tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80115812891396075732024-03-13T12:32:55.111+00:00The Aten Sequence BooksWelcome to The Aten Sequence series of science fantasy books for young adults and big kids everywhere. Aten is fed up. Who would have thought that a little mistake like forgetting to fill up at the intergalactic service station would get him stuck on a sorry planet at the end of the Universe called Earth. He is desperate to leave, but needs to find huge amounts of gold to make fuel for his ship. So he plans to empty the gold vaults of Karnak Temple. After all, whatever could go wrong?
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-28575720129366814022016-12-07T11:06:00.000+00:002016-12-09T22:53:13.531+00:00Busting Through Your Creative Writing Blocks Workshop - Christmas Edition<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">To get everyone into the Christmas spirit and help spark some ideas for their writing over the festive period, at last Monday's meeting of <a href="http://www.watfordwriters.co.uk/" target="_blank">Watford Writers</a> I ran a creative writing workshop, along with Helen Nicell. The idea was to have some fun with a few writing exercises designed to burn through writing blocks and get the creative juices flowing. With the ethos of there was no right or wrong way to do the exercises and that it was about exploring ideas and expanding boundaries, much fun and hilarity was had by all.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tinsel on the Christmas Tree</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">As always, I was awed by the talent and originality shown by the short stories and poems when they were read out to the group. It was also a lesson in what can be achieved in only ten minutes when you let it flow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">I would like to thank all of the Watford Writers who came along and participated with such good humour and who willingly gave of their writing talent and creativity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">So if you are feeling stuck and need a shove to get moving with your writing, why not settle down with a piece of paper, pen and an open mind and work through the exercises we did in the Workshop?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">Please find the Workshop below:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Busting Through Your Creative Writing Blocks Workshop - Christmas Edition</u></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you have ever thought you were not
creative, are stuck on a piece of writing or cannot fill in the holes in your
plot line this is the evening for you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What are we going to do in this workshop?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">1)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Write. It is a ‘hands-on’ writing workshop so you
will have plenty of opportunities get those words on the page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">2)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There
are four separate exercises to undertake.
You will have ten minutes to complete each one, and after each will be
able to discuss and read out your work if you choose to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">3)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Remember
there is no right or wrong way to approach these exercises – they are designed
to unleash your creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Exercise
1</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What colour Christmas tinsel are you – red,
green, blue, silver or gold? Which of
the colours describes you best? Write a
piece of prose or a poem on the theme of your Christmas tinsel colour and why
it represents you? How does it make you
feel? What qualities do you share with
your colour? How do you reflect your colour out to the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Exercise
2</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">You walk into Santa’s Grotto only to find it
empty apart from the headless corpse of an Elf.
Write the story of what happens next from your point of view and in the
first person.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Exercise
3</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Think of your favourite Christmas Carol or song. Write the story of the song in prose. Who are the characters? Where is the tension and conflict? Is there a moral, political, or spiritual
message that needs to be conveyed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Exercise
4</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Think of a partner, relative or friend you
know well. Now write a story about them organising
a primary school Nativity Play from their point of view. Bring as much as you can of their character,
mannerisms and typical responses into the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">I hope you enjoyed working through these festive writing exercises.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">Happy Christmas to you all and a successful, prosperous 2017. May all your publishing dreams come true!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;">Tinsel on the Christmas Tree Image: By mattbuck (category) - Own work by mattbuck., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45902151</span></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-81855511424224504172015-12-12T11:31:00.000+00:002015-12-12T11:36:19.987+00:00A Winning Autumn! NaNoWriMo and Flash FictionSo it is nearly Christmas and what have I done? Quite a lot as happens, I've surprised even myself!<br />
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To get the bad news out of the way, the third Aten Sequence book - 'Tomb of the Golden Osiris' is still in bits on my laptop awaiting radical revision and rebuilding. A project for the dark winter nights of early 2016!<br />
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For the first time this November I participated in National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo.<br />
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The aim of this challenge is to write 50,000 words of a novel from scratch between 1st and 30th of November. <a href="https://nanowrimo.org/" target="_blank">NaNoWriMo</a> was set up to get writers writing and words on the page. The goal is to get the procrastinators amongst us to commit to their writing and produce something. Who doesn't have folders on their laptop that have the first five pages of that brilliant idea you had back in 2002 or outlines of plots? All you need at the end of the month is 50,000 words, not a revised, edited, fully polished novel - that comes later.<br />
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Like everything in life, it is probably best you have no clue what it is going to be like until you do it. I signed up, calculated I would have to write 1667 words a day and talked about it a lot. 1st November was fortuitously a Sunday, but also the morning after the night before. I managed a whopping 469 words and realised I had a challenge on my hands.<br />
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I won't lie, NaNoWriMo does take over your life for that month, but you get to know how you like to write and when, what excuses you make for not writing and how to push through when you really do not feel like it.<br />
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With a lot of support and encouragement from my friends I made it, with one day in hand and can now call my self a NaNoWriMo Winner. I also raised $313 in sponsorship, which goes to helping keep National Novel Writing Month going and run creative writing projects with young people. Thank you so much to all the amazing, generous people who sponsored me - you know who you are!<br />
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So now all I have to do to finish 'The Jackal Code' is write another 50,000 words, revise, edit, edit some more and then send it out there. A busy 2016, me thinks?<br />
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Watford Writers Flash Fiction Competition - 'Revenge'</h2>
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The flash fiction competition theme for <a href="http://www.watfordwriters.co.uk/" target="_blank">Watford Writers</a> on 7th December was no more than 300 words on the theme of 'Revenge'. There were many excellent stories entered, with some truly fiendish plots and twists. Don't upset some of these people, I'm telling you! So I was thrilled to have won first place and big congratulations to Steve Clifford and Rachael Muirhead who came second and third.<br />
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So have read and see what you think.<br />
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<b><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Christmas
Morning<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">By the time the body was taken away, the
poor sod had been dead for hours. I knew
it didn’t matter. The piece of shrapnel
that took half his head off had seen to that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It was Geordie I was worried about. Geordie, who had held the bloodied corpse to
his chest and rocked it like a baby.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘What’ll I tell his Mam?’ he’d asked with bewildered
eyes. ‘I promised I’d keep him safe.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It took the sergeant, threat of a field
punishment and hot tea laced with rum before he’d let go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘I made him join up,’ Geordie said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘Nobody’s fault, it’s this bloody war,’ I
replied. I saw the CO thread his way
down the trench to rouse the men for stand to. ‘Pick up your rifle or you’ll
cop it.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Geordie stood up and shouldered his weapon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘I’ll kill those bastards. Then his Mam will know I tried.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘Don’t talk daft! They’re soldiers, like
us. That shell was fired from miles
away.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Expecting the order to prepare for ‘morning
hate’, I looked around. The Captain was huddled with the NCO.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘A cake’s been sent over from the German
lines. They want a truce for Christmas morning.’ I heard him say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Geordie turned pale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">‘No bloody Christmas peace for them, they
killed my mate,’ he screamed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Before I could stop him, he had pulled the
pin from a grenade and scrabbled over the top.
It detonated seconds later. I wept silent tears as blood-stained debris
rained into the trench.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">His shattered body hung on the wire, lit by
the rising sun. Down the lines the German
soldiers started to sing a carol; its message of hope and love too late for
Geordie to hear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-8517478197157916022015-09-27T15:54:00.001+01:002015-09-27T15:55:48.080+01:00Introducing Rosemary Morris - Author of Historical Romances<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i><b>At Watford Writers there are many authors and poets of great talent, so let this blog post introduce you to Rosemary Morris who writes historical romance novels.</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There is a
gigantic canvas for a historical novelist to choose from. So far <a href="http://rosemarymorris.synapsenewmedia.net/index2.html" target="_blank">Rosemary Morris</a> has chosen to set her published novels in the reign of Queen Anne Stuart
1702 – 1714 and the ever popular Regency era 1811 - 1820. She is now writing
Tuesday’s Child a Regency novel and revising Proud Norman Nest set in the reign
of Edward II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-39BcMYt_pzI/VggCNcCiNVI/AAAAAAAABM0/QEcCi1Gdpz0/s1600/Rosemary%2BMorris%2B-%2BSmall%2Bphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Writer of Historical Fiction - Rosemary Morris" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-39BcMYt_pzI/VggCNcCiNVI/AAAAAAAABM0/QEcCi1Gdpz0/s1600/Rosemary%2BMorris%2B-%2BSmall%2Bphoto.jpg" title="Rosemary Morris - Historical Romance Author" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rosemary Morris - Historical Romance Author</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She chose those three periods
because each of them affected the course of history. If the Duke of Marlborough
had not won The War of Spanish Succession and The Duke of Wellington had not
defeated Napoleon at The Battle of Waterloo the history of Britain and that of
Europe would have been very different. Defeat would also have had far-reaching
consequences for the rest of the world. If Edward II had won the Battle of
Bannockburn, Robert the Bruce would have probably been killed. It is feasible
that King Edward II would have conquered Scotland and, perhaps, as it is
claimed, he would not have been murdered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The more Rosemary
reads about her chosen eras the more fascinated she becomes and the more aware
of the gulf between those periods of history and her own. She believes people who lived in the past
shared the same emotions as we do but their attitudes and way of life were in
many ways quite different to ours. One of the most striking examples is the
position of women and children in society during bygone ages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rosemary presents men
and women who are of their time, not those dressed in costume who behave like
21st century people. Of course, it is almost impossible to completely
understand our ancestors. However, through extensive research Rosemary ensures
her characters observe the social etiquette of their lives and times. If they
didn’t, they would be outcasts from society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Research of
Rosemary’s chosen eras sparks her imagination. The seeds of her novels are
sown. From them sprout the characters and events which will shape their lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rosemary Morris
was born in in Sidcup Kent. As a child, when she was not making up stories, her
head was ‘always in a book’; and she has always loved learning about history,
reading historical fiction and non-fiction. In her mind’s eye she visualises
many people who lived in past times. Eyes closed she can visualise Princess
Elizabeth sitting on the steps outside the Tower of London afraid that like her
mother, Anne Boleyn, she would be beheaded. To name a few more, there she
imagines Alfred burning the legendary cakes, the smoke from the fire stinging
his eyes, tragic but foolish Charles I, grim faced Oliver Cromwell and The
Merry Monarch, Charles II <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She can’t remember
a time when she wasn’t engaged in creative writing – particularly historical
fiction. To research, Rosemary has read dozens of non-fiction books and visited
places of interest. On a visit with a friend to Hatfield House, where Princess
Elizabeth received the news that she was Queen Elizabeth the First, they saw
Queen Anne Stuart’s Coronation chair. While they looked out over the
knot-garden, Rosemary shared anecdotes about the queen. When she and her friend
turned around a group of American tourists had gathered to listen. ‘Pass the hat
around,’ her friend joked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">While working in a
travel agency, Rosemary met her Hindu husband, who was reading law at Middle
Temple. He encouraged her to continue her education at Westminster College. In 1961, Rosemary and her husband, now a
barrister, moved to his birthplace, Kenya, where she lived from 1961 until
1982. In Africa she was privileged to see herds of elephants. She also saw
rhinos and lions besides many other animals. Besides visits to the game parks
she enjoyed the white sands and warm seas at the coast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After an attempted
coup d’état, she and four of her five children lived in an ashram in France. Rosemary
and her children enjoyed the alternative way of life and studied Sanscrit
literature. Rosemary has read and re-read the Bhagavadgita As It Is by
A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and the great epics The Mahabharat and The
Ramayan, which rival the Greek classics, and The Srimad Bhagavatam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Back in England,
Rosemary wrote historical fiction and joined the Romantic Novelists’
Association, Historical Novel Society and Watford Writers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As well as writing
historical fiction, Rosemary enjoys reading, visiting places of historical
interest, vegetarian cooking, growing organic fruit, herbs and vegetables and
creative crafts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Time spent with
her five children and their families most of whom live near her is precious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Titles of
Rosemary’s Books:-</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sunday’s Child,
False Pretences, Tangled Love, Far Beyond Rubies, The Captain and The Countess.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
novels are available as e books from MuseItUpPublishing, amazon.co.uk, Nook,
Omlit, Bookstrand Mainstream, Kobo and elsewhere. Far Beyond Rubies is also
available as paper back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
can read the first three chapters of the novels and view the book trailers on
Rosemary’s website www.rosemarymorris.co.uk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rosemary
would like to hear from you and receive your comments and reviews. She can be
contacted at: rosemarymorris@hotmail.co.uk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-65850378474782188312015-08-23T18:18:00.000+01:002015-09-10T21:44:49.558+01:00Writing With Feeling – Where is the Emotion?<div class="MsoNormal">
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I’m sure you’ve read books that, without quite knowing how
it was done, brought memories, feelings and emotions you didn’t even know you
had up to the surface to flood through you.
Books you’ve laughed with, cried with and even screamed in terror with.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They are not always the obvious books; the romantic weepy,
the slasher horror story or the slapstick comedy. They can be books about ordinary lives and
the kind of people we might know. People going about their business;
experiencing their daily small hurts and triumphs.</div>
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Written by authors who can make their words dance in a way
that speaks straight to our hearts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The best books let us learn something about ourselves. They
illuminate parts of us we might not really want to look at; allow us to feel
stuff, revisit old hurts and wounds safely in the world set out between the
pages. The tears we cry for our
fictional friends are just as cathartic, the joys we share with them just as
uplifting as those we feel for ourselves.
With books like these, when you turn the last page it’s like leaving
home and saying goodbye.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So as writers how do we go about putting the emotion back
into our writing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have to confess I am at the very beginning of this journey,
so all I can do is share the thoughts and insights I have had and what brought
me to the realisation that my writing needed more feeling, more raw life and a
bit of true grit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Writing the Aten Sequence books is fun. It is a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek romp
through science fantasy and Ancient Egypt.
So far the characters have faced some challenges, been in a bit of
danger and had their petty disputes, but there’s been nothing too heavy. And
let’s face it, there’s not a shred of evidence that our protagonist Aten even
has a heart, let alone knows how to use it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the third book, which I’m currently revising and editing,
this all changes. Something happens
which will have a major impact on the major characters; they will experience
loss, suffer grief, regret and guilt.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet when I went through the chapter that would change
everything for them and, hopefully the reader, it read with all the emotion of
a recipe posted on a cooking blog.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The words are there, the facts are there; everything the
reader needs to know about what happens and move the story along is there. But the feeling isn’t there. It’s as emotionally flat as a pancake!<o:p></o:p></div>
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So what have I done to help put the emotion into my writing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"><b> </b></span><b>Exposure</b> – as authors we might think we are writing solely
for the benefit of our readers, but I believe the most talented authors know
that they have to put themselves into their work. They have to expose themselves. Show who they are through the actions,
feelings and thoughts of their characters.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Exposure is scary; letting people see who we really are and
be honest about our feelings is hard for a lot of us. But the only emotions we have access to are
our own, so we need to use them when we are creating our characters and putting
words into their mouths. Especially, the
darker, pettier, less glorious traits we possess. </div>
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Exposure makes us feel vulnerable, but as an
author I feel you have to accept you will feel a degree of vulnerability every
time you send a manuscript out, every time you read your story out loud to an
audience or ask a friend to critique it.
Letting myself feel vulnerable like this has been a hard one for me, as
I used to hate anyone reading my writing.
