Excuses, excuses...

I have just noticed that I haven't posted on this blog for nigh on six weeks. I should say "Bad Wayne!" and other remonstrations to myself of that ilk, but I have been busy. So sue me. Anyway, time to do some planning.

Beta Reading

Hola. I'm back off a weeks holiday with the family and finally shucking the skin of the A - Z Challenge off my shoulders. Really felt a bit wiped out after all of that! While I was off, I started beta reading for a Five Sentence Fiction colleague of mine; Phillip R Hall at Crazy Flipper Fingers.

Z is for Zenith

Here we are. The last post of the A-Z Challenge 2013 and it's a hard letter. What do you post for Z? I have to be honest, I'm at a loss. Doesn't mean I won't try...

Y is for Yawp

One of my favourite films is Dead Poets Society. It stars Robin Williams at his mercurial best, firing one liners  at a rate of knots. It's wonderful stuff. I remember going to see it in the cinema on my own as a 17 or 18 year old. I laughed like a drain all the way through and then at the end (slight spoiler alert) I cried like a child into my enormous casket of popcorn. On my own in a packed cinema.

X is for Xenophobe

I'm plugging this series of books as I want you to read them because they are funny. I'm not getting paid for the plug or anything so sinister as that. Every now and again, it's important to have fun poked at yourself and these books do it in a broad way that you can't take offence to. Well, you could, but that would be silly.

W is for Writing

So, here we are at the crux of it. The tail end of the A-Z Challenge and I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I'm sure that there are a bunch of you out there that are feeling good about yourselves too. Nearly twenty six posts in the bag in one calendar month. That's a lot of writing.

V is for Vernacular

A little while back I had to put my car in for a service and took a half day off work to go and pick it up in the afternoon. I rock up at the garage and I see that the mechanic is still working on my car and am told that I have to pick it up the morning after. No problem I say and call a cab to take me home as it's pouring with rain. Cab arrives and it's a big MPV thing, a Citroen Picasso or something. The cab driver is a genial fellow and wants to chat.

U is for Ubiquitous

This is a stretch to get to the subject matter I'm blogging about, but I'm nothing if not game. I'll roll the writers sleeves up and get down to business.

T is for Totally Forgot

I totally forgot to do this one. I'm not even joking either. My alphabet completely misses T and goes straight from S to U. Maybe I'm secretly ancient Irish. Their alphabet called Ogham has only twenty five letters, grouped in clusters of five. There, you learned something. I'm all about the esoteric knowledge today.

Rock on,

W.

S is for Stromboli

Here we are at S. When I was writing down the random list of subjects I was going to blog about this month, I thought a recipe would be a good idea. So, here is an Assiratti family favourite: Stromboli. When I first started making this I didn't know what it was called and it became known as "Dad Bread" in our household. I cannibalised a recipe I saw on a cooking channel once made by the very delicious Giada de Laurentis. Hubba, hubba. The kids are big fans. Of the bread, not her. That would be weird. This recipe is a really sneaky way of getting spinach into the kids without them noticing too. Apologies for the poor photos, they were taken on my phone, but I think you will get the idea.

R is for Rewind

Everyone has regrets in their life, whether they be decisions not taken, lovers shunned or things uttered in the heat of the moment. What if I had taken that job, or should I have tried harder at that thing maybe? Should I have talked to that person in that bar one day when they caught my eye, fought harder for that thing....

Q is for Quireboys

Hola lovely A - Z'ers! Another cheeky music post for the letter Q. I give to you a lovely little offering from 1990 by British Rawk 'n Rollers, Quireboys.

P is for Paramore

More music for P. As you might already know, I'm big into my music. I'm turning forty this year and starting to get set in my ways. I have however started to get into what I foolishly called "kiddy rock". My nephew, who is twenty now, got me into listening to some modern rock acts from the states and as a result I discovered Paramore.

O is for Omar

The next couple are going to be short ones as I have a sizeable assignment to complete for Thursday for a course I am being forced to do taking at work. So, I have decided to some music related posts for O, P and Q. Please don't think me lazy, I just got to take care of business...

N is for New Day

Hola. Since it seems that some of you lovely people out there have enjoyed the story I have been writing, here is another short bit. Hope you enjoy.

M is for Mice and Mystics

I like board games. About once a week me and three friends get together to play. Now I'm not talking about Monopoly or Cluedo. I'm talking about the new breed of board games. Games that are really more about the playing than the winning. Generally, if I have played a game and enjoyed it without winning, I think it's a good game. Now my son and daughter are getting to an age where they can play games that are more structured. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a fan of the "classic" games and being an old school RPG'er at heart, I'm keen to find something that might be a gateway for them to get into board games. One that has proved to be a big hit with my son at least is called Mice and Mystics.

L is for Lucky

There is nothing I love more than a day wherein you have next to nothing to do. You can sail through the day and do the bare minimum of stuff to get you to the end of it. Today, for me, is one of those days.

K is for Kids

Of which I am the proud owner of two. One of each type, which is nice. Rocco, my brilliant, funny and clever little boy is nearly seven. Jasmine, the gentle, caring and beautiful girl is nearly four and a half. The half is important.

J is for... well, things beginning with J

I'll admit it. I had trouble finding something to blog about on this letter. So of course I went in search of inspiration to the interweb and found out some stuff that I have decided to share with you. It's slightly lazy, but useless information is what I thrive on. So there.

