Tag Archives: full time mum writing

15 Jul 2023 · 12:23 pm

Modern life is rubbish!

This is a blog post I wrote a couple of days ago. I’ve wrestled with my conscience as to whether I should actually post it. Mainly because it’s only going to worry people. I promise we’re all OK, but I do need to vent sometimes. This, being my blog, seems as good a place as any to do that. So it comes with a <rant mode> warning. Naturally, it’s written with a mental voice I use specifically for ranting which sounds like John Cleese doing Basil Fawlty going off on one. If any of it makes you laugh, that is the correct reaction. It is meant, foremost to amuse, but also to inform a bit in that it does genuinely feel like that sometimes.

Since the entire tirade genuinely reflects the way I felt at the time I wrote it, I think that, in the interests of full transparency, I should publish it. And also because I haven’t written anything else, so here it is.

[Rant mode] Modern life is rubbish!

A famous Blur album from the 1990s but also, sadly, very true for me. Or perhaps if I’m honest I should say, I am rubbish at modern life.

Aroogah! Aroogah! Whinge warning!

OK so I’m going to go on a teeny bit of a rant here, because in many respects, I’ve had a pretty rough time of it lately, and since this is my blog, I can sodding well do what I like. But I have a burning question right now and it’s this.

Why am I so unsuited to modern life? Because despite having been invited to sit the mensa test, it counts for zilch since I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to certain, more mathematical strains of logic. I write numbers back to front and upside down (and add them up that way too) I often mange to look up completely the wrong hymn in church—because I read the number back to front—and my organisational skills are negligible. I couldn’t organise a fart in bed but the most galling thing is that despite knowing this, I still haven’t hit on a way to learn how to be organised. It just … doesn’t.

Then there’s the Mum stuff. The perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit. I have skills. Are they any use to me for this? Of course they’re fucking not, I need the jot tittle and iota of formfilling and box ticking down pat and frankly, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to the moon by putting car springs on my feet and trying to jump than I do of bossing that sort of stuff.

Mum’s mortgage money is dwindling astonishingly fast so I am trying to get some help from the NHS with her care costs. Yes, I know, I’m in the UK and the NHS is supposed to provide healthcare free to all at the point of need and yes, it does … except that some aspects of healthcare are more free than others. When you have dementia, it’s classed as a ‘social’ illness and dealt with by social services and presumably mental health services. It is a mental illness but at the same time, it isn’t because the causes of dementia are physical; strokes, bleeds to the brain, or neural diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies, Motor Neurone etc which are all caused by physical factors, even if medical science doesn’t always understand why they happen, it’s a physical factor, not a mental one, which causes these outcomes.

Unfortunately, the NHS changed its classification of dementia back in the late 90s and for a whole swathe of people it was too late to plan for any healthcare costs, they just had to hope they wouldn’t need them. Worse, if those people did try to offload some cash after diagnosis, they stood the chance of being had up for avoiding care fees which is called deprivation of assets and is considered to be a criminal offence.

Some folks were lucky and they didn’t get dementia or they died fairly soon into the journey. My parents weren’t. One of the diffiiculties is that, for example, Mum has a house and the logical thing to do, from the point of view of death duties, would be for her to make over the house to us but continue to live there but even if she does this in a way that is compliant with UK tax law, then, since her dementia diagnosis, it would be a criminal offence because that would be trying to leave something to her children rather than spend the last of her and Dad’s assets on the healthcare she was promised for free until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Oh, and because the fact she and Dad have spent around £900k on care fees, to date—that’s right, close to ONE MILLION QUID—one million quid I didn’t even know they had, it still isn’t enough because the bastards want to make sure they strip those assets thoroughly, family antiques, pictures, the house, it’s all got to be sold to pay for care costs, or you have to make over the house to the authorities if they are going to pay (there may or may not be a cap on how much they can take for this. I think it depends where you are).

Yep, if you want to be tax efficient with your will, or try to avoid paying every last penny you have in care costs and give something to your kids … well … if you’re dying of cancer that’s OK. If you have a benign front temporal lobe brain tumour that presents very similar symptoms to the ones Dad endured, that’s OK, but if your affliction is associated with dementia then no. I’m sorry. If you try to do it, then, it’s a crime. Remember people, the D in dementia stands for destitute, and as far as the state is concerned, if you’re not destitute by the end of it, they’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to surrender everything to pay for your care fees, suddenly, it becomes an actual crime to leave anything for your children or grandchildren.

Because we’re lovely compassionate people here in the UK and when our government screws over our citizens it likes to do it properly. Dementia isn’t a long grinding and hard enough road on its own, oh no, the government and the NHS like to ensure they make it as shitty for everyone concerned as possible. Why help one dementia patient when with a few deft tweaks to the care system, you can ensure there are more and double the assets you strip from the afflicted. Twice the money. Chancellor rubs hands together. Excellent.

As you can see, I’m not bitter or angry about this. Not at all.

Seriously, though. I genuinely don’t give a shit about my inheritance, that’s gone, although I do care about my brother’s half and that he gets nothing as well. What does make me angry is that it’s cost me pretty much everything; the never ending, grinding awfulness of it all has sapped me of any meaningful ability to write books and with that my purpose. It’s cost me being a decent mother, it’s cost me being an attentive wife, it’s cost me keeping in touch with my friends and wider family because it’s such a massive drag on my mental energy that I can only just keep in touch with a few folks. I guess we could just stop with, it’s cost me my happiness in many respects, or perhaps my contentment because in terms of stress, time, sadness, love, pain and god knows what else, it’s blown away any semblance of concentration and mental capacity I had (yes! Stress gives you brain fog, who’d have thunk it). It’s cost my husband and son because they feel it too, and they’ve seen me cry, many times and in my son’s case, at far too young an age. It’s cost my brother and his wife and my nephews and niece just as much.

I fucking resent the price we, and thousands like us, have paid because the illness our parents have endured has the wrong name. It does, indeed boil my piss. Mwahahahargh! I try not to think about it too much.

And fair due, when I say they take ‘every last penny’ they do generously leave you the last 23k. Except they don’t—and it’s not—because there’s a sliding scale of help beyond that and the full package doesn’t kick in until you are at £14k … which, to put this in perspective, is about 9 weeks of care fees.

Anyway, the amount of form filling! As you know, I am always a tower of strength when it comes to form filling, says she, with deep sarcasm. Did I mention that looking after Mum’s finances, healthcare and general wellbeing is a perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit? And so was Dad’s. And it’s been going on for years and years, and years. And I am so, so fucking tired of my entire life being about trying to boss an enormous collection of all the things I am emotionally, physically and mentally least equipped to do. And Oh Lordy I took McMini to a consultation with a counsellor today and we fleetingly touched on the whole dementia dementor that is sucking away my life and I actually nearly wept. It caught me completely broadside because I thought I was through all that.

Not quite. Clearly.

The other day, I was listening to a programme on BBC sounds about dementia and they were so fucking upbeat.

‘Do you know carers everywhere save the government over £11bn a year?’ they said (or something along those lines). ‘Aren’t you all marvellous?’

Yeh the same way clapping people is so much better than giving them a pay rise and we don’t save them the money, they take it from us.

And I was sat there in the car, bundling along the M25 (it was flowing well that day) shouting,

‘No! We’re not fucking marvellous you absolute pus wangle! We’re fucking desperate, and lost and we have NOTHING left to give and NOTHING left to fight with! And no-one fucking gives a shit! And while I’m shouting at the windscreen like this, worrying the person in the car next to me,’ MTM turns, gives the nervous looking woman in the nissan micra a thumbs up and waves. ‘Can I just mention what it costs US? Everything. Fucking everything. Let me repeat that! It costs us every. fucking. thing. Our social lives, our hobbies, our capacity for coherent thought, our health and in some cases our sanity or our actual fucking lives.’

OK so I appreciate that sounds melodramatic but sadly, it’s true. One demented relative, and you are surrendering to years of sleepless nights and brain fog. Think new baby for years, and years, and YEARS until the lack of sleep kills you.

In a horrible irony, do you know what the result of that level of stress, for 15 years, was for Mum? That’s right. Dementia for her too. What a kindly joy! Thanks God you absolute get. The woman who said, ‘I don’t really care what happens to me when I get old, so long as I don’t lose my marbles.’ is losing her marbles.

Thank you, you to whichever clusterfuck of cucking funts made that decision back in the 1990s because thanks to your intervention she has, indeed, lost her fucking marbles.

Bastards.

Yes! I’m sure I’m entitled to all sorts of benefits and help and Mum gets it, what there is, but I’m too exhausted to look into it. And when I do, it’s for people spending 36 hours a week on care. If you have a part-time job that you can no longer do because of the strain of looking after your demented relative, that means you’re not eligible. If you worked during the school day, you’re not eligible because that’s not 36 hours. It’s a fucking shower! And I’m just running a house, a care team and a life from afar. I’m not even one of the poor bastards at home doing it 24/7 with no let up, no relief and no fucking hope. Waking up every hour all through the night and trying to persuade their demented relative to sleep because they are so … fucking … tired. People with dementia can live a full and happy life but it costs their loved ones everything. And nobody gives a fucking toss.

Then there’s … ugh … other stuff. Other stuff is a bit patchy to be honest. Everyone has a Draco Malfoy (look it up if you don’t know) and McMini is no exception. There’s a kid picking on him at school and for a while a lad who was a friend at one point was joining in, which made it extra specially hurtful. The ex friend has stopped now, thank goodness, but the other lad has continued. Luckily McMini, who was bullet proof on that score, and then very suddenly, not bullet proof, seems to have rediscovered his armour and ceased to care about the Draco Malloy in his life. Long may that continue.

Though the school is being brilliant it’s been tough for him. Hence the counsellor (psychotherapist who does counselling) and I arranged for us to meet to see if a few sessions would help. Things are a great deal better but I still want rule in or our whether or not Mc(not so)Mini might need a few handy coping strategies. Mainly because I doubt I’d be here now, in quite the same form, had I not had a lot of CBT at the beginning of this fucking dementia nightmare. And while he’s coping fine now, the kid who picks on him is still picking on him. So I set up an initial session to meet and see if the counsellor could help.

The first session was on Tuesday.

I forgot.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and their fluffy donkey. Fuck me but I’m a fucking dickwad.

You know what. A few years ago I did an intelligence test, the result was a bit like a spider with 8 zones of intelligence and scores for each. Basically, I scored a solid top 80%-90% in seven of the eight areas. However, in one area—numeracy and certain mathematical logic—I scored below 20%. In an IQ test I scored one point off genius level (on paper, I’m well thick on screen) yet for everything that matters in wrangling my and my mother’s day-to-day existence my fucking enormous teflon-head brain is of absolutely fuck all use. The only thing my intelligence achieves is a keen awareness of how lacking I am in the one single form of fucking intellect I actually need. There are people out there with such severe cognitive disabilities that they are unable to live independently who are smarter than I am in the only area that anyone counts.

All my life I’ve railed against the stupid fucking bigots who say that the only intelligence that counts is mathematical intelligence and discount everyone else whose abilities aren’t a carbon copy of their own as ‘stupid’ because they’re too unimaginative to see the worth in any other kind of intelligence. I heartily loathe those people who aver that only one kind of intelligence is the arbiter of all intelligence and that without it you are thick, much as I heartily loathe the way the morning people have managed to fit the entire world to the way they function and have convinced us all that being a night owl (a logical evolutionary step to ensure some of the tribe was always awake to keep watch) makes you some kind of morally bankrupt deviant.

Sadly, modern life and educational standards are set up for mathematical logic, and nothing else, and it’s amazing the number of people who, when I suggest that it’s possible to be intelligent without being mathematically intelligent, will agree but then basically say, no. Engineering and construction and most stuff runs on maths or is designed using maths they argue. Therefore our world is built on maths and it is the apogee of all intelligence. I completely get that. I get that it’s important.

But we don’t all need ALL the maths to just … you know … live. I mean, for starters, if everyone in the village has one kind of intelligence and is brilliant at building the bridges, who’s going to do the fucking cooking? Rishi’s barking plan about maths until people are 18 … well … it depends what they teach. But trying to get people like me to understand advanced trigonometry isn’t going to happen, no matter how many times you try and drum it into me. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Nobody insists we all play an instrument to grade 8 level and shames anyone who can’t as an inferior or a second grade person. Some people aren’t musical. Nobody gives them any grief. Some people aren’t mathematical. Newsflash. That isn’t a fucking crime. Why this ridiculous insistence that mathematical intelligence is the only thing that matters? It’s bullshit! Surely, unless they want to be a theoretical physicist then, so long as a person can manage their finances, or parse a spreadsheet/find an expert they trust to do it for them that’s all they need.

Yes, we need to understand certain mathematical basics to get by but the way they go on. It’s like saying that only one colour matters or that only one musical note is important. And what will making people who are useless at something keep trying—and failing at it—do for their confidence.

‘You have so much to give, and so much talent but that counts as nothing because this one tiny facet of intelligence (that you’re shit at) is the only thing that matters.’

Is that a healthy message to send to our kids? From one who received it loud and clear at school throughout their entire fucking childhood let me assure you that it’s very much not.

The other day, when I forgot that session with the counsellor for McMini, I hated myself: truly fucking hated myself in a way I’ve managed to avoid since the CBT I did to deal with just this kind of negativity when I was first trying to look after my parents and navigate the absolute craptonne of admin they seemed to generate. Fact is though, I’m just a massive fucking white elephant. I know I am. Normally, I can look away and carry on living the lie that there is some actual fucking point to my existence but yesterday. No.

