BLOG TOUR: The Girl in the Storm

When I was at uni, I had two types of books on my shelves. The ones on my module reading lists, books I'd read but not necessarily enjoyed, and a hench ass pile of trashy favourites with appalling storylines.

One of these types of genres that I love so much is dystopian YA fiction. An odd one I know, but give me a series where an entire city has been wiped out by killer rain or a high school that's on lockdown because of a ridiculously specific virus that destroys the minds and bodies of anyone over the age of 18 and I'm there, which is why I signed up for this latest book tour.

The Girl in the Storm by Ceri A. Lowe focuses on the lives of a group of people living in the aftermath of a series of deadly storms. A percentage of people seemed to be living above ground, and a percentage below. I say seemed to be because there was one big, big flaw with this book.

I had no idea what was going on.

The Girl in the Storm is the second part of the Paradigm trilogy and, having not read the first one (as I didn't know it existed) I had no understanding of the plot. Obviously, I could pick up the bare bones of it such as the way governments were attempting to repopulate the earth, that families were being constructed and destroyed and that there were vastly different things going on above ground compared to below, but there was still a lot missing.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy this book, I really did, it was blissfully easy to read and something you'd definitely love if this genre is something you're into, but I really needed to have read the first book before I started in order to grasp a better idea of the plot.

Usually, if I don't understand or enjoy a book I won't bother with the rest of the series. It's like people who watch TV shows only to say "the first series isn't very good but it gets better." This just seems totally pointless to me. I'm a busy woman, I've got shit to do and I have no time for wasting what energy I do have reading or watching something I don't enjoy. In this instance, however, I do plan on picking up the first book in the series, The Rising Storm, before coming back to this book. I really enjoyed what I could piece together, I'd just prefer to have been a little more clued in.

All in all a really good book, and a perfect choice for fans of the Hunger Games or Maze Runner series. 6/10 without having read the first book, but I'm sure it'll have a higher when I come back to it.

Pick up The Girl in the Storm on Amazon.

xXx

My Imaginary Friend

 

One of the problems with BPD is that my brain never shuts up, not really. I'm always focusing and obsessing about something, be it a hobby or a thought or a book or a film. I'm constantly obsessing and it's exhausting.

The big problem with these obsessions is that they don't always exist, not really. I've always wanted to be loved, more than anything. As a teenager, I used to watch One Tree Hill and sob and sob and sob because I wanted so badly to find a relationship like the ones they pictured on the show. I craved for someone to hold me, to want me, to love me. I needed it more than I could ever possibly describe but, in true BPD fashion, I thought it was impossible, so I pretended it didn't exist.

Ironically, that feeling is still there, but it's also accompanied by a refusal to get romantically close to people. I joke about my commitment phobia but it really is a big part of my life. BPD is characterised by a fear of abandonment, so I've always refused to let myself get close to people in case they leave. When you have someone close to you, and you get used to them being there, the gap they leave when they do go is far far more painful to live with than the pain of being alone. 

My recent forage into dating was pointless, really really pointless. I knew it was destined to fail from the start. For one thing, he was separated (aka still married and clearly hung up on her) and he also had two kids. I have nothing against people who've reproduced, but I'm not willing to enter a child's life only to disappear on them when I leave again. It's simply not fair.

Plus if I'm honest I really wasn't attracted to him.

My other impossible obsession is my weight, and the two go hand in hand. As much as I pretend to be happy with my body I would still trade every single part of my existence to be "thin". To reach the non-existent goal weight that I conjured up when I was 13 and never managed to reach. I've been close a couple of times, but even then I still wasn't happy.

If anything I was even more miserable but that's beside the point.

What the point is is that, even at the age of 26, I'm still convinced that the only way I will ever be loved is if I become thin. That I'm unlovable because of my weight. I think about food every second of every day and it's exhausting. I'm longing for something that doesn't exist, that never will exist, and for an impossible situation that I've made up in my head.

This is why it's time for me to leave again. It's time for me to really, truly be by myself.

