personal – Everything Is Better With Dragons

World Fantasy Con 2025: Day 1

I have registered, I have my goodie bag, and I have been to the dealers room.

https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/

I wasn’t planning to buy anything today, but I gave in and spent lots of pennies visiting the FlameTree Press table, the Wizard’s Tower table, and the Portal Bookshop table, as well as a couple of indie author tables

I have pretty much spent half my book budget and may need to reduce it further to get a suitcase to take them home in.

I’ve treated myself to three notebooks from FlameTree, some teas from the Bird & Blend shop, and a pocket watch from a jewellery maker.

I’m having a break in hotel room. I’ll go back to the con about half four for the 5pm workshop I’ve signed up for. Until then I’m resting amd writing.

I did WW ‘s new Personal Points programme to prove a point

Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to do weight loss or weight management programmes anymore, after the last one fucked my mental health over, but I did that one for 18 months. This has only been a 6-month programme., because I refuse to pay the full monthly price. I got some sort of deal through Hello Fresh.

Actually, that’s a good point; Hello Fresh leads people to the WW website if you choose one of their WW Personal Points meals. Clearly they have some sort of partnership and benefit from driving consumers from their respective websites to each other. It’s somewhat sick that they take advantage of people like that. I was just looking for something good in my discounted meals.

I decided to turn the experience into an experiment. I’m going to take things month-by-month and write a bit each month. There will be an explanation in the September 2022 section.

My thoughts on #Spectrum10K

In case you haven’t heard, Cambridge Autism Research Centre, lead by Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen, have launched a new research initiative. They want 10,000 autistic people to send them their genetic material. There has been a bit of fuss in the Autistic community because of the unsatisfactory answers given by Spectrum 10K when asked about data safety and the way some ‘Ambassadors’ have behaved, including naturalist Chris Packham calling anyone who disagrees with the research a science denier and conspiracy theorist, and ‘comedian’ Paula White calling a respected autistic autism researcher ‘brainless’.

I haven’t commented on any of the Twitter threads, but I’ve been reading them and taking in the information. The main issue is that there isn’t any guarantee about the security of the data, which may be sold to companies at a later date, and that some of the people and organisations involved, even tangentially, are known to want to ‘cure’ autism. Yes, we’re scared of eugenics.

I tried a weight management programme for 18 months and all I got was worse mental health

This is a long one, get comfy. I don’t talk about personal stuff much now, since my blog has evolved into a book blog from a general/mental health blog.

For the first time in 18 months, I weighed myself today. Last time I got weighed was at the start of 2020 when I was weighed at the start of a ‘get active’ programme with the local leisure centres, where I started swimming two to three times a week, and then a ‘weight management programme’ a few weeks later.

I will be talking about weight and BMI, so if that’s not a happy thing for you to think about, probably best not to read on.

I haven’t lost or gained any weight, but apparently I’m 6 centimetres shorter than I was in February last year…

Yuletide wishes

Happy Hogswatch,

Glad Yuletide,

Joyous Solstice,

Merry Christmas,

Happy Hanukkah,

Sorry if I’ve missed anyone.

I’m not massively into the festive season, mainly because I find it loud, bright and busy, and people are massively hypocritical. The fuss is massively overstimulating for me and makes we tired, grumpy and generally not well. I find hiding in my house with the lights low and no sounds except possible low nature sounds or classical music in the background to be the only way to cope. I’m already finding it hard to focus if there is too much going on.

There’s the expectation of being around people and I can’t really cope with it. I like visiting people but I need to be able to escape when I want. Going to spend 25th with people has a lot of expectation that I’ll be there for a certain amount of time and because I can’t drive I need the other people to get me there and back, so I feel reliant on people. I don’t like being reliant, I don’t like feelings of expectation, I don’t like not being able to escape when I want to.

I do like giving gifts but I struggle to know what to give people. It’s easier if people just give me a list of the things they need. I don’t like buying people things that’ll get put on the shelf and forgotten. I’d prefer them to actually want and need what I give them. There are a lot of books being given this year.

The hypocrisy of people spending two weeks pretending to care about less fortunate people when they spend the other 50 weeks of the year being selfish and only caring about their immediate family gets right on my tits. Don’t do stuff just because it’s Christmas and New Year or because you want people to think you’re so wonderful (charity gifts for example); help people because you actually care and want to help people.

Also, if you don’t want to spend shed loads of money on gifts, don’t just to keep up with the neighbours (or the in-laws). Actually, if you don’t want to do the whole traditional roast dinner/Christmas day thing, don’t. It’s not compulsory. If it’s the only day you’re getting off for a month and you want to spend the day in your jammies eating chocolate, do that. If you want to go on an adventure, go on an adventure (a friend has the week to herself for the first time in almost 30 years, and is going to the West Country with friends – because she can and she wants to). Don’t let other people’s expectations and demands stop you dong what you want to do, if doing that makes you happy.

Right, I’m getting off my soap box now and getting dressed. I’m going to see my bestie, exchange gifts and eat mince pies.

My First Rejection

To be fair, this is the only publisher I’ve submitted to.

I heard back from Sara at Inspired Quill yesterday evening, although I only read it this morning. Unfortunately, they aren’t accepting Hidden Fire this time round but the advice she gave was really useful. I’m going to go back and look at both Hidden Fire and Fire Betrayed again, with her feedback in mind.

