Third part

Dedicated to Blogless, this time. The fourth part should be the final one, but, um, not quite finished it yet. I'll try and do it tomorrow (my time) so I can stick with the daily posting schedule. Then I'm going to challenge somebody else to do this too! Or you can volunteer.


So when it comes to responsibility, the woman in the wall is a better candidate than my dad. The one good thing about dad is that he can get me out of here, so I smile sweetly and say: 'thanks, Dad,' all enthusiastic so the nurse can hear.

Because of the no-licence thing, the hospital arranges for a volunteer to drive us to the cottage. She's a square-shouldered older lady with grey helmet hair who smells of hairspray and fusty perfume. She helps me into the back of her car with a heap of fussing and seatbelt arranging. Dad makes as if to climb in after me, but I shut the door, so he has to go and sit in the front next to her. She witters on about the weather, and was I comfy in the back there, and the price of bread, and she doesn't shut up until I interrupt a story about her budgie to say: 'so, you'll be leaving as soon as we get to the cottage then, Dad. There's a bus stop up the road.'

Dad doesn't say anything for a moment, so the helmet-hair gets back on to the budgie story, until he interrupts her to say: 'Jackie, you'd have died if I'd no' found you when I had.'

Helmet-hair draws her breath in sharply between her teeth, and then even more sharply when he adds: 'You minded me of your mum when I found her after the overdose, you were that empty-looking and still.'

That offends me, because I'm no addict, unlike him and Mum, and I don't even want to look like someone who's an addict, so I jump the conversation on. 'Well, maybe you should have gone away down the pub for another drink, like you did when you found Mum, and then I'd be dead too.'

'Jac, your Mum was dead already. I've told you that many times I canna even do it nice any more. She was dead, with the needle still in her arm, and I just needed a drink to give me the strength to call the police in.'

'So you left her there for me to find.'

Helmet-hair's not got the strength to hiss any more breath in, but when I look at the back of her head, I can see her hair quivering despite the hairspray.

'I didnae ken you'd be home early. But…I've no excuses, Jackie. I'm no' going to make it sound any prettier than it is. I coundnae have brought your mother back, but I did the wrong thing. It took me more than twenty year to learn how wrong, but I ken it the now.' He turns round in his seat and looks right at me, and for the first time, probably because I've been avoiding looking at him, I notice that the whites of his eyes are that. White.

'Look,' he says. 'I'm no' drinking any more, hen. I've no job, I've no car, but I've no bottles rattling around in my pockets either. I'm a fully signed up member of AA, I go three times a week back in Glasgow, and I've been twice to the church up the road since you've been in the hospital. Back home I sit alongside Eck McKinnnon. He's been in the AA for over 30 years and I never even knew. He says that's why he'd give me a birl home after a night in the lock-up. There but for the grace of God, he says. And he says it's the grace of God that brought me to the AA, too. I dinny ken too much about God, but every morning when I wake up with my face in the pillow instead of in a pile of puke I've the manners to say thank you to Him if he's a hand in keeping me sober. But, if it's any help, hen, I'm awful sorry for your mother.'

I don't know whether he means he's sorry for not doing anything to help her, or, he's sorry she died so pathetically, sprawled across the kitchen table with my cat gnawing on her fingers. Or he's sorry I had to see it. Or even that he's sorry that she didn't have the courage to do what he's done and stop it all before it was too late. If he has stopped. I heard that one in a million different ways when I was a kid. 'Never again, Jackie.' 'Our lives'll change now I've stopped drinking.' 'Just one more chance, Jackie.'

I don't say anything else all the way home, and neither does he, and neither does Helmet-hair, so we never find out what happened to Joey, her budgie that flew out the window on a cold winter's night. When we get into the cottage I’m feeling a bit light-headed, so I let him help me in. He looks around as I flop on the sofa.

'No' done much wi' the place, have you?' he says. 'How's the sofa facing the wall and not the telly?'

'I don't watch television.' I close my eyes and when I open them again, there's a mug of black tea on the coffee table beside me and a note saying: 'Away to the shops for some milk and bread'. Well, I suppose he might as well get some supplies for me. I wonder if he's any idea where the shops are. If you turn right at the gate, the next village is only a mile away; if you turn left then you've three miles to go. The tea is cold, so I'm guessing he turned left.

'Hi,' I whisper, but nobody answers. 'Hi,' I say again, a bit louder. 'Hello? Where are you?'

No Dad. No woman in the wall.

When Dad gets back he's carrying more plastic bags than a bit of bread and milk would need. 'The bus stop's up the road,' I remind him.

'I ken,' he says. 'I got the bus into Edinburgh the day.' Then, without saying anything more, he unpacks a sleeping bag, a pillow and some new clothes. 'I forgot to bring any,' he says as he unpacks a packet of undies. 'I was in that much of a hurry when Stuart called me.'

'Why did Stuart call you?'

'Said he'd given you notice and you looked a bit weird. He was worried about you.'

'I don't need anyone to worry about me.'

'Aye. Right,' he says as he piles the bedding on the end of the sofa by my feet. 'Where's the shower?'

I don't tell him, but he finds it, and when he comes out, shaven and washed, he looks almost respectable. He sleeps on the sofa at night, and when I lie on it in the day, the cushions smell of cigarette smoke.

'I couldna give up the fags,' he says. 'I will, but no' too much at the one time.' He smokes outside, without my having to ask, but the smell still clings to him and I find myself breathing in deeply when he walks past me, and sometimes I bury my face in the sofa cushions, not to hide from the smell, but to absorb more. The smell of my childhood. I ate, slept, lived in a musk of cigarette smoke. I thought I hated it.

There's no sign of the woman in the wall. Perhaps it's because he's here. Perhaps she's shy. I whisper to her when he's in the toilet, or off to the supermarket, but there's no answer. I’m worried she's gone. There's so much I need to talk to her about. Not working is driving me mad, my fingers fidget on the arms of the sofa like it's a plush keyboard, but they're typing out nonsense. I've nothing to think about, and that's making me thing about things I don't want to think about. I've got to get back to work. Then I remember I've no work to go back to and my fingers fidget all the more, until I'm exhausted and slump back into sleep, clutching a cushion with a sharp-cornered zip that feels like one of Benito's claws.

After a few days, Dad brings in a letter from the hallway. A cheque from the office with a formal letter terminating my contract and offering me six month's redundancy. A pink post-it is stuck to the front of the letter. 'I fixed this up for you. Hope it helps. Stuart.' The post-it has a puppy in the corner. He must have picked up off Maddy's desk.

I rip the letter and post-it into shreds, then roll the cheque up into a little tube. Dad cleans up the shreds without asking what or why or even complaining. Sometimes I like him for that.

The second chunk of the story...

For Aerin. First chunk below for new readers. Let me know if you can handle more. Our ill heroine has just been sacked...

The room glows orange with late evening light and every breath I take binds my lungs more tightly in white-hot metal bands. For some reason, I'm thinking about Benito, the cat I had when I was a kid, and how it felt to have him curled up against me when I slept, warm and breathing. If I close my eyes and wriggle back against the cushions, it's almost as if he's there, snuggled into the curve of my back.

The woman in the wall stops singing. 'It was the name, wasn't it?'

'Yes.' She manages not to say, I told you so.

We sit up together through the darkness, but we don't talk. Through the window, I watch the brief night close down day and then the pale light of tomorrow fights it off again. At some point I crawl into the bedroom and change out of my crumpled suit into pyjamas, then I go back to the sofa to be with the woman in the wall and Benito. At some point I throw up, tearing more pain into my chest, and the woman in the wall says she's amazed I've anything to throw up, because as far as she can tell I've not eaten for days. At some point when the air is invisible again, I throw open the window and breathe it in deeply, which sets off such a coughing fit that the woman in the wall tells me to shut the window before I catch my death. At some point I sleep again and I dream about Benito, flying through the air with his legs and tail outspread, like some kind of five-limbed and wingless prehistoric bird. At some point I lose track of time. At some point the woman in the wall, frustrated by my silence, tells me it's her turn to talk, and she asks herself the questions she asks me and then she answers them too.

'Tell me where you're from,' she starts.

'Just outside Edinburgh,' she says.

'I ken Edinburgh very well,' she says, and now I hear that she's putting on a Glasgow accent. Like mine before I changed it.

'It's a tiny village,' she says. 'On the outskirts.'

'I ken most of the villages outside Edinburgh too,' she says, as me. I never say 'ken' now.

'I went to the village school,' she says, and then she hesitates, because she can't exactly stick to the script now.

'Och, I love the friendly family atmosphere of wee village school!' she improvises in her Glasgow-me voice.

'It wasny so friendly,' she says. 'And family can only go so far.'

'The woman in the wall?' she says. 'Unusual name for a girl.'

'Short for dead woman in the wall,' she answers and even the pain in my chest pauses for a moment.

'Shouldn't it be dead woman?' she-me asks.

'I ken, I ken, but that's no' a very nice name, now is it?' she says. 'Woman in the wall, now that's got a wee bit of a ring to it, that's a wee bit romantic. Dead, that's no' nice at all.' There's a snap in her voice, I think, but then she asks the next question and her voice is sweet again.

'So, you were an only child?'

'Aye. My parents only wanted the one. I was special, my father told me all the time.'

'What about your mother?'

'Och, she left, when I was just a bairn. I came home from the school one day and she was up and away and I never heard a word from her again.'

That's different. I always simply say that my mother died when I was young.

'So your father brought you up on his own?' she-me asks.

