Category: crafting

The Spring Messenger arrives…

I know, I know… I’m late with the strip again. Sadly this is the bane of my life; I set myself deadlines and I never manage to hit them precisely on time. I was the same at Uni by the way…

Any way. Instead, I thought that I would do something topical and introduce you to the Easter Bunny… okay, he’s not the real Easter Bunny… we all know who that is:

Hugh Jackman a.k.a The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny I am talking about, isn’t really a Rabbit. He’s a Hare. Specifically a Moon Hare from The Land Far Away. He is also my Art Muse and is always finding new techniques for me to try.
Stardust (my Craft Muse) is alternately relieved that she doesn’t have to over work herself any more and jealous of all the time I have been spending with him recently.

Named after one of my Favourite Artists, he arrived not long after I started doing a proper art project in Art Class:

A New Muse…

Puff: Who is that?
Stardust: *sleepily* What are you talking about? There’s no one there…
Puff: You can’t see it? That strange shape over by Author, waving her artistic kit at her?
Stardust: *Frowning* Oh yes… I can’t quite make it out…
Patches: What are you two muttering about?
*The other two point*
Patches: Oh, that’s the new muse… they haven’t chosen a shape yet.
Stardust: I thought I was the Art Muse…
Patches: You’re more interested in the Craft side and Author has been doing a lot of drawing recently.
Puff: So there’s space for a new muse? Hmm… I wonder what it will be?

Story #43 – “Author & Muse Stories” by Kira Morgana

Stories #43 and #44 won’t be told in visual form for quite a while yet, I need to catch up with myself and all sorts of things get in the way of me working…
*glares in the direction of SB & PW*
…however, he has appeared in a couple of full page stories – most notably, Matchmaking in the Singletons section with Angerbun.

So as he’d become a bit of a fixture, I started writing his origin story. I usually write the Land Far Away stories in rhyme, but I had serious trouble with this one – none of the words wanted to rhyme and it appeared that he had more story to tell than rhymes would allow.
I changed tack and swapped to prose rather than poetry (although there is some poetry in it – Land Far Away wouldn’t be Land Far Away without the awful rhymes) and the words started flowing well.

Then Stardust got involved. I’m not going to explain that one here; I already did it in a video:

Apologies for the Videography – it’s something else that I’m still new to…

So having completed the Ever Spring Tree with Stardust, I found that Salvador’s story was flowing better than ever and thought I ought to introduce him with a Character Page:

Salvador Bunli, The Spring Messenger

Hopefully his whole story should be finished soon and I am hoping that Maria K. will be able to illustrate it and we’ll get it published in time for the next Spring Holiday… but as I said before, deadlines are not my strong point so don’t get your hopes up too soon – a lot has to happen before we get to publication stage!

A Rare Occurrence has happened & Other News…

… I’ve got a flash story published an an anthology!

It’s a rare occurrence because, while I cut my writing teeth  on short stories and anthologies, I have problems writing in forms any shorter than a thousand words now;  for this particular anthology the word limit was 250!

The process also created a short story that will be going into my next short story collection (which will be published when I feel I have enough words to justify a book) so it was rather useful in that respect… and it was a great deal of fun to write for – I had to really concentrate on my words and their meaning.

The links to the book the flash story is in are at the end of the post.

* * * *

I’ve  just started a creative writing course. Now you might think that would be a waste of time for a writer, but there’s always value in going back to basics and working through them methodically; you learn more about yourself and improve your process… and writing that way. I’m not sure what I’ll do with anything I might write from the course, but it’s going to be an interesting journey, which is rather the whole point of it…

I shall of course, keep you posted on my progress.

* * * * 

I’m working on a new story for Camp NaNoWriMo in July.

It’s an off-shoot of “Teacups & Time Travel”, set in the world that Lady Elizabeth ran off to… and is already doing rather well on the page. If I think you may enjoy it, I shall post excerpts on here…

Here’s a few words from it…

Hi, I’m Alice. No, not THAT Alice; she was a figment of Lewis Carroll’s hallucinations. I’m a real Alice.

Wonderland? Real? Yes, but not the way he saw it. Or the way that the Cartoons and movies have imagined it or even the way that you might see it when you’re reading the books.

I know the Real Wonderland and… honestly… it’s a lot more scary, a lot less friendly and even more fun than you might think. I don’t call it Wonderland though, I call it the Curious World; to me it’s my escape place – my freedom and my relaxation.

Do you want to come with me to visit it?

There’s no following a White Rabbit or falling down a hole in the ground. My route is much, much simpler and a lot harder; you have to have the ability to step through your reality and into mine.

Do you still want to come with me?

What do you think? It feels like it has legs for me and I’m going to run with it…

* * * *

And Finally: 

Here’s those book links I was talking about!

Anthology of deliciously fun murders about those who serve us badly and those who abuse the service providers.

US Link: https://www.amazon.com/Please-Hold-Murder-Important-Anthology-ebook/dp/B07DD6XB72

UK Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Please-Hold-Murder-Important-Anthology-ebook/dp/B07DD6XB72

 

Continuing Personal Development…

A while back I was feeling pretty unsuccessful.  I don’t sell a lot of books and for some reason I equate the number of books that I do sell with my personal sense of achievement. That hasn’t changed… I have.

Since we moved to this town, I’ve been feeling very low and trying to write when my brain refuses to focus and co-operate with my muse is almost impossible. I started doing various art & craft courses – mostly to get myself out of the house and talking to adults more. I was also trying to keep my hand in with the techniques so that I could teach them if I ever went back to work (I’m a Design & Technology / Art & Design Teacher remember?)

One thing that the courses have done is give me more confidence in my own abilities. Writing is a very solitary pursuit and I had thought that doing the courses would stop me writing, but  practising my other creative skills and socialising with people face to face, other than just with Writers and Artists online,  I found it revved up my writing muse and I found that I was managing to write something on my WIP’s every day.
Don’t get me wrong – I love my online friends; they stop me going crazy and make me feel better about myself, but the face to face interaction makes me feel less like a hermit.

So here I am nearly at the end of may, with over 50,000 words into Teacups & Time Travel. I’ve also written a flash story and a short story for two different anthologies (although I have no idea if they’ve got in or not) and I’m working on another one. I’ve also started looking at my blogsite here and my branding etc in the hope that I can improve my chances of selling my work, using the Panoptic Foundations Website Planner.

I’m not going to be going back into teaching for a long while – and when I do, it’s almost certainly going to be Adult Education rather than Secondary Education; it’s not that I don’t like teaching kids (I do) but I need the freedom to be able to teach what I want and how I want, rather than having to stick to the Curriculum that the Dept of Ed force on us and I find the other side of Secondary education (marking, reports, politics etc) far too stressful to enjoy the Teaching side.

So I’m going to continue writing and publishing. I’m going to continue taking courses, crafting and designing… and hopefully between the two, my sense of achievement will latch onto something other than my sales figures!