Friday 19 March 2021

Guest Post, Wendy L. Anderson Ulrik author




Hello, I’m Wendy L. Anderson. I am a fantasy author! I will also reveal that my fantasy writing has a bit of romance thrown in. There is action, adventure, magic, danger, and intrigue in all of my books. 


My first foray into the world of writing was my five book Kingdom of Jior epic fantasy series. I have created an entire world full of fantastic and noble beings and it all begins with book one Of Demon Kind. Most of my reviewers have found this book series surprises them with its uniqueness.


One thing I love about writing fantasy is world creating. Would it be bad of me to admit that I love to escape into the worlds I make up rather than face the one I’m in?


I am a pantser which means I write by the seat of my pants and do not use a formal outline, process, or formula to write. I just sit down and start typing an idea I have or a scene that pops into my head and I just go from there. I also use many themes in my writing because they are my favorite things and places and they just happen. Being born in Colorado, it should not come as a surprise, that I love the mountains. I also love winter, forests, waterfalls, hot springs, crystals and jewels, prisms, and anything medieval. Knights, chivalry, swords, and honorable quests inspire me to write these fantasy adventures. Those favorites appear often in many of my stories, but I am always pushing the boundaries and I do try to expand my writing horizons.


In addition to my five book fantasy series, I have written a stand-alone Viking story titled, A Cut Twice as Deep. This is a beautiful tale I saw in a dream and is about twin sisters who only have each other in a world where women are not particularly valued. They have grown up serving their tyrant of a father when suddenly they find out that they have been given in marriage to the highest bidders. Forced to separate and travel great distances they are parted so that their father may increase his wealth and power. This story has everything danger, intrigue, and romance, and did I mention Vikings? I test the waters of historical fiction with my special brand of fantasy thrown in. A Cut Twice as Deep is an emotional tale of sisterly bonds and finding love in a land where blood and ice reign.


I once read, and perhaps you have heard the saying, that a true writer needs to write it is in their nature just like a painter needs to paint or a sculptor needs to sculpt. That is me. When it comes to writing, I live by Winston Churchill’s wise words, “Never, never, never, never give up.”


 I hope you have enjoyed this ramble. You can learn more about my books and my writing on my website www.wendylanderson.com. Be sure to subscribe and feel free to contact me about anything you’d like to know about me and my fantasy writing.


Until then… Enjoy the fantasy!



Tuesday 9 March 2021

LOOK WHAT I MADE

Fun fact, I hate shopping. Nothing digs deeper into eating disorder memories quite like flashbacks of how fat I felt every time I went shopping as my BED developed. My clothes were getting too small whilst my mother's were getting too big as she continued to starve herself to death and get thinner. 

It was a fucking blast.

Anyway, because of that, I fucking hate clothes shopping, so I make my own clothes, or modify the ones I do buy. An oversized T-shirt cut up here, a tie-died shirt there, whatever it is it's fun, and I'm hella proud of what I made today. 

I don't know where this idea came from, probably from the fact that my friend is coming over today to tie-die oversized tops that I bought from a guy on Spadina who told me I was pretty, but your bitch decided she wanted to spray paint some clothes. So I dragged myself to the craft store to find, in orgasm-level euphoria, that a shit tonne of fabric spray paint was on sale. I went with one to start but went back within the hour to get another lot. Because BPD obsession. 

After heading home past the aforementioned shop on Spadina, I got home, took off my pants so I didn't turn them yellow, turned a large white T-shirt into a tank-top held together with safety pins, made a stencil out of duct tape and headed outside. 

Now, I haven't used spray paint in a while. Not since my last year of college where I became low-key obsessed and spraying 90% of the final piece I made before I started my foundation degree. 

Not to be mistaken for the one that ended up in a local gallery #flex

Turns out I love the smell, so a few enjoyable spritzes later, I was happy with my design and I left it to dry round the corner from my house. Let's face it, no one was going to steal it. 

