Author: admin (Page 29 of 51)

I got to see this at the cinema, yay! (I much prefer seeing films at the cinema even if it is far too expensive without Orange Wednesdays)

Ignoring the horrible green wall colour in the background here are the amazingly stunning cast of this film. It’s based on a book by the same guy who wrote and directed the film. That’s right people, he wrote a book and about ten years later managed to get it made into a film after he, himself, had written the script. I was already well disposed to like this film from that fact alone. I love these kinds of people.

I’d not read the book but watched the trailor the day before the film just to make sure I had some idea of what the film was about. Mostly the trailor implied teenage right of passage style stuff about a guy who really wasn’t good at making friends. There was no hint at the real sadness and deepness to what actually happened in the film. This film touched on some really deep issues and did a very good job of showing the after effects of shildhood trauma.

There were some great comedic moments and although this was more of a teenage film I still felt young and crazy enough to really get into the mindset of the main characters. They lived life for every special moment and I still try to do that. My favourite line from the film is ‘Let’s go be psychos together’.

I think the film was a little too understated on what had gone wrong in Charlie’s life before meeting his new friends as it never even came out right and said what had happened to Charlie when he was young, although it hinted at it a heck of a lot. I almost wish it had come out and said it. I think it would have had more dramatic effect on the audience but either way this film really tugged the emotions in many different directions. At times I was laughing my head off and other times fighting back tears.

I really hope I can add this film to my collection.

Nathan was just the right man to head the first few hours of the day’s plans. He had joined the security teams on the ground as soon as he’d finished another night shift at the main house. He was tired but knew Sherdan had entrusted him with an important mission. People would need to be kept calm and the guards would need to be as polite as possible.

Nathan had an advantage none of the others had. He could tell what people were thinking. He could also project his own thoughts into someone else’s head as if he had said something to them. The first of these two abilities was perfect for pre-empting peoples reactions to being asked to leave.

As soon as his usual guard shift was over he reported to the guard house nearest the strike area. There a team waited for him.

“Right men, we need to be polite but efficient. We’re representing this country on one of its first diplomatic missions and we want to give a good impression.” Nathan smiled at his men. Everyone filed out to do their duty.

Eight men had backpacks on. The army wouldn’t realise they carried emitters for the shields and barriers in them. The soldiers would be pushed back as the guards advanced.

The eight fanned out along the perimeter side that was being expanded and began walking towards the edge. Nathan kept everyone else close behind.

They were careful to miss the housing, walking between them so the emitters didn’t reach any further than the brick walls of each house, so they would just push back the army. They wanted the people within their houses to continue sleeping.

A few rows of houses near the compound had already been evacuated by the army when they had first arrived. This only made Nathan’s job easier. They would be readily available for any new residents.

In the cover of night, the guards advanced on the resting soldiers. They soon shrunk back, feeling the affects of the moving barriers. The retreat was a shambles as the men rushed to get away from the unseen advancing walls.

Nathan smiled as his team took over the British barricade and abandoned defences. Everything was running smoothly and only the odd barking of a dog in the distance showed their progress had been noticed by anything other than the army.

Sherdan urged Nathan on from the command bunker, evidently excited. He in turn encouraged his own men forward.

After an hour had passed the entire targeted area was under their control. Each guard with a backpack was stationed to form a new perimeter, keeping all the soon-to-be refugees within the area and the army out.

As soon as everything was secure and just how he wished it Nathan led his security team to the first few houses. He split the groups into four and had them knock on the nearest doors. He waited and watched from a central location.

He concentrated hard on listening to each conversation as the doors were opened. The first was a little girl who had beaten her parents out of bed. She ran to fetch them, evidently a little scared.

The second door revealed an older mother. She had two teenage sons. The pair of men at her door launched into their rehearsed speech about who they were and why they were here. She started crying which finally attracted the attention of her children.

Nathan projected instructions to the guards on how to handle the situation, reminding them to stay calm and as non-threatening as possible. They asked the worried mother if she had anyone the family could go and stay with, until her insurance paid out. She nodded, brightening at the thought of insurance covering the financial side of things.

