Reflecting on The Rolling Stones: ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’

Famous songs lose their context and impact when you grow up with them. You enjoy a great rhythm and learn to sing along without hearing the words. And sometimes when you do hear them, you hear the wrong parts too loud.

I was vibing with the lyric ‘What a drag it is getting old’ this morning and it made me dig out ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and listen to it again:

‘Mother’s Little Helper’ official lyric video on YouTube

I know this song well and have long thought it was an interesting critique of the misogynistic culture 1950s and 60s housewives endured; worn out, unappreciated, and bored, relying on early prescription anti-depressants that were addictive and harmful. Not the take you expect from a bunch of young men living the life of rock stars.

Most are in a hurry to point out that the Stones are underlining the hypocrisy of middle class family values critiquing drugs in youth culture, but there are a lot of barbed lines specifically aimed at the misogyny and showing a lot of empathy for the women themselves:

“Men just aren’t the same today”
I hear every mother say
“They just don’t appreciate that you get tired”
They’re so hard to satisfy
You can tranquilize your mind…

And four help you through the night
Help to minimize your plight…

The song describes a woman or women heading for a complete breakdown and being offered drugs instead of help. The men don’t appreciate how much they do ‘that you get tired’, the experience of women is recognised as a ‘plight’ that’s being minimised.

The jaunty, off-kilter riff makes this sound like an upbeat song despite the minor key – it distracts from the fact that this song is actually quite empathetic and alarming (much like the tranquilisers alluded to as ‘mothers little helpers’.

All of this, I was pretty familiar with. What changed listening to it today was that rather than considering it a historical artefact – grounded in the situation of a housewife, a very alien concept to me – I related to it.

It’s not just that I myself am getting older, and seeing the big Four-Oh approaching. It’s that the anti-depressants I rely on to function are not masking the horrors of the life I am struggling to live in.

Anti-depressants have come a long way. I have unironically described the Duloxetine I’m currently on as a ‘Wonder Drug’. It does powerful good at controlling my anxiety without making me feel sedated. Depression and anxiety are the things that are altering my mind. the SNRI I take restores balance. Or attempts to.

And unlike what the song says, this is a genuine illness. I have an imbalance in my chemicals (amplified by trauma) that needs correcting.

But there’s no denying it, the situation I’m in is fucked. I do not think I would need the drugs I’m taking if I wasn’t frequently required to keep working through intollerable things.

For the mid-century housewife, misogyny and rigid gender division of labour, which devalued women’s labour, was the biggest cause. For me, an ableist, capitalistic hellscape fraught with growing fascism and transphobia is front and centre. But the two things aren’t that different. Both are rooted in binary gender essentialism and capitalist economic tyranny.

These are real problems. A real plight for which no one is offering tangible, practical help. So I need to take medication, because the heightened level of anxiety about real problems on top of my existing trauma, has just gone on too long.

The drugs in this case aren’t bad, but they’re not the long-term solution I need. In a more just society, I wouldn’t need them.

Which brings me to my second Rolling Stones song, which YouTube helpfully pointed me at after I listened to the other:

‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.

This lyric hit a little harder, and rang a little truer than it had in previous listenings:

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, we’re gonna vent our frustration
If we don’t, we’re going to blow a 50-amp fuse

I am so full of frustration – the ableism and transphobia are so overwhelming right now. Hell YES I feel like I’m gonna blow a 50-amp fuse.

Only there’s nothing like the demonstrations of the 50s and 60s, and I’d be too sick to go to them if they were any.

I want to RIOT but I can’t.

I also realised that over the last few years I’ve been misreading this lyric.:

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You just might find
You get what you need

I thought it was putting ‘you’ down for wanting things (‘I want doesn’t get’) and what you ‘need’ might be a slap in the face. The sort of thing a parent tells you to get you to shut up. I was not a fan of that.

But listening to the rest of the lyrics – especially the protest verse… It’s not saying to *stop* asking for what you want. It’s saying you have to keep trying to get what you want. You have to ask over and over, even if it means not getting what you want over and over. Because if you don’t ask, you never get what you need.

