Dolphin Dreams (100,000 words, more details and excerpts here).
plus a novel-length version of Lord and Master (60,000 words).
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This copy of the blog doesn't have a comments facility, because it's manually written html. But there's another copy on Livejournal with user name julesjones and comments are welcome there: http://julesjones.livejournal.com/. You can also email me at jules.jones@gmail.com
One short story accepted by the Distant Horizons anthology.
Two more novels written and accepted by Loose Id, for publication next year --
Dolphin Dreams (100,000 words, more details and excerpts here).
plus a novel-length version of Lord and Master (60,000 words).
One book hit 1000 copies sold, which may not seem like much by the standards of a midlist author, but is still pretty nice down here in the small press.
I had my first translation (into Italian, of an excerpt from Spindrift). And I collected a few enthusiastic reviews.
I did *not* make the short list of the 2006 Spectrum Awards, but given one of the other names on the "other nominees" list, I'm not going to complain. :-)
On the fanfic front... well, I haven't done that for a few years. But I did start setting up a website for the zines and some of my own fic. I'll post a link in the fanfic LJ when I've got a bit more of it done.
One last book log entry for the year...
And a side note -- oh dear, oh dear. Someone didn't like my Amazon review of Neutron Star. Was that because I liked the book, or because I dared to suggest that some of Niven's later work doesn't match the standards it set?
Reginald Hill -- Bones and Silence
Bones and Silence (Dalziel and Pascoe Mysteries (Paperback)) at amazon.com
Bones and Silence (Dalziel and Pascoe) at amazon.co.uk
Reginald Hill -- Recalled to Life
Recalled to Life (Dalziel and Pascoe Mysteries (Paperback)) at amazon.co.uk
Recalled to Life (Dalziel & Pascoe Novel) at amazon.co.uk
This time last year I saw a novella published in a New Year's Eve themed anthology of three sf&f m/m romance novellas. As it's New Year's Eve, I've got a good excuse to repost the blurb for mine, plus links to the excerpts.
First Footer
published in A Kiss At Midnight
ISBN: 1-59632-211-X
http://www.loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=5
They say that how you spend New Year's Day will set the pattern for the rest of your year. Matthew Ryder was hoping not to be single by the end of the New Year's Eve party, but the blind date promised by his matchmaking friend never showed up. Still, there's always hope in the form of the old custom of First Footing. To bring good luck to the household, the first person across the threshold after midnight should be a tall dark man holding a lump of coal and a bottle of whisky, and in some places they still like to provide this service for neighbours.
A tall dark stranger does indeed knock on the door at midnight, and he's the man of Matthew's dreams. Intelligent, good sense of humour. Handsome too, if you go for fur, tail, and a very seductive purr. For the First Footer is a First Contact team member, with a bit of a problem. There's making a discreet landing in an uninhabited area, and then there's landing your spacecraft in a peat bog.
It's going to be an interesting year for Matthew...
Excerpt 1 from First Footer
Excerpt 2 from First Footer
Erotic excerpt from First Footer
Reviews
Arrived in Ipswich at Chez predatrix, where I have broadband, lovely broadband... Still need to set up Turnpike to tell it to use the ntlworld smarthost before I can send out email, but at least I can see out again.
rasfc meet in Bath this afternoon. Present - self, Charlie A, Chris D, Nicholas W. An excellent pub lunch followed by an amble through Bath, including the second-hand bookstall in the market, finishing up in the Waterstones coffee shop. Books were bought. Conversation was had. Mundanes were probably frightened. Much fun, will try to do again next year.
Still trapped in dial-up land, sans Surftime so I have to pay by the minute. You'll have to wait for someone else's report...
Still stuck in dialup land...
Other Half knows me entirely too well. My present consisted of a Tardis Talking Pen (plays a snippet of the theme tune or the Tardis dematerialisation sound), a new LED lamp for my bike, and Marks & Spencer vouchers. Geek toys and an excuse to spend an afternoon in M&S. Utterly perfect.
Speaking of Doctor Who, I enjoyed it. Particularly the bit where we get to see that he may be a good man, but that doesn't stop him being dark and dangerous.
No DVDs in *my* Christmas stocking, so I'll be hitting amazon.co.uk as soon as I have Real Net Access again. I'll start with Season 4 of B7 and the Ecclestone Who boxed set. And maybe the 1975 Legend of Robin Hood. The one with the bath scene beloved of B7 slashfen.
And on a more sombre note -- the Boxing Day post-prandial walk took in the churchyard where Siegfried Sassoon is buried. It's a simple enough headstone, in the middle of a row of such. But he's not forgotten. A small posy of poppies, and half a dozen wooden remembrance markers; five crosses, one star of David.
I am now on dialup, and have to worry about who's looking over my shoulder. I am cut off, bereft... Shall be in Ipswich with predatrix from the 30th.
And a happy 25th Gauda Prime anniversary to those of you who also celebrate. To those of you who don't, let's just say that nobody does angst like the BBC. And nobody inspires angst like the BBC. Whole forests have died in the service of Gauda Prime denial. And enhancement. :-) Think I'll post some fic on my fanfic LJ today.
It occurs to me that I have sadly deprived new soul for the faith l_prieto by not shepherding her through the entire series before today...
I've just seen my first Torchwood episode (and thus seen Captain Jack for the first time, as I still haven't seen any Ecclestone Who episodes other than Rose). I liked, even if it didn't show much of the team other than Gwen. My, there are some pretty boys in the show, aren't there?
I've been playing with Google's free webspace and page creator, having finally obtained a circular tuit and decided to do something about putting some fanfic online; both my own, and the zines I edited. The WYSIWYG page creator is flaky, and there's a sharp limit on what you can do with the html editor, but for pouring text into a simple site it's not half bad. It's still in beta, and it's free, so I'm not complaining too loudly about the bugs. Most of one zine (at least as links to stories already archived elsewhere) and a few of my own stories so far, which is a lot more than I'd have achieved in the same time if I'd been hand-coding it. (pinkdormouse, most of the Dead Boyfriend of the Week links currently go to Pink Asteroids, in case you were wondering why the flurry of activity when I was testing the links.)
Of course, the easiest stories from my own output to put up are the ones that are already on the web somewhere. These are also the oldest ones, and dear god it's cringe-inducing to read one's early fiction. It could be worse, of course, because at least my early ones usually went past a reasonably competent editor before appearing in public, and are thus not as awful as they might have been had I been of the generation that thinks "beta-reader" is the person who tells you how wonderful it is just before you stick it online without even running it through a spell-checker. You can thank watervole for them being readable.
Now that I have a chance to read the backlog of email, I find that my publisher is doing a big Christmas promotion. Full details at the website, but in particular, LGBT, menage and series ebooks are 5% off until Christmas Eve, print books bought directly from Loose Id are 5% off until Christmas Eve, and all ebooks will have a 12% discount on Boxing Day. There's also a $1 discount on all Flings scheduled later this week.
waveney has returned home, and found a long ethernet cable. I have net access on my own machine from the kitchen table. With any luck it is also long enough to reach as far as the dining room table as well. All we need now is for nobody to trip over the thing...
watervole and I went into Poole yesterday, the better to do some shopping. In the course of said shopping I acquired a half-price generic laptop power supply from Maplins. It is big and heavy and not as sexy as my Thinkpad's own power supply, but it does enable me to turn the laptop on without thinking "only three and a half hours of use until I get a power supply". Alas, it transpires that waveney has set the Chez Waveney wifi network to a high channel, that it might be invisible to passing American laptops, and cannot work out how to tell my American laptop to use a Euro-channel. So I have my own machine back, but only for offline use. If I want net access, I have to steal watervole's machine. I am peeved. How can I work without constant access to Google?
I'm not actually that desperate to sit down and start writing the next book, but I did have some overdue paperwork to do on the last one, and it would be convenient to have my own machine online to do so. I'll just have to resort to dial-up to shove out my Demon email and suck down the incoming. The intended work on putting more of my fanfic and my zines online will have to wait. Either that, or I drop stuff onto the USB drive and transfer it to watervole's box.
Note -- I'm still jet-lagged, and I'm timesharing ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
watervole's computer, so my response to communication attempts is likely to be erratic even by my standards...
This also means that book log links to sites other than amazon have gone away again.
Fixup novel about the Singularity and its aftermath. Three generations of the Macx family deal with the consequences of ever-accelerating technological change. Enormous fun, and stuffed with ideas, but *so* stuffed with ideas that you need your wits about you when reading it.
Note to self -- stop doing first-time reads of Charlie's books on long haul flights, they interact strangely with jet lag. And the Laundryverse will probably *really* not mix well with jet lag...
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
Yaoi manga, collection of short stories. Definitely in the plot what plot vein, and you could use it for a slash cliche drinking game. The first two stories about a ninja trainee and the ninja master also edge rather too far in the direction of "young" for my taste, as the trainee looks about ten to my eyes. It doesn't help that the second story has the ninja master developing an interest in schoolboy fantasies. Very pretty art for those who like the underfed waif look, but if you want plot or are easily squicked by apparently underage characters, look elsewhere.
at amazon.com
Shinobu Kokoro: Hidden Heart at amazon.co.uk
Yaio manga. Seventeen year old is in love with his older brother's friend -- who is now a teacher at his school, and still in love with the brother. When older brother gets engaged, it's younger brother's opportunity to offer comfort... It's a fairly simple plot, but a believable one, with interesting characters and some seriously hot sex. Nice art as well. I read a borrowed copy, and I'll probably put it on my own wants list.
at amazon.com
Empty Heart: Yaoi at amazon.co.uk
The Syndicate has made it onto a Listmania list at Amazon. :-)
Arrived safely at watervole's. Jetlagged... Forgot to pack the power cable for my laptop, good thing Other Half is coming over next week and can be detailed to bring it. It's getting dark here now, so I will soon be having trouble telling which way is up.
[flop]
The first draft is finished, at 61,602 words. I need to read it through again to look for really obvious stupidities, and then send it off to my editor this evening. I wouldn't normally send her something before it's been beta-read, but given that I'm going to be out of contact for a couple of days and then jet-lagged for several more, I'd be happier if she's got the draft before I go. Just in case my laptop gets stolen en-route, etc, etc.
[wilts]
erastes posted a pic of a BBC canonical m/m snog a few days ago. I have never even seen Torchwood, and yet the damned picture had me staring at it with my mouth hanging open for about five minutes, followed by looking at it on and off all weekend instead of getting on with writing my own smut. I've just used it as a reference photo for a scene in the WIP. And I am now feeling the faint tickling of an urge to commit fanfic. Note that I only ever wrote in one fandom, and I quit cold turkey four years ago, purely and simply because I was attacked by the Trashy Porn Novel That Grew, and by the time I'd finished that my interest had shifted completely to original fic. I'd put it down to a bad case of cat-vacuuming, but I fear it's rather more than that...
