Blink Publishing: authors

Alfie Deyes, The Scrapbook of My Life

06:09

How A Bad Girl Fell In Love

01:38

Blink has recently published popular sex blogger Girl On The Net's fantastic new book "How A Bad Girl Fell In Love". This is a love story for people who don't believe in love stories, erotica for people who are bored with erotic fiction and a popular feminist manifesto for the politically confused.With this in mind, we spoke to Girl On The Net about her new book, and her life as an anonymous sex blogger.

You’ve had a successful sex blog for a while now – what made you decide to write your second book?

The second book came out of the gnawing worry that the blog can only ever present one side of a person. There's a temptation, particularly when you're writing the kind of gratuitous, horny stuff that goes on a sex blog, to paint a one-sided picture of yourself. Or at least to avoid talking about the more difficult topics, because they're complex and not easily dealt with in something clickbaity.

A couple of years into blogging, after the blog started to become successful, I was struggling with lots of different issues: mental health, commitment, the terrifying emails I'd get from blog fans or trolls, lots of stuff. And I realised that I was doing the same thing that frustrated me about romance novels and magazine-style advice articles: pretending that life was much simpler than it actually is. Hopefully the book shows sex blogging, and kink, and life, in all it's messed-up, complicated glory.

How was writing your book different to writing a blog?

With a blog you can see the evolution of your views over time - you can change, and document the ways in which your views have become... well... less ignorant (as I hope mine have). A book has permanence, though, so if you're a massively anxious person like I am you're constantly going over your arguments and double-guessing how they might be interpreted. That's why it's helpful to have an amazing editor like Emily - she picked me up on things that I'd missed and made me really think about the points I was putting forward.

Did you find it difficult being so honest with your readers?

I'd love to say yes, and that it was a struggle, but I think the hardest part is deciding, and then once you've made that decision it all comes out. I have a huge amount of respect for people who write fiction, because I think it's incredibly tricky - you have to plot and plan and make your characters feel 'real' - whereas everything I write is true. Even the fantasies - they're there because they popped into my head one day and I couldn't get them out of it. Opinions, loves, desires: once you've made the choice to be open, it's easy to decide what to write: you just write the truth. If people like it that's awesome, but if they hate it then at least I can comfort myself with knowing that it couldn't be any other way.

You mention in your book that it can be difficult reconciling having a personal life with remaining anonymous on the internet. How do you achieve that balance and continue to remain anonymous?

With a load of effort and a hell of a lot of panic! I think I'm a bit of a hermit in the sex blogging community - I don't tend to go to events or meet people in person, and even when I do I always give fake names. I have two phones, two laptops, and duplicate everything so as to avoid crossover between my 'Girl on the Net' activity and my personal activity.

The hardest part, though, is that my main message is that sex isn't something we should be ashamed of or horrified by. Quite rightly people think there's a disconnect between that and anonymity. But I don't think I'm really anonymous in the true sense of the word - 'Girl on the Net' is as much me as 'Real Name me' is - she has the same opinions and beliefs and desires. It's just that she's not as easy for my grandparents to find if they happen to search for my name. And she's also - hopefully - less easy to locate, so the guys who send me terrifying emails won't turn up on my doorstep in their pants.

What is the ultimate message behind your book?

The overall message is that there is no 'right' way to be in love. We have a lot of expectations around sex and love - there's an idea that by the time you hit a certain age you should have had sex with a few people, got married, had children, bought a house, have joint bank accounts, etcetera. But actually there is no one 'true' way to conduct relationships: every element is a choice. So although there are myriad articles telling you the Top Ten Ways To Blow Their Mind In Bed or How To Guarantee He'll Love You Forever, in fact no one can tell you what the right path is for you - you just need to explore your choices, understand what you want, and make peace with the fact that you'll mess a lot up along the way.

You can find Girl On The Nets Blog here, or you can purchase her new book: "How A Bad Girl Fell In Love" here.

authors

How I Met My Son

02:17

Rosalind Powell wrote this blog for Mumsnet, but we liked it so much we thought we'd share it here. You can find the original article here.

