*Cartoons - subliminally attacking our children's relationships*

My husband loves cartoons. I’m not convinced he actually watches them, but uses them as a way of switching off from the world as the myriad of colours dance past his eyes. 

Husband, eldest daughter and his brother, sister and niece watching TV

I was editing this morning and glanced up to see two interesting alien characters having a conversation about love on our TV and my husband laid on the floor with his glazed eyes trained on the screen. He used to claim the children had it on, but well...we've been on our own since the beginning of the year...with Spongebob and these colourful aliens. Just sayin'.

Ooh, this is a bit different, I thought, tuning into the two dimensional drama. It was basically a scene in which a sexy lady robot had been encouraged to have feelings for a human dressed in blue lycra with pointy ears. Without ceremony and with only a hinted at apology, the blue lycra human dumped the poor sexy robot lady, with a lame excuse and an attempt at humour. The word ‘love’ was used numerously and the poor lady was left with a fried computer component, unable to process the awful rejection.

Cut to the next scene and the sexy lady robot is exacting her revenge. She’s saved the world, turned off her emotional component and is intent on ruling a group of other robot misfits as their queen. In other words, she's throwing herself into her work.

Sucks to be you, human with pointy ears in blue lycra. 

Off she flies, spitting venom and the animation of the blue guy’s face hints at guilt...but not for long.

Interesting.

So, let’s get this straight, the message to this vulnerable next generation is: when rejection comes, which it will, wrap your heart in barbed wire and wreak havoc on everyone around because you have the right.

As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, the following cartoon depicted more two dimensional people with unusual triangular faces. They were also talking about love in disturbing images.

“I don’t love my special friend anymore,” one character claimed.

“That’s ok,” said his orange friend, “cash it in and get another one.”

Oh my goodness! And we wonder what’s wrong with the world? Seriously?

Yes, as a parent I was guilty of using the TV as an unpaid babysitter while I cleaned, ironed and prepared meals as the mother of four children under four with a husband who worked odd shifts. Fortunately for me, although I didn’t think so at the time, our house was freezing during the winter months and the only place I could take my coat off was the living room, which was heated by an open fire. So when the weather outside was the wrong side of unpleasant and playing in the snow not something anyone wanted to do for more than half an hour, I sat with my cartoon-watching children and peeled potatoes into the washing up bowl and breastfed.

I’m embarrassed now when I remember thinking Johnny Bravo was more hot than jerk (yeah, I know) and that Ed, Ed and Eddie were actually funny. I sat through cartoon Spiderman and non-cartoon versions of other things which we all still remember fondly. The Queen’s Nose, The Worst Witch, yeah I had my fill. Choked off, would be more accurate.

Follow link below to see more cartoon memes

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/8d/8ded210a02269ef16b65132e791be442a7f185b8e739b749558bdc623504c96f.jpg

I can’t watch so much as a Disney movie now and dread having grandchildren that want to go to the movies instead of making brooches, painting pictures or chalking outside on the pavement to play hopscotch. But I’ll deal with it when it comes. I’ll be that grandma!

Maybe cartoon makers back when my children were young made as much effort to subliminally alter their view of life and what’s more worrying, is they probably succeeded without me realising. Would I, as an exhausted mother who probably hadn’t enjoyed an unbroken night’s sleep for four years, actually notice some cartoon character making free with my children's view of life, love and friendship?

Nobody said it would be easy

No way.

I was just glad of the chance to have my own thoughts for a moment before the next onslaught of tears, snot or poo.

What I watched this morning was worrying.

Does anyone care that the next generation is being influenced by hidden messages which attack the nature of relationship, whether it be between family, friends or potential spouses?

My girls seem to be turning out ok as adults, aren't they?

Please don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s noticed....

#parenting #mothers #kidsfun

*The Liebster Award* K T Bowes

I am very grateful to have been given a Liebster Award for blogging by the lovely Celia Kennedy. 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6965584.Celia_Kennedy/blog

Celia blogs at Woman Reinvents Self and is also the gifted author of Charlotte's Restrained, which I have read and can recommend.

