No Christmas for me

I mean it: no Christmas for me. To those of you who have read my book Excuse me, where is the exit? know already, that I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas; far too stressfull and most families end up drunk or fighting or both. I prefer to use the time and -- for once -- peace in the house to get some work done.

How can you not like Christmas, you wonder? Well, apart from the fact that I'm not religious, I think it's fake and spiralled out of control, into a commercial day. Nothing's about love and sharing anymore, instead it's about who's got the biggest, most expensive presents. The charities run riot and fall over each other in the supermarkets to appeal to the good heart of people. I personally think people who have much more than others should share when they can, on every day of the year. If all who have more would think about those who have nothing every day of the year, the world would be a better place.

Many say: oh it's just for the children. Yes, it's nice to have the Christmas tree and have the children sitting on Father Christmas's knee, but why do they need all the masses of presents from their parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles? To me, that's training them from an early age that Christmas means a lot of presents. It trains them to become materialistic.I don't think that's the meaning of the fest.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of getting together, sharing food, wine, love and laughter, but which family really has these idyllic days? In many families it's pure stress, mother spends all day in the kitchen, kids come home, eat, take their presents and leave for the party with friends.

I wonder how many people are actually out there, celebrating what they have in each other. I personally love surprising people on any time of the year, by giving them a little something as well as telling them how much they mean to me.

Sweet & Sour Lentils gone wrong

Recently, luck walked out on me, and in a hurry to get away it must have stumbled over the cable of my fridge freezer, pulling the plug. When I came home with a bag full of shopping, I found the food in my freezer defrosted and had to throw away quite a bit, the rest is going to be used in a cooking marathon over the next few days.
Today, I decided to use the bacon and duck breast; to go with it, I thought sweet & sour lentils would be a great idea. And as I'm a bit of a Blumenthal, always trying new things, I added apples to the lentils.
Here's the thing: if you ever have people coming round your house and you want it to be their last visit here's the recipe that'll make sure of it:


I used: 
soaked green lentils
half a red onion (chopped)
three slices of smoked bacon (diced)
a small apple (chopped)
a far too generous amount of vinegar (it wasn't on purpose, I swear)
an equally good amount of honey to make it look like you know what you're doing
vegetable stock

Sweat the onions and bacon in some oil, add the lentils and apples, cover with the stock, then let it simmer until the fluid is gone. Turn the heat off when you put the meat in the pan.

Score the skin of the duck breast, season with salt and pepper. Heat a pan with a bit of oil, then put the breast in the pan, skin side down. Fry for about two or three minutes, turn the heat down to medium. Turn the breast and leave it for another three minutes. Depending on the thickness and how you like it, keep turning until ready. Let it rest for a minute or two, put the lentils onto plates, slice the breast and place it on the lentils, decorate with whatever you like. Voila!

Looks brilliant, but taste vile, trust me. Not the breast, but the lentils. Just watch your visitors' faces as their eyes water from the sharp sting of the vinegar and smile.

Tip: cook the lentils the same way, but without the bacon, vinegar and honey and you're in for a treat :-)

Pass me the tissues, please.

When I logged into my e-mail account today, I found a rather complimentary letter from a guy who said he enjoyed my blog immensely. Ah, I thought, that's something nice to wake up. then, when I read on, my smile dissolved. It seems that with so many bloggers, the job directories are catching up, or better people who try to make money like the big jobsites like monster, stepstone and the like. They contact bloggers with a sob story to get them to link to their sites. For free of course. Legit companies have set aside a certain budget for advertising and won't get in touch with private bloggers. This particular company is registerd in Cyprus, so it says in the e-mail. I didn't bother to check. I've had quite a few e-mails of this kind in the past and I wonder how many people fell for it. This one was so great, I had to share it.

Excerpts of the e-mail:

"I just want to thank you for your wonderful blog."

Here is where my smile appeared.

"I read the post "Newsletter: return to sender" and then I spent another hour on your blog by reading your posts with pleasure :) Every article is interesting and easy to read."

Oh, oh, oh, you're going to offer me a freelance job as a content writer, aren't you? I thought, excited about the prospects to have some extra money doing something I love. Perhaps even at a good rate. I read on

"I really like the "I love my flat, but not the neighbours"."

Really? I'd like to know why? It's nothing more than a boring list of events and it ends in me saying that it's taking a toll on my health. You're rather weird, you know that?

"I work for Jooble company, we aggregate job adverts around the world."

Right, and what has that to do with my -- as you say -- wonderful blog? Now out with the job offer. Chop Chop!

"My job is to persuade bloggers to link to our site."

I'm confused you signed off as 'account manager'. But that aside: I'm guessing this is not a job offer but you'll try to 'persuade' me now?

"I really love my job! We have a friendly team and good management, but unfortunately I have no idea how to convince a blogger to link to us, I'm afraid I might lose my job because of it :("

Awww. You poor thing. Seems like your blogger persuasion skills are non-existent then?

"And that is why, instead of sending letters to thousands of different blogs, I am reading yours."

Are you saying, my little blog will make up for thousands of different blogs in the search engines? Wow, that's brilliant. Let's get down to business. £500 a months for an advertising link on my blog? Come on, your company can write it off next April.

"Our site is really cool, it can greatly help hundreds of people to find jobs."

Great, so why are you not trying to find a suitable job for yourself then?

My offer stands, you pay me £500 each month and I'll put a link to your company's website. Deal? Let me know when you're up for it. You have my e-mail.

Best,

Stella Deleuze

PS: Don't tell a blogger you spent over an hour reading his or her blog. I have an insight as to how long visitors stay, what they looked at and where they came from.

Please do not disturb: my iguana, my king

This was just too cute I had to share. After a relaxed doze on his top shelf he came down for a bit of a cheek rub. He loves it. But first things first: I fed him some spring greens, holding the huge leaves, so he can -- like they do in nature -- perforate and rip pieces off. He looked rather happy munching away.

Then, he decided it's time for a massage. Since he normally doesn't enjoy being touched, these rare occasions need to be savoured. As soon as I stroked his cheek, he dropped his feet and melted into the cork-bark.

 If an iguana does that when you touch it, he's definitely relaxed. ------------------------->









 See the back leg stretched, a good sign.

You can see he enjoyed it. After five minutes, though, he had enough and buggered off. :-)

Man I love this animal, with all his faults and troubles and even with all the aggressions, these are the rewarding moments.

Self-publishing: it's crucial to be realistic

I read it more and more on writers' websites that authors, being fed up with getting rejection after rejection, are eager to self-publish. Often accompanied by the words 'I've heard so much about all the success stories, I'm thinking about it, too.'

As much as I support self-publishing at some point, I can't help but wonder how they define 'success'. Would they call one book a week a success or maybe one book a day, perhaps ten books a day? And I wonder if they know how little they get from each sale. Unless they start with a novel at $2.99, which is what you need to have to receive 70% royalties, but readers are more reluctant to buy. If you price it lower, you might get more sales, in fact you have to make many more sales to have the same royalties you'd get from one sale with $2.99 (about £2, I think)

I had priced my novel at 99c to start with and sold 65 in the first month. I then put the price to $3.49/£2.50 and the sales dropped drastically. Might be the subject matter (paranormal romantic comedy), but it could easily be down to pricing.
Reviews from independent blogs didn't seem to boost sales either. Now don't understand this as a moan; I've always said, you never know if a book sells or not; despite good reviews readers didn't exactly queue to buy the book. It's just something one has to accept. I will release the sequel to No Wings Attached in Janurary and will see how it picks up and if it picks up, if it will push the first book's sales, too. If not, then there's not much I can do other than writing them off as 'good books, but nobody wants to read them'.
Unless you couldn't care less about sales, for most of us self-publishing is a full time job; the press release, the plugging, the guest appearances, interviews, blogging, give-aways, talks, signings (if you have paperbacks), blog tours, etc. Marketing isn't to be taken lightly, because it's crucial to selling, unless you have a highly commercial book in a popular genre, like Thriller, for instance. Then it might pick up without you doing anything, especially if it's of good quality.

My short stories have been rather consistent in sales, I had them on a low price from the beginning and they have been perceived well by readers, which I'm glad for. Still, I personally wouldn't call rougly over 3500 sales (kindle only) since March as successful -- others might disagree -- but to me success begins if I sell about 1000+ in a month, because that's when your book is visible in the Amazon charts.

