Random bollocks

"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing." –Margaret Chittenden

Got that from Linnea Sinclair's MySpace. I love Linnea, because not only did she write a brilliant book that I absolutely loved reading, but she also loves cats. Oh, and when I reviewed her book for my newsletter, she emailed me to say thank you, and that she'd like to use the quote on her website. What a thoroughly, bloody nice chap. Er, chappess.

Also, today is my parents' 35th wedding anniversary. It really doesn't seem like five minutes since their 30th, or even that long since their 25th. Thirty-five years--pretty impressive, huh?

November News

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November. For that's when the latest issue of Cat's News is available! Yeah, I know, it's not the greatest of rhymes. Did I say I was a poet?

With book recommendations, author interviews, jokes, anecdotes and trivia, Cat's news is an incendiary as any fireworks display! Well, not really, but I'm trying out this marketing thing. How'm I doing?

Oh...and the picture is Guy Fawkes, if you were wondering. Ask any British schoolkid.

A new game

Invented by me, because I'm bored and procrastinating. It's called Think-of-a-quote-from-your-favourite-movie-book-song-and-TV-show-and-have-people-guess-them.

I may need to work on that title. Anyway, you get the idea. This time, however, I want you to tell me the character who said the line, the person who sang it, or the author who wrote it.

1. "We have got no money going down the mountain."
2. "They tell me to fight it; well, they can bloody well just try it."
3. "You'll really like him. Well, nobody really likes him. I don't even really like him." Something Blue, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kendra Clark.
4. "Walk a mile on these paws."

Think ya know? Tell me!

The Twelve Lies of Christmas

Look! Look at my new cover! Isn't it brilliant? Clue: yes!

Normal service will resume shortly

I.e., when I've got rid of this crappy cold that's making me feel like some evil little gnome has stuffed my head full of steaming compost, lined my throat with sandpaper and dropped me on a cakewalk. A cakewalk on a merry-go-round. With a hangover.

How is it that we can vaccinate against smallpox, yet can't cure the common cold? It's a daily catalogue of woes: last Wednesday I couldn't breathe or tilt my head more than five degrees forward; by the weekend I was feeling travel-sick while standing still; and now I've got the sandpaper throat, while at the same time still trying to show the sinus crap out the door.

Ugh. Enough whining about that. Let's whine about something else. I'm looking forward very much to being able to take a proper shower (as opposed to a bath, yes, I do wash). While the new one is plumbed in, it's still useless because it needs wiring up properly (water pressure here=zero. Do not feel guilty about wasting water by using power shower, as live in country wetter than some planets consisting entirely of water). I have no idea why my house, which is about forty years old, has worse electrics than my best friend's, which is 400 years old. Still. The new shower looks great. Goes very nicely with the tiling.

Got first draft of a cover for Twelve Lies today. Should be fantastic. Remind me to put details of that on my website. I can probably do that during the day, assuming I can get past the toolbox, sawhorse and ladders outside the bathroom door.

Spy me to the moon

13,523 / 13,523 (100.0%)

FINISHED!

The Twelve Lies of Christmas is done, done, done. Well, sort of, I still have to go back and check its not all a big steaming pile of crap, then send it to my editor so she can do the same. and I need to write an actual, proper blurb, because I don't have anything like one yet.

But anyway. It's done!

The movie quote game

At Emma's suggestion--since I titled my last post with one!

A. Pick 16 of your favorite movies.
B. Then pick one of your favorite quotes from each movie.
C. Post the quotes in your journal.
D. Have those on your friends list try to guess what the movie is. If you google, you suck.
E. Strike out the quote once it has been correctly identified and place the guesser’s username directly after the quote.






Okay, we'll start with that one.

