A Tour Through Blogland Award

A huge thank you to my lovely friend Sally Cronin for nominating me to tag along on the Tour Through Blogland Award Hop. From the first day I met Sally I could see the wonderful person that she is – the fabulous soul that she is shines through so brightly, it’s impossible to miss. She also has my kind of wicked sense of humour, and loves to laugh. We share an abiding love of animals and the Earth. Straight away we became firm friends, and we will always be that. Hopefully one day we’ll be able to laugh and party in reality if her International Convention happens – we’re all buying LOTS of lottery tickets. Sally has shown me the most amazing support in every possible way, and I’m regularly humbled by her thoughtful kindness. We chat away on emails all the time, and all I can say is that I’m very, very happy to have my dear Sal in my life. She is also amazingly supportive of all sorts of bloggers and authors out there. She shares the work of talented artists, poets, photographers, musicians, cooks, and generally cool people and things with us, boosting them, and giving us opportunities to meet new and interesting people and friends.

Sally is the author of several books, every single one of them brilliant. I’m not saying this because she’s my friend – I don’t ever lie about writing. Her books are real, emotive, beautifully written, with her wry wit and humour adding to the way that they grip you from the start. She’s lived an eclectic life, and has done much successfully over the years, including working in radio and television. Her personal experience as well as her training as a Nutritional Therapist resulted in her writing columns in the media in the United Kingdom and Spain and the publication of the awesome book, Size Matters which I’ve read a couple of times, reviewed here, and still often pop into. This book is a gem for anyone who wants to live a healthy life without being deprived.

Sally’s beloved and gorgeous husband is the Ebook Doctor, and also runs Moyhill Publishing, where you can find all of Sally’s books as well as the works of other authors you might like. All her books are also available from:

Amazon
And
Smashwords

If you’re not already connected with her, I really suggest you do.

LinkdIn
Twitter
Facebook
Facebook Page
Google+

Now on to the tour.

The rules:

1. Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers.

2. Give them the rules and a specific Monday to post.

3. Answer 4 questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.

4. The last part of Tour Through Blogland is to write a one-time article which is to be posted on a Monday (the date supplied by your nominator). This article can be in the same post in which you answered the 4 questions. The article can be anything of your choosing.

The date supplied by my nominator was Monday, 9th February 2015. I’m a bit late (for a change) because I squished my left hand and up to now it’s been refusing to type anything without letting me know about it rather painfully, so I’ve been forgiven. The dates I choose for my nominees to post is any Monday between 16th February and the end of March 2015, if they choose to hop on.

Questions Section About My Creative Process

1. What are you working on at the moment?

I work on a couple of different things simultaneously. I didn’t like that “What Now?” feeling after finishing my first book and having nothing else on the go at the same time. I like to work on different projects and genres at the same time, but always there is one main focus which is the next in line for publication, so I’m working on Shadow People two and three mostly.

2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?

Shadow People is difficult to put into a classic genre. It’s science fiction, fantasy, metaphysical, spiritual, with an element of horror – especially in the coming books. I generally don’t think genre when I write. If something seems right to me I’ll plop it in anywhere.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

I’ve loved to read all of my life – multiple genres – fiction and non-fiction. Writing is just taking that pleasure up a notch for me, in that I get to decide every little thing that happens – a very giddy joy indeed. I’ve neglected my arty attempts for years and years, and have only started getting back into it when I created a couple of my own book covers. I’ve always leaned towards pencil sketches, children’s pictures, and collages, but pastel and oil painting I also enjoy. Now that I have a Wacom tablet and a couple of nice paint programmes I have a lot of plans for future art.

4. How does my writing/creative process work?

Unless the universe tosses me a dodgy curve ball of some kind (and just lately I’m wondering if my destiny was to take up cricket – thank you universe), I always write in the morning. Monday to Sunday, whether it’s one hundred words or three thousand words. Good words bad words – I like to get done either way. If I don’t then I don’t feel right until I do again. I don’t have a problem with thinking up ideas for stories. Those little guys arrive all the time, and when they do, I immediately stop what I’m doing, open a new document, scribble the idea, and the first couple of paragraphs, and then leave it alone for the future. I have piles and piles of paper notebooks filled with ideas and stories too. The Shadow People series has an enormous amount of it still in notebooks. As I write any of my stories I take notes too – this is especially important writing a series. Things like names, appearance, or items I might forget, important scenes and the page numbers they’re on. Sometimes I add a couple of bold XXXXXX’s when I can’t think of what comes next and want to move around it – then I go back and sort it out later.