The Liebster award is for new bloggers and is given among the blogging community to get to know each other and highlight a newbie. 

My blog, The Bowes Library Corner began as a safe place to express opinions about the world we live in and how we interact with it. It contains a series of different articles which are inspired by my work as an author, events in the world or in New Zealand and the struggles I see many others undertaking. Some people seem to do it really tough and my heart goes out to them, while others coast on through, unaware we all watch with green eyed jealousy. I’m attracted to libraries in a very surreal way; hence the name of the blog. When we were travelling New Zealand, I probably managed to blag my way into most of the libraries along the way and have a nose around their books. We lived in a camper van and I had no fixed abode with which to sign up for membership and I couldn’t have taken a book out even if I wanted to. But I just loved how every library looked and felt different inside, as though reflecting the character of those who ran it. It was fascinating. Books and central heating are definitely the best things ever invented.

Sometimes I blog in my corner about my novels and some particularly interesting piece of research I might have done. My all time favourite blog was an interview with my leading male in the Hana Du Rose Mysteries - Logan Du Rose. No matter what I do, I think I will always love that blog best. Other times I rant about something in life which is unfair or just plain wrong. It depends how I feel.

So, Celia has provided me with a number of questions which I will do my best to answer. Here goes.

1. What was your first blog about?

That’s embarrassing. I think I was defending my right to write on the toilet. It was for another blogger. I’m definitely not giving you the link.

2. How would you say your blog has evolved?

I think I’ve relaxed and allowed more of myself to come through. It was all a bit wooden at the start. I’m less afraid of expressing my opinion nowadays. I’m getting old enough to wear purple and spit, so I care much less about what other people say about me.

3. What do you find most satisfying about writing?

The release it gives me. If I have a bad day, I write about it and feel better. If I dislike someone, I make them a character in a novel and give them a horrid time. Karma is wonderful and they never need to know that I killed them off, gave them acne or made them run naked down the high street in a fictional world, laughing while I did it.

4. Has your blog led you in an unexpected direction?

Yes, I recently joined kiwimummyblogs.co.nz

I’m a newly nationalised Kiwi, a mother and a blogger. It’s opened up this whole other world of women for me to connect with. Blogging can be a lonely experience if nobody ever talks back, but actually interacting with other bloggers is awesome.

http://www.kiwimummyblogs.co.nz/

5. How many blogs do you read?

I get email notifications and pick and choose. I like the ones containing writing tips and often check into the ones where parents are blogging about their family struggles, because I’ve been there.

6. What grabs you about someone else’s blog and have you incorporated it into yours?

For me, I’m happy with what I blog about. It’s personal and nobody can write about things the same way I do, because they aren’t seeing through my eyes. But I do take style tips from other blogs that work really well and am interested in those that don’t work great. I like to dissect them and find out why.

7. If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you do?

Read, eat, find a designated toilet spot, read and repeat.

8. You can travel to anywhere in the world! What location came to mind?

Lincoln, England.

9. Have you been there before or would it be a new experience?

My parents are there. I haven’t seen them for a couple of years now. I would turn up on their doorstep unexpectedly and hug my mother really hard for a very long time, whilst passing tissues to my blubbering father.

10. Your blog goes viral and you are asked to vlog – would you want to?

I’d give it a go. I have an extremely funny outtake from a vlog I did for a blogger in India in which I was meant to be talking about my novel, Artifact. It took my daughter and I ages to get the seat right, the lighting as we wanted it and I had a few dummy runs. We didn’t realise until much later that the iPhone we used had been running the whole time we were fussing around. At one point I actually adjusted my underwear. Hilarious.

