Long Overdue Links To Good Stuff

Excellent advice from Elana over at Query Tracker on trimming the fat in your manuscript. Take note of the post-it note tip...

Via the filtration that is communal blogging (snatched from Alan Baxter who was alerted by Cat Sparks who took it from Jay Lake's journal), I give you the The larval stages of the common American speculative fiction writer. Also from Alan, I was alerted to these two pages of interesting aids/rules in writing fiction: Page 1 Page 2.

Monica Valentinelli writes an interesting piece all new and emerging writers of dark fiction should take a squiz at.

I've been thinking lately that I've been a very bad online community member. I've not been doing the blog rounds, I've not been commenting a lot, I've not been posting a lot - and then I found this. Oh, yes! Bring on the crickets.

Locus Online has released their 2009 recommended reading list. Some excellent choices and plenty of Aussie flavour. (Must look into how you get a book in front of these guys so we have a chance of getting Dark Pages on the 2010 list).

This requires no explanation. It is so true. And funny.

Weekend Update

Knocked off a bit of reading on Friday, but then life stepped in and I didn't do anything else writing related all weekend.

Played cricket again on Saturday. We have once more won on first innings at stumps (the end of play) for day one. We will again be pushing for an outright win next week. On a personal note - it was nice to make some runs for the second week in a row - woot for me...on a more important note, it was brilliant to see the team working as a single unit, backing each other up with excellent fielding and bowling performances. Lastly, a big congratulations to Brett Dantonio for his herculean effort at batting for 2 hours without giving a chance. Some of us show ponies may have come in and taken the glory but it was all down to his anchoring the innings.

As usual, for those of you that care to follow along and become official ATCO Cricket Club groupies, feel free to visit the site (skip the ad). I'm captaining the B Grade team this year. Ignore the tables as they've not been updated from last year.

On the agenda for today - more reading as soon as I get a moment or two!

You can also get some reading done with Mercede's wonderful piece at 52 Stitches, JT's piece at The Nautilus Engine, Aaron's piece at Everyday Fiction, an excellent Q&A at Alan Davidson's blog with Kelly Armstrong, or Alan Baxter's 'The Book'.  If that's not enough for you, you can always buy the latest antho from Pill Hill Press which includes Nat Sin's story 'Donor'! (Warning, naked men in spa shown in advertisement - that should get some people there for you Nat).

Is it any wonder I don't get through submissions quicker with everybody publishing such cool stuff. Well done everyone!

Oh, for those of you wondering what happened to my background, my Photobucket account apparently died because I hadn't logged in for 3 months. Now I'm struggling to remember the password or what email address it was under so I'll go without until I find a replacement or remember how to access it. You may see the odd flash of something different while I play. Don't be alarmed - no animals or small children will be harmed in the making of this blog site...

Links

It's been a while and I've read some really good stuff around the place recently.

Great advice from the Query Tracker blog.

October Issue of Apex Mag is out for some good reading.

Alex has some good advice and prods us to look closer at our dreams - definitely something I need to do. (I've had two really good stories disappear on me in the last ten days)

I talked about lists recently - well now read this, and then this (Or just subscribe and read all of Alex's posts). This should give everyone a good idea on how to go about list creation and some ideas for their own.

There is justification for all writers over at Kate's blog. In a convoluted path, you will end up over at Dani Shapiro's corner of the cyberverse where we find it's good for a writer to do nothing! (occasionally).

KC lets us know everything we ever needed to know about deers - and a lot that you wish you didn't. This is just good fun and while you're considering the benefits of doing nothing, you may as well surf other writer's sites...

Aaron was kind enough to let us know that Necrography has gone the way of the Dodo :c( Make sure you read all the comments as well - and put your hand in your pocket occasionally.

And in an effort to wrap this salad up with something ultra useful and uber helpful to all writers, I present one of the best posts I've read in a long time from Ms Mercedes (love that name) M Yardley. If you intend to pitch, verbally, to anyone - you need to read this.

Congratulations to everyone who gained an acceptance recently - I know there are a few of you but this post is long enough.

Hope you find something useful.