1. "His bathroom is bigger than the Blue Banana." Pretty Woman, Emma Sinclair
2. "Hello? McFly?" Back to the Future, Michele
3. "Boy, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals."
4. "What an infantile idea! What a heartless, wicked, brainless thing to do."
5. "...and then they made me their chief--" Pirates of the Caribbean I, Allison
6. "With all this foil in my hair, I'm picking up HBO."
7. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." The Princess Bride, Michele
8. "Really? How many corpses have you stabbed?" Gosford Park, Amelia (even thoigh I had to tell her the actual title)
9. "This is your captain speaking. We may experience some turbulence and then...explode." Serenity, Michele
10. "I can keep talking until you strike me dead. Or not. I prefer not." Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alysia (extra points for knowing he also wrote Serenity!)
11. "That's Ren and Stimpy. They are way existential." Clueless, Allison
12. "If you say 'war' just once more, I'll go in the house and shut the door."
13. "I dazzled him with my...wits." 10 Things I Hate About You, Emma Sinclair
14. "It's like table tennis, only with slightly smaller balls."
15. "Your intrails will become your extrails." A Knight's Tale, Michele
16. "Why can't you wear black shoes, like the other mamas?"

Bonus points if you can tell me which of those quotes were written by the same person. And how many were adapted from books (or plays!). Er, and for anyone who can tell me how to strike out text.

12,157 / 12,000 (101.3%)

Yep, I went slightly past my orginal target. BUT I do have a range: 12-15k. So that's alright. I just wanted to make the minumum...and now I really hope I don't go over the maximum. I hate cutting.

12,157 / 15,000 (81.0%)

My bathroom is bigger than the Blue Banana

See? It has a whole harbour in it.

It's actually based on Port Isaac in Cornwall, and yes, it is being viewed through a mirror. Reason being, I painted it back-to-front because all the detail is on the left, which would be behind the door otherwise. And yes, it is in a bathroom--the downstairs loo, to be exact. Had to get it finished this week because we're having the upstairs one refitted, starting tomorrow, so I had to clear all the painting crap out so we'd all have somewhere to leave our toothbrushes.

10,030 / 12,000 (83.6%)

And yes, that total has gone down. I deleted some stuff because I'm in danger of exceeding my word count!

It's one am

And I've actually been working. Look!

10,205 / 12,000 (85.0%)

The White Stuff

Okay, I have a problem.

Keen readers (there must be one of you) may remember that I went skiing in March of this year, with my dad (his first time) and my brother (his third). It was my third time too, and, remembering two school ski trips to France, complete with hideous vegetarian food (a bowl of peas was a memorable highlight), overcrowded slopes, long transfers from the airport, poky accommodation, and of course, the French, I found us a fantastic resort in Sweden where the people were lovely, the food great--mostly because we cooked it ourselves, but the supermaket range was impressive--and the accommodation absolutely wonderful: we had our own freaking sauna.

The only thing wrong with the holiday was my inability to ski down anything steeper than the nursery slope.

But at least I finally figured out the problem. It's not exactly my total lack of coordination, although that doesn't help. It's my absolute phobia of heights. There's a word for it--acrophobia? Can't remember--but a phobia is what it is. I never realised quite how bad it was until I found myself dizzy and shaking in the exact centre of the floor, as far away from the windows as possible, on the 109th floor of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas last year. There were inches and inches of thick safety glass all around me, all the safety features and restraints you could possibly imagine, and yet after five minutes nervously admiring the view from a safe distance, I was incapable of standing up. I think the words I'm looking for here are 'panic attack'.

So, is it any wonder that standing at the top of a steep, icy slope with a couple of strips of highly polished fibreglass strapped to my feet, I'm concentrating less on the view and more on the absolute certainty that I am going to die? I tried to explain this once to a friend, who kept telling me that I only thought I was going to fall. "No," I said, "I know I am." It's the hindbrain, the bit that's left over from the days when big things with teeth chased us to the tops of cliffs, where we most certainly were going to die. It's the appendix of my brain, the wisdom teeth, the spleen. The bit I don't need anymore, but have anyway.

So. Problem. Well, not really: I just don't go skiing any more. Right?

