OUUROBOROS

I've finally returned~! Spain was interesting, to say the least. Various shenanigans occurred. I've got about three blogposts to come about my misadventures this summer, but first - the second set of shorts is formatted and ready to upload to amazon and will
 be published (hopefully) within two days! After a slew of last-minute edits and changes, I'm quite proud of these. My favorite is definitely We've Lost Our Moral Compass, which seems weird considering up until I reworked it completely I despised it in every possible way. I'm really excited for everyone to read them!

The second set of shorts will be free for 5 days. I'll post and tell you when they're ready.

Other updates: I have a facebook page now, so you can get important updates etc. from there too if you like. :>
I am also now nineteen. I feel no different.

Another thing, you might note that the cover of my first ebook has changed ever-so-slightly. The reason for this is simple. I managed to choose what is, perhaps, the only spider image on the internet WITH ONLY SEVEN LEGS.
This was pointed out by a friend of my Dad's. Oops.
I thought about keeping the spider a bit 'special' on that cover for a joke, but decided against it in the end. It's fixed now. If it ever becomes famous and you've got the one with the seven-legged cover, well, count yourselves lucky ;v

And I suppose spiders brings me on to one of the many shenanigans that occurred in Spain. Might as well do the entire post now, photos and all!

We stayed in this really nice villa, small but super pretty, because we always prefer to self-cater rather than stay in an expensive hotel. Couple of photos for you!



The pool was easily the best thing about the villa. Being from England, hardly anyone has a need for an outside pool, and they're too expensive to maintain for the five days of summer we normally get. It was a huge novelty for us. Until the so-called Spider Episode. I'll explain.
One morning, I was sitting by the pool and I happened to see what I thought was a leaf at the bottom. It was pretty big, a bit spider-like, and I thought it was from one of the plants nearby. One of my kind, helpful family will retrieve that, I decided, and left it. But by the evening when we all went in the pool, it was still there. My little brother, who continually bangs on about being a 'real man', was told by my dad to swim down and get the 'spider' as 'a real man would do that, no trouble.'
'It's a leaf,' said Joseph, but still did not dive and get it.
While they argued about the prerequisites for manhood, the hero of this story decided that a real woman would succeed where a real man failed - using a bit of ingenuity. I got the net from the side, swam over and picked up what I thought was a leaf, intending to chuck it in Joe's face with a battle-cry of SPIDER! and have a laugh at his expense.
Alas, when I brought it to the surface, I found that it was the biggest spider that I had ever seen outside of a zoo.
The battle-cry turned into a scream for assistance very quickly.

I don't think I've mentioned on this blog yet, but I really don't like spiders. I'm not a full-blown arachnophobe - I don't mind the really teeny-tiny baby spiders. Those are kind of cute. I don't mind pictures of spiders, or looking at spiders from a safe distance when they are behind glass. But anything near me, anything bigger than a few millimetres across, anything where I can see the segments in the legs, I absolutely cannot stand. The legs really, really make me uncomfortable. And this particular spider, well! - you could see those awful shiny leg segments very clearly, if you get what I mean. I'll show you.

My ipod camera was too rubbish to get a decent picture (my phone had run out of charge.) But it was far too huge for any self-respecting spider to be. Bigger than half my palm, and when I googled it I found that it was one of these.

(Image credits: jacked from here - click if you want to learn more about these blighters.)
It's a funnel web spider, and they can be extremely poisonous. I had no idea they existed in Spain! I thought they were only around Australia, but a bit of google-fu told me that there are some in Europe too. And there was little old vaguely-arachnophobic me, picking it up with the net thinking it was only a leaf and I'd get one over on my brother!
It was thrown out of the pool with some enthusiasm, net and all, and then examined from a cowardly distance. In the morning it was eaten by red ants, and thus, the Spider Episode reached its conclusion.



