PDFelement: Guest Post from Celine Liao at Wondershare.com

Tags

format, PDF editor, PDFelement, writingtip

PDFelement: How Important is a Good PDF Editor to My Writing?

By Celine Liao of https://pdf.wondershare.com/

PDFs have been around for a long time now. Professionals and students frequently use PDFs on a daily basis to handle their documents. Non-professional users also have to use PDF files once in a while, just like we do when writing our own books. We also need to format them with illustrations and text.

Sometimes I have to upload many manuscripts and mark many papers, or use references for my writing.  I not only want to read as well as edit and update in a specific case, but I also might want to put a security check on a document containing confidential information.  It’s then I realise how important it is to have a PDF editing tool.

There are several tools in the market to read, edit and manage a PDF file: Adobe Acrobat, NitroPro, and PDFelement. After I tested free trials of them, I would like to say that the PDFelement is better for me and my writing.

A very commonly known PDF editor is Adobe Acrobat. It is a very well-known tool in the market, but there are a few aspects that do not go with user comfort.

Though Adobe Acrobat offers you many features, it is very costly to keep it as it has a high monthly subscription. The other setback is that even if you only need Adobe Acrobat, you still have to purchase the complete package that includes other elements that are not required.

If you consider the cost effectiveness with available features, then you have a better option in the market while spending less.  Though the Acrobat is the creator of PDF format, now there is a better tool that edits PDFs in a far better and professional way.

The PDFelement is the a tool that offers you several state of the art facilities to edit, update, convert and/or secure documents with an economical price tag.

The crucial point is to know the needs that are to be addressed while editing, updating, converting and/or securing a PDF file.

It is a very handy and practical tool that allows you to do things such as:

Ø  Read, edit and save PDF files.

Ø  Add, replace, delete, move, resize and/or rotate any graphic content.

Ø  Create interactive forms and also cleverly recognizes the form fields.

Ø  Ease of securing the document with a password option.

Ø  Ease of converting PDF documents into Word, HTML, Text, and Image.

Ø  Can fetch specific data from single or multiple PDF documents and convert them into a Word or Excel file.

Ø  Batch processing documents with different features, such as water marking, bate numbers and data fetch.

Ø  Option of a digital signature for approving documents and other files.

Ø  Ease to insert page numbers, bate numbers, page elements and book markings.

Ø  Making text editable on images with OCR.

Ø  Can also run OCR in user defined fields on scanned documents and images.

These above mentioned features have made the PDFelement a unique tool that helps the user almost in every aspect.

If you are looking to remove, resize, add and/or rotate your graphic content on email, presentation slides or any document, then it is possible with no hassle at all.

The form creating facility in PDFelement lets you create forms of any style and can also choose from different templates. It also recognizes the form fields automatically.

Now the user can secure its documents with confidential information or viewable to specific members by putting a password on the document.

A PDF file can be converted into many other file formats as Word, HTML, text and/or Image. You can also fetch specified information from single or multiple documents. It is now very easy to add a page number, and bate numbers for indexing and booking or marking PDF documents. This is very important for my writing and learning.

The latest OCR option is one state of the art feature with which you can extract text or make the text editable from any image scanned, or imported from any file.

PDFelement is a very easy to work tool that saves time and hassle. It has proved its professional approach for PDF annotation with very economical spending.

Now PDFelement has a discount of 50% OFF.  You can test it free for your laptop or download app to try if you like it.

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Hyperlinks for you:

PDFelement: https://pdf.wondershare.com/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=steviet3-peblq&utm_campaign=wspe

50% OFF: https://pdf.wondershare.com/promotion/pdfelement-on-sale.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=steviet3-peblq&utm_campaign=wspe

Download app:

https://pdf.wondershare.com/pdfelement-app-landing.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=steviet3-peblq&utm_campaign=wspe

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Thanks to Celine Liao for this guest blog.  If you would like your post to be featured on my blog, please email stevie@steviet-turner-author.co.uk with ‘Guest Post’ in the subject box.  You can also subscribe to my mailing list at: https://www.facebook.com/StevieTurnerAuthor/app/100265896690345/

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Guest Post – The Foolishness of Love, by Jim Webster.

I’m pleased to feature Jim Webster’s short story ‘The Foolishness of Love’ today.  You can find more stories by Jim on his Tallis Steelyard blog:

The foolishness of love.

Have you noticed how there are some men who seem to be fated to be a sad disappointment to their wives yet if they behaved as their wife seems to demand, then they’d end up divorced in short order?

