Finish, The Diamond Standard

(Sorry, bad joke by a friend, which came about from his question: what do they clean the diamonds with?)

Well, they certainly don’t clean them with dishwashing liquid in my new work-in-process novel, ‘A Belgium Mystery: Diamonds for the Destitute’.

I found this pic on Google. Lose the moustache and the grey hair, and he could be my Christophe.

I am pretty happy about the advent of this novel, since I began it last year, about this same time, when I was in Belgium, but didn’t get further than the first page. It was originally meant as a prequel, a background display of the life of one of the supporting characters in another of my novels. I have ideas for a sequel to the first, too, though, again, it would come about as another insight, rather than a direct follow on.

My mystery centres around two jewels with reputations: the beautiful Miss St. Clair, love interest of the French protagonist, Christophe Beladore; and the Leonaise diamond, which goes missing on Christophe’s first day of work at the diamond factory.

Although the story is set in Bruges, Antwerp, another city in Belgium, was actually one of the hives of diamond cutting and trade in the 1920s, the decade in which my story is set. Bruges played its own part, but it was nothing compared to the achievements of Antwerp. I guess the whole inspiration for my story is the diamonds.

Of course, as well as being the detective, Christophe’s position means that he arrives as the scapegoat, too, framed and imprisoned. Thank goodness he begins to gain a mind ready to solve the trail of clues that point to a plot more sinister than just the theft of a famous jewel.

However, the book is about exploration and growing up, too. Christophe, aside from working and investigating the missing diamond, also gets to enjoy the pursuit of handgliding, courtesy of his mentor, Georges. This I did enjoy researching, though I myself would never take to the air in such a recreation.

As a little background information, it turns out that proper handgliders came into better use, made from stronger material, around 1910s, so it makes sense that handgliders would be quite popular in the 20s.

Anyways, I hope to keep you updated as to how the story is going, along with the many other things that I am meant to be doing and keeping upated with: short stories, Psychology work, editing, rewriting, publishing…

Ironically in this post, it will be a while before I finish this one story, due to its predicted size, my schoolwork (as I have just returned for my final year of school), and other projects that I slip in and out of. I’m working on a sci-fi project for the time-being, and on my Agnetha King Trilogy.

Photographs!

I am back uploading to DeviantART.com my photographs from my self-set 365-challenge last year. This ran the whole of 2011, but I’ve been so far behind uploading the resultant pictures, most likely because of so many conflicting duties that I have.

Do You Remember?

I don’t know if the 36-challenge is person-specific, with the task being delegated by the self- and, indeed, I am following someone who lived her life in specific ways each month for the year- but, being in a circle of photographers, I learnt about it as specifically a photography challenge.

To take (at least) one photo per day for a year. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, that’d be wrong. Sure, professional photographers, or people who have access to models or shoots, would easily be able to incorporate the challenge into their daily lives, but I am not one of those people; I am just an amateur, using the challenge to see the world in a different perspective whilst honing my camera skills.

One of my biggest challenges with the, well, challenge was to find three things. The first, my memory: every day, at the beginning no less, I needed to remember that I was part of the challenge, and I needed to remember to keep my eyes open. The second: a subject. As a student, it’s not easy. And once I had the subject, I needed to find time, amongst my lessons and activities (and novel-writing) to spend at least ten minutes arranging said object or finding the best view around the scene.

I guess I made it harder for myself too. I think the idea was just to take and improve. I tried to find a photograph that summed up each day. For some days, of course, this was easy, such as Halloween or Christmas or the Royal Wedding. On some days I was doing such significant things that my meaning was obvious to include: 

And the Drama of Love

on the night I performed my GCSE Drama piece, playing Eliza in Pygmalion, I took this picture of my dress-shoes on a school hymn book. They were nice shoes, even if a little tight! Yes, photography is perfect for reviving old memories; that’s one of the reasons I love it!

On other days, however, ‘unimportant’ days, or those that were just normal week-days, where you’d find me not venturing out, I was stumped. I attempted to make the pictures that come from those uninspired days as relevant as possible, but sometimes it was just that I saw something nice. Thus a photo came out of what I saw, rather than felt, but, to me, it was just a little off-principle.

