Another five-star review for "The Charcoal Knots" on Amazon...

Thank you, Amazon shopper Otiselevator, whoever you are, for sharing your thoughts; there's nothing like a good review to warm a writer's heart.

"Arty S&M, you'll submit to its charms.
An all too brief but erotic and intriguing story which left this reader panting for more. You're significantly raising the bar for other writers here Imogen and I hope the sequel comes to fruition very soon. By turns romantic and stimulating it outstrips (no pun intended) a certain global bondage success story within a few pages. A sexy novella written by someone with literary ability and knowledge of creative artistry, not to mention a vivid imagination....whatever next?"

Massive blues today

I had a job interview yesterday; it went fairly well, there were no really ghastly or tough questions and everyone was friendly.  But afterwards as I was coming away, I found myself puzzling, because instead of feeling pretty cheerful about it as I would have expected, I felt really flattened.

I'd been completely in "interview mode", just fixed on giving it my best shot, remembering all the things you need to remember at an interview, all the nuances, all the subtle things about choice of words, tone of voice and so on.  I went through the whole thing working hard to keep as focussed as possible and perform to my very best.  But slowly as it went on I found myself starting to feel oddly uncomfortable. 

I couldn't pin it down for a while, and I wasn't really able to step back mentally and think "Why doesn't this feel right?" until it was over.  It took me some time to sort out why I wasn't happy, because I needed to get right out of that mental space again and look at things more coolly; and so I was a good deal of the way home before I had the first ah-ha moment.  Then gradually as I thought things through I began to see what had been so jarring. 

It would take forever to explain all the little signs I managed to put together; but basically I realised that over the course of the interview there had been a growing number of signs that the role wasn't quite what I'd thought. 

I'd got the idea, from the job description and person specification, that it was a role doing a lot of the things I used to do at Kew, at the level I used to be at, and I know I have the skills and experience for that sort of work.  But it turned out to be a different, rather lower-grade job, a basic admin support for two people at the level I used to be at; not only less well-paid but also markedly less responsible, and only using a small proportion of my core skills regularly.

I'm not quite sure how, but I had misread the job information as saying what I wanted it to say.  And I'm not sure how, but it would seem the employers had misread my application in the same way.

I'm not terribly career-minded; I don't feel slighted at the prospect of not being employed at the same grade I used to be on.  But I am concerned that this job might turn out to be a lot less interesting than the description made it sound, and a lot less involving for me.  I probably wouldn't have applied if I'd cottoned-on that it was an office junior role, rather than a front-facing customer-focussed sales role.  I'm trying to go after jobs that require my core skills, which are heavily based in customer-service, not general basic admin. 

It was a rather peculiar experience altogether.  I can analyse it till the cows come home (believe me, I'm over-analysing for England right now) but working out how this maybe happened isn't helping as much or as quickly as I'd like.  I just feel so inept, and terribly deflated; it's really depressed me to have made such a basic error of judgement.

 

I hope I don't get offered it now, because I really won't want to accept it if I am. And that thought feels pretty bleak. 

Damn it, something has to come up at some point.  Something has to.

But feeling so low and blue today has left me fighting, suddenly right on the edge of a bout of depression.  Damn it all to hell, I don't want to go there. 

The Charcoal Knots - I've had my first reviews!

Aaand the first reviews are in: 

"sooooo good... can't wait to read the rest..."

"Definitely worth a look if you like safe, sane and consensual bondage with a male sub."

"Oh my goodness *buy it buy it now*!!"

Okay, so those are comments from readers, not the TLS, but still - positive feedback warms the writer's heart! And there's a really lovely comment on Amazon as well: 

"I read this in just over 2 hours, I couldn't put it down. Erotic, evoking striking imagery, and storytelling at it's finest. You get so embroiled in Kat's artistic affair with this mystery actor, who's finally getting to act on his desires, that you truly don't want the story to end. I was very interested (you'll understand that reference when you've read it), and can only hope the author finds a way to continue the tale. The ending certainly leaves you wanting more."

