| Suffering For My Art |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|03:44 am] |
It's 4.03 in the morning and I am reminded why living on the Northern Coast of England, maintaining a website and having dial up are incompatible. It has taken me hours to fix whatever the last updates to Moonfruit somehow swallowed - i.e most of my home page - two photographs, a form... and yank out yet more typos. (Why, oh why, doesn't it have a spell checker like e-mail and live journal?)
So I apologise to those of you who kindly visited my site a week ago and found it a wreck. It's all pretty again now, honest! (And no this is not a thinly disguised attempt to get more traffic!) There are now short stories to download - all free - two for ladies who love ladies, two for boys who love boys. All but one unpublished. (I have yet to write any hetero short stories, to my shame, I'll get right on that for you! Still, if you're broad minded enough a good tale is still as good, no?) There is even a silly game for those of you inclined to waste some time... (Alright, that is a thinly disguised attempt to get more traffic!)
Enough already! Time for some shut eye. Pleasant dreams, world. Now watch some telesales wage slave wake me up early! |
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| Writer's Block: Green-eyed monster |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|04:26 pm] |
Whether I respected or disrespected the celeb in question, if a partner of mine said that given the chance they would sleep with anyone else but me while they were dating me, they'd be out the damn door and I'd be in the market for another lover! Betrayal begins in the mind, if they're thinking about doing it, action is just the next easy step and it could be with your best friend. Dump them now, would be my advice, cos you sure couldn't trust 'em. |
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| Blowing My Own Trumpet. |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
Khimairal Ink have just released the October edition of their free e-zine. The Samhain themed issue has stories of ghosts, revenants and redemption - hence the graveyard photo on its cover - so don‘t be put off. It also happens to feature my short story The Frog Princess; or Sweet Surrender. Drop by www.bedazzledink.com to download a copy of the lesbian-centric electronic magazine.
My four publications this year, coupled with sales of the same, blogs and the influence of my new website www.traceyshellito.moonfruit.com (which just welcomed its 150th visitor) means my cachet has gone up on the search engines. Anytime I want an ego boost I Google myself and - lo and behold - I have 200 hits which actually refer to me, and my work. I have officially gone global! Websites as far a-field as India, Japan, South Africa, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the USA are all selling my stories. That feels pretty bloody awesome. It’s clearly time I got off my arse and wrote another full length novel.
The website is getting tweaked all the time to bring it closer to perfection, (and no, all those visitors aren’t me, the counter doesn’t register in edit mode!) as well as having updates and new additions. I think I have most of the kinks (and spelling mistakes) out of it now. Thanks to those of you who have sent comments and feedback, every little helps. And if anyone can think of links that should be there, or anything they would like to see which isn’t up already, please let me know.
Thank you for reading this blatant self indulgence. Normal service (i.e. opinionated ranting) will be resumed shortly. |
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| Writer's Block: So funny I forgot to laugh |
[Oct. 23rd, 2009|08:10 pm] |
People don't often tell me jokes. I have a rather odd sense of humour and they get hacked off if I don't crack a smile. (And no, I don't even pretend something is funny for politeness sake when it's not.) But I often find them laughing with me about some funny/tragic story I'm telling. I seem to be better at making other folk laugh than they are at finding my funny bone. |
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| Zombies and hot chocolate |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|10:07 pm] |
I don't usually rave about movies, and I know there will be plenty of folks that disagree with this choice, but go and watch Zombieland. I haven't laughed so much in a long time. I hate Woody Harrelson, but I made an exception for this movie. It's gorey as all get out and I have no idea how it managed to get away with a 15 certificate in the UK. (the title sequence alone should have given it an 18, these days it isn't violence that they give that rating to just sex - a thing which everybody does and is necessary to create a population - but, hey, let's not get sidetracked here.)It was total gross out and completely bad taste, un p c the works but it was really damn funny! And as the nights draw in and the wind blows down your chimney what could be better than a great horror movie and a mug of hot chocolate?