Sometimes you don’t get everything you ask for, but you still get something.

We have to get better at standing up and asking. And we have to keep standing up for each other. Because it’s hard to keep speaking up and getting your ‘fair share of abuse’.

It gave me another view of the protests I’ve been too. Especially the last one (against Trump’s visit to the UK). It was depressingly small. A police officer made me censor my sign to be more polite under threat of arrest. A fascist infiltrated our tiny protest and the other protesters had to use their signs to cover his. I ended up getting too tired and had to go home early.

It was not exactly an uplifting experience.

But like Mick says, when it’s important, protests aren’t great, validating experiences. They’re running up against a dominant culture that SUCKS. You’ll get abused for going, and most of the time you won’t get what you want out of it. But you have to keep showing up.

You have to keep showing up and asking for what you want, or you’re never gonna get what you need.

So thanks, Mick. Things are pretty shit right now, and the utter apathy of the vast majority of people about the issues that are absolutely essential to me… it’s gutting. And I can’t afford to keep pushing myself if I’m the only one doing it. But I guess what I get from this is that even when it feels like you’re just volunteering to get beaten up over and over again, continuing to show up matters. Even if it’s just writing on a blog post or a committee that never seems to achieve change.

Sometimes you achieve change. Sometimes you’re an inert object that stops bad change from happening. Sometimes you’re just an irritant that slows the tank of capitalism down as it rolls over you.

You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes, you get just enough of what you need for it to matter.

We get more of what we need when we show up together.

I’m going to continue showing up in the shitty situations where I don’t get what I want and mostly don’t get what I need. But if you show up with me we’ll get what we need a little bit more often.

I sold a story!

My story, ‘The Village of the Cats’, has been accepted for publication in Alternative Apocalypses, an anthology to be published by B Cubed Press. It’s going to be launched at World Con!

I’m really excited! It’s been a long time since I had anything new in print, and I’ll admit, it was getting me down. The combination of PhD + illness meant that the momentum I started building around 2008-12 just kind of… stopped. In all aspects of my writing, really. But earlier this year I decided to get serious about my submissions again. I bit the bullet and signed up to Duotrope and I sent all the stories I still believe in out on submission, and I kept sending them out when they came back.

Duotrope, for those unfamilliar, is a service that offers listings and a sophisticated search engine to writers that helps them find markets relevant to the genre and pay level they want to publish at. You can also use it to track your submissions and their listings contain detailed information about response rates, acceptance rates, and sometimes interviews with the publishers about what they’re looking for. The catch is that you have to pay a nominal monthly fee.

I’m a firm believer in Yog’s Law: that money flows towards the author. I never wanted to pay that fee. Especially when a professional pay rate is only $0.08 per word, and very few markets pay that rate. The most I have ever received for my work is still the £25 Amazon voucher I got for the first story I ever sold: a piece of flash fiction that was recorded as a podcast by Radio Ryedale. Flash fiction is usually paid by flat fee rather than by word, and £25 is very good compensation compared to the $10 that I most often see offered in the market. You can see why, in this market, it’s important that the writer – the person who produces the content that makes the publication possible – shouldn’t have to spend any money before they are accepted.

I’ve been a loyal user of Ralan.com for years. Like, since the 1990s. If you click through that link, you’ll see that the website has not changed since the 1990s, and yet it has won multiple awards. That’s for a very good reason. Ralan is always up to date, and offers comprehensive listings for pro, semi-pro, pay, token, anthologies, books, flash fiction, and contests. It covers science fiction, fantasy, horror, and humour markets. It says which markets are open, what genres they accept, what they pay, what word lengths they accept, how quickly you’re likely to get a response, and how you can submit. It’s a free service and all in all it’s pretty good.

But I hadn’t had any success for a few years, and something had to change. Some of my best stories are for very niche audiences and I needed to widen my scope. So I gave Duotrope a go. There is a free trial – so it’s worth checking out just to see the extent of services on offer.

I wouldn’t have found this market without Duotrope. It also gave me the very useful perspective that most of the markets I had been submitting to had a 99% rejection rate, so the fact that I was even getting positive and personal rejections was a good sign.