Just got in from seeing Casino Royale. It was good. Daniel Craig has a perfectly shaped arse.
Yesterday saw the leaked Torchwood fanservice photo with the searing m/m kiss. Stared at it for about five minutes -- and then on and off through the rest of the day.
My weekend leching quota is all used up, and it's still only Saturday (just). :-)
l_prieto came over today for another day of book-shopping and watching Blake's 7. So that's twice this week I've been in Books Inc with a friend who was egging me on to buy the big dolphin plushie as a promotional tie-in with the new book. Only l_prieto was a lot less circumspect than brooksmoses was. :-) There were some very interesting suggestions as to suitable publicity poses with the thing... Today's episodes were Duel, Project Avalon, Breakdown and Bounty, complete with running commentary on the slash potential. And she has gone away with my DVD of Children of the Stones, which is Region 0 and can thus be played on an unhacked American DVD player.
Tuesday 375 words, in part because I went to the optometrist and couldn't see anything close up for several hours afterwards, which makes typing a wee bit difficult. 3581 words yesterday. 600 today. Current total 54962.
brooksmoses and I went for lunch in Mountain View today, followed by a trip around both the new and the second-hand bookstores, in which we were good and did not buy more books than our respective spouses' tolerance limits. Rather odd conversation with the sales clerk in the new bookshop, in which I was outed as a romance writer, but redeemed myself by explaining that I'm a science fiction fan. And then casually dropped my monthly royalty payment into the conversation as a not particularly subtle way of saying, "No, I am not a PA author."
While in there we noted that autopope has most of a shelf to himself in the paperback section, with several faceouts, and two different books in the section for new sf hardbacks. When we went next door to the used bookshop, we found Accelerando, which was the first time either of us had seen any of his books in there. We're not quite sure what it was doing in the romance section though.
It was the first time I'd had the chance to use my PalmThing -- a download of my LibraryThing catalogue onto my Palm IIIxe. It's an easy way to carry a list of the books in my library so that I don't end up buying duplicate books, and I used it several times to check whether or not I already had something. Very useful indeed. It's an open source widget developed by one of the LibraryThingers and running on PalmOS 3.0 and above, so you can use it even on pretty old models of Palm that can be picked up for a few dollars on ebay.
http://www.librarything.com/groups/palmthingforlibraryt
http://home.comcast.net/~mmcm/palmthing/readme.html
Friday 2000 words, Saturday 1100, Sunday 1500, today 800, taking the total past 50,000.
cced from my Official Author Newsletter, just in case anyone here is interested in a cover art print:
The new book won't be out for a while yet, but I do have some cover art prints. Since I had to reformat my laptop's hard drive last week and have spent the last week putting things back together, I'm not in the mood to dream up anything fancy by way of a contest. :-) If you want a chance at one of the postcard-sized prints, email me at jules.jones@gmail.com with "Contest: Dolphin Dreams" in the subject. I'll draw a name on Saturday morning California time. You can see the pretty picture at http://www.julesjones.com/fiction/details/dolphindreams.html
991 words on Wednesday and 1700 yesterday, taking it to 45,016 total at the end of last night. It was 13,559 at the start of November, so 31,457 during the month. I wasn't officially participating in NaNoWriMo, because a) I'm not physically capable of doing 50 kwords in a month without risking damaging my hands, b) I had a contracted book to write, so I did actually have to do all the stuff you're actively encouraged to drop in NaNoWriMo in pursuit of learning that you really can find a novel's worth of words and get them on paper. I already know I can put together 50 kwords in coherent fashion. :-) Averaging 1000 words a day of decent first draft over that period is a fairly good target for me, so I am pleased even if I didn't do the 50 kwords.
2621 words yesterday and 2673 today, taking it to a total of 42,324 tonight. It is now officially a novel.
The first sex scene isn't actually until half way through the fourth chapter, 40 pages in -- or about 10,000 words in. And it's another 28 pages to the next one. But there do seem to be a lot of them in there after that. It's got nine altogether so far. I'm sure this news will put off some prospective beta readers, and only encourage others. :->
It's just passed 37 kwords, and it's got at least 10, if not 20, to go. I told $PUBLISHER that it was going to be a novella. Oops. However, $EDITOR is used to this, and will only laugh at me.
Update on the last two weeks worth of word count -
Sat nil, Sun 627
Mon 431, Tue 1896, Wed 449, Thu 2045, Fri 2031, Sat 326, Sun 1403
Mon-Thur nil, what with sick laptop and Thanksgiving, Fri 1509, Sat 677, Sun 1016
elisa_rolle of the Italian romance blog Isn't It Romantic? has translated the blurb and clean excerpt for Spindrift into Italian. First time I've been translated. :-) You can see the dual language version here:
http://romancebooks.splinder.com/post/10026384
The blog has a fair bit of coverage of GLBT romance, including reviews, translations of blurbs and excerpts, author interviews and an essay about reading m/m romance in Italy. You can find them using the tag link below:
http://romancebooks.splinder.com/tag/lgbt_romance
Early mystery from Barbara Paul, set in a New York theatre in the present day. A modern take on the Jacobean revenge tragedy, it's harsh and a traumatic read, but one hell of a book. One of my all-time favourite mysteries, and I'm pleased to see that it's recently been brought back into print.
Fourth Wall from BarnesandNoble.com
The Fourth Wall (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries)
The Fourth Wall
at Powells
Another mystery from early in the Wycliffe series. As usual, it's as much about the characters as about the actual murder inquiry. In this one a young woman who worked as a striptease artist is found dead -- but why was she working as a stripper when she was respectably married to a devoted husband? And why did the killer leave behind a thousand pounds in cash? Short by today's standards, but an entertaining book.
Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat at BarnesandNoble.com
Wycliffe and How to Kill A Cat (Wycliffe)
Wycliffe and How to Kill A Cat
at Powells
I was poking through the Tower closing down sale last week, and found a batch of yaoi manga, which I promptly bought for research purposes. (Yes, really. My editor asked if I'd consider doing something yaoi-style. It's tax-deductible and all.) I suspect that I've hit lucky with this one and bought one that happens to fit my tastes rather well. It's a lot of fun and it has a plot. And when I finished it I went looking to see how many more in the series.
Teenager goes looking for long-last father, expecting to find a burnt-out salaryman, and instead gets a baby-faced 33-year-old who makes a living as an anime voice actor. Finding himself with an unexpected son to support just as his current series is finishing, he tells his agency he'll take any job. What he gets offered is roles in boys love audio dramas...
Shout out Loud!, Volume 1 at barnesandnoble.com
Shout Out Loud! Vol. 1
Shout Out Loud!, Volume 1
at Powells
The laptop reinstall is still in progress, but running reasonably smoothly. It has been interrupted by Terrycon 2 -- the local Rumor Millers have turned out to see one of our number visiting from another state. Terry arrived yesterday morning, so there was a group lunch and cruise round the Mountain View bookshops yesterday, and this evening we assembled at Rebekah's for pizza, chat, and silly games. As a bunch of us left, there was a chorus of the Time Warp... Great fun.
I've lost all my Demon email dating from the changeover to this machine. Hiccups when I was transferring stuff over to the new machine meant that I ended up with a second copy of the mailspool, which I somehow forgot to delete. And guess which copy I backed up before reformating the hard drive this morning...
If I owe you a reply from email sent to my Demon address, it's hosed.
I pulled the plug this morning. Used the IBM Recovery system, which reinstalls WinXP Pro. It appears to be sane so far, but I need to sit down and re-install software, move files back on etc. At which point I'll discover whether it is now condescending to read CDs, which was the tipping point last night on declaring that this is a dead installation, it is no more. When the thing is burning CDs perfectly well, but refuses to read any CD, there is something wrong past the point of it beinf worth trying to track down what is on its tiny silicon mind.
My computer is sick. It is clear that the registry is corrupted, although in a way that doesn't stop me *using* the computer, so we're not sure how long this has been going on -- it may explain some minor issues that have been going on for a while now. It does, however, need to have Something Done About It. This may have to go as far as doing a clean install, or as clean an install as you can get with WinXP and its "we won't give you a copy of the software on a CD, you filthy pirate" policy [spit]. Everything important is backed up, I think. I hope. My computer will not read the CDs it's just burned, although Other Half's computer will read them perfectly well.
I'm not sure how long this is going to take, but if it does end up in a "format c:" situation, it's probably going to take a couple of days to put everything back afterwards...
An entire gang of m/m romance authors will be chatting at the Literary Nymphs yahoogroup tonight, US East Coast time. There will be prizes. Some of us will even remember that there are people in other time zones, and draw their prizes the day after the chat to give everyone a chance. :-)
Manlove Gang Bang
Join us as we have a ManLove Gang Bang chat TONIGHT November 15, 2006 starting @ 7:00 pm ET for 4 fantastic hours (location below). We're having authors drop in and you can ask them questions or just come by and say "HI" to everyone! Some of the authors that will be dropping in are Kayelle Allen, Laura Baumbach, Ally Blue, James Buchanan, Anne Cain & Barbara Sheridan, T.A. Chase, Renee George, Jules Jones, Rowan McBride, Sean Michael, Jet Mykles, Willa Okati, Kate Steele, Kira Stone, Stephanie Vaughan and who knows who else could pop in!
Make a note on your calendar - this is the "First-Of-It's-Kind" event and it will not be the last!
There will be insanity, chaos and door prizes!!!!