Thank you to everyone who's given me feedback!  It really cheers me up to read comments like these!  I'm not expecting to make money by doing this, but it's a tremendous boost to the self-confidence, knowing that people have read my story and enjoyed it. 

In which I self-publish (with a lot of help!)

I've been planning to do this for ages, and I finally got it done.  Quite literally; I got a friend to do it for me.

I had the text, I'd created a cover, it was all ready to go.  But the technical side, so often described as "simple" and "intuitive" (one of my least-favourite buzz words!), completely defeated me.  Cue the very capable assistance of my good friend the DipGeek, who is as technically savvy as I am woefully ignorant of these things.  I couldn't have done it without her, so huge thanks are due!

So what have I published? (for reasons of space I'll refrain from using "had published for me" and similar clumsy constructions from now on).  It's this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charcoal-Knots-Stardom-success-fulfilment-ebook/dp/B01CZ6U4Q6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458019324

You may remember that several months ago I was wittering on about a couple of writing projects and saying I planned to e-publish them.  Well, this is the first of those.  It's an erotic novella about an artist seducing an actor.  It's available from Amazon.com and on Goodreads, and I even have (because Dip built me one) a facebook author page.  Which you can visit, and like.  I'll be posting updates and news there, if I have any that is. 

You'll notice if you check that out that I've published under what one might term a slight pseudonym.  All it comes down to it that The Charcoal Knots (formerly known as "If You're Interested") is pure smut, and some of my family are fairly old-fashioned about such things.  I'm shielding them, and shielding myself from having to deal with their shock and disapproval, and concern that I'm failing to seek help, and anxiety that in some way it's their fault that I grew up as a woman with sexual thoughts.  You know the saying "you pick your fights"?  Well, I'm picking my family-stressors. 

I don't expect to make money or get famous from this.  It's very likely to sink without trace, like the majority of e-books.  It's possible that almost no-one will read it.  But if it just sits on my hard drive then it's certain that no-one will read it.  If I sell thirty copies I'll make back my costs.  Anything more than that is a plus. 

The cover, incidentally, is my own work.  Hence the rather amateurish quality of the layout & graphic design.  I photographed a drawing in my sketchbook and overlaid the title on it using Microsoft Paint - pretty basic stuff.  The text is all my own work as well and all  my own proofreading - and three typos have already been flagged up to me.  At some point I'll learn how to do a new edition, and eliminate them.  But for now, there it is, my book.  My dirty book.  I am a published pornographer. 

I'd be getting more done in the marketing line right now if I weren't currently battling a horrendous cold.  It came on very suddenly and has left me feeling vile.  I ache all over and have a hacking cough - I sound like a lifelong smoker at the moment - and I can't think straight.

If I can get Dip to teach me what to do, I'll follow up on The Charcoal Knots with a few other things.  I'm working on a sequel to it, as well.  If a few people read and enjoy things I wrote, that will make me very happy.  I hope it will make them happy too.

Quick catch-up...

It hasn't been a particuarly easy few months, since I got back from Greece.  I began serious job-hunting in October, but without success as yet.  I've been depressed at how little there is out there that is both interesting and worthwhile, that would also still pay me enough.  I've found jobs that pay okay, but are either dire, or involving skills or experience I don't have; and I've found jobs that sounded great, but were only part-time or temporary, or only paid peanuts.  But the intersection of "This sounds like a good job" with "I can do all those things" and "I could live on that salary" has proved dismally elusive.

And I'm not looking for a large salary, by the way!  My core skill set, after all, is in customer service, a field we undervalue badly, and given that, I know it's unrealistic to set my hopes high.  But I'd like to earn enough to live on. 

I finally have an interview on Monday, anyway, so that's a start.  It's a job at Richmond Theatre, which would be great - and getting it would mean I was joining ATG, which could also be great.  So cross fingers for me.  It'll be good interview experience, anyway.

