Holiday!

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

So I mentioned a trip to the seaside, and we went to see some sights in Selsey. Which is a new little area of the UK to me, and bloody hell it is a cute little place.

We had lots of fun in a self catering little cabin thingy just relaxing to be honest. We went on daily trips to the shops and got to do some very out of fashion things that you don’t do in the city. We went to a butchers shop, which was a strange new adventure for us. I think we struggled with the amount of choice we had each day.

On our first day after arriving we had a kebab take away I admit but most of the time we cooked. We made a pie the first day to kick it all off. I think that is why I got back into the idea of cooking again. I even made a brisket for the first time ever which I found really exciting and it was really easy. We made pastry twists for puddings and we had lamb chops and it all just felt fresher, even though we often cheated for lunch and had a pot noodle, it was a quick solution after a trip back from the swimming pool when we were starving. Sure I still can’t swim but I had lots of fun trying, and often floating was some of the most fun.

I really enjoyed the trips to the shops and our little routine. We even broke the routine a little and went down to East Beach and had our first ever crab melt panini for breakfast (late breakfast) discovered that crab melt panini’s are very very filling. We saw the life boat station and the boat, which was bigger than we expected …

As you can see there were some cool views and ducks and some very yummy drinks. The other half loved the cold water and I got to relax and sit down for a while. The drinks that you can see was a coffee frape thing and mine was a bubblegum millions flavour milk shake that we had on our first day trip to the shops exploring, which was actually a really delicious drink if I am honest but very sugary!

We saw some gorgeous cottages and fell in love with some of the architecture. There was a really cute shop with a really nice lady inside who made her own jewellery, I got a couple of rose rings made from wire. I haven’t got any pics of those yet. Oh and I made three trips to a knitting shop in the town which I thought was brilliant. I think I will make a post dedicated to that later.

It was a wonderful week, we spent the evenings either trying to annihilate each other playing Mario Kart or watching The 100.

I wish we could rewind time a little and go back on holiday again, it was really great quality time just enjoying each others company. It gave us time to get into a nice rhythm and relax in a really chilled way. I like the peace and quiet and the time away from the day-to-day routine, I think it really helped to give me some more direction in a way. Getting that space showed me the kind of future I wanted and what it was I wanted to do. I really want to pursue a vocation over the idea of a career. I want to feel like my work is my passion, and I think writing is one of those really big passions.

The One Year Anniversary- What happened?

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

Well it was a bit of a business first kind of morning, I had to go to the doc’s to get some more meds for migraines but after that, well the adventure begun… ish.

We got home still in our giddy excited engaged bubble and we played Mario Kart, which you know, being a competitive sport could have ended it all very badly. But it was fun. We are both mega competitive with it but boy was it fun. We watched some bits and bobs on the telly and played more Mario Kart.

Got washed and dressed for the evening and hung out and chatted and took the engagement ring photo….

I am engaged! I still cant believe it

I don’t think I could be more excited to be his future Mrs!

But yes… after that and trying to not make my hands look super weird… we used a gift tag and Harry Potter bed sheets from Primark…

So the evening portion of the day we went to the restaurant from our very first official date date. Mangetsu, which does a combi of Chinese and Japanese. We had their yummy buffet menu and managed to demolish : 2 orders of Pork Gyoza, an order of duck, bbq ribs, 2 orders sweet and sour chicken, chicken noodles, egg fried rice, chicken katsu sushi rolls and prawn tempura sushi rolls… I think that was all of it. And bloody hell was it delish!

After eating a substantial dinner we decided to walk part the way home to find a Mary Berry chocolate cake which we discovered was a Sainsburys thing only which meant we had a couple of wasted run rounds other shops but that’s ok. Oh and we must have tried nearly four or five different corner shops/news agents to find a specific kind of Iron Bru that we had on the way home on our first official date date too. Lots of nostalgia. We eventually found it by sheer determination on the very last chance on our way home and picked up a couple of bottles of BLUE Iron Bru… I think it is bubble gum? Either way- the blue stuff is yum!

We got home and got everything ready upstairs blue drinks and all, we even cut a couple of slices of the Chocolate cake and popped them in the microwave for ten seconds to have hot choccy cake and we sat there in our pjs and watched the Great British Bake Off…

It was a perfect day!