WHEN?? Wednesday November 15, 2006 from 7:00 pm ET to 11:00 pm ET There are times when war is necessary. But it is not noble, merely a choice of evils. The price is paid in blood; in broken bodies and broken minds. Lest we forget the price, and those who paid it. 3245 words today. Time for bed... 135 words yesterday, 2255 today. Basic setup is now done, and they're an established couple. Now to do the scene that shows where the thing about doing it in front of the office window comes from, and then comes the chapter which incorporates the original short story. No writing over the weekend, as predicted, and slow yesterday (738) and today (1231), but the total length has topped 20,000 words. So 6,500 in the last week. Need to improve, but to bed now. There is much angst happening right now because some of us, not to put too fine a point on it, are suffering from middle-aged spread... I'm going to end up in a trouser suit at this wedding, I think. Because the last half hour of rummaging through the wardrobe has demonstrated that pretty much anything skirt-like bought in the last five years conforms to fannish rather than mundane notions of "formalwear", and anything bought long enough ago to look like something you could wear to a mundane wedding is either so hopelessly unfashionable that even I can see it's unfashionable, or it reminds me that I need to lose at least another two stone to be somewhere near the weight I was when I bought it. (I don't normally buy things that conform to fashion to the point where they then look unfashionable six months afterwards, but things bought to wear to weddings are more likely than most to fall into this category, because they're likely to have been bought at short notice and/or under pressure from someone else in previous iterations of this problem...) Just finished a chapter (with sex scene, some people will be pleased to know), so I've posted the backup to predatrix and am going to bed. It occurs to me that I haven't done any word counts for a bit, so to catch up... Last week - Monday was spent pimping Blake's 7 to new soul for the faith l_prieto, so only 100 words or so. Tuesday 1450, Wed 3500, Thur only 350. Sunday 1000, Mon 1700, Tuesday 500. And I'm not officially doing NaNoWriMo, but my word count on this book at midnight on Halloween stood at 13,559. Yesterday 1957, today 2600 exactly. However, I'm going to a wedding this weekend, so a) weekend word count will probably be zero, b) I'm definitely not going to BASCon, even for one day. Okay, the finals of the new cover art have arrived. :-) I've just seen the draft of the cover art for Dolphin Dreams. I have only one thing to say. OMG!!!SQUEEE!!!! Food porn, which means that three or four of you will be interested and everyone else will probably be bored witless... Roast duck for dinner last night. A duck bought from the local Chinese supermarket. Third duck in a row from there with barely enough meat to feed two people, in spite of weighing pretty much spot on five pounds. I have a theory that it is some breed of duck specially bred for duck-three-ways, in that it produces superb crackling, barely enough meat for two, and a lot of very fine stock. And lots of duck fat for later use. The five pounds included the head and feet, because this was a duck from a Chinese supermarket. They were discreetly removed and disposed of before Other Half, who gets queasy about this sort of thing, could see that it was indeed whole duck. Bread and onion stuffing flavoured with juniper berries and a small sprig of rosemary, moistened with the juice of half a lemon. Cooked covered rather than a proper roast. End result -- beautifully tender, moist, and flavourful duck, and what turned out after chilling overnight to be 400 ml of fat and 100 ml of seriously solid jelly. The carcase went in the stockpot along with a large carrot and an onion, and more rosemary. Several hours gentle simmering, more carrot and onion, a couple of large potatoes and the jellied juices and chopped leftover meat later, a large pot of soup that's probably going do several more meals. If I consider just the roast dinner last night, the duck was ridiculously expensive -- but there's half a pound of duck fat in the freezer that would have cost me nearly as much as the duck did, and a couple of litres of excellent soup... This weekend marks ten years since I was bitten by the writing bug. I went to a science fiction con, and saw my first fanfiction zines, ones for a political sf show from the BBC. Something clicked, and not long after that, I started writing my own fanfic stories. And submitting them to zines with editors who edited. The first story I ever wrote was submitted to someone who tore it apart, showed me why it didn't work -- and how to fix it. I learnt a lot from that, however painful it might have been at the time, and when I started writing original fiction three years later it showed. I sold the second original story I wrote, to the second editor I submitted it to. For forty two pounds, a number which amused me and will amuse a lot of other science fiction fans. Ten years on, and I've got ten books out with a small press. It's still mostly political sf crossed with gay romance, and it's still a lot of fun to write. I hope everyone else has had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Cheers. Honest to God, I was actually doing some book research when I came across this comment on a website. And for some reason, I don't know why, I thought of a few people I know when I read the second last sentence. The Condom Lollipop Designed to look like a candy lollipop, the condom lollipop is guaranteed to produce smiles all around. Available in a single colour or a mix of different condom colours. Clear custom labels are applied to the condom wrapper. The bows also come in a variety of colours, but can only be mixed on larger order quantities. The condom lollipop is probably our most popular promotional item. We have seen otherwise mature and responsible adults behaving very badly to get their hands on them. Use them at an exhibition and traffic to your stand will turn your neighbours green with envy. http://www.14-condoms.co.uk/bulk-condoms/promotional-condoms.html I've spent the last two days doing my bit as part of autopope's crit group, reading draft 1.0 of his current WIP. Even in draft, in need of revision and polishing to get everything hooked up just so, it rocks. Once it's available to pre-order on Amazon next year I will be cheerfully plugging it. It's a weird experience reading a novel to crit it. Trying to keep track of all the stuff that's going on, checking to see if anything gets dropped or appears from nowhere, from entire sub-plots down to small stuff such as characters changing names half way through. (It happens, and it's a bugger to spot when you're the writer.) It's different to reading the finished product for pleasure. But it's also fascinating to watch a novel develop, especially one like this. I wasn't able to do last year's crit group, because of a bad attack of Real Life, and I'm glad I got to do this one. Because there are people who have me friended, but not james_nicoll, and I see no reason why they should escape knowing about *this*: http://www.teddy-babes.com/sonya.html Gacked from dsgood:
In other news, yesterday I cycled up to the new WholeFoods store that opened while I was away. The general verdict: the food is very good, and the range is excellent, but methinks there's a certain amount of boutique pricing going on. I'm not just comparing the prices with the local Safeway, but with the local family-owned-not-chain greengrocer/cheesemonger in the next block. And when I see "normally $2 each, special offer 2 bags for $3" on a bag of organic baby carrots that costs $1.50 every day in the greengrocer's, I am inclined to think that the difference in price is not entirely made up of their proclaimed policy of "seeking out environmentally farming practices for *you*, yadda yadda". I'd also be slightly more impressed with the environmentally friendly practices if they included not hiding the bike rack round the back of the bottle recycling bins, where it takes a certain amount of determined searching for cyclists to find it. However... the food *did* look and smell pretty nice, and while my fruit/veg/cheese/ex-pat shopping will continue to be primarily at the Milk Pail, and the Chinese supermarket close to home, I'll be going there for meat and the occasional specialist item. Amongst other things, they have dry-aged beef. Not something I necessarily want to buy every week, but it's there, and it will be sampled in the near future. Fish counter looks pretty good too, although that's less of an issue because the Chinese market is within walking distance rather than cycling distance and has a good fish counter as well. I bought some stewing lamb, which currently browning in the frying pan before going into the casserole for dinner tonight. And I finally remembered to buy some juniper berries, which means that I will soon be wanting desperance's duck confit recipe. 400 words on the novella yesterday, plus the essay in LJ. 500 words today. Needs to be cranked up, but at least words are happening. And a belated happy birthday to watervole -- sorry about the belated, but I have been somewhat confused by the change in time zone and now being half a day behind the UK instead of ahead... Played with GoogleDocs. In spite of me being not entirely compos mentis on account of not having had an unbroken night's sleep since I got back, we managed to get the collaborative function working and even got 500 words done on the Ipswich story. Also 400 words on the new novella. Still not up to editing/revision, but with any luck I'll be all right if I get a decent night's sleep tonight. Finished the bookkeeping, and got back to writing this evening. Only 400 words, but it's a start on the new novella. I'm not quite awake enough to be doing revision on the novel, so that can wait another day or two. Must prod predatrix tomorrow. The new Google Documents facility looks as if it might be a suitable replacement for Netmeeting when it comes to being able to work on a document together. It's been very frustrating trying to work in a chat client. As part of the process of chasing last month's paperwork, I strolled over to look at the revamped Bywater Books website. It's well and truly revamped, there are several interesting looking titles for sale, they are taking submissions again, and there is a Contest. A contest with an entry fee, but entry fees seem to be the way of the literary world outside the sf genre (which views them with deep suspicion, should any non-sf person be wondering why I mention the fee), and $20 isn't an outrageous ripoff. If you have an interest in commercial fiction targeted to lesbian readers, the url is http://www.bywaterbooks.com/
They're primarily interested in general fiction, mystery and romance. I would note that I am not in general interested in lesbian fiction, but I'm still contemplating adding Val McDermid's mystery series to my buy list. Caught up on almost all the writing admin that accumulated while I was away -- emails printed off and filed, snail mail logged and filed, accounts file brought up to date, submissions tracking database ditto. Still a couple of items to do, but I'm getting very fuzzy now. I think it's time to go and take a walk in the sun as part of the reset body clock regime. Probably too fuzzy to write actual word count this evening, but with any luck will start on that tomorrow or Sunday. Myself, I still want the one with the Darwin fish and the Jesus fish kissing. "Christian" and "Creationist" are not identical sets. Has anyone received their contract from Greg Herren for Distant Horizons yet? I haven't, but I don't want to bug the guy unnecessarily -- especially when I'm too jet-lagged to compose a coherent email. Stuff from the snailmail while I was away:
I've added a draft details page and unedited excerpts for forthcoming novel Dolphin Dreams to my website. No cover art or publisher link yet. Expected publication date is early next year. P D James -- A Dalgliesh Trilogy
P D James -- Unnatural Causes
Tanith Lee -- Electric Forest
I've just been asked if I'd be interested in being a panelist at a con in January. As far as I can remember it's the first time I've been asked for my profic rather than my fanfic. Alas, I'll almost certainly be on a different continent at the time of the con, so I've had to decline other than as a last minute addition should I actually be able to get there. On the other hand, I *have* just committed myself to writing the novella for Valentine's Day, which means that the final version needs to be turned in to my editor by end of year at latest. I haven't actually signed the contract yet, but having now given a commitment in email to write for that schedule slot, I will not be popular if I don't supply the manuscript on time. Given that I've already got a good idea of the outline, it shouldn't be a problem -- as long as it stays a novella. I can't write a full-length novel in that timescale, so this one had better not get any ideas about putting on weight. Contemplating whether to go to BASCon. It's within commuting distance, but on the other hand it's also going to be a long weekend out of my writing time when I have two books on deadline (revision pass and editing on Dolphin Dreams, and writing the novella). And the programme tends to be very orientated towards specific fandoms, many of which I have not even heard of, let alone watched/read. It's very much a con I go to mainly to see friends I otherwise wouldn't see, so is anyone else going? Heads-up for the people beta-reading Dolphin Dreams -- I expect to start the revision pass in a week or so, so comments whether detailed or just "it works"/"you need to cut about as much as an Italian publisher would" would be welcome in the next few days. My editor said that it needs some polishing and trimming, but nothing more detailed than that, so there's nothing specifically ruled in/out by her comments (although I suspect she'd be unhappy if too much of the sex got chopped, as this is an *erotic* romance house:-). My feeling when I'd just finished the first draft was that I probably needed to trim it, but I wouldn't be able to see where until I'd had a break from it. If you haven't had time to read/comment, don't worry; I know one or two people have had a bad attack of Real Life. That cover art illo in the previous post on my LJ is hosted on my website. I've just looked at my site log, as I do every few days. I had no idea that: - there were now *that* many websites scraping the LJ recent images/posts feed, or that many people looking at them. - so many people actually do read one or the other of my LJs (it was cced to my fanfic LJ), or at least have them on their regular reading filter. And while it had occurred to me that anyone who thinks that their filter names are Sooper Sekret is operating under a false sense of security, this *really* rubbed my nose in it. I ain't posting examples, but the referral url does give the game away rather. Fortunately I am a good little netizen and deliberately used a fairly small (in kb) image. It might have done interesting things to my bandwidth usage if I'd been an idiot. Because geeks have sex lives too...
