I’ve voiced my issues with the quality of Society6 T-shirts before. The main reason I went to Threadless for my shirts. However, their ancillary stuff is pretty good. Their phone cases are durable and the laptop sleeves are well padded. So I have moved a little to the left and opened a Society6 store. I’ll keep the shirts on Threadless only though as I feel the quality is far superior. You can visit both stores at the links below.
My good friends at Ann-William loved the title of an old post of mine, Villains and Birdsong. So much so, they’re writing a story about it. You can read a snippet HERE, and with a bit of luck, the complete story will be published this year and may eventually be turned into a novel. Nice. Also, they have just released a new book, Krissy’s Notebook, available now on Amazon.
I’ve mentioned a few times I’m trying to get back to collaborating with people after the last few collabs collapsed, but it looks like this one may actually happen. Decided to pull in two people I knew well and narrow down a collab to a phrase. “It arrived.” My partners in crime for this collaboration are Layne and Forrest. If all goes well, we shall be publishing a piece of art or fiction next Sunday to the theme of “it arrived.”
A lot of us blog, write and doodle because it’s what we love doing. But it’s nice to have our creations seen by others on the internet. Getting seen is something a lot of us struggle with. So my suggestion to folk this week who want to be seen is to ignore those articles like, “10 great things you must be doing on social media today”. Instead, grab 2-3 mates in the blogging or social media world. Get together and do a small collaboration.
Pick a theme, like ‘it arrived’ and each of you writes a post on that topic. Beauty blogger? Pick a brand of make-up that you all have and each of you can incorporate it into a look. Lifestyle blogger? Pick a tea brand, Instagram your cups and link to each other. Consider a 3-way interview, run it on Discord and invite people to join.
When you publish your posts, @ each other in your tweets, Instagrams and Facefungi.
I’d wager most of you would benefit more from getting together with fellow humans than reading another “top 10 social media trends” posts.
And just a wee note, that if you love what I do and want to support the Little Fears, you can buy us a cuppa on ko-fi or pledge as little as $1 through Patreon. It’ll help me, help you, wake each morning with a groan and cry of pain as you read my woeful puns.
A return to the astrological characters this week for #Colour_Collective. Aries the ram. She’s a colourful lil Fear, and I always wanted to return to her and re-shape her body.
Ooo, yes! And speaking of astrological signs, Virgo is now available on my Etsy store.
I now have a Ko-Fi page. The new coffee icon at the bottom of my posts takes you there. I had a PayPal button which was limited on how much I can earn without being a registered charity from tips. Also, the button isn’t straightforward to make. PayPal tips button is a kludge. So, enter Ko-Fi.
Ko-Fi allows people to give small one-off tips of $3. It’s a great idea over Patreon because not everyone wants to subscribe to donate dollars every month. Some folk just prefer one-off tips. I like the idea of Ko-Fi too. Buying someone a cuppa. That’s just nice.
On payment, Lisa was my first coffee buyer. The change landed in my PayPal account within minutes. It comes out $2.57 after fees. Thank you, Lisa!
If you’d like to buy me a cuppa, please do click the link below, and I take PG tips with a little bit of cows milk.
Grr. I’m pro-GDPR. Data security and privacy are concerns of mine. But how the piss-feckery did Facebook and the like think they were going to continue to abuse peoples data without something like this having to come into force.
For most of the internet, nothing changes. We just need to to have a few more warnings and we all need a privacy policy. For my self-hosted WordPress blog friends, being compliant is easy. Open Jetpack. Click the banner at the top about EU & Privacy. Fill in the privacy policy page template (takes 2 minutes) and you’re done. That’s it.
The only way that gets more involved is if you collect data and do anything else with it. Such as “download my free ebook, gimme your email address,” then add people to mailing lists. Or storing data outside of WordPress. Or if you’re collecting data and doing nefarious things with it. If you are collecting data and doing nefarious things with it, please stop. You’re being a dick and fucking it up for the rest of us.
An edit to add, GJ’s description of how she summoned cookies and a privacy policy on the WordPress.com personal plan.
