Follow Me Day 3 - #ROSACon2015 pictures

As promised the pictures from today's presenters. The Conference is now over, but keep an eye out for the feedback posts about #ROSACon2015 - see you next year!

Karina Szczurek Brink

Jayne Bauling

FltR: Joss Wood, Rae Rivers and Elsa Winckler

Rae introduces Phoenix Kelly

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 14: Follow Me...Stellenbosch @ #ROSACon2015

Some of the Conference attendees: Day 1

Yesterday I was asked to be one of the bloggers for one of the presentations. The presentation was about Internal vs External conflict - that one thing that sets a story apart from a narrative. I don't know when the post needs to be ready for the SA Romance Writers' blog, but will let you know, and post a link if you want to read it. There will also be posts about the other presentations that you can have a look at.

Today is the last day of the conference and here is what I have planned for my day:
1. The Category Romance Formula by Joss Wood

2. What do you mean I have to market my writing? presented by yours truly
I will be giving the presentation to everyone subscribing to the mailing list on my blog. I have also received a few requests to give the presentation back home too. If you are interested, please keep an eye out for the details of the date and venue. It will be in the Pretoria/Centurion/Johannesburg area.

3. Tips to overcome the fear that can paralyse our writing by Rae Rivers

As promised there will again be more pictures online (in a second post) after the conference finishes today for you to look at.

See you later!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

Follow Me to #ROSACon2015 - Day 2

Some of the speakers today:

     

Left: Romy Sommer (chairman of ROSA); right: Joss Wood (author)

Rebecca Crowley and Jo Watson

A few of the dinner pictures as promised :)

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 13: Follow Me...Stellenbosch @ #ROSACon2015

The Butterfly in Linzé's Mischief

One of the benefits of using an online journal is being able to write blog posts while attending a writers' conference. The first day of the conference I will be attending the following talks:

1. Options for Authors today by Rebecca Crowley
2. Say what (is it about writing dialogue) presented by Joss Wood

Then I will be skipping a few presentations to go to a book shop with antique and rare books. I just have to go. As a book collector this kind of shop is my kryptonite. I don't know if I will find any books that will interest me, but if I don't go I will never know. I saw on their website that they had books that might interest me - and so the opportunity arises.

I will be in time back for the next session that interest me:
3. Just because you could, doesn't mean you should by Marie Dry

I will add my notes and impressions (and also lessons learned) as the second post to my blog. Will also try and get some good pictures of the speakers for you.

Tonight is the conference dinner at a historical building in town and some fun and mischief might result. Put a bunch of writers together, and the end result is guaranteed be unpredictable. Keep an eye out for my update later tonight.

See you later!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

Follow Me - Day 1 Pictures

The view from my room @ Le Verger Guesthouse In Stellenbosch

Le Verger Guesthouse - my room is the one on the left

I took a few pictures with my mobile phone from the plane, but cannot upload them here. I have a Samsung phone and a Apple Mac - they don't talk to each other :( If you want to see some of my aerial shots, please visit my Facebook page.

There will be more pictures tomorrow!

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 12: Follow Me...Johannesburg to Cape Town

Linzé is a Member of ROSA

Part of the rules for the 35 Day Author Blog Challenge is to go to the parent website and post your daily post link for everyone else to see. When I went back to get the link for Day 10, I realised that the post had originally been scheduled for Day 11, oops!

I didn't fix the booboo and I have to apologise for that. If you didn't spot it, well, I am not going to tell you what it was. :)

If you read my Journal, Linzé's Mischief, on Sunday you would have seen that I have been having difficulty on deciding what clothes to pack. Well, the weather forecast clinched it for me, so I am packed and ready to go.

I even relented on my own decision to pack my camera. Yeah, yeah, I know, what is a mind if you cannot change it? So I did, and now I will be able to post some decent pictures for you on Facebook and here on my blog. To make it slightly easier for me, I will add another post today with some of the photographs I have taken along the way. Also keep an eye out during the coming days for pictures of the #ROSACon2015 venue, my fellow attendees, the speakers and some of the mischief we are getting up to.

Here is to a lovely long weekend for me! If you are a rugby fan, like many of my friends and colleagues, enjoy the world cup games!

See you later, from Cape Town and Stellenbosch!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

Guest Post: Revenge by Francis H Powell

"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the Lord

Revenge has to be cold and calculated and has to have the ultimate impact. The better you know the victim of your revenge, the better. What are some of the ultimate true life “pay backs”.

There’s a new phenomenon, posting photos or videos of former partners on the internet, naked or doing sexually compromising things. This seems tasteless…mind you who recalls the infamous severing of John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis by his wife Lorena…as a man this makes me squirm, even thinking about this. There are more sophisticated ways of meting out revenge, take Lady Graham-Moon, (whose name speaks volumes) her retaliation against her two-timing husband, included pouring paint over his BMW, cutting up his Savile Row suits and, perhaps the most devastating of all, giving his vintage wine collection to the neighbours.

Revenge is an instinctive part of human nature, Relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam says that if you define revenge as wanting someone to hurt as much as you do then it is indeed a natural human instinct. However not all us (maybe thankfully) have the brevity of a Mrs Bobbit, or Lady Graham Moon, we fantasize about the terrible revenge we are going to enact, but we don’t see it through. Susan Quilliam also says that this instinct for revenge is nurtured during our childhoods.

Fictional revenge, who can forget “Carrie”, by Stephen King, the revenge she takes out on her cruel despising classmates, at a school prom. “The Cask of Amontillado”, by Edgar Allan Poe, also hinges on the subject of “revenge”, the story set in Italy concerns a man who takes revenge on a friend, believing this friend has insulted him, the revenge taking the form of burying this friend alive. Revenge is steeped in The Count of Monte Christo. The thirst a person might have for revenge is a burdensome as the original act that thrusts them into revenge.

In my book of short stories, revenge often comes to the fore. In “Mutant” revenge appears twice, there is a revenge for a revenge. Firstly a Scientist takes the ultimate revenge on his cheating wife, firstly by causing a car accident, secondly to have the audacity to splice a fish tail onto her torso, then placing her in an aquarium for all his selected friends to gloat over her new appalling situation.

Her case was flooded with intrusive bright light. So the price of my infidelity is to be displayed like this, naked to the world, a freak in a lavish giant aquarium, she lamented.

However she manages to escape and enact her own brand of revenge.

With my story “Slashed” a brother has lived in the shadow of his older brother, who is a “genius painter”. The brother is also a painter, but far more mediocre…When one evening drunk, he passes his brother’s studio, the temptation is too great to gain entry and he forces his way in and causes the maximum amount of damage…absolute carnage of his brother’s masterpieces, in a frenzied blitz of art vandalism.

About the Author

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading, like many a middle or upper class child of such times I was shunted off to an all-male boarding school aged eight, away from my parents for up to twelve weeks at a time, until I was 17.  While at my first Art college, I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. His personality and wit resonated, long losing contact with him.  Later I lived in Austria, in 1999 I moved to Paris.  During my time in Paris I met Alan Clark, who had a literary magazine called Rat Mort (dead rat). I began contributing and got hooked on writing short stories.  My book Flight of Destiny is a result of this obsession.  I also write poetry.

Connect with Francis online

https://www.facebook.com/flightofdestinyshortstories
http://theflightofdestiny.yolasite.com/http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00WSWYVNK 
https://twitter.com/Dreamheadz