Hello folks, sorry for not posting on Wednesday, especially as the last time I had a chance to check in was Tuesday, but I had the 'brilliant' time of trying to update my mobile number on all the sites that needed it. It would have been interesting if my old phone had been stole because I needed to have the permission codes sent to the old number so if it had been stole that method of security would have been as useful to me as a one legged man in a butt kicking competition. (Can someone compile a list of 'as useful as's please. I think it would go down a storm on Facebook.)
Any way, shifting away from the private and on to the career side of things, I am going to ruminate today on the uses of history in writing. This is where I prove just how dangerous an author's mind can be as, since my boyfriend is very interested in WW2 films, I have recently been calculating how a certain power of that time would have been able to win the war. Granted it would have needed to have a leader that was actually half way rational and not as evil as they come. Or actually had a brain full stop.
Don't get me wrong, I am damn glad that the Nazis got their butts handed them on a plate but at the same time, as a writer, watching 'The Battle of Britain', I can't help but part of me wanting to smack myself on the forehead and yell 'Did you have Scheiße for brains?' at Goering. The blitz of London was, without a doubt one of the biggest blunders of Hitler's tactics. The bombing of civilians only gets you hated and rallies them behind their armed forces and their leaders.
As I said this is where I prove just how dangerous an author's mind can be.
If I'd been the one coming up with the tactics for grinding down Britain, I'd have divided my air force into three parts. The first quarter would have headed to London but only one in three of those bombs would have been filled with explosives. The other two out of three would have had detonators but would have been weighed with sand, which minimalises civilian casualties while causing mass disruption, effectively bringing the capital to a halt with the signs 'Unexploded Bomb'. It as so saves me resources that can be used for something else.
That quarter would be the decoy, to draw the RAF away from the south coast. My next wave of planes would be about a fifth of my force and would be targeted at the radar stations along the south coast. I'd want them and the pylons brought down, effectively blinding my foe.
The last part would be everything else that I had left at my disposal and they would be headed for the air fields in three waves so while the third wave was busy destroying the air fields the first would be landing and refuelling, ready to take off again, with the survivors of the first two parts joining them as they made it home.
That would effectively create a rolling barrage to destroy the air fields so effectively that the RAF wouldn't recover, giving me control of the skies.
As I said, I'm damn glad that the Nazis didn't win but at the same time I can use their blunders to form the road map, if you will, to creating a truly terrifying villain.
The other thing is that I wouldn't have the Holocaust. Besides being the biggest mass murder in history and totally sickening, it was also a total waste of man power.
Every society has its unwanted caste, come to think of it, we have two in modern Britain, one is called 'immigrants', the other is 'disabled'. In modern Britain they are treated with scorn and suspicion, effectively ostracised within their own communities because of what is published in the press. Is it so big a step from that to segregating the 'unwanted'?
However, I would not have them killed. That is not only morally wrong but also is a waste. There are always jobs that not only unwanted but also highly dangerous. Things like attaching the detonator to the explosive inside a bomb. Get that wrong and you'll be over there, over there and up there.
So instead of killing your unwanted, set them to work. Give them basic housing, food, sanitation and set them to work in the war factories and if you want them to be afraid, then sent off the rumours of the place where it is 'worse than this, a lot worse'. One thing school taught me was that fear of the unknown is the greatest tool in the hands of the powerful. I was always more afraid the longer they left me alone because I didn't know what they were saving up for so let the rumours circulate and they will grow on their own.
You could ever set it that the families are segregated, except on two days a week, and then sort the people into squads; those squads that do well get to see their families. In fact, the thing with squadding your workers is that you can then impose squad punishments. Once you start getting visitations of 'the Holy Ghost' you know your work is done; you no longer have to make whips, they are building their own whips in their minds.
A little explanation. 'The Holy Ghost' is a slang term referring to when a member of a squad has, through their misbehaviour or mistakes, earned their squad a group punishment. When their squad is asked the next day, who beat their unfortunate comrade up in the night, the cooperative reply is 'The Holy Ghost!'