Moving on, these are a couple more photos of the area we stayed in. Incredible mountains, all terraced, seemingly many years ago. We were on the Costa Blanca, and visited Valencia and even Benidorm for one day, because we're classy. Valencia was so pretty, really beautiful, with every building decorated. I think my dad fell in love with Spain that day - he kept waxing lyrical about how amazing everything was, how nice the paella was, how he even liked speaking the language. The only thing stopping him dropping everything and moving out there is, I think, the temperature - which was extortionate. 37 degrees most time we were there, and it was impossible to sleep at night.

We went to Benidorm to see the Mundomar sealife centre, and watch the dolphin show on my birthday. It was amazing! They even had a tiny baby dolphin, though it didn't perform through being too young. I was at first concerned about the welfare of the animals, but they seemed to have kind keepers and the ways their welfare was maintained were all explained for us. They constantly swam over to their trainers to be kissed and have hugs, and I feel as though if the dolphins were upset or unhappy, they are such intelligent creatures that the trainers couldn't get them to perform their tricks or be so close to them.

I'm really awful when I go to any kind of animal place. I always look out to see that the animals are kept well and are cared for properly, as it's really upsetting to think of any being badly treated. Luckily most places I've visited have been at a high standard for animal welfare.


My favourite animals from the sealife centre~

The other incident that happened while on holiday was, believe it or not, on the very first day. We needed to get food so stopped off at the supermarket, where this - and I'm not sorry - stunningly good-looking human being gives us kiwis to try for free. Thanks to some picky eating habits as a child, I'd never eaten kiwi before, but found that it was really nice (also, a hot Spanish guy was giving it to me, do you think I am cold and unfeeling?) So, I ate it.
Everything was fine until my face swelled up.
So, exhausted from travelling, still tired from Holland, I had a violent allergic reaction to kiwi fruits. In front of a devastatingly attractive young man. I know, you just can't purchase this level of coolness. I was born with it.
Hey, at least I know I will never need botox in the future. I can just eat a kiwi fruit before I leave the house.

Also, can I heartily recommend Barry M's waterproof black liquid liner? I foolishly put it on without realising we were going to a water park one day, and the whole time worried my face would be melting off. But after an awful lot of slides, two goes on a rather good wave machine, several adventures with fountains and swimming pools, it was still one hundred percent intact at the end of the day. Good, huh?



But one of the best things about Spain was definitely the beautiful flowers everywhere. They're all so bright, all pink and red, and mostly huge! You rarely see flowers that big here, and they were all over the place. So many different flowers that I'd never seen before - they were really beautiful! My favourites were the hibiscus plants by the pool - the photo with my hand shows exactly how big they were.


Too bad England is too rubbish to grow any, or I'd fill my garden with them.

That essentially concludes my shenanigans in Spain, and this post! I will post about Holland at some point, with photos, but I'm on edge for releasing the next set of shorts. If you've made it this far through my ramblings, may I suggest you check the downloads page? I've updated it with a new cover that I've developed for the third set of shorts, so you can see a preview of it in thumbnail form before I properly present it to you after this second release. :> Easter egg!



 I will leave you with a picture of my face. Yes, that is a bikini. No, you aren't seeing the rest of it. Society's not ready for that yet. 

For once, a post not entirely about writing! First, a quick update - thank you so much to everyone for all the downloads and kind messages/reviews! The free promotion came to an end a few days ago (boo, Amazon) but during the five days my story was downloaded 159 times in total. For my first ebook, I reckon that's pretty swell. ;>

I'm off to Holland tomorrow morning for a week of sailing, lasting until Tuesday, so I'm having a bit of a break from writing and instead taking inspiration. However, the second installment of City of the Damned is ready for final-minute edits and converting to an ebook, so I will try to publish it pretty much as soon as I get back! I like this set better than the first for sure, so that's exciting.

But this post is not about writing, exactly. If you read my blog, you'll know I'm an eighteen year old living in the United States of Eurasia Kingdom. You may not, however, know that I am learning to drive.

