Tales of humour, whimsy and courgettes
“Hey,” came a voice from the bushes. “Hey, Red!”
“Hydra?” asked Red. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” replied Hydra. “Listen, the police are chasing me because I stole some swimming pool inflatables.”
“Oh dear!” gasped Red. “If Yuffie finds out she’s gonna be mad!”
“I know,” replied Hydra. “I gotta lilo.”
Don’t forget to enter our competition to win Lucy this week!
This week I am giving away a copy of the nefarious Lucy. A sinister Little Fear, most known for her appearance in Capricorn. She is printed on 220gsm A4 matt card stock, 210 × 297mm. Our non-British friends are more than welcome to enter, though you may need to Amazon an A4 frame (or cut her to size).
Share this post anywhere. Social media, blogs, forums and anywhere else on the net you fancy. Then leave a comment below linking to where you shared the post.
On Sunday 8th of October, I shall pick a name at random from comments below using a spreadsheet.
Enter once anytime between now and Saturday 7th of October at 11:59 PM UK Time. You are limited to one entry. This contest is open to international residents. The contest winner will be posted on Monday, October 9th. If I am unable to contact the winner, the winner will have one week to email me via the Contact link at the top of the page.
She is rather. Other Fears are available on my Threadless store in art print and tee form. Prints even come in American sizes. ~ littlefears.threadless.com
It’s just past 11:59 PM, wandering on Sunday Morning. Comments have been turned off and a winner will be announced later today. Thank you to all the entrants and good luck!
“Splish splash,” she says, dancing through the puddles.
“Honey, stop that,” says her mother.
“But,” replies the girl.
“No buts,” snaps her mother.
“Splish splash,” says the girl’s reflection.
Keep ya eyes peeled for the competition announcement later on today!
“Well, I used to teach,” said Sprite.
“You were a teacher?” asked Fuen.
“Yeah, science, space and stuff,” said Sprite.
“What sorta stuff?” asked Fuen.
“Gravity,” said Sprite. “It was a weighty subject.”
Quite late posting today. Pardon me!
“She was banging on my door at 2 o’clock this morning,” grumbled Hydra.
“Good grief,” said Cloud.
“She was shouting, ‘for feck sake! Your music’s loud. Do you know what the time is?'” moaned Hydra.
“Ah,” said Cloud. “Did you know the time?”
“Yeah,” said Hydra, “a standard 4/4 rock beat.”
A quite literal, badaboomtish! 🙂
Stone me, this is a big update! You’re gonna need a cuppa tea for this one.
The character at the top there is Fawn. Created as a horror character, the tale Magpies Eyes featured killer deer as a bit of a hangover. I needed her to look different from Deer from Deer Puns in the humorous stories. She walks on all fours and looks pretty ruddy menacing to me. Coloured this week to fit into the Colour Collectives, Old Lace theme.
Spider Dance is back! Never been my best seller, indeed a long way behind Bird Walk, but it’s one of my fave art prints. There’s just something very cheerful about Spectre teaching the baby spiders to dance.
Spider Dance is available from $12 on my Threadless store; https://littlefears.threadless.com/
I have meant to add some incentives to Patreon for yonks. I’m hoping to add unique art prints monthly to high pledgers. It may have to wait until I have moved to Scotland and I am settled, I need my printer, proper inks and paper to do it justice. Blah! Until then though, I have a different idea. If any of you fine people pledge $10 a month or more, I shall give you a shout out, adding your name and a link to your website to the bottom of the weekly update posts. Not sure how that works? I’ve added the $1 & $2 supporters to the bottom of this post as a demonstration.
You can support me on Patreon by visiting my page here: https://www.patreon.com/littlefears
Yup, Lucy again. As you know, I do a fair lick of PR work freelance. In 17 years, I have had a hand in running three competitions. One I ran on Facebook when Like/Share comps were legal. One pairing up with a DVD launch which my colleague signed off without asking me first. Hoo, boy did that backfire. One was with a magazine. I ‘m not big on competitions, but I learned something from each.
Next week I will be running a contest to win an A4 art print of my favourite nefarious lady, Lucy. The intention is to discover how much interest a competition will generate for the Little Fears website. After I have a winner I shall furnish them with a copy of Lucy, then do a Monday blog post detailing the method, website stats and increase in traffic and earnings I may or may not receive. Keep an eye out next week for how to enter.
I have a problem with my doodles. They’re rarely consistent. I have trouble drawing the same character the same twice in a row. I believe I am good at conveying an idea or image in ink, but my technical abilities are quite clearly piss poor. So this October, I am entering all three of the most known draw-a-thons with the idea of building a more consistent style across a couple of characters and scene style. I’ll only be posting them on Twitter and Instagram. With a few in the weekly updates on the blog. So if you want to follow along on my themes, say hello to me on social media.
Twitter: @TheLittleFears
Instagram: Little.Fears
Interested in joining? By all means, please do share links below to your Twitter, Instagram or other Inktober posting outlets in the comments section below. We can come over and harass, like, and retweet your Inktober submissions.
New to Inktober? Some advice, post in full on Twitter and Instagram if you’re on the platforms. Don’t auto-share because you won’t get anywhere near the attention you should. Nobody retweets Inktobers that are just links to your Instagram account.
For Inktober I am going to practise scenes. Such as Spider Dance above.
For Witchtober I shall be drawing 31 Yuffie’s. Our resident necromancer is the right character for this, and I struggle to get her hat right each time I doodle her.
