anger

Guest Post #6 Dreaming Of Another World

~ ChanAtkins ~ 11 Comments

Dreaming Of Another World is a new feature on my blog, inspired by a piece I wrote during lockdown. I wondered whether other writers and bloggers felt like me during this strange time – that another world was possible and could just be glimpsed thanks to the stillness enforced on us. I’ve had a great response and each week I will be posting a piece written by a guest – sharing their thoughts, feelings and experiences on how lockdown changed their perceptions. Did it change their life in any way? Did it change their view of society and how it operates? Did it make them yearn for something else? This week please welcome author and blogger Marjorie Mallon. This feature was also inspired by her This Is Lockdown collection, of which I was honoured to be a part of.

Thank you Chantelle for a wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts about Dreaming of another World.

It’s been the strangest of times. Each morning I open my bedroom curtains and stare at our country park trees. We live on the edge of the park with such a beautiful vista of trees, flora and lakes…

During lockdown, it was so silent, no traffic noise, the skies were blue, no airplane trails.

Now, with restrictions easing, we return to a semblance of ‘normal.’ ‘Normal’ has become a careless word; applied to this dear planet we call home. The sky has lost its virgin blueness, the sound of traffic is back, humming with incessant noise, a reminder of the pollution it will bring.

How to cope? I create. I don’t paint; I wish I could. I admire artists so much! Instead, I wander off and indulge in amateur photography. Or I commune with nature. I have a new hobby! I plant vegetables, grow wildflowers from seed, and bake bread. I’ve had great success with courgettes, cucumber, herbs, and spinach.

How to cope? I create. I don’t paint; I wish I could. I admire artists so much! Instead, I wander off and indulge in amateur photography. Or I commune with nature. I have a new hobby! I plant vegetables, grow wildflowers from seed, and bake bread. I’ve had great success with courgettes, cucumber, herbs, and spinach.

My tomatoes are slow, green, and tiny, but the plants are growing. I hope the tiny green tomatoes may yield some edible ones soon!

Somehow the daily routine of planting, digging, and nurturing my vegetable garden has become an unexpected pleasure! As has taking up yoga again, which I’ve always had a fondness for. Both of these activities make me feel a deep connection to the earth, (a journey that I began with tai chi and mindfulness training.) This connection to mother nature blossoms as I check my vegetables, or adopt a yoga pose.

I’ve always enjoyed baking cakes and puddings. Progressing to bread baking isn’t so much of a stretch! It’s satisfying to eat your own creations, to knead, and watch them rise.

My way of staving off anxiety and depression is to keep busy. I write, immersing myself in new projects. I normally write YA Fantasy, poetry, flash fiction, and short stories. Recently, I compiled and released an anthology, my first entitled, This Is Lockdown. Chantelle, (along with many other talented writers, authors and creatives,) kindly contributed to the anthology with a piece on her thoughts and fears at this time.

After I published the anthology, I missed the daily routine of writing diaries, short pieces and poetry. I can’t say I enjoyed the editing and formatting stage, but at least it kept me occupied! For a while, I felt quite lost.

Now, it’s time for new writing projects… and old editing jobs that I have neglected. Anything to take my mind off COVID19. I’m gearing up for Halloween! Autumn is my favourite season. It seems appropriate to write horror short stories and poems. COVID19 is a horror story set in an all too familiar reality.

And yet, there have been so many unexpected positives. I’ve spent so much quality time with my grown-up daughters and my husband. I wonder how I’ll cope when my daughters return to their studies and I’m left with hubby dearest! My eldest is starting teacher training in Scotland, my youngest is returning to University in Manchester. I will miss them both so much.

I’m incensed at how this virus has affected our youngsters’ education. With university fees so high, £9,000, (predominantly now on-line,) plus crippling rent and all the rest. How will studying online impact students? Especially those with mental health and support issues who can’t cope without the help of face-to-face interaction from their personal tutors and lecturers?

Students who graduated this summer have had no graduation ceremony and are struggling to find jobs, sending off fruitless application after application.

And the stress of home schooling followed by the exam fiasco. I can’t begin to imagine how stressful that must have been for pupils and parents.