Only 3 months to go.

xXx

REVIEW: If You Love Me I'm Yours, Lizzie Chantree

I won't lie, when I agreed to take part in this book tour, reviewing If You Love Me I'm Yours by Lizzie Chantree, I expected to hate it. I signed up last minute because I was between books and wanted something to do that felt vaguely productive. Downloading it onto my iPad, I started it this weekend with little to no expectations, thinking it would be nothing more than a smushy chick-lit that would make me roll my eyes so far back in my head they'd detach and get stuck somewhere beneath my eyebrows.

Oh, how wrong I was.

For the first time in a very long time, I connected with the character I was reading about. Maud is a cripplingly insecure school teacher with incredible artistic talent that she hides from the world as a result of her family's disapproval. She tries and tries to get them to understand her passion for art but it falls on deaf and discouraging, ears. To release her inner Georgia O'Keefe, she starts leaving paintings around her local town with the signature 'If you love me, I'm yours' scribbled on the bottom. She doesn't want anyone to see her art, but she doesn't want it to go unnoticed either.

As a child and teenager, I was always artistic. Making things, drawing things, burning things - I did everything I could to unleash the noise in my head, even if at times it wasn't very healthy (entire sketchbook based on my eating disorder anyone?). This all ended when I turned 19 and my friend told me I couldn't draw. I still had bursts of creativity, but I stopped drawing, and I've barely picked up a pencil since.

The idea of having to hide what you're passionate about because of fear of rejection, not to mention the way she feels about her appearance and those around her, struck a chord with me that I never expected. The gorgeous guy she's into and who flirts back? Clearly not interested. The belief that if someone hits on her they must be doing so as a joke? As a teenager, I often assumed that anyone who spoke to me was mid-way through a game of "Pull the Pig". Teasing me, mocking me and playing a joke at the expense of my self-esteem.

Of course, it all works okay in the end. Her career soars, she connects with her parents and (obviously) gets the guy. All things that would normally have me scoffing in disgust, but instead, I found myself tearing up.

I'm not going to say that I burst into sobs thinking that just because this one character in a work of fiction found love and success it automatically means I will too, in fact, it was quite the opposite. Even at the end, her constant worry about her love life and self-deprecation was a MASSIVE pain in the balls. Reading it was like reading my thoughts in book form and made me realise how irritating, and wrong, my thinking process really is.

The other books I've read have been quite diverse. I've discovered complete surprises, unknown genres, and things that I'd happily forget I'd ever read. As with Without a Hitch, this is great for someone who loves a bit of chick-lit, but, luckily, it has far more depth. 9/10

xXx

Jessica, you're being a fucktard

I'm in a situation at the moment that's draining my confidence faster than cum leaving a virgin's penis when he first ejaculates on his high school girlfriend. I'm crying in the middle of the day, drowning in anxiety and altogether I'm just fucking miserable.

It's shit.

Thing is, I'm ALLOWING this bs to happen. I'm sitting back and accepting the world making me feel like this when, in reality, I shouldn't be. If I can put a rapist in prison, I can mother fucking well stand up for my cunting self. I'm so so done with feeling like this.

When it comes to self-confidence, my high score has never been great. Hours spent as a teenager screeching at my reflection begging for an answer to why I was so ugly, carving the word fat into my arm, getting cunted and fucking random strangers in exchange for a shred of recognition that would up my esteem nothing more than a hair. It's not something I'm used to having but now I've had it, I miss it.

I don't remember the last time I felt so insecure. Of all the amazing things I've done this one has me on the tip of relapse central. I even had some fun abusing laxatives yesterday, thankfully I managed to avoid shitting myself but the risk was there.

My point is, I'm not doing this anymore, I refuse to do this. I'm an amazing woman who has conquered so much, fuck off am I going to let this shit beat me.

Stay tuned.

xXx 

Why I'm Always Tired

I went on a couple of dates with a guy recently who kept commenting on the fact that I'm always tired, and he's right, I am always tired. If I'm yawning in your face or looking dozy af in front of you it's not because I'm bored (well it sometimes is) but because I'm exhausted, but I swear I have very good reasons.

