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

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 11: Planning for Pantsers - scene setting

As pantsers we tend to write our stories chronologically. To be able to do this, we sit down and read what we wrote the previous day and then simply continue where we left off. This is a simple process when you write every day and keep the story and characters alive in your head while you are writing.

But what if you did not write yesterday? Or the day before? What if you had to work overtime for two weeks and was simply too exhausted to look at your story? How far do you go back to pick up the plot?

The major plot would probably stare you in the face during the last scene, but now the finer details of the sub-plots are gone from your memory. Do you start reading from the beginning, or is there some way to help you keep track?

If you need to read many pages every time your writing is interrupted, you will be frustrated because you are reading instead of what you want to do...write.

But there is help and it's not so complicated as you might think:

1. Use visual images to help you with the setting of your story. A Pinterest Board is an excellent tool to gather and pin landscapes or seascapes, or a city, or spaceship where your story is taking place. Even fantasy or imaginary graphics could help you. The world is filled with exceptional artists and pinning their work to your board could help you create the most interesting settings for your stories.
2. If you cannot find what you are looking for, make a drawing. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it is only an aid to keep your story straight. I did a drawing of the village of Akan for my Nations of Peace series so that I could remember the lay of the land. Where the forest was, the houses, the school of Magic and Knowledge, etc.
3. Another way is to sit down and describe the city, town, farm, asteroid or spaceship in as much detail as you can. The lights, the smells, the sounds, the odd green colour of the walls, etc. Describe each room. Or specific place (such as the barn) where your story could have a scene. You are not going to use so much detail in your story, but writing it all down helps to fix the setting(s) in your mind. By adding the details you can add depth to the story via the experiences your characters have in that environment.
4. All the points described here are especially helpful when writing a series where the characters or stories have the same setting in common.
5. It will also save you a lot of reading time to refresh your memory when you have not written for prolonged periods of time.

Keep all your notes, planning and preparation in the same place for quick referencing to save time. You can then focus on writing, instead of constantly backtracking to search for details about the setting.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 10: 6 Easy SEO tips for bloggers

Linzé's Google Result

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the technique used for websites, and blogs, to be found by Google or any of the other search engines. While most people know about keywords, it is one of many algorithms used by the search engines to find your blog and list it on the results page if someone searched for something.

For authors the one thing that we want others to see is our books, isn't it? Whether the searcher types in the title you want yours to be listed first. Problem is that book titles are far from unique.

With almost two hundred thousand books being published every year (yep, it is that many and growing!) the probability of duplicated titles are getting higher and higher. So if you want to have a high ranking, you have to the be keyword. Sounds weird I know, but you are your brand and unless you are writing one book and one book only, the title is not going help you much. Unless you think of something completely new and catchy - which of course, I hope you do - your name is the only keyword that will help with search engines.

Here are some easy SEO tips for bloggers to get going:

1. Your blog has a theme. Make sure the majority of your posts are about this theme. I would say >90% of posts should be about the theme your chose for your blog.
2. Plan your post content and use the keyword a maximum of five times in a sentence that make sense to the reader. The shorter the post, the fewer the number of keyword sentences. In a post of 500 words, 5 times could work. In a short post of 300 words or less, don't use it more than 3 times. If you do more, it will only irritate your reader.
3. Use the keyword in the title of the post.
4. Use the keyword in the first paragraph of your post.
5. If you use a graphic image with the post, make sure to add its metatags too, since the web crawlers cannot see images, only recognise the text associated with it.
6. Don't use your name all over, use it to tag book covers. The images are just as important as the text on your blog.

Is there more to SEO for bloggers? Yes, there are many ways to help your blog to be visible and gain a high ranking in a search, but using keywords and metatags is an easy way to start and not technically challenging for even the most inexperienced blogger.

See you tomorrow for the first of my Follow Me posts - I am on my way to #ROSACon2015

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 9: Planning for Pantsers - backstory

Photograph and cross stitching by Linzé

Planning for pantsers might sound like a contradiction in terms, and to some extent is it. However, without at least some planning the amount of editing that a pantser has to do, is exponentially more than that of a writer that plans her story in detail.

As a fiction pantser, and a non-fiction planner, I have learned that there is a way for a pantser to plan without going into details about the story. I am a pantser because I don't want to know how the story is going to end until I write...the end.

link to VISUAL TOOLS FOR PANTSERS

That still leaves a round or two of editing that the planner may not have to do, but it significantly cuts down the number of edits you have to do, if you plan at least some aspects of your story.

link to CHARACTER PLANNING FOR PANTSERS

Backstory is a tricky thing for pantsers and planners alike. This is especially important when you write a series of books, with either the same lead character or group of characters. You need to keep your story straight so to speak, or your readers will call you out for inconsistencies and boo-boos.