The elderly, and those shielding, suffer such loss of confidence. I saw my dear father this summer. A year ago, he was in great spirits. At his ninetieth birthday party he sang to our waitress in Russian, a language he’d learnt during his National Service. Now, he seems diminished, his confidence shattered by a virus that he cannot fight. I’m so saddened, I just hope that somehow he will continue to dance in his living room, tell jokes and stories as he has done so many times before.

And culture, music, drama, the bedrock of society. What of them? Who is keeping these much-loved darlings alive? I can’t imagine a world without them. I don’t want to imagine that. Yet, the pubs have opened at the first opportunity… Crowded, full of people drinking alcohol and forgetting to social-distance. Local pubs vary in their responses., some of them implement a high level of COVID safety, while others disregard safety.

How crazy is that?

Somehow, I just hope that we will find our way to a new, kinder normal. I’ve noticed some positives: neighbours expressing concern for one another, chatting, greeting each other in the street.

I don’t think we have a choice; we must learn from this. Surely, if COVID19 has taught us anything it has to be – an awareness of our fragility?

We must nurture our planet, or in time future generations will suffer for our stupidity and neglect.

We need to get back to basics. Slow down, reflect more, and care for our environment, mindfulness has much to offer. I recommend it.

I fear for the future, truly I do.

A huge thank you to Marjorie for coming on the blog and contributing to this feature – but also for inspiring me to do it in the first place and for being supportive and enthusiastic about my idea. If you would like to find out more about Marjorie and her writing, her author bio and links are below! Please get in touch if you would like to take part in Dreaming of Another World.

Author Bio:

I am an author who has been blogging for many moons at my lovely blog home, Kyrosmagica. My interests include writing, poetry, photography, and alternative therapies. My favourite genres to write are: Fantasy YA, Paranormal, Ghost and Horror Stories and I love writing various forms of magical poetry and micro poetry – haiku and Tanka and flash fiction.

It is one of my greatest pleasures to read and I have written over 180 reviews.

I was born on the 17th of November in Lion City: Singapore, second child and only daughter to my parents, Paula and Ronald. I grew up in a mountainous court in the Peak District in Hong Kong with my elder brother Donald.

I’m a member of the professional international writing group: The Society of Children’s Writers and Book Illustrators.

I run a supportive group for authors and bloggers with author D G Kaye on Facebook: Authors/Bloggers Rainbow Support Club

I’ve contributed articles/writing to various sites including: Literary Lightbox (Inspiration) and poetry to Spillwords – Magic of The Dragonfly.

I work for an international sixth form and live in Cambridge, England.

Authors Books= Kyrosmagica Publishing

YA Fantasy http://myBook.to/TheCurseofTime

Poetry, Prose and Photography: http://mybook.to/MrSagittarius

Anthology set during Lockdown: http://mybook.to/Thisislockdown

Anthologies:

Forthcoming Releases:- Spellbound compiled by bestselling author Dan Alatorre features my short story The Twisted Sisters. It is available to pre-order and releases 14th October by Great Oak Publishing. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08DM83XKR/

Guest Post #4 – Dreaming Of Another World

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Dreaming of Another World is a new feature on my blog, inspired by a piece I wrote last month. I wondered if other creatives felt like me during lockdown…that another world could just be glimpsed as the pollution cleared and the traffic stilled. I reached out to writers and bloggers to ask how lockdown affected their vision for the future. Has the experience changed them or the way they live their life and if so, how? The next guest post is from author Celia Micklefield. Here she discusses how anger often got in the way of her writing during lockdown…

My Covid Year

I give my sincere thanks to Chantelle for the opportunity to put my thoughts together and write this piece. Since February my ‘Covid-World’ experience has been bugging me. I haven’t been able to organise my thinking or my writing for quite some time now. As a result, my work-in-progress, A Measured Man isn’t as close to The End as it should be. That isn’t because I don’t know the plot. I know it very well. But, actually writing it has been beyond me.