My relationship with my son is much like any other mother’s with a growing teenager. I can feel inordinately proud of him and extremely frustrated. I worry about his emotional wellbeing, his friendships and budding romances (should there be any). I laugh at his jokes and despair at his laziness. I look at him and hope one day that someone will make him happy and love him as much as his mum does.

There are two fundamental questions that lie at the heart of adoption: can you love someone else’s child, and can they love you? I know that you can. To all intents and purposes, we are a ‘normal’ family and Gabriel, 13, is completely ‘our’ son – although, in another sense, we’re not and he isn’t.

I’d always assumed I’d have children, but never gave it much thought. When my husband Harry and I discovered we couldn’t have them naturally, without the help of fertility treatment, it felt as if my world had collapsed overnight. After three unsuccessful rounds of IVF and relentless cycles of hormones, hope and disappointment I was left feeling battered and bruised, and as if my body had let me down. After a year of licking our wounds, we turned to adoption.

We knew the climate had changed – it was no longer a case of newborn babies being relinquished by unmarried mothers, and that many of the children up for adoption now have been more than likely taken away from their parents and come through the care system.

Undaunted, we embarked on a homestudy – the intensive, six-month appraisal of all potential adopters undertaken by a social worker – and were asked deeply personal questions about our ability to be parents. We were approved by an adoption panel and spent the next two years in limbo, waiting. It was a strange, frustrating and occasionally distressing time as we were sent details of children to consider whose life stories gave me a glimpse of a cruel, hellish world. Others just didn’t feel right. It felt awful turning them down, but we were determined to do right not only by ourselves but, more importantly, by the children we were asked to consider. We felt it was essential that we knew our limitations and what we could cope with.

After two years we were on the verge of giving up when we were sent details of a little boy. I heard his name and felt an instant sense of recognition. We’d found our son.

Adoption is a leap of faith that co-exists with fear, and I had plenty of fear to begin with. We had spent almost eight years yearning for a child and then one came storming into our life like a small tornado. I’m amazed I didn’t run around our flat screaming, ‘What have I done?’

Our son came to live with us just before his second birthday and overnight my life changed in more ways than I’d ever imagined. I never finished a conversation or put my needs first; I mastered the art of crawling on all fours pushing small cars mumbling ‘brum brum’ and miming actions of nursery rhymes; I rarely socialized but would look forward to relief to my first glass of wine at 6pm, sharp; I had more patience than I’d thought, but also discovered a bad temper; I became intimate with every café and swing park. It was, in short, a crash course in parenting and I hadn’t read the manual. Of course these are common experiences for every parent of a toddler. But most other parents have had at least two years with their child to get into training. We didn’t know each other, let alone love each other yet. Like an arranged marriage, we had to wait for love to come.

It didn’t help that for the first six weeks he called us both Harry, which he’d call out loudly in swing parks. Maybe I had to earn the title of Mummy.

There were difficult spells: he had been taken from the only family he’d ever known and was, in effect, in mourning. At times he became angry, tired of being on his best behaviour and testing us to see if we’d stay. Times of change have been hard for him – moving house, leaving his cot for a bed, changing schools. But he was also incredibly adaptable and brave.

We’ve occasionally had to field awkward questions from nosey strangers. Our son is mixed-heritage, we’re white, and I’ve been asked why he’s got brown eyes when ours are blue. We’ve been told he looks like he’s caught the sun. An acquaintance once explained to her child, in front of us, that our son was an orphan. Sometimes his friends at primary school would ask me if I was his ‘real’ mum. One boy went so far as to tell him – and me – that I definitely wasn’t his ‘real’ mum.

But these incidents have been few and far between and, on the whole, the fact that he’s adopted hasn’t been an issue. He’s interested in his birth family background up to a point, but doesn’t choose to dwell on it. That may change. He might one day want to trace his birth parents and if and when he does, we will give him all the support he needs.

Part of the process of adopting is feeling a sense of ‘entitlement’ to be a parent. I felt I couldn’t just become a mother, I had to earn the right to be one. As I now watch him grow into a young man, developing his own opinions and beliefs, interests and plans for the future, I feel proud of what a remarkable individual he has become. And like any other parent, I can also take some credit for that too.