 

Take Off

To be fair, I knew a girl who dropped out of the challenge quite early in. The problem for her was that she kept getting her rolls of film mixed up, thus losing which picture belonged where, And, of course, for the photographer knowing which picture goes with which day is important. This I about the individual days, as well, as the bigger picture of the challenge.

But I completed it on New Year’s Eve 2011. Okay, I didn’t take one every single day- simply because I had forgotten or was in a depressive phase. Taking two on another day didn’t entirely help, as, just like my friend, I have begun to get confused about which picture is relevant. Sometimes it feels like I’ve lost a couple. So I stop uploading and have a root around. Sometimes I find them; lately there’s been a gap in my list.

I'd gone around to one of my close friend's house, and we'd started playing with her old Lego. She asked me to search for my bionicles, and later I did, finding myself photographing them as I went along.

Nevertheless, I know that my photography knowledge and skills have improved since I did the challenge, and I am glad for doing so.

On this day a year ago… 18^thApril:

 You can find my profile on the site here:  http://goldenearthangel.deviantart.com/

What about you? Got any interesting photos to share?

Ciao, Alexandrina

I Love My Capotasto

Okay, so this is basically a rant about how much I love the new capo (short for capotasto, Italian for “head of fretboard”- thank you, Wikipedia!) I have been bought and the sound I am able to produce with it.

For those of you less string-inclined, this is a capo.

By being placed tight on the fretboard of a stringed instrument- in my case, guitar- it changes the length of the strings (hence the Italian translation, since it does become the new fretboard-head), thus the pitch, and thus the entire key of the instrument. It’s an ingenious little device actually, first mentioned by musicologist G.B. Doni in his Annotazioni of 1640, though capo use began earlier in the 17th-century (so Wikipedia informs me). Some muscians use capos to help them with holding certain chord shapes as if they were playing with ‘open’ strings; I myself use one because I think it sounds divine!

I have come to the decision that my favourite  capo position is on the third fret, the regular barre positon of G, creating a tone that brings up the fallen red of a sunlight across a sandy beach. Yay, slight synaesthesia!  It helps that my Music GCSE enabled me to complete cadences by ear, as well as with some complex thinking about which key requires what cadence where. Ironically, I advanced my barre chord skills by playing Lady GaGa’s song ‘Pokerface’ over and over again.

I had a good session of composing yesterday, though it probably didn’t do my nails any good- not that I should actually have long nails on my left hand. Now, they’ve been brittle, chipping, breaking and peeling, calcium layers like an onion. My fingers flake themselves too; it’s lucky I’ve been playing for so long that my calluses are automatic.

I could go on and on about capos, but I shan’t, since a capo-specific post could come in the future. If you would like to know a little more, you need only ask!

Ruby, my darling guitar, steel-string, and acoustic with amplifiable qualities

Music is so much a part of my life. I love the wisdom that can be sought from it, the inspiration that is gained without much effort, and the ability that is honed and will always become better. There are many great musicians in the world, there have, indeed, been some remarkable , but there will never be a ‘perfect’ musician. Music may have the appearance of sounding perfect, complete, but it can never be the best music, as such a thing changes with the turn of life. In any case, let music rein on so well!

Alexandrina

(Wikipedia page) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capo

Random New Stuff

Just a note (so not really a post, to be honest) about the little tidbits I’m working on at the moment. Most of them are beginnings of ideas that I don’t mind abandoning for my exams.

Well, for one thing, there’s my physics revision notes, written in fiction-form (Goodness help me!). It may sound mad, but I think that revising this way will help improve the triggers of my memory. However, it’s still only a few sentences long, due to my other revision getting in the way. Oh dear!

The next is the beginnings of a ‘just-for-fun’ story that can be found on Protagonize.com called ‘Ceilidhs’. Inspired by the true story of my first Ceilidh dance session, it tells of school-children uncovering the secret to the spirit world through the medium of dance. Not that that actually happened to me… *shifty eyes*

The last is the revival of my Latin story on Protagonize, entitled ‘Parva Fabula Romae’- literally ‘A Little Story of Rome’- about Roman life for Selena when she meets the son of a famous poet who promises to help Selena out of a pickle. So…if you’re into Classics…