So we did it 🙂 We got the kickstarter completely funded and now we have a book in production! Above is the front cover and the beauty of this book is just mind blowing but then I would say that I am publishing it!
Or rather The WigglyPet's Press is publishing it 🙂
For those of you who missed the kickstarter - this is the Gloucester Poetry Societies first book to mark their first year anniversary. It is being published to coincide with the first Gloucester Poetry Festival. You will be able to purchase it from the The WigglyPet's Press site as well as via amazon and other platforms, not to mention the book will be doing the rounds at local craft and art fairs in the run up to Christmas.
I dreamed that the world had managed a kind of immortality and two people lived the life span of the universe but though this seemed fantastic it wasn't as it meant the whole universe could not move on to it's next cycle - the problem? Cyclic-evolutionary rebirth - those two people were stuck in their mid forms, in the medium of being, they had not lived out their allotted lives and now everyone was stuck. The god made a parasitic/baby universe from the dying one so that they could become and be once more. But they could not exist on their own so others of the universe had to volunteer to become corporeal ghosts to care for the infants and raise them threw their lives. Violent deaths stunted the process of moving up the spiral of lives that had to be lived so each life had to be lived well and just repeatedly killing them as soon as they were incarnate was out of the question.
Things were also hampered by the flesh ghosts who had a tendency to forget what their purpose was and think they were indeed alive. Their minds took the form that they had been in the most and as human form is the medium average for live, the form that most lives were lived in that was the form they mostly inhabited. There were strange effects for those who thought themselves alive - like being able to fly/float if you meditated and with concentration teleportation of a kind was achievable including breathing in space, sometimes the ghosts tried to kill each other which if they had been within the incarnation cycle would have sent them back a rung or two, the god wasn't sure what to do about that behaviour yet and it really was a minority action, hardly noticeable in the positive karmic stew of the new little life bubble.
And so with snow angles and story writing and climbing mountains and star gazing, the universe creeped and crawled closer to it's next cycle. The other gods admonished the god and said they would have just jettisoned the universe rather than mucking around trying to save it but the god could not waste all those souls that were unique and fully formed in this universe - one day they would be strong enough to break out of the universe and become, no there would be no destruction of souls. And besides this was interesting - they had done something not seen in any of the other universes and the god thought that there were lessons to be learned here. The other gods sneered, the god just shrugged and continued to be an interventionalist in the universe they had designed to run on a set of rules instead.
There is an article on the BBC news website asking - Should Parents Ban Horrid Henry?, my response to this is... NO.
Horrid Henry is not actually horrid - pretty much as soon as you ask should you ban a book the answer is NO (even bad books that really shouldn't exist should not be banned they should be watered down with lots of other books and besides if you ban them you have just made it more likely that impressionable people will read them as they are now EXCITING, it's what I call the prohibition effect).
The stories have progressions where the kids fight and resolve differences and get around issues such as dyslexia and ADHD etc... and the insecurities that brings for kids etc... they are a positive thing. They also covered headlice and all the other little things that dominate a child's world, yes they contain toilet humour but lets face it 6-12 year olds tend to love that sort of stuff (regardless of gender), just pomp loudly in a room full of kids and you'll see what I mean!
Jean's read all the books and for Mary the Too Cool for School episode/film thingy was immensely important as a confidence builder. In the article the actors main issue was that his kid started kicking up after watching it - my take on that... kids go through phases. Jean started kicking after watching Ben 10 the animation - this was a time to teach that you can't just blanket copy what you see.
Also the books have the easy read high content thing going for them which is exactly what reluctant readers and those with things like dyslexia need. They need a story they can get their teeth into and in this case they will often identify heavily with the protagonist i.e. Henry but it is not so bulksome and wordy that they will feel they are grinding their way through them.
Yay so Horrid Henry is not actually horrid!
The science world and the art world are full of forms - in order for me to do an hrs work I have to fill in forms that take me hours and get me stressed - I'm dyslexic (+head injury) it takes me a long time and I often get things wrong, this sometimes costs me chances to work, work I am perfectly capable of doing - admin of one sort or another is currently taking all my time and therefore killing the creativity which it is supposed to be supporting/enabling :/
Admin also has a habit of multiplying - so the more admin I get done - the more appears before me in a kind of sisyphean bog of hate - because yes I hate ADMIN. I hate it so much. I hate the way it gets under your skin and ends up in your dreamscapes or the way it scoops our your mind as you try and balance dates and times and places and equipment costs. I hate how it scritches away at your brain when you are just trying to have a bath or something.
I hate the fact that people want phone calls which are especially hard for me unless I know the person well because you know I have tinnitus continually and that makes hearing hard and I have always done better if I can lip read the person talking anyway - this is a remnant from being almost completely deaf as a small child with glue ear. This means the amount of brain energy/effort I have to put into understanding some one on the phone is astronomical and I it tends to scrub me out. I am happy to meet in person or email but phone calls... GRRRRRR.
I hate that people can be really damn snotty about little typos and spelling mistakes but demand responses instantly leaving no time for me to even consider getting the replies proofed by Al and really that isn't needed anyway - it is obvious what the reply means unlike the jumbles of long winded text that has three small points of information that I need in them. BULLET POINTS or NUMBERED LISTS people!!!! Come on!
So recap things I hate - form filling, phone calls, waffle instead of information and people thinking they can alter events at the last minute and that will just be ok and have no reprucussions at all - like I am only there to serve them - this is mostly a problem in the charity sector where I find people seem to struggle respecting that my time is a resource.
Rant over - now back to admin... I suppose :/
Fri 1st Sept 11 am - 3 pm Gloucester: Community Craft Day at Gloucester Cathedral - upcycled accessories a Salaric Craft workshop.
Fri 1st-2nd Sept Cheltenham: Jean's performance as Joe in the Young Gloucester Opera and Dramatics Society's production of Fame at the Parabola Arts Centre.
Sun 3rd Sept Oxford: ICFP-International Conference on Functional Programming where Alaric will be speaking about the programming language Scheme part of Kitten Technologies.
Tues 5th 6:30 Stroud: Villanelles Poetry Evening with the Gloucester Poetry Society. Performance as part of The Wiggly Pets Press.
EDIT2: Talk is Wednesday lunchtime at the Museum of Gloucester.
EDIT: there is some confusion currently as to weather this talk is on Tues or Weds as the History Fest have it down as Tues and the Museum for Weds - Currently trying to sort it out 🙂
1pm Gloucester: The Start of Art general interest talk on cave and rock art at the [Museum of Gloucester](http://venues.gloucester.gov.uk/Freetime/Museums/events/Talks.aspx] part of the [Cuddly Science's)(http://www.salaric.co.uk/cuddly-science/) Histories.
Sat 9th 3-5pm Gloucester: Food For Thoughts at the Cafe Rene, poetry performance as part of The Wiggly Pets Press.
At three things to be confirmed later in the month 🙂
Books, Events and Outings, Poems, Sarah | sarah | 
Mon 25th Sep 2017 10:35 am | 
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