The Art House Bristol (by sarah)

Thursday I headed off to Bristol with the lovely Nick Short, the aim - to read poetry at the Art House. We had a little bit of trouble finding it, the Art House is a lovely little cafe with a cellar/entertainment area. There are arty pictures on the walls and yummy foods to be had.

There were some wonderful musicians playing, I especially liked the Vampire guy though I failed to get a photo of him 🙂

We bumped into an old friend from Cheltenham who had also come up and ended up in a conversation with a woman at the end who wondered why we'd come all the way to Bristol to perform. It is a weekly event at the Arts House and Bristol simply is bigger and has more to offer was the answer. Cheltenham has a great poetry scene but it is not weekly or even every night like it is in Bristol. We spoke of the poetry society and the Festival and then moved on to art in general.

I read an arch of poetry starting with a Fist Full of Nitro and ending with Star Stuff. From the individual and depressing to the optimistic future of all was the way I saw it.

It was a lovely night.

Day 9 – VAT issues (by sarah)

The painting is called Lonely Christmas and is part of the painted advent I am doing, I like the concept and the colours but... I don't think it quiet works - nor unfortunately do my plans for The Little Book of Festive Poetry amongst other things. Basically there are new VAT laws coming in and they seem stupid complicated and so for now like many many authors I am having to currently put a hold on selling ebooks 🙁

But you can still listen too it here.

Writing 2014 (by sarah)

I really missed doing NaNoWriMo and the other writing challenges in 2013 due to my course - I still did well and wrote the equivalent of a small paper back but I want to really plough through the writing this year. With the five years of Monster Blogs there to help it shouldn't be too difficult but will not really get going until after my course finishes.

But there is a lot of work already up for people to read - several people have been asking me for the links recently so I thought I'd just pop them here.

Magenta Monster is flash fiction, short stories and serials and there are a lot of stories on there now and The Cavern is steadily going out - as a story it now exceeds the novelette range and is almost too long to ben a novella now! And I am still going strong with it.

A lot of the world building for my Punk story line is there in short stories under the category The Punks World. There are also plenty of story starters and writing inspiration I have shared for other writers to use.

My Poetry and Music goes out on Turquoise Monster, I tend to do a lot of poetry writing challenges etc... and if you want to keep up with what I am doing then there might be a good place to check 🙂

I'm aiming to release the Turquoise Monsters first poetry collection this year as well as Ballads of the Scientifica in double album mode. Along with the Muse Monster Poetry card game.

WoPoWriMo of course is still going strong - it had it's 5 yr anniversary last year so it is back to normal again this year. It's a writing challenge and community I help run so the blog needs sorting for that and I need to actually do the writing challenge myself. The site is full of exercises and ideas plus guest posts from various poets.

Orange Monster is my kidlit and illustrations blog etc... and this year it will mainly be about finishing stories off and illustration. I released The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry this year in physical form and hope to move forward with the Little Books in general and maybe collect together some of the other work I have been doing.

Jeany is also writing her book reviews on Orange Monster.

Red Monster is just a summary of what I've been upto on the other blogs and Blue Monster has writing exercises on for other writers. Yellow is my dad and Green is reviews of books and films.

Lime Monster is my gaming blog (mostly Minecraft at the moment), where I say what I think of games, progress I've made in some of the on going games and things I do inspired by the games like crafts with the kids etc... and also some fanfic too.

I have note books full of stuff for the gardening, DIY, Fashion blogs etc... but not really sure when I will have time to update them 🙁 Mainly I want to focus on projects that I can finish easily and get up and running.

I also want to make sure that Alaric gets a chance to do his writing this year.

And of course I am hoping to be doing some more science writing!

I think writing wise there maybe actually more editing than writing involved as I try and bring my novels into the world. I shall be prodding Al repeatedly about retrieving Dragon Hunter for me of the old laptop and I shall once again be attempting to type up The Drs Wife. I really really want to push ahead with the Punk series but realistically know it will always end up as my NaNoWriMo and GothNoWriMo projects!

The plan currently stands that we would like to have a week away together just to write for a 10 yr wedding anniversary but not sure if it will get to happen.

Knitting 2014 (by sarah)

So last year I knitted 2 bears, most of a creeper cuddly, heart coasters, tinsel, holly and the such like, I also made a pattern for my bucky ball but I haven't published it anywhere I as want to test it first - if anyone is interested let me know please 🙂

I tend to put the knitting stuff up at Ravelry.com I am 5affy on there if anyone wants to friend me 🙂 I do tend to be a bit sporadic with it though. I want to catch up and put all my knitting challenges on Salaric Craft but am so far behind now that is a major undertaking so we shall see.

Actual knitting wise I want to finish stuff off - there is the berry bear blanket which is for Mary and was supposed to be for her birthday - if I push the boat out maybe I might finish it in time!

I'm still knitting Jeany's Christmas present - a creeper scarf so I want to finish that first along with her creeper stuff toy which pretty much needs sewing and stuffing!

There is a science knit concept I am working on as part of my Science Communication course right now which is having to take priority. But if I can pull it off as an actual working thing is going to be awesome!

I'll be doing some quick knits like roses etc... to pop on etsy. The trouble is I get Wednesday whilst Mary eats her lunch after mini mice climbing to knit and maybe Thursday during film night plus odd bits here and there but it is all moving forward nicely and I learnt two new technics over Christmas.

Alaric is still clicking away at my tea cosy 🙂 And of course he is in charge of making the pockets for the berry bear blanket - but I think he has the sewing bug as I keep finding the sewing machine out and things fixed!

Jeany still loves finger knitting - so much so that I have given up on the concept of buying tinsel every again! She has just started with a knitting nancy peg doll so we shall see how that goes - she was rather taken with a rainbow or crazy loom thing she saw at a friends party over Christmas so I think she maybe saving her pennies for that at the moment.

I am also still working on my upcyle knitting loom to make upcyled shopping bags - we shall see 🙂

Five Years of Monster Blogs (by sarah)

This year the monster blogs are 5 yrs old on average 🙂 So I thought I'd do a little celebration. Mainly I will be trying to finish various projects off.

This month I am starting with the poetry Muse Monster game which I hope to have on sale properly by the end of the month.

I'll also happily write flash fictions for people if you leave a character or some words or even a story starter in the comment field below 🙂