Alys Prince

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Alys Prince

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Doubling up of stories

On the Author Page - three stories are listed twice (Cry Baby) (Why can't I be like other Girls) (Catalogue Shopper).
Can this be fixed?

On the Stories List page - these three are short of details and are about 2,000 short on their reader count from when this data disappeared in March. What can be done about this. I suspect that other authors who added stuff in March have the same problem.
Love AlysP

Message to You Alys9

Did You Get it This Time ?
It is not so easy to pick out points, but I will try:

1. Being CONFIDENT - his/her showing confidence was a big step for your main character, but it was more than just that. I remember when I was about 11 - 12 and my breasts began to bud, I was picked on and bullied by the boys and giggled at by the girls until an unhelpful visit with my mother to the family GP ( there was only one in the whole area) led to our discussing what to do, finally in a grown-up way. We went over what we both wanted from each other. My Mum was a concert pianist before she had me. My Dad was unwell and frequently had to go back into hospital - he had been a professional soldier in India, and before WW2 was moved to Germany because of his ability to speak a variety of German, and his experience in India had included his being disguised as a native and mingling with various groups to find out what they really thought of the British, as various movements were developing with demands for more independence from British Domination. Once there he was sent from the British occupied Rhineland, over to the SE to Muenchen. to listen to and assess what risks if any there were from an obscure demagogue called Adolf Hitler, who was said to be rousing the rabble, it was reported. My Dad's German had a lot of Yiddish in it, but he said that this strange little man had an even worse dialect than Dad's - he came from Austria it seemed, and Dad reported back that the man was mad, but dangerous because he somehow raised the crowd's emotions to a fever with his strange aura. Dad was a trained Marksman, who had picked off Afghans on India's North-West Frontier when they tried to shoot British Guards on the Kyber Pass. Dad offered to return to Munich and eliminate him. The response from the big bosses back in Britain was surprising. He was ordered back to Britain, taken to White Hall, a Politician and a top army officer were there and he was really ripped off ! He had his stripes (rank) taken away (they let him keep his medals) and he was dismissed from the Army. When one thinks about this response, one can see why they reacted like this - Britain was still trying to recover from WW1, there was NO interest from the public nor the military in another war with the Germans, so soon after 1918. Britain had well over a million men out of work and a vast empire scattered over 5 continents to hold and protect. He was able to get a job as a Labourer in a flour mill, and as that did not pay very much he worked in his spare time painting and decorating peoples' houses and flats for them. And so he met my Mother, who had had a very big argument with her father and left home to live with her "Big Granny", whose house was being decorated, inside and out, by the man who became my Father.

I was very interested in music and learned to play piano from a young age, from my Mummy and later I had a private music teacher too. Now, when the WW2 began we were living in East London, in an appartment we sub-let from a couple who rented a whole house. Dad has been promoted ro being a shift foreman at the mill. The Germans sent huge numbers of aircraft filled with bombs to spread fear and panic among the people of London, expecting a quick surrender. The war (and it was the UK who declared war on Germany, by the way!) was very unpopular among the working class people. Winston Churchill, who became the Prime Minister, decided that by putting anti-aircraft guns right there among the huge housing estates, any damage done by the bombing would make the public angry enough that they would be ready enough to take up arms against the Enemy, and in this he was successful. Unfortunately a lot of children and mothers were getting killed and injured though, so it was decided to evacuate as many as possible. Before this happened to US though, the house we lived in was hit and I had to be dug out of the rubble at age 2. My parents were giving a concert at the local pub, and the other couple who lived there were supposedly 'keeping an eye on me' that night. I do still have a slight injury to my left leg but otherwise I have no visible injuries.

2. You are very bright, This is absolutely essential for you to write anything worth reading. The odd typing error does occur, but by the time you get into selling printed versions of all your books, like Tanya Allen does, you will be able to hire editors, proof readers, and all that. Although it is now within our reach that we could be building computers without keyboards, that we just talk to and they print it for us, checking the spelling and avoiding mis-typing events.

3. It is very important to have read a lot in order to gain the breadth of experience that enables one to write well. If one wanted for example to write a novel in which a couple travel from the UK to N America, then to New Zealand and Australia, it is very difficult to make it all seem real unless one is familiar with those places because one has been there, and not just as a tourist, or at least one has read a great deal about the geography, geology, history, climate, economy, anthropology, and oecology of the places one writes about, It helps a lot if one learns to read long before going to school, as in even the most advanced and civilized countries, most of what children get at school is indoctrination into the preferred attitudes and behaviour patterns of the currently-dominant class or group of adults who are in control of running the country, or the class to which it has been decided you should fit into. Thus in most countries there will be a lot of religious instruction, the local economical hypotheses will be emphasised, what is regarded as proper etiquette will be emphasised, current modes of dress promoted and expected... You can
follow the pattern I illustrate here I am sure.

4,I had an Uncle, who was married to a younger sister of my Mother, who did not join the army even when he was ordered to (WW2 was fought mostly by people CONSCRIPTED into the military, on both sides - as he taught me to put it, by Slave Armies. This was also true for WW1, as soon as it became evident that people were not getting drunk then volunteering to go in any more. Uncle Bill was a composer. He was slim and slightly effeminate, did not have robust health. As a "conscientious objector" he was forced to go down and dig coal in the coalmines, but his lungs could not take the dust and he was invalided out. The Authorities put him in prison to try to get him to change his mind but he would not, so in the end he was let loose and allowed to do office work for a trade union.

It all happened one Sunday afternoon. The Sunday "Newspaper" had just come through the door of the cottage, formerly a stable, in the village that we were now living in, Daddy had been called back into the army, and Uncle Bill and his wife, Mum's sister Irene, was sorting through some second-hand clothes for her. My Mum was expecting a baby so needed some bigger ones. Uncle Bill was reading out of the "News of the World" a Sunday paper that actually had almost NO NEWS in it, but it did have lots of what the grown-ups in this gathering called "Scandal".

*(This paper recently ceased being published after a big discovery that its reporters tapped peoples' phones and did all sorts of criminal things to get the scandals they used to fill up their paper and wreck the lives of their victims.)

I remember still to this day, hearing my Uncle reading out to my Mother "It says here that.... " My little ears went up and I rottered over to him and asked "Where does it say that?" and he showed me. "This is writing, these and these are all words. follow my finger and say after me ..."

... and in that afternoon it was my first opening of the window of my curiosity about printed words, and how one read them. In one afternoon my dear Uncle Bill taught me how to read. I was only three years old, but I walked over a mile to the nearest public library, went in and asked for a library ticket like he suggested, the librarian was dubious about me being able to read but let me show her I could, she was then delighted and gave me a ticket, and I was allowed to take up to 3 books at a time home with me. Like you have also discovered, once one can read one can learn ANYTHING, as much as one wishes to learn, about everything that has been written about. The point is, find an exceptional adult that will treat one like a grown-up, and who can help one.

5. Learn to play a musical instrument.

Well Dear One, there it is. 5 points.

But have you noticed, they are all in your story already. You dont NEED help Dear. you have it all already !

If you managed to, thanks for reading all this !

Briar

Briar