I said yes!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

As you can see I am super excited to share with you my engagement….

It still feels wildly like a dream!

And that doesn’t surprise me… He and I have very different ideas of how it happened… mainly because he was 100% awake when he asked me and I was dosing off!

Can you believe it! On the night before our one year anniversary!!!!

So I asked him to do something for me, I asked him to write it as he remembered it. This is what he wrote for me:

We were cuddling up together watching Aristocats falling half asleep and I asked “how would you like to fall asleep and wake up next to me for the rest of your life?” You said “yes” with a big cute smile on your face and then I said “Ok in that case will you marry me?” You shot back and said “really?” I said “Yes really” and you said “yes” then I said “you better have this then” showed you the ring and asked again (Just to be sure) and you said yes.

 

Wanna know what I remember?

I remember closing my eyes and listening to the Aristocats cuddled up in his arms dozing a little bit and just feeling very blissed and happy and tired. When he asked me if I would like to fall asleep and wake up next to him for the rest of my life I had no idea what he was up to so I said yes without even opening my eyes. I think I must have opened them a bit because he moved away a smidge and asked me if would marry him and I couldn’t have been more surprised, hence my “really?” which was probably more a “really?!?!?!” or at least that is how it would have looked in my head. When he said “yes really” I didnt think twice for saying yes. I was wide awake and then he gave me the ring, I don’t remember him asking a second time, I just put that ring on and that was that. Wide awake and way too excited to sleep for hours. So I got out his present from in the cupboard that I had stashed there for this exact reason. Gave it to him and watch him get frustrated at 3 layers of wrapping paper, because you know, I am nice like that. He got a bow tie to learn to tie and his face did that super cute thing when he smiles which just grew even more when he saw his Toy Story “Woody” doll. Which made him even more excited when he found out that Woody Talks.

Safe to say it was an amazing night. A brilliant engagement. A frustrating proposal because my memory is a bit patchy until the part where I get super excited. But still very happy. Was a brilliant anniversary day too… But that will come in another post.

The Diary of Elliot Parker

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

 

My name is Elliot Parker. Except it’s not. And you have known for a very long time.

This was my diary, not private thoughts, not all true and not all false. Some of it, was so very, very real. And you knew that.

I hope that was ok with you.

I started this with the hopes I would be able to deliberately create the life I thought I wanted. When I started I thought happiness came from a toxic relationship that was a cycle of heartbreak and never being enough. I thought that Clover was a good friend at the start, well ok at least, I thought we were trying to make life better and more fun for each other. She just seemed to want to see me keep to that cycle of not enough and being hurt all the time pursuing a relationship that hurt more than it healed. Our friendship cycled in and out of break ups and make ups. When it comes to Clover I think that she will keep her pattern of behaviour because it brings her the attention she wants. But I don’t think it will work so effectively anymore. I am done being abused by someone who has no genuine desire to see me happy. She reminds me now too much of my mother, who I rarely speak of at all, not on here, I save that for my therapist. I wish Clover the best.

I wish Adrian luck in his “not a relationship” and I hope he at least learned from the past, I know I did. I thank him for the experience and for the past that was shared. The good the bad and the ugly taught me what it was I really wanted and what I actually deserved.

I am thankful that I still have a best friend and brother like Hal after all these years. I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart for being the best friend I could have asked for, I want to thank him for years of friendship and fun. It’s been over ten years and I am still the luckiest for having such a wonderful, kind, supportive friend and I hope you have the best life, because you deserve it.

I want to thank Dyl for coming into my life. I want to thank him for showing me a healthy relationship, that love doesn’t have to hurt. I want to thank Dyl for so many things, that to list them would take an eternity but I appreciate every one of them. You showed me a new life, a happy one. One where heart-breaking times were something I could live through with someone so wonderful, strong and supportive by my side. Someone who just made life wonderful just by existing. Thank you so very much for being a part of my life, even if I fought how I felt at the start, I am so glad I stopped fighting and just let life change and grow and become all that it could be.