But I’m having to work to get over it, or all I’ll ever have to show for
my effort is a few yellowing manuscripts at the back of a drawer.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Practice</b> – like everything you want to be good at, writing
is about practice. Just as nobody gets
to be good at tennis by sitting on the sofa watching TV, your writing won’t
improve unless you write. Most experts
recommend that if you are serious about your craft then you need to have the
discipline to write every day. To set
aside some time and write, even if you only produce a couple of lines in the
time allotted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Intention</b> – if, like me, you don’t think you are getting
your readers to feel the range and depth of reaction and emotion you would like
to call from them; take time and pay more attention to the words you choose and
how you use them. I tend to like to
gallop on with the story, so miss opportunities to draw the reader in and give
them the space to experience it all – to feel whatever it brings up for them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is also tempting to tell our readers what they should be
thinking or feeling. Avoid being too
explicit with what your characters are experiencing. The old ‘show not tell’ is just as pertinent when
it come to emotion and allows the reader to create their own interpretation,
come to their own conclusions. If you
tell your readers your hero Joe is heartbroken because his girlfriend left him,
it is not likely to grip their imagination as much as if you painted a picture
of his grief and sense of loss through his actions and dialogue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, taking my own advice on board, this week I have been
practising! I have been writing poetry,
which is very unusual for me – love poetry no less! It might not be very good poetry and probably
wouldn’t win any competitions, but the aim was to write emotionally, to expose
feelings, pain and hurt.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As an author you can never really know if you have achieved
that; only a reader can tell you if you touched them with your words. It may
take hundreds of thousands of these words to get it right, but if you are
serious about being a writer you will keep on trying and will never give up.</div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> I Wish I Knew<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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Ribbons of thought unwind<o:p></o:p></div>
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Round kisses, words and time<o:p></o:p></div>
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When lying warm and drowsy<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sun creeping across your bed<o:p></o:p></div>
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Was all the paradise I needed<o:p></o:p></div>
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To banish the doubts from my head<o:p></o:p></div>
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From the night I first saw you<o:p></o:p></div>
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The casual glance you threw my way<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I saw in a stranger<o:p></o:p></div>
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A man to steal my heart away<o:p></o:p></div>
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The heart I left unguarded<o:p></o:p></div>
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A trust for which I’d have to pay<o:p></o:p></div>
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Didn’t know shadows could lengthen<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thought the sun would stay<o:p></o:p></div>
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Believed that in that patch of golden light<o:p></o:p></div>
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My dragons you would slay<o:p></o:p></div>
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So when I smiled and reached for you<o:p></o:p></div>
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I didn’t see you’d slipped away<o:p></o:p></div>
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For though your body lay warm beside me<o:p></o:p></div>
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In your head you’d gone<o:p></o:p></div>
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Galloped to a distant country<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where another conquest you won<o:p></o:p></div>
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I wish I’d seen, I wish I knew<o:p></o:p></div>
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That all I was, was the past to you<o:p></o:p></div>
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That even as you loved my body</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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My face you did not see<o:p></o:p></div>
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Patterns on the wallpaper more interesting than me<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was a port of call,
a pit stop along the way<o:p></o:p></div>
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A place to fuel and rest awhile<o:p></o:p></div>
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Till other interests lit your day<o:p></o:p></div>
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I tried to stay, I tried to pretend<o:p></o:p></div>
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Things had never changed<o:p></o:p></div>
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That the words you said still rang true; believed them all
the same<o:p></o:p></div>
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But knowledge is a dangerous thing, so when I saw you smile<o:p></o:p></div>
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And look across the crowded room to catch a brand new gaze<o:p></o:p></div>
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I could hide no longer; from Eden turned away<o:p></o:p></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-62527660684938147992015-06-14T13:33:00.000+01:002015-06-14T13:33:25.581+01:00Winners of the Watford Live! Richard Harrington TrophyOn the 1st June there was a special event at Watford Writers where the winners of the 2015 Watford Live! Richard Harrington Trophy were announced.<br />
<br />
The theme was 'Fairytales' and the top ten short stories chosen by the independent judges were read to a bumper number of attendees before the winners were announced. The creativity and original twists on the theme of 'Fairytales' was amazing, ranging from traditional stories to modern, even dark tales of the little folk.<br />
<br />
Out local MP Richard Harrington attended the event for a short while, but was unfortunately unable to stay for the announcements or present the trophy.<br />
<br />
The First Place went to Carolyn Storey for 'The Seeker' an charming story about a little boy who goes looking for fairies and is convinced he saw one.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TXedrRTB4FQ/VX1xY8ocmpI/AAAAAAAABMY/td47D8E6OQI/s1600/IMG_0480.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TXedrRTB4FQ/VX1xY8ocmpI/AAAAAAAABMY/td47D8E6OQI/s320/IMG_0480.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carolyn Storey - talented writer and winner of the 2015 Richard Harrington Trophy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Second Place was 'The Alley' by Louise Broadbent and the Third Place was shared by John Ward 'The Return of the Tooth Fairies' and Paul White 'A Cereal Offender'.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PAYc3f12A2w/VX1xx1IIKsI/AAAAAAAABMg/xwwT8C67NH8/s1600/IMG_0481.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PAYc3f12A2w/VX1xx1IIKsI/AAAAAAAABMg/xwwT8C67NH8/s320/IMG_0481.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Louise Broadbent - Second Place Winner<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of the top three stories will be displayed in Watford over the coming summers months, along with those that came in the top ten, so look out for a great short story coming to you very soon!<br />
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Now you may be asking how did my entry do in the writing competition? Well, gentle reader, I scraped in 10th by the skin of my teeth. So please find below my competition entry 'The Storyteller', which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I had fun writing it.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Storyteller<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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He slipped unobserved through a side gate in the blistering
heat of the desert noon. But within a
few short minutes the news was sweeping through the city like flames licking
through dry straw.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘He has come,’ they cried on the market stalls, in the
workshops of the artisans, the hovels of the poor and the cool marble halls of
the palace.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the time the sun began to sink behind the distant
mountains, they had gathered in the main square to wait for him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The warm dusk air was fragrant with the delicious aroma of
food being cooked on the many fires that had been lit. Babies were soothed, children were hushed as
the huge crowd continued to wait in patient silence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first stars were beginning to prick the night with cold,
diamond light when a diminutive figure wrapped in a snowy, crisp robe and
leaning on an intricately carved cane padded through the squatting crowd and
sat on the cushion which had been placed there for him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The crowd sighed their relief as he carefully composed
himself and arranged the folds of his robe around him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He was here at last.
Many had thought he was a myth; like one of his tales. Not a real man but a story; such as the ones
he had once weaved at the feet of the mighty Sikunder as he led his conquering
armies through the mountains of the north.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seemed hours before the Storyteller began to speak, but
as soon as the words started flowing from his mouth they were caught. His voice
rose and fell, snaking through the crowd like a fine silk scarf brushing their
cheeks and lightly ruffling their hair.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The crowd listened silently; spellbound by what they were
hearing. They laughed, they cried. They
felt the pain and were swept by feelings of love. The Storyteller led them into the tale with
the skill of a master chess player, each word carefully chosen and enunciated
until it became their story, their life, and their emotions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘As the Prince rode into the courtyard, he looked up to the
top of the tower where he could see his beloved sitting before her mirror. Her hand was reaching for the golden comb
dipped in poison that her step-mother had given her.’ <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Storyteller paused to look at the spellbound faces of
the crowd.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘He called her name, but she did not hear him. She lifted the comb and pulled it through her
glossy, ebony tresses. She was so
beautiful, so perfect, in that moment before her mirror, but seconds later she
collapsed on the couch and his love was dead.
The only comfort the Prince had was the promise she would be placed in
the heavens as a star, so her beauty could shine on the world below for
eternity.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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The listeners cheered their appreciation, but when they
looked again the Storyteller’s cushion was empty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was gone and nobody saw him go.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-26497727821367773272015-05-25T15:20:00.000+01:002015-06-14T13:05:27.455+01:00Flash fiction – or How I Got with the Programme!<div class="MsoNormal">
I suppose you could say I came to writing via a circuitous
route. I started the first Aten Sequence
book a few months before I went travelling in 2007 around Australia, with all
good intentions of having it finished by the time I returned. Well that never
happened – too many beaches, kangaroos, outback trails, excellent restaurants
and fun to be had!<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
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On my return I discovered an American website called Hubpages
and started writing articles and earning money online, so fiction writing was
firmly on the back burner. After several
years, I turned back to my original project and the first two Aten Sequence books
were completed and self-published<o:p></o:p></div>
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But like all things, if you are passionate about what you do,
you want to learn, you want to improve, and want your writing to be the best it
can be. So how to do it? Of course, one
of the best ways is to keep on writing, so I started writing short stories as
well as starting on the third Aten book.
I also started reading everything I could on composing stories, structuring
novels, marketing and how to get book reviews.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the thing that always puzzled me was the amount of
people who wrote flash fiction. Why?
What was the point of it? Flash
fiction, if you have never come across the term before, is a very short, complete
story of under 500 words or so. There is
even micro fiction, which is generally accepted as a story of 300 words or
less. But if you have novels to write,
why spend your precious time crafting these stories?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I finally learned the benefit of flash fiction and how I
could use it to improve my writing skills when I joined a writers group. Again this was something I had thought about
for around three years before I plucked up the courage to attend one of the
Monday night meetings, where regular flash fiction competitions are held. These
stories have to be 300 words excluding the title and the theme is chosen by the
group.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So how did starting to write flash fiction help to improve
my writing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">It made me start to consider every word I used
and weigh up how important it was to the story.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">
</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Writing full length novels makes it very easy to fall into the trap of
using too many words and indulging in long, rambling sentences.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">If using adjectives and adverbs is the cardinal
sin of writing, then flash fiction helps you eliminate them and forces you to find
ways of conveying your meaning without using too many descriptive words.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">If you have only got 300 to use, you want to
make sure each one counts.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">It helps bring clarity.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You have a story to tell, ideas to get
across, points of view you want to share.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">
</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You have to get rid of all the waffling, rambling and going around the
long way.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">For a complete story you still
need a beginning, middle and end, so you need to strip out all the unessential elements and get on with it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">This stripping out also means ditching characters,
too much scene setting, and any dialogue that does not add to the plot.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The ‘KISS’ principle reigns supreme; to tell
your story in so few words you have to keep it as simple as possible.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You need to wrap the story up with a decisive
last line. It is too easy with so few words to leave a story hanging and not give
your readers an ending that satisfies them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Flash fiction poses a new challenge every time.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You are given a theme, a word count and you
have to produce a piece of writing in set time period. Challenges can be scary
but they push us out of our fur-lined writing ruts and test us to think
differently about what we are doing and write on topics we would usually avoid
at all costs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">.</span><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Writing flash fiction gives you the opportunity
to have a long, hard look at the bad writing habits you have gotten into. What
words do you habitually overuse? Do you have certain phrases or expressions
that creep into every piece you write, whether they are appropriate or not?</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">In these very short stories, there is no
place for your writing ‘comfort blankets’. They have to be discarded to crisp
up your story and let it be told within the word limit.</span><!--[if !supportLists]--><o:p></o:p></div>
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I am no great expert in writing flash fiction and am
relative newbie in producing these very short stories. But I am already beginning to see the
benefits and am starting to bring what I have learned to my longer projects.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, if like me, you are sceptical about how writing flash
fiction can help you develop as an author, why not give it a go? There are competitions and sites online where
you test out your skill or you can join a local writers group, where you will
receive useful feedback and critiques.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/X08HicQmPtw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X08HicQmPtw?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Here is an example of flash fiction. It is a story I wrote on the theme of 'beyond the gate' for the <a href="http://www.watfordwriters.co.uk/" target="_blank">Watford Writers Group</a>, which I am very proud to say won the third prize. I hope you enjoy it.</div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Darkest Hour<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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The shadows lengthened as the moon slipped behind the
mountain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maren knew it was time to wake the American. The wounded flyer would only get one chance
and, if he didn’t get it right, they could both be dead by the time the sun
rose.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He reached out and shook the sleeping man’s shoulder,
shoving his other hand over his mouth to stop him calling out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Time to go,’ he whispered. ‘The moon’s just set, so it’s as
dark as it’s going to get. You need to keep low and make as little noise as possible. I haven’t seen or heard one of their patrols
in a couple of hours, but it doesn’t mean they’re not out there waiting for us
to make a move.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maren took the top off his water bottle and thrust it at the
American, who took a few thirsty mouthfuls.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The young flyer gave the old Basque guide a grateful look as
he handed back the bottle.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Won’t you come too?
Someone tipped the Nazis off, those patrols were waiting for us? It’s
too dangerous to stay.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maren shook his head.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘My family is here.
If I don’t go back I’m putting them all under suspicion. Besides, Todor is only expecting one package.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘How can I thank you for what you’ve done for me? You’ve risked so much?’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘By not getting caught.
The Spanish border is over there by that stand of pine trees. Get beyond the gate and you should be safe.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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At that moment a light flashed three times in the trees, the
signal Maren had been waiting for.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘You must go now,’ he said pushing the American out of the
barn door, watching as he stumbled into the dying night to be swallowed by the
darkness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-2087161795975008972014-12-06T20:54:00.001+00:002014-12-06T20:57:19.532+00:00Flash Fiction - A Jolly Good Catch<i>This is a short story I wrote for a flash fiction competition at <a href="http://www.watfordwriters.co.uk/" target="_blank">Watford Writers.</a></i> <i>It was my first evening at the writing group and my first entry. I was very proud</i> <i>my story was voted into second place.</i><br />
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</i><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>A Jolly Good Catch</u></b></div>
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We’d always thought of Edmunds as a good catcher and usually
we applauded him for it.</div>
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It <b><i>was</i></b> a good thing until that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good chap to have fielding on the rutted,
makeshift pitches we used for battalion cricket matches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could catch any ball that came at him,
however fast. He’d always manage to wrap his fingers around it and throw it
back in one rapid, seamless movement.</div>
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That night was bitterly cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was an iron frost and the sky was full with the cold sparkle of stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The half
moon threw shadows over No Man’s Land, turning shell holes into pits of stygian
hell. Moonlight glinted off the rifles and bayonets of the dead, strewn like
random, broken puppets across the frozen mud.</div>
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We huddled on the fire step waiting for a German raid. The
frigid air carried every sound we made, so each cough, foot stamp and curse must have carried
to the German lines.</div>
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All we could hear was crackling frost, distant shelling and
a machine gun chattering down the line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Every time a Very light briefly lit up the dark night we expected to see
the raiding party creeping towards our wire.</div>
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We were so lost in our waiting that at first we paid little
heed to the dark object that flew with a faint hissing noise over the parapet.</div>
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Edmunds, acting on his famous reflex, stuck out a hand and
caught it.</div>
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‘Jolly good catch,’ cried one of the men as another Very
light lit up the sky.</div>
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Edmunds looked down and seemed confused by what he’d caught.</div>
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‘Throw the bloody thing back over the wire.’ I screamed before
scrambling to get as far away from him as possible.</div>
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But Edmunds didn’t move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His usual faultless follow-through was gone.</div>
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The thing went off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ears
ringing, I turned to see Edmunds explode into a human fire ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw his lips move, but could hear nothing
over the roar of the flames.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His catch
had probably saved us, but the price he paid was a hideous death by fire.</div>
<i>
</i><br />
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</i>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-72615774912289652572014-08-27T14:46:00.000+01:002015-05-25T14:59:06.311+01:00The Aten – Unravelling the Mystery of the Ancient Egyptian God<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>In the Aten Sequence
Books, our not-so-noble hero Aten has persuaded the gullible Prince Amenophis
that there is a new god in Egypt called Aten, who can only be worshipped
through him. The foolish prince is then
persuaded to embark on a mission to clear all obstacles, including his own elder
brother, out of his way of his becoming the next Pharaoh so he can impose his new
religion on the Egyptians and thus allowing Aten access to the gold he needs stored in
the vaults under the Temple of Karnak. But in Ancient Egypt who or what was the
Aten and how was it worshipped?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_98ji2At3nY/U_3cO8Grq8I/AAAAAAAABLk/I0nZvULWZq4/s1600/Akenat%C3%B3n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Aten shining on Akhenaten" border="0" height="241" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_98ji2At3nY/U_3cO8Grq8I/AAAAAAAABLk/I0nZvULWZq4/s1600/Akenat%C3%B3n.jpg" title="Akhenaten worshipping the sun disc" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Akhenaten worshipping the sun disc</td></tr>
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The Aten was the god the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten singled
out from the vast pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses to worship. For the first time in Egypt’s long history,
there was only one official deity; only one god who could be worshipped, a god
who could only be approached through the Pharaoh himself. In the ‘Great Hymn to
the Aten’, which many scholars believe Akhenaten wrote himself, the king extols
his god as the creator of life, the source of all nourishment and abundance for
every person, animal, and plant on the planet.</div>
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So why did he choose this particular god? The Aten came to
prominence during the long reign of his father, the Pharaoh Amenophis III, so
it was a religious concept which was already developing not something the young
prince snatched out of thin air. The
Aten would have been discussed and worshipped as he was growing up and his
father’s royal palace at Malkata was referred to in ancient times as ‘the
Palace of the Dazzling Aten’.</div>
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During this reign the deity is often show with the body of a
man with a falcon’s head. However, references to the Aten or sun disk did start
appearing much earlier in Egyptian history than the 18<sup>th</sup>
dynasty. As far back as the Middle
Kingdom, there is a reference to this radiant deity in the famous ‘Story of
Sinuhe’. The Aten was depicted as a
yellow or golden sun disk and sometimes the full moon was referred to as the ‘silver
Aten’. The deity’s full name was ‘Ra-Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in
his Name as the Light which is in the sun disc’.</div>
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When he first ascended the throne Akhenaten was known by his
given name Pharaoh Amenophis IV, but as he gradually embraced his new beliefs
he changed his names, shut down the temples of the old priests and started
building a new capital city entirely dedicated to his new religion on the Nile
at what is now known as Amarna. He declared he would move to his new city,
named Akhetaten, or ‘Horizon of the Aten’, with his wife and daughters and once
there would never leave his city again.
To mark the boundaries of this new capital he had huge boundary stelae
carved into the cliffs.</div>
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As Akhenaten was building his new capital Akhetaten, he had
the name of his god carved onto these boundary stelae marking the city limits. Sometimes it was shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten
or just the Aten. From this time forward, the deity was no longer depicted in
human form, but always as the sun disc emanating rays of light culminating in
little hands that offered life, health and prosperity to Akhenaten and his
family. This was not a god for the
people, but a deity which showered its abundance and light on Pharaoh, who then
became a conduit of this divine energy to his country and people. So in a way, it was Akhenaten himself who was
now to be worshipped and seen as a god.</div>
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This was nothing particularly new in Egyptian thinking, as
the Pharaoh had always been regarded as a physical manifestation of the divine,
the direct link between the people and their gods. But before there were many, many gods and
goddesses in Egypt that an ordinary person could choose to honour and most
houses had their own little shrines and statues of their favourite deity. With the arrival of the Aten all this was
stripped away and carvings, statues and references to the traditional gods were
torn down or erased.</div>
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This new era also completely changed worship in the
temples. Not only were the old gods
gone, but the temples themselves were very different. In a traditional Egyptian temple, there would
have been outer courtyards open to the sun thronging with people, but as you
moved closer and closer into the heart of the complex it would get darker and darker
with fewer people having access. Finally
the shrine of the god would be reached.
A dark chamber of secrets, magic and ceremonies probably only visited by
the High Priest, a few of his senior clergy and the Pharaoh and his queen.</div>
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The new Aten temples were vast courts totally open to the
life-giving rays of the sun. There were
rows and rows of offering tables heaped with all kinds of costly foods, drink
and cups filled with smoking incense. In
the so-called Long Temple at Amarna the Egyptologists found the remains of 920 mudbrick
offerings tables in a grid to the south of the temple wall and have estimated
there was as many as another 150 in the central stone-built sanctuary that was,
in the new way, left open to the skies.
It would be nice to think that all this abundance of food, a sure sign
of Pharaoh’s wealth and power, would have been distributed among the people after
the religious ceremonies were over, but there is no evidence for this. It is not even known if the offering food was
cooked on site or taken away to be prepared for feasting at the palace or a
more humble family’s dinner. Or was it
just left for the god, rotting away under the merciless heat of the Egyptian
sun?</div>
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Another unusual feature of these new temples was that there was
no cult statue of the deity, which had to be washed and dressed in fresh
clothes every day. Because the
interlinking courtyards and the inner sanctuary were all open to the sky, the
sun disc was worshiped directly, by tracking its daily progress from where it
rose in the east and set in the west.
There were priests in the Aten temples, but Akhenaten himself presided
over some of the worship; acting as a High Priest and leading the other
worshippers in reciting or singing ‘The Great Hymn to Aten’ and other
prayers. </div>
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The royal ladies of Amarna played an unusually prominent
part in this worship, and Akhenaten’s queen Nefertiti was usually shown the
same size as her husband, accompanying him with their six daughters in all his
activities. One of the great honours
that could be bestowed on these royal women was having a small, open cult
shrine, known as a ‘sunshade’ or ‘kiosk’ dedicated to them. One of the features of the Amarna period was
a turning away from the stylised art and formal depictions of gods and people
towards a more natural style of art showing beautiful scenes of trees, pools,
animals and all the bounty nature had to offer.
These ‘sunshades’ were often set in beautiful, sunlit surroundings where
there was pools containing fish and colourful plants and flowers. They created an oasis of tranquillity,
somewhere for the women to come where it was quiet and peaceful, a place for contemplation
and prayer. </div>
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But even here human conflict crept in. In one of the larger known sites for the ‘sunshades’
called the Maru-Aten, the names and titles of one Amarna royal lady was erased
and recarved with the names and titles of Akhenaten’s oldest daughter Princess Meritaten. It used to be thought that it had been her
mother Nefertiti’s name which had been removed, but now many Egyptologists
believe that it was the name of one of Akhenaten’s other queens, Kiya, which had
been struck from history.</div>
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For all its glittering brilliance, the cult of the sun disc
and Akhenaten’s new capital city were to last for less than twenty years. This self-imposed exile and concentration on
religion rather than affairs of state had weakened the Egyptian empire. There
is also some evidence that a plague which was sweeping through the Middle East
at that time, reached the Egyptian court killing some of the female members of
the royal family. When Akhenaten died
there were a few shadowy years were who his successor was is disputed, some
scholars thinking it was a young king called Smenkhare and others that Queen
Nefertiti seized the throne and ruled on her own. </div>
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But a few years later, when the young boy king Tutankhamen
came to the throne, the capital was moved back to Thebes, the temples and old
gods were reinstated and the names of Akhenaten and his god were erased. Unfortunately Tutankhamen was destined to die
young and the glittering 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty came to an end with the reign
of Horemheb, who saw to it that any last traces of this religious experiment
were destroyed forever. Akhetaten had
been hastily constructed of mudbrick and any stone which had been used was
stripped and used elsewhere, so it swiftly fell into disrepair and
crumbled. The tombs which had been
carved in the hillsides were left empty and no more offerings were made in the
temples.</div>
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akenat%C3%B3n.jpg" target="_blank">Akhenaten image</a> <span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 21.280000686645508px;">David Holt , Jean-Pierre Dalbera Wikimedia Creative Commons <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en" target="_blank">Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Generic</a></span></div>
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Sources:</div>
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Amarna Project - <a href="http://amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/central_city/index.shtml">http://amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/central_city/index.shtml</a></div>
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The Aten - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten</div>
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Ancient Egypt Online - http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnareligion.html</div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-2657229231195118042014-08-14T12:12:00.000+01:002014-08-14T12:14:17.209+01:00The Agony and the Ecstasy of Book Reviews<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div>
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Gentle Reader, I have a confession I wish to make – I have
not done it. Yes, I freely admit I have
not done it. I am Cynthia Marsh, author
of this parish and I have not done it! I
have not been sending my books out to review sites and have been very lax in my
marketing. There I’ve said it! Been honest and stopped hiding behind the too
busy, must take my plant to the vet or I got stuck in an airport in Azerbaijan with
no internet access excuses.</div>
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Now the more practical and level-headed of you out there are
probably puzzled right now. Thinking ‘how
does she think she’s going to sell any books if she doesn’t put herself about a
bit and do some marketing?’ Well of
course you are all right, ‘write it and they will come’ doesn’t quite cut the
mustard in today’s cut and thrust world of short attention spans and millions
of other things to read.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G-6FqTwXm1A/UbS_Li8bYxI/AAAAAAAABBc/w9bS73sO0oQ/s1600/Hall%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGolden%2BCrocodiles%2BJune%2B2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hall of the Golden Crocodiles - The Aten Sequence 2 " border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G-6FqTwXm1A/UbS_Li8bYxI/AAAAAAAABBc/w9bS73sO0oQ/s1600/Hall%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGolden%2BCrocodiles%2BJune%2B2013.jpg" height="320" title="Hall of the Golden Crocodiles - The Aten Sequence 2 " width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hall of the Golden Crocodiles - The Aten Sequence 2 </td></tr>
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So what stops authors blowing their own trumpets, sending
their books into the world and marketing the hell out of them? After extensive and long-drawn-out analysis
(time I could have more profitably spent in writing a few more blog posts or
annoying a few more book reviewers) I would have to say it is fear. Scalp-numbing, blood-freezing, visceral fear!
You have spent months, if not years,
working on your novel, short stories or poetry and now you are expected to send
it out there to a bunch of strangers who have the power to dismiss it entirely
with a few, well-chosen words. Or even
worse, ignore it entirely.</div>
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The only situation I can liken it to is when mother’s
anxiously prepare their kids for their first day at school or play group. They dress them up smartly, make sure they
have enough felt pens and crayons to compete in the pencil case wars, pack up
their lunch and deliver them to the school door. And for perhaps the first time in their child’s
short life they will have no control at all over what is now going to happen in
their child’s life. Will they be
liked? Will the teacher understand they
don’t like carrots? Will people know
that he only pokes his tongue out at people because he’s scared?</div>
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Well that’s a bit like how you feel when you are ready to
launch a new book onto the unsuspecting public.
There aren’t enough back-page blurbs and plot synopses in the world to
really allow you to convey what this piece of fiction means to you, the endless
hours you spent agonising over every little word and punctuation mark and what
your protagonist really meant on page 72, fifth line down. And the worst thing
to swallow is that you know that nobody really cares.</div>
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Because readers are buying a finished product, a book that
can entertain, take them away from reality for a few hours, inform or make them
think, and the author’s journey in producing that product is just an
interesting little titbit for the author bio on Amazon.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cynthia Marsh - author of The Aten Sequence Books</td></tr>
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So what we authors really need is a much thicker skin,
something many creative people lack.
There are many writers out there, of course, who are doing really well
and making lots of money, because they have overcome their fears, or never
doubted the quality and saleability of their work in the first place. They may not even necessarily be the best
writers in the world today, but they have the guts and drive to get out there
and market their books, so they fully deserve all the success that comes their
way.</div>
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I did read somewhere recently that most procrastinators are
actually perfectionists and that is why they are so bad at starting new
tasks. I think a lot of authors, me
included, are like this. We can fuss,
revise and edit for years but at some stage we will have to admit there is no
such thing as the perfect book and get on with it. And when we do that, it frees us up to write
the next book and then the next one and our writing improves because we are
doing more of it.</div>
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And because no book is perfect, we authors just have to get
used to the reality of bad reviews. As
an author you simply can’t please everyone.
Someone out the, and probably quite a few someones, will not like your
book. They will not like the cover, they
will not like the genre, they will not like the characters, the plot or the dialogue. And this is Ok as they have a perfect right
to not like your book, even if it took twenty four years and several nervous break
downs to write.</div>
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If you get a bad review, all you can do as an author is
accept the fact somebody did not like your book and take on board any
constructive criticism they made. After
all, you want your writing to improve right?
Instead of viewing it as an attack on your precious oeuvre, thank the
reviewer and take it as a chance to get a different perspective and an
opportunity to learn and develop your writing skills. Of course, writing a bad review is not the
same thing as a reader attacking you personally as an author. These types of reviews are best ignored and
are not even worth the energy of a reply.
Unfortunately, the world of the internet is full of trolls trying to get
a rise out of people, so take heed of the signs and do not feed the trolls.</div>
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But even though I have said I have not done my marketing, I
have to confess to doing a little. This
led to a delightful book reviewer called Kathy Ree reviewing ‘<a href="http://kathyree.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/review-of-hall-of-the-golden-crocodiles-the-aten-sequence-2-by-cynthia-marsh/" target="_blank">Hall of theGolden Crocodiles – The Aten Sequence 2</a>’ on her blog ‘Kitty Muse and Me’ and
also posting the review on Amazon in the States. This is where the ecstasy of book reviews
comes in. When you see those five little
stars and realise someone else has loved your book. Someone, moreover, who was not your mother,
best friend or the guy down the road you promised a beer to if he read them all
and posted reviews. So I can’t thank
Kathy enough for giving me my first independent book review in the US and a
good one at that!</div>
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Yes book reviews can be agony, but they can also be ecstasy
and, like it or not, you are not going to sell many books until you get
them. Readers these days want to know
other people have read the book, they are reluctant to be the first. Surprisingly, bad reviews do not do as much
harm as you may think, as a large percentage of
reviews for ’50 Shades of Grey’ were not that flattering, but they still
encouraged others to buy it.</div>
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If you are one of the rare outliers who will read books that
catch your fancy that are still unknown, do the author a favour and write that
review for them. A few short sentences
is all it takes and the writer will love you forever!</div>
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-57468444477147395242014-02-05T18:27:00.000+00:002014-02-05T18:27:11.733+00:00Are There Any More Undiscovered Royal Tombs in The Valley of the Kings?<div class="MsoNormal">
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<i>Aten wants gold, more gold and more gold. And then he has to work out how to make the fuel he desperately needs so he can get back to conquering the Universe with his Uncle Lucie. While he tries to work out how to get into the massive treasure vaults beneath Karnak Temple, he sets up a little tomb robbing ring. Aten’s goal is to find intact royals tombs brimming with gold treasure. Finding an intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings is also the dream of many Egyptologists today. But was the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen the last big discovery that the Valley of the Kings will yield or are there more amazing finds just waiting to be unearthed?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The discovery of the tomb of a minor pharaoh from the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty in 1922 by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon rocked the world. Never before had an almost intact pharaoh’s tomb been found in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Kings">Valley of the Kings</a>, and this discovery gave us not only fabulous treasures but a great deal of valuable information on the end of the Amarna period. But is the boy king’s tomb the last great discovery to be made in the Royal Necropolis or are there more undisturbed tombs hidden in the cliffs and valley floor waiting to be found?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N44WelDOu4g/UvJ6B-jtZhI/AAAAAAAABK4/qBSOp2jPhtU/s1600/Excavation+in+the+Valley+of+the+Kings.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Valley of the Kings Excavations" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N44WelDOu4g/UvJ6B-jtZhI/AAAAAAAABK4/qBSOp2jPhtU/s1600/Excavation+in+the+Valley+of+the+Kings.JPG" height="240" title="Excavation in the Valley of the Kings - November 2008 - own image" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excavation in the Valley of the Kings - November 2008</td></tr>
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That there are many tombs yet to be unearthed in Egypt has been amply demonstrated over the last few weeks. In Abydos, the sacred heart of Ancient Egypt, a huge quartzite sarcophagus discovered a year ago has been identified as belonging to an obscure pharaoh of the 13<sup>th</sup> dynasty called Sobekhotep I, leading to the discovery close by of the tomb of a previously unknown king. Hieroglyphs painted on the tomb walls gave his name as Senebkay. And just around the corner from the Valley of the Kings at el-Khokha, a beautifully painted tomb of a courtier from the Ramesside Period is being excavated. The tomb belonged to the Chief Brewer of the Temple of Mut called Khonsu-em-heb and the exquisitely painted frescos show him and his wife Mutemheb feasting and making offerings to the gods. So could there possibly be more royal tombs waiting to be found in the Valley of the Kings?<br />
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The first burial in the arid, remote valley was a departure from tradition. In earlier dynasties, pharaoh’s tombs had been built in plain sight as a sign of their power and prestige. From the earliest mastaba tombs to the pyramids, these tombs were as large and lavish as the pharaoh’s treasury and length of his reign allowed. Even as late as the 17<sup>th</sup> dynasty, pharaohs were buried in small pyramids at Dra’ Abu el-Naga, a necropolis in the Theban hills. So why did a high court official called Ineni dig a rock cut tomb for his royal master, boasting ‘alone, no one seeing and no one hearing’? Possibly because it was becoming obvious that most of these ostentatious, very visible tombs were being entered by tomb robbers, who stole the precious funerary treasure and ripped the pharaoh’s mummies apart looking for amulets and jewellery. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Valley of the Kings</td></tr>
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But although it might have been possible to conceal the location of one royal tomb, as successive pharaoh’s carried on digging their tombs in the same valley, the site of the royal necropolis became well known and a workmen’s village was built at Deir-el Medina to house the men who dug and decorated these fabulous sepulchres. To date sixty four tombs have been found in the Royal Valley, belonging to queens, royal children and favoured courtiers as well as the mighty pharaohs themselves. So who is missing? Which pharaoh’s tombs have not yet been found? The two main contenders are Thutmosis II from the early 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty and Ramesses VIII from the 20<sup>th</sup> dynasty. The mummy of Ramesses XI has also not been found and though a tomb was dug for him in the Valley of the Kings, there is no evidence he was actually buried in it. Most of the tombs of the queens from the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty have also not yet been located and there may also be smaller tombs of princes, princesses and royal officials still awaiting their turn to be discovered. <br />
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In 2007 Dr Zahi Hawass appointed an Egyptian team of archaeologists headed by Afifi Rohiem to start excavating in parts of the Royal Valley where he believed there might be a new tomb. At the same time the <a href="http://dashfoundation.com/archaeology.html">Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research</a> undertook thorough ground-penetrating radar investigations of the cliffs and valley floor. The Egyptologists worked between 2007 and 2010, starting with the area around the tomb of Merenptah. Their excavations rediscovered some ancient graffiti first recorded by Jaroslav Czerny and the remains of some workmen’s huts, which have been carefully recorded. Tantalisingly, one of the ancient graffito was written by an official called Userhat who said that he had created a burial for his father close by. <br />
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The Egyptian found two cuttings in the rock that could be tomb entrances, one where the rubble has been disturbed, suggesting that whatever is there has already been disturbed, and one where it had not. Could this be the entrance to an intact tomb? These two new tomb entrances became known as KV64 and KV65. The KV64 entrance was found close to Merenptah’s tomb and is Ramesside in appearance. It was thought this could possibly be the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses VIII. The other tomb entrance was cut and in the style of the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty and Dr Hawass stated in a lecture that he thought this could be the tomb of an individual from the Amarna period and that some debris has been excavated that had the name of a previously unknown queen on it.
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However, for some reason no further investigations of these tomb entrances were undertaken, possibly they were halted by the civil unrest that started during 2011. In January 2012 a team from the University of Basel in Switzerland stumbled across a new tomb in the valley completely by chance. When they opened it they found it contained the undisturbed coffin and beautifully wrapped mummy of a temple singer called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16576265">Nehmes Bastet</a> dating from the 22<sup>nd</sup> dynasty. The tomb, now officially designated as KV64, was not originally built for her but had been usurped from an earlier period. The inscriptions show that Nehmes Bastet was the daughter of the High Priest of Amun, so are there more burials from this family and period still awaiting discovery in the Valley? <br />
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So there is a strong chance there are still some major finds to be made in the Valley of the Kings. KV63 is now thought to have been more of a storage chamber for burials of the Amarna period, rather than a royal tomb. Most of the burials of the royal ladies of this period have not yet been located and finding the tomb of one of the major figures, such as the iconic beauty <a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nefertiti-where-did-she-come-from-and.html">Queen Nefertiti</a>, would be very exciting and help to clarify what really happened during this shadowy part of Ancient Egyptian history. The mystery tomb <a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kv55-mystery-tomb-of-valley-of-kings.html">KV55</a> could be the tomb of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten or his ephemeral successor Smenkhare, so is either of these king’s tombs still concealed in the cliffs somewhere? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Western Branch of the Valley of the Kings</td></tr>
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We also still do not know the complete family tree of the pharaoh’s or of their court officials, so there could be tombs to be discovered that belonged to queens, royal children, ladies of the harem or nobles we have never before encountered in Egyptian history. Also all the tombs visited by tourists are in the eastern branch of the Valley of the Kings. There is a western branch that contains the tombs of Amenophis III and Ay that is rarely visited and has not yet been thoroughly surveyed or excavated. But although a tomb stuffed full of golden treasure would captivate the media and the public the world over, any find, however small, adds to our knowledge of our ancient past and fills in another piece of the puzzle. <br />
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Sources: Wikipaedia, BBC News</div>
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-80663076053984138222013-10-31T17:37:00.001+00:002013-10-31T17:48:20.832+00:00The Life of a Schoolboy in Ancient Egypt<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>In The Aten Sequence Books the main character Aten sends Luke and Neferptah to be educated with Prince Dhutmose and other noble boys in an educational institution called the ‘Kap’, situated in the royal place. But what was life really like for a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt? What were they expected to learn and how were their lessons taught?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What was it like to be a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt? Formal education was mainly reserved for the upper classes and boys from wealthy families would begin their schooling around the age of four. They would be trained in all the skills they would need to follow in their father’s footsteps. A boy’s future occupation was decided by his family and they usually entered the same profession as their father. Many important positions at Pharaoh’s court and in the major temples were handed down from father to son for many generations. The Ancient Egyptians were also a very practical people, so children were taught only the subjects and skills that would be relevant in their later career.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Literacy was mainly confined to the ruling classes such as courtiers, state administrators, senior members of the priesthood, and important army officers. The artisans at the workmen’s village at Deir el-Medina who worked on the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the mortuary temples of the west bank could also read and write and, most unusually for the ancient world, there is evidence that some of their wives and daughters were also literate. These workmen needed literacy skills as they had to accurately carve or paint texts onto tomb and temple walls from papyri or ostraca. Any Egyptian who was literate was known as a ‘scribe’ and the ability to read and write was so highly valued that many important courtiers and officials had statues carved that depicted them as scribes with a roll of papyrus stretched out across the knees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">School started early in the morning and would generally take place at the teacher’s house. Boys were required to bring their own lunch and would pack bread and beer to keep them refreshed until the lessons ended at noon. Teachers were very strict and the lessons would be made up of copying from old hieroglyphic texts and memorising passages from stories and texts. Papyrus was very expensive, so students would practise their writing on fragments of limestone called ostraca or pieces of broken pottery. If the teacher thought a pupil was being lazy, was caught sleeping in class or had been disruptive, then the punishment could be harsh as they would be beaten across the back with a stick. Arithmetic was also taught but, although texts were recited out loud in order to learn them, all mathematical calculations were done silently and not spoken aloud.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The lessons were very difficult as the students would have to learn both the hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Hieroglyphics were the formal version of the script and were used in tombs, on temple walls and on the possessions of royalty and important noblemen. Hieratic was developed around the same time as the hieroglyphic script and was a simplified version that was used for more mundane purposes such as keeping accounts, making records and private correspondence. There were many different hieroglyphic signs to learn, over 700, all of which were consonants. There were no vowels, and the grammar was also difficult. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When writing in English we write from left to right across the page, but Egyptian schoolboys could right from top to bottom or across the page. If writing across the page, the text could be started from either the left or right. The way they would know which way to read the text was to look at which way the animal, bird or people signs were facing; if they were facing right, the text was to read from right to left. Writing was regarded as sacred by the Ancient Egyptians as they believed it had been given to them by the gods, so texts had to be perfect, with no mistakes and neatly presented. The schoolboys would use brushes made from reeds to do their work, which they would dip into either black or red ink. The ink, along with the reed pens, was stored in a <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/544694" target="_blank">pallet</a> that was generally made from wood, although more elaborate ones were crafted in ivory or gilded. Black ink was made from soot and water and other colours were made from mixing water with ground up minerals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Physical education and military training did not really come to the fore until the time of the New Kingdom when the army came to more prominence and senior army officers began to wield great power in the ever growing empire. Young royal princes and scions of the nobility were brought up and educated in an institution called the ‘kap’ or the Royal Nursery. The ‘kap’ was part of the royal palace and having been a ‘child of the kap’ conferred a great deal of prestige in later life and was often mentioned on the owner’s statues and tomb inscriptions. Foreign princes and nobility were also sent to the Royal Nursery, or brought as hostages, to be educated alongside the future pharaoh. This may have been done to forge strong personal bonds between the crown prince and the young men who would go on to rule the satellite states of the Egyptian empire or to ensure the continuing good behaviour of their fathers. Not all who gained the coveted title of ‘Child of the Nursery’ were from the highest levels of society; some young boys came from relatively humble beginnings, such as the draughtsman Nebseny, although their career prospects were bound to have been boosted from their early proximity to the highest in the land.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">These privileged young men would have been trained in archery, hunting, chariot driving, swimming and fighting with sticks. Pharaohs had always been portrayed as accomplished warriors and athletes, but by the time of the New Kingdom the heir to the throne was shown and described engaging in amazing feats of arms and athleticism. Most of these images probably portrayed rituals rather than real life events, but the Egyptians doubtless looked up to their kings as physically powerful and fearless fighters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Parents also taught their children the stories of the gods, religious rituals, ethics and morals. There were texts called Books of Instruction or Wisdom Literature, which stressed desirable precepts such as veracity, treating people fairly, being obedient, leading an ordered life and taking responsibility. The Ancient Egyptians tried to live by the principles of Maat, personified as a goddess, which created prosperity and balance in the country. These principles were harmony, cooperation, justice, truth and decorum. Punishment for not following these ideals was believed to come after death, when your heart was weighed on a scale against a feather of Maat. You would only be allowed to move on to a joyful, prosperous afterlife if your heart balanced the scale. However, if during your life you had murdered, lied or cheated your heart would be too heavy, so it would then be flung to a demon called Ammut to devour and your life would be ended forever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Children from poorer families started working and being useful from an early age. So you can see images on tomb walls of children helping with the harvest, herding animals, fishing and many other tasks. They would have been trained by a close family member such as their father or uncle, and would have been expected to contribute economically to the household from very early on. Girls were not educated as formally as their brothers, although there is evidence that royal princesses were taught to read and write. However, they would be taught by their mothers how to do all the daily household tasks and maybe also how to sing, dance and play instruments. These skills were especially useful for the girls who went to be a singer or a dancer in one of the many temples. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So the life of an <a href="http://www.touregypt.net/historicalessays/lifeinegypt7.htm" target="_blank">Ancient Egyptian schoolboy</a> was regimented and they were expected to be diligent, respectful and follow the path laid out for them by their family. Much more was expected of them at an early age than would be today, but life expectancy was typically only between thirty and forty. Children had to grow up faster and work hard to make their mark in a world that could be tough and</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">unpredictable</span></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heratic_script_limestone.jpg?uselang=en-gb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hieratic text image</a> Wafulz on Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maler_der_Grabkammer_des_Menna_008.jpg?uselang=en-gb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Child Working in Garden - Tomb of Menna image</a> Wikimedia Commons Public Domain</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scribal_Palette_LACMA_M.80.202.167.jpg?uselang=en-gb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Palette of a Scribe image</a> Wikimedia Commons Public Domain</span></span>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-28560583536674850902013-08-11T13:25:00.000+01:002014-10-12T11:51:53.882+01:00The Importance of Gold to the Ancient Egyptians<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In The Aten Sequence Books, our hapless main character Aten is desperately trying to get his hands on enough gold to make more fuel for his ship, so that he can blast off back into space and join his evil Uncle Lucie in conquering the Universe. After trying out a few options, such as the Bank of England in Victorian London, he decides the Temple of Karnak during the reign of the fabulously wealthy Pharaoh Amenophis III is his best bet. Now this is pure fiction, but the Ancient Egyptians were famous for the amount of gold they possessed, so why was it so important to them?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“And gold – everywhere the glint of gold” - Howard Carter on what he saw as he opened the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most people when they think of Ancient Egypt think of gold. Ever since the glittering tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun was excavated in 1922, we have associated the mysterious land of Egypt with untold wealth and glittering treasure. It seemed as though every exquisite piece of funerary equipment removed from the tomb was gilded in the precious yellow metal or even made entirely of solid gold, like the famous funerary mask and inner coffin. And if this was the treasure placed in the tomb of a relatively insignificant pharaoh who only ruled for a few years and died young, what wealth could the tombs of the mighty kings such as Ramesses the Great and Thutmosis III have contained before they were robbed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But why was gold so important to the Egyptian pharaohs? It was not a precious metal used by the ordinary people; it was reserved for the exclusive use of royalty and important nobility. Domestically it had no economic value, as barter was used for trade and all servants of the crown were paid with food, fuel and gifts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Money was not used in Egypt until the Ptolemaic period, so gold was not used in coins. One of the reasons it was so highly prized was that it was associated with the dazzling light of the sun and the solar deity Ra. It was believed that the very skin of the gods was golden and that their bones were composed of silver. Because it is a precious metal that does not tarnish and is fairly indestructible it was also associated with eternal life. The pharaoh was viewed as divine, the human link between the earth and the numinous, so gold was used for royal coffins and funerary equipment to help preserve the king’s mortal remains for eternity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was in international trade that gold became important, and Egypt became famous for the amount of the prized precious metal that it sent to all corners of its far flung empire. It was not only used for trade, it was also an important diplomatic tool as pharaohs would send quantities of gold and gilded treasures to their allies and vassal monarchs in order to keep them happy and fighting to maintain Egypt’s borders. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So used were these vassal kings to having a continuous flow of gold being sent out to them that they would write and complain if there was any disruption in supply. In the late eighteenth dynasty King Tushratta of Mitanni wrote to Queen Tiye to moan that her husband Amenophis III was only sending gilded statues not the solid gold ones he had apparently promised:<o:p></o:p></span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">I have asked Mimmuriya, your husband, for massive gold statues. But your son has gold-plated statues of wood. As the gold is like dust in the country of your son, why have they been the reason for such pain, that your son should not have given them to me?</span>’<o:p></o:p></span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gold was also given as rewards to courtiers and military leaders. Reliefs at Amarna show the royal couple Akhenaten and Nefertiti handing out golden collars and arm rings to their faithful followers and large flies fashioned from gold were handed out for valour on the battlefield, much as we give out medals today. Interestingly these military awards were sometimes even presented to women, as Queen Aahhotep I, the mother of Pharaoh Ahmose I, was buried with three such flies in her tomb.</span><o:p></o:p></span> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span> <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">As the wealth and might of the Egyptian empire grew in the New Kingdom, so did the prestige of goldsmiths. The men who created the exquisite jewelry, statues and funerary masks became feted and wealthy in their own right. They developed several techniques that are still used by jewellers today such as utilising the lost-wax technique to make intricate statues, beating gold into fine leaves, and mixing it with other metals to create alloys. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Electrum, a blend of gold, silver, copper and other metals, was one such alloy that was very widely used to plate the exterior of monuments such as obelisks and the pyramidions that topped the pyramids.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gold had been mined and worked in Egypt since predynastic times. How it was first discovered is shrouded in mystery, but this very early gold was more than likely extracted from alluvial deposits. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It was one of the first metals to be worked and used by prehistoric man, probably because it could be found in the natural world that surrounded them, is very malleable and soft so can easily be worked with rudimentary tools, and its shine and glitter would have made it attractive for use in jewelry and ornaments. Most of the gold extracted in antiquity in Egypt was mined in the Eastern Desert and Nubia. In fact Nubia even incorporates the ancient word for gold ‘nub’ in its name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The methods of extracting the metal were simple but effective. The earliest method used was probably extracting gold from auriferous sand, which was known in antiquity as nub-en-mu or ’gold of the river’. Quantities of auriferous sand would be placed into a sack made from an animal fleece, with the woolly side facing inward. Water would then be poured into the bag and vigorously shaken around by two men. This would separate the heavier metal from the dirt and grit and when the water was drained out, it would take the dirt with it leaving the gold dust adhering to the fleece.<o:p></o:p></span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shallow underground mining probably didn’t start until the New Kingdom and this technique of extraction was known as nub-en-set or ‘gold of the mountain’. The metal bearing rock was first crushed into powder and then spread over a stone table that was slightly tilted. Water was then poured over the powder, which separated all the dirt and dust from the metal, leaving only the particles of gold on the table. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This was repeated a few times until only gleaming, yellow metal particles remained. They then rubbed these precious particles between their hands for a length of time, before they finally ran small sponges over it to clear out any remaining dirt.<o:p></o:p></span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So far there have been over a hundred gold workings and settlements that have been found, most of them in the arid wadis of the Eastern Desert. However, according to the map on the Turin Papyrus, there were at least 1300 such mines in ancient times. Hopefully, more evidence and remains of the ancient gold mining industry will be excavated from beneath the sands of Egypt, as well as further beautiful examples of the ancient goldsmith’s art.<o:p></o:p></span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-5386251968707686902013-07-29T21:57:00.000+01:002013-07-29T21:57:54.446+01:00'I Was Really Going Places You Know' - The Lament of Tuy<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tuy is one of the important female characters in The Aten Sequence Books, efficiently looking after the practical side of Aten's life at the villa, while at the same time being a sarcastic thorn in his side. But she too has her story and her dreams, and being stuck on Earth with Aten had very definitely never been part of her plans.</i></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xOtgbN5HdKE/UfbUutkAmoI/AAAAAAAABEQ/dCHl61c4fxQ/s1600/Deir+el+Bahri+(17).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Deir el Bahri" border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xOtgbN5HdKE/UfbUutkAmoI/AAAAAAAABEQ/dCHl61c4fxQ/s320/Deir+el+Bahri+(17).JPG" title="Deir el Bahri" width="320" /></a></div>
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‘I was really going places you know,’ Tuy gulped, as two fat
teardrops formed in the corner of her eyes and slowly tracked their way down
her flushed cheeks.</div>
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‘I had plans, I had dreams, I was really going places. And now look at me? Stuck here in this hot, dusty hellhole that
doesn’t even have a proper power supply.’</div>
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The guard cat broke off from his morning ablutions to fix
her with his enigmatic feline stare.</div>
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‘Don’t look at me like that.
It’s not my fault that the only thing I’ve got to talk to is a cat. At least you don’t answer back, which is more
than I can say for some of them round here.’</div>
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Tuy flung the onions she had been peeling into the bowl with
unnecessary vigour and turned around to fetch the goose that was hanging on the
wall behind her.</div>
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‘And don’t think that I don’t know what you are up to? If you put so much as one paw on this goose
carcass, you’ll be going into the pot with it.
Don’t think I don’t know where that stuffed carp went last week.’</div>
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The guard cat looked mildly offended at this insinuation and
returned to lovingly licking his front leg.</div>
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‘See, even you don’t take me seriously,’ Tuy wailed, as
fresh tears started tumbling down her face.</div>
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‘But you don’t know; none of you know. I was really going
someplace, someplace special. I was the
only one out of my clutch to even make it external processing and do you know
how many get through and are given an exit permit? Only 2%! I was in the top 2% of my clutch and look at
me now? A single mother stuck on a
backward planet I don’t even know the name of.
Motherhood was never what I wanted, especially not at my age. And what
am I going to do with him? There aren’t any opportunities for a young Galasian
here and it’s no life for him stuck in that shed all day.’</div>
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The guard cat switched to cleaning his other front leg
without even looking up to acknowledge Tuy’s distress.</div>
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‘He needs to be out in the fresh air, running and playing with
the other youngsters. Not shunned for being different and locked away as if he
were a monster.’</div>
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These words did cause the guard cat to temporarily interrupt
his washing and look up at Tuy with an air of disbelief. His sensitive nose could detect the rank
odour of Piy locked up in his shed, even this far away in the kitchen, despite
the strong tang of onions that was in the air and the gamey scent of a goose
that had been hanging for a long time.</div>
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‘And it wasn’t just the exit permit I got. I was one of only seven hundred and twenty
females to be admitted into the Galactic Cocktail Shaking School on Mildorium
27. Can you even begin to imagine what
an achievement that was?’</div>
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The guard cat yawned delicately and turned around to lick
his nether regions. When would the
tedious woman shut up? At this rate she
would never turn her back, so he could get at that goose. She might think she had a hard life down
here, but really she had no clue as to what he had to go through just to get
the odd mouthful of food occasionally.