11. Have you ever revealed something in your blog that a loved one was surprised by? Tell us a great story!

I once said in an interview that I started writing because I was lonely and depressed after emigrating to New Zealand. I had heaps of positive feedback from other people who used writing, song writing and poetry to deal with emotional turmoil and it was really edifying. My husband never reads my blogs but this one time he did. He came to me and asked me how I felt and I was a little suspicious, wondering what he was about to drop on me. He smiled at me and walked away. Later when he asked me again, I thought I’d better investigate. Turns out he’d actually read my blog and misunderstood. He thought I always wrote when I was depressed. I’d spent the day tapping on my laptop and he thought I was miserable and harbouring some deep seated issue I couldn’t talk about. We had a very interesting conversation during which I realised that back in 2006 when we first got to New Zealand and I was really unhappy, he hadn’t actually noticed.

Thank you to Celia Kennedy for nominating me. Her novel, Charlotte’s Restrained, I read and really enjoyed.

I would like to nominate fellow author and dragon impresario, CJ Rutherford. I’m sure his Irish wit will stand him in good stead for these questions, although I should probably address them to his sidekick, Claude.

1. What time of day do you blog?

2. What’s the most controversial thing you’ve ever blogged about?

3. What’s the one thing you’ve blogged and then wished you hadn’t?

4. Who is your favourite blogger?

5. Do you find that blogging as Claude makes you braver in the things you say?

6. What is your vision for your blog?

7. What is your favourite blog topic?

8. Did you start with a particular blog style in mind or has it evolved over time?

9. Potato chips or chocolate (Colin not Claude!)

10. Who is your personal idol and would you want them to read your blog?

11. Would you ever take a blog post down if it caused offence, or would you leave it up there for posterity?

Thanks again, Celia Kennedy.

Let’s keep blogging!

#Liebster

#blogging

#amwriting

*Parent versus State - Raising Kids Shouldn't be this Hard*

As New Zealand parents rage about the two rowers from St Bede’s School being allowed to row at Karapiro, I’m left feeling somewhat confused about what the real issue is here. The media has literally had a field day, fuelling a fire which already stokes itself perfectly adequately behind the cover of most front doors in our nation.

How do we bring up our own children, when the state seems intent on undermining us at every turn?

Was the incident in which two silly boys rode an airport carousel serious enough to warrant their being dropped from a rowing team in a prestigious national secondary school event?

The answer has to be: who cares? The school rector said it was and that should be the end of it. He is after all, the man in whom the parents of St Bede’s put their trust and leave their precious darlings with on a daily basis, happy for him to perform the role in loco parentis (in place of the parent) for most of the year. So why not this day? The boys broke the terms of their contract and brought the school into disrepute. End of. All those people in the airport who had their baggage trampled by the two idiots showing off, saw the St Bede’s school uniform and turned their nose up at the kind of behaviour nice families discourage in their own children. You can imagine the scene. Decent kids from decent homes who happen to share that same uniform as those two boys, had their institution judged by anyone who saw the incident. Nice. And staff at St Bede’s who work hard to provide a wholesome education in a changing world were damned by association. Fantastic. Not!

Does it matter whether his decision was fair or reflected the punishment fitting the crime?

Again, who cares? The board of trustees believe his judgement to be sound and the parents paying the fees for their child to attend, clearly must do or they would have voted with their feet long ago. So the issue of his fairness or ability to make snap decisions is irrelevant. In fact, most of us had never heard of the poor man before last week. Now he’s the subject of a media storm in which everyone has an opinion. Yes, including me.

Now there are reports that one of the fathers misrepresented the facts in order to influence the judge’s decision, but the mistake goes back further, to his perception of his son’s wrong doing. The boy made a stupid choice about his behaviour and has to face the consequences. Doesn’t he?

As parents, we’ve all experienced that awful moment when your child runs to you ashen faced and tells you the headmaster wants to see you. We’ve all been there. Your blood runs cold as you walk back into school, going against the outward flow and clearly in trouble. My son did it to me numerous times and I would stare at the back of his head all the way up the corridor, hissing out of the side of my mouth, “What did you do?”