Each and every single writing course will tell you that backstory needs to be woven into the thread of the story. That means you don't start with 10,000 words explaining the main character's childhood abuse or bullying or sexual history in detail before the story starts.

You have to write the story and add a sentence here or a small paragraph there to fill the blanks. Like the thread that holds the tapestry in place for the stitches to be sewn into. In the back. You are aware that it is there, but you don't look at it, nor does it stand out to compete with the image.

Good backstory telling works the same way. Your reader will read it without noticing it. It is there; it provides necessary colour to the story, but it is NOT the story.

If you have this habit of writing 10,000 words before getting into the actual story, then do that, just remember to cut the words and save it another file for you to reference. Or leave it in your first draft, and cut it when you start editing. Just remember to draw those threads into the story when you cut the backstory text.

If you don't do this, then you need to write the backstory anyway. You need to have the history of your main character (at least) done before you write. What made him the man he is today? How did she get to the place/time where the story will start?

This is not a character sketch, but it is history and experiences that your character(s) have had to make them the way your define them in the character sketch.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 8: Make it a good morning, and a great day

Earlier in the year I started reading The Artist's Way with the intention to follow the program this year. To my shame, I have to admit that I have not progressed further than Chapter 4. The one thing I did start, and am still doing is what the author calls morning pages.
While I have been keeping a diary since I was very young, the idea of morning pages struck me as a better approach and I have since converted to the practice.
For those of you not familiar with the term, morning pages is written first thing in the morning for about half an hour. It is a brain dump basically. Anything and everything that pops into your brain can be written down, there is no structure nor any other rules. The idea with morning pages is to get your brain cleared of all kinds of stuff so that you can then focus on being creative for the rest of the day.
Since I start work at 6am, I have no time to do this "first thing" in the morning. So I do that as soon as I get to the office. While I wish that I would have 30 minutes available, ten is about as far as I get.
But, 10 minutes is better than nothing, and I find that even that small pinch of time makes a difference. Not only does it help me get clarity on the issues inside my head, I have upon occasion gotten an idea for a story. That alone makes the effort worthwhile. And I get to write every day.
The one other pleasure I gain from the experience is writing by hand. And in long hand too!
If I have a little time, usually over the weekend, I will use a fountain pen or even a nibbed pen to pen my thoughts.
Morning Pages is journal writing at the next level, and that alone makes me grateful that I found The Artist's Way.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 7: Review a book (part 1)

Photograph by Linzé

This is the first of three posts about book reviews. The second will be aimed specifically at reviewing erotica or erotic romance, so watch out for that if you need some guidance. The third will be about reviewing non-fiction.

I am a blog host for two websites, and every now and then I volunteer to read and review books for them. While my first choice of genre is romance, I also read and review mysteries.
So how do you review a book that you liked?
That is the easy one. But I have a request: please don't tell me the story...seriously! I really can read. Rehashing the synopsis or summarizing the story (without giving away the ending, of course) is really not helpful. That is why the author/publisher adds a summary/teaser to the book or website so people can see what the story is about.
What I want to know when I read a review, is what you liked about the characters, or the plot, or the story. Why should I also read this book? Is the hero hot and sexy, yet an interesting character to read about? Is his enemy a multidimensional character with his own issues, making you almost want to root for him instead? Is the story believable? Does the plot keep your attention to such an extent that you lost sleep in order to finish the book?
Do you like the way the author wrote the story? Can you smell the roses? Will you pay money to read another book from the same author?
The answers to these questions tell me what your experience was when you read the story, and that is what I want to know.