'Aye. All that I am is all that he made me.' And I find my mouth moving along with those words, even though I've never said them before.

She asks a new question at the end. 'Why did you never ask me any of these questions?'

She doesn't answer that one and neither do I. By then I'm using all my strength to squeeze air and out of my lungs, although I wonder why I bother, because all I'm doing is tightening those metal bands, millimetre by burning millimetre. I can't feel the sofa under my body. I think I may be floating. A man is talking, I think, or it might be a woman. Am I awake or dreaming? Alive or dead? I don't care, so I close my eyes and let go.

I wake up in hospital. I am still breathing, and although I feel as though something heavy and warm is living in my lungs the fire is gone. A drip dangles over my head and the room smells of alcohol, which helps me to work out that the slumped thing in the corner must be my father.

It's pneumonia and I'm there in the hospital for five days and he's there for most of it too, although I manage to ignore him for most of it. He tells me that Stuart called him when I didn't answer my phone. I never even heard it ringing. Dad was listed on my original application form as my next-of-kin, right next to the Jacqueline-Marie. Two mistakes on one form. If I've learned anything from this, it's to start the lying sooner.

The nurses are nice enough to him as well as me. They don't seem to notice the smell of alcohol. For a while I wonder if he's real, but then he comes over to the bed to kiss me, and I feel the stubble on his cheek and turn my head away so I won't have to smell his breath.

I don't talk, but he does. 'I'd to come on the bus,' he says. 'I lost my license a year or two ago.'

I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner.

He's like the woman in the wall. Just keeps on talking, even though I don't say anything back. Asks his own questions, gives his own answers.

'What about my job, you'll be asking? Well, I lost that too. No' really a surprise. Good of them to keep me as long as they did. I'm doing volunteer work now, surviving off the bru.'

He sounds very philosophical. The alcohol helps with that. He seems to be there in his corner most of the time, though, so I'm not sure when he's doing his drinking.

I miss the woman in the wall. On day five the hospital say I can go home if there's somebody to look after me.

'I don't have anybody who can do that,' I say, because the woman in the wall can't exactly heat me up a tin of soup, and the nurse lets the forms fall back on to her clipboard and is already turning to leave the room when Dad says: 'aye, she does'.

'You don't know how to look after yourself,' I say.

'Ignore her, hen,' says Dad to the nurse. 'She's aye grumpy when she's sick. Where do I sign?' The nurse hands over the form, no doubt glad for the bed, and with a sweep of the pen I'm his responsibility again.

Not that he ever showed much responsibility. We let ourselves in and out of the flat with our own keys and sometimes I'd meet him in the kitchen, hunched over a whisky glass with a fag burning between his yellowy fingers, and I'd have to nudge him out of the way so I could get in to the cupboard for some baked beans for my tea.

More often he'd be off on some bender somewhere for a day or so, until Eck McKinnon would rap on the door to drop off a shambling beast, stinking of alcohol, fags and vomit. He'd not have to tell me my dad'd been in the cell again, but sometimes he would ask me, did I have enough to eat, because his Effie'd love to make me a casserole? I'd smile as the beast shuffled past me in the narrow corridor to his nest on the sofa and say, och, thanks Eck, but I've my cookbook and we're doing fine. Eck wasn't to know that I was my mother's pupil when it came to cooking. We lived off a diet of tins, toast and fish and chips from the shop on the corner. Unlike her, though, I didn't follow it with a heroin chaser.

I'd wave Eck away with a big smile and stand at the door of the flat, looking out at the grimy sky peeking between the tower blocks, listening to my dad retching inside and the police sirens going off outside. Not knowing if it would be better to be outside or in, or maybe just to jump right off the railings right here on the tenth floor of Sunlight Towers and splatter my blood like tomato sauce over chewing-gum plastered pavement below.

Bigger chunk of the story...

The Woman in the Wall

I practice a lot at home. Tonight is no different.

'Tell me where you're from,' asks the woman in the wall and I do. She knows the story well enough now to correct me if I slip up. I know the story well enough not to.

'Just outside Glasgow,' I say.

'I ken Glasgow very well,' she says.

'It's a tiny village,' I say. 'On the outskirts.'

The wall is ordinary. Wallpapered with faded old-people wallpaper, to match the speckled formica kitchenette and pink bathroom suite. When I moved in I thought I might renovate, make it into a home, but it doesn't bother me that much. It's not like I've ever lived anywhere nice.

For now I just like that when I lie on the floor on my back and look up out of the windows I can see the air, real air that's invisible all the way up to the sky. Not second-hand city breath, but air as clean as a sheet on the line and smelling just as fresh. For that alone, the cottage is worth the long bus trip to work in Edinburgh.

'I ken most of the villages outside of Glasgow too,' says the woman in the wall.

'I went to boarding school down south. I was a complete bookworm – I even loved maths.'

'An accountant from an early age!' says the woman in the wall and I smile like it's the first time I've heard anyone say that. 'You're showing too many teeth,' she says and I press my lips together, hiding the black scars of cheap fillings, put in too late. The price of a childhood of jeely pieces and gobstoppers.

The afternoon light is fading, adding blotchy grey shadows to the pale roses and creeping vines of the wallpaper. Usually I'm not home until after dark, even in summer. The woman in the wall says I work too much, but I tell her it's my life. She says that's daft and life should mean a social life. I tell her she's my social life and then she'll stop talking, but I know she's pleased.

I start to cough. I've been coughing for a few days, hacking coughs that stoke a fire in my chest that burns constantly now, even when I'm just breathing. Stuart sent me home early today; told me to see a doctor, but I stay away from doctors, because the last thing I want to do is discuss my family history. 'And what did your mother die of?'

I just need a good sleep, that's all. I'll be back at work tomorrow. At work I matter. 'It's a shame bonuses are only for client management this year,' Stuart said at my appraisal last month. 'If they were for technical knowledge, you'd have got one for sure.'

'That's an awful cough,' says the woman in the wall. 'Got a hanky?' I wave a tissue at the patch of wall where the paper is peeling away from the cracked plaster. Her window. Some days she mutters about a nice cotton hanky, but today she's satisfied with the tissue and moves on seamlessly through the litany.

'Jac?' she asks. 'Unusual name for a girl.'

'Short for Jacinta,' I say. Kirsty Watt, the payroll clerk knows about Jacqueline-Marie Thomson, but Kirsty's down on the third floor where the elevator only stops to let out women in chain store suits and men with soft-soled shoes. Jac Thomson works on the sixteenth floor, where the air conditioning works properly and the men wear silk ties.

'Shouldn't it be Jass or Jace?' the woman in the wall goes on, and I'm ready for this too.

'I know, I know,' I say, rolling my eyes. 'My parents wanted a boy. Continue the family name and all that.'

The only place our family name has ever appeared is the drunk's cell at the local police station. Eck McKinnon wrote Dad's name over the door in Magic Marker one night. 'It seemed only right,' he said when he dropped him off the next morning. 'He's had that much use out of the place.' Eck always dropped Dad off in the morning if he'd been on the night shift when Dad was brought in.

'You went too far with the name,' the woman in the wall says.

'Nobody's ever going to ask me,' I say, but my words are lost in a fusillade of coughing that rips at the burning insides of my lungs.

'Honey and lemon,' says the woman in the wall. 'I told you that.'

'I just need sleep,' I gasp eventually.

'But we haven't got on to your parents yet. That's the most important bit.'

'I know.' I have to turn my back to get her to shut up.

'You've no' had your tea, yet,' she mutters as I pass by the kitchenette. 'Again,' she points out as I close the bedroom door on her.

I lie in a sweat of fever and chills that doesn't feel like sleep, but still makes late for work the next day. I'm never late, I'm never sick, I'm never moody, but today I have to plaster on a breezy smile in the lift.

The breeze freezes when I see Maddy Cooper at my desk. Not just at it, but inhabiting it with her furry gonks and family photos, the uneven china pencil holder one of her kids made and the computer screen decorated with multi-coloured post-it notes like a tacky Christmas tree. Desks like that make me feel itchy. I keep my desk clean and clear. I even put my coffee cup on the floor and fold my jacket in a drawer. Now the back of my chair is draped with Maddy Cooper's jacket and her blue-skirted cushion bottom is oozing over the edge of the seat.

'That's my desk,' I say.

She looks up at me, sticks out her lower lip and puffs out some air as if to say it's none of her business. 'You've to talk to Stuart,' she says and rearranges one of her gonks.

Stuart's door is shut, but when I knock he opens immediately, like he's been watching me through the narrow little window at the side.

'Come on in,' he says, and now he leaves the door open.

'Why is Maddy at my desk?' I ask.

'Sit down, Jac,' he says. 'We need to talk.' He sits down behind his curvy desk and picks up a pencil to twiddle. He's a big man, with loose ties and fidgety fingers that are always twiddling with something.

I sit neatly, with my hands folded. 'I'd like my desk back, please.'

He makes a noise halfway between a groan and a laugh. 'Such a polite request,' he says. 'I've always admired your beautiful manners. Which makes it all the stranger…' He pauses, tapping on the desk with his pencil. 'I can't give you your desk back,' he says after a few minutes. 'Your technical ability – that can't be faulted. Nor can your manners, your appearance, even your presentations. And yet – the clients don't warm to you. I send Maddy or Tim along with your ideas and the clients call me to thank me and ask for more. I send you, and the same ideas get rejected. I've never really understood that. Until yesterday.'

He puts the pencil down on his desk. His hands are still, for the first time I remember. 'See, Jac, I popped down to payroll yesterday afternoon.'

