Dreams and regrets

Thinking of self

18th November 2018 by Jax Blunt 1 Comment

Over on twitter today I’ve been involved in a fab conversation with lots of other autistic adults. People have been discussing how they felt post diagnosis, which, particularly for those of us with late dx, can be a whole complicated bunch of things. And then people have gone on to talk about special interests and what makes them happy.

Right at the moment I’m not doing very well keeping myself happy. I’m watching all these people talking about happy making activities and all I’m doing is getting through the days.

I don’t have a special interest at the moment. I was trying to do nanowrimo to finish either of the books I’ve been working on, but while a few people have said really lovely things about my writing, every time I’ve tried for a commercial opinion it’s overwhelmingly negative. I chose that word carefully. It overwhelms my ability to believe in myself, to focus on the story, to find the words.

I’m sure right about now you’re telling me I need to grow a thicker skin. To not worry about the commercial appeal, or even the readers. To tell the story for the sake of the story. But I’m a little greedy. I wanted my story to be one people would want to read. To buy.

I’ve been writing for a very long time. (About as special an interest as I’ve ever had I guess.) And I always come back to it. But I’m very bad at finishing things. (Honestly, you’ve no idea. This house is full of half read books, incomplete crochet /knitting /sewing projects. Paintings, drawings, manuscripts.)

What is it that I’m worried about? That I’ll finish the story and no one will read it?

Well, yes. That’s up there.

And I don’t think it’s that I won’t have anything else to carry on with when I finish, if I didn’t start anything else I still don’t think I’d run out of projects.

There’s something about finishing things that gives me a problem. I don’t know quite why. I’d like to understand what it is that gives me difficulty seeing things through. But it’s something that I guess I’ll go on working through.

And tomorrow, I’ll do some more writing.

Dreams and Regrets by Emily Williams, author of Rafferty Lincoln loves.

13th March 2018 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

You may or may not be aware that I have an occasional series of posts on the theme of Dreams and Regrets. (If not, follow the link.) Today I’m happy to add to that series as part of the Rafferty Lincoln loves blog tour, with a guest post from author Emily Williams.

Dreams…

When Jax first talked to me about her dreams and regrets series for her blog, I was very excited. There are so many dreams in my head and I think I could talk forever about them! My dreams have evolved over the years but the central core – writing – has always been there.

My dreams during childhood were mainly pony-related. I spent hours fantasising that I owned a horse, buying all the equipment and saving my pocket money for the horse that never was. I read and saved every horse magazine going and grew a good collection of pony related non-fiction books and hundreds of pony stories, which to this day I still have. I guess the pony dream always stuck with me. Despite, in my early twenties, finally getting that pony the dream of horses and ponies is always there and still makes me smile.

I wrote endless pony stories and developed the dream of becoming a writer from an early age. This would be as early as primary school, when I first learnt to write. The stories always had animals in them, and mainly ponies or dogs. It was during secondary school that the dream became more concrete. Another child had had a story published in a magazine and I was jealous. I realised that it was writing that I wanted to do and wanted to become good at. The teachers were a great encouragement.

I continued to write stories, for my eyes only, right up until college, when I knew that I wanted to find an audience for my stories. University and boys took over for a while, but in my head, there were still stories. The dream never went away until the idea for Letters to Eloise (Amazon affiliate link) arrived. Never before had I a whole novel in my head bursting to get out. For once, I planned and developed a strict timeline. I always thought the dream was possible, I just didn’t think I’d ever have the motivation to finish.

When a publisher friend of mine printed me the first proof copy of Letters to Eloise, I knew I’d found my niche in life and the childhood dream of writing had begun.

Regrets…

I don’t have many regrets in life but I do regret not starting to pursue my dream earlier. I regret those wasted years and years spent unhappy at what I was doing with my life. I wasted my twenties. Although Letters to Eloise was already in my head, I didn’t sit down to write the novel until my late twenties/early thirties. I dabbled with short stories, occasionally sending them off to be rejected. But I didn’t properly give writing my full concentration.

I had a full-time job, a career that I was good at. However, the writing dream was always there, always niggling in the background waiting to be heard. I just wish I’d listened sooner and started writing those ideas in my twenties and not my thirties. But who knows, maybe I just wasn’t ready then.