And I'm SO FUCKING HAPPY with how it turned out. Now, when people ask why I'm insane, I just point to my top and they can see it's because I have BPD. SHWANG 


Other things that have made me happy this week include becoming a very big Machine Gun Kelly stan and my husband finally getting on board with the Lynn language and calling someone a shit cunt. 



So proud. 

xXx


Friday 5 March 2021

The Moscow Whisper by Michael Jenkins, Guest post




At exactly eight o’clock in the evening, Dozich’s internal CCTV system was infiltrated by The Court’s hackers sitting at their dimly lit consoles somewhere in the quiet Suffolk countryside. Sean’s phone began to vibrate - sure enough, right on time. Jack messaged him on TextSecure and the phone came alive with a green screen showing three dots flickering. ‘Good to go. All stations on standby.’


The Court’s hackers had inserted a Trojan worm deep into the servers of the villa, which quickly propagated laterally to gain the privileged access rights to the CCTV system. The hackers took control of each of the internal cameras that would provide sight of Sean making his way to the rooms he would search.


‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ he said to Yelena. ‘If anyone comes and asks where I am, text me, and tell them I’m on the loo.’


‘I can come along and keep an eye out for you while you’re in the room you know. It’s my father’s house and if anything goes wrong, I’ll be able to tell a story far better than you at being caught mooching around like a jewel thief.’


‘Funny that, Jack set my legend up to show I was once an amateur thief.’


Had Sean seen the anxious look on Jack’s face back at The Court, he may have taken her up on the offer to tag along. But no. he needed to do this work alone. He stepped outside the door knowing the corridor cameras were now under the control of The Court hackers who had digitally manipulated the imagery being seen by Dozich’s security operators deep in the basement of the villa. He then sent a text to Jugsy: ‘Land the drone on Dozich’s balcony. Five minutes.’


Within three minutes, Sean had turned a key to enter the spacious office which was located on the first floor of the villa. He’d memorised the plans of the villa and the layout of Dozich’s office with the help of Yelena who had managed to coax the information from the housekeeper as well as the location of the spare key that her father always left in the vase opposite the door.


As Sean started to rummage the room, he still couldn’t work out why Yelena had been so accommodating, so helpful. Almost from the very beginning when he first caught her half naked in that room in Tuscany. Since that moment, it had not been at all difficult to extract information from her. Indeed, she even steered him straight to the Albanian thug. Why, he wondered? 


His phone began to ring. The signal that the drone was now inbound and imminent. Sean walked over to the terrace, released the latch on the sliding door, and stepped out to be confronted by a buzzing quadcopter two feet ahead of him at head height. He imagined Jugsy grinning at him through the onboard camera, so he decided to give him the finger. Following a smile at the ugly whirring beast, he grabbed a small black pouch from a cradle below the drone’s belly. He gave a thumbs up into the eye of the onboard camera, and watched it lift quickly before silently peeling off into the night to land on the roof of the villa.


Sean pointed his penlight towards the large white desk that sat neatly in the corner of the room with two twenty-inch screens and a desktop computer. He gazed briefly at the three large pictures behind Dozich’s desk. His gaze turned into serious study. Something had caught his eye. One picture had three men dressed in Spetsnaz fatigues and Dozich holding an AK47. It looked like it was taken in Afghanistan. Dozich was stood next to a man Sean recognised. It was a much younger Sergei. The Russian spy Jack had recruited and the man he had met only a year ago in the very conference room that Jack was now sat in. Sean’s nape began to tingle. What if Sergei had played Jack all along? Surely this is too much of a coincidence for Sergei, the lead officer for a Russian illegals programme in the UK, to be a military friend of Dozich? 


Sean took a photo of the wall mounted picture with his smartphone and beamed it back to Jack using the secure photo app specially designed for Court operations. He muttered a few words to himself about moles and how Swartz might have been compromised, before sitting at the desk. The computer screen was alive with a background picture of a mountain view. He tapped the return button to bring up the password box. He then stood up and walked around the room once more until he finally found what he was after. A small second desktop machine with a laptop beside it on a small table next to an open fireplace. Sean instinctively knew that Dozich would probably use the laptop for emails and internet transmissions, whilst he kept his main desktop machine isolated from any intruders who would hack into his machine via the internet. Operational security for organised crime lords in the digital world was a must, and one that Dozich would take seriously. 


