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TheTalespinner
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Country: United Kingdom
Birthday: 9/24/1965
Gender: Female
Interests: Writing, reading, listening to music, tidying up after my children...  Watching good comedy on TV
Expertise:
How to make an arse of myself when the wrong people are looking...
Industry: Government
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
5/29/2003
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| Oh dear ...Right, I'm going to start this by saying; first of all "thank you" to everyone who's posted here, and secondly "sorry" to those who I should've been reading and haven't.
Fact is, really, I just don't have time to read/comment on everyone and the more I put it off, the harder it gets.
I'm going to drop out of the Xanga community as of (as soon as I've found/saved all my old entries!)
Thank you very, very much to everyone who's supported me over the years, I'm not going anywhere, but I don't want to clog up the allocated spaces in your subs lists when the chances of me utilising those subs are zero -to- highly unlikely.
I'm still on My Space, you can do so much more over there now than when I joined a couple of years ago, and I will keep a blog there on a very occasional basis.
So, all that remains is for me to go back and save all my entries, and I wish you all a wonderful weekend! Seeya around!
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| What? It's not quite two months, that's not long! Well, I made it back, finally! Things have been a bit strained lately, but generally they're now on the up, so to speak. (this box is driving me nuts at the moment, it's hanging for a second so there's a delay and I keep doing double spaces!)
Okay, first off: financial stuff has been sorted. I'm now on something called an IVA (individual voluntary arrangement) so that means I have a basic bank account, no cheque book, debit card or credit cards. My debts have been taken over by a company to whom I pay a single monthly payment and they divvy it up amongst my creditors. At the end of 5 years the remainder of my debts are written off. Apparently I'm going to be very disciplined with my budget by that time! *lol* I am now, in fact, as I have no overdraft facility, and everything has to be paid for in cash or by direct debit. So no online purchases unless I can get my friend to do it, and pay her the money. This is going to work, I know it is 
Mum and Eddie came down for a visit recently too, we had a couple of days out; one was to Cotehele House which is actually just up the road from where I used to live, and I've been in the grounds but never the house. I'm telling you, I got fricken CHILLS in there, it was just so atmospheric.
It's 16th Century for a start, and the Great Hall, when you first go in, is so sparsely furnished that right away you get a sense of the times. Stone floors of course, the table is laid with pewter plates and goblets and little else, and on the wall there are ancient weapons: pikes, flintlocks, swords, muskets, lances ... all genuine artefacts. The house has been preserved as was, with no electricity in it at all. Will post some pictures sometime if anyone's interested.
The visit with Mum and Eddie was wonderful, and we were all desperately sad when they left: it'll probably be another year before we see them again.
While they were here though, a somewhat scary thing happened: they had my room so I was sleeping on the sofa bed in the front room, and at about 1.40am on the Wednesday morning, someone came knocking on the glass door!! I sat bolt upright, and quite honestly had the first inkling of how it's possible to have a heart attack through sheer fright. The knocking went on for a while and I ran upstairs to look out through Robbie's bedroom window that looks out onto the back garden. I saw this guy walk out through my gate and head up the hill, then he came around to the front and started ringing on the bell!
I leaned out of the window in my room (front) and asked what he wanted. He said he was looking for his mother! We got rid of him, and I went back to bed, and when the front doorbell rang at 6.45 am I thought it was the postman and opened it. Duh! (well, I was half asleep, hadn't slept that well!)
Got rid of him again and all was fine the next night.
Then Friday morning he came again! Same kind of time. Both days were ones I was due to go into work as well; I was knackered! When I got home from work I called the police and told them, they said they'd send someone over. They didn't. So, around midnight when he came back again I dialled 999 and they sent someone out - eventually!
Apparently (I'd found out through work anyway) he used to live here with his mother - now deceased. He'd had a head injury and believed he still lived here, was determined to get in, and told the police so; I heard him say "I'm getting in there, I am!"
I feel so bad about making a fuss, knowing he wasn't some nutter, but had suffered a head injury - but at the same time I was utterly terrified and don't know what I'd have done if Mum and Eddie hadn't been here. Anyway, he's getting the help he needs now. I hope!
Okay, this is getting far too long-winded! Just briefly then: Had another panic some weeks ago when those bombs went off in Turkey - Keith was there at the time and I couldn't get hold of him. He was close by, apparently, but okay.
We went camping last weekend, me, the boys, Keith and Charlie, and Chris and his girlfriend! Could have been weird, was a little, I suppose, but we all got on fine.
Was my birthday on the Sunday and that was the day we came home. Was a fantastic weekend and have uploaded a few pics.
 Surf's up! Dom, Keith, Charlie, Robbie. Right, that's enough!
Seeya around, folks!
ps - good to see Starbucks ticking over so nicely over at rmo.com :)
pps- "Terri, great to hear from you ..." who said that?!
*WHOO HOOOO*
Haha!
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| Titles - sent to try us ...I'm feeling quite pleased with myself at the moment having just
completed the first draft, and first and second edits of my second
book. (The first one is still out there being perused by the damn
publisher who asked to see it, and it's a daily struggle not to spend
too much wondering if that's a good thing or a bad thing)
This
book is the one that's been with me, I think, the longest ... I'm not
sure. It's been through several incarnations - ironically the subject
matter has no small connection with that as well - and even more
titles. The first title was long-winded and annoying, but it popped
into my head before I even started to write, and so I wrote the book
around the title which was "The Haunting Of Jonathan Riley." Lots of
problems with that: It's too much like something else, it was too long,
and when I got into the story I realised that Jonathan Riley was not
haunted at all, but playing host to something a bit unpleasant.