There was a possibility the evacuee’s insurance wouldn’t cover the house against being taken like this but that wasn’t a problem Nathan could address. He just had to get them all to leave as quickly as they could.

The third people to answer were equally amicable. They had been expecting to be moved from their houses anyway and were already partly packed. The three University girls went to sort their remaining possessions and phone their already worried parents to let them know they’d be coming home very soon.

Nathan had the groups that were done move on to the next houses. So far so good.

“Two houses packing. Only two hundred or so to go,” he said into his radio, reporting to Sherdan.

“Thank you Nathan. We’ll need to pick up the pace to get them all out by nightfall,” came the reply.

“Yes sir. I suggest sending in the extra men. We’ll need some help. There’s quite a few young children.” Nathan waited, listening to the parents at the first door. The father was trying to argue with the guards.

“They’re on their way. Give me a report in half an hour.” Sherdan’s voice commanded.

“Yes sir,” Nathan replied, only half listening.

“Tell them they have until midnight tonight to be packed and ready to go or they’ll be removed without their possessions, with force if necessary,” he sent into the head of the guard. He soon heard the guard repeat it to the irate father. The soldiers walked away to the next door before any more could be said.

The father contemplated following but his wife tugged on his arm and instead they retreated inside. Nathan sighed with relief. He wanted this to go well.

As the sky grew lighter, and each successive door was knocked on, Nathan grew more and more tired. Each new house presented a fresh reaction and with the extra security there were eight to concentrate on at a time. The remaining guards did useful things, like taking the people crates to pack into.

The single mother even made use of one of the male guards to help her load her car with the packed boxes as they were done with.

An argument soon broke out when an old lady, living alone, tried to go around to a friends house and tell her what was happening instead of packing her own things. Nathan sent a more mature female guard over to explain to the resident why she had to go back to her own house.

He lingered nearby as he listened to their conversation. The poor old woman had been very intimidated by the men and their uniform. Sending another woman to deal with the situation did the trick and she soon allowed herself to be walked back to her house.

“Make sure Annie hears it from you and not one of these big oafs. She’s a nervous one. They’ll scare her,” the old woman added. Nathan smiled when his guard assured her that her request would be granted.

“Well done,” he whispered into the guards head before switching his focus elsewhere.

Three hours later, just over a third of the residents had been informed and other than one house everyone was packing and sorting through their possessions. The army had tried to get into the area a couple of times but hadn’t succeeded. Nathan had a headache and knew he couldn’t keep using his ability much longer.

“Stay another hour if you can manage it. Use your power sparingly,” Sherdan requested. Nathan did as he was told, hoping the hour would pass without mishap. He only had to make it to half ten and he would be relieved from duty.

The occupants of the house currently troubling them did not seem to be there. Nathan’s men knocked on the hour three times before he gave the order to knock the door down. No one was inside but the house look lived in.

“Sherdan, we’ve got a house with no occupant. If the fridge and laundry is anything to go by there should be,” Nathan radioed.

“What number is it?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Okay, we’ll check the address. Leave it alone for now.”

Nathan sighed. This job wasn’t easy and his headache only got worse as the hour progressed.

The first person to lash out at a guard did so with only ten minutes of the hour to go. Nathan rushed over to the scene as did a few other guards.

The man had punched the soldier when he’d been informed of the ultimatum. Thankfully the guards soon had him restrained and sat down. Other than the blood flowing from the guard’s nose there was no harm done.

Nathan had the two men separated, just in case tempers flared, removing the guard from duty to get himself checked out. He thought it better to be careful where this kind of thing was concerned.

“I’m sorry that today’s news has upset you.”

“Too right it has. You’ve got no right ter take our houses,” the middle aged man replied.

“Sherdan warned the British government that he would do this if they attacked.”

“That don’t make it right!”

“No, but it’s our only way of retaliating without risking civilian deaths. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“We’re gettin’ hurt though. You’re takin’ our houses.”