It’s so hard to be bright, really bright, in a whole arena of disciplines which, while perfectly valid, are discounted by modern culture as worthless, it’s even more frustrating to be smart, but, at the same time utterly, crushingly, mind-numbingly thick at the only subject by which the world gauges intellectual worth … and filling in forms … and admin. Oh I know it’s a them problem (and the fact that I care is a me problem) but it’s fucking galling. It’s not that maths isn’t important, it’s that not everyone is going to use it to an advanced level, not everyone will need to and more to the point, not everyone can. Making them try for years is just going to make them feel shit about themselves and as we all know, miserable people beget misery.

Actually if you want to appreciate what trying to force people to study something beyond their ceiling does just read this. Read this to see just how shaming people who are bad at maths makes them feel. Read this to see how giving people the impression they are stupid or somehow morally lacking, because they are less able at something you can do easily makes people feel.

It’s this idea that because some people are engineers or scientists and are using maths to define space and time, or build bridges, we should all be doing it. It’s like saying that every single person in existence should be made to write a book. It’s like saying, ‘oh we’re having a bit of trouble with the new covid vaccine, MTM why don’t you have a go?’ and being surprised and upset when I can’t crack it. It’s saying that we should all be carbon-copy geniuses (geniai?). It is, quite frankly, a bit fucking mental.

Most of us need to do a tax return, manage a budget and possibly manage a business. Yes, it’s important to know that. We all need to. But just as important is showing people who are less gifted at maths useful stuff like the kind of logic required to parse a spreadsheet that’ll do that maths for them.

It seems a trifle unfair that the zone of intelligence, out of those eight, around which my entire chuffing life revolves is the one in which I sit in the bottom 20% of the population; remembering things, administrating financial matters, filling in government forms correctly, dotting every I and crossing every T as stipulated, and in a timely manner, not being able to see how my situation fits a standard box, sitting waiting on hold because I’m over thinking it.

On top of that, my startling lack of smarts—in the one area which dominates my existence—makes life such an uphill struggle that I have nothing left for anything else after I’ve finished with it all. That’s really where this whole sticking eyes on things cropped up. Because I wanted to write. NEEDED to write, but after dealing with all the shite, getting it wrong, doing it again, missing bits off and cocking it up, all while watching my father and then my mother slowly disappearing in front of my eyes; all while taking their hands and walking beside them as we made our way together into the dark … after that I had nothing left in the tank. But an eyebomb takes a few minutes, little or no energy. I still get to be creative and it cheers me up.

Hence the marked absence of any new writing so far this year. Or last year to be honest. Of course, that’s also the reason I’ve been concentrating on the eyebombing book. Because it’s a different kind of creativity and an easy win … except I did an event on Saturday and there was very little interest in it live … so to speak which was rather worrying after it looking like people were interested online.

This is the first book I’ve talked about on social media where people have demonstrably shown an interest but … The price was definitely too high. Nobody was countenancing paying £18 for the hardback and £10 was clearly too steep for the paperback too. I might try a smaller size and see if I can produce it more cheaply and charge £7 for the paperback and £10 for the hardback. I guess the trouble is that it’s still too expensive to produce a colour photobook for a price that anyone’ll pay. It may be that I need to aim it at a more deluxe audience … gulp … but then the photos should probably have been better. Yeek!

Bummer. It looks like I might have produced yet another turkey.

Never mind. I guess you can’t win ’em all… or any of them, it seems. I should give up already, but that would be easy, and I NEED to create things … and I’m pig-headed. Onwards and upwards.

[/rant mode]

Here’s something a little lighter …

Something for that person who has everything: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday objects ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in our own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing mailing list by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, book marketing, dementia, dementia emotional cost, dementia fiscal cost, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, massive rant, rant, trying to be a writer

21 May 2023 · 6:47 pm

We’re not at home to Mr Cockup. Oh no, no, no, no.

Except we so smecking are. Mwahahargh!

Picture of an amber warning light for an automatic gate with plastic googly eyes on it to make it look like an irritated face.

Yes he’s a bit fucked off.

I was going to do a post about writing this week—and accompanying things—but the accompanying things got a bit out of hand and so I’ve gone off on a completely non-writing related tangent.

Do you remember a refrain from the Blackadder II episode where he’s made Lord High Executioner?

‘We’re not at home to Mr Cockup!’ he tells his team. And they fuck it up, of course, and Baldrick says, ‘Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr Cockup, my lord?’

Yeh, well … Mr Cock-up seems to have taken up permanent residence in the spare room and his omnipresence has affected most events this week. Sadly this time, my inefficiency has impacted on my ‘work’. I put ‘work’ in quotes because we all know that I don’t have time for a real job, since what I do is look after Mum and be a mum. My writing ‘career’ is the thing I pursue in the few minutes a week that I laughingly call, ‘my spare time’.

Here’s the thing.  For the last, I dunno how long, the cunningist of my most cunning marketing strategies has revolved around the crack dealer’s school of marketing. Give them books, get them hooked and then make them pay. To whit, I have been handing out cards … these cards … (see pic).

picture of two business card-sized flyers advertising free books.

The QR codes send people to a page where they can download The Last Word (top card shown) or join my mailing list (other card shown) and grab a copy of Nothing to See Here… In case, like me, readers can’t get the QR code reader on their electronic thingy of choice to work, there’s a link written out longhand as well.

When I changed ISPs a few months ago, I lost my website. I’d run out of space and there wasn’t enough room on the server to back it up properly … except that I didn’t realise that and so when I got the new site up and running and tried to upload the backed up file it told me to piss off.

On the face of it, this wasn’t so bad. I have an earlier back up which contains most of the material I’d want to keep. Also, I used a lot of orphan pages; that is blanks with information about my books etc but without the menu and distractions that might make people browse away before they’ve properly assimilated how fantastically brilliant my books are and ponied up for one. Phnark.

Those were stored on my computer. I composed and edited them in a very ancient copy of Dreamweaver … 2004 ancient, to be precise … and put them backwards and forwards using the ancient Dreamweaver’s integrated ftp. As a result I was able to upload those to the new site and so most of the stuff in my automations should be working as usual. But things with Dreamwever are getting a bit shonky—it being nearly 20 years old and that—so I’ve been attempting to use an alternative.

Anyway, because I’m so organised and efficient (oh ho ho) I made a list and started downloading the code for all the pages I wanted to use … except that then, I suspect, I saw a shiny thing, or something happened with Mum, or McMini needed a lift somewhere and I got called away, and when I returned, I thought I’d finished. What distracted me is immaterial, the point is I hadn’t finished the job that I thought I’d done.

Yes, it turns out I’ve been handing out these cards like confetti and sending people to my site to download a free book to read and all they get is a 404 error.

Mmm, well done MTM. Bellend of the week award anyone? Ah yes, that would be me.

Balls up discovered, I have now put it right and the page for people to go to when they click the QR code is back in position. However, my gargantuan cockwomblery does not end there. Oh, no, no, no …

It now transpires that the QR code on my mailing list sign up cards points people to a sign up page with my list provider rather than on my site. I did these cards when I had artwork but in advance of publishing the book so I had to guess what I’d call the landing page with a view to making it later—when there was a book there for people to download and I’d written an onboarding sequence. I duly made up a name for the landing page, which involved the working title of the novella rather than the one it actually has…

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right. I forgot to make that page. I forgot I’d made the link. I forgot that was where the QR code pointed but I had the cards printed anyway. Once again, the helpful QR code was taking them to a page that said oops but this time, rather than an oops page hosted by me, it was hosted by Mailerlite.

Mmm. My professionalism knows no bounds.

Bollocks.

In order to have a neat link, I used a link shortener.  Needless to say, in the interim, the link shortener in question, Bit.ly, has drastically reduced the facilities of its free account so I can’t just make a new one for bit.ly/hupbook or whatever because I’m only allowed to use the ones bit.ly gives me, you know; bit.ly/1f*5hio;avew or something equally catchy and easy to print correctly and remember. So what did I do? Well, I just duplicated the signup page I have, and renamed it with the name I used when I made the original link. Simple! But also. Ugh. Head desk.

As you can see, my marketing’s been just peachy this week, say I with such leaden irony that if I decide to move this sentence I’ll need a special, heavy-duty winch. Then again, perhaps my … er hem … marketing prowess has been kind of OK because I can tell myself that I’ve fixed a long-term problem that’s been extant since mid January.  Which makes this a win. Obviously. Snortle.

How did I not spot this problem earlier? I hear you ask, except I probably don’t because I expect you’ve nodded off by this time, but as usual I’m going to pretend, for comic effect, that I did. Er … hang on … oh yes. How did I fail to spot this? Well the QR code isn’t the only thing on there, I have also written out the link … except … it’s a different link which goes to a real page which does exist and will allow them to sign up and download the book. Not a total disaster then but kind of weird, all the same. I’ve left it like that for now because an alternative means changing the artwork.

Going forward (not a phrase I like but probably the best one to use here) people can at least sign up to my mailing list or download a free book with those cards, now. They probably won’t but that’s not the point is it? The point is that they can.

It’s been one of those weeks this week.

Similarly, I ordered a new case for my phone. I needed a wallet case because I like to have a single card in there and be able to go out with just my phone without being caught short of cash. Also, if my wallet’s nicked and I have to stop everything else I can still pay for things in a shop and get cash while I’m waiting for them all to arrive AND I can still buy stuff if I go out and forget my wallet.

However, I couldn’t find any companies that made them for my phone initially and had to buy a normal case—this is me, it has to have a protective case of some sort because otherwise, I’ll smash it. Although even with the protective case I smashed the phone-before-last on day two.

The case it has is great but I have to take it off to plug in a USB stick to download my photos, and as I’m doing the eyebombing book at the moment, I need to keep moving eyebomb pictures from my phone to my computer so, as you can imagine, this has become a sizeable point of pain. I have google drive but anyone who’s ever tried to download anything more than one photo at a time from Google Drive will know a) what a palaver it is and b) that when it compresses the photos into a zip file it leaves three quarters of them out. Massive, MASSIVE ball ache. The USB storage stick is way easier, even if you have to keep taking the phone out of its ruddy bastard case each time. That’s how eager Google is to ensure you don’t bother and pay for extra storage. Money grubbing bastards.

Sorry, where was I? Ah yes.

Having ordered the case, it arrived two weeks later from China and I discovered I’d inadvertently ordered one to fit a Pixel PRO rather than a plain pixel. When I put ‘custom wallet case for google pixel 6’ into a search engine, I have to be very careful that I check the results are not for a Pixel 6 Pro, which is bigger, because no matter what I do, it lumps them all together. I also get annoyingly irrelevant ‘sponsored’ results from companies who don’t make a custom wallet case for a pixel at all. I know I had the right one initially but the internet dropped, I had to reload the page and I didn’t realise it had defaulted back to pixel 6 PRO again. Bastards. That said, it was so rubbish that when it arrived I was almost glad it didn’t fit.

Needless to say, only one other site offering a Pixel 6 (not pro) wallet case popped up on my search results, but apparently they’d changed some vital parameter to ‘custom’ that made BT parental controls ban them. Or perhaps it was because they’re called hairy worm, phnark. Uh yeh … I guess it could be that. Sometime, long ago, in the dim, dark, distant past, we put parental controls on our BT internet access because … you know … McMini.

However, that was eight years ago. We are out of contract and neither of us knows our BT password so we can’t change it. I tried to get this back off BT but was unable to because it was confidential information. So confidential that once it’s been lost, they can’t even tell the actual account holder what their own password is. Likewise, if they spell your name wrong, they can’t change it. I might be able to tone down parental controls via the wi-fi router and I will probably try at some point in the far future, when I’ve nothing better to do.

Alternatively, it might be that only McOther can do it because he’s the account holder and being his mere wife means I’m not secure enough. I did have a secondary account and password which I could do this stuff with but those no longer work, probably because I haven’t used my BT email address, ever.

As far as the account goes, I think there has to be one default email address but we can’t get in because … password … and they can’t send it to us because we can’t get in to read the email. Anyway, they’ve spelled our surname Maguire, the ignorant tossers, so they can fuck off.

Hmm. Sorry. Not ranty or anything today am I? I’m just in a grump because my son has very generously shared his cold with me. Back to my long and rambling story. I just know you’re on the edge of your seat. Mwahahargh!

Luckily, I have data on my phone so I just used that to bypass BT’s draconian system by using my data and my phone, instead. I did try to report it as an error but obviously I needed to know my account name and password for that. Considering I uploaded the artwork, positioned it and chose the text colour using my phone I am actually quite chuffed. See picture attached.

Mmm … K’Barthan swag.

Nothing much else has happened this week other than my opening what, I suspect, is going to be the most gargantuan can of worms. I asked about getting Mum a care assessment for a continuing care grant; mainly because one of her carers’ grandfather had been given it and she told me that, in her professional opinion, he was no more in need of help than Mum. Her mother, who is also on the care team, agreed. I asked what they did, and apparently another family member had contacted an agency who’d done it for them.

Armed with this information, I rang the agency in question but they told me that if Mum is able to speak she isn’t bad enough. The chap there seemed to think that non-verbal was a key factor and told me to come back when she reaches the pureed food stage. I’m a bit confused by that because if she needs help to stand, go to the loo, wash, dress, cook, clean and can’t even use the phone or turn the telly on by herself then surely that’s 24 hour care.  To be doubly sure, I rang the Admiral nurses helpline. Sadly they don’t cover where Mum lives so they won’t be able to help with the process but they were able to advise me and said that yes, Mum definitely had needs that made her eligible for Continuing Care.  Next, I got through to social care at the council who thought I should contact her Doctor. I guess what I really need to find is the local social services number for her and get a social worker on her case. I’m not 100% sure how that’s done, as with Dad I seem to remember it happening automatically. I’ll have to look up his notes and see if I have a number for them from then.