I only started in November last year because I didn't feel I was mentally mature enough to be hurtling around our roads in my own death-box on wheels when the law first said I could (if you could have seen me when I was seventeen, you'd probably agree too.) However, since I've started driving, I have come to understand that this concern was needless.

APPROX. 80% OF PEOPLE ON OUR ROADS ARE COMPLETE AND UTTER MORONS.

Yes, this is now a scientific figure. You read it on the internet, it must be true.

But I digress. I took my theory test earlier in the year and passed easily. It was easy because the answer to every single question was a slightly different variation of 'don't be a twat to other people.' Don't tailgate them because that is dangerous and therefore illegal. Don't beep your horn late at night unnecessarily because you'll wake the kiddies. Don't drink and drive not because you might kill yourself, but because you might kill someone else. Preferably drive safely and don't kill yourself at all, but killing someone else through your personal stupidity is really inconsiderate. If you must drive stupidly, do it far away from anyone else and don't come crying to anyone when you die.

Oh, and don't be mean to learner drivers!!

I get it. I really, honestly do. Learners can be real nuisances. They can stop abruptly, stall at traffic lights, or take longer than usual to pull away. They often travel a little bit slower than others. I do, when the road is slippery or there are many tight corners or parked cars, because I don't want to die and my reactions are not as good as someone who has been driving for 20 years.
But this is no reason to be a dick to every learner driver you meet! For one thing, that driver might be very capable and do none of these things. For another, they might be on their test and you pulling something stupid or unexpected can cause them to fail through no fault of their own and cost them a lot of money in needing another test thanks to the really stupid examination system we have!! For ANOTHER, it makes you a raging arsehole. Guess what, peasant - you were a learner driver once too. Cool your jets.

This is a list of some of the idiocies other cars have subjected me to while learning to drive. Warning, it's at once both long and stupid.

♦ Screamed past me at 70/80mph on a national speed limit road (60) when I was already driving at the max, just because I'd actually adhered to the 30mph speed limit all the way through the last village and they GOTTA GO FAST.

♦ Driving towards me on a narrow country road, instead of steering towards the side of the road so we could both get by steered TOWARDS THE CENTRE OF THE ROAD and forced me onto a verge where I then stalled the car.

♦ When I was first starting out I stalled at some traffic lights. The car behind beeped repeatedly and drove right up close so I couldn't see anything out of my rear window... causing me to stall again in panic.

♦ Mercedes Benz vans tailgating me. 90% of the many times I've had some idiot tailgate me when I was conscientiously sticking to the speed limit it's been a Mercedes Benz van. Says a lot about the people who drive Mercedes Benz vans. Panther taxi cabs are almost as guilty. And people who drive BMWs and Audis.

♦ One Mercedes Benz van who decided that no, a learner car cannot possibly be allowed into the fast lane of the A14, and as soon as I pulled out to overtake a lorry aggressively tailgated me and WOULD NOT GO AWAY. I could understand if I'd been hogging the fast lane but I'd literally pulled out 20 seconds previously. Arsehole.

♦ Various idiots who, after travelling pretty slowly and me overtaking them and realising that I was a learner in a tiny red car, sped up on purpose to overtake me back, often smashing the speed-limit to hell and back in their attempts to appease their puffed up egos. Then, proceeded to go really slowly again. Pretty much all BMW drivers.

♦ BMW/Audi/Mercedes drivers that don't seem to know where their indicators are located.

♦ A huge lorry trying to turn into a minor road when it was my right of way as the traffic lights had let me go, temporarily stopped as it saw me but then, just as I started to go, STARTED MOVING AGAIN. I slammed on my brakes of course, and then the other car behind me nearly crashed into my back and beeped me. Not my fault!! Arsehole then drove past me when I parked making rude gestures. I made some back though, so it's fine.

♦ The cyclist who decided it would be hilarious to cycle down the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD and then not move out of the way when I approached, meaning extreme evasive action on my part was required when I'd only just started out.

