Author of Epic Western Novel Alias Jeannie Delaney & Multidisciplinary Artist
Sunday 14 April 2024
JO. B. CREATIVE!: MY BIG, BLACK DOG
JO. B. CREATIVE!: MY BIG, BLACK DOG: MY BIG BLACK DOG I've just come out of a rather nasty bit of brain explosion and the need to ...
Saturday 13 April 2024
MY BIG, BLACK DOG
MY BIG BLACK DOG
I've just come out of a rather nasty bit of brain explosion and the need to share my story is a 'must'.
Firstly, I'm fairly fit-ish as a western saloon fiddler's fiddle. Mostly. (The reference to the wild west will soon become clear). I love walking - not running (I hate running) - and overtake most walking folk of my generation (I do that when I'm cycling too - when they're cycling I must add!), and I'm almost as flexible as a pretzel. In this case, I'm eternally grateful to my mother, who, after we'd walked two miles ten years ago and she'd leapt over a ditch, asked me: 'You alright to do that, dear?' She was eighty at the time. I was so proud of her. I'm also immeasurably creative and look twelve (just a tad exaggeration).
But... a huge 'but'...I suffer from the big black dog.
The black dog plagued Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf and a whole host of creatives. I'm one of 'em and a bloody nuisance it is, too. It can literally do your head in and prevents you from enjoyment. I've struggled with depression and anxiety for years, particularly after having a family.
My biological family and spouses were the main miscreant causes. Their actions were unintentional in some cases but very intentional from others, and were brought about due to my individualistic and creative stance.
My childhood was okay on the whole, except for my moods and mother's sergeant major approach towards me. Think Maggie Thatcher. Mother even had the hairdo.
Dad was a peace keeping police officer. He didn't rock boats. My parents were loving towards me in many ways - I was close to Dad - and we three became good friends as I grew into adulthood, but they were incredibly neglectful of me and unaware of what they were doing. I never discussed mental health issues because they would have just dismissed them. 'Pull yourself together!' 'You're so sensitive!' 'You bring it on yourself.' Huh?
I felt like an only child. My two older brothers virtually ignored me - I felt like a pesky little sister - and I could barely communicate with them - ever. The only thing I had in common with the younger one, who was a year and a half older than me, was our parents and the fact that we grew up together. The older one joined the navy so I didn't know him till latter years. The younger brother hero worshiped our older sibling.
Mother, practical and busy, was he daughter of the organiser of the post war Austerity Olympic games. Says everything really. She took after him big time. She was rarely ill and didn't possess an emotional bone in her, so she didn't understand her sensitive and creative daughter. My brothers and parents got on very well, leaving me an outsider. However, it wasn't all bad. Sunday dinners were often hilarious. Dad would get purple nosed and tipsy on mother's home made wine and we'd listen to the sixties and seventies' radio shows The Navy Lark, Around the Horne, and The Goons. The family were irreverent and black humoured, and I liked that.
I watched TV westerns and became aware of the fact that the women had lousy roles, much less became the fastest gun! That's when, as a teenager, my protagonist Jeannie arrived in my head at night, before I went to sleep. This was exciting! She did everything western heroes did and I loved it. I created story lines for her and drew pictures of her inspired by film actors and western cowboys. The wild west became an offbeat fascination.
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JEANNIE |
I'm a girl, I'm English and I'm fascinated by the wild west! My parents were highly bemused and chuckled a lot over it, thank goodness. Where this interest came from I have no idea. One ancestor had joined the Yukon gold rush and his cabin is now a holiday rental in Dawson City, Canada. Another homesteaded in British Columbia and was - according to Dad - 'burnt out by indians!'
Life became Chinese torture drip-drip-drip as I grew up, married my soulmate and had kids.
The familial judgements and naggings were incessant. Post natal depression hit me like a ton of heavy firebricks and the culture shock of becoming parents was horrible. I was prescribed medication, which helped a great deal, and I began to type Alias Jeannie Delaney, my western trilogy (which wasn't a trilogy at the time!).