Links

She's new to the blogging world, and extremely funny - The Intern. (Thanks to Editorialass for showing me the path) This is her take on an editorial meeting: What really goes on in editorial meetings is a lot like what goes on when a bunch of girlfriends go out shopping for clothes. Many acquisitions can be boiled down to one fundamental question: Does This Make My Boobs Look Good?

Thanks to Helen Ginger, I now have a new appreciation for the Web, and a slight glimmer of a future plot point for my current WIP with this article from the BBC. :c)

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror is now open for submissions - check it out.

Thinking about including a horse in your story - Check here first.

Good advice from Toni McGee Causey on creating worthwhile secondary and tertiary characters. (Something I'm concentrating on at the moment)

A review of a 'Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction' has been posted over at How Publishing Really Works which sounds like it could be a useful resource book.

Most writers who've been at it for a while (at least a year or more) have heard all this before (if they've been researching the industry - or have been a regular visitor here), but I'm not sure if I've heard it put quite so well as this over at Murder by 4. The included rejection quotes are a wonderful tonic every writer should remember as well.

And Holy Cow! Has anyone else seen this postover at Hoyden About Town, personally, I only found it by randomly clicking on links in other people's blogs, but anything which delivers an indepth look at Labyrinth, the movie, and close up pictures of a young Jennifer Connelly (I had such a thing for her in the 80s - not so much now she's had all 'that work done'), can only be a good thing.

Updating

I have spent a lot of time over the past few days, trying to catch up with other peoples blogs, web sites, finding new places of stirling information and paying back those who come to visit me by visiting them.

I'm not done by a long shot, but I am getting there, and then I need to rationalise all the links I have slithering down the right side of my blog - it is getting ridiculously long.

Cool stuff you should be casting an eye over:

Alan Baxter is continuing his blog tour. Subscribe to his feed to be instantly updated as to where his words of wisdom will show up next. Today (day 4 of the tour) he has an interview over at Publetariat.

Also through Alan, I've been reading the wise words of one A. Victoria Mixcon. Now there are lots of editors, agents, and others, on the net offering advice, but I've found that writers, particularly unpublished-but-wannabe-published-novelists, should take care to read as much advice from experienced professionals within the industry as humanly possible and still leave enough time to put that advice into practise.

If you can manage that trick, you'll begin to see similarities and patterns forming, which hopefully are not due to the last thing you introduced into your system, and the current general guidelines for all forms of writing shall emerge. You will also find the occasional professional who talks to you in a manner that just rings true and the proverbial penny shall drop!

Over at Joanne Anderton's blog I found this little gem of advice you might like to take a squiz at.

I'd like to say hello to those who have dropped by, joined the Musings Cult, and left comments recently. I am working my way through all of you, to return the favour, and I'm browsing through your lists/blogs/websites in search of new places of inspriration. Keep an eye out for me.

I began reading the last book in the Dexter Omnibus last night. As usual, I ended up drifting off for a nap. This has more to do with my lacking of sleep in general, and me being on the wrong side of 40, than anything to do with the book. Once I finish this one and release the review, you'll see what I mean - Dear Determined Dabbler in the Waxing & Waning Waters of Writing (good grief - sorry Chuck).

Happily, I'm also still finding time to do the occasional update to my current WIP. This one is coming out in a strange fashion, which is exciting me as Dreaming, the short story which was accepted into the Apex anthology, The Blackness Within, was the same way. And that turned out pretty kewl so I'm hoping this will be the same way.

I'm currently working on chapter 3 and that's going on okay. The lead female character's name has now been set in stone, and last night, the male lead's name came to me. I'd changed it twice already and still wasn't happy with it, but last night, it became obvious when the female lead told me what to call him - got to love it when the characters are already taking over.

This coming weekend will be dedicated to reading - I have to if I want any chance of coming close to deadlines. Being ill put me a long way behind. Time to catch up.

Links

I've finally caught up on my feed reading and now present some of the gems for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks to Ellen for putting me onto this article about pacing over at the Enchanted Inkpot.

Josephine Damian alerted me to an article from Robin Hobb that is so scary every blogger should read it. It is so me it's scary!