It was the intriguing story of Caster Jessip which reminded me of this truth. Caster was a peddler. He dealt in frills and furbelows, gimcrack jewellery and the off-cuts of machine-made lace which he passed off as perfect for edging and finishing.

He’d started life as the youngest son of peasant farmer on a small farm south of Port Naain. He had soon realised that all life held in store for him was backbreaking toil and no reward. So he’d borrowed some money from the pocket of a drunk in the Hellion’s Arms and had used that as his original business capital. It must be said that due to the guilt he felt over this action, he’d bought that habitually intoxicated gentlemen far more drinks over the years than the original loan really warranted.

Still he was quite a good peddler. Now most peddlers sell a wide variety of goods, most of them very worthy. Both the lady and gentleman of the house can easily justify the purchase of pins, needles, salt and an ever dependable bottle of Tody Whissup’s patent laxative. Caster on the other hand sold nothing a lady could justify buying. So he approached his customers in an entirely different manner to the average workaday salesman. Caster flirted unmercifully with them. He winked, he made suggestive comments, he flattered and cajoled. It shouldn’t have worked; he should have had his ears boxed. But somehow, for reasons nobody has ever put a finger on, it worked well. Perhaps he never actually said anything to offend? Perhaps it was because he was not too proud to change a dirty nappy, help with the washing up, or even clean windows, provided the target of his sales technique remained within earshot. He was selling ‘the dream.’ He would do this whether the lady was alone or whether her husband was present. Indeed husbands tended to find the whole process immensely entertaining, and the guffaws of a husband normally doubled Caster’s takings.

That is how Caster met his own wife, Hillit. She was swept off her feet by his talk and gave as good as she got. The realisation crept over Caster that he was entering dangerous and uncharted territories, but he pressed on, and eventually they were married.

Now their marriage wasn’t a bad one. They had two bonny children and were doing well enough. Yet Hillit always felt a sense of vague dissatisfaction. The exciting rogue she had married turned out to be a decent man and a good husband. She realised that this wasn’t really cause for complaint. (Many a woman has discovered the exact opposite, and they are the ones to be pitied.)

When Caster arrived home he wanted no more than to enjoy his lady wife’s cooking, play with his children, and tell them stories when they went to bed. Indeed it might well be that Hillit could, in truth, describe him as boring.

I confess that this is something I too am familiar with. I will spend an evening being fascinating, witty, and sweeping people off their feet with roguish charm. When I get home I just want to sit in silence staring into my coffee mug. Shena has commented on it. Still as she also said, there is only so much roguish charm a girl can take and in all candour, the silent Steelyard is not without his place in her life.

For Caster things would doubtless have continued well enough, until his wife’s mother moved in with them. Caster had never really known her; almost by definition, when he was courting Hillit his efforts had been put into separating the object of his affections from her mother.

Unfortunately it meant that the old lady didn’t really know Caster. So she seemed to assume that his rapscallion persona was the real Caster. She would regularly abuse him as an adulterer, a breaker up of happy families and a seducer of innocent maidens. Not only was Caster innocent of the charges, he frankly would have been at a loss to achieve any of them.

Still the accusations of the old termagant and her constant berating him made home life uncomfortable for him. He took to spending less time at home and more time on the road. Unfortunately this merely gave the harridan even more evidence to use against him. Her constant refrain was that her family had always held to the highest moral standards, so how had her daughter become entangled with such a reprobate. Indeed it got so bad that Caster began to suspect that the old woman was driving a wedge between him and Hillit. Indeed he was spending so little time at home, when he did eventually meet his wife, she was occasionally distant, and also took to referring, in censorious tones, to wandering persons of immoral habit.

Now Caster was at his wits end. He was on his way home after a longer than usual trip away. At this point in the trip he would traditionally be looking forward to returning to the loving bosom of his family, yet he found himself dreading his homecoming.

Hence, to put off that evil hour, he directed his steps to the bar of the Hellion’s Arms. He purchased a tankard of their heavy ale and sat down in a corner to drink it. He had a vague hope that by the time he got to the bottom of the tankard, his life might make a little more sense.

He was on his third tankard when the stranger sat down at his table. So far his attempts to come up with a way of improving his domestic circumstances had come to naught. He greeted the stranger in an absent minded sort of way and turned his attention back to the ale.

“You from round here young man?”

Caster abandoned his increasingly fuzzy attempts to think and gave his companion his full attention. “Born and bred sir.”

His companion was a generation older than  him and even in old age was tall and ‘distinguished.’ He’d obviously been a handsome man in his younger days.

“You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Caster nodded sadly.

The stranger continued, “A sharp young fellow like yourself, what on earth can be the matter?”