I is for Immigration

One of the things that I have noticed over the past few years, especially since the start of the credit crunch in 2007 is the alarming rise in (for want of a better phrase) "nationalism". In Britain I have seen that political parties are more and more playing the "British" card when trying to obtain votes in local or national elections. Is this subconscious racism? Are we being manipulated at all?

H is for Handwriting

Maybe I have a split personality.

As the world rushes forward, embracing all things digital, I have noticed that what I like to call the art of handwriting is becoming less and less important. It's very rare that you see people doing any writing by hand these days. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not being all middle aged and raging about it, shouting about the fact that kids aren't taught proper handwriting in school. I can type faster than I can write now. If you come out of your first few years in school being able to form all the letters of the alphabet and have a legible hand, you have learned to write and that is all that is necessary to get you through life.

G is for Getaway

Here we all are on week two of the A - Z Blogging Challenge. Are you feeling the pressure yet? I know I certainly am! Anyway onward and upward of course. Some of you seemed to enjoy the piece of flash fiction I posted for D last week, so I thought I would post a bit of a continuation. Hope you enjoy.

F is for Fallout 3

Yes, I am a 39 year old father of two. I have responsibilities. Things to pay for, fix and feed. I do however once in a while, when I'm not blogging, working, doing stuff with the family or singing with the band, have some time to myself and like to kick back and play vast RPG's on my games console of choice. The first one I ever played of the "modern" generation was Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 is one of the many titles in the Fallout series of games that have been running for about ten years brought to us by a plethora of software publishers. Fallout 3 was brought to us by Bethesda, who also own the Elder Scrolls franchise.

Now, lets give you the skinny on a game that is so immense, that I have over the past few years put in around 150 hours of my spare time. Now for a game that cost me £35 quid in 2008, that's pretty good value for money.

E is for Everything Is Ok

Hi there. Today is a very short one, but I was shown this the other day by a good friend and it made me laugh like a drain.

D is for Diamonds

I decided that a bit of Flash Fiction might be in order for D. I had an idea about this and decided to knock it out for today. Hope you like it.

C is for Coalition

I was going to write a blog post about something else for C, but an article in the Guardian newspaper caught my eye and I thought I would summarise and share some interesting points with you on the coalitions welfare and tax reforms that are coming into effect this week in the United Kingdom.

B is for The Black Crowes

Now for something completely different to the musings yesterday about the dystopian near future. B is indeed for the Black Crowes. They are, without question, my favourite band of all time. I'm going to take a little of your time to tell you about exactly why you need them in your life. And need them you do.

A is for Augmented Reality

So, we now live in a world where a large amount of the worlds population own a mobile computing device. I don't call them smartphones anymore. Not because I am being smart about it, or trying to be cutting edge. Yes, these devices we use can be used to make telephone calls, but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that generally most of us use them to get our emails on the go and update the plethora of social networking sites we all use for whatever reason. For that reason alone, they are fast becoming more computing device than phone...

What to post....

Beautiful People. As you know, A - Z Blogfest is looming large on the horizon and I'm sure that those of you that have chosen to get involved this year are, like me, getting slightly panicked about the sheer volume of posts that need to be pre-written in time for the event.

A - Z Blogging Challenge 2013

So, I saw loads of very good stuff last year when I was a fledgling blogger during the A - Z Challenge. Every day through April except Sundays, participants are to post something (each day the next letter of the alphabet in order) on their blogs. That being difficult enough, it's generally accepted that you should have some kind of theme. Cripes.

Liebster Award.

Hello there you lovely people. The very nice Mina Lobo over at Some Dark Romantic has nominated me for the Liebster Award in the vain hope that my little blog in this dusty corner of the internet gets a little bit more traffic.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that my list of blog followers is quite small, and the population of that list are quite popular bloggers, I was hard pressed to find eleven people to nominate in turn. So, I am just going to answer the questions posed by Mina and hope you lot find it amusing.

Old School

Good day to you lovely bloggers. I notice I have been remiss in my regular blogging over the past couple of weeks but I have been writing all the same. Not however, in the digital medium. I have found over the past couple of weeks that I really enjoy writing in notebooks with a pencil and paper.

Paper, pencil and sharpener. That's how I roll, yo. 

Self Publishing

Hello everyone.

I have been doing some bits and bobs of searching on the internet about doing some self publishing later on this year. It's a bit of a minefield by the looks of things. I have found all manner of sites that will provide you with a digital publishing platform and also a few sites that will make books to order. Some places do both.

There are "brand" names like Lulu, Smashwords and the like, but I was wondering if any of you folk out there would be able to point me in the right direction and maybe share some experiences. I'd feel better about going into it with some first hand knowledge from any of you that have decided to go down that path.

Rock on,

W.

Five Sentence Fiction - Midnight

Good day to you all out there whatever time it may be where you are. Here I start on my resolutions for writing with my first installment of Five Sentence Fiction for the new year. Once again I am late to the game, so without beating around the bush or any further ado, here is my take on Midnight. 

Writing Goals

Buongiorno! 

I decided today to make some writing plans for the year. I managed to speak to some folk over the Christmas break that were interested in my blog (readers, not bloggers themselves) and some of the writing that I have done on it and got some really good constructive criticism. So, here is the list of things I plan to stick to over the coming year...