A renegade sysadmin looking for a way out of his boring job, Allard's escaped to space. Now he's on the Mary Sue, a spaceship with a slightly nutty crew of syndicalists who have an even more malevolent attitude toward traditional management structures than he does. Much to his surprise, Allard's found co-workers he actually likes, and a man he more than likes. Now Allard and his new love are getting married. But who's going to be the bride, and who the groom? And what will Mark wear? When the fitting's done, the parents settled, and the sex games are over, they'll be glad they found Something Blue. http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook40674.htm The "Choose me" m/m romance contest is still open, but not for much longer. There will be a chat at 9pm EST (USA) on 30 Sep for contest entrants to chat with some of the authors, and the contest will close as the chat starts. You don't have to be present at the chat to win one of six prizes -- there's a main prize of 25 m/m romance ebooks, and five runner up prizes of three books. There will also be a door prize for people who attend the chat. The contest details can be found at
http://www.kayelleallen.com/choosemeauthors.html
and the chat room is at
http://www.irctoo.net/?channel=djmanlychatzone
I won't be able to make the chat myself (although I've contributed books to the contest), but there should be quite a crowd of m/m authors there. John M "Mike" Ford, 1957-2006 Sf author and poet John M Ford, better known to his friends and acquaintances as Mike, died yesterday. He was funny, thoughtful, wise and gentle, and many, many people are grieving today. Some were close friends, others had only a slight acquaintance with him. All miss him. I've seen people dismiss online communities as somehow not real, the acquaintanceships and friendships formed there as some sort of mirage that doesn't really exist. But those communities are as real as any formed in meatspace, and Mike was a member of one such community that I'm involved in. I knew him only slightly, but his posts brought me much pleasure and I always looked forward to seeing his contributions. And then this morning I sat down to read my LJ friends page, and a few posts from the top I ran into papersky's post. And stumbled over the first two sentences, unable to process them at first. Then I read the rest of the post, and went to Making Light, where there is a long memorial thread:
I sat and mourned a while, and then, when I could trust myself to talk coherently, I phoned a friend who knew Mike much better than I did. Pressure of work means that she's often out of the fannish gossip loop these days, and I wanted to be sure that she did not wander into someone's blog in a few days or a few weeks, and stumble across it as old news. Fortunately someone else had already had the same thought. We talked briefly of how Mike had been living on borrowed time for so long that it was hard to believe he's finally gone. I still can't quite believe it, even now. Can't believe that there will never be a new Pygmy Mammoth Salad post to delight us all. That cover text I was supposed to be working on? I had a very rough draft of some bits of it. I have some spare time to do something about it. Can I find the file? No, I can not... Just in case any of the authors and/or review writers reading this are not yet aware of the latest way to make a fool of yourself in public, Amazon have a new facility. It is now possible to comment on other people's reviews, at least on amazon.com (.co.uk doesn't seem to have it -- yet). I have one word of advice. Don't. If you'd like that expanded, the long version is "Anne Rice". :-) Which leads me into a related topic. I would just like to say "thank you" to various beta-readers and editors who've prodded my prose over the years. However good a writer you may be, it is a really good idea to have a couple of people cast their beady little eyes over your stuff before it goes before the public at large, the better that you may not make a fool of yourself in public. Now, I have been known to argue with my editors about various points, as [info]watervole will doubtless confirm. But that's because I find it helpful in trying to work out what I was actually trying to do with that there bit of prose. If I ever show signs of arguing because I think I don't need a second opinion on my work, do feel free to kick me before the attitude becomes entrenched. Gacked from Making Light: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Due out Nov, $29.95.) The links to B&N and Powells will return when I can remember my passwords, or get around to asking for them to be reset... Isaac Asimov -- The Caves of Steel Asimov's first robot novel, and it's a nice short (by today's standards) mystery as well as sf novel. As with "I, Robot", this is the first time in years that I've read it, although it was one of my favourite books when I was a teenager. And again, I thought it was still an excellent book, but I was occasionally jarred by the way reality has caught up with Asimov's projections about the future and left them looking rather silly in places. The futuristic setting with a 1950s nuclear family, complete with the husband as the head of the household and sole source of the family social status, isn't quite as plausible as it might have been when the book was first published back in 1954. And the suggestion that a population of 8 billion is unsustainable without the Cities seems unlikely in a world that is rapidly approaching 7 billion and has more than enough food to feed everyone were it distributed to all. But these are minor niggles rather than major flaws, and the story itself is good enough to easily override them. A period piece, then, but one that has survived the passage of time and which offers an entertaining story along with some interesting speculation about the psychological effects of the cultures protrayed. Caves of Steel (Robot City (Paperback)) P G Wodehouse -- Carry on, Jeeves Collection of Jeeves and Wooster stories, including the story in which Wooster first takes on Jeeves (or possibly the other way around). Enormous fun. Carry On, Jeeves Arthur C Clarke -- The Sentinel 1983 collection by Byron Preiss of some of Clarke's most important short stories, including "The Sentinel" -- which still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Good collection, beautifully illustrated. Out of print, but readily available second-hand, which is useful as this was a library copy and I probably want my own. The Sentinel I've been ego-surfing, now that I have net access again. Look very carefully at
Oh yes... Some readers will be familiar with my whining about how I don't write many short stories because most of my short stories end up being 20-60 kwords long. So much so that my editor at Loose Id laughs at me when I say I've got an idea for a short story, and just says she'll expect to see it when I've finished it. Well, that 102 kwords in draft thing I just turned in started out as a desperate attempt to come up with a short story for [info]sacchig's stint as guest editor at Suspect Thoughts last year, as mentioned in this post:
It had mutated quite a lot by the time it gelled and I actually started setting it down about three months later, and not just in the length -- but that's where it started.
Grabbing a brief bit of net time... I really *am* having very intermittent, patchy net access, so I'm not ignoring people. There is good stuff, sucky stuff, and it-sucks-but-it-could-have-been-much-worse stuff happening all over my flist, and I *am* reading it,but by the time I see most of it it's old news. And I shouldn't read [info]desperance's posts when it's still an hour to go until dinner, because they just make me hungry.... Flailing through the paperwork for Dolphin Deams when I manage to get a rare uninterrupted half hour of puter time. Most of it is done now, but I still have not written the cover blurb for it. I suck at this particular bit of the job even at the best of times, and coming up with something sparkling and lively for this novel is much much worse than pulling teeth. (Yes, I do have ample experience of the latter, at least as the patient.)... I don't need to be on a computer to start plotting a new story. This is not necessarily a good thing, as I now have the first chapter in detail and a good idea of much of the rest for a novella using the same basic plot as "Lord and Master", the short story that was published on Clean Sheets last month. This may sound like a good thing, especially as it could be slanted towards a Valentine's Day release and I could probably write it in time... but I *was* planning to work on the third Buildup book next, that it may have a sporting chance of coming out a year after the previous one.
... I have bought Another Psion. Another four Psions, in fact, although three of them are apparently mortally wounded and fit only for spare parts. I probably wouldn't have been willing to bid as high as I did for a merkin version, were it not that the package includes assorted other useful bits as well. At this point all I need is an AC adaptor to have everything I need by way of accessories, but to be honest the wee beastie's main usage is in situations where I wouldn't bother to haul out a mains supply anyway. The whole point of buying another one is that having had one for some months now, I find that I *like* being able to pull something out of my handbag and start scribbling notes on it within 30 seconds, and I'm scared the current one will curl up and die soon. There is a meme going around the writing-orientated corner of the blogosphere whereby people describe the process of writing a novel. Because I have been more or less offline, the first one of these I saw when scrolling through several days' worth of LJ flist was Chaz's, here:
Now, I don't think I'm going to get around to churning out a long, witty screed on how I write or fail to write novels while this meme is still current, because the chances of me getting enough uninterrupted time at the computer to do so are somewhat miniscule. However, I might be able to manage a related cat-vacuuming activity that pops up on my fanfic LJ's flist every so often. This is the one where I invite people to ask me more about the genesis/background/whatever of a particular story I've written. So if anyone wants to know more about one of my stories, feel free to ask. (But keep it to the things that have been published as profic, please - if you have a burning desire to know more about one of the fanfic pieces, ask about it on the fanfic LJ.) Okay, does anyone have any suggestions as to why the log for my website has a bunch of hits yesterday from search engines for people searching for "jules jones" and "A Trifling Affair"? (Just in case anyone is still searching, and it really is me they're looking for, the short story is on my website here - http://www.julesjones.com/fiction/trifling.html ) ETA: one possibility has just dawned on me - could be someone's used the story as one of the trivia questions in a contest on one of the romance loops. It's that sort of pattern of hits. Kayelle Allen is running a contest to promote her new m/m romance and m/m romance in general, with a prize of a very nice package of m/m ebooks as an incentive to fill out a survey. Yours truly is one of the prize donors, so here are the details: Enter to win 15 free books from MM Romance authors Evangeline
Anderson, Laura Baumbach, Ally Blue, TA Chase, Jules Jones, Sean
Michael, DJ Manly, Jet Mykles, Luisa Prieto, ML Rhodes, Kira Stone,
Tory Temple, BA Tortuga, Stephanie Vaughan, and Kayelle Allen. One winner will receive a book from each of these authors! Five more
will each receive two books of the reader's choice and a copy of
Tales of the Chosen: Wulf, by Kayelle Allen To enter, click the link below and complete the entry form. What are
you waiting for? Spend Autumn's cool nights curled up between two
hot guys. http://www.kayelleallen.com/choosemeauthors.html Note back from Clean Sheets rejecting the excerpt from Pulling Strings, for reasons which I fully agree with. :-) It's a novel excerpt, which is always tricky, and it's an sf novel, which is also tricky for them. I wasn't that hopeful when I sent it in, for precisely those reasons, but I prefered to let the editor reject my submission rather than rejecting it myself. It was, however, a "please keep submitting" -- and some of the people reading this should note that they'd still like to see more m/m literotica submissions. Thanks to everyone who beta-read the submission package for me. I may well look around for somewhere else to submit it once I have decent net access again. And sold a novel...