Caster was minded to just mutter something incoherent, but the stranger summoned the woman who kept the bar, and a fourth tankard of heavy was placed in front of him. Feeling somewhat indebted by this spontaneous generosity Caster poured out his heart.

The older man listened courteously. “Alas, if it is matters of love, then I’m afraid I’m the last person to advise you.”

With this he gestured to the barmaid and two more tankards materialised. Caster hastily emptied the one he was clutching lest the next be whisked away as swiftly as it had materialised, and settled down to listen to the old man’s story. It was a long, meandering and maudlin tail, of love, passion, and loss. Caster rather let the tale wash over him until the old man mentioned a name.

“Sorry I missed the name.”

The old man stopped and looked at him. “Hildi Murewall.” He sighed, a long and deep sigh. “A beautiful innocent creature, I loved her more than life itself.”

Caster was still in shock, “One of the Affiton village Murewalls?”

The old man mopped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Yes, and to my shame I got her pregnant and abandoned her. I heard she had a daughter called Hillit, but I never had the courage to go back and face her.”

“Hildi Murewall, from Affiton?”

The old man looked at Caster with the expression you find on the face of somebody who has just discovered he is mistakenly drinking with the village idiot. “Yes.”

“And your name sir?”

“Wilan Burt, but I don’t think that matters.” He was speaking to an empty chair.

Caster drained his tankard as he ran out of the bar. He ran the remaining two miles home. This wasn’t entirely to his advantage, in that when his mother-in-law saw him, she got to berate him without interruption. Finally he got his breath back. “Where’s Hillit?”

The pure normality of the question shook the old woman so much that she actually answered it. “She went into the village to get some salt and spices.”

Caster pulled himself to his full height (a gesture slightly spoiled because he had to lean on the door frame to keep upright,) “Woman, I’ve met your lover, Wilan Burt. The father of your bastard child sits drinking in the appropriately named Hellion’s Arms.”

The old woman reeled back as if he had struck her and disappeared into the house. Two minutes Caster saw her slip out of the back door carrying her few belongings wrapped in a blanket.

Caster was still sitting on the front step as his lady wife came into view, their two children clinging to her skirts. To be honest he’d rather dreaded the discussion that was now inevitable, Hillit was a dutiful daughter and he wasn’t sure how she’d take the news. As he frantically tried to come up with a tactful way of broaching the topic, Hillit said, “Caster, I don’t believe what I’ve just seen.”

“Why, what was that dearest?”

“My mother, hand in hand with an elderly man, skipping together down the road towards Port Naain.”

Guest Blogger Tanya Sen Writes of the Benefits of Dark Chocolate for Seniors

Tags

chocolate, healthy living, Old age

As a youngster I used to eat quite a lot of milk chocolate, but gave it up 20 years’ ago due to migraines.  I always found the taste of dark chocolate too bitter.  However, I’ve often read that dark chocolate can have health benefits, and in this guest blog today Tanya Sen gives some examples of benefits that will thrill all you chocolate-loving seniors (and juniors for that matter) out there.  You can find out more about Tanya by visiting her social media sites below:

Tanya Sen

Tanya Sen quit her well-paying job to follow her dreams and become a writer. She is now creating and managing digital content to build relationships for organizations and individuals. An avid traveller, having visited more than 40 countries. She loves to cook and try different cuisines. She now lives in Goa, India.

https://twitter.com/tanyasen990

https://www.instagram.com/tanyasen990/

https://plus.google.com/101074612794729384371

https://in.pinterest.com/tanyasen990/

https://www.reddit.com/user/tanyasen990

 

5 Health Benefits of Chocolate for Seniors

 

 

 

Popular all over the world for its delicious taste, chocolate is available in a wide variety of forms these days. However, it is no longer considered that chocolate’s only redeeming quality is its taste. Over the years, research has discovered that chocolates have several compounds that are beneficial to human health. It is no longer restricted to the young as well. Even seniors are being encouraged to consume some chocolate, especially the dark variety, to gain the benefits possible.

Here are some of those benefits.

Reduced Risks for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s is a dangerous degenerative disease to which the elderly are particularly susceptible. However, it has been noted that dark chocolate can have a role in decreasing the risks for this condition.

The flavonol content of dark chocolate can increase the flow of blood to the brain. As a result, it becomes easier for senior people to maintain their cognitive abilities. Even more remarkable is the fact that it will also be beneficial for those already diagnosed with the condition. Regular consumption of dark chocolate can improve brain function temporarily.