Er, no. Two reasons: one, my mother is determined to have a week to herself while we're off skiing; and two, my dad is paying for the whole trip. Oh, and three, actually (I can't count, okay?), if I don't go, my brother is on his own for skiing, because Dad'll be having lessons again. So. It looks like I'm going for other peoples' sakes, not my own. Gift horses and mouths, I know, and it's a free holiday (where I will sleep on a sofabed, get frostbitten lips and twist all the ligaments in my knees into helter-skelters, because there is no way my hindbrain will allow my legs to do anything other than a snowplough when the going gets tough).

So, how do you switch off the hindbrain? How do you disconnect the bit that makes no sense, and hook up to the bit that ought to be in charge? All those of you out there who are scared of heights, or open spaces, or closed spaces, or dark places, or flying, or any of the other crap there's no rational reason for, speak up.

5,615 / 12,000 (46.8%)

(Yes, it's the same as before. I've been spending all my time reading rotten ski brochures)

One Day In History

The One Day in History site is being a bit wanky with me over the length of my entry--4000 characters is all I get, and once I've taken out bothersome things like spaces after full stops and commas, it's what I've got. Actually, 3995 is what I've got. Arsing thing won't let me enter it. I'll try again later. But for now, here's my snapshot of life in 2006. Enjoy.

Why do shampoo manufacturers make bottles with screw caps? Hard enough to unscrew it with wet hands, but then after you pour the shampoo into one hand, you’ve only got one free to screw the lid back on. I don’t care how volumising and shinifying the stuff is: if it’s got a stupid lid, I ain’t buying it.

The Lottery. By now I should probably have realised for once and for all that I’m not going to win, and yet every time I see that magical word, ROLLOVER, I veer off into wild fantasies of a big house with characterful features, heating that makes no noise, mains electricity which doesn’t need rewiring, holidays wherever I want, with proper first class travel and flat beds on long-haul, a car that doesn’t make weird clunking noises when it moves—actually, a car of my own, full stop. See?It’s not like I’m asking for billions. A few million would be nice. Actually, a few thousand wouldn’t be turned away.

Also in my dream millionaire house (see, I want the millions really), I’d have someone paid just to sort out my recycling. I know the council isn’t doing it for the good of the planet, they’re doing it because the government fines them if they don’t. And because they’re only doing it for money, it’s all token gestures, and no one’s really thought about it in enough detail. I have absolutely no idea what kinds of plastics are recyclable, and the manufacturers sure aren’t telling me. At one end, I’m buying food wrapped in three different materials so as to avoid any kind of bacteria whatsoever—including the good kind—and at the other, I’m being told that All Packaging is Evil and if I don’t recycle it, no one will collect my rubbish any more and it’ll all pile up in festering heaps outside the house. Bunch of bullies.

It’s like the fat/thin pronouncements. I’m confused. Am I in danger of succumbing to the Obesity Epidemic—epidemic!—sweeping the nation, creeping in my door, probably borne by some poorly packaged foodstuff, or should I be worrying that my body image is distorted by too many skinny women on TV and in magazines? I have no idea if I’m too fat or too thin, and no one else seems to be able to tell me.

Speaking of heating—well, I mentioned it earlier—this is the time of year when I’m perpetually cold. Mostly because my dad, who has the constitution of an ox, stamps around wearing all his clothes at once, hacking at things in the garden and leaving all the doors open. While I, for some strange reason preferring to spend my leisure time sitting somewhere watching TV, reading the paper, or surfing the internet for porn—I mean, information and communication—sit there shivering, because I’m only wearing one or two layers of clothing, not seventeen, and it’s October, which is officially chilly. I don’t care if the sun is shining. I don’t care if there’s global warming heating us up like an oven. 17 degrees is not a comfortable temperature when you’re as lazy as I am.