So there you have it, why authors are so damn dangerous. We see the mistakes of both sides and start working out how to correct them. That does not mean you agree with the ideals of both sides, believe you me, I do not agree with anything the Nazis did or believed but you can use it, as a writer, to make you heroes more heroic and your villains even more terrifying.
So go on, pick your favourite war, do your research and then change the out come. If nothing else it would be interesting to have a book where the villain has more brains than your average homicidals manic.
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Photobox Gallery Now Live!
Alright! All you lucky people out there.
I have just managed to launch my Photobox Gallery so all my paintings are for viewing and sale (at much cheaper prices I will add) at:
www.photoboxgallery.com/VJBartlett
So please go view, share, spread the news and order those birthday presents today!
I know I'm pressing this pretty hard but it took me over an hour to work my way through all the tangled links and everything to set this up so please have a look.
As a preview, here's one of my best pieces to date.
I have just managed to launch my Photobox Gallery so all my paintings are for viewing and sale (at much cheaper prices I will add) at:
www.photoboxgallery.com/VJBartlett
So please go view, share, spread the news and order those birthday presents today!
I know I'm pressing this pretty hard but it took me over an hour to work my way through all the tangled links and everything to set this up so please have a look.
As a preview, here's one of my best pieces to date.
After all these years of struggling to get images on to my blog I have finally managed to do it. Turned out that all I needed to do was change the format to JPeg.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
First of 2015 - Forest City
Hello all.
My first success of 2015 is in. I have just up loaded my new painting to deviant ART and it should now be available of sale.
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery/
I titled this one Forest City and thought I'd use my blog post to explain some of the inspiration behind it.
I suppose that I got the initial germ for it years ago when I heard about this house that had been abandoned and by the time anyone thought to send in the bulldozers an oak tree had taken root in one of the upper rooms and was growing its roots into all the cavity walls. House that was growing into a tree, if you will.
This information was filed away in a box marked 'interesting' in my brain and left on a shelf until I watched 'Hellboy II The Golden Army' about this time last year, when the imagination took down the box and opened it up. I was really thinking about the fact that the bad Prince in that film had a point; we are destroying all the forests and we'll kill ourselves in the process. That led into the thought, what if some of the human race could give up its greed and start trying to live along side nature again instead of fighting her? My imagination grabbed that idea and started building this world were you wouldn't be able to tell what was forest and what was city because one was the other.
Forest City is the result. The central 'tree' is actually a group of six trees that have been encouraged to grow into each other and all those round things with lights in them are giant sized oak apples that have been turned into rooms. The reason it doesn't have a canopy is because it's out of 'shot'. Trees that have grown into a house, or to be more exact a skyscraper.
I know that the being in the foreground is an elf but that bit was inspired by the accompanying painting in the Youtube video for the Heather Dale song 'The Fair Folk'. (If you haven't listened to that song then it's well worth the time as the elves in that song aren't the friendly sort.)
That is that thing with artists, we very rarely have only one inspiration. The background alone was the collective images of at least a dozen photos and paintings. As to why it took me this long to finally have the painting done, well, that's life. I had a couple of months to chew over the idea, then had to finish the projects that I'd already started, complete several commissions and then I was able to start on Forest City. The sky alone took a week as it was a right royal bugger to do that colour shift from dark blue to light purple. That took some experimenting as I've never tried something like that before.
It is one of the reasons I use acrylics, if I make a mistake I can paint over fairly easily and believe me that sky took some painting over.
That is the main advice I can give to new artists, if at first you don't succeed - paint over and try again.
My first success of 2015 is in. I have just up loaded my new painting to deviant ART and it should now be available of sale.
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery/
I titled this one Forest City and thought I'd use my blog post to explain some of the inspiration behind it.
I suppose that I got the initial germ for it years ago when I heard about this house that had been abandoned and by the time anyone thought to send in the bulldozers an oak tree had taken root in one of the upper rooms and was growing its roots into all the cavity walls. House that was growing into a tree, if you will.
