It’s been a while since we had an author interview here on The Glorious Outsiders, so it’s a real pleasure to welcome back Marjorie Mallon, who writes under MJ Mallon to celebrate the release of her latest book, Do What You Love. The new book is a wonderful collection of poems, flash fiction and photography and is certain to make you smile. Here is my review, followed by the interview with Marjorie!
“As other reviewers have said, this is an overwhelmingly sweet and positive collection that will not fail to make you smile during these tough times. A well written and thought provoking collection of poetry, flash fiction and photography, this is an inviting read and can be read quickly in one sitting. I loved the conversations with the Fates, as the author reflects on stages of her life. There was a lot I could relate to in this book, and as with her other works, I appreciate the author’s love and appreciation of nature. A wonderful, heart-warming collection.”
1. What inspired you to write this book?
After the pandemic I’ve been keen to share some inspiring and uplifting writing. Life has been hard for us all, and the precious joys of life really matter, like spending time with family, friends, and walking in nature, as well as embracing change and being brave. This change within me happened around that time when a group of authors, poets and bloggers came together to share their thoughts and I released the anthology This Is Lockdown.
2. What came first, the photos or the writing?
Interestingly, in a lot of cases the photos! I’m inspired by art and photography so I suppose that isn’t too surprising. Some of the family and friends poems were inspired by heartfelt experiences, so in that case, writing first.
3.Do you have a favourite type of poetry?
I love autumnal, (autumn is my favourite season,) and nature poetry. I appreciate short forms of poetry like haiku and tanka, in which just a few words can convey so much.
4.It’s a warm and loving book, is that what you had in mind?
Yes! Definitely. I hope that everyone reading Do What You Love will find something relatable within its pages. The poems, photography and narrative within may remind them of a friendship, a difficult time in their lives that may now have been resolved and the many challenges that we face as human beings. And yet, we are strong, we overcome, and we should embrace creativity and do what we love!
5.What are you working on next?
Probably, my YA Fantasy coming of age series The Curse of Time – I’ve written #1 Bloodstone, #2 Golden Healer and now I’ve started work on the next book which is primarily set in the Land of Shadows. A different book… but there are similarities. In this tale, there is also an emphasis on family, and friends, and even though this series has elements of dark fantasy, (with mental health aspects,) there are humourous characters such as Aunt Karissa to lighten the story.
Writing YA Fiction help keeps me young!
Other than that, there are several projects on my hard drive waiting to be fine tuned – time will tell which wins the prize to be finished next.
I tend to be a bit of a mood writer.
6. Do what you love is a wonderfully positive message, is it a mantra you live by?
I try to. I believe that when you open your heart to creativity lots of new opportunities and happiness can come your way.
7. What else do you love?
Mindfulness, walking in nature, trees, travel, art sculptures, the sea, and tai chi. I have been fortunate to find a tai chi class here in Portugal. I spend several months here and the rest of the time in the UK. It has been wonderful doing tai chi outside in the sunshine!
8. What is your writing and creative process like?
Unplanned. It tends to evolve. I like it that way! Perhaps like a painting or a photo, we are never sure how it is going to turn out until it is finished.
Thank you Marjorie and good luck with the new release! Here is the blurb and the links!
Blurb:
Do What You Love Fragility of Your Flame Poems, Photography & Flash Fiction is a personal poetry collection celebrating how the fates may have a part in all that we do. With special poems and short reflective moments inspired by family, flowers and nature, love, scrumptious morsels, places I’ve visited, lived and intend to live in, the friendships and hopes I have for the future. The overarching theme is to live a life well lived… And to do what you love.
float along with me
create clouds of sweetest joy
to do what you love
hold fate’s hand as we venture
near and far on life’s journey
Release Date: 25th November 2022, able to preorder via the following links.
Hi everyone – it’s been a while since I highlighted an indie author on The Glorious Outsiders. I blame that on Netflix and not reading enough lately! I’ve also been attempting two reading challenges so often my reading choices have to try and fit with those. Anyway. I recently had the pleasure of beta reading a murder mystery novel by Val Portelli. Val has contributed two pieces to my blog since I started my lockdown themed features, so I jumped at the chance of being an early reader for her new novel Alderslay. I really enjoyed the book and will definitely read more of Val’s work in the future. I invited Val on to the blog to tell us all about the new novel and she has written this piece detailing the things that can go wrong while preparing a self-published book for launch day. If you would like to know more about Val and her work, her links are all at the end! Enjoy.