Which reminds me, time for a re-run of Blade. Think I'll go and do just that! |
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| Writer's Block: What is your muse? |
[Oct. 14th, 2009|01:43 am] |
I don't find it either enhances or impedes the creative process. When I write a short story I'm more concerned with meeting the criteria of the brief - ie what the requirements are to make the cut and get into the anthology - but as with a full length novel, the story is something that flows from ideas I've had which demand to be told. I can honestly say I've never thought about how others will react to the work while I'm creating it. It just yammers at me to get it down and write it, so hard, that I can't think about anything but telling the tale. About six thousand words later I can sit back and take a break, remember to eat, drink, go to the bathroom and re-read what I've written - THEN I might wonder what a prospective audience will think about this piece or that character. But does it affect what I write? No. If I gave a damn what anyone else thought about it, I'd probably never write another word, for fear that it wasn't perfect enough! |
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| Writer's Block: Airplane reading |
[Oct. 7th, 2009|08:50 pm] |
My books of choice for really long journeys are always horror. I've read more Clive Barker books in the air than anywhere else. Imagica, The Great & Secret Show, Jericho, Cold Heart Canyon and Weaveworld & Abarat were all read between 22 and 35 thousand feet up and maybe they were better for that. I only bother to watch the in flight movie (if I'm on a plane, of course!) if it's something I like. Otherwise I talk with my companions, play cards, listen to music and eat the awful airline food. |
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| Writer's Block: Sick day |
[Oct. 6th, 2009|12:06 am] |
Go it alone, absolutely! I hate being sick, but I hate folks seeing me sick even worse. Unless I'm really ill, I tend to go into work, or work through it at home, to take my mind off how crap I feel. But those few times I've been bed ridden I confess to feeling happier knowing there is at least one other able bodied person in the house to fetch me food, or drinks, or tablets. I HATE going to the doctor's and am more likely to phone in for a prescription to get filled at a chemist than go for an appointment. It is also my good fortune that I've never had to stay in hospital. Not bad going for 46 years of life! |
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| Making Money from Misery |
[Sep. 27th, 2009|01:57 pm] |
Much has been written lately about the idea of a National Heath Service. Obama wants one. The Canadians have about the best one and Britain's... Well people, I'm here to tell you that not only does Britain's not work it is very bloody broken.
Evidence to support my point.
If you are a junkie and your veins are completely fucked, you get a bed, rehab, fixed up and the chance to sneak outside and smoke and shoot up when your friends arrive with your fix and your family of (and this is an actual true instance) of sixteen kids with their five different mothers - none of whom have ever worked in their lives and are - like said junkie claiming unemployment benefit and have therefore never paid a penny into the system, come to visit and disrupt the ward.
If, however, you are a pensioner, have paid into the system all your life, worked until you are seventy years old, and need a hip replacement, you will be put on a waiting list which could be as long as three years, and when you finally get a coveted hospital bed and your operation is performed, get charged £4 every time you turn on the TV above your bed while your relatives get robbed (another actual true instance here) nearly £9 (approximately $18) to make a twenty minute phone call to see that you are okay because they can't manage to make it to the bus to visit you that day.
What's wrong with this picture?
While I would never think to discriminate against the legitimately poor and unemployed through no fault of their own, there don't seem to be any of them any more. The amount our welfare service pays to these indigents who just fall out of school with no qualifications and no desire to ever work, whose sole reason d'etre is to get their equally shiftless girlfriends pregnant so they can get given a council house, get £250 for every child that pops out from between their legs and have everything taken care of for them, their bills paid, rents and council tax sorted out while they play on their games consoles and get free health, dental, optical care and continue to perpetuate the cult of laziness in the next generation beggars belief.