Meanwhile, my back-up plan was to do lots of writing while I was out of work.  But I've been struggling with that; indeed, a lot of the time I've been completely blocked.  It's nightmarish when that happens, but I've been there before and I know that all I can do is soldier on and get through it; it always does end, eventually, so it's the soldiering-on that I have to focus on.  Just recently, the last couple of weeks, there've been signs of a breakthrough on that front, which is fantastic.  I've been re-reading some of the stuff I've written in the last few years and have been pleased to find much of it is better than I remembered.  I'm working on some re-writes and using that to coax the Muse into coming back for a longer stay.

What other news?  I turned fifty in December, shock horror.  Luckily the birthday itself was fine, but the number is a bit shocking just the same. 

I've lost 25% of my body weight since last March, though, and have now stabilised at just over 12 stone (12 stone 1lb - I can't seem to shift that last little scrap!), and I feel healthier physically than I have done in years.  The doctor has even taken me off the diabetes medication for a trial period, to see how I get on with managing the condition just through diet and exercise. 

I took a touch-typing course, and am working rather slowly at trying to improve my speed and accuracy.  I'm not great yet, but I'm getting there.  Slowly slowly, as my Nana used to say. 

I've also taken up fencing.  The sport, not the garden skill.  I just finished a beginners' foil course and tonight is my first-ever time with the main club practice session.  The idea of walking in this evening and just looking for someone who'll fence a few hits with me is frankly bloody intimidating.  But I've started buying the kit, so I really can't back out now.  It's tremendous fun, anyway; I'd hate to stop.  I never thought I'd find a sport I enjoyed this much - never been a sporty type at all...

Otherwise, not much is going on.  Need to get on with the writing and find a new job.  End of update.  Ciao!

This bears repeating...

I just posted this on facebook, and glancing over it again I think it bears repeating here. I've just been reading this article and am left full of thoughts and feelings. It hits me hard, as it sums up something I've struggled with a lot over the years, especially during the last decade since turning forty.

It's been so long now since I was in a relationship that I can barely remember what it actually felt like, making those compromises and sacrifices, and playing that role of tacit care-giver that Laurie Penny writes about. I'm not sure I was ever much good at it.

I've spent years of my life regretting being single, and many sleepless nights struggling with the "what's wrong with me?" question, trying not to settle for the easy "they're all bastards" answer since it has always felt fundamentally false (not to mention mean and petty!).

I fall in love regularly just the same, no matter what's wrong with me, no matter how single I am - sweet gods, I fall in love like a very large brick dropping off a cliff, I am a heavy-weight sharp-cornered effing nightmare when I fall in love - but that falling process has been as far as it has got, for over 20 years now. There has never been a person I could actually have a real, equal relationship with, when I picked myself up at the bottom of the cliff.

Mostly they were long gone. I think maybe they ran like thunder, seeing a brick about to fall on them; and can one blame them, if so?

As time has gone by, and particularly in my forties, I've come more and more to think "Good grief, what on earth would I do if I WERE to find an equal partnership - now, when I am finally myself and have found my own life? Now when I recognise that for me the experience of 'falling in love' is primarily one of losing myself and going slightly crazy for a while?" But the knowledge that I had grown into myself and accepted who I was, which ought to have filled me with hope and certainty, proved instead to be deeply depressing, because it made me fear I was no longer fit for love.

A couple of years ago I began to get to know someone I had known by sight for several years and had always found tremendously physically attractive; and to my immense surprise, this person turned out to be really very interesting. I didn't 'fall in love' straight away as I have done in the past; the brick of my heart stayed peacefully on top of the cliff, taking pleasure as usual in the view over the English Channel. But I began enjoying someone's company simply because it was always enjoyable; this person was intelligent and articulate, kind and mature, witty, hard-working, capable, even shared some of my more esoteric tastes and hobbies and likings. Potentially, then, a good friend; but an attractive one of the opposite sex.