I had my first book, a romantic novel called ‘Changes’ published several years ago. Shortly afterwards I wrote the first draft for a mystery novel called ‘Murder of Changes’ to tie in with the theme.
Fast forward and ‘M of C’ as it was affectionally known, sat on the back burner while I self-published other books, contributed to anthologies, wrote short stories, learnt about marketing, web sites, blogs, editing, formatting and how to defeat gremlins.
At one stage I was in contact with an editor who read the book and gave me valuable feedback which I incorporated into a revised draft. Entering a competition, I was delighted to win the opportunity to have a cover designed, so M of C was dragged off the back burner, submitted to beta readers, and became new and improved as I incorporated their suggestions.
A year passed and I was assured the cover design was in hand and would be available shortly. Numerous emails later, the MD of the design company eventually admitted the communication between himself and his employee, my designated contact, had proved lacking, and it was the first he had heard of it. My carefully composed details and suggestions had never been seen by the design team.
Was it jinxed? Should I forget it and move onto something else, perhaps a follow up for a series on one of one other books? Stubborn? Moi? Let’s just say a challenge is a challenge. I mentioned it to a friend and fellow author who had been instrumental in my other cover designs, and despite having other priorities she sent her dragons charging to the rescue. With all the to-ing and fro-ing, I’m not sure why she hasn’t blocked me, but the end result was a cover I loved. Thank you P.
I love writing but my marketing skills have to be seen to be believed- e.g. non-existent. Nevertheless, I endeavoured this time to try to do it properly, put the book on pre-order, diarised to set up the paperback to coincide with the eBook release, and bit my nails. Amazon nudged me with reminders of a countdown for when my final Kindle version should be uploaded, but I was happy the latest version was good to go.
A few hours before the cut-off time I received feed-back from a blogger who loved it, but pointed out in Chapter X I mentioned ‘A’ but in Chapter Y it’s ‘B.’ Aaagh. Reading for the umpteenth million time she was right. Dilemma. Should I try to change the minor discrepancy which most readers probably wouldn’t notice, or update a revised version which could result in throwing all the page set-up out of line. Being a perfectionist, I had to put it right, which was the signal for the world and his wife to interrupt with things that had been hanging around for months but needed a response NOW!
There was also the problem of the chicken and egg syndrome. Many readers these days use Kindles, but others only read paperbacks and wanted to know if/when this option would be available. Knowing Amazon suggest paperbacks can often take 72 hours to be approved, and hearing from other authors the virus had affected normal timescales, I set up a formula to include probability ratios, US versus UK time zones, and whether there was an R in the month.
With an eBook release date of the 3rd March, I waited until the early hours of the 1st March, UK time to press go for the paperback, before trying to catch up with some sleep. The following, or rather the same day, I opened my emails to discover the paperback was already live, having taken only 4 hours to approve and had beaten the eBook publication by two days. So much for trying to be a clever-clogs.
Beta readers had been advised of the approximate release date, in the hope they would leave a review. That’s when I realised they would they would be looking for the publication of ‘M of C.’
Just when I thought all was going to plan, a reader advised me there was a slight problem with the layout on one small area of the paperback which had already been released. Should I ignore it or try to correct it before more sales were made. No time like the present and again I burned the midnight oil. The amendment itself took two minutes, but then the long wait watching the wheel go round while Amazon went through the whole routine from scratch before I could access the revised preview.
Thankfully, it was again available within a few hours and I breathed a sigh of relief. A zoom meeting with a friend who lives abroad started with her asking what had happened to the paperback. She had tried to order in exactly that short timescale while it was awaiting the revision. Who said being an author only involved putting words on a page?
Despite all the problems, my first fantastic 5* review had me bouncing, and was quickly followed by others.
Is it worth all the stress and hassle if the actual income works out around a thousandth of the hourly minimum wage? Of course not, but the satisfaction of knowing someone actually read and enjoyed your book drives you on to write the next one. Sincere thanks to buyers, readers, bloggers, reviewers and supporters who have helped to keep me sane. A short break before the characters start calling, then here we go again!