Both brothers married and had families. None of the judgements from them and their spouses were obvious, all very subtle. Small moments, and continuous. Judgments from family ruled our life. Hubby tried to explain to me the oddity that were my family. I tried to protect them and shrugged. Just the way they were.
I hated domesticity - couldn't think of anything worse! I wanted to travel, be an artist and writer. I was writing my novel I had so many interests and hobbies. Despite everything I love being married and adore my family.
Parents, siblings and spouses expected me to be a good mother (I'm an amazing mum!), a homemaker (forget it!) and a good wife (hubby and I are like a couple of ten-year-old schoolboys). Yet no matter how well I/we did (we did a fabulous job and we have terrific relationships with our offspring and granddaughters) we were never up to family standard, whatever that meant. My parents could be loving, but that was little and not often. Thankfully they were highly bemused by 'my' wild west 😄 and when a feature about me and my gun totin' , cheroot chompin' western persona Kitty Le Roy appeared in a Sunday magazine my parents rang and asked to speak to Kitty! I was published in various periodicals in that role and I'm very proud of that.
I desperately needed to prove to family that I was good at what I did. I would think: 'I'll show 'em. I'll show 'em.' Hence my need to get my novel published and show how good I am at all my interests. It was exhausting.
Looking back today, my lovely councillor suggested that Jeannie represented everything I wanted to be to my family. Devastating. Tomboy beautiful. Charismatic. Funny. Powerful. Bisexual. A light bulb pinged on in my head. It made a lot of sense. I wanted to apply my western female lead to my everyday life back then. Thus my epic western trilogy became the source of my mental issues to such an extent I could no longer listen to music with a western vibe or watch westerns without crying. Still can't.
My parents died within days of one another some years ago. For the first time ever I felt free. I accepted what my family had done to me and I was able to distance myself from them. My older brother died during the pandemic.
One thing is for sure, I no longer suffer from long term depression. I'm up and down like a bucking bronco, and working on the trilogy has resulted in burnout. Hubby has been magnificent. My rock. I couldn't have asked for anyone better.
Book 1 of Alias was self published last summer and the result was excellent. My editor loved it! I had five star reviews and reader comments telling me that they loved the story and the unique status of it. Unlike any western they'd ever read! It is hard to market, taking the singularity of its niche, but I'm working on that.
My editor worked on Book 2 and returned it with the comment:
... and here it is -- what a story! When I started reading I couldn't think how on earth you'd be able to make something interesting from the situation Jeannie was in, but OMG ... Your writing is 24 carat!
As a break from the intense work on novels, I'm aspiring to be a multidisciplinary or multi-passionate creative. An artist who will try their hand at anything.
I'd like to poke my wrong doers in the eyeballs with a: 'That shows ya!' Well, that's not going to happen, but at least it's a small step towards proving to myself and my disbelieving and doubting subconscious that, actually, as an aspiring multidisciplinary artist, writer, wild west person, western author and all round renaissance soul, I am pretty awesome, actually.
Facebook Jo Ballantyne
Monday 1 April 2024
JO. B. CREATIVE!: DID THIS PERSON REALLY WRITE THAT GRITTY, SOMETIME...
JO. B. CREATIVE!: DID THIS PERSON REALLY WRITE THAT GRITTY, SOMETIME...: DID THIS SWEET HOPSCOTCHING STEAMPUNK GAL WHO LOVES THE COLOUR PINK & STUFFED ANIMALS REALLY WRITE THAT GRITTY, SOMETIMES DARK WESTERN...
Saturday 30 March 2024
DID THIS PERSON REALLY WRITE THAT GRITTY, SOMETIMES DARK WESTERN?
DID THIS SWEET HOPSCOTCHING STEAMPUNK GAL WHO LOVES THE COLOUR PINK & STUFFED ANIMALS REALLY WRITE THAT GRITTY, SOMETIMES DARK WESTERN? YES, SHE DID!
Hubby and I dropped in on Basingstoke's Milestones Museum's Cogs and Clogs Steampunk event in Hampshire recently.
Enormous fun! Loads of stalls, music and everyone dressed wild west punk, fairies, military, medieval, you-name-it... We were dressed to the nines - hubby as a befrilled sergeant in peaked cap and goggles who screams orders at rookies, and me as a glam pirate complete with small flintlock pistol. When I'm not a gun totin' westerner granny called Kitty Le Roy, I'm a pistol totin' pirate granny with the same name.