But how do you review a book that you wouldn't normally read? I am honest, I do not like reading out of my preferred genres, but sometimes someone asks and then I say I will do it.
Since I am a romance lover, happy endings are part of the definition of the genre. Now I read  a book where a happy ending is not a guarantee, and oftentimes it can be tragic. Okay, so I don't like the ending, now what? Do I shoot down the book? Of course not.
I don't give the ending away, but if I am not careful in writing my review, the tone of I might give my displeasure of it away and that would be unfair to the author.
So how do I tackle a review, of say a literary novel, where the ending may not have been to my liking? I do it the same way as a review of any other book.
The characters, the story and the writing. Just because I may not have liked the book, does not mean that the book has no merit and cannot be enjoyed by a number of people.
So instead of shooting it down outright, unless the writing is bad or the characters one dimensional, I will say what I did like. Even if you don't know the technical details of creative writing, you can still write a positive review.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 6: Another Follow Me Tour

One thing that I love about blogging is that I can show you my country as I travel for work or pleasure. Or in this case a writers' conference. Yep, I am grinning like an idiot, as it will be my first local conference. Local as in the same country, but not the same province. I live in Pretoria in the Gauteng province and the conference is in Stellenbosch which is in the Western Cape province. For my non-South African friends - if you can find Cape Town on a map, you will see that Stellenbosch is not far away.
Since I am not much of a travel writer, I will beg your indulgence as I do my tour guide impersonation from 24 to 27 September. One thing I should mention in my favour is that I can take good photographs, so at least the pictures will be something to look at. And I should warn you, this is one of the most beautiful parts in my country, even if the region is famous for its wine making. Cheers!

"Stellenbosch fan Papagaaiberch grut" by Fmalan at en.wikipedia.

In the meantime I have to finish preparing my presentation. Yep, I will one of the speakers at the Romance writers Organisation of South Africa (ROSA) Conference. My talk will be on marketing for writers, and it will focus on the things a writer have to do to get started on marketing.
I will be talking about topics such as branding, blogging and social media. The contents of my presentation is an extract from Chapter 6 of my book, Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work.

PS: I will email a PDF of the presentation to my blog subscribers after the conference.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 5: Suddenly the challenge is too much, or is it?

Linzé Brandon (photograph Francois A Venter)

Most writers work full-time to pay the bills and write after hours to indulge in their passion. I do the same. Only writing to me is not just a passion, it is an escape from the stressful hours I call work obligations.

I have often heard that people say they didn’t write or have stopped writing because real life interfered. And I think, seriously? If your writing is not part of real life, then what is it a part of? A fantasy? A dream? Of course, bad things happen, and it happens to everyone.

Think about it. If you or you child gets sick, you get time off from work. If someone close to you passes away, you are allowed time off. My employer allows me time to take care of myself or other issues, but then I get back to work. Right? The question I then ask myself, why should I stop writing if something happens? Is there not anything more to writing than spinning tales in book format?

Unlike my job, I find that writing can be therapeutic and healing. It doesn’t have to be the next book in my fantasy series that I write; it can be my journal. Sometimes it is only my journal and nothing else for days. The need to write has become such a part of me, that even when ‘real life’ happens, I have to write about it. Yes, I share my pain with people I love, but it is not the same as pouring out everything onto paper.

Paper never gets impatient with me. It never tries to ‘help’ where help is often not what I need. Sometimes people understand, sometimes they don’t. But in writing I can let go in a way I cannot do with another person. Perhaps that is just me, or perhaps you are the same, but it works for me. Writing is my ‘real life’ and the longer I do it, the more it becomes part of the way I define myself.

See you tomorrow!

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?

Book Tour: Made in India by Biddu

As a child, Biddu dreamt of going west and making it big as a composer. At the age of sixteen, he formed a band and started playing in a cafe in Bangalore, his home town, At eighteen, he was part of a popular act at Trinca's, a nightclub in Calcutta devoted to food, wine and music, At nineteen, he had college students in Bombay dancing to his music. 

In his early twenties, he left the country and ended up hitchhiking across the Middle East before arriving in London with only the clothes on his back and his trusty guitar. What followed were years of hardship and struggle but also great music and gathering fame. From the nine million selling "Kung Fu Fighting" to the iconic youth anthem of "Made in India" and the numerous hits in between. Biddu's music made him a household name in India and elsewhere. 

In this first public account of all that came his way: the people, the events, the music tours and companies Biddu writes with a gripping sense of humor about his remarkable journey with its fairy tale ending. Charming, witty, and entirely likable, Biddu is a man you are going to enjoy getting to know.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5758954.Biddu

Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/8172239238

Flipkart: http://www.flipkart.com/made-india-english/p/itmdyu4cabcs53hg?pid=9788172239237

About the Author

Biddu was born in India, where he started his career playing in a pop band whose influences lay in the classic repertoire of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Following his early success, he decided to hear West and move into the international music arena. He struck gold, signing the unknown Carl Douglas and producing "Kung Fu Fighting?" which went on to become a hit all over the world. He also wrote and produced hits for Tina Charles and soul legend Jimmy James. 