This is not even a comprehensive list. These are just the incidents that I can think of off the top of my head now. I have also come to the conclusion that tractors should be banned from driving on the roads during rush hour, and that tourists to Cambridge should not be allowed to rent bikes under any circumstances. I used to get road rage badly on my bike - it's 1000 times worse in a car.

I don't get it. Would you people rather learner drivers sped along like you lot, going super fast when their reactions are still poor so they crash, potentially crashing into you? Do you not remember when you were a learner driver and stalled a lot? Do you not understand that harrassing or intimidating a learner driver makes them MORE LIKELY TO PANIC AND STALL AND CAUSE AN ACCIDENT?

I wonder how many of these people would pass a driving test if they took it now, especially having to deal with other arseholes like them. I also hope they all get arrested for speeding and dangerous driving.



Rant over, I guess. :> I'll see you guys after Holland! I've got a couple of things to post about, and the second installment of COTD will be out sometime after then. Exciting!

Aah! I just checked on amazon and my ebook has received 50 downloads after just two days of being up! I don't know what kind of numbers are good for a first ebook, but this seems like kind of a lot to me and so I'm really happy ♥‿♥

(It's still free for four more days, download HERE! Also, if you have no kindle or iphone/ipad/android with a kindle app, you can download a kindle reader to your computer free from here.)

Thank you so much to everyone who downloaded my book, and to everyone who will download it! It means a huge amount. I really hope you enjoy it, cause I had fun over the last year writing it. As for part two, it'll be out just as soon as I get the final edits done! That's Quantum Entanglement, We've Lost Our Moral Compass and Spidermusings. I personally think these stories are better than the first lot, but I did write them later on after I improved a lot. So, I'm starting to get excited for them too.

At the moment I'm actually working a little more on my big project, The Light Age, and I'm finalising the plans for that. Super-happy with it so far. But I guess now might be a good time to talk about why exactly I chose to do this kind of project over my gap year, rather than attempt to get published traditionally.

Getting a book of mine into actual book shops as a real, paper book is obviously my ultimate dream. But I did a lot of research about the publishing industry and it just seemed next to impossible to break into it. Publishers want you to have an agent, agents want you to have been published already... As an unknown, you really have such a little chance! But the main thing I didn't like is that as an author in the publishing industry you seem to get very little control over your book. They can edit it however they like, make you edit stuff out, make you add things in... And when I write, I guess I see it like painting. I'll try and explain.

I'm really picky with the words I choose and the sentence structures, because it's like choosing colours and tones and every subtle shade of a painting. Everything builds up into this whole piece, this whole scene and then eventually the whole story, and if someone were to chop it about too carelessly I feel as though it would lose the effects I've tried to achieve. Of course, everything needs editing - I edit my stuff relentlessly, and ask people all the time how I can improve! But throughout I am careful to keep the feeling for the story that I intended. I would also worry about my actual content and scenarios, not just the way I structure things but the things themselves. The publishing industry has been known to pull stuff like this too.

I guess a lot of my content can be seen as uncomfortable, unpleasant - my stories don't always have a happy ending. In fact, a lot of them have really quite horrible endings. And that's okay, because how many happy endings are there in real life? I'm not going to tack on some happy-happy-la-la-obnoxious ending on the end of a story about courage in the face of impossible adversity because it makes it hollow - it cheapens it. And besides - writing is art! You should write things that you want to write, that you feel are important - not what people have to want to hear. Of course, it'd be really nice if people did enjoy your work; I really, really hope that people like my stories. I actually teared when I turned on my computer and saw how many people downloaded it (even if it doesn't seem like much to most authors, it's a lot to me!)

Basically, I don't want someone else having creative control over my stuff. I also wanted to make my own cover, make sure my stories were presented exactly how I wanted to present them to people. They don't let you make your own cover in the publishing industry very often. Sometimes authors end up with a horrible one, or one that doesn't match their book - or even a downright offensive one. And they may not be able to change it.

