Open Book Blog Hop – July 16th

Tags

French language

The topic this week is:

What language have you always wanted to learn? Do you think you will try?

Many years ago (try 45?) when I was in school I enjoyed learning French, although I was taught by somebody who was English.   I even had a French pen friend at one point and tried out my halting French on him.  He replied in terrible English, but we corresponded every now and then for a couple of years until it fizzled out.

When I reached the Fifth Year at school (15/16 years old) we had a native French speaker come to visit our class so that we could all try out our French conversation skills.  However, because we had been taught by an English person, none of us could understand a word she said.  She spoke terribly fast and with an accent obviously native to her part of the world.  To add to this calamity she couldn’t understand much of our South London vernacular either.  We named her the ‘Flog a Dead Horse’ lady.

A few years ago Sam and I visited friends, Jean and Roy,  who now live permanently in France.  Jean has picked up the lingo quite well, but Roy hasn’t.  I found that I could understand some of the language when Jean spoke it to the locals, but couldn’t understand their reply.  It seems to me that you need to be taught by a native if you want to understand what is being said, or perhaps live in your country of choice for a long, long while!

I would still like to learn French, but don’t know any native French speakers.  I think that’s the only way I’ll ever learn that particular language.

Let’s see which language other blog-hoppers would have liked to learn:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Open Book Blog Hop – July 2nd

This week the topic is:

What skills do you have that would make you useful in the medieval time period and/or would get you condemned as a witch?

I have no other skills that would serve me well in that time period other than I am clair-sentient, so I would have probably been labelled a witch and drowned in a ducking stool or suchlike!

From an early age I saw ghosts in the flat where I lived as a child.  The little bed I laid in would shake violently and I’d dive under the bedclothes until the shaking stopped.  Sometimes Mum would see the imprint of a body on the bedspread during the day when I was at school.  However, I never thought to tell her about the shaking, as I was only about 6 or 7 and thought it was ‘normal’.  As I grew older and we moved house, the shaking stopped, and then Mum discovered somebody had hanged themselves in my old bedroom when visiting friends who had moved into the flat.

My grandfather often visits me from the ‘other side’, as I can sense him and smell the tobacco that he smoked continually (neither of us smoke).  If I am at a low ebb and ask for help, then Spirit make their presence felt immediately – the last time by an exploding glow bulb in an electric fire that wasn’t even switched on.

I am ultra-sensitive to people’s feelings, and I’ve had so many deja vu experiences that I’ve lost count.  One night I sat up in bed to get a drink and there was a lady in a white coat sitting at the end of my bed.  She looked like my oncologist. She smiled and faded away, so I took it as a sign that I’d be all right in the end.

There is an afterlife and another world out there that we will all be part of sooner or later.  I have relatives who watch over me and have passed on messages to mediums.  Those messages have convinced me that there is life after death, as no fraudulent medium could ever have come up with such personal information.

So, it’s a good thing I’m not living in medieval times, as my lifespan would have probably been somewhat shortened!

Let’s see what other blog-hoppers’ skills are.  You can even add your own!

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

An InLinkz Link-up

Open Book Blog Hop – 25th June

Thanks to my techie support husband, I can take part in this week’s Open Book Blog Hop while I’m over on the Island.  We now have Internet for more than half an hour every day!

This week’s topic is ‘What historical event would you have liked to witness?

Ooh, there is more than one event I would have liked to witness, some historical and some not, so I’ll list them here:

1.  Life in Osborne House, Isle of Wight before Prince Albert’s death in 1861, from the privileged viewpoint of Vicky, Princess Royal, eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

2.  The launch of the Titanic, in April 1912.

3.  To walk with Lord Tennyson on his regular perambulations over High Down, Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, now called the ‘Tennyson Trail’.

4.  To have seen the cobbled street of my childhood as it was 100 years before I lived there in the 1960s.

5.  To witness everyday life in Pompeii before Vesuvius did its thing.

6.  And to be one of the bathers at the Bath Roman spas!

7.  To work with Mr Brunel on his plans for the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

8.  To have been at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival and seen Jimi Hendrix play!  Cosmic!

9.  To watch the Wright brothers fly the first aeroplane in 1903.

10.  To meet my great-grandparents.

Let’s see what other blog-hoppers would have liked to witness.  You can even add your own event if you like!