Welcome to another guest post for my ‘Hello Home…’ pandemic themed feature. It would seem all of us have experienced or are still experiencing a lockdown of some sort while the corona virus continues to blight our lives. Although we are all in the same situation, we experience it differently because our homes are all so different. Thinking about this inspired me to write a piece a few weeks ago dedicated to my house and what it has meant to me during these strange and unsettling times. I then decided to reach out to others who might want to talk about what their home has meant to them during the pandemic. Today please welcome writer Adeola Sheehyto the blog!
My house has shrunk.
I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but sometime just past summer the walls began to move.
This house has always been cosy, but I now understand that bungalows have a habit of getting smaller the longer you stay in them, especially when the people inside just keep growing bigger.
I look down at the floor and expect to see a visible path in the carpet. There is a perfect circle to run in, from the hallway, through the kitchen, round through the front room and back again. I know it is perfect because I watch the exhilaration on their faces as they chase each other, and because I laugh at their shrieks as I join in the pursuit.
On a Monday there are so many people in my house I’m reminded of a house-party and my second favourite spot in the hallway, there are no getaway stairs here. Only now all the ‘guests’ are in tiny boxes on screens, with each child in a different class in a different room. There aren’t enough rooms or screens, so I end up here, in the hallway. Except this party is oddly quiet. I wonder if this is what those silent discos feel like? Everyone in their own individual worlds, together.
Our daily lives are now governed by these mini invasions, sudden bursts of people all talking at the same time, scrabbling for a moment of connection.
The nights are a contrast and that silence has a different feel.
Once it’s just the house and I, we both exhale, deep and long, releasing the built up tension and softening the edges which have hardened through the day’s onslaught.
The walls recede there in the dark. They shift back into place, a retreat from the battle lines drawn in the day. It’s those daylight hours, with their noise and movement that take up all the air and physical space. That’s when the walls move in and I start plotting my escape.
I used to love travel, but I loved coming home too. That brief window of time when you step inside the door and see the space as an outsider. It only lasts minutes, like the moment you bump into an old friend or lover on a busy street
and your eyes drink each other in, smiling in recognition, noticing the changes. The instant familiarity and simultaneous curiosity of the new.
Then slowly it all slots into place, the warmth of people fills the air, the sound of chatter pushes the stillness out and it’s all the same once more.
I haven’t left in over a year and familiarity is not helping our relationship. I need to leave so I can miss you. Your walls are like arms encouraging me on my way, pushing me out the door. We will like each other again I’m sure, but right now I can’t imagine how you got so small and I just don’t seem to fit.
Thank you so much to Adeola for writing this piece for the blog. If you would like to find out more about Adeola and her work, her bio and links are below!
Mother, writer, and women circle facilitator, Adeola leads courses in creativity and all aspects of the feminine experience. The written word has been her expression, safe haven, and dearest love for as long as she can remember. Be it fiction, poems, essays, or musings on life, her pen is almost always attached to paper.
Welcome to another guest post for my ‘Hello Home…’ pandemic themed feature. It would seem all of us have experienced or are still experiencing a lockdown of some sort while the corona virus continues to blight our lives. Although we are all in the same situation, we experience it differently because our homes are all so different. Thinking about this inspired me to write a piece a few weeks ago dedicated to my house and what it has meant to me during these strange and unsettling times. I then decided to reach out to others who might want to talk about what their home has meant to them during the pandemic. Today please welcome my oldest sister Danette. My sister lives in a beautiful 500 year old cottage that must have seen so many societal changes over the years so I was really pleased when she agreed to write this for the blog!
Inside Out by Danette Moorish
It feels a bit like that doesn’t it? Life under lockdown. Inside out and upside down and turned on a sixpence until like children blindfolded at a birthday party game we lurch forward into our days, stumbling, arms outstretched , not knowing quite what to hold on to or indeed what there even is to hold on to.
I have lived in 10 homes since I entered this world 50 years ago. I started life living at my nan’s house, I retreated back there in my teens when after leaving home rather too young my world became a scary place. I moved from bedsit to flat, to another flat, to another. One was a gloriously rambling maisonette over an antique shop which I believe is still there, a gem through whose windows I would gaze, feeling that as a teenager I probably was not their text book customer but longing to drink in the wonders that laid within. I eventually bought my nan’s house living there for years until a move to rural North Dorset brought about living in a completely different kind of home to that I had so far experienced.