Around this time, Biddu became involved in Indian music: he composed the cult "Aap Jaise Koi" for the film Qurbani which set a new landmark for sales in India He followed this up with a pop album, Disco Deewane, with Nazia Hassan, which became the largest selling pop album in Asian history, and was the first Indian album to hit the charts in fourteen countries. In 1995, Biddu wrote and produced the three-million-selling album Made in India with the singer Alisha Chinai. To date, Biddu has sold over thirty-eight million records worldwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biddu

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35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 4: That creativity thing: myth, magic or something else entirely

I will not give myself out as an expert on creativity, but this subject is close to my heart (it is my blog theme for this year). It describes the essence of what we as writers aim to achieve: a creative life. Creativity comes in many forms, but for a writer the words are our paint brushes and the computer screens our blank canvasses.

If you are fortunate enough, to be able to either write/paint/design or do some other creative activity full-time, count your blessings. On the other hand, if your daily slog is as non-creative as mine, the time I spend writing becomes that much more of a blessing. Like the quiet of a country garden after hours of listening to the grind of heavy equipment.

I don’t need particular quiet, or a specific kind of music to be playing while I am writing. In fact I do prefer some background noise, as it helps me to focus and think. Some people prefer music, others want complete silence around them, but I think we all want the same thing from our inner self – a chance to the creativity flow.

For some it comes easier than for others, but in that I have a firm belief: the more you practice, the easier it will become. You have to keep your hand in, in a matter of speaking. While I love writing, I also like to paint and sketch. I take a break once a year from writing, but never from doing something creative. It is then that I dig out my pencils and paint brushes. For the first few days I feel rusty and stiff, as if I have never held a piece of graphite in my hand. Then the door springs open as the skills return and the lines or brush strokes flow as if I had never stopped. Yes, I do prioritize my creative activities, but time does not allow me to do much more than write at any given time.

Is living a creative life a myth? I don’t think so. Neither does it require a magic wand to make it happen. I feel that a creative life is a deliberate choice, whether as a paying job or as a serious after-hours activity. Writing for me it is not a hobby, because I make sacrifices to write. I have hobbies, but I only indulge in those when I have time or an opportunity with other people to enjoy them.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 3: A picture says more than a thousand words

Photographs and graphic images play an important role in a self-published author’s life. While you may not be a photographer, it is important to understand why these requirements must be met. Let’s start at the beginning.

As a self-published author you have control over all aspects of your brand and you need to make sure that the quality of your brand is of the highest standard. When it comes to photographs of yourself for profile pictures on social media sites, or author biographies for blog posts, make sure the images are of high quality and give you a professional image.

It does not matter if the photographs you use are not posed, but they have to be full face on, and not your dog or cat. Yes, we are all sensitive about the way we look, but your audience would rather see you, than your pet pig’s face.

And no, selfies do not qualify. Get a professional photographer to take a handful of images of you that you can use. If you don’t know a professional photographer, or cannot afford one, ask a friend with a good camera (a digital SLR or bridge-SLR) to take the photographs of you. Remember these are not happy snaps, so ask a friend that understands the basics of lighting and composition of portrait photography to take them.

The same applies for your book covers. High quality images. In most cases the publishing site will also specify the minimum and maximum size that the book cover image has to be. Make sure you read these rules before you use any images from the web. Beware of copyright infringements. Just because the image is on the internet, does not imply that you have the rights to use it for commercial purposes. Even if you make the book free of charge, it is still a commercial application.

There are many sites that sell images of the right quality, so investigate those and buy from them. They are not as expensive as you might think.

See you tomorrow!

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?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 2: Measure Yourself

image © Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Do you set goals for yourself? In your job? In your hobby or sport? You should do the same for your writing. It is easy to come up with excuses not to write, sometimes it is so easy it is shameful. But it doesn't have to be that difficult to write if you set means to measure yourself. There are several ways to do that and many applications to help you do that. Don't have one of the apps available? That is another excuse!

Set yourself a target for every day. If you choose to set a minimum word count target, and it has to be the minimum, then write with software that helps with that. All the word processors, and some other more simple applications, will do that for you. It is a matter of one or two mouse clicks and you know how many words you have written.

Does that feel like too much pressure? Not sure how many words you can write each day? Maybe you are a slow typist and it feels like a mountain to climb if you set a target that you think everyone else can achieve in a matter of minutes. Then set yourself a time limit - not a word target.