“We wouldn’t be doing it if we could think of a better option.” The man hung his head. The fight had gone out of him. Nathan felt sorry for the man but he had a job to do. “You should find somewhere to go for the meantime and then enquire about your insurance if you own the house.”

He received a nod in response but that was it. He had the guards let the guy go and everyone backed off to give him time to think.

Nathan, very thankfully, finished his shift. Sherdan sent another guard to take over from him and he didn’t waste time, leaving to turn towards his own home. He lived in a small house not too far from Sherdan’s, in case he was needed.

The walk back didn’t take long and he was soon climbing the stairs to his room. He removed his uniform and climbed into bed. It was gone one in the afternoon so he would have less than five hours before he would need to be up for guard duty in Sherdan’s house. Before he settled down to sleep he reached into the top drawer of his bedside cabinet and pulled out his Bible.

I picked this book up on goodreads free in exchange for a review. This is a sci-fi/ fantasy book with a bit of mystery/thriller thrown in for good measure by Sophie Davis.

I really liked the main character of this book, Talia. She was a tough chick and perfectly kick-ass. I also thought the plot was great and was sucked into the book from the beginning, making it very hard to put the book down. The author really knew her characters and did a good job of getting them across.

I’d have said  it was a perfect adventure story if it wasn’t for the need of a seriously good proof read. The amount of missing words in sentences and odd places where words like ‘that’ and ‘it’s’ appeared where they shouldn’t be often making a sentence entirely nonsensical was a great put off. On top of that there would often be words with the wrong tense ending or an s missed off for a plural, coupled with my pet peeve the s’s at the end of a possesive name that normally ends in s when it should have been s’ at the end instead. When people say Jess’s house for example it should actually be Jess’ house. Because there is an s before the apostrophe it doesn’t need one after.

Unfortunately it meant I just couldn’t get fully absorbed into the story.

Emeli Sande sang this song at the olympic closing ceremony and until then I’d never heard it but one day when I was about to get into writing I decided to play the song and have a listen. I was looking for a bit of inspiration to write. Unfortunately it actually had the opposite effect.

Here’s a link to the song on youtube and the lyrics:

You’ve got the words to change a nation
but you’re biting your tongue
You’ve spent a life time stuck in silence
afraid you’ll say something wrong
If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?
So come, on come on
Come on, come on
You’ve got a heart as loud as lions
So why let your voice be tamed?
Baby we’re a little different
there’s no need to be ashamed
You’ve got the light to fight the shadows
so stop hiding it away
Come on, Come on

I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream till the words dry out
so put it in all of the papers,
I’m not afraid
they can read all about it
read all about it oh

At night we’re waking up the neighbours
while we sing away the blues
making sure that we remember yeah
cause we all matter too
if the truth has been forbidden
then we’re breaking all the rules
so come on, come on
come on, come on,
lets get the tv and the radio
to play our tune again
its ’bout time we got some airplay of our version of events
there’s no need to be afraid
I will sing with you my friend
Come on, come on

I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream till the words dry out
so put it in all of the papers,
I’m not afraid
they can read all about it
read all about it oh

Yeah we’re all wonderful, wonderful people
so when did we all get so fearful?
Now we’re finally finding our voices
so take a chance, come help me sing this
Yeah we’re all wonderful, wonderful people
so when did we all get so fearful?
and now we’re finally finding our voices
so take a chance, come help me sing this

I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream till the words dry out
so put it in all of the papers,
I’m not afraid
they can read all about it
read all about it oh

I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream till the words dry out
so put it in all of the papers,
I’m not afraid
they can read all about it
read all about it oh.

It’s rare I hear a song and wish I’d written the lyrics but this is one of those. It sums up a lot of how I feel and have felt over the last year or so. I’m an ambitious person, I always have been. Mostly it’s come from knowing I was a miracle child, I’ve always felt I must be here for a good reason but I also love inspiring other people. In short, I want to change the world, and that’s no small task.