Essentially, Mum needs a care assessment first from the right team. Apparently you can call and ask for one of those any time. Then the results of that are scrutinised closely and financial help awarded … or not. The trouble is, nothing says who you call to get this initial care assessment sorted.  There are parameters and a procedure, but to the outsider looking in the vaguaries of the system are very difficult to understand, at best and at worst, it comes over as deliberately opaque, whimsical and arcane … Mum ticks most things on the list but, as yet, I’ve found no concrete information as to where the starting point of the system is. As a result, I’m not sure who to contact to have the care assessment done. It’s a NHS team, who does the assessment for the actual application, but I have no clue if we need a ‘normal’ assessment first from social services. I’m guessing we do, although I’ve found a thing that says a district nurse can arrange this, too so I might see if I can get the carers to liaise with them.

There are two agencies who will apply for NHS continuing care on behalf of people, and a law firm with the most ridiculous name on earth—they’re probably really good but the name screams cold-calling ambulance chasers. The only one of these august bodies that quoted a price for their work charged £2,500 and some suggest as much as £6,500 depending on what they have to do. I will have to think about whether it’s worth that. No, it’s definitely worth it, for my sanity, to pay someone else to do it for me because this will be a grim project to try and undertake on my own and, like all the Mum stuff, is a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit.

In the meantime, I’ve started filling out the form on the website of the other agency. I’ve already stalled at how much Mum has spent on her care … well … you know … apart from, ‘everything’ but some of that was the day-to-day costs of running the house. She has a state pension so there’s that on top, as well, though so theory, it’s actually a bit more than everything.  Everything with brass knobs on? I dunno.

What I don’t understand is this; while I appreciate that they aim to make it hard for people gaming the system, it would be quite nice to set it up so the people who needed this particular part of the system would have some blind clue as to what, exactly makes them eligible and how it works. There are lots of really clear accounts that explain what will happen when you are already in the system and what the steps of the evaluation are. But how to start the process? Absolutely fuck all.

Carers looking after a sick relative who are seeking continuing care for them, or people who are sick themselves and need continuing care … they’re not exactly endowed with an abundance of energy for administriviatitive shit because they have a craptonne on their plate and are already nearly broken. I should imagine many of them will never get money to help with care, money to which they are entitled, because they are too fucking ill and their relatives too fucking frazzled and burned out to even begin to work out how to fucking apply.

Fuckity fucking fuck! Preparing the guest room for Mr Cockup then, even, also as we speak.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella—to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example—or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work, or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from most of the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) while two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere 99p or c from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Apple and Chirp (if you’re in the States). It’s also free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, dementia, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

3 Sep 2022 · 12:38 pm

All the things … so many things …

This week, by the wonders of technology, I’m speaking you from somewhere I’m not. Yes. I’ve scheduled this post in advance. A LOT has happened this week. Let’s start with an update on, Mum.

Mum is in hospital still but she is getting better with each passing day. She has something like a potts fracture, having broken both the tibia and fibula bones in her right ankle but I think bruv and I have managed to convince them not to operate because she has a bad heart and dementia. She’s had a brain scan and it shows clear signs of dementia but apparently they’re not allowed to give her a diagnosis so we have to go to her Doctor for that. On the up side, she won’t have to go for a CT scan because she’s just had one. I’m hoping I can sort that out as she does need one.

We are kind of holding off on the mortgage to see what happens and how with-it she is as she recovers. Ultimately, she probably will have to go into a home but ideally, not until she has forgotten about her actual house and is happy anywhere. Strangely, this did happen in hospital, at the beginning, when she was first admitted. She is perking up now though.

Things looked a bit grim there for a while so I’m glad she’s bounced back a bit. McMini is going back to school, so I took him down to see her on Wednesday. On the upside we did also get to see Bruv and the Missus as well two of McMini’s cousins. We had lunch together in Worthing and were ready for visiting hours around 2.00pm so that was grand. We also met a lovely consultant who’d been looking after Mum and had a word with the doctor about her. She’d been moved to a different ward; Durrington ward. With the best will in the world, because the staff there are lovely, it does slightly strike me that the D in ‘Durrington’ also stands for ‘death’ and it does slightly look as if waiting to die is what most of the occupants are doing.

That is unfair, but it’s kind of a waiting room ward. People tend to end up there recovering from strokes, broken hips and other ailments usually associated with the elderly. As a result it is, slightly, the twilight zone between home and a care home, but also where people wait while their families get care in place at home so they can leave, or wait for the results of tests, or wait for treatment to be decided. There are usually some with dementia, of which Mum is one.

Everything felt very final on Wednesday, but as I understand it from the carers, Mum was a great deal perkier yesterday so I’m less worried. We should have a hoist and a hospital bed for her sometime next week and once that’s all arranged we can take her home. The most important thing is that, though bored, she is actually alright in herself and seems quite relaxed. The carers are taking it in turns so someone visits her every day, too and they are actually pretty up beat about getting her home and looking after her there. However, this does feel like the beginning of the next stage but … not in a scary or bad way.

So that’s a weight off.

It was also lovely to see my bruv and wife plus niece and nephew who went and played on the slots on the pier with McMini. An excellent way to spend the time! We had a fabulous lunch in the restaurant at the end, which is really very good. Then I went right to the very end and took a photo looking out to sea.

Meanwhile, I’ve booked to go one a two day metal detecting dig this weekend and there’s another one next weekend too! Lovely McOther has bought me some scotch eggs to have for my lunches. Smokes but I love scotch eggs, and I’ve charged up the detector all ready. Fingers crossed I’ll have a good day and find some interesting stuff. It starts at 9 but apparently there’s often a big queue for registration at these things so I will need to get there earlier. I’m aiming to leave here at half seven, which should get me there for quarter to eight, or thereabouts, and I will be up at half six so I can finish the IBS before I leave. There’s another one next week but they let you register on the Friday for that one so you don’t have to queue on the Saturday morning. I might do that, I think.

We went to the beach yesterday, which was wonderful, and I managed to get an hour’s practise in with the detector. No finds to report, well, except for 20p, but it did bring back how the tones sound, which was useful, so I feel a little more confident that I can still remember how to use it. I haven’t been out in an eternity to be honest.

Things are a bit busy and I do have half an eye on Mum and the other on the fact that I have two two day digs over the next two weekends, McMini is back to school, McGrandpa will be having a cataract operation. McGranny doesn’t drive and McGrandpa won’t be able to drive so McOther will be going to Scotland for a week to keep his Mum company and drive his Dad to and from the hospital. We’re not sure when that’s going to be though but the hospital will tell us when his slot comes up.

Then there’s the last weekend of September, which is NorCon. I have ordered a craptonne more books because it’s over two days. Yikes. I’m hoping that people will buy the small ones on the first day, read them and then come back to buy more! Well … I can dream. Also, THE CLOAK has arrived and it’s really rather splendid. Yep. I think we can say that it is good. I took a quick pic this afternoon but I need the full costume on to do it justice.

Other news, while I have steadfastly not lost any weight since the start of August.

Bollocks!

On the up side, I do now fit into an awful lot of clothes which I haven’t been able to wear for years, or at all in some cases. Yes, I really am that dumb. I actually have clothes that I bought thinking, ‘this is small but it will fit soon because my fat bastardy is temporary,’ about eleven years ago and turned out to be wrong.

Mmm. Bonus points for optimism.

That said, it makes for a nice surprise now. It’s a bit of a gas suddenly discovering that shirts I’ve not been able to wear for years, and was going to throw away unless this last ditch attempt to slim down worked, now fit. I’m liking that. I still have a lot of pot belly to lose but oh so much less than before! I think some of the slow down might be due to the fact we keep having Important Events (like McOther’s birthday) at which we eat things that are the antithesis of compliance with my eating plan and then keep eating them repeatedly for days afterwards, as left overs. I’m looking at you, baked potatoes. I love baked potatoes but one is approximately one million calories. Seriously, I could do my whole allocation for the day with one tuna baked spud. It’s frightening.

picture of two paper bags on stripy fabric backgrouns As well as the craptonne of books for Norcon, I decided I’d try getting bags done with a logo, too. That way, if I go bagging up my stuff when I sell it people carry paper bags round with the HUP logo on.

OK so the logo isn’t necessarily going to encourage them to read the books but it’s cool and people might ask what it is and the web address is on there so I thought it was worth a go. To that end, I have procured a rubber stamp and some green stamp ink as well as 100 recycled paper bags. God help me, I now have to stamp them all with a green logo.

Mmm I’ve done six so far. Watch me go! Mwhahahrgh.

That said, I have to confess to being pleased with the results.

Talking about green … last week something went gross in our kitchen bin. We removed the liner, washed it and dried it and put it back. Needless to say, neither of us noticed that there had been maggots. Boake! Or that the liner had holes through which the maggots had retreated into the bin proper and then each one had become little crysalis. Oh god.

I’ve no idea how long that takes but in my defence, both McOther and I checked both bins and noticed nothing. I’m not sure if it’s myopia or abject skankiness I’m pleading here but anyway, we saw nothing. But there were a lot of them. Which we didn’t see. And then they hatched into blue arsed, or at least green arsed, flies. For some reason they decided that the conservatory was the place to go, so on Wednesday afternoon, McOther went in there and discovered a whole swarm of them. I kid you not. It was like the fucking Amyteville Horror.

After killing 20, McOther closed the door and left the rest in there. We searched anew for the source and finally I discovered the remaining pupae under the bin and then, he discovered the pupae inside. Ugh. The weird thing was that, though there was something very stinky, at no point were there maggots. Well, no, there must have been but clearly they must have been whistle stop maggots because our bin is emptied about every other day and when we emptied the reeking yuk bag the other day, no maggots were in evidence.

Luckily they are mostly dead now. We have chalked it up to experience.

So … have I written anything this week? Er … no. But I have last week’s post to use as a handy guide when I get back to it again.

Fancy something a bit more fun?

NorCon! Yes, the Norfolk film, TV and comicon is coming up on 24th and 25th September at the Norfolk Showground Arena and guess what? Yes. I’m going to be there with some of my other author friends! Woot. If you want to come along and say hello. I will be dressed as The Pan of Hamgee complete with the New Cloak and devaluing my books by signing them for people.

Or treat yourself and stay at home …

Yes, Ambassador! Spoil yourself with your good taste and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella, to take your mind off that whole thing I said back there about the green arsed flies, for example … or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from all the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) and two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere £1.99/$2.99 on retailers and free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as an author with children, author blog, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, Events, full time mum writing, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, writer parent

2 Jul 2022 · 9:15 pm

Siberian hamsters and other alarums and excursions …

Well that was an interesting day. Or perhaps more accurately, morning. But it explains why there has been no blog post until now … that said, ‘now’ will probably be tomorrow (Sunday) in light of what time it is already, and the gargantuan amount of time that the activities of ‘this morning’ involved.

Originally, McOther and I were heading off to a car boot and from there to the garage to get his car fixed. However, when push came to shove we realised he wouldn’t have time to do the boot and the garage so he went to the garage and I eschewed the boot and went to the market instead. I also have some secret knitting that I wanted to do in his absence. More on that story … later.

McCat came running in and to my complete and utter horror, I realised he had something hanging out of his mouth. Something grey, with a tail.

Remember a few years ago when that McCat brought that vole in? I can’t find the original post but it ran under the fridge in the utility room and then to the units where it disappeared and I never saw it again. I always hoped it had found its way outside again but then the room began to smell and it wasn’t McCat’s earth box or McMini’s socks. Yes, it died and I did find a post I did later about discovering its lifeless body in the washing machine while I was on the phone to my mum, six months after its disappearance. If you need to jog your memory, it’s here.

So there’s McCat running about and there’s another chuffing vole with it’s tale and arse hanging out of his mouth one side and it’s head and front paws the other side. It’s squeaking,

‘You absolute cockwomble! Put me down immediately! Ow! That fucking smarts you smecking furry gobshite!’ etc. Actually I have no clue what it was saying but I think we could safely assume that it’d be something along those lines so that seems about right.

Come here you little bastard! I shout (because I’m classy like that) and rushed after him. I’m speaking to the cat at this pint, obvs. not the rodent in distress.

Luckily, I cornered McCat in the hall and because it was his vole and not mine and he was not dropping it at any cost. I was therefore able to pick him up and carry him to the door, deposit both of them on the mat outside, shut the door and lock the cat flap before he could bring it back in.

There was no rescuing the poor little critter now, so it was best to leave them to it so he killed it quickly. I grabbed my kit and ensuring that I didn’t let him in, I went to the market to do my shopping.

Upon my return, McCat was lying on his back on the door mat chirruping and burbling in his most loving manner. He showed me his tummy and it was clear that the dead vole on the mat beside him was a gift. Yes. This was an effort at reconciliation.

‘I know you are head of the house mummy,’ he was saying, ‘but I just couldn’t give up the vole. My natural instincts wouldn’t let me but you can have it now.’

Likewise, I cannot guarantee that was what he was saying but I know the mentalist tabby git so well now that I suspect that was a pretty good approximation.

Naturally, I thanked him for his gift, because it was only polite. Then I explained that it was a lovely thought, but if he didn’t mind, I’d just pick it up with this trowel here and pop it in the dustbin. I thought of burying it but he’d only dig it up again.

I went inside, put away my purchases and I was just bumbling about the house when I heard McCat scampering about. Uh-oh, that was the kind of scampering he does when he’s playing with Mr Squishy (his favourite toy) or when he’s playing with something else …

‘Squeak!’ said somebody, who was very definitely not McCat!

‘Fucking fuck!’ I yelled and leapt into action. McMini had a second vole cornered behind a box in a corner and of course I arrived, grabbed said box and the vole disappeared underneath the book case. But wait, not quite underneath. He was under the large books on the bottom shelf that stick out, leaving a tiny half inch gap between their bottoms and the floor.

