejo we're talking about is to add a suffix: ejo hazaza (tomorrow), ejo hashize (yesterday).

Superfluous

There are a couple of reasons I'm including this word. Firstly, because it's rather nice to say, and secondly, because it is what it describes. With so many shorter ways of saying something is OTT, too much, and more commonly excessive, unnecessary or surplus to requirement, the very word superfluous is almost always superfluous. I like that about it.