Prevention of Heart Disease

Senior people are at an increased risk for heart disease. This risk can be reduced through the consumption of dark chocolate. This food item contains several beneficial compounds which are capable of preventing the oxidation of LDL. LDL is more commonly referred to as the bad variety of cholesterol. As a result, it is possible for dark chocolate to reduce the risk of heart disease.

 Additionally, dark chocolate is known to be capable of reducing blood pressure. This, in turn, improves heart health. It is possible to gain all of these benefits by consuming only a little amount of chocolate every week.

Improvement of Good Cholesterol Levels

The benefits of dark chocolate on the heart do not extend to just preventing the effects of LDL. Instead, it is also capable of improving the levels of good cholesterol, also called HDL. HDL is capable of maintaining the health of the entire cardiovascular system including the arteries and the heart.

Enhancement of Mood

People do not like chocolate simply because it is delicious but also because of the effect it has on the mood. Dark chocolate is a rich source of tryptophan, an amino acid that is responsible for the production of serotonin. Additionally, it also has compounds that can produce endorphins. Endorphins and serotonins are chemicals that improve your mood and make you feel positive and happy.

This is particularly beneficial for senior people as they are at greater risk of depression and other negative moods and behaviors. Consumption of dark chocolate can greatly benefit them.

 Reduced Risk of Skin Cancer

The skin tends to thin out with age, thereby weakening the body’s resistance to skin cancer. Therefore, senior people are at increased risk of that condition. However, consumption of dark chocolate can significantly reduce your risks for skin cancer. This is due to the protection provided by the flavonols present in it.

The benefits of dark chocolate are certainly commendable. However, its consumption among seniors must be monitored as excess chocolate may result in other complications.

 

Guest Blog by Katrina Mountfort

 

Hi all, today fellow author and blogger Katrina Mountfort is writing about what she has learned from running a Kindle Scout campaign for her new book ‘The Lost Corner’.

Running a Kindle Scout campaign – what I’ve learned:

At the beginning of June I decided to have a shot at getting my latest novel published via Kindle Scout. From what I’ve heard, of other people’s experience with Kindle Press, they can sell a lot more of my books than I could manage on my own. I was delighted but shocked when my application was accepted within 12 hours of submission and so, a little unprepared, I started a 30 day campaign to gain as many nominations as possible. It’s been a huge learning curve but a useful one, so I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned so far:

1. A large proportion of my votes have come from direct traffic to the Kindle Scout site. So my first piece of advice is to polish your submission as much as possible. Make your one line description catchy. Invest in a professional cover. Proofread it again and again.
2. It’s a marathon not a sprint. My biggest mistake was to use all my big guns at the start of the campaign. Several friends shared it on Facebook all at once. This helped me make a splash and find myself in the ‘hot and trending’ section, but it’s hard to keep up that momentum. If I had the chance to start again, I’d have asked my friends to spread out their shares.
3. Book bloggers are the nicest people. My work schedule doesn’t allow me to blog regularly so I asked several people whose blogs I follow if they’d feature my campaign. They all said yes and each post has given me some votes. I’ve tried to spread them out so I’m featured in one blog per week of the campaign.
4. I’ve had mixed success with social media. Facebook has been far and away the best. Twitter has only given me a few page views. Some people have found Bing Bing and Headstarter useful but I haven’t got very far with them yet.
5. Although I find it excruciating to do so, you have to contact EVERYONE you know.
6. It’s not just a popularity contest. The point of getting a lot of votes is to get the judges to consider your work at the end. They’re not going to publish a seemingly popular book that will then get a lot of bad reviews so if other books seem to be ‘hot and trending’ more than yours, don’t despair.

If you’ve found this useful I’d be grateful if you could check out my campaign:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2KB0W6JT2O5KA

If you like what you see, please nominate me. If it’s accepted, you’ll all get a free electronic copy.

Finally I’d like to thank Stevie for her generosity in letting me post on this blog and wish her luck in her own Kindle Scout campaign for ‘The Porn Detective’! https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3IQ62RDNCFI3F

About me:

I am a UK-based author, living in York. My philosophy of life is that we only regret the things we don’t try.  When I hit forty, I decided it was time to fulfil my childhood dream of writing a novel. My first three novels, Future Perfect, Forbidden Alliance and Freedom’s Prisoners formed the speculative fiction Blueprint trilogy, and were published by Elsewhen Press. I love music, walking with my two Labradors, travel, wine, daffodils and Parma violets.