So while The Diary of Elliot Parker has had moments of pure anger, heartbreak and true pain; it has had the most wonderful moments of revelation. This diary has had some incredible moments of happiness and it hasn’t exactly been a “story” as such, it has been a diary or journal or whatever you call it. It had no beginning, middle or end structure. It had one thing in common throughout, me. I have been finding out who I am and experimenting with that and now I know, like I really know who I am and what I want it gave me the clarity to be able to choose and decide on what I needed to do to pursue a healthy happy life.

So to all those who have read some of my cringing disasters and some of my least favourable qualities and decisions. I apologize but I thank you. Without the bad decisions I probably wouldn’t have found out what it is I wanted to be, who I was. I had lost my identity. I know who I am now. I got to choose myself deliberately working out what made me feel good, what was best for me. Perhaps by reading some of my mistakes it will save you the trouble of making them for yourself.

I am making healthier decisions now about my future. One of those decisions, has been that I will be closing the book on this story. This for the foreseeable future is the end of The Diary of Elliot Parker. This is goodbye for Elliot Parker.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I have learned so very much and grown, hopefully very much too. I hope I have changed massively from the Elliot Parker who wrote that very first sentence.

This is goodbye from me; I hope you live the best life.

The Diary of Elliot Parker is OUT NOW here is the link for Ninety-One to One hundred and Twenty!  

And if you want the whole collection in one neat and tidy book, here is the link for the Complete Collection! OUT NOW!!!

The New Project update… again

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

So no luck on an agent so far, I have had rejections back but I am hoping that tide will change. I am still writing it, so maybe once it is done I will stand a better chance at getting published though I wouldn’t object to getting the second one under way. I just don’t know what to do for the best, in terms of writing here.

Like I understand my hesitation and my holding back can’t be much fun to read but at the same time I don’t know if the project is ready to hit here yet. So I think until I feel prepared and certain and have my answers I am going to have to start being a bit more creative with my posts.

I suppose I would like to know what you want to see so perhaps send me a tweet or comment or something. To be honest, I would love to get a little feedback.

I have to admit, eight years ago when I first took pen to paper- literally because that is how this all started, I never imagined it would ever be as confusing as this. Knowing what is right and what will work for you? No one gives you a magic formula and says this will work for you, trust it. No one even knows for a long time. It took a long while before I was ready to even admit I was a writer. I was in some kind of closet so to speak. In my day to day, when I began writing, I felt worse than trapped and worse than helpless. And now I look back at it I can see how much writing freed me.

While I escaped from some horrors in my life, or admitted to them in a way that I couldn’t say out loud, writing became a passion, more than just my therapy. So it has always been that wildly personal thing. Admitting that I am a writer when I meet people is difficult. If you asked me right now “what is my job?” I don’t think writer would be the first thing out my mouth, I would probably respond with I work in a supermarket. That is something I want to change. I want to be confident and assured enough in my self that I can say, “I am a writer” without any hesitation. It sounds like I have a complex, because when I write, when I sit down and pull open a blank page, that is the only time I feel confident, when I let the words flow, it makes sense. But when I stop and I go back to being me, I don’t feel that confidence, I don’t have that self assurance, sure I am better than I used to be, but there is a way to go to where I want to be.

So I suppose going from hiding my very personal thoughts to exposing them here, of all places, the world wide web, it is a strange experience. To then go from that to actively trying to get a publisher or agent, that is when things got scary and harder. I suppose to a degree the rejection lead me to a point where I realized I have to really truly start committing 100%. Committing 100% and working and trying to remain vaguely sane, that is a balance I haven’t quite achieved yet.

I want to do better and be better as a writer, and I have come on a very long way from the first stories that I wrote (Breathing Smog, Darling Daughters, Counting Corvids). Even the difference over time of how The Diary of Elliot Parker changed. I know I have grown with it, learning what I want to achieve and how to do it. I just want to sort of feel the rhythm and the path I am on is bringing the goal of being a published author- by a company and not on my own back. It can be a very lonely thing some times, being a writer. I suppose that is what makes the rejection a bit more of a hit to getting more writing done. But at the same time I know it is not impossible.

Nothing is impossible.

May luck and adventure be on your side.

ARA

xxx