The Realm of Katherine Vick

Note: I am reduxing this blog in honour of a kind lady I have been alerted to whose lovely reviews of my books on a Facebook reading group have resulted in a small flurry of sales. I'm very, very grateful to her. :) ------  I like reviews. Anyone who knows me from my fanfiction days will know that. I’m happy to admit it. It’s an odd feeling, but a nice one, that little buzz of validation from a total stranger, often living hundreds of miles away. It is someone you will probably never meet and never know but yet they have taken the time and trouble to spare a few words to make your day. They  like your writing . And for someone of an insecure and anxious disposition, that makes a massive difference. Writing is an odd pursuit in that most of the time it is done in total isolation. And much like those hopeful youngsters singing in their bedrooms before applying for The Voice or X-Factor, a writer can never really be sure if they are actually any good at it until they sling their ...

  Be More Dullard You may have noticed – to be fair it is hard not to – that I often use this blog to vent my frustrations at the state of the world in which we live. I’ve never tried to hide it – I ain’t subtle and have long been prone to a bit of ranting now and again in an effort to express my inner exasperation at what is going on around me. What I also hope people have noticed – if not, I may have been too subtle, though somehow I doubt it! – is how much of that frustration also worked its way into my novels, in a wide range of forms that it would probably take a skilled literary analyst a number of years to tease out but a member of my close circle who knows me well will spot in about ten seconds. I have been told by those in the know that my books positively reek of me.   But rather than wait for some miraculous and highly unlikely time when someone will consider my books worth analysing or indeed pull them apart for you myself, I shall say this – if there is one t...

  Note: Totally forgot to post anything this month, mostly due to some appallingly poor service from a business incapable of fulfilling the basic function of moving an item successfully from their warehouse to my home without damaging it - three times. Therefore this redux seemed appropriate... On Treating People as Things It's another serious one - I'm afraid I am quite cross with the state of the world at the moment. Sorry folks... As I recently quoted in my blog on AI, a character of the late, great Terry Pratchett once said - “Evil begins when you treat people as things.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Indeed, I’ve thought about it a lot over many years, as anyone who has read my book may have noticed, given treating people as commodities who exist only to serve a purpose for others is one of its major themes. But as I said in my blog on AI, when I stated I feared it would be used to enhance man’s inhumanity to man, in this modern age, the idea of a person as ...

 Life continues to batter me, alas so it is a redux once again. And although I only posted this one last year, I think it is important to say it again. The Importance of Thinking Twice We live in a reactionary world. That’s simply the way it is now. Someone says something or does something and around the world people React. They get quite fervent in their reactions and the reaction builds and then suddenly it becomes a Thing. But I do wonder how many of these Things would not develop in the way they do at all if people just stopped and thought twice . Because it isn’t the first thought you have that matters. It’s the second . The great Sir Terry Pratchett has beaten me to this insight, of course, in his Tiffany Aching books. But I shall do my best to clumsily articulate it all the same. Our first reaction to anything is instinct. It’s born of our culture, our upbringing, our influences, our religion, even deep, primal emotions – it’s the thought that comes without even think...