The written word is something I’ve always loved, but when it comes to seeing the difference it makes to peoples lives it’s the hardest to judge. With live performances and art galleries you are there to see people’s reactions to your work, but with a book or a poem, unless they tell you what they thought, you can’t see the impact it’s had.

It’s days like this I feel torn between the arts. I want to know I’m making a difference and singing and films move me just as much as, if not more than, books do. I guess I really want to do all three but it takes a long time to build a career in one let alone all of them so I feel like I have to choose.

Either way I guess I’m not going to get much work done today.

Yes I know this game has been out a long time but you’ll have to forgive me for only reviewing it now. I don’t normally play shooting games as I’m not particularly good at them. Give me an actual gun and ask me to shoot  a stationary target and I’m not too bed but shooting games always feels like a totally different ballgame for me.

A good friend of mine eventually bought the xbox game for me, informing me that I would love the storyline if nothing else and would probably survive the shooting on an easier setting.

Well for the most part I did manage to survive the shooting, apart from one very fateful moment when I encountered a thresher maw pictured right when I was in a Mako, below, for the first time and still learning how to control it. I got smooshed very quickly.

Apparently there is also one of these to look forward to when on foot in the later games.

The Mako for me was actually the biggest let down of the game, the controls were just a little too complicated for me, although running over grunts with it was kinda fun. I often spent several minutes, waiting just out of sight and range of enemies for my shields which had almost been entirely exhausted to creep slowly right back up to max so the mako could survive another few minutes of my crazy and very erratic steering while shooting madly in roughly the right direction of the stuff shooting back and hoping I hit and killed something before I had to retreat again and let my shields regenerate once more.

Making my main character Shepard and picking her facial features etc was quite fun. I would have liked to pick clothes a little more but nevermind. She was a great chick and the general person shooting controls were easy enough to use. I also really really like the paragon and renegade feature. When you did good stuff you got paragon points which opened up options for you later where your goodness gave you extra ways out of certain situations plus extra information etc. You can do the oposite with Renegade options. I also liked that choices affected things and I’ll be really interested in seeing how my choices in this game have impacted what happens in the next one.

As my friend pointed out though the storyline and creation of it was awesome. I was very impressed with how many different conversations and comments the characters could make. It really added depth to all the people and made the game very special. I can’t wait to play the next one in the series. I just wonder if I’ll regret letting the first council die in favour of commiting more ships to the defence of the Citadel – it gained me renegade points, which surprised me considering I thought commiting all my war vessels to the defence of the city and population was better than commiting a chunk of my fleet to protecting only a few people. Surely less deaths is better? I guess they went with the very American, protect your leader above all else patriotism. I’m sorry I’m a captain goes down with her ship kinda girl.

Anya lay awake for many hours that night. She wasn’t happy and had been having increasingly worse nightmares. She still felt afraid that Sherdan would revert back to being nasty again.

He often got angry when she expressed her disapproval and also grew frustrated at they way she kept him at arms reach. Her feelings about him were still mixed up. He attracted her, that was for sure, but she didn’t like his personality as much. He thought too much of himself and disregarded her opinion too readily. She wanted more respect from a potential life partner.

The last few days of attempted invasions and bombings only made her feel even less safe around Sherdan. She didn’t understand the technology he had and imagined the compound being invaded at any point. It made her feel stuck between two powerful forces and she couldn’t decide who she wanted to win, if she wanted either to.

When everything was calm and Sherdan reminded her that he had originally forced her to stay she hoped the British army would sweep in and save her. When the country was under attack she prayed for Sherdan’s defences to hold and for no one to get hurt.

She sat up in bed, tucking her knees up and wrapping her arms around herself. The room was so familiar to her now that she had begun to forget the details of her own house. She could generally picture it, but little items and particular things which made it her home had faded.

She closed her eyes to try to picture the bedroom better but after a few minutes flashes of her torture came into her head instead.

