Monday, 26 November 2012

Birthday musings and hello to Rufus Garlic


Wow. First an apology! It’s been over a month since my last blog! I’m sorry for such a long delay. There has been so much going on and I lost my way a bit…Where to start? Well, let’s start with the good stuff, can I please welcome Rufus Garlic to Thinking Plainly!


Rufus Garlic

Rufus is a new author publishing for the first time and his debut novel ‘The Disappearance Club or A Polish Detective in London’ will be released soon on Kindle. I am over the moon to be able to work with Rufus and I am looking forward to the coming months working through the release of his book. Rufus is on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and can be reached from the Contacts page on the Thinking Plainly website. He has only recently joined these sites so please bear with him while he gets to grips with getting to know you all. I will be making formal announcements about the release date of his book and other information shortly via Facebook but for the time being why don’t you read a synopsis:

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The Disappearance Club or A Polish Detective in London

Janek Lipsz sets up a business to help people run away from intolerable and frustrating lives and to set up new ones elsewhere. Unfortunately he cannot escape his own past or the guilt he carries within. After thirty years a woman arrives at his Disappearance Club door and she forces this past and this guilt to the surface.
Fate cannot be avoided, not even in the suburbs of south-east London, but is forgiveness possible? The woman comes armed for revenge. Unexpectedly she warms towards Janek and he falls in love with her, but is this enough for her to let fall the knife she has sharpened for him?
The reader is taken through a harrowing journey as the good, humorous, kind-hearted Janek’s past is revealed. The prose, initially light, becomes darker. This mirrors the central theme: it is easy to be a moral man when times are good. But what about when one’s back is against the wall? What about in 1940s occupied Poland when survival depends upon individuals not being moral? And should a man still pay in 1977 for what he did more than thirty years before?
This is a story of guilt expiated, of forgiveness given and withheld, of crimes and   consequences. It is story of redemption and the struggle for truth. No one character knows where all the pieces lie or all the skeletons are buried, but as they discover more about one another, they discover more about what happened one dark night in 1943. They also realise that time weaves a continuous thread through their lives and mutual pasts, so that no single moment in the present can ever truly be said to be free of the shadows of war and the atrocities of war.
No one who knows Janek in peacetime London would recognise the wartime Janek.  Janek’s problem is that he knows both men intimately and that a woman has found him who thinks she knows both. She seems committed to her revenge but whose understanding of the past will bear closest scrutiny when they return to Poland?

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On the author page of the Thinking Plainly website you can find a short biography of Rufus. Hope you find time to learn more about him.

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So back to my apology

I hope you understand that working with Rufus has taken up a lot of time but it has been a fantastic experience so although I feel bad for missing blogging, it has been more than worth it.  I haven’t been writing at all recently but I’m not beating myself up too much, I have been thinking a lot about things. (Thinking takes up a lot of time doesn’t it!) When I set up Thinking Plainly as a vehicle to publish my short stories, I did it to push me, to stop giving myself excuses, I figured that once I told people about it properly I couldn’t go back on it. So my initial plans were to write a story every month, publish it and on to the next…well, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way! I have around ten stories or so in development and I am happy that my desire to write has only got stronger, but I am also really enjoying the opportunities that have opened up to me. Actually, they are not opportunities; it is more that my mindset sees all thoughts as possibilities. Now the step has been taken to put myself out there I have lost all sense of limit, I don’t feel the need to question whether or not something can be done, I just ask myself if I like the idea, and if I do, then on my list it goes. I’m saying this because all the advice people give about making sure to write everyday and similar I fully agree with, however, I want to say that if you don’t write everyday then instead make time to think clearly everyday. Everyone has pressures, work, family, health…it’s hard to get that hour down, or find that quiet space and so it has been with me, I have spent my time working with Rufus, working on my website, marketing, day job pressures, etc. but the thing that has taken up the most time, is rolling around new ideas in my head. I don’t feel that time is wasted, I am further behind with my next story than I would have liked, but I am far in advance of where I thought I would be with my plans for Thinking Plainly Limited.  So I guess I am saying always try to be productive, but don’t get depressed if that productivity can’t be measured by a word count, if whatever you have been doing moves you forward in life, no matter how tentatively, that has been time well spent.

Here are a few other things I’d like to share with you:

Media Page

I am really excited by plans for new exclusive content on the Media page of the Thinking Plainly website. I will keep you posted on the development of films, audio clips, photo galleries and how you can get involved.

Student Talk

I gave a talk to some 6th form students at a local college a few weeks ago. It was about how you can treat your hobbies as ‘professional hobbies’. It was hugely nerve wracking and I think I probably repeated all the boring stuff and missed out all the interesting stuff but never the less I really enjoyed it. It made me think about what the opportunities are now that weren’t there when I was at school, the same goes for every generation I’m sure, but in the light of developments within social media it was amazing to see how much potential students have to make progress with their talents. If you ever need encouragement just think what you can do now that was once almost science fiction, then make sure you don’t take it for granted! I felt refreshed walking out of the college, it reminded me of how lucky we are to be in a position to make things happen for ourselves…and if that isn’t enough, just remember how lucky you are not to be back in school ;)

Turning 33

I firmly set foot into my thirties this week. Unfortunately I managed to pick up a bug that meant I was sick in bed all day with a temperature so it wasn’t exactly a rock’n’roll occasion. It did however give me a chance to reflect on the year gone by and without getting too personal, it has been fairly rough and there have been times when I have struggled to remain positive, but again, keeping with what I have already said, just because you haven’t go to where you want to be, doesn’t mean you haven’t progressed and in writing terms I am more confident than ever. The more you think about what you want to do and the more you believe it can be realised, the more time seems to disappear!

So combine that all together and it’s been a good couple of months overall even though there isn’t anything physical to show for it! Hold that thought however, in the coming months there will be lots happening, Rufus’s novel, my short stories and a whole bunch of ways you can interact with us.

While I am on a general muse then I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every one who has followed me and Thinking Plainly Limited on our various sites, it really has been amazing to meet so many different people from all over the world. The website still has a few tweaks to be made but I hope you like the new look, let me know what you think? I’ll be keeping up my regular posting to my social media sites with links to various creative news so I hope they are of interest to you, if you haven’t connected with me yet, please feel free to do so, all the links are on the right hand side of this blog, or on the Contacts page of the website. 

Update over and out, normal blogging will resume next week!

RGR
P.S: Please join me on all my social media pages:
And Author Profile Pages to keep informed of the latest releases:

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