According to B Cubed Press’s Facebook group, they had over 900 submissions for the anthology, which means they only accepted 3%. My story was in that 3%.

And I think it’s a really good fit. Long time readers will know that I’m a fan of apocalyptic fiction, but I tend to get frustrated with a lot of the popular tropes. I don’t think the majority of people will default to violent, tribe-based behaviour if the trappings of modern civilisation were to be destroyed. The implications for human nature in such tropes are very negative, philosophically troubling, and frankly out-dated. Humans are fundamentally co-operative, social creatures. And I don’t think enough attention is given to the ‘softer’ skills that would be needed in a post-apocalypse environment, especially farming and textile creation. The ‘Village of the Cats’ very much reflects this perspective, and it is an Alternative Apocalypse. I’m so glad it’s found a home in an anthology that’s all about offering a fresh take on one of my favourite genres.

And I’m currently planning to be at World Con, so I’ll get to be there for the launch!

Stay tuned for more details as we move towards publication.

Officially a Doctor

I graduated on 22 January 2016, and am officially Dr Ro Smith, a doctor of philosophy in philosophy, passed with no corrections.

Apologies for not posting about it at the time, I didn’t have any photos myself and only just got some through!

I hope everyone is appreciating my sparkley graduation shoes. And the silliest bonnet. I wanted to keep the silliest bonnet.

If you donated to this blog or to my Go Fund Me last year when I was in need, you helped this happen, and I am incredibly grateful to you. I would not have made it without you.

There was a long time – a very long time – when I really stopped believing that I would get here. I had been so ill and poor and depressed for so long. I’m still not physically 100%, and mentally… well, that’s a process, and a long one, which isn’t entirely about the PhD.

Neverthless, I’m really proud, and grateful. I did it. I was capable of doing it, after all. And I did it well. There were a tiny number of typos. That was it.  The examiners said in the end that they would accept it anyway. Typos and all. (I did correct the most glaring typos, though – the photos at the top of my blog are not a lie, I really have had green hair, and red hair, and many other colour hair.)

And so many members of my family came up for me. My dad came from Australia, my mum, two sets of aunts and uncles, my step-dad.

I wish I had been thinner. I wish I had had suitable smart clothes to wear that I could still fit into (the dress I am wearing was more low-cut than I would have liked and didn’t exactly have a graceful fit). I wish my hair looked better – I had fried it in my attempts to go back to blonde for graduation. Maybe one day when I’m better off and thinner I will rent the gowns again and get it professionally done. Still, it’s great to have done it at all.

It is very strange to have it done. I’m still temping at the moment. I need to publish before applying for academic jobs and I’m… honestly not read to leave my city, yet. And most well-paying jobs I am qualified for would involve that, even if they weren’t in academia.

I’m tired, and I’m still ill a lot. And I want to get serious about my writing. I want a first draft of a novel this year.

I also want to relax. I’m getting back down the allotment (you might have noticed). Which is something I was really sad to not be able to give enough time to the last few years. I always promised myself ‘When the PhD is done…’. And it’s important in terms of exercise. I was down there for four hours today. It’s hard to get such good, prolonged exercise doing anything else.

I want to paint and not feel guilty about it. I want to choose craft projects for reasons other than ‘It will be quick’ and ‘I can give it to someone else as a present because that is the only way I can afford presents’.

I’ve bought material and a pattern for an ambitious Daenerys cosplay this year. Still a lot of work in getting that done, though.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the things I want to do, but I’m trying not to do that. Trying to unlearn my habits of continuous anxiety and guilt.

But hey, I’m a ‘Dr’ now, and that’s something. Some kind of validation of my existence and ability and intelligence. Not the only way such things can be validated, of course, but… something I needed to do, for me. Yes, I had something to prove to myself, and to the world. And maybe that’s not terribly healthy, but I needed to do it.

It’s strange and surprising to find that I have done it after all.

 

2015 – that was a year that happened, didn’t it?

I wasn’t going to write one of these. 2015 is… exhausting to think about.