That really worried me. So, I decided to go it alone. I guess now I have to deal with the label of 'vanity publishing', but I'll just have to hope that my work can stand for itself and people will find it worth something. I like to think my work is good enough to be read by people - and surely, it can't be any worse than certain books that actually were published! At least, I hope not. If my stuff is as terrible as certain things currently out there, I don't want people to read them! I'd be so embarrassed.

Mostly, I thought it'd be a bit of fun. A little experiment, something to do with my gap year. I'm on my own, but that's kind of fun. ♥‿♥ I can do what I like, it's an adventure that could have any kind of ending. Entrepreneurial! That's the word. I might not be a proper, legitimately published author like I always dreamed, but I can certainly be an entrepreneur until I get there. If that doesn't sound too pretentious, that is. And maybe, by the time I get there, authors and the art they create for people will be a little bit better respected by the publishing industry as a whole.

Once again, thank you for any downloads! Please enjoy.

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Hello! It's been a while, but I've been rather busier than expected. All my friends are back from university now, so we've gone hard - and not always gone home -  for the last few weeks. As I write this, I'm trying to format the first set of shorts into an ebook, but it's taking a while. And two days ago, I got home from my work experience at the Houses of Parliament, in London!
It was so cool.

I stayed with my uncle, who has a flat in the city, and that was really fun too. Ate Vietnamese cuisine for the first time with him, which I can 100% recommend to anyone. It's a little like Chinese food, but much spicier, and I actually prefer it! Unfortunately I have no photos of the food because I ate it before I could remember to take any. Also it turns out that I am absolutely abysmal at using chopsticks.
But, I digress.

I had to catch the bus to the Houses of Parliament each day (and get it back!) and as someone without a sense of direction to speak of who is used to a small city only, this was pretty daunting. However, my bus route took me past most of the big sights (St Paul's Cathedral, Trafalgar Square etc) so it was still pretty cool. I had to keep asking for directions, and you can say what you like about Londoners being grumpy - everyone who I asked was really kind, especially two policemen who offered to actually show me the way themselves.
I'm such a tourist.

Maybe I'd get better at things if I actually lived in London - who knows? But I sort of want to live there now, at some point in the future. Also, London buses get the weirdest people on them. First day I was going back to my uncle's, I was treated to an hour-long, full-on sing-and-clap-along-to-Jesus-songs session, from a man who I suspect was profoundly drunk at this point. Unfortunately I could hear him through my iPod at max volume; and when Nine Inch Nails is being drowned out by something else there's a problem.

The first thing that I did was go on a tour of the houses, which was great - but unfortunately, you aren't allowed to photograph anything. The House of Commons is absolutely tiny, way smaller than you think it is from TV. The House of Lords is blinged up to the absolute max with gold. There's all kinds of funny, interesting and largely pointless traditions. And the architecture and artwork is awesome. Someone had to build all that. It's crazy!

After this, I went off to meet my MP. Then I was able to go into the public gallery at the Houses of Commons and watch some of the debates. It was about the EU Common Agriculture policy, which was pretty interesting. The one Labour MP got up and delivered an ever-so-pretty, extremely flowery speech that included comparisons to the 'charge of the Light Brigade' and speaking in French, but by the end of it he hadn't really said much at all. When pressed for an actual opinion he didn't give one, so effectively he thought the same thing as the Conservatives but couldn't possibly say this. This is always what frustrates me about our politicians - at the end of the day most of them are very much the same, and they'll u-turn as soon as they get into power and people just don't see it. People forget.

I also had to do some admin work, like going through my MP's post and filing things. I also had to sign something saying I wouldn't talk about it, so I won't in case I get arrested. What I can divulge is that MPs have some rather interesting people writing to them  - and that's probably about the kindest way I can put it.

The next day was the best, however, because I got to see Prime Minister's Questions. I saw Dave! Well, first of all I saw Ed Miliband (ugh), then Nick Clegg (UGH), a handful of other big names and then David Cameron (still mostly ugh.) The first part of PMQ's was effectively Ed and Dave getting bitchy at each other, which was quite funny - some of their comments just made me think meow! Politicians behaving badly. In the end the speaker told Dave off a bit, because I think he got a bit too personal. Shame, really.