The constant flipping between two extremes was taking it’s toll on her emotionally. Combined with her nightmares she felt more drained with each passing day. She also felt more tempted to let Sherdan have things his way. It might make her feel safer.

Anya blocked this thought from her head right away. It would do her no good to be his wife. Only God could ensure her safety and He only promised safety for her soul. Sherdan would only put her in more danger.

She got out of bed and went to her window, praying for God’s peace as she had done the last five nights. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She didn’t understand why God wanted her here. All she knew was that she had to endure it for as long as it was required of her.

When she finally felt tired enough to sleep she got back into bed. Within five minutes she had slipped into a dream…

She sat in the middle of an all too familiar room. She was, thankfully, unchained this time. As she got up Sherdan came in. His eyes blazed and she took a step back, catching her breath. It wasn’t normally him but the guard instead.

Sherdan advanced on her and she backed up until she could go no further. He pinned her up against the wall with his own body. She could feel his heart beat against her own. His significantly calmer than hers.

He didn’t hurt her and she didn’t struggle. Her eyes never left his as his expression softened. Her fear faded and still neither of them moved. Finally, he bent to kiss her but stopped as a noise came from outside.

The door slammed open against the wall and in rushed several men with swords drawn. They advanced towards her and Sherdan. She shrank back even further, thinking they had come for her. They hadn’t. They marched towards Sherdan who also backed up, afraid.

Anya didn’t know what to do. She felt frozen to the spot and could only watch as each step brought the three men closer to Sherdan. Feeling pushed from behind she rushed to the middle of the room and in front of him.

“This man is under my protection. Leave now,” Anya felt her mouth say with a voice unlike her own. They laughed and continued, ignoring her and trying to walk past.

She thrust her right arm out sideways, catching the nearest soldier in the kidneys. As she swung her arm back she grabbed his sword hand and pulled back his fingers.

He dropped the weapon and it clanged onto the hard floor. Anya watched as her arm reached out to pick it up and she swung around, slicing the throat of the same man. Blood sprayed out as she moved to the next two. They hesitated. They hadn’t believed her threat any more than she had.

She seemed to know exactly what to do and soon dispatched both of the soldiers to follow the first into the next life…

Anya woke up, breathing heavily. She had never had a dream like it. The idea that she might be able to defend herself had never occurred to her and to act in such a violent manner in defence of Sherdan disgusted her.

Her stomach heaved as she ran to the bathroom. Thankfully, she reached the toilet in time for the second spasm which removed her evening meal from her stomach. She shivered violently, kneeling on the floor for the next few minutes as her brain tried to process the odd dream.

She had felt herself do things as if another was in control of her body at the same time as knowing exactly what doing each of the martial arts moves would feel like. It played through her head again as vividly as it had moments before, but she still couldn’t understand why she would ever do anything like it or why she’d protect Sherdan.

A part of her despised him for everything he had let his guards do to her and for all the manipulative conversations he’d followed it with. But it was only a part of her. On occasions she found herself thinking about life by his side. She assumed it was something like Stockholm syndrome but couldn’t feel peaceful either way.

She decided to see what God said about violence and killing in the Bible and picked up the copy Sherdan had let her have. Flicking through it didn’t help at first. There were plenty of wars in the old testament but that wasn’t as relevant. She was only one person not a nation.

Instead of reading any more from the old testament she moved to the new testament and Paul’s letters. He’d often been persecuted for his faith and talked about both his trials and the trials of many of the other disciples.

She scanned through looking for relevant passages and stopped in Romans. There was a section in Romans 12 titled ‘love in action’. The last line said, “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

She stopped breathing as she stared at the section. God expected her to overcome the evil situation by being righteous. She’d been awful to Sherdan and suddenly felt very guilty.

It was important she didn’t let him control her but, while she remained and God wanted her there, she knew she needed to be better at showing Sherdan kindness. She was struck with the thought of how far her kindness and goodness should go and the idea of her defending him didn’t seem anywhere near as absurd.

The martial arts still baffled her, however, as she’d never studied it in the slightest. She had to ponder further over why she might have dreamt it but her eyelids drooped and stopped her confused thoughts until morning.