A word from the author…

I wrote Rafferty Lincoln Loves… as I have always wanted to write a horse involving horses. I read many pony stories as a child, but have found that there are very few to read as a young adult/adult so I wanted to fill this void. I have been around horses from a very early age and spent many years saving to afford my own horse. Sadly, due to a road accident and then a fall of a horse, I can no longer ride. However, my passion and love for equines hasn’t diminished. Due to arm injuries from the accidents, I have had to dictate the novel, Rafferty Lincoln Loves… and am donating the proceeds of the novel to the British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre – a charity I have supported since childhood.

Many thanks for supporting the novel and I do hope you enjoy it!

Emily x

Find Rafferty Lincoln loves on Amazon (affiliate link)

The blurb of Rafferty Lincoln Loves…

Rafferty Lincoln doesn’t like horses. Not one bit. But when the popular high school girl of his dreams, Liberty Ashburn, pulls him into a world of lead ropes and horse brushes, who is he to say no?

Except this isn’t any old horse. This is the missing racehorse, Profits Red Ridge. The horse Rafferty and three of his friends are hiding from the world. And Liberty Ashburn isn’t just any ordinary high school girl. How far will Rafferty go to win her over?

An intense, witty and powerful coming of age story with startling consequences.

The proceeds from the novel ‘Rafferty Lincoln Loves…’ will be donated to The British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre.

BTRC is dedicated to improving and promoting the welfare of retired race horses through education, retraining and suitable rehoming in order to ensure that our Thoroughbreds have a rewarding and valuable life after their racing careers have ended.

Each year thousands of horses leave racing, some because they reach the natural end of their career and others through injury or lack of ability. Established in 1991, The British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre was the UK’s first charity dedicated to ex-racehorse welfare, retraining, rehoming and protection for life.

‘It is fantastic to see a contemporary novel for young adults embracing passion and love for horses, as well as advocating for their welfare. Emily’s fast-paced novel not only explores the relationship and incredible bond between horse and rider but also delves into darker aspects relevant to today’s challenging world of growing up. Rafferty Lincoln Loves… deserves to be celebrated for bringing an important cause to the forefront of today’s young adults.’ Frankie Dettori MBE

‘I am thrilled to have written this novel for the BTRC and to be donating the proceeds to such an important and dedicated charity for the welfare of retired racehorses.’ Emily Williams

Author Bio

Emily Williams lives by the seaside in West Sussex with her family and a menagerie of small pets, including her own horse Bella, and welsh mountain pony, Lucy. After graduating from Sussex University with a BA in Psychology, Emily trained as a primary school teacher and teaches in a local school.

Rafferty Lincoln Loves… is her first YA novel after the success of her debut adult novel, Letters to Eloise, released in 2017.

You can follow Emily on twitter

Find out more about Emily’s other books on Amazon

Read reviews and find out more on her blog

Martyn Ford: Dreams and regrets – UKYACX blog tour.

11th September 2016 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

As part of the UKYACX blog tour (MG variety), I’m very pleased to welcome author Martyn Ford to the blog today, continuing on the occasional series of Dreams and Regrets guest posts. Over to Martyn

Tasked with writing a blog post on “dreams and regrets”, we first have to define the words. I’m going to interpret the former, dreams, in the aspirational sense – an ambitious goal – and not write, despite the temptation, an account of that time I swapped souls with an old school teacher in order to trick a talking crab called Sesame Jones out of stealing all of my teeth.

And the latter, regrets, I’m largely going to ignore because I’m one of those people who says conceited things like, “Oh, ya, no, I don’t have any regrets”. Not because I’ve perfectly handled the many millions of choices I’ve had so far in my life, heavens no, but because regretting things is a bit like saying you’d change them in a time travel situation. And we don’t need to google chaos theory to know why that’s a bad idea.

So, what is my dream (goal, aspiration, target, whatever)? If I’m completely honest, I actually don’t know. Because every time I achieve something I set out to achieve, the target moves. It’s like running to the horizon.

This is a paradox. It seems to me the kind of people equipped with the necessary discontent, the compelling drive to work hard towards a situation different from their current one, are often the people not satisfied with the result.

I think I have a compelling urge to be creative, that’s all. Any achievements outside of that – which I’ve often mistaken for goals – are simply a nice bonus, a by-product. And, recently, I’ve learned that this is fine.