Briefly, as a child messing about somewhere he shouldn't underground,
he smashes a jar containing the treasured, and supposedly guarded,
remains of an ancient Cornish king with unfinished business to attend
to. Boy inhales dust in shock, boy becomes something you really don't
want to fuck about with. (As I said, briefly
...) I understand this subject matter is either something you can run
with or you can't, it's all a matter of taste. Not the point.
So
anyway. It changed a few times, had the working title of "The Heath"
for an awfully long time, set as it is on Bodmin Moor where I grew up.
Then one day when I opened the document to get down to it, I just
looked at the title and realised I was so incredibly sick of it that if
I wasn't careful I'd bin the whole project.
So, the search for a
new title began. Again. I'm notoriously shit at titles; either I come
up with them and nothing to put under them (ie: a story) or else the
story leaks out of my fingertips mega-fast and then I spend weeks
searching for something catchy to hang on it handle-wise. The two
rarely come together.
I played with several ideas and came up
with a couple, then had to ask Ms Google to please check I hadn't
nicked them. I had, of course. One was "Dust of Ages" which turned
out to be a song. Then I started with the word "ancient" to see what
slithered through my mind, and came up with "The Dust Of Ancients."
Ooh good, I thought, that sounds nifty! So I Googled it, and it came up with a whole page full.
Shit,
says I. Then I realised they were all the same thing, and that one
thing was a line from Geoffrey Of Monmouth's History Of The Kings Of
Britain. First published 1138. Abso-bloody-lutely perfect.
Even better was, when I read the whole excerpt, the line is: "The dust of ancients shall be restored."
I
have a notes document for each project, these usually run into several
thousands of words for a longer piece, and I just hammer away at it
when I've got a problem. It's always fun to read through and see how
the thought processes work and how the original idea evolved.
Very
often it's peppered with things like "fuck, this isn't working, I need
coffee/a nap/a miracle" etc. The notes document for this book totalled
39,262 words - the book is just over 107,000.
Here's the bit where I worked through the title problem (the most recent one)
I hate the title!!!! Gah! Go
back to something like the original? The haunting of Thomas Riley? But
that sounds like a ghost story and it’s not. Also sounds bit archaic
and it’s set now. So no.
There follows a lot of other notes and then this:
How about something like King’s Dust for the title? Strange, but keep thinking along those lines. Dust of The King? King to Dust? Dust Of Ages? Sounds familiar though ... Google it. It’s a song, but not a book title!!  So don’t rule it out. Dust Of The Ancient Dust Of Ages? The Dust Of Ancients – quote from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History Of The Kings Of Britain. Okay, so the new working title, is The Dust Of Ancients. It’ll probably stay that.
Now, if only the perfection of this little find could be taken as an omen. Dare I?
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| OkayRight, I think I'm ready to surface again now! Ugh, why do I let it go so long every time?
I think the main reason at the moment is that my book is so near to completion that any length of time over about twenty minutes that I get to spend at the computer, is spent editing and making notes. And, of course, I need longer than twenty minutes to do a post and catch up on people's Xangas. Which I will do starting in about half an hour when I've done this, and sorted the kids' tea.
The boys go on holiday tomorrow, for the longest time ever, over a week! I'm looking forward to the first few days (see earlier comment re: book completion) but I know that by about Wednesday, when I go back to work, I'm going to be twitchy for a hug from the little one and fun conversation with the big one - who, by the way, is sixteen tomorrow!!  (how the hell did that happen?!)
My finances are crappier than ever, but we get a bit of a bonus next month which should, at least, get me up to date with the rent, even if my credit cards are shot to hell. Still thinking about an "individual voluntary arrangement" but before I do that I'm going to take a little bit of that bonus and set up another account, or put some of it into Robbie's so I'm not too constrained. This is the trouble I was referring to, and when I put it into perspective, which I've been doing lately, although I sometimes feel sick with worry, most of the time I think "bloody hell, at least I live here in Plymouth, have my home, my job and my boys." Once I get that part straight the rest of it doesn't seem to matter.
Mum and Eddie are coming down next month, so will book a few days off then - can't wait! Saw them last on my birthday last year, so it'll be all but a year! Don't know what we'll do but it doesn't matter, it'll just be so good to see them.
First book is still with the publisher, they haven't told me yet whether they want to publish it, still don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one! Well ... pfft! The new book is more fun anyway!
I'm trying to inject a little fun over at rmo.com by revamping the chat area into a coffee lounge! *lol* Bit mad I know, but it'll be fun to see what others are eating/drinking, "sit down" with them and maybe have a little party now and again! The place just seems so flat lately, apart from the Aus tours there's just nothing to talk about. This won't change that, of course, but it may be a bit more fun to pretend to be in that kind of environment, it's good for the imagination; give it a little workout! I'm even 'decorating' the place out in honour of Mr Marx! (to be honest I think I'm a bit on the loopy side today ... *sigh*)
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| Again ...I always seem to be saying this - sorry.
I'm in deep trouble and have just crapped on someone too, so I'm not feeling in the best of moods just now. I know she understands; she sent me a lovely e-mail which has put me in floods of tears.
But I'll get there. I'll visit you all soon, and comment on your blogs. Please be patient a little while longer.
Something to think about; how fast has this past year gone? Exactly one year ago I was leaving to go on holiday with someone very very special. Remember how excited I was? The memory of that holiday is holding me together at the moment, so thank every power that exists, for that.
Back soon.
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