I'm so glad you picked this week to visit the blog! Oh, sorry - I'm just a wee bit excited...let me start over. Welcome back and welcome for the first time - either way I certainly hope you find the JLB Creatives Blog to be your blog of choice to visit for some fun, education, and inspiration for the whole family.
Now...I'm so glad you picked this week to visit the blog! This week's topic is another interview with a very special fellow author. I think you'll find his personality, dry humor, and exceptional talent of writing to be quite the treasure. I won't keep you any longer than to ask you to be sure and watch the video before you read the interview...
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This Week's Video:
Introduction for
Lord David
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Author
Lord David Prosser
Lord David Prosser
WEEKLY TOPIC POST: Interview with Author Lord David Prosser
JANET: Hello David. Finally, the chance to meet you...a long awaited thrill in my life and I'm certain is soon to be a thrill in many others' as well. Please introduce yourself: background, growing up, where you're at now, where you're headed.
DAVID: Hello everyone. I'm David. I grew up mainly in North Wales though I have worked in various places during my career in Local Government. I'm now retired due to an unfortunate battle with ill health which I lost but have discovered that my life is not over since I started writing and found I could bring a smile to a reader's face....probably saying "Been there, done that."
JANET: I can relate to illness keeping you from work and finding writing as a wonderful outlet for certain. And you have kept a smile on faces I personally know of first hand with your writing. Here's one for you...if you could sail on a tall ship (with a full staff to tend to your needs) to anywhere, what place or places would that be, who would you take with you, what supplies would you request, and how long would you stay away?
DAVID: Oh I think I'd definitely head for Tahiti. If I started taking family the ship would be overflowing as I have not just my wife and daughter but wonderful nephews, nieces and of course friends. So, I'd take my editor and friend Ilil Arbel, lots of pads and pens, some pickled onion crisps (potato chips) some corned beef, roast beef and some strawberries so I don't get into trouble for not eating fruit. I think a year away would be plenty to settle down and get two more books under my belt.
JANET: Sounds great! I'd follow along in a dinghy just for the food! OK - I can't stand it any longer...all I'm going to say here is, Oscar - please explain. :)
Oscar
DAVID: Ah well, at one time I thought my wife was the boss...then she bought a kitten. 17 years later I know my place in the household and it's right at the bottom. Any ham in my sandwiches is his, what I thought was my chair is in fact his that he just deigns to let me sit on when he's not using it. Oscar has his own blog to share his wisdom with all Superiors (cats) and Longlegs (us) and all his training methods with Superiors. His fan base is bigger than mine!
JANET: I have read Oscar's blog - and it is quite the treasure of a read for certain! Be sure and tell him we all say hello - we don't want him to get grumpy. Now back to you - when it comes to candy, what's your vice? Chocolate? Fruity? Caramel? Something else? Please tell why you have made the choice you did.
DAVID: Normally I would say anything savoury...especially the previously mentioned Pickled Onion Crisps but I confess to a sweet tooth and at the moment my favourite is called a raisin and biscuit Yorkie or dark chocolate ginger biscuits.
JANET: Oooooh - dark chocolate ginger biscuits...if it's not a secret, we'd love the recipe for those! Sorry, chocolate always sidetracks me. When we first connected, I realized you were quite the hugger - which I'm always fond of a hugging person I must admit - tell us about the hugging religion and isn't there a link for the wonderful article about you?
DAVID: I like hugging. I think it defuses any situation and maintains that you can't hug with a weapon in your hands. With all the friction in the world I thought it would be nice to create a social group which crossed all religious boundaries and didn't allow religious differences to get in the way of friendship. Someone said it was like a "hugging religion" and I sort of adopted that. There are many benefits to health from hugging which are listed should anyone visit my site. I know there are fundamentalists on all sides of the divide but that each of the main religions has a book that preaches tolerance. It's the way it gets preached that makes the difference. For me the fundamentalists don't have a place as they only preach hate. My site is: http://lorddavidspage.weebly.
JANET: Very cool! Hugs to you and your family (even Oscar)! Tell us what your perfect day would be like - is it with family? Alone? With Oscar - tee hee? Feasting? Enjoying the outdoors? I give you free rein to tell us about your perfect day.
DAVID: My perfect day is usually every other Sunday when my wife and I visit my daughter in Chester. Even better, sometimes we are joined by my best friend and my two nieces that I'm closest to. It's the day King Oscar rules his demesne alone and I get to eat a roast beef dinner with yorkshire pudding, uninterrupted. We get to walk around shops (or crutch around shops in my case) afterwards which was always my favourite pastime but these days Lady J always stops me from cluttering the house. Women can be such spoilsports.
