Dim's Write Stuff

Take one fluffy, scruffy, undersized excuse of a dog, add a love struck teenage boy desperate for a dog to love and bit of female recognition of the human kind, mix it up with a dopey best mate and one granny who’s lost her marbles and the creature you’ll end up with is My Zombie Dog . My Zombie Dog is Queensland author, Charmaine Clancy’s first self-published novel for young readers but not her first encounter with zombie-type dogs like, Fossil, the lead non-living character in this quirky little tale. Zane is the main living character whose one desire for his 14 th Birthday is to receive his very own dog. The kind of dog a boy his age would be proud to run around the block with; a Rotty or even a Border Collie. What he ends up with thanks to his well-meaning but slightly askew mother, is a mutt too large to be a rat, and too small to be a werewolf, but as repulsive as both. And this dog is apparently not well. It promptly drops dead before Zane has a chance to blow out his birthd...

News Flash ~ You've got just two more days before the international release of Charmaine Clancy's   newest book   My Zombie Dog . Zombie Dog promises gore, humour and insanity on a canine level and is aimed at our sometimes gory, often silly and verging on insane, tween market. But before sales go crazy on the 1st of March , I managed to pull Charmaine aside to a quite corner of the cemetery and find out a bit more about this exciting new Queensland kids author. Here's what I discovered: 10 Things you didn't know about Charmaine Clancy and Zombies 1. This is your debut release. How long have you been writing for? Tried and failed to write novels many times in my youth. What I didn't know then is imagination is not enough, I needed to LEARN the right skills. About 4 years ago, at Uni, I came across a classmates blog; Amy from Ink-Fever. Amy was making her writing a priority. This motivated me to get stuck in and see a novel through to the end.   2. Why ...

Charmaine Clancy's Blogfest, Imagination Sparks , has jolted me into blogging action this week. OK I can't offer an exercise everyday thus illustrating why I need to exercise (my creative brain) more. So here is my BOOSTING CREATIVITY EXERCISE. It involves no arithmetic, very few scientific formulas, and your favourite snack can be easily incorporated into the routine. Step 1: Understand Your Mind I'm not 100% certain but I reckon the mind's capacity to take in and store data has got to be pretty huge; at least 1 Tbs worth. At least it feels like that some days in my head. And often all that info forms into a thick claggy cloud of bewilderment, stress and inactivity. Step 2:  Hit the Shut Down Button You need to do this to avoid data overload. De frag, reorganise, unclutter, minimise. Call it what you will just don't fill up your precious head space with anything for a while. If this means missing the social pages so be it. The world will get on without y...