The Smoker’s Nose…

At work my desk is by a window four storeys up and underneath the window, at street level, people smoke. And when they smoke, the smoke rises and creeps through the window and up my nose. I am not a smoker so to me the smell of cigarettes is a heady blend of stale ashtrays and the fictional memory of what a real chimney should smell of, courtesy of Disney’s Mary Poppins.

It got me thinking about the smoker’s nose – what I mean by that is the fact that smokers are so used to the smell that they can’t smell it. How ironic is it that the people who are bothered by the smoke are the ones who aren’t drawing it into their lungs or onto their clothing/hair/accessories several times a day?

So why do we get used to some smells and not others? For example, I recently purchased my favourite perfume but after a while the smell does not seem to linger on me and I’m forced to frequently switch perfumes to keep the smell, well, smellable (new word? I’m coining it right now. Smellable is mine)!

So why is it that when I went shopping on Monday and spritzed myself (and by myself I mean my wrist, friendship bracelets that are permanently tied on and coat sleeve) with a different perfume – which by the way turned out to smell like a cross between over-scented pot pourri and moth balls – that four days later I can still smell the awful stuff? Is it some reaction by our brains to ensure that we are kept awake and alert by not being able to zone out smells that we don’t like? Answers via comments please! If someone can invent the selective nose I would like to apply. And if that is a new scientific breeding idea I’m taking credit for that too.

Elloise.

Book reviews coming soon…

As I write my way through my debut novel and undertake a course in Professional Writing, it becomes clear to me that many book sales and discussions today are driven not just by marketing but by word of mouth and personal recommendations.

It is for this reason I have decided to launch a monthly book review on my blog and the first one will be coming soon. Now I already write book reviews for online platforms – mainly focusing on debut works and big fantasy releases – but the blog reviews will be different.

Here I am going to focus on small press and self-published works in the hope of giving authors who are not benefiting from expensive online campaigns the chance to be read, reviewed and then read some more. Someone once told me there is nothing so valuable to an author as book reviews and so as someone who will one day be putting my own work out there for review I want to do the same for others.

If you have self-published a book or have released a book through small press and would like to put it forward for my monthly blog review, contact me. I am a fantasy reader and writer so that is the genre I will be focusing on. First review will be going up before Christmas and I will continue from there. Look forward to hearing from you.

Elloise.

Redundancy…

Redundancy. Such an ugly word both in meaning and in the physical appearance of it written down. There is something about the arrangement of letters in the ‘dundan’ portion that just doesn’t look nice to me. It is a word that we hear all too often in this climate and it has just claimed another victim.

Having myself been in danger of redundancy for some time, it is very unsettling to have to say goodbye to a colleague in these circumstances. First there is the cloak and dagger way in which the whole situation is handled. Communication breaks down. No one will tell anyone else what is happening; lots of sad, red, stressed faces walk around in silence creating an atmosphere thicker than quicksand.

Then there is the goodbye speech by the two-faced management. The hypocritical ‘you will be missed, thank you for your contribution, etc.’ announcements that everyone knows are false because this person has been made redundant so clearly their contribution wasn’t appreciated.

And last of all comes the aftermath. Walking into the office and looking at the empty desk where your friend sat. The pity and sadness you feel for their situation. The terror you feel and the sense of impending doom that you are next. Then the guilt for thinking of yourself when you still have a job and someone else has nothing. It is a horrible word and a horrible consequence and every day I keep my fingers crossed that the last one really was the last one. Sadly it never seems to be the case.

Elloise.

The Blank Canvas…

The words ‘writer’s block’ get bandied about a lot. Now whether you believe or not, there is no denying that at some point in a writer’s life there will come a time when the blank canvas seems impossible to fill.

I just had one right now, when I opened up this document to write a blog, there it was. A white page glaring out at me waiting for my mark, and for some unknown reason I felt unable to write anything. Lucky for me the words blank canvas popped into my mind and saved me, but for a scary moment there I thought I was in trouble.

I like to think of myself as a non-believer in writer’s block and that there is always something to write, even if you know it will need heavy editing or have to be cut later. But today I am sparing a moment for people who really do feel that they suffer writer’s block. What a horrible feeling it must be to dread the page everyday and lose the love of the craft to a fear that the creative juices just aren’t flowing.

Here’s my shout out to anyone who thinks they have writer’s block – just write. Even if it is to express that you can’t write because you have writer’s block, just write and fill that blank canvas with a stream of frustrated consciousness.

Elloise.

Comic lover…

Since I started writing my own novel and studying, and I suppose tracking even further back than that when I discovered books by the likes of Robin Hobb and Mark Anthony that re-ignited my love of fantasy fiction, I have been immersed in almost exclusively reading novels of genre fiction and some classics. The old ‘if you want to write it then you need to read it’ school of thought kicked in and I have been reading my way through shelves of novels for years.

But that’s not to say I had forgotten my love of graphic novels and comics. In fact I’m dying to read the French graphic versions of Hobb’s assassin stories and I’ve never stopped watching cartoons and film adaptations. But somewhere along the way I just lost the urge to read graphic work. Mostly time constraints I suppose and the guilt of knowing that reading graphic novels/comics was for pleasure rather than work.

This is something I hope to remedy. Starting off with Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá et al (artists whose work I greatly admire) I am slowly sinking my teeth back into the world of graphics… and I am enjoying it no end. Suddenly I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on it all this time. It is perhaps a little daunting knowing where to begin and what styles to aim for but the possibilities are, let’s face it, pretty endless.

I certainly have a very visual mind, which I apply to my own writing and much as I think I will always be a writer first and a graphic artist second there is something wonderful about being able to watch a story unfold at the same time as reading it. I hope comics will take more of a place in my life from now on and who knows, I may even branch my reviewing out into this area to remove the guilt factor. The exciting part of it is that there’s a whole world of graphics out there waiting for me to discover it. Any suggestions welcome…

Elloise.

NaNoWriMo…

Well the writing month of November has begun. The target: 50,000 words in 30 days. In anticipation of the pain – physical and emotional – that I will be going through over the next month I have re-named it ‘November Pain’ after a song that I love but thanks to my father’s request to play it as his funeral now has a darker connotation. Thanks dad!

So day one kicked off and I wrote 2,000 words, which wasn’t a bad start when you consider that I was at work all day and then came home to the usual boredom of chores, dinner and juggling life as a student with life as an author and book reviewer. Not too shabby. 48,000 to go!

This is my first attempt at NaNoWriMo and I have a beginner’s hunger to ‘win’. I’m taking this as a personal challenge and I know failure is not an option if I want to keep my sanity (and avoid the wrath of Sam Sykes who publicly warned me via twitter that I couldn’t let our houses down – Sam, I’m on it!). So there it is. Writing is on. Life is on pause. Good luck everyone. Good luck self!

Elloise.