Alice Cooper

Sunday, 4th of December 2022

Peter Germany Cat, Editing, Horror, Horror Writer, Music, Nanowrimo, Writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Good evening, folks! How are we all doing?

My post NaNo world has been much of the same, just with a slightly lower intensity. I’m at about 3700 words for the month on my NaNo project, I still have no idea how this first book is going to wrap up, but it’s fun working my way through it. I do need to transfer what I’ve got into Scrivener, but I don’t think that’s too much of a priority for this coming week.

I will still be working on the NaNo book, this is now a primary focus for me, but I still have to get the vampire book ready to be published on my Ko-Fi page. I could do it monthly, but I’d like to get it all done and dusted and scheduled for one story a month on my Welcome To My Nightmare tier. I’m trying to be better organised, and having this scheduled will be one thing I won’t have to worry about.

That’s what I’m going to be working on alongside with the NaNo project for the next couple of weeks.

Photo dump from the last few days ☺️

9th of December 2018

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I didn’t get the early start that I wanted to today but I still had a decent days writing, albeit it a slow day’s writing. I went out for a few hours with my folks, which involved a good forty-five minutes to an hour in a car both ways. So I managed to get about 800 words done then. Once I was home I flaked out for a little while and then wrote a blog post looking at my NaNoWriMo which you can find here. I should have written it sooner but my heads not been in it recently and I wouldn’t have done it justice.

Back to the words though. I did crack on slowly while watching some movies in the background and ended the day with 1218 words total on PE3. Today is the first day this month I’ve hit my 1200 word (per day) target. I am thinking I’ve got a slight NaNo hangover, but a few life events have popped up that haven’t helped. But hopefully this has helped get back in the rhythm of what I want to do with this story. I can see the path I need to take and I just need to sit down and get stuck into the journey to the end of this novel.

One thing I need to do is get better at the self promotion stuff. I was invited to contribute to the Ginger Nuts of Horror look at the works of the legend that is Alice Cooper. I was quick to nab the album Trash, you can read the post here. I was really excited to write this post. Trash is the album that made me fall in love with Alice Cooper’s work and I had a lot of fun writing this post and felt very honoured to be including in this look back at Alice Cooper. So please check it out, and the other posts in Alice In Summerland.

I was also interview by The Bold Mom website and boy was it fun to actually be interviewed. After it went live I realised that I hadn’t really done an interview like this before and Mar Garcia did an amazing job putting this interview together. You can read it here. I’ve just read through the interview again and it really is a beautifully put together piece. I know I’m a touch biased but Mar really does go above and beyond with what she does with authors and I can’t wait to work with her again in the future.

Please do check out those links. Both were a lot of fun to do. I’m gonna call it a night now and watch a movie.

NaNoWriMo 2018- Day Ten

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After A slow start I hit the word count and rolled past it to 2074 for a total of 22680 words  for NaNo.

I didn’t get much else done today. I finished up about 2pm sort of time and then did some gaming (I wrapped up Gears Of War: Judgement). I do want to get stuck into PE3 again, but that can wait for December if need be.

It has been somewhat of a lowkey day if I’m honest. I am happy I passed 2k again. I’m still three days ahead which I think will start dropping off once I’m back at work next week. I’d really like a 3k day tomorrow to up that buffer a bit more but I’ll see how that goes. I am hosting a Write-In tomorrow which should push those numbers up a little.

I forgot to mention yesterday but I had an article published on The Gingernuts of Horror website as part of their Alice In Summerland series. This series looks at the works of Alice Cooper and my contribution focuses on his album, Trash. Please go over and check it, and the rest of the series out.

June 1st 2018

Peter Germany Horror, Music , , , ,

I’ve not done any writing today. I wasn’t planning on doing too much to be honest but I did do a little pimping for the announcement of The Ginger Nuts of Horror summer series, Alice in Summerland.

This series looks at the career of the one and only Alice Cooper, and I am one of the contributors. I am very much looking forward to reading this look at one of the iconic musicians of the last few decades.

Please click the link and have a look at what you’re in line for. The line up of contributors for Alice In Summerland is pretty epic! I’m proud to be part of that line up.

Looking At Influences

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I was talking about how reading can influence how I write in my last post and it got me thinking about deeper influences that affect not only my writing but also who I am.  When I was a kid, and I mean pre-teen, I listened to a couple of Alice Cooper albums and Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman’s Bat Out Of Hell II : Back Into Hell and the Alice Cooper stuff really left an impression on me.  Now I can’t remember the albums that they were, aside from Trash.  My brother had these albums and I think one of them is Lost In America.  What I remember is the vibe coming from some of the songs.  One in particular had the line “We fight, because we’re not on the same side”  That one line has really stuck with me in the twenty odd years since that I heard it and it is something that I think brings down the concept that your enemy could have been your friend if they, or you had been born somewhere else.

Another great song he did was one where he is talking about being the monster in the closet and under the bed which fascinate me as its pushing our fears into our heads.  Alice Cooper writes music which slams our nightmares into our minds as we’re awake.  I must start buying his albums and getting the collection.

Where am I going with all this you may be wondering.  Cooper’s music has a real sinister edge to it and I cant help but wonder how much that has been ingrained into me as a person.  Some of what I write is very dark, some of it scares me if I’m honest but I think it has a sinister edge to it.

Just some of the ideas alone have properly sat with me, I have a story about two soldiers from different sides who realise that they are not what they thought the other would be.

With the Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman music I don’t think that it has sunk so deeply into me but it is definitely there.  Just the concept of Hell being in the title and the imagery struck me strongly and I will write a story with Angels and demons in one day (I have a great idea for it) I think I took from this music the enormity and theatrics.  This music really tells some really good stories which, again have stuck with me.  Objects In The Rear View Mirror Appear Closer Than They Are is still one of my favourite songs ever!

Another song that I cant help but think had an effect on me is Gangsters Paradise by Coolio.  Some of the lyrics in this song are very powerful and still sit with me.

I’m in danger of listing every song that has a line that struck a chord with me here so I’m going to try to get to my summary.

All of this has left a lasting mark on me.  It is these things that we have around us when we are young that we absorb and it stays with us for life and is part of who we are.  So if we are of a creative mentality then it will come out in what we create in some way.  That could be in the same mould or totally opposite to what we had around us.  I remember Ozzy Osbourne saying that he was inspired By The Beetles and although I am not an authority on either The Beetles or Ozzy Osbourne I would never put them in the same musical genre.

At the end of the day though I say that if you have an idea, just write and see where it goes 🙂