Saturday 31 May 2008

Matalan

Well. Mum and I went to Matalan today. Twas interesting. Especially since part way through she needed to sit down, so I pushed her round in a wheelchair. And then she decided the nice new top I got from Primark on Thursday wasn't posh enough for a party, so she then found me another pink top, which is very nice, perhaps even nicer. The one I've got is, I admit, a little bit casual perhaps, but I like it. Anyway, that's what I've been up to so far today.

Friday 30 May 2008

Sammy



I decided to make Sammy, seeing as she's one of my all-time favourite characters. So, here she is. On the left, before she split up with Ben. On the right, after she split up with Ben.

Characters.




Ok, so here's some of my characters. I made them either yesterday or quite some time ago. First up: Terry, on the left.

Now, the next one is currently just a random character, but I quite like her, even though I have no idea who she is. She looks interesting. Maybe she's Mirror, one of the new characters from Sky Dancer. Yeh, I think that's who she is. Tell a lie, I've just realised who she is, looking at her. She's Tria, and she actually has wings, but I didn't really think the wings that were on there suited her.

Next: My zuijin, from the fantasy which never got completed, but she's an interesting character. She's called oh dear, I've forgotten what she's called. Anyway, she doesn't actually have two arms, that's just because I wasn't sure how to get rid of one of them, but oh well. So, there we go, three of my characters, just so you can get an idea of what they look like.

Sky Dancer


There's a very interesting thing going on with Sky Dancer. I've had to make a map to show all the fighting that's going on, because I'm pathetic at geography, and I need to work things out. Because everyone's trying to take over the world at once... Anyway, here's the map, assuming this works...

Thursday 29 May 2008

Whoo!! I finished Lightning Smoke!!

Yesterday, I managed to finish Lightning Smoke, which is now book four in my series, but is actually the sixth one that I've finished. Yeh, I'm not really writing them in proper chronological order. Well, I was, but then there was about a sixteen year gap or something between Broken Sky and Chain Heart, and a lot of stuff happened in it, so I figured I needed to write what happened, even though Nutmeg doesn't feature in it at all. Terry came up with a lot of surprises, and I mean a lot, who would've guessed he had such a complicated and problem-riven family history? Red chucked in a couple too, as did Sammy and Eagle. I'm telling you, secondary characters suddenly developing personalities and histories and stuff like that is dangerous and interesting. I mean, who would've thought it of that lot? Sammy was just a nice, quiet angel who I chucked in because I needed someone to go in Nutmeg's new team, she wasn't supposed to be such a fierce, completely amoral warrior, who technically isn't. Well, I won't go into that here, just for when I get published. Maybe I will though. I mean, it's not exactly like everyone's going to suddenly pour onto this blog and plough through dozens and dozens of entries to find information, and I haven't really ever used labels, so they'd end up having to read it all... Anyway, Terry was causing more problems than Sammy in this one, because Sammy is waiting a bit to reveal all her stuff. And I have a feeling this kind of intermediate spin-off sort of series about the secondary characters may get a little longer than I thought. I mean, it's already gone from one book to definitely two and I have enough ideas for three I would think, but these guys are so unpredictable, it may end up being quite a few more.

Something's up with this thing

I was on before, trying to post, and I was about to upload some pictures I'd made while entertaining next door, and the internet browser just kept randomly closing. It was odd.

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Pat (from Kenya)

On Saturday, a lady called Pat came round to our house, to see my parents, because they sent some money to the orphanage she runs, called Covenant Home, in Kenya, and she was coming to our church on Sunday, but since my mum's not allowed to come, Nicky said she was making sure mum got the chance to meet her. She's amazing. She was talking about the violence, and how it's not really gone away, it's still there, lurking below the surface, and it isn't going to take much to spark it off again. It's a totally different culture. The police and other civil servants aren't being paid, and so when the police need food, they go out and make up a couple of charges, but you can't really blame them because they're starving and desperate too. Anyway, it was really interesting, and it's incredible to listen to Pat talk about it.
Here's the website, have a look.
http://www.covenanthome.co.uk/
It's amazing what God's doing there. Because of all the violence, they needed security, and they were going to have to contribute to a kind of neighbourhood thing, when really they need all the money they've got for food, but the neighbour said that they'd put her on it without her having to pay, because of all the good she's doing for the people of Kenya.
Anyway, I'll be off now, to do some more writing, and maybe some revision at some point...