book log I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov I adored this when I was a teenager, but I can't have read it for at least fifteen, if not twenty, years. It's still brilliant, although the failure to forsee certain social changes is much more evident now. Might do a long review to submit to Firefox News. The Hangman's Hymn -- Paul Doherty Medieval mystery, part of a series based on the Canterbury Tales. It's the first one by Doherty that I've read. Not sure what to make of it - I liked the premise, but there was something about the style in the first half that I found very unpolished. On the other hand, I kept reading... Picked up another one in the library this morning, though this time an Ancient Rome setting. I've been making lemon curd again. It's interesting to see that different varieties of lemon really can make a difference in the taste of the finished curd. I use a recipe based on proportions of
Email from Greg Herren to say that he'd like to use my short story And If I Offered Thee A Bargain in the Distant Horizons queer sf anthology. I am, needless to say, doing the happy author dance. :-) This is the sf fan meets sidhe story that has been collecting "I like it, but..." rejections, partly on account of it being neither fish nor fowl. Too much or the wrong sort of sex for the sf markets, not enough and wrongly paced sex for the erotica markets, and no HEA so the romance markets can't use it (my editor at Loose Id adores it, but even by LI's generous interpretation of HEA this is *not* a Happy Ever After). There's also the minor matter of it being stuffed with fannish cultural references that will mostly go over the head of mundane readers. So I am well pleased to have sold it -- and to have sold it to a specfic market. I've only had one previous fiction sale to a specfic market rather than an erotica or romance market, and it's a good thing I was paid on acceptance for that one because it still hasn't appeared and there is no sign that it is ever going to do so. So I'm hoping that nothing happens to this anthology before publication. Sadly, this isn't as unlikely as one might hope. Greg lives in New Orleans... Received my contract renewal notice from Loose Id for Promises to Keep this morning. That means it's been out for nearly two years now -- it was published on 19 October 2004, as part of their Halloween collection. It's a longish short story, 5000 words, sold as a Fling (Loose Id's line of short, cheap ebooks). In the year and ten months it's been out, it's sold 549 copies, and it continues to sell around 10 to 20 copies a month. If I've got my numbers right, that means it's earned me some $380 in royalties so far. So it's had a much smaller audience than if I'd managed to sell it to the anthology I originally wrote it for, but I've had a lot more money back from it than I would have had from the anthology payment. 7.5c/word, so far, and those of you who know about SFWA will understand why this pleases me. It's picked up some very nice reviews from the romance review sites, and resulted in some fan mail. I definitely feel... satisfied with the way this one has gone. Yes, I'd like that contract with a New York publisher, and I'd like to be earning enough money from this writing lark to make a living at it. But there's a nice glow of accomplishment at what I've achieved in the small press. Those of you who've used the market listings at www.ralan.com will know how useful they can be to specfic writers. Unfortunately Ralan's hosting costs have gone up considerably, and the site needs some financial support if it's not to close. Two ways to help - enter the Grabber Contest, with a $20 entry fee and a specified split of the entry fees between the prize pool and the site hosting costs, or donate money. The contest closes 31 August (and I meant to mention it earlier, damn it). I've just made a donation, because I think I've had a lot of value out of the site and I want to see it keep going. I'd have entered the contest, but I didn't come up with a suitable entry. The sf world is generally pretty leery of contests with entry fees, and with good reason; but this one is very clear about what you're getting for the money, and one of the things you're getting is supporting a useful resource. My short story Lord and Master is now available for your reading pleasure at Clean Sheets. :-) Romantic erotica (sort of), 1500 words, m/m, contemporary. I've just had a personal demonstration of why standard manuscript format matters... As I've mentioned previously, one of the gentle ironies of my life is that although I am published by an ebook house, I do not normally read ebooks for pleasure. I'm one of the unfortunates for whom ebooks are physically more difficult to read than dead tree format, and the gap is large enough that it's simply not worth it for me, other than having a couple of familiar classics loaded on my Palm for when I'm stuck in a train station. I also don't do much crit/beta reading for other writers these days, for related reasons. However, I *am* on one friend's crit group filter on LJ, and over the weekend I read the latest iteration of his current manuscript. (A month late, for various reasons, but no matter.) I think it's currently 60,000 words. And I happily read my way through half of that in one morning, on a screen, without having the issues that bug me with ebooks. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that it's work. Highly enjoyable work, but it's still mentally filed under "job". Which means sitting looking at a computer screen isn't really an issue for me as long as it's a decent screen, whereas I really don't like having to sit at a computer to read a book for pleasure. Books get read in all sorts of places, which means I don't want to be tied to a computer, sitting in one place and sitting in the appropriate posture. (Current handhelds do not do it for me.) And the other reason is Standard Manuscript Format. I'm one of the folk who write in SMF even in a word processor. I'm used to looking at it. It is invisible. And it seems that it's invisible when I'm looking at someone else's manuscript. I'm not spending clock cycles on trying to interpret the layout. I've known this for a long time, because it's one of the reasons I much prefer mailing lists and Usenet to web forums. I can set the appearance to what's comfortable for *me* and then forget about it. From then on everything looks the same, and I can run through at speed without having to consciously work out who said what. But this really drove it home to me. If the layout is effectively invisible, it makes it ever so much easier to read the text, and if you've been reading 12 point double-spaced Courier etc for years, then it's invisible. Even if it *is* ugly. And someone who's going through umpty-ump manuscripts in the slushpile needs every little bit of extra reading comfort they can get. As ever -- formatting guidelines are not there because editors like messing with writers' heads. They are there to make the editor's job that little bit easier. RTFGuidelines, and follow them. Whatever format the editor wants, give it to them. And if it's not stated, assume the standard 12 point double-spaced Courier yadda yadda. Yes, it's boring and it's ugly. It's also invisible to most editors, and that's what you want if you want to make that editor just that little bit happier when they look at the first page. Editors are human. They will smile more kindly upon your attempt at fame and fortune if they don't get a headache simply from trying to read the thing. Apparently the Loose Id webshop is having a little local difficulty with credit card processing, and the orders are having to be manually processed. This means Actual Human Being involved, and the actual human beings in question have to sleep occasionally, so there will be delays of anything up to twelve hours in processing orders for the next few days. It should be fixed by sometime next week. I have just exchanged a hot summer for a coldish winter. Amongst other things, this means that I am no longer able to stroll onto the patio and pick a tasty heirloom tomato and some basil for the sauce while the pasta for lunch is cooking. On the other hand, it *does* mean that I am somewhere where it is possible to obtain decent lamb and bacon. It may be cold and wet where I am, but there is also a rather nice casserole of lamb shanks and best end of neck in the oven right now. :-) Unfortunately I have also swapped broadband for metered dialup over a wet string, and that only at irregular intervals. I can read my Demon and Gmail incoming email pretty much daily, but outgoing (unless urgent) and sundry other activities such as LJ are likely to be somewhat more erratic. Probably not as erratic as online sightings of [info]predatrix, though. I'm not going to be doing much writing for a few weeks, so I might actually get some reading in. I read more novels on the plane than I did in the previous month, i.e. the last two thirds of Singularity Sky, and most of Iron Sunrise. I think I'm going to have to add Charlie to the short list of authors whose books I only buy when I'm travelling, on the grounds that there are so few authors I like whose books can be found in airports and railway stations... I headed off to the library this morning, and as per usual had a quick browse for books by people I know. Only score was the third book in [info]desperance's Outremer series. Mildly peeving, as I don't want to buy books while I'm here (too much weight in the luggage home), so I'd rather get books out of the library and buy a copy when I get home if it's any good and I don't already have it. And I have a list of books I want to (re)read and pimp, seeing as how I'm actually reading again. My review of the DVD of children's sf series Children of the Stones has gone up at Firefox News. And yes, I was paid immediately, as the review was accepted on the 6th, posted on the 10th, and the cheque arrived today. I have still received neither cheque nor reply to query about same for a review I did for a different online mag some months ago, so guess who gets first refusal in future? Finished writing synopsis for Dolphin Dreams and sent it off to my editor. Did requested edits on the story for Clean Sheets on Friday and sent them back, then approved final version yesterday. Expected publication date is 23 August. After that I ran through the shapeshifter story (which now has the working title Dolphin Dreams, although I'm open to suggestions) and did a tidy up -- mostly stuff like giving names to the characters called [x], checking that various things were consistent, and doing some very minor copy-editing. I also fleshed out the final chapter a bit, as that was the one I wrote on Monday when I was too sick to go to the dentist, and it was still a bit outlinish in feel. That added another 100o words or so, which means the final word count on this draft is 102,000 words. When I read it through I found that it was a lot less porny than I'd thought, though this does not mean it's short on sex. Normally I'd get it beta-read and do some revision at this point, but I'm about to be away from home for a while. I asked Ye Editor, and she wants to see the first draft now rather than waiting until whenever I manage to get a revised version done. Thus it came to pass that I emailed her the rtf this afternoon. I'm not sure whether I should put out a call for beta-readers anyway. Will think about it this evening. l_prieto came over today for a spot of Blake's 7 watching. We tried the new Hawaiian barbecue restaurant on Castro Street for lunch - cheap and tasty, though I'm not entirely convinced by the DayGlo yellow sauce on the chicken and pineapple. After she'd gone, I worked on the edits for the Clean Sheets story, but haven't quite finished them. Still a bit fuzzy from the poor sleep over the last couple of nights it seems, and I'm not quite up to de-geeking some of the text. About 500 words on the Ipswich story. Read through the latest iteration on the contracts, which took a couple of hours (because there are two versions, one for single author and one for co-written, and they had different sets of remaining typos and weirdness). Printed off nine copies of the co-author version, because there are three contracts relevant to The Syndicate series and they have to be done in triplicate. Filling out that little lot took an hour... Ah, the glamorous life of a romance writer. Anyway, they've now been posted to [info]predatrix for her signature. Felt much better this morning, so I was able to go to the dentist. Two fillings done without any great excitement other than failure to be completely numbed in spite of three injections. Maybe I _will_ get through this year without a root canal filling. I have to go back to have a crown fitted, as one of the teeth now has so many fillings it needs the protection of a crown, but that can wait. But it took a chunk out of my working day, as I was there for an hour and a half and feeling fairly fuzzy for a couple of hours after that. Signed the contract for the DVD review, so with any luck that will appear soon. Received edits and likely publication date (late August) for the short at Clean Sheets, but I've left it until tomorrow on account of aforementioned fuzziness. Also received further iteration of the new LI contract. I... um... proof-read the first version and sent them back notes... Will need to check through new version tomorrow, fill out, and send to [info]predatrix for her scrawl to be added. I was sick during the night, and still feeling a bit off this morning, so I've rescheduled the dental appointment. Not too sick to write though, and I've just finished the first draft. 