OUUROBOROS

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I'm now back from uni and I spent the holiday with my family. It was great :v got some nice presents. Mostly clothes, 'cause I didn't know what I wanted (oops). My main present was a super-nice dress from my parents (I was in charge of my present getting, they gave me a budget and I online shopped the lot. No need to go into town, right? Just as I was about to order I saw it had been reduced from £60 to just £30! Pleased to the max. I probably should have got the size smaller than I chose to be safe, but it still fits fine.
I also got this gorgeously fluffy white faux fur snood, which I have become one with and wear all the time - even indoors. It's so fluffy, I might die.

Update on the story situation - my main proof reader has been utterly useless and hasn't even looked at the last three shorts (???) I know, right? Yes, my dad has work that pays for our house, but clearly this is more important! Tch.
He says he will get to it soon. If he doesn't, I'll threaten him some more.

So, the whole thing is delayed. Some more.
Disappointing.

However, my main project comes along in leaps and bounds :v The final plan is written, everything is worked out, and I'm hemming and hawing over beginning it. I will - eventually. ;__;

But, I thought I'd write (read: complain) about something else in this post today. Obviously, as an aspiring writer, I have a miniature love-affair with words. I love words. I love the words that have multiple different meanings, I love the colours words make on the page when you put them together. The English language is great! We have some beautiful words. Celestial, pelagic, xanthochroic, solar, feather, glimmer, machine, luminescence - all so soft and pretty.
However, it also follows that there are words I hate. Here are some, along with some fairly garbled reasons as to why.

Folk. I hate the word folk, or folks. I especially hate it when applied to a group of people. It makes me physically cringe when someone says it. It's just so ugly! Cannot stand it. This is one of the words I would never use in writing, never, not under any circumstance. Objectively there's no reason for me to hate this word, just like there's no logical reason that the smell of baked beans makes me want to be sick - I just do. The sad thing is it's not an offensive word or a word many people are bothered by, so I can't really demand that it be banned from human speech.
BUT IT BLOODY WELL SHOULD BE.

Next, warmth. I've always hated this word, right from when I was a kid. Once again, no particular reason, besides it has my least favourite letter right at the start. I've never liked 'w' - it's an ugly letter, with an ugly feel to it. Although, normally my dislike for words with 'w' in is confined to those that start with 'wi', so warmth is a strange one. I just try to avoid using these words unless I have to. The other letters in it aren't offensive to my by themselves, but I don't like the combination of rm or mth. It looks like someone's being gagged. Th on it's own is fine though. I guess I'm just a pedantic freak.
Plus, and this is more a personal thing, I don't connect 'warmth' with a nice kind of heat like lying on a beach in the Mediterranean. I think of it as more the uncomfortable kind of heat, like when you're stuck under a blanket and can't really move. It just makes my skin crawl.

I don't think this post will be doing much to convince you of my sanity, but I promise I'm not a lunatic. I just have an irrational hatred of certain words.

'Wi' words in general. 'With' is okay because the 'th' softens it. 'Wind' is okay depending on the words I use it with, perhaps its connotations spare it. Otherwise, I don't like them at all.

Words spelt the American way. I'm sorry, people of the USA! It might be the most logical way to spell things, but it's damn ugly. Colour versus color. Favourite versus favorite. The 'ou' way makes the word seem softer, smoother. 'o' is harsh, abrupt, and hurried. I guess you could compare it to cheap wine versus pricier wine on your palate - the more expensive wine is smoother and the taste lasts longer. Sorry!
Hahaha, I bet that's offended someone somewhere. Helpful hint : take things less seriously.
Pet peeve - when the British spellings are underlined as spelling errors. Nope, they might make less sense from a logical standpoint, but they look nicer in a paragraph. They leave a nicer taste when I write them, and give a sentence a more subtle, rounded colour and flavour.
'Ou' words are are awesome. And 's' is better than 'z'.

Whoever made this image, it's never been more appropriate.

There are probably more words I hate out there, but they don't spring to mind at this current time. This has been a long post anyway, so I'll sign off and bully my dad some more.

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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Publishing this one now because I'm profoundly off-pissed by pretty much everything.

 Unless you've been living under a bit of a rock, you'll know who Edward Snowden is and what he's done, so I won't rehash it in great detail. He effectively blew the whistle on the NSA and the GCHQ, who have been merrily spying on everyone's online activity. NSA is American, and GCHQ is British.
That's my country, yo.