I think the sales figures often sound much better than they actually are. I receive 30% of each sale for 86p. Again, I'm not complaining, it's not a whinge, I'm just trying to bring across the reality of self-publishing to those who are dreaming. Hocking, Locke, Leather and the likes are the exeptions of the rule. Certainly, there are a few inbetween who sold over 10k or more books, which is fantastic, but the majority of authors struggle in the lower ranks, competing against the vast amount of new authors who release their books daily.

My advice is to be realistic, don't expect anything and if success comes around the corner by surprise, you will be more able to enjoy it.

Note: I'm refering to amazon kindle and smashwords here, as I don't have experienced B&N yet. Smashwords, to me, has not been proven the right platform, which might be due to less promotion because I have my main sales through Amazon.

Newsletter: return to sender

Yes, that's another social media rant. Recently, I started to receive e-mails from several review sites and other people I've been in touch with. Somehow they seem to think it's okay to add me to their mailing list  to update me on their bowel movements. Guess what? It's not! What makes you think I am so bored that I need to read several blog posts a day, dear Sender? Hm? Care to explain?
Though I do understand that reviewers or authors want to gather a solid following and visitors who come regularly to read their offerings, I find it rather annoying to be bombarded with e-mails, especially if I didn't sign up for it. Marketing is important, but certainly not that way. In fact it's the easiest way to get rid of me. If I work with a review blog, I'm all up for posting the links, on twitter, on facebook on other platforms; I do want to help spreading the word, but if you force me to read your stuff, I'm less inclined to be honest. Yes, and I have to admit that even your chirpy 'Hello, it's me again' fails to make me smile.
Almost every site or blog has the option of an RSS feed or other subscription buttons, don't you think I'm intelligent enough to click on it, or fill in my e-mail address if I wanted to receive updates? Just a suggestions.
There is a difference between targeting your market and spamming and I consider receiving e-mails I didn't ask for as spam.

Especially you, Review bloggers. You see, the time I spend clicking through the process of unsubscribing, I could have read your post and be on the way to comment or I could have tweeted about it, if I found it be tweet-worthy. But please tell me why I would want to tweet a review of a book I didn't even read? Maybe I wouldn't like the book and then I tweeted something in the world wide web, and people who trust my taste, go and buy the book and are bitterly disappointed if they don't like it, blaming me. Or is the purpose of your e-mail a try to sell me the book? Well, if I was short on reads, I would know where to go since I have your site somewhere in my favourites.

I'm an author, not a reader. Maybe you should think about who your audience is. Surely it's not the authors whose books you agreed to review? I mean, I'm a reader, too, but mainly an author, so why do you pester me with your e-mails about the newest reviews? Or did I misunderstand? Did asking you if you want to review my book entail a life-long subscription with your site?
If that's the case, I'd rather not have my book reviewed by you. You see, I thought you want to reach readers, because only readers will make you big and only readers are important to us authors. For some reason, I find you got the wrong end of the stick.

But be assured, the next time I receive an e-mail from you, I'll hit the unsubscribe button until I have my peace back.

I love my flat, but not the neighbours

Some of you might know, or even be fed up with my constant complaints about my upstairs neighbours; let me tell you one thing: if anyone has a right to be fed up, then it's me. Why?

Okay here's what happened:

In August 2009, two girls moved into the flat upstairs and from then on my life was filled with terror. One of the girls began to work in a pub around the corner and regularly brought her new friends home after work; bags filled with bottles banging against my door when they entered their flat at 2am, a herd of elephants stomping up the stairs and since they were drunk, they turned up the volume of the music, shouted, laughed loudly, etc. At the weekends, she would have parties with about 30 people, who constantly went up and down, past my flat, making it impossible to work, to read, to sleep, in short: to live. I tried talking to them, stood in their flat at 3am, then 4am and 5am to tell them to turn down the volume again and even asked her to come down to 'hear' from my perspective. It didn't help. When the other girl moved out in March this year (2011) my landlady, to whom I complained regularly, got rid of the noisy girl and I had peace for a month.

In April, the next pair of girls moved in. I'll never forget that day. It was a Sunday. We quickly said hello when I heard all the rumbling and stomping in the hallway and they said they'd come to introduce themselves properly. Okay, I thought, that's a good start. When I wanted to visit my friend I found the handlebar of my bike so heavily moved, that I couldn't use my bike. After trying to re-adjust it, I went upstairs to ask for help. Reluctantly, the one guy sitting in their living room came to help. Arseholes! was what I thought and I knew they woudn't be any different to the last girl. That bike is my property and if you don't tell me to remove it for the duration of the move, then, at least make sure, you won't damage it!