How I Met My Son: A Journey Through Adoption by Rosalind Powell (Blink Publishing), is out 11 February

authors

Christmas Survival By @TechnicallyRon

01:26

Author of Life-Abet and Twitter funnyman @TechnicallyRon A.K.A Aaron Gillies has written our Christmas guest post. Here is his 6-Step Guide to Surviving a British Christmas.

Christmas in the UK begins in September. The supermarkets start selling Christmas-themed washing-up liquid, festive bleach and toilet paper with little snowflakes on it. It’s bloody awful. Like many aspects of modern society, it is easy to criticise, to scream into the internet that capitalism is ruining a holiday about a baby being born 2000 years ago. Capitalism ruins everything. In the last 2 weeks run up to this holiday of forced merriment, there are some steps you need to take to make sure you get through it in one piece.

Step 1: Preparation

When is the correct time to do your Christmas shopping? Who are you buying for? Are you getting something for your nephew you haven’t met since he was born in 1997? Are you expected to write cards for family members you don’t see, labouring over the meaningful message for them to simply look at it for two seconds before placing it in the bin? Are you emotionally stable enough to handle the high street? To go into the shops playing endless Christmas music, the staff behind the counter now having Vietnam-style flashbacks when ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ comes on the shop radio for the 60,000th time that day?

No.

You are not ready for any of these things. Treat everything like a Secret Santa. Get drunk, go on Amazon and hope for the best. Uncle David accidentally got a 3ft dragon dildo? It’s all about the thought.

Step 2: Logistics

Where are you spending Christmas this year? Are your family selfishly requesting your presence? Do you have to leave the comfort of your own home and stay in a house with 16 other people? How are you getting your gifts there?

There is nothing more dejecting in life than trying to navigate the 10.20am out of King’s Cross with 5 suitcases filled with scented candles and a dragon dildo.

My advice would be, rent a horse for the week, they can be found in posh stables or simply requisitioned from fields outside the M25.

Step 3: Bloody Hell

What is the appropriate amount to drink over the festive period? Are you meeting the in-laws for the first time?

Maybe the best first impression isn’t you banjaxed on sherry screaming the 12 days of Christmas into a sink as you evacuate turkey from your body. The key to Christmas drinking is a solid drinking plan. Bubbly prosseco-ey nonsense first, this is light, it’s basically sparkling water with child’s booze in it. Then wine with your meal, the vast quantity of food will soak up the fermented disaster you’ve just poisoned your body with.

Step 4: Rest

It is a British Christmas tradition that you must nap during Christmas day. All the gluttony and greed is tiresome, so in a post-munchfest-haze of gravy and mulled nonsense you must pour yourself into an arm chair, and attempt to sleep whilst children surround you and complain about your general state of apathy.

Step 5: Gifts

The best bit about Christmas is giving gifts. You sit on the corner of your seat watching in anticipation as your relative picks up the badly wrapped box you have decided to get them. You watch their face as they unwrap the packaging to expose a shoe horn or an egg scaler or a cucumber stripper or some such bollocks.

You observe their dejected face as they try to arrange a sentence in their head full of positive words. You have done well. You are proud. Now it is your turn to be the centre of attention.

Don’t over-emphasise the reaction, you can’t be too humble, and you can’t be too ecstatic. You have to display the exact amount of reaction the recipient expects.

You open your gift. It’s another cucumber stripper. You cheer as if you just received a cheque for £100million pounds. Your over reaction was not subtle.

Everyone hates you now.

Step 6: Disgrace

Once gifts have been exchanged, food annihilated and carpet slightly ruined from a misguided wine glass gesture you now simply focus on one thing. Drinking.

This drinking can take place whilst watching whichever station is showing E.T for the third time this year. This drinking can occur whilst the family start the inevitable board game which will result in a low level riot. All you know is that this is the one day in the year in which you are encouraged to drink. The drunk uncle keeps topping up your glass, the children don’t understand why you are now speaking in slurs and at the volume of a jumbo jet. But you have done well. You have survived. You have chased the cat into the Christmas tree and cheated your way through a game of Articulate. All that Boxing Day has in store for you is regret, shame and a hangover than feels like your insides are made of tinsel and your brain is covered in gravy.

Get more of these brilliant insights from @TechnicallyRon in Life-Abet: An A to Z of Existence