Other Writing – Page 53 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Download Festival 2013 (A victory for the socially awkward)

My First Festival

In just over two weeks I will be departing Lincolnshire in the company of my dear friend Lellibo for that great celebration of all things rock and metal, Download Festival 2013.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/news

I’m rather excited. I’ve never been to a music festival before. I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing. I was not a normal teenager or student; now I’m getting on a bit I am interested in music (if you hadn’t noticed). I have no idea what to take, although I have been trying to find out. The Download website is quite helpful and when I contacted the organisers with questions they were answered promptly. I also found a festival survival guide written by a veteran of Download, especially for people going to Download for the first time. There’s a link to it on the Download website.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/info

I’m going to meet up with an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years, and two new friends that I’ve yet to have a chance to meet up with. I hope to also meet new people. I don’t find it particularly easy to make new friends or even acquaintances, but I want to try. As well as a celebration of my 30th birthday this trip is also going to be a celebration of how far I’ve come this year. I still have trouble dealing with people (and occasionally leaving the house – people are scary) but I managed to go to London and meet a large group of strangers, and to go to a concert in Nottingham on my own, so this will help me prove to myself that I can do this stuff.

This morning I’ve been going through the line-up and stage times, trying to work out which bands I definitely want to see. There are quite a few. If I get my timing right I should be able to see most of them. Bands I have no intention of missing include HIM, Korn, Motorhead, Young Guns, 30 Seconds to Mars, Stone Sour and Sacred Mother Tongue. There are a few that I would like to see but I don’t mind if I miss a bit of their set getting between stages: Down, Papa Roach, 3 Doors Down, Turisas, Iron Maiden, QOTSA, Alice in Chains, Rammstein and Limp Bizkit. The rest of the time I’ll just catch whoever I like the sound of.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/line-up/all

I did a quick calculation and worked out that it might be expensive for the weekend (we’ve got 5 night camping tickets) but even if I only see those 16 bands, that’s £12.81 per band with free accommodation plus £20 towards petrol. You can’t get concert tickets, accommodation and train tickets for that; such good value for money! Now I just need to get some spending money together 😀

I’m planning to write about my experiences, and have purchased myself a notebook to write everything down in while I’m at the festival. I’m on the cadge for a camera to borrow so I can take some decent pictures. While I am getting one of the lockers and will be able to charge my phone, I want to save the battery for emergences, for example when I inevitably get lost, confused or forget my medication and need rescuing by my friends who I’m going to issue with spare inhalers for me.

So for the duration of Download I will be offline.

When I get home I plan to sleep, shower and start writing about it. Not necessarily in that order. It might take a couple of days for the band reviews to get published but they will be. In addition to band reviews I intend to write a general commentary on the festival as a whole, and a discussion of my reactions to it. I’m wandering how I will react to all the people, the constant stimulation and general atmosphere. I don’t generally do well in loud crowded places for more than a couple of hours at a time (it’s a wonder I survive concerts).

If anyone has any survival tips for the festival I’d appreciate the advice (or if any of my friends/relatives want to contribute to the 30th birthday spending fund – you know where I am).

Bye for now,

Rose

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Worlds Without End: Women of Genre Fiction Challenge – I’m going to give it a go

I quite like SciFi/Fantasy books, I’ve read a lot of them, so when I found out about ‘Worlds Without End’ I decided to go and have a look at their website:

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/

One of their ‘challenges’ is the Women of Genre Fiction challenge in which participants have to read and review twelve books from their list of women authors. The books have to be by women authors you’ve never read before. I’m going to give it a go. The first I am reading will reading is ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ by Ann Radcliffe.

For more information on the challenge please go to:

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/authors_wogf.asp

Bye

Rose

Listening to the radio

I’m listening to BBC Radio 4 Extra; there’s a radio play on called ‘I want to go home’ by David Pownall. The play is about word meanings and sound changes, and is from the perspective of the words that make up the sentence.

The characters are anthropomorphisms of words, ‘I’ starting out as ‘Ich’, ‘want’ as ‘willa’, ‘Home’ and ‘Haim’ and ‘to go’ as ‘gan’, and the story of how they changed over time. It’s an interesting and entertaining programme, very educational as well.