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

An InLinkz Link-up

Open Book Blog Hop – 18th June

Tags

#freebooks

This week the topic is:

What’s your opinion on authors giving away their books for free?

My opinion changes on this one.  To start with I decided not to give away any books for free.  I came to the conclusion that $1.95 (the price I settled on in 2015) was not too much to pay for one of my books, and readers did buy a fair few.  In 2015 I sold 1142 books, and just under 1000 in 2016 (in August 2016 I had my best ever month at 179 books sold).

Then the rot set in during 2017 with pirated copies everywhere on the Internet.  I received almost daily Google notifications that my books were ‘free’ for downloading, even though I had not authorised this. I decided to try and draw honest readers in by offering one of my books for free during February, March and May 2017.  All in all I had 6577 downloads, but the amount of actual books sold dropped to 642.  I didn’t offer any more books for free during 2017.

It wasn’t until a year later that I slowly started dispensing with Kindle Unlimited and adding all my books to Draft2Digital so that they could be sold on various digital outlets.  At the moment ‘The Pilates Class’ is free on many digital sites (except Amazon), in the hope that readers will download it and then be interested in one or more of my other books for sale.  So far ‘The Pilates Class’ has only been free for a couple of weeks, so the jury is out so to speak about whether the whole exercise is worth it.

Do I think it’s a good idea to offer free books?  With all the pirated copies out there, authors might as well offer at least one to draw readers in.  As I see it, the book would then be downloaded from an authorised site!  The thing to do I suppose is offer the first book in a series for free, but to date I haven’t yet written a series.

We can’t beat them, so we might as well join them.  I gave up with Blasty, who to begin with sent me daily messages listing another 500 sites offering my books for free.  After a while when I stopped visiting the site, strangely enough they stopped sending me any more messages.  This makes me wonder whether the notifications were actually genuine, or whether they just wanted me to pay a monthly fee.

Do you think that offering free books is a good idea?  Click on the link below to see what other blog-hoppers think, or you can add a comment or blog of your own on the subject.

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

An InLinkz Link-up

Open Book Blog Hop – 11th June

This week’s topic is the following:

What’s the strangest medical or psychological condition you’ve ever given to one of your characters?

Working in the medical field as I do, I’m fortunate to be able to think of many conditions to write about.  Here’s a list of the psychological or medical problems faced by some of my characters:

• Dr Beth Nichols in ‘A House Without Windows’:  Stress due to being kept captive for 10 years by a crazed/obsessed ex-patient.
• Jeff Jackson in ‘Leg-less and Chalaza’:  Achilles’ tendon rupture.
• Lyn Fuller in ‘No Sex Please, I’m Menopausal!‘:  Menopausal hot flushes and a disinterest in sex.
• All my characters in ‘The Pilates Class’ are either stressed or suffering with joint or muscle pain, mainly shoulder or lower back problems.
• Alys Linford in ‘Alys in Hunger-Land’:  Morbidly obese.
• Izzy Tyler in ‘The Donor’:  Kidney failure.
• Martin Andrews in ‘Mind Games’: An addiction to pornography.
• Frances Andrews in ‘Mind Games’: Stress due to having to be a porn detective.
• Lily Read in ‘Lily: A Short Story’:  The trials and tribulations of ageing.
• Erin Mason and Alan Beaumont in ‘A Rather Unusual Romance’:  Thyroid cancer.
• Arla Deane in ‘The Daughter-in-law Syndrome’: Stress due to being ignored by her mother-in-law and with no support from her husband.  Then more stress due to acquiring a daughter-in-law that she doesn’t approve of.
• Ann Veale in ‘Revenge’:  Stress and anger due to husband Alistair’s infidelity.
• Anita Fairfax in ‘Repent at Leisure’: Stress and fear due to being married to a man with anger management issues.
• Eve and Leigh Chandler in ‘The Noise Effect’:  Stress due to having to cope with noisy neighbours.
• Ginny Ford in ‘For the Sake of a Child’:  Stress and anger at having discovered a paedophile ring and not being able to do anything about it.

