Litquake video - Oral Sex!

Well it's been ages since I have been able to put up a blog. Sorry. Life is just life sometimes. I have been busy, busy, busy enjoying myself. I have also been writing for two anthologies that are being published in December.

Last week, I was honoured to be invited to read at Litquake (an amazing San Francisco literary festival) as part of fantastic social network A Band of Women's anthology series, Nothing But the Truth ..." about Transitions. For some unaccountable reason, I decided to write about sex, not knowing at the time I would then have to read an extract from it in front of 150 + complete strangers in a posh art gallery in the heart of San Francisco! That'll teach me. My wonderful husband videoed me and, due to popular demand, I am publishing it below.

After my reading, which was wedged in between heart-rending readings from a variety of very accomplished writers about women refugees in Afghanistan, children with autism, gender transition and infertility, and made me feel like I was a bit of light, fluffy relief in the interval, I was hugely relieved when some people came up to me afterwards and asked if I had a book for sale because they had enjoyed my reading so much. I am now feeling very motivated to finish my memoir.

B is for Bug (by me!)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Today is my turn! I decided to write a limerick and I also recorded an audio too. Enjoy :)



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

My recording of Bug Poem (download)

A British divorcee called Claire

Sent an email one night for a dare

To her first love at school

Who’d been horny and cool

And no man since then could compare.

~~~

When they first met he had a nickname

She wondered if it would be the same

He quickly replied

Bursting with pride

He was still known as Bug, he proclaimed.

~~~

The years apart had been more than thirty

But they found that they both were still flirty

She’d forgotten that Bug

Was not like a slug

Coz when it came to romance he was dirty.

~~~

Two years later in a town by the sea

He declared his love and proposed on one knee

She jumped up and down

With the ring he had found

And with no thought accepted with glee.