I was so poor, and depressed, and ill at the start of the year. A week into January I had to ask for your help to pay my rent and my bills. I was flat broke and had exhausted all other avenues. It’s a humiliating and panic-stricken situation to be in. I am so very grateful to the strangers and friends who kept me afloat in that period. I quite literally would not have made it without you. In the end I raised £1,460 via Go Fund Me, and about £60 via my tip jar (that last may have been smaller, but was immediately accessible funds badly needed at the time!).

Thanks to you I kept a roof over my head and I was able to finish my PhD.

The PhD

Which I did. I submitted at the end of May and was examined at my viva on 26 August, where I passed with no corrections. I was completely floored. Having spent the previous year largely bedridden due to illness (and the two years before that ill enough that I often went immediately to bed after work), I spent the final months of my PhD frantically writing up in my supervisor’s office. He didn’t get to see a full draft before I submitted. I was convinced I’d have major corrections – another chapter to write at least! – but I didn’t.

I had typos.

And they decided to accept the thesis with them anyway.

It’s… a bit hard to deal with. I had no reason to think it would go so well. A lot of people had told me I couldn’t do it over the years, and that my depression and illness were symptoms of me trying to do something I wasn’t cut out for. I knew I was ill because of the poor diet I had adopted because I had no money and was depressed, and that I was depressed because of long-standing issues combined with the fact that so many people had no faith in me to do my PhD, which was the most important thing in my life. And now a few people have made comments along the lines of ‘You see, you had nothing to worry about!’ … I can’t sweep it under the carpet that easily. I can’t just set aside how difficult it has been.

Being happy about finishing my PhD is… complex.

I am looking forward to graduating, though.

Today I told a salesperson that my title was ‘Dr’. That was nice.

A New Mattress

I was ordering a new mattress when I did that. I can afford a new mattress now. That’s nice, too.

My current mattress is the one I bought at the start of my PhD when I moved in to share a house with my friend Fred. It was the first unfurnished place I had ever lived in. It seems a lifetime agio.

It was never a particularly good mattress, and it ceased to be anything but deathly uncomfortable years ago. I got a couple more years of life out of it with a mattress topper, but even that has been struggling for a while.

Imagine being bedridden on a broken mattress and too poor to replace it because you are too ill to work. It’s not fun.

I’ve been temping full time since June, and now I can afford a new mattress. It’s good.

Temping

Full-time income is really good.

Not working in the evenings and weekends is really good.

I have played a lot of Dragon Age. Which is really good.

Temping isn’t really good for me, though. I work with nice people and they don’t mind if I have blue hair, but I only get half an hour for lunch and is in an Enquiry Centre. I answer phones all day every day. I find phones very stressful. I have a very good phone manner, but phones are not good for me.

I need a job in something I’m actually trained for, but I can’t get an academic job without publishing, and I needed a break from all that, and I’m so tired when I get home from work that all I do is play Dragon Age.

And instead of losing weight after the PhD was over, I’ve continued to gain weight. Because work is stressful and there’s a food table at work and when I’m stressed I eat from the food table. Also, I have continued to be ill, so even though I have been exercising, I have not been exercising enough. Yeah.

Nine Worlds

I had my least ill Nine Worlds ever, which was nice. And I also gave my first paper on their academic track, which seemed to go down well. And I was on a panel about geekdom in academia. I enjoyed both a lot!

I also had an updated Daenerys costume, and I got to take part in Knightmare Live – childhooddream fulfilled!

For various other reasons I have a lot of anxiety right now about the thought of going back. I hope I will overcome them. Nine Worlds has been a real bright spot in some very dark times, and I would like to feel that way about it again.

Editing

Although I have done less editing overall this year than previously, it’s still formed a fair chunk of my income and was vital in seeing me through those last few months of my PhD. I’ve also expanded my client base of authors and come to enjoy working directly with people who know what they want.

My sincere thanks to all my clients for being wonderful and a joy to work with this year.

Writing

It’s not been a great year with regards to writing for me.

I had one story published – ‘The Runaway King’ in Fox Spirit Book‘s Missing Monarchs anthology. I got to second round with pro magazines more times than I ever have before, but nothing was actually accepted.

I’ve barely progressed at all with my novels.