On a the personal plan site you navigate to the customise section, then go to widgets, select a section you want to add the privacy notice to, I used the lowest footer, footer 3. Select the consent and privacy widget, then update the details as required, setting how the banner reacts and the address of your privacy policy and publish. Done.
For anyone else on WordPress.com… WordPress adds the cookie banner automatically. If you add the cookie widget yourself, the banner never closes. Deleting the widget solves the problem.
Thank you. Thank you for supporting me this last 18 months with the Little Fears. Thank you for supporting me on Patreon. Thank you for buying my books, tees and art prints. Thank you for sharing my posts. Thank you for dropping pennies in the tip jar. Thank you for turning up so often to leave a groan or chuckle. You are all absolutely fabulous.
So I think, after a two years run of bad luck. The loss of my entire life savings. Not seeing my missus in over a year. Much boo-hoo and stress, I may be about to sell my house. For those that have known me since before Fears started, you know what a big deal this is to me. I’m not popping the champagne yet as there’s one teeny hurdle to hop over, but I am now basing the next 3-4 months on being homeless. I may have to stay at my missus mum and dads house in the middle of the Scottish mountains with flaky internet at best with 4G style data caps. In addition to lacking internet, I’ll be sorting her parent’s house out into a liveable state during the time I stay there as it’s currently darn near uninhabitable.
So, without knowing how much time, peace or internet I am planning out the Little Fears website until 22nd of October.
Crime Capers
I grew up watching seventies and eighties cops shows. My dad allowed me to watch the Sweeney. I followed that with The Professionals. Then moved onto murder mysteries. David Suchet is Poirot. I shall not acknowledge any other attempt. I adore both Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie as Marple. I even love the riffs off of sleuths and buddy cop programs. The British fantasy shows, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were my idea of TV heaven. Also, who can forget The Detectives with Jasper Carrot and Robert Powell?
The gist here is I love a good crime story. So the next ninety stories on the Little Fears will make up three cops and robbers crime capers. Each story will be thirty tales long and follow DCI Lily and Inspector Sally as they solve crimes.
We will start with a sleuthing tale. Lily and Sally attending a crime scene where a woman’s been killed in a variety of ways with far too many motives. We follow that with a Starsky and Hutch style escapade as the intrepid duo chase down a master thief. The final story sees the pair in hot pursuit of a serial killer who’s also committed the heinous crime of putting pineapple on a pizza.
(I’ll add there, as a vegetarian, I’m pro-pizza-pineapple. Don’t tell Lily that!)
I’ll be posting these stories Monday to Friday as they form a singular narrative. Each story is entirely self-contained but they have a stronger overall story than Grey Moon and Seeking Hydra. If the names Lily and Sally sound familiar, yes, that is the name of my little arsehole Jack Russells.
TellyTube
I’m currently getting ahead on the audio for Lily and Sallys case files. I’ll be doing one more series of videos in the current format. Once I have moved home, I want a chair, with a tartan blanket thrown over it. I will sit in this chair and tell the stories to a camera. Some real Jackanory bedtime stories. With a dog on my lap and another dog at my feet. A cup of tea in one hand. A book in the other hand. Some digestive biscuits in the other hand. My trademark oddness and humour stamped all over the videos. That’s how I see them. It’s just going to be impossible to do that for the next three to four months. Blah. Something to look forward too!
Art
As I’m doing the tales, Monday to Friday, I’ll be moving the Colour Collective portraits to the weekend. I know they don’t get as much of a response as the daily tales, but I love doing the Fears portraits. By keeping the weekly portraits it ensures the Little Fears aren’t purely puns. A lot of bloggers insist you need to stay niche, I disagree. I say stay to a theme. If I niche the Fears as pure puns and nothing else, I think I’d get bored of them.
Speaking of not niching myself to puns…
Horror
Oh man, what to do about horror. My next set of horror stories was going to be a 90 tale run of Denver going in search of his partner, Malcolm. The problem is I wrote it as a continuous story. I don’t think that’s going to work unless I post them daily like I will be with the Crime Capers storyline.
