Blog – Page 2 – Little Fears

Kaijune 27 (and finishing those projects)

June 27, 2019 LittleFears24 Comments

A turtley awesome kaiju for Kaijune this morning. This fella used to be an introvert, he was a shell of his former self. But now he’s come out of his shell.

He’s got a brother, they share the same mother, but the father was a porcupine. Now, if you cross a porcupine and a turtle you get a right slowpoke.

Oh, dear god, stop me.

Just three more kaiju and we’re done with this series. I shall miss these monsters.

I get told, quite often, I work hard when other writers see the graft I put into the fears. Honestly, I feel do work hard. But the big difference I find between myself and other writers is, I finish my drafts and projects. Then move on.

I’ll mash out stories all the time. My current ratio is writing 12 stories and discarding 6 of them. Of the 6 I keep, at least 3 need work before anyone’s going to read and groan at them. There are some days when I write and keep all 12 stories. There are other days when I write 12 shite stories and discard them all.

I take this approach with everything. Get stuff made first, discard the bad bits, keep the good bits. Then move on.

I say this because I’m still reading blogs I was reading 15 years ago, and their authors still haven’t finished their books first draft. I get, life’s hard, writings hard, but get the damn draft finished. You’re probably not going to keep half of it anyway, right?

What is it they say?

The purpose of a first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

Get your darned drafts finished people.

A little something that might help. A free course on Skillshare, Bring Characters to Life in Your Writing: Describing Traits, Actions, and Thoughts.

The course is 100% free. Just hit the link below, sign up, skipping anything that asks you if you’d like to go premium, and enjoy the course.

Linky: https://skl.sh/2RCaYw8

Cheers to Kathy & Warren for the continued $10 Patronage. You can find me on Ko Fi, Patreon, Etsy, Amazon, Skillshare and Threadless.

Kaijune 26 (and the perils of serialized fiction)

June 26, 2019 LittleFears16 Comments

Yes, I know a bovine kaiju is udderly ridiculous. I didn’t want to do a bovine kaiju for Kaijune. But sometimes, you have to go with the herd.

Hah! Badumtish!

Currently writing all of next months stories. We’ll be hanging around the black-sand islands for July. A series of summer holiday stories, of lost fears.

I have around 600 tales already pre-written. However, the stories are heavily serialized. This didn’t work for me during Brass (clicky). I wrote about my experience with serialized fiction online in-depth in an earlier post (clicky). I don’t want to scrap them, but I also don’t want to publish them on the site. There are ideas and themes amongst them I could use elsewhere.

I guess the lesson here is, don’t write too far ahead.

Just mentioning this again, if you want to revisit any of my earlier series of Fears, you can buy the first five series in book form on Amazon (clicky). Or read all seven series for free by checking out my websites spiffy new front page and scrolling down (littlefears.co.uk).

Hey, I just realised how good the reviews are on my books on Amazon. That’s very heartwarming.

Cheers, gang.

Cheers to Kathy & Warren for the continued $10 Patronage. You can find me on Ko Fi, Patreon, Etsy, Amazon, Skillshare and Threadless.

Kaijune 23

June 23, 2019 LittleFears15 Comments

Wouldn’t be right, having a Kaijune with no giant iguanas.

I have two more collaborations to publish. Then I hope to end this series of collabs. If you’ve already received the initial email from me and have started planning or writing a story for submission, let me know ASAP. My open offer to everyone for future collaborations may return. But I’m going to need a break from them.

Each collaboration takes 2-10 times longer to publish than my own daily stories. That’s OK when it’s only one story a week. But then add onto that the staggering amount of time wasters you get.

A lot of folks noticed I was taking submissions but didn’t read the blog post or initial email. For every one post that gets published, I sift through five random, unusable submissions. From Mills & Boon style romance too entire chapters of books. Nevermind the grammatical and spelling messes I’ve turned away. I don’t mind doing some correction. I also don’t mind letting some mistakes stay in their stories. I’m certainly not a perfectionist with spelling and grammar. But when there are ten mistakes in a 512 character long story? Be polite, use a spell checker before submitting a story, you know?

I would like to return to the collaborations. I enjoy working with other writers to create great stories. I get to see my characters in a new light. It’s great seeing folks riffing off the tropes I use daily. Collaborating is also a great learning experience. But right now, I need a break from them.

Cheers, gang.

Cheers to Kathy & Warren for the continued $10 Patronage. You can find me on Ko Fi, Patreon, Etsy, Amazon, Skillshare and Threadless.

Colours Collected Portraits

June 5, 2019 LittleFears39 Comments

From 2017 to 2019 I took part in the weekly #Colour_Collective hashtag creating a Little Fears portrait for each colour. Seventy-eight portraits later, and I felt compelled to move onto new things. On this page, for your viewing pleasure, is the complete series.

If you fancy using these characters portraits for anything, please do. They’re free to use in any project. Need a higher resolution copy? Drop me a comment below.

I only ask that you drop a credit to Peter at LittleFears.co.uk alongside the image and let me know where you use them. I’d love to see them out in the wild.