What these charming institutions have been doing is, of course, mass-monitoring global transmissions. The NSA were using the Prism scheme to spy on people - in Hong Kong, China, their own country, and who knows where else. The GCHQ has been accused of being involved with Prism too, and circumventing UK law to spy on people including the Germans, and God knows who else. If America wasn't spying on us, GCHQ probably was.

The thing that makes me laugh is that the US expected Hong Kong to hand Snowden back to them, after its spying activities on the people of Hong Kong were revealed.
You're not used to having people say no to you, are you, America? If I'd found out someone was spying me, no way would I ever hand the person who warned me about it back to them! Now America is accusing Hong Kong of supporting a fugitive when actually, it acted in accordance to international law. What do you mean, America isn't the world?

And I'm so, so angry that Britain's been getting its fingers in the pie too. Why do we always do this? Our country is a goddamn lapdog. I think this just about sums up our Government's relationship with the US.

USA: IRAQ HAS OIL. WANT TO GO TO WAR?
UK: Oh, such fun! Jolly good, tally-ho! America's doing it so we definitely ought to! Leeroy Jenkins!!!
USA: HAND OVER THIS UK CITIZEN TO US IMMEDIATELY.
UK: Sure, have this one on us. It's not like the supposed crime they've committed isn't a crime in the UK, and this person has never set foot in the US before! Take the plebian away!
USA: WE'VE JUST DEVELOPED A SPY SYSTEM THAT MEANS WE CAN SPY ON ANYONE EVER!
UK: Oh, do please let us join in! It's not like this is 100% unethical and will backfire badly as soon as anyone finds out! We're the good guys, everyone! Boo, hiss, China and Russia and everyone else the US doesn't like and accuses of doing exactly the same thing!
(To be fair, they probably do.)

But that's why I cannot stand this country. We're wet blankets. We're pansies. When we aren't happily going along with what America says, we're whinging about how stupid their Government and foreign policy is. Hate to break it to you, fellow Brits, but WE DO EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEM. We are just as bad, and I actually think we're worse because from the amount of people complaining about 'stupid America' we clearly think we know better, but we don't do better.

We even have drones now, which is something I staunchly stand against. I was disgusted by the Obama administration continuing to use them, and I'm even more disgusted that the UK has decided to start using them on Pakistan too.
And yet the poor old Pakistanis are the terrorists. Want to tell that to the innocent civilians and their children who keep getting blown sky-high by drone strikes that they cannot control, predict and don't have the chance to escape, just because they happen to live sort-of-near someone who's cross with the USA? Oh, I forgot, they're collateral damage. They don't count because they aren't American.
It disgusts me that our country adopts the same attitude.

Then, we complain about a rise in insurgency in these countries we attack. I don't know about you, but if someone had drones primed to kill hovering above my country and kept blowing up hundreds of random civilians 'by mistake', just to get to a handful of meanies, I'd start feeling pretty sympathetic to those meanies. I'd probably start feeling pretty fanatical about things myself.

But, I digress. Edward Snowden. Prism.

NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO INVADE INNOCENT PEOPLE'S PRIVACY.  America & Britain, you don't get the right to spy on the populace of other countries while complaining that they might be spying on you. You also do not get to spy on the activities of your OWN countries' populace. Big brother is watching us, and we were stupid enough to vote him in. George Orwell saw the future, and he was basically right. Every day I find new articles about truly horrible things that are being created - adverts for in cities that lock onto you and follow you and track where you're going. A TV box with a camera in it that watches what you are doing (the official spiel is that this is so that ads can be tailored to what you're doing - say, a romance ad if you're cuddling with someone, toy ads if children are playing, but anyone with a brain can see how bad an idea that is and how easily it could go wrong.)
 Even the good old XBoner was going to have a camera in the kinect that couldn't be turned off or disconnected from the internet - because if you didn't connect to the internet once per 24 hours you could no longer play games. I think that's been changed now though, which is good. Thought it was some horrific joke.

Do none of these people read? Do they not read anything at all?

1984 was NOT an instruction manual. 
Run, Snowden, run.

