About draliman | draliman on life

Luv and Hat

June 9, 2015 draliman 28 comments

A little wee while ago, Anxious Mom over at Strong Enough to Break nominated me for this Love/Hate challenge. “Love” and “hate” are quite strong words so I’m toning it down a bit by using Sideshow Bob’s tattoos from The Simpsons (because they only have three fingers, you see).

Things I Luv

Sunny early mornings with the smell of flowers and grass and such.
My job. Well, maybe “luv” is too strong a word, but I don’t mind going, it’s a good job and I enjoy it. That’s more than many people can say.
Reading great books. Lots and lots of books!
Being all growed up so I can make my own decisions.
Writing again after so long – years and years and years.
My little car
Afternoon naps
Quiet walks out in The Nature
My little house – mine, all mine bwahahaha! (And the bank’s.)
Netflix, and its wealth of quality entertainment 🙂

Things I Hat

Spiders
Inconsiderate people.
Computers answering phone calls when people should be answering phone calls.
Traffic slowing down for no reason and then speeding up again and you never know why.
Crowded places.
Marketing cold calls. No, I don’t want any, thank you. Oh, you’re a computer.
Changing my routine.
Intolerant people.
When people randomly waste stuff, like water or electricity or plastic bags.
More spiders

I’m not going to nominate people, and I know many people have done this one already. Feel free to join in if you like!

Categories: About draliman Tags: challenge

Sharing My World 2015 Week 21

May 31, 2015 draliman 25 comments

Everything has changed this week for Cee’s Share Your World! This week Cee has provided a list of list topics, and we must choose four list topics from this list of list topics and make a list of four things answering the question posed in the list topic we have chosen from the list.

Goodness!

Favourite Songs
This list changes over time. I’ve bought a couple of new albums recently so a couple of songs are from those. There are many classics of course which always remain favourites of mine, so these songs are more the ones I currently listen to on a daily basis.

End of the Dream – Evanescence
Froot – Marina and the Diamonds
House on a Hill – The Pretty Reckless
Wrong Side of the Sun – Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Favourite types of animals
Cute and fluffy :-).

Monkeys!
Kitty cats!
Lemurs!
Koalas!

Movies to cheer you up
It’s strange the things that make me laugh out loud… though maybe you won’t be surprised if you’ve read some of my stories. Warning – none of these are technically comedies.

Planet Terror – laughed till I cried
The Expendables – especially that one scene where the bloke’s head gets completely blown off
Any apocalyptic zombie/”infected” film e.g. “World War Z”, “Resident Evil” series
From Dusk Till Dawn – I’m including the Netflix series here, since one episode has heads being ripped off and everything – it’s hilarious!

Things I want to have in my home
Home upgrades.

Massive home cinema system
Sound-proof room in which to place said massive cinema system
TARDIS-style relative dimensional system installed in home in order to accommodate sound-proof room
Girlfriend with whom to watch films in newly-installed room – note, I also own less gory films e.g. “Pretty Woman”, “Miss Congenialty” and the like

Thanks for reading my world sharing for this week :-).

Categories: About draliman Tags: Share Your World

Bloggity Touring

May 18, 2015 draliman 16 comments

Tastyniblets over at Tastyniblets was kind enough to nominate me to join in the Blog Tour. I feel a bit bad because I turned it down a while ago, but I’ll give it a go now. The reason I turned it down before is because I’m not really a “writer” in the same way many of my bloggity buddies are, who all seem to be working on manuscripts, or have already published something.

Don’t forget to check out Tastyniblets’ blog for great fiction and photographs :-).

The rules are:

Post on a given Monday. That would be today.
Give your nominees the rules. More on this in the next bullet point.
Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers. So this is where this gets dodgy. I hate passing things on to people, which is the other reason I declined this before. “Zero” is “up to four people”, right? I realise this is a bit of a cheat, so I’m not going to use the official badge for this challenge.
Answer four questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do. I can answer the last two!

Q.1. What are you working on at the moment?

Nuffin. Well, I’ll be editing my Mondays Finish the Story in a bit.

Q.2. How does your work differ from others in your genre?

I don’t think it does. I’m pretty sure most of what I write can be traced back to some author or other. I don’t have a genre, either. Supernatural, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, horror, comedy, dark comedy, whatever my mood is.

Q.3. Why do you write or create what you do?

Because it’s fun! I like making things up. I always loved writing stories at school, and with the advent of the interwebz they are no longer consigned to a notepad in my drawer.

Q.4. How does your writing/creative process work?

I use the “slapdash method”. I write stories for photo prompts, so when the prompt arrives in my inbox, I look at the photo and then wait for inspiration to strike. If it has struck by lunchtime I will write the story during my lunch break and email it to myself. Otherwise, I’ll write it when I get home while watching some soap opera or other.

Once an idea has struck, I sort of write it in my head while doing other things. Since I have the story ready when I start to type, a 100 word story generally takes around 10 minutes to write plus a few minutes to edit. I’ll do everything (once home from work) while watching TV apart from the final edit, which requires the Pause button. I’m currently watching “Chuck” on Netflix.

That’s it!

Categories: About draliman

Sharing My World 2015 Week 17

May 3, 2015 draliman 32 comments

It’s Sunday, the day I contribute to Cee’s Share Your World, just one of the fun challenges that Cee organises on a weekly basis.

What is your most favourite smell/scent?
My two favourite smells are quite opposite to each other. One is the smell of bacon cooking. Mmm, bacon. The other is the smell of nature. Not cow poo or anything like that, but the smell of the forest, cut grass and flowers.

The Higher Garden at Lanhydrock, near Bodmin, Cornwall

Do you prefer long hair or short hair for yourself?
Well, quite recently I toyed with the idea of having longer hair. I decided it would be cool. However at my age it would probably just look stupid, and when my hair gets to a certain point it tends to puff out. So short is the way to go for me. If I was going to try “going hippy” I should have done it 25 years ago.

Do you plan out things usually or do you do them more spontaneous (for example if you are visiting a big city you don’t know?)
Tricky one. I used to plan everything down to the last detail. I don’t do that any more. That’s not to say I’m a spontaneous person. There isn’t a less spontaneous person on the planet than me!

However, if I’m off somewhere I don’t know, I’ll plan the route, where I can park and if applicable I’ll book somewhere to stay. That’s the limit. I might switch the car display to “map” so I can see roughly where I am but I’ve never actually used the Sat Nav per se.

I’ve discovered that planning everything to the last detail leads to major stress. Knowing where I’m going and that I have somewhere to stay reduces stress, having exact things to do at exact times – well, life’s too short to put myself through that.

What is your favourite outdoor activity?
Walking in the woods, gardens and so on I guess. And I like taking pictures of it all. So in the spirit of that, here’s another picture of Lanhydrock, looking at the main house across the lower gardens, framed by little ornamental battlements.