I’m thrilled that Rachel from Creatopath has nominated me for the Blog Tour Award. I always love reading her stories for the weekly flash fiction challenges, and checking out the creative ventures on her blog, so thanks once again for the nomination Rachel! This award involves answering four questions about writing. The rules are:

• Compose a one-time post on a specific Monday (date given on your nomination – I was given Monday 27 April.

• Give your nominees the rules, and a specific Monday to post. My nominees can post on Monday 18 May.

• Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers.

• Answer four questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.

Here are the four questions and my answers:

Q.1. What are you working on at the moment? At the moment I’m working on a paranormal/suspense novella (or novel, depending on how many words the story needs to be told) based on a flash fiction piece I wrote a while ago called White Manor. It’s about a woman who inherits her family estate and has to deal with some unexpected events involving the house, and learning a thing or two about herself along the way. I started it as part of CampNaNoWriMo this month but haven’t got a hope in hell of actually finishing it by the end of the month now so I’ll keep playing with it and use the next Camp in July to finish the first draft if I haven’t done so by then. I’m also finishing up two short stories that I’ve had sitting around since the start of the year.

Q.2. How does your work differ from others in your genre? My writing voice inevitably gravitates towards humour/satire because I find it difficult to take life too seriously, so even though my current project is quite a dark story, it’s probably going to be coloured with humour somehow. Also, my protagonists tend to be female because a) its easier for me to relate to a woman and b) I think that there are enough male characters out there saving the world/galaxy/universe already, so I see it as my duty to strive towards balancing the equation 🙂

Q.3. Why do you write or create what you do? I love all forms of creative expression, whether its art, photography or film. Writing just happens to be the form I feel most comfortable with because it allows you to create people and places and alternate realities without getting paint all over your hands or having to get wet/cold/hot/dirty to capture that perfect shot. In saying that, I’d happily get out there for the perfect shot if I didn’t have two young children to care for!

Q.4. How does your writing/creative process work? I’m not a very disciplined person by nature, and that combined with a cheeky toddler and 6 month old baby, create a challenging environment for a regular writing habit. The following tools and techniques are helpful:

• Limiting the use of social media. It would be very easy to wile away the hours socialising online, so I’ve purposefully broken my Facebook habit, and don’t have any other social media accounts. Blogging, and socialising with the WordPress community is enough for now.
• Limiting my blogging commitments. As much as I’d love to feed my addiction to flash fictioning and photography by participating in more challenges, I limit myself to two flash fiction challenges a week (Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers, Mondays Finish the Story, and the Daily Post Photography Challenge).
• I like to work on a few projects at the same time, usually of different genres, so that way when I start running out of steam with one story I switch to a different one for a few days.
• Even if I’m writing a story about transgender aliens planning an Elvis convention, I always make sure to research the subject area in order to give the story some level of plausibility.
• I like to start with an overall outline, and then a paragraph or so for each chapter to have some kind of structure to start with. Nothing too set in stone of course, as characters like to do their own thing most times don’t they?
• I use Scrivener, which makes it easy to move between chapters and scenes, and to shuffle things around.
• I’ve become a fan of writing sprints after being at CampNaNoWrimo, and find its a helpful way to quickly dump whatever’s lingering in the subconscious onto a page – its amazing how much you can write down in a 10 minute sprint, before treating yourself to a tea/coffee and bikkies!
• I also use the notes feature on my phone to jot down ideas and inspiration on the run, and then save them to Dropbox for later (I save everything in Dropbox now after suffering the horror of a crashed computer not long ago.)

Well, that’s enough about me – time to pass the baton on to some writers whose work I look forward to reading each week. Without further ado, my nominees for the Blog Tour Award are:

1. draliman at Draliman on Life;
2. purpleanais at Arawenaragonstar;
3. Kathryn Player at Thoughts of a Curlyhaired Essex Girl; and
4. Dave at ParkInkSpot.