The Girdle of Melian

ery quick post today as I'm going to be on my rounds, trying to catch up with all of your blogs! I'm doing well on my main A Round of Words in 80 Days goal, which is to complete the Alfred Russel Wallace transcriptions: I've typed up the current batch and simply need to format them. I also finished knitting an Outlander-inspired cowl! But that's for a later post... I thought I'd share links to some of the fellow bloggers I'll be visiting, including - still! - some lovely bloggers who came by when I was blog blitzed !: Old Kitty Trisha at Word and Stuff Outlander Kitchen Joan of Dark - who has a new book of Geek Knits patterns coming soon! Author Margaret Buffie The Word Wenches , a gaggle of romance authors Al Diaz or Father Dragon - haven't visited in ages! Joy Campbell - another blogger I miss visiting! Fellow Forumite Jo Murphey Jamie at Mithril Wisdom Nick at Scattergun Scribblings Julie Glover ...

nd the winner of my 900-posts contest is...Theresa! I've previously employed my cats to choose winners, because it's easy to toss rolled up bits of paper in the air and have them choose one to bat around. This time, though, I used a new method. I asked this little girl to choose from a range of items on the windowsill: A foolproof method! Except when she launched her chosen item on the floor... For today's post and ROW80 check in I'd planned to do a year-end review of my writing in 2014. Yet I'm afraid to look, as I don't think I've accomplished very much. Let's see: January 2014 – I was wise last January . I recapped my knitting as well as my writing, and I only entered one vague goal: edit Druid's Moon . Unfortunately, I'm still stuck on that project. It's a great little novella. It just needs a bit of tension-adding tweaking... February – Not much writing, again. But I updated my characters' faces file ! This is very excit...

his is my 900th post! The last milestone was my 800th post , which featured the first sentence of a story, milking a cow, and lots more. Prior to that, I celebrated my 500th post with a week-long contest and a recap of all the posts that had gone before, including a very handy list of all the books I'd reviewed, plus blog awards and writing snips and author interviews and writers' houseparties and Charles II and so on. I'd really like to do that for today's post. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go through 400 posts one by one. Maybe when I hit 1,000 I can make the effort, especially since going through the list of posts has gotten me intrigued about all the authors I've reviewed or interviewed. Instead, I'm going to share a few random ones from the last 400 posts that leap out at me based on their titles: 30-day Song Challenge HEAP Reading a Book is Like the Star Trek Revolving Door Speaking of Star Trek -- Wil Wheaton ! 30 Things I Want...

inter's day... Mulled wine cart Pikemen Wool! Not sure what this was. Preserved plants in jars...but I missed the young lady's explanation. Songs of the Escalade. All of these photos are of the commemoration festivities of the Escalade, an event that took place in 1602 -- enemies of the city were beaten off the walls and their invasion foiled. Boiling soup was poured on their heads! Marching band Drummers Men preparing to head for battle City walls The Alps in winter Every day, in every light, they look different. Save for the fact that they always look like something out of an ancient story. I'm always taking photographs! The current run of ROW80 has ended and a new round has begun, to run until 26 March. Eighty days of writing and other goals. For now I'm going to stay vague. I'd like to get some editing done, and maybe send a few more submissions to agents. I'd also like to finis...

appy new year! Medeia Sharif has a new book coming out, and she's hosting a giveaway! VITAMINS AND DEATH by Medeia Sharif YA Contemporary, Prizm Books Release Date December 10, 2014 Purchase from Prizm , Amazon – Vendor sites will be updated on the author’s site. Deidra Battle wants nothing more than to be invisible. After her mother, a public school teacher, engages in an embarrassing teacher-student affair at Lincoln High, they relocate to a different neighborhood and school. Being her mother's briefcase, Deidra joins her mother at her new workplace, Hodge High. Since her mother has reverted to her maiden name and changed her appearance, she thinks no one will figure out they're the Battles from recent news and that they're safe. Neither of them is. Hodge brings a fresh set of bullies who discover details about the scandal that changed Deidra's life. Feeling trapped at home with an emotionally abusive, pill-addicted mother and at school with...

ear-end review of books read -- it's here! First, a side note. We've reached the end of another round of ROW80. My goals petered out at the end. I haven't done much writing and no editing at all in the last couple of weeks. It's been nice to read for pleasure for a bit! Also, join me on 3 December for a birthday toast to Tolkien ! And now...   Annual Books Read Statistics ! Here are the statistics for 2013 , 2012 , 2011 (and the list ), 2010 , 2009 (and the list ). Books read : 113 , of which 84 were novels and kids' books (I count 'em all!), 8 were short stories, 2 were poems, and 19 were essay collections and comics and so on. This is compared to 188 novels and short stories in 2013 (plus poetry), 142 in 2012, 124 in 2011, 92 in 2010, 131 in 2009, and 101 in 2008. That's not counting the thousands of words written and read for writers' houseparties over at the Compuserve Books and Writers Forum, plus other forum writings, and magazines...