Something cold crawls through the inside of my head; icy-legged spiders that ripple freezing webs down my neck and spine.

'I'd had a word with the other partners, to see if we couldn't do something about your bonus situation, to recognise your ability. Fine, they said. So I went to Kirsty. She'd never heard of Jacinta Thomson. But, she said, there was a Jacqueline-Marie Thomson working on the sixteenth floor. Working for me.'

The spiders are in my mouth; wrapping their silken frost around my tongue, so that even though Stuart looks at me, I cannot speak.

'Jac,' he says. 'It's not just the name. You're a clever girl. It's just…the clients don't believe in you. And now, I…' I can see from the look in his eyes how hard he's trying not to say that he doesn't believe in me either.

The only part of me that is warm is my chest, rising and falling through its lapping tongues of fire. I breathe in and then out, long and steady, defrosting my tongue, chasing away the spiders, rolling them down my body to my hands and feet where they settle with lumpen chill.

I smile with fiery lips, then stand up and offer Stuart my hand. 'It's been a pleasure working with you,' I say. He looks at my hand like it's something extraordinary, something he's never seen before, but then he reaches over and shakes it limply.

I have no personal belongings here, so I just leave.

The woman in the wall is waiting for me.

'Early again,' she says.

'Yes,' I say. I lie on the sofa facing her. 'Sing to me.'

She doesn't ask any questions, just starts singing softly, like my mother used to do when I was tiny, and I fall asleep right there on the sofa in my suit and shoes. When I wake up the she's still singing. 'You can stop now,' I say.

Here's a few hundred words of a short story...

...if you've got a moment, have a read and let me know what you think. It's a long one, but this is how it kicks off.

The Woman in the Wall

I practice a lot at home. Tonight is no different.

'Tell me where you're from,' asks the woman in the wall and I do. She knows the story well enough now to correct me if I slip up. I know the story well enough not to.

'Just outside Glasgow,' I say.

'I ken Glasgow very well,' she says.

'It's a tiny village,' I say. 'On the outskirts.'

The wall is ordinary. Wallpapered with faded old-people wallpaper, to match the speckled formica kitchenette and pink bathroom suite. When I moved in I thought I might do something with the cottage, make it into a home, but it doesn't bother me that much. It's not like I've ever lived anywhere nice. There will be time for that.

For now I just like the fact that when I lie on the floor on my back and look up out of the cottage windows I can see the air, real air that's invisible all the way up to the sky. Not second-hand city breath, but air as clean as a sheet on the line and smelling just as fresh. For that alone, the cottage is worth the long bus trip in to work in Edinburgh.

'I ken most of the villages outside of Glasgow too,' says the woman in the wall.

'I went to boarding school down south.'

'Och, I loved hockey!'

'Last time you said lacrosse,' I say.

'I like to keep you on your toes,' says the woman in the wall.

'I was more of a bookworm,' I say. 'And I loved maths.'

'An accountant from an early age!' says the woman in the wall and I smile. 'You're showing too many teeth,' she says and I press my lips together, hiding the black scars of cheap fillings, put in too late. The price of a childhood of jeely pieces and gobstoppers.

The afternoon light is fading, adding blotchy grey shadows to the pale roses and creeping vines of the wallpaper. Usually I'm not home until after dark, even in summer, and it stays light most of the night in summer. The woman in the wall says I work too many hours, but I tell her it's my life. She says that's daft and life should mean a social life. I tell her she's my social life and then she'll stop talking, but I know she's pleased.

I start to cough. I've been coughing for a few days, hacking coughs that stoke a fire in my chest that burns constantly now, even when I'm just breathing. Stuart sent me home early today; told me to see a doctor, but I stay away from doctors, because the last thing I want to do is discuss my family history. 'And what did your mother die of?'

How was your writing week?

I've been on a bit of an unplanned writing hiatus. Not writer's block, more writer's faff. I started to research for a possible new novel, but found the research so boring that I had to stop! Ah, my dedication. I love the characters that are demanding to squeeze themselves into the novel; I love my basic plot and the idea of the background...but the research for that background. What a yawn. So many poor novels and very little usable non-fiction or original sources (one being so boring and so badly written I just couldn't get through it). Solution? Possibly to relocate the story slightly to the future and apply what I've learned with a degree of re-interpretation. Not science-fiction, not really, but a slightly changed world, where different rules can apply in the face of impending devastation.

While mulling that over, a process that I do not wish to hurry, this week I wrote 4,772 words of a new short story. 'Short'? I know, another 15,000 or so and it will be a novella. Hey, chuck in 60,000 and call it a novel. I expect it to finish in another 1000 words or so, though.

And then there's the famous re-editing of Maureen, which I keep talking about and not doing.

So, tally for the week:

New words: 4,772
Re-editing Maureen: 0
New novel research: -0
New novel ideas: plenty

Writing exercise!

I don't normally make you work for a living, but there's a first time for everything. It's a short snippet, I promise, and I hope it will be funny. No prize, but I will be grading your efforts on criteria such as writing, ideas and humour. Mostly humour, if you want a hint as to how to beat your fellow bloggers. No laugh, no points.

The King of Troll-land is considering purchasing some kind of voice recognition software in order to help him share his brilliance with the world. He was comforted to learn that there is only a 1% error rate.

I was not comforted in the least by this and came up with this demonstration of why 1% matters. Here's an innocuous paragraph of 116 characters or so:

"The great ship towered above, creaking in the wind. Warm steam from the vents caressed his skin as he breathed in the rich smell of its cargo."

Changing just one of those letters – i.e. less than 1% – has the potential to completely change the whole thing. Say, for example, replacing the 'p' of 'ship' with a 't'...

"The great shit towered above, creaking in the wind. Warm steam from the vents caressed his skin as he breathed in the rich smell of its cargo."

I'm so pathetic that I spat tea on my own keyboard when I came up with that.

Amuse me. Write your own para of 100 characters or so (Word can count 'em for you, but I won't hold you to precision) and change only one letter to totally turn the meaning around.

My keyboard awaits your efforts.

Life's little luxuries...

You're a millionaire. Yes, you. The lottery fairy fluttered past everybody else and sprinkled you with magic dust and millions of dollars.

You've bought the mansion. Eight bedrooms, a pool, a gym, a movie theatre and everything else you'd expect in your luxury pad. A sports car, a four-wheel drive, a limo, a hummer and several other vehicles are parked in your multi-car garage (complete with chauffeurs). They're next to the yacht (complete with crew). Staff everywhere, pandering to your every whim.

But what is that whim? What's the quirky little luxury that will remind you every time you see/hear/touch/smell/taste it, that you are really so rich that you can have everything you ever dreamed of?

For me would be clean sheets every day. Twice a day if I take a nap. Crisp, clean, fresh-smelling sheets. The best feeling in the world.

Ah, soccer boy

With fire in their bellies and blisters on their feet (new soccer boots are such a pain), the 8P1s took to the field. To be confronted with the same group of girls they drew with in their very last game of last year. (When I say 'they', I mean the four players that were on last year's team that are also on this year's team). Of course, that got them even more fired up.

I'd like to be nice about this, but 8-1. Again, 8-1. Two goals from Soccer Boy, two each from three of his friends and the other three came close to scoring too. The girls only got one chance, they took it with both hands and scored, but after that they had no chance. One more time 8-1.

My athleticism nearly matched that of Soccer Boy, with another visit to the gym. I worked a bit harder this time, having got over the fear that I was going to break myself. I got my heart rate up to the recommended level and survived. Pain no worse than last time. I may even be looking forward to going back, but I refuse to commit myself to that statement.

Other than our family sporting endeavours, I spent virtually all my computer time this week wrestling with a printer and software issue. Finally fixed it on Friday (myself, the barrage of e-mails to the tech experts didn't help me one little bit) and managed to send out an edited version of'The Party' to a couple of mags. Other than that, no new writing recently. I wrote half a page of a new story, not enough to count, but the idea is still wriggling around, so I may finish that this week if work isn't too demanding.

So, if I were grading this week, I'd give my body 8/10 and brain 10/10. I was thinking that my brain deserved a much lower mark for not actually doing any writing, but, on the other hand, it did fix my faithful 'puter, without which I'd probably do no writing whatsoever, so I think it deserves some praise.

In a word

I went to the gym today for the third time in my life. I went twice a few years ago, but then fell pregnant, so that was the end of me and gyms for a few years.

This is a small, non-intimidating gym only for women. Everybody in baggy old gear. No cool people. At all. Works for me!

As for the exercising part. In a word. Ouch.

Soccer Boy is back!

Forget Cricket Boy, now he's assumed his true mantle once again. First match was on Saturday, which I missed because Princess was sick. It was a friendly, a very different kind of match, against a team of kids with disabilities, most of whom played with their parents alongside them.

Unfortunately we hadn't been able to prepare our kids properly for this, because we had been told the team was 'mildly disabled with some visual or slight physical problems'. Sadly this was way too gentle a description and the kids were quite startled by some of the disabilities. I'm angry with the club about the lack of information, because if they had told us the truth, and we had been able to explain it properly to the children, what to expect and how to behave and play, it could have been a much better experience on both sides. However, our kids did manage to play with some gentleness, but I think it was mostly because if the manager/coach saw any 'big boots', they'd whip the kid off and replace them with a tamer one. Our most timid boy had a whale of a time; I don't think he's ever been on for a whole match before!

