The Allotmenting Begins! (by sarah)

So we kind of didn't get to the allotment in Nov, Dec or Jan except to pick up brussels for Christmas. At the weekend we popped down there to a) pay the annual fee and b) to check out exactly what needs doing.

I picked the last of the cabbages and pulled a leek and eyed up a few of the other things that are supposed to still be there and was very please. Yes it is not neatly rotavated like a lot of the other plots but when I think of what it looked like when we took it on!

We also put out boundary string back up and started forming plans 🙂

I am hoping that it will be good weather this coming weekend so that we can spend one or two hours there again as at the very least I want to move my worm juice stock there (the liquid I drain out of the wormeries is basically plant food and good to mix in with the water for some crops).

The drawings we did on the chair have all come off which is no bad thing as it simply means the girls get to do new fresh designs this year 🙂

Yes that's the little dragon from the weekend Symmon - he is coming on outings and being photographed for some Wiggly Pet Blog stories 🙂 Here's a closer shot.

Graphic Novel/Comic Here We Come! (by sarah)

As anyone who follows me on social networks will have seen, I have been promoting a kick starter for a Comic Book Convention in Cheltenham. Today is their last day - they have reached their funding goal and are ready to roll but there is still time to book a ticket today and get all the fun extras 🙂

For the kick starter click here.

I am quiet excited about this - the convention will happen next year and there will be a comic book/graphic novel show casing on my stall 🙂 There will be The Little Books and prints of my art work and stuff like that, but the thing I am really excited about is the graphic novel/comic book I have been working on for the last few years.

The whole series started as The Punk In Pink and was a seat of your pants writing madness I did for NaNoWriMo. I started the graphic novel in the April after my first NaNo as part of a script writing challenge run by the same people - I decided to go for a graphic novel script but as always found that doing a straight story board worked much better for me than scripts. The novels started off in the middle of the story where as the comic starts at the beginning of Punk's story or as she is known then Punku.

Since then the stories have grown and there are three stories series plus the graphic novel work and short stories and flash fictions set in the same universe which I have been posting on Magenta Monster.

Anyway - basically I am going to be working on getting the art work sorted for the first 'comic book' Revolations which is the first part of Babbel (which is the story arch and will make up the nice hard back graphic novel type thingy).

I will be doing my own Sponsume (like a kickstarter - I did one for my sci-art thing a couple of years ago), to raise money for the initial printing run. I know a few of you are desperate for me to do more wiggly pet stories but I'm not sure it is fair to do two such projects at once but I am open to suggestions!

Cheltenham Comic Book Convention – for 2015 (by sarah)

I am very excited about the potential of Cheltenham having a comic book convention in 2015, so really really hope this kick starter works out!

They need 5500 by the beginning week of March and are over the 1500 mark. You can by your tickets to attend on the kickstarter or like me buy a stall. Kickstarter only takes your money if the target amount is made so if they don't the extra money I'm not going to have a stall to sell my things at.

Of course I would have loved a pair of the shoes they are offering as a reward but alas and alack, I am not rich!

There are some funky peeps from the comic book world down as guests (as you would expect!) and there will be professional stalls etc...

Apart from the fact that this is a social or community venture, I am excited about this because it gives me a deadline. I have stuff that can go on the stall anyway - namely The Little Books but I would like to run a save the Wiggly Pets campaign and/or get the first part of the Punk comic / graphic novel out there.

So yeah that's the plans 🙂 London peeps etc... you would be welcome to stay at our house if you came up for this - as part of the kick starter you can buy tickets - did I mention that already? 😉

Also cosplay stuff!

Nursery Cuteness :) (by sarah)

Mary's nursery sent her home with a toy puppy and a book to write up the adventures!

