To Boot or Not to Boot…

I’m going to be much better at blogging.  This time.  Truly!  I’ve got a new resolve and it’s going to be blogging and representing Seadrake better.  So it may be that I keep blending my two careers onto one blog or I may start an independent blog just about jewellery (or if you’re in the US – jewelry).  Not to be traitor to blogspot, but I’ve seen some amazing blogs on Wordpress and WOW.  It acts like their main jeweller’s website and blog with links to their Etsy shops.

 

BTW here is one of my etsy listings: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/111646849/fine-silver-999-with-dichroic-glass?ref=shop_home_feat

 

Here is the main question: do I start selling smaller, less expensive items at the local car boot sale or do I focus on the larger and more expensive markets?  My experiences so far of vintage and craft fairs is that they cost so much (along with the public liability insurance) and it might lead to one or two commissions afterwards and is a lovely place to meet artisans, but there is little to no financial gain at the end of it. 

 

Enter the car boot sale.  It conjures up visions of broken high chairs, rusty old tools, rotting books rejected from a charity shop… but the car boot sale has some amazing finds, stalls, and regulars who, upon chatting to, say how slow the market has been and they only take X amount, which happens to be triple of what I make at a craft stall on a good day (and without the need for public liability insurance AND with about a third of the setting up price).  But the trick is to get the right items out and keep an eye and strong nerve for those who are out for either a freebie (ie 5-finger discount) or extreme haggling (which I’ve never had a problem dealing with).

 

Another bonus about car boot is that you pay on the door on the day.  No pre-booked stalls that don’t get refunded if the weather is too poor for the public to show.  And it’s a good day out with the opportunity to get some amazing bargains on tools (see the photo up top?  That was a £3 car boot find – a rusty old jeweller’s vyse.  It took me only 3 hours to refurbish and now it’s invaluable in my workshop).

 

It will be (my plan at this time anyway) some Roman sterling twisted wire rings, pearl and gemstone earrings, leaves range and a photo album display for people who might want to commission bigger items.  The footfall for car boot is pretty amazing and what a great place to advertise!

 

After the Oyster Fayre I’ll keep an eye out for the right Sunday morn and then, BAM! out I’ll go to the car boot at 6:30 in the morning to get my ideal position before 7am opening and see how things go.

 

I may have just answered my question – To Boot!!!

April Escapes and May Showers

 

It’s been a while since my last blog (the usual… life got in the way again) but this time I have a slightly better excuse and yes, it is the weather.  The relentless winter got me (and I know even hardened individuals suffered this year) down, my light box was still ‘missing’ since the move to the new house, and the new house was/is an icebox with freezing cold air pouring off the outer wall.  Even paying outrageous fees in gas and electricity kept us wearing double to quadruple layers indoors, which frankly, I found rather offensive.

 

So, with a bitter feeling of cold despair, I begged for an escape home to sunny CA and my supportive husband readily agreed.  Two weeks of sunny bliss, family gatherings, meeting up with old friends (at one point it felt very ‘Housewives of Orange County’ except we weren’t bitching, it wasn’t Orange County and well… let’s face it, I was the only ‘housewife’ in the group).

 

On the trip, I had my e-mail account hacked – typical timing and I spent some time trying to fix it on my mother’s computer which felt a bit like wearing someone else’s underpants (the keys responded differently, screen alien, and well, it just wasn’t my computer).  I’d meant to abandon all computer-related activity so it was just by chance that I checked my e-mail and received a mass of informants.

 

But when the two and a half weeks were up, I was ready to go back to reality – it was even warm for the weekend before plunging back down to the gloomy weather we’d left.  Two weeks in and I’m still reeling over the catch up I’m trying to do.  And balanced with recovering from jet lag, an excited toddler and growing lawn, my workload is feeling a bit overwhelming.

 

Writing – I’ve got my short story for the Springbok anthology to do – well, I’ve just finished the draft and need to change a few bits before sending it in – it’s due at the end of the month.  Then after the Oyster Fayre, it will be ‘all systems go’ to get this non-fiction drafted in time (Three Victorian Women in Asylum).  I’ve also been compiling a fairy anthology of retold ancient lore and new tales with an ancient feel.  It will be illustrated by my fabulous mother and talented artist, Linda Gunn.

 

Wyvern – There are still two books on the lists – then will close.  Or it was going to (I had no time for my own writing whilst running a publishing company).  I’ve got a potential buyer, hoorah!  So authors might have a chance to receive new contracts, which I’m thrilled about if it all goes through.  I’ll keep posting updates as they happen.