JANET: Hmmm - I was thinking spoilsports were normally the guys. LOL!! OK - let's get to it. So when did you decide that writing was a part of your life?
DAVID: My friend asked me how my day had been and jokingly I described it as a diary entry with each bit broken down. She loved it and asked for more. After about a week of this she suggested I try a book. I was bored as I spend most of my time indoors so I agreed. This was in about September 2010. I finished the first one before Christmas and another friend did the proof reading for me and Ilil did my editing. Because the story was written like a diary and because she compared me to Trollope and PG Wodehouse we decided to change the village to part of Barsetshire and it became My Barsetshire Diary.
JANET: Then by all means, let's get people informed on where they can purchase your wonderful tales. Please links where we can find both you and Oscar. Facebook, Twitter, Blog, etc.
Oscar is on http://lorddavidspage.weebly.
Facebook is either David Michael Prosser or Author Lord David Prosser.
JANET: Perfect! I'll even use those as my LINK OF THE WEEK in hopes of helping out a fellow author! How many genres have you written and what are they?
DAVID: Just the one genre (so far) and that's humour (sorry about the English spellings).
JANET: Spellcheck - schmellcheck - I'll bet the blog readers are keeping up with ease. Which book was your favorite to write and why?
DAVID: It was definately 'The Queen's Envoy'...why?...because it was fun! I cast myself as a sort of poor man's James Bond. Being able to travel the World and sort problems out was huge fun. In the sequel to this one I'm including my friends on missions with me, probably by turning up in their city with a problem that requires their help.
JANET: May I call you 007? That sounds like a great read! Please describe your writing style. Dry humor? Serious? Tons of detail? All of the above? None of the above?
DAVID: I'd say dry humour might describe it though there's probably some written slapstick in there too. People get to read about the situations I end up in because I'm soooo oppressed and very naive.
JANET: To the readers of the blog: If you haven't read Baretshire Diary...all I'm going to say is when you do, I dare you not to laugh at the toothpaste scene! Back to you David. What type readers have you found throughout your career of writing to be your most dedicated?
DAVID: I think they would be the friends I made on Facebook after writing the books. They have been enormously encouraging.
JANET: I can relate to, and hopefully others can too, to that kind of rare connecting with such great people. What would you tell someone who has never read your work to get them interested in your stories?
DAVID: If you don't know what life is like in a small British Village then this is the book for you.
JANET: Couldn't have said it better myself. Do you have an excerpt from one of your pieces you would like to share with us? Pretty please?????
DAVID: Would love to. This is an excerpt from the first book and describes a funeral I attended as a pall bearer.
At a quarter to two I left Lady J preparing to visit the stables to see her 'boy'. I asked her to give Twinkle a pat and a carrot from me, and to be careful herself.
I walked to Upper Greenfield for the funeral. I had never actually met the person who had died. His name was Albert Newcome and he had been the brother of Freda Newcome who kept the town library. I know her fairly well but had been surprised nonetheless when she had asked my brother Wyn and I to be pallbearers for her brother. It seems he had grown up in Greenfield Bottom and had wanted to be buried here in the graveyard we share with Upper Greenfieldians.
Both Wyn and I had, of course, agreed to support her in this request. Accordingly Wyn, myself, Owain and Frank Rumpo were there at the ready when Mr Hatchett arrived with the hearse. For the sake of balance, Owain had decided that he at 6'3" and my brother at 6'4" should take the rear of the casket, while I at 5'11" and Frank Rumpo at 5'7" should take the front. There seemed nothing wrong with this at the time and we agreed. We picked up the coffin from the hearse and the procession started off.
The Rev Zvingler took the lead slowly swinging his censer before him. Next came Miss Newsome and a scattering of family and friends dabbing at their eyes with an assortment of paper tissues. Then came the coffin and behind came Mr Hatchett.
I don't know if you have ever carried a coffin but it's a complicated affair of shoulders, linked hands under the coffin and unused hands in support. It's also a finely balanced affair, and while Owain had been right to suggest we paired according to nearest sizes he had not taken gradient into account.
The path in our churchyard is very steep from the gate to the church and also from the church to the lower cemetery and the older plots. This meant that going down the path the coffin pointed downwards with our two tallest people at the back and the shortest at the front. And those of us at the front were at a disadvantage. I don't know whether the deceased was a short man but I do know that both Frank and I were starting to feel movement from above as we moved. I mentally dismissed the first stupid thought to occur to me that maybe we had a live person in the coffin, but as we moved further, the body moved rapidly from one end to the other, ours being the other. The sudden shift in weight caught Frank and me unawares and seemed to push the coffin forwards. We changed pace to keep up with it but that caused more consternation as our move started to pull it off the shoulders of Owain and Wyn.