The Doll’s House as I fondly call it was incredibly small and yet within its walls the life changing blows of facing the fact my marriage was quite frankly an appalling place to be and that I had to replace the roof overhead as a now single working mum of 4 year old twins and all that entailed reverberated in them like a blast from a cannon.
I found work as Housekeeper at an ancient Manor House that provided a tied cottage and life fell into a swift new routine of learning on my feet, raising my children who had just started at the local village primary school and tending the small flock of sheep, geese and hens that came with my job. Life was little short of exhilarating as I found myself surrounded by all things I loved, beautiful buildings, history and the countryside. Living in the countryside as I had first discovered when I moved to the area meant navigating delights such as soak aways and septic tanks, rickety electrics, lengthy powercuts and being snowed in. With much hilarity and the large streak of optimism I thankfully own I had a full and happy life.
That life was neatly ordered into routine, work, home, school and being outside. Everything was very separate and to some possibly monotonous, dare I say it even dull or boring but to me it gave me a strong framework for my daughters and I to thrive in.
Planets align, paths are revealed and obstacles clear and destiny had us three turn into us four and with my now darling husband, move this time into his grandparents house. A move that took us back towards the coast into rural West Dorset to live in an achingly old ramshackle Cobb and thatch farmhouse with only a well for water, minimal electric supply and all the holes in the thatch and windows that you could throw your earnings at.
This house has stood here for over 500 years and there’s good reason to think there has been a dwelling here going back longer than that, maybe even back as far as the 14th century when lockdown life back then was due to the Great Plague.
Oh how easy it would be to navigate the choppy waters of a global pandemic if it just meant better flea and rodent control along with a huge jump in basic sewerage systems and personal hygiene- do read the superb Minette Walters The Last Hours and it’s follow up The Turn of Midnight for a compelling insight into lockdown life circa 1348, there are similarities with issues of division, mistrust, blame and confusion.
In 2020 we found ourselves sheltered within thick walls of mud and straw bound together with the blood and urine of long dead animals yet compared to all other testing times that have beheld the previous occupants we now shelter here with electricity, a full larder and store cupboard, running water and all the delights that modern plumbing has brought us, yes we upgraded from the well dear reader. My holiday accommodation business slammed shut and my husband’s business, a QS in construction in the hospitality and leisure industry ( double ouch) meant we for the first time in our lives found ourselves at home with no ‘work’.
We had time to finally enjoy our home. And there in is ‘it’ for me. I believe as well as sheltering us our homes should be things that bring us great joy. I’ll hand over to William Morris for he worded it perfectly a long time ago. ‘ Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful , or believe to be beautiful’. Absolutely. I decided long ago to surround myself with things that bring me joy. Call me trivial but I get immense pleasure from drinking from a beautiful mug than an ugly one, it matters not if it is chipped, it is not perfection that brings me joy, far from it, it is beauty. So the first lockdown gave us this chance to throw all our doors and windows wide open, the warm Spring egged us on as we sorted and cleaned. Not just perfunctory but proper old fashioned Spring cleaning! We turfed out cupboards, we sorted papers and wardrobes. As the days lengthened we ventured into sheds and garages, we were unstoppable and all that being busy helped tremendously to giving our minds something to focus on, and after all when we were weary from the endless news we could turn it off and go and find a shady spot in the garden or park to sit in.
The world slowly began to turn again and whilst my husband’s job remained sadly static, mine burst back into life as our shepherd’s hut and outbuilding conversion filled with city weary folk desperate for the sight of rolling green hills to feast their eyes on. Life went from zero to 100mph and our home became again something we sped through or collapsed into after a busy day. Soon little jobs began to pile up again, little piles of ‘stuff’, oh how I loathe ‘stuff’.
Yet before we had time to grumble too much November had us slamming on the anchors again and this time it felt different. With the calendar turned to the last but one month of the year it felt as if the house hunkered down around us as the first bad weather of the Winter hit. I found myself lying on the sofa in the living room writing long letters to friends whilst my husband sat listing to records in the sitting room and the girls did what ever it is teenagers do on the internet up in their rooms ( don’t ask they wont tell you!) As I sat there I could actually feel the house holding us. Holding us safe. All with space to have privacy when we needed it and room to regroup when we needed that too and having lived in a very small house, remember The Doll’s House I mentioned earlier? That is something that I truly appreciate and never take for granted.