Take an old fashioned egg timer, no fancy mobile phone or computer app to distract you, and set it to fifteen minutes. And then you write! The number of words are not important. The time you sit and write - and you have to write - is your target for the day.

See you tomorrow!

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

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 1: My Challenge

I don't consider myself impulsive, in fact as an engineer I am one of those people that tends to overthink rather than jump in. Upon occasion, I do step out of character and boom!
I did that about three days ago when I saw the link on Facebook, and two minutes later I enrolled into the 35 day blog challenge. You would think considering my ten-hour workdays, freelance commitments and working to finish a non-fiction book, I would have thought twice about taking part. Second thoughts did come though, but not to withdraw, instead I got a brainwave. Rather like that little light bulb you see popping up in cartoons when a character gets an idea.
I have a blog post list which I drew up early in the year, but have done only a few of the posts I had planned. Thirty-five posts are a lot to manage for someone who barely makes the one post per week schedule. While I was staring at a blank page (yes, I do my blog planning on paper) that light bulb moment happened. Why not do two things at the same time?
I have to finish the book - it is aimed at the writer and in keeping with the theme of the challenge - and I have to write the posts. Since this thought happened, I had often wondered why I had not thought about this before. The creative brain seemed to have been constrained too much by the rational brain of late. I say, no more.

So here we go! Challenge accepted! Thirty-five days of posts and thirty-five days of writing to complete Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Pop over and leave a comment!

Reading and Writing...away from Home

Instead of posting in Linzé's Mischief today, I decided to add a post to show you some photographs. Enjoy!

Sunday 30 August 2015 (21h05):

Boesmansberg Guest Farm - our home away from home

Being away from home isn't always easy, especially if it for work. The travel, the long days, the difficulties when things don't go as planned. But sometimes there is a weekend in-between the work days where you can recharge your batteries, like we did this weekend.
Yesterday, a few of my colleagues and I went to a local church fete. It has literally been years since I had been to one of these things, especially in a rural area. Back home our local fetes in a big city, are not the same as I remember from being a child in a small town in rural South Africa.
Prieska, in the Northern Cape province is as rural as you can get. It is the closest town for many of the farmers in the area, and while it has no mall (local joke) it has three of the major supermarket chains represented, the major banks and a co-op or two, everything a farmer needs.


Not the heat they had predicted!

I had a good chuckle when I Googled 'Prieska mall' and actually got four hits! Trust me, there is no mall in this town.
On our way back to the guest farm, we had a good laugh. We cruised the CBD of Prieska, had to search for the venue of the fete, and drove all of 2.6km in the process! Back home the closest shop is 2km from my home, and the closest mall (yeah, a real one) 5km away.I love small towns, but living in a big city sure does have it benefits.

The Orange River flows past Prieska

The closest city is Kimberley, and an almost four hour drive away. Local businesses, such as the guest farms of the area, get their products delivered from Kimberley, since it is more cost effective.

The week ahead sees the second stage of our testing that is planned. While the weather prediction says high temperatures are on the cards, we have been having cold and rainy days. We can still test if it rains, but it's not comfortable working outside, especially when it's cold and windy on top of that.
I finished reading the third book in the Antique Mystery series by Eileen Harris. The review of books the last two books will see the light of day, once I get back home.
Today had been a quiet day, although the wind is howling like mad at present. I spent the day writing, and it was good to get a few hundred words done. I haven't been able to do that the past week, and will probably not have a chance to write again until I am back home. Such can be the life of a writer with a full time job!
On that note, I wish you a successful week.

Creating Dangerous Characters - reblogged post

The 10 Secrets Of Resilient Characters

'Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.' ~Josephine Hart

The key to surviving in this world – and any fictional world you create – is resilience. It is not the strong who survive, but those who can weather change, because life is nothing but change. You do not need to be braver or bigger or louder. You do need to be able to bend with the wind, get up when you fall, and move forward when it seems impossible. This resilience strengthens you emotionally in either a positive or a negative way, and allows you to continue.

This is why your two most important characters – your protagonist and your antagonist – need to be resilient. Resilience is neither good nor bad, which is why it works for all characters who have goals and the desire to achieve them.

Are your main characters resilient enough for your story?

