Recent content by Charles Parkes

Sentry garden - the idea really appeals. Keep the great ideas coming please! I can think of plenty of examples of fantasy characters where something like this is more appropriate for their security :D Or maybe I've been watching too much Penny Dreadful and the witch's warded cottage has got...

Lost a couple of weeks of work at one point - I didn't cope with it. I got massively depressed and stopped writing for three months. Seems silly now - I wish I'd found a coping strategy. But did teach me the merit of Dropbox. I guess I went back to it at the suggestion of my partner - so -...

This is such a good idea - do you find that different types of sleep affect how much you remember your dreams (sleeping longer, or less, eating before bed, interrupted sleep... I used to have a recurring dream when I was very young I owned airfix models, and the dream always focused on a...

Liked fan makers What about make-up manufacturers? "What, you're the one who keeps us supplied with arsenic? Keep up the good work."

I... can't believe I never thought about it like that. From my point of view you don't have to have humans. I suspect a lot of readers will still read it through the lens of the human condition :) Personally speaking a well crafted non-human tale holds a lot of attraction. But you might...

Ice merchant... someone has to keep the wine cool! Horse-breeder Thief Doctor (manic laugh) Courier Wattler - better than being a dauber Inquisitor Whaler Privateer... pretty Elizabethan Lady (a full time job given the scale of the households) Mourner... amateurs need not apply Viking. That was...

I find that if you get addicted to something and then stop it causes a crush of ideas (starting with copycat ones but developing into more original ones). I'm talking an author, or a game, or a tv series of course. Eh hem... I actually wrote part of something recently with the television...

I'll admit to occasionally popping on the 'Civilisation' game series anthology. It's pretty awesome for worldbuilding while you're writing. (Though if you find yourself wanting to US militamen the hell out of those pesky Persians, you're probably taking it a bit too far.)

Gosh darn it. This pulled some of us away from our tree-hugging long enough to protest. 'You may take away our immortality, you may change our physical appearance' and so on. . . but there's still a place in contemporary fiction for elf-like harmony creatures, even if they are blown into a new...

I'll admit I'm finding 'The Village of the Happy People' intriguing (it sounds a bit like 'The Prisoner' tv series from the late 60s). Nice points about identification despite deviousness. I think I've seen this broken most spectacularly through acts of cruelty - towards animals or those seen...

I second Lea. Pinterest is hands down the easiest and most fun source for me. Especially if you have a phone with a large screen. Some easy search terms like 'fantasy landscape' can leave you with jaw-drop and under-utilised writer's hand for hours : ) I also am trying to be organised and do...

I second Lea. Pinterest is hands down the easiest and most fun source for me. Especially if you have a phone with a large screen. Some easy search terms like 'fantasy landscape' can leave you with jaw-drop and under-utilised writer's hand for hours : ) I also am trying to be organised and do a...

Hello Chesterama, Really like the cover art. From my perspective the quality of the text doesn't quite seem to match the quality of the image. But perhaps it being marginally darker might change that. Or possibly it could be a case of introducing a 1point width border around the letters...

I owe finding my determination to finding my partner. She's an artist, and a good one. And she made me confront that niggling voice that was telling me the creative arts were for people who weren't serious. I've written my first story and my future seems much brighter now. I can talk...

I'm on a macbook pro (think I must have trod on the screen once, so it's a weeny bit ropey). I sympathise with your dilemma about where to write. I'm always on the sofa and I think it's playing havoc with my back and neck. Bought an iphone 6 plus the other day so that I could do some...