Nothin' to do, not much to say

I'm tired and bored. And also kinda depressed, because I went to a funeral today. Is it wrong that while the son of the recently deceased was giving the eulogy, I was sitting there thinking, "Hey, great job growing up!" Okay, and the eulogy was very moving too. So, an appropriate time interval, and then we'll see about improving my slut test score...

Okay, joking. He was surrounded by girls anyway. You know, it's very annoying that all my mother's friends have daughters of the same age as me who are at least half my bodyweight. I mean, there were three of them standing together, and I reckon if you stuck them on one side of a scale and me on the other, they'd still be higher than me.

Blah. Trying to print my own business cards, since I don't care for any of the pre-made templates you can get at those free business card sites, and when you design your own they charge you for it, then charge you to upload the image (yes, I know), then charge you for postage, then... I don't know, probably they charge by the letter or something. Anyway, have printer, will print. So long as the damn thing plays along...

Slut test

Okay, I did one of those slut tests, just because it's Sunday and I'm bored, and apparently I'm 32% slut, which I think is pretty funny. I mean, I don't even leave the house most days.

However, my doubts as to the validity of the test are underscored by the interesting statistics told me by the site(yes, even after all the data I put in, both for me and my made-up slut friends): (was going to copy/paste but it brokethe html, so I'll just summarise.) Apparently 0% of the 1.2 million test-takers have ever French-kissed, had anal sex, had sex with someone they didn't like, or just plain old had sex.

Right. Every one of those million-and-a-bit testees was a virgin? Possibly they're all thirteen, in which case good job, but there has to be one person who has had some kind of sex. No? The test is just for losers? Methinks perhaps that data has absolutely fuck-all to do with...well, anything.

Just for shits and giggles, plus see above re: Sundayness, I'm going to test a couple of my characters. Chance is 70% slut, kind of disappointing for someone in her profession (although I'm sure Dark's love is what denied her the last 30%). Aura, 79% slut (again, slightly disappointing, seeing as she ticked all boxes except those involving disturbing bodily functions, and entered the highest number possible in the 'number of partners' section). Con, rather sweetly, is 40% slut. That's because he's a magic-geek. Bless.

Meaningful thoughts prompted by song lyrics

AKA: is this song about me or am I superimposing myself on it? Well, the chorus is about right. Even down to the left/right thing. Drove my driving instructor nuts. And what the frilly heck is a wonderwall?

Everyday I wake up and it's Sunday
Whatever's in my eye won't go away
The radio is playing all the usual
And what's a 'wonderwall' anyway?

Because my inside is outside
My right side's on the left side
And I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you

Points for anyone who knows who that is... or anyone who does know what a wonderwall is... or comments...

Win signed smut

It's easy, look.

Each of the four Sundown, Inc. books (covers right) contains a character named after someone from my favourite TV series. Some of them are major characters, some minor. If you can tell me who they are, I'll enter you into a draw to win a signed copy of the Sundown, Inc. anthology. There's no end date to this contest (at least not yet, I'll probably end it when the book is released) so you've got plenty of time to think about it.

The Sundown, Inc. books are: She Who Dares, Blue Moon, What Wizards Want, and Baby Sham Faery Love. They're all available to buy in e-book format now from Changeling Press.

What I want you to tell me is: what's the TV show? (this one's fairly easy, I babble on about it all the time) and also, who are the characters in the Sundown books that I've named after characters from the TV series?

Okay, so I lied about it being easy. But the offer's still there.

Holiday! Celebrate!

Okay, bloggers. Ideas please. If you were invited to a costume party and the theme was 'holidays', what would you dress as?

No bikinis, please--and no, I'm not doing the Madonna thing, either!

We are the winners...of Eurovision!

I think you really have to be a) European and b) slightly mad to appreciate the cheese-fest that is the Eurovision Song Contest. When even the presenter can't stop laughing (love ya, Tezza--I mean, Sir Tezza) you know it's going to be entertaining.

Anyway, this year's highlights included: a Britney lookalike (when she was still hot) from Moldova who changed her outfit three times during one song; a French chick who badly needed a tuning fork; crazy shaven-headed Spanish dancers; a Swiss entreaty for World Peace; cute Russian boy with an unfortunate mullet, accompanied by a ballet dancer appearing from a piano; a British rapper backed by schoolgirls in boaters; a Danish teenager emoting over some boy's inability to 'twist'; Israeli soul sung in English and Hebrew (at least, my guess is Hebrew); and the winners, a group of Finnish Orcs singing comedy metal about the Day of Rockening (sic).

