ROW80, Travel Questionnaire, Agatha Christie, and a Brand New Joke!

heck-in time!

I last shared my goals for A Round of Words in 80 Days in January.

Here they are with updates:

Overall goal list and my goals for A Round of Words in 80 Days:

Keep up with blogging and thelitforum (plus the reading, knitting, baking, etc.!): I'm keeping up! I know I owe some comments!

Check all "writing to do" and type up all notes on paper and collate all story ideas and ideas from dreams, and all story drafts and research and Save to Scrivener notes in my emails, ideally into my lovely new Kate Davies journal... Organize all Scrivener files: Er, this is moving very slowly, but I'm happy to report that it is moving. My gmail labels are getting more organized by the day!

Figure out what to do with the orts, such as the CampNaNoWriMo2015 story The Heathen in the Hold, and others, including items such as this post-apocalyptic story idea I wrote in 2010, based on a dream, the idea mentioned in my 2016 recap, and all other such half-formed notions: This is not moving at all, except for The Heathen in the Hold, to which I add a few thousand words a year during CampNaNo. On the other hand, I did send out two or three submissions, for The Charm of Time and Captive of the Sea. Rejections all around, boo hoo! The next one to concentrate on, I think, is the short story "The Tattoo"... I also have other plans for CampNaNo in April -- see below!

The current WiP is: The Future in Time (contemporary mystery, Christianne and Rory (third sequel), written NaNoWriMo 2021)
I didn't finish it during NaNo, so I've been editing or reworking a scene a day for the last couple of months!

Now I've reached the point where I don't have any scenes left. I'm at 30k, and need about 25k to reach the end (and begin editing all over again!)
So for now I'm going to try to keep going, at one snip per day (these are usually 500 to 1,500 words each).


Today is also reblog day!

I'm reblogging some fun stuff, with new comments in square brackets.

First up, a travel questionnaire from nearly 10 years ago!

What's your favourite place to visit in your own country?
There're a lot of places I haven't seen yet! The Yukon, the extreme north of Quebec, Gaspé, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island! So far I've enjoyed visiting Fredericton, New Brunswick, and all along the St Lawrence Seaway. As for Turkey, I love every place along the Aegean Sea.

What about your favourite place overseas?
Wales and Yorkshire. And probably the Scottish Highlands, but I haven't been there yet!

What's the best thing you've ever eaten overseas?
Besides pide in Turkey?

Where are you off to next?
Hopefully Plattsburgh for shopping in November, and New York City! And maybe England at Christmas! [We finally come to a question I can update! Just got back from a visit to Schwyz in central Switzerland, and we might be making plans for England at Easter, and Barcelona in July!]

Do you have a bucket list destination?
Do I ever! *deepbreath* Highlands, Shetlands, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Russia, Trans-Siberian Railway, Yukon, northern Quebec, Gaspé, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the 35 or so US States I haven't visited yet, the rest of England and Wales, eastern Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Patagonia, and -- maybe I should stop here... [adding a few: Croatia, Ukraine, the west coast walk in Wales, St Gallen, Orkney Islands, Costa Rica...]

What's the worst place you've stayed?
Well, it was my own fault. I wanted to see what my childhood summer place near Izmir was like in the wintertime. But our house was boarded up, so we had to stay at a pansiyon. And they hadn't been expecting guests, so the heat was off. It was cold. It was damp. Brr! On the plus side, we made a fort out of all the blankets and had a huge pile of snacks, and eventually warmed up enough to fall asleep. [Well, I wouldn't necessarily call that the worst. It was only one night, after all. When you have friends to share an adventure with, it's not all bad!]

Big city hotel, bnb, igloo, tent...?
Bed and breakfast in a big city! Or a renovated farmhouse in the country. [I think I'd rather a 4 or 5-star hotel in a big city :p Or a small boat on the Aegean Sea!]

Is there anything you can't travel without?
Camera. And pen and paper, natch! [And a book or 10 to read]

What has travel taught you?
Actually, there's a lot more I could learn. I still haven't ever visited a country where I don't speak the language and am entirely out of my element. Now that would be an experience! [I still have yet to do this...]


And now, some vocabulary fun!

Last year, when I blogged about The Great Agatha Christie Reread, somehow this old post of mine (from 2009!) about vocabulary (and a riddle!) from Agatha Christie slipped the cracks:

I've been rereading quite a few Agatha Christie books, mostly for fun but also partly because my new glasses haven't arrived yet (and won't until the 19th, unfortunately).

I can't wear my contacts for too long, or they hurt - so I either have to read (and do everything else) with taped up, askew glasses, or read with the book about 1cm from my face. In that position, it's hard to read anything new that I don't trust.

Anyhow, here's a list of words, ideas, etc. that I've marked for research and follow-up (sorry, lingo from work there; I've moved to a new section and have been concentrating hard all week) [this is why I not only have many a TBR pile and an endless wishlist, but also a Books-I-Just-Finished-With-Flags-Marking-Things-To-Look-Up pile]:

"he'd probably had to retrench his scale of living a good deal since the war"

"Michael and I are absolutely on our beam ends. Mick's had a really good part offered to him... Now we'll be in clover."

Post-WWII England: "With eggs so scarce and mostly foreign at that, so that boiling is always risky."

To scotch a rumour

To doss down on the couch (rather than sleep in the bed)

"he didn't half create" - i.e. made a fuss

Saying or quote: "three to one, the nun"

"not for her the state of mind of Cortez' men upon the peak in Darien."

"...as your poet says, 'to annoy, because he knows it teases.'"

"In my young days the young men... discussed Maeterlinck's 'Bluebird'."

"mugging over some notes"

I know two things about the horse, and one of them is rather coarse

Boracic acid (what is this stuff, anyway? Google here I come!)

The green bay tree

A Lion of Lucerne

"cut the cackle and come to the horses"

Milton's Sabrina Fair (no, I haven't finished reading Paradise Lost yet!)

"Mrs. Gamp" as a nickname

"So might Agamemnon and Clytemnestra have stared at each other with the word Iphigenia on their lips" (how I wish schools still gave one a proper grounding in the classics!)

"...don't be like the heroines of third-rate thrillers who start in the very first chapter by having something they can't possibly tell for no real reason except to gump up the hero and make the book spin itself out for another fifty thousand words."

A song lyric: "For the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin."

"...a line from one of your poets: 'A question is never settled until it is settled - right.'"

"'Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead.' A line from one of your poets."

"all according to Cocker"

"a secret de Polichinelle" - a secret that everyone can know, and people who don't know it never hear it, cos everyone assumes they know it already

And, finally, a riddle from Poirot, just for fun: "'What is it that has two legs, feathers, and barks like a dog?' "'A chicken, of course,' I said wearily. 'I knew that in the nursery.' "'You are too well informed, Hastings. You should say, 'I do not know.' And then me, I say 'A chicken,' and then you say, 'But a chicken does not bark like a dog,' and I say, 'Ah! I put that in to make it more difficult.'"

I note that the Books-I-Just-Finished-With-Flags-Marking-Things-To-Look-Up pile NEVER gets any shorter! And I'm not faraway nowadays from the Lion of Lucerne, I shall have to visit him!

And I have a new joke! Invented by my three-year-old:

What did the house say when he walked outside? I don't know how to say 'I'm home' – because he was inside himself!

What fascinating things have you looked up lately?

Please share a joke or riddle with us!