Apart from the great pictures which accompany this article from the Mystery Man on Film, it is also a great discussion about the misconstrued adverb. As does Steve Harper Piziks over at the Book View Cafe (but without the nice pics).

And Kate Nash and the infamous Rejector have both posted articles about the dreaded synopsis in the vain hope that it would shed a little more light into our dark brains. Go see if it helps you out.

Ugg

Still very sick.

Crawled out of bed to find a new movie to watch and to post some stuff - sorry Aaron, the brain is just too fuzzy to come up with another word.

So far I've watched:

Sweeney Todd - cool
The Prestige - interesting but a bit of a let down with half the reveal. I'd figured one bit out, but the other bit I couldn't grasp had a simple solution which was shouted at me all the way through, but one which I didn't believe. Looking back, as a piece of story telling, it was well crafted, but as a watcher, it seemed a little bit lacking.
The Illusionist - Cool film with lots of plants and payoffs which led to a logical ending. This wasn't a case of the story teller trying to be overly subtle or by trying to hide things from the audience - everything was there and it still made for a good story.
Underbelly 2 - my wife and I are working through the TV series. We have a disc and bit left to go. Not as good as the first series, but not bad.

Add these to the movies I've already mentioned in recent posts, and you can see I've done very little other than watch the box.

Some interesting news in the little bit of cyber-surfing I have managed:

Jason Sizemore (Apex Editor) has announced the magazine is coming out of hiatus (which lasted all of a number of weeks). Go check it out. Submissions will be open as of July 1st!

Stuart Neville is releasing his book 'The Twelve' to the Northern Hemisphere this week (no, I'm not upset that once again we down here have to wait...), but he has also released a free ebook of short stories called The Six. Go check it out to read some of the most anticipated work for some time.

There's lots of other good stuff, but I'm going back to bed so you'll have to troll through my blog lists over there on the side-bar. Yeah, I know, very slack of me, but I'm sick so :cP

Good luck with your writing.

BT

Wordage

I still make the grade even when I'm being bad...

And that is very sad.

A little while ago, I joined an online writer's group to give me additional impetus to do some work on 'A Kookaburra's Laugh' (AKL). I was a little lost on how things were to operate, but I think I've figured things out. I'm never said I was the sharpest tool in the shed, or should that be sharpest pencil in the case?

Still, the rules state I need to write a minimum 1000 words a month on a declared project. My project is AKL (obviously), and this is my word count. I've only been tracking wordage since December 2008 where I wrote nearly 16,000 words, but I've been keeping a written tally since Feb 09.

Feb - 14135
Mar - 7848
Apr - 6147

And so far in May 09 - 1900. Notice a trend...anyone....?

How sad is that? Two days left in May to add to that miserable target, but at least I still got my minimum done. Yay for small victories. (a very small yay)

In other news:

Some links I couldn't resist sharing with you.

Every writer's friend, Mr JA Konrath, has listed some excellent advice to published writers, but I think getting these things right at any level, published or unpublished, should be a priority.

The irrepressible Janet Reid has a lovely post about the courage of some writers. To be perfectly honest, I couldn't do it.

And lastly, here's a post from Alan Rinzler about POV and a bit on the whole publishing process which I thought was a worthwhile read.

So this weekend, in among shopping for a new secondhand car, I need to seriously complete my second-to-last assignment for this semester, and aim for a couple of chapters drafted in AKL. Oh, and I need to read quite a lot as I'm falling behind (I should probably stop playing with my daughter's DS - it gets quite addictive battling with Pokemon).

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

So Far Behind

In among all my writing and reading, I still scour the web for writing information which sparks a light in me and allows me to move further forward in my journey in mastering the craft. As is my way, I like to share these little bits of priceless information with you, my readers, so you, in turn don't have to search everywhere I've already been.

To this end, I usually post up a link salad, but I haven't been keeping up with the great stuff I read and my posting of those links to you, so this may turn into more of a salad farm.

Lately my stories have been getting edgier. Sex has never been something I've been afraid to write about, but it always had to be a natural progression of the plot rather than gratuitous. There are two posts over at 'The Mystery Man On Film' blog which covers all you'll ever need to know about writing about sex. It is superb advice.