Christmas felt a cautious time, the girls broke up from school and I don’t believe any of us gave much thought to them possibly not going back but here we are. All stood in 2021 in our homes again,children tethered to kitchen tables with online school and us adults feeling that inside out, upside down feeling I started this off with.
Why do we feel so unsettled and irked this time round? How many of us standing at crowded bus stops in the dark and rain have stood there over the years on our work commute willing the world to JUST STOP so we could hide at home and have endless duvet days and not venture out much in January thank you very much! Yet we find ourselves back at home and a quick trip around social media will show weary tales of people struggling deeply with trying to make sense of this all.
Maybe we can’t. I don’t have answers, I just know what works for me is – quoting William Morris once more to remember that keeping busy for me is key to getting through the days with my sanity intact, it was a very long time ago he wrote
‘ A good way to rid one’s self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy , dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order, it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to it’s creative character’
Yet he could have written it a few days ago in a weekend article in the papers as a way to try to get through this enforced time at home. Our homes perform many functions and never more so than now. They are schools and offices, gyms and studios, canteens and corner shops and we are having to fit all that living, all that emotion and interaction that we normally expel out into those different places into our homes and that is a lot of living to unfold between four walls!
In quiet moments I like to sit and let this house settle around me. In the corporeal sense it literally settles, creaking and depositing centuries old dust from its walls and ceilings yet emotionally I believe it needs to settle too. With travel away from our homes curtailed for so many reasons we can still all thankfully head out for exercise so when we all head out with the dogs I whisper to the house as I leave, ‘be still, thank you , we love you’. And on the rare occasions the others head out and I am here alone I will light an incense stick, always Nag Champa for it is our home’s signature scent, and walk into each room , carrying the gently smouldering stick and letting it waft around the rooms settling the energy as it disperses through the air.
This works for me, I’m too old to worry too much if I sound as mad as a hatter. What I believe is if you are struggling to find your inner core of peace and resilience at the moment and who isn’t, by making peace with your surroundings and not fighting it will ease some of the discord. You may blast out music, we do that here too, you may move things around, gather round watching films or play games. You might all yell and storm off to rooms away from each other and that’ ok too as long as you regroup later and talk and hug. Our homes can take it, they just ask that we balance up the energy books a bit later on.
The current situation we all find ourselves in is just one of many that the home I sit and write this in has witnessed, from the Peasants Revolt to The War of The Roses, through the tumultuous Tudor times to another plague in 1665, to Stuarts and Hanoverians, Waterloo and the dawn of the Victorian age and more recent historical events such as the Industrial Revolution and the two World Wars. I doubt the inhabitants of our house were directly affected by Waterloo, with no internet, indeed with most of the population being unable to read and write, news didn’t travel terribly fast and tended to be be news of the local area passed on by word of mouth by folk travelling through.
What I am trying to say is that we need to spend less time occupying our heads and hearts with what goes on outside of our four walls. Imagine, before you cry I am thoughtless and shortsighted, if we all bought less, consumed less, chose wiser, made do with more, slowed down, grew more, recycled what we couldn’t reuse, bartered what we couldn’t buy and at the risk of ending in a bucolic naive haze generally gave a bit more considered though to our actions on the natural world that exists outside our four walls, wouldn’t that be a force for good? A change for the better for all?
Something such as being asked to remain at home can feel like an Orwellian command but it could be a switch of mindset to see it was a chance to let old paradigms fall to the wayside.
Now, I am off to boil the kettle, grateful as ever that its coming easily out of a tap and that the kettle will do in a few minutes what the top of the wood burner would take nearly 30 to do. As I pour the freshly boiled water into my cup I will call to my teens that the school day IS nearly over and that time draws near when we shall all spill outside with the dogs. The cold air will hit the breath from us and it will feel a welcome embrace that we come back into, not a constricting prison. As with most things it is a matter of finding the best perspective to see the situation from.
From this very old house to yours, I wish you peace and resilience, good humour and patience as we head into more days like those that we have already under our belts. As long as we all keep busy in the ways we can individually find, we will be alright.
A big thank you to my lovely sister for writing this heartfelt piece! We will be back with another guest post next Friday!
The Glorious Outsiders 