His version was never the same as the teacher’s. Never. There were shades of him having perhaps been at a similar event, but his take was entirely different. I wondered many times if staff might have got my child confused with another, when faced with his alternative version of events which put him nowhere near the scene. But no. We all knew he did it and he knew there would be consequences. He had to learn that when an annoying little girl in Year 4 gets in your face and refuses to stop nagging the ears off you, it’s not ok to bite her on the arm out of frustration. Life just ain’t like that, is it? It won’t wash with employers, wives or other members of your soccer team. In fact, the only people likely to accept that kind of behaviour are rugby players and my father still has the mark on his bum to prove it. Allegedly, you understand. I won’t be checking!

So how is this going to go?

The boys rowed and a nation sees they got away with it. But did they? Rowing New Zealand are now saying that selection to national teams was not based on a rower’s performance in this event, so the whole thing was a judgement based on miscommunication and supposition. It’s a mess.

What’s worse is the watching generation who now believe it doesn’t matter what those in charge decide for them. There will always be someone bigger who can turn a consequence, punishment, judgement or decision over. So do what you like and be damned.

New Zealand law dictates we can’t smack our children. It’s no longer within our jurisdiction. Some think that’s a good thing, others are left hamstringed by it. Have the statistics in child abuse changed? I don’t believe so from the reports I’ve seen. Child abusers abuse. They don’t administer a smack on the backside for running into the road. They abuse. It’s different. But the argument was fought and lost to the legislators and it’s been a done deal since my youngest daughter was ten.

So, in short, if you want to bring up decent, wholesome children, go and do it someplace else. The state says you can’t smack them when they’re little and the courts will overrule whatever disciplinary measures you put in place when they’re older.

Then all of a sudden when these same children are over the age of culpability, they’ll wind up in court and be given a prison sentence for an offence which they justified to themselves as fun, or harmless, or their given right to behave how they please.

No wonder the prisons are bursting with offenders and the courts are so overworked they can’t cope. Where does it end? Well, we all know, don’t we? But it starts with incidents like this, when someone in a position of leadership identifies a behaviour as unreasonable and administers a punishment - and the courts let them off.

As I sit shaking my head, I wish this next generation the very best of luck.

And they’re going to need it.

#parenting #itdoesntcount #teenagers

*Online strangers and abusers - Parents wake up!*

As a mother, it never ceases to amaze me how vigilant parents are in safeguarding their precious child from ‘stranger-danger’, boogie men on the short walk home, taking sweets from others that may be laced with drugs and not accepting random offers of a ride home. The principle of never change location, never be unaccounted for, always be reachable by mobile phone or average pitched shout, are as clear to this generation as it was to mine. Other people are not your friend.

Me and my sister knew to trust nobody

Until it comes to the wonderful world of the internet.

Just because our child ‘talks’ about someone as a friend, appears to know heaps about them and repeats endless snippets of veiled hero worship, does not mean they are safe people for our precious charge to be around. Nor does it mean our child really knows them or has ever met them in person. You might just assume they have. Listen harder.

My generation believed ‘strangers’ were three headed monsters with forked tails and cloven hooves, when actually they were the vaguely known man down the street who was always trying to get you to come into his kitchen for a moment to admire his cute dog.

What is a stranger for this generation?

The answer is NOBODY. There’s no such thing as a stranger. Why? Because of the internet.

The snatching of children on their way to school was prevalent in 2000’s UK when I was struggling to raise my 4 in the Midlands. I would let my 10 year old twins walk the half a mile to school provided they stayed together, talked to nobody on the way, crossed with the lollipop lady and didn’t stop in the play park. Most times I would walk behind them with my youngest daughter, taking sneeky peeks round walls, hedges and trees to make sure they were doing as I asked. I only found out recently they knew I was there and used to giggle about me with a degree of irritation.

Four times in 2005 I was greeted by the infamous ‘note’ from the headmaster falling out of the empty lunch box after school. My blood would run cold at the open letter addressed to all parents trying desperately to help their children to independence in a terrifyingly dangerous world.

‘Parents, please be aware that the police have notified us of an attempted snatching of a school child in this area. They are currently looking for a white car, last seen at.....

We ask for your vigilance in this matter...’

We went back to walking together. They knew the rules. Trust nobody.