The other thing I got to sit in on was a meeting of the Scottish Independence committee, which got rather dry towards the end but was still pretty interesting.


The view from the office window!~
At the end of the day, I'm not sure I could be a politician. High Overlord maybe, but first you have to be a politician. But London's an awesome city, and I could see myself living there in the future. As a lawyer, maybe - or, preferably, as a successful author. :v

London also has Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Does Cambridge have Krispy Kreme? I think not.

On the thirteenth April I went to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Warner Bros. Studios  ♥‿♥ And the reason I haven't posted about it yet was that I couldn't find my camera cable and I have tons of pictures. Harry Potter has and always will hold a really special place in my heart, seeing as I grew up with it and it was what first inspired me to be an author. I first started reading them when the fourth Harry Potter book came out in 2000, when I was six, as my parents already had the first three books and hadn't let me read them in case they were too scary. They bought the fourth book and I remember racing through the first three as fast as I could, in order to read the fourth (partially because the cover had a dragon on it, but also because that thing was huge. I'd never read a book as fat as that one, and was determined to do so. I've always had a thing for nice, fat books that took me a good while to finish.)

Needless to say, I loved Harry Potter. I read those books again, and again, and again. I got them on audiotape, my mum read them out to the family after tea. When the fifth book came out we went to buy it from Waitrose at 7am, the shop's opening time, and when we asked for it the manager said we were his first customers and gave it to us for free! Excellent marketing strategy, as then everyone we met in town we told about it. We later bought a second copy for my mum, which we then did ever since as me, her and dad would fight over who got to read them first.

I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in a day, and every release after that we went at 5am to ASDA to buy the books. I would get so excited for the release days, I wouldn't even sleep! And then I wouldn't put them down until I finished reading them. They were the only days  I was allowed to read at the table, although little-kid-me always tried it. I miss those days so much! They were some of the happiest of my life. We even got a system going - I was the fastest reader and would finish within the day, then passing it on to my dad. My mum would finish her copy in two days, and then give it back to me to read again. ♥‿♥

The films were never as good as the books to me, but they were Harry Potter and so I loved them anyway. Thus, I was really excited when I heard about the studios tour, and desperate to visit from the offset. But the tickets are kind of pricey, so we had to put it off for a year. Finally we came across some vouchers to go (we are so cheap) and jumped at the chance ♥

These are the photos of the day! Be warned, this will probably be a stupidly long post. This isn't even half the stuff we saw that day, and the pictures don't do it justice at all! So if you are a fan of the Harry Potter series and you haven't been, go. It's absolutely fabulous, and I got quite emotional about it afterwards! It really was the end of my childhood, and I may just have teared in the car on the way home. Honestly, I think nothing will ever replace Harry Potter. Nothing will be quite the same, touch people quite the same. I can't imagine it, and that makes me really quite sad - but also happy, because I got to grow up with Harry.

 

The ice sculpture from the Yule Ball ♥‿♥ so much prettier in real life than in the picture!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, I'm going to talk about two things. First, a piece of software that's been helping my writing no end, and next a little bit about my work with birds for those who are interested.

The software is called Darkroom, and it's free to download. What it is, is a writing environment with no distractions. This is excellent for me and my kindred spirits, the notorious procrastinators of this world. Microsoft Word or Open Office can be distracting because of all the buttons, the options, the fact that the start bar with Firefox is still there... you get the idea! When you open Darkroom you'll see a completely black screen. When you type, it will be in green. I was skeptical at first, because I thought this combination would hurt my eyes, but it doesn't in any way. It's easy to get sucked into writing with this, and my productivity has probably increased ten-fold by using it. If you can't see distractions, it takes much more effort to be distracted!
The only downside is that formatting, such as adding italics, has to be done in a Word/Open Office document. I paste my work into Open Office and made necessary edits there at the end of the day. Darkroom saves as you go so it's pretty hard to lose work, and even if you close the program and opt not to save it to a .txt file, when you next open it your work will still be there.