So you see, I do tend to make my characters suffer!  If you click on the blue button below you’ll see more problems faced by other blog-hoppers’ characters:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – 4th June

This week’s topic is:

If you could change one thing in your life and not have it affect you negatively later, what would you pick?

Well, I can answer that one quite easily.  I would change my place of residence from Suffolk on mainland UK to 200 miles further south on the Isle of Wight, where Sam and I currently have a holiday home (we’re not allowed to live there permanently).  It would not affect me in a negative way at all – quite the contrary… it would cause me to be extremely happy!  Unfortunately all the while we’re still working we cannot live there.  I have my job at the hospital (with my age and medical history I’d never get another one!).  For Sam it’s not practical either, as every time he needs to go and see a customer he would have to queue for a 40 minute ferry crossing (which are often delayed) and then drive up to London where most of his customers are based and then wait for another ferry crossing at night.  Also it would cost a lot of money every year for our sons to visit us with their families. However, here’s a few photos to show you why we’d like to live there:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

What would other blog-hoppers pick? Click on the link below to find out or to add your own choice:

Open Book Blog Hop – May 28th

This week the topic is about camping and eating ‘al fresco’, and what our must-haves are for these events.  This is a scheduled post as I am currently staying in my nice caravan with running water, central heating, a cooker, a washing machine, and two flushing toilets!

I’ve camped before at music festivals and I must admit that as I’ve grown older I definitely prefer a nice comfortable hotel room equipped with a private bathroom.  Here I am with my two sons at the Download Festival back in June 2010:

The festival-goers were shouting ‘Oggy-oggy-oggy -oi-oi-oi’ all night, and not much sleep was obtained.  I also remember being filled with dismay to discover that my airbed was deflating by its own self during the night and that my backbone was scraping the ground.

Also, using the ‘festibogs’ is an experience not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted.  All the men do their thing against any perimeter fencing, and queue up at the festibogs with their rolls of toilet paper in the mornings.  My daughter-in-law, last in the queue, came back to the tent and decided she’d wait a bit longer!

So, what are my must-haves for camping?  I’d say based on my Download experiences they would have to be as listed below:

• My very own chemical toilet.
• A memory foam mattress.
• A hairdryer.
• A washing machine.
• A kettle and a cooker.
• An electric fire to use at night when it gets bloody cold.

As the last five might be pushing it a bit, if I ever go camping again (I’m in no rush as you might have gathered) I’d settle for my very own chemical toilet and a large drum barbeque so I wouldn’t need to wait over an hour for a cup of water to boil on one of those piddly little ‘disposable’ things.  I’d also like an airbed that doesn’t deflate.  Is that too much to ask?

What are other blog-hoppers’ must-haves for camping?  Click on the link below to find out, or add your own list!

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

An InLinkz Link-up

Open Book Blog Hop – 14th May

Tags

Open Book Blog Hop

 

This week’s blog topic is to write about our top five junk foods or our top five healthy snacks.

I was fortunate enough to have had my tastes in foodstuffs ingrained before the explosion in junk food towards the end of the 1970s when I was already a young adult.  My mother Dot read a lot and knew all about the effect of certain foods on the body when I was still a child.  By the time McDuff’s opened their first store over this side of the pond, Dot had been serving me with good nutritious stews and casseroles, low fat dinners, and lots of fish and vegetables for nigh on 18 years.  I had also been on the receiving end of hundreds of lectures by Dot on the dangers of overeating and junk food – snippets of these lectures went like this:

• I must always have a green vegetable or two on my plate.
• I do not need to eat more than 3 biscuits at a time.
• I must never cook with solid fat such as lard, as it will collect around my arteries and stop me from getting up out of a chair.
• Sugary foods are junk and will do me no good at all.
• If I ate white bread I might as well eat the wrapper it came in, for maybe the wrapper might have some goodness in it.
• I need to give my stomach a rest in-between three good meals a day.