Moving stones, what fun!

Well. My dad decided it was a good idea for us to redo the garden, what with mum not being well and me having important exams soon. So today, two ton of stone arrived in the front garden. And it needs transporting to the back garden. So James and I got tasked with doing it. We have moved quite a few now. Hard work though. And James was pretty useless, so I wound up doing most of it. He kept dropping them on the grass at the front, instead of into the wheelbarrow, and of course he then couldn't pick them up. Argh! It's so annoying. I'm a lot stronger than him, so I wind up doing most of the hard work. Humph.

Monday 26 May 2008

Another Nightmare...

This one also involved an English exam. Paper 1 of English Language if you're interested. And basically, I was doing it at the same time as a science paper and it was really odd because we were in a classroom and people kept talking and I had to keep moving and I got behind with the timing and so I didn't finish. It was really awful, so I woke myself up at half four yesterday morning, put on some nice calm music, and just lay there, awake, but not really awake. And when I started falling asleep again, it came back, so I woke myself up and didn't drop off again until about seven, and then I got up at eight. Woke up at half four this morning too, mainly because of the light. Managed to get back to sleep though, which is a definite plus.

Story update

Well. I know I said Terry was being difficult last time, but that's nothing compared to what he's gone and done now. I mean, surely there's a limit to this insanity? Maybe I shouldn't let him get away with it, but it does send my story off in an interesting new direction, and it makes sense, it really does. I won't say what it is, because it really is a crucial bit of plot. Suffice to say, it has to do with his ancestors and with Zanedron. I won't say any more. Zanedron, by the way, is a very evil demon.

The iPod and the Washing Machine

Well, I had an interesting experience on Saturday, when my mum came up to my room and told me she'd just found my iPod in my blazer pocket... After it had been through the washing machine. I tried switching it on, and it didn't come on, so I figured that was it, that my little iPod nano which I've had for nearly a year now, was dead. But after looking on the internet, I figured I may as well leave it to dry for a little longer, see what happened when I plugged it in. I plugged it into my dad's computer (didn't want to damage mine if it killed it), and the screen came on, and the computer recognised it and nothing adverse seemed to happen. As far as iTunes was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, so I let it charge up and took it out. Now the screen is a little dodgy, as it won't change from what it comes on as, but it plays music. So I'm hoping it's just a little wet inside still and will sort itself out soon. Failing that, well, it doesn't matter too much, and I'm amazed it still works at all. It's a surprisingly durable little thing in all honesty... :D Let's hope I don't test its durability again though...

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Just a thought...

If I ever become a published author, I'll have to stop writing so much about my stories on here and giving it all away. It's just occurred to me that I'm supposed to be mysterious. But I like talking about my stories. No matter. Cross that bridge when I get to it. Not if. When. Because I will get published. I will.

Story update

Well. I was adding to Sky Dancer, until my angels leapt at me with a really interesting idea, which is going to turn into three books between the current third and fourth ones. It had to be three, because it was too much idea for just one, and two would screw up my sneaky pattern which nobody will ever notice, but it's there, so ha!

See if you can spot it...

Nutmeg Angel (written)
Winged Fire (written)
Broken Sky (written)
Lightning Smoke (one I'm currently working on)
Steal Faith (provisional title)
Teach Trust (provisional title, unlikely to be used, but it serves its purpose for now)
Chain Heart (written)
Twisting Fate (written)
Seeking Truth (from here on are unwritten so far, but I have ideas)
Dark Light
Cursed Hope
Shadowed Watch
Crimson Flight
Grow Life (not sure about this one)
Chase Dusk
(no idea what this one will be called, I haven't found an interesting title that fits the pattern yet)
Darkening Waters
Shimmering Soul
Thousand Worlds
Forgotten Warriors
Completed Paths.

That's a lot of books. But I will do it. Gradually. Just like I'll finish off the series about Ash, and Sky Dancer, and I'll write A Crash Course In Parachuting and yeh, I've lots to keep me busy.

Anyway, in this one I'm working on, Lightning Smoke, the characters have gone heywire. I mean, Terry was always a nice quiet guy, solid, reliable. He's been badly injured, and all sorts of stuff about his family is coming out. And then there's Eagle and force lines and what I thought was a mostly fairly predictable series (well, more predictable than some of my other books, even if plenty of random unexpected stuff did end up happening...) is suddenly just as unpredictable as Pterodactyl was. Still. It's interesting to say the least.

