For my regular followers, the cover art work for my book is progressing, in as much as I've done one design and rejected it so my book is inching towards publication.
For those of you who are just dropping in, the title of this post was done in response to something that was told to my friend Michelle.
Michelle, through an unfortunate series of events, has wound up spending her teenage years in care. More specifically in placements that have not encouraged her to make friends with people. Let's put it this way, in one placement one of the other girls used to go round pouring water into the sockets in an effort to start a fire and burn down the building. Not exactly the sort of people you want to be hanging round with.
Michelle, thankfully went to the same church as me and we got talking one day. One thing led to another and by the time she was posted back to Yorkshire we were firm friends.
However, at the placement where there was the little fire starter, Michelle was being picked on by the staff because she 'didn't have any friends'. When she turned round and said that she had me, she was informed by a member of staff that "she can't be your friend, she's Autistic and they don't know how to be friends."
I've had a lot of accusations thrown at me over the years because I'm Autistic and I have to say that this one has to be one of the most insulting that I have ever heard!
Yeah, so we have to be taught empathy and compassion. So what? That just puts the responsibility on your shoulders to teach it to us, if you want us to be able to use it. Once we've learnt how to use compassion and empathy we can't stop. Once the ability is turned on, we can't turn it off so all we need is for someone, like my Mother, to put the time in to teach it to us.
We can be friends and we make for very loyal friends, probably because once we have found someone who can put up with our little querks then we stick to them like glue. So what if when one of our friends has a problem we don't just sit there shaking our heads and going 'oh what a shame' but get up and go out of our way to fix said problem. Doesn't that make us the better friend because we are willing to pour our time and effort in to fixing other people's problems before our own?
So what that we sometimes get confused and have to ask someone to explain it all to us? We are human, we make mistakes like homo sapient do, at least we tend to be more ready to admit that we've done a goof up. Doesn't the ability to say 'I was wrong' make a more forgivable friend?
So we seem to think sideways when compared to everyone else? Doesn't that make us the more interesting friend? The one that you can count on to bring something something new to the table? Something different?
Or is that the problem? Do people find different scary? Are we the big bad Bogey man? Are we the one where it's not what we've done, it's more the fact that we exist?
Well, I'm autistic and I have friends, even if with some of them I count them as my friends and they don't count me as theirs. I hope that I haven't picked up any of those in recent years, I don't think I have since I left High School.
Saturday, 23 August 2014
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Cover Artwork
Right, having managed to scrape together half an hour to sit down and compose a blog, I set out to do just that.
I'm in the process of discovering the joys and the exhaustion of being both a writer and an artist.
My first book is just about ready to publish and after much thought, much submissions and a lot of disappointment (would it hurt for these people to at least send you a rejection note), I've decided to go self published through the medium of RPG.NOW, a print on demand service that a friend of mine is already using, hence the recommendation.
Reasons for this:
1. To get published these days you have to have an agent.
2. Said agent has to be paid.
3. Said agent has no legal responsibility to push your book to the publishers and therefore can sit on your manuscript for years and be paid for the privilege.
4.Said agent will, when you get published, take 17% of your pay as their cut.
5. As a new, first time author you will be lucky to be given 2% of the profits as your royalties.
6.Therefore, if the publisher makes 1 pound profit from your book, you will be lucky to receive 2 pence and your agent will want 17% of that.
7. Publishers are only responsible for the printing and posting of your book to bookshops and the like. It is the authors responsibility to maintain their website, their fan base, twitter feed, blog, contacts with writers' circles, organise talks and book signs, convention visits and generally do everything to actually shift their books off the shelves.
With all of that I decided that I might as well do all that work (which I would be doing anyway) and receive 100% of the profits, particularly as half of everything I receive has to be put aside for the tax man anyway.
The reasons I'm using a print on demand service is because:
1. It is already on the Internet so I don't have to worry about trying to make the links into that market.
2. I won't have to store piles of books every where.
3. If Mother takes another bad turn and I have to revert to being her carer for three months I don't have to worry about my e-mail inbox filling up with orders and complaints for books that I haven't had time to view and therefore, haven't completed.
4. In short a print on demand service is like a publisher but a lot more approachable.
The only thing I have to make sure of is to employ a very good editor to make sure my book is up to scratch, which I have already done so the written part of my book is jut about ready for publishing. However, that engenders the downside of doing it myself, which is I need to have the cover artwork done.
See as I'm a artist as well as a writer, I can do the front cover myself but that does mean that my time is being gobbled up almost faster than I can credit, especially when I look at all the other stuff I have to squeeze into it.
As I mention to WillowRaven the other day, "As a writer and an artist, I don't sleep much."
I'm in the process of discovering the joys and the exhaustion of being both a writer and an artist.