And no, I didn't make any of those up.

However, my personal vote went (or would have done if there was any phone signal in Alysia's house) to the Lithuanian entry, LT United, with their fabulous, possibly even post-modern football anthem We Are The Winners. Laugh? I very nearly ruptured something.

Come on, all together now: We are the winners of Eurovision. We are, we are! We are the winners of Eurovision. Vote vote vote vote, for the winners!

Honesty about writing

Laura Kinsale on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Everyone's thinkin' it, she's just sayin' it. Or maybe they're not. But I definitely agree with her. Voices in the head and all that.

Hell, if I'd wanted a proper job with money, respect, own flat etc, I'd have gone to university. Instead I have a damn vocation, and much kudos it brings me too! See my many millions of pounds, my fabulous house, gorgeous husband? Nah, didn't think so.

Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell, my wingéd friend, I think we got it wrong. The fairytale, the happy end, just prehistoric songs...

Well, yesterday's vet trip wasn't just so Tinker could get a haircut. It was a checkup--he's been on thyroid medication for years--and they did a blood test. Results back today. His previously overactive thyroid is now very underactive, so he should be piling on weight. But he isn't--he's a skeleton--because he has tumours in his stomach.

I've memorised this tune. Her word was 'indefinite', but I've heard that before. Ten days before his sister died, in fact.

Sucks.

Why my mail is so slow

Apparently the Royal Mail is in the pink again. Which explains why my local post office is still closed, my mail never comes before midday and it takes two weeks to send anything 'airmail' to America.

Royal Mail's operating profits were £355m, with all of its businesses improving their financial performance.

Note that 'financial performance'. Not actual, you know, letter-delivering performance. Apparently they're also getting £1.7 billion from the gov't--that's the government who can't afford to pay nurses properly--to help them out. No, I don't understand it, either.

Old man poodle

So, posting about books gets no response, but bitchery about men does? Quelle surprise.

Took the old man to the vet today (he's a cat, I don't take my grandfather there. Besides, my grandfathers are dead). He had all the matted fur on his back legs clipped off, and now he looks like a poodle. A really skinny one! The vet didn't judge us for allowing him to get into that state: she said old cats often just stop grooming. Must find some kind of brush I can use to get the tangles out without hurting him: he's just skin over bone.

Either that, or a chihuahua coat.

(Yes, I know that's a Corgi. Couldn't be bothered to look for a rat-dog picture.)

10 Things I Hate About You...You Bad Book

A meme I nicked from Glenda Larke's blog.

Stuff I hate to see in books.

1. Endless beginnings, especially those prologues that have nothing at all to do with the rest of the first half of the book and whose purpose doesn't become clear until chapter eleventy-hundred, by which point you've forgotten clear how it all started.

2. Billions of characters all turning up in the first couple of chapters, all of whom I'm supposed to give a damn about. But how am I supposed to remember which one is the alcoholic jockey with the schoolteacher girlfriend, who's teaching the kids of the ex-Olympic horse woman and sleeping with her husband, whose stepdaughter fancies the guy from the stables whose sister has just moved in and fancies... oh Christ, I don't care any more. Jilly Cooper can do it. The author whose book I just outlined above (any guesses? I only got a quarter through before I gave up) can't.

3. Those bloody Scottish characters who start every sentence with 'Och' and say 'nae' instead of--what is it supposed to be instead of? Billie Piper did it better when she met Queen Victoria in Dr Who. Seriously. What are you, the Nac Mac Feegle?

4. Fantasy books that include more than a dozen new words in the first paragraph. Vaellina looked out of the window at the Mergl citadel of Kinsk and wished the Plotzbum hadn't curtailed her powers of Skimseeing. If only the Flimsbotty would return to put things right! But since the battle with the Kugglebinders nineteen Moonspars ago, the only Drovian beings in the whole of Plongy were the Narskinians.

5. Character violations. You know, like when your restrained, shy, nurturing, hopelessly romantic heroine suddenly takes all her clothes off in the back of the limo to taunt the hero. Where was the chapter where she grew a spine?