I started removing the books but by this stage McCat had lost interest, the absolute bastard, or maybe he’d decided that I’d claimed the vole. Whatever the cause, he’d wandered off. The room we were in was full of places where a small vole could hide, die and then smell impressively. I was determined to ensure that when I poked it out from its hiding place, there were no other crannies for it to run to. In short, despite trying to rescue it from McCat I could have done with a tabby backstop and I’d definitely have preferred to let him kill it quickly it was that or a second round of let-me-die-under-your-furniture.

I surrounded the vole with a wall of heavy hardback books. Got a piece of cloth and grabbed it. I picked it up and took it outside. It looked as if it had had a nasty bump on the head but I left it to recover near the place where I thought McCat had caught it.

McCat locked in, I went out and had a look.

The vole was not well. It appeared unable to move its hands. It was clearly injured, it was squeaking and it was in distress. I rang the vet and explained that I had this rodent that was probably a vole only now … looking at it … I wasn’t 100% sure and could they help.

Clearly if my furry friend was, as I was beginning to suspect, a young rat, I wasn’t too bothered if McCat murdered its family. If it was a vole, I should probably take it somewhere for treatment and leave McCat locked in. McCat’s vet informed me that they had a pigeon and chicken specialist but nobody who was too good on small feral critters. They recommended I phone a different vet surgery, which I did.

I explained that I thought I might have an injured rat but that I didn’t know and though it seemed a bit nasty of me, I felt that, if it was a rat, I was OK about letting McCat out to murder the rest of its family, because there are millions of rats but that, if it was a vole, I’d keep him in. I also explained that I thought it might be dying, that the kind thing to do would be to kill it but that I wasn’t a farm kid and I doubted I could dispatch it cleanly without subjecting it to more physical and emotional trauma. Our cat used to catch mice when I was a kid and Dad used to have to kill the ones she hadn’t quite killed. He was really good at delivering a swift blow to the head but it always used to upset him … not to mention us.

Bring it in, the vet told me and they would take a look at it.

Going back to the ‘vole’ which very much might not be a vole, I decided I’d wear gloves to handle it. Good thing that, because it was a great deal livelier than it had been when I put it out and it bit me as I tried to catch it. Although the bites didn’t break the skin they did pierce the gloves. McOther was home by this time and helped me put it in a cardboard box. I walked up to the vet’s with it and they took it in to have a look.

Turns out I was right to doubt and it wasn’t a vole after all. Just call me Manuel but it was a bona fide Siberian hamster although it escaped the ratatouille so that’s nice. I do know we have rats in our garden, but … yeh. Probably a good thing if the cat eats them then. The rat did, indeed, have some kind of head injury which was making him unable to move properly and they put him to sleep so he didn’t suffer any more.

And the vole last time? Er hem. Yeh. That was a rat and all. Even with a light bite, the vet warned me about Weil’s disease and said that if I start to develop cold symptoms I must go to the doctor’s and explain what’s happened. Me, I’m just wondering what my half-rat-half-human superpower might be.

Other things

It looks alright on the claret one (right).

What I should have been doing this morning was working on my latest and top secret knitting project while McOther was out, which is his fabulous birthday present. OK, this is me, so you know, by now, that it’s not a fabulous present especially if it involves my knitting prowess, which is more knitting prowless to be honest. On the upside, it is something he’ll use and ~~enjoy~~ … he’ll use and at least there’s thought in it. It’s a wine sock. Yeh. Don’t all fall over with excitement.

People who like wine do blind tastings, which basically means you put the bottle in a sock, except socks are a bit shit because they make the bottom of the bottle uneven and more likely to fall over. Enter the um … wine sleeve? Wine sleeves leave the bottom of the bottle clear so it will stand up, no matter how drunk you are when you place it on the table.

I’ve made the bit for the neck of the bottle too short. The bit of metal over the cork can give tasters in the know a bit clue, so I need to unpick five rows of ribbing, add six rows of plain knitting and then do the ribbing bits again. It looks shit flaccid but when you put it on the bottle … yeh, OK, it still looks a bit shit until you get to a claret bottle … then … Oh yeh. Ish.

Oh alright. It’s a disaster really. I decided to use some wool I had left over from making a pair of socks for McMini and a pair for me. But there wasn’t quite enough to get it to the shoulders of the bottle. I didn’t want to buy another ball of wool to do three stripes of fancy knitting so I bastardised another ball of similar wool and to be honest, it almost looks deliberate. I will have to knit him another less bodged one as well, clearly, but this is a nice start.

Other news …

It’s a long time since I’ve mentioned McMini here. But rest assured he is no less eccentric. He is older, and even more sarcastic, but still a delight (to his parents anyway). He did once tell me that he wanted to do the teen thing and rebel against us but he liked us too much. I’m not sure that’s anything we did, it’s just luck of the draw. Luckily there are some people at his school that he prefers to rebel against more.

Anyway, last week we were we’ve been watching the tennis as a family and supporting one player, the underdog, naturally, because we’re British. The audience on the telly were mostly supporting the other more famous player. Between each point there were shouts from the audience,

‘Come on Oojah!’ or ‘You’ve got this Thingy!’ etc.

Then as it all died away after the ‘quiet please’ one bloke right up in the gods at the back shouted something that sounded like, ‘bollocks!’ into the silence.

‘That sounded like, “bollocks!”’ said McMini. ‘Did he just shout, “bollocks!”?’

Next point, same male voice did it again and again, McMini said,

‘I’m sure he said, “Bollocks!”.’

McOther and I admitted, giggling, that it did sound like it and he might be right.

Next up to serve was the player we were not supporting. She threw the ball up and as she swung to hit it, McMini shouted, ‘Bollocks!’ and she served a fault.

She served again and in spite of McMin’s rousing cry of, ‘Bollocks!’ it was in. The lady we were supporting returned it and as the other swung her racket to hit the ball back, I shouted, ‘Arse!’ and it went into the net.

‘Woah! She can hear us!’ shouted McMini.

It opened the floodgates. They played a tie-breaker with McMini and I continuing to shout bollocks, arse and for some reason, follicles. Our lady won. I made a cheer which reminded McMini of an impression I do of Dad doing an impression of one of his teachers dropping dead in the middle of assembly (he yelled ‘eeeeeruuuuuw!’ and keeled over apparently). So McMini adds the part of the story following that which is the boing, boing diddly boing this teacher’s wooden leg made after he’d measured his length.

Despite this coming out of nowhere, I knew exactly what McMini was referring to and started to guffaw at which point McOther who was actually watching the tennis turned to us briefly, smiled indulgently in an oh-here-they-go-again sort of manner and reverted his attention to the TV.

McMini and I sat there crying with laughter and all was right with the world.

It’s competition time …

OK. Have you ever seen extreme ironing? If you haven’t it’s worth looking it up because it’s mad. Here’s a potted summary.

Let’s do our own variant Blog peps! Extreme Reading. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Here’s how it works.

1. Get one of my books. It has to be an actual M T McGuire book. No other authors’ books are admissible. You can use a paperback or your e-thing with your e/audio book open and showing really obviously.

2. Go the area you have selected in which to read in an extreme manner, be it upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Tobogganing down the Cresta run, *sitting in the fountains at Trafalgar Square in your swimming cozzie or whatever.

3. Get photographed in your extreme reading position and then submit your photos to me. I think I will probably put them to the public vote.

* don’t do actual this though. You’ll get arrested.

How do I submit my photo MT? I hear you ask.

Well, I don’t to hear you ask but let’s not complicate this. Let’s pretend, for the sake of making this section that tiny bit more interesting, that I did. Here’s what you do.

Attach your photo photo to an email. You’ll need to give me your name and me some brief details saying where and when the photo was taken (date, place/town and country) and any witty commentary you wish to make about it. Then send it to me by email with the header, EXTREME READING TOURNAMENT, like that to list at hamgee.co.uk. You can send a maximum of two entries and it will cost you nothing to enter.

If you want to, you will be able to share the entries you submit on the Hamgee University Press Facebook page. I’ll make a specific post and pin it to the top so you can comment and add a photo but that’s not obligatory because I totally get that not everyone does Facebook. I wouldn’t do much social media if I didn’t have to.

Small Print: Nothing above 3mb please or Google won’t deliver them to me and a maximum of two entries per person. You may have to resize mobile/iThing photos to get them to me.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t do anything dangerous or stupid. This is an extreme reading tournament, it’s not the Darwin Awards or a game of who dares wins. Happy snapping.

And finally …

The Last Word is available in Audio.

If you enjoyed the short story, The Last Word, the audio of that is also available or at least, still available. If you need it, here’s a quick reminder of the blurb.

When Mrs Ormaloo brings the terrible news to the Turnadot Street Businesswomen’s Association that the Grongles are going to burn some more banned books on the night of Arnold, The Prophet’s birthday, Gladys and Ada decide to Take Steps. They even enrol some of the punters from their pub to help out. The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can. But the key player in their plan is Humbert and there is no guarantee that he’ll cooperate.

Corporal Crundy is determined not to mess up his first assignment since his promotion. It should be easy. All he has to do is guard some books. Yeh. It should be a piece of cake but somehow that’s not the way it turns out.

To find it, go here.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, full time mum writing, humour, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, M T McGuire audiobooks, McMini, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer mom, writer mum, writer parent, writers, writing

15 May 2022 · 5:26 pm

Still hanging in there …

Still here … 🙂

There’s been a bit of a long break and I thought I should probably pop in here, if only to reassure you that I’m still alive. There is a reason for my absence. First up, I was away on holiday for two weeks, during which I incredibly cleverly managed to get COVID 19. We all had it, the boys for a couple of days each. Me? Like all colds it went on for chuffing ever. First a week of really bad allergies during which I consulted a pharmacist in the resort and as it only appeared at night she reckoned I was right in thinking it was allergies.

Then, on our last day at the ski resort, I woke up with a temperature and a full blown cold (I get a temperature for the first couple of days with most colds, I’m rubbish at them). The cold turned into a two week sinus infection. After that there was a period where I felt very post viral. Once I’d been clear five days I went to church (I sing in the choir) and at the end of the first hymn I was surprised at how weak and sweaty I felt. I think it’s pretty much gone now but I’m still really tired and I feel terrible about all the people I met and spoke to over the second week on holiday, when I was huffing COVID cooties over everything. I sincerely hope I didn’t give it to any of them.

On the up side, although I didn’t know it was COVID I knew I had a cold and I felt it was only polite, in the current pandemic, to wear my mask for every and any interaction with other people. I also sanitised my hands to the point where they were so sticky I could probably have used them to climb up the sheer sides of glass buildings. Probably.

Hopefully all that protected everyone from me. I think masks probably stop more coming out than they stop going in. I hope so. The fact it was Easter and everything was shut also helped as it meant I didn’t sit in restaurants infecting people the way I might have done if any of them had been open.

While I was feeling drippy and post viral, I ditched anything that I absolutely didn’t have to do. So that meant everything except a bit of writing here and there, my monthly newsletter and Mum stuff, of which there is a craptonne right now. I also included ditching the blog. Although, I’m beginning to think that ditching blogging might not have been such a good idea. Not in the long run.

Overwhelm

I didn’t mean to talk about this today, but I’m going to because, fuck it, this is my blog after all.

The thing is. The Mum stuff has been really hard. There was so much of it that at first I was afraid (I was petrified!) ~~Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side~~. At first I did just go into fluffy-bunny-in-the-headlights mode but after a few weeks of going, ‘shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!’ I managed to belt up and did what I always do in situations like this. ~~Ignored it and pretended it would go away.~~ No! I stopped looking at how much there was to do and divided it up into little tasks; began at the edges if you like, chipping away at it one small job at a time. Phone this, post that, check these etc. Trying to do one small thing each day.

Net result; I’ve finally broken the back of it. I should be smug and yet, I still feel a bit overwhelmed with it all at the moment. I know why, too. I’m coming up to the anniversary of Dad’s death and I miss him, real him. When Dad was sliding into insanity, I could always ask Mum stuff. But now Dad has gone and Mum is sliding into insanity and there is no-one to talk to. Well no, there is but I’m making these decisions without the ultimate authoritative input of the demented person’s spouse, whereas when we made them about Dad it was simply a case of discussing it with Mum.

This is the hardest and loneliest thing I’ve done. It’s worse because I know my brother doesn’t really agree with what I’m doing. I love my brother dearly and I don’t want to fall out with him but the stress of continually going against what he wants, and what is actually the most sensible course of action, is a bit grim. The trouble is, the sensible thing isn’t what’s best for Mum, and if I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning for the rest of my life, then I have to do what Mum wants. Even if she is as mad as a box of frogs. Even if, were I to ask her aged 50, she’d be horrified. It’s a bit of a shit position to be in.

Also, with the mountain of stuff I had to do, and the fact I was recovering from COVID and couldn’t do much else, I did have to have a bit of a sprint at it eventually. Drop everything and sort it. This approach is OK for a short time but with the COVID it went on longer and … I suppose I’ve looked too hard into the face of Mum’s dementia for too long and that always leads to trouble.

The trick with dragging the millstone up the hill is to know what’s happening but at the same time, not acknowledge it. Like some warped Magic Eye picture, I can see the image but I mustn’t uncross my eyes and let reality creep in or I will be undone, and god knows I can’t be undone.

If I allow myself to think about what is happening in the wrong way—or at all really—there are tears. But not useful, get-it-all-out tears. They’re the pointless crappy ones that achieve nothing and just fill your nose with snot.

Also. I’m so fucking angry. I’m absolutely incandescent that my parents were promised free health care and then, at a point when it was too late for them to do anything about it or plan for alternatives, it was taken away. Oh I could rail against the Government, and NHS’s institutionalised discrimination against certain mental illnesses while it happily treats others but what’s the fucking point? I could write letters, I could write to my MP and get the usual boilerplate reply referring me to the statements she has made about the issues that most concern her on her website. She doesn’t even pretend to give a shit.

