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 ...
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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Thursday 7 March 2024
JO. B. CREATIVE!: A SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM ALIAS JEANNIE DELANEY - BOOK...
JO. B. CREATIVE!: A SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM ALIAS JEANNIE DELANEY - BOOK...: THAT'S ONE OF MY DAUGHTER'S NOVELS IN THE BACKGROUND! Hello folks, I'm sharing Chapter 3 of Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 1 - ...
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