What would work is a Seeking Hydra style background plot to ninety stories. For those that are new to the Fears, Seeking Hydra was ninety tales mostly puns, that were nearly all separate. But had a theme of Hydra seeking his identity throughout. That would work with a story I’m only going to post once a week. I think I need to do a quick strategy change here on horror. Like the art, it stops me being fully niched into puns and I feel scary stories and weird fiction is now an important part of the Little Fears. I need to figure that out… For now, Denver’s search for Malcolm is on hold.
From obstructions can come creative thinking though. This is the kick that I need to start the horror postcards series. Images of spooky happenings, strange goings on and blood-curdling terrors accompanied by single sentence horror stories. It would be both different and in theme for the Little Fears. Maybe that should be my next thirty horrors.
Collaborations
It’s been forever since I did a collaboration with anyone. I started three since the last one and each time the other party lost interest or wandered off. I have a few good folks looking to do collabs. But I’ll be unable to do audio recording until I get my new house. Not sure what to do there.
If anybody wants to take the lead on a collab that doesn’t require my voice, leave me a comment. I’m brain farting on what to collab on at the moment though.
Movigos
One collaboration I have kept up is the Movigos. We spoke about dropping it from weekly to monthly and making it more an event. Perfect timing for me after this week. I wouldn’t be able to keep up weekly while I’m semi-homeless. Just need to sort something new out with the gang.
If you want to find us on Twitter, hit the hashtag #Movigos. Member list shamelessly ripped from Weird Shit with Alex.
And of course, if you wish to drop a few pennies in the tip jar, Patreon subs are always appreciated. Even just $1 a month contributes to the whole and enables me to continue waking you good people with a smile and a groan. Thank you.
As I mentioned yesterday, Grey Moons last story was published on the Little Fears website this week. Along with Capricorns final page. A letter to the illustrator.
I’m afraid I lack good photos of the book. Both my copies were sent up to Scotland a year ago where I was meant to follow two to three months later. A year later… Life aye? Still, it looks like my two years bad luck run with the flat may be coming to an end. Some progress has been made on the sale. If it happens in June I’ll be homeless for a few months until I’m able to buy a new house. So darned happy today.
Capricorns horror stories were about the best thing I did early on in the Little Fears life. By establishing horror and weird fiction alongside the humour, I gave myself a huge amount of flexibility in what I can draw and write here. I love telling Little Fears groaners, but if that’s all this website was, I think it would be a bit poorer.
The horror shorts came about from a deep love of the old British horror and sci-fi radio shows along with theTwilight Zones and Outer Limits.
Capricorns horror shorts are available as an ebook and a paperback. I’d usually say something piffy about sniffing books, but in this case, I’d sniff with caution. You don’t know if she’s going to reach off the cover and drag you into one of her horrors within.
Fancy the risk? Well OK, I did warn you. She’s available on Amazon from the links below.
My good friend Joseph from WikiPoem recently asked about getting a tattoo of Capricorn. Brave man! I’ve never heard of a tattoo dragging its bearer into the pits of horror, but it sure sounds possible!
Finally, if you have a custom request for an illustration, doodle or fear you have seen here, just let me know in comments. Another good friend from WordPress, Eric of Dogtown (who I feel like I’ve known forever!), put in a request the other day. I’m quite happy to offer reprints of older illustrations.
Little Fears sales posts are like a British bus service. Nothing for ages, then two come along at once…
Oops! I missed last weeks #Colour_Collective. Posted it to Twatter and nowhere else. Flight, something we’ve all dreamed of doing right? We’ve all probably had a fear of falling from said flight too.
With all the fishy puns this week, #Colour_Collective have given us a blue to play with. So in comes my favourite fishy, who from henceforth, shall be named, Feesh.
Do you think when froggy’s die they ascend to a pond in the sky? Looks more like a squid than a frog this gal, but I coloured her for this weeks #Colour_Collective on Twitter and she became a frog spirit. Original doodle in sepia when I got my new pens.
Affiliate links incoming for anyone that would like to snaffle the above gear for themselves.
Siamese Kittens are the cat spirits of the Little Fears world. It’s debated whether or not these felines are evil on account of them being accused of killing an underground mammal. Personally, I think that’s making a meowtain out of a molehill.
And with that delicious pun, we show off some arts and present some new listings!
Little Fears 