All it will get me is a sore throat or numb fingers. I could keep on asking the powers that be why, if two people have the exact same symptoms, one can be treated on the NHS for free and the other is forced to pay—not just their money but their house, possessions and everything they own, simply because their illness has a specific name. I could ask why people with dementia are taxed to the tune of all they own, unless they’re fortunate enough to die first. I could ask them if that’s just. Or right. Or building back better.

I suppose it might make me feel I’d made myself heard but I doubt it. Trying to do anything about it is like pissing in a wetsuit. Doubtless it will give me a nice warm feeling for a moment or two but it’ll make fuck all difference in the long run.

And I suppose it doesn’t help that we seem to have one of the most morally destitute bunch of stone-hearted cocksuckers ever to darken the doors of Parliament running this country right now. A bunch of feckless, misogynistic lounge lizards who also, unfortunately, appear to be completely teflon.

We have someone at the head of the nation who is an international joke and, possibly, one of the most unsympathetic and bone-headed premiers since Cromwell. Except, stone-hearted, empathy-free bastard that he might have been, at least Cromwell appears to have had some kind of moral compass and seems to have genuinely believed he was acting to help his people rather than just blatantly helping himself.

The present shower appear to pride themselves on having the kind of moral standards that make the Emperor Nero look like an exceedingly uptight nun.

Sorry, where was I?

Mum stuff and it being hard. I guess what makes it hard is that everything takes ages. Twenty minutes on hold, minimum, for a three minute telephone conversation. Then there’s the whole fact that we are mortgaging Mum’s house so we are basically gambling on how long she has to live. And we can only mortgage half so if she lives more than four and a half years, we’ll have to sell the house and move her into a home anyway.

Then

I guess what I’m saying is that it is possible I need to do some serious self care.

If you are looking after someone with dementia, this is probably the point where you’re hoping I’m going to share some amazing coping mechanism with you, right? God in heaven! I wish I could. But to be honest there just isn’t one. I guess the almighty (who I’m also pissed off with about this) has just decided that the camel WILL through the eye of the needle and 50% of people over 70 will get gold plated entry into the Kingdom of God by din’t of a whistle stop visit to hell before they die. Going nuts and spending everything they own on care.

Seriously though, one of the things not writing my blog for a few weeks has taught me is that actually, it’s pretty vital I that write my blog. By venting all the anger and weirdness and tension on here I get to be effortlessly normal in the Real World.

Well. No. That’s not exactly true. Normality is always an effort but you get the picture I’m sure.

For example, having a Basil Fawlty style rant on here and will make people laugh. It might make them think and it might make them sympathetic but by making it funny and airing it here I can cut the sense of overwhelm I feel down to a manageable size. Laugh at it and it loses it’s power and all that.

Conversely, having a Basil Fawlty style rant in real life leads to awkward silences. I’m clearly not funny enough to carry it off face on. Or maybe I’m just too desperate and too angry. Like a young woman I saw on Live at the Apollo a few years ago who did a fabulous stand up routine about nursing her mother through cancer. It was so powerful, but it was also painfully raw and the audience looked like they wanted to hug her, not laugh.

Even worse, by not ranting it all out here, it spills out when I talk to Real People. Yes, I have fallen into a terrible habit. When people ask how I am, I’m fucking well going and telling them.

This is not good. This is so, so not good.

I do not want to turn into the kind of person people hide under parked cars to avoid. I don’t want to be the dear woman my mother used to hide in the coat cupboard from (she was lovely but she was enduring very tough times and she talked soooo much).

Am I there yet? I don’t fucking know! But I fear I’m perilously close. I’m going to meet up with some of my old school friends this week and I am actually quite nervous. I have lost so many friends by meeting them during a crisis after a long time apart and then being too intense, too weird and too chatty to the point where they quietly delete my details from their address books and move house.

A big part of the stress is that I’m appalling at this stuff. Seriously. In my 20s, I had an IQ of 149. One point off genius level. But the side of my brain for maths is … it’s so stupid. Brain 1 is sitting there looking on in complete incredulity as Brain 2 tries to understand compound interest. One side of the house is mercury quick, the other is like wading through semi congealed tar. It’s weird and frustrating and thank God McOther has agreed to attend the mortgage meetings with me so there is someone there to ask pertinent questions and understand it all straight off.

Then there’s a fair bit of guilt. One of the things that cropped up, doing all of this, was how badly I’ve taken my eye off the ball. I confess that while Mum was reasonably well and not deteriorating as much, I kind of let things slide. I wrote stuff and did things with my spare time that normal people might do. IE nothing particularly looking-after-Mum related. She was very frail after Dad died, and although I knew that the Almighty is far too hell bent on crapping on us all from the stratosphere to do us the mercy of having Mum’s money outlast her, there were three years of it and logic said it should.

I really should have known. Again, it might be easier for us to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of God but I’m sure that, with the help of a blender I could— yeh alright. Moving on.

Returning to my derelict duties I discovered that Mum’s payments from Dad’s work pension had stopped and that she is on the lower rate for one of her benefits when she should have been on the higher one since she started to need carers at night (April 2019).

Gulp.

On top of that, I realised that if the council tax definition of severely mentally impaired goes on levels of dementia alone, she should be eligible for a council tax disregard, which means her council tax payments are waived. As these are over three grand a year it seemed quite a good idea to get the forms for those and ask her Doctor if he was prepared to sign them. If he doesn’t, I am now at the point where I can safely say I’m spending over 35 hours a week on Mum and I will claim carer’s allowance with a clear conscience, instead, and bung some of that her way. (You can’t do both).

None of this is quick. Oh my goodness no. But I stayed on hold for the prerequisite 20 minute plus to each of the august bodies I was required to contact and got the forms sent out. In the case of the pension, although Mum had signed a chitty to say they could talk to me, it was too long ago. They gave me an email address to send my power of attorney to and then told me I’d have to wait 10 – 12 working days before it would be ‘on the system’ and I could ring to ask my question again, at which point, they assured me that they’d answer it. I put a note in my diary to ring on the magic day and relaxed knowing the forms would arrive at Mum’s while I was away and I could pick them up a couple of days after getting home.

But then I arrived home and discovered I had bastard COVID and I couldn’t get to Mum’s to pick the forms up before they expired.

Can you guess what happened next kids?

Urgh. Yes. That’s right. I had to phone them all again. I swear the Man has decided that the new way to keep us down will be to give us pointless shit to do, like sitting on hold for a fucking eternity to ask a question that is answered in about ten seconds.

So over the past couple of days I’ve been writing covering letters and filling in forms. In black ink and in capitals. Needless to say, I ballsed up the forms extensively but hey, Tippex is my friend. I sent one form to Mum’s for her to sign with instructions to the carers as to what they needed to add (her list of meds) and bless them, she signed the forms yesterday and they put them in the post. So that’s one job done that I’ve been meaning to get round to for several months.

Meanwhile at the beginning of the week, I sat down with the next round of paperwork the mortgage broker had sent, filled that in, decided how much we needed to borrow and sent it off.

Yesterday, I filled in the council tax form and sent it to Mum’s doctor, with an SAE to send it back if he signs it. Once that comes back to me I can send that on, or apply for carer’s allowance if he can’t sign without a pukka diagnosis. Mum is doing fine thinking her memory is crap. She can maintain the illusion that it isn’t dementia, even though she kind of knows it is. But if she formally hears she has it she’ll be undone. So I can’t get a diagnosis if she has to be told about it too, it’s too unkind.

Good news is, the fucking mountain of administriviatative shite is nearly all in the bag, except for signing up to the actual mortgage, which will require the services of a solicitor. Oh yes and getting rid of the last of Mum’s shares, which are in an old family firm but needs must. They have to go.

This is not the end, or even the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning for this particular period of intense Mum-based activity. Once we’ve got this bit done she’s set for another three or four years and it’s like I can see the end of the tunnel on this batch now, after which there will be a calm period.

Sure it will be horrible when the mortgage is spent and we have to sell the house and put her into a home, but there’s no point agonising over that until it happens. I guess what I’m saying is that, I should be able to write some more soon.

Talking about writing …

There is an outside chance I will finish the current W.I.P. this year. There are 102k words of it so far and I have a horrible feeling it’s going to be three books. I might be able to break it up into 50k instalments though. We are only half way through but it’ll need tightened up and when I’ve done that I suspect I’ll have three 50k instalments, two 85k novels or one absolute monster. As the other books are short but the first book featuring Goojan Spiced Sausage is also 85k I’m thinking two at that length would work really well. Otherwise one 50k and one 85k (if I can keep the prose spare enough) would also work with the some books short, some books long nature of the rest of the series.

Lastly, I’m thinking of entering Too Good To Be True for a sci-fi book award. The books have to be over 50k, a stand alone or a first in series. I’d be entering it as a stand alone. Unless it isn’t. Decisions decisions. The competition is adjudicated by sci-fi bloggers. They’ll probably hate it. They usually do. But what do I know?

Right. Until next week, that’s me … although it might be after next week, but it might not because I have to tell you about my pathetic efforts to do a calorie controlled diet and my new electric bike! Woot. I’m also thinking of doing a kickstarter to raise funds for the next book in the Hamgeean Misfit series, Starting at $10 but it gets all the other books too, or something like that. Let me know in the comments if you think that’s a good idea.

If you’re bored …

Why not try the audio box set of the K’Barthan Series from my shop with 30% off. If you’d like to give that a go, click on the link and type ARNOLD at checkout.

K’Barthan Box Set Audio in Reduced Circumstances

Alternatively, if you enjoyed the books and have the inclination, why not write a review of one of them. A list of them, with links to them on the main stores can be found here

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Tagged as dementia, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, women in sci-fi, women writers

27 Feb 2022 · 6:05 pm

Oh shit … warning: venting ahead.

Gardening tips from Vladimir Putin

Holy fucking fuck.

Well, this has been an bit of a grim week hasn’t it? If you’d asked me the kind of future I envisaged for my son a few years ago, I’d have said, ‘whatever he wants to make of it.’ I confess that the idea that, in a couple of year’s time, he might be called up to fight in a third world war wasn’t exactly uppermost in my mind. I suppose it depends on a lot of factors but there are uncanny parallels between current events and some of the darker parts of 20th century history.

What worries me, specifically, is that, putting my Lord Vernon hat on for a moment, if I was the average dictator-in-the-street, with one of the largest conventional armies at my disposal, I’d be thinking like this:

Nobody wants to use nuclear weapons. Why? Because a nuclear war would poison the entire planet. We’d all die except for about 0.0001% of the population; the social or political elite who have access to/own a nuclear bunker. Everyone else would either be vaporised in the succession of blasts, or would die of radiation poising in the aftermath.

Obviously as a dictator, I don’t give a shit about killing people but a nuclear conflict does raise problems:

1. If I want to bestride the earth like a colossus with every creature doing my bidding, I need … well … an actual earth to bestride. If I’ve nuked it so that no-one can ever go outside again then, frankly, my chances of doing any seriously satisfying bestriding are a bit shit aren’t they?

2. There’ll be a staff problem. I mean, I’m a dictator. I have an ego. I believe in my own indomitability. There have to be enough people in the underclass to lord it over. There won’t be enough little people to crush under my mighty feet as I do the colossus thing if they’re all dead and there won’t be enough of them to see it. Unfortunately, today’s underclass- no scratch that, pretty much the entire population of the world, today, lacks access to a nuclear shelter. If I nuke my enemies and they nuke back then all the little people will die in the attack. I will be left with a very small group of similarly mighty egos to my own, and the kind of people who’ve never got their hands dirty.

3. If I’m a proper dictator and worth my salt, I like money and a broken and shattered world economy isn’t going to earn me shit. Unless I just want all the stuff. Maybe I just want a palace full of looted art and jewellery all stacked up. The art. All of it from every single museum in the countries I’ve destroyed. I dunno, but I suspect if I’m properly dictator-level greedy I’m going to want an economy to subjugate that’s a bit more than dead on the table.

No sireee! I’m pretty sure that if I was a dictator, a world comprising me and my special few, plus a couple of thousand people from every other country that could afford a shelter system—with a sprinkling of the kind of insanely rich and paranoid bell-ends who have their own nuclear bunkers, Auric Goldfinger, come on down—would not float my boat world-dominance-wise.

Yes, lording it over the survivors of a nuclear war will be child’s play, but as I mentioned, there’ll be only a handful of them. It might be alright, but I’m guessing the average Dictator-in-the-street will consider this to be small-time shite and not the big cock-waving fest they’re after.

Unless Putin’s decided he’ll rise from the ruins with a few thousand privileged survivors and start a master race. I do hope not. I wonder how that would work though. Especially if, for months, no-one can go outside for more than half an hour without getting radiation sickness, and when they do, nothing will work because the EMP in the blast has done for the infrastructure. I’m hoping he’ll decide that poisoning the entire planet is a really bad idea because it will make it much harder to subjugate.

OK so that sounds good so far, but it’s not, because if I’m a properly power crazed nutjob, the inability to nuke isn’t going to stop me wanting a massive fuck off war. If I was the average Dictator-in-the-street and I knew that I had a bigger army than most of my enemies put together, and being a dictator, I didn’t give a rat’s arse about the people I govern because they are there to serve me and add to my wealth, nothing more. I might be tempted to sacrifice a few million of them in a conventional war.

After all, if I start a conflict that wipes out 60 million people like the second world war did, I still have way, way more individuals to screw for cash and lord it over afterwards, if I win, and there’s still the remnants of an infrastructure for me to milk for my own ends. If I’m just another of the rich white men who wants to run the world but am being a bit more obvious about it (by din’t of being a meat-packing dictator) war without nukes will suit me.