Milestones Museum is an indoor Victorian town setting open to customers to wander shop and factory settings. On one of the pavements are two hopscotch squares chalked up. Naturally we have to hop. He's tall and skinny, like a drainpipe, and he's good at hopping. I ain't. I used to be slim and beautiful but now I'm Rubenesque and beautiful. I've never hopped well and was terrible at school PE. (I'm great on a bike and striding briskly).
So hubby hopped like a good 'un and I sorta hopped on and off. (I'm not talking to him any more!) Never mind. Glad we did it. Good fun! And we filmed one another. Brilliant stuff. Hop scotching steampunk style.
Now, if you want to see it being done properly, here you are:
And there you have it. Ain't that great?
Another confession: I love the colour pink and hubby and I love Pig and Monkey.
Now, the point of this post is: Did this fun loving hopscotching, rather sweet gal (so my teenage twin granddaughters say, and I believe them) really write that gritty, sometimes dark and violent western? What? Really? Yes, really.
I'm either schizophrenic (shouldn't joke - I know all about mental health), or there are genuinely two sides of me. The dark side and the goofy, creative side. The goofy artistic side is predominant, but the dark side, when the mood strikes, comes crashing in. I had to write Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 1 - Go West, Girl!. I had no choice. This girl gunslinger - female gunfighter - who's the fastest gun in the west, had to be. My fascination for the wild west decreed that I writ1e the story of a devastating and charismatic pants-wearing cowgirl. I know her inside out. I know what she looks like, her qualities and her likes and dislikes. I wanted to be her, it turns out, because my own family - parents and siblings, and their wives - didn't understand me and tried to make me what I'm not and didn't want to be.
Jeannie is powerful. Magnetic. Charismatic, hysterically funny, scary. Terrifying sometimes. Tremendously stylish in male clothing. Sexy as hell. Tomboy beautiful. She looks like a beautiful youth, then she's figured out. OTT. Irresistible. She's bisexual. All things to everyone. I was horrendously embarrassed about her, which made things even harder. I tried to tone her down but it didn't work. Finding out just how much people appreciate her has made things so much better for me.
I wanted to be like her to make up for my largely alone position within my family. I managed to cope with that when I was young, but having children made matters harder and my mental health, exacerbated by childbirth and post natal depression, suffered, along with the drip drip of family pressures and opinions.
That's why I wanted to be Jeannie. That's why I needed to write her story and 'get her out there'. And that's why I have two sides to me. Which would I rather be? Both. Gladly.
Facebook Jo Ballantyne
Wednesday 13 March 2024
JO. B. CREATIVE!: KINDLE UNLIMITED - STEAMROLLING READERS!
JO. B. CREATIVE!: KINDLE UNLIMITED - STEAMROLLING READERS!: Someone - or two persons - have finished reading Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 1 - Go West, Girl! on Kindle Unlimited at a rate of knots! ...
KINDLE UNLIMITED - STEAMROLLING READERS!
Kindle Unlimited, available on Amazon Prime, is an online platform that gives access to a library of books, audiobooks, and magazines. Kindle tracks the pages a borrower reads and the author can follow it and is paid per page. I've had a number of readers borrowing Alias and Hubby tracks along with it and reports back to me.
So far I've had several readers belt through it like a steamroller. Which just goes to prove how unputdownable it can be to the right reader. The 'right reader' is a pretty vague target. When target marketing comes into one's promotional plans, in some cases that's an almost impossible question. The 'right' reader for me is probably American or Canadian, but not necessarily. Some are UK. They are adult and usually, but not always, female. I've had many male readers enjoy it too. They could be adventurous or aspiring towards it. They can be well off, middle class or not so middle class. They can have hundreds of interests or barely any. Outdoorsy, possibly. Categorising Alias for Amazon was really tricky.
