Spring cleaning

January 17, 2012, Author: lubelle, Categories: books, fun

Phew! Today was busy. These are some new snaps of my bedroom!

I set up my bookcase. It’s maple and one of those flat packs from Argos. I have fewer books than I thought I had funnily enough. I think I will have to check under the bed for further books as I cram everything else under it.

Also bought a TV stand yesterday! For my nice TV. So I assembled this all myself even though I have a few cuts and bruises now. But it looks neat. I did a crazy thing last night and rearranged my furniture in my room at 2am.

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Author Etiquette Round-Up

January 15, 2012, Author: lubelle, Categories: authors, books, fun, writing

I promised a picture post but that will have to wait, I haven’t enough good pictures yet. I am hoping it gets cold enough that there will be frost in the mornings and that it snows. Snow is beautiful to capture.

There has been a lot of author drama lately.

1. Recently the author of ‘The Selection‘, Kiera Cass and her agent Elana Roth performed badly to a quite a fair review on Goodreads.

2. Author Mike Coe left 40 comments, yes 40 comments on a not so positive review of his book.

3. Leigh Fallon of ‘Carrier the Mark’  sent this email and tried to rally her friends to gang up on a reviewer and down vote it on Amazon.

I don’t think people have learnt proper business etiquette here, and how this kind of thing does them a disservice. There is no reading mafia, reviewers don’t get salaries or paid. Goodreads is a place where readers can leave their reviews positive or bad. Trying to manipulate reviews of your book is misleading and like fraud to your potential readers. Glowing reviews are a nice thing but they do not usually provide a balance which is needed for a reader to make an informed choice. In fact negative reviews can lead to new readerships. Everyone needs to take a good lesson in business and P.R..

Other notes:

Anyway come Summer 2012 I am doing a Come Dine With Me style dinner party for my family. It will be Chess themed so, everyone will be dressed in black and white and as chess pieces. Desserts will be white chocolate home made cheesecake and chocolate home made cake. I am really excited for this! So I will take pictures and let you know how it goes!

ETA: change of layout. Prefer this one tbh.

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New year, new writings

January 3, 2012, Author: lubelle, Categories: books, studying, writing

Studying literature is immensely difficult. My marks are quite low due to the harder analysis required for this module but I am enjoying it. One of the books I am reading by Thomas de Quincey ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater‘ and is pretty self-explanatory. De Quincey details his addiction to the drug, the pleasure, the pain of it and how it has bettered his life. At the time it was very controversial as people thought it advocated drug abuse. I don’t think so. I think it is a little self-indulgent (as is most Victorian writings) but it’s very insightful into the psychology of addiction.

An unusual introduction I know but I Lou, am back. I grew quite tired of my previous domain. No enthusiasm, none at all. I hope this stays for this one. I bought a reseller off Secret Kiss Hosting. I thought I’d go with a more personal one before I have only gone for big companies or well-known ones but I wanted to feel part of a community in a sense. And at the moment I am loving it as I missed having a reseller. I have plans for separate websites etc but I am not sure about taking on hostees for the time being. If you ask I will take it into consideration.

I have written a short story called ‘Little Acres‘ it’s where I got the  name for the website from. The short story is not publishable yet, it had several revisions to go, and to change the point of view. It is about a 1500th girl who moves into a farm with her family, there she meets a boy in the attic. They become friends.

89 because that is the year I was born. ‘acres‘ is such a nice word. It is a term for a period of distance but it rolls off the tongue. The ‘ache‘ in acres has such a nice sound to it.

I had a merry good year I will tell you that. Spent it down the pub, had a bit of a buffet then retreated back to the house to watch Lee Evans. My boyfriend Scott as I have mentioned previously have celebrated our 7th years together, I surprised him at Christmas with a Mockingjay pendant from the ‘Hunger Games‘ I bought of Etsy for him. It is beautifully designed. I also surprised him with Goosebumps ‘Series 2000‘ collection I bought off ebay. Then two other book series; Alex Scarrows ‘Time Riders‘ and Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials‘ ooh makes me want to write.

My next post will be full of pictures because I have a new ipod with fancy effects. Hope you like this layout, it’s simple and elegant. Not one I designed myself but maybe one day again because right now I hate designing these things myself. My main focus is to get a consistent blog going.

My question to you, what books did you buy this Winter?

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