The drama is set to Everything by Lifehouse, and even though, thankfully, I've never been in remotely like the situation of that woman, it still makes me feel guilty about things that I have done in the past that have been bad for me, bad for other people, or just plain stupid.For those with a slightly black sense of humour, the “101 uses for...” series of books attempts to find things to do with, traditionally, a dead cat. But in this book the author has decided to use meerkats – one of the nation’s favourite animals in recent years.
The book is full of pictures of meerkats being used as book stands, fairground rides, clothes pegs, tent poles, spy cameras, and, rather disturbingly, as stockings. Unlike the cat books, the meerkats were coloured in, standing out from the black and white line drawings and taking away some of the fun of trying to spot the dead animal.
It was an entertaining enough book, but for the price, I couldn’t help but feel that it was just an attempt to cash in on the current craze for meerkats.
101 Uses for a Dead Meerkat by Massimo Fenati
£9.99, published by Boxtree.
ISBN 0752227924
I absolutely love the new Twining's Tea advert with its beautiful animation and the soundtrack of Wherever You Will Go by Charlene Soraia. I don't know about something I listen to when I'm happy, but the song makes me feel happy and uplifted.
Starting out gently, this story of spooky goings-on in a village church by Christian author John Thomas make for a spine-tingling read.
There are pieces of classical music that will make me cry, and I know there are several songs as well that I've heard as backing in films that have made me cry, but the one that leaps out is from the recent Phantom of the Opera film, when Christine agrees to stay with the Phantom to save Raoul's life.
This song makes me laugh, smile, want to sing and dance, and makes me think. It's Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrman.
I was reading the obituaries of the local paper and came across this fascinating entry:
The Crazy Frog. I really hate The Crazy Frog. Part of the problem is that he's just plain annoying, and part of it was that he butchered Axel F, which is one of my favourite movie themes of all time.
I love Madonna's Crazy for You, and I think it would make a great 'first dance' song. I don't think it would be quite appropriate in a church wedding, but for the reception it would be perfect.
Just off the top of my head I'm going to say I don't really like the Lightning Seeds, but I've only heard one song of their that I know of, and that was Three Lions, which I really didn't like.
I think I'm going to plump for Never Forget, because it's a fantastic feel good song and I always remember going to a concert, finding my seat was really close to the stage, and singing along with Never Forget, waving my arms in the air, and leaving with a really good buzz.
An easy choice today - In Christ Alone has been one of the songs I've wanted at my funeral pretty much since the first time I heard it.
When I did an image search it brought up the expected pictures of cute toddlers and chubby babies, but this picture leaped out at me. I don't know if it's the expression on the woman's face, or just that it was different, but I'm going to use her as a character in a story.
meetings and trying to fit in sleep, I (foolishly!) decided to try Camp NaNoWriMo in July as well. This works on the same principals as the main NaNoWriMo in November, but happens throughotu the summer months.
I've changed my font colour especially for this post. Why? Well one of my guilty pleasures is Raise Your Glass by Pink. Aside from it giving me an excuse to turn my blog pink for a day, and to post the beautiful picture of cherry blossom over there, it's a loud song that I love to turn up to full volume and sing along with in the car. I've never done that outside of my car, and some people who know me would be astonished that I like the song at all, let alone that I'd sing along with it.
I love cats so I was really fascinated by this book telling the true-life story of Oscar, one of the resident cats at an old people’s nursing home in America.
The book follows Dr David Dosa, one of the staff, as he realises that Oscar seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing when patients are about to die and making sure that he sits with them at the end of their lives. His behaviour is so accurate that the staff even rely on him for a second opinion on occasion.
The book also looks at the condition of dementia, which many of the patients suffer with. A fascinating story with some lovely moments which cat lovers – and even some people who don’t like cats – will really enjoy.
Making the Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa
£7.99, published by Headline Review
ISBN 9780755318131
Back to the 1980s for this one and Kylie's first album - complete with big curly hair - for The Locomotion! This song had a silly dance that everybody could join in with and absolutely everyone at my middle school knew the words. It was obligatory for school discos and for parties, and all the girls wanted to be Kylie.
One of my favourite albums from a few years ago was Celine Dion's The Colour of my Love. The album had a lot of really good songs on it, including Refuse to Dance, which has a really interesting violin part. But I think my favourite song was Next Plane Out.I listen to the sound of the rain fallin' down my window
Prayin' for a gentle wind
To bring my baby back again
A Whole New World from Aladdin was the first duet I ever sang, and so of course it reminds me of the person I sang the duet with.
Advanced creative writing develops your writing ability by widening your generic range and developing your knowledge of style. The course works on the forms introduced in the Level 2 course Creative writing (A215) – fiction, poetry and life writing – and supplements these with dramatic writing, showing you how to write for stage, radio and film. You’ll explore how these scriptwriting skills might enhance your prose style, improve your writing across the range of forms, and further develop your individual style and voice. The course offers guidance on professional layouts for the dramatic media, and is a natural progression from A215.More here...
My final assignment for my OU course is due in at the start of June, so I'm working on that at the moment. I'm torn between whether to do the whole thing in fiction or whether to throw in a bit of autobiographical travel writing as well. And then I came up with an idea for a new novel, so now I'm wondering if I should use that instead. Decisions, decisions!
The Write For Japan book has gone on sale this week to raise money for the Red Cross's relief work in Japan. The book has 34 short stories by 34 different authors from all over the world, including my sci-fi story Generation Three.
Zen looked at the picture of herself and her family. Her dad looked out of place, his blond hair and blue eyes standing out among the Japanese features of the women in his life. For the first time Zen caught herself wondering what her life would have been like if her grandparents hadn’t decided to be part of the generation ship mission.
She went over to her bunk as the deceleration warning sounded. As she strapped herself in she noticed something white sticking out between the bunk above hers and the wall. She reached up and tugged at it, then frowned as she looked at the object in her hands. It was about the size of a small display unit, but it was made of thin pieces of... Zen hesitated for a moment, trying to remember the word from her history lessons. Of course, it was paper, and the item was a book.
Carefully, she opened the front page. It was covered in writing; some in English and some in Japanese kanji characters.
‘Oh!’ the exclamation was entirely involuntary as she recognised the name at the bottom of the page. The book was a diary, and it had belonged to her grandmother.
Writing is so much easier when you have a deadline to write towards. Take naNoWriMo, for example. I've managed to complete the challenge - 50,000 words in 30 days - for the last four years, but trying to keep up that amount of writing at other times seems to be pretty much impossible for me.
All the authors are writing stories on the subject of destruction and/or hope. I don't know exactly what form the stories will take, but I'm looking forward to finding out. My story - Generation Three - is a sci-fi one set on board a generation ship, taking the human race to find another world after the Earth became uninhabitable.
I am a firm believer that in order to write well you have to read a lot, and not just a lot of one type of story, but a lot of every type of story. One way I get my daily fix is from Every Day Fiction, which drops a nice piece of flash fiction into my inbox every day. Sometimes I'm not particularly impressed with what I read, and other times I can't stop thinking about the stories, but because they come from writers all over the world they're always different.
When I was younger I would read He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra Princess of Power, then Thundercats, and from there I found Power Pack, which was the support strip.