Some of that is deliberate. I put a hold on more or less everything in order to finish the PhD, but I had intended to return to writing when I was finally free. I haven’t.

I have mostly just played Dragon Age.

Some of that is much needed rest. Some of that is still me not being particularly healthy. Some of it is the FEAR.

I need to get over it.

I’m 32 and my life has been on hold for the last nine years whilst I finished the PhD. I can’t bimble along waiting until I’m Ready to become a Writer anymore.

Resolutions

I want to have a full first draft of one of my novels before I’m 33. That’s six and a half months. It’s not impossible, but I need to get serious about it if I’m to manage to do that alongside a full time job.

I want to lose at least a stone in weight. I need to lose three or four stone, but I’ll settle for one. My clothes don’t fit and my health is suffering. This can’t go on.

I want to be earning more money this time next year than I am now. I’ve never earnt as much as I do now, but it’s temp work. There is no job security and I don’t get paid if I’m ill. I also have a lot of debts to pay off. Things are better now, but they’re still tight. I want to get out of this situation of limping by and owing lots of people money. I need a proper job.

That might be an admin job or a job in publishing or an academic job – those each come with varying levels of difficulty, but at some point I need to stop just coasting and take control of my life.

So. There’s three resolutions. I know a lot of people don’t believe in resolutions, but they have sometimes worked for me in the past. I want 2016 to be the year that everything changes for the better. A lot happened in 2015, much of it for the good, but there was too much hardship for me to really look back on it with any fondness.

Thanks to my wonderful friends who have been with me through it all. You’re very special people, and I’m inadequate in expressing quite how much your support has meant to me.

Thanks also to the friends, family, and strangers who kept me afloat this year.

And now I think I need to move on from thinking about 2015. I want to look forward, instead.

Nine Worlds Schedule: Now with Extra Me!

The Nine Worlds Schedule is now up! And it’s freakin’ amazing! So freakin’ amazing that I can’t remotely take it all in!

But what I can now tell you is that it now contains TWICE as much me as anticipated! Yes!

NOT ONLY, can you attend my paper – which is the third of three papers included in ‘Rebellion, Outsiders and Group Dynamics’, 3:15pm-4:30pm Friday – but you can also catch me on Saturday, 10am-11:15am, where I will be on the ‘Being a Geek in Academia’ panel – OMG!

OK, on the (very considerable) off-chance that my sheer presence is not enough to tempt you, here are some exciting details:

‘Rebellion, Outsiders and Group Dynamics’, 3:15pm-4:30pm, Friday

Across these three talks, the speakers explore various ideas of difference and how those differences colour of perceptions of groups outside our own. The first will look at representations of physical and mental disability in the Vorkosigan series and how the series’ protagonist defies the standard template of science-fiction heroes. The second talk will focus on the seminal Judge Dredd story America, and look at gendered attitudes towards and forms of rebellion and interaction with the overwhelmingly white and male authorities of 2000AD. Finally, the series will conclude with a discussion of relationship between “self” and “other” in Battlestar Galactica.

‘Being a Geek in Academia’, 10am-11:15am, Saturday

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a geek in the world of academia? Considering how to apply your skills to your passions and use them to build a reputation and standing? This panel will explore various ideas of how one becomes a geek in academia, combining your skills and your passions, and what makes all the stress and struggle worthwhile.

Be there or BE WHATEVER SHAPE SUITS YOU BEST.

Nine Worlds and Me!

I may or may not have green hair again for August. We shall see!

So, I have been accepted to give a paper for Nine World’s Academic track – I’m so excited! I’ll be giving a paper on ‘Battlestar Galactica and the Master/Slave Dialectic: Relating Selves to Others’, which is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

It’s all a bit intimidating now that it’s real, but I’ll try to do a good job!

For those not in the know, Nine Worlds Geekfest is the best, most inclusive convention I’ve ever been to.