With the internet, our children can chat to people on the other side of the world, admire their photos and share in their exciting life. How amazing they’re the same age as our child, enjoy the same sports and hobbies and have the exact same issues with girl or boyfriends as them. What an amazing coincidence and how wonderful as a parent to experience the satisfaction of a happy child with good friends to confide in.

When my children went off to a friend’s house in the UK, I either knew the parents and where they lived, or we had a frank phone conversation. As a mother I was open to such scrutiny. Why wouldn’t I be when I expected the favour returned?

But what about internet friends? How on God’s green earth can you check them out as a parent, especially a technically challenged one who has data on her phone which she has never yet worked how to use?

“Oh, I hate computers,” I hear parents say. “I can’t even programme the DVD recorder.”

Then learn!!!

It’s like when the child closes their bedroom door and peers at the laptop screen, they enter Narnia, going wherever and with whomever they like without accountability. And the hapless parent stands smiling aimlessly AND LETS THEM.

How would those same parents feel if they knew that 14 year old Bianca from Auckland, who’s been chatting to their darling Paul for six months is actually dirty Brian from round the corner, a 64 year old convicted pedophile with a long criminal history of crimes against children? He doesn’t need to go watching play parks or driving around in his car anymore. He just buys stock photos of his wonderful pretend life and invents an online persona on social media and hey presto, the poor kids come to him. (Just to clarify, there is nothing wrong with the name Brian - it’s an example, before all the Brians in Auckland get upset.)

Next time your child slams the front door with the shout, “Off to see.................. I’ll be back later!” you need to be running after them making sure you’ve actually met this friend who’s only a bus ride across town.

You can’t put your head in the sand and expect it not to happen to your child. You should be their ‘friend’ on all social media and have access to their online passwords. It’s not cruel. It’s not an invasion of their privacy. It’s your duty as a parent to protect them. If they don’t like it, that’s fine. No computer. It was the rule in our house and faced with the equivalent of internet solitary confinement, we got those passwords. My husband works in IT and is something of a guru, so my kids were convinced he could see anything they wrote. He couldn’t but it made them more careful. Maybe I shouldn’t confess that now, but I don’t think they read my blogs.

If you aren’t confident online as a parent, I’m sorry but that is no excuse. Find someone who is or take one of the free computer courses often available at local colleges. Ignorance will be no defence when you’re mopping up the aftermath of an avoidable crisis.

And don’t get me started on Kindles. Yes they’re fantastic as long as you put your ‘wise head’ on before you hand it over. It’s not just the dent an enthusiastic reader can put in your credit card either. That’s the least of your problems.

When I was researching keywords to put my teen books under, I trawled around the books in the teen categories for inspiration.

“OH MY GOODNESS!” Yeah, you really don’t want to know what I found lurking under the ‘teen’ guise, especially the free books. There were sex scenes that made my hair curl and I didn’t think that was possible. Some of it was plain disgusting. Your child’s Kindle should be registered to YOUR email address, not theirs, because you need to see the purchases. Then all you have to do is go onto Amazon, find that book title and use the ‘Look inside’ facility, where you can read the first 10% of that book. If you’re not happy with what your child or teen is purchasing, you need to have that talk. But delete that book from their device and get a refund. Yes, you can request a refund and definitely tell Amazon why you aren’t happy.

Just understand, as an author, I could potentially shove up any old rubbish with a cover and a title, fulfil all the requirements of the metadata and TELL YOUR CHILD ANYTHING I WANT through the pages of my corrupt work. I don’t. But I could.

If you’re picking up some frustration here then it’s because I’ve had one conversation too many, with parents who are happy to let their child go down the rabbit hole without following them or knowing what they do in there.

Look, I took every possible precaution to protect my children from ill doers as they grew up. I got involved in what they got interested in, I sat through boring committee meetings and spent hundreds of Saturdays doing things I really didn’t want to. I thought I’d done ok until recently, when the leader of one of my children’s clubs was prosecuted. My kids were unmolested, thank God and we were all good parents and couldn’t have stopped it happening because it was too covert.

