How to succeed in customer service

If you are reading this, then congratulations! You have a job in customer service. Allow me to shake your hand, and once again congratulate you on your enlightening new career as a Sales Rep, Assistant, or whatever your company calls you!

Working in customer service is a life-changing experience, and this post is a simple list of the three things you need to remember when you are serving customers!

Number One: The customer is always right!

-          Is the customer asking for a certain product?

-          Don’t have any of that product on the shop floor?

-          Can’t even find it on the store’s system?

-          But the customer insists that you must have it in-store because it’s on the store’s website?

Well, if the customer is always right, then despite all the odds you must have it in-store, so keep looking until you can’t look further, because that customer just won’t admit they’re wrong!

Number Two: Remember, you are a cockroach!

As a customer service rep, you are automatically the scum of the earth, you deserve no respect, not from anyone, not even your parents! You’ve chosen a life of trying to save enough money to make it on your own, and you must pay for it by being treated like the cockroach you are! So smile and take that abuse from the customer who’s trying to get a discount for a shirt they purposely soiled, because you deserve it!

Number Three: What is this ‘thanks’ you speak of?

Don’t expect a customer to thank you for helping them, because you quite clearly have the attention span of a gnat coupled with the grace of a drunken gorilla. After all, you only climbed the Empire State Building of a ladder to grab a jumper the customer wanted to look at in the first place, only to discard on one of the lower rails. Who cares if you nearly fell off twice? It’s your own damn fault for doing your job! You don’t deserve to be thanked because working in customer service, you are obviously no good and deserve to be contained in an environment where you will be seen strangling the customers who annoy you!

Exploring The White Lands of Empathica, or "how I learned to incorporate music into my writing habits"

Music has long been a love of mine, and after years of longing I have finally begun to learn my favourite instrument: the guitar. There are many reasons why I love the guitar: it requires dexterity (which I lack), co-ordination (which I lack), the strings when strummed correctly produce beautiful music, to name just a few. Recently I began to pen songs for my characters to sing – I have formed a small band to be known as ‘Arctic Wine’ in addition to a mermaid – and I fully intend to compose the music for the songs myself. I often find my ability to write relies on how I feel, and there has been one constant strong musical influence I have always thought of when writing: Nightwish.

Originally, this post was going to be about my three favourite bands to listen to while writing (Nightwish, Rammstein and Blind Guardian), but only the Nightwish fandom responded to me in time enough for this post so I decided to make a mini-series about each band, beginning with Nightwish.

Like any fan, I spend a fair amount of time listening to Nightwish and (obsessively) wandering over various fan-pages on Facebook and Tumblr. In fact, it was on Facebook that I discovered I’m not the only one who finds Tuomas and co to be a constant source of inspiration. Nati, from the Facebook fan-page “Soy Nightwisher@ de corazon, mente y alma,” provided me with this short snippet from a story she wrote based on her interpretations of “The Poet and the Pendulum” and “The Crow, the Owl, and the Dove.” The extract can be found at the end of this post.

My favourite character to write has to be Sylvan Dreyfus (nee Markvard Eriksson), a Finnish vampire. He was originally meant to be one of the good guys, fighting for the Organisation and whatnot, deviating from Richard’s original tale where he is a bad boy, but as I listened to “Planet Hell” I thought “Yeah, this guy needs to be a fucking psycho!” Here are my Top 3 Nightwish-inspired scenes from The Noble Angels thus far:

1.      “The Poet and the Pendulum:” Matt is in deep despair after being unwittingly blamed for the death of his mother, the loss of several friends after being outed as gay, losing his father in a suspicious fire, among other things. This song is essentially one of those suicide notes people write to vent their frustrations, and Matt’s mindset as the story develops is heavily influenced by this song. Death, beauty and silence are common themes in Nightwish songs, and it is these three things Matt longs for the most.

2.      “Planet Hell:” Sylvan. The song is clearly satirical in many ways and the one which sticks in my mind is “mankind works in mysterious ways” which parodies the Christian mantra “God works in mysterious ways.” The song makes many mentions of graphic violence, like that of a battlefield. Sylvan’s psychotic nature is inspired by this song for its fast pace and in-your-face vocals. Sylvan is a psychopath through and through, he lives to kill and kills for the fun of it.

3.      “Last Ride of the Day:” While this particular scene has not been written yet, this song has spurred me on to plan World War Three and, finally, Ragnarök. This will be the bloodiest, most depraved scene I will ever write.

I have many friends who read philosophy, and one of whom does her homework while listening to Nightwish. I believe her exact reaction was “Listening to Nightwish + Doing Philosophy = MINDFUCK.” Listening to “The Poet and the Pendulum,” I could not stop crying because of what it is about, and how I would eventually have to take everything away from the world I have created. The music of Nightwish has not given me ideas; it has given me the energy I need to write and the push in the direction my characters need to take.

Nati’s extract:

“I knew that death was waiting for me, but I would leave this world as a loved person, I would be remembered as the poet who was murdered in the White Lands of Empathica.

All I thought and hoped for was to find a beautiful landscape, like the ones that I used to describe in all my lyrics.

I pictured myself between the waves of the ocean, where my soul had always belonged.
While all my life was going through my mind like images from a movie, I felt how the pendulum went through my body.

I remember that the last word I whispered was: ¡Save me! And then I closed my eyes forever.
In that moment, I felt a cold breeze on my cheeks and I knew that all the suffering was finally over; now I was at home, or at least that was how I felt.

When my soul left my body, I found myself on a seashore.

There was nothing more beautiful than seeing the horizon and hearing the sound the ocean waves.

Finally, I could find that landscape I have always longed for.

I looked quickly to the sky, and I saw a crow, an owl and a dove flying with grace towards me...”

Epics, Fantasy and Epic Fantasy: Origins and Analysis of Mythical Monsters

Epic poetry can be traced right back to its roots in the oral tradition. The epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be the oldest known epic poem to date, and over the centuries more and more have been discovered. Homer’s Odyssey and The Iliad are probably the most famous examples, as not many people have heard of the Hávamál or Völuspá, two epic poems from the Ásatrú sacred text, The Poetic Edda. Within these epic poems can be found monsters of mythical proportions: Cyclopes, Hydras, werewolves...

In his documentary, Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters, Tom Holland takes us on a journey where we learn the influence prehistoric fossils had on local storytelling. It is easy to forget that dinosaurs once roamed the Earth because we cannot go to the local pet shop and buy a miniaturised tyrannosaurus rex, nor can we see them in our parks or zoos. The origins of land, air and water-dragons, like the Lerneaen Hydra who was offered Andromeda as a sacrifice, can be credited to the plesiosaur. The structure of the plesiosaur offers its flippers, explaining why modern writers and artists illustrate their dragons with glorious wings, basing their art on the Chinese literature without acknowledging it. Giant elephant skulls found in the Mediterranean by the ancient Greeks helped to spur the myth of the Cyclops, a man-eating giant. The anatomy of the elephant skull is simple: the huge nasal cavity where the trunk used to be was mistaken for an over-sized eye-socket, and the immense size of the skull itself would have had a devastating impact on the puny Greeks who discovered it. As a result, stories were told of epic heroes who would later be recorded by various poets.

My personal favourite wolf lore lies in Scandinavia. The two sky-wolves who both pull and chase the Sun and Moon – Hati and Skoll – are trapped in a perpetual state of catch-22: either they destroy their own cargo and lose all meaning, or they continue on a permanent wild goose chase. However, these wolves originate from a beautiful story, and their role is pretty damn apocalyptic: when they catch the Sun and Moon, Ragnarök will begin. Wolves had long been in mythology and epics before the Norse began to sing and write them. In fact, many of what we now refer to as myths remain the basis of several Odinic belief systems. The origins of these wolves can be found in the need to explain the natural world: by creating reason for the wolves to be in their respective pictures, the epics became a tool for education and worship.

The Writer and The Reader

A poem for all of my fellow writers out there :)

With undipped ink beside blank parchment,

Once upon a time never seemed as far off as now.

A thousand stories run through the temple,

A thousand songs are sung and stars implode.

Fearsome monsters and broken wings become stone,

The mind’s eye runs rabid with fear and excitement.

The ink is still undipped and the parchment remains blank,

The invisible barrier hard to penetrate as the story overwhelms.

Together as one the journey unfolds,

One thousand lives are lived as the game begins.

Spells are cast and wars are waged,

The world could end on the very next page.

Every voice is heard but few will listen.

Stories are told and songs are sung,

But it will always be too late to turn back the clock,

Back to when page one was fresh and new.

Music plays but the symphony dies,

All poetry becomes meaningless as sex begins to sell.

A simple kiss becomes a soul-crushing blow,

And it is such that the writer must decide.

How to Live One Thousand Lives

Writer is a peculiar creature, often seen hanging around with a strange group of friends. Research is Writer’s best friend, the friend who is always there and who you mock because, hey, that’s what you do with your best friend! Writer’s second best friend is Characters – people Writer talks about constantly, pores over night and day to make sure that they develop into mature people, the kind of friend who everyone thinks the writer is crazy for crushing on. Setting is an important friend in Writer’s group, that one friend who apparently takes charge. Finally, there is Conflict, the one friend who is a slight attention whore who has to make drama for everyone, and who Writer finds a solution for at some point.

“'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies ... The man who never reads lives only one.” (GRR Martin). The same is true of writers.  Creative writing is an incredible discipline, and I’ve often thought that some of the best writers out there must be some of the greatest minds the world has ever known. The creation of worlds, histories, and individuals is an astonishing feat in and of itself, and the authors responsible for it go to a lot of effort to make it happen.

The writer and the reader share a unique relationship. For me, being both a writer and a reader is about having a two-way existential crisis: the characters are both fictional and real, and the same is true of me. Fictional in the sense that they are avatars brought to life by imagination, real in the sense that the character is able to make you feel for them. For both writers and readers, stories offer the opportunity to live as many lives as they choose, hence George RR Martin’s famous quote. When I studied English, I found it tedious to analyse every aspect of a story because it felt like the life was being torn away from it, so I decided to read History at university and just enjoy the books I read.

FAQs

"Why is Matt gay?"

Because he is.

"No, seriously. Why?"

Because he is.

"What music do you listen to when you write?"

I listen to a LOT of Nightwish. Their music has helped me a lot, and if I ever get the chance I will personally thank Tuomas Holopainen for how much his music has helped me and kept me going.

"Who are your favourite authors?"

I have a read a LOT in my short (nearly) 19 years. While I was writing RSTD I revisted a lot of stories, plays and books I'd read years ago as research, including a lot of Aristotle, Sturluson and Michael Grant.

"Why is Matt gay?!"

I refuse to answer this question with anything other than "Because he is. Get over it!"

"What prompted you to write RSTD?"

That's an interesting story. When I was growing up, I didn't have a father, so my mind invented one for me. His name was Richard Amsterdam. Every night when I went to bed, he would appear and tell me stories, but when I was nearly 15, he just disappeared. Of course I missed him initially, but when I was 11 I had started writing down the stories he told me, and over the years they developed into a complete book known today as "Runes Shalt Thou Dream."

"Cool story... What's with the title?"

Originally it was called "The Nightmare Man," and after my little self-publishing phase turned out to be a disaster I started seeking proper representation. When Ecanus picked me up, the editor wanted me to change it to something which reflected Norse mythology a little bit more, and nothing is more Norse than the Runes :)

Don't Question Reality... Or Else!

"In the beginning, humans were created to protect Midgard from Loki the Jötunn and his evil forces.

When a series of bombings occur in London, it is clear that something unnatural is happening. Two brothers lead an investigation into their organisation’s long-held traditions to uncover a legend which tells of nine noble warriors who will rise up and fight in a battle for the world. But that’s just a legend, until Matt, the son of one of the Organisation’s most prominent members, begins to display powers the likes of which have never before been encountered.

With Yule fast approaching, Matt must face his demons and slowly begins to realise that, just because something is a dream doesn’t mean it’s any less real."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Runes-Shalt-Thou-Dream-ebook/dp/B007U5LIOA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338647653&sr=8-1