More great advice is still finding it's way to the 'Net via Alex Sokoloff's blog 'The Dark Salon'. She is also about to do some reorganisation to make all this information easier to access. Stay tuned for a book version as well.

As I'm so far behind, how I end up at some of these new places with great, or in some cases, funny, information is lost to the ages. If you follow the blogs on my sidebar, you'll have seen some of this already. If you are responsible for throwing up the links to begin with, then feel free to claim credit for it in the comments section and I'll update it as required.

101 Reasons To Stop Writing is a funny sight and has some great tongue in cheek stuff to brighten your day.

Query Tracker has some great little contests for you to participate in. There's another blog I read at home which has some great info on it which is connected with Query Tracker somehow (I think), but I don't have the link here. I'll update when I get home...

The wonderfully talented Natalie L Sin has been singing the praises of The Funky Werepig blog radio show for sometime, and I finally got around to checking it out. And now, so should you. Very funny and very educational. You'll even hear about others who haunt this area of the blog-o-sphere so you'll feel somewhat intimate as well.

Marty Young, Mr AHWA President himself, has thrown up this post about the upcoming anthology by Tasmaniac Publications titled Festive Fear. Every Australian writer of dark fiction should know about this one by now and should either have submitted, or be just about to (that would be me for the second time), a piece for consideration.

Timely information from super agent Kristen Nelson (yes I plan to send her my manuscript AKL when it's done).

Over at Sex Scenes At Starbucks there is an interesting list of reasons people should be writing short stories you could be interested in. I was...er...am, I mean, I am! Go read.

This post over at Alan Baxter's blog is just funny and a great example of how you write one thing, but a reader sees something else. It is also a good example that your blog is not just a place to reel off any old thing in any old manner, you are a writer who is presenting their talents every time you use the written word to convey something. A blog is just practise for you - so use it wisely. Personally, I think Alan handles the situation quite well.

With a nod to TestWhimsy (Rebecca) for the link, this is a great article. But it strangely doesn't offer the advice which immediately sprang to my mind on the foot steps of going back to the source (ask Flick - that was my advice to her as well recently). Why wasn't this guy advised to query his manuscripts to other agents? It's obviously not working overly well with his current agent who also seems to have a bleak outlook on his future fortunes. That cannot be a healthy working relationship. I'd be sowing those oats a little wider if I was this chap, or at the very least, having a long chat with his current agent on where they see this current working relationship going.

Well that's enough from me.

Hope some of this is useful.

Miserable and Tired & a Link Salad

My alarm is set to go off at 6:00am. It is currently 4:23 as I begin to write this. I can't see the point in going back to bed for an hour and a half when I still won't be able to sleep.

My brain won't shut down and neither will the pain in my back.

I've gone and read a bunch of blogs, and will soon go back to reading some more. I can't concentrate enough to work on any of my writing or to read anything of length.

So far, I've found a number of interesting posts you should go look at. I've also finally opened an email I began sometime last week and finally sent home the other day, with all sorts of links. So I'll throw the still relevant of those up as well.

This one over at Query Tracker defining genres and how you should define your book is excellent, and there is more to come. It also has an excellent link over to a discussion on the 'Literary' genre at Nathan Bradsford - and we like Nathan's opinions on anything - including a discussion about concepts.

This one over at Straight from hel on book-royalty statements is one to keep for future reference but is interesting to see what actually takes place when an author goes through the process.

If none of you believed my spouting wonderful things about Alexandra Sokoloff's book The Harrowing, then you could always read another independent review of it over at Hellnotes. It's a good review, and nicely written. One day, I to will write reviews as good as this. And just for the hell of it - here's a video I found with an interview Alex did.

Quite a few of the regular agents I monitor went to the London Book Fair. This post over at Pubrants had some interesting stuff in it, with this little snippet catching my eye in particular:

In Asian territories, literary/commercial historical fiction doesn’t work at all. The editors won’t even look at it. However, UK and European editors say bring it on--they'd love to look.

I'm thinking AKL could work in a UK market, being about when the Brit's first arrived over here, so maybe I should add UK agents to my list.