Most of them get paid more in a week to sit on their arses doing nothing but increasing an already too big population than I get for working 40 hours a week while their idleness sucks up the money that would have been my pension and I have to work ever more years to try and bridge the gap, have to fight them for a hospital bed if I get sick and watch the country sink deeper into recession while these apathetic malingerers use us.
I begin to see Ebenezer Scrooge's point. "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Indeed.
Dear American president, don't get a National Health Service. You will be opening the door to a Welfare Service and a whole world of financial pain. |
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| Lift-off! |
[Sep. 22nd, 2009|06:12 pm] |
Following the kind words of a recent ranter to LJ, who I number among my buddies, that you don't haveta be selling fiction all the time to get your name out there, I went away and thought long and hard about what else I could do, since I am so not big on the whole blogging thing.
Then it came to me. My fan site was being dismantled and I'd been promising it long enough... So since I'm gonna have five pieces of published work out there this year (a new record for me) I have signed up with Moonfruit and after two weeks of hard work, in deepest secrecy, I have launched a new website.
A few of you lovely people will be getting an invite to look at the thing prior to it getting picked up by the likes of Google and co and I'm still playing around trying to optimise it to get it into as many search engines and databases as possible without spamming anyone. But if you are one of the unlucky few, your comments would be welcome to help me refine the camp creation before the rest of the planet find out about it.
For the rest of you it can be found at http://traceyshellito.moonfruit.com and will soon be officially open for the business of promoting me and my work. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 6th, 2009|02:38 am] |
While yours truly is once again beavering away on full length sequels and prequels to my novel Personal Protection, I am - as always - very aware of time passing and my name slipping out of the public eye. I'm not saying everyone is fickle, but certainly the next big thing often attracts more attention than the next item by someone established. So I like to keep my hand in doing other things.
Since, as a writer, I don't really have a social life, I've written a lot. Most of this stuff was just for me, but inevitably some of it finds favour with the reading public and I make the odd sale. It's always nice to find that scrap of a story, that thought you had tucked away on your hard drive has found a home. So it is with pleasure that I tell you I've just sold a work to Bedazzled Ink's e-zine Khimairal Ink and in the October issue of their free to download magazine, you'll be able to find my short story The Frog Princess: or Sweet Surrender. It's about as close to romance as this author ever gets. Those of you who used to follow my personal website will have seen an early version of this. Well, here is the official article. Enjoy. |
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| Something else to add to my CV |
[Sep. 4th, 2009|11:56 pm] |
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My copy of Velvet magazine's (www.velvetmagazine.squarespace.com/ check it out!) fifth anniversary issue just dropped through my door. This includes my double page article on lesbian detective fiction. (Thank you to all the lovely people who provided the books, series, movies and source material for this, without whom...) So I can now add "feature writer" to my CV. It's good to have skills. And for my next trick - lesbian speculative fiction maybe? |
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| Writer's Block: Doh! |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|01:32 pm] |
I DON'T MAKE A HABIT OF DOING DUMB/STUPID THINGS. I'M NOT A FOOLISH PERSON. BUT IT OCCURS TO ME THAT, EVEN IF I WERE THIS KIND OF FOOL, I WOULD BE AN EVEN BIGGER FOOL TO TALK ABOUT IT ON A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FOR EVERYONE TO READ! |
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| Fount of all Wisdom |
[Aug. 27th, 2009|09:45 pm] |
Well, I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted in my day job by another colleague searching for tips on how to get his book published today. Obviously one of the things I suggested was get blogging, so it behooved me to update after such a sweeping statement, even if I have nothing much to update you on.
Vitamin c strikes again. The infection I was incubating came to nothing packed its bags and went looking for a less healthy host for its germ-like self! And good riddance I say. So I'm not about to expire any time soon. Always a good thing.
My mom's friend is out of hospital and his kidney problem seems to be sorted out without the need for dialysis. This pleases me because, even though we are not exactly friends, any one who knows me will tell you that the last two months all I've been hearing from folks I know was bad news. It's so nice to have something good to report for a change.
