April 2018

Spring 2018...eventually

Well here it is the third of April and it still feels like it may snow at any time. To make matters worse I have caught a fairly nasty cold. Fortunately I have been keeping busy by reading the Silmarillion lightened by the leavening of the occasional Tumbleweeds comic and Asterix graphic novel during the more grim episodes of the Noldors' lives in the first age of Middle Earth. Unfortunately, my cold also keeps breaking my concentration for my own writing as such my current projects are going extremely slow.  Whenever I feel I just cannot concentrate I pull out a DVD of my favourite geriatric delinquents and just watch Last of the Summer Wine for hours on end. This usually helps me feel better, laughing does that for me, and I can pick up my pen again, although so far all I've really managed to do is draw out a map of Sapphire's homeworld! Oh well, I'm sure it will help in the long run. I have also spent a fair amount of time trying to identify a lovely cup and saucer I found at a thrift shop. it is a Royal Albert pattern called Rosamund whether or not it is still current I have no idea. My favourite pattern, Winsome, was discontinued before I'd managed to collect anything more than a few cups and saucers. I have found a few pieces in thrift shops but not a full size teapot. Why do all the patterns I like end up cancelled? Oh well, I guess I'm just a bit too individual in my tastes, which is probably why I spend so much time in my head creating worlds of my own. Speaking of which, all of this has given me a few ideas for one of the two stories I am currently writing so I think I'll end this post here and jot them down in one of my notebooks. Hopefully next month I'll have more to post on the writing front. By the way, for those who have a love of Irish mythology the title used by the mysterious woman in the excerpt for this month will identify her, although it is one of her more obscure titles. I stumbled across it while reading the Celtic Cycles section of the Larousse Encyclopedia of World Mythology and jotted it down in one of my notebooks back in 1997. I always study as much as possible about any existing mythology I intend to use in my writing for a touch of reality. The  group of Greek goddesses who were connected to the moon helped provide me with Artemis's attitude problem about being the only deity connected to it as well as a possible connection between her and a group of aliens in another galaxy that I am using in a novel I am currently writing. I have always found research to be the largest well of inspiration for my writing; it leads me into so many strange places.