But the internet is another story. It’s an open doorway into your child’s bedroom. Are you happy with that?

If not, learn to shut the door! Because I promise you this, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” will not comfort you when it’s all too late.

Me aged 3

#internet safety

#childabuse

#firstworldproblems

*To war or not to war - that is not the question.*

One of the hardest things I ever did as a mother was put my son on that bus down to Waiouru Army base. He was only just 17, still my little boy but he’d made his decision and it was time to let him go. It wasn’t what we wanted. I argued bitterly that he should finish Year 13, get some qualifications behind him and then make different decisions about his very precious life. He’d made his choice and the bus left at 9am one very frosty Monday, leaving behind a silent, confused family, not quite sure how to feel, but showing support the best way we knew, shaking hands waving long after the bus left the Hamilton street.

I shaved his head the Sunday night before he left. I used to shave his head when he was small because it was the easiest way to control his curly mop. As the hair fell over the side of the bath and my 17 year old exhibited the same kind of trust he had when he was 6, I remembered all the times I’d added tramlines, or a mohawk - yeah, thanks for that David Beckham.

We did a 6 hour round trip to visit him twice at Waiouru. The first time the whole family went, but the second time it was just me and my husband. Obviously he changed. He wasn’t just my wee boy anymore. He was a soldier in the New Zealand Army and proud of it. The army had the power to tell us we couldn’t take him for a coffee off the base so we crouched on wet grass along with the other subdued families and ate the food we brought with us. We were on a time limit. He belonged to them now, not us. They controlled what we were allowed to give him, post to him, say to him.

I grew up in the British Air Force. My life was always linked to the great institution of war in one way or another. It was in my blood. Both grandfathers served in the British Army and my grandmother was a drill sergeant during the war. Both my parents served and it was just the way things were. One minute we could be a happy family of 4, minding our own business and living our lives and the next, my father could be  on the next bus or train to wherever. At the age of 4 I told my teacher my father had gone to Northern Ireland to be killed. At the age of 16 when he shipped out to the Falklands, I was old enough not to say it, but still thought it.

My son did his time and somewhere along the line he stopped being my wee boy and grew up. He wasn’t just the fun loving soccer kid, he was a killing machine who knew things before the age of 20 that I’d rather he didn’t. He’s at university now, working part-time as a barista to fund himself but sometimes I see that look in his eye and know he misses it, the camaraderie, the belonging, the common purpose.

I just watched the Q+A debate on TV about whether or not NZ should get embroiled in the war unfolding in the rest of the world. I don’t know the answer. I think it’s really easy to sit in an armchair and make huge declarations about what’s going on overseas and wax lyrical about whether we should or should not commit to a costly involvement. I don’t pretend to be any kind of political commentator. I’m just someone’s mum. And I know the private cost for a woman somewhere will not just be financial.

I don’t know the answer. I do know however that my son is still within his recall period and one day, I may be a victim of a political decision. There are many people with opinions about what should and could happen, just like there’s been for every war over the last millennia. We’ve all seen the romanticised movies, but we’ve also watched the horrific documentaries. When politicians comment, I want to hear them do it with an understanding of a mother’s perspective, not just run into something blindly, like the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ fiasco undertaken by the British a decade ago. Good men gave their lives to find weapons that never existed, embroiled in something far deeper than they ever expected.

There needs to be a goal and a resolution, an outcome that is more than just blindly following America and Europe.

There has to be good reason to take these women’s sons and throw their lives away with a nod or handshake. 

Wilfred Owen said it before his death on November 4th 1918, 7 days before armistice. But it was dramatic irony, aimed at the cigar smoking officers who sent him to die in the trenches. 'Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.' 

#war #mothers #mothersofsoldiers

*Last One Out's a Cissy - releasing your children into the wild.*

So, despite having got out of hospital exactly a week ago after gallbladder surgery, I still made the 5 hour journey to Palmerston North, to take my last child of 4 to university there. I had to. That’s what mummies do!

She was ready to go, there’s no doubt about that. She made free with my car and my house and definitely started to win the unwinnable arguments. It was time.