Instead, I’ve been on a mission to bake the perfect loaf of bread, grow the juiciest fruit and vegetables and keep my dahlias pristinely dead-headed and voluptuous. I’ve needed physical occupation. Even though my CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome) lays me low some days I’ve wanted to be doing something as long as it didn’t involve too much thinking. CRPS affects my immune system. Neurological pain wears you out and inflames your entire nervous system. I usually catch everything that’s doing the rounds so at the outset of this new virus I knew I’d have to be careful. I couldn’t settle though, to work at my next novel. I wasn’t able to sit still. Beating up a lump of dough and slicing green beans or hacking off wilted flower heads replaced my normal daily activities. I think it’s because I’ve been angry.

Lockdown loaf!

I don’t want to get too political. As a writer of fiction it isn’t appropriate and I wouldn’t want to alienate potential readers. My characters can have strongly-held views: Celia Micklefield, the author very rarely comments but as myself, Celia Smith, I can’t help wondering what happened to common sense last winter. Viruses don’t travel by themselves: they need a host. People carry them. So why didn’t we stop people travelling way back in February to give us more time to prepare for the inevitable? We were completely without the means or even a decent plan to cope with such an emergency even though a 2016 exercise had pointed out the risks and pitfalls. So, we fell into the pit and panicked.

I began ‘shielding’ long before the instruction. Similarly, the local care home went into lockdown and banned visiting. They already had their own stock of PPE. They refused to take in anyone from hospital even though they’d been instructed to do so. Their staff don’t use public transport because there isn’t any to reach many of our villages. We’ve been lucky being quite isolated here in Norfolk. We recorded a relatively low number of casualties in the population and in care homes but we expect the recent influx of holiday makers will change all that.

It seems the current pandemic has brought out the best and worst of humanity. Some thought their holiday was more important than the risk of spreading disease. Many chose to ignore guidelines and did as they pleased. Yet there have been stories of amazing selflessness and goodwill. People were more patient in the supermarket, even in the car park. Our two local pubs organised food parcel deliveries for folk who had to stay at home. Eventually my partner and I were allowed to visit his mother at the care home where we sat, appropriately distanced and wearing masks in the garden marquee. We worry what will happen when the money from the sale of her house runs out. It still winds me up that single people (her husband died two years ago) diagnosed with any form of dementia have to sell their home to pay for their care. Imagine if cancer patients were treated the same -or any other chronic condition? Surely there’d be a revolution.

Maybe that’s what we need: a revolution. Not in the violent battle sense but in our values and attitudes. I’m reminded of what the anthropologist, Margaret Mead said about the earliest signs of civilisation in ancient cultures. Her students expected her to name things like cooking pots, fishing hooks and simple tools. Instead she explained how skeletal evidence of a broken femur which had then healed was the first sign of civilisation. Animals who break a leg do not survive long enough in the wild for the bone to heal. They can’t run from danger or hunt for food and drink. A healed human femur shows that somebody else stayed with the person who was in difficulty, helped them to safety and tended them until they were well again. Have some of us forgotten that it’s in our genes to be compassionate and offer kindness to others?

I grieve for society. In a speech in 1977 U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey said the following:

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

I believe this year has shown us just how broken we are. We cannot continue to build our world systems of government based on a need for continuing economic growth that mostly benefits those already rich. How can we keep on building luxury apartments when there are so many without any home at all? Why are we still buying products wrapped in plastic? Why do so many people always want the latest upgrade of everything? I haven’t even mentioned climate change. That’s an even bigger catastrophe waiting to happen.

Sociologists say it takes 50 years to change people’s attitudes. If that’s the case I won’t be alive to see the changes I’d wish for but maybe I’ve witnessed the beginning of it. Hooray for the young people who successfully forced the U-turn on the ridiculous algorithm designed to give students results for an exam they didn’t have the opportunity to sit. Three cheers for the shoppers in my local supermarket who refuse to use the self-scan machines because somebody lost the chance of a job at an extra cash out. Good for you if you didn’t buy any clothes you didn’t really need this year.

See? I told you I was angry. People I thought I knew well have shocked me with their selfishness. People in the public eye have stunned me with their incompetence. There now, I’ve got it off my chest. Maybe I can get back to novel writing soon. In the meantime I must concentrate on the positives of my personal Covid year: I bake loaves of bread I can be proud of and my dahlias are show-stoppers.