Sean tapped the number into his phone that he’d been given by Jack to speak to a Court operator in the operations room back in Suffolk. The hacker would help him get into the machine to search and retrieve all of the files of Dozich’s illicit trade, his financial connections and any connecting evidence to Sir Rhys. 


‘Sean? Can you hear me? My name’s Bill?’

‘Yes, I can, I’m in front of the machine, go ahead.’

‘OK, this won’t take long. First off, there are two pensticks in the black pouch. Both will be required to perform this attack which should take less than five minutes. The blue stick will be used to create a live USB that will boot on the laptop while, the yellow stick holds the payload that will then be executed on the device. It will infiltrate the machine and search for the password hash. Place the blue one in now.’


Sean drew the blue pen drive from his jeans pocket and placed it into the USB drive. ‘Done,’ he said waiting impatiently for the next instruction.


‘OK, now on the pen drive is a small switch. Turn it on so a green light flashes once before going solid after five seconds.’


‘Done, what’s next.’


‘Just sit back for about three minutes or so. It’ll boot on the laptop and also sniff for the drone sat above you on the roof, and once it’s connected, we’ll have a transmission frequency to extract the data we need.’


Wednesday 3 March 2021

Things I, personally, can't do as a borderline



This list is entirely subjective, but it's what applies to my own experience with BPD. Enjoy.

I can't have any pets

You know how everything dies? Like everything. As someone with BPD the thought of either a) finding a dead pet or b) forming a loving attachment to something that is, by nature, not going to live as long as me, is not a good one. Yes, the idea of having a cat or a rabbit or a dog is lovely. But is it worth the BPD episode I would have and the lifelong pain I would experience when it died? No. Nothing is. 

I can't form casual relationships

This is a very raw and recent one, as in today recent. I met a girl, she's amazing. She's beautiful and smart and caring and respectful and, were I staying in Canada, I would do anything to be with her, but I'm not. Today I had to tell her that I can't see her anymore because I'm leaving. There wasn't a single chance on earth that I wouldn't fall for her, especially during the yearly trifecta of hell. Normally I would let it carry on, knowing I would be in pain because I thought I deserved it. But it's not just about me, I owed her the respect to be honest. And that's what I had to do. 

I gave up a woman I knew one day I could love because of my BPD, and that's why it's fucking shit. 

I can't have access to excess medication 

Last week I didn't sleep for four days. Eventually, I went to my doctor because I laughed hysterically for two hours because I didn't have any ribbon. 

I get weird when I'm tired. 

Anyway, I had them for one night, then crushed two of them up the next day and snorted them and knocked the other two back. Within less than 48 hours. I can't be near any drugs that I don't essentially need. I was thinking of picking my medication up early but I know I'd overdose and then not have them when I need them, so that can wait. 

I can't have access to sharp objects 

Fun fact, it is difficult to self-harm with standard kitchen knives. That's because standard everyday knives are sharp enough to cut through the skin. Same with most drug store razors, unless you find the really cheap ones that you can pull apart. Craft knives aren't that great either, they break.  The most successful method of self-harm is with those rectangular razors.

Anyway

To combat this I've started using a brand of razor I used as a teenager, it has some weird soap attached to it but I can't be bothered to research the name. Regardless, you can't get the blade out. So I can be hair-free (ish) and not cut.

That doesn't mean I don't want to though.

I can't be an air hostess

I don't want to, but you can't be an air hostess with self-harm scars. 

xXx

Monday 1 March 2021

BPD Questions



Last week I posted a blog with a list of BPD "hacks", or that was my intention. It instead turned out to be a page of exhaustion fuelled rambling that listed a few thoughts about my condition, but I had intended them to be helpful. 

Today, I'm presenting you with a list of questions that, even after all the years I've lived with my condition, I still don't have the answer to. 