Find Katrina on the following web links:

Blog: https://herstoryblogspot.wordpress.com/

Website: http://www.katrinamountfort.com/

Publisher website: http://elsewhen.alnpetepress.co.uk/index.php/catalogue/author/katrina-mountfort/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatrinaMountfortAuthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/curlykats

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Katrina-Mountfort/e/B00MU1AEA8

New Book: ‘For the Greater Good’, by Colin Guest

I am pleased to be able to feature Colin Guest’s new book ‘For the Greater Good’ on my site today.

http://bookShow.me/B071R8B81K

When Jeff, a specialist in Black Operations, learns his brother has died while in police custody in Yemen, he wants answers. While he is in Yemen he gets involved in a plot to assassinate the self proclaimed president, as it seems this will benefit both the country and world peace and be for the greater good of all concerned.  He carries this out by use of a new and deadly effective method … using his skills to adapt innocent toys.

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Colin Guest was born in England in 1940, and became an expat worker in 1993, specialising in high-class interior fit-outs. After obtaining a contract down on the Mediterranean Coast in 1988, he had a house built, and lived there until after his wife’s death in 2007. He is now married to a Turkish lady and lives in Istanbul. His first book, “An Expats Experiences of Living in Turkey,” recently re-published, covers his living in Turkey for over 25 years. His second book, “Follow in the Tigerman’s Footsteps,” is intended to help readers discover that there is more to life than a boring 9-5 job. Although a memoir, it reads more like an adventure story, covering numerous life- threatening, crazy and hilarious incidents, which occurred while he lived a life most only dream. Colin’s latest publication, “Terror Holiday,” is based on events during the recent attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016.

Apart from writing books, Colin had an article published in a UK expat magazine, and over twelve articles published in online magazines. In between writing books, Colin also writes poems, with several well placed in online contests. Due to his deep concern about nature and the environment, Colin supports several organisations including, Sea Shepherd, and Care for the Wild/Born Free, with his adopting a tiger for the past ten years. After working as a volunteer at Wildlife Rescue/Rehabilitation centers in South Africa and Thailand, he recommends this as a way of giving something back to nature.

You can check out Colin Guest’s website by clicking on the link below:

https://www.turkmed.wordpress.com

Guest Blog, 1st February: Travel Troubles (part 2) by Frank Parker

Last time we learned how Frank became lost on Paddington  Station as a 10 year old boy.  Now read how a simple mistake led to him becoming lost in a  Surrey wood on a bitterly cold January day.

You can discover Frank’s books by visiting his Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Parker/e/B0076JVE5I and more about Frank by visiting his blog at https://franklparker.com/

Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker.

Travelling by coach from London along the A3 Portsmouth Road necessitated that I alight from the coach at a place called Fairmile. From there a twenty minute walk through woodland took me to the School. It must have been January 1954. I’d not returned to school on the appointed date. There were two reasons for this: I’d contracted chicken pox during the Christmas holiday and early in January there was a heavy snowfall which made travel from our cottage near the Black Mountains impossible for several days.

My return therefore took place on a bitterly cold foggy morning near the end of January. I alighted from the coach in what I believed to be the right place. After waiting for a suitable gap in the traffic I crossed the road and sought out the entrance to the path through the wood.

I was familiar enough with the route. After all, I’d taken it in reverse only a few weeks previously. And the path skirted a small lake, known to us school boys as Black Pond, which was a frequent destination for weekend walks. In weather such as I was presently experiencing such walks might include skating on the ice. Swimming there had been banned after a boy a year or two older than me had become entangled in weeds and drowned the previous summer.

There was, however, nothing familiar about the path I’d chosen. Where was Black Pond? And I certainly did not recall a ploughed field beyond a wire fence at the edge of the wood.

I decided to retrace my steps and try a different path into the woods. This one quickly turned out to be as unfamiliar as the first. By now I was shivering with the cold – or was it fear? I could not feel the fingers of the hand holding the small attaché case I carried. My nose was numb and running. I regularly suffered from chilblains in winter. This year was no different. Every step was accompanied by searing pain. My breath came in sobs.

I wished I could find somewhere warm to curl up and die. I stopped walking and looked around me at the frost fringed undergrowth. This – the situation I’d got myself into – was stupid. How could I have got things so wrong? Had I got off the coach at the wrong place? If so, where was the right place?

Once again I retraced my steps. I had definitely got off the coach at the right stop. I recognised the place I’d stood waiting for the London bound coach back in December. It was at that moment that I realised my mistake. And cursed myself for an idiot. My sobs turned to hysterical laughter as I re-crossed the road. There, immediately recognisable, was the right path. The fog began to lift and a pale sun sent splinters of light bouncing from the cobwebs festooning the briars at the path’s edge.

I look now at news footage of refugees trudging for miles in appalling weather or braving a sea crossing in overcrowded leaky boats, and realised that, however painful it may have seemed at the time, nothing I had to endure as a child could begin to compare to the suffering of such people.

