Life

Have you ever felt pushed by unseen forces in your life? All my life I've felt these pushes. It seems that as soon as I think I'm where I'm supposed to be and I start to relax life says Ha! Tricked you!

I know I've made poor decisions in my life, and bad choices. I've tried to understand and forgive myself for all of them. I've tried to start again and get it right, to do what I was born to do and stop wasting my life. Everything seemed to come together, everything seemed to be working and I really believed I was finally on the right path. It didn't matter that it is a path a lot of people thought I was crazy for travelling, it was my path and it felt right.

But now finances are forcing me to at least change how I'm doing things and maybe change everything. I don't want to do that, you can't imagine how deeply I don't want to do that. I've begun making a life here and to feel comfortable. I want to be comfortable!

There have been times where I have hated it here, the dirt and the dust, the filth. I've lost my temper over the difficulties in the smallest things like getting a decent can opener or egg flip. I've struggled with the language and the customs and the food. I've longed for decent curtains (still do) and good milk and any number of small conveniences. I've wished for rain and grass and flowers and a garden.

But now, with the threat of losing it all I realise that I don't want to leave it. This is my little corner in the world and I want to keep it (but not the curtains). I want to keep my cats and my street cats and this apartment. I want to complain about the milk and the cheese and the laundry guys forgetting to send back a shirt. I want to buy food from the Syrian bakery and travel at life threatening speeds in a taxi that badly needs some air in its tyres or new shock absorbers or a new cv joint or most likely all three. I want to sit on my balcony in the dawn light, eating my breakfast and listening to silence. And I want to write.

I'm so close to success I can taste it. My first book is selling steadily, my little books continue to sell steadily, I have a new short read book I'm about to publish and I'm working on another book that insisted on being written. I don't want to give up now when I'm almost there.

I have options, I hope. I'm trying to get writing jobs on various writing sites - problem with them is that so many require you to be a US citizen. I've decided to write the prequel to Zora's Dawn and publish it and Zora's Dawn on Amazon without waiting for agents or publishers. That will potentially earn money faster than waiting for an agent to pick me up and then find a publisher - that all takes months and I don't have months. I'll try to find an online tutoring job too.

I don't know if any of this will solve my problem but I hope it will. I want so badly to finally be able to stop worrying about how to pay for everything - and by everything I mean a roof over my head and food on the table (a figurative table since the apartment doesn't have one but you get the gist).

I can only believe that I am once again being pushed in a different direction to get me where I'm supposed to be - I don't know quite what I'm supposed to be doing but I'm being pushed, I assume, because I didn't figure it out fast enough on my own.

So, I'm teetering on the brink of the black hole but I'm determined not to fall in, I'm determined that somehow I'll find a way to get financial security sooner and not later (I was prepared for later as making a successful writing career requires patience), I'm determined that I will grab life by the throat and say enough, stop jerking my chain, let me live in peace.

I'll get back to you on how it works out...

My head's going to explode!

Aww you guys, you come here and check every day, and like a bad landlady I don't show up. Well I'm here now :)

I have news, nothing earth shattering - well actually it is quite literally earth shattering, at least part of it. So I'll start with the earth shattering. Outside my apartment building is a backhoe with a giant jack hammer attached and it is attacking the ground, unearthing chunks of concrete and rocks and breaking them up. It's been going allllllllllllll day and I'm about ready to shatter along with the rocks. I hope it won't be for much longer since I think that the main issue is the old foundations for a little building that was there originally. I hope so.

While digging and clearing, this backhoe most helpfully also cleared the phone line to this building and so I have no ADSL internet, just the USB wifi which costs a whole lot more for a whole lot less data. I've no idea when the line will be repaired, it sure would have been useful if the people responsible had checked to see if there were any underground cables before they started. But you know, that would be reasonable and responsible and suchlike. Who would do that? Am I miffed? Just a teensy weensy bit.

So my day has been full of the musical tones of a huge jackhammer. I can only be thankful I am on the fifth floor and not the ground floor. Even here the floor is reverberating. So is my head. I've been trying to write but getting nowhere at all. It's like the words that circle in my head have been stirred up and they've fractured. So instead  of the smooth series of circles full of words I've got a jumbled up mess. The letters are all at different angles, the words are scrambled and nothing can flow. So when I try to write they get stuck and all I can feel is my head vibrating and the words all tangled up inside.

I'm getting this blog written but it's not as free flowing as usual. I'm making spelling errors and having difficulty getting the wording correct. I keep having to stop and think, which when I write is not something I usually have to do. Generally it all just streams out onto the screen and I don't think at all until I come to edit.

Anyway, enough of my woes. The other news is that I've started the second author page, the one about Sabrina. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/SabrinaStreetCat

Now onto other news. No news on the find an agent front, other than that I've tweaked the synopsis and the query letter and sent them off to a few more. It's the wait that is so frustrating, so it's best to focus on other things while waiting which is what I've been doing.

Yesterday I got a huge morale boost with a fantastic review for one of my little short read books. Reviews are very important to an author - well to this author anyway. They are a means of getting feedback from readers, to know if the book has resonated or not. I feel validated in my choice of career when I read a great review like this one, it really lifted my spirits. I'll share the link for that too in case you're curious as to what makes me smile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OLYHA5Y

It's the second review :)

Other than that it's been write, plan, keep up with the two new pages, and write some more. It's finding the balance between them all that's a bit tricky but it does seem to be evening out. Well until today anyway. Earlier on I was so frustrated at the fractured insides of my head that I gave up and went and made scones - which turned out brilliantly. I really hope tomorrow won't be so bad, that the jack hammer will be done its job soon.

Have a great few days until I'm back here again, hopefully less fractured next time!

 This is the cause of my brain fracture :)

So I made these

But I still need this sign on my front door!