A Fulton Prize winning short story which is a good read, by Sean Ferrell who has also just gained his first novel contract with HarperCollins no less. I've already added this guy to must read list of modern-authors-with-a-new-book-deal. I told you about that one - yes.

Not long back I discussed my process in creating wonderful works of art for people to read. Julie Weathers discusses her way of doing things which I thought a timely addition to the earlier discussion. I loved this bit:

Most often, we fall somewhere in the middle and a well-written book makes its own luck. Part of that "luck" process is a whole lot of hard work in the background. Writing, editing, revising, revising more, smoothing, beta reading, revising more and then smoothing one last time before we send it out into the cruel world.

And this bit should be made into a bumper sticker

“Unique for unique only makes a freak, not a fully functioning darling.”

To add some food for thought on the whole future of publishing debate - Check this post out over at Michael Hyatt's blog about Microsoft's current research projects. Print may very well become hugely expensive and only kept in museums - not libraries.

And here we get another angle on the bane of us all, rejection, from published author Alan Baxter.

Done! And it's now 5:16am - definitely not going back to bed for 45 minutes. It's going to be a long day.

Back Into Normality

Back at work today. Nothing blew up in my absence and it did take me all morning to work through hundreds of emails after 12 days away. In the end, there were only a dozen or so of any note.

Unfortunately one of them was a rejection for 'Digging Up The Past', my sub for the Devil's Food Antho. Just a form pass so it'll take a quick revision and out she'll go again.

When I earlier said I didn't think I was being a good blog citizen, I was referring to my lack of reciprocating to those kind enough to visit and leave comments. My reading of others blogs has been a little stunted recently. I've even been slack in updating the blogs I frequent on my sidebar. I'm in the process of fixing that. You'll notice my blog rolls are extending quite a lot.

Now I'm back at work, I'll also be settling back into reading blogs first thing of a morning to catch up on current events and hopefully having something useful to add in way of a comment.

As I had mountains of email to trudge through this morning, and, shock horror, I had some work to do, I haven't gotten through all my feeds yet, but I thought I'd add whatever useful links I came across as I did.

From Janet Reid's excellent blog I found this quote from one Julie Weathers, "Query letters are like a good strip tease. Reveal enough to stir up the reader emotionally and leave them wanting more." - writing advise to live by. Brilliant! (And yes, I've added Julie to my blog roll - if someone can come up with writing advise like this, I want to read her daily thoughts).

A little while ago, during one of the meme things that were/are going around, I disclosed a funny and utterly stupid thing I did in the past in regards to the first manuscript I'd written. I won't rehash it her, but this post over at Et in arcedia, ego, agent Jennifer Jackson's blog, pretty much nails it. I have, on many, many, many occasions tried to push this point since I wised up and winced at my early behaviour. If you want to be a professional writer, you must act professionally. It is a given fact that we are all too close to our work to be able to give objective opinions on it. Writers never stop learning and growing in the use of the craft. Not all experimentation or plot twist will work as you envisage it. When you finish your work, let it sit before revising it - then send it to someone not related to you, and preferably living in a different suburb, if not a different state or country, to give their opinion on it. Revise some more - polish it till it shines. Remember, great writing is not written - it's rewritten. Then submit it to market as per the guidelines as stated on the target market/agents website.

Just about everyone haunts Nathan Bransford's blog now-a-days, but just in case you've been under a rock, down the coast, or just too busy (that would be me on all three accounts), Nathan has been hosting the Be An Agent for a Day series of posts. As soon as I find some time I intend to go through them and check out the queries, the responses, and Nathan's advise on them. I should be able to learn something from that lot...I hope.

And just for the hell of it - stop complaining about agents or the process. Just write. If you do this well enough, you'll find the right agent for you, but please, enough with the agent bashing I keep reading about around the place - it's not nice - and it doesn't help anyone. Feel free to vent on your own blog (god knows I do from time to time), but is there really a need to sound off on an agents blog? Besides, it's not professional and I have a sneaking suspicion agents have a long memory about such things...

Tweets - I don't get it. I know one or two of you out there partake of this particular phenomenon, but I don't get it. I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do it - look at the length of this post!