The journey was painful and long. I couldn’t lay my seat down because my husband’s enormous car wasn’t quite big enough to fit in a year’s worth of crap and my daughter’s worldly belongings jammed my seat in an upright position. It also spilled over into her sister’s car, some kilometres behind us on the Desert Road as the two of them bopped and swayed to something jaunty on the stereo, which thank goodness I was spared. I could see their heads bobbing in the side mirrors.

A running race in Taupo delayed us by enough that we couldn’t quite make it to Taihape before my bladder exploded so Waiouru it was. I spent some time in the toilet at the garage mending one of my sutured wounds with a Band Aid, as you do. Mummy power and all that. But all too soon it was Palmerston North and the Massey University Campus. Daughter number 2, as she’s loving called, met us there with her boyfriend as she’s in her 3rd year at Massey and went through this a few years ago. We unloaded my husband’s car and Daughter number 1’s car, while Daughter number 3 ran around like a headless chicken, eyeing the other newbie students like a rabbit in the headlights. “I’ll never make any friends,” she repeated on a loop, as the rest of us fended off the terrified teens who lurched for human contact, abandoned by their parents only hours before.

"Say 'hi' to everyone," they were probably told, "and you'll make friends." Walls, doors, other people's parents, siblings, their car, their luggage. All with that crazed look in their eyes. They'll all be fine once they stop trying so hard.

We got home a couple of hours ago. I adore my husband and we will be celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary tomorrow. So why then does my house feel so empty and soulless? Her room is stripped bare as she’s taken everything with her. I really thought I’d be fine. My son was barely 17 when he left for the army and I cried for a full day and scrubbed his room until it shone, like a psychotic disinfectant queen. Since then I’ve had my older 3 coming and going like Zebedee on steroids, Canada, England, home, flatting, going, going, gone...

When I look back, producing 4 bouncing babies in 4 years flat was a miracle feat, even if I did chuck twins in there just to show off. There were times when I thought I wouldn't make it out the other end alive. There's a pitiful video of me sat drowned in babies on my eldest daughter's 4th birthday and I say very sorrowfully, "I think you lot will have me dead by the time I'm 30!" And there were times when I believed it and probably welcomed the idea of a permanent nap amidst all the crazy.

But my youngest feels so final. She drove me to work so I could check emails on my phone and we swapped at her school. I’ve stupidly left the alarm on my phone to remind me to collect her from the bus in Ngaruawahia at 3.20pm on weekdays. Now I can’t delete it because I’ll still look at the clock and probably cry anyway. I thought it was funny all through the summer holidays when it pinged and we both laughed. Not so jolly now, is it?

She vacuumed for me on Friday. Yeah, I paid her but hey, she knew I wasn’t up to it. There are stripes on the rug in the family room where she went forward and back with the vacuum. I don’t want to be the one to walk across them and spoil her pattern. She spent 3 weeks away leading on a horse camp over the summer. “I can do this. It’ll be fun to eat cornflakes naked in the dining room just because I can,” I valiantly told my husband. I know I won’t. I’ll be looking for my daughter to stroll in, set fire to her gluten free bread in the toaster and make free with my husband’s coveted jar of Nutella that he keeps hidden behind the boring tins of beans and sweetcorn, thinking that’s the last place she’d look. He's spent the last 9 years in NZ thinking it evaporates in the heat. Now he's gonna know.

The paddock looks empty of some horse waiting to be broken in by her, or taught some manners. Her tack shed is even swept clean with my broom that she left out in the rain. The sky looks grey tonight, like the Waikato is grieving.

Last one out is a cissy. But I find after all, the cissy is me. 

#parenting #parents #familytime 

*The Special Snowflake type of writer*

It’s hard to accept as a writer that the product of my imagination is not near perfect. It comes as a bitter blow when I actually bother to stop and listen to what my critics say.