Interestingly Soccer Boy said the kids were fine, but the parents were a pain, because they kept blocking them and they put a Dad in goal so he couldn't score. I don't think he grasped that the parents were there to prevent their kids being knocked over like skittles. After six months without his beloved round ball, all he wanted to do was score, score, score! I liked that he wasn't perturbed by the kids, though. He's quite an accepting boy, thankfully.

Remember Elektra's crapometer?

It's looking kind of abandoned over there. My fault as much as anyone else's, I haven't visited since Christmas and I'm feeling guilty.

I sent in a story - the one I wrote for Chris' writing exercise. Why not sent yours? Or anything else! And comment, comment, comment. Because that's what it's all about.

Here's the lonely crapometer.

December talking...

It’s Fun to Write Dirty

I remember writing my first real romance, back in seventh grade. The amount of actual experience with sex I had at that point equated to seeing a couple of copies of Playboy and a clandestine viewing of Last Tango in Paris (I didn’t get it), but I was determined to write a sex scene.

I do wish I still had it. I don’t remember it well, but I do recall one line, which I in the wisdom of my twelve years on Earth thought was fantastic: “They moaned and kissed and moved.”

Now that’s HOT.

My writing got better (at least I hope so), but I still have to admit, when I’m planning a new book in my head, the sex scene is one of the things I’m most excited about. That’s what got me into erotic romance to begin with. I was writing “regular” romance, and one day I discovered Ellora’s Cave. I still remember that, reading excerpts (the excerpts were more explicit then), studying everything on the website, with my heart pounding. I could write those! And it would be fun—really, really fun!

And it was. And it still is. But…it feels so strange to admit this…

It started not being enough. It wasn’t an issue with the genre itself, or anything of that nature. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write it anymore, because that was not the case at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t think (or don’t think) writing good erotic romance isn’t a challenge—believe me, it is. It was quite simply that I wanted to try other things, too. I wanted something new.

Not to move away from either romance as a genre or erotic romance in particular. But to spread my wings a little and see if I could do it. I’m far from a master of erotic romance. I get pretty good reviews. I have decent sales. It’s not like I reached the pinnacle of a genre and decided there was nothing else for me there. I just wanted to try something else.

So I wrote my first urban fantasy, Personal Demons, which will be released in a few weeks by Juno Books. My first mass-market paperback; that’s pretty exciting! And it’s funny, because when I was writing it I considered it to be straight urban fantasy with a dash of romance (and of course a sex scene). Now, looking back, I think it actually straddles the line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance pretty neatly.

And it was fun. It was exciting not to be plotting out the arc of a romance so the end and the “I love you” came at the same point. (I of course have the entire romance planned, and know everything that will happen, but I didn’t have to put that in the book and that was pretty cool.) It was exciting to focus on one character and write the entire story from her POV (a little constricting, I admit, it took some getting used to). I really enjoyed myself.

Even more exciting is the idea that I can actually let my parents and family read Personal Demons—I don’t allow them to read any of the December Quinn stuff. Well, really, would you want your parents to read it? Romantic as it is—and I hope it’s pretty damn romantic—it’s still graphic and explicit. I really don’t want my Dad reading that and wondering if I write from experience.

So will I ever stop writing the erotic stuff? I don’t think so. It’s too much fun for me. But writing urban fantasy is just as much fun, and now I have an agent (my heart still stops when I type that) who wants more urban fantasy, and it looks like my experimenting might have taken my career in a whole different direction.

Which is fine with me. I love it all.

Stacia Kane’s debut urban fantasy, Personal Demons will be available in bookstores nationwide in the first week of April. To learn more or read a sample chapter, visit her website.

For erotic romance, check out the December Quinn website or her Books page at Ellora’s Cave.

Guest blogger tomorrow!

There will be a sudden leap in the quality of this blog when guest blogger, December Quinn/Stacia Kane, visits us tomorrow! Many of you already know Deecia from around and about the blogosphere (or scroll two posts down to find out more), but tomorrow is your chance to discover why she started writing erotica, why she moved on to urban fantasy and, most crucially, whether or not her elderly relatives know about their precious baby's success in erotica.

I'm hoping she will also answer questions, so get 'em ready, there's my loves.

Revisiting the web site

Will she never shut up about this? One last post, I beg you. This is an interesting tip, actually, for anyone working on their site with a deadline in mind.

Do it at least six weeks before you expect anyone to google it!

My site has been up since the end of January, and it's only today that it's finally appearing on Google. Yahoo picked up on it a bit sooner. Google's info says something waffly along the lines of it might take 'some time' for Google to crawl a new site. I thought that meant hours or days. Imagine my horror when He Who Knows About These Things, i.e. Conduit, explained that meant weeks or months. I had worked hard on the website knowing that my agent would soon be sending out the submission and I wanted my site to pop up when editors googled me. Bah. Guess I missed out on that, then! (Although I did give my agent the address and there have been some visits that I cannot link to friends and family).

Moral of the story, just one more time: if you're creating a website with a specific goal or deadline in mind, be sure to add a couple of months to your timeline if Google-ability is important to you.

All about December: her novel and her news

Where do I start with the wonder that is December?

How about the fact that she has two names, and it's under her other beautiful name, Stacia Kane, that her first novel is about to be published by Juno Books? In 'Personal Demons', Megan Chase's life is turned upside down by her encounters with savage, saucy and sexy demons - some are savage, some are saucy, some are sexy, but only one is all three... Despite the power of demons, it turns out that Megan is the one who has the real power, and to find out why, you'll have to read the book. I was lucky enough to be a beta read for Personal Demons and it is a fantastic read. The characters are strong, the plot is unbelievable and the writing lifts you right along with the adventure. At times I found I was forgetting to comment, because I was enjoying the ride so much, and if you've ever critiqued a book you'll know how big a compliment that is. You can start reading now with Chapter One on December's website and you will find more excerpts on her blog.

You'll notice that I'm not steering you to a specific part of her blog. Grr, annoying, you're thinking, that lazy furry thing. Not really - I've done this, because you need to read the post at the top of her blog too. You really need to read that one. December aka Stacia has just landed a great agent! This is awesome news. I first met December on Miss Snark's blog a couple of years ago and have been in touch with her in blogland and occasionally by email ever since. She is a hardworking writer, blogger and mother. And she's good at all three. I'm hoping that her family appreciates the last one, because I'm not really able to do that myself, but I certainly appreciate the effort and skill she puts into the first two.

It's interesting to see that December found her agent the same way I did - the slush pile. It's slow, it's annoying, but apparently it does work.

Maybe we can talk about that some more...when December makes a guest appearance on this blog later this week! I'm looking forward to it.

Free stories!

Ah, yes, the catch...I can't really think of one. What do I get out of it? A useful range of critiques hopefully, my darling readers.

Here's the background (pay attenion, now). Chris Eldin set an interesting writing exercise that ran over four weeks. Each week she gave us some elements to incorporate into a story. Seven of us made it through the four weeks, with some running wild with the elements, and some taking them more literally. The result is a fascinating range of stories, technically using the same ideas - but wow, are they different! There's action and horror, womens' and literary - and the other three!

About half way through, Evil Editor got wind of this (or Chris told him, who knows) and he's going to comment on the stories. If you know EE, then you'll know that this could be helpful or hilarious, or, more likely, both.

Check them out at I kiss you for doing writing exercises. And if you have time, please leave your comments!

The waiting game

Dear Husbad asks me almost daily: 'Have you heard from your agent? What's happening?'

The answers are usually: 'no' and 'lots'. Nathan Bransford explains why, far better than I ever could here.

I know my novel has been submitted. Via my agent I have answered one question from an editor (a procedural question that implied neither approval or disapproval). So I know it's out there. I know it's being read. Now I just have to wait and it could be for a long, long time... Pull up a chair!

Blurbs that make you go hmmm...

I had drafted a lengthy explanation of this post, but deleted it by mistake. Too late and too tired to do it again. In a nutshell, I'm railing against the book blurbs that I read time and time again; the ones that make me put a book back on the shelf. It's all personal, so these may be exactly the phrases that make you pick it up!

'...retiring LAPD detective...' Please, not another grouchy old guy who just wants to make it to tomorrow and his pension, but first he has to get the bad guy out of the way
'...race to save the world...' Sorry, but it's been saved so many times that the paint is peeling off.
'...coming of age...' Not averse to this as a topic, but if you offer me a hero or a heroine in a certain age range in a certain range of situations, I can figure this out for myself.
'...tall, dark, brooding stranger...' The world appears to be full of these.

More to come! Add yours!


Real life update

If a poodle puppy eats a green pencil, its poo will be green. I like to be informative.

Reclaim your Right to Wallow!

Did Worldwide Wallow Day go wrong for you? Kids fell sick, family intervened, didn't visit the blog until it was too late (naughty, naughty)?

Reclaim the Wallow!

All Wallows must add up to a full day, which in my calculation means 16 hours of bliss. I lost my evening thanks to Family Event, so tonight as of 6pm I will be resuming the sofa and recommencing the Wallow from the precise point where I was cruelly forced to leave it.

The calorie rule still works.

Worldwide Wallow Day

We have an extra day this year: Friday 29th February. I hereby declare it to be Worldwide Wallow Day. Here are the rules:

If at home: send kids to school as early as possible. Proceed to sofa. Lie on sofa. Read and watch tv while drinking tea/coffee and eating cake and chocolate. Around 1pm half of a bottle of wine should be consumed for fortifying purposes. Nap. More tea, cake and chocolate. (NB Because this day itself does not actually exist, neither do the calories). When kids return from school the television and electronic games may be turned on instantly and may remain on for the rest of the evening. Finish fortifying bottle of wine. At some point during the evening, feed kids any poor-quality frozen food you have on the premises. No actual cooking is permitted. Open second fortifying bottle of wine. Resume sofa position. Persuade husband, grandma or pet to wash and tuck up kids. Send husband, grandma or pet out for takeaway and romantic comedy on DVD. More fortifying bottles of wine may be opened if required. On no account move from the sofa until bedtime, other than for hygiene purposes. This is Severe Breakage of Wallow Pact, punishable by disdain of more wallowful friends.