I was chuffed with this:

wonderful authorial voice that flows well and is a pleasure to read. Your characters are interesting, and it’s obvious that you know every detail about the world you’ve created.

… I like the way you don’t end every sentence with ‘said’ or ‘she shook her head’ (or similar!)…

I’m just sorry that currently, Inspired Quill doesn’t have the resources to offer you a contract and work with you.

The feedback boils down to:

Dialogue can be hard to follow when there are groups – non-verbal cues
More telling than showing – non-verbal cues
Episodic (good because keeps readers engaged) but needs a unifying arc running through.

The autistic writer has a problem with non-verbal cues and tone of voice. Now there’s a surprise! (This is a humorous comment, not a criticism of the feedback).

I can work with this. It’s not a problem.

I published Hidden Fire and Fire Betrayed a year ago, and I’ve learnt a lot since, especially during my dissertation writing. My supervisor, although a bit harsh at times, pushed me to write better, and his advice coincides with what Sara has written, to a certain extent.

Yes, it hurts my ego a bit and I’ll be shying away from doing anything for a while, but, I know how I react. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll start work on them all again.

Completely random thought re: criticism and autistic people:

People say auties are rubbish with criticism, but I think it’s just a case of us needed longer to process and reflect so our automatic response is ‘nope, not happening, not doing it’, because, I at least feel like, when people criticise they expect immediate change and improvement and it’s just not possible, so ‘shut down and refuse’ is the go to response. Given time and no pestering, it’s possible to integrate the criticism into my worldview and work on it, but I need enough processing time (about two weeks). I don’t know if that’s how other auties feel, but that’s how it works for me. Maybe, instead of just listing ‘doesn’t respond well to criticism’, people should ask about how we feel and approach criticism, how we process and integrate it, instead?

I am almost definitely not a great loss to science

I was having one of my ‘can’t turn brain off’ nights last night. I had a few thoughts, like autistics are about 1% of the population, add the other neurodivergents and that probably comes to 5 – 10% of the human population. Maybe there was a evolutionary advantage to having a small number of people in a group that thought and processed the world differently.

And then I got up this morning, did my usual Twitter, Facebook and WordPress gander and realised, it’s all been thought before and articulated better, by people much more intelligent than I am.

So I think I’ll go back to writing stories.

Ignore the pacing, tapping and twitching, I’m just stimming.

This week I’m going to write about stimming. The calendar asks the questions what is stimming and how is it related to masking.

Stimming is autie slang for those things we do to self-sooth when anxious, among other things.

I have a variety of stims. I flap my arms, like a confused penguin, usually when I’m in the chemists and waiting for my medication. It works particularly well when I’m wearing my waterproof jacket, because it makes a rustling sound that I like. I rub my hands on my thighs especially when I’m wearing jeans. The texture and movement is soothing. Texture seems to be important for me, rough textures work well. I also like physical actions, like throwing a ball at the wall and catching it. Crafting is possibly a stim too. It’s a socially acceptable stim to crochet or sew in public.

Why do I stim? Because I get anxious and I need to send the energy somewhere, I suppose.

What has stimming to do with masking?

If I can redirect the anxiety to an activity I can hold up until I get home. It helps me maintain the facade of calm and attention, except when I can’t and then I stim because I need to. That’s when the mask drops in public and I get funny looks. That’s not fun. Especially as I think some of my behaviours that might have been stimming as a teenager were the reason some people bullied me at school. It was twenty years ago but the worry is still there that someone will attack me for doing what I need to do to be comfortable.

So that’s my take on stimming and masking.

Anyway, I’ve discovered this evening that Monday evening after 8 pm is a good time to go shopping. There was only two other people in the shop when I went to get my food shopping. It was great. No queue at the tills, no children getting too close, hardly any staff getting in the way with containers. It was great. Plus I had an audio book on my tablet, with the volume quite high. I’m going to end up deafening myself.

Third time lucky… Applying for PIP again

Now that I have a diagnosis, a support worker and I’m seeing a clinical psychologist every couple of months, I might make some progress this time.

Continue reading “Third time lucky… Applying for PIP again”

Dissertation update: Week 9

I got a bit of feedback from my supervisor earlier in the week on the most recent draft. Still need more of the city in the description. So on Wednesday morning I added 1400 words describing the first trip Lucie and Robbie take from Nettleham to Washingborough adding lots of details about the route and scenery.

Google Maps is a life saver! I’d mostly remembered the route correctly but it helped to have it mapped out with images.

Apparently the essay is good now. I just need to get everything arranged properly for the final presentation, provided my supervisor is happy with the creative piece.

I’m other writing news, I managed a thousand words this morning and a read through of everything I’d written so far of Her Last Death. I’m up to 21949 words now. I’m hoping to reinstate my 1000 words a day policy but it depends on what else is going on. I’m currently achy as hell but I can’t decide why. I think I’m going to do nothing this weekend.

In reading news, I’ve read one of the London Mysteries I’m reviewing a week today, and my copies of Wrecker and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot which I’ll be reviewing later in the month have arrived.

I’m what else I’m doing news, my rainbow draft excluder is coming along nicely, the garden is beginning to pick up and my cross-stitch is looking okay. I’ve been swimming and to the AAF café this week. That’s probably why I ache, I’ve pushed myself a bit. Oh, and next week I meet my support worker!