~~~

 From her family it was very hard to part

But she needed to follow her heart

To live in the sun

Sounded plenty of fun

Bug had always been Right From The Start.

~~~

Happiness is a choice

 

I was talking on the phone to my close friend of over 40 years (yikes, that dates me) and was expecting the bright, hopeful person I had spoken briefly to the day before. Instead, she was morose, sad and depressed. She is in the middle of a break-up with her boyfriend of a few years and was having a bad moment. As I listened quietly to her for a few moments (a new skill for me) I thought about a story someone told me a while ago.

Tony Robbins, the well-known author and motivational speaker, was helping a woman who was in a deep and seemingly bottomless pit of depression with the grief of losing her husband. She had tried everything, she said, and nothing seemed to work. She had been talking for a few minutes on stage, going on about how terrible her life was without him and how nothing, not even medication, helped with the misery of her life.

Suddenly, quite out of the blue, Tony Robbins took a step back and asked her loudly if she had just farted!

To read the rest of this blog, please go to The Kindness Project, where I am posting today. Thanks.

Kindness is an inside job

I am posting on The Kindness Project today. Here is a taster of my post, but to read the rest please visit TKP blog:

I think pondering what to write about for this post and got to thinking about my Mum back in England. She is always helping and looking after other people and putting herself last. She recently had a prolapsed disc in her neck which was incredibly painful. Luckily it was diagnosed reasonably quickly but she was told in no uncertain terms to REST. Not one of her strong points as she hates sitting down and doing nothing, but she was so worried about getting the pain back that she has taken the stern warning seriously for once. She decided to write a list of all the things she was NOT to do and at the very top of her list was: "I must not get irritable with my husband!" Thankfully, he is responding well and bringing her breakfast in bed, cooking dinner and generally looking after her, even though he has limited cooking skills. Her day-to-day kindness and caring of others was also rewarded when a recently widowed neighbour, who Mum had been checking on regularly, rang and offered to cook lunch without knowing Mum was incapacitated and desperate, as there is only so much fried eggs and yorkshire pudding anyone can stomach!

Ok - that's all you're getting here. You'll have to visit TKP blog to see what else I have to say. I would love comments in either place if you have time. Thanks.

Politeness is a British Culture

My sister said this to me the other day when we were chatting. It really struck a chord with me. I started thinking about how politeness is so much a part of everyday life in England and how different it is in America. Not that I’m saying Americans aren’t polite. They are, just in a different way.

The word politeness derives from the Latin word “politus”, which means polished. My sister put forward a theory that we may have got our politeness from the mixing of the classes, when the Upstairs and Downstairs had to start polishing up their communication skills in order to socialize together and no-one knew how the hell to do it.

The English, in particular, admire politeness, reserve and restraint, although some might say we are merely stuck up, unfriendly and cold! Not so much of the Rule Britannia, but more of the Rude Britannia? Apparently, according to some research ...

If you want to read the rest of this blog, please go to The Kindness Project, as I'm blogging there today.

The 11 Questions Tag Game

I have been tagged again. This time it's the lovely Mimi at Magical Mystical Mimi    I have to thank. I love this one because it is all about my lucky number 11. Here are the rules:

• Each per­son must post 11 things about them­selves on their blog.
• Answer the 11 ques­tions the tag­ger set for you in their post.
• Cre­ate 11 new ques­tions for the peo­ple you tag to answer.
• Choose 11 peo­ple to tag and link them on the post.
• Go to their page and tell them you have linked him or her.
• No tag backs and you legit­i­mately have to tag 11 people.

Dragon Blog Hop (Choose Your Own Adventure)

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon ChooseYour Own Adventure blog hop. The adventure starts on Kerri's blog, so go back here if you want to start from the beginning.

You shout for the dragon to come back!

You are suddenly overcome by terrible guilt. Geez, it’s not every day a gay dragon asks for help, is it? Still a bit winded after all the unexpected running, you roll over and gasp “Wait! I’ll help you” as loudly as you can manage.

Meet the Agents Speed Dating

A Date With Destiny?

Just had to write a quick post to tell you my good news. I went to this amazing event in San Francisco on Saturday, organized by the Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter (WNBA-SF). They hosted a 'speed-dating' of Agents and Acquisition Editors, plus a keynote lunch with best-selling author Meg Waite Clayton (who was great).

First Challenge, Fourth Campaign - The Gas Chamber

The Gas Chamber

Photo credit

Shadows crept across the wall of the boarding school dormitory. There was utter silence.  It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Which was unusual with eight boisterous, hormonal teenagers forced into one room, with too much energy to sleep at a ridiculously early hour. We were playing Colditz, a WWII prisoner of war series on the telly. Six of us ‘prisoners’ would hide at various points in the dormitory, while the two remaining ‘guards’ would take a flashlight and try and find us. Now, of course, there were very few places you could hide in a sparse dormitory, so most of us were under the beds trying to stifle our excited giggles.

Awards, Factoids and Music!

I was very kindly given this Award by TB McKenzie at Magickless. Please pop over to his blog and say hello. The rules of this particular Award are to list 10 things about myself and then pass it on to 6 other bloggers. As usual, I am going about it arse-about-face and have decided to start with the bloggers I want to pass this on to.

Blog Critique

Today I am having my blog critiqued by Laura Barnes from Laura B Writer. She does this on a regular basis - so go and check out her blog. I think she said some very nice things about my blog (phew, worried there for a moment) but, of course, also things that need improving. I shall consider and try and implement them. (I have cut out 'negative space' already. And stopped the exclamation points - boy, that feels like I am speaking in a monotone. Ooooh wanted to put one there.)

What do you think? Do you agree with Laura? Anything you would rather see or not see? Any blogging tips or secrets that I am missing?

One of the things she mentioned was not having a regular blog schedule. Now this is a tricky one for me. I can be fairly undisciplined and like to be spontaneous. Plus my everyday life (and now work) make it quite hard to find the time to write a blog on a set timescale. How do you guys do it?

Also, a tagline for myself? Yikes, not sure what that would be (well, anything that could go on a public blog, anyway). Suggestions anyone??

Weirdo at Work!

Introduction to Scribd

Tag! You're It!