If at work: follow above plan up until 'proceed to sofa'. Proceed to work, purchasing favourite breakfast en route. Turn on computer. Browse your favourite websites and find new favourites. Do no work other than work you enjoy. Leave everything else until Monday. I mean it. Nothing is more urgent than your wallow. Include extended coffee break with cake and chocolates, see calorie note above. Leave early for lunch, which you will take sitting down in a restaurant. Lunch at your desk is Severe Breakage of Wallow Pact. You may take a friend to lunch. Feel free to open more than one fortifying bottle of wine. Return to work. Afternoon to proceed as morning. Leave office early. Upon return home immediately turn on all electronic distraction devices for children, and then follow instructions above starting from: "At some point..."

Computer access is permitted from time to time in order to compare Quality of Wallow notes.

Sign up now!

Email wipeout!

Gremlins got into my email and devoured all my address details, and all my old messages, so I'm starting afresh. Oh, how liberating. Oh, how irritating. If I had your email address, then now is your chance to escape me. On the other hand, if you still want me baby, please send a message to the address in my profile so I can put you in my shiny new address book. Lovin' you all...

Real life update

I was ready to wallow, as prescribed. I finished my work to deadline yesterday; I spent the morning on admin. All done. I collected the library book, made a cup of tea and a sandwich. I was going to start by reading on the sofa. One bite of the sandwich. The phone rang. It was the school. It was The Call. I spent the rest of the afternoon ministering to a sick and grumpy Cricket Boy.

The rest of the family clearly need to get with the Wallow Program.

Precie in print!

Just wanted to highlight Precie for her great story today in Every Day Fiction. I think it's a really well-constructed piece and the ending is just perfect. Conduit had a standout story in Every Day Fiction a couple of months ago, so a late high five to him as well.

Precie is a fellow blogger with a secret blog whose address I once had, but can't remember (Precie, that's a hint). She hangs out a lot with Evil Editor and Chris Eldin, but don't hold that against her.

As for Every Day Fiction, it's a great way to read a new story every day - subscribe and they will send one by e-mail every morning. Heaps of different styles, lengths and genres - the quality is just as varied, but there are some real gems (and the gems include the contributions from Precie and Conduit needless to say).

Itchy and Scratchy

I'm spending some time with Itchy and Scratchy at the moment.

Itchy is my desire to scrub up my grubby house of appallingness now that both kids are at school. Scratchy is my desire to ramp up more work and earn more cash. (Guess which DH thinks is more important?)

Itchy is my desire to throw myself into the latest idea the Idea Salmon has flicked my way. It's not all that new, it's been bubbling since before Christmas and I'm pretty sure it's going to be my next new project. On the other hand, Scratchy is my desire to re-edit Maureen and get her into the best possible shape. I read a page or two the other day and I still love what I've done; but it will take time to sort out, including rewriting the last third.

Overweening all this is my desire to spend some time for myself now that both kids are in school. The seems to show itself in constant procrastination and not actually achieving anything; mooching about, cleaning this and that, (a little bit of Itchy) but nothing systematic. Reading a chapter of a book, then feeling guilty and going off to half-do something else (a little bit of Scratchy).

I'm broken! Fix me! What's the right brand of oil to sort me out and get me going properly again?

Advice from a master

Over at Oxyjen, the very lovely Goblin asked us to post any lines from books that had inspired us. I interpreted this a little loosely, and offered my all-time favourite writing advice: 'if you don't know what to write, just write it'.

This was a piece of advice I was given when I first started out working in Public Relations. Oh, how I hated PR. Really, really hated it. The only part of the job I enjoyed was the writing part - news releases, letters, brochures - so it did get me started in that it showed me what I should really be doing (I moved on to become a copywriter). So while putting in the hours trying to presuade journalists to write articles about boring widgets and discussing lack of articles on said widgets with irate clients, while not mentioning the word boring and pretending it was all my fault nobody would write a story on boring widgets but my boss hadn't told them that their widgets were boring and nobody would write a story about them, because he wanted their money....where was I?

Back to the start. I worked with a very experienced PR consultant, who was fed up with writing. She was good at it, but she was fed up with it. So she sent it all over to my desk. I loved it. Flowery stuff here, flowery stuff there, make it all sound artsy and lovely and tremendously significant. One day she read a particularly florid piece of mine, looked over her glasses at me and said: 'you're fired'.

No she didn't. She said (you knew it all the time, didn't you?): 'if you don't know what to write, just write it.'

OK, so it's slightly enigmatic, but that's what I love about it. At the time she was telling me I was an idiot and I needed to call a spade a spade, not a gardening implement. I still have this phrase in my head at all times, but now in addition to trimming the blooms off my flowery language, I also use it as an incentive.

If you're stuck on something, just write it down. To me that can mean either 'skip this bit it's too hard, but e.g. write down a placeholder'get Martha to the lorry depot', and then move smoothly on with the bit that inspires you - worry about getting her to the depot later when you're feeling inspired about that. Or it can simply mean, whack whatever you can down on paper before the baby wakes up.

I can also interpret it to mean, stop procrastinating.

Or, don't worry about not having an idea about where this story is going, just write something down and the idea will come.

It all adds up to one thing, though. Just get out your pen and paper and write the damn thing down.

Real life update

You're not going to believe this. Princess had a damn good try and knocking out her new best friend's teeth on Friday night. She definitely needs a new name. Fangkiller? The Dental Recruitment Officer? Suggestions welcome!

Do you have photos of yourself in your house?

In most of my friends' homes there are many photos. Kids, husbands, dogs, relatives, friends.

Guess who the one person is who is usually missing.

Then tell me about the photos in your house. Are you in them? With family? On your own? Big? Small? Framed? On the wall?

Why are they there and what do they mean to you or somebody else in your family?

Real life update

Princess may need a new name. Not satisfied with kicking out one of Cricket Boy's teeth two weeks ago, this week she managed to knock one of the dog's out. She may look cute, but...

Heaps of work on, which should help me adjust to the empty house pretty fast. It's just me and my keyboard and a stack of website copy.

Out of the slush pile!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to come and visit and leave so many lovely messages on my agent post. I know some people want more details, so here's the story.

Sealsong is a contemporary fantasy for young adults. It's built on one of the great Scottish myths I loved as a child, the selkies - the half seal, half people of the seas. When I started to think about sending it out to agents, I figured out that my ideal agent would be a person who would not only read the story and think 'sales potential', but also a person who would actively enjoy the novel for themselves; somebody who would throw themselves into that world. I thought this person would probably be young, female and working in a smaller agency. It turned out I was right about that.

Around the middle of last year I found an article, which I have never found again, extolling the virtues of young, enthusiastic agents. One of the agents named was Kate Scherler of Fletcher & Parry, so I sent her off my query by mail. A few weeks later she asked for a partial. She came back and said she loved the chapters (ahhh) and asked to see the full. At the time I had other partials out and another agent asked for a full a week or so later, so I was starting to think I wasn't a complete idiot - and getting a little bit excited.

Kate sent me a few e-mails in the next couple of months letting me know that she was still interested in Sealsong. In October she sent a more detailed message explaining some areas that she thought could be improved and said she would love to read a rewrite. A few weeks later I sent her a new version and in early December she came back and said she would like to submit it!

I had a ton of questions, most of which were probably very silly, but we spoke on the phone and she cleared them all up with ease. Kate was extremely pleasant and also had a very pretty voice - I love pretty voices! She then sent me a copy of the agency letter of agreement by e-mail and that was such an exciting moment - seeing my name on the top of that document! That kind of made it real.

Christmas then slowed things down a little, but we exchanged some e-mails in the meantime, and, as most of you know, I went a little crazy setting up a website. Kate suggested that as I was so far away from US editors and readers it might be a good idea to have more information readily available - something to show that I wasn't really that far away and that would offer people a way to contact me.

So it's really real and now we're moving on to the next step of sending the novel out to publishers. Fingers crossed for me!

A tiny child starts school

Thank you so much for all the good wishes on my agent post. I promise I will post a more detailed story, but time is a little short at the moment. One of the reasons is in this photo - at the age of only four and a half, Princess has started school. And she's doing great. She even won an award this week - her first week! Which means that we have now finalised her place and we are about to rush off to the school shop and equip her properly - note lack of school shoes and regulation bag in the photo! I kept her school kit minimal until we were sure we were doing the right thing. Scary though it is, it does seem to be the right thing. She's ready.

My little secret

I have a secret. I have been keeping my secret since just before Christmas.

I have an agent.

Why have I kept this secret? Mostly, I think, because I didn't believe it was really happening. I needed the agreement to be signed and sealed before it would be real.

That's all done now.

My first YA novel - Sealsong - is going out to editors this week.

OMG! There's a party going on in my head!

Of the 11 resolutions...

...only these remain:

5. Finish half-done rewrite on Maureen. Consider whether or not it needs third total rewrite (she's my problem child). No deadline. I want to get it right, as long as I'm working on it and progressing I'll be satisfied.
6. Try and find a mag that might be interested in the two short stories I am happy with.
7. Write more short stories.