It will probably be on iPlayer for a week if you want to listen, I would recommend it.

Bye,

Rose

Currently reading…

I borrowed this book from the library last week and I’m making my way through it. I’ve never read any Dean Koontz books before, and I’m enjoying it. Proper review to follow when I finish it.

[EDIT: I couldn’t finish it. But the bit I read wasn’t bad, I just couldn’t get on with the writing style.]

I’ve been on a bit of an organisation kick lately

Good evening,

I should be sleeping as I have to be up for work at quarter to four tomorrow morning, but I’m not tired so I thought I’d say hello to everyone, especially to people who have only recently started following this blog.

Hello.

I’ve been organising a few things lately. I had two wordpress blogs, twitter and a tumblr; after a bit of thought I now have 1 wordpress blog (this one), twitter and three tumblr accounts.

I decided that as I’m not shooting much at the minute (no money/damaged lower back/working weekends) there was no point in having the archery blog (travelswithmylongbow.wordpress.com) because I’m not using it. I also decided that my tumblr needed organising. My personal tumblr is a random mix of all my interests, and my dashboard is usually full of fandom stuff, which makes it difficult to find writing/music related posts. I now have two new Tumblrs

• rosemariecawkwell.tumblr.com is my writing blog. It’s where I follow writing blogs, book and literature blogs and sometimes post short stories.

• hornskeepthehaloinplace.tumblr.com is my music blog. I follow various band/fan blogs; they’re useful for news and finding out what fans are talking about.

Most of the posts I make here go to my Tumblrs. Feel free to have a look at them.

In other news, I am now working part time (weekends) so I will have a bit of money coming in while I work on my writing. It’s not perfect but these things have to be done. I have managed to get a couple of short stories written this week though, which I’m pleased with. Next week will be spent typing them up. I would like to get another one of my short stories finished next week. After that I’ll have three left to write for the collection. Now I’m working part-time I’ll have plenty of time to concentrate on writing, and not worrying about money or being too tired to actually write.

I will also be listening to a few new bands who have followed my Twitter account and giving my musically uneducated but passionate opinion on them.

Right, I’m going to try to sleep again now.

Bye,

Rose

Good Morning!

Hello one and all,

My phone is finally working again, so I’m going to celebrate with a quick update on my short story collection.

I have five completed and typed up, one complete but not typed up, and three partially completed.

This morning I plan to finish one of them before I leave for work at half one, I’ll finish another on my breaks at work. And then depending how late I finish work this evening I’ll start typing them up. I’m busy for the next few days, but I have most of next week free so I will probably spend it typing up everything I’ve completed so far.

I’m fairly pleased with my progress so far. It’s been an interesting exercise so far, and some of the stories that I’ve come up with have been unexpected.

Bye for now,

Rose

[Edit: one more finished! It’s fairly long and I’m probably going to write another part for it at some point, but not for this collection. It might make a novella at some time in the future.]

Work does have it’s uses after all!

I’ve started work again, but only part time. Still, it’s already biting in to my writing time. I was in the middle of writing a story for my anthology last night, right in the narrative flow, when I realised it was gone eleven and I had to be up for work at six. Most irritating.

At work I tried to find some time to work on another short story for the collection. Luckily, the technical department tend to be very much ‘go with the flow’ and since there wasn’t much QA-ing for me to do I did a bit of admin for the manager instead. Mindless and easy, my mind wondered off to other worlds. Break time came and I started to write. Twenty five minutes concentrated writing and then back to the day job. Then later another twenty minutes scribbling away. It might not be any good but when I’ve finished it and typed it up I’ll play around with it and improve it.

I find work is a good place to let my creative side have free rein on the subconscious level, so that when I do write it’s all there waiting for the short spurts of writing I can manage.

Maybe, if you’re having a bit of writer block, that might be a way to break it. Set aside ten, fifteen minutes to just write anything. Go away for a few hours and then have another short session. The intervening time will allow your brain to mull over ideas started in the first session.