I personally feel as though there's only one thing to do to make them stop watching us. It's been rumoured for a long while that governments filter through everyone's emails, search for keywords such as bombs and terrorists and allahu akbar and when they find them, put these people on a nifty little to-watch list so they can see if they're terrorists. This practice is definitely not islamophobic, what are you saying??
They want to watch us, put us on lists? Fine. I say that everyone in this country - no, everyone in the world - should send a bunch of emails to themselves and everyone they know containing nothing but buzzwords in them - guns ak-47 attack terrorists fanaticism al-qaeda how2makebombs hi David Cameron! They wanted to spy on us, under the guise of protecting us? They can have their cake, and eat it too. Good luck sorting through the rubbish to get to the good stuff. That'll learn ya.

Oh, and for the record, Snowden's not a traitor. He's a hero, and he'll be remembered as standing on the right side of history. I said this blog would get political. 

Reckon they watch blogger, too? Am I on their list? Hi in advance, NSA. Pinky-promise that I'm not a terrorist. 
This is why I write the genre I do. Because it's true.

Life is skittles, life is beer~
Spring is my favourite time of the year!
I think so, don't you?
You do? 'Course you do!

After a stupidly long winter, it's finally sunny and sort-of warm again! Ate the first strawberries of the year. They were huge! And I'm actually able to sit outside some, which is amazing. Winter is the worst season for me purely because I end up stuck inside because I can't stand cold.

In actual news, Shadows on a Wall is complete. Straight on to Quantum Entanglement. Hello, horrific moral quandaries and assorted angst.
Ten down, two to go.
Also, Margaret Thatcher died. People seem to be throwing parties. Ding, dong, the witch is dead? Not very classy, if you ask me - but then, what do I know?

Perhaps I'm a bit odd, but as a writer words excite me. ;> Especially interesting, or unusual words. I've always had a bit of a love-affair with the English language, and finding weird words is a bit of a hobby. In lieu of anything important, I decided to post my favourites. These words all need more love! Some are long, some sound funny, but all are fabulous. And hey, maybe you'll learn something new!

♥Amalgam - A mixture, union or combination of ideas.
♥Abyssopelagic - relating to the very bottom of the sea.
♥Agrestic - rude or aggressive.
♥Bumbershoot - an alternative word for an umbrella.
♥Cathartic - a release of emotion.
♥Confabulate - to chat with someone.
♥Corpulent - a polite way of saying 'extremely fat'.
♥Floccinaucinihilipilification - to describe something as worthless.
♥Flummery - nonsense, empty compliments.
♥Hobbledehoy - a clumsy youth.
♥Icythyophagous - something that feeds on fish.
♥Kakistocracy - a government controlled by the least qualified citizens (literally the UK) ♥Lackadaisical - lazy, in a dreamy way. Like me :>
♥Quixotism - idealism without regard to practicality.
♥Saccharine - cloyingly, overpoweringly sweet.
♥Sesquipedalian - long winded, ponderous.
♥Shenanigans - mischief, silly behaviour.
♥Syzygy - when three celestial bodies are aligned. No idea when you'd need this, it made the list for having a ridiculously cool spelling. I challenge you to get it into your next piece of writing. I also challenge you to say it aloud without having it sound like a sneeze.
♥Tatterdemalion - a raggedy person.
♥Xanthochroic - pale.
♥Zenith - the highest point reached by an object, or the point in the sky directly above you.

Oh! And if anyone follows my twitter, you'll know about Oliver. He's the fox that appeared at my work with the birds over Christmas, and he is completely unafraid of humans! He sits maybe five metres away from where I am in the aviary with the birds, and watches me. When I watch him back, it doesn't bother him at all. At first I thought he might be injured or sick, but he's not - he looks absolutely beautiful. We put out food for our tame crow Russell, and he's been helping himself :> And he is so cute!I managed to snap this photo of him while I was inside the aviary. It's taken on a video camera so the quality isn't all that good (had to zoom in a lot) but here he is! Isn't he just darling?

So this is being written basically to put off my Chemistry revision (exam is in two days. Christ.) and because my friends are being funsponges and ignoring my whinging on the matter on skype. Boo, commoners!
Whinging is pretty pointless if no one gives it attention :( My friends are peasants. I'm not being narcissistic at all here. Gosh.
All you need to know about this one is that my self-esteem is not going to recover after this exam. This is going to be abysmal.

