The Z Files ~ Lynda Renham ~ Aquarius

Welcome to The Z Files, in which writers show how the characteristics of their star sign influence their work; I instructed contributors to take the subject as seriously or as lightly as they wished!  Links to other posts can be found at the end of this one.

Dancing over to my blog in pink wellies, a flat cap and a wonderbra (please see her Amazon page HERE!), the very charming Lynda Renham, a proper off-the-wall Aquarius in the nicest possible way!  Lynda is the first of five (so far) chick lit authors, and a hugely popular one ~ again, please refer to Amazon page :)

So, Ms Renham, how is it for you?

"How does being an Aquarian affect my writing? The fact that I am batty most certainly impacts on my work. In fact I would go as far as to say I am more than a bit batty."

Batty Ms Aquarius with her chick lit heroes?

  

"I write in my writing room which is also known as The Beach Hut. It has the feel of the beach when you enter. Or maybe I just imagine that. I have never used a desk. I sit with my legs up on my writing couch, which I like to imagine is a chaise longue and I then dream away and tap out my ideas. I have my cat at the end of the couch and music blaring through my headphones and me singing along at the top of my voice. When I wrote ‘Fifty Shades of Roxie Brown’, my most recent novel, I was singing ‘I’ve Put a Spell on You’ on a loop. This is sometimes very disconcerting for the parents who deliver their kids to the local village school next door. I also have a tendency to forget about dinner so that when my poor husband comes home there often isn’t anything to eat.  He is terribly understanding, thank goodness.  Many of my characters are a bit batty too."

"My blog certainly reflects my quirkiness. It’s full of fun and strange things. I discuss all kinds of things on there and I am very open. In fact some readers have said I’m an open book." (link to blog later) 

I agree that Aquarians are very friendly and unprejudiced. I have a fab relationship online with my readers and they help me a great deal when I am promoting a new novel. 

I don’t think I am unreliable, except maybe getting a book delivered on time.  Far thinking?  If writing about Christmas in July is far thinking, then that’s me."

It was the whole picture of Lynda in her 'Beach Hut' that confirmed the batty Aquarian-ness to me (I write at my desk, facing a wall, in silence).  Do have a look at Lynda's 'full of fun and strange things' blog HERE and follow her on Twitter, too!

Now, I have two more Jan/Feb born writers to make up the Holy Trinity of Light Romance Royalty with Lynda...

... water carrying New York Times bestselling author of 

The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot....

.... and the Aquarian High Priestess of Chick Lit ~ 

Helen Fielding (she's the Bridget Jones lady, in case you don't know!)

Up Next: Pisces

Previous Posts:  

Leo and Aries: Terry Tyler and Julia Proofreader

Leo: Anne Goodwin

Gemini: Shelley Wilson

Aquarius and Capricorn: Nicky Black

Sagittarius: Katrina Mountfort
Cancer: Mark Barry

Virgo: Barb Taub

99p ~ You Can't Go Wrong!

The two instalments of my family saga about the Lanchester family, KINGS AND QUEENS  and LAST CHILD are both on offer for 99p/99c from today, September 17th, until midnight on Wednesday, September 23rd.  Click on the titles for Amazon links!

You can see details for the books ~ blurb and over 90 x 4/5* reviews ~ on the links above; in brief, they're two episodes of a contemporary drama about a family who own a property developing empire ... with a historical twist.  Kings and Queens is about Harry Lanchester and the six women in his life, which might remind you of a certain Tudor king... it's a modern day retelling of the story of Henry VIII and his wives.  Last Child is about Harry's children, Jasper, Isabella and Erin, who closely resemble Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I.

Please note: no knowledge of history is necessary!  Both books are essentially just modern day dramas, and can be enjoyed without any reference to the characters' historical counterparts.

My new book, The House of York, will be out in October, all going well, cross fingers and touch wood.  You can read more about it HERE

Many thanks to anyone who downloads!