This information was filed away in a box marked 'interesting' in my brain and left on a shelf until I watched 'Hellboy II The Golden Army' about this time last year, when the imagination took down the box and opened it up. I was really thinking about the fact that the bad Prince in that film had a point; we are destroying all the forests and we'll kill ourselves in the process. That led into the thought, what if some of the human race could give up its greed and start trying to live along side nature again instead of fighting her? My imagination grabbed that idea and started building this world were you wouldn't be able to tell what was forest and what was city because one was the other.
Forest City is the result. The central 'tree' is actually a group of six trees that have been encouraged to grow into each other and all those round things with lights in them are giant sized oak apples that have been turned into rooms. The reason it doesn't have a canopy is because it's out of 'shot'. Trees that have grown into a house, or to be more exact a skyscraper.
I know that the being in the foreground is an elf but that bit was inspired by the accompanying painting in the Youtube video for the Heather Dale song 'The Fair Folk'. (If you haven't listened to that song then it's well worth the time as the elves in that song aren't the friendly sort.)
That is that thing with artists, we very rarely have only one inspiration. The background alone was the collective images of at least a dozen photos and paintings. As to why it took me this long to finally have the painting done, well, that's life. I had a couple of months to chew over the idea, then had to finish the projects that I'd already started, complete several commissions and then I was able to start on Forest City. The sky alone took a week as it was a right royal bugger to do that colour shift from dark blue to light purple. That took some experimenting as I've never tried something like that before.
It is one of the reasons I use acrylics, if I make a mistake I can paint over fairly easily and believe me that sky took some painting over.
That is the main advice I can give to new artists, if at first you don't succeed - paint over and try again.
Saturday, 10 January 2015
The Matters of Conflict
In an effort to start bring my blog into line with what I actually do for a living I'm going to try and start using it to write more about my work than about what is in the news that gets my goat. So to begin with I'm going to start with the word conflict.
Of course conflict is at the heart of any book written. Without conflict there is no story and no point to the book. Whether it is the clash of mighty empires (national), a suppressed people fighting for their rights (social) or a daughter who discovers that her beloved parents stole her as a child (personal), there is conflict at the heart of a story.
I'd say that a good author tries to include one example of all three, national, social or personal, in their books.
National conflict does not necessarily mean war, although recent history kind of puts lie to that. National conflict can be fought with back room deals, public manoeuvring and trade agreements that are bias in one direction or other. Recent history is the best example of this as the hand of big business is having more and more trouble trying to hide, although if you read the book 'Empress Orchid' you can see the hand of the East India Trading Company in the orchestration of the Opium Wars.
Social conflict can be formed in many ways, from pressure groups fighting to prevent building projects that are going to result in mass pollution to terrorism. Yes, that last one is a massive issue in the modern world, although examples of it can be found throughout history, but terrorism is a symptom of poverty, which is social injustice.
When people are left with their water being exported by a foreign company, their natural resources being claimed by a foreign power and their cries for mercy being ignored by foreign people then it only takes on fanatic to say 'it is their fault that our children are starving, it is their fault that we cannot provide for our families, it is their fault that we live in poverty, let's go kick them for everything they have done for us' for terrorism to be born. You only have to look at the history of central Europe between 1918 and 1945 to see the truth of that.
Personal conflict can be anything from an adolescent trying to find her place in the world, to the issues of family crisis to the bickering between allied soldiers. The personal history of the author is going to have a baring on how their characters deal with inner crisis and family crisis. It is very true that how we saw our parents handling crises often shapes how we deal with our own and often that models our characters behaviour, even if it by the thought of 'what if my parents had done the opposite?'
I have to admit I really do love stories in which allies do not get on one hundred percent. I find the tension between the characters to be a superb resource for revealing talks and it adds a depth of realism when there is a healthy competition between characters struggling to prove themselves. Humans are a competitive species, we like to see the struggle between characters, it is why we root for the underdog.
If you want a situation that is absolutely spitting with tension and sparks then the old thing of 'an enemy of an enemy is my... ally' is an definite winner, especially if you have spent two or three stories building up the rivalry or even out right hatred between two characters, races or nationalities and then throw an absolutely huge enemy their way so they have no choice but to unite or face utter destruction.