This post does actually have a point, of course - and that is that I'm trying to design my ebook cover! My laptop was broken so I was using my Dad's at this point (I got it back today) and so what I've got so far has been made in GIMP rather than my usual Photoshop. It's not done, my original design idea turned out not looking so great so I had to scrap most of it. But I've sorted the typesetting and the background and so decided I might as well post my progress.
It was born out of a desire to escape Chemistry revision and We've Lost Our Moral Compass, and me stumbling across lousybookcovers.tumblr.com. I can remember thinking, as I scrolled through it – this is not going to be me. I absolutely refuse! So, I decided then and there to make my ebook's cover. For one thing, it was a valid reason to procrastinate. I was going to have to do it sooner or later, and I might as well get it done while I was feeling creative. You can see the first part right at the top! I personally feel it's pretty snazzy so far, especially for someone who isn't so interested in graphic design. I'm not posting the whole thing yet (partially because this is only a start) and though it doesn't look very impressive now I hope it will later!

I had a look at the covers of the books in my room, and tried to figure out which ones worked and which ones didn't. The first thing I looked at was typesetting - most book covers have two different fonts - and I picked Jura and Infinity after a quick google search. I experimented with sizes/combinations on MS Paint (stay classy) before hopping over to GIMP and arranging them.

The background itself, I already knew that I wanted to be navy blue. Not as harsh with white text as black, and it suits the nature of my writing. I added more colours and hues with a low-opacity layer and a fuzzy paintbrush (deep purples and greens) to give depth, and also incorporated a free paper texture from bashcorpo. I noticed in my bookshelf 'market research' that covers looked better with a faint texture to them rather than flat colour, so I turned down the opacity on it, adjusted the colours and erased some distracting darker areas. I quite like how it turned out!

I was drawing the images to use on the cover by hand (I had a little picture for each story drawn out, but it didn't look so great on the mock-up so I'm rethinking the design) and now I'm having a long think before I commit to another. I'll be creating it myself in either Photoshop or Illustrator, but whatever happens I want it too look professional and classy. Think cogs and gears, perhaps a swallow. I'm going to take my time on this one! I'm determined to do it right. I'll post the full cover just as soon as I finish it - and hopefully soon after (drumroll...)
My first three stories will be available to download  for free! (:

Okay so I don't really have anything to write about today but I'm lazy and can't bring myself to start properly writing my shorts so will proceed to post something pointless so I don't have to.
I had my first actual driving lesson recently (was too poor and Scrooge-y to pay for them up until now, so up until now my driving experience has consisted of being shouted at by my dad for nearly crashing the car into a bin, a lamp post and an old lady) and, to my surprise, it went extremely well. I managed to blag a practice theory test and get 90% using common sense, didn't stall at all and got into fifth gear on the road with other cars!
I also experienced my first bout of real road rage. I've had it before, of course, but you can't really shout obscenities while you're cycling because passers-by can hear you and you feel self-conscious and then it's no fun any more. Prior to my lesson my dad would not allow me onto the road with other cars and made me stay in a carpark, mostly because I wasn't very good at steering. Turns out it was just poor instruction ;> I'm not that lame a driver! But I think I gave my driving instructor a bit of a shock when I started shouting that the car driving very closely behind me was a peasant. I was clearly a learner (if they couldn't see the massive bloody 'L' plates on the back of the 'RED driving school' car they probably shouldn't have been driving in the first place) so they should have been more thoughtful and not bothered me. I'd have been thoughtful and not bothered me if I were them. Peasants.

Isn't 'peasant' a wonderful insult?
I use it for everything. People starting to bid heavily on an eBay item I've stalked and coveted and longed for for days? Get off my lawn, you peasants. A BMW driver cutting me up without indicating when I'm on my bike? Peasant! Most of my family? Peasants!
It lets out so much pent-up frustration without actually being offensive. It's cathartic, it's wonderful. I'm sure it's beneficial to my health. It's one of my favourite words, beaten out only by shenanigans, bumbershoot, abyssopelagic, flummery and tatterdemalion. If you want to get fancy a variation of peasant is, of course, pleb. Everyone can use this word except Tory ministers, apparently.

But by far my favourite of the class-related insults is the word prole. It's wonderful because most of the time people won't realise you've been being obnoxious and will let it slide, but occasionally you'll get someone who understands. Then you both can have a doubleplusgood nerd moment where you squeal over the ins and outs of Newspeak, thought crime and George Orwell. You are both lords and everyone else is a prole and this is just how life the universe and everything should be.
It's a damn good litmus test when meeting new people.

Yes, I have writer's block today. When I have writer's block I get bored. When I get bored I get facetious.