The Z Files: Barb Taub ~ Virgo

Welcome to The Z Files, in which writers show how the characteristics of their star sign influence their work; contributors were invited to treat the subject as seriously, cynically, or lightly as they liked.  For links to all previous posts, please go to the end of the article.

On my original instructions to the writers, I specified the amount of words required; knowing writers as I do, I thought it best to err on the side of too short, in order to get something about the right length ~ like when you tell your husband you have to be somewhere at 7, so that you've got a chance of getting there for 8; if you say to a writer 'give me 200 words', you get 350-400.  Which was about what I wanted.  My artful plan worked.... until...

 ....Barb Taub

 ...who gave me 537.  In other words, more than twice the amount I asked for.  Look at her, she's laughing at me, isn't she?  Surely she can't be a Virgo at all?  Surely that blatant disregard for the rules (um, it's mean to be about your writing, Barb..), the inability to rein herself in, the verbal diarrhoea, is more like that of a fire sign, or an Aquarius or Gemini?

Let's see what Barb has to say for her Virgo self, shall we?

Virgo ~ it's not all bad...

"I was worried. I'd agreed to take part in Terry Tyler's feature on writers and their star signs, but when I got her list of top traits for Virgos, I realized that my mother must have been off by several months in her recollection of my birth date. Since I have four kids and a sincere and ongoing interest in the process that produced them in the first place, it seemed like a stretch that my sign's symbol would be The Virgin.

I decided to talk it over with someone who knows me well—my daughter. (Chosen because she and the dog were the only ones around, and the dog is a Taurus so she had zoned out and was snoring, all four paws waving gently in the air.)  (Note: my husband is a Taurus, too, Barb; the similarities are amazing!)

 Virgo ~ it's not all good, either...

Me: This says that Virgos can be “nit-picking, critical, and calculating”.

Daughter: You used to send our teacher's notes back with the grammar and spelling mistakes corrected. In red marker.

Me: The list does say “likes to be of service to others”.

Daughter: You sent Ms. B's note back clipped to the help-wanted section of the classifieds, along with a suggestion that she look for a more suitable job.

Me: That was one time. And she didn't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Personally, I'm amazed the woman managed to dress herself.

Daughter: How about the time you told the School Board to get their act together because it was going to be hard for you to find places to hide that many bodies?

Me: You're right. The list does say “doesn't mind repetitive and nitty gritty tasks to get the job done” so I probably should have spent more time researching body disposal.

Daughter: Or when you told the people at the mani-pedi stand not to give you the massage because you don't like people touching you?

Me: Do you think that comes under “modest”?

Daughter: If that's what you call it when you yell, “Don't touch anything but my fingers or toes, you damn perverts.”

Me: Okay, maybe a little bit of it applies. Like the part about how Virgos are dutiful and meticulous.

Daughter: I think the term we're going for here is OCD. Like your thing with schedules. You make us go to airports four hours before flights take off. And remember that first time you took us to Paris? You had an entire binder with itineraries at 5-minute intervals, along with maps, and annotations. There were tabs. Daddy waited until you weren't looking and threw it away. He said it had to be done in the name of international relations.

Me: Sigh. I miss the tabs."

A wanton Virgo, especially for Barb

"So yeah, Terry. I am a Virgo after all. At any given time, I'm worrying about at least fifty separate problems, all but about three of which are completely made up. Being a writer is a form of recycling that lets me use the other forty-seven of them. Fuelled on coffee, I can race through the house, putting every couch pillow and picture frame exactly straight, cook dinner (cleaning up as I go, of course), invent overly-complicated plot sequences, and completely ignore world news because...I'm a Virgo: I just don't have to give a damn."

Yes, Barb, you're a Virgo, and I hope it has amused all readers as much as it did me!  I still think you've got something Sagittarian or Aquarian hidden in there somewhere, though.....