Author biography

I first began writing in earnest after I retired from teaching and went to live in the south of France. I sold short stories to a UK women’s magazine and was offered a contract by the first literary agent who read samples of Trobairitz the Storyteller, my second novel. Unfortunately it didn’t work out. I was so disappointed I decided to continue self-publishing as I had with my first novel, Patterns of Our Lives. I suppose you could classify my work as Women’s Fiction but they’re all different sub genres: a saga set partly during WW2, literary fiction, a psychological mystery, dark humour. I love reading a variety of genres and I think I’d be bored if I had to write the same kind of book every time.

When I started out I knew nothing about book bloggers, blog tours and the like and just kept writing not really going about marketing my work in any sort of sensible way at all and missing out on building important relationships. A series of difficult circumstances brought me back to the UK to live with friends where I wrote my only non fiction book, People Who Hurt, abusers and codependents looking for answers, a book to help others understand the nature of toxic relationships.

Now I live a quiet life in Norfolk near the east coast of England and I’m content looking after my vegetable garden and writing, albeit slowly. I have a neurological condition called CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome) which developed while I was living in France after I was hit and knocked down by a careless driver. My bones mended but my central nervous system didn’t. Pain is my constant companion but I’ve learned how to deal with it. On low pain days I write as much as I can.

I have a website http://www.celiamicklefield.com and a Facebook author page in my author name. You’re very welcome to visit and maybe leave a comment.

My three novels and two collections of short stories are available on all Amazon platforms. I hope to make a better job of marketing my fourth novel, A Measured Man when it’s ready.

Link to Amazon UK page

Thank you so much to Celia for taking the time to write a guest post for this feature! I really appreciate it. It’s proving to be incredibly interesting to find out how other writers felt during the lockdown about society in general and where we go from here. If you would like to write a fiction or non-fiction piece for the blog on the theme Dreaming of Another World then do get in touch!

Dear Forty-Something-Year-Old Woman…

~ ChanAtkins ~ 47 Comments

Dear Forty-something-year-old woman,

Who didn’t see it coming…who thought it would never happen. Who once looked at other ‘middle-aged’ ladies and couldn’t believe that would ever be you. Because it seemed so impossible and you felt so invincible. In your teens, and twenties, ready to take on the world, believing you could ‘have it all’, even your thirties were a breeze compared to this.

I see you, forty-something-year old woman, I pass you every day on the school run. Your car passes mine, and as we make way for each other, we briefly wave a harassed thank you. We pass in the playground, trying to remember to smile whilst realising we have toothpaste on our top and our child should be dressed in mufti…

I see you driving your car, letting me go, just like I let you go, as if there is this silent, unspoken agreement among forty-something mums, that we will help each other out where we can. You smile in exhausted thanks and I smile back. No problem. I know the feeling.

Dear forty-something-year old woman, I see you tapping into your phone while waiting for your child to finish their club and I see the disapproving glares you get from grandmothers and grandfathers. They don’t know what I know. That you are receiving text messages from your teenager, who might miss their bus and might also need picking up, even though that means driving across the other side of town, right into rush hour traffic. That you are answering emails from work as they pop up endlessly on your screen, because you might as well deal with them now so that later you can give yourself to your kids. That you are paying bills with a tap and a swipe, or answering messages to keep your business going.

I see you in the supermarket looking lost as you naviagate the ailsles, torn as always between pleasing everyone, keeping them healthy and balancing the bank account. Someone phones you wanting something from you. Texts bing and vibrate. You don’t want to be there, or anywhere. You want to run and hide.

But you do it all anyway, as if getting married and giving birth automatically allocated the most mundane jobs your way. Choosing the meals, planning the menu, writing the list, driving everywhere, finding a parking space, traipsing the aisles and secretly wanting to ram your trolley into every inconsiderate person who gets in your way. Packing the shopping into the bags for life as fast as the checkout lady can throw it at you. Trying not to displease anyone, and all the time, wishing you could just scream.