Still no word from Torquere Press re: the edits of the latest anthology acceptance and it's been two months now since we exchanged contracts. Either they've lost my e-mail address again, or they are having as much difficulty marketing lesbian aimed publications as they said. Come on gals, I though we were all big readers. Get out there and buy stuff! (Especially my stuff!) I think they're on LJ somewhere, so if you're listening Shaun and co, drop me a line, please? I don't do Yahoo Groups.
Am now three-quarters done with a third play through of Mass Effect trying for the 75% renegade award and amazed to find it's easier to level up when you're being bad. I created a male character this time out with the intention of getting another guy into bed for the romance subplot only to find they wimped out and won't let you do it! Oh you can be a gal and have a relationship with another gal, but you can't be a guy and have a relationship with another guy? Do we ever know this game was written by mostly men! Still, one of the few times I'm glad to be a gal. I get to have a lesbian character in a computer game and sleep with blue skinned alien babes! Go me! Now I was always a big fan of the Splinter Cell franchise (even though they buggered things up with the operating system of Double Agent) and I'm really looking forward to Splinter Cell: Conviction. But Mass Effect has hooked me in a way no other game I've played has and I think it must be a contender for best single player computer game ever. I'm really looking forwards to spending another 150 hours of my life on Mass Effect 2. Yes, you heard that right. 150 hours. Now you know why I haven't been writing much lately. I am such a completionist. I'm trying to hit all the achievements...
But even if I am not putting fingers to keyboard much to write stuff, I am researching two of the backgrounds of characters in my current writing. As you by now realise, I'm from across the big pond in Blighty and since most of my recent sales have been in the US I have to work at getting some conviction into my American characters. I'm looking into how the fire service and SWAT work. So anyone that would like to volunteer some helpful information will get credits in any published work. Both of these epics are book length fiction, not short stories, so when I find a buyer there will be some concrete proof and a possible free copy for your assistance. Though don't hold your breath on the when. As I said to my questioner this afternoon, there are no instant fixes, getting published is as much about luck and getting your name known as writing a great book and hooking the publisher.
Wait a minute. Isn't this where I came in? |
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| Goddamit! |
[Aug. 22nd, 2009|01:27 am] |
Somebody tell me why it is that the moment I get through saying; "I don't usually come down with all those colds and infections like my friends," I get on a bus and someone sat behind me starts up with the cough of death. You know the one, the thin high-C wheeze coupled with that thick hawk and spit thing that follows. The one where you absolutely do NOT want to turn round and find out where they spat and what they spat in and you are hoping that you are far enough away that it isn't you. And glad you wore a jacket you can hose down...
Thursday, going into town to shop for food this was, and me with only my return bus ticket. (So I had no change to get off and escape exposure. You try giving a driver a £5 note for a £1 fare on the busy five o'clock route and see where it gets you!) And here I am on Friday night and I can feel the glands in my throat swelling up. I don't know what that bitch had but it sounded terminal. I am so not looking forward to this.
I wasn't boasting when I said it, honest! Only trying to point up that I usually end up prone to other things. But no, fate, karma, call it what you will, always decides to pay me back when it thinks I'm blowing my own trumpet too damn loud.
Look, I KNOW I wanted some time off work, but this is so not the way I planned for it to happen. They have such things as annual leave, ya know?
Nope. Not looking forward to this one bit.
Least if I don't die I'll get some time to play more computer games and write. Maybe.
Pity me. |
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| Writer's Block: The Right to Privacy |
[Aug. 16th, 2009|01:31 pm] |
Of course some aspects of celebrities lives should be off limits! While far from being a celebrity of the proportions you are meaning, I am an author, I do get fan mail, I do have a website and some of my life is in the public domain. I can honestly say that SOME is all I ever want it to be. You can't live your entire life in the public eye, nor should you want to. What kind of person would that make you? |
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| Judging |
[Aug. 9th, 2009|05:14 pm] |
Further to my last post; They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we’ve all done it haven’t we? (And in this instance I’m talking about real books, not the analogy of deciding what is on the inside of something by how it looks on the outside.) We take one look and we instantly know what the genre is by the typeface and the photograph, illustration or lack of the same on the front. Of course, we don’t know how good or bad what’s written inside will be, but how many times does the cover put you off buying the book when you don’t know the author or their work?