They were also unavailable, and not remotely interested in me as a woman. I knew this from very early on, and it actually helped a lot, in what was for me a pretty peculiar experience. Because as I went on getting to know them, I found myself thinking "IF you had been interested in me and attracted to me, and IF you had been unattached, I could actually have envisaged trying to do the drastic amount of restructuring and rebuilding of my own life that would have been necessary in order to have a relationship with you." And that idea was a hell of a shock.

It really was. Firstly simply because I'd never expected to meet anyone who made me feel that. Secondly because it brought home to me what the other side is of that feeling of being 'no longer fit for love' - the fact that I have grown into myself. I actually no longer saw my self as something I would willingly set aside for a man. I saw - I see - the possibility of adjusting my life around a relationship as something I would need to be seriously rewarded for, where for my entire previous life I had seen the relationship as a reward in itself.

Well, so I grew up. About bally time. I wish I'd been able to achieve this degree of self-knowledge and self-acceptance thirty years ago. Even twenty. But better late than never.

I'm not writing love off. I'm sure I'll fall off that cliff again in the future. It does have its benefits (for a start, I write lots of poetry when I'm 'in love' and some of it is even quite good). I hope I never land on someone and crack their head open, though.

And if someone were to come along who was as thoroughly interesting as the person I wrote about above, the one who wasn't interested in me, I can imagine contemplating whether I would be willing to dismantle my life and rebuild it to include them. Now that I know that's what it would be.

But for now, I am single, and I am no longer unhappy about it except in jest; and that is a lot.

Well, I'm back...

...but a good deal of the time I wish I were not.  My month of travelling in Greece was an extraordinary experience and I would do it all again in an instant.

I remind myself that I must be realistic about this.  Staying in rent-rooms and small hotels and eating out most of the time wasn't great for my blood sugar.  My readings got slowly less good and in the long-term I think my BG levels would probably have slipped badly.  The starting point was excellent, so slipping didn't take me into a really terrible level but by the end of week four things were noticeably worse than usual. 

A week after getting back, with my diet completely under my own control again, things are getting back to normal; so no outright damage was done, I think.  But I cannot risk burning out any more beta cells, so for that alone I would have had to come back from Greece.  Or else settle there permanently, of course.  The key problem was not being able to prepare my own food, leading to a diet with a number of things in it I wouldn't normally eat.  If I had my own kitchen then that issue wouldn't arise.

Moving on every few days was frustrating, too; in every place I went to I wanted to have more time.  That's a good kind of negative, of course.  Wishing you could get away from somewhere is a miserable state of mind; wishing you had more time does at least leave the possibility of another visit, another time.

On a more practical level, I really began to miss having a washing machine.  Not every accommodation I stayed had a basin with a plug, and scrubbing your clothes with a bit of hand soap and rinsing them out under a running tap doesn't really seem to get the dirt out.  It's been good to have really clean things to wear again.

But, ye Gods, the places I've visited, the things I've seen!  I know what a cliche it is, but my heart is full of memories I'll cherish for the rest of my life.  I've climbed the Acrocorinth.  I've swum in an ancient harbour beneath a ruined Mycenean citadel.  I've drunk from a sacred spring, and watched the new moon rise over the Isle of Pelops. 

And now I am setting myself the task of trying to write about them in more detail than I did in the blog.  The task is a bit daunting but I won't step aside from something just because of that; heavens, one would never get anything done!  I don't yet have a "proper" job; I have begun looking since I've been back, but nothing interesting has come up as yet (well, it's only been a week).  So I aim to make sure I do something useful with the large amount of free time I have at the moment.  Being back from this trip feels pretty depressing; something I looked forward-to for so long, now finished and done, and not to come again.  No job, nowhere to go, nothing to do; I must keep depression at bay, and that means work.  Which means, write.

By damn, though, this country is cold.  And damp.  And dark.  My heart and my bones are missing the brilliant light of Hellas.  "Missing" is too pallid a word, indeed; it's a fiercer emotion that that, it's a feeling that wants to cry out in pain and anger, because I have been taken from what had come to feel like my home, and left stranded instead in this chilly place where the sun hides behind rainclouds and the steady wind is icy and blows from the north... 

So now let me write and remember.