Resilient characters:

1. Accept help when they need it
2. Adapt to change
3. Learn how to cope with setbacks and disappointments
4. Focus on finding ways to get around problems, rather than on the problems themselves
5. Make mistakes and then learn from them 
6. Learn to accept constructive criticism
7. Make the most of their strengths
8. Recognise their weaknesses
9. Recover from failure and rejection
10. See the bigger picture in challenging situations

We do not enjoy reading about static characters who are trapped by their thoughts and circumstances. We want them to find that self-belief that forces them out of the prison of their heartaches, tragedies, and even the limitations of their victories.

So dare to create dangerous characters who have more moments of strength than moments of weakness. We love characters who are strong enough to withstand anything we throw at them - these are the characters worth rooting for.

Reblogged from www.writerswrite.co.za

This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell… - Guest post by Francis H Powell

The most leading question most people ask themselves on a daily basis must be…what happens to us after we die? Many religions lead people to think, if they lead a good life, they will go “to Heaven” or if they lead a bad life…they will end up in Hell. Hell is perhaps a good way to keep people on the right road, and a good stick to beat them with, should they go astray.
With my story “Cast from Hell” the last story in my book of short stories “Flight of Destiny” I written a tongue in cheek story about somebody who is rejected by Hell for being too good…they die a middle aged man but are sent back in the body of a woman, in her twenties, replacing the soul of a woman in a coma.
At the start of my story, I envisage what Hell is like and what the devil’s modern day preoccupations are. The Devil’s heyday was the middle ages, a time when superstition reigned and the church had a vicelike grip on the population. My vision of what Hell is like in the modern day era is far from being like Dante’s inferno…This is my description of hell…To my surprise, there was no evidence in Hell of people being grievously punished. The slothful were not being goaded with burning coals. The gluttons were not being tormented with thirst and hunger. There were no hedonists being bathed in burning pitch and stinking brimstone, or envious individuals howling with grief over that which they could never possess. The proud were not being brought down. The covetous were not being denied. In fact, the damned seemed to be living in a modicum of comfort. I never detected any weeping, wailing or gnashing of teeth. The place, called by some gehenna, the bottomless pit, was admittedly no holiday camp, but things there had grown shoddy and dysfunctional.
My description of the “devil” is one worn out over a period of time, a devil that has become “insipid” and unimaginative and I make the point that the world's leaders have usurped the devil’s job with their ineptness, lies and monetarily-advantageous wars. Watch the news and we can see Hell is clearly on earth, for many wretched souls.

In my story I take a quick glance at what Heaven might be like…in comparison to Hell…I took a last look survey of Hell. It looked like a vast airport terminal: vacuous, tedious, and hum-drum. By now I couldn't wait to leave. By contrast, I have often tried to imagine Heaven. To me it would be one long party in a great vivant night club, not unlike this second life to which I was now looking forward to I closed my inner eye as instructed and waited while Charon transported me to earth's dimension. Apart from the cliché images of Heaven, those pearly gates, streets of gold, winged angels and the Righteous, with their bodies made perfect and immortal, singing the praises of God forever, what are people’s visions of what Heaven is like? Also what kind of existence would this constant praising of God be like anyway?
One of the plus points of Heaven would be according to many the fact that witnessing the torment of the damned will be one of the joys of paradise. This seems a strange notion.

Peter Bell the Third by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Hell is a city much like London – / A populous and a smoky city; / There are all sorts of people undone, / And there is little or no fun done; / Small justice shown, and still less pity." Shelley's Hell bears a close similarity to Regency London. "All are damned – they breathe an air, / Thick, infected, joy-dispelling".

Huis Clos/No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
"L'enfer, c'est les autres." A valet leads three characters to a windowless room, which is Hell. To what torment are they condemned? Each other's company. In the course of the play, the characters probe each other's sins and bring alive their guilty memories. "There's no need for red-hot pokers."

About the Author

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading and 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 periods of up to twelve weeks at a time, until I was 17. While at my first Art college through a friend I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was at the time in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. He was a bit older than myself, me being fresh out of school, but his personality and wit resonated, despite losing contact with him. I had a stint living in Austria, where I began writing. It wasn’t until I moved to Paris, that my writing began to truly evolve. I discovered a magazine called Rat Mort (dead rat) I sent off a short story, in the hope it would match the seemingly dark world the magazine seemed to embroiled in. I got no answer. Not put off I sent two more stories. Finally I got an answer. It seemed the magazine editor was a busy man, a man prone to travelling. It seemed my first story really hit the right note with him. His name was Alan Clark. I began writing more and more short stories, some published on the internet. A bit later my anthology Flight of Destiny slowly evolved, published April 2015, by Savant publishing.