 

Seadrake – Gulp!  Only a few weeks left before the big weekend of Oyster Fayre – the market that sums up Seadrake perfectly and the event I look forward to every year… I’ve got all my stock put together, but there are some final bits that have been giving me trouble (combined with a toddler who keeps trying to break into my workshop means I can only work when she’s asleep… which is usually when I crash out too).  I have to brass leaves to saw and finish into beautiful medieval brooches – they are all etched beautifully and are ready for the wrist and knuckle breaking moment of hacksaw (which takes forever).  There are costumes to drag out of the closet – I’m selling off as much of my historical wardrobe I can this year, so if you need a Tudor/Renaissance/Saxon/Arthurian gown, drop by for a steal.

 

Fab, so it’s all systems go until June 1… Bring on the Oyster Fayre!

 Seadrake pure silver and moonstone ring

 

 

 

I miss the chickens.  I miss their morning clucking, the sound they made when they were laying, the boasting that happened afterwards and the crooning when they found their favourite patch of grass in the sun.  I also miss their eggs.  Each chicken laid differently – at different times of the day, yes, but they also had very distinctive eggs too.  Poppy’s eggs were renown for having light yellow yolks, thin membranes and HUUUUGGGE shells.  Ruby’s were medium, had darker yolks, Speckled Gemima’s were small, spreckled and firm.  They were ideal for poaching, whereas Poppy and Ruby’s eggs were best fried. 

 

Someday I’ll get chickens again.  I certainly don’t miss de-icing their water every morning in the winter, or finding red mites in the summer (evil things).  The darkest part of hen keeping is when they get ill.  Commercial hens have been bred to produce eggs at a high rate – an unnaturally high rate.  It takes its toll on them and their life span is lucky to be three years.  I know some keepers who’ve got chickens that last 20 years and up, but this is not the norm… those are superchicks!  The cost of feed has also hit the roof, making hen keeping more of an expensive hobby rather than a slice of the good life.  That, has got to be all this rain that keeps threatening crops…

 

Which brings me to the allotment.  I’ve got my seeds ready, the ground is prepped… it’s time soon to start work.  Just as soon as this cold weather lets up and this heavy drench peters out.  Icy swamps are not good for growing!

 

And despite having promised life a slowed down pace… I ended up sending a mass of submissions out and am getting acceptances!  It’s amazing and I’m so excited, but it also means more work and manic writing.  I’ve re-started my non-fiction writing as it’s nice to have a trickle of income (even though the per-hour rate is about 10cents an hour).  But it’s nice to have a reconnection with other writers and post interviews of their successes. 

 

So on to my accepted submissions… Firstly, I’m working on and with an amazing charity anthology for Springbok Publications – the new small press that will be highlighting the plight of the African Black Rhino and all proceeds will go to that charity.  I’ll have a teen fiction slant on my story (I’ll also be submitting a poem) which brings me to the fact that I’ve had a lightning moment and I KNOW MY GENRE.  I’m a teen fiction writer (hear my friends say, ‘duh!’) although I do also write for children (and the child at heart).  No more horror, no more steampunk attempts, no more random submissions for women’s magazines.  It’s all about children’s and YA fiction with a slant on the edgy and dark side.

 

Okay, okay, I’m rambling again.  Back to accepted submissions.  My non-fiction Three Victorian Women in Asylum is also being taken on by Springbok and I’m going to do my darnedest to help promote it by writing a series of articles and sending them out to (don’t groan) women’s magazines (so, I may not be writing fiction for them, but a good article is different ;)  I still have to finish the draft and pay for the photos of the women (in archive at the moment) but I expect to have it ready by October this year (not the release date, but the date I send it to my publisher).

 

Next on the list (whew! getting tired already and there is still much more to cover) which is I’ve had my stories accepted with provision to bookstogonow.com which is a fabulous small press that helped my friend and fellow writer Tim Reed reach bestselling proportions.  As they no longer publish individual short stories, I’ve sent them a collection of teen dark fiction – two have been previously published so they might want fresh new ones and I don’t want to chuck my ‘wrong genre’ unpublished stories in with the goodies I sent them earlier.  So we’ll see.  The real up note on this is that I think they’ll be interested in Downtrodden, my latest teen (well 15+ due to some graphic scenes – I’ve posted snippits of this book on previous blogs) fantasy novel.

 

Did I say I missed the chickens?  I could use their calming company.  Aside from all the writing tasks I’ve given myself, I also am developing a line of wedding and engagement rings for Seadrake Creations.  I’ll start them from cast silver and have prices up for gold and platinum if people would prefer one metal over the other.  Then, and here is the exciting bit… customers can choose their stone so they know exactly what they’re getting (unless they want me to pick one out – oooh like a dark, dark ocean blue brilliant cut sapphire… drool).