Barb is always worth reading, I love her blog, which is HERE if you would like to read it ~ I suggest this post, If Adam and Eve sent texts, which is one of my favourites and will give you an idea of the laughs to be had within!  Barb also writes urban fantasy; I have read her hilarious book Don't Touch, review HERE.  You follow her on Twitter at your own risk....

Here are your other Virgo writers...  

Another Virgo who writes of fantastical things ~ 
GRR Martin (The Game of Thrones dude, in case anyone doesn't know!)

.....and Stephen King, who I would imagine 

 owns a binder with tabs or two, himself!

Next up: a super-dooper chick lit bestselling Aquarius!!

Previous Posts:
Leo and Aries: Terry Tyler and Julia Proofreader
Leo: Anne Goodwin
Gemini: Shelley Wilson
Aquarius and Capricorn: Nicky Black
Sagittarius: Katrina Mountfort
Cancer: Mark Barry

The Z Files: Mark Barry ~ Cancer

Welcome to The Z Files, in which writers show how the characteristics of their star sign influence their work; contributors were invited to treat the subject as seriously, cynically or lightly as they like.  You can find links to other posts at the end of this one.

Daring to sidle out from underneath his protective Cancer shell and expose himself (!) to my blog readers, here's Mark Barry :)  Mark is, in my opinion, one of the best 'indie' authors out there.  I've read four of his books (at the time of writing); you can read my reviews of them HERE  (ps, they're all 99p/99c until October, I thought I'd just slip that in!). Under his Green Wizard guise, he also does author interviews with a difference... more later!

Tell us about your semi-Cancerian self, Mark...  

Mark on the left, his son on the right.

"An old boss of mine was a part time tarot reader and astrologist and, thus, I picked up a ton from her about astrology without ever fully assimilating its doctrine. 

I’m ostensibly a Cancer, born June 23^rd. This nearly makes me a Gemini and therein lies, of course, the contradiction. If I had taken aboard the teachings of the starry tablets of stone, I would be scared. Here’s why.

Cancers are by nature crabs. Diamond hard on the outside and soft as melted butter on the inside. Once you penetrate the shell, a Cancer is yours, but breaking through it isn’t easy."

The Cancerian moon smiles warily at the twins...

"Yet, Geminis are the opposite. Assess the negatives and weep. Shallow, scheming, feckless, duplicitous, slutty, unrealistic, boastful, Janus-faced, bi-polar – the playful twins offer a disorienting contrast to the stolid, dependable, loyal, faithful, honest, depression-prone crab. 
According to my old boss this combo was always going to make my life very difficult.   One half of me wants to party like it's 1999 and the other half of me wants to lock the doors and tell everyone to, er, go away.  That’s me in a nutshell. Trapped in a circadian parabola oscillating from manic party animal to despairing recluse almost by the day."

...okay, then, have your own sign!

 
"Potential partners? If you’re an Aries, your zodiacmates have already mashed my swede in twice, so keep me in the friendzone thank you very much, but if you’re a Pisces, a Scorpio or a Capricorn, we tend to get on alright. I also blend with other Cancers but, as you can imagine, that is a mind-blowingly intense combination – and no apologies for the adverb; it’s appropriate."

"My writing? Cancers suffer in a private hell of their own making and Geminis are the ultimate dancing communicators so what else can a man afflicted by both do but write or teach? 

Do I believe in this stuff? I’ll leave that to you to work out :-D"

Actually, Marky Mark, I have to tell you that up and down moods are also very much a feature of moon ruled Cancer...  if you would like to know more about the Green Wizard's cauldron, you can give it a stir HERE and follow Mark on Twitter; you won't recognise him, by the way, as he changes his profile picture on a weekly basis, and it's rarely him.  He may think this is the mercurial, changing face of Gemini; I think it's the hideaway Cancerian :)

Would Mark like to share a beer with these two fellow crabs ~ under their respective carapaces, perhaps?

A chap who knew a thing or two about human nature... George Orwell..