And cocktails? Really? She would have been better off going to a good
mousing academy, though god knows how many small rodents she would have to kill
every day to keep that malodorous turnling of hers fed.</div>
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‘It’s bad enough that you ignore me when I’m trying to talk
to you, but do you have to wash your private parts on my kitchen table?” she
asked him irritably. ‘And how come you
can’t talk like those royal cats can?’</div>
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If the guard cat had eyebrows he would have raised them in
disbelief. Why on earth did the woman think he would talk to her? Having to
listen to her rants as he was waiting for food was bad enough.</div>
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‘I was great at the cocktail shaking school; one of their
fastest learners ever. By the time I
graduated I could mix over fifteen hundred cocktails from fourteen different
planetary systems. And did you know that
I was one of only eight thousand graduates ever licensed to use slieppel juice
from Grandorminian 75? That stuff can
fell a Lotkair Sloth with just two drops.
I had my pick of jobs. I really
thought that bar in the mining belt was going to be the first step in a
glittering career. It was just oozing
with rich miners and droids, all with plenty of cash in their pockets and out
for a good time. The tips were fabulous. Did I tell you the story of the night that
tulsphate miner dropped a 560 carat diamond in my cleavage? </div>
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The cat elegantly stretched and then curled up into a ball
of mackerel striped fur. Was the woman
going to rant all night? What he really
wanted was to have a quick nap, but he could almost guarantee that as soon as
his eyes were closed that goose would be put in the baking pot and he would
have lost his chance. But it couldn’t hurt to let the woman think he was
asleep.</div>
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He could hear that Tuy had started plucking the large bird. <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>Time was running out
and, in the mood she was in, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around when she
started to chop it up with her cleaver.</div>
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‘You can ignore me if you want, but I’ve still got my
story. That tulsphate miner loved me you
know. Said he’d take me on his next prospecting
trip and buy me anything I wanted. Oh why did Aten have to come into my bar
that night? There were seventy five
others on that strip. I mean it’s not like I ever fancied him or anything, but
I’d never met one of the immortal ones before.
It’s not often a girl gets a chance to party with a member of the First
Families. He offered to show me his
space ship and the next thing you know we’ve run out of fuel in the middle of
nowhere. ‘</div>
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The guard cat curled up even tighter in the hope the woman
would take the hint and stop talking. Tuy,
however, was just getting into her stride.</div>
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‘I mean how does one of the immortal ones do something that
stupid? They’re supposed to be role
models for us, right? People we can look up to, not incompetent idiots who run
out of fuel and then don’t know how to fix the problem. If I’d known that I was going to be stuck
sweeping and cooking in a scratchy linen robe and too much eye make-up I would
have just stayed on the home planet. I
could have raised several clutches by now, not just one turnling.’</div>
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The guard cat could feel himself gradually dozing off. His was so sleepy he felt like his head had
been stuffed with cotton wool. The woman’s
voice now just sounded like a constant drone in his head and she wasn’t showing
any signs of stopping any time soon. If
he wanted that goose he would have to do something drastic.</div>
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There was only one thing he could think of that was guaranteed
to get her out of the kitchen in a hurry, leaving his coveted prize
unattended. So he slowly reached out his
mind, probing until he found the wooden door of the shed Piy was locked
in. He could sense the Galasian turnling
impotently hammering at the rough wooden slats trying to get out, so he pulsed
some energy into the stout piece of rope that was holding the door closed. After a few seconds it ignited in a blaze of
hot, blue flames that rapidly burned through the rope. The next time Piy’s fist
hit the door it swung abruptly open.</div>
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Any time now thought the guard cat smugly, as he started
counting down from ten. Ten, nine,
eight, seven ....... Suddenly, a loud female scream, followed by the guttural
roar of a Galasian turnling shattered the late afternoon silence that had been
hanging over the villa. More screaming
and the sound of running feet followed.</div>
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Tuy, her tearful rant rudely interrupted by the commotion,
angrily slammed the half-plucked goose back down on the table in a cloud of
grey and white feathers.</div>
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‘Not again,’ she screamed. ‘How did he get out this
time? And why are those stupid girls
screaming, it’s not like he’s anything to be scared of. I suppose I’m going to have
to go and sort it out. Not like anyone
else is going to.’</div>
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She quickly wiped her hands clean on the scrap of linen she
used as a towel and ran out of the room in the direction of the screaming.</div>
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The guard cat waited until he could hear her footsteps
pounding down the verandah, before he lifted his head and looked at where the
goose was now lying on the kitchen table.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">These humans think they are so clever, he
thought as he dragged the large bird off the table and out into the courtyard. Now he could have his dinner in peace in his
special hiding place behind the dung heap, have another leisurely wash and a
good long sleep.</span>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-2764704155488817472013-07-21T20:39:00.002+01:002013-07-21T20:39:44.870+01:00Bast – Ancient Egyptian Goddess of Cats<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>In the second book of the Aten Sequence ‘Hall of the Crocodiles’ we are introduced to Prince Dhutmose’s cat Ta-miu. In the book <a href="http://www.atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/in-search-of-historical-prince-dhutmose.html" target="_blank">Ta-miu</a> is a very special royal talking cat who has a very important role to play in the unfolding of the story. We do know that the real, historical Prince Dhutmose did have a beloved pet called Ta-miu because her carved limestone coffin was discovered and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. What we don’t know is whether she could talk to her prince, but even if the Egyptian cats couldn’t talk or do magic they were revered by the Ancient Egyptians and they had an important cat goddess they called Bast.<o:p></o:p></i><br />
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Cats were regarded very highly by the Ancient Egyptians, so it is perhaps not too surprising that they worshipped a powerful cat goddess called Bast or <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/b/bronze_figure_of_bastet.aspx" target="_blank">Bastet</a>. She is depicted as a cat or as a woman with the head of a feline. She was a daughter of the sun god Ra and her name means ‘warmth of the sun’. In the pharaonic period she was worshipped as a sun deity but, after their arrival, the Greeks associated her with one of their lunar goddesses Artemis and she became known as a moon goddess.</div>
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Like most Ancient Egyptian deities Bast had many attributes. In some guises she was an angry, vengeful goddess, one of her father Ra’s avenging deities sent to punish wrong doers and Egypt’s enemies. At other times she was a kind, protective goddess who would shower you with blessings if you gained her favour. She was also a goddess of fertility and love, with the cat being her sacred animal. It was considered to be a great sin to harm a cat, one certain way of bringing Bast’s wrath down on your head.</div>
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It is thought that cats were first domesticated in the Middle East in around 10,000 BC. They probably became so important to the Ancient Egyptians because they were so useful at killing vermin. They would have hunted and killed the rats, mice and venomous snakes that lurked in the granaries, houses and also in the fields surrounding the ancient settlements. They were also valued as domestic pets and there are tomb paintings that show these domesticated felines out hunting with their masters.<br />
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Bast was a very important, powerful goddess and her cult was spread the length of the Nile Valley, but the centre of her worship was at the city named after her in the Nile Delta. During pharaonic times the city was called Per-Bast or ‘House of Bast’ and it then became known as Bubastis. It reached the peak of its importance during the 22<sup>nd</sup> dynasty when Pharaoh Shoshenq I created it as his capital. The city remained the capital of Egypt for over 230 years until the Persian invasion led by Cambyses II in 525 BC.<br />
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What is left of the ancient remains of the city lies on the outskirts of the modern industrial city of Zagazig, some 80 kms north of Cairo. The great temple of Bast, which the historian Herodotus described as a building of great splendour and beauty, has been excavated. The building of this temple commenced in the 4<sup>th</sup> dynasty in the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu, who was the king who also constructed the Great Pyramid at Giza, and was extended and embellished by many successive pharaohs over the course of the next 1700 years. The temple of Bast was built from blocks of valuable red granite that had to be transported all the way from the distant quarries at Aswan.</div>
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The temple attracted many worshippers and Herodotus also recorded that a great annual festival was held to venerate the goddess. He noted that as many as 700,000 pilgrims would arrive in the town to celebrate, make votive offerings and join in the great procession. There was also a famous oracle of Bast located in the city.<br />
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One of the most common offerings made to gain favour and blessings from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery_12.shtml" target="_blank">Bast</a> was a mummified cat. Thousands upon thousands of these cat mummies have been discovered and there is a huge cat cemetery situated in Bubastis itself. This extensive cat necropolis was started in the Third Intermediate Period, and grew into a network of subterranean passages and tomb chambers made from mud brick some 200 metres north of the temple. The cat mummies were placed in niches and on shelves along the walls. Some of these cat mummies had been carefully wrapped in fine linen and placed in finely decorated coffins; others are much simpler, probably reflecting the wealth and status of the pilgrim. Because so many of these cat mummies have been discovered in Egypt, in the recent past many of them were ground up to use as fertiliser or burned for fuel.<br />
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EMS-96004-Rosecrucian-Egyptian-Cat-Mummy.JPG" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Egyptian cat mummy</a> image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain</div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-28185965957695793132013-07-16T20:53:00.000+01:002013-07-16T20:53:25.610+01:00‘Ghosts and Other Really Big Surprises’ Is Now Available In Print!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">‘Ghosts and Other Really Big Surprises’ has been available as an ebook on Kindle for almost a year, so I decided the time was right to create it as a print book in CreateSpace. Somehow, even though I wrote these short stories, it felt that having a printed book of them, something I could hold in my hands and turn the pages, would make them seem more real somehow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Now there are these amazing Indie authors out there who seem to just know how to do absolutely everything, but unfortunately I am not one of them. Formatting large documents is not one of my favourite tasks, but I had managed it OK for the digital file, so surely I could create one for the print version? Well six upload attempts and several different error messages later I was beginning to wonder. I had downloaded the template, pasted all the text in, read notes on ideal margins and stuff, but every time I uploaded it again, bingo there was another error message. So I made some more adjustments (fiddled around a bit hoping I would get it right by default!), crossed my fingers and uploaded it for what I hoped would be the final time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Hallelujah! This time there were no errors noted. I clapped, shrieked with happiness and generally carried on like a crazy woman. I was full of that wonderful feeling of accomplishment on a job well done, an obstacle overcome, reaching the finishing tape after running a long race. Then I proofed the formatted documented. You guessed it; I had crowed way too soon. The one thing that I hadn’t taken into consideration was that by changing the margins, I was also changing where the text was sitting on the page. So I had to go back to the document, move the text back to where it was supposed to be and then upload it again. Thankfully, this time I got it right and all was well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I used the CreateSpace resource to design the cover, which was another adventure and learning experience, and with some trepidation pressed the finish button. So now you can buy a printed version of these spooky short stories. Read about Harold’s sinister adventures with vegetables that grow much bigger than they should, the mysterious plague that sweeps through Britain bringing economic and social devastation in its wake, or the tale of an evil ancient Egyptian who may not be resting easily in her coffin. If you like ghosts, there is the story of a little girl who was saved by a ghost one snowy Christmas and the tragic tale of the mother who was trying to protect her young son from a malevolent presence from beyond the grave. There is even romance as Gemma goes on a first date that doesn’t quite go to plan and Hazel finds that there is more to bird watching than she previously thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Definitely stories to read hiding under the duvet, with a torch held in your trembling hand. Make sure that you have some hot cocoa and plenty of chocolate for comfort and don’t forget to lock the back door. Because those weren’t footsteps you heard in the kitchen were they? Someone making their way slowly up the stairs?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-62913757837068431672013-07-14T16:23:00.000+01:002013-07-14T18:34:38.071+01:00Akhmim – Ancient Egypt’s Oldest City?<div class="MsoNormal">
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<i>‘The Aten Sequence
Books’ are science fantasy fiction novels, but I have used some real historical
characters and locations in Ancient Egypt to create my stories. One place that gets mentioned is an ancient
city called Akhmim, as it was where Princess Merytamen’s wicked stepmother
Queen Tiye came from. So where is the town of Akhmim and what was its
importance in antiquity?</i></div>
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In the 16<sup>th</sup> century the author and diplomat Leo
Africanus claimed that Akhmim was the oldest city in Egypt. So is it true? How old is Akhmim and what was its importance
to the mighty ancient Egyptian civilisation?
It is situated on the east bank of the River Nile in Upper Egypt, a few
miles from the more bustling town of Sohag.
Its earliest beginnings are more than probably lost in the shifting
sands of the desert, but clues of human habitation start to appear with
artefacts from the Badarian culture in the 5<sup>th</sup> century BC. It is from the remains of these very early
settlements and cemeteries that we see the first evidence of the development of
agriculture in the Nile valley. They also made very distinctive pottery, which
included polished red vessels with black rims.
Early artwork has also been discovered in the form of carved ivory
figurines.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Statue of Merytamun at Akhmim</td></tr>
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In pharaonic times the city was known as Ipu or Khent-Menu
and was a centre of worship for the fertility god Min. In the late period the
Greeks knew the city as Panopolis. The
cult of Min stretched back into predynastic times and he was usually shown as a
man with black skin, holding his erect phallus in his left hand and holding a
flail in his outstretched right hand.
Min was depicted with black skin
to show that he is a fertility deity and great festivals would be held every
year to celebrate his ‘coming forth’, where worshippers would carry his statue
in procession and present him with votive offerings. He was the god Egyptians
would pray to for a successful annual inundation of the Nile followed by a
bountiful harvest. Oddly enough, lettuce
was one of the key features of his festivals, possibly because when the leaves
are ripped apart they secrete a milky substance that resembles semen, which is
also an opiate and aphrodisiac. The
Greeks associated him with their god Pan, another fertility god who was often
shown with the head and torso of a man and the lower limbs of a goat.</div>
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Tiye was the wife of the Pharaoh <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/amenhotep_iii.shtml" target="_blank">Amenophis III</a> and Queen of
Egypt towards the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty in the period known as the
New Kingdom. Unusually, we know who her
parents were as Amenophis III produced a series of commemorative ‘marriage
scarabs’ stating that <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">‘<i>the name of her father is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Yuya</span>, the name of her
mother is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Thuya</span>; she is married to
the great king whose southern border is at Karoy and whose northern is Naharin</i>’. These
scarabs make it very clear that Queen Tiye was not of royal birth and it is
believed that her parents came from the town of Akhmim. The intact tomb of Yuya and Thuya was
discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1905 by James Quibell. The mummy of
her father Yuya shows that he was unusually tall for an Egyptian of that
period, had a beard and facial features that differed from those of a typical
Egyptian. A theory has been put forward that he was a foreigner or at least of
foreign descent, with some scholars pointing to the unusual spelling of his
name as further evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mummy Mask of Yuya, Cairo Museum</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Yuya was a courtier of Pharaoh
Thutmosis IV and was a commander of the chariotry and then went on to serve his
successor and son-in-law Amenophis III.
His titles included ‘Master of the Horse’, ‘King’s Lieutenant’ and ‘Father
of the God.’ In his home town he held
the titles ‘Priest of Min’, ‘Overseer of the Cattle of Min’ and ‘Lord of
Akhmim.’ His wife Thuya also held a
string of impressive, high status titles that included ‘Priestess of Amen’,
‘Chief of the Harem of Min’, ‘Chief of the Harem of Amen’ and ‘Chantress of
Hathor’. Their burial was robbed during
antiquity, but much of the impressive, elegant furniture remained and both the
mummies were discovered intact in their coffins. They were known to have a son called Anen,
who became known as the ‘Divine Father’ and also held the titles of ‘Chancellor
of Lower Egypt’, ‘Second Prophet of Amun’, and ‘Priest of Heliopolis.’ Many scholars also believe that Ay, a
prominent courtier in the reigns of Amenophis III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun
who then took the throne and ruled as Pharaoh for around four years, was also a
son of Yuya and Thuya. So although we
have no evidence that Queen Tiye had royal blood, her family were obviously
powerful and influential at the Egyptian court.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">There is very little left of the
pharaonic town of Ipu to be seen as many of the carved and dressed blocks of
stone from the temples were taken away and used in later building
projects. In 1981 a temple dedicated to
Min and his local consort Triphis, also known as Repyt, thought to have been
built during the Graeco-Roman period was excavated to reveal remains of a
monumental gate. Fragments of statues of
Ramesses II were discovered as well as a colossal statue of his daughter, and
later great royal wife, Queen Merytamun.
This beautiful statue has been restored and now stands as the
centrepiece of a small open-air museum.