Let’s take that a step further. Not only do we judge the book by its cover, but we often judge the reader by the book. How many people see adults reading comic books and sneer at them? How often do we think someone is intelligent just because we see them reading something with a clever or complicated title?
It’s possible the front cover of my first novel allowed those who didn’t know me to judge me and put them off buying my work. (How many of you would be comfortable sitting somewhere public, or walking up to the counter, with a book displaying a clear black and white photograph of a naked pole dancer? I rest my case. I wasn‘t even out when I wrote the book, but the publishers choice of cover blew that subtlety right out of the water.)
Now my latest work appears in a cover that would be right at home beside Pride & Prejudice and Emma! You wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen reading this in public, it might even be assumed you were reading something high brow until someone got up close to see the title.
It’s an interesting ploy and one I’m not sure I applaud. (Though I have since discovered that it is in fact aimed at academic libraries for women’s studies and so forth. Go, me! Soon to be the subject of college courses!) It may lead to new readers who wouldn’t normally wish to be seen in public reading the more lurid covers our work occasionally attracts, or those scrappy art house illustrations from independent presses, which say cheap pulp novel loud and clear. (Not that there is anything wrong with pulp fiction, some of my favourite stuff could be categorised this way. We’re talking about the majority of the great unwashed perception, here. I know folks who won’t buy anything unless it’s in hard back!)
In light of this, perhaps it’s time we took a look at the covers we as authors allow to go out on our work and how it must be affecting our sales. With the growing Internet phenomenon of downloadable work, electronic covers are largely irrelevant, but on the paper and board covers we still buy and stock our shelves with, it matters a great deal. While few of us can afford an expensive bookbinder to make our novels look like part of an expensive library, a fresh look at how we allow ourselves to be packaged might not go amiss.
And to those of us who are the buyers of books or also the buyers of books, I ask look twice at that unpleasant book cover and read a few samples of the text before you walk away. We don’t always have any control over how our books are covered. You may just find some hidden treasure or new friend in its dubious clad pages. In much the same way we find joy in our sometimes outrageously clad real world friends. |
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| No Good Deed... |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|08:29 pm] |
...Goes unpunished they say, and once again I suspect whoever coined this phrase had some kind of hot-line to fate.
I've been re-purposing a room and in the process came across a pile of unfinished cans of house paint. I hate to waste anything and I hate to kill the environment, so since our back garden was in need of a little TLC - the summerhouse and the whitewashed walls starting to look shabby and in need of some weatherproofing, I volunteered my paint to the effort of sprucing up and repairing. Well, this Sunday was the big day so I went and did my duty and boy am I paying for in now.
Windburn. Only in the UK! My back looks like a raspberry, my legs ache from having stood around so long, my right knee joint keeps complaining. Hell, I really must be getting old and out of shape. And now that monthly annoyance has come along to add insult to injury. My life is complete!
On the plus side, I have just received my pay cheque and comp copy of my latest appearance in print with Bedazzled Ink Press, in Best Lesbian Fiction 2008. The Impressionist painting on the front cover makes it look like a Jane Austin; you know, the kind of thing that was required reading in schools. Which considering my own tale and at least four others I am personally acquainted with from Haunted Hearths (which readers of this occasional column may remember I gave such high praise to not so long ago) made me howl with laughter.
And suddenly, though I'm in pain, I feel so much better. |
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| Late |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|01:11 am] |
I just realised that I haven't posted for over three weeks and the first time I do it is a post on the writers block about food. This seems remarkably sad to me. Yet the main stumbling block for me when it comes to regular blogging is still that I just don't think my life is interesting enough than anybody would want to hear about it.