Some of the others require year-long attention, such as continuing to blog and doing Church Lady's writing exercises (or do I get out of that one now that she's changed her name - vote here!). After years of resistance, I'm liking this resolution thing. It's really focusing my mind and giving myself deadlines has been fantastic. I completed the website one ahead of time, which gives me another golden opportunity to give myself a pat on the back.

Now, of course, I have to focus on the rest. Life is as little fragmented at the moment so I'll leave Maureen for now. I think I'll concentrate on short story markets and maybe on writing some more stories. I'd like to expand on one of Church Lady's writing exercises, namely why Calcutta servant Bir Singh is looking through his employers' windows. I think I typed it directly into her blog so I'll have to go on a find and rescue mission through her archives. Some research will be needed into India in the time of British government, so it will be a slow writing process, but I know who Bir is and what he's about to do. My mother's family were in India, so I've got a little background in my head about expat life in those times, but I want to make it as accurate as possible.

Real life update...

Princess has started school at the age of only four and a half, but brimming with confidence and a desire to learn. We think it's going to work out; but what will happen when she's sixteen and her classmates are eighteen? We've had to leave that question for the future to resolve. Padlocks and chains could be a good answer.

Back up to speed

Yee-haw! Ride 'em bandwidth, cowgirl!

And, tarantara, the website is up. Needs a smidge of correcting (blows kisses to the beta readers), but job pretty much done. Wow. It was a challenge, but yanno, it was fun too. Now I have to try and remember everything I learned while I was doing it, so I can make changes and add pages as time goes on.

Last, but not least, Cricket Boy resumed his place on the cricket pitch today. 'There's no way I'm playing cricket next year,' he informed us in the car on the way to the game. 'I'm playing summer soccer.' With that gung ho expression of enthusiasm he took to the field like a duck to treacle and dreamed his way through fielding. However, when he bowled he got a wicket - first ball! (American friends, that means he knocked the stumps over and sent one of the batsmen back to the dugout, although we have no dugout, just a line of mums in folding chairs holding jackets and water bottles and pretending to watch).

On the way home in the car he reminded us again to sign him up for summer soccer next year. Five more weeks and then his cricket career is over!

Drama on the sidelines when Houdini Polly Dog wriggled out of her harness and ran away from Husbad. She was just looking for me. Aw. Thankfully she found me before she found the road.

Back to the stone ages

I've exceeded my data allowance for this month so my broadband is now narrowtwistyband at dial up speed. Grrrr. So you may not see much of me for the rest of this week until it speeds up again and there's no way the web site will go up yet. Double grrr.

In the meantime, I was too slow to sign up to help Patry Francis, an author who needs a little extra help, so I'll make my contribution by pointing you to Church Lady's very cool post about her: http://abenchpress.blogspot.com/. And what's more, it's competition time over there with the very lovely clergy supporter!

Web site hitching to completion!

It's not that I've been obsessed with it, but I've been obsessed with it. If you know what I mean.

The kids are on holiday here, which makes it hard to get involved in projects which need large chunks of time. Tinkering with the website for an hour here and there has been perfect and now it's nearly done. The words are now written and I've got over my issues with images by downloading a free graphics program which does the things I was hoping to do. Now there are images in the top left corner and also across the top of the screen. They are different on each page, which adds a lot more visual interest.

The only thing I need to finish off is fixing up a link to e-mail, so that if you click it automatically brings up an e-mail screen with my address. I'm hoping this will be straightforward, but I can't actually do it just yet, because I'm not sure what my e-mail address linked to the site will be. I'd like to use my domain name, but I can't set up any addresses at the moment until my web site host gets back to me.

Pay attention now, here comes the technical bit. For me, sorting out my domain name and site location has been a two-part process. It turns out I could have done both things with one company, which would have been much more straightforward. What I did was register my domain name, let's call it www.cricketboysmum.com with a domain name registration company. All that did was reserve the name for me (dollars had to be provided). Now I have chosen a host - the company that will actually give me the space on their servers for my information - the web site - to appear (more dollars were provided).

The hitch in my case is that I now have to 'delegate' (move) my domain name from my registration company to my hosting company. It seemed straightforward, just a little electronic form to fill in with info from my hosting company. It's supposed to take 2-4 hours to work and then my host company would send me an e-mail letting me know everything was all set up and ready to go. However. I did this yesterday. 24 hours and no e-mail. And this, of course, is a holiday weekend here, so there's no point in harassing anybody, because there is nobody to harass.

Grrrr. I'm impatient now!

Coming up soon:
Will princess start school next week? At four and a half? Will the school take her? Is this wise or are we going to mess her up for life? On the other hand, will staying home for another year when she is clearly insanely ready for school mess her up even more? What about when she's 16 and her friends are 18? Why oh why can NSW not legislate more clearly on these matters so we don't screw up the life of our child?!!!
Will Cricket Boy's team ever win a match? Cricket starts again next weekend after a holiday hiatus so check in for more updates! (Caveat: soccer registration comes up in a few weeks and I suspect Cricket Boy will be more than happy to hang up his bat as soon as possible.)
Does Cricket Boy really have promise as a swimmer, as suggested by his teacher when he promoted him by two classes this week? Why, when he's actually good at something, does he hate it so much?
Why is Princess coming up the stairs and crying? Guess I'd better go and find out...

The Evil One Takes Over the Church!

The ever-beautiful Church Lady (just check out her photo on her blog, she's a stunner!) is hosting a blog party dedicated to the release of Evil Editor's book 'Novel Deviations 3'. Check out her blog between 9am and 9pm on Thursday, January 24, to commune with the Evil One, his minions and his weredingos. It's sure to be hilarious, sorry, highly educational.

The Evil One does not allow the public to see any photos of himself, but after much begging and pleading, he did finally release one to me. It explains much about his obsession with weredingos.



The wise words of the Evil One can be found here.

Home page

This was a tremendous fiddle, but if I've managed it, this should be the home page of my web site:



What do you think? All critique welcome! This will have my real name on it, but I don't really want any links to my real name from this blog, which is why I've popped in McK. I'm also thinking black and white photo for the top left hand corner for the home page. That photo will change on every page, as will the title in the top bar.

Turning myself into a web monkey

I'm having fun! When I started researching HTML I rediscovered the fun I had had in creating a family web site many years ago. Then I got halfway into HTML and discovered a new thing - CSS! So I started to teach myself that, too. More fun! Maybe I was a computer programmer in a previous life, although in my previous lives a computer probably consisted of three stones and a stick.

Conduit clearly knows heaps more about this than I do, and I'm kind of hoping he'll jump in, but these days it seems that rather than writing, and then cutting and pasting, hundreds of HTML codes, you create a style sheet in CSS and simply attach it to a much simpler HTML document. More fiddlework up front, but as I add pages it's going to go very fast. It will also make it easy to make changes and add pages in the future. So it looks like I'm doing this myself, from scratch.

I've already created the front page; complete with menu, which means I have roughly structured the content, and am about to try and master inserting images, then I will move on to actually adding the pages the menu points at (links are working, but linking to nothing at the moment). I like the design (well, of course), but may mess with fonts. I'll post a lookie-see for you at some point, but I'll see if I can get some images first.

There's not much in the way of words on it yet - want to help? I'd like to put up a FAQ, so can you think of any questions that should be on there? I'll answer 'em, promise! Remember, I write YA, guys, so nothing too, um, well, yanno, no smut!

Back to the resolutions

I'm kind of liking this resolution thing. Keeping them very specific is helpful - it's easier to get started and, of course, easier to finish. My resolutions could have been summarised as 'keep writing' - but then I might start counting things like writing birthday cards, or forget about it all together.

So, I have 11. I won't bore you with them again, but, suffice to say thanks to some speedy beta readers I sent out Ghost Boys yesterday, so yippee and goodbye to resolutions 1, 2 and 3. The Christmas drinking is over, alas, so number 9 is gone. Ah, happy, but vague, memories. Did one of Church Lady's writing exercises today, so there's number 8 gone, and I'm managing to keep blogging with remarkable success, so I think I'll cross out 10 as well. See, this is going great!

However, it's time to get started on number 4: 'Get a website up and running - by the end of February, sooner if possible'. This might be the stumper. I wish I'd broken this one up a little, so I might do it now:

4a - register domain name (done!)
4b - research some HTML sites to see if I can be bothered teaching myself HTML again
4c - research some easy-to-use web creation, Mac-friendly sites/programs to see if that would be a better option - must combine a certain amount of creative freedom with idiot-proof simplicity
4d- structure web site (kind of done; I know most of what I would like to have on there)
4e - write copy (should be easy; I do this for a living along with other types of marketing copy, but, as we all know, doing it for yourself is, oh, a million times harder, than doing it for anybody else)
4f - source photos
4g - knuckle down and design website
4h - consider whether or not design is so pathetic that I should hand it over to one of my friendly design agencies to do for me - disadvantage is the megabucks it will cost
4i - test thoroughly in all programs and fix hitches
4j - choose host and get up and running

Did I miss anything? More experienced web folk please pitch with advice! I know December is partway through the process, as is Church Lady, anyone else ever tried this/feel like coming along for the ride?! Or, can anyone recommend any good writer web sites for me to snoop around? I like simple, edgy design. Simple is important if I'm doing it myself!

I think resolution number 4 is going to take a little time, but I want to create something that will last me for some time.

