Tuesday 30 July 2013

Tea For Tuesday

I suppose I should have saved this for Wordless Wednesday, but my inner punster can't be denied. I have a secret, and now it's out - I like to collect tea cups, such as this dainty Turkish tea glass. The secret, when collecting anything, is to not let others know you collect it. Otherwise you end up with loads of things be they tea cups, salt and pepper shakers, or everything and anything that has been stamped with a wolf or horse on it. Trust me on that last one.

Saturday 27 July 2013

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Last week I realized that I might have given the wrong impression with the first installment of 70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans, that it will all be about the Internet's favourite past time, snark. No, no, no. Jill Potenti is all about positive vibes and occasionally speaking in the third person. The fact is that book covers will never be so groovy again, just like children's educational television:


Why yes, that really is Morgan Freeman on The Electric Company!

Just take a look at...

The Other Side of the Sky

Arthur C. Clarke's Believe It or Not - Stories of our first outposts among the stars. Do you believe that computerizing "The Nine Billion Names of God" will put an end to our universe? What happens when aliens invade Earth after the biggest xenophobe ad campaign ever? Can man survive on a planet with only one side?
Believe it or not - astronauts have been known to use the moon as a tax shelter! Let space-age wizard Arthur C. Clarke set you straight on these and other important questions of our extraterrestrial age.

With a little more work and a shift in colour palette, this cover could easily be a proto prog rock cover. It's like the art director shrugged at the artist and said "I got nothing." Then the artist mashed together a few things and called it a night. I just love those green hands - are they Martians or zombies or...? The baby is the stuff of nightmares. And whatever do they have to do with Arthur C. Clarke stories from 1947-57. Short stories are always a personal pleasure. Sometimes too much detail becomes an info dump or needless padding. Clarke is a master at taking little moments and building great importance into them, and naturally many of these stories, like All the Time in the World have a twist ending, or, like Feathered Friend, a simple answer to an oversight. 

Upon re-reading these stories, I was pleased by how well they aged - the tone is perhaps a bit stuffy and a few things are oddly named - but human emotions never change. It's easy to forget, when the future is now, how the past thought about the future. As a child growing up in the 80s, I often wondered when "the future" would happen. Seems like it was delayed by only about thirty years. Yet it's easy to simply not know that others were thinking about the "future" as far back as the 1930s and 1940s - and laid the groundwork for the "future" to come.

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Escape From The Time Trap!

Escape From The Time Trap sounds like a work of fiction, but it's a movie or book that we have all starred in. There is no shortage of advice online to combat time traps (try Lifehacker and 43 Folders) - plus it's also the name of a 1972 time management book, The Time Trap. The key seems to be first realizing that you are the star of this story and that you need to escape from an overused plot! Every time you hear yourself say...

"When I have enough money..."

"When the kids are done school..."

"Someday I will..."

And ESPECIALLY if you say

"When the time is right..."

...you are stuck starring in Escape From The Time Trap. Trust me, there will never be a 'right' time to get started or get finished your creative project. There will only be the time you have not spent working on it. Also playing a role in Escape From The Time Trap are these antagonists cleverly disguised as:

"I'm not good enough..."

Trust me, you are good enough! It's hard to overcome fear (and fear of rejection) but feedback will only help you learn and grow. Mistakes are the fertilizer for success. Weird, but true. The road to success may look like a straight path, but really it's a twisty turny one. Make sure to surround yourself with people who will support you in your growth, and never those that will try to bring you down. The time for being "good enough" is now.

"I don't have the time..."

I was one of those people once. "Eh, I don't have time to go to the gym. I don't have time to read anymore. I'd like to be a writer, but I don't have the time." One will never Escape From The Time Trap with those kinds of excuses. The hard truths are:

You don't have time because you prioritized something else over your creative output.

and

If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.

Now, surely, no one would ask you to de-prioritize important things such as bills, family or things that make you happy or are truly important to you. But if you find yourself lacking time, keep a time journal and see where your time is going. Are there things you do out of a sense of obligation or because you've always done it? Are you passively consuming media when you could be actively creating your own? Are you giving your time away too freely to others? Have a hard time saying no (especially if you are a people pleaser)? Spending too much time on Facebook? Heh, even I will confess to playing an hour of Bejewelled when I should have been creating :-D Find out where your time is going and learn to manage it better.

Lastly, it's possible to be stuck in the most vexing maze of all - procrastination. I am a recovering procrastinator and here to tell you that you can break this habit. Pick up a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen (now!). It will change your life, even if you only practice a few of the simple habits. This book is a life preserver in a sea of tasks and priorities. My favourite habit is the "Two Minute Rule" which goes:

Can I get this thing done in two minutes or less? If “yes”, do it right now.

