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Antony

Exiting News: My First Book Review Published on TheGayUK

By Amazon, Books & Authors, Creativity, Happiness & Joy, Reviews2 Comments

A while ago I saw a tweet from TheGayUK asking for Writers who want to contribute to get in touch or submit some work online for review.

I sent an email in between working on a shortstory and they encouraged me to submit something. I’m not going to lie, I completely forgot about it until I got a reminder email a few days ago.

I submitted two book reviews and shortly afterwards got an acceptance email for one of them. Today I decided to have a browse of TheGayUK as I do from time to time and found this: Book Review: Franky Gets Real with my name in the byline!

I’m so excited to share this news with you and hope to be a regular contributor to TheGayUK. I’m not exactly sure how it works yet; but from what I understand I will be expected to contribute two articles a month, one around an agreed theme. So it can either be two book reviews (one book based on the theme) or one book review and another type of article.

Will keep you informed. Blog soon,

Antony

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Thursday 25 April 2013

TED Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert – Your elusive creative genius

By Amazon, Books & Authors, Creativity, ThinkingNo Comments

This is a TED Talk video from Elizabeth Gilbert:

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This is what it’s about:

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
(From: http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html, Last accessed: Saturday 20th April 2013.)

After Elizabeth Gilbert‘s best selling book Eat, Pray, Love she went in search of a psychological construct to deal with her work and her natural anxiety about writing her next book.

What I like about Elizabeth Gilbert‘s talk is her use of humour and storytelling. She looks at creative people in history and how they managed their anxiety; as well as talking about brushing up against devine creativity. I found myself in agreement with everything that she says and certainly related to brushing up against devine creative. I’ve had inspiration and ideas appear from nowhere in my mind and in these cases it feels Like they are not coming from me, but from somewhere else.

I have shown and shared this video with the many creative people in my life. The feelings were mixed. Some agreed with all of what she says, some agree with bits and some totally disagree. I guess it’s a perspective thing.

In the near future I will be sharing some of my short stories as free downloads. I’m stomach wrenchingly nervous about it. But the having a genius concept makes me feel less anxious. If people don’t like my short stories my genius can take the blame.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Wednesday 24 April 2013

Book Review: Speed Demons by Gun Brooke

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
speed-demons-gun-brooke-cover Speed Demons by Gun Brooke is quite essentially a lesbian love story that was kindly sent to me by Publishers Group UK.

Evie is a NASCAR Racing Driver that had a crash and is planning a come back. Blythe is a Professional Photographer and was snapping the day of the crash. Blythe has heard about Evie’s comeback and wants to document her journey back to the racetrack in the form of a photography book.

Blythe convinces Evie to agree to the photography book idea and a relationship starts to develop – far to quickly to be believable to the reader. Along with the waves of closeness between Evie & Blythe they both help one another to overcome the current challenges in their lives.

For Evie the challenge is apparent: her recovery and return to the racetrack. In order for Evie to achieve her goal she must undertake her physical training and find a way of dealing with her PTSD. Blythe’s challenge is to deal with her lost family connection and her feelings about it. Blythe feels that her family indirectly blame her for the attack on her brother many years ago.

Evie & Blythe’s characters are well developed with good backstories. Brooke‘s use of character perspectives and of Evie & Blythe psychoanalysing one another makes the reader care about them.

Brooke‘s description was sparse at times and the reader would have benefited from more detail. The are a few sex scenes; I found it strange that Brooke used the word “sex” to describe lady-parts in one part of the book and yet later on used the word “clit” quite blatantly.

The storyline was fair and somewhat predictable. I did find that Blythe’s family challenge felt like an after thought, thrown in towards the end of the book. The ending was reasonable but had a few loose ends – such as Evie’s family approval and a resolution of Blythe’s family issues. The most unsatisfying part of the ending was Blythe’s seemingly sacrificing her life for Evie’s. Overall the ending felt rushed and not thought out.

Yet despite the criticisms it was a reasonable book; by the end of it I found myself wishing there was a gay male version of Gun Brooke writing gay mens love stories. Speed Demons by Gun Brooke is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

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Monday 22 April 2013

Advice About Writing From Stephen King: “A Magic Moment”

By LifeNo Comments

One day I told Sye that even I could write a better book than the one I’d just read.
“Why don’t ya?” Sye asked.
I started to write I suddenly had an overwhelming need to tell the stories of the characters that have come to life in my head.

In the video below Stephen King gives advice to those wanting to be a Writer. He says aspiring Writers should read lots and write lots. He also talks about a magic moment after reading a book where you think to yourself: I can do better than this.

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I’ve only just discovered Stephen King’s advice, so there you have it. I’ve had my magic moment. I just didn’t realise it at the time.

Write soon,

Antony

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Sunday 21 April 2013
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