Blogging words of wisdom

No, not from me, sillies. Somebody much wiser. The sexy overcaffeinated one known as Sex Scenes at Starbucks, possibly the best blogging name in the entire world. Anyway, she's been doing this blogging thing for a while and this week she posted some of her tips as to what makes a good blog. Let's see if I can do a fancy link: Wise Words from a Master

I break many of these rules on a regular basis:

1. See a** below. Duh! Just call an ass an ass you slacker koalie
2. I don't visit many new blogs; just keeping busy with the ones I already visit is enough for a slacker like me
3. I'm a posting slacker

At last I know why I don't get 150 hits a day! And I'm not sure I ever will. See use of word 'slacker' above. However, this is all great, practical advice and I insist that the rest of you go off and follow it to the letter.

I love the visits I do get, so please keep checking in and I may even post more often (I've done well this week, haven't I?)

Is it all over for Robin?

At the start of the year, well, a few days into it, one of my regular commenters, Robin was challenged to Fight The Smut over at Evil Editor - the link is at the side of this blog.

Alas for Robin, some of Evil's regulars had noticed a tendency for...um...innuendo in some of her posts. Or plain, honest smut. She was challenged to keep it clean for as long as she could. Evil Editor, who is a harsh taskmaster, thinks the jig is already up.

To follow the tale scroll down to 'The pool' where the challenge is set, then for a giggle read the comments trails to Fight Scenes numbers three, five and nine. Then check out Fight Scene fifteen and see if you agree with the Evil One.

It's been fun and Robin's been a good sport, but I can't believe it might be over so soon!

Getting up off my blogging a**

Here's the final list of resolutions, numbered for efficiency and satisfying crossing-offability:

1. Finish editing Ghost Boys - by early Jan.
2. Find Beta readers who can read and return by mid-Jan:-)
3. Make any sensible changes and send out by end of Jan.
4. Get a web site up and running – by the end of February, sooner if possible.
5. Finish half-done rewrite on Maureen. Consider whether or not it needs third total rewrite (she's my problem child). No deadline. I want to get it right, as long as I'm working on it and progressing I'll be satisfied.
6. Try and find a mag that might be interested in the two short stories I am happy with.
7. Write more short stories.
8. Do more of Church Lady's writing exercises and keep visiting her blog. (As requested by Church Lady)
9. Break the Christmas habit of two glasses of wine every night - by the end of the first week of January!
10. Stay in touch with your blog friends, and keep your persona going strong where we can all enjoy your refreshing self. (As requested by Robin, and pretty much in her words, because it's my blog and I like the compliments, I do, I do, purr.)
11. We will definitely buy your work when it's published. Promise. (oh, hang on, I think that's Robin's resolution. But I'll buy yours too, Robin.)

OK, let's get going on the crossing off... What? Why did you think I was posting?!

Number one - it's done! Yippee! Well maybe it could do with another re-read, but I can do that while carrying out numbertwo... It's already off to one reader.

Number eight. I'm still visiting Church Lady. That's an easy one!

Number nine. Two nights ago I had a gin and tonic instead of wine. No, really, that counts. Oh, OK then. Last night not a drop passed my lips, just a lot of chocolate. It's a step-by-step process...

Number ten. I haven't written much here, but I've been flitting about the blogosphere in my breaks, so I'll take a yes on that one. Another easy one really. I think. Assuming I've been refreshing, which I will allow you to judge.

Not a bad start to 2008!

Make McKoala's New Year Resolution List

I never make one, so thought it might be fun for you to do it for me. Whatever you like - writing, food, bad habits (not that I have any, of course) - post 'em for me.

Try to keep away from the dark side, but knowing some of you, I reserve the right to pick and choose! If any of them are vaguely attractive to me, I'll give you monthly updates as 2008 moves on.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hogmanay!

I'm a Scot, so I will persist in my traditional greetings, however politically incorrect.

Many of you have posted kind festive greetings on the pickled brain thread, and thank you so much for your good wishes, but I thought I would pretend to be elegant by putting a special post up to return the holiday happiness.

It's been a fun year; I'm glad I started to blog at last and met so many nice people. Have a wonderful Christmas season, whatever you are doing and whatever you believe in. See you next year if you're taking a break! I'm not, so I'm happy to chitter chatter with anyone else who is just hanging out over Christmas.

I have pickled my brain

I do have some quite interesting, well, at least vaguely relevant things to blog about, but not today.

'Tis the day after the School Mums' Night Out. I missed almost all my other Christmas nights out due to illness, so I went to this one determined to have a good time. I did. Today is not so good. Funny how it's not until the next morning that you realise that last bar was a really, really bad idea.

I am so exhausted

Nonetheless, I dragged myself to my keyboard to share good news.

I finished the Christmas gift shopping today!

I know you're happy for me. Really, I do.

Where I am with my writing

Slightly on hiatus! This is my busy period for work - everyone wants copy for brochures and web sites they hope to have ready either before Christmas or in early January. So I'm writing thousands of words, but it's all commercial copy. There is simply no time or head space for anything else. The good news is that things slow down later this month and most of January is pretty dead so then I will have the opportunity to get back to some fiction.

My aim then is to finish redrafting 'Ghost Boys'. This is a young adult ghost story which I first drafted around the middle of the year. It's now in second draft after some great suggestions from Conduit who very kindly read the first draft. I did 'complete' a second draft, but I wasn't happy with it, so now I'm changing something very specific, which runs through the whole story. I've started doing it, but then the work pressure was on so I had to abandon it. I'm not too perturbed about having to back away from it for a while as I know what I want to do and how to do it. I hope it won't take too long to actually put it down in words!

I'd also like to write a few more short stories along the lines of 'Sand Baby' or 'Preparing the Body' - some of you may remember those from the Crapometer. I should be thinking about writing more womens' stories, as I seem to actually be able to sell those, but I have very little desire to do that at the moment. I want to explore other things. Writing womens' stories does take more effort than some people think and, like all other kinds of writing, you need to be dedicated to do it properly and I just don't have that dedication at the moment.

I also think I need a web site. Now there's a challenge.

So that's where I am with my writing. Where are you?

What's in a name?

In some ways, mostly daft, certain parts of my fuzzy brain are set in stone. One of the daftest Stonoids sometimes affects my reading.

It's my utter loathing for the name Gillian. I just cannot handle it. If I read a book about a supposedly sympathetic character called Gillian, I have no sympathy. To me, a Gillian is automatically the bad gal. I wait through the entire book for her to turn on every other character and if she doesn't I am utterly dissatisfied. And I still have no sympathy for her. Whatever happens.

That's probably the most extreme example of Name Stonoid Disease, but there are others. To me, the name Caroline exudes confidence. That means that if I run into a heroine called Caroline who is weak and soft, I simply lose all belief in her. 'Pah, Caroline, pull out those sharp bitch nails i know you have under your fluffy paws and give 'em hell!'

As for characters called Louise or Emma, I'm afraid I can't even pick those books up off the shelves. Nothing personal. There are just too darn many of them in too many books. Rightly or wrongly, to me it says 'bland'. Probably wrongly, but that's Name Stonoid Disease for you.

If this is the day I find out all my readers are called Gillian and have written books with heroines called Louise and Emma, not to worry. I'll just set Caroline on you. And, by the way, can I call you Jill?

I'm hoping this will be a photo...

It looks like a load of meaningless code to me, but hopefully it will magically transform into a photo when I publish this post. It's Polly the Puppy, by the way.

Robin asked how things were up the eucalypt... Frenzied is the answer. I worked five days last week. I don't think I have done that since Cricket Boy was born. This is always a busy time for me, with lots of clients wanting things ready to print for Christmas or early next year, but this year has been bananas. I could work three or four days this week too, but I don't think it's fair on Princess or Polly so I'm trying to squeeze everything into the few hours I have.

Also, my mother-in-law's aunt died - the last of her generation, so we've had to comfort Grandma. Plus the kids getting into Christmas performance mode, Cricket Boy's birthday coming up this weekend and one of my friends has just split with her partner - initially amicably, but now he's just tossed her out, so needing to offer support there, too, and practical help. So...yup...frenzied.

Over to you...

My last post about the weather (exciting topic, eh!) got a bit pretentiously writerly, I thought. That's because I was trying to write it without any visual description whatsoever. Did anybody even notice?!

So now...can you do it? Tell me about the weather where you are without using your eyes!

How's the weather with you?

It's spring here. The air is thick with the smell of freshly cut grass and cicadas hum to one another across the garden. In the middle of the day my skin is clammy with sweat and when I lick my lips they taste of salt. The puppy and the kids pant, slurping water, or crunching ice blocks. You can almost hear the rustle of new growth, of the earth relaxing under the gentle sun. In a few months it will become brutal, blasting everything brittle with dryness. But for now it caresses us, slipping its warmth under our goosebumps, coaxing us outside with its tender touch.

We have puppy!

It was a struggle getting her up the eucalypt, but we managed in the end.

She's a nine-week old cavoodle (they used to be called mongrels, but now they're getting all fancy); a Cavalier King Charles spaniel/poodle cross. In the shop she was 100% Cavalier, loving and smoochy and very mellow, but then we took her home and she turned poodle on us, dashing around the garden in a frenzy, playing with the kids. I like that she has both natures in her, it will keep us on our toes. As will the pee and the poo all over the laundry floor. I've got pads out, but Madam prefers to choose her own spot - a different one every time, although she does pee on one side of the laundry and poo on the other, so I suppose it's a system.

Her name is Polly, chosen by Cricket Boy.

Reading superstitions

As a child I think I may have had mild obsessive-compulsive disorder. If I took a drink, whether it be from a tap or a cup, I had to have an even number of mouthfuls, and preferably in multiples of two and then four etc.. Two, four, eight...and if I accidentally took that ninth swallow, I was up for sixteen, and then after that... well, it was a stretch for the bladder. I also could not stop reading on page or chapter 13 - or multiples of 13. That meant some late nights if I was reading a book with long chapters.

I'm over the water thing now (tg!) and over the multiples of 13 thing - but I still cannot stop reading on chapter 13, or any chapter before or after. So I still have to decide whether or not to stop at the end of chapter 11 or if I forge on to the end of chapter 14.

OK, so now you know I'm a complete freak, do you have any weird reading or writing superstitions or habits?

Cricket Boy Clean Bowled

Along with the rest of his team. Once again they ran into a team infinitely better than themselves. Seems to happen every week actually.

Revised Sand Baby on Crapometer

It's here if anybody would like to read it: http://www.crapometer.blogspot.com/

Cat or dog?

We have a mouse in our bedroom, scritchy-scritching behind the wall. Simultaneously, the cat or dog debate has been raging in our house. I thought this would seal the cat side, but husbad claims that he read somewhere that mice will also stay away from a house with a dog in it. Any ideas?

Cricket Boy bowled like a...well...really, there are no words...no, not demon...so not demon...more like something that really can't bowl...fish with its fins tied behind its back. Better draw a veil over that one. However, he won an award for his excellent batting last week, so he was happy. (Really, it was the coach making sure he'd bat next week, but he's not to know that...)

Late update on Cricket Boy

There were tears. There was stamping. There was messy nose blowing. Cricket Boy did not wish to bat.

'But you were great last time!' Big, wet eyes that knew the truth looked up at me.

Quick update. 'You'll be great this week!' More tears.

Then, coaxed every step by the coach, he dragged out to the crease; shoulders slumped, bat a-hanging, pads unravelling.

And he whacked that ball! He slapped that ball! He clouted that ball! He didn't score many runs, but he did score a little bit of dignity, and that's enough for me.

The rules of cricket

This is a quick read, honest. Only two pages. Big letters.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/hi/sa/cricket/rules/the_basics/newsid_3794000/3794981.stm

Hm, you'll need to cut and paste that as I am a link-making fool.

Cricket Boy's First Steps

The slap of leather against willow. The gentle applause from the crowd. The smell of the dry grass that crunched under his feet. The feel of the giant pads, strapped tight against his legs, making him walk like a constipated brachiosaurus. The heavy bat, dragging along behind him.

Thus it was that Cricket Boy made his way to the crease for the very first time.

He lifted the bat, weighted it in his hands, then lowered it so the tip touched the sandy spot by the stumps and turned side on to the ball. The bowler, unemcumbered by pads, scurried towards him, released the ball - a flash of red - clatter - stumps ahoy! Out first ball.

To be continued as the cricket season unrolls...

Great words that need a little more exercise

Over on the most reverend Church Lady's blog (http://abenchpress.blogspot.com/) a few of us were distracted by some wonderful words that just don't get out of the house enough: namely 'turgid' and 'roil'.

Can you think of any other words that deserve to be sent out in the world a little more often?

Things you fail to notice in writing and in life

So I trundle downstairs this morning to find a spotless kitchen floor, but kitchen cupboards stained with brown. Husbad had dropped a cup of coffee. He had the brains to clean the floor before the Wrath of Wife descended on him, but even with all his academic and professional brilliance at his power, it simply did not occur to him that the coffee might have landed anywhere other than on the floor, and his eyes failed to register the streaky cupboards.

When I write, my eyes fail to register the word 'just', and I have to go through all my manuscripts using find and replace to cut the 'justs' down to a reasonable amount. I've found it occurring three or four times in a single sentence. I also don't always notice repeated words in my own writing - a much harder problem to fix as I can't use find and replace on every possible word I might have used (can I?).

Is there anything your eyes or brain simply refuse to register, either in your writing or in the world around you?

Spending your imaginary advance

JJ the Goblin says it's OK to blog brain fluff, thus refreshing my confidence in my ability to blog. Brain fluff. I can do that.

Today, however, I've come over all Proper Blogger and actually have a question which might be remotely interesting. There's a fine old wrangle going on at http://rejecter.blogspot.com/, basically The Rejecter vs Unpleasant Anonymous Blogger aka Anon 7.55. Hie on over there if you wish to follow the main thread of the argument. My question, vaguely arising out of their grandstanding, but requiring absolutely no knowledge of that to answer is: (drumroll)....

Your novel has just been accepted for publication (woo hoo!) for an advance of $5000 (hmm). What would you spend that money on?

Pointless entry

Jeez, I'm one lazy marsupial when it comes to blogging. About to go on another trip, so the situation won't improve much over the weekend.

I think the problem is that this blog has no focus. Bit like me, really.

You tell me. What should I blog about?

What fun it was in paradise...

Sea, sun, sand... Not that we froliced (should that have the 'k' or not?) much in the sea or on the sand, because when folk bring sand in lorries and lay it on bare rock in front of a tableau of oil tankers it's really not that inviting. The sun was good though. Apart from the rain.

OK, here's a very funny thing. Flight: $1000. Suncream: $15. Discovering suncream not waterproof after a whole day at the pool: priceless. When I could walk again (legs) and the littlest koala could open her eyes again (face) we bought new cream, to which Soccer/Cricket Boy then had an allergic reaction. Sooooo funny...

This sounds like a catalogue of disasters, but everything else was fab. Paradise. Best hotel swimming pools in the world. Three separate pools, all with warm water and one with water slides for little koalas. I like my pools hot, hot, hot and spent hours in a chlorine marinade. We eschewed the poolside bar for the water safety of the little koalas, but made up for it with cocktails later when the furry babes were tucked up tight in their eucalypt. We also had some top times with a friend from the old countree who now lives in paradise, and has a maid who looks after baby koalas and does grubby holiday washing while cooking dinner with her third hand. Maid? Angel.

No, I'm not telling you where paradise was. Koala secret.

Holiday hiatus!

We're dragging our weary bones on to a plane later this week, seeking sun and pleasure. Hoping to come back fully re-energised and raring to go with a fun-filled blog... I'm sure post-holiday koala brain will be much more entertaining than pre-holiday koala brain, which is as full of holes as a slice of gruyere.

Befuddled and therefore simple

My head is stuffed and befuddled by some weird virus or other, so I'm keeping it simple today (well, that's this week's excuse...). Let's talk the last soccer game of the season!

The last match was a good one. Against an all-girl team, but they had one of the most solid defenders I've ever seen (solid in every meaning of the word, too) and a good little attacker. Still, we kept them at bay with a 1-0 result. An accidental ball to the face of the attacker may have influenced that result - she refused to play any more after that. I'm reliably informed that Soccer Boy scored the goal, but unfortunately I wasn't watching at the time, and despite recording most of the match on my video recorder, you've guessed it, I missed the golden moment... Idiot mother.

Now, sadly, the Era of the 7G1s has drawn to its close. Never again will the exact same combination of boys and girls grace the field (guaranteed by the fact that one of our kids has already moved house and has been toiling long distances to get to our matches...). It's been fun, fun, fun all the way. Highlights: Soccer Boy's hat trick (grin). The Winner that Never Was (the whistle had blown, but we mums had missed it and went into full-on celebrations with all the kids laughing at us...). The Dancing on the Field (from one of the girls). The Dancing on the Field (from one of the boys). The Mums' Nights Out (heh, heh). The End of Season McDonalds Party and Presentation (Soccer Boy - Top Goalscorer). The End of Season Parents-Only Party (yet to come, but I'm optimistic as to its success).

In a month or so, Soccer Boy will return to the blog in another guise...Cricket Boy! Roll on summertime!

Stretched thin like chewing gum

Remember in the gross years before you realised anything was gross, you'd take a bit of chewing gum out of your mouth and stretch it until it was long and droopy and so transparent in the middle it seemed thinner than paper, but somehow it still held together? That's how I feel right now.

In the past three weeks we've been undergoing a major crisis with Soccer Boy who decided to grow a big lump in his neck. All kinds of tests showed nothing. We were about to have a biopsy for lymphoma and were quivering with fear, when at the very last minute his last blood test showed glandular fever.

He has glandular fever and we're happy! It's just, the other options were so awful. What's more he's not even unwell. A little tired and grumpy, but still going to school, even still playing soccer - although no goal this weekend, so clearly it is affecting him in some ways, heh heh...

Back to that gum...and then after you'd stretched it so far that it was just a thread wafting in your breath, you'd bring the ends back together, all dry and crusted with whatever dirt was on your hands, then you'd put it back in your mouth and chew it all back together again.

We're going on holiday in two weeks. We need to bring the ends back together again.

Victory!

It's been a long time since I've updated the progress of the 7G1s and, my friends, I know you are on the edge of your seats, because under sevens soccer is everybody's idea of a top sporting event.

The weather was against us for the longest time. Weeks without a match, weeks without training, weeks of small boys weeping every Saturday morning when they saw it was raining yet again. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, the sun crept out again and... we got crushed 5-0. Oops. The next week, though, the team were back on form with a 3-0 victory and this week a 4-0 victory, with Soccer Boy scoring twice in each game. Ah, mummy's so proud!

Has Harry Potter manipulated me?

*No spoilers in this post, honest. I wouldn't do that to you.*

Yesterday I did something I've never done before. I bought a book on the first day it was published. You know the one...

I'm not a frantic fan (with respect to those who are...hi jj!). I like the series; no more than that. I've read them all, mostly a year or so after publication. So why did I rush out and buy this one?

It