What do you think? Does any of this sound familiar? Helpful? Can you be the hero of Escape From The Time Trap?

Saturday 20 July 2013

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

So, when I married Jack, I also married his stuff. He is the ultimate geek and as a lady geek, we are in geek heaven most of the time. One of the times we weren't was when he unpacked his paperback collection. Pity the poor paperback - so ephemeral in its cheapness, and stinky after thirty years in a box.

"They were just throwing them out!" he said in their defence. Now of course, I love books as much as any bibliophile, but not when they were gross and smelly and falling apart.

But, ten years of marriage later, my view has softened. The time is now right to snark on old things, so here you have it - 70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans! I queued up several posts of gems from Mr. Potenti's collection to share with you! And the first one is...

Time Snake and Super Clown 

Sounds completely awesome, right? Let's see what's outside and inside...

The important new novel by the talented author of Candy Man, Vincent King, now makes its first appearance in Britain. It explores, through the eyes of a mysterious central figure, the concept of who or what is the alient among us and how do we know we all see the same thing.

As the Watcher moves through a series of times and worlds of his own, omnipotent, invulnerable, guarding the Zone against the Alien, he tries to understand why the wraiths, the fragile humans, feel no threat from the universe.

And the answer, when he finally learns it, is one which is both tragic and hopeful for the destiny of mankind.




When I saw the spine on the shelf, I pictured some crazy buddy adventure, starring two dudes named Time Snake and Superclown. So wacky 70s! Unfortunately I never made it past the first chapter because it was so awful. As far as I can tell, the Watcher is the clown, because a prostitute laughs and calls him that. Thanks to the Internet, it turns out that Vincent King was the pen name of an artist and English teacher, Rex Thomas Vinson. It looks like he only dabbled in writing in the late 60s to 70s. I should give it another try sometime - especially so I can find out if there's any relation between the story and the cover, which is pretty respectably sci-fi looking. And as you probably know, that happens a lot...and maybe next Saturday!

If you made it this far, I'd like to offer you a coupon good on Smashwords for my book. Just enter NP24K when you check out on Smashwords. Click here! Buy now! Quantities are unlimited!


Wednesday 17 July 2013

My Official Photo...

I hemmed and hawed about putting a picture of myself on profile. I try to keep my photo offline as much as possible. Way back in the day, when listicles weren't invented and no one thought lens flares were tacky, someone put up a page that was called "20 Reasons Not To Put Your Photo Online". It was some poor kid's face PhotoShopped every which way possible, including tinted yellow and distorted. No one plasters Jill Potenti's face on a horse's hiney!
I'm not happy with it, but it will have to do for now. I pictured looking like a stock photo model, looking all writerly and stuff, but I'm too shy and Mr. Potenti was in a hurry to take a nap. But I exist! You can be rest assured I'm not a bot randomly making ebooks. By the way, did you know that "robot authors" are a real a thing

Monday 15 July 2013

Hello World, I'm Jill P!

My name is Jill and I'm here to share my writing with the world! I don't want to say that I'm one of those people that have been writing since they could hold a pencil...but I kind of sort of have. I enjoyed reading and writing little stories for myself very much and kept it up as a daily habit. Then one day...I stopped writing. I don't know why. Maybe I had run out of things to say, maybe the discovery of tropes and clichés put a damper on things. Maybe even knowing that others had already covered similar themes did my motivation in.
Then I took a class on literary narratives a couple of years ago. The teacher was awesome. His schtick was to be a crusty old guy so the younger students would be interested. He was weird and it was wonderful. Once, to demonstrate spontaneity, he "accidentally" stapled his finger, which sure got the attention of the class pretty fast. I wrote an essay for a class assignment and found that I still loved the process. Really write (I got an A+). And enjoy it again!
Once the class ended, my husband, Jack, and I went on a two week trip to California. It was amazing! We saw so much and the time away from our daily grind was so refreshing. I took along my Kobo and read a short story collection by one of my favourite writers - Philip K. Dick. Some I even read out loud to Jack as we drove six hours from North to South. Somewhere along the way, along those rolling California hills, I realized that there were no stories like these with women in them. While Jack slept in (I'm an earlybird), I quickly made friends with Evernote and SwiftKey on my smartphone and started four of the five stories in my first book - Watch Out For Warden. By the time we returned home, all they needed was some polish. While on one journey, another journey began right after. You'll hear more about it, trust me!
If you made it this far, I'd like to offer you a coupon good on Smashwords for my book. Just enter NP24K when you check out on Smashwords. Click here! Buy now! Quantities are unlimited!