 

I’ve found that working with my hands keeps my head from spinning new stories and is the most relaxing thing around.  That, and going to craft fairs is a wonderful day out which involves being computer free.  Bliss.

 

Well, I think that right about wraps things up.  I’ve got my suite101 articles going again, but I may jump ship to helium as suite is yet again changing things and is very vague about whether writers will be getting any money at all for their work.  Ah well, at least I got a few goodinterviews in ;)

 

ttfn!

 

 



Digging up the year...

I’ve decided that I should no longer be that manic girl… the one chasing her own tail and running herself into the ground with a million and one different projects on top of the normal everyday duties that life brings.  This year is going to be all about growing.  Not personal growth (although I’m sure a bit of that will happen) but vegetable and herbs. 

I was going to give up the allotment – with my little girl too young to not in danger on the plot (there are a lot of poisonous weeds and stinging nettles), and with moving house, I knew I wouldn’t have any time for it anymore.  I was gutted.  The allotment was, ironically, really the only thing that kept me truly rooted in the UK, even in the winter.  But having thought things through (mostly not wanting to dig up our apple trees and relocate our berry plants) it’s staying. 

Last three seasons were horrible to veg – if anyone grows their own vegetables, they’ll know exactly what I mean.  From drought to floods; frost to heat wave and back again, those little plants have a hard time surviving, let alone producing fruit or tubers (my first earlies crop of potatoes were mini and most of my lates had rotted themselves in the ground after having lain in permanent puddles despite the well draining soil).  But the berries… oh, the berries loved it!  They could handle the dry weather and still bring fruits, the heavy rain just made the produce more.  Even the birds couldn’t get their fill of those amazing blueberries and raspberries.  The strawberries did okay… I’ll work on those too.  But for the next season, the allotment is going to be about raspberry canes and blueberry bushes.  I can never get enough of them anyway and being low maintenance and easy to grow, they’ll keep the allotment producing until my little girl is big enough to go to school. Then maybe this horrible extreme weather would have settled a bit and I can get back on to growing the basics.

The new house has got some amazing potential too for a herb garden in one area, a potted veg patch in the other, and space for a cob nut tree and couple of apples.  There will be… a lot of digging going on in the next few months.

That said, I still have been very busy with writing and jewellery.  I’ve been lucky enough to be asked back as a judge for the Paws n’ Claws competition for children’s fiction stories, I still have to edit and complete my fantasy book, Downtrodden (might even have a chance to upload it before the new year), and of course, writing for knowonder.com.  And sending out to agents… but that’s a given rather like breathing.  And I’ll keep it all low key.  Even now that I’m part of a new publishing group, Springbok Publications, I’m staying low key for a while and asked to only be assistant editor due to time constraints.

As for Seadrake Creations, I’ve got my etsy shop all pretty and will be working on new lines casually and adding them when I’ve got a moment to do so.  This year for Seadrake will be less focus on selling and publicity and more time spent on learning new techniques and skills.  Rather like an extended internship.

So, whew!  Bring on those long days so I can get back to digging over the allotment…

Balancing with Two Inks...

Does anybody remember Robert Pattison pre Twilight?  Aside from being Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films, he was a talented musician.  If you saw Twilight, you would have heard his song, and his talents as he played (yes, it was him, not dubbed over) the piano.  So what happened to his music career?  It could have developed alongside acting right?  Or no?

My point is that I must be barking mad trying to balance two difficult careers.  My writing is doing very well at the moment and despite my having developed my jewellery making skills and photography (pics for the jewellery) it’s just not going anywhere.  I love it.  I really, really love it.  It also keeps me sane when I’m battling it out with editing.  But it’s not making anything.  Do I keep at it or focus just on writing?  I’ve just registered my maker’s mark with the Assay office – expensive, but a legal requirement for the UK if I’m making larger items of precious metal.  I don’t want it to just be a hobby.  I don’t do hobby-level crafting; it’s usually all or nothing.