Work, for most of us, is a dull grind done so that we can afford to do the things we want to, so using the time effectively, to allow writing during the work day, is a must.

Going to nap now,

Bye,

Rose

Shamelessly plugging my ridiculously talented relatives

Hey, everyone else is getting free advertising so I thought I’d do my family a minor favour and let people know about them.

My younger sister Helen has a small business proofreading, and she’s also a bit of an historian.

She has a blog and Twitter, plus a Facebook page for her business.

Her blog is helencawkwell1.wordpress.com, her Twitter is @helen_cawkwell and her business Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/StudentProofOnline

She’s really good at the proof reading, she usually proof reads my longer articles for me, although not my blog posts because I write them at odd times. Go and have a look at her pages, please.

My brother-in-law Richard is a spectacularly good guitarist in need of a band. Here are some tracks he’s recorded:

If anyone near by wants to get in touch, or further away if you’re aren’t insanely far away, he has his contact details in various music shops in Grimsby and Scunthorpe, and on the SoundCloud page. Seriously, go have a listen.

My cousin, another Richard, is a tattooist and photographer. He works under the name ‘Loveless Tattooer’ at Bespoke Body Art in Grimsby. The best way to see examples of his work is to look on his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/lovelesstattooer

If I ever get a tattoo I think I’d get Richard to do it, mainly because I wouldn’t trust someone not family near me with needle and ink. And I like his work.

I have other cousins; Dominic is a photographer and student film maker – he’s very good. I’m using one of Dominic’s pictures as a prompt for a series of short stories. Christopher likes to play with computers and Louis is a historian. I’m scared he’ll start a war with France one day. They’ll have to add their own links in the comments if they want people to see their work because I don’t know where they have them.

And that is my shameless plugging of my family’s talents over (To my family – you’d better appreciate it, you horrible lot :D)

Bye-bye

Rose

Metal Hammer presents HIM Tears on Tape Limited Edition Collector’s Pack: Was it worth it?

YES!!!!!

You know I said I’d stop fangirling? Well, I lied. I’m back with another post.

I pre-ordered the fan pack as soon as it was available (if I’d waited I wouldn’t have had the money to pay for it). It arrived the on Monday, the official release date and came packaged in a sturdy cardboard container.

It contains

· a comprehensive magazine edited by Ville Valo and covering everything to do with the new album,

· two double-sided posters (although one of them might be for pre-orders only – it has the names of everyone who ordered before the 2^nd of April printed on it), one A1 sized and the other full door length

a drawstring bag (again pre-orders only?),

· for 1000 lucky people, signed cards (I didn’t get one of those *sigh*),

· a code to download five bonus tracks from DXX records.’

At £14.99 I’d say that was a bargain. Even if you take out the stuff that’s for pre-orders only that still leaves a thick magazine, an album, several bonus songs to download, and a very large double-sided poster. At a quick estimate, let’s say the album costs £10 on its own, the poster, 3 or 4 quid, the magazine is at least £4, plus the downloadable tracks? £2 or £3? So about £20 in total? If you could get any of the extras on their own, which I don’t think you can, that’s good value for money. Now the only decision is, do I hang the posters up, or keep them safe in the packaging?

So, purely from a monetary viewpoint, the fan-pack/collector’s pack is worth it. From a fan’s point of view, the insights into the band, the album and everything that goes with it, the magazine is a treasure house of information. So yes, definitely worth the money if you like HIM.

Bye,

Rose

Ah, the long eighteenth century, how I have missed you.

I was strolling through Twitter a few minutes ago when I came across a post that an historian of the eighteenth century had retweeted. It came from another wordpress blog, called georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com; little known fact about me: I find the 18th century fascinating.

Society was poised on the edge of revolution. Not just the violent kind either. It was a time of scientific discovery and social change, the beginnings of industrialisation and empire building. The working class and industrial/urban middle classes were beginning to assert themselves. Some excellent books were also written as well, like ‘Pride and Prejudice’. And if you’ve had a read of any of my old posts you’ll know that’s one of my favourite books.

So occasionally I might reblog posts from georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com.
It’s a really interesting blog, by the way.

Bye,

Rose