101,000 words in total. Now I need a title. And to do the synopsis, and the paperwork that will be wanted once I sign a contract, and a revision pass, and stuff like that. Joy. About 3000 words today. Another 500-1000 to go, I think, so with any luck I will finish tomorrow. However, I have an appointment at the dentist to have two fillings done, both of which should be routine, but which have the potential to be complicated (for values of complicated including "oops, time for another root canal filling"). I gather from the trail of comments this morning that my editor at Loose Id has found my blog and spent far too much time reading it last night instead of getting on with editing. Get back to work, you. :-) Note this evening from Firefox News (nothing to do with the browser, but a pre-existing sf zine), accepting my review of the Children of the Stones DVD. Must fill out the contract tomorrow when I'm awake enough to read it. Further digestive disturbances this evening. I have absolutely no idea what set this off, but it appears to be IBS rather than food poisoning, so I am grateful for small mercies. [info]l_prieto, assume Tuesday's video session is still on unless I say otherwise, but I will email you the street address and a map reference just in case anything happens on Tuesday morning and I can't actually get to the station to meet you. 1867 words in the new chapter, of which 144 were actually written on the train last night, on my Psion. So 1700 for today's count. Might get it finished tomorrow, with any luck. You can put the whips away now, thank you. 2500 words today and I've just finished the final sex scene. One more chapter to go, and then the first draft should be wrapped up and it will be time to start the revision pass and look for beta-readers who haven't seen the first draft. And come up with a title. As previously noted, this is a menage a trois, with a pair of dolphin shapeshifter doms and a human sub, set in present day Britain. I was a bit worried with this one that it was too much like Spindrift in general theme, but I think that I'll probably get away with it, and not just because of the polyamory and D/s elements. For one thing, Spindrift was very much a fantasy novel that happened to be published by a romance house rather than a specfic house. Yes, there's a gay romance as the main plot thread, but it's about the impact of bureaucracy and security controls on the innocent, and about the conflict between urban and rural and whether the conflict is really what we think it is, and how we define "human", and stuff like that. Only with the Hot Boy-on-Boy Love to provide motivation for the characters to go do stuff, of course. This one's more on the romance-with-sff-elements side than the sff-with-romance-elements side. I laid off the ID card doom and gloom in this one because a) it would otherwise read too much like Spindrift, b) anyone who's read Promises to Keep and Spindrift has either noticed my views on that subject by now, or probably isn't going to unless I spell them out in one syllable words and 60 point type. It's also a lot less in your face about what happens as the magic runs down and the magical creatures have to decide _how_ to fade away. But it's still got some stuff on what do we mean by "human". Of course, laying off the political stuff seems to have left room for more sex. Maybe if I actually went and did a page count comparison, I'd find I'm wrong, but there does seem to be a _lot_ of sex in this one. Or maybe it's just the impression left by trying to handle sex scenes where it's necessary to show which of three people "he" refers to... 1500 words today, so getting back into gear. Still feeling a bit tired, but I've got my appetite back and I managed to cycle the mile and a half each way to Safeway's which is more than I could have done yesterday. I could have really done without an IBS attack *and* a dose of food poisoning in the same week. Forgot to mention that three new reviews came in on Tuesday afternoon, which cheered me up rather after the rough morning I had. All five star reviews from Fall Angel Reviews:
A Kiss At Midnight
Only 400 words on Monday, partly because I was dealing with book contract renewal paperwork. Is it really two years since Loose Id accepted The Syndicate? And only 700 words yesterday and none so far today, for reasons which will doubtless count as TMI for some. I made a remark on Making Light a few days ago about waiting for the food poisoning epidemic to hit after the heat wave. Well, yes... The staff at the dental surgery were very nice about it, and said that it was going around and two of their staff were off sick with it. I am so glad that I was simply having the six-month check-up and cleaning, and was not in the middle of a root canal filling. I actually feel much better today, but my attention span is shot, which is why I have been annoying other bloggers and forum users instead of getting on with that last 5,000 words that should really only take me two or three days . I'm not sure who should be more worried about this, [info]james_nicoll or my characters, but I've just been reading an old LJ post of his that made me think that I should go and put an extra scene in an earlier chapter just by way of pointing out that two of my characters haven't quite got the hang of this "of course we're perfectly normal humans, what makes you think we're shapeshifters!" lark yet. (Reference: nude, cooking in the, why you shouldn't...) Only about 100 words yesterday, because as I was reminded, there are these things called weekends. One of the things that happened by way of relaxing and socialising was a barbecue, which normally I don't mind. Unfortunately, I have had evidence today that there was an IBS trigger in some of the food I ate. Frequent evidence. I suspect soy mince in the burgers. So only about 500 words on the m/m/m today, because I have had the attention span of a goldfish all day. The religious rant was from the Here's One I Prepared Earlier file, not crafted on the spot. I did a tomato salad as our contribution to the barbecue. Four different varieties of heirloom tomato, plus basil, salt, balsamic vineger and olive oil. There's a photo around here somewhere which may get posted later. I harvested the sole remaining Brandywine for this - 230g. The first ripened fruit on the Brandywine was eaten on the vine by something, and I found the remains of the still green one pretty much where it would have been dropped by something that had stolen it and retreated to the nearest gutter to eat it. The Brandywine was delicious, and I am tempted to grow it again next year in spite of the pathetic performance this year. With any luck, a healthier plant (this was the one that was blighted) in a pot with good compost rather than the local clay soil will do better. There was a splendid crop of red cherry tomatoes a couple of days ago. Yesterday there seemed to be fewer than I remembered, Yesterday evening there was rustling in the eaves, and even fewer ripe tomatoes. This morning every single ripe or near-ripe one was *gone*. I would blame the squirrels, but the theft took place after dark. Apparently we have possums around here. (Um. Opossums if they're merkin possums?) Wonder if I can buy a catapult anywhere around here... The light rail in San Jose was severely disrupted by Grand Prix this evening, but I did get one compensation. One of the bikes in the bike compartment on the tram was... a penny-farthing. :-) Only 700 words today - slacking somewhat. Combination of RSI catching up with me after yesterday's overdoing things, and needing to work out exactly how the current chapter is going to go. 3200 words today to take the total over 90,000 words. Greatly assisted by it being a comfortable temperature *all* *day* for the first time in well over a week. Probably won't get much done tomorrow, as [info]l_prieto is coming over tomorrow for another session of drooling over Blake's 7. :-) 2800 words yesterday, 2500 today. Three chapters and around 10-15,000 words to go. I won't finish the first draft by the end of the month, but it shouldn't run much over. The cool change has finally come through, and the top temperature was a much more comfortable 30C in the house today. The outside temperature has dropped enough that we were wearing light sweaters sitting outside the pub this evening, although that was just the contrast to the previous few days - it wasn't actually cold in absolute terms. Still too hot, but I managed to get 1300 words done today, and the total is currently 81.6 kwords. This was the chapter where I started dealing with the problem of two of these guys are shapeshifters, and they'd like to have sex in both shapes. It has to be absolutely clear that there's a human mind in there when they do. It's a _lot_ harder than writing the scenes in First Footer, where one of the guys is a felinoid alien, but is also very obviously a person even if he isn't human - not least because he speaks English (almost) throughout. Fun, fun, fun... Well, I knew when I started writing the book that this section was going to be a logical development of the D/s relationship and that it was going to be difficult to write, so I can't complain about my muse handing me this sort of weird Weird Shit at the last moment. Charlie was complaining about his muse being a drill sergeant. Mine apparently has ambitions to be a porn film director. Only 500 words today, because I was expected to be sociable instead of spending the day glued to the keyboard... Also, it was too hot, although at least the iced water bottle last night helped and I got a decent night's sleep. Still 30C in the house, but the temperature outside is starting to drop to a sane level now, and the cool change predicted for tonight had clearly arrived sometime around 9 or 10 pm. "Cool" in these terms meaning about 21C low overnight, which is warm but much more pleasant than the last couple of nights. I'm still going to be taking Codis, because I've got the headache early warning signs again and I suspect this heat could trigger not just a headache but a migraine. Hit it with codeine *first*, I say. 700 words on Tursday, none yesterday or today. [info]l_prieto came to visit yesterday, so we spent the day wandering around bookshops and bead shops, watching Blake's 7, and talking about writing. And I was out in the evening, so no wiritng done then either. It was Too Hot last night. In fact, I can tell you that it was 28C at 4 o'clock this morning, because I'd had very badly disturbed sleep all night, and that was the point where I'd been lying awake for an hour or so with a heat-induced headache, and finally gave in and got up to find some aspirin. I checked the temperature while I was wandering around... It was Really, Seriously Too Hot today. As in it hit 34C before lunch, and was 37C at some point during the day. It's still 32C in the house as I type this. I did not get very much of anything done, because my brain had switched off from a combination of overheating and lack of sleep.. I even completely forgot until about 6 o'clock that I was supposed to be at an online chat today, which is not something I normally do. I'm about to take aspirin (because I can feel the headache coming back) and go to bed. [melt] Other Half is home from his trip, so I interrogated him this morning about the likely damage to be found in a house that had been abandoned for thirty years, and how abandoned it could be and still not need major structural repair. He has a lot more personal experience of this than I have, and all our DIY books are in storage somewhere... Having got a good feel for what I'd need to make my scenario plausible, I went back over the least few chapters and tweaked them here and there to fit. So only 600 new words today, but there was also a fair bit of revision that didn't change the word count much. Well satisfied with the day's writing work. Started on the amoxycillin last night and feeling slightly queasy as a result. I've got a three day course - if that doesn't clear up the dental infection, it's going to need poking at to determine what's causing the problem. Only 550 words today, partly because I was doing paperwork type stuff and partly because it was Too Hot. And because I had to go to the dentist to get an antibiotic prescription and an appointment, and then to the pharmacy to get the penicillin, and I had to cycle while it was Too Hot. That nerve branch that's had endless trouble and multiple root canal fillings in the last few years is playing up again. I hope it's just a minor gum infection annoying the damaged nerve, and not another abscess forming. I'd like to go at least one calendar year this decade without having a root canal filling. [sigh] Paperwork stuff including tackling the pile of short works to be submitted somewhere. Revised a DVD review