My first book is just about ready to publish and after much thought, much submissions and a lot of disappointment (would it hurt for these people to at least send you a rejection note), I've decided to go self published through the medium of RPG.NOW, a print on demand service that a friend of mine is already using, hence the recommendation.
Reasons for this:
1. To get published these days you have to have an agent.
2. Said agent has to be paid.
3. Said agent has no legal responsibility to push your book to the publishers and therefore can sit on your manuscript for years and be paid for the privilege.
4.Said agent will, when you get published, take 17% of your pay as their cut.
5. As a new, first time author you will be lucky to be given 2% of the profits as your royalties.
6.Therefore, if the publisher makes 1 pound profit from your book, you will be lucky to receive 2 pence and your agent will want 17% of that.
7. Publishers are only responsible for the printing and posting of your book to bookshops and the like. It is the authors responsibility to maintain their website, their fan base, twitter feed, blog, contacts with writers' circles, organise talks and book signs, convention visits and generally do everything to actually shift their books off the shelves.
With all of that I decided that I might as well do all that work (which I would be doing anyway) and receive 100% of the profits, particularly as half of everything I receive has to be put aside for the tax man anyway.
The reasons I'm using a print on demand service is because:
1. It is already on the Internet so I don't have to worry about trying to make the links into that market.
2. I won't have to store piles of books every where.
3. If Mother takes another bad turn and I have to revert to being her carer for three months I don't have to worry about my e-mail inbox filling up with orders and complaints for books that I haven't had time to view and therefore, haven't completed.
4. In short a print on demand service is like a publisher but a lot more approachable.
The only thing I have to make sure of is to employ a very good editor to make sure my book is up to scratch, which I have already done so the written part of my book is jut about ready for publishing. However, that engenders the downside of doing it myself, which is I need to have the cover artwork done.
See as I'm a artist as well as a writer, I can do the front cover myself but that does mean that my time is being gobbled up almost faster than I can credit, especially when I look at all the other stuff I have to squeeze into it.
As I mention to WillowRaven the other day, "As a writer and an artist, I don't sleep much."
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Twitter Success
A little good news for me and rather a leap forward.
Don't ask me why but if I'm using my laptop on WiFi connection she will not link straight to the twitter website, which is more than a little annoying as it means I've become months behind in my posting.
However, I've just discovered to today that I can access my twitter account through all the e-mails they have been sending me.
Not only has this meant that I've been able to finally catch up with my long neglected twitter posts (granted only through retweets but some is better than none) I've also managed something I've never done before.
I started following WillowRaven, a fellow artist that specialises in book cover illustration, for which she sent me a thank you note over twitter and asked me what I was working on at the moment. I think my reply of 'Four books, twelve paints, a script and trying to busk my work. As an artist & a writer I don't sleep much' must have impressed her as I pretty much instantly had back 'I know the feeling'.
I've managed to start a thread on twitter!
O.K. it doesn't sound like much if you are a techno-genius like some of my friends but I, however, am not. In fact you could say that I am a techno-idiot so for me it is a big deal that I've managed to finally pull this off. Especially as I had no idea what was really meant by 'threading' on Twitter. It's been one of those things where I've recognised it when I've seen it and done it.
Also, as a heads up, I've spoken with an art busker in Norwich and it appears that even the cities have no set authority for those of us who are just busking our stuff. So the general consensus of opinion seems to be as long as we keep ourselves quiet and don't make trouble for anyone then you can just get on and do it, so expect to see me in Dereham sometime soon.
Don't ask me why but if I'm using my laptop on WiFi connection she will not link straight to the twitter website, which is more than a little annoying as it means I've become months behind in my posting.
However, I've just discovered to today that I can access my twitter account through all the e-mails they have been sending me.
Not only has this meant that I've been able to finally catch up with my long neglected twitter posts (granted only through retweets but some is better than none) I've also managed something I've never done before.
I started following WillowRaven, a fellow artist that specialises in book cover illustration, for which she sent me a thank you note over twitter and asked me what I was working on at the moment. I think my reply of 'Four books, twelve paints, a script and trying to busk my work. As an artist & a writer I don't sleep much' must have impressed her as I pretty much instantly had back 'I know the feeling'.
I've managed to start a thread on twitter!
O.K. it doesn't sound like much if you are a techno-genius like some of my friends but I, however, am not. In fact you could say that I am a techno-idiot so for me it is a big deal that I've managed to finally pull this off. Especially as I had no idea what was really meant by 'threading' on Twitter. It's been one of those things where I've recognised it when I've seen it and done it.
Also, as a heads up, I've spoken with an art busker in Norwich and it appears that even the cities have no set authority for those of us who are just busking our stuff. So the general consensus of opinion seems to be as long as we keep ourselves quiet and don't make trouble for anyone then you can just get on and do it, so expect to see me in Dereham sometime soon.
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