As a geek, it’s great, because it has umpteen million tracks, covering specific fandoms like Doctor Who and A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as Podcasting, Academia, LARP, Social Gaming, Fanfic, Creative Writing, Race and Culture, LGBTQAI + Fandom, Geek Feminism, Young Adult, All the Books, and SO MUCH MORE. Along with kickass evening entertainment, like FRIGGIN’ KNIGHTMARE LIVE and the now traditional Whedon Sing-A-Long, which I have been to every year (see the video of the first impromptu Doctor Horrible act-out here).

As someone who has been marginalised, it’s great, because everyone who is there is there because they want to enjoy a safe environment where no one feels marginalised. As well as having specific tracks to discuss issues faced (by, e.g., women, LGBTQAI people, and people of colour) they also have highly diverse panels for their other tracks. They have an excellent and well-publicised anti-harassment policy (which I have seen in action, being handled with great sensitivity). They also have clear accessibility information and have made an evident effort to ensure that all events are as accessible as possible. I’ve never seen so many disabled people at a con before, looking relaxed and like they’re having fun. Same for LGBTAI folks and women. More present. More relaxed. More fun.

I also appreciate how trans/gender-queer/agender/non-binary friendly they are. Last year all loo signs in the con area were changed to ‘with urinal’ and ‘without urinal’ rather than ‘men’ and ‘women’. Along with tags you could pick up at registration to indicate your prefered pronouns.

It’s also family friendly, and I enjoyed seeing a great many young geeks and their parents being able to enjoy the con.

It’s still a problem going to general SF&F/fandom events that you will have to deal with bigoted/sexist/racist/transphobic people. I experienced this at a local meet-up I attended. Most people were lovely, but I still ended up being shouted at by an older white man aggressively defending his sexist views. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy to endure that shit when I want to be geeking out anymore. At Nine Worlds? I simply haven’t had that problem. I once had a heated debate with another feminist, but that’s as confrontational as it’s gotten for me. And I never met anyone who wouldn’t let you drop out of the conversation or change topic if it was stressing you out.

I can’t recommend Nine Worlds enough, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the academic track. My profile is not up on the Guests page – it’s almost like I’m a real person.

 

 

Update on the Rhube

I submitted my thesis on 29 May 2015. It’s done. It’s in. It’s not everything I might have wished that it could have been in better circumstances, but it got finished and handed in, and that’s something I was not convinced I could achieve for a very long time. Not that I didn’t think I could write a thesis, but just that I had been so poor and ill that I thought 8 years’ work might ultimately go down the drain.

And for a long time I seemed to be surrounded by people who didn’t think I could do it or get why I was trying. People who took my agony at the fact that I might not complete as a reason to suppose that I should not be doing a PhD at all. That was incredibly draining. Having people you care about tell you they don’t think you can do the most important thing in your life is gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.

But then there were other people. You guys. Those of you who used the tip jar to keep this blog afloat even when I wasn’t producing anything. Friends and strangers who contributed to my Go Fund Me, literally paying my rent and food and bills so I could finish and telling me they thought it was worth it. That was very special to me. It meant something. People actually believed in me and wanted me to finish.

And my supervisor let me work out of his office, that really helped, too. Because my house was a sickroom that had got into a really horrible and depressing state. And there, with just enough money to live off, and a quiet space to work in, I did it. I got that fucker done.

I come back to this again and again, but Virginia Woolf was So. Damn. Right. You need enough money to live off and a room of your own to work in in order to write. And I think that goes for academic writing as much as for fiction.

My viva is still to come, but that happens at the end of August. Now… I’m resuming some kind of life.

I start work at a temp job tomorrow morning. I’m gonna have actual money coming in. And I’m gonna have to go to bed before midnight. Which is something that’s been really hard for me to do since I had neighbours who routinely kept me awake past 1am. I don’t have those neighbours anymore, but I’m still afraid of going to bed and not being able to sleep. It doesn’t make sense, but I’ve been conditioned that way.

And today I’m playing the role of Washing Police on a kitten who has recently been spaid and Must Not Lick Her Stitches (her owners would rather not stress her out with a cone more than necessary). It’s not my cat, but I don’t mind chilling with a kitten for a day, watching Netflix and catching up on my writing.

I don’t have to feel guilty about how I use my time when I’m not working anymore. That hasn’t been true for over 9 years, if you include my MA. It’s… very, very odd. But good.