I see you when you go jogging, fitting it in when you can, which is never as often as you think you should…I see the guilt on your face that you are doing something just for you, to make you feel better, something that takes you away from your family. And I see your face when you pass your reflection and wonder what happened to the old you, why it’s so hard to lose weight these days, why no matter how much you run, or diet, it’s still just the same, like your body is determined to turn you into a frump.

I see you at the doctor’s surgery, wondering whether you are wasting their time and yours, but worried all the same, about bulging veins, or hot flushes or misbehaving periods. I see you following health advice on social media, noting supplements that might help, whilst all the time knowing deep inside that nothing will help apart from screaming.

Dear forty-something-year-old woman, hot and tired and red-faced, your teenage hormones are back to haunt you. A second adolescence, a rerun of puberty, from bad skin and weight gain, to rollercoaster emotions. One minute you are as high as the sky, without any wine, high on life, smiling to yourself, content and in a perfect dream, everything makes you happy, everything is to hope for and dream for. The next moment you are exploding from the inside, red rage billowing in your guts and spewing like fire up to your flame-red chest. You are gritting your teeth, afraid to let go, afraid to do anything more than sigh or roll your eyes, because if you do, if you open your mouth, if you let it out, give voice to every little thing that has ever pissed you off…it might never end, you might never stop. And then you are crashing, falling, spiralling violently down to earth and after that, just sadness. Almost a comfortable friend. Someone you remember from the past. Tears in your eyes at almost everything. You want to be alone with this. You need to be alone.

Insecurity, self-doubt, urges to self-destruct. What you really need is time alone, or with a friend, with another self-depracating forty-something-year-old woman, who feels the same, who knows what you know and can help put names to the feelings. You want to explode, you want to be seen but also invisible.

But you can’t. Not when there are children to pick up, and playground etiquette to observe, emails to read and answer, lists to tick off, money to save, beds to make, washing to hang out and bring back in and place on the stairs for everyone but you to ignore, toilets to clean, gardens to tend, dogs to walk, homework to supervise, bills to pay, shopping to do, Christmas to plan and in the middle of it all stands you, swimming, while the world spins around you.

I know you sometimes think that you are not good enough. That you will never win, never do it all or have it all, never feel thin enough, that the to-do list will never end, that you’ll always be lacking, torn between kids and work and relationships. I know you fear so much. That your mind turns and your stomach churns with the great unknown, with climate change and Brexit, with plastic pollution and school funding, with things you have no control over, things you want to protect your children from. It keeps you awake at night and hits you cold at the strangest of times. What are we doing here? What is this all about? Is this what I thought life would be?

Forty-something years old…but still you. Still young. Tougher than you know. Shining brighter than you realise. So much would fall apart without you at the centre. Forty-something, but still something…still someone.

Dear forty-something-year-old woman, let’s be friends. Let’s see each other. Let’s smile and wave and meet for coffee and wine. Let’s name our grievances and laugh about them. Let’s swap horror stories and feel less alone. Let’s remind each other that though so much is behind us, including our youth, there is still so much more ahead. That it can only get easier, that the best way through is to laugh and scream and cry and sing. That we are still us and that sometimes we need help and that sometimes we just need each other.

When Books Make Me Angry…

~ ChanAtkins ~ 9 Comments

I love reading. I am a proud book worm and always have been. I read a lot of books, sometimes averaging two a week. I put one down and pick the next one straight up. I read books I’ve stumbled across myself, books I’ve been recommended, books I’ve been sent, and books I’ve chosen to read and review for UBR. I don’t think of myself as a picky reader, although I generally try to stay away from romance and most sci-fi, and I have never felt enticed to pick up erotica. Apart from that, I will pretty much give anything a go, although as you all know, what I am always looking for is the character…

Anyway, books make me happy, reading makes me happy. Words make me happy, as do made-up worlds and wonderful characters and plots. But sometimes, just sometimes, the opposite happens and books make me angry. Really angry. Want to know why? Then read on for a list of my pet peeves when reading a book…