Almost a decade ago, I was 19 years old and working at an off licence. While it was a wonderful place to work, for all the wrong reasons, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. (Once, and this is true, I was so unstimulated that I stuck cutlery to the ceiling with Blu-Tack. A spoon here, a fork there, not too much. I had to use a ladder. If you don’t believe me, well, good. Making that up is less weird than actually doing it.)

“Ah, well, what do you want to do?” was the common response to my apparent dejection.

I had no real answer, besides a vague desire to write.

“Ah, well, what do you want to write?”

Again, just pouts and shrugs from me.

Fast forward a bit and I was walking past my local newspaper’s office. In the window they were advertising a vacancy for a junior reporter. I wandered in and, despite my lack of experience and (although I lied about this bit) ability, the editor offered me a job. She is one of many kind people who have given me the benefit of the doubt at various milestones in my career.

This was good (it still is, I still work for the company, albeit on a different paper). I was getting warm. This was a well-trodden path. I’d heard successful writers say they started in regional journalism.

(In fact, it’s a job I’d recommend to any aspiring writer. It consists of speaking to people, learning about the world and writing. I can’t think of any three things more beneficial to a would-be storyteller.)

But it wasn’t quite it. I wanted more creativity. I wanted to write things which weren’t true.

And so I founded my very own rejection letter factory. It’s quite simple, you can make one yourself. First, write a bad screenplay or a bad novel. Then, pitch it to every literary agent/ publisher/ producer you can find.

It got to a very strange point where if there wasn’t a rejection letter in the post/ email inbox, I felt a pang of disappointment. What kind of next level, masochistic psychology is that?

In the interest of brevity – let’s leap forward in time a few more years. Finally, I sat down and started writing a draft of what would later become The Imagination Box, an idea I had been stewing since the age of about eight and, more importantly, the first thing I finished that I felt positive about. That, alone, was a triumph for me.

Thankfully it secured me a brilliant agent and, about five years after my first draft, was published by Faber & Faber. It has since become a trilogy – I’ve recently finished the third.

It’s about a machine that creates anything you imagine. So themes of desire and the overblown virtues of getting what you want are prevalent.

It seems so trite to say something like, “it’s the journey, not the destination”. But it’s true. It’s about the whole ritual, the hard work, the knowing smile. Each and every rung.

The utterly bewildered frown on your colleague’s face the following day when they look up and notice that spoon – that’s just a lovely bonus.

Maybe, just maybe, I “regret” taking most of my twenties to figure that out.

***

So who else is now checking the ceiling for cutlery? Or contemplating sticking some up there? Great post from Martyn, and you can catch him in action at UKYACX next week – all details here.

Martyn Ford is a journalist and author of The Imagination Box trilogy (Faber & Faber in the UK, Delacorte in the US). Follow him on twitter at @Martyn87 or check out his website here

Disclosure: amazon links are affiliate links.

Regrets and Dreams – Sue Ransom

17th September 2015 by Jax Blunt 3 Comments

I’m thrilled to be kicking off the UKYA extravaganza blog tour today with a guest post from the wonderful Sue Ransom. Sue is the award winning author of the best selling Small Blue Thing trilogy, with her latest book, The Beneath published in March this year. She manages all this alongside a full time job and a family. What regrets could she possibly have? Read on to find out more…

When Jax first suggested that I do a post in her ‘Dreams and Regrets’ series, I wasn’t sure what I might write. To many people I’m living the dream – I’ve had four books traditionally published, they’ve been translated into several languages and one has won an award. What do I have to regret? Why aren’t I just enjoying what I have?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised I have plenty to say.

I started writing because I had a dream – I wanted my young daughter to have a book which resonated with her and which described her own, familiar world. All her favourite books were set in America, it seemed. So I wrote a story just for her, as a birthday present. I wrote about her school and her friends, and a girl who might be like my daughter would be when she got to seventeen. It took months, and throughout that time I kept dreaming that she would love it, that I wouldn’t be faced with the nightmare scenario of her finding it a bit lame. And that dream came true. She did love it, and then another much more secret dream came true as well.

Although I’d written Small Blue Thing just for her, in some quiet, buried part of my brain a little voice kept repeating the same thing: “You could get this published. You could be a proper author. You could go to fabulous author events.” I didn’t share those thoughts with anyone, and I almost keeled over with excitement when the first publisher to see the manuscript offered me a three book contract.