Interestingly there are also some carved blocks from Akhetaten (Amarna)
that had probably been scavenged to build the later structure. More recently another temple dating to the
time of Ramesses the Great has been found and the fragments of a broken colossal
statue of this pharaoh lies partially buried by what used to be the gate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">There is a necropolis at <a href="http://www.touregypt.net/akhmim.htm" target="_blank">Akhmim</a>
dating from pharaonic times, which has never been systematically excavated
although some more recent discoveries include five tombs dating to the Old
Kingdom. There is also a necropolis at
nearby el-Hawawish that is notable for its rock-cut tombs of the governors of
the Nome who were buried there from the 4<sup>th</sup> to the 11<sup>th</sup>
dynasties. Also at nearby el-Salamuni
there are more rock-cut tombs dating from the Graeco-Roman period and a chapel that
was dedicated to Min. This rock chapel was thought to have been carved during
the reign of Thutmosis III and decorated during the reign of Ay by Nakhtmin,
who was the ‘First Prophet of Min’, with reliefs of Ay and his wife Tey
worshipping local deities. The chapel
was known to the Greeks as the ‘Grotto of Pan’ and more reliefs were added
depicting Ptolemy II Philadelphus during this period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Magic is a very important part of
the story in ‘The Aten Sequence Books’ and Akhmim is also known as a place
where alchemy and Egyptian magic were very important. Indeed the town was known by the name Khemmis
or Chemmis, which may have been the basis for our modern word chemistry. In ancient times the land of Egypt was called
‘Khem’ meaning ‘black earth’. Some of
the oldest known books on alchemy were written at the end of the 3<sup>rd</sup>
century AD by a famous alchemist called Zosimos of Panopolis, whose writings
were among those of around forty alchemists that were placed in a compendium
put together in Byzantium in the 7<sup>th</sup> or 8<sup>th</sup> centuries
AD. Alchemists concerned themselves with
the transformation of base metals such as copper or lead into precious metals
such as gold or silver. They also acknowledged
that a process of transformation and purification within themselves was as
important as the outward changes in the metal and they worked more for the gaining
of spiritual knowledge and development than they did for the material
gains. The greatest magician and
alchemist of legend, <a href="http://www.atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/writers-block-call-on-ancient-gods-of.html" target="_blank">Hermes Trismegistus</a>, who was a composite of the Egyptian
god of writing Thoth and the Greek Hermes, was also supposed to have lived for
some time in the town. So Aten’s
attempts to turn gold into the fuel he needs for ship were perhaps an echo of
the experiments these alchemists undertook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">These links between Akhmim and
alchemy were to last for many centuries as in the 9<sup>th</sup> century AD the
celebrated Sufi Dhu’l al-Misri was born in Akhmim. He thought to have been an alchemist and been
able to perform miracles. He was a great scholar and travelled large distances
across the Arabian Peninsula and through Syria in order to learn from the great
teachers of the day and also to teach himself.
He died in 859 AD and is buried in Cairo’s City of the Dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">So although Akhmim might now be a
relatively unknown regional town in Middle Egypt, in antiquity it was a prosperous,
bustling regional centre. Queen Tiye is
said to have owned vast estates in the area, which would have produced a vast
array of agricultural produce. It still has a thriving weaving industry that
produces fine silk and Egyptian cotton that is said to date back to the time of
the pharaohs. It became a centre for
magic and alchemy during the Greek period, melding the ancient Egyptian
traditions and knowledge with the philosophies the Greeks had brought with
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Statue of Merytamun image <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kurohito" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kurohito</a> Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Share Alike 3.0 Unporte</a>d</span></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-51495886786182039072013-07-08T19:51:00.000+01:002013-07-08T19:51:19.012+01:00My Very First Online Interview! An Author First For Me<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess I was pretty naive when I started writing the first
Aten Sequence book back in 2007. I just
sat down at my laptop one Sunday and started typing. After typing five whole pages I was pretty
impressed with myself. Who knew that I
could string so many words of fiction together? Perhaps not surprisingly, not a
single one of those first words actually made it into the final draft, but they
will always be important as the first steps in my writing journey. I even have
them saved somewhere on my laptop.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AMvK9sZJMkA/UdsIOzTiITI/AAAAAAAABC8/7kq6-q0xBV8/s1600/Cynthia+to+use.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Cynthia Marsh - Author of The Aten Sequence Books" border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AMvK9sZJMkA/UdsIOzTiITI/AAAAAAAABC8/7kq6-q0xBV8/s320/Cynthia+to+use.jpg" title="Cynthia Marsh - Author of The Aten Sequence Books" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cynthia Marsh - Author of The Aten Sequence Books</td></tr>
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But what I did not know then was how much other stuff I
would need to learn in order to get my books written, produced and sold. Because I chose to go down the
self-publishing route, I quickly worked out that being an indie author means
you either have to do everything yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.
Oh, the lucky writers who just happen to be partnered up with a cover designer,
editor or file formatter that will do freebies for them!</div>
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Like many authors, I have done a lot of things myself and
paid to have some other things done for me.
My first foray into self publishing, which was a bit of a test really,
was my collection of spooky short stories ‘Ghosts and Other Really Big
Surprises.’ This was a totally DIY
project and I put the cover together myself, formatted the file for Kindle
Direct Publishing and uploaded it. I
have recently been wrestling with it in CreateSpace, so that I can have a
printed version for sale and not just an ebook. </div>
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For The Aten Sequence Books, I wanted to have professional
book covers designed. I also wanted them
to be available on more online book retailing sites. So I chose to use <a href="http://www.bookbaby.com/" target="_blank">BookBaby</a> and have been very
impressed with them so far, as they took my somewhat sketchy brief for the book
covers and produced something very close to what I had envisaged in my mind’s
eye.</div>
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But it is the book marketing and promotion that I have found
the most challenging so far. Write it
and they will not necessarily come! Now
that self-publishing is so accessible and can be done for free, there are
thousands upon thousands of indie books out there. Some are amazing, some are good and some are
....., well just are. But the challenge
is how do I make my Aten Sequence Books stand out among so many others clamouring
to be downloaded onto the e-readers across the globe? How do I persuade a
potential reader to take a punt and spend some of their hard earned cash on a book
written by an unknown author?</div>
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I was so focussed on the writing and editing side of things,
that I neglected to read the advice on starting to promote your book at least a
year before its release. So I am already
a late starter in the promotion game.
But impatience doesn’t help anything.
This is a marathon, not a sprint, and I have set my goal as doing one
thing a day, however small, to market my books and get them out there. So you
can imagine how excited I was when I saw that standoutbooks were looking to
interview indie authors and they agreed to interview me.</div>
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Being a typical introvert writer, my first concern was what
was I going to tell them? I mean I write
stories about other people, not about me.
How was I going to make me interesting?
There is a myth that writing is a glamorous profession. Well maybe it is when you get to the level of
success enjoyed by J K Rowling and others, but for us relative newbies writing
means hours hunched over your laptop at home, quite often still in your pyjamas
and picking cornflakes out of your hair.
So I had to put on my big girl pants and open up about myself, my
writing and my books. Not easy at the
start, but as I started answering the questions it started to flow and I amazed
myself at how much came out. </div>
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I have to give standoutbooks a big thank you, as I think
they have done an amazing job in putting the interview together online. It looks really professional and I am very
proud of it. I’d also really like to thank them for giving a few of us indie
authors the chance to talk about our books.
We are all looking for a break, that first elusive whiff of a winning
streak and I don’t think people realise how much it means to us when you tweet
about our books, share our posts on Facebook , comment on our blogs or write a
review on sites like Amazon or Goodreads.
So thank you to everyone who has ever shown their support for The Aten
Sequence Books. So make an indie author
happy today and tweet this post or share it on Facebook – go on, you know you
want to!</div>
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In case you missed this awesome interview you can catch it here - <a href="http://www.standoutbooks.co.uk/author-interview-cynthia-marsh/" target="_blank">Author Interview: Cynthia Marsh</a></div>
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-61157274114199330612013-06-25T16:40:00.000+01:002013-06-25T16:40:14.326+01:00When Did Reading Become Such Hard Work?<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a question to ask you all; when did reading become
such hard work?</div>
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I have always loved reading and even as a small child my
mother would find me sitting in a corner immersed in a book rather than being
out playing with my friends. I was a
devourer of books; getting them from the local library, as birthday and
Christmas presents and from jumble sales.
I started off on Enid Blyton, progressed to pony books and then started reading
my mother’s romances. Some of my favourite books I read multiple times, until
the pages were dog-eared and the covers battered. Now I read a fairly eclectic mix of
non-fiction, thrillers and horror with the very occasional chick-lit romance
thrown in.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rOg26NU0gX0/Ucm45S8KUHI/AAAAAAAABCM/Jn7SyTNol0Y/s1600/Book+Stack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Book Stack Waiting to be Read" border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rOg26NU0gX0/Ucm45S8KUHI/AAAAAAAABCM/Jn7SyTNol0Y/s320/Book+Stack.jpg" title="Book Stack Waiting to be Read" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Book Stack Waiting to be Read</td></tr>
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But reading has always been easy; you just pick up a book
you like the look of and read it. If you
don’t finish it, it’s no biggie. But I
don’t know whether this has been a knock-on effect of the internet, but for a
lot of folks out there reading is now hard work and a serious business. People are compiling reading lists, setting
themselves targets about how many books they want to read in a given time and
then talking about it on the net. It
makes my ten minutes reading a day just before I switch the light off at night
look very inadequate and I have had to ask myself a very hard question – am I a
lazy reader? Am I just not disciplined
enough? After all, there are millions of
books out there and how am I ever going to get through them all unless I have a
plan?</div>
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Of course I could blame the Kindle. With the electronic e-readers that are now
available, people can have hundreds of books sitting there waiting for them to
dive in. I still use the local library,
so my queue is based on how many they let me take out and how many I can carry
home. Buying books poses some of the
same problems, along with the big question of storage. I have at least twelve packing cases full of
books stored away, as well as the ones I have out on the shelves. I shudder to think how many I have taken to
the charity shops over the years, although parting with any book is always a
wrench. I mean how do I know whether or
not I may want to read it again in fifteen years and tie-dyeing tights may well
come back into fashion?</div>
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One of the things that I loved about travelling in Australia
was that they have book exchange shops, where you can take your old books and
they will give you a few dollars for them or exchange them for some different
titles. Some of these places are like
Aladdin’s cave, piled high with a huge assortment of reading material, some of
it many years old. I found a lot of
books that I had read and loved years ago, so had some nostalgic moments as I dived
into stories that I remembered from my teens and twenties.</div>
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But if being a disciplined, goal driven reader is right up
your street, where can you go to achieve your aims?</div>
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<b>Book Clubs: </b></div>
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Book clubs have become very popular. They can be as simple as a few friends getting
together, choosing a novel they are all interested in reading (not always so
easy!) and meeting up at each other’s houses for tea and cake (or wine and
pizza), to discuss the book. There are
also several high profile TV book clubs you can join, which generally seem to
pick a different title every month or week.
In the US, Oprah has a <a href="http://www.oprah.com/book_club.html">book
club</a>, with lots of different articles and a book of the week suggestion and
here in the UK <a href="http://www.richardandjudy.co.uk/home">Richard and Judy</a>
still have a book club on the internet.
Otherwise, if you can’t cajole your friends into giving up an evening a
month to discuss literature and share snacks, just do a web search and you are
bound to find a book club in your area or on the net that is right for you.</div>
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<b>Reading Lists and Goals:
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Now if you are a really organised, motivated person you can
create your own lists of books you want to read, set a time frame and keep
tally of how you are doing. But if you
want some company, there are now plenty of places on the internet where you can
hang out and do all this, with the added bonus of being able to interact with a
group of like-minded avid readers while you are doing it. Perhaps, one of the best known sites is
Goodreads, where you can set up our profile, add books you have read to your
shelves, post reviews and join in the discussions and groups. There are even
book clubs on <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6927847.Cynthia_Marsh" target="_blank">Goodreads</a> you can join. Of
course, we authors love readers that post reviews of our books. Good ones are great, but even a less than
glowing review that gives constructive criticism can be very helpful for the
future. Shelfari is a similar site and
there are also sites like Wattpad where you can post your own stories as well
as read and comment on stories written by others.</div>
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So Gentle Reader, if you want to take your reading habits to
the next level and set yourself some serious goals and you do not want to do it
alone, then there are now many resources you can tap into to help you get
there. As for me, I might get around to
that pile of books that have been sitting on the shelf for over a year once I’ve
made a cup of tea, but then I’ve always got the excuse that I’m supposed to be
writing them!</div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-61898652606806670212013-06-23T15:37:00.000+01:002013-06-23T15:44:14.913+01:00What Happened to the Three Youngest Amarna Princesses?<div class="MsoNormal">
The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Queen Nefertiti had six daughters, who were often shown with them on their monuments and in tomb decorations. Before this time at the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty it was rare for Pharaoh’s to be shown with their offspring or even alongside their royal wives, and there are probably many royal children who have not made it onto the pages of history from Ancient Egypt. But from these illustrations from Amarna it would appear that these little girls lived a privileged life of luxury and ease in the royal palace and also that they were loved and included in both the public and private lives of their parents. But life expectancy was not very long in Ancient Egypt, even for the cosseted children of royalty, so what did happen to the three youngest Amarna princesses Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ReCEoUwyAdk/UccDo1Sij0I/AAAAAAAABBs/9oLfrsGjz0Q/s1600/Painting_of_Akhenaten's_daughters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure" border="0" height="239" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ReCEoUwyAdk/UccDo1Sij0I/AAAAAAAABBs/9oLfrsGjz0Q/s320/Painting_of_Akhenaten's_daughters.jpg" title="Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure</span></td></tr>
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What draws many people to the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt is the innovative, more realistic style of the art and statuary. For the first time in Ancient Egypt’s long history the palaces were decorated with colourful scenes from nature, such as flying birds, fish in ponds, gambolling calves and plants. The royal family were also shown in a more natural guise for the first time. No longer were the Pharaoh and his Great Royal Wife shown in the perfect, formal poses of earlier reigns; they were drawn or carved with pot bellies and long, spindly limbs, doing the kind of things that ordinary families do, such as playing with the children and showing affection to one another. Some of the most charming scenes from this time depict the young Amarna princesses playing with each other, cuddling with their parents or even being naughty by poking a chariot horse with a stick. But, as well as being attractive images, these carvings and wall paintings provide us with most of the evidence we have regarding the lives of these royal children.</div>
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Their royal father Akhenaten abandoned the traditional capital and religion of Egypt and built an entirely new city called Akhetaten, based on the worship of the Aten or sun disk, for his family and to be the principle royal administrative centre. It is very likely that Neferneferuaten Tasherit (Beauty of the Beauties of Aten’ – Tasherit means ‘the younger one’ or ‘little’) was the first of the royal sisters to have been born in the new city, followed by Neferneferure (‘Most Beautiful One of Re’) shortly after and then the youngest princess, Setepenre (‘Chosen of Re’). The very first image we have of them all dates to around year 9 and is a wall painting from the King’s House in Amarna. It shows the entire royal family relaxing, with Neferneferuaten Tasherit painted sitting with her sister Neferneferure on a cushion. The fresco is very badly damaged unfortunately and all that is left of the picture of the youngest daughter, Setepenre, is her tiny hand.</div>
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The three youngest Amarna princesses are also shown in the decorations on the walls of the noble’s tombs at Amarna. It is in these tombs that we see the last scenes that show <a href="http://www.atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nefertiti-where-did-she-come-from-and.html" target="_blank">Nefertiti</a> surrounded by all six of her daughters. In year 12 of Akhenaten a ‘Great Durbar’ was held at Amarna where foreign rulers and vassals came from all corners of the Empire to pay tribute and give offerings to the Pharaoh. The three little princesses are shown with their elder sisters standing behind Akhenaten and Nefertiti as they receive tribute in the tombs of Meryre II and Huya, the Chief Steward of their grandmother Queen Tiye, and in one of the registers Neferneferure is shown holding a pet gazelle, which her youngest sister Setepenre leans forward to pet. This ‘Great Durbar’ seems to be the nadir of Akhenaten’s reign, as after this glittering event things seem to start falling apart at Akhetaten and many members of the royal family slip away into the shadows of history.</div>
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There is evidence from the Amarna letters that a great plague was sweeping through the Middle East at that time and that unwittingly the coming together of so many people from different countries could have helped it to spread. It is thought that the three youngest Amarna princesses may have been victims of whatever disease it was that was ravaging the population of Egypt. The tiny Setepenre may have been the first to die, as there is no evidence of her after years 13-14. Her name does appear on Wall C in the Royal Tomb, along with that of four of her sisters. She is also not shown on a wall in another chamber of the tomb that shows her parents and family mourning the death of her older sister Princess Meketaten. No evidence of her burial has been found, although she was very likely interred in the Royal Tomb and, heartbreakingly, the little girl was probably not even six years old when she died.<br />
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Princess Neferneferure is also missing from the death scene of Meketaten in the royal tomb at Amarna, so may also have died by years 13-14. However, it is important to remember that we do not know that much about the protocol surrounding royal burial ceremonies; these two princesses may simply have been too young to have been mourners in the scene. However, Neferneferure’s name is plastered over on Wall C in another chamber in the tomb. She could also have been buried in the Royal Tomb, although there is some evidence she could have been buried in another tomb at Amarna, Tomb 29, based on an inscription that was discovered on the handle of a pot that refers to the ‘inner (burial) chamber of Neferneferure’. If she was indeed interred in this other tomb, it could be that she died after her father Akhenaten and the Royal Tomb was already sealed and could not be opened for another burial.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SwxJSZd8R30/UccFLrSTttI/AAAAAAAABB8/LXHFi8QIVbU/s1600/Amarna+princesses+behind+Akhenaten+and+Nefertiti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters" border="0" height="130" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SwxJSZd8R30/UccFLrSTttI/AAAAAAAABB8/LXHFi8QIVbU/s320/Amarna+princesses+behind+Akhenaten+and+Nefertiti.jpg" title="Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters</td></tr>