By the end of this year I want to have finished writing one of my novels. Not sure which one yet. I have the Superhero with Depression, the One with Clones and Nanites, and the Fantasy One with Dragons and Spies. At the moment I’m leaning towards the One with Clones and Nanites…

And the kitten is washing again, so I’d better keep a closer eye on her.

Toodle-pip!

Getting my shit together

No Music for the Apocalypse again this lunchtime, or probably until my PhD is finished.

I am in Getting My Shit Together mode.

My supervisor is very kindly letting me use his spare office (yeah, he has two at the moment) so I have somewhere I can be that’s not my house (sickroom pigsty) and not the library (full of noisy students and expensive coffee). So I have a place to be where I am expected at specific times and where I am expected to work. It’s good for me. Although my body has not yet caught up to the ‘going to sleep before midnight’ expectation of this deal.

I have continued to be ill, although not as ill as I was. And I basically have no time left. Like, no time at all. I have just over two months to do six months’ worth of work. And, quite frankly, I am not up to pulling all nighters. But I’m finding my motivation again.

Which means I need to set aside this blog even when I have something to write about that I know will get hits. Even when I want to continue a series. Even when I feel crappy about how many unfinished post series I have – Read Along with Rhube, I have not forgotten you!

But I’m being an adult about this. There’s something I have to spend the next two months doing, and it’s not writing about apocalyptic music or George R R Martin. In June I can start thinking about a post-PhD life again, but that’s June. That’s not where I am right now.

In the meantime… money is still very tight.

I’m getting work, but I’m still wondering every month if I’m going to make my rent. I have clients who have been very considerate in paying promptly, but I… just have no leeway at all. I’ve done enough work to pay my rent this month, but whether I can pay all my bills when I need to is another matter.  And I can’t afford not to meet the agreement with my bank that reduces my overdraft by £100 every month. It’s like my rent went up by £100.

Any donation you could make to my GoFundMe would still very much be welcomed. The less work I have to take on the more chance I have of being able to do the ridiculous amount of work needed over the next two months. Or you can pay me directly via the Tip Jar in my sidebar.

Thanks again to those who have already donated. You guys have literally kept me going when I was out of options.

This’ll be an interesting year to look back on, I’ll tell you that.

No Music for the Apocalypse today, sorry

Life is happening at me.

I have work. But because I was really ill for most of this month I’m doing most of that work this week, and I don’t have time to select a song, research it, and write something thoughtful and apocalypse related about it. I wish I did, but I don’t.

Things are really tight at my end. I will just, by using all that’s left in my overdraft and on my credit card, be able to pay my rent this month. But that’s it. No money for food. No money for my dentist appointment (which is due). No money for emergencies.

The work I’m doing now will pay the rent at the end of next month and cover bills etc., but I’m not sure how quickly the payment will go through and things are likely to be tight in the meantime.

The kind and generous people who donated last month paid my rent for this month, an electricity bill, my food, and a chunk of the rent for this month coming as well. My copy editing and proofreading business is picking up… it’s just a matter of timing. And of just how deeply I was already into the red.

If anyone has anything to spare to keep me going until my payment comes through, my GoFundMe is still live. Or you can use the PayPal tip jar in my side bar. If you do want to use the PayPal tip jar please be sure to check the ‘No Address Needed’ box (click here for info on why).

I hate to ask, but donating keeps a roof over my head and is really, super helpful in enabling me to have time to spend on my PhD.

You’re all great. I promise this place will become an awesome place again full of content when my situation improves.

Missing Monarchs Photoshoot!

My author-copy of Missing Monarchs arrived – Eeeeeeeeeeeeee! Quite obviously only one thing to do: PHOTOSHOOT!

For those not in the know, Missing Monarchs is the Fox Spirit Books anthology in which my story, ‘The Runaway King’ was published earlier this year.

It’s super awesome because it contains ME, but also because it contains stories by cool people such as Lou Morgan, Jo Thomas, Chloe Yates, Geraldine Clark Hellery and more!

You can buy this as a Kindle ebook, or as a paperback.