Want to tip me for an images use? You can drop me as little as $3 for a cuppa on my Ko-Fi page: https://ko-fi.com/E1E6DSNP

Spiders

June 2, 2019 LittleFears7 Comments

Spiders is the Little Fears third series of stories, originally posted in 2017. Much like January, it’s a series of random silly tales with frightful doodles. No plots or development. Just a whole lot of puns.

Although there’s a book available which is complete, I lost parts of this series on the website during the WordPress 5.0 upgrade that wreaked havoc on the Fears.

What’s left is most of the third series, which I hope you enjoy.

[frontpage_news widget=”9945″ name=”Spiders Part One”]

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If you enjoy Spiders and want to inflict my puns on others, this complete series was carefully curated in a book, available on Amazon.

Available as an Ebook and paperback. It’s the perfect gift for someone you want to torture with terrible puns!

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2WhKmGd

January

June 1, 2019 LittleFears10 Comments

January was my first series of Little Fears stories. This first series was just a random series of tales. There’s no plot arcs, character development or history. It was just me, looking at copyright-free photos, imagining monsters. I hope you enjoy.

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If you enjoy January and want to inflict my puns on others, this complete series was carefully curated in a book, available on Amazon.

Available as an Ebook and paperback. It’s the perfect gift for someone you want to torture with terrible puns!

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2Mm997G

New Sprite Tees

May 31, 2019 LittleFears9 Comments

Following Sprites story this week, we have a couple of new tees on the Threadless store along with another free shipping sale code. Use Code “FREESHIP6197cca8e” on checkout.

She’s available on t-shirts, hoodies, jumpers and vests from $15.

Little Fears on Threadless: littlefears.threadless.com

Cheers to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage. Want to support the Fears or nobble books, art and merch? Find me on Ko Fi, Patreon, Etsy, Amazon, Skillshare and Threadless.

Lost Leeds

May 31, 2019 LittleFears4 Comments

The Lost Leeds storylines are three sets of thirty(ish) tales following DCI Lily and Inspector Sally’s criminal investigations first posted in 2018. They make up the Little Fears 6th series of stories.

A mass-murder occurs, with one victim. The thief, Robyn Banks returns from DCI Lilys past and Anita Bath, the dirty diary stealer goes on a killing spree.

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June prompt ideas

May 26, 2019 LittleFears4 Comments

I regularly get asked where my inspiration comes from. I attribute it to a childhood spent watching the Twilight Zone and British comedies. But it does help to give the grey matter a nudge every so often. I’ll often check out prompt-challenges.

Most of the time, I don’t try to stick through a month of prompts. I’ll take what I want then bugger off to the next thing. This weekend, I’ve noticed a few month-long prompts in my feed for June and figured I’d share them with the class.

Kaijune: Illustrate a Kaiju a day for the month of June. You all know Kaijus right? Big-arse monsters like Godzilla, King Kong or them mean buggers from Pacific Rim.

JuNoWriMo: NaNoWriMo comes to June. I don’t think it’s the actual NaNoWriMo team, but there’s a few of them. I’ve come across them on WordPress.com a few times.

NaNoMangO: I’ve no idea if this one’s even going this year, but the idea’s good enough to mention. Create a 30-page comic over 30 days. It’s traditionally taken place in June. Quite literally, nobody is talking about it this year though. That’s not to say you can’t take that idea and just create a comic over 30 days, aye?

Solo Photo Book Month: One for photographers. Create a photobook across the month. Another one, I’m unsure if it’s still going. It ran every year from 2008 to 2018. It’s been quiet since. Not sure if it’s a dead project. Again, there’s nothing stopping you doing the challenge yourself.

If you know of any other June prompt-challenge let me know. I’ll add it to my post and give you a credit link for mentioning, of course.

Cheers to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage. Want to support the Fears or nobble books, art and merch? Find me on Ko Fi, Patreon, Etsy, Amazon, Skillshare and Threadless.

Playing Time

May 19, 2019 LittleFears29 Comments

Aha, those that follow me on social media may have noticed a change this weekend. I have been busy, yo! I’ve doodled up a new avatar for myself. It’s a self-portrait of sorts. Yes, I have small eyes, look generally confused and have a fabulous moustache.

I’ve also changed the header banners on all of my social platforms to Spider lurking behind a rocky outcrop. It’s a bit more ‘me’ than a vanilla ‘Little Fears’ written on a plain white background. I never liked that banner. I was just too lazy to change it.

I’ll be trying a more comic-format this week for the Fears. I’ve tried this before. It’s never quite worked. I got a pile of blank Strathmore ATC’s, and I’d like to do something interesting with them. So this week I’ll be applying my macro doodles to micro cards and giving them the typical Fears tales you all know. Just in an even shorter form.

If you enjoy this week’s panels, please do let me know. If you hate them and want wordier stories back, also let me know. Finally, if you simply want to declare your love of fuzzy llamas with moustaches, please do let me know!

Thanks to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage.