The Girdle of Melian

aby Faces Blogfest is here! Hosted by Trisha ! " What are the requirements? Between December 2nd and 3rd, post a pic of yourself as a baby, and/or; Tell us a story about when you were a baby (no doubt you can't quite remember it yourself, but you've probably heard some stories from other members of your family). You can choose to do one or the other or both, depending on your mood on the day(s)." Now this is embarrassing. I thought I had the perfect photo, me with chubby cheeks, in pink pyjamas with feet, lying on the sofa, but I can't seem to find the scanned version. So instead, here's toddler me, and I'll do the second half of the blogfest properly. I wonder if any of you can help with this: When I was a baby, learning how to speak, I went up to my mom one day at the park and said something that can roughly be spelled as "Demisi vu vu children." To this day no one in my family has any clue what that means. I also got my firs...

t's coming! It's coming! The Attack of the End-of- NaNo jitters! Two days to go, officially, but I'm hoping to finish tomorrow, to give me time to attempt the Luddite validation: "How do I verify if I'm writing by hand? Invoke the Luddite Clause ! What you do is write your 50,000 words, then have someone you trust verify that it is, indeed, 50,000 words. Then using something like the Lorem Ipsum generator, submit a file of the exact number of words of your handwritten manuscript to our word count validator." Be warned, I'll be posting some random photos of my three (!) messy notebooks. The thing with NaNo is that it provides the conditions I work best in: a prompt or two (in this case my original story idea), a deadline, competition from others, and limited time that requires writing spurts. I can get 600 words on the 10 minute train ride home, knowing I won't have time to write the rest of the evening. I will certainly NOT vouch for the...

inda trying something nuts this weekend... NaNo validations start tomorrow, so I've gotten it into my head to try to finish NaNo early. The sooner I get the last few thousand words, the sooner I can tweak the opening pages of Out of the Water , based on feedback, and return to querying. Which was the other half of my ROW80 goal... Is anyone else finding all sorts of unexpected twists in their stories as they barrel through NaNo? So far I've had a rival love interest, a merchant with busy hands, a ball and a moonlit boat ride, a duel, and a raid by soldiers, all on the path to trying to get my hero and heroine to the altar. I'm that close. If Santiago wins the duel, everything might be okay for him and Mawdlen... By the way, if you care about libraries, help support the Save Newcastle Libraries campaign. Hey, look at this! I stumbled on a super short Neil Gaiman story. I have to confess, I can't quite follow the plot: " Untitled by Neil Gaiman ...

a gotta go see Nutschell's awesome post about stationery . I love drooling over notebooks and pens and sticky paper supplies. I don't have a home office, but if I did, I'd have a massive corkboard, covered in inspirational images. For now, at least I've got Pinterest and tumblr . And now on to books, which I also drool over... If you haven't yet, read Amanda Palmer's post about her friend Anthony . I got my copy of Anthony Martignetti 's book Lunatic Heroes yesterday and started it this morning - already teary, and marking all kinds of quotes. The stick in that drop cap is for him and Amanda, and all of us. I also just read Diana Gabaldon 's The Space Between , available right now in her anthology A Trail of Fire :   "In LORD JOHN AND THE PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES, Lord John Grey is posted to Jamaica to assist the Governor as he faces a most unusual kind of uprising among the colony's slave population. In THE SPACE BETWEEN, Jamie Fr...

aleks! "No power in this universe can stop the Daleks!" I've been reminiscing, watching the first ever Dalek episode . "Don't act without thinking!" says Nicholas Courtney, and William Hartnell as the Doctor replies, "I never do and I never shall!" Well, I won't keep quoting. Apparently, we've passed the halfway mark for NaNoWriMo ! I'm still a mite worried that my story will end before the month is out, but the writing has been going smoothly (yay for ROW80 goals!), so I try to keep worries at the back of my mind. On the other hand, I have started to devolve into writing "easy" scenes again. Anyone have tips for upping the stakes and sending my characters into further trouble? Okay, one more quote: Courtney: "You're a very brave man." Hartnell: "Rubbish. I'm only doing what needs to be done." I also think it's funny that the Daleks used to say Eliminate! and Execute! before they s...

oday's post is brought to you by the letters P and J. By which I mean, Pearl Jam. Yes, if this post seems short, it's because blogging time was interrupted by emphasising-how-great-Pearl-Jam-are time, as I came face to face with a reluctant fan. Also, in keeping with my last post, I forgot to link to Claire Gregory's other blog, The Road to War and Back . I distracted myself from NaNo the other day by reading Talli Roland 's latest, Mistletoe in Manhattan : "As Little Missington's first Christmas baby in fifty years and the daughter of Christmas When You Like It party-planners, Holly West has been surrounded by the holiday spirit since birth. Trouble is, she's not exactly filled with festive cheer. In fact, Holly can't wait to ditch the tinsel and Santa suits for champagne and celebs, and become a party-planner to the stars. When British TV star Dean Layton hires her parents' company to throw his holiday bash in Manhattan, Holly jump...

orgot to post for Insecure Writers Support Group day! Rather timely, actually, because NaNoWriMo has been on for a week already (and ROW80 Round 4 is about halfway through) and I think I hit the wall this past Friday. I pushed for more words than the daily average, to make up for fewer words the day before, and I could tell that by the end, even though I was still in a frenzy of drafting, the words were growing increasingly repetitive and silly. I hope the second week is better. Anyone have interesting writing prompts/questions to share? Today is Remembrance Day, so I'm going to link to two specific bloggers: Claire Gregory, with a post on her family in WWI , and research she did about another family in WWI . Private Lamin's experiences in WWI . For WWII, I just discovered this site: A Dutch historian juxtaposes photographs taken during WWII with modern-day photos of the same places. With this year's NaNo, I'm close to having, at least, drafts of all m...