The Article: Sometimes Scribblers Have to Scrub

I’ll say this first off – I’m not overly fond of housework. In fact I really can’t stand it. I’ve got books to write, people to create, worlds to imagine. I really do enjoy cooking and spending time in my kitchen – but actually washing the dishes – not so much. Sometimes I’m so busy scribbling or doing some Indie related thing that I don’t realise how much clutter builds up till it falls on me.

Any sort of job isn’t going to go smoothly in a cluttered, disorganised, or dirty environment though. Subconsciously that pile of dishes, dusty everything, or the fact that you’ve been in your PJ’s for three days subsisting on Doritos is going to have a detrimental effect on your creative output.

Scribblers will get to a certain point where their inbox is loaded with thousands of emails. The fridge has taken on a bluish glow from all the new life taking form in its neglected innards, life gets in the way, the cat is lost in the towering pile of ironing, and the dishes… well…. But no matter how hard you stubbornly try and ignore all of these things, you still can’t write. I’m all for write first, and the rest must wait, but sometimes it doesn’t happen because all those festering piles of things waiting to be done really is taking up too much brain space even though you aren’t fully aware of it. So in the long run, pulling up your sleeves and spending a day having at it all will probably actually translate into more and better scribbling when you park your tired bum back in your chair, basking in the afterglow of having done what needed to be done, and the piles get to start from scratch again….

Nominees

My first nominee is Noelle Granger. A lovely lady and fascinating author. You can find her on her blog at Sayling Away. Have a squiz at her Interview with Chapel Hill Magazine and be as blown away as I was. She’s one very humble lady doctor with many kudos to her credit, and a fabulous way of researching her books, which you can find on Amazon.

Noelle A. Granger grew up in Plymouth, MA, in a rambling, 125 year old house with a view of the sea. Summers were spent sailing and swimming and she was one of the first tour guides at Plymouth Plantation.

She graduated from Mount Holyoke college with a bachelor’s degree in Zoology and from Case Western Reserve University with a Ph.D. in anatomy. Following a career of research in developmental biology and teaching human anatomy to medical students and residents,the last 28 years of which were spent in the medical school of the University of North Carolina, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction.

Death in a Red Canvas Sail is her first book and features an emergency room nurse as her protagonist. The book is set in a coastal town in Maine, similar to Plymouth, and she has used her knowledge of such a small town, her experiences sailing along the Maine coast, and her medical background to enrich the story.

She has also had short stories, both fiction and non-fiction, published in Deep South Magazine, Sea Level Magazine, the Bella Online Literary Review, and Coastal Style Magazine. Her second novel in the The Brewster mystery series, Death in a White Dacron Sail, will be published soon.

N.A. Granger lives in Chapel Hill, NC, with her husband Gene, a physician, and is the mother of two children.

My next nominee is the lovely author and artist Carole Parkes. I have her book on my Kindle, and am dying to get stuck into it. Check out Tissue of Lies on Amazon US or Amazon UK.

Carole was born in Liverpool, England in 1945 and has lived in her current house in Lancashire for the past 37 years. She’s been married for 49 years and has three married sons.

She started writing in 1985 when she produced several short stories, a series of children’s books and her newly published book on Kindle “TISSUE OF LIES.” Between 1985 and 1989 she also encouraged her elderly mother to write her life story whilst she started on her own biography. Owing to her commitment to her elderly parents, she didn’t take her writing too seriously until after they both passed away in 2012, aged 97 and 94.

She has since rewritten “TISSUE OF LIES” to take in the technologies of our modern age. Although it’s been hard work to finally finish, edit and publish it, she’s thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and has already started on her second book.

My final nominee is one of the most fantastic musicians I’ve ever come across, Mihran Kaladjian. A wonderful supportive blogger and friend, I’ll never forget the first time I clicked on one of the YouTube videos of him playing the music he writes. Angelic, beautiful – it will knock you off your chair. Have a listen.

Mihran Kalaydjian loves the outdoors, comedy, bbq, reading and travelling. He worked in the beer industry in college so he loves talking about good beer. He used to be a competitive runner so (like all runners) if you make the mistake of asking him, he’ll tell you about his entire career and PRs. He also spent his youth working in restaurants, so if you’ve done the same, he’s happy to swap stories. As well as all that, Mihran Kalaydjian provides visionary leadership and management oversight of the sales, marketing and revenue strategies for Classic Hotels and Resorts.