Author: gorgeousgael

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT SEX

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Here are 25 steps on the subject of writing about sex that are probably better than any I could dream up. I know, I am just a lazy bugger and couldn’t be arsed to use my imagination. Either that or I’m still in the missionary position!

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/04/30/25-humpalicious-steps-for-writing-your-first-sex-scene-by-delilah-s-dawson-author-of-wicked-as-she-wants/

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” Virginia Woolf

Sex is interesting but not totally important. I mean, it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion. a man can go 70 years without a piece of ass but he can die in a week without a bowel movement. Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the same thing. D H Lawrence, Lady Chatterlesy’s Lover

 

 

DON’T MAKE YOUR HOUSE IN MY MIND

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                                                         (scene from my play Money From America)

 

DON’T MAKE YOUR HOUSE IN MY MIND

 Oh yes, I saw what you wanted

From the very first day we met;

Your long legs wanton in the marram grass,

You promised sex without frills,

Your instincts more mothering than you know,

You delivered it without thrills

 

After the kids came it was respectability

And a job we could grow old in;

Our own home twenty years down the road

Everything borrowed along the way;

Freedom mortgaged for a safe house

Wasn’t such a big price to pay

 

All things come to pass in time;

The kids, the home, the income,

Shared lives going down the long slide

But their passing leaves a sour taste behind;

I should have made it clear from the start,

Don’t make your house in my mind

 

 

DOES YOUR POSTMAN ALWAYS RING TWICE?

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James M Cain, author of the best-seller THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE said the book was so-called because when his postman was returning his rejected manuscripts he always rang twice

A few years ago, Samuel Moffie submitted The Perfect Martini to 100 literary agents. Actually, he submitted  the first twenty pages of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions disguised as The Perfect Martini. Only one agent responded positively, but that’s because the agent recognized the original author. 99 agents declined.

Which just goes to show, what the fuck do agents know!  Or care.

Agents are concerned with commercial viability, first and foremost. Literary quality is a secondary bonus. Now, if Vonnegut wrote a novel where a dominant vampire becomes master to a naive, submissive, shape-shifting werewolf, I’m sure he would have fared better.

Why spend months, or even years, writing and submitting queries to agents who are clearly looking the other way? If they passed on Kurt Vonnegut, what chance do you have?

Brian Marggraf writes in his blog; I queried over 300 agents, followed all their silly and varied submission requirements, I know, no attachments, got it, waited to hear back for weeks sometimes, other times, didn’t hear back at all, even with partial or full manuscript requests, read all their canned responses, I’m not taking on new authors at this time, the work doesn’t fit with my list. Blah, blah, blah. My tip – don’t send any more. Take your work straight to the reader.Within one month, I built a platform, designed my cover, formatted my ebook, published, promoted, marketed, and advertised. Made sales.

He has got a point. And my postman? Yeah, the fucker always rings twice.

GUT FEELING ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

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GUT FEELING ON THE DUCK THEORY OF EVOLUTION

In the beginning there was silence

Slow symmetry break-dancing in the bleakness

Time’s arrows curving beyond comprehension

 

Soon, the dance of geometry commenced;

Atom, electron, proton, neutron,

Wave upon wave

Spin particle, spin!

 

Then into the melting pot

The first sounds of all our futures;

Quark, quark, quark, quark, quark, quark…

 

NEIGHBOURLY ADVICE FROM WRITERS

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The first draft over everything is shit– Ernest Hemingway

There speaks one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Some advice, such as the above, is common sense, and some, such as this ‘write about what you know’ is shit. If all writers followed that advice how many great books would have been written? Would Orwell have written 1984? would Terry Pratchett have written any book at all? would Shakespeare have written Julius Caesar?  The list goes on. Write about what you don’t know might be more appropriate!

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham

The following 21 tips may offer some insight – but I wouldn’t bank on it! 

21 Harsh But Eye-Opening Writing Tips From Great Authors

to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent

 

NEW WAVES

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NEW WAVES

To hear someone say;

I worked my fingers to the bone

So someone sharper could take my home,

Raises few eyebrows these days

 

Work isn’t the toad

Work is the poor man’s load

Piled up all his life ahead

Never relenting until he’s finally dead

 

You could of course ignore it;

No mortgage, no gadgets that comfort

No requirement to pay-as-you-earn it;

A kind of existence

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NEVER LOOK DOWN!

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Looking at these images reminds me of my own time in the steel/construction industry. In more than 30 years I worked variously as a welder, rigger, banksman, foreman, and sometimes all 4 at the same time. The pictures show a time when health and safety didn’t exist as a concept;there were no safety nets, hard hats, harnesses; you were your own safety officer, comon sense prevailed. And if you didn’t have any you didn’t last very long.

We had all the modern safety equipment bu t it still still didn’t prevent accidents or deaths. I remember working on the biggest construction site in Europe in the early 1980s, Aughinish Island Aluminium Extraction Plant in west Limerick, and on the first day we had to attend an induction course. We were lectured about safe working practices, and told that according to statistics x amount of workers would be injured and seven would be killed. I don’t remember how accurate the injury forecasts were, but over the course of the 4 years the complex took to build 7 workers were killed. Most were falls but a couple were hit by falling objects.

Remember, the construction site is a dangerous place. SO TAKE CARE

to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent

 

 

ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY

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ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY

 Oh beautiful chromed perambulator

You of the sleek wheels

And wayward inclinations

Carrier of booze and babies

And, occasionally, goods and chattels,

You were a lovely mover once

 

Look at you now;

Silt to your midriff

Capsized for eternity

Gathering flotsam and jetsam

For a stinking old stream;

Fit for nothing but stopping gaps

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

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THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

 

Old women with polished perms on fat heads

Men tinkering with diseased cars

Dogs taking their owners to the park –

Where they converse with their friends

And crap indiscriminately.

The Postman, the Milkman and the Gasman,

Two door-to-door leaflet saleswomen

A stray cat or two

And twenty five chimney-stack pigeons.

Then there are all those aerials-

Like one-legged storks-

Looking down on the patched-up pavements.

 

Where have all the front gates

 Absconded to, I wonder?

Frightened away by all the leering

FOR SALE signs

Constantly peering over their shoulders?

I guess that must be it.

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CONFESSIONS OF AN ALTAR BOY

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EXTRACT FROM MY BOOK ‘THE SHINY RED HONDA’:

Religion was taken seriously in those days. Every season brought is own festivities and duties.  March, for example, usually signified the beginning of Lent and weeks of fasting and devotion.  Each of us owned our own prayer books and rosary beads, mother’s missal was stuffed to bursting with relics and Holy pictures.  Blessed Martin himself had never been kissed as many times as had that faded picture of him she carried around with her. She had great faith in his powers as a healer. Whenever one of us was sick she kissed his picture and placed it on the afflicted part of our body.  Holy water, Lourdes water, water from the healing well in Mothel lurked in every corner of the house and was dished out like tonic.  As soon as sickness appeared she reached for one of her bottles and administered three sips to us.  Never mind that it tasted like bog water, it still had to be swallowed.

            The coming of Lent heralded a change of attitude in the lives of almost everyone in the community. From the priests whose sermons became more vociferous to the women who beat a path to the altar daily now, their eyes downcast, their heads shrouded in black veils. Continue reading →