  1. Telling rather than showing. I find this so annoying. I am not stupid. I do not need to be told things I can work out for myself. I do not need to be given a character’s whole back story in one go, or a giant list of their general opinions, or their inner thought processes. I want the character to do this for me! Not the author. I do actually start to feel quite angry when an author tells me things I would like to have gathered for myself. I might need the author to give me a brief description of the characters physical attributes, but I don’t need the narrative to tell me if they are bossy, dominant, paranoid or selfish. I can work that out for myself by the way they behave and speak and interact with others. I also really, really don’t need to know their entire life story thanks. Just the parts that are relevant and not all in one go!
  2. Info-dumping. This is linked to the above. When an author dumps a whole load of information on you, basically because they can’t work out a suitable way for the characters or the plot to explain something to the reader. So they will explain it for you, very nicely, over several pages, without dialogue or interaction between said characters, until you start skipping bits and nearly die of boredom. This probably makes me angrier than anything else. Please, if there is a lot of information to get out, think up other ways to do it! Spread it out, get the characters and the plot to help ease the load, take your time, be clever, be patient, leave clues. If you try to get out a load of information all in one go, whether it’s technical stuff you think is vital, or back story for a character, or history or whatever it is, the reader will get bogged down with it and bored and will more than likely forget it all anyway.
  3. Mixing tenses. I have come across this a few times lately, and sadly it has mostly been when reading indie books. I know it can get a bit confusing if you are writing in present tense, but the character is describing something that happened in the past but there really is no excuse for continuously getting this wrong. It might take a few more beta readers to pick up on mistakes like this. I can get over the odd mistake or typo, where the author has used the wrong tense by mistake, but if it is happening again and again throughout the book, it is worrying and confusing and basically makes me angry.
  4. Poor dialogue. One of my top peeves when reading. Lack of dialogue can also annoy me, but I’ll get over this if there is a reason for it, ie the characters don’t or can’t talk much. But if they talk a lot, and the dialogue is poor, I will get annoyed. Poor dialogue is obviously a matter of personal taste and opinion. I always ask myself, do people actually talk like this in real life? Also, is the dialogue fitting to the character? Is it also unique to the character? I recently read a great book with great characters, but I couldn’t help wincing a bit every time they spoke. They sounded too old for their ages and it made me question whether the author had spent any time around young people recently. I think dialogue needs to be researched like anything else. It needs attention. What they say, and how they say it and why they say it, need to be considered, otherwise, it can all start to feel a bit cringy.
  5. Unlikeable characters. By this, I mean I just don’t like them at all and don’t care what happens to them. This saddens me. Maybe the plot was a fantastic roller coaster of twists and turns. Maybe the writing was spectacular, the prose beautiful and the style unique. But for some reason, I didn’t get to know the characters, which meant I didn’t get to fall in love with them. For me, I need to feel like these people are worth me investing my time and thoughts in. They might not be perfect, they might even be totally evil, that’s fine, but I have to feel like I am on a journey with them. Even if they are despicable, I have to have some amount of empathy for them and their actions. They need to go on some kind of journey which sees them develop, for me to properly care. I feel robbed when this does not happen!
  6. Sex scenes. Call me a prude, I don’t care. I don’t like sex scenes. I don’t like reading detailed accounts of how the characters get it on. I don’t mind them getting it on, and if they do get it on, I obviously want to know. I might even be really hoping they get it on, but I don’t need to have explained to me in graphic detail, which is why I avoid romance and erotica. I just find those kinds of scenes boring. I want to skip over them and get back to the story. What makes me really angry is when books that are not marketed as romance or erotica, throw in really graphic sex scenes. It’s not what I’m looking for when reading, so to find it by surprise is quite off-putting. I’m not a total prude, I don’t mind romantic scenes if they are done well and if they add to the development of the characters and the plot. I don’t mind a bit of kissing or fondling, I’ve even written a few scenes like this into some of my books. Undoubtedly, love and sex creep into human stories and we can’t avoid it. I just personally don’t want or need a graphic description of the sex acts that go on for pages and pages…Yawn.

Now, what about you? I know these are all very personal peeves. I know that some people get really angry with first person narration! (No way!!) And some people hate too much dialogue. We’re all different readers, and we all have our preferences. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What makes you angry when reading?