...and the original gonzo journalist, who was known to have 

an up and down mood or two, himself... Hunter S Thompson :)

Up next ~ An amusingly analytical Virgo, followed by a decidedly off-beat Aquarius!

Previous Posts:
Leo and Aries: Terry Tyler and Proofreader Julia
Leo: Anne Goodwin,
Gemini: Shelley Wilson
Aquarius and Capricorn: Nicky Black
Sagittarius: Katrina Mountfort

All the SUNDAYS of my life...

'Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon' ~ Susan Ertz

A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

I got the idea for this post after reading one by Tom Angel: Every Day is like a Sunday...
.....and it got me thinking about the changing face of the day of rest; these are my experiences but I am sure many will share similar :)

My 1960s childhood Sundays meant a church service I thought would never end, forcing down Sunday lunch (I hated it!), a walk in the woods, David Copperfield on telly at about five-thirty (with tea on the coffee table in the sitting room, such a treat!), and that feeling of doom about school on Monday.  Brussel sprouts, long sermons and the dread of Monday aside, very nice ~ but it all went downhill when I mooched (in a particularly gauche fashion) out of childhood.  I don't think today's teenagers, with their short attention spans and need to be constantly entertained by iThis and iThat, would be able to deal with the long dark tea-time of the soul that was four o'clock on a winter Sunday afternoon in the 1970s :)

Photo by Max Dupain

The 'long dark tea time' phrase was nicked from Douglas Adams, of course.  It's perfect, isn't it?  I remember it so well, sitting upstairs in my bedroom, cold and dark outside, wondering what on earth to do with all those hours until bed time; I can't recall what my parents did on Sunday afternoons; not that they do any of these things now, but they certainly didn't go shopping, watch DVDs or go for a drink ~ televisual entertainment was a three channel affair and pubs/shops weren't open!  I think Dad did stuff in the garden and Mum in the kitchen.  As an older teenager, when I was at the stage of being in the house as little as possible, I can remember wandering around dark, wet streets with my friends (doubtless with our flared jeans dragging in the damp - I'm talking the mid 1970s!), stretching out a coffee in the only place that was open, whilst we waited for the pub to welcome us back at seven o'clock.

I like to think we were more subtle about it....

..

  ... which brings me onto the 1980s, which wasn't much different.  I loved going out for a drink or six in those days, but if you didn't get to the pub by one o'clock on a Sunday you couldn't get as pissed as you want to when you're in your twenties, because opening hours were a meagre noon until two pm.  During most of that decade I had a shop in Northampton town centre with Husband #1, and we lived above it; our 'local', The King Billy, was only twenty seconds walk away.

Something we used to do with a group of friends was the shared all day lunch with a theme - French Day, or American Day.  We'd each bring a course, and dress up appropriately.  Average calorie intake each ~ 4000 for the day.  Such days always resulted in increased sales of Andrews Liver Salts.  Great way to spend a Sunday, though, especially in the winter!

Sundays weren't always about self-indulgence, I hasten to add!  We used to do those indoor crafty/arty type fairs in which we sold the wares from our shop, or went for long saunters in places like Salcey Forest, which is in Northamptonshire. 

In the early 1990s I used to spend Sundays at the casino - I was living with a compulsive gambler!  Oh, those six hour long games of kalooki, the sessions round the blackjack table during which our holiday fund was lost to the turn of the card....  and it was some time during the 1990s that shops began to open on Sundays between 10 and 4, wasn't it?  Like many people, I was against it.  Not from the religious aspect (though I understand and respect that, of course!), but because it stopped Sunday being something special, a bit different.  

In the late 1990s I was an alternate weekend step-parent, which I loved; Saturday nights was spent under the duvets with Jonathan Creek and scary films, but Sundays meant the park, and games.  Um, and sometimes it would be a drink or two in a pub garden, many pubs being more family orientated by then.  The Crown and Cushion, on the way back from Abington Park, even had a children's play area, and my 11 year old stepsons were allowed into the pub to play pool with their father.