Let’s face it, half the western world believes Putin’s the good guy anyway. Yes. Russian sources are painting the Ukraine as the aggressor and because Putin and his ex KGB mates have so successfully undermined our faith in mainstream media there are normal people in the west who actually believe it. There are, educated, sensible people who genuinely think that Biden and Trudeau are part of a communist conspiracy to seize power.

Well, I guess they kind of are, because Putin would probably call himself a ‘communist’ I suppose. If it happens, though, I can’t help thinking that the power seizing is going to go very differently to the way our conspiracy theorist friends expect. The fact is, as I understand it, a lot of the folks who are in charge in Russia are also very rich. I can’t help wondering if a lot of the very rich and very right wing people in the west have looked on and thought, ‘hmm, we want a piece of that.’

Do we think our Dictator-in-the-street has sown enough internal discord in the West’s main players to ensure they stand divided, crumble under pressure or even stay home? Possibly.

All I can hope is that financial necessity and greed will save us. That the parties controlling the propaganda in this will appreciate that any war will destabilise economies and detract from their ability to line their own pockets long-term, and they will put away their guns and lure Mr P back to the negotiating table.

The only thing we can guarantee is that average dictator in the street doesn’t give a shit about, is his people and the death toll. Yep, we know that he won’t be having any thoughts about that.

So rock on greed, I guess. Unless it’s about ideology. In which case, I suspect we’re screwed. Nobody believes their ideology as hard as a your average extremist nutbar.

I sincerely hope we are not standing on the brink of world war three, but looking at our apparent inability to learn from the mistakes of history, I can’t help wondering if we are. I keep seeing the parallels; the undermined press, the persecuted minorities the whole thing, right down to everyone sticking their heads in the sand and going, ‘La, la, la, it’s not happening!’

But what do I know? I’m just a mother with a young son who may end up being the wrong age at the wrong time. One of millions who stands to lose someone they hold very dear over the antics of some vainglorous dickhead with an over-inflated ego.

Just like last time then.

That’s a bit of a pisser.

It’s not often I agree with Sting, but here he is articulating my fervent hope. Yeh. Maybe I should have just ditched the rant and posted this …

On a happier note …

If you want to forget about this shit, you can always download my free ‘winter’ story.

The Last Word, A Christmas K’Barthan Extra

The Last Word

Yes! It’s dark, it’s mid winter and in K’Barth that means only one thing. It’s Arnold The Prophet’s Birthday! The biggest holiday in the Nimmist year. As usual, the Grongles have banned any celebrations and worse, this year, to add insult to injury, they’re going to have a book burning on the Sacred Day but that’s not going to stop Gladys and Ada. Oh no. Here’s the blurb:

The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can.

This story is about the same length as Night Swimming and available in PDF, Mobi and Epub from Bookfunnel. Which reminds me, I must pester Gareth about doing the audio version.

Later on I will probably add a second half to it and release it as a short story with a proper cover and t’ing rather than this slightly dodgy one what I done! Phnark. Aaaaanyhoo …

To download your copy, click here

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, author parent, full time mum writing, M T McGuire, massive rant, McMini, off topic, rant, writers

22 Jan 2022 · 3:17 pm

This week I am mostly … wittering

So a quiet one this week. I’ve been trying to finish off some of the admin. I’m getting there but rather slowly. Big pluses this week, I have done my tax return! Woot. It’s always a weight off when I finish that. It was made easier this year by the fact I started getting the information together a while back and so I’d collated the various bits of paper I need.

The hardest thing is that originally, when I did my tax, I would have a four page short form which I’d fill out and send in. I just declared how much I’d earned, how much I’d spent and then any income from bank accounts and shares. Now that I do an online return, I have to fill in the long tax form, which appears to be written in a cross between legalese and accountant speak. Jeepers. Even the simple stuff is complicated. Where it was profits, turnover and loss it’s now turnover and ‘allowed expenses’.

Expenses used to be extra things you could claim, for example if you bought a computer you could spread the cost as a loss over three years and that was a business expense.

Now, I don’t actually know if the ‘expenses’ it’s talking about are business expenses, or the day-to-day costs of running the business. I’m allowed legal fees and accountancy fees but is paying my cover designer an ‘allowed expense’? I dunno. Everything is so much more complicated. Thank you, Gordon Brown, for mushrooming the amount of tax law from one weighty tome to an entire fucking truckload of weighty tomes.

Bastard.

Onwards and upwards.

As a person with discalculia, numbers are extremely difficult for me. We are talking wading miles up to your neck in treacle. Weirdly, I actually have some scientific and mathematical pragmatism and logic but numbers themselves are grey and amorphous. There is nothing to cling onto. I get zero intellectual traction.

Words are like bright sparks, glittering and zipping down my neural pathways at the speed of light. I can feel the tiny nuances in meaning between them. Words are sparkling, and razor sharp and glittery and accurate. Numbers are grey and insubstantial with nothing to hold onto, or they are cloying and impenetrable, like slime; thick grey slime. Words … if I hear a word for the first time in my own language, I know instinctively what it means. Numbers are drab and faceless, the dementors of my intelligence, their meanings unknown to me, their messages scrambled or parsed in a code to which I have no key. They’re like a foreign language but there is no dictionary and I lack the intellectual capacity to discern them without one.

It’s important that I take numbers very slowly, to the point where it might be close to retardation. My mind and thought processes are usually quite quick, so my incapacity it makes me feel very stupid. It would be good to be bright and not … stupid. No wonder so many of us dyslexics are chippy about our intelligence.

Put that next to the knowledge that, if I get this wrong, I’ll go to prison and obviously it’s a recipe for a neurotic hissy fit and stress fest!

Seriously though, I go through these pages and pages of questions just thinking, I have no idea what this means, I’ll leave it blank. Although I reckon if they are questions I can’t begin to comprehend, they’re probably not asking something that applies to me. Gulp.

One particular joy is that we have to declare all our foreign earnings. We have some foreign unit trusts or something and I have to declare the few quid a year I earn which are ploughed back into them. I suspect individuals such as myself are not the type of people for which this section was added. I have also told myself that I will definitely, definitely file the current year’s return as soon after 6th April as I can. Except that was what I vowed last year and here I am, filing it in during January when the do by date is 31st … then again, they’ve extended it to Feb so in theory I’m a month early. Ooo now there’s a result.

Obviously, once I have got used to it, I can fill it in much faster and I’m much more confident. However, they rephrase all the questions and change the entire form EVERY. FUCKING. YEAR. Ugh.

Next up on the admin list is to try and confirm when Mum last did a tax return. I have a vague clue but not a massive one although I think I’m homing in on that gradually. We have to dispose of Mum’s stocks and shares now because there aren’t enough of them for it to be a sound investment strategy. The balance will go into a high interest account and fund her care while we arrange to borrow a yearly sum for care fees against the house. In the UK healthcare is free unless you have dementia, in which case, you have to bankrupt yourself. When you get down to your last £23k, except it’s not really £23k it’s actually £14k, the local authority will step in to help rather than the NHS. If you’re lucky, you may end up in a decent care home. If you live in an area where there are more demented people than care home places then it’s either up to your relatives to look after you, or if they are busy doing things like jobs to pay their rent and feed their families, you get four twenty minute visits a day to serve you meals and help you dress and undress.

Mum’s local authority are very good. They were great with Dad, but even so … I hope the house is worth enough to last her out.

I was thinking about dementia, obviously, with the life I live (Thanks God, you utter, utter git.) I think about dementia quite a lot. Mum’s is different from Dad’s. Well obviously because Mum is different from Dad. That’s the thing of course, every individual is different so each person’s dementia attacks them in a different way. I guess there are general pointers which allow folks who know what they are doing to work out exactly what stage the person with dementia is at. It’s handy to have a handle on that when it comes to planning care and anticipating whether to ease off or step it up.

My grandmother ended up lying in bed for a year. She was totally unresponsive and Mum said that she used to go visit once a week. She’d just sit there holding her mother’s hand and cry. Apparently the sister in the home was lovely and used to tell Mum that it was alright and reassure her that my grandmother was different – in a good way – after her visits.

I could see Mum going that way, herself. If she did, I’m not so sure I’d mind so much. Surely it’d be better than the torment Dad endured on his darker days, wouldn’t it? I’d read to her I think. Whodunnits, or books that I knew she’d enjoyed like the Children of the New Forest, and Ballet Shoes. Or the Romany books.

On a happier note. My cousin came over this week and we took Mum out to lunch at the pub round the corner. She wasn’t in the best of form but the visit went well and my cousin had some prints of the school I grew up in which she offered to my brother and I, but I don’t think he was interested, which was handy as I’m very pleased with them.

Said cousin also kindly gave me a print of a portrait of my … I dunno how many times great grandfather who started a newspaper called Bell’s Weekly messenger. See picture. He looks worryingly like Fraser from Dad’s Army. I believe he’s responsible for initiating the use of the double s—before that they used an f. But that might have been his father. I get muddled because there were two John Bells in a row.

Even though he is wearing the most magnificent Dickensian coat—of which I am extremely jealous—I am fully expecting him to step out of the print and tell me I’m doomed.

Extra bonus content was a book of poetry by my great grandmother which I think might be termed as ‘sentimental’. It’s sort of good and also sort of hilarious, bless her. She clearly travelled to India and Kashmir and found it hauntingly beautiful. I can’t wait to show it to my Aunt, who grew up in India. I think she might appreciate the descriptions and find the sentimentality as amusing as I do, but at the same time, I think I could get away with us having a giggle about it without being disloyal.

I was going out to the theatre yesterday evening so McOther and I decided to have our big meal midday and we went out to lunch to a noodle bar in town.

What is it with people, though? We arrived early and there were only a couple of diners in there, one sitting at a table one side, by the window, the others sitting about ten feet away, at a table that was also by the window but on the other side. We sat further in, near the wall.

While we were there, four more groups came in to eat. One sat on the table right behind me, although that was still a good three feet away from ours. Another sat at the table right behind McOther which was also three or four feet away. Neither was too close but, at the same time, they could have sat a bit further away.

Finally, as we were just finishing our plates of noodles, and enormous Dodge Ram wanker-tanker pulled up outside. It backed up, parking across the drive of the house next door and a family got out. It looked like husband and wife with granny and young daughter. They were all quite big, which, presumably is why the four of them had to arrive a vehicle about the same size as some of the smaller-sized buses operating in the UK — although it probably does fewer miles to the gallon.

The presence of the daughter, who could have been anywhere between about four and seven, was notable, in that she should have been in school unless she’d had special dispensation, or was unwell. She proceeded to demonstrate that she was, indeed, unwell by producing a wracking cough, you know, the sort of thing you usually hear from people who have spent the last 40 years smoking sixty a day.

Clearly the little girl was off school, recovering from a chest infection, or possibly, judging by the sound of her cough, pneumonia.

There’s no way the kid had the Rona, nobody would be that thoughtless, but in these dodgy times, someone who is clearly off school sick, coughing as if they are suffering from TB is always going to be a bit disconcerting. Bearing that in mind, when it’s me, I will always be a bit embarrassed about it and sit a long way from anyone else, I was kind of expecting them to choose one of the empty tables away from other diners.

Maybe they’d had it up to their eyeballs with people looking askance at their coughing kid, I dunno. But they came over as very concerned that they should be allowed to exercise their own freedoms and rights but at the same time, not remotely bothered if exercising their rights and freedoms came at the expense of other people’s — parking across someone’s drive because it wasn’t illegal and nothing said they couldn’t, for example.

The restaurant contained about ten or fifteen empty tables. Including the other half of ours. Our table was the end of a table for six, comprising a four seater and a two seater, and it had been turned into a two seater by being pulled about six inches away from the other one.

Did the new arrivals go for the social distancing option and choose one of the empty tables that were a decent distance away?

No.

Of course they fucking didn’t.

They came and sat next to us. On the four person bit of our six person table. Right hugga-mugga pretty much on top of us. The daughter barking like a sea lion all the while as they took their places. I was fully expecting to see the poor kid’s lungs land in her noodles.

Not that we stayed that long. We made a very, very swift exit. But instead of enjoying the rest of our noodles and then sitting for a bit with our cups of jasmin tea, we shovelled them in as fast as we could, knocked the tea back and legged it for the door.

To be honest, these folks were clearly completely oblivious. The kid probably just had asthma. The hospital’s not far away, maybe she’d just been seeing the specialist, who know. I’m not blaming them. Folks pull this shit all the time.

However, it did get me wondering why we are such herd animals. It’s a bit like that thing when you park in an empty car park and return to your car to find that there are now two cars parked in the car park, and the other is next to yours, and parked so close that you can’t open the fucking door to get in. What is it about we humans that means we have to all huddle together in a crowd? To the point where it’s bloody irritating.

Why, in a restaurant with about seventy covers, did three quarters of the diners decide to huddle in a close knit group round our table? I have no clue. I am always one to find an empty space, if only so we can relax and converse unheard. The rest of them? It’s like they wanted us to listen.

Finally to round off the week, the theatre performance I went to was Jenny Eclair’s new show, Sixty FFS which was hilarious. I bought the last two tickets in the house for a friend and myself, in separate boxes one each side of the theatre. Then the booking office rang us and asked if they could change the tickets so we were in the same box, which was ace.

Jenny was absolutely as funny and as outrageous as I expected. She was particularly funny about post operation constipation – which is a factor of the painkillers (for more on that story, go here). She was also very funny about Nordic walking poles – we all end up using them because we’re arthritic – and she showed off her gilet ‘I bought it in yellow to go with my teeth.’

If it’s on near you and there are any tickets left. Go! It’s hilarious.

Oh and I’ve even done a bit of work on Misfit 5. Woot.

All in all, then, a moderately successful week.

And now for something completely different.

As per last week, another quick reminder about freebies and cheapies available from my fabulous portfolio of literature.

