Morning all.

I've been on the internet for somewhere around twenty years now. Blogs didn't exist back then, but web pages did and I was putting myself out there from the start of AOL's fledgling 2Mb web space for each user. I have numerous web sites, blogs and all sorts.

From the book site, I'm here now because of my bad experience of GoodReads which is now owned by Amazon and is denying sales traffic to competitors, including publishers own sites. Also I'm here to reach readers directly because the book blogging community seems to have a censorship thing going on. My latest straddles the worlds of BDSM and the vanilla person and as a consequence many vanilla bloggers feel justified in shunning the work.

So, I'll start with the latest video on my pruned YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StWd5O65IHw

The blog that supports the book is here - http://therealslavel.wordpress.com/ - and you'll find that I've got posts on there that go beyond the book but also what I, as an author, am finding is an unhealthy book world at the moment.

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading and like many a middle or upper class child of such times I was shunted off to an all-male boarding school aged eight, away from my parents for periods of up to twelve weeks at a time. In such an institutions, where I was to rest until my seventeenth year, there was no getting away from the cruel jibes hurled at me from taunting tormentors. My refuge was the arts room, where I started to find some kind of redemption from the stark Dickensian surroundings, whose aim was nurture the army officers, businessmen, and gentry that dominate the class ridden world I was born into. The seeds were sown, I was an outsider, Happier times were to follow, I went to art school, where I attempted to exorcize my time spent at school. At eighteen I turned my back on a parentally enforced weekly visit to church and my head was filled with a range of nonconformist ideas. While at my first Art college through a friend I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was at the time in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. He was a bit older than myself, me being fresh out of school, but his personality and wit resonated and despite losing contact with him, I always read his latest published books with not only great expectation and unabashed admiration, but also a fascination for a person I had really looked up to, his sentences always tight, shooting arrows that always hit the mark. My yearning to be creative stayed strong and diversified, from my twenties through to my thirties and forties I made electronic music, doing concerts, in front ecstasy infused crowds, at a point I was making videos and short films. When the age of the internet arrived I was really able translate my creative endeavors into something really tangible. To earn a living I have worked as a teacher. I moved to Austria where upon I thought I would try writing. It is sure that my writing at that time was rough and rugged and without direction. I dived into a story about immortality, the story remains vegetating on some dusty floppy disk. Then tried short stories for children with illustrations to go with them. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-forties that my writing took shape. I was at this point living in Paris, France. I spotted an advert for short stories. The magazine happened to be called Rat Mort (dead rat) I sent off a short story, in the hope it would match the seemingly dark world the magazine seemed to embroiled in. I got no answer. Not put off I sent two more stories. Finally I got an answer. It seemed the magazine editor was a busy man, a man prone to travelling. It seemed my first story really hit the right note with him. His name was Alan Clark. He had a flat in the Montmartre area of Paris, where he seemed known to all, especially those who frequented his favorite drinking haunts. He offered me many words of encouragement. I was writing stories that were coming into my head at regular intervals, as if a monster had suddenly awakened. I was writing them on scraps of paper, less I would forget them, while I travelled on the Paris metro, going about my teaching work with staid business types. I had found a format for writing that worked, as well as a hunger to write about the demons of my past that still haunted me. Moving closer to present times, the desire to put together an anthology seemed to resonate in my mind. The Flight of Destiny evolved slowly. Many trans-Atlantic exchanges between myself and two editors seemingly far away. This evolution took my writing to a new level and the stories more depth and resonance.

Hi all!
I just set up my account here at Booklikes. I am an active blogger and love reading! I read a lot of paranormal romance, new adult, urban fantasy, and some light romance on occasion. However, if it is a highly recommended book and a known page turner, I will read it no matter the genre. I imported my books from Goodreads so my shelf is available for everyone to see.

I post mostly reviews and memes. Just light and fun and nothing deep. Always looking for some new reading friends and bloggers. You can find me in several places:

www.thebooknerd2013.blogspot.com
@lagnella
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/19124318-laura-agnella

Happy reading!
Laura

Hey everyone! I hope every is having a good year so far! I hope everyone still have some new blogs to share!