It can be extremely fun to have the good guy and the bad guy fighting on the same side for a turn or two, the tension can be invigorating for a writer and if played well can drag the most reluctant of reader hook, line and sinker into your story. There can be all sorts of arguments over methods, with the good guy doing their best to reign in the excesses of the bad guy and the bad guy grumbling about how weak the good guy's ideals make them.
If nothing else having a common enemy can lead to the two sides finding out that they have more in common and less to fight about than they thought they did. Depending on how bad your bad guy is it could even lead to a truce, of sorts.
Of course conflict is at the heart of any book written. Without conflict there is no story and no point to the book. Whether it is the clash of mighty empires (national), a suppressed people fighting for their rights (social) or a daughter who discovers that her beloved parents stole her as a child (personal), there is conflict at the heart of a story.
I'd say that a good author tries to include one example of all three, national, social or personal, in their books.
National conflict does not necessarily mean war, although recent history kind of puts lie to that. National conflict can be fought with back room deals, public manoeuvring and trade agreements that are bias in one direction or other. Recent history is the best example of this as the hand of big business is having more and more trouble trying to hide, although if you read the book 'Empress Orchid' you can see the hand of the East India Trading Company in the orchestration of the Opium Wars.
Social conflict can be formed in many ways, from pressure groups fighting to prevent building projects that are going to result in mass pollution to terrorism. Yes, that last one is a massive issue in the modern world, although examples of it can be found throughout history, but terrorism is a symptom of poverty, which is social injustice.
When people are left with their water being exported by a foreign company, their natural resources being claimed by a foreign power and their cries for mercy being ignored by foreign people then it only takes on fanatic to say 'it is their fault that our children are starving, it is their fault that we cannot provide for our families, it is their fault that we live in poverty, let's go kick them for everything they have done for us' for terrorism to be born. You only have to look at the history of central Europe between 1918 and 1945 to see the truth of that.
Personal conflict can be anything from an adolescent trying to find her place in the world, to the issues of family crisis to the bickering between allied soldiers. The personal history of the author is going to have a baring on how their characters deal with inner crisis and family crisis. It is very true that how we saw our parents handling crises often shapes how we deal with our own and often that models our characters behaviour, even if it by the thought of 'what if my parents had done the opposite?'
I have to admit I really do love stories in which allies do not get on one hundred percent. I find the tension between the characters to be a superb resource for revealing talks and it adds a depth of realism when there is a healthy competition between characters struggling to prove themselves. Humans are a competitive species, we like to see the struggle between characters, it is why we root for the underdog.
If you want a situation that is absolutely spitting with tension and sparks then the old thing of 'an enemy of an enemy is my... ally' is an definite winner, especially if you have spent two or three stories building up the rivalry or even out right hatred between two characters, races or nationalities and then throw an absolutely huge enemy their way so they have no choice but to unite or face utter destruction.
It can be extremely fun to have the good guy and the bad guy fighting on the same side for a turn or two, the tension can be invigorating for a writer and if played well can drag the most reluctant of reader hook, line and sinker into your story. There can be all sorts of arguments over methods, with the good guy doing their best to reign in the excesses of the bad guy and the bad guy grumbling about how weak the good guy's ideals make them.
If nothing else having a common enemy can lead to the two sides finding out that they have more in common and less to fight about than they thought they did. Depending on how bad your bad guy is it could even lead to a truce, of sorts.
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
It's the New Year
All ready.
As of midnight tomorrow my post log will return to zero and I will have to start work all over again to make sure that I have posted fifty two posts by the end of the year. Sounds like I have no problems doing that. Ha ha, think again. One there is the time factor, or rather the lack of time factor. You try scrapping together enough time together to work on a blog every week when you are trying to run three... four... five lives all at once.
Two, you then have to think of something to write about. It has to be interesting because nobody is going to want to read a post about you munching breakfast in the morning. Well, maybe they would be if you eat raw worms for breakfast but I don't eat raw worms for breakfast. Personally, worms belong in the garden, not in my mouth.