 

Guest Blog 30th January: Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker

Tags

Frank Parker

I’m pleased that Frank Parker wanted to join me on the blog-go-round.  He’s written a guest post for me that I’ve split into two, which is set in the days when children used to travel on public transport unaccompanied.  I’ll share the first part here today, and the second part on Wednesday.

You can discover Frank’s books by visiting his Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Parker/e/B0076JVE5I and more about Frank by visiting his blog at https://franklparker.com/

Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker.

Monday 15^th September 1952: the day Mum waved me off from the platform at Hereford railway station bound for Paddington, the London terminal serving the West of England and Wales. Some time during the previous week we had delivered a case containing a change of clothing, toiletries and writing paper and envelopes for those all-important letters home, to the station master of the small village station on the Golden Valley branch line to be sent “Passenger Luggage in Advance” to my new school in Surrey.

There would be a half dozen identical journeys over the next 2 years so I suppose my recollection of the route is an amalgam of more than one. The station names are certainly familiar and have a nostalgic ring to them: Ashperton, Withington, Colwall, Ledbury, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, Malvern Wells, Worcester Foregate Street, Worcester Shrub Hill, Moreton-in-the Marsh and so on, through Didcot and Oxford to the metropolis. Moreton-in-the Marsh especially always reminded me of a radio show from a few years earlier called Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.

Awaiting me at Paddington was Aunty Jessie, a former work colleague of Mum’s from her pre-war days. My memories of the journey from Paddington to Stoke Newington are vague and confused. I’m sure one or more trams were involved – or maybe the whole trip was accomplished on a bus? I recall a terraced house with a basement and meals in a small dining room at the back of the house.

The following day Aunty Jessie accompanied me to Waterloo Station where I and around 150 other boys aged between 10 and 18 were scheduled to catch the 2:15pm Southern Region train for Oxshott. Three months later she met me at Waterloo and delivered me to Paddington for the return journey in time for Christmas.

In between these two events I turned 11. I also learned that I was not so clever as my successes in a rural primary school might have suggested. I learned some modest skills on the soccer field and discovered that I did not much like being regarded as the country bumpkin.  Of the thirty or so boys in my age group, one came from Wales, one from Scotland, another from Newcastle. Most of the rest had homes in or near London. Many of them had begun their attendance at the school 2 or 3 years previously or had been together at a sister school in the London Borough of Wanstead. So only a handful of us were new boys. One thing we all shared in common was the absence from our lives of at least one parent.

Returning to school after Christmas, a journey that I knew was inevitable but the end of which I no longer faced with optimism, I descended from the train at Paddington and looked for Aunty Jessie in the crowd thronging the platform. I was gripped by panic. To add to my misery at having to return to school it now seemed that I was alone in London. I had no idea how to find my way to Aunty Jessie’s Stoke Newington home.

The train’s guard had, as on the previous occasion, been charged with ensuring that I was handed over to Mum’s friend. Now that she was nowhere to be seen he handed me over to the Station Master – or one of his staff whose role included the disposal of lost children. I was taken to a small room with a gas fire and left to sit on a hard chair.

An announcement must have been broadcast over the station tannoy and eventually a rather flustered and embarrassed Aunty Jessie came to claim her friend’s distressed son. All I can remember of the next 18 hours is that, hard as I tried, I could not stop shedding tears.

In due course I learned that Aunty Jessie had written to Mum to opt out of the responsibility. Mum then had to make an alternative arrangement. Fortunately, Jessie was not her only London contact. She had an uncle and grown up cousins living in Hammersmith. And a Green Line coach bound for Guildford stopped on Hammersmith Broadway.

The man I referred to as “Uncle Basil” – actually Mum’s cousin – was a bachelor who lived with his father, my mother’s Uncle Henry, and his brother. Their small flat did not have space for me to sleep, but there were two married sisters each of whom lived in a flat in an adjacent block within the Guinness Buildings complex. I could sleep and have my meals in the one occupied by Aunty Rose and her grown up son. Uncle Basil would meet me at Paddington and accompany me back to Hammersmith. Either he or she would see me on to the coach the following morning.

I can’t recall exactly how many times this arrangement continued. In due course I would be deemed old enough to make the whole journey on my own and a route was discovered which involved changing trains at Reading and Guildford, arriving at Oxshott on the north bound platform. Before that there was to be one more panic-inducing mishap. This time no-one else was to blame.

I HOPE THAT YOU CAN COME BACK ON WEDNESDAY TO READ THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF FRANK PARKER’S ‘TRAVEL TROUBLES’.