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Again we cannot be certain what happened to Neferneferuaten; when she died or what was the cause of her death. She is shown on the walls of the royal tomb mourning the death of her elder sister Meketaten accompanied by Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, so was presumably still alive at this time, which was around year 14. There has been speculation that Neferneferuaten could have been married to a foreign ruler, one of her father Pharaoh Akhenaten’s vassals, and sent abroad but this has never been proved and would have been highly unusual. Egyptian princesses were married within the royal family or to prominent courtiers, and not married off into foreign royal families as diplomatic bargaining pieces. There is also a theory that she could have been her father’s mysterious co-regent, a shadowy figure who may have been either male or female. However, it is thought that she died before Tutankhamun and her sister Ankhesenpaaten (Ankhesenamun) came to the throne, as there is no evidence of her during their reign that has so far come to light.<br />
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Perhaps we will never know what the ultimate fate of these three young <a href="http://www.atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/atens-egypt-amarna-period.html" target="_blank">Amarna</a> princesses was, but the sands of Egypt still hold many secrets and new evidence may be found during future excavations. So hopefully there are artefacts out there still waiting to be found that might give us more clues and further glimpses into the extraordinary royal lives of these three little girls.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Painting_of_Akhenaten%27s_daughters.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Image </a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Painting_of_Akhenaten%27s_daughters.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Amarna Princesses</a> - </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Neferneferuaten and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Neferneferure Wikimedia Commons Any Purpose</span></span></div>
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HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-29022059678696363472013-06-06T22:01:00.000+01:002015-01-31T12:07:25.141+00:00Introducing ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles – The Aten Sequence 2’<div class="MsoNormal">
It always felt a little strange talking about a series of books when there was only one available, but at last there is actually an Aten Sequence! It feels like it has been a long time coming, but the second book in the series ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles – The Aten Sequence 2’ has now been self published and is available as an ebook on Amazon Kindle, ibookstore, Barnes & Noble, Reader Store (Sony), Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker & Taylor, eBookPie, eSentral, and Scribd.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bou1_Ivlnf0/UbD2FyoaT4I/AAAAAAAABBA/sBNSCA6Ptus/s1600/Karnak+(20).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Temple of Karnak" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bou1_Ivlnf0/UbD2FyoaT4I/AAAAAAAABBA/sBNSCA6Ptus/s320/Karnak+(20).JPG" height="240" title="The Temple of Karnak" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Temple of Karnak</td></tr>
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In this second book in the series, we find our immortal friend Aten getting ever more desperate. He is very close to running out of fuel and, now that the High Priest Neferhotep is even more suspicious of him, it looks like his chances of getting at the gold stored in the vaults beneath the Temple of Karnak are even slimmer. As taking responsibility is not his style, he blames his travelling companions the half man/half basset hound Druitt, the tempestuous Galasian cocktail waitress Tuy and Luke the rebel teenager from the 21<sup>st</sup> century for all his troubles.</div>
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So he sends Luke and Neferptah back to the palace to be educated in the Kap, a military training school for the royal princes and nobles, with Prince Dhutmose and his pals, in the hope that they will be able to find a way into the temple for him. Of course he neglects to tell the boys that’s why they are there and eventually has to blackmail Luke into going in search of the Princess Merytamen, in the hope that she will be able to lead him to his goal.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-G-6FqTwXm1A/UbS_Li8bYxI/AAAAAAAABBY/pOz6nVEJX9g/s1600/Hall+of+the+Golden+Crocodiles+June+2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-G-6FqTwXm1A/UbS_Li8bYxI/AAAAAAAABBY/pOz6nVEJX9g/s320/Hall+of+the+Golden+Crocodiles+June+2013.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
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So once again the two boys find themselves stealing through the palace corridors in the middle of the night, desperately hoping they will not be caught. But their pursuit of Merytamen sets off a chain of events that eventually leads them deep into the tunnels and halls beneath Karnak, on a dangerous quest to find the princess. As their friends from the palace try and find them before they are missed and Aten follows them in hot pursuit of the gold, can the two boys survive the dangers that lie before them?</div>
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Because there are ancient spells protecting the darkened corridors and vaults of the temple; powerful magic that can only too easily be awakened by unwary trespassers in this most sacred part of Karnak. There is also the little matter of an irate High Priest, who is a powerful magician in his own right and who would do anything to keep them away from the princess, to contend with.</div>
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Hall of the Golden Crocodiles is a light hearted science fantasy novel suitable for both young adults and older readers, featuring all of your favourite characters from Pharaoh’s Gold. There are also some exciting new characters for you to meet such as the talking royal cat Ta-miu, Prince Amenophis’s creepy new friend Mahu and the tomb robber Parneb. But it is someone from Aten’s past that causes the biggest surprise; a new arrival that could make his life even more complicated.</div>
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So will Aten get the gold he so badly needs and manage to make enough fuel to leave Earth and join his Uncle Lucie at last? Or will all his plans just fall apart again, leaving him stuck forever? Whatever happens, you can bet that none of it will be his fault and that there will be plenty of adventures along the way.<br />
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Download your copy today to find out!<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=cmhypnothypno-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=B00D6NRUHO&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br /></div>
<br />HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-82966079325324251292013-06-06T11:35:00.000+01:002013-12-17T10:30:10.775+00:00Authors: What Type of Social Media User Are You?<div class="MsoNormal">
Being a successful author used to be a lot easier. You sat in a freezing cold attic with little
food, scratched away with your quill pen long into the night, abjuring all
human contact in order to follow your muse. And then, after you died in misery
and penury, your manuscript would be discovered, become a bestseller and you
would be hailed as a genius. Simple.</div>
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But now, oh the horror of it, {cue dramatic drum rolls} we
indie authors have to do our own marketing!
That’s right, those books don’t sell themselves and as more authors
choose to self-publish it becomes even more imperative to make your books stand
out from the crowd and be noticed.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jane Austen </td></tr>
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Now, as you might have gathered from my earlier post ‘<a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/writing-success-you-might-want-to-start.html" target="_blank">WritingSuccess</a>’, I’m not a great fan of rigidly following other writer’s paths to
success and it is important that you find a way of promoting your books or
articles that works for you. It’s more
of a buffet approach, where you can read what has worked for others, appreciate
the success they have achieved and then pick out the bits that resonate with
you. But there is one thing that is
getting increasingly hard to avoid and that is social media.</div>
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Now many of us authors are shy, introverted creatures who
feel much safer tucked up behind our laptops dunking chocolate digestives in
our tea, but if we want our work to be noticed in the big wide world, we have
to be brave and dip our toes into the churning ocean that is now social media. ‘Write
and they will come’ is a nice idea, but your stories and characters will
probably get a bit lonely and your light will remain firmly stuck under the
bushel if you don’t get on with choosing your profile picture and writing your
blurb.</div>
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I know that it can seem daunting and, to be quite honest,
you will probably have to develop a thicker skin, as at some stage you will
probably encounter a few internet trolls, jealousy or nastiness. Just let it go and do not respond is probably
the best policy. Some people just cannot
help themselves and if you feed a troll they will just keep coming back for
more.</div>
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Probably the two most important resources that authors use
are Facebook and Twitter. Setting up
accounts on both is a straight forward exercise and there is plenty of help on
the internet to get you started. With
Facebook you can set up a page as an author or you can set up pages for your
individual books, although you will need a personal account in order to do
this. With Twitter, you just set up your
account and happily start tweeting.<br />
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Now this is not a ‘how to’ article, as there are already
thousands of them out there written by experts who know a lot more than I do
about the technical stuff. I just wanted
to ask you what type of social media user are you? What are you hoping to gain by using these
tools? It might seem like a strange
question, but many social media newbies can scupper their chances of success
and becoming popular, by only focussing on what they can gain. They view it as a simple marketing exercise
and, probably with the very best of intentions, plaster the social media
networks with their links and promotions. This is known as spamming and is very
much frowned on and can even get your account terminated.</div>
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But why is this spammy approach regarded as such a bad thing
you may be asking? Isn’t getting my book
links out there what I am giving up some of my precious writing time to do? Well,
it is because being overly promotional is simply not how social media
works. The clue is in the word ‘social’. These tools were set up so that people could
socialise and communicate with each other, places where they could build up
online communities. View it more like a
real world conference or party. Would
you just go barrelling in there, thrusting your business cards into people’s
hands, not even waiting for them to respond before you moved on to the next
person? No you would not. You would take
some time to introduce yourself and let others introduce themselves also. You would chat and establish some common
interests and only then, when you have made a connection with the other person,
would you give them your contact details or promotional material. One of the simple things that we can forget
when we are online is that we are still dealing with real, live people, not
just a faceless computer, so treat them the way you do the folks you meet in
your offline life.</div>
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A very good way to approach social media is not to think
about what you might gain, but to concentrate on what value you can give. You
know the Law of Attraction even works in cyberspace; the more love you give
out, the more love you will get back. Think
about it. If all you ever tweet is
promotional links to your books or blog posts, are you offering your followers
value? If you have a Facebook page that
again is full of links to your books or only talks about you, are you really
engaging with your followers? Now there
is nothing wrong about promoting yourself, talking about your achievements and books,
but that is what your website is for. It is all about achieving that crucial
balance between not losing sight of what you are really there for, which is
promoting your books, and wasting long hours chatting, arguing or commenting
that doesn’t bring you any tangible reward for your time. </div>
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Be disciplined, create a plan and, if you know that you can
easily get off track, set yourself a time limit. Remember though that social media is about
sharing. Social media is about
connecting and being generous. Make your
Facebook page interesting to your followers by sharing resources, articles or
links from other authors or experts. ‘Like’
and share stuff that your fans have posted if you think that it is interesting
and gives value. Engage directly with
the people who have generously given their time to like your page, start a
conversation and have some fun. Make you
page a fun and interesting place to visit.</div>
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On Twitter, it also pays to be generous and offer
value. Just don’t tweet your stuff, spend
some time retweeting other posts that you have found interesting or
helpful. If you have read an interesting
article written by another author, tweet it for them. Twitter was also designed to talk to other
users, which is something that is easy to forget when we are in marketing
mode. Start a conversation, join an
interesting thread, but keep it polite and respect the views of others. It is too easy to get carried away in the
anonymity that is the internet, but the words we post are potentially out there
forever and it is hard to take them back. </div>
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Another thing to think about with Twitter and Facebook is what
type of followers do you want to have?.
The people you really want to connect with are your readers and
potential readers, the people who are going to buy your books. But I see author after author Twitter
account, including my own, where all the followers are other authors or people
working in publishing. Now I’m not knocking this as it is great and very helpful
to connect and build relationships with other people in your industry, but are
they going to buy your books? It is well
worth taking the time to identify your readership and making the effort to encourage
more of them to follow your account.</div>
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If we are honest we would all love to create that tweet or post
that goes viral, that is shared by hundreds if not thousands of other social
media users, potentially putting our book into the hands of millions of people.
But this is far more likely to happen for you if you have taken the time to create
a strong network of online friends that you communicate and share with regularly.
What you give out comes back to you, so go and have some fun out there in
cyberspace. Maybe don’t take your
marketing and promotion so seriously; go and connect with some like-minded
people and organically grow your online presence over time.</div>
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jane_Austen,_from_A_Memoir_of_Jane_Austen_(1870).jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jane Austen Image</a> Wikimedia Commons Public Domain</div>
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-90219854947239343062013-06-02T14:35:00.001+01:002014-08-27T10:01:31.023+01:00In Search of the Historical Prince Dhutmose<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Aten Sequence
Books are set in Ancient Egypt and although many of the characters are purely
fictional, I have ‘borrowed’ some real historical characters and woven them
into my stories.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of these
characters is Prince Dhutmose; Crown Prince and eldest son of Pharaoh Amenophis
III. In the books he is a young prince
undergoing his military training in the Kap, a training school for the young
boys of royal and noble blood. At the
beginning of the story line he is just a young prince having a good time hunting,
racing his chariot, wrestling and having fun with his friends before Aten shows
up and embroils him in his schemes to steal the gold from the vaults of the
temple of Karnak. In the second book, ‘Hall
of the Golden Crocodiles’, we also meet Dhutmose’s beloved pet, the cat Ta-miu
who, being a royal cat, can talk, do magic and is much more than she seems. So
what can history tell us about the real Prince Dhutmose?</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hPyCL1pTQ8Y/UatFP06Yo_I/AAAAAAAABAQ/Ilwu9KbMClA/s1600/800px-Sarcophagus_of_Prince_Thutmose's_cat_by_Madam_Rafa%C3%A8le.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu - Egyptian Museum Cairo" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hPyCL1pTQ8Y/UatFP06Yo_I/AAAAAAAABAQ/Ilwu9KbMClA/s320/800px-Sarcophagus_of_Prince_Thutmose's_cat_by_Madam_Rafa%C3%A8le.jpg" height="212" title="Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu - Egyptian Museum Cairo" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although we do not know a great deal about the historical
Prince Dhutmose, isn’t it amazing that we do know that just over 3,000 years ago
a young prince loved his cat?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all our knowledge of ancient civilisations, we rarely
catch even the faintest whispers of the personal, intimate lives that these
people once led. Even for royalty,
beyond the formal inscriptions that rulers used to trumpet their achievements or
show their reverence to their gods, we usually know very little about the real characters
beneath the glittering regalia and formality of court life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But just occasionally we do get a small glimpse into these
past lives and loves, and one of these rare glimpses comes from a young boy’s
love for his cat. Prince Dhutmose was so fond of his cat that he had a fine
limestone sarcophagus carved for her, had her body mummified and then carefully
buried. The limestone sarcophagus is now on display in the Egyptian Museum in
Cairo and shows the cat sitting before an offering table heaped with goodies
for the afterlife. It seems that her
owner wanted her to enjoy her time after death as much as she had appreciated
being a cosseted royal pet in life. We
know from the inscriptions that she was called Ta-miu, which literally meant ‘she-cat’
and that her owner was Crown Prince Dhutmose, or Thutmose, the eldest son of
the mighty Pharaoh Amenophis III and his great royal wife, Queen Tiye.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Living in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, where Prince William
and Prince Harry have practically every moment of their lives captured on film
and the details of their day-to-day lives endlessly scrutinised and pored over,
it may seem strange to us that back in Ancient Egypt it was actually very rare
for there to be any mention of royal children or even their queens, on a Pharaoh’s
monuments. What we do know about the Egyptian royal families over the thousands
of years of Egyptian history tends to have been pieced together from titles and
inscriptions found in tombs or on statues or funerary equipment. Even today
there is much speculation about some of the relationships in the Egyptian royal
family and how they fitted together. However, this started to change towards
the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> dynasty and Amenophis III had his wife Queen
Tiye shown alongside him on statues and had the names and titles of his
children carved onto some of his monuments.
However, it was still usually only the royal princesses who were
mentioned and during the ensuing Amarna period the famous heretic Pharaoh
Akhenaten and his beautiful wife <a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nefertiti-where-did-she-come-from-and.html" target="_blank">Queen Nefertiti</a> were often shown with their
six daughters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the fact that we know that Prince Dhutmose even existed
is a miracle, as he did not outlive his father and become Pharaoh. Although we do not know many details of his
life, he seems to have been born between years 16-19 of his father’s reign and
have died young sometime between years 25-30.
His titles were listed on Ta-miu’s sarcophagus as ‘Crown Prince,
Overseer of the Priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, High Priest of Ptah in
Memphis and Sm-Priest (of Ptah)’, so he could well have spent much of his short
life in Egypt’s ancient capital Memphis.
As he was young, we also do not know whether these titles were purely
honorary or whether he did undertake priestly duties in the temple of
Ptah. However, there is evidence that he
officiated at the burial of one of the first Apis bulls at Saqqara, the large
royal necropolis over on the west bank of the Nile from Memphis. He may also have had connections to the military
as an ivory whip found in the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun is inscribed
with the titles ‘The King’s son, the troop commander, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thutmose_(prince)" target="_blank">Thutmose</a>, repeating of
births’, although again we cannot really be sure that the whip’s owner was our Dhutmose
and not another royal prince with the same name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How Prince Dhutmose died or his exact age at death is
unknown, but his demise paved the way for the emergence of his younger brother
Prince Amenophis onto the political scene.
It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the young prince
had lived and had succeeded to his father’s throne. Would he have led Egypt away from the worship
of Amen and the traditional gods as his brother was to do, or did he share
Akhenaten’s beliefs in the pre-eminence of the Aten? Prince Dhutmose’s tomb has never been
discovered, but there is a mummy that was discovered in the KV35 cache in the
tomb of Amenophis II that has been identified by some as his remains, although
others think that it may be Prince Webensenu, a son of Amenophis II, as some of
his canopic jars were also found in the tomb.