The Christmas story is still up for grabs, also, the audiobook versions of Few Are Chosen and Small Beginnings are down to 99c on Apple, Chirp, Kobo and my own Store. To find an information page, with links to buy, or to download The Christmas One, just click on one of these links:

Few Are Chosen (remember it’s Kobo, My Store, Chirp and Apple the other stores still have it at£7.99)

Small Beginnings (this one is free on my store but 99c/99p on Kobo, Chirp and Apple.

The Christmas One This one’s an ebook, obviously. Gareth is currently performing in Worms (snortle) but there is an audiobook scheduled for late February.

The Last Word

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Tagged as author blogs, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, early dementia, full time mum writing, humour, indie authors, K'Barthan Series, M T McGuire, M T McGuire audiobooks, M T McGuire new releases, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer mum, writer parent, writers, writing

18 Dec 2021 · 1:07 pm

I ai’tn’t dead … honest.

Although I can forgive you for thinking I might have been because, I concede, it’s been ages since I’ve had time to write the blog. I’ve had to keep dropping it in favour of writing for Nano – which I ‘won’ – or doing other things. I even had two posts ready to go but ran out of time to upload photos and then didn’t post them. They’re a bit out of date now although I might post the one about NanoWriMo midweek just coz … you know … I can.

Truth be told, it was my own fault. I stymied myself completely by ensuring that I’ve not a single clear day in the three weeks running up to Christmas. That wasn’t a good idea. My recent writing deadline of 15k words in three weeks has fallen by the wayside at 5k. Then again that is 5k I wouldn’t have written otherwise and I achieved it in 5 of the 15 days so I’ll take that.

Thursday: I should have realised things might not go the way I planned when I discovered, while having a mid-morning wee, that I was wearing my knickers inside out. No time to change them so inside out they remained. All day. Nice. I’d arranged to go round to a friend’s house for lunch and I discovered, to my complete and utter horror, that I needed to bring some food. This, at a point when the only cooking slot available was just before I set off. So no writing that morning either!

On the up side, once I’d finally got my head round the idea that everyone had volunteered to bring things, I was left with the something sweet brief. Easy, I would make chocolate log, except I’d make the ‘log’ into buns and ice them with a lovely piped rosette of chocolate icing. Mmmmm.

Luckily, it was McMini’s last day of term so we were all up early and the mixer was droning away in the conservatory, with the door shut because it’s a bit noisy sometimes, before McMini even departed for school at 8.10 or at least 8.25 because McMini’s interpretation of time is somewhat elastic. He is a teenager after all.

Talking of McMini, he is still hilarious. I sent him off to get a tea light the other day to go in the lamp on the table which we light at supper. We have three bags of the damn things, but two have been put away by McOther who has no idea where they are and, since they’ve been put away by him in a ‘logical’ place, the likelihood of my ever finding them is, frankly, remote. Luckily I’d bought a big bag a few days previously and kept hold of them in my office so I told McMini where to find them; on the floor by my desk.

The next time we needed one, I said, ‘Remember that you’ve already torn one side of the bag to shreds and turned it over to make it look as if it wasn’t you, so please don’t rip the other side open as well.’

He looked at me with a certain amount of horror the more than a hint of admiration and shock, as if I’d just seen into his very soul.

‘Blimey Mum, I swear you are telepathic or something. How on earth do you know I did that?’

I glanced over at McOther who had a huge grin on his face because he knew the answer, and then back to McMini who was still wearing an expression of complete disbelief.

‘It’s because the genes are very strong, and it’s the sort of thing I would have done,’ I told him.

The discussion then went on to how he was doomed because there was so much of my side of the house in him. Although luckily he doesn’t suffer from discalculia and has a science brain so he won’t have to go through his entire life trying to do arts with a science brain that he can’t use because he can’t speak maths, and being told how thick he is.

Result.

Back to the cakes. I put them into cup cake cases and didn’t bother neatening them up much because the mixture normally kind of … settles in the oven so they look normal. Needless to say, this one time, when I came to get them out of the oven, I discovered that they hadn’t settled and were still as lumpy and strange as they had been when I put them in.

Arse.

Never mind, I can do piping quite well so I reckoned I could squeesh a rosette of icing onto the top of each one, throw on a few chocolate stars, dust it with icing sugar and the irregularity of the buns underneath would be well hidden.

Next stop, while the buns were cooling, make the icing. This was butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and a little milk. That done, I spooned it all into the piping bag. Buns now cool, I approached the first one, held the bag over it and squeezed. Nothing came out of the nozzle but big brown poo-like gushes of icing oozed out of the seam in a kind of star shape, landing randomly everywhere.

picture of untidy kitchen Ah.

That wasn’t how I expected it to go.

The oozing was somehow extremely comic to watch, so of course now I was laughing.

On my own.

In the kitchen.

With a piping bag that appeared to have many extra orifices, all of which were producing something brown and very poo-like in consistency, apart from the one in the nozzle, as if they were the arse end of one of those poodles that shivers a lot.

For a moment I wondered if I should be asking myself some serious questions about my sanity but then I realised that if I was going to get to lunch with my mates at 12.30, I really didn’t have the time.

Onwards and upwards.

Nothing for it then. I turned out the lump of icing, scraped off the bit so f the icing bag that had dissolved and stuck to the outside. Oh dear, that left a lot less icing. Never mind, I washed the bag and threw it in the bin. Why did I wash it first? No clue. There you go.

Taking the pallet knife I smeared icing onto the cakes, but they wouldn’t stay still so the first problem was that my fingers got covered in icing and because of that, the lovely white pristine cup cake cases got covered in icing too.

That done I stood back to have a look. Oh dear. Something about the marks the pallet knife had left didn’t work for brown icing. In fact it made the cakes look like licked turds. Oops. Not the vibe I was going for.

Time for plan … heaven knows, I was probably onto about Plan F by this time, A, B, C, D and E having failed comprehensively. I got a fork and distressed the tops of the cakes so they looked sort of spiky. That was a bit better. Next I got a sieve and some icing sugar and sieved it over the top of them. That was a lot better until I dropped the sieve on the cakes, followed by the palette knife, and then had to do it again.

cakes in a plastic box that looks like abs

Some of the Cakes, this box is called ‘the abs’ although it’s more … the sumo.

Next I put some stars on them and some chocolate popping candy which neither popped nor tasted of chocolate before putting them into various tupperware boxes. Needless to say, we lack the right sized box to put all the cakes in one so they were added to several different lunch boxes in groups of anything from two to seven. Standing back to admire my handiwork I dropped one of the boxes, resulting in my having to return to square one with the fork fluffing and icing sugar sprinkling.

Head desk, or to be accurate; head counter-top.

On the upside, I did manage to get to my friend’s house with some of the cakes and arrived just as she was sorting out an electrical problem with her toaster. Too many crumbs in the bottom coupled with the fact a stray blini that she was toasting had somehow got across the divide so it was completing the circuit between some of the wires in a way that was not conducive to the happiness of either the toaster or the electrical system of the house. They’re buggers like that, blinis.

We had a wonderful lunch. I ate too much and the three of us consumed two bottles of wine. It was a few minutes before I left for home that I ran one hand across my face and a large lump of chocolate icing appeared on one finger. Turned out it had been hanging from one eyebrow like some giant clagg. Nice.

Thinking about it, I suspect it did me good to walk home in the fresh air. I finished the day feeling very tired, although the fact I went to bed at ridiculous o’clock the previous night and, indeed, had done all week probably contributed to that as much as the wine.

As it was McMini’s last day at school there was that magic moment at the end of the day which I always treasure, when I switch the 7.00 am alarm off on my phone. Sure I get two hours less in the day but lordy me I need the sleep! I’m at the horrible time in the month when I sleep really badly but mainly because I sleep too lightly rather than because I don’t sleep at all. As a result, a couple of extra hours in bed is a tonic.

The next blog post will be Christmas Day and I will be releasing a Christmas story for you all to read. Although clearly, since it’s K’Barth, it won’t be a Christmas Day story exactly, it’ll be about The Prophet’s Birthday, but that’s kind of the same thing.

The Last Word

It’s called The Last Word … I think, although I’m also tempted by Trouble Afoot: Parrot Abroad, then again, I could use that as the subtitle quite happily. And I’ve sort of done a cover … just. In the end, after three years of not having a clue, I decided to learn to use my iPad and iPencil to draw something. Woah. So that was fun and although it’s still a bit half cock – a lot cock really – it will do until I can get my lovely friends at A Trouble Halved to design one properly … for now.

This is the short 10k version which I wrote for an anthology in the same manner as Nothing To See Here – same anthology too. In this case though, the anthology was never produced so I have it knocking about. As I did with the anthology version of Nothing To See Here, I have expansion plans for this one so it will become another novella – it’s 12k already. I might also, possibly use it as a mailing list exclusive for the series I’m writing now about how Betsy Coed’s guest house ended up becoming a brothel. Alternatively, if it takes ages to finish Misfit Five I’ll switch to this one, finish it and release it in February or March 2022 so that something comes out next year.

The Betsy story will take me ages because that’s a massive sweeping epic but I’m really enjoying writing it. Lots of new characters or at least bit people out of the other books. Doing the Pratchett take-a-sub-character-and-focus-in technique. Oh alright, attempting it, not doing it per se. Big Merv’s in it though and Trev is so lovely. I hadn’t realised until I started to write this one what an absolute sweetie he is. We find out a lot about him because he’s one of the main characters.

Talking about Misfit Five, or at least, I was a couple of paragraphs back, it’s coming on nicely. I have just shy of 65k of it at the moment although I’m thrashing with the wobbly middle before I can get the end done.

To my unfettered joy, I think it’s going involve a fight in a balloon warehouse full of helium canisters. I have warned Gareth because it seemed only fair. Someone’s going to see the gas canisters and smack the end off one or shoot it thinking that it’s H rather than He and that it’ll blow everyone up, but instead it won’t and they’ll all end up speaking in very high voices like the Chipmunks or Pinky and Perky (depending on your age and country of origin). Obviously I’m looking forward to writing that bit immensely. There will be one cannister of hydrogen – or oxyacetylene, or something else flammable – because the warehouse must blow up. After all, you can’t go wrong with a good fireball and also I have this mental picture of The Pan and two other characters he’s working with walking out of the flames with a bag of Goojan spiced sausages. Thank you diddly guitar bit at the beginning of Coldplay’s ‘Slow It Down’ for that image!

The Hamgeean Misfit series is also turning into a bit more of an epic than I intended as The Pan gets inexorably drawn into Big Merv’s organisation and gets more and more trapped, while the net tightens around him from the other direction as it were, as Lord Vernon increases in power and influence.

There are only going to be six books in it too, because the way the relationship between Big Merv and The Pan is developing is not something I can string out much longer than that. Not if his fear of The Big Thing in Few Are Chosen is going to make any sense. What is fun about that though, is giving the low down on what Big Merv thinks. The Pan is so scared of Big Merv that somehow the idea that he really likes The Pan but is stern and bluff and that because of this, The Pan, mister zero confidence, doesn’t realise, actually works.

It’s weird. One of the things I really enjoy about writing is not really knowing where it’s going to go and the interesting journey involved in finding out. Somehow, I’ve managed to relax with that over the last eighteen months or so. I’m just taking my time and enjoying what I’m working on. Although I’ve resolved that I must finish the 5th Misfit before I work on anything else. The way my year tends to pan out, the release window is May at the latest, after that, it becomes summer holidays, there are trips abroad and then in September every single piece of admin I have to take care of comes up all at once. So basically, if I miss getting it to the editor before April, it doesn’t get released until the next year.

Also, while it’s nice having lots in progress it’s a shame if there’s nothing actually finished. And I want to release something each year which means Misfit 5 for 2022. But the fact I took a little longer over Too Good To Be True and let it rest before I published left me with a way, way better book. Therefore, Misfit 5 has got to be done by the end of February if I stand a realistic chance.

If push comes to shove, next year, I’ll finish off The Last Word, publish that in March and do Misfit 5 later on in May or June. After that it’s summer holidays and I can’t write or work until October/November and then only if I completely ignore Christmas like I have this year! Mwahahahrgh! That suits me but probably isn’t quite so great every year.

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Tagged as author blog, comedy fantasy fiction, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barth, K'Barthan Series, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, McMini, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer parent, writers, writing

7 Nov 2021 · 7:15 pm

Licensed to chill …

Better late than never this week, yes the blog goes out on a Sunday because MTM was phaffing about too long on Saturday. On the upside, the phaffing involved writing 2,000 new words on Hamgeean Misfit 5. Hoorah. On the downside, I wrote 202 words of it today, and this!

Yep. News this week, I decided, at the last minute (but then, how else do I do anything?) that I’d have a bash at NanoWriMo. If you don’t know what that is, it stands for November Novel Writing Month … actually it doesn’t does it?Well look, that’s what it is, anyway.

The idea behind it is that you write about 1,600 words every day throughout November and at the end you have, 50,000 words, which is a novel. Obviously, the chances of me writing anything on a Wednesday are slim so that’s five days down before we start. That means that if I want to write 50,000 words in November I have to do at least 2,000 a day. Hey, you know me. I like a challenge.

When you’re writing it all on one story it is quite a tall order. My brain takes ages to mull things over and so I usually write several things at once. I might yet do that with Nano and call the results ‘a book’, but at the same time, I want to finish this particular story and this seems as good a time as any. At the moment I suspect that it’s terribly slow and lacking in action but I’m thinking that once I get the bulk of it down I can fix that. Everything I’ve written is stuff I can use, although I did have to move chunks around a lot yesterday to make it work. I guess what I mean is, I’m not so worried about whether or not I’m writing these scenes in the right order (or even the write order, badoom tish! Oh ho ho).