Found this post on Smoke & Mirrors, Shane Jiraiya Cummings blog. Yep, it was five days ago and I'm only now catching up. It gave me all nice and warm fuzzy feelings to see my name listed as a possible candidate for best fan writer - yeah, right! My vote goes to Chuck McKenzie. It'll be an interesting list when the nominations do come out. Any way - thanks for the mention Shane.

I also found out today the the Australian Tax Office considers writers as "Special Professionals" - as tax time is only a couple of months away, here could be some info you need to know. (Thanks to Speakeasy for the nod & reminder.)

Okay - that is more than enough for my first post back at work. There may be more tonight if I get around to doing some writing.

BT

More Links

Yes I post a lot of links to stuff I think is interesting and possibly educational for writers of all levels - it's what I do.

Here's some great advice on bad advice from Jim C. Hines

I remember some time back mentioning in a post that a writer needs to possess innate talent, be willing to put in a huge amount of work and have copious amounts of luck to actually get that book deal and make a financial success of this writing caper. It seems Moonrat over at Editorial Ass(istant) agrees with me. Who knew I knew what I was talking about...

As I was randomly clicking on links which led me to different sites and more links to keep my random path moving in new and exciting directions, I came across this site: NewPages.COM. There is a wealth of information here on, about, and generally concerning the industry. Go lose yourself for a while.

The above link and this next one are both thanks to yet another new site I stumbled across: Random Complexity Writer's Challenge has loads of interesting and useful information - and links - like this one to the "A Comprehensive and Totally Universal Listing of Every Problem a Story Has Ever Had" article by Douglas A. Van Belle over at ASIM. If you want to improve your chances of getting out of the slush pile, or at least of being published by ASIM, then you must read this.

Interesting Stuff II

Do you remember a few weeks/months ago we talked about the benefits (if any) of doing study? I talked about the amount of time I dedicate to assignments and how I wondered if it was time well spent...alright, hang on, I'll see if I can find the post - err, no, I can't find it. Maybe I dreamed about posting that one.

Anyway, I vaguely remember something about wondering if the amount of time I spent on study would be better spent on just writing, and practising the craft.

Here's an interesting take on it from Tess Gerritsen's blog. Make sure you read the comments as well. I'll be finishing my diploma now I've started it, but I'd think twice about recommending it to anyone who just wants to write fiction.

Chuck McKenzie has started a new online zombie novel. I was unfortunate to not have followed the first one and that got rave reviews and may have other plans in the works for it, so don't miss out on reading this one.

An interesting interview of Nathan Bransford over at the Book Deal blog.

Go here to download issue 1 of Ruthless Peoples Magazine and read Aaron Polson's spectacular flash piece titled 'Man Bites Man' - satire at its biting best (It's a pity the mag editor didn't screen his publication for typos though. Still it's only the first issue so a couple of hitches can be excused - I guess). (And happy birthday for the 15th)

And lastly Cate (Catherine J Gardner) has The Marionette Manipulator & The Headless Bride up on 52 Stitches - yes it is as odd as the title sounds, but it is told in the unmistakeably wonderful voice Cate is becoming well known for. Very much worth the read.

And tonight - will be the very first post from my laptop as it comes online - stay tuned...

Another Slow Day

Something I ate hasn't agreed with me leaving me with headaches and a somewhat unstable stomach - not nice.

So not much writing done today.

From the feed list I've found a few things of interest:

Thoughts on writing a synopsis from the BookEnd Literary Agency. You'd think an agent type of person should know what agents want so this may be worth a look. I've also added this link to "The Global Classroom" links in the sidebar.

If you have a piece just returned or just ready to go out, this anthology from Comet Press may be worth a look. Strangely it has been listed on Duotrope as a new market and yet has a submission closed date of the end of February. Not long. I haven't checked it out - because I'm sick and couldn't really be bothered at the moment, so make sure you do before sending anything.

