Tag: blogging

The story you want to tell

LittleFears17 Comments

Sometimes you’ve got to tell the story you want to tell, even if you’re not sure it’s going to work. I’ve had that struggle with Brass, a post-apocalyptic road trip featuring two new Fears, Copper and Iron. A blend of horror and humour. The entire story is just over ninety stories long forming one continuous narrative.

I’ve been pondering on whether or not to publish this story online since August last year when I’d told the first of Lily and Sally’s Lost Leads stories. A thirty tale long narrative felt like the limit for an attention span on the Internet. Five stories a week would mean if I started today the story wouldn’t finish until June. Could the Little Fears focus on one story for that long? Heck, could I?

So the stories, sat, languished, and niggled. I want to tell the story, but I don’t feel it would work on the net.

Until this weekend…

My Internet friend and fellow blogger Lauren bought Copper and Iron as a print after my Etsy overhaul the other day. (You can visit her website HERE and my Etsy store HERE. Wink, wink.)

To quote Lauren:

“I just really liked their dynamic… something about em really appealed to me.” 

Me too, Lauren. She pulled me back to their story. I gave it a few read-overs and figured if I re-wrote about 40% of it and loosened off the connection between each days tale, I could tell their tales in my daily horror and pun format. It’s a big job, but, well, sometimes you just have to tell the story you want to tell.

It helps that I’m hoping to have my entire website fixed post-Gutenberg/WordPress 5.0 update by the end of February. Then I can rework the front page and side-bar with links to each complete story. Grey Moon, Seeking Hydra, Lost Leeds, Capricorn, January and of course, Brass. That’ll certainly make navigating my site easier. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with the current theme, but eh, can figure that out when the website’s been fully repaired.

So, thanks to Lauren for prompting me to return to Copper and Irons story. Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage. And thank you to everyone else for the continued support!

Cheers, Fears!

Ko-Fi | Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare| Threadless

Storms & Studios

LittleFears35 Comments

So I thought I’d share a photo of my not-Instagram-worthy studio today. Also, I thought I’d share what yesterdays Storm Deidre did to my new homes fence. Pssh. The fiend! The Fears are on hand to help drop a pallet on a salvageable panel that was pulling the rest of the fence down. Cheers Piscies and… Oh… Deer…

Now, there’s a studio pic. It’s a mish-mash of the cheapest furniture I could get with odd second-hand bits and bobs. It ain’t very stylish but it is very functional. The studio includes a spacious dog crate used as a desk extension (because apparently, my desk chair is nicer for pups to sit on).

The PC was a self-build and cost £300’ish for a 16gb ram, AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with a bunch of old hard drives in. I’ll cover the PC in a future post about the tech the Fears use.

I ended up with two small monitors instead of one big one. A £20 19″ monitor combined with a £4 “16 flat screen TV. Both second hand. The 16″ TV is absolutely dire. It has less than 720p resolution. The monitor is absolutely awesome. I know 19″ is too small for most people nowadays, but the picture is so darned crisp. It’s an odd one because I cannot find it listed anywhere. It has a 1920 x 1020 resolution. But no matter how much I search, I just cannot find any 19” monitors with a resolution that high. Maybe it was one of the first 1020p monitors that were too expensive to make? Whatever, It’s small, but I absolutely love it.

The lamps are of course, meant to help with future videos. The window doesn’t get much light as I’m around the back of the house. So when I’m videoing myself drawing I need every bit of light from my left that I can get.

Oh, that box against the back wall is a delivery of art-prints. I’ve had them nearly two weeks and haven’t gotten the buggers onto Etsy yet! Hopefully, this week…

Some hot-picks furniture links.

Phew. Ever put studio pics or other creative spaces photos online yourself? Leave us a link comments so we can have a perv over your own creative spaces and writing desks.

Fears at Work 2 – The WordPress update

LittleFears86 Comments

Have you tried the WordPress update yet? I notice a lot of people in comments are saying they’re scared of it but haven’t tried it yet. 

Well… Go try it. It’s an update that’s been coming for well over a year. We’ve had nearly a year to try Gutenberg, the new editor, to see if we like it or not. There are options for returning to classic editor, but ultimately, the new editor is coming (or here if you updated this weekend) and it’s here to stay. make a new account or if you self host, create a subdomain and use a fresh install of WordPress 5.0.

If you don’t like Gutenberg you can always try Medium.com for a brilliant writers website. From fiction to politics to lifestyle. It’s a social media built for writing and reading. If you need a homepage, try Squarespace, Wix or Weebly. 

In my opinion, the WordPress team are trying to make an editor that can in some way stand up to Squarespace’s and Wix’s website editors. It has a block functionality that allows you to add new and different things to your blog posts without the need for plugins or HTML. For some people, this new way of doing things is completely awesome. For others, it’s going to really mess with peoples workflow.

The old editor was pretty dated. Squarespace, Wix and Weebly have made website creation very accessible, WordPress was going to start losing a decent lump of new bloggers to the more modern website builders. Not everyone wants to learn HTML or website building to run a blog. Even if it’s just five minutes of their time. WordPress has always lagged behind in that respect.

The downside to this is you get people like me. I’ve been using WordPress to blog since 2004’ish. I’m well stuck in my ways. So the new editors an issue for me. I used WordPress because it was WordPress. Not a block-based web builder.

The reason my own website broke so completely is partly my fault. This website has broken numerous times over this last year and hasn’t even been fully fixed when I’ve done complete re-installs. So when updating to WordPress 5.0, it was a catalyst that blew up every bug, issue, code error and media problem I’ve had this last year. I back up once a month so had access to a folder with my media library, but when importing the websites XML it didn’t want to accept my media library was there. Even using plugins to re-attach all my media, I’m still having to go through and manually edit every single post.

I also have an issue with inline images no longer working unless made with the Gutenberg editor. So that little line of icons at the bottom of every post exploded across my screen and made a right mess. Again, every post on this site needs that edited out. 

My old theme also spat the dummy out and won’t function with WordPress 5.0 so I’ve spent a lot of today figuring out a new layout for the website. Almost there.

The amount of work I need to do on this website is going to take me weeks. It’s a horrific pain in the arse, that’s partially self-inflicted. I could have been far more prepared for this.

So, the thingy of this post. Don’t panic. There are good reasons why my website died so catastrophically. Gutenberg is coming. Like it or not. Go try it now. Don’t fear something you don’t understand. You might like it. You can revert to the classic editor through a plugin, but eh, Gutenberg is the way WordPress want things done now. Reviews on Gutenberg are pretty split. As is often the way with the Internet, it’s easier to rant than to praise.

One last thing. If you hate Gutenberg or find bugs, let the devs know. But have some humanity with it and don’t go abusing, threatening and being a dick to the developers. The internet doesn’t need any more abusive rage.

What people think

LittleFears20 Comments

“She called me a cretaceous throwback with a head as bobbly as a Necroraphidia,” moaned Bugly.
“That’s what all this sulking is about?” sighed Sprite.
Buglys eyes widened and his top mandible quivered.
“Ok, listen, don’t worry about what humans think,” said Sprite. “They don’t do it very often.”

~~~

Howdy, all. Trying a new title picture and hopefully image inserts for WordPress reader and email subscription today. Paws crossed. Might make image shares from this page a bit more interesting too.

Planned theme change didn’t happen because a plugin broke my website for four days. Apologies to any deleted comments, I had to cobble together a six week old back up. Thank you, as always, for sticking about everyone.

Ibex

LittleFears4 Comments

Introducing Ibex for this weeks #Colour_Collective. A lovely lady really. Big on climbing and biffing people up the butt. Small on collectable frog toys. This weeks colour is Scheveningen Orange.

With special thanks

Weekly shout out to my $10 patron, Warren from IWrite. Without people like Warren, I wouldn’t be able to wake you all with my little fears and you’d probably cry a lot less in the morning than you already do. So please do check out Warrens blog.

Tiny Fears

LittleFears25 Comments

 

We’ll be having a wee break from the Lily and Sally stories this week for five tiny Little Fears horrors. A teeny bit of experimentation with my art style and storytelling. Like Floofy, up there above this text. 

Lily and Sally will return for their last case next week, Finding Leads. In which we find our intrepid duo hot on the heels of a serial killer.

Until then, I hope you enjoy this week’s micro horrors.

 

Ko-Fi | Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare| Threadless

Paper Fears

LittleFears13 Comments

Now, you may not have noticed this, but I’ve been putting a ton of original art on my Etsy store this week. It’s working out quite well as a creative horror outlet while my daily tales are running the current ongoing story.

A couple of things have occurred this week though. The main one being I have run out of the smaller paper I have been using. That’s not much of an issue right? Just go buy more. But I have a larger pad of the same stupidly thick, 240gsm card that I have been promising to use once the smaller pad ran out. That’s a fear for me. Use big fancy paper? Heck, the current 5-inch by 7-inch paper is the biggest scale I have ever drawn at. I have made bigger prints, but my actual illustrations are usually tiny. So yeah, this week, I have a fear of big paper.

Something else has occurred. I have been reunited my fancy paper that I left behind in London and the printer. So I can return to art prints again. Awesome. BUT! There’s another but… But I am pricing up a Moo.com order for the future of my art prints. Why? Well, I love my current canvas effect paper. But ordering the paper in batches of 50 then using official HP ink costs far more money than it ever should for something as simple as my prints. There’s also no difference in quality between my prints and the Moo prints. It’s just a different paper type. Moo use flat matte instead of canvas paper. By ordering 500 or more prints at a time through Moo I can bring down the costs to me and start hitting the markets up in Scotland. Though this is of course once I have a house and space to separate and organize 500 prints. Eesh. Nearly there. So, yes, if you still want to order my prints on fancy arse canvas effect paper, you have a couple of months at most before I’m ready to move onto bulk orders and new paper for my prints.

One last wee thing. I’ve mentioned ACEOs a great many times to fellow artists. Never done them properly myself. So this week I’ve put in an order for 200 or so cards of different paper types, and I’ll be having a go at them myself. What’s an ACEO, I hear the uninitiated cry? Well, it’s an original art piece on a canvas, card or paper the size of a playing card. You get fancy frames and sleeves for them. They only sell for about £6. But (another but? Really?), I think they will work well with what I do. Compact and quirky. The perfect creative outlet for the Little Fears. Keep your eyes peeled for them, they’ll be about in the coming weeks.

Now I know after all this, you’re busting to see my Etsy store right? Well, you’ll need a link, just like the one below.

etsy.com/uk/shop/LittleFears

I have another suggestion for you creatives while you’re here. It’s a Skillshare class by one of my favourite teachers. Melanie Greenwood. How To Sell Your Art Online With Etsy.

As always, my Skillshare sign up links offers 2 months of premium subscription for free. There’s no obligation to carry on past 2 months, you can cancel any time before your 60 days are up and you won’t pay a penny. It’s well worth it. Thousands of courses by creative lords and ladies. From photography and art to blogging and marketting.

Skillshare sign up Linky: https://skl.sh/2kvcAJi

 

 

Migrations

LittleFears77 Comments

So, obviously, I did it. I made the ride from London to Scotland. About 960 km. In one run. Got up at 2 am, loaded my life onto the back of my bike, and whoosh. Off I went. Made it to Newcastle by 9:30 am. Smashed it! Then remembered the second half of the journey takes twice as long as the first half. On top of that, Scotland gave me a very wet and very windy Scottish welcome. So I lost 2 hours sitting in cafes waiting for the rain to feck off. I arrived in the Grampian mountains around 8 pm.

My house sale actually went through in the end. Two years… The whole sorry saga still cost me way-way-way over £100,000. My life savings are gone. The stupidity, evil and greed of humans eh? Seriously had to scale back on what we wanted to buy. Good news though already put an offer on a house up here and hopefully completing early September. Get in!

Until then, I have the option of the missus mum and dads wireless internet. Slower than the old dial-up connections. Literally, cannot play a video. Or using my phone as a 3g hub. Possible, but as you can imagine, the middle of the Scottish mountains has some seriously shonky reception. I can also pop into the closest town cafe and sponge the wifi as much as is possible over a cuppa tea. Now that option works for me! Haha.

In the meantime, I can keep creating, writing, drawing, finding new clients and getting ready to take over the world from a new home.

I gotta say. Big thanks to everyone who’s continuing to support me while I’m barely active in the community. The visitors, the commenters, the post sharers, the patrons, the Ko-Fi buyers, the art purchases and book readers. It all helps. Thank you. You’re a wonderful audience.

Ko-Fi | Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare| Threadless

Ko-FI

LittleFears11 Comments

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.

Little Fears Ko-Fi page

Ko-Fi | Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare | Threadless

GDPR & WordPress

LittleFears91 Comments

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.

We, good people of the EU, are missing American websites today. Sorry about that. Also, Facebook, within 24 hours, haha, bloody ha.

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.

To read my privacy policy, click here. It’s the WordPress template, with my email and web address on.

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.

You can drop Gareth a thank you over at http://gjstevenscom.wordpress.com/

 

Another edit to add a tip from Aimer.

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.

You can drop Aimer a thank you over at https://aimerboyz.com/