I will admit that I kind of cheated this year as I did nearly eight posts in May in one go, which meant that I bought myself a little leeway where it came to the post counter but seeing as half of them didn't get any post views I'm not sure that really counts.
Three, you then have to come up with a catchy title so that people will at least look at the first sentence of your post.
If you can do all that then you may have the start of a popular blog... or not. It all depends on whether the audience likes what you write about. Fame is a difficult thing to catch and sometimes you think you have it and then it flies away again... like the popularity of the silent movies.
In which case I think I will settle for blogging about what I'm working on, or gets my goat, or makes me laugh. If other people like it, great. If not, well, I'll have to keep posting until some decides they do like me.
Oh, that makes me think. All this stuff about New Year Resolutions? It's a load of bunkum.
You make a New Years Resolution, break it by habit or because you just weren't paying attention that day and then you feel massively guilty and then you pretend you never made it and go back to you old ways. (Hey, is that why the Conservative Party is deleting all their mandate for the last election off the Internet? Was it one massive New Years Resolution?)
It is far better to make life resolutions. Things like I will try and be more organised this year. Or I will try and do more work when I first get a job so I'm not pushing the deadlines.
That way you have the whole year to work on it and it doesn't matter if you fall over in the first few weeks, you have the rest of the year to pick yourself up again.
Hope that gives you a few ideas and that you have a healthy and safe New Year.
See you all in January.
As of midnight tomorrow my post log will return to zero and I will have to start work all over again to make sure that I have posted fifty two posts by the end of the year. Sounds like I have no problems doing that. Ha ha, think again. One there is the time factor, or rather the lack of time factor. You try scrapping together enough time together to work on a blog every week when you are trying to run three... four... five lives all at once.
Two, you then have to think of something to write about. It has to be interesting because nobody is going to want to read a post about you munching breakfast in the morning. Well, maybe they would be if you eat raw worms for breakfast but I don't eat raw worms for breakfast. Personally, worms belong in the garden, not in my mouth.
I will admit that I kind of cheated this year as I did nearly eight posts in May in one go, which meant that I bought myself a little leeway where it came to the post counter but seeing as half of them didn't get any post views I'm not sure that really counts.
Three, you then have to come up with a catchy title so that people will at least look at the first sentence of your post.
If you can do all that then you may have the start of a popular blog... or not. It all depends on whether the audience likes what you write about. Fame is a difficult thing to catch and sometimes you think you have it and then it flies away again... like the popularity of the silent movies.
In which case I think I will settle for blogging about what I'm working on, or gets my goat, or makes me laugh. If other people like it, great. If not, well, I'll have to keep posting until some decides they do like me.
Oh, that makes me think. All this stuff about New Year Resolutions? It's a load of bunkum.
You make a New Years Resolution, break it by habit or because you just weren't paying attention that day and then you feel massively guilty and then you pretend you never made it and go back to you old ways. (Hey, is that why the Conservative Party is deleting all their mandate for the last election off the Internet? Was it one massive New Years Resolution?)
It is far better to make life resolutions. Things like I will try and be more organised this year. Or I will try and do more work when I first get a job so I'm not pushing the deadlines.
That way you have the whole year to work on it and it doesn't matter if you fall over in the first few weeks, you have the rest of the year to pick yourself up again.
Hope that gives you a few ideas and that you have a healthy and safe New Year.
See you all in January.
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
I'm on Faceplant... er...Facebook Even!
O.k. I have finally given in to the march of 'progress' and signed up to Facebook. I'm not entirely happy about it and if my computer subsequently gets a bug then someone else can pay the sixty pound bill to strip the computer down, clear out the bug, reload my recovery disks and the remove, one at a time, the twenty five languages that I don't need hogging the memory space.
Still I'm there now and I suppose that it is another platform that I can use to advertise my artwork and writing on, which is the main reason that I signed up to it. Still not sure that I like it because it seems even more complicated than twitter and blogger put together but I'll give it a go. Hopefully I'll get at least a few views from it and maybe a few more visitors when I do a fair.
Did I mention in my last post that I had done a craft fair at the Common Room (not Coffee Lounge, my mistake) at 24 Saint Benedict's Street and this time I actually managed to sell something! Granted it was only four of my postcard sized photo-cards but it was a sell, or rather three of them (one person bought two of the cards).
It did mean that I got all of forty pence as my wage but it is a start. The tax fund is still receiving more than I do but that is what I was advised to do, just in case the tax man decides that he wants to take one heck of a bite out of me the first year I make it over the tax threshold and I am kind of thinking of it as my retirement fund. Especially as by the time I make it to retirement age the possibility of there still being a state pension in the UK is minimal.
To clear up the whole thing about the taxman - the story of a fellow writer.
The first five years she was a professional writer she did not make the tax threshold. The sixth year she did and the tax man demanded not only the tax for that year but also the tax for the five years previously, pretty much bankrupting her.
What is more the taxman is above and beyond the call of law. He demands and you cannot fight him in court 'cause you cannot take him to court and even if you could, take him to court that is, who among us has the money to fight that sort of legal battle. Not me that's for sure.
That and as I said, I'm kind of seeing it as my retirement fund. If the taxman doesn't want it all then there's my nest egg. May it grow big before it's needed.
Any way back to the original subject.
You can look me up under the name of V J Bartlett (for some reason I can't use the initial punctuation) and my first album of my art work is open to the public.
If you want to buy any of them as prints, check out:
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery
One final thing before I go, my boyfriend Stephen 'Stormwell' Hughes has just come up with this song bite based on 'Over the Hills and Far Away' from the Sharpe movies:
"Because the taxman commands
And we cough up,
Down the sofa
And under the rug."
(Looking for the lost change.)
Still I'm there now and I suppose that it is another platform that I can use to advertise my artwork and writing on, which is the main reason that I signed up to it. Still not sure that I like it because it seems even more complicated than twitter and blogger put together but I'll give it a go. Hopefully I'll get at least a few views from it and maybe a few more visitors when I do a fair.
Did I mention in my last post that I had done a craft fair at the Common Room (not Coffee Lounge, my mistake) at 24 Saint Benedict's Street and this time I actually managed to sell something! Granted it was only four of my postcard sized photo-cards but it was a sell, or rather three of them (one person bought two of the cards).
It did mean that I got all of forty pence as my wage but it is a start. The tax fund is still receiving more than I do but that is what I was advised to do, just in case the tax man decides that he wants to take one heck of a bite out of me the first year I make it over the tax threshold and I am kind of thinking of it as my retirement fund. Especially as by the time I make it to retirement age the possibility of there still being a state pension in the UK is minimal.
To clear up the whole thing about the taxman - the story of a fellow writer.
The first five years she was a professional writer she did not make the tax threshold. The sixth year she did and the tax man demanded not only the tax for that year but also the tax for the five years previously, pretty much bankrupting her.
What is more the taxman is above and beyond the call of law. He demands and you cannot fight him in court 'cause you cannot take him to court and even if you could, take him to court that is, who among us has the money to fight that sort of legal battle. Not me that's for sure.
That and as I said, I'm kind of seeing it as my retirement fund. If the taxman doesn't want it all then there's my nest egg. May it grow big before it's needed.
Any way back to the original subject.
You can look me up under the name of V J Bartlett (for some reason I can't use the initial punctuation) and my first album of my art work is open to the public.
If you want to buy any of them as prints, check out:
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery
One final thing before I go, my boyfriend Stephen 'Stormwell' Hughes has just come up with this song bite based on 'Over the Hills and Far Away' from the Sharpe movies:
"Because the taxman commands
And we cough up,
Down the sofa
And under the rug."
(Looking for the lost change.)
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Christmas Time Rush
I'm not normally one for joining in on all the silliness at this time of year but this year is rushing towards me with the sound of ten thousand elephants, all intent on trampling me into the ground.