Delightful stepson David, now doing Sunday things with his own daughter!

In 2000 I moved to Cromer in Norfolk - and what would Sunday be without a walk on the beach, whatever the weather, calling into The Kings Head on the way back? I worked full time then, so Sunday was a wonderful day - always is if you live by the sea, regardless of the time of year!

Photos by Jackie Rivett

 Me and Kings Head chums Ema, Gail (landlady) and Fee, on a return visit in 2013!

Nowadays, of course, people go shopping, stay in the pub all day, go to work ~ Sunday is a lot like any other day, though it still has its own atmosphere, doesn't it?  There's something about the papers, the smell of the beef cooking ~ which often means opening the first bottle of red; not that I've done that for a few years now, as I'm married to someone who doesn't eat meat, I hardly drink, no longer get the paper and am usually writing!  Oh, and when I go to stay with my father I even accompany him to church... and enjoy it, too.  Mostly because I am fascinated by the history of the church (some parts of which were built in the 10th century), it has to be said!

 Daddy outside church

It's still a bit special, Sunday, isn't it?  Always will be....

The Z Files: Anne Goodwin ~ Leo

Welcome to The Z Files.  I asked writers to produce a piece for me to show how the characteristics of their zodiac signs manifest themselves in their work, and the way they work... they were invited to treat it as seriously, lightly or cynically as they wish!  For previous posts, please see the links at the end of this one.

When I first thought of this I did my own Leo post to kick it off - then, lo and behold, the first two posts I received were from Leos, too!  Never let it be said that we lions are not on the ball :)  Today I'm pleased to introduce fellow Queen of the Jungle and north-easterly person, Anne Goodwin, who has recently published her debut novel, Sugar and Snails ~ if you take a look at that Amazon link you'll see it has many stunning reviews already :)

Anne Goodwin takes a cynical look at astrological characteristics; here she asks:  How could I be a Leo? 

"I must have been about seven or eight when I first learnt about horoscopes – or horror-scopes as I genuinely believed they were called. And not without reason: discovering my star sign proved beyond reasonable doubt that I was inadequate. Like the lion, Leos were supposed to be in charge of the pack, not hiding at the back, scared to open our mouths. 

So forgive me if I’m somewhat sceptical about diagnosing personality according to patterns in the night sky. A sociable charismatic leader I most definitely am not. I’ll accept creative and determined, but aren’t these characteristics of any writer who craves publication? If I appreciate being appreciated, does that make me like a lion basking in the sun?"

"If I paid any attention to the Zodiac, I wouldn’t have made the narrator of Sugar and Snails another Leo. You don’t stick your head above the parapet when you’ve got something to hide. Had I thought about it, I’d have lodged Diana under Cancer: a dutiful hard-working teacher unable to dissociate herself from painful emotions from the past.

But there’s one Leo characteristic I’d claim for the pair of us, and that’s warmth. As in my picture, I’m quite a smiley person, and Diana is only waiting for someone to love her to bring out her natural warmth, displayed in the colours of her cover image. All she needs is one more sunrise over the pyramids to embrace it for herself."

 

I'm duty bound to stick up for astrology, I suppose, so I feel I must point out loads of writers aren't as determined as you, Anne, and that your online presence has a somehow queenly aura I can't quite put my finger on!!  You can follow Anne on Twitter where she is a keen sharer of blog posts, or read more from her on her blog

And finally ~ I wonder if Anne has anything in common with these lady Leo writers?

Crime maestro P D James....

.... and fantasy land lady herself, Enid Blyton!

Up next: a Cancer who thinks he's half Gemini, followed by an initially sceptical Virgo!

Previous posts:

Leo and Aries: Terry Tyler and Julia Proofreader
Gemini: Shelley Wilson
Aquarius and Capricorn: Nicky Black
Sagittarius: Katrina Mountfort