Blog-go-Round

Tags

#postaday, blogging

I cannot help but notice that one of the latest promotion strategies to win more readers to your blog site is to use your own blog as a base for other authors to write guest posts on.  There seems to be a sudden surge lately in authors inviting fellow scribblers to compose a family friendly blog for their site.  I’m sure it is the way forward to gain more readers, but I have a bit of a warped sense of humour, and my mind has gone into overdrive.  I’ve started to imagine some kind of frantic blog-go-round, where we all send posts off through the ether that we would have written on our own pages, but now they have to appear on somebody else’s blog instead.  Blogs fly in from cyberland, taking up residence where our own posts should be.

While I’m awaiting guest post invites from my cyber friends, this whole scenario has caused me to trundle through my back catalogue and check the content of the most popular blogs I have written over the past year.  I thought it would be a good idea to cut to the chase and find out which type of blog I’d like authors to blog-go-round with on my own WordPress site.

With it so far?  Ha ha!  What I’ve come up with is surprising to say the least, because I’ve found out that readers on the whole aren’t too bothered about who has got a book for sale, or even what their new book is about.  No, my dears, fasten your seat belts on the blog-go-round and have a gander below:

29th Jan 2016 – The chance to win a free critique of their work in the ‘Dear Lucky Agent Competition:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/dear-lucky-agent-contest/

16th Feb 2016 (53 views) – ‘Anodynity’ which focuses on using local slang in your novels: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/anodynity/

9th March 2016 (89 views) – A blog regarding my then new women’s fiction book club: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/03/09/new-womens-fiction-book-club/

23rd March 2016 (64 views) – A blog about my new book ‘Repent at Leisure’ (yes I’ve contradicted myself, but never mind – onwards and upwards): https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/cover-reveal-for-repent-at-leisure/

11th April 2016 in the Open Book Blog Hop (47 views) – Lessons we’ve learned while writing, publishing or marketing:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/open-book-blog-hop-11th-april/

4th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog about alternative medicines: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/alternatively/

13th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog regarding ReadFree.ly’s 50 Best Indie Books of 2016 competition: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/readfree-lys-50-best-indie-books-of-2016/

15th May 2016 (42 views) – A blog about my mother’s 92nd birthday: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/two-years-older-than-queen-elizabeth/

17th May 2016 (64 views) – My review of ‘Vatican Intervention’ by Andrew Lee Sullivan: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/review-of-vatican-intervention-by-andrew-lee-sullivan/

25th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog for Haddon Musings’ Senior Salon regarding role reversal:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/haddon-musings-senior-salon-role-reversal/

4th June 2016 (78 views) – Information for authors regarding the PitMad competition: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/info-for-authors-for-june-9th-pitmad/

6th June 2016 (83 views) – I write about a good marketing strategy which I tried on Facebook,  but unfortunately it died through lack of interest:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/a-good-marketing-strategy/

29th June 2016 (62 views) – I write about my first time nerves at attending an author signing event: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/first-time-nerves/

25th July 2016 (55 views) – I write about raising a hyperactive child:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/open-book-blog-hop-25th-july/

3rd August 2016 (47 views) – I write about learning of the past whilst speaking to an elderly resident who lived in my mother’s sheltered housing complex:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/all-change-and-yorkshire-miners/

14th August 2016 (47 views) – All about my first book signing event:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/the-manchester-author-signing-event/

21st August 2016 (47 views) – Promotions tried and tentatively tested:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/promotions-tried-and-tentatively-tested/

22nd August 2016 (42 views) – A blog about where I live ‘Seasons in Suffolk’:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/open-book-blog-hop-22nd-august/

29th August 2016 (44 views) – An excerpt from one of my short stories:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/open-book-blog-hop-29th-august/

7th Sept 2016 (61 views) – A blog about the secret of a long life:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/the-secret-of-a-long-life/

10th October 2016 (38 views) – A travel blog of places I’d like to visit:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/10/10/open-book-blog-hop-october-10th/

26th October 2016 (47 views) – A blog about downsizing:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/downsizing/

4th January 2017 (51 views) – A blog regarding the generation gap:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-generation-gap-is-alive-and-kicking/

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So you see that the most popular posts seem to be blogs that are about the lives of authors, not about their books.  Therefore in this 2017 blog-go-round if any authors would like to write a funny, heartwarming or poignant post about events in their lives for a guest post on my blog-go-round, then please send it to stevie@stevie-turner-author.co.uk.  Don’t forget – IT’S NOT ABOUT YOUR BOOK, IT’S ABOUT YOU (you’re allowed to add a link to your Amazon author page though)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Sexual Abuse, by A. T

Tags

sexual abuse

This is a new category that I’m starting today for bloggers who would like me to feature their article.  Today’s candid post by A.T (who prefers to remain anonymous) deals with the effects of sexual abuse upon the behaviour of the abused.  I welcome this article as I was once a victim too, although on a somewhat lesser scale.  Look out for my interview with A.T next week which will be published in my ‘Life Experiences’ category.