Did I listen to all these instructions? Did I heck!  As a child I spent my pocket money on bags of sweets just like any other kid.  My one love was sitting on my front step reading a comic and eating a bag of chocolate buttons.  I only listened as I became older and realised that what my mother had drummed into me actually made sense.  As I said above, my favourite junk food as a kid was chocolate buttons, but now I don’t eat sweets at all (I can’t – if you’ve had radiotherapy to the neck you’ll realise why) and I haven’t eaten chocolate for about 23 years.  However, I do like a piece of lemon cake – preferably one piece a day!

I tend to like fruit in-between meals, especially an orange in-between breakfast and lunch, and an apple in-between lunch and dinner.  I’ll have a piece of cake in the evening before bed, and that’s it really.  I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, hate sitting for hours in restaurants being presented with course after course (it’s one of my worst nightmares), and don’t really think about food much unless I’m hungry.  I hate cooking, and every evening dislike stopping writing and having to go into the kitchen to prepare a meal.  My one desire would be to afford to have a cook that would prepare me wonderful dairy-free dinners and then wash up afterwards!

What do you like to eat as a snack? Click on the link below to discover what other blog hoppers’ like to eat.

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Open Book Blog Hop – April 9th

This week we have to recommend some books in our genre to readers.

I like to read (and write) psychological suspense and psychological family dramas, so here are a few books I’ve read and reviewed, and some that are on my TBR list sitting on my Kindle:

Books I’ve read and reviewed:

1.  Lock the Door, by Jane Holland (4 stars)

https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/review-of-lock-the-door-by-jane-holland/

2.  The Bigamist, by Mary Turner Thomson (4 stars):

https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/book-review-of-the-bigamist-by-mary-turner-thompson/

3  The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue (5 stars):

https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/review-of-the-wonder-by-emma-donoghue/

Some books on my TBR list are as follows:

The Other Twin, by L.V Hay

The Babysitter, by Sheryl Browne

Tell Me I’m Wrong, by Adam Croft

The Perfect Neighbours, by Rachel Sargeant

Click on the blue button below to find other blog hoppers’ book recommendations, or you can add some of your own.

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – March 26th

Here’s this week’s topic:

Being the CEO, how do you handle all the tasks you must juggle in this writing/publishing world?  Do you hire out certain tasks?  Why or why not?

Yes, there are quite a few tasks that need doing if one is considering this writing business seriously.  I’ve listed my thoughts below

1.  Writing.  

Not actually with pen and paper, but with a PC and Word.  I’m rather thankful I completed a word processing course back in 1994, which cured me of my fear of computers and made me realise how much easier typing on a keyboard is than writing a whole novel in longhand.

2.  Proofreading.

Yep, I do this as well.  Luckily I have to do this with every clinic letter I type at work, so I’m quite used to checking for spelling and grammatical errors.   I read every chapter through twice when I’ve finished it, and usually I can spot any glaring errors straight away.

3.  Editing.

I do this chapter by chapter as I go along and then read through the whole novel a few times when it’s finished.  By reading it through more than once at the end it’s easier to check the flow and spot plot hole

4.  Cover design.

I used to pay for book covers, but now I use the KDP free version.  I’m of the opinion that the content of the book matters more than the cover, and the free versions are good enough for me.  It’s also much easier using the KDP cover creator than the CreateSpace one – even I can do it!

5.  Formatting.

Oh no, I draw a line at formatting.  It makes me angry – that tearing your hair out angry.  My table of contents never turns out how I want it to, likewise the links, and I’m happy to pay to let the professionals format my books.  Caleb’s Book Formatting Service are very reasonably priced, and Caleb himself is in the process of formatting every one of my books.

6. Marketing.

Yes I do my own marketing via WordPress, Twitter, Facebook and my website.  I try and post a blog every day or re-blog others, and belong to two Twitter re-tweet groups.  I have a monthly newsletter, and am slowly building up my email list.

What tasks do other blog-hoppers do for themselves?  Click on the blue button below to find out, or add your own blog to this one.

 Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.