Although if you feel the need to tell me the answer to them, 86 that desire, it's only going to piss me off. 

Why do I trust other people's suggestions and opinions even when they're negative?

I had a conversation with someone once about whiskey, well bourbon to be exact. I like bourbon. Double shot, ice, a splash of ginger *chef's kiss*. But then they told me it was a weak (as in not very good quality) drink and I doubted my love of it for a good two or three days. 

I once overheard someone say that the email provider I used wasn't very good quality and subsequently created a new email account, which caused nothing but confusion and I predominately use the first one. 

There are probably a lot more examples, I just can't think of any right now. 

My point is, why do I trust them? When them as given even though I own opinions and experiences to go on? I still like bourbon, I still use the same email account and yet that doubt is still there. 

Luckily I didn't trust the person who said I should just keep my writing as a hobby, because that bitch deserved a punch in the face. 

How on earth are there people on the planet who've never wanted to kill themselves?

This is more of a general question, but it baffles me that there are people on the planet who've never wanted to commit suicide. I feel suicidal and want to hurt myself all the time, I even wrote my suicide note the other day. I've tried it multiple times, it's never fucking worked and I never woke up with a sense of relief that it hadn't worked and that I was still alive because I get very little enjoyment out of being alive. 

To be fair that may be a general mental health question rather than a BPD-specific one. Here's my suicide note by the way. 

And it's a story that might bore you, 

But I'm not in any pain anymore

Fuck yeah I quoted rules of attraction.

Why are the majority of people presented with BPD in the media portrayed as dangerous?

I've recently, as in over the last 2 or 3 days, become a massive Pete Davidson stan. Partly because he's hot, partly because of his bromance with Machine Gun Kelly, but mostly because he's one of the only people in the media with BPD who hasn't been made out to look dangerous or insane. There are no rabbits being put on the stove (I'm looking at you Fatal Attraction) or whatever the character with BPD does in Girl Interrupted, he's just a comedian who happens to have BPD and explains it well without the judgement of the people who he's talking to, which is a new one. 

I would attach a video to the interview where he explains his condition but the comments annoy me. Instead, I'm including one where he explains how to jerk off in a room full of people.

Because I'm helpful like that.

 


Why does everyone think I'm a total disaster?

At the age of 19, despite living with a love of self-harm, the issues associated with having recently spent time being homeless and an undiagnosed mental illness, I went to university. During that time I spent time in a low-key abusive relationship, went through the journey of having my condition diagnosed, tried to kill myself, was told I was too fat to have an eating disorder, was raped and subsequently put said rapist in prison and lost a really good friend of mine. In spite of all this, I graduated with a 2:1 bachelors degree in history of art and literature. 

Since then I've lived in multiple great places, secured lots of great jobs, set myself up as a freelancer, travelled around Europe by myself multiple times, took a great leap of faith and moved across the world to be with a man I'd just met and emigrated across the globe all by myself. 

And yet, for some reason, people don't think I'm capable of looking after myself. I asked my mum if I could be put on her car insurance when I return home and was met automatically with "well you haven't driven for a few years so..." thankfully I 86-ed that before she finished. I've had my license for over a decade but my parents don't think I can drive, they don't trust me. Always a kick in the balls, 

My friends and family also like to message and talk to each other about my behind my back, LOVE that one. 

Why do people feel they're allowed to talk to and treat me like crap?

Someone I know once told me I was hard to love, someone once told me I was the worst person I'd ever met and my mum's boyfriend once told me I should be in therapy for being such a cunt. 

That was a fun one. 

Side note, he's still friends with the cousin that left me homeless. And yet I'm the cunt? 

Now, is it because of my BPD that people feel that it's okay to talk to me like that? That people are convinced it's totally fine to talk to and treat me like a piece of trash, I don't know. But I do know that these are things that are unlikely to be said to someone who isn't mentally ill so, you know, maybe it is because I'm a borderline. 

Or maybe it's because I'm a cuntish bitch who's impossible to love, why knows?

and

Will I ever find love?

Jokes, read my last post for my response to that one

xXx