Sherdan had gone to lead his team in taking more territory long before breakfast, so Anya ate alone and, as she’d been doing every day, she put the twenty four hour news channel on. It gave her more information on Sherdan’s plans than he did.

Already the focus of the reporter was the new country. Sherdan’s teams had already began warning people in the area that they were going to have to leave. Many still hadn’t been out of bed when the guards had arrived. The army tried to stop them but it seemed that barriers were all covering the new area as well. Sherdan had been thorough.

The cameras got as close as they could but were still a long way off. Anya could tell they wanted to interview the residents but many were already busy packing up their belongings. A lot were in shock and seemed to be working autonomously. A few stood on their front lawns unable to think coherently.

Many of the guards were lending a hand. Anya was surprised at how amicable everything was. It seemed most of the people losing their houses understood there was no point in arguing and the kids seemed to think the day was a great game; a far more exciting way to spend a Sunday morning.

The army and news reporters watched as several hours passed. The people all packed their possessions into the crates they were provided with. The crates were slowly stacked into cars and by midday the first few people were ready to leave, although they were mostly students who had less to pack.

Anya couldn’t believe the heartlessness of the whole thing. Many of the women cried at having to leave their houses, especially when a large amount of the furniture was being left behind.

She could hardly tear her attention away from the news. As people left the area the reporters finally got their interviews and new footage was shown on the TV.

The people interviewed struggled to articulate how they felt and many just cried. Anya was moved to tears by them at several points.

When there were still people leaving and packing long after dinner had been and gone, Anya grew restless and turned the channel off. She could not watch any more.

She went to pick up a book but found she had read all the modern ones that interested her. Sherdan had forbidden her touching all his old first edition books so she wandered through the house until she found herself in the security room.

All four of the security team were there. Nathan and Julie were standing in the open space. None of them had noticed her so she hung back and watched, curious.

Nathan was instructing Julie on something Anya couldn’t hear. The next thing she knew the two began sparring. Nathan was evidently the better of the pair and the instructor of the other.

Anya gasped when Nathan landed a blow and hit Julie. All four guards turned to her, only Nathan smiled.

“Good evening.”

“Good evening. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry… I just… I.”

“I was teaching some self defence. Do you wish to join in?”

“I… You’d teach me?” Anya’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected to be offered lessons in martial arts.

“I’m teaching already. Another one of you wouldn’t make much difference.”

“I’d love to learn.” Anya beamed but looked nervous all the same. She took a few steps into the room before hesitating. She had no idea where to begin.

Nathan sent her to fetch some more suitable clothing. She almost didn’t go back, but after the dream she knew she couldn’t say no. She just hoped that she’d not have to use it, not really use it at least, but she didn’t think it was a coincidence that Nathan had offered to teach her less than twenty-four hours after she’d dreamt about it.

Before she could back out, Anya rushed back to the security room. When she arrived she noticed that both Julie and Ed were gone. Nathan got up as soon as she walked into the room.

“Oh, I’m not getting in the way am I?” she asked.

“No, not at all. It only takes two of us to do our duty when people are in the house. One to watch the safety of the residents and one for the exterior.” Anya looked puzzled. “You’re here so I’m still doing my job.”

She finally smiled, put at ease by Nathan’s eagerness and reasoning.

He encouraged her to come stand out in the open and ran her through thirty minutes of warm up and basic exercises. She was already out of breath and exhausted by the time he had finished.

“You’ll need to bring your fitness level up to get good at a martial art. You’d be surprised how tiring fighting is.” Anya nodded at him. She wasn’t sure she could speak. He started by showing her the very basics; how to stand and protect herself.

She did her best to concentrate, picking up the gist of his requests quickly. Calmed by his gentle instruction she soon lost track of time. He’d shown her some basic blocking movements and almost two hours had passed.

He stopped teaching and bowed towards her. She copied his movements, bowing back.

“Thank you. I enjoyed that.”