It seems that I have decided, without meaning to, to start my career seriously at probably the worse possible moment. Not only am I trying to get stock of my prints, in formats that are going to appeal, done and posted to me in time for the craft fair at the Coffee Lounge on Saturday the 20th, but I'm also looking at learning how to juggle the demands of family, a new relationship and a commission that must be done in time for Christmas all at once. As Mr Jenkins once observed:
"Trust you to be awkward, Vicky!"
Still it is turning out to be fun, in a very loose sense of that word.
What is more, it is being very expensive at the moment to buy the prints, not because Photobox is expensive but because I have yet to receive and substantial amount in return. I have managed to sell one print so far but when you start calculating the expenses, the tax man's cut and my wage, then there isn't a lot of profit left to put back into the account.
This isn't for lack of trying, you understand.
I was at the craft fair at Stew, Gallery and Artist Studios Thursday just gone with Steph, sharing a pitch and despite a good turn out, handing out oodles of my new business cards (did I tell you about them?), I didn't sell a single thing, hence my rush to buy in new stock. Hopefully cards will be more acceptable to the public.
The only problem is that I had not a moment in which to order them sooner than yesterday, so with a dispatch date of the nineteenth, even with next day delivery, I might have walked out of the door half an hour before they arrive. Not much of a help for the fair.
Still, if they don't arrive on time, I will still go with what stock I do have. For those of you who maybe interested, the next fair I will be attending is at the Coffee Lounge, starting 11 am. The full address is:
24 Saint Benedict's Street
Norwich
NR2 4AQ
Hopefully, I will be able to see some of you there and maybe sell a print or two. Either way, it would be good to be able to talk some more with the audience. Writing and art can be such a lonely career, especially as a lot of self employed, or previously self employed people have been telling me don't expect to sell anything between Christmas and Easter.
Not good news for my bank account but maybe I'll have some time to do some actual work on my writing and my personal art projects.
That's a point.
Who would like a calendar of my artwork? If you would please leave a comment in the comment box.
For previews of my work, please visit:
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery/
Best wishes for Christmas period. May it be a happy and healthy one for you and your family.
It seems that I have decided, without meaning to, to start my career seriously at probably the worse possible moment. Not only am I trying to get stock of my prints, in formats that are going to appeal, done and posted to me in time for the craft fair at the Coffee Lounge on Saturday the 20th, but I'm also looking at learning how to juggle the demands of family, a new relationship and a commission that must be done in time for Christmas all at once. As Mr Jenkins once observed:
"Trust you to be awkward, Vicky!"
Still it is turning out to be fun, in a very loose sense of that word.
What is more, it is being very expensive at the moment to buy the prints, not because Photobox is expensive but because I have yet to receive and substantial amount in return. I have managed to sell one print so far but when you start calculating the expenses, the tax man's cut and my wage, then there isn't a lot of profit left to put back into the account.
This isn't for lack of trying, you understand.
I was at the craft fair at Stew, Gallery and Artist Studios Thursday just gone with Steph, sharing a pitch and despite a good turn out, handing out oodles of my new business cards (did I tell you about them?), I didn't sell a single thing, hence my rush to buy in new stock. Hopefully cards will be more acceptable to the public.
The only problem is that I had not a moment in which to order them sooner than yesterday, so with a dispatch date of the nineteenth, even with next day delivery, I might have walked out of the door half an hour before they arrive. Not much of a help for the fair.
Still, if they don't arrive on time, I will still go with what stock I do have. For those of you who maybe interested, the next fair I will be attending is at the Coffee Lounge, starting 11 am. The full address is:
24 Saint Benedict's Street
Norwich
NR2 4AQ
Hopefully, I will be able to see some of you there and maybe sell a print or two. Either way, it would be good to be able to talk some more with the audience. Writing and art can be such a lonely career, especially as a lot of self employed, or previously self employed people have been telling me don't expect to sell anything between Christmas and Easter.
Not good news for my bank account but maybe I'll have some time to do some actual work on my writing and my personal art projects.
That's a point.
Who would like a calendar of my artwork? If you would please leave a comment in the comment box.
For previews of my work, please visit:
http://v-j-bartlett.deviantart.com/gallery/
Best wishes for Christmas period. May it be a happy and healthy one for you and your family.
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