6. The endless, endless cliche of the heroine who sees her guy have a conversation with another woman, and then storms off with no word of explanation for three years. Yeah, like you're going to engender enough trust to spend your lives together.

7. See above, only with the hero becoming suspicious this time. Then he cruelly condemns the heroine, half-rapes her (sometimes more than half) and abandons her. She never says a freaking word to set him right, even if he tells her what's wrong, which he usually doesn't, and turns up barefoot and pregnant but still madly in love with him. In fact, the whole secret baby thing. Done to death. Twenty-first century, man.

8. Jokes set up so far in advance that you can see them with binoculars.

9. Getting to a tense crisis, heroine dangling over a cliff, held up by her ponytail which is snagged on a twig, while above her the evil villain has the hero tied down with unbreakable bonds and is aiming a gun at his head...the chapter ends and you turn, feverishly, to the next page...and it's three months later, they're happily married and expecting an ickle fluffy baby, and laughing about how they vanquished the evil overlord last spring. Bah. Bah, I say!

10. Historicals where the forward-thinking heroine doesn't wear a corset. She'd have been trussed in one since she grew breasts and her clothes wouldn't fit without it. I don't care why, it's like a modern woman wearing no knickers. Or bra. Or shoes.

And please, those things take freaking hours to get off. There'll be no more casually exposed boobies, ta.

Oh, and finally (because I do words, not numbers, right?):

11. Those 'Oh but you must read it!' books. I must breathe, I must eat, and I must sleep. I won't die if I haven't read the Da Vinci Code. Besides, I already know what happens.

I'm going to become a lesbian

Because, seriously. There are what, something like 30 million men in this over-populated country, right? One of them must be sane, mentally normal, and not a hard drugs user. Wherever he is, he's nowhere near me.

Interview with Aura, sex faery

To celebrate the release of Baby Sham Faery Love, I'm conducting an imaginary interview with Aura, the book's heroine. We've all seen the blurb and the cover and the excerpt (and we've all entered the contest, right?), but here's something a little different...


Where did you live between the ages of 7 and 12?

The mortal realms. I always desperately wanted to go to the Courts, but my parents told me it was too dangerous. So I lived amongst humans. I kinda like them.

Tell me about your best earthly friend.

That'd be Tadgh. He's a psychiatrist here in New York, and he's pretty successful: he has an office overlooking Central Park. I still haven't worked out if that's because he's really good, or because he's a raging hottie. He's a sweetheart too: the most kind, patient man you could ever meet. Well, he'd have to be, with a diva like Ell for a boyfriend. Oh, and he's part centaur. Did I mention that?

If you had a time machine that would work only once, what point in the future or in history would you visit?

Oooh, so many choices! Well, I'd probably try to go back and stop my parents being killed in those ridiculous inter-Court skirmishes. But Fate has a nasty way of biting you on the ass and they'd probably die another way the next week.

Which of the following restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently, or never leaving the region in which you now live?

Leaving the country permanently would be easier for me. I mean, I love New York, but i don't want to sya here forever when there are so many fabulous places to see!

If you could take a pill that would enable you to live until you reach 1000 years, would you take it? Why?

No, of course not. I'd be cutting my own life short.

If you could change two things about the way you were raised, what would they be?

Easy. I would have been raised in Faery, and I'd have had both of my parents around for a good while longer.

What was the best thing that happened to you this past week?

I found the most divine Anya Hindmarch and it perfectly--absolutely perfectly--matched my new Choos. Ell was so jealous.

Oh: and I found out that my raging hottie of a best friend isn't actually as gay as I'd thought, and had rampant sex with him all afternoon. But I'm still pretty chuffed about that handbag.

What is your favourite time of day?

Twilight. When Seelie and Unseelie merge: it brings out both my faery sides. Dawn is good too, but I like sleeping in.

If you could choose your career over again, would you do it differently?

Probably not. What's not to love about being a sex faery?

How do you relax?

Oh, darling. See above.

What is your most embarrassing experience?

Probably the time I was summoned by the Unseelie Queen while I was having sex. There I was, all naked and sweaty with my legs wide open, and suddenly I was in someone else's bedroom, in the presence of the Queen. It's a damn good job I can apparate clothes, I tell you.

Coming soon: an interview with Reaver, hero of Never Leave me, the first in the new Sundown International series.