You can download Darkroom here!

But next, I thought I'd talk a little about my work.



If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I work with various animals - in particular, corvids, and in particular Eurasian jays. These are some of them! Washington in the top-left and bottom-right, and Lisbon in the other pictures.
They live in a huge outdoor aviary with options for hiding inside or sheltering from rain, and I help run studies on their behaviour. They're so much fun to work with - every single bird has a different personality, and I love them all! It doesn't help that they're so cute.
Some will fly down to sit on my hand or take worms from me, others prefer me to toss them up for them to catch. Jeru, or Jerusalem, is particularly nifty at that. My personal favourite is Lima, the vainest bird - he loves the sound of his own voice, and sings whenever he sees me. Because it's breeding season, the birds have also started to talk. They can repeat all kinds of noises - so far I've had ambulance sirens, wolf-whistles repeated back to me, 'oy-oy-oy', 'hello... hello... hello...' and 'Liiima, Liiima'. I know for a fact that one bird can say extremely rude things, but I haven't had chance to hear him yet as he lives in another aviary. Jeru also makes a downright maniacal laughing sound, which is funny because she's the smallest and cutest bird.
She also has a habit of doing a poo every time she sees me, before flying over for worms. I take it as a sign of love.

And they are incredibly clever. As in, I knew corvids were clever (that's the crow family), but I didn't think they were this clever. Observing them is a real privilege. And after working with them since October, they've started to trust me. This job just makes me incredibly happy. ♥‿♥

I've met so many people from different places through it, as well as different animals. Oliver the fox, Russell the crow, a magpie and a wagtail and a wild jay who hangs around outside the aviaries. Scrub jays, rooks and jackdaws as well as my favourite Eurasian jays.
And that's about it! It's great because the welfare of the birds is taken into account all the time, one hundred percent, and they're all so happy. The best part is when they sit in their pairs on the branches and puff themselves up. 'I love you this much!'

♥

Tomorrow I'm off to the Harry Potter studios, which I'm incredibly excited for! Harry Potter was just about my entire childhood, and was what made me want to be a writer. So, I'll blog about that pretty soon, and include lots of pictures for once. :>

Well hello there. :>
Sorry for no updates, my laptop finally gave up the ghost and I had to splurge on a new one e__e Fortunately, I'd saved some money for uni and seeing as this will be used for uni I could justify it. It's infected with the disease-like Windows 8, but I've managed to get around it and the keyboard is ever so nice for typing on!

I've been working on another short lately - Viral Heart. It's quite possibly the nastiest, darkest one so far (and considering themes to the others include mindwipes, suicide and just about everything else) so, it's quite exciting!
I also had a really nice couple of days with my writing buddy Artemis Timms, watching Lord of the Rings (as she hadn't seen it yet which is a complete travesty) and discussing story ideas. :>

In lieu of an actual post, here's something I doodled up today. It's the main character from my novel; and I was bored. Introducing: Lilia. Messy hair and all. First digital art in a long long time!

Yeah, so I was just editing We've Lost Our Moral Compass (almost completed the digital edits, have completed the ones on paper) and my computer decided to crash. Unfortunately it crashed right in the middle of me saving my file, so now I have to write all the edits out again.
All of them.
Shriek.
Flail.

It was a dark moment. I shall put off dwelling on it.

Now, as anyone who lives in Britain knows, we've had a stupid amount of snow over the last few days! So, you can all have some snow spam because every idiot with a camera seems to be posting them at the moment, and this idiot doesn't want to miss out.
I tried to make a Dalek snowman, but unfortunately it was an embarrassing failure. No photos. None.

I also finished reading 'A Clockwork Orange', which is absolutely fabulous and has made it onto my list of all-time favourite books for being deliciously dark and twisted and thought-provoking, and for some incredibly fun messing-around with language.