I of course had great fun with this 🙂 I have put a version of the story up on the Wiggly Pet blog - there are lots of cute pictures of Mary though I wish we'd had slightly longer/remembered to take him with us at the weekend! Then I could have done multiple stories 🙂

Make Good Art or Get Creative (by sarah)

This speech by the writer Neil Gaimon I found extremely powerful especially for someone like me who has to do creative things to survive.

But also the fact that I have not done things the normal way and that I keep hitting barriers such as I don't have an art degree so therefore do not count as an artist for some people. I am in a space inbetween. When I hear or read that others have not done it the normal way either it gives me hope.

Also I feel encouraged that I am not the only person who finds that trying to do projects for money fail and end up leaving you worse off than you started but the ones you do because it's a fun idea race ahead and are successful.

He mentions the changing landscape of publishing too which for me is an emotive subject - I really think I am going to continue on my own path with my blogs and getting my own CDs printed and what have you. I have tried traditional publishing twice now and both time the company has gone bust or something similar - one still having the rights to the work I'd done so I didn't even end up with it and worse they have not done anything with it :/

My first attempt at crowd funding has been a huge success 🙂 So I am very happy with that.

He mentions throwing bottles into the sea and then they all start coming back and you have to learn to say no. And you know - this is actually happening - though I would say I have been shouting into the void and now the echos are not only coming back but are bouncing and reflecting and propagating and I am having to turn things down! (But please still ask as I may not be doing stuff that weekend etc... or like with the Stroud Water Festival - what I was supposed to be doing may have been canceled).

I do feel a bit weird though it is just like suddenly I am this person that people know of - I'm getting pounced by people who I do not know who start chatting to me about my art (ok well this has always happened quiet alot but frequency has increased!).

It is bizar but I do feel like a fake - really? Me? That thing I made in the middle of the night? That story I wrote whilst breast feeding the baby at 5 am? The knitting I did at a festival whilst listening to my favourite local bands? That really? You like it?

It is not all positive feedback mind - one of my best friends hates my songs, I was accused at the Poetry Festival of being arrogant as my business cards say Artistic Scientist and Scientific Artist. Alaric cringes at my Wiggly Pet stories and visual puns. Performance poets see me as a page poet, page poets see me as performance or worse experimental and the artists are scared or the science part and the scientists are like 'you have no PhD!' and I have people ranting at me over spelling mistakes on my blogs...

But....

That is small compared to what is coming back to me at the moment. I keep thinking I'm so lucky how has this come about? But it is such a knife edge world really - I'm getting bookings now but 6 months down the line? And also it still isn't actually making money 🙁 And what it does make tends to be for charity.

But you know people are excited about Ballads of the Scientifica and there have been requests for a Wiggly Pet book and for t-shirts with things like my Normali Tea picture on.

If you watch/listen to Neils speech he says make good art, I would change that to Get Creative.

When I tore the ligaments in my ankle and had to be flown home from a field trip in the desert I GOT CREATIVE - I made Wiggly Pets

When I had to take a year out for medical treatment to my back - I GOT CREATIVE - I began writing and designed a series of childrens' science stories.

When I found myself having nearly died, and crippled from childbirth, boiling with anger and fear - I GOT CREATIVE - I started writing a novel and so was found in a cafe by the now Cheltenham Poetry Festival Director.

When our house was flooded I GOT CREATIVE and designed childrens activities to entrain my toddler.

When I got shingles and had to rest and give up the Master degree for the second time I found the Paleo Art community and began drawing trilobites and things.

When I was devastated about miscarriage I constructed The Punk In Pink personality.

When I was petrified of going to the hospital to have little Mary I wrote poems about that fear and about having a separated pelvis.

When we were being chucked out of our home I made a poem about how the home is not the building but the people with in.

And so on. There is an even larger list of good times and being creative but that would make this post silly long! 🙂

Basically as I have struggled to build my own serendipity funnel and have just reached my perceived tipping point and this talk resonated so strongly that it made me cry (yes I know that will be the hormones).

If you haven't already listen to it 🙂 But most of all Get Creative!