The mummy is of a young boy of around 11 years of age, who still wears
the sidelock of youth, and his identification as Prince Dhutmose comes from the
proximity of the remains to another mummy known as the ‘elder lady’ who has
been identified through DNA analysis as being Queen Tiye, his mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe there is more
evidence of Prince Dhutmose still to be excavated from beneath the shifting sands
off Egypt and we will be able to piece together some more of the details of his
life? Maybe even his tomb is still out
there somewhere in the hills of Thebes or in the necropolis of Saqqara waiting
to be found? But the one thing we do
know is that the young prince dearly loved his cat.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu image, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laraz/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Larazoni</a> Wikimedia Creative Commons <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Attribution 2.0 Generic</a></span></span>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-29577498057864537822013-05-07T12:31:00.000+01:002015-12-08T20:38:18.724+00:00Writing Success – You Might Want To Start Telling a Different Story<br />
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What is your definition of writing success? Is it rave reviews, worldwide fame, number of books sold, cash in the bank or the fact that your nearest and dearest think that your book is the best thing ever written since Shakespeare laid down his quill? Since I self published my first book in the Aten Sequence, Pharaoh’s Gold, like most newbie authors I have been reading all the blogs and forum posts about how to be a great author and promote my books.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qmB6tOHpBKA/UYjicspdxEI/AAAAAAAAA_I/ctBFcrYnfxI/s1600/South+Molle+Island.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Whitsunday Islands, Australia" border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qmB6tOHpBKA/UYjicspdxEI/AAAAAAAAA_I/ctBFcrYnfxI/s320/South+Molle+Island.JPG" title="Whitsunday Islands, Australia" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is this what success looks like? Yes please!</td></tr>
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It seems like everyone has an opinion, which is great, but also that they believe that the way they have carved out their success is the only way to go. Some of these posts have led to panic and a sinking pit in my stomach that my books will never be a success and guess what – that it is all my fault! Yep, it’s totally my fault. I didn’t read the post about beginning to promote my book at least a year before I released it on to the unsuspecting public, I haven’t sent it out to thousands of reviewers, I haven’t sent out press releases, done signings in coffee shops, tweeted my little heart out, amassed 10 million Facebook fans or any of the other myriad things that I have read that I <b><u>MUST</u></b> do or my books don’t stand a chance.</div>
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Now I’m not knocking any of the above marketing tools, they are all valid and have worked for many people. What I think that I’m trying to say is that if you get too caught up in reading all the writing and publishing advice out there, it can literally paralyse you. The task is too big, the amount of work formidable and only someone with the iron determination to work twenty four hours a day with no distractions will be successful and deserves to be successful. Yes, you heard the word correctly – <b>deserves</b>. There is a real evangelical, whip yourself until the blood runs feeling out there in author blogland. You must at least half-kill yourself to succeed or you do not deserve it! I have learned that pure luck or success springing from nowhere seems only to inflame the mob, leading to howls of outrage and hisses of disbelief. To earn your success, you have to suffer. You have to be able to sit in that interview chair at the end of it all, dripping wounds on show, telling it like it was - a true tale of torture and suffering.<br />
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Now in my naivety I thought that stringing together around 70,000 words in a vaguely coherent story was the real hard work, so I was a bit shocked when I read that I still had the big mountain to climb. For several months I panicked, I floundered around; I did a bit and then didn’t do most of it. I felt totally overwhelmed by this huge, seemingly insurmountable obstacle that had been placed in front of me. How was I even going to start building that shiny author website with lots of singing, moving gizmos and buttons? What about all these book signing gigs, talks and radio shows? How are all these other people doing it?<br />
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But after a lot of deep breathing, I decided that I needed to write another success story, one that was uniquely my own. It took a lot of sifting through my beliefs, taking a hard look at all the things I have read and learned and examining my own priorities before I came to a startling conclusion. And this conclusion was that success for me was the pure joy and exhilaration I got from writing my book. It was the process of crafting the story, creating the characters and bringing their very world into existence. I have self published the first book in the Aten Sequence, am about to release the second and am currently writing the third. <br />
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These characters I now know as well as my own family and friends. Even if I don’t write every day, I will still be thinking about them, plotting a new part of the story or trying to change a bit I have already written to make it better. Aten, Druitt, Neferhotep, Merytamen, Luke and all the others are now my mates; friends that I spend a lot of time with. For the first time, I am killing off one of my characters and it is bringing a lump to my throat as I write the words that seal his fate.<br />
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Writing success for me is the joy I feel every day when I sit down at my laptop and continue my story or start writing a completely new one. There are so many different characters out there, so many situations, events and emotions that I know that I will never run out of words. Not even if somebody offered me £1 million to stop writing would I take it, because it is a part of who I am. Writing for me is happiness, freedom, exhilaration and fulfilment.<br />
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Every <a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/dont-be-desperate-newbie-author.html" target="_blank">author</a> is different and on their own path to success, so my advice would be to take on board any knowledge, tips and tools that resonate with you, that you know you are going to enjoy working with and just go for it. More importantly, know that trusting your own instincts and following your heart will lead you more surely towards your goal than any advice given by others, however well meant.<br />
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Do I want my Aten Sequence books to be read by lots of other people? Do I want to find fame and fortune with them? Yes of course I do and I know that I will probably have to use some of the marketing and promotional tools that luckily we now have available to do it. But I’m open to experiencing pure luck and being an overnight success with no effort involved. I’m going to stop beating myself up about what I don’t do and give myself a big pat on the back for what I do get done. For me, the path to success is no longer through suffering and hardship. I’m going to spend my precious time doing more of what lights my life up, which is writing. I’m going to start writing myself a different success story.</div>
HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-65235233230722681332013-04-06T13:15:00.000+01:002014-08-20T19:18:29.075+01:00Egyptian Pharaoh Sneferu and His Overachieving Children<br />
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<i>The fourth dynasty Pharaoh Sneferu is alluded to in the first two books of the Aten Sequence, because he was regarded by later Egyptians as a wise and benevolent ruler. But this Old Kingdom Pharaoh has a much larger part to play in the third book of the series, but you will just have to wait until it is released to see how Luke and Neferptah get into trouble with a long dead ruler.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Have you heard of the Pharaoh Sneferu? There have been powerful royal families and dynasties throughout history, but if we travel back to Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom we find a family who all seemed to be high achievers and whose monuments still stand today, including one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The founder of this amazing family was the Pharaoh Sneferu, who was also the first king of the 4<sup>th</sup> dynasty. Sneferu’s own parentage is still disputed. Some scholars think that his father was his predecessor and last king of the 3<sup>rd</sup> dynasty, the Pharaoh Huni and that his mother may have been one of the lesser wives or concubines of Huni called Meresankh. Sneferu was the pharaoh who brought pyramid building in Egypt to its full fruition and remarkably built three major stone pyramids during his reign, the Meidum pyramid and the Bent and Red pyramids at Dashur. </div>
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He was a pharaoh who was also admired by later Ancient Egyptians for being a wise and benevolent ruler. He had several wives and many concubines, as was the custom in Ancient Egypt and his Great Royal Wife is believed to be a lady called Queen Hetepheres I. Hetepheres I was probably a daughter of Huni and therefore may have been Sneferu’s half sister, but marriages between brothers and sisters or even fathers and daughters were common in the royal family of Ancient Egypt. To a certain degree the succession of the Egyptian crown was matrilineal, as the next Pharaoh tended to be the son of the Great Royal Wife or a wife of royal blood. These marriages were entered into to ensure that the succession to the throne remained within the immediate royal family and marrying his close female relatives strengthened a king’s position and power immensely.<br />
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So you would think that having as mighty a Pharaoh as Sneferu for a father would be a hard act to follow? Well his kids did not seem to think so, as it was his son Khufu who succeeded him as pharaoh and went on to build the Great Pyramid at Giza, a miracle of ancient engineering. Khufu was a son of Sneferu’s Great Royal Wife Hetepheres I and was not remembered by later generations as benignly as his father, as he goes down in folklore as being a particularly cruel and implacable ruler. The length of time a pharaoh ruled is often disputed by scholars, but it is believed that Khufu ruled for around 23 years.<br />
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Apart from his amazing achievement of building the Great Pyramid of Giza as his tomb, it is believed that he led expeditions into Nubia, the Sinai and Libya. The relationships of the 4<sup>th</sup> dynasty royal family have been pieced together from ancient histories, inscriptions and monuments and some of them are by no means certain and many are still been disputed. Khufu is believed to have had several royal wives, including queens called Henutsen and Meritites I and two further queens whose names are not yet known. Meritites I and Henutsen were both half-sister’s of King Khufu and daughters of Sneferu.<br />
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Khufu had many brothers and sisters and the ones that we do know something about all held high office if they were men, or married powerful courtiers if they were women. Khufu was not, in fact, Sneferu’s eldest son, even though he succeeded him on the throne. According to inscriptions, the eldest son was Prince Nefermaat I. Nefermaat I’s mother is unknown, but he was the acknowledged Crown Prince as well as holding some other impressive titles such as Vizier, Seal Bearer and Prophet of Bast. Nefermaat I was married to a lady called Itet and they were both buried in a mastaba tomb at Meidum that is famous for being where the glorious tomb painting known as the ‘Meidum Geese’ was found. They had a very large family, but possibly their most famous son was Hemiunu who was credited with being the architect of his Uncle Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza. <br />
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Prince Ankhhaf was another younger half-bother of Khufu. We do not know who his mother was, but he married his half sister Hetepheres, who was a daughter of Hetepheres I. He served as Vizier under his nephew the pharaoh Khafre, who was a son of Khufu and Henutsen. He was buried in a large mastaba in the eastern cemetery at Giza and a particularly fine statue of him can be seen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
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Another son of Sneferu and half-brother of Khufu is Rahotep, who was the High Priest of Re at Heliopolis. He was married to a lady of unknown parentage called Nofret and they were buried in a mastaba tomb in Meidum. There is a very beautiful and lifelike painted statue of this couple in the museum in Cairo that was excavated from their mastaba. There are also sons and daughters of Sneferu that we still know relatively little about. Ranefer is known from his mastaba at Meidum. Kanefer held the titles of Vizier, High Priest and Overseer of the Troops. His tomb is situated in Dashur, which could indicate that he died after Rahotep and Nefermaat who were buried at Meidum, as during his reign Sneferu abandoned Meidum as a his possible burial place and started building pyramids at Dashur. It is also more than likely that they all predeceased their half-brother Khufu who went on to become the next pharaoh.
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There is also another known son of Sneferu called Iynefer, about whom almost nothing is known and, of course, in the future the sands of Egypt may give up evidence of the existence of further members of this talented, powerful family. There are also some other daughters of Sneferu who we know a little about, such as Nefertkau who may have been married to her half brother Khufu. She was the mother of Nefermaat II and was buried at Giza during the reign of the pharaoh Khafre. There was also a daughter called Nefertnesu whom very little is known about other than the fact that she had a son called Kaemqued.
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So you are beginning to get the picture of how everything was very much all kept within the family, so that political power, military power, administrative power and religious power were all led and directed by members of the royal family for the benefit and prestige of pharaoh and the royal family? It is perhaps unfortunate that all we know about this dynamic, powerful family comes from the formal inscriptions they have left behind on their tombs and monuments and that we can only guess at the politics, relationships and emotions that were generated between the various members of the royal family.</div>
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We can only conjecture that the royal ladies manoeuvred and plotted to get their sons ahead in the succession and high in pharaoh’s favour and we have no idea of how the royal princesses felt when they were married to their half-brothers. Was it a peaceful happy family living in accord or a turbulent, feuding one? We will probably never know, but we can still go and see the amazing pyramid that Khufu built on the Giza plateau and those of his descendants Khafre and Menkaure and be bowled over by the accomplishments of this ancient family of overachievers.
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<br />HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011581289139607573.post-52618063808116737772013-03-16T17:30:00.000+00:002013-03-16T18:20:49.745+00:00Writer’s Block? Call on the Ancient Gods of Writing for Help <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of us writers have our days, or even weeks, when we feel like we are blocked. There are times when the words that usually flow so easily from our typing fingers are harder to find than gold nuggets on the bed of a fast flowing river. So what can be done to release that writer’s block and get your creativity going again? Well, if you have tried all the writing tips that you can now find out there on the internet and literally nothing is working for you, then maybe it is time to intercede with one of the ancient gods of writing and writers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We tend to forget that it is only very recently that being able to read is regarded as a necessary skill that is taught to nearly all children from a young age. In ancient times, writing was considered sacred. The only people who could read and write were generally the priests who wrote and needed to interpret the sacred texts, perhaps the rulers and some members or the nobility and the scribes who ran the royal administration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Aten Sequence Books are set in Ancient Egypt where from pre-dynastic times they used a form of writing that we now call hieroglyphs. This is a form of writing that consists of images, phonetic glyphs and determinatives that was used to carve the sacred texts on the walls of the temples, tombs and papyri. The god that the Ancient Egyptians revered as the inventor of writing was Thoth, who was often depicted with the body of a man and the head of an ibis. He is also frequently portrayed as an ibis or an ape, or sometimes as an ape with the face of a dog. Thoth is a lunar deity, so is shown wearing the lunar disc and crescent on his head. As well as inventing writing, he was credited with inventing medicine, astronomy and geometry. He counted the stars, charted the earth and was the guardian of all wisdom and recorder of all knowledge. He was also seen as a psychopomp, as when Ancient Egyptians died they believed that they would meet Thoth in the Hall of Maat, where he would record the results of the weighing of their heart against the feather of Maat that determined whether or not they had lived a righteous life.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Uniquely in the ancient world however, during Ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom we do have a source of texts written by ordinary people. The inhabitants of the <a href="http://atensequence.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ancient-egypt-workmans-village-at-deir.html" target="_blank">workmen’s village at Deir el-Medina </a>were literate as they were responsible for digging out and carving or painting the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings and decorating the walls of their mortuary temples. The villagers would use flakes of limestone called ostraca and scraps of papyrus to record lists, keep accounts, send letters to friends and loved ones and generally record the gossip of the day. Egyptologists have gleaned a great deal of information about the lives of these workmen and their families from these writings and it is perhaps the earliest instance where we can follow the goings on and lives of ordinary folk.</span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The centre of Thoth’s cult was at Hermopolis and during the late period of Ancient Egyptian history when the country was ruled by the Greek Ptolemy’s, <a href="http://www.touregypt.net/godsofegypt/thoth.htm" target="_blank">Thoth</a> became identified with the Greek god of writing Hermes and was worshipped as Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes Trismegistus was known as the ‘thrice great’ and was associated with astrology and alchemy. He is credited with writing philosophical or occult texts such as the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius that are collectively known as Hermetica. These texts enjoyed a revival in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance with the alchemists that were studying the occult, magic and also experimenting in turning base metals into gold.</span>
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps one of the oldest deities associated with writers and writing, who is still worshipped by millions today, is the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha. His mother was the goddess Parvati who created her divine son by smearing her body with a paste made from herbs and sandalwood. She scraped this paste off her body, moulded it into the shape of a young boy and breathed her creation into life. Parvati then went to bathe and asked her new son to keep watch over the house. While she was bathing, her husband the Lord Shiva returned home and fell into a rage when he was denied entry to his own home by an unknown boy. His outrage was so great that he struck the boy’s head clean off his shoulders. When Parvati emerged from her bath she was grief stricken when she found out what had happened to her beloved child. Such was her distress that Lord Shiva sent his retinue out to seek a new head for the body.</span>
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first creature they came upon was an elephant, so they decapitated the animal and brought the head back to Lord Shiva, who then revived the boy by placing the head on his shoulders. But Parvati was still not consoled as she feared that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha" target="_blank">Ganesha</a> would be laughed at and disrespected by gods and mortals alike because of his elephant features. To appease his wife, Lord Shiva blessed Ganesha by proclaiming him to be the ‘Remover of Obstacles’ and that henceforth if you wanted success you had to offer up a prayer to the elephant-headed deity before starting projects and quests.</span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He is regarded as a deity that presides over writing and protects writers because he broke one of his own tusks, which he is portrayed as holding in his lower left hand, in order to inscribe the epic Mahabharata that was dictated to him by the sage Ved Vyasa. He is worshipped as the god of knowledge, education, wisdom and prosperity and is depicted as a large-bellied man with the features, huge ears and curving trunk of an elephant seated on a rat. His elephant head symbolises the soul and his human body our earthly incarnation and he pushes humanity to success by removing our obstacles.</span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iOAI88vo1zA/UUSnyMeAgKI/AAAAAAAAA60/c6QrCcyqHtE/s1600/357px-Ganesha_divali.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ganesha" border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iOAI88vo1zA/UUSnyMeAgKI/AAAAAAAAA60/c6QrCcyqHtE/s320/357px-Ganesha_divali.jpg" title="Ganesha" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
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</span></span> <span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if you are having trouble with your latest writing project, why not ask for some help or a little push from one of these ancient deities? Ritual and ceremony have long been used for personal growth and to help move our lives forward, so why not keep a picture or a small statue of your favourite writing deity on your desk to remind you to invoke their aid and tap into the ancient wisdom. In some ways writing is alchemy, as writers take words and form them into different shapes and meanings, so perhaps it is not so surprising that words and writing were once regarded as sacred? And after all, who of us wouldn’t like a little help in achieving success?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thoth at Medinet Habu - Own Image</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trismegistos.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hermes Trismegistus image</a> Wikimedia Commons Public Domain</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ganesha Image <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/97409654@N00/7703990/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Khushi</a> Wikimedia Creative Commons <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic</a></span>HypnoGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15620669278505860135noreply@blogger.com0