Morning Pages Wake Up Call: 6.30am - but stayed in bed to do them (not easy with two dogs, a cat and my lovely Simon for company!
Word Count: 3600 (Total - 41,636)
Treats: A glass of Prosecco after a Writers Abroad Chat on Skype
Other Activity: Reading (for pleasure) - Girl on The Train
Word of the Day: PENURIOUS adjective 1. extremely stingy; parsimonious; miserly.
2. extremely poor; destitute; indigent.
It's Sunday, and that means there is a roast in the oven filling our tiny little house with mouth watering smells, I have a glass of prosecco in hand and... I'm still in my PJ's. Even though my life is so different in so many ways from when I lived in the UK, some habits die hard. Weekends are still special and Sunday particularly so. It's the time we catch up with family and friends via Skype and we just chill out. I have done some writerly things, I've managed a small NaNo contribution, with the help of my feline and canine friends, but essentially a Sunday is about time out.
In terms of my NaNo project, I've decided that the next eight stories are going to be just enough words to reach my target by the deadline. I've committed to publishing a project I've been dithering with for months, probably longer. The Good{Expat}Life will go live on December the 1st - yes eight days to go - I need to give myself a bit of space. I should have thought about this before of course but there you go. Life takes a course of its own. A writer has to be flexible...
Ciao for Now
Producing a book is not just about writing a story, as many of you know. That is only a small part of the many processes that take place, albeit a very important one. When you choose to self publish your book, you can add many more 'things to do' to what seems a never ending list. Designing a book cover is one of them. Even if you employ someone with the skills to do this you will still have to think about what you want the cover to convey to a potential reader.
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For me, covers are very important. I will choose a book purely by what I see on the front, without reading the blurb. (I used to read the last line *Shock!Horror!* until my husband convinced me it wasn't a good thing to do).
For The Duke's Shadow, I did pay someone to produce the end result, because I felt overwhelmed with getting my debut novel out. I spend a long time looking for images and settings which I thought would a) say something about the overall theme of the novel, and b) entice the reader to look inside. And as you can see, it was well worth the money.
I'm planning to release 'The Good[Expat}Life on Wattpad as a serial, as I want to gather some feedback before I publish it in October. I still need a cover and this time I've created a simple cover myself in Publisher using a pencil caricature of Penny and George (the two main characters) played about with colours and fonts and this is the result.
It sounds easy, but actually it has taken me probably two maybe three days in total to get to this stage. But I've enjoyed using a different creative process and, for me anyway, it does what it says on the tin. The jury is out and I still believe that you have to have a good story, however slick the cover may be. What do you think?
Until Later,
1. What is your real, birth name?
George Horatio Nelson – I know, my mother thought it would stand me in good
stead… how wrong can someone be? Don’t tell Penny that I've revealed my middle
name, will you?
2. Do you have a nickname? Well, not really. Penny calls me lots of
things, especially when she’s angry. Mostly she refers to me as l’uomochifa the man who does, or who
will do as Penny reminds me. She’s very organised.
3. What do you look like? One
woman where I worked thought I looked like George Clooney. No, honest she did! Penny
said that the resemblance stopped with the name George… but I know she’s
teasing me.
4. How do you dress most of the time? Well, it depends what I’m doing. If I’m strimming (which I do a lot) it’s
usually a pair of thin cotton trousers with an elastic waist (cheap buy from
the supermarket), an old white t shirt usually with remnants of the last strim,
an old cut sock on my arm (the strimmer motor burns it) and a hat (or if I’ve
forgotten it, a clean pair of underpants – much to Penny’s disgust.)
5. How do you "dress up?" Erm, I wear a shirt usually on
the top half. Penny likes me in pastels, pink and lilac.
6. How do you "dress down?" Erm, shorts usually (isn’t
that what all men wear “down” or trousers?) too early in the year say our
Italian neighbours, they are still in their puffa jackets until mid-July.
7. What do you wear when you go to sleep? Nothin’ usually, the odd
cat around my neck, who doesn’t stay there long. I like ‘skin to skin’ but
Penny insists on wearing some kind of nightwear. Just in case. Of intruders or
such like. So she says…
8. Do you wear any jewellery? My wedding ring. I did try an ear stud many years ago, but Penny was not
impressed. I thought it was very ‘George Michael’.
9. In your opinion, what is your best feature? Definitely not my hair. Definitely
Penny.
10. What's your real birth date? I’m 59 years young. I’m sure you
can work it out. We have a big double 0 birthday next year. Penny wants to
ignore it, but it’s time for a celebration don’t you think? Perhaps I can
persuade with a list. She loves lists.
11. Where do you live? In a very small house with very large
grounds. Large enough to hide from Penny and her lists. (I do love her tho’ and
she does get things done… with my help of course).
12. Do you own a car? Yup. But don’t want to talk about the front
wing. Penny!
13. What is your most prized mundane possession? My strimmer of
course. Used to use a hand scythe and I still have it. Its handle was made by
Pietro, the old guy who lived here. He made all his tools and I have them all.
14. What one word best describes you? Obedient?
Until Later,
The Good {expat}Life is one of the projects I'm working on at the moment. It's a humorous contemporary story about Penny and George who have to make a choice between their life in England and their retirement plan in Italy when their business falls flat on its face. They can't afford to keep both and they bravely decide on new beginnings, helped by best friends Daphne and Roger.
To say that the story is loosely based on the truth is a bit of an understatement, Penny and George live out some of the experiences and situations we may have endured since moving to Italy almost seven years ago. And I can say that I do identify with Penny, though I don't think I'm quite as tough on Simon. He, of course may beg to differ. All the characters are based on a mish-mash of people, a trait here, a habit there and a splash of physical features and abracadabra! So to all the friends (and others) that I have met here, I can put hand on heart and say I defy them to identify with one of the characters. What they may see is a hint of others they know, but one rule of writing is never to use a real person. So apologies, but if you want to audition for a role in the TV sitcom, happy for you to apply.
Most people, those who don't live abroad, have a very rose tinted vision of people like us who have moved away from our natural home. Mainly they think that we have a swimming pool - ha! First we couldn't afford the maintenance, never mind the installation. And our land slopes downwards, a little tricky unless we were going to install a water ride. And, apparently, we sit on our terraces, sipping Prosecco until the sun goes down after a day at the beach basking in the sun. Well, the odd day may be spent like that, but more often than not we're growing and picking vegetables (cheaper), strimming (initially with two old hand scythes that were left here along with a number of other hand-made tools) the two acres of field-like land that is loosely called our 'garden' and feeding an array of abandoned animali that we've adopted.
But like Penny and George, we wouldn't swap it for the world.
More about P & G later...