Nightmare...

Well, I was going to write all my dreams in here, so I figure I'd best put this one in too. It completely freaked me out, and thankfully it didn't come true--my phone went safely away into my locker...

I was in my English lit exam, and about five or ten minutes in, I realised I still had my phone. I put my hand up and said, and was told that it was too late, and made to stand in a corner for ages. Then they decided it was ok, and I could do the exam, but I had to rush like mad to get it done, and then they gave me more time so it was ok, but it wasn't, it was a really freaky dream, and I'm very, very glad it didn't come true.

English lit...

I think it went pretty well. The big question on Paddy Clarke was virtually identical to one I did as a practice, which Mrs Farrell gave me full marks for, so that was good because I just rewrote the gist of that essay. Not exactly--my memory isn't that good--but I was a bit annoyed that I forgot one of the characters names (Charles Leavy). The poem was a really nice one though, about London at two in the morning. The Blood Brothers question wasn't too hard either, so hopefully I've done fairly well. I finished a bit early, but it wasn't too bad, because I just read all the other extracts. The one from Stone Cold was really interesting. Apparently it's quite a good book, so it can go on my list of things to read over the summer.

Monday 19 May 2008

Maths...

Well. I said this morning maths'd be ok provided I didn't finish in half an hour. I did. It was an hour and a quarter exam.

Gotta go. Come back later assuming I'm not reading paddy clarke ha ha ha.

Sunday 18 May 2008

Mum's Birthday

Well, it was Mum's birthday on the eighth of May, so we all went out to Pinocios round the corner, me, James, Mum (obviously), Esther, Aunty Lynn, Uncle Mike, Daniel and Granddad and Anne. 'Twas good fun and good food.

Fire...

Yeh. I don't know how to explain this really, but I want to write it down all the same. At church this morning, Moya went up to speak, and she was saying about this conference and there's a revival going on, a revival of fire, and she was passing it on, and she said we were to all come up if we wanted her to pray fire for us, and then she said it was a double portion for the youth and I went up. It was like electricity flowing through me, and I couldn't stand up. Someone, Dianne I think, helped me to a chair, and I just sat there and couldn't move, and then I was shaking, and my hands especially were all tingly and I really want to share it with other people in my school, because it was such joy and peace and completeness, and then towards the end of the service I was just laughing and shaking still, and Dianne took me over to Lorena and Christine and we just sat there and we were laughing and laughing and just couldn't stop laughing, it was amazing.

RE Exam

It went pretty well. There was one question 'what importance does St Paul's thing on love in 1 Corinthians 13 to Christians' that I wasn't so sure about, but I figured it was the 'love is patient, love is kind' one and it turned out to be, so that's ok.

Maths tomorrow, English lit on Tuesday and Biology on Wednesday.

Monday 12 May 2008

First Exam

Think it went pretty well. My teacher said I was very relaxed and some of my answers made her laugh. Presumably that was a good thing. I think she was amused by the 'if the world was perfect, we wouldn't go to school', and the fact that I said I was energetic after eating chocolate...

I also managed to persuade my RE teacher to let me miss tomorrow's lesson for the newspaper meeting...

Saturday 10 May 2008

Story

Well, I've decided to work on Sky Dancer, because I don't think it'll work as a trilogy, so the story overall needs finishing off. Shall have to see how that goes.

Marks

Well. I got my mock results back for most of it. Chemistry was my best out of all the sciences, and Mr Benett read the marks from worst to best, and I was best in the class! Have to admit, it was a little embarrassing. Not quite as bad as English though. Apparently, my essay on the unseen poem which was exam practice, was faultless, so Mrs Farrell decided to read it out to the class. It wouldn't have been so bad if it'd been anonymous. Still, I am quite happy about that, because I didn't think I'd done amazingly in it. Just goes to show it's more technique and confidence than anything else. And I hate waffling. Although Mrs Farrell said mine was longer than Illyas' (sorry, no idea how to spell his name), she said it doesn't matter if I have the time to write that. Plus my writing is a fair bit bigger than his. Other marks, Physics I was one mark off an A*, but the grade boundaries are sooooo low, and Biology I was into an A*. Maths I did pretty well in, 64 out of 70 on the non-calculator.
Mrs Farrell's marked my story now, the one I had to do for B2 on Paper 1, and she said it was really, really good, which I'm happy about because I wasn't sure she'd like it, and she said that if I cut anything out it'd spoil it, which I was also surprised about, because there was a lot in that story. I wrote it as a blog, and it was about this girl who'd been raped on her first night out since being caught in the bomb blast during a terrorist attack in which her brother was killed. Anyway, she wasn't sure I could write it in the time, but I just have done today, I managed to write out a version of it that follows roughly the same lines as the original, in exactly half an hour, which is the amount of time we have. I quite liked that story. Maybe I'll continue it into a novel, like I kind of planned on doing, but kind of am now not sure about. I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Mrs Farrell about it on Monday. Have to see.