In no time at all I was standing in the printer’s factory, holding one of the first of thousands of copies

of my book coming off the production line. And I now have a whole bookshelf of different editions of the books, a dream I never dared to have at all.

So what of the regrets?

There are plenty of them too, and they are mostly due to my lack of courage. I still have a day job, and I know I’m in a chicken-and-egg situation. If gave up the day job I would have more time to write and promote my books, and then I’d sell more books. And if I sold more books I could afford to give up the day job.

It’s a tough call, but one day I hope that I’ll have the courage to make that dream come true as well.

For now, I’ll meet as many readers at as many events as I can cram into my annual leave, and continue writing in snatched moments perched in corners. And the more readers I meet at events like the UYYA Extravaganza, the braver I get. It’s so encouraging to hear that people like what you’ve done, that maybe you’ve inspired them in some way.

So maybe one day soon I’ll take the plunge. I hope so.

***

Thanks for joining us Sue – and I hope you find the courage to take that plunge soon, I think it would be a fantastic thing for all of us.

You can find out more about Sue on her website, via twitter, and of course her books are widely available eg Sue Ransom at Amazon (affiliate link. Support your bloggers!)

Do make sure you check out the rest of the blogs in the UKYA extravaganza blog tour, and don’t forget to get your tickets for the event itself – find out more on the UKYAX website

Starring Kitty Blog tour – Keris Stainton – start with the pizza

17th July 2014 by Jax Blunt 1 Comment

Today I’m pleased to welcome an author I’ve actually had the chance to meet in person, not once but several times – Keris Stainton, whose new book, Starring Kitty (A Reel Friends Story), is published 24 July. (Amazon have it wrong. Honest.)

Over to Keris, on the theme of Dreams and Regrets.

I like to say that the only thing I regret is not eating the last slice of the most delicious pizza I’ve ever had, at my friend’s house a few years ago. But that’s not true. I have stacks of regrets, even though I know they are completely pointless.

And while I do regret some things I did do too, it is of course the things I didn’t do that niggle me the most. Actually it’s the reason I didn’t do them that bothers me. It was because I didn’t think I was good enough. At anything. For anything. I wanted to be a writer, but my careers officer told me that was unrealistic and I believed her. I wanted to leave school early and go to work at the Liverpool Playhouse (where I’d done my work experience), but I let my parents talk me out of it (and then failed my A levels anyway, because I really didn’t want to be there).

I kept getting – sometimes even making – really great opportunities and then letting them slip away because I was scared. Always scared. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, after I’d had my first son, that I decided that being scared wasn’t a good enough reason. I had to feel the fear and… you know. And I did. And it changed my life. And I’m still scared a lot of the time. I still feel like an imposter. I still go to events like the YA Literary Convention at the weekend and feel like a competition winner. But that’s ok. Because one thing I’ve learned is that so many other people feel the same way.

As I get older, I find myself looking at younger people and wanting to tell them that they can do anything. That they’ve got plenty of time. That they shouldn’t be scared. I want to grab them and say “Do you know how amazing you are? Do you know all the things you can do?!” But a) that would be creepy and b) I don’t think they’d really hear it or believe it. I know I wouldn’t have done. So I try to put it in my books instead.

Starring Kitty is the first book in the Reel Friends series and it’s about Kitty and her friends Sunny and Hannah learning what they want from life and realising that there’s a much bigger world than the one they’ve experienced so far, that they can choose where to go and what to do. I want to make them braver than I was. Although of course there will be challenges, I want them not to be so easily put off. I plan to make them grab every opportunity and squeeze all the juice out of it. And I hope the same for my readers.

And for me too. Because it’s not too late. It’s never too late. And I’m starting with pizza.

***

Good advice for us all there. Would pizza for breakfast be a mistake?

You can find out more about Keris via her website and Starring Kitty is available for pre order via Amazon or Hive (affiliate links).

Do check out the other posts so far on the blog tour (and note forthcoming from the banner):

Catnip books – exclusive first look

Peter Jones author – top 5 fictional couples

Sister Spooky – book people are the best people and 20 questions

And the next stop will be with Carly Bennett at Writing from the Tub

Dreams and regrets

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