Only one week after they moved in, on a Sunday, I had to knock at their door heavily at 0.30am. Reason: they were wrestling upstairs, throwing each other onto the floor, shouting, screaming, etc. Everything in my flat vibrated. A guy came downstairs talking to me. Odd since it's girls who rented the flat. He apologised and said they'll keep it down. Yeah, right!
At 1.30 am I knocked again, this time I was furious. I knocked about fifteen minutes -- actually, I heftily banged my boot against their door. Finally, the guy opened again and I blew off. Then, one of the girls came down and told me I'm rude to ask them to go a level higher where I won't hear them. And if I couldn't bear the noise I should move out! Me? Rude? Okay, I didn't ask them friendly anymore, but then I don't think I needed to since I told them an hour beforehand that they're disturbing me with their behaviour.

From then on, I've been disturbed frequently, in fact, if they are at home, I'm always disturbed. They come home late at night, having people around and sit upstairs shouting, stomping, having everything in my flat vibrating. They also slam the doors daily. The concept of closing them without slamming is new to them, it seems.
This house was not build to be separated as flats, it was a family home, and was converted into two flats. What's really bad is that they didn't seem to sound-proof the house. It's a timber-framed house, which means every door slamming will travel through my flat. Even if they slam the door downstairs. I have no idea what they're doing upstairs, but Thursday I was ready to kill. For 12 hours one of them was stomping upstairs. Back and forth, back and forth. I felt like sitting in a carton and someone drummed on it constantly and I had no way to escape. When they are at home, they are constantly moving around. Okay, it's what they do, but can't you move around without interfering with other people's life? I have laminated flooring and even when I have visitors, nothing vibrates when they go to the loo or kitchen briefly. It feels as if they are stomping their barefoot heels on the floor, sending vibrations down to my flat. The glass in the vivarium is actually rattling. They even wake the iguana occasionally,  so do they wake me and I sleep with earplugs. One night was particularly bad. They thought it's funny to sing loudly at 4am on a Monday morning.

I've tried to explain it to them in a friendly way, I've complained numerous times to my landlady, who said she'd call them, I've been in touch with the council, who said they can't help me because it's not loud music/telly, I've spoken to anti-social behaviour who said there's nothing they could do. Frankly, I'm at the end of my tether. I have to call my landlady on a weekly basis. It'll be okay (ish) for a few days and then it begins again. I've been firm with my landlady because it's her responsibility, not mine, to make sure I can live in peace. All she does is ring them up and recently she sent a letter. They still don't change. I wish there was a law that landlords could be fined if they don't get their tenants under control. It's their flats and they make money, it's their job to keep it peaceful. But all she sees is her money. I told her it's also bad sound proofing, she doesn't want to know anything about fixing it and rather has me moving out, I think. That's the only one option I have and it saddens me. I love my flat; apart from being cosy, it's close to all shops, bus stop in front of the door. Quiet from below and to the left, mostly quiet to the right. It's just those upstairs idiots who can't graps the concept of respect. And that it's possible to be respectful shows that it's quiet from anywhere else. No parties around me, just them. And it was possible before, never had any problems until 2009 (I moved in April 2007).

What I hate the most are stupid suggestions by people who never experienced this kind of nuisance: just buy some earplugs or headphones. Yeah, so great. And you think after 2 years of terror, I didn't think of that myself? If it would work, I'd hardly complain, you get that? Or other suggestions like: just play loud music yourself at 7am. Yeah, right. Their bedrooms are a level up, above THEIR living room. It'll hardly do the job. Or: put some rotten meat in their flat or throw a stink bomb. Yeah? And how do I get into the flat? By crawling up the drain pipe outside? Very funny. Noisy and respectless neighbours aren't funny and if you don't know the situation, shut up!

After over two years of terror, I finally have to make a decision and it's a hard one, but the situation has taken its toll: my health is going downhill.

Okay, that was a very long post, I could have given more details on what I actually tried to do, but it would fill pages. Two years of pure hell isn't easy to put into a short text.

If anyone has had or still has the same problems, please feel free to comment.