Am I lazy, though? See above re: obesity. I think a lot, and I exercise my brain, so does that make me lazy? I’ve tried exercise. It either involves paying money to clubs, which I don’t have, or coordination, which I really don’t have, or team spirit, which I’m also lacking in, or sweat, which I don’t enjoy. Sitting quietly reading a book, however, requires none of these things. And it’s got to be better for the brain than whacking a ball with a stick.

While I’m at it, one more thing. In the future, it’s entirely possible no one will be able to read this because I have, to the best of my knowledge, spelled and punctuated it correctly, and also proofed it for errors. Unlike some people, including: Uttlesford council, who ‘don’t do’ apostrophes on street signs any more; The Times newspaper, which doesn’t seem to even spell-check its articles any more; professional signwriters, such as the one who corrected ‘Luxery En Suite Accommodation’ to ‘Luxury Ensuit Accommodation’; people who write menus, flyers, advertisements, websites, book reviews, and on occasion, books.

There’s my snapshot of Daily Life in the Early Twenty-First Century. My, don’t I moan a lot.

Tag, I'm it!

Emma Sinclair tagged me, and I'm all about the procrastination, baby, so I'm giving in.

1) One book that changed your life: Seven Up by Janet Evanovich (yes, I read them out of sequence. Shoot me). Before this I'd never really read a mystery before, only seen them on Sunday night TV. And I'd never dreamed that they could be funny--at least, not without being distasteful. A chick-lit heroine and an action-packed plot? This was what I'd been waiting for!

2) One book that you’d read more than once: Everything by Terry Pratchett. Every time I re-read I find something new (like the Elvish joke in Soul Music? And Asphalt the roadie? How freaking long did that one take me??).

3) One book you’d want on a deserted island: Er. How To Build And Pilot A Plane Using Ordinary Desert Island Materials. Either that, or Where Jack Hid The Rum.

4) One book that made you laugh: Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. I was in convulsions. Honest to God, tears rolling down my cheeks.

5) One book that made you cry: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I may have spelled that wrong). Won't spoil the ending, but I was so overwhelmed by it.

6) One book you wish you’d written: Well, I've already mentioned The Pratchett, so I'll go for Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie. I just love everything about it. Plot, characters, dialogue--Christ, the dialogue. If I write one scene as brilliant as any part of that book, I'll be happy.

7) One book you wish had never been written: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Made GCSE English a misery, and was the last set text I ever read the whole of. Incidentally, this does not prevent a passing grade.

8) One book you’re currently reading: Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett. First City Watch book I ever read (I've just finished Guards! Guards! for the first time). No one writes characters with as much...well, character, as TP. I'd read about Sam Vimes or Angua buying their groceries (one large packet cigars {Pantweed Slim something? I can't remember}, one tub armour polish, one convex shaving mirror; one bottle dog shampoo, one hairbrush, one box dog biscuits).

People I'm tagging: Oh hell. Emma's already tagged most of the people I'd do. Can I double-tag Kendra? And the other Great Escape Artists, heh. I really need to read more blogs, don't I? Feel free to tag yourself...

5,615 / 12,000 (46.8%)

I may regret this

But here is a wordmeter, so you can all see how much work I'm not doing.

4,845 / 12,000 (40.4%)

Well, I have another project on the go, too. Perhaps a little unwisely, I'm also painting a mural downstairs to be perused while one is enjoying the facilities of the downstairs cloakroom. It's my mother's idea. Last night (first day of painting) she said it was too big. This morning, when I explained that she never told me how big she wanted it, and indeed saw the size when I had sketched it on the wall, she amended it to 'too blue'. Looks like I'll be creating a more authentically British sky of pale blue-grey.

This is, approximately, what I'm painting (click for a larger picture). God knows what it'll turn out like.


Oh, and I've amended the sidebar with blogs I actually do read. Or at least intend to. I'm terrible at catching up. Should I be reading your blog? Tell me, without using the letter E, why I should.

Only kidding. Use as many Es as you like. I'll even give you bonus points for them.