Exams approaching

First exam on Monday. Not looking forward to it. Just wanted time to freeze while I was at the Delirious concert last night. Still, I have two weeks, with two exams this week coming and three the following week, then a week break, and then nine exams the next week, and then the weekend to collapse and then just another four the next week. Then it's all done. And I will never have to do French again. Or physics. Even though some bits of physics are interesting. Why can't I study microbiology at A-level? Or just have a new science which deals with atoms and molecules and DNA and all the really interesting stuff that science is advancing in? I'd love to do that if it existed. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I'd have to do all three sciences to find out the really interesting stuff. Humph.

Delirious?!

It was awesome. I absolutely loved it. And now I have the new cd, and that's great too! It was really loud and leapy aroundy at times, but they did a few quieter songs too. They were playing for nearly two hours, did loads of songs, and it was amazing. I didn't know quite a lot of them, but the words were up behind them, so I sung along all the same, and it didn't really matter if I sung the wrong tune, because it was so loud nobody would've been able to tell.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Whoo!!

I finished Pterodactyl last night. It was kind of late, so I didn't come on here. But I did it! There were a couple more surprises from John, and I'm sure you'll be glad to know his rocket launcher did come in useful after all. He used it to blast a couple of Japanese helicopters out the sky. As you do.

Thursday 1 May 2008

Delirious?!

I'm going to see Delirious? in Clitheroe next Friday. I can't wait! Naomi said they'd sold out of tickets when she tried to get them on the internet last night, but I rung my Granddad and asked him to get two for me and Hil, and he managed to get some from the actual place where they're performing! Yay!!!!!!!! I know, I know, bad practice using more than one exclamation mark. But Mrs Farrell has used up to three, so I'm justified. I'm excited. I can't wait. It's going to be great, because they're an absolutely awesome band!

PE and Pen Fight!

Yesterday Naomi and I somehow managed to get into a pen fight. Apparently I started it, but Naomi definately won. Oh well. I still have pen on my hand from that. Must remember to take in a camera tomorrow.
PE was fun today too. We were doing Table Tennis, and I went with Naomi and we shared a table with Carrice and Andrea, and it was so fun. We basically played a rally game at first, then we got a bit tired so we knelt down and tried to play like that, and then we got even more tired and also slightly fed up with table tennis, so we sat on the floor and played under-table tennis, which is very, very amusing and also quite hard because of the way the school tables are. Still. 'Twas amusing. And then we played a couple of proper one on one games, and out of six games I won five! Maybe I'm not quite as terrible at it as I thought. That or I was just having an abnormally lucky day...

Cathedral

Well, it could've gone a lot worse this morning. Of course, despite sending an emergency message round yesterday to tell everyone we had to be at the Cathedral by half eight, Mr Tarney didn't start choir until ten to nine, and I had to get the bus at half seven, so I was a little peeved, and now I'm tired. But oh well. Two of the songs went badly wrong. The Agnes Dei kind of failed to start up, because we didn't actually know it very well, and in Lift Up Your Heads Oh Ye Gates we didn't quite manage to get the A... Never mind.
Mr Whyte's song at the end was good fun, plus we did nice songs which we picked. So we did Servant King, Shine Jesus Shine, and one other which I cannot remember the name of but I love and we sing it at church sometimes. Oh, I know, I'll just go look, cos I have the sheet. It was My Jesus, My Saviour, and I love that song. But the best bit was Mr Whyte's song, mainly because it was so hopelessly out of time with everything but we belted it out anyway. LOL. Couple of people were crying because it's our last ever Cathedral Service, but it doesn't feel like it's soon to me. I mean, yes I've got a leaver's book and I'm going to get everyone to write in it, but there's still a fair bit left.