As an aside, if I notice anyone bitching about young girls drawing witches for Inktober, I will unfollow you. Last year there was a tiny minority of men spitting venom at young girls on Twitter. It came across as poncy old men, bitter that 12-year-old girls could draw better than they ever could. Man, they were noisy and man they were nasty.
Goretober has no official list that I have seen, so I shall be drawing the nefarious Lucy in Indian Red doing evil deeds each day. She’s usually pretty curvy and it would help me practice getting longer lines smoother.
I did nobble myself some new art supplies for the month of course.
Click the image to blow it up. The assembled stationary consists of:
Posca Paint Pens
Zig Art & Graphic Twin
Faber Castell PITT artist pen
Daler Rowney Sketchbook
Have you seen my new buttons? They look the bee’s knees, don’t they!
I keep getting told, and my stats show me, a lot of WordPress readers never visit my site. Folk read the flash fiction without even opening my blog post because it’s short enough to read in the preview. I then get asked where folk can buy my books and art prints. The cute buttons are in the hope someone might see and click them from my post snippets.
Some of you asked about the tip jar PayPal button. There is a way of creating a donations button in the PayPal account settings. I believe you’re limited to raising $10,000 or less through that method if you’re not a charity (haha, like any of us will get that much!). The button looks hideous though. I created my button myself by setting up a zero priced ‘buy now’ page link and adding my image. You must be registered as a business on PayPal to do this. It’s one of those things everyone with a tip jar seems to do it differently.
My avatars body. I’ve been telling Esme I would post him for a while heh. Never used him in any stories. He’s a short bodied, long-eared Spectre. I named him Fenix after the foxes.
I’m kind of hot with social media, but holy snot bags I am not good at Pinterest. I usually try to have conversations on social media to build followings. I tried this week getting into Pinterest. After 30 comments, I hit a block to prevent spam. 30 ruddy comments and I hit a block! OK, maybe it’s because I use my Pinterest as a share and forget network. Time to edumacate me though aye.
A browse of Skillshare and I have found two premium courses by Peg Fitzpatrick and one free class by Raymond Baxter. The free course is completely free, just sign up, skip anything that asks you to pay, and navigate to Raymond’s course.
How to Create Amazing Pins for Pinterest
The first premium course from Peg. I figure I’ll do this one first as I know my pins themselves need work. The shape of my images is all wrong, and most have no description. She has 92% in reviews http://skl.sh/2xL1BlA
Pinterest Marketing 101 for Creative Entrepreneurs
The second premium course from Peg, a chuffing lot of reviews leaving her with 99%. About 2,100 students, certainly think that’s worth my time. I’ll let you know what I think when I finish. http://skl.sh/2xFrGTg
Boost traffic to your website with Pinterest
The free course from Raymond, three reviews at 100%. I’ll be taking Pegs courses myself, but I understand everyone cannot afford the Skillshare Premium subscription. This course is 100% free, no dodgy premium payment to unlock. Just sign up, skip anything that asks for money and take his course. http://skl.sh/2yciJly
Say hello to me on Pinterest at pinterest.com/littlefears
If I pick up any $10 Patreons, you’ll be getting a special shout out each week in my Friday update posts like my current Patrons below.
Special thanks to my Patreons;
Susan of very-seriously.com
Denise of densietimmert.com
FireFaerie of firefaeriefineart.co.uk
Sparrow of sparrow.global
Cheers!
He woke. Headache pounding. Eyes sore. He threw up on the dusty rug. Dust was thrown up in the air. This room was old. For this amount of dirt, and by the decor, nobody had been in here for hundreds of years. It was dark, the only light coming from a chandelier above him. Candlelight only. Three candles.
A bookcase in one corner, a sideboard in another, the third corner was empty, the fourth had a chair with himself sitting in. The room got darker. Two candles left. Flickering.
He stood up. There were no footprints on the floor. How did he get here? Darker still. One candle. Flicker.
Get out. Head to the closest door. Where’s the door? Panic. Flicker. Darkness.
Trapped there by the nefarious Lucy no doubt, who’s available as an art print on my Threadless store… (Tenuous link, sorry! 🙂 )
“Honestly,” said Fuen, “I am not sure what everybody is.”
“I don’t follow,” sighed Hydra.
“OK, so this place,” explained Fuen. “It’s a crossing point, from the living world to the afterlife. It is in-between. When humans, animals, and even some plants die, they walk down the paths, to the main road, and follow it to the afterlife. But we live on here for a while. We are the ideas, opinions, hopes and dreams that linger after the living embodiment is gone.”
“So I am just an opinion?” asked Hydra.
“You’re a hope or a dream Hydra,” replied Yuffie. “That’s why we don’t let you play on the road.”
I know this story has been posted before, but this is a good starting point for Hydra’s story and it hasn’t been in a book yet.
“Yello Huffie,” said Raptor as Yuffie walked by.
“I give up!” yelled Bee. “All darned day!”
“What’s up?” asked Yuffie.
“Raptor is swapping the starts of words about all day today for charity,” said Bee.
“Cupid stunt,” sighed Yuffie.
“And then she said no,” laughed Yuffie, “she was menstruating!”
“Ladies,” sighed Fuen. “PMS jokes are not funny.”
“Period,” nodded Reala sagely.
Yuffie stifled a giggle.
Naughty joke, I know. Sorry! 🙂
Little Fears 