A.T says: “Domestic violence does not need boots, fists, or weapons.  Abuse starts with the mind.” 

Sexual Abuse Damages Boundaries, by A.T.

Abuse – whether it be physical, emotional, mental, sexual or a combination of all of them – plays havoc with human boundaries and that all-important sense of self.

I have recently emerged from an abusive marriage. It has taken a huge toll, not helped by the fact that my ex-husband and I remain in the same house until frustrating delays can be overcome in the moving process.

My ex never hit me in anger, though he enjoyed pain – both receiving it and doling it out – sexually. For over three decades, I have been subjected to abuse in the bedroom, abuse which was both sexual and emotional – but, because it was enacted under the false umbrella of ‘love’, I fought battles in my own mind in order to call it healthy sex, and used every justification to excuse him.

More than this, however, I gradually erased that healthy line between what I felt safe and comfortable with – and acts which I dreaded and which were, in truth, little more than legalised rape. Trained to respond in an overtly sexual way, to be alluring and suggestive, to dress up and use props and act and be convincing, my signals were broken and my covert messages to men so messed up that I did not know what I was transmitting to male friends and colleagues half the time.

Accused of Vanilla attitudes to sex – though the actual name came much later – and persuaded that my compliance was proof of my love for this man, and terrified that he would have sex with someone else if I didn’t please him, I lived in constant fear. I could not say a convincing ‘No!’ you see – and, on the few occasions I tried, I received such manipulative behaviour in return (anger, back-turning, muted threats, loud wrenching sobs) that giving in was, ironically, less stressful than holding out.

He was, and remains, a man who would not take ‘No’ for an answer, in or out of bed. Things I felt very uneasy about were made to seem normal and necessary through his intimidation and gaslighting rhetoric. I felt as if I, as an individual, did not matter and barely existed: I was there to keep him happy, to keep his rage at bay, to satisfy his persistent fantasy in the sexual sense. I was expected to be speedily aroused, highly responsive and inventive in a demeaning way.

As a consequence of this, the natural boundaries – my sense of myself as being more than a sex object – have been badly damaged, and I still feel enormous anxiety around men and this dread feeling that I should be trying to appear seductive and willing and ready if they want me. I have no current wish for that kind of relationship – but there lurks an underlying fear that I should be available, at least in potentia, and that men (even those who are platonic friends) expect the sexual option to be clearly on the menu.

I suspect I flirt and tease without even being aware I am doing it, not because I want sex – but because something of self-esteem and self-respect and the hallowed sanctity of my own body has been ripped and torn and shredded. The boundary which allows women to feel they have the right to refuse sex, and still be loved and respected, has worn away.

It makes me feel so sad. I have a huge sense of loss and grief. There was a time, long ago, when sex was earthy and bawdy pleasure for me; when I was utterly spontaneous and adventurous and unafraid; when my boundaries were both deep and clear.

Sexual abuse makes us feel that we have to prove our love through ever-more outrageous acts; it means that our abusers are never satisfied with our performance because it is not about lust; it is about control – theirs. It is about the dark extremes of human sexuality – and is, in fact, the very opposite of true arousal. It is a cold and frightening universe full of unstated threat and despair.

For thirty years, I have been sexually abused. I will never again be the hopeful and innocent and undamaged young woman I was in my early twenties. That trust and openness and freshness and true connection with my own body has gone – and it may never return.

I mourn its loss.

Rebuilding my boundaries and healing my sexuality will take time. I know that. I could weep for the waste and pain of it all – and sometimes I do just that.

Abuse is real. It is out there. It is hidden behind closed doors. It does not inevitably involve fists and feet and weapons breaking fragile skin and bones. It is not perpetrated by obvious monsters. It can be committed under the pretence of love and after the ceremony of Holy Matrimony. It can break minds and cripple bodies.

Abuse: The Fifth Horseman – and the one too many people turn a blind eye to.

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Thank you A.T, for such a heartfelt post.

If anybody else would like to send me a guest article, I’d be very happy to receive it.  Please email stevie@stevie-turner-author.co.uk with your blog, making sure that ‘Guest Article’ is in the subject box.  I will unfortunately have to reject anything that I do not deem appropriate for my site.