With the possible exception to the retired, the indigent, the sick and those who are school age and younger I have a yawn-making day job that puts food on the table and for the pittance I am usually paid I write in what spare time I can find. I don't go anywhere particularly exciting, I don't do anything particularly different to anyone else. I just get on with the process of living, yet we are told as writers that our public want to know about us as much as our work. That we need to put ourselves put there in order to sell our books. This is all fine and dandy, but if I do that when is there time to actually write the work I'm supposed to be selling?
At what point did publishers make it a writer's business to promote themselves and pay for that? Why did we fall for this con and whose fault was it, because I'd really love to give them a punch in the kisser! I don't need to be feted at every turn and given telephone number salaries (though admittedly the salary part would be nice) but I would like my publishers to spend a bit of money promoting my work and bigging me up (and in the case of anthologies, my fellow collaborators too) so that folks would know the books were out there and might go and buy a copy without me having to tell my (admittedly small) group of acquaintances I've written something. Maybe they'd like to go and buy a copy, please? Grovel, grovel, creep creep crawl crawl. I mean, much as your mates like you, they are the ones who expect to have the free copies! There's a recession on after all!
Now to be fair, I don't have this problem so much with my American publishers, since I cannot, after all, be expected to hop on a plane and promote a work which is giving the grand total of $50 for my contribution no matter what they net. But the publishers here expect you to drag your ass round every bookstore you can find and try to talk them into taking your work, expect you arrange your own transport to conventions and pay to participate in them, then want you to go on a panel and talk about the subject matter in general rather than your own work and not pay you for the appearance. Oh and pay for your accommodation as well, while giving you 20% of whatever they make on your book - less how much it cost them to publish it - not 20% of the cover price. And all without the benefit of a single advert in a newspaper, magazine, local radio (or anywhere in fact) to push the work.
People, I used to BE in advertising. To sell enough to make a profit takes a hefty stake in advertising. Your first work is probably going to sell at a loss because your name/brand is unknown. But you recoup that in subsequent sales, because you are no longer the new kid on the block. Even businesses know better than to think they'll turn a profit in the first three years, that's why they get tax breaks. So why should publishing work by a new author be any different? Yet how often do publishers put their money behind unknowns to sell their work? Instead they stupidly mount massive advertising campaigns around the heavy hitters who are already selling well. Talk about wasting money! These people already have fans buying their work! It isn't going to make them buy two copies! But the existing fans and mass saturation of the book in your local bookstore and library will still guarantee sales to new buyers because the shelves are full of nothing else!
Now I don't know how it's done everywhere else, and thankfully I am not in this for the money, (I'd have lost my home and died of starvation long since, otherwise) but if I'd have known all this when I began on the road to publishing my first novel, I would have very seriously considered paying a vanity press to publish my book, giving away to folks I thought would like it and saying 'forget it' to the publishers who wanted my book.
Every so often I get dispirited when I think of the hoops I have to jump through when all want to do it write the stories. It jams me up creatively because I am set to wondering whether it's all worth it. Then I get a letter or an e-mail from a fan and I give myself a mental kick in the pants, tell myself to stop whining, grit my teeth and get on with the after sales part. But it doesn't make the doing of it any easier.
It's not a glamorous life to be a mid-lister or just have a small fan base and sell a few hundred books. We have lives very like our fans. So when you lovely people write to me and wonder why I'm not blogging, just picture me doing the same stuff that you do until my next sale comes along and wonder no more. I promise to write as often as I can find something interesting and germaine to write about. But it won't be as often as everyone else, and now you know why. |
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| Writer's Block: Leave Room |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|01:09 am] |
Heinz steamed chocolate pudding with thick chocolate custard. Now ask me when I last ate this? Over five years ago. Now that's what I call self discipline! |
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