“You’re welcome. You’re a fast learner. Have you done anything like it before?”

“Not at all. I don’t even know what you’ve been teaching me.”

“Oh, just some karate. Mostly the defensive side of it.”

“Well thank you.” Anya smiled.

“Would you like to learn some more? We can continue at the same time every day or in the last hour of my shift in the morning, if you prefer?”

“Morning would be better.” Anya didn’t want Sherdan to get upset that she was spending time with his guards instead of him. He always worked in the mornings so would be a lot less likely to miss her.

She thanked Nathan again and went back to the study, it was almost midnight and there wasn’t any sign of the master of the house. He’d been at the compound for over sixteen hours.

The news still focused on Utopia and the day’s events. The Prime Minister had presented another speech late in the evening saying he considered Sherdan’s latest move an act of war.

Anya laughed when she heard this. They were already at war. The attacks had seen to that. She also noted that to be at war both parties had to be countries. Sherdan had gained ground in that regard.

She found herself being swayed in Sherdan’s direction and disapproved of how her own government were handling this. Brute force evidently wasn’t going to stop Sherdan or his people.

It amused her that the army had been unable to do anything but watch all day. They’d tried to save face by helping the people kicked out of their homes but they couldn’t get anywhere near people until they were let out by Sherdan’s men. He was in complete control.

The Utopia security team used the emitters as a sort of double gateway, opening one after the other, moving the leaving people out of the way but keeping all of Sherdan’s citizens safe at the same time. It impressed Anya.

She gave up waiting for Sherdan at two in the morning and went to her room. Her body ached a little as she climbed into bed. She prayed she’d get a good nights sleep and not have any more nightmares. She felt exhausted. The day had been fraught with nervousness as she watched the happenings on TV and, with her karate lesson to finish the day, she felt a lot more tired than usual.

Last Month

It’s hard to believe another month has flown by already but it has so here’s the bullet list for last month.

• Typed 16k of the latest WIP The Fire of Winter (Was Lady Winter)
• Finished off Chains of Freedom for print
• Spent approx 10 hours working for red feather writing
• Spent approx 20 hours marketing
• Spent approx 40 hours reading
• Edited approx a third of Sherdan’s Prophecy
• Sent 39 emails

I had the first week of this month off so I could have got a bit more done but I didn’t do too badly all things considered. I’ve had a handful of new reviews of all three ebooks and all of them positive.

Chains of Freedom is now on the way to being available in print and the proof has arrived. It looks absolutely amazing.

This Month I’m hopefully having a launch party for Chains as well as planning out my novel for NaNoWriMo. I’m hoping to get started on the sequel to Sherdan’s Prophecy for NaNo.

I also plan to finish the editing for Sherdan’s Prophecy and send it off to my very amazing proof readers. I would also really like to get the cover design started for that.

Once all of that is done I’ll write some more of the fire of winter book, which will be my focus again after the Sherdan’s sequel.

All in all it’s going to be a very busy month.

This was a blu-ray my husband and I picked up on our birthdays. we had requested it as the trailor had caught our attention and thought it looked like a cute and fun watch.

It’s about the last pair of blue Macaws and the specialist who wishes to breed them together. He approaches the owner of the male, a male which can’t fly and requests she brings her bird to Rio to mate with the female he is looking after.

There’s a brilliant double romance in this, obviously between the two birds but also between the two owners. It’s quite typical cartoon romances but still cute and fun.

I wasn’t expecting this film to be as funny as it turned out to be I have to admit. I laughed a lot even though I was working while watching and found I didn’t get any where near as much working done as I expected when I started watching.

The plot was mostly predictable but it didn’t matter. It was entertaining enough and is actually a pretty good family film.

Ever since reading Lord of the Rings as a child I have always wanted to create my own special fantasy world with my own races and monsters.

Recently with my Winter series I’ve been doing just that. Making a fantasy world involves lot sof different aspects to make it believable and I’ve got spreadsheets and documents on all sorts of things to make sure my brain can remember the land, races, animals and all sorts of other things. There’s a lot of areas that need thinking about before the books can even be decided.

