So that was a long time ago and I don’t really have the excuse of writing my book . I only have been having fun with learning my planning tool Scrivener. Though I do write whole swathes of texts when describing my characters and the places in my world.
I have come to the conclusion that I am a bit of a dabbler in things. With my vegetable growing, with my writing, with my trying to be social.
I blame my very low level of boredom. Kids nowadays have all sorts of acronyms and labels stuck to them. When I have a look at them I think I have a bit of AD with OCD and a touch of Asperger’s.
Though it is a bit too late to have treatment for it plus when I left work I vowed to be myself again without restraints. Boy does that feel good!
Still, I do my best not to be hurtful to my best ability with some success.
The world is becoming a weird place the more time goes by. On Twitter, one of the main subjects is the fact that in some states of the US they are going backwards in time when it comes to women’s rights.
In Alabama, they have made abortion illegal under ANY circumstances!!! A group of mainly older, Caucasian men have decided this was a good idea and put the law into action. They hope when women will dispute this in the Superior Court that the law, which lets women decide over their own bodies, will be repealed altogether by a similar group of old Conservative farts.
Never thought Margaret Atwood had such visionary ideas in 1985.
Trump is always fulminating against the Muslims but has made it possible for Christian fundamentalist to call out their own Sharia over women.
Maybe the should have never made a television series about it as it might have given those guys the idea. Next thing will be incarcerating women so they can give birth under duress. Then we will be all called OfFred or OfJohn etc.
I will definitely be reading The year of the flood and Oryx and Crake again to see what is next in store for us.
Climate change is already with us. Strange dry Winters, hot Summers and that perpetual wind! Pole caps are melting rapidly so that flood is coming I promise you.
Insects are popping up that have no business to be in the cold North and on a happier note: Wine production in the same more northern countries have never been so good.
TV series Handmaid’s Tale
Another sign of the times is that we don’t seem to think it terrible that hoards of people, men, women and children, are living in camps in poor hygiene and with hardly any access to schools or opportunities to get jobs. We are sitting with millions in front of the Television watching The Voice, Cooking contests and the Eurovision song contest, while the above situation is rarely noted and then quickly forgotten. Nice and comfortable in their own lives people are too worried having to share any of that life, so they pretend it is all for the best to throw people who have walked miles, seen friends and family die and their homes destroyed and are only looking for a better future for their children, in what is practically a prison or a dump.
Politicians don’t want to know as providing something decent to these people costs money and they rather give that to their industrialist millionaire backers.
Through my volunteer work, I do get to know people who try their best for them. They are fighting an uphill struggle. They mainly do their work quietly, without praise. They should get the golden shoe or whatever other trophies they give to sports people, who earn vast amounts of money anyway.
I better stop my rant as it is making me feel very hopeless sometimes.
An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.
They take perilous journeys organised by crooked people smugglers who make them pay a lot for often nothing.
Was reading the Helliconia books again until I got some books rather cheaply in Amazon and am reading the City of Lies now by Sam Hawke, which is very good. I have found lately I get recommendations or writers’ own marketing on Twitter which often persuades me to buy books that on closer inspection are not quite as good as the many books I have read in the past. I know it is hard for the new writers to come up with something original, but sometimes I just type in the title of the book in Amazon and get 15 books with the same title from different authors. Come one. The first thing you would expect them to do is Google it!
There is a lot of City of…, Priest of…., Prince or King of… going on in the titles. Not to mention Dragon or Raven this or that.
I love Fantasy and Science Fiction, but some of the offerings make me scurry back to the books that have a bit more meat on them such as Don Winslow‘s take on the Drugs world and the politics around it. Or A gentleman in Moscow and Rules of civility by Amos Towles.
The books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft have been the last Fantasy I really liked.
For Science Fiction it has to be Tade Thompson with his Rosewater series.
I might go back to some of the many others I bought. What I abhor the most are unnecessary adjectives. I will plough on for a bit in the hope that it is a beginner’s mistake and the editor will soon kick in, but when they persist with their cold winter snow, radiant sun etc I leave.
The best thing I learned from Stephen King’s book on writing was to watch out for that same mistake.
There is so much counting of words now that they probably need the adjectives as filler-uppers. In Twitter I often read so or so did 5k words today and I always feel like asking: And what did those words make? Something readable?
I am probably too harsh especially never having finished even one book, but I sure have read thousands of them.