Thus far, yeh, a week in, I’ve managed to write an average of 1,000 words a day because I managed 2,202 yesterday which means I’ve got Wednesday covered. OK that means I’m 600 words a day down. On the up side, this particular book has now reached 17,000 and something words. I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen but I’m enjoying finding out. There are any number of bizarre plot strings which may or may not come together into something meaningful. One involves an actor with a colourful past as an all-in wrestler. I like the idea that Marcella the Pirate, who is a key character and a total cow right now, might reform somehow after a run-in with the Grongles and retire from her life of crime as part of some travelling wrestle-tainment show.

Or not.

This was not a good idea.

Other strings involve someone in The Pan’s party getting kidnapped and the plot, or at least, the next bit, revolving around his efforts to free the kidnapped person. It’s kind of a mystery and I like the idea of them solving things by blundering blindly deeper and deeper into the thick of it like the bunch of clueless fools they are. It remains to be seen if my intellect is capable of constructing a suitably mysterious mystery to solve. Probably not. It’s all rather jolly though because I’m just agog to see what happens at the moment.

Today, I also wanted to share some thoughts that have been drifting about in my head for some time now about writing generally, and my career, such as it is. The hurriedly written newsletter I sent out this week seems to have hit a chord as a fair few people replied. There’s a small group who reply regularly, anyway, but there were a couple of extras this time and one sent me a truly wonderful letter asking why I wasn’t famous, which was actually quite humbling, as well as touching. And then a similar discussion popped up with a member of the K’Barthan Jolly Japery group on Facebook who said I didn’t give myself credit over the books and then proceeded to say lovely things about them which had me walking on air for the rest of the day. Woot!

Funnily enough, I remember asking Gareth exactly the same question on Whatsapp while he was doing the K’Barthan Series. It was a question neither of us could easily answer. Why is one artist famous and another not?

Sometimes, it does appear that an artist’s skill at marketing or reading the zeitgeist surpasses their actual ability. But also, I think there are disciplines where the art of succeeding is about so much more than just the artist doing their thing. It’s really hard to talk about this sort of thing when you aren’t successful because you can come over as bitter, or sad or whatever. I feel none of that, surprisingly.

When I look at my books, I’m pretty sure they’re commercial, yet different. Hell, I’m even confident that, if you like that kind of thing, they are good. They just … don’t sell.

Strangely, I have come to realise over the last year that I am completely alright with that.

Perhaps it’s because I write my books for me. Sure, I want to share them with others but I like them. It turns out, they differ from the type of thing most people want to read, but they are the kind of thing I want to read and the kind of thing I like. I enjoy writing them, indeed, I kind of have to. It isn’t 100% voluntary, this writing gig. It’s a cross between a bad crack habit and a calling. I need to do it, I need to tell and share stories. It’s a compulsion and I think most people practising an arts ‘thing’ feel the same way about their creative weapon of choice. I’d say there are very few of us do it because we can, we do it because we have to.

So if we’re all telling stories, why do some people succeed and some people not? Well apart from the obvious things, I mean, in that some books are just terrible, or too out there, or badly presented, or the authors have a higher opinion of their own talent than perhaps they should.

Here’s my guess, or at least, this is what I said to the lovely person who emailed me, anyway. I think that ‘success’—or at least financial and fame-type success—in any arts career is about 73% hard work, 25% talent and 2% luck.

While talent and work can get you to the point where you can turn in the kind of stuff you are proud of and which may even get you earning, I suspect that the thing that gets you into the stratosphere, and household-namery, is that 2% of luck. You can probably succeed with less work and more talent, or perhaps if you put in more work, you can succeed with less talent but I suspect it’s the luck that takes you over the edge.

Luck is the right person encountering your stuff and then telling the right people. It’s Stephen Fry discovering one of your books and mentioning it on twitter, it’s David Gilmour hearing you and championing your work to the record company. I genuinely believe that all you can do, as the artist, is make sure you cover your arse; put in the other 98% of the equation, do the work, do it to the best of your ability, rinse and repeat in the hope that it will be enough, and then learn the other skills; do your best to make the luck.

Sometimes, I do feel that my books are the equivalent of Kate Bush’s music. Strange but good, only without the Gilmour. Other times, I think that I am probably being slightly deluded about my skills as a story teller to put myself on the same plane as someone like Kate Bush. And furthermore, that she would have succeeded without the Gilmour factor and that the ‘Dave’ effect was just the icing on a the cake that was already well and truly cooking.

The thing is, you just put your head down, make your shit and put it out there. Because the more of your shit there is floating in the ether, the greater the probability of Mr Gilmour—or equivalent— finding it. Or that huge review blogger—you know, the one with the thousands of followers who blindly buy everything she recommends—she’s more likely to find your books if there are sixty than if there are six.

It’s just maths innit?

That means, I guess, that one of the biggest parts of success is having a LOT of content available. Look at Julia Donaldson. The Gruffalo hit the big time quite recently with the film and all but it actually came out in the 1980s. I remember my friends reading it to their younger siblings when I was at school. Ditto Michael Morpurgo, who spent a lifetime producing scores of the most fabulous books but became major league when, some years after it was published, one of his books was made into a West End show. Behind those big successes are years and years of bum on chair, head down, create, rinse, repeat.

This is how it should look.

In my case, it does feel, slightly, that the amount of material people cite as essential to gain traction is always the number of books I have out, plus about 30%. When I had one book out it was three, when I had three out it was five, when I had five out it was ten, now I have ten out, it’s twelve. It is what it is; funny in a painful sort of way.

It might be, possibly, that availability everywhere also helps. I’m talking less about KU versus wide as large print, paperback, hardback, french, german, audio, ebook etc etc. If I ensure my content is out there in as many formats as possible it has to help a bit, right? And I have ensured that my whole publishing ecosystem is primed and ready so that, should the luck unicorn fart at the right place and time, and a cloud of richly-scented glittery sparkles float my way, I can maximise the exposure to that magic spangly guffage.

If a gargantuan back catalogue is the way to succeed, it’s unlikely to happen for me. My rate of output is way too slow to play the numbers game. But people do succeed without it. Perhaps I could be like that author who wrote a crime book, put it on Amazon so her family could buy it and woke up five weeks later to discover she’d sold 80,000 copies without doing anything. Oh no hang on, that was a) a crime book and the key word there is crime (or thriller or romance). And b) she was a solicitor writing in her spare time, as so many break out indie authors are—maybe there’s something in the mindset. And anyway, I’ve written ten books now and it still hasn’t happened so I suspect that boat has sailed.

As for making my own luck. Hmm … well. There are about 2,965 people on my mailing list. With every new release that number goes up by about 20. It seems that I cannot break through that 3k barrier until the next two books are out, at which point, presumably, my having hit the holy grail of twelve, the magic traction number will be fifteen.

Certainly, if it’s really true that I need about 10,000 engaged mailing list readers for any of my new releases to be even half visible in the stores—and I’m pretty sure it is—I will have to write an absolute craptonne of books.

Yeh. As, you can see I have a very long way to go. If I’m totally honest with myself, it’s probably further than I’m going to get in this life time.

Do I care about that?

Strangely, not the way I used to. When I started writing books, I thought my stuff was so mainstream and bleedin’ obvious that it would sell by the truckload. I thought a good product was enough and, sure, if I went back to 2010 knowing the things about book marketing that I know now, perhaps it would be.

At the time, I wanted to sell enough books to rescue McOther from his job because it was high stress and he was clearly not enjoying it the way he had at the beginning. Even in my most high-powered job—national responsibility, household name company—I didn’t earn what he paid in tax so between you and me, it was probably a rather ambitious target.

However, this last year, somehow, I seem to have let a lot of that stuff go. Perhaps it’s because McOther is retiring so he doesn’t need rescuing and there isn’t that same urgency. Perhaps it’s because he’s at home now and McMini was at home school for a fair part of the last two years and that’s been really lovely. Maybe it’s that life is easier now Dad’s gone. It was bad watching him suffer his illness but it was also very distressing to watch Mum endure it too. Now he is OK, and though she has dementia, Mum is OK at the moment, since she’s happy enough and ensuring that she is as happy as possible is all I can do. Maybe with less angst about other stuff it’s easier to let the writing angst go. Or maybe I’ve accepted that while success, on the world’s terms, is possible, it’s probably not going to happen, and that’s OK.

Perhaps there is just too much joy to be had in the texture of life to obsess over succeeding in one specific area. And perhaps that single-minded approach is what sets successful writers apart from people who are reasonably talented, but unsuccessful, like me. But I don’t want to miss Real Life and anyway, without it I can’t write. The daft games with the McOthers, McMini discovering the first faint signs of armpit hair and obsessively checking for extra growth and reporting his finds. His endless search for thrash metal records, his ludicrous out there view of the world. The pleasant, gentle rhythm of life casa McGuire or the holidays we have. All that stuff has to be experienced and lived. Not only is it important to me but without it, my mojo is as useless as a car without petrol. Life, living, experience has to go in for any writing to come out.

Anyway what is success if it isn’t happiness?

So will I keep writing. Of course. And without the pressure on myself to succeed, I find I enjoy it better and write more. Strange huh?

Will lots of people start reading my books? Will I earn a craptonne of cash from them? Will they become bestsellers? Will they be made into a film? Will The Pan of Hamgee become a household name? Well … it would be nice but if I’m honest … probably not. But you know what? Amazingly. That’s alright.

As long as I can carry on writing books, and as long as the handful of folks who do read and enjoy them keep on reading and enjoying them, I’m OK with that.

Talking about books …

Which reminds me, if you want to decide for yourself if my books are any good, feel free to read one. You can find a list of them, with links to buy them from the major stores, and mine, at the end of this smashing link here:

MTM’s Books

Or you can sign up to my mailing list and grab Night Swimming for free here:

Night Swimming

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Tagged as accepting failure, an author with children, author blog, comedy fantasy fiction, failing to make it, full time mum writing, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, writers

7 Aug 2021 · 5:38 pm

Urgh! Just kill me now …

This week I have been making a very credible attempt to disappear up my own bum. Jeepers, if this is what it takes to visit another country I am never ever smecking going abroad again. And I’m not even the poor bastard trying to organise it. That’s McOther.

Suffice it to say that we had been looking at the prospect of escaping to France at some point, but I suspect the gargantuan mound of admin we have to attend to, were we to do so, would compare unfavourably with the amount of forward planning Scot did for that fatal trip to the Antarctic.

Other news this week, my website – not this blog but the actual http://www.hamgee.co.uk one – fell over. OK it didn’t really fall over exactly, I pushed it … a little bit. But NOT on purpose.

For some time now my web interface over there has been pestering me to upgrade to WordPress 5.8. However every time I do I get a server error. This was something which had always happened at first release but there was usually the option to upgrade to the US version. I’d do that and then the GB version would work fine. This time there was no US version.

This was not a good idea.

Looking up on t’interweb, I discovered that it might be down to lack of server space, possibly, or I might need to do a manual install. I deleted a lot of posts from my blog, except for the two years when it was there rather than here. Then I attempted the manual install. I followed the instructions carefully and … when I loaded the site, I got a little message telling me something was missing. And a white screen. But nothing more.

Shit.

I backed up the copy I had on my own computer and then cracked open the original copy I’d downloaded in 2014. Then I wiped everything on the server and uploaded that. Maybe that would work?

Nope.

Maybe if I uploaded the backed up recent version on my computer then?

Nope.

Shit.

The galling thing was that this was obviously a really simple fix, I was just having trouble understanding what things it was telling me it needed.

Long and the short of it was I contacted the fellow who designed the site and does my web hosting. After a fraught 24 hours waiting for him to come back to me. He was away bless him, he reassured me that there was a back up on the server and reinstalled one from Friday. It’s still a bit borked so he’s going to have a look at it and see if he can straighten things out. Fingers crossed.

Other news this week, I suddenly got two promo slots for Hello Books, which is rather good and as a result I added a couple of other promo sites and yesterday Escape From B-Movie Hell received a massive 40 downloads. I am very chuffed about this as they came from other sites as well as Amazon, including Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Woot. Happy with that then. Yes it cost more than I’m going to earn but at the moment it’s a case of collecting new readers any way I can and hoping that as they join in with the whole K’Barthan Jolly Japes community, they will stick around and read my other stuff too.

Yesterday, I managed to step on a dead chick which I think may be the most revolting thing I’ve ever done. It was very windy here and I think it must have blown out of a tree or been dropped by one of the squirrels/magpies. It still had a yellow egg sack and it was primrose yellow and fluffy and definitely hadn’t been caught by the cat as there were no bite/puncture marks. Ugh. Just thinking about it gives me the boake.

Over the next four weeks I have many, many things to do. Just the thought of it is giving me hives, also characteristically, many things I wanted to do are, of course, happening at the same time, or when I’m not around; church friend’s funeral, the first metal detecting rally I’ve had access to in two years … all fall on days I can’t get to them. I guess that’s the same old same old.

During the next month, I suspect there will be no blog posts because there will not be time. I’m really sorry about that. There is so much admin that it’s all I’ll have time to do. If you feel denuded of all things K’Barthan, and are on Facebook, do feel free to hop over there and join the K’Barthan Jolly Japery Group. It’s a scream and I should be able to check in there a couple of times a day.

Right then. That’s it, I think. A bientot! Waves.

In the meantime, if you are hankering after some K’Barthan nuttery …

You can get some of my books reduced at the moment. Woot.

First there’s still that free audiobook of Small Beginnings, from my online store.
Second, Escape From B-Movie Hell is 99c again until Monday for links click here.
Third, Small Beginnings (ebook) is free in most places.

There may be a security error on some of these links but last Friday, I installed something that fixed that, but clearly after the time the site was backed up to. I have just installed it again. Oh yes I have. Hopefully it will work and nothing will break.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, author parent, cheap quality books, comedy fantasy fiction, full time mum writing, humour, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series