Search

12 Books in 12 Months

writing books and blogging about it

Open Search

An Awfully Big Adventure

I have a number of friends on the internet who I’ve come across through writing stories.  One such person is Glempy, also called The Rogue Verbumancer, who you may remember from guest posts like this one, and my almost monthly entries for the Pictonaut Challenge.

As the general setup of Pictonaut implies, Glempy is one of those writers who likes to get other people writing.  This predilection could stem from pure philanthropy, or it might be orchestrated so the man in question has a ready-made support network of peers gnashing their teeth and churning out #amwriting tweets at the same time as him – it’s impossible to know for sure.  Still, whatever his reasons, the outcome is a positive one – lots of stories for you to read.

With that in mind, I would like to tell you about Sir’s latest project – The Life and Times of a Working Barbarian.

Choose Your Own Adventure #45 You Are A Shark (1985)
Picture by Paxton Holley (http://blog.paxholley.net/)

Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books?  You read some of the story, then had the option to choose what happened next – for instance, ‘to go through the spooky arch turn to page 62,’ or ‘to climb the rickety ladder turn to page 4.’  The story was in your hands, and anything could happen – if you made a bad choice the hero might actually die, or at least be horribly maimed.* 

The idea of Working Barbarian is to resurrect this storytelling model.  Glempy has assembled a group of writers, including yours truly, who have agreed to relay The Life and Times of a Working Barbarian in gripping internet instalments.  After each instalment there will be a list of ‘what do you want to do next’ options and you, the general public, get to Choose Your Own Adventure by voting on whether you want the Barbarian to go through the spooky arch, climb the rickety ladder or stroke the adorable cthulu kitten.   

I’m really excited about this project, and if you’re excited too then you should CLICK HERE whereupon you can subscribe to email updates or follow the blog so that new posts appear in your reader.  You’ll also be able to find out a bit more about the merry band of people involved in writing the thing.

The first part of the story, penned by Glempy himself, goes live on Monday April 8th.  Hooray!

*Bear in mind this was pre Song of Ice and Fire / Potter – main characters being senselessly killed was unusual back then. 
4

Weekly Photo Challenge – A Day in My Life

This week’s photo challenge is to take you through a day in my life, so what follows is my Easter Sunday.  I have tried to allude to the fact that even though I didn’t write much yesterday, I though about stories and storytelling a lot – that is pretty much how I exist from day to day.  There are explanatory captions attached to these, and if you click on the first one you’ll get the pictures in an exciting slideshow.

Start the day with a strong coffee.
Watch Doctor Who on iPlayer – represented here by a small Matt Smith figurine riding an Easter Chick.
Read something culturally edifying – this is Gutter, a Scottish writing magazine.
Get in the way of other half playing FIFA.
Decide to go outside – for which I need lip balm…
… tunes…
… and shoes.
Wander through the park. Keep an eye out for talking animals and terrifying women driving sleighs as lamp posts of this sort obviously mean I am near Narnia.
Look for hilarious graffiti – this is the best I got yesterday for I was perambulating in an area of class.
Search desperately for signs of spring. Settle for these guys.
Start to formulate a Hunger Games style tale based on random tags hanging in trees.
Converse with this affronted Ent.
Wonder whether the paint is bubbling like that due to imminent alien invasion or ghosts.
DRINK ALL THE TEA.
Eat soup that I made. Over the weekend, it was Squash.
Sit down to do some writing. Faff about on the internet for about five hours.
Watch more Doctor Who. This is from Nightmare of Eden.
Retire to bed to read more – currently The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh. S’good.

3

Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)

Going for a walkIt’s Thursday, it’s 7.30pm, it’s Top of the Pops Pictonaut Challenge!

This month, The Rogue Verbumancer (or Glempy, if you prefer) challenges the internet to write a thousand words on the topic of going for a walk over a bridge.  Or y’know, anything else that springs to mind on seeing this picture…  But as you will discover, my brain opted for a fairly literal interpretation.

Thus:

Continue reading “Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)” →

5

Where do you get your ideas?

Ideas never run out
© Adi Respati

As a fiction writer I tend to feel like this is a stupid question, whilst as a journalist it feels amateurish and slightly redundant to ask it.  Read their work and it’ll often become pretty apparent – Irvine Welsh didn’t come up with Trainspotting because he spent a lot of time hanging around Disneyland, for example.

Continue reading “Where do you get your ideas?” →

2

Phoneography Challenge: My Neighbourhood

The title of the post may have alerted you to the fact that this week’s photo challenge involves taking your phone and going out to take pictures of your neighbourhood.  The camera on my phone is a little bit rickety, and can only really cope with daylight (bright daylight at that) – so thank goodness it snowed this week.  It could have been a very grey-green old time without nature’s lightbox to help me out.

For an extra challenge I was told to tell you a mini story with my pictures, so without much further ado I give you the story of… me walking around a park in the snow.  I wanted to get a book in somewhere, possibly alongside a cheesy comment along the lines of ‘my favourite place in my local area is inside a story’ – but alas!  I only had a borrowed paperback on me when I went out, and I didn’t want it to get soggy.  So I didn’t.

Tree in the snow
Arthur’s Seat
Holyrood Park
Spring has sprung…
My next door neighbour

P.S. When I say this is my ‘local neighbourhood’, what I mean is I actually live in the park.  I have a secret hole in the ground, sort of like the Psammead.  Do say hello if you’re passing – although like the Psammead I may respond with insults if I haven’t had my coffee yet.

2

Terrible Picture Book Ideas

In the most recent edition of Writers’ Forum there was a feature which basically consisted of someone who thought it was easy to write a picture book for children being proven wrong.  I’ve yet to write a picture book (although it is on my To-Do List for the end of this year), but the piece got me thinking it might be fun to brainstorm some titles.  Yes, coming up with new book titles is my idea of fun – because what do you do that’s so much better?  Nothing, that’s what.  So.

  • The Blobfish At The Bottom Of The Pool – a small girl refuses to learn how to swim because her local pool is full of blobfish.  They could be literal blobfish, or some kind of metaphor for her insecurities.
  • The Repressed British Picture Book – this would basically consist of taking the British Problems twitter feed and adding pictures.  Possibly in the style of Edward Gorey.
  • Percy the Piglet Squid Has A Picnic – I was recently introduced to the WTF, Evolution? Tumblr and was really taken with the piglet squid.  I imagine his picnic would involve lots of other weird but cheery looking sea creatures and they would have a jolly time.  The blobfish probably wouldn’t get invited though.
  • Who Puked In My Boots? – a sequel to the much loved Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it was None of His Business.  It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Leave a comment if you’ve got any ideas to add…

4

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