Races

Most fantasy books have humans in them somewhere but often a fantasy writer has to decide what other races they want in there.

Elves are the next most common race in fantasy but you don’t just have to decide whether they are in the world or not but other things like, how pointed their ears are? Do they have any benefits over being human? How long do they live?

Common fantasy traits for elves are long living, even sometimes immortal, pale and fair, wise and mostly keeping themselves ot themselves. They value beauty and learning over many other things and try to be one with their surroundings.

The next common race is dwarves. These can be handled in several ways as well. More commonly these are offspring of humans and often shunned by society. The most famous of these is probably Tyrion Lannister from the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series. There are also the Tolkien style dwarves, however, where they are a complete race of their own. In the Lord of the Rings films Gimli the dwarf jokes that the dwarf women look so alike the dwarf men that it makes people think they spring up out of nowhere.

There are of course many other races you could invent. In my fantasy so far I have a race of flying humans called Nepharil and Tolkien also has Ents. Game of Thrones has Others, a type of possesing demon.

Finally the relationships between these races needs to be decided. Is anyone at war at the start of the series. Are there old rivalries and tensions. Which leads us nicely into the next area that needs to be thought about.

History

Every land has some history to it. How long have the elves lived where they do. What old grudges do families have.

Family trees can need working out and sometimes books in a series can span hundreds, even thousands of years. It doesn’t all have to be worked out right away but it helps to include little bits of information here and there. Readers like to feel like it’s a complete world they are being immersed into.

Mythology

This is another one that features in a lot of fantasy. There’s usually some kind of God or gods and Tolkien even went so far as a whole creation myth, belief system, a heaven and angels. You don’t have to have any type of God if you don’t want to but people tend to believe in something and it helps make them relatable to readers if this involves religion for at least a few characters. Praying can be a great way to put a characters deepest worries into dialogue as well and helps give the reader some inside knowledge into the thoughts. It can also lead into great things like answered prayers, miracles and gives our good guys an extra weapon in their arsenal.

Maps

These aren’t quite as common but for fantasy that travels a good distance maps can be very important. They help the reader visualise the kind of terrain and the enormity of the journies travelled as well as helping make the whole thing feel real. I also personally find as an author they help with knowing what’s coming next.

I map out the areas and mark on where the big events happen, where the characters start and where they are going to travel too. At the least it provides me with an idea of how long it’s going to take to travel between A and B.

Languages

This is more Tolkien’s thing than anyone else. He made up four languages for Lord of the Rings and it can really add to the feel of the races if they occasionally talk in their own tongues. It set’s some mystique to a race and also ties in well with the mythology and history.

On top of that it adds well to the dynamics between the races if you can have occasions where they don’t understand each other because they speak separate languages.

I’m sure there are also many other areas of the fantasy world that need creating. It’s really quite an undertaking but can ber very rewarding.

This is the second book in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin and I’ve already reviewed the first one here. I didn’t know if I was going to get this book due to the expense of the ebooks but the publisher dropped them all in the Uk ever so slightly when the second series was on Tv so this one was a little cheaper. Unfortunately they appear to have come up again.

I was very eager to start this book after finishing the first and I delved into the book very happily, eager to continue and I’d say the first half of the book was just as amazing as the first. I was interested and eager to read on. I’m not sure I enjoyed the chapters from the newer characters, however, as towards the end of the book I got a little bored.

Generally I don’t like having too many characters killed in a series and I think having one of my favourites killed at the end of the first one did take some of the shine off this one as well.

On top of that Catalyn Stark has started to grate on me and there were quite a few chapters from her point of view. Maybe because I’m not a mother I don’t relate well to her but I find she interferes too much and doesn’t actually help.

Reading this book I did find I developed even more respect for both Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister though and between the two of them they saved this book for me.

Overall not as good as the first but still not bad and I have picked up the third one with my brithday money. I’ll review that in a while.