When I first published, I was of that special breed which author Amber Dalcourt would term, ‘a special snowflake.’ I still love that expression and only wish my unique perfection was still embodied within that blissful state of oh-I’m-too-damn-wonderful-for-this-world. The first person who dared to criticise my small and flailing brainchild was spawn of the antichrist and online-shunned in all forms of social media. If only life could have stayed that simple.

Now if you’re in the game of spilling your guts onto paper or laptop for the heck of it, then scribble or type away. If all you ever expect is five star reviews and fan mail, then enjoy the adulation of family and friends and when you run out of those, let your book slide quietly to the bottom of the Amazon pond, to be given away as tombola prizes and the $5 Secret Santa every December. You go for it. And all the very best of luck to you.

I stayed within my cone of wonderfulness for a short time, until joining Book Review Depot not long after my first novel went live on Amazon. They were a game bunch, reviewing honestly and sharing criticism in genuine banter and positivity. Then came the first private message. ‘Your covers aren’t that great, love. Maybe pay someone.’

Gulp. Time stopped and I stared at the lovely photograph of my reluctant daughter standing at the fence in our paddock, surrounded by a bottle green Publisher margin my husband slapped on and a curly font you had to turn sideways to read. What was wrong with it? My chin wobbled and the bottom lip shot out.

You can stop laughing now...

I think I sulked for a day and then looked at the cover again. Yeah, fair do’s. It was a bit crap. I started experimenting and probably made it worse for a while. I remember the cover of The New Du Rose Matriarch even made me cringe for a bit there. Thank goodness I didn’t know anything about hashtags or SEO. Believe me, I couldn’t cope if I did a Google search of my author name and that popped up. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Then we got into plague words. Yep, I used them all. Then grammar, then adverbs, then overuse of the word -suddenly...ok, ok, I’m ashamed! I got PhotoShop. I started buying stock images. I listened to people. I asked their advice and yeah, I did sometimes cringe when they told me stuff I didn’t want to hear.

I’ve spent the last year writing at the same time as editing all my previous works. Being very obsessive compulsive, what gets changed in one, happens in every single one. With twelve novels to my name, I’m concerned about what will happen when I have fifty out but I’ll worry when I get there. Having got to the end of them all, someone mentioned an online writing tool. I put a single chapter of my work in progress through it and the alarm bells went off at the overuse of ‘had’ and ‘that’ so back I went again on the editing rampage.

When I wondered why my third teen book wasn’t doing so well when all the others were jumping out of the gate at an incredible rate, I asked an author friend. Demelza Carlton’s novels are international bestsellers and her pedigree is sound. So when she suggested my title of ‘Blaming the Child’, probably wasn’t relating well to teens who firstly, don’t like to be thought of as children and secondly hate the idea of blame, I had to give it some serious thought. The irony was that my husband, who doesn’t usually comment, said the same thing just a matter of hours before. So I wheeled in my teenage daughter. She postured and thought for a moment. “Yeah,” she concluded, “I wouldn’t go for that.”

At first it was painful. That darn book is listed in every single one of the other eleven. That’s a lot of changes over quite a few sales platforms. I slept on the idea overnight. When I woke, I brainstormed a bit. I chatted to other people and tossed a few suggestions around. I asked my teenager again and started changing the cover. “Na,” she said. “That’s not right. I like this better.”

It’s taken me all day to make and upload the changes. It involves so many areas I’ve had to fiddle with. But it occurred to me as I finished that instead of feeling depressed, I should feel proud. The special snowflake has melted. I’m not quite sure what that makes me; a transparent drip maybe? But it sure blesses my work, accepting the input of other people.

Not everyone is out to get me, I had to learn that early on. When more than one person tells me something, then the old adage applies; they can’t all be wrong. There are always trolls around, dishing out one star reviews like confetti, it’s an inevitable occurrence, like nits in schoolchildren. But when a few people point out something irritating or distracting in a review or forum, for goodness sake get rid of the cause. Don’t leave it to fester there and collect more negativity. Deal with it!

So after much fluffing and primping, my re-released teen book, the third in the Troubled Series.

‘A Trail of Lies.’ Buy it and enjoy!

#amwriting #amediting #writetips