Karma is a bitch

Just had an awesome weekend away at the Black Library Weekender 2012 in Nottingham. Seriously, it was awesome. In fact, awesome is a word that is entirely inadequate to describe said event.

Being one of the few Golden Ticket holders, our fun and games began on the Friday. Truth be told, the Friday was the prime reason I bought the ticket as it gave me twenty minutes (which ended up being closer to thirty minutes) with an editor. Obviously I took a lot away from the weekend as a whole, but I think its fair to say that it was this meeting that the majority of Gold Ticket holders were really interested in. I came out of that meeting with an entirely new perspective on how the whole process works and have a much clearer idea of where I should be focussing my writing energy.

My story submission appears to have been well received too – which came as something of a surprise to me, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. I worked bloody hard on it after all. When the meeting was over many of us couldn’t wait to get back to the keyboard and start bashing out our next submission, myself included. My notebook is crammed full of new ideas, some of which came about through chats with established authors, others that just seemed to seep into my brain as I mingled in a crowd of collective awesomeness. I predict my fingers are going to be worn down into stunted nubs come the end of this week.

So, all in all I came away from the Weekender feeling pretty damn good and fairly optimistic about the future. Sadly, karma’s a bitch.

While I was away and submerged in awesome, my wife was at home on her own having a pretty shit time. It was always going to be a hard weekend for her. We live on a farm and share the duties. When one of us is away for a day, the other really feels the extra workload. Top this off with the fact that we both also work as paramedics, we’re pretty busy people. So its fair to say she had enough shit on her plate without the damn electrics in the house failing. I tried to talk her through fixing them, but I may as well have been speaking Mandarin. I just could not believe that the fault was anything serious. How wrong could I be?

The ring main had failed. I have disconnected everything but it’s still screwed. Hmmm, perhaps one of the sockets is wet? Nope. I know this because I have had the cover off every socket in the house. I especially know this because the last socket was hidden within a built-in cabinet. It took me three hours to dismantle that cabinet. The fact that the cabinet is now damaged beyond repair had me hopping mad for a almost a full minute when I realised how badly I had destroyed it. That anger however was soon replaced by a higher form of rage upon discovering that my built in cabinet had obviously been used as a toilet by my cats for some considerable time. How could I not smell that? Well, I live on a farm remember? I’m kinda used to living and working in shit.

All in all, the scales of inner happiness are still tilted in favour of my weekend of awesomeness making me surprisingly, well… chuffed. I really like that word, chuffed.

Until next time.

M J

Author: Mark S Thompson

Okay, so these things are kind of hit and miss. If you’re reading this then I am thankful to you for taking the time out of your day to do so. I’ll be honest, when I think of myself as a writer, I kinda cringe. Don’t get me wrong, it is the dream, it's​ just I never really believe it will go anywhere. When I think back to the day that I first knew I loved writing, and I mean really knew, I see myself sitting in an English lesson at secondary school. The school was called Wrotham and is in the county of Kent, England. As far as I know, it's still there. English was far and away my favourite subject. The best bit was when the teacher gave the class a selection of words and asked us to make up a story that either contained those words or was about those words, you know. At other times we would be given the first sentence and then write what happens next. Good times. Many times my work would reflect what I had recently read and it would be okay. Nothing special, just okay. On one occasion though I wrote about a merman called Finchy and can remember going into so much depth and detail about him and the underwater kingdom he lived in. I really enjoyed writing that and it must have shown because my teacher commented on it. She was really impressed and loved the story. That was it for me, my moment. Now when I write I think back to those great times and to that story. Hopefully, I’ll write something that you, the reader, will be moved to comment on. For me, there is no greater elixir View all posts by Mark S Thompson