and submitted it to Firefox News, and re-read a story and tweaked the formatting as per submission guidelines before submitting it to Fishnet. Also re-read a story to check if it looks good for Clean Sheets, but will submit it tomorrow when I'm awake enough to make sure I've formatted the submission correctly. Then I can dither some more about what to do with a 5000 word short that's just long enough to send to some of the erotic romance publishers. Submit it to one of them, with no money up front but the prospect of continuing royalties? Or submit it to Ruthie's Club, who pay a reasonable cash sum on publication and are a market I'd like to submit to for other reasons? Or stick it back in the file of short stories that could probably be expanded to novella length? Decisions, decisions... I didn't get around to dealing with submissions over the last couple of weeks because I was rattling through the WIP at an incredible pace and was totally focused on that. Came up for air on Saturday, and realised that I had been meaning to send in a sub to Erotic Dreams Zine for Cock Appreciation Month, I still hadn't done so, and it was last day. Only when I went to check the site for the subs address, I found that they'd closed early due to being swamped with subs. Oops. Oh well. I'll send it to Clean Sheets instead. I didn't completely neglect subs, as I installed OpenOffice and exchanged files with predatrix to see whether I can pick up Track Changes done in a modern edition of Word. The Spawn of Redmond drives me demented every time I try to use it, but some markets insist on using .doc files rather than .rtf files, so it would help if I could at least read the files complete with edits when I absolutely must. Fortunately my editor at Loose Id is perfectly happy to work with rtf, which is compatible with the software at both ends. Delurk day at Romance Junkies was spread out over both Saturday and Sunday this week. Lots of fun, and doubtless did me some good, because as previously noted I was here on my own for the last couple of weeks. 350 words on Friday. 1000 words on Saturday, except the software crashed with that weird bug again, and *ate* them. So had to rewrite them on Sunday, and did another 450 beyond that. 10,000 total last week, for a running total of 76.9 kwords by Sunday evening. "No, but please keep submitting" form rejection from Best Lesbian Erotica, saying that the story had reached the semi-final stage even though it hadn't got into the final selection stage. Feeling very pleased with that, as I don't normally do f/f. *If* I can get copies in time and *if* I can organise for one of my local friends to take them down for me, there will be copies of The Syndicate for sale from the Broad Universe table at Worldcon in LA. If anyone's going and would like to buy a signed copy should they be available, let me know. Didn't sleep well last night, and had other work to do today, so by the time I had time to write I was too tired to concentrate. Think I'll go to bed early with a book instead. I made duck leg confit a couple of days ago, just to see if I could. I tried a bit yesterday, but left it until today to have it as part of a meal, as it's one of those dishes that matures over a couple of days. Cold, it's pleasant but very salty, and I should probably have cured it for less than the 24 hours it got (the recipes I found online varied from a couple of hours to 24-48 hours). Tonight I reheated a leg by frying it in its own fat, as recommended by a recipe I saw at the beginning of the week and promptly lost. Chucked in a couple of slices of fresh ginger to flavour the fat. Steamed a potato in the microwave for five minutes, then sliced it and fried it in the pan with the duck. Chopped a spring onion and dumped that on top of the frying potatos, and added steamed peas as another vegetable. Since I knew this was likely to be very fatty, I did a rhubarb sauce to go with it, which I will doubtless pay for tomorrow (IBS trigger). Also had a tablepoon of lingonberry jam, as I've thought before that it's sharp enough and the right flavour to make a good substitute for redcurrent jelly on fatty meat dishes. The duck was salty but extremely tasty, and frying it does crisp up the skin nicely - and drains off a surprising amount of the fat, so if you lift it out with a slotted spoon and let it drain over the pan for a few seconds, you get rid of much of the fat. The lingonberry jam made an excellent accompanying suace, and cut the saltiness as well as the fat. The rhubarb was less successful, but I should probably look up how to make a proper rhubarb sharp sauce instead of just cooking it in the microwave for a couple of minutes with a bit of sugar. :-) There are three legs left, so those will probably be lunch over the next couple of weeks. And if I haven't completely sickened myself, I shall then make some more, and experiment with different herbs in the dry marinade. Went down to Campbell this morning for morning tea with l_prieto at what turned out to be a very nice tearoom -- although their tea isn't made strong enough for my taste, it is at least made properly with boiling water, something not guaranteed with USian purveyors of tea. I demonstrated that I have had no meatspace company for a week by my monopolisation of the conversation now that I actually had someone to talk to. Much talking about writing, slightly inhibited by the fact that there were young children in the room. Trying to describe my current WIP in more detail than I do in the blog but _without_ going past PG-13 was a trifle difficult. [info]l_prieto admired my Psion 5MX and is now threatening to get one herself, in spite of having an Alphasmart. Did do some writing when I got home -- 1000 words today, bringing it to 75,000 total so far. My guess is that final length will be 90-100 kwords. 3000 words today -- and a resurgence of the RSI this afternoon. I've probably been overdoing it a little, although it doesn't help that I put my shoulder out again yesterday (a separate problem). So it's a good thing I'm meeting l_prieto for morning tea tomorrow, as it will keep me off the keyboard for a bit. 2700 words today, total to date 71.1 kwords. It's definitely a novel and not a novella this time. :-) In the last couple of days I have looked up such things as the likely cost and timescale of reconnecting a remote rural dwelling to the electricity grid after a thirty year hiatus, how old a building has to be before it's likely to be on the listed building register, and what the consequences are if it is, when septic tank sewage systems first started making an appearance, the likely state of decay of a stone cottage that has been boarded up for some decades, failed to find suvey maps of any of the Purbeck qaurry caves but did find a nice sketch of the relevant strata... Hooray for Google, and anyone who suggests that erotic romance authors just churn it out without reference to the real world is likely to find themselves Tuckerised, and not in a manner that they will find pleasing. 3400 words yesterday, 2100 today. Harvested the first Green Zebra and Dwarf Patio tomatos today. Taste test report at my LiveJournal. Only 800 words on Thursday, partly because I spent some time tackling the tomato support problem. 2900 yesterday, and 3000 today. Total to date 62.9 kwords - this one is going to hit full novel length by the looks of it. Speaking of the tomatos, I found the first ripening Yellow Pear on Thursday, once I'd tied up the plant and could actually see all of the bottom truss. The Red Grape fruit has come on enormously in the last couple of days and there are a lot of ripe or nearly ripe fruits on several trusses. And the other garden item is that the gourd and cucumber plants are looking much happier this week, There is definitely something wrong with the soil on that bit of the bed, possibly including tannin poisoning from the redwood cones from next door's redwood. I dumped a load of Miracle Grow on the plants last week as a fast treatment for any basic nutrient deficiencies, and it seems to have helped. I should probably grow runner beans there next year to do some nitrogen fixing. Okay, I just harvested the mutant Cherokee Purple. 12.8 ounces or 364g. That's a lot of tomato. Actually it's a lot of tomatos plural, because this is the one where at least half a dozen flowers fused together to form one giant flower on an incredibly thick stem, and I ended up with a ring tomato. It started ripening in one of the fruit, and then ripened from there around the ring in each direction, one fruit at a time. Unfortunately it got black spot on the earliest one, and it started rotting today, so even though it wasn't quite ripe on the last fruit I had to harvest it this evening. It's lost a bit of weight from the rot, so if perfect would have been even a little heavier. The taste raw is mild, no acid at all but not that sweet either. Bland is the word that springs to mind, although it's certainly not tasteless. It may have a stronger taste when fully ripe. The fruit is extremely meaty, almost all flesh and very little pulp or seed. I can see that the yield of seed per plant from a seed crop could be pretty low. If you like meaty tomatos, this is a good one. I started cooking dinner just before I started writing this note, and paused long enough to cook dinner and eat it. Streaky bacon fried in a pan, with mushrooms fried in the fat as it drained off the bacon during cooking. Added slices of the tomato to the pan about five minutes before the end of the cooking to cook in the bacon fat and mushroom juices. The cooked flavour is utterly divine. Cooking greatly intensified the flavour, and it was tomato flavour, not just added flavour from the fat. Very mushy, so you coudln't cook slices directly on a grill on the barbecue, but this would be a wonderful tomato for a pan on the barbecue. I'll add some photos once I've transferred them from the camera. Comment from James in the comments thread from yesterday:
"The future will be a cornucopia of regretable commercial products." Collected highlights from various LJs The plushie sex dolls: Flying Spaghetti Monster Porn, featuring well-known classic art work: And by the way, there are Flying Spaghetti Monster plushie dolls. Wouldn't they go well with some of the *other* things in the thread? Such as this one: Of course, there's always Real Doll: or for the fans of alt.hamster.duct-tape: A little something for the boys: And there is something creepier than all of the above: I've spent the last hour (on and off, because it's hot out there) attempting to deal with the problems caused when one's Other Half insists that a three foot high tomato cage will be perfectly adequate support for an indeterminate tomato. He keeps forgetting that he's not in England now, and if you plant a jungle creeper in this climate it will head for the eaves... Anyway. I have installed two large cup hooks in the eaves above the Red Grape and threaded through a four foot metal plant stake, from which now dangles a support mesh. I've tied up the plant as best I can, but after spending the last couple of weeks sprawled on the ground it doesn't really want to be forcibly rearranged, and it's all looking rather Heath Robinson. However, the net result is that I could once again reach the bottom couple of fruit trusses, and I sit here now with two tiny tomatoes that do indeed look like red grapes. The big one is 23 mm long and 4 g, the small one is 16 mm and 2 g. That is now "was". :-) Sweet, mild tomato flavour, no acid, rather tough skin. They'll do well in salads and as snacks. I need to install the same sort of arrangement on the other side of the patio window now to keep the Yellow Pear under control, and then work out what on earth to do about the Purple Cherokee, which is directly in front of the window and thus slightly more problematic. I am making a vague effort to eat more salad during the summer weather. However, the Milk Pail, greengrocers, cheesemongers, and suppliers of imported foods to homesick ex-pats, have added duck leg confit to their lineup of cold meats at some point, and this week I decided that I had to try this even if it _was_ about three times the price per ounce of factory-farmed water-and-polywhatsit-injected mechanically-recovered ham from the supermarket. So today is the second time this week I have had the following for lunch: sliced tomato Is sufficently yummy that I have been inspired to look up a recipe for making confit, for the next time the Chinese supermarket on Castro Street has duck legs on special. I have to confess that because I am a Philistine Brit I did also add a dollop of salad cream to today's version... 3000 words and a new plot twist... I won't name the guilty party, as it was in a friends-locked post, but someone on my LiveJournal flist has just had a Share And Enjoy moment with this link, and I see no reason to refrain from infecting others: http://www.teddy-babes.com/ Comments thread at my LiveJournal. 