I've gained over two hundred readers - some from free download promotions, but what the heck, at least I'm being read! Over two hundred readers - two hundred and twenty, or something in that region - is pretty damn great when you think of the 'unique' and
'singularity' or 'extraordinary' status of my novel's subject matter (all those words have been quoted) - a devastating and charismatic cowgirl is the fastest gun in the west and a great lover to men and women. A gripping story of a cowgirl's journey to find her true self on the frontier. Sounds pretty good when I read that back!
Once upon a time, in the early days of being published, every time a book sold, we'd leap in the air and shout 'Yippee!' Not any more. Now it's 'Good. Excellent.' Almost complacent. 😄 Funny how things change so quickly. By the time August comes along, Book 1 will have been online for a year and hopefully Book 2 will have been published. A lot can happen in a year.
Monday 11 March 2024
ASPIRING TOWARDS MULTIPASSIONATE CREATIVITY
ASPIRING TOWARDS MULTIPASSIONATE CREATIVITY
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GETTING PAINTED! |
I've spent the past umpteen sometimes painful years working on an epic western trilogy Alias Jeannie Delaney. I shouldn't have been surprised when this turned into a trilogy. I self-published, with PA hubby's brilliant help, the first novel, Book 1 - Go West, Girl! on Amazon. It's been very successful in many ways, accruing over two hundred readers and five star reviews, some of which commented on the unique status of my subject matter. (Devastating, charismatic pants-wearing cowgirl Jeannie Morgan is the fastest gun in the west. This is the story of her struggles with the jealousies of people over her powerful persona and her gun skills. A gipping story of a cowgirl's journey to find her true self on the frontier). I'm working on promotion and the next two novels.
As a complete break from intense trilogies, I'm aspiring towards multipassionate and sometimes
radical creativity and, being the renaissance soul that I am and always have been, pursuing my umpteen zillion interests and hobbies.
A multipassionate creative is someone who's artistry covers any number of practices, be it photography, writing, sculpture, theatre design, jewellery making, printing... A polymath, or renaissance soul is someone like my hero Leonardo da Vinci, who had umpteen zillion interests too, although he never finished his commissions, leaving behind a load of clients sighing in exasperation!
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LEONARDO DA VINCI - MY HERO! |
My zillion interests and fascinations include reading, creativity, boating, wild west, rifle, archery and crossbow shooting, travel and exploration, flying, snorkelling, archaeology, beach combing and mud larking, history of photography, underwater photography and maritime archaeology, medicine, space flight and exploration, the paranormal, gardens, Japanese gardens, tropical plants, driving, cycling, walking, yoga, architecture, science and biology... you get the picture! 😅
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of it I'm aspiring to include in my creativity. In between working on my trilogy, I intend to build my brand as an artist. Which means I have to become more disciplined. 😱! My poor old visual creativity zone has been neglected. After all, I have just bought a new art desk and installed it in our conservatory/studio.
I've created accounts on both YouTube and Tick-Tock and I'm posting videos demonstrating the type of simple creativity that anyone who claims that they can't draw a straight line can do! I'm aiming to experiment, including using weird and wonderful materials - mud, stones, chocolate (before I eat it), wet tea bags, coffee (before I drink it), fruit, squashes, beetroot, papers and plastics, found objects... and anything else I can think of that's weird but not disgusting. I'd like to be drastic in some cases, such as Jackson Pollock would do, and throw paint from a tin against a wall! More conventional materials include wood, acrylics, gouache, clay, mixed media, 3D, collage, pens, inks, coloured markers, pencils, pastels, collage... you name it. I love abstracts, photographic realism, stylised, Art Deco and Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, abstract expressionism. Still life, landscapes, faces and figures, design and pattern. Science, botany and biology. Alternative processes such as cyanotype
and anthotype photographic processes sound fun as well. Get my drift? I'd like to photograph the stages during art making and share it online.
My only issue is that I suffer from the next shiny object syndrome. I look at something, then I'm attracted to something within the something. Then I'm attracted to something within that...🙄 I want a get-out clause. I won't beat myself up about it. I'll simply say to self: 'You thought about it. Good. Tomorrow's another day. Maybe then.'
I'm a student of Life, continually learning, experimenting, growing and developing. I'd love to hear from anyone who feels the same way! Speak soon. x
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