Snarky posts

I'm reading all over (well okay, in like two or three blogs) about one erotica writer who isn't happy with the general state of the erotic romance genre. Pretty much all the responses to her blog post (I only read the first few because the rest were so vitriolic and frankly, depressing) have been attacks on her and especially her writing. Glass houses and all that.

This annoys me for several reasons.

First, you shouldn't attack your own genre unless you're a) unassailable (Jude Deveraux, Nora Roberts et al could probably get away with it) b) very brave or c) brave's best friend, very stupid. It's inviting attacks on you and your work. Actually, maybe I should scratch a). People love to complain and they'd probably tell Jude and Nora their work sucks.

Secondly, she does have a point that romantica is probably not the strongest field of romance writing. There is some crap out there. I've read it. I may even be writing it. But it's like any popular genre, of writing or film or music - there's some good stuff and there's a lot of rubbish. I say to its critics the same thing I say to any critic of any genre (and I'm going to put it in really big letters to make my point): If you don't like it then don't read it.

Thirdly, it really, really, really irritates me that a person is attacked so strongly for expressing her opinion. All opinions are valid (despite what my big brother believes) and is it not an integral part of the western civilisation we all prize so highly that we can all speak our minds? Isn't that sort of the point of the internet? Frankly I'm starting to become afraid to express my own opinion in case I offend someone with more delicate sensibilities than myself. I have my own views on religion and politics, but I rarely express them because I just don't like getting into fights over them. They're not even radical. But they're still offensive to a lot of people who probably think I go around kicking puppies and things.

Therefore it would seem that the only way to get along with anyone anywhere is to keep one's opinion to oneself. Never speak out against anything that you believe to be wrong or incorrect. Never express your own beliefs. Never be individual or unusual, because this way pain lies. After all, Plato himself laid down the rules: that knowledge is based upon what is, and ignorance upon what is not. Since opinion and knowledge cannot be the same thing, opinion cannot be based upon what is. It's nothing to do with facts. Therefore, it must be invalid, and irrelevent.

Plato really could be an idiot sometimes.

Here's the original post

Kingdom of Heaven

Mildly confusing film with many unexplained elements. However. It contains Alexander Siddig, who I thought was gorgeous when he was being squeaky clean Dr Bashir in Star Trek DS9; Orlando Bloom being moody (who'da thought it'd suit him so well?); and lots of blood-spattering gore.
Also this image, which is the sort of thing I'd like as a cover for Chance and Dark (clicky for a bigger pic)


Gorgeous, no?

GARK!

I just got a reply from the Fab Five coordinators (I emailed the overall one as well as my category because... well, I'm impatient) who both said they loved my writing and it was really professional and that Raelene wanted the full ms!

Yay! And also Argh! I have to edit the goddamn thing!

On another note, I just had a really vivid Firefly dream where I think I was Kaylee. We were at a party and Inara had a really hot dress to make Mal jealous, but then she hooked up with someone (who reminded me disturbingly of Patrick) and it seemed that I was wearing the dress... and Mal was being hot. Weird! It was one of those dreams where you know you're half awake and you're directing it. So I made Mal hug me. Haha.

Ooh, and I get a plaque too. Not for the dream (clearly) but for the contest. Squeee!

Look! I told you I have a business card

Check it out!



(The font is a little more legible when it's been printed. Honest)

I already added it to my business card, so it must be true.

Just to clarify...

I won. I won the Fab Five freaking contest. Well, in my category, which is Erotica, thank you very much. Probably because I managed to get some sex into the first ten pages, which when two people have never met before and both their world and their species has to be described, is pretty damn tough, I think!

I ran upstairs to get a jumper 'cos we were sitting outside (yes, I know. I know. But see below for why the British do this sort of thing) and saw there was an IM from Amy asking if I'd heard yet. I gave her a gloomy Dougal reply and clicked on the Contest Alert group for the hell of it.

Then I squeaked like a mouse and read the post again, fairly sure they were listing in reverse order because how else would I be at the top of the list?

I mean, seriously. I wasn't kidding when I say final found judges usually hate me. All editors hate me. It's a rule of the universe. Like 42. There were six finalists in my category (like, an extra one - should've been five, hence the contest name) which just said to me that I now had an unprecedented opportunity to come sixth out of five.

Have since forwarded what probably doens't make any sense onto pretty much everyone in my address book (possibly even the twins, which could be intertresting since I haven't spoken to them in a year or seen them in a year and a half), and am anticipating many replies of "What the fuck are you babbling about, girl?", or possibly no responses again, 'cos they'll probably think it's spam.

Anyway. Don't care. I checked the list again this morning and it's still there, no retraction or anything. I already added it to my business card, so it must be true.

Oh, and for the superstitious/people who like to laugh at the superstitious, I asked my oracle book yesterday about the contest. The question I picked was "Will I receive the honour I am hoping for?" The answer came back: "Yes, a woman will help you."

Seeing as I figure probably in excess of 99% of people involved with this contest are women, that's not particularly helpful. But accurate, nontheless. I guess you can take that as you want.

Gark

Oh.
My.
God.

I never won anything before.

I'll post more when I've recovered from getting squashed to death by my mum who thought an appropriate tribute would be to hug me til I stopped moving.

__________________

I've been sane a long while. And change is good.

Still nuthin'

See above.

Bleeaaah

Still nuthin'. This timezone thing sucks. If they weren't six hours behind, I'd have heard by now.

Well, probably, anyway.

Hey. Random thought for the day. At the beginning of Home Now on No Doubt's Return of Saturn album, there's what sounds like the annoucement on the London Underground at Victoria station: "This is Victoria. Change at Victoria for the Victoria line, mainline and mainline suburbia." But I stopped at that station the other day and that's not what she says (and yes, it is a recording). How can this be?

Okay, I lied

...about posting on the hour every hour. Actually I found something to do: putting together a package for... someone... that I probably won't get around to sending for days, if not weeks, and then I decided to make some bread with the wheat-free flour Mum got me. It's a little weird so far: I've never made bread with vinegar before (and after working at the mill, I've made quite a few kinds of bread), and never made bread that didn't need kneading. The dough tastes good, but it's oddly cake-like - a little gritty with the flour (not superfine like wot I am used to) and not as doughy as bread dough. More like cake mix.

Anyway, we know where the proof of the pudding is, right? Tune back in for a riveting update!

Oh, and still nuthin'.

Shall I compare thee to a boring Sunday afternoon?

Looks like I'm posting on the hour, every hour. Just like Sky News.

For your reading pleasure, I thought I'd post this amusing little tidbit from AA Gill's restaurant review this week in the Sunday Times. Anyone who reads this regularly will know he spends most of the review talking about something completely irrelevant, using as many long and complicated words as he can to confuse anyone who's not as fritefully clever as he is, before adding a scathing paragraph at the end about whatever unfortunate establishment he's reviewing this week. The full article is here but the bit that made me laugh because it's so bloody true is this bit, right here:

We all look back on seaside holidays with a heightened, exaggerated, messianic reverie. The them and us of this island is not between indigenous and immigrant, black and white, Muslim and football, but between those of us who, as children, went to the seaside and ate mangoes and grilled parrotfish, swam in the warm surf, collected seashells and watched glorious sunsets, and those who went to the seaside, hugged their knees and yomped with damp sand in their socks across muddy strands, carrying plastic bags full of sodden towels and grit-battered jam sandwiches.

Nothing so forms the English sensibility as the seaside of childhood: the damp stoicism, the “make do and wait for a gap in the clouds”, the listening to Radio 2 behind a windbreak on the prom. It has made us what we are. Very little disappoints the English, because they’ve been relentlessly inoculated against great expectations. Instead of installing a sense of optimistic adventure and boundless possibility, the sight of the sea reminds them that the pier is closed and that there is sand in their hard-boiled egg.

This season I will be mostly spending time on such a beach, shivering and picking sand out of my lunch. I will be spending one week with my parents, who seem to think that sun=warm (and no, they never have been skiing) and one week with Alysia's family, who I don't believe have ever been on a summer holiday anywhere north of southern Spain. To them, a holiday involves suncream and airports. To me, it's many, many, many, many, many hours feeling sick in the back of a car that smells like wet dog, followed by a week somewhere very pretty but terribly chilly, eating twice my own bodyweight in chips and availing myself of the local cider in order to warn off the pneumonia I will have got from sunbathing on the beach.

Ah, England.

Oh, and... still nuthin'.

Ooh la la

I just realised the blog was still timed on GMT, not BST (British Summertime, which is an oxymoron). So now I'm on French time, since Blogspot doesn't seem to recognise summertime.

Remind me to change it back in September.

Still nuthin'. Or should I say, encore rien.

Contest nerves

Still nuthin'.

Anyway, it's only 6am in Wisconsin, and being that they announced the results last night at their party thing, porobably no one is awake yet there. Besides, the conference goes on until noon. Why am I so paranoid about this?

Actually I'm not. I'm still just bored.

Contest nerves

Still nuthin'.