So how does Pattison deal with it?  Does he moonlight as a musician under an assumed name, hoarding off the adoring vampiric fans?  Or will he wait until the acting career has fizzled into a comfortable level and then do a bit of band work on the side (thinking of Adrian Edmondson and The Bad Shepherds - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aulos-NGsk)

Getting paid for my writing today and not for any of the rings I’ve made this month is probably the sign that I’ve been putting off.  The problem is that I can’t STOP.  So… if you’ve read this, thought, hmm… I need to wear some pirate rings to put me in the piratey mood while I read Blood Tide… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Tide-Promise-Freedom-ebook/dp/B0099POPGW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359111765&sr=8-1 please visit my etsy shop and knock yourself out with a 10% discount (type in NEWCUST10 in the discount code box) http://www.etsy.com/shop/SeadrakeCreations?ref=si_shop

Because balancing the two is what I do best :-)

January inklets

So much to do and so little time.  I’ve been working on more rings and other jewellery for Seadrake Creations.  My photography has certainly improved, but I’m still struggling to be seen and found on etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/SeadrakeCreations?ref=si_shop) as there are so many millions of people selling there.  I do very well at the craft fairs, so this year, I’ll be looking for more fairs to sell at.

I loved doing the bat ring for Berni.  She’s going to wear it to the next Dracula Society meeting – a perfect setting for such a goth ring.  Other jewellery projects have been doing more rings, working with traditional sterling bezels (look at the etsy moonstone ring which blends fine silver with sterling https://www.etsy.com/listing/120699333/beautiful-6mm-moonstone-in-fine-silver).  My wax ring is looking beautiful with celtic spiral and trinity knots, but it’s too expensive to have cast just now. I’ll have to wait until I’ve sold more work.

As for writing… I suppose I needed a break.  I’ve not written anything new for knowonder save for the forward to the next anthology coming out soon.  The ideas seem to be bottlenecked in my head but come out as dark teen fiction – probably because I’m still editing my YA 16+ fantasy book, Downtrodden.  Blood Tide was swept up in the free offers after Christmas – over 400 readers downloaded the book internationally in three days, but only one person left a review.  Thankfully, it was a five star review, and that did make my day.  After years of toil, research and rewrites, it has come to pretty much nothing. Yet I’m happy I wrote it.  It is, in my opinion, my best work – something that I may never top, which is a scary thought.

The days are passed wondering what else I can do to promote my work.  There is always more to be done, but there is danger in just throwing out cash for google-ads only to find your time and efforts would have been better off spent on something else.  So what on earth to do next?  I really want to get this fantasy edited, dusted and kindled.  A wonderfully supportive fellow author has shown me the path to Smashwords – an online resource that allows authors and publishers to upload to most retail outlets for little to no cost.  So I suppose I’ll continue to slog forward, blinded by the icy headwinds, recklessly delusional in the hope that someday, someone will pick up my work and hand it to someone who might send me a good contract.

Four Leaves

*I wrote this children's rhyming tale last year but it never found a home until now...

Four Leaves

 

Four leaves on my clover,

four leaves, I can see!

I picked it when Dad used the mower,

and now I’ve got wishes for me.

 

It was a tricky thing I’ll say

to get to it in time,

because the mower was so fast

and its blades are sharp and fine.

 

I did a tumble, roll and jump,

just like they taught at school,

(that’s acrobat school don’t you know

don’t think that I’m a fool).

 

As I said, I jumped and rolled,

or something of that sort.

And when I plucked up that clover,

I knew I was a clever sport.

 

It happened so very fast,

when I saw it had four leaves.

I’d been sitting on the rooftop,

hidden among the eaves.

 

Impossible? No, not at all,

not when you know the moves.

From roof to tree to grass I rolled

and without even wearing my shoes.

 

Now, now, don’t think me odd,

I do it all the time…

I liberate small things you see,

that I think are so divine.

 

Last week it was a chocolate cake

that my sister had.

She would have eaten it, truly so!

But instead I made her mad.

 

I swooped down on a rope,

(I’d been practicing high wire).

I popped that cake into my mouth

and Sister swore blue fire.

 

And two weeks before,

I rescued a lost cat.

She was about to be eaten, (I swear!)

by a large lady in a blue hat.

 

I got in trouble of course,

but it’s worth it in the end.

With cat and cake and clovers all

any rule I’ll bend.

 

Anyway, I digress, what was I to say?

Ah yes, my lovely, leafy clover.

Four leaves all for me to wish,

but for what I’ll think it over.

 

Should I wish for a new bike,

with shiny red new paint?

Or maybe a huge trampoline,

with that I’d have no complaint.

 

Then, I suppose, I could wish something nice,

for all my family to share.

Nah, I think I keep all four wishes,

a nine-year-old shouldn’t care.

 

“Alan, get back inside,”

a voice shouted from behind.

And all my wishes vanished,

blanked by the daily grind.

 

It was just my imagination after all,

but a boy’s got to wish sometime.

It’s back to homework now for me,

No trampoline or bike so fine.

 

Until, at least… maybe Christmas time.