3000 words today, and some ideas on plot development. :-) 2500 words today, taking it over 50,000... Just had a note from Clean Sheets to say that they've accepted my short story "Lord and Master". :-) Feeling well pleased about this one, as it's good exposure even if the pay's low. No publication date as yet, but probably within the next four months. [does the happy author dance] 1600 words on the shapeshifter, and around 600 words on the Ipswich story, so pleased with today's progress. Time for a tomato update. Fruit on four of the plants started colouring up last weekend, although the Yellow Pear and Brandywine are still showing no signs of doing so (though the Brandywine is in practice at least two weeks behind the others anyway because of the blight it suffered early on). I had a fruit from the Red Grape earlier in the week, although it wasn't truly ripe and had just been knocked off by accident. I picked the first ripe one today to try, although it was probably still a little underripe. Sweetish, some tomato flavour, still a little bland. It was one of the smaller fruits, and only weighed 2g. Really quite tiny, and definitely more suited to salad or snacking than using in a sandwich. The plant is covered in fruit and has shot up -- it's now around six feet tall and becoming a nuisance, because it's well outgrown its support. The Green Zebra is ripening nicely, but it's rather difficult to tell when the fruit is ripe, because it's, well, *green*. I can't remember whether it just goes yellow with green stripes when fully ripe, or whether it has red pigments as well, so the ripest looking one just gets prodded every couple of days. (Rummage - yellow-gold with green stripes, it seems.) The Purple Cherokee is purpling up on the Giant Mutant Compound Fruit that resulted from its habit of fusing several flowers on a truss together -- there are about six or seven fruits fused into a ring, and they're colouring one at a time, working around the ring. I'm going to have to take a photo of this thing when I finally harvest it. It too has escaped the confines of its support cage, although it's not as enthusiastic as the Red Grape. And the patio dwarf one is doing something, although as I have no idea what colour it's supposed to be, I don't know how far it is from being ripe. I also have a couple of self-sown plants from last year's experiment with the species tomato. They're far behind the others, of course, but it's interesting how many seedlings did turn up around the trough. It's obviously pretty hardy as tomatos go, and as it's a very pretty plant I want to get these ones to the stage of one ripe truss just so that I have seed for next year. The basil is doing nicely and I've been cutting it for kitchen use for some time now, so sometime next week I will be having my first pasta lunch with tomatoes and basil picked from the garden while the pasta is cooking. :-) I have by no means saved money by growing my own--by the time you add it all up, it would be much cheaper to buy from the shop. But nothing beats a tomato straight from the plant, and they certainly brighten up the patio. Hmm. Haven't updated my word count for a few days, in part because I had other things to talk about. Wednesday about 550 words on the dolphin shapeshifter and a couple of hundred on the Ipswich story, Thursday about 210 on the shapeshifter (partly because I was out much of the afternoon taking Other Half to the airport), and about 1000 words yesterday, in spite of spending the afternoon printing off part of a government manual I am going to read in pursuit of a career change. As mentioned, I'm here on my own, with car, and will be for the next couple of weeks, which means I'm inclined to wander about and see people within easy driving distance. However, the last two times Other Half went off on a business trip I promptly got sick enough to reduce my driving range to somewhere between "none" and "San Jose as long as it's somewhere I've been before" (i.e. David's house). I hope not to repeat this experience, but am not making plans to go as far as San Francisco or Berkeley. I'm printing off that government manual because I really, really cannot bear reading anything at length on screen. I tried. I failed. If I print out the entire thing it will probably cost me at least $50 in paper, toner and binders, and probably double that, but I don't care. So I was pleased to find an essay by Eric Flint about this in his Letters from the Librarian section at the Baen Free Library. Some of the things he talks about there are ones that I heartily agree with. As I've mentioned to a couple of people, I will start reading ebooks routinely when the reader device works like a book. The pages will be made of epaper, but it will have pages, bound together into something that looks and handles like a paper book. It's not because I'm an old fogy. It's because the packaging *does* matter, and for exactly the reason Eric gives - reading off a block of physical pages is easier than reading from a scrolling screren, at least for me. Last night's emergency tree surgery activities went on until at least half midnight, althoughI think they probably did finish around the same time that I went to sleep. I've just been down to the end of the road to inspect the damage, and it appears that one of the big acacias along there simply snapped at the base and fell onto the road, possibly taking some of its friend with it. There is now a sad looking stump, and a pile of neatly cut up canopy blocking the bike lane. Presumably they decided to stop once they'd got the car lanes clear and safe. Normally I'd have things to say about consideration for cars but not bikes, but on the whole I'm quite glad they stopped when they did, and I'm sure the people living closer were even more glad. The acacia next to the one that actually went does in fact have a heritage tree removal notice on it dating back a few weeks, and was due to be removed for a variety of reasons including it being liable to come down in the next high wind. (Any tree over a certain size, 2' circumference IIRC, can't be removed without a permit from the council, and a better reason than "I don't like the tree". There is an appeal period during which a notice is fixed to the tree so that people can object to the permit being granted.) It's possible that the late lamented was also slated for removal, but has beaten the council to it. The one still up has some fresh neatly trimmed branch stubs this morning, so either the falling tree took out a couple of limbs last night, or they looked at it and decided it was about to drop a branch or two and took pre-emptive action. The stump is over two feet across, and the one still up is around twenty feet tall, so that was quite a lot of tree on the road last night. It's 11 at night here. I was disturbed a while back by the sound of a chainsaw. It took a little while to register that it was after 10:30 and someone was using a chainsaw, which is very definitely verboten at this hour in these parts except in emergency situations. Then the chainsaw noise was replaced by the sound of Large Vehicle with a siren to warn that it's reversing, obviously shuffling back and forth. This carried on for a bit, and eventually I got curious enough to wander out and see what was happening, and more importantly how long it was likely to happen for. The main road at the end of the block has several council vehicles of various sizes and shapes lumbering around on it, a diversion on one carriageway sending traffic from that carriageway down my street, and rather a lot of shrubbery *on* rather than by or above the carriageway. Obviously a tree's come down, although since it's night and it's the far carriageway, I couldn't see exactly which tree and what had happened. But I think there is going to be hooting and bleeping and rumbling desiel engines for a while yet. And now we have the police/fire engine/whatever siren wandering around. Lovely. Don't think I'll bother trying to sleep just yet. ETA: We now have what I presume is the noise made when chunks of tree are picked up off the carriageway and dumped in a lorry to be hauled away... Just found the official announceme
WHERE?? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/literarynymphschat/
11 November: Armistice Day
Mesopotamia
Rudyard Kipling (July 1917)
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:,
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide -
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo -
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
10 November: wordage
9 November:
7 November: wordage
3 November: That wedding...
2 November: wordage
2 November: Coming next winter from Loose Id...
October 2006
31 October: Cover art
30 October: Duck soup
28 October: Where did that decade go?
25 October: A shame they're only sold in bulk
22 October: Surfacing
21 October: A little something for Halloween...
19 October
demonstration of why when you're an author smarting over a review, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt.18 October
16 October
14 October: Back to work
14 October: Bywater Books
13 October:
13 October: All bow to His Noodliness
12 October: Catching up
-- cheque from Clean Sheets, dated 30 September, for short story published 23 August.
-- invoice from Waveney Webs for webhosting (
-- note from Bywater Books saying that the f/f anthology Desire at Work is cancelled. I'd assumed that, given the delay, but it's nice to have a formal letter rather than having to prod them now I'm home.
-- signed renewal contracts for The Syndicate series and Promises To Keep, plus signed contract for Dolphin Dreams12 October: book log
- "Shroud for a Nightingale"
- "The Black Tower"
- "Death of an Expert Witness"
Three of the early Dalgliesh novels in an omnibus edition. Good detective novels with lovely, lyrical prose.
Dalgliesh visits his aunt in a remote hamlet, and finds that one of the local writers has been murdered -- or has he?
Short sf novel exploring identity and manipulation via consciousness transfer into android bodies, with the usual Lee sting in the tail.8 October: Con meditations
7 October: Note to beta-readers
5 October: Well, that was interesting...
3 October: The Syndicate 3 at Fictionwise
Volume 3 of The Syndicate has just been released at Fictionwise, so there's another 40 kwords or so of gay geek romantic comedy now available from Fictionwise as well as direct from the publisher. Here's the blurb:September 2006
29 September:
26 September: RIP John M. Ford, 1957-2006
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html
25 September: I hate it when this happens
22 September:
21 September: hear the wallets whimpering across fandom
21 September: book log
The Caves of Steel (Robot Series)
Carry On, Jeeves
The Sentinel: Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy
20 September: Cynical amusement strikes again
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:6rzQuT8B0hcJ:books.lowcost.us.com/item_42303030435252313643/Buildup_Mindscan.php
Does that review look as if it has been auto-generated from a template? Yes, that's what I thought even before I looked at the side bar and saw the same template on some of the other items. That was in the Google cache. Here's what the real time page looks like:
http://books.lowcost.us.com/item_42303030435252313643/Buildup_Mindscan.php
And what *I* saw when I looked at it was something making it *really* obvious it was auto-generated from a template, though it may have stopped barfing by the time others check. :-)
14 September (later):
http://julesjones.livejournal.com/42375.html
14 September:
9 September (4):
http://desperance.livejournal.com/37321.html
but there are sundry other examples around.9 September (3):
9 September (2):
9 September (1):
2 September (later):
Note from my editor at Loose Id to say that she's accepting Dolphin Dreams, the m/m/m dolphin shapeshifter novel. Likely publication date is next year. It's been a good week. :-)2 September:
1 September (later):
1 lemon
1 egg
1 oz butter
3 oz sugar
giving roughly one pound of curd from three lemons, and I usually do it the old-fashioned way in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. I've been known to make it in batches as small as 1 lemon quantity at a time, because it doesn't keep that long, and while I would be quite capable of eating a full kilo within a week, it would not do much for my attempts to keep my sugar intake to sensible levels.
1 September:
August 2006
30 August:
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3 August:
Spindrift
Spindrift 2: Ship To Shore
2 August (later):
2 August:
July 2006
30 July:
28 July:
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22 July:
19 July:
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13 July:
12 July:
11 July:
10 July:
8 July:
6 July (dinner):
6 July (later):
http://www.teddy-babes.com/
http://www.dildoart.com/fsm/2.html
http://www.venganza.org/
http://www.dreamkitty.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=G-MD58480&Category_Code=brand
http://www.realdoll.com/
http://www.realhamster.com/
http://www.bedroomsports.com/default.aspx?PageID=495&CategoryID=280
http://www.huggableurns.com/6 July (afternoon):
6 July (lunch):
sliced apricot
shredded butter lettuce
handful of young spinach leaves
chopped pecan halves
drizzle with balsamic vinegar (drench, in my case, because I am Weird and like vinegar a lot)
an ounce or two of thinly sliced duck confit, freshly sliced off the bone5 July:
4 July:
3 July:
2 July:
1 July (later):
1 July:
June 2006
30 June:
29 June (later):
29 June:
