Friday, 1 March 2013
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Blog Hop: My Next Book – Another Journal of Ted Terrier by Ted Terrier (Dog) and Emma Knight (Human)
Many
thanks to Michelle
Goode for
tagging me in this Blog Hop, which consists of ten questions about my current
project/s and then tagging other authors/writers. Here goes!
1.
What is the working title of your next book?
Ted: It will probably be Another
Journal of Ted Terrier as The Journal
of Ted Terrier was my first book and that is already published on Kindle
and will be out very soon as a normal paper book too. And if a lot of people
(or anyone else who isn’t human) like it and want more then I will do another
one. In fact the first one isn’t all my writings that I’ve already done – it is
only some of them, which I chose with my human sister, Emma – whom I rely on
for mind-reading, so that she collects my thoughts, and then writing or typing
to put them down – and then a friend of ours – Sue Mynall - did the drawings
for those bits of writing we had selected. And also while I am about it Gejo
Canovas did the cover for us too and is a very good friend, whose best friend I
fancy!
2.
Where did the idea come from for your book?
Ted:
It came from me! It’s all my ideas and about my life and what I think and
feel about the things that the humans in my life do.
Emma says I have to let her say something about it
too. You might find we argue during this Q&A, but don’t worry that’s normal
for a brother and sister – even though different species – and also for those
who collaborate and it’s called creative tension – when it’s about creating
something, which is what we have done.
Emma: Hi Everyone, Emma
Knight is my pen-name; appropriate as I am the one holding the pen because Ted
cannot. (Though Ted is also not his real name: We’re a pair of pseudonyms ;))
In real life I, Emma, - though as Ted is keen to
remind you I’m not really called Emma - am a writer of screenplays and a
psychotherapist. When the idea for this came – and to be fair it wasn’t really
even an idea, it just simply popped out! – I was suffering a severe case of
writer’s block, and feeling quite miserable about it. Writing makes me feel
good! I was sitting on the sofa next to our Jack Russell Terrier and,
fortunately, with a little journal in my hand and a pen. I spontaneously
started writing from his point of view. And out poured a great deal of ideas,
thoughts, concepts, observations in and around the life of a dog; how they may see
the world, and adventures that go on around them. Of course, real Ted’s own
character had a massive influence on how it all came out.
Ted: So, just as I said,
it came from me!
Emma: Yes it all came
from you, Ted J
3.
What genre does the book fall under?
Ted: It doesn’t fall
under any genre – nothing fell on top of it – and anyway I don’t know what a
genre is but it sounds a bit like it might be painful?! ;)
Emma: No, Ted, it’s not
painful – it just means what sort of a book is it. What is a bit painful though
is trying to fit it into a genre. It’s a bit like instalments in a diary – as
in The Diary of Adrian Mole – though
the order is a bit random because Ted can’t focus on one thing for too long,
and I am appalling with dates. So it’s disorganized but linked because the
people in it are all Ted’s humans. Some readers have likened it to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, though we hasten to add that no dogs get murdered in this book.
It was also not planned with any particular readers in mind, though it seems to
appeal to older children and adults.
4.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movies
rendition?
Ted: If you read my book then you’ll find out ;)
5.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Ted:
I find it impossible to write just a single sentence, and if I did, it
would be very long cos my sentences always are, and in fact they should be
several sentences really.
Emma: Anecdotes in the
Life of a Jack Russell Terrier.
6.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Ted: It’s
been self-published cos no publisher will accept the way I write. They say you
have to send the first three chapters and have to have a plan for a story, but as
we said above, I don’t write in a straight-line order and I don’t think in
chapters or for long enough to plan a story, and also my sentences are too long
- so I’ve just got the human I love best to publish it for me! You can find it
on the amazon dot websites on the internet J
7.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Ted: I
don’t know. It just took however long it took and is still taking.
8.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Ted: It’s just a book of all its own type and can’t be compared to
anything, and also cos it doesn’t have a story, or at least it has lots of
stories, but we already answered this in the wrong question, or this is the
wrong answer to this question and the answer to it is above!
9.
Who or what inspired you write this book?
Ted: Me! Me and Emma together. Me and my other humans. Watching how
they behave and how different we are and yet the same and how we relate to each
other. And cos dogs and humans are best friends.
10.
What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
Ted:
My
theory that human beings are too intelligent for their own, and others, goods –
even though I love them more than any other species including my own - and so
they have muddled thinking and that’s why it’s interesting to study them. But
they are brilliant too! Please read and let me know if you agree with me…
Tagging for the next
blog hop:
Ray
Noble is a scientist,
musician, singer, writer and song-writer, who also writes a blog on ethics.
Esame
Okwoche is a mother and
prolific insightful writer. You can find some of her work at her blog Esame's
Rants.
Mike
Howarth-Baker is the author of What
If? He writes poems
and quotes based upon his life experiences and thoughts and feelings on
everyday life. His facebook
page.
Bit of a late entry and extra addition just in case ;):
Murna Safford-Kuaea is a ‘moderately
conservative writer, poet, inventor of really cool stuff, novelist and closet
idealist.’ She has seven titles available on amazon and can tell you what she
is working on in her blog hop J Her facebook: NovelIdealist SK
Friday, 22 February 2013
The Last Custard Cream...
When humans go round to each other’s homes to visit each other the first thing that happens – well in my home it’s the second thing that happens cos the first thing is that I greet them enthusiastically and then they have to get past me to be able to see my humans – is that they get offered a cup of tea. Emma is saying that’s what happens in homes in England and it may be different in other countries – in America she thinks they get offered a cold drink like maybe a beer, but in China they would probably get Chinese tea, which is different because it is green, instead of black, and they don’t add milk to it. Tea here gets milk added mostly and sometimes sugar too. I’ve heard Emma offer sugar to people in their tea and sometimes when the say ‘No, thank you’, she says ‘No, you’re sweet enough’ and then they all laugh. I laugh too cos I don’t need any sugar at all cos I’m the sweetest enough. I also don’t need tea. Humans – well English humans – need it for all sorts of reasons – to be social with each other (I have a lot of socialness in me already!); to wake them up in the mornings (I just open my eyes and bounce); to help them sleep at night if they are Emma or Judy (I just close my eyes and stop bouncing – humans, not Emma and Judy, say tea makes them too awake so they can’t sleep so they don’t have it to make them sleep); to make them feel better when a bad thing has happened - well just come and see me and you won’t need tea . The other thing that happens when they get given tea is they also have biscuits. They usually sit down in the living-room and hold their mugs, or cups in saucers if they are doing it very properly, and then the biscuits get put on the coffee table – which is called a coffee table even if it’s being used for tea-having. I get very excited when the biscuits go on the table and try to take one, but I’m not allowed to. So instead I go round visiting each human, and smile at them pleasingly, and wag my tail and then bark if that doesn’t work. Sometimes they say ‘Oh Teddy’ and give me a little bit. Often not though as they think I am too fat and also that their biscuits are not good for me. Emma says that is very true if they have chocolate in. I like chocolate! That’s another thing we’re always told that something is bad for us when we like it. That doesn’t make sense! How can it be bad when it’s good?! But Emma says it is important that humans know human chocolate isn’t good for dogs and dogs can have dog chocolate. Anyway the last time this visiting and having tea happened the biscuits on offer were custard creams. After the visiting has finished my humans went and said ‘Goodbye’ to their visitors. You can see what I did…
Love and licks, Ted and Emma XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
To read more stories like this one please visit the rest of my blog http://
The Blog of Ted Terrier © 2013 by Emma Knight
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Tuesday, 5 February 2013
My e-book available now on amazon.co.uk and .com and other amazon dots!
Love and Licks, Ted and Emma XOX
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
My Journal is being published...
Available tomorrow on amazon.com kindle and other amazon sites....
Love and Licks, Ted and Emma XOXOXOXOX
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Paralympics and Disabled Beings
It's very difficult when you are unable to do something because you are lacking in the necessary body parts. As you will know from my last post I was unable - or as humans call it; disabled - by being Cushinged and that made me lack energy and wee a lot and drink and eat a lot. I kept having to go to the vet for her to get the Cushing out of me and it seems she has managed that very well cos now I am too much un-Cushinged - it was supposed to stop when I was normal again but now I am a little bit the opposite. I've become a puppy again and have lots of energy, and I have grown a lot of hair back and want to go for walks a lot and jump around and, and... write all my thoughts to you. But it seems Emma got Cushinged too cos she kept telling me she didn't have the energy and unfortunately I need her to write. Actually she got Herpesed, which is very painful indeed and I wouldn't wanna get cos a Herpes sounds even worse than a Cushing, so I understand and forgive her. My other unability as a dog is that I can't write cos it's hard to hold a pen with paws or to type with paws - have you ever tried it fellow paw-beings? You end up hitting too many keys at once. You need to use someone with fingers to help you. So I have pet-stirred Emma til she finally said I could borrow her fingers and her brain, and as usual, dear readers, I hope she doesn't take over and start trying to correct me or put her thoughts through too - oh no, too late, she says pet-stirred isn't a word and I mean pestered, but if she knows what I mean I don't know why she can't just keep calm, carry on typing and leave me to it. We love each other loads really!
It makes me wonder how it would have been for any of the paralympians if their able-bodied helpers - for those who had to have them - had decided to correct them or tell them to do something else, when, even with the body parts they were lacking, they were highly skilled at what they were trying to do, just as I am highly skilled at all the things I try to do. I think being unable in some ways makes you more able in others. It's just like I always say humans have too much intelligence for their own goods. Maybe even too much ability with their hands and other parts to act on that intelligence and cause all sorts of chaos in the world to themselves and to others trying to live in it, including other animals and plants. But I digress - which as it suggests means digging around in all sorts of other things (the resses) than the thing which we are talking, or writing about, which Emma says I do a lot, but of course I do cos I am a dog and that's what dogs do, especially when they are trying to dig up something they buried to save for later. Getting back to the unable paralympians - some of them didn't have eyes or eyes that worked, and so another human had to direct them where to go, and that didn't work very well for those having to do long-jump - which is basically running and them jumping as far as you can in a pit of sand - cos many of them ran and jumped in the wrong directions and hurt themselves, or others badly. As my human mum Jane would say - "that's not very sensible." A bit more sensible were the blind runners, who could hold hands with their guide who could see. That worked a lot better and they did very well. they all had to wear blind-folds to make them equal - in case some of them could see more than others - and the guides had to run at the same speed and just make sure they went in the right lane and right direction. I would have been very good at that job. Emma is laughing her head off - well not literally, that's her again and I've just told her that if she did that she wouldn't have a head and that's too much unability cos someone can't function at all without a head. Now she is laughing even more so I'm asking her why and she says cos I'd not have been a very good guide-dog for the blind runners at all cos I pull people along cos I go faster than them, and I decide which direction to go even if it's not the direction we need to go in. Well we'd win eventually!! You have to know the rules to break them as humans say. Yes, but you're not supposed to break them, as Emma says, cos then you'd lose whatever medal you won. Oh and gold medals aren't really gold - they are silver but painted gold, which I think is not very nice. It's be like getting a babybel cheese that has something that's not as good as a babybel cheese inside it - hm yes, that's irony... I'm an ironic dog cos that's what happens to me when I get my anti-Cushing pill... Emma's just said that IS like gold within gold cos it makes me feel a lot better. Anyway there is a problem for the runners cos who runs with a blind man runner. We only saw the women and they had to have men runners as their guides. It made us wonder who the men would have had - perhaps it would need to be someone like Ussain Bolt or Mo Farrah, who both ran as Olympians, who are fully able. I'd love to run in a race with Ussain - I'd win even though I have shorter legs than him - or maybe I wouldn't - the man, who is called the Blade Runner (Emma loves that film) cos he lost his lags and has blades instead, and whose real name is Oscar Pistorius, was beaten in a race by a man with longer blades, Alan Olivera, and Oscar said it was unfair and that Alan cheated. So maybe to make it fair in a race between me and Ussian Bolt, I'd have to have blades added on to my legs or he'd have to have part of his legs chopped off so we'd be the same height. My favourite paralympian is Ellie Simmonds. She does swimming. I don't think I've ever done swimming or if I did it was accidental. I don't like water very much. In fact I hate it when I have to go out to have a wee and it's raining, and I hate it even more when it's raining hard cos that scares me. And then when I have to have water on me cos Emma says I need to have a shampoo and cut, I don't really like that very much either, but she makes it into a game and tells me I'm a good boy and so it's not as bad as it was when I got dragged to the beauty parlour and bad very short back, sides, ears, tail and everything - so much so that Emma said she didn't know who I was though she was only joking really. And then recently she had to cut my hair even before she gave me a shampoo and threw water on me cos I was growing what she called dreadlocks. I don't think she understood that I was trying to look more like Ussain Bolt and Mo Farrah, cos they are black men and can grow dreads, but I'm a mostly white dog so don't usually grow dreads. Maybe she dreaded them though and that's why she took them off. No wonder I have trouble being a cool dog as I keep being given bad haircuts - though I better not complain cos then Emma will send me back to the beauty parlour and her way of doing it is far nicer, even though I almost always look a bit daft. Oh yes, she says I just look like I am! That's love for you :). Anyway, Ellie is like me cos she is vertically challenged, cos she is a dwarf. I don't know how she got dwarfed but Emma says some people just come out dwarfed when they are born. I suppose it's like me - I came out dwarfed too cos I have short legs like Ellie has short legs and arms and feet, like me with my paws, that sort of look too big for the rest of her. She is very nice and everybody loves her and she won lots of medals. When she won her medals Emma cried. In fact Emma cried a lot at the Olympics and then even more at the Paralympics. She said it was all very moving - all these amazing people overcoming all sorts of things to even take part and then some of them win, and that makes her cry even more. It's all good crying she says. And she and other humans getting very excited and jumping up and down while all these people did their running, and jumping, and swimming, and cycling and well all sorts of other things they do to entertain themselves. And in a way it's all a bit strange cos there are lots of signs up at the moment telling people to 'Keep Calm and Carry On' - and for a while in the summer that's not what they were doing. I found it funny to watch them, but like the dancing horses, I kept calm and carried on cos somebodies have to. Even though I'm too much anti-Cushinged, I still have very calm moments, when I watch my humans be foolish and funny... like me :)
It makes me wonder how it would have been for any of the paralympians if their able-bodied helpers - for those who had to have them - had decided to correct them or tell them to do something else, when, even with the body parts they were lacking, they were highly skilled at what they were trying to do, just as I am highly skilled at all the things I try to do. I think being unable in some ways makes you more able in others. It's just like I always say humans have too much intelligence for their own goods. Maybe even too much ability with their hands and other parts to act on that intelligence and cause all sorts of chaos in the world to themselves and to others trying to live in it, including other animals and plants. But I digress - which as it suggests means digging around in all sorts of other things (the resses) than the thing which we are talking, or writing about, which Emma says I do a lot, but of course I do cos I am a dog and that's what dogs do, especially when they are trying to dig up something they buried to save for later. Getting back to the unable paralympians - some of them didn't have eyes or eyes that worked, and so another human had to direct them where to go, and that didn't work very well for those having to do long-jump - which is basically running and them jumping as far as you can in a pit of sand - cos many of them ran and jumped in the wrong directions and hurt themselves, or others badly. As my human mum Jane would say - "that's not very sensible." A bit more sensible were the blind runners, who could hold hands with their guide who could see. That worked a lot better and they did very well. they all had to wear blind-folds to make them equal - in case some of them could see more than others - and the guides had to run at the same speed and just make sure they went in the right lane and right direction. I would have been very good at that job. Emma is laughing her head off - well not literally, that's her again and I've just told her that if she did that she wouldn't have a head and that's too much unability cos someone can't function at all without a head. Now she is laughing even more so I'm asking her why and she says cos I'd not have been a very good guide-dog for the blind runners at all cos I pull people along cos I go faster than them, and I decide which direction to go even if it's not the direction we need to go in. Well we'd win eventually!! You have to know the rules to break them as humans say. Yes, but you're not supposed to break them, as Emma says, cos then you'd lose whatever medal you won. Oh and gold medals aren't really gold - they are silver but painted gold, which I think is not very nice. It's be like getting a babybel cheese that has something that's not as good as a babybel cheese inside it - hm yes, that's irony... I'm an ironic dog cos that's what happens to me when I get my anti-Cushing pill... Emma's just said that IS like gold within gold cos it makes me feel a lot better. Anyway there is a problem for the runners cos who runs with a blind man runner. We only saw the women and they had to have men runners as their guides. It made us wonder who the men would have had - perhaps it would need to be someone like Ussain Bolt or Mo Farrah, who both ran as Olympians, who are fully able. I'd love to run in a race with Ussain - I'd win even though I have shorter legs than him - or maybe I wouldn't - the man, who is called the Blade Runner (Emma loves that film) cos he lost his lags and has blades instead, and whose real name is Oscar Pistorius, was beaten in a race by a man with longer blades, Alan Olivera, and Oscar said it was unfair and that Alan cheated. So maybe to make it fair in a race between me and Ussian Bolt, I'd have to have blades added on to my legs or he'd have to have part of his legs chopped off so we'd be the same height. My favourite paralympian is Ellie Simmonds. She does swimming. I don't think I've ever done swimming or if I did it was accidental. I don't like water very much. In fact I hate it when I have to go out to have a wee and it's raining, and I hate it even more when it's raining hard cos that scares me. And then when I have to have water on me cos Emma says I need to have a shampoo and cut, I don't really like that very much either, but she makes it into a game and tells me I'm a good boy and so it's not as bad as it was when I got dragged to the beauty parlour and bad very short back, sides, ears, tail and everything - so much so that Emma said she didn't know who I was though she was only joking really. And then recently she had to cut my hair even before she gave me a shampoo and threw water on me cos I was growing what she called dreadlocks. I don't think she understood that I was trying to look more like Ussain Bolt and Mo Farrah, cos they are black men and can grow dreads, but I'm a mostly white dog so don't usually grow dreads. Maybe she dreaded them though and that's why she took them off. No wonder I have trouble being a cool dog as I keep being given bad haircuts - though I better not complain cos then Emma will send me back to the beauty parlour and her way of doing it is far nicer, even though I almost always look a bit daft. Oh yes, she says I just look like I am! That's love for you :). Anyway, Ellie is like me cos she is vertically challenged, cos she is a dwarf. I don't know how she got dwarfed but Emma says some people just come out dwarfed when they are born. I suppose it's like me - I came out dwarfed too cos I have short legs like Ellie has short legs and arms and feet, like me with my paws, that sort of look too big for the rest of her. She is very nice and everybody loves her and she won lots of medals. When she won her medals Emma cried. In fact Emma cried a lot at the Olympics and then even more at the Paralympics. She said it was all very moving - all these amazing people overcoming all sorts of things to even take part and then some of them win, and that makes her cry even more. It's all good crying she says. And she and other humans getting very excited and jumping up and down while all these people did their running, and jumping, and swimming, and cycling and well all sorts of other things they do to entertain themselves. And in a way it's all a bit strange cos there are lots of signs up at the moment telling people to 'Keep Calm and Carry On' - and for a while in the summer that's not what they were doing. I found it funny to watch them, but like the dancing horses, I kept calm and carried on cos somebodies have to. Even though I'm too much anti-Cushinged, I still have very calm moments, when I watch my humans be foolish and funny... like me :)
Love and Licks, Ted and Emma XOXOXOXOX
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