My meds 

Whilst there are few connections between the medication I take and tiredness, the combination of the two drives me balls deep into exhaustion 24 hours a day. I take a lot of very strong medication, I take it regularly, and it drains the life out of me like a mother bitch, but this really isn't something I can control. I've been on far stronger medication in the past that made it even worse (16 hours of sleep a day is pretty impressive) but I'd choose to be able to semi-function as a member of society over tiredness every day of the week.


Pain

Thanks to my dad's side of the family, I have very severe hypermobility. This coupled with scoliosis and a trapped nerve to the left of my lower back, means I spend a lot of my time in extreme pain. This not only means that, when I do sleep, I don't sleep well because lying on my side hurts my joints, but also that being in pain all the time is really fucking draining. I take regular painkillers and bath myself in pain-killing gel when it gets really bad but, understandably, my doctor doesn't want to prescribe me anything stronger. Unfortunately, I just have to suck it up and get on with things.

BPD

You know how slow your laptop runs when you have 85 million tabs open at once? That's how my brain works. Constantly jumping from one emotion to the other means my brain is constantly working on overdrive and it sucks the life out of me. One of the classic symptoms of depression is not being able to get out of bed in the mornings, while a classic symptom of having BPD is having an emotional compass that runs a mile a minute. Sometimes it calms down enabling me to feel relatively normal, and sometimes I have to sleep for 24 hours in a row. No amount of medication is going to fix this, so I just have to let it live.

So really, as you can see, being tired is one of the few things in life that really isn't my fault.

Honest.

xXx

Foreign settings – pitfalls to avoid, Guest Post by Katharine Johnson

This will be the third book tour I'm taking part in, and I'm still really enjoying them. Instead of writing my own review, I've been sent a guest post by Kathrine Johnson, author of The Secret. Here's what she had to say about writing about different countries.

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Foreign settings – pitfalls to avoid

As a reader, I’m often drawn to books set in other countries. I love to feel transported somewhere different, whether it’s revisiting a place I’ve been to or discovering more about one I haven’t.

In some ways having an exotic location can be a gift for the writer. 

But when I decided to set two of my books in Italy I found it also presented a number of challenges. 

Make sure it’s accurate

How realistically can you depict a country that’s not your own? I worried about this quite a lot as I’m not Italian so what qualified me to write about it? 

On the other hand, I think sometimes it helps to be an outsider because you observe things in a different way, noticing things that people who are used to their surroundings might not notice. Also, I love history and it was the wartime history of Tuscany that drew me to writing The Secret, sparked by conversations I had with locals but backed up by a lot of reading.

If you’re going to mention real places you need to make sure readers who know these well won’t be able to catch you out on things like how long it takes to walk from the station to the cathedral or what scenery you pass on your way from the airport. If you haven’t been or can’t remember it’s worth asking in an online group.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Italy and have had a home in the Lucca province for 15 years. We spend as much time there as we can and always speak Italian with our neighbours. 

For me, it helped that The Silence and The Secret which has just been published (June 2018) are both set in a fictional village. While Santa Zita isn’t based on any single real location it’s inspired by many of the mountain villages close to my home. I’ve taken lots of photos and videos when exploring and made notes to help me with descriptions later for my fictional village.

But even then you have to be careful to remember where things are – you can’t have buildings moving about. I sketched a map of the village with the bar, restaurant, school, church, different characters’ homes and Villa Leonida so I could remember where they were.

What if you haven’t been to the country? I’ve read books written by people who’ve never been to the location they write about or who’ve only been for a short holiday but are nonetheless totally convincing. I think this is partly because of the strength of the story but must also be due to research. We’re very lucky these days to be able to do so much research online. Watching videos and old film clips can also be very helpful.

Too much description

But how much description should you include? How do you bring the setting alive without making the story sound like a guidebook? I’m sure there are lots of different views on this and it’s impossible to please everyone. People read for different reasons – some buy a book because of its location whereas others are more interested in the story and are less interested in where it’s set.

My feeling is that a book that’s marketed for its setting can carry a bit more description than usual but the really hard thing is making it feel incidental. An early draft of the opening for The Secret which I had critiqued had too much exposition so I’ve cut this down as much as I could and tried to convey the setting in a few words here and there to anchor a scene rather than long passages which take people out of the story.

Get the language right

We’ve probably all winced at a wrongly spelled word or inaccurate foreign phrase in a novel. Apart from looking unprofessional, it undermines the reader’s confidence in the storyteller. If you don’t know a native speaker to check your language you’re sure to find one in an online writers or readers group. 

But how many foreign words should you include? This is another really hard one because if you use too much it can just look like you’re showing off and put off readers who don’t have time to look up a translation. Some readers would also feel patronized if translations were given for words they consider obvious so it’s worth testing these out on friends. I decided to use foreign words such as ‘piazza’ and ‘gelateria’ which are easily understood and give a sense of place but keep the Italian speech to a minimum.

Something I find it quite odd as a reader is when a character delivers a speech in perfect English and ends with si? As though they wouldn’t know such a basic word as ‘yes’.

And then there’s the foreign accent – do you need it? Again people will have different opinions but as a reader, I don’t generally like accents to be written down – I’d rather imagine them myself. While an Italian speakinga likea thees might work in a funny book or scene, it can sound a bit ridiculous or even offensive in a more serious story which is why I decided against using accents in my books.

Avoiding cultural clichés 

Another difficult line to tread – you want to make your book feel real and you want to give your readers a flavour of the country but without resorting to stereotypes, which might even appear racist. 

So there are dozens of potential hazards to avoid when writing about another country but I’ve really enjoyed writing about the secrets of Villa Leonida and I hope people enjoy reading about them. 

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You can find Katherine and her books here: 

Facebook www.facebook.com/Katharinejohnsonauthor

Twitter twitter.com/@kjohnsonwrites

Website/blog Katy’s Writing Coffee Shop  katyjohnsonblog.wordpress.com

mybook.to/thesecretjohnson

The Silence https://mybook.to/TheSilence

Lies, Mistakes and Misunderstandings mybook.to/LiesMM

xXx

I'm sorry, it seems I've lost my hard on

Fight Club is one of those films that everyone watches once and then feels the need to inexplicably quote for the rest of time, myself included. Watching Edward Norton and Brad Pitt have at it in a display of early noughties masculine despair is one of my favorite hobbies, particularly when you throw in the abandonment issue infested/suicidal train wreck female lead. It makes people happy to feel like they're fighting against Chuck Palahniuk's self-penned establishment, and so it remains the kind of film that will never go out of style.

I even have a quote from the book tattooed on my ribs, how's that for dedication.

Now, this post isn't a review of what is arguably one of Brad Pitt's finest pieces of work, despite the two obvious flaws it is undeniably a great film (Meatloaf where's a shirt when the third rule of Fight Club is no shirts and no shoes and you can die from insomnia.) Instead, it's a conversation about one of its more iconic quotes, mostly because people like to feel scandalous every once in a while.

I know I'm self-bashing harder than a teenager with a Victoria Secret catalog here, so calm your tits with the eye-rolling and the claims of hypocrisy for a moment.

The line is 'self-improvement is masturbation" which, by default, in my opinion, means that self-deprecation is a massive boner killer, and this is what's on my mind today.

We all have insecurities, in the same way, we all breathe, its part of how being human works, but nothing is cringing me out more atm than people creaming their pants over someone else's success by putting themselves down. "Oh you did this amazing thing today when all I did was XYZ" or "Oh my God I wish I had a figure like yours." Seriously, people, you're making my clit shrink.

The thing with these kinds of posts is that, aside from being as common on social media as a bottle blonde in Primark, they are so fucking embarrassing. What exactly are these posters expecting to happen? That they'll be miraculously thrown a compliment that they can jizz over for years to come? Or that they'll magically transform into the person who's ass they're sucking and therefore all their cringe-worthy comments will become irrelevant. Everyone has issues, stop acting like you're special and play along like everyone else, you're giving me frown lines.

Perhaps it's time for more coffee...
xXx