Sick of hearing about the New Kindle 2.0? While on my death bed I watched a segment on "Attack of the Show" which did a big trial on it. They recommend to wait till Xmas before purchasing for a couple of reasons. It'll be cheaper, and there may be other things on the market which combine multiple tasks and still has a good e-reader built in. This screams to me that the Kindle, and e-readers in general, still have a long way to go. (Although this post by Nathan Bransford makes a good case for Kindles competitor over at Sony)

If you haven't been keeping up with things, you can read all the posted stories in the 52 Stitches Anthology here. These are very short, and very cool snipits. Felicity's story is up this week. It's a must read for men so you know the cat is out of the bag, and a must read for women so you know the pain and anguish men go through from time to time.

I've been talking about editing recently so I thought this was timely - and funny.

If you haven't had a chance yet, head on over to The Blood-Red Pencil, and check out the posts. Not everything that goes up there is great, or detailed enough, but sometimes there are some good reminders - like the current series being posted by Helen Ginger. Subscribe to the feed as there is no such thing as too much information.

And just so you know miracles still happen to writers in this economic downturn, read this entry over at Rob Hood's Undead Backbrain.

So there you go - a long post with little or no input from me, and yet full of interesting and educational information.

I'm going back to bed.

Now What

Before I start my usual ramble, here's a couple of interesting things I found during my daily surf:

Some humour at Rob's undead backbrain that unfortunately rings a bell of truth. If you're a writer, go have a read and you'll see what I mean.

Over at John Joseph Adams, he has listed 21 sites all writers should include on their regular reading lists. I haven't had a chance to go through them yet, but I will - and post my own thoughts about the relative usefulness of them. Go have a look for yourself here.


Onto my normal ramblings...


I took my laptop to the cricket on Sunday and found the horrible truth that I only have 1 hour of power when I'm not connected to mains electricity. That makes my dreams of working while watching my lad play pretty much useless. As it was, I kept being interrupted by other people so I was never going to get anything done anyway. I guess I'll have to drop him off, nip home for a couple of hours and then go back.


So Saturday was a write off. Today wasn't any better. I was doing my normal Sunday chores when a latch on the front door needed fixing. So I did that. I went to hang out some washing and found the rear gate needed fixing - so I did that. After cleaning up the backyard, I heard a car coming down the road with the horn blaring. I went round the front to tear strips off the driver for disturbing the peace when my wife rolled into the driveway with the horn stuck - in my car.


It took a while but eventually we found out how to disable the thing and restore some quiet.


Then the bees came. Seriously, we had a group of bees suddenly descend on our bedroom window. Not exactly a hive but there were enough to cause concern.


As you can imagine, I've been pretty busy all day.


That's led to no writing, so I'm still behind on my assignments and I've still not done any more on Newland.


There seems to be an issue with Blogger at the moment as well as it keeps locking up. It's taking longer than usual to post my ramblings...turned out to be a problem with a file I was downloading - apologies to blogger. The whole system crashed and I just had to reboot. Thank God blogger saved this attempted post as a draft. It's been one of those days.

It's getting late and I'm calling it quits before anything else goes wrong - after I do a full backup of my stuff.

Speak to you later...I hope.

BT

Post addition - This was actually when my troubles started with my laptop. From logical reasoning I think it all began on the Saturday when people kept coming over and interrupting me. I placed the laptop into the boot of my station wagon. I think a child of one of the parents who came over may have sat on it or put pressure on the lid, which resulted in a damaged display. Lesson here is to never leave your laptop where others can accidentally damage it.

Links & Other Great Stuff

I'm going to dump this stuff together. As usual I've gotten behind on my feed reading so I'm learning all sorts of cool stuff in one hit instead of passing it on in bits as it was originally intended.

This is a very cool topic to start with: Dracula: the Undead. Nope, not another trashy rip off of the original fanged one. This has been written by descendants with full backing of the Stoker Clan and the weight of some big publishing houses behind it. Read the full story on Hellnotes. Seriously looking forward to this coming out.

Want to dream big - look here, but remember: only 10% of writers make a living out of writing and only 5% of those earn 90% of the money, so don't give up your day job. Besides...none of use write simply for the money - do we?

Some very interesting thoughts over on Speakeasy - and you've just got to love the final quote.

And just because I'll be spending some time here searching around because it's so HUGE - take a gander at Horror World when you get a chance.