Our forward surge had also put us amongst the mourners who parted like the Red Sea at our arrival, and also brought us to the back of the Rev Zvingler who must have heard our hurried steps. He spun round and viewing a coffin about to hit him in the head jumped off the path. Unfortunately, he tripped and fell. He started rolling down the hill until coming to a halt beside a gravestone.
Meanwhile, at our rear Mr Hatchett had managed to grab the missile and slow its forward momentum. Frank and I had reached a run at this time and almost shot out from under it.
However, with some effort we managed to slow and with as much dignity as we could muster, we edged ourselves backwards until we were back in position. Owain and Wyn did the same thing from their end.
We managed to reach the church safely, though by this time we led the mourners and the Rev Zvingler, who had just gingerly regained the path to get there in last position. It made me think of something biblical in my near hysteria - "those who are last shall be first", and I had to smother an insane desire to giggle.
We deposited the coffin on the bier that awaited.
JANET: Awesome! I'm sure folks are going to want to read more after that excerpt! One last question for the road...If you could sit down with just one person and pick their brain, who would that be, what you would ask them, and why?
DAVID: I think I'd like to sit down with Mahatma Ghandi and ask how he developed such a way of non violent confrontation and pick his brain to see how it could be applied to so many troubled nations today where the people desire change. There are many places where democracy could flourish given the chance. I know it might not be a popular move but If I were given charge for a day I'd restore many of the old Monarchies with the enlightened descendants of the Royal Houses, I think the Monarchy unites people where Governments divide.
JANET: David, I love your attitude! Your wishes for a peaceful planet, I'm sure, are shared by so many of us. It has been a pleasure to interview you and I hope we'll have the chance again someday.
DAVID: Thanks so much for the opportunity to chunner on Janet. It's the most I've been allowed to talk in years.
Many, many Hugs.xx.
Wasn't that just a delight? I must say that as I journey on through my writing career, it is people like David making it worthwhile.
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Wasn't that just a delight? I must say that as I journey on through my writing career, it is people like David making it worthwhile.
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My books and Author interviews may be found at:
LINK(s) OF THE WEEK: All about Lord David
I'd like to personally invite you to check out David's links, LIKE him on FB, and buy his books to bring some joy to your lives!
Oscar is on http://lorddavidspage.weebly.
Pic n' Thought
by
Janet Beasley
Weekends are like waterfalls.
Fun, enjoyable, relaxing...but always
rushing by so fast!
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NOVEL UPDATE: Hidden Earth's Volume 1 "Maycly" in Janet's 6 novel series was submitted to a new publisher end of last week. The publisher's submission guidelines say that it can take 12-16 weeks to get a response...has it been 12 weeks yet?
To fill in the holes for those who have just discovered author Janet Beasley and the JLB Creatives Blog, Janet has written her inaugural epic fantasy novel and is hard at work on the next 5 novels in her Hidden Earth series while "Maycly" is out on submission. Self-publishing has been put aside for the time being as Janet feels strongly about having such a large novel professionally edited, printed, and marketed. However, this does not mean she has completely vanquished the idea of self-publishing but wants to test the waters first.
To read an excerpt of "Maycly" you may wish to visit Janet's interview with Lord David Prosser at http://barsetshirediaries.wordpress.com/interview-with-janet-beasley/
To fill in the holes for those who have just discovered author Janet Beasley and the JLB Creatives Blog, Janet has written her inaugural epic fantasy novel and is hard at work on the next 5 novels in her Hidden Earth series while "Maycly" is out on submission. Self-publishing has been put aside for the time being as Janet feels strongly about having such a large novel professionally edited, printed, and marketed. However, this does not mean she has completely vanquished the idea of self-publishing but wants to test the waters first.
To read an excerpt of "Maycly" you may wish to visit Janet's interview with Lord David Prosser at http://barsetshirediaries.wordpress.com/interview-with-janet-beasley/
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SUMMARY:
What a guy...and a cat! I certainly hope you enjoyed Lord David's interview and will consider purchasing his books to bring a smile to your face.
Another great way to tell people about Lord David is by sharing the JLB Creatives Blog so they can check out his wonderful interview! I'll even make it easy for you to share instantly:
Again - a stellar week chocked full of fun and surprises! Enjoy the rest of your day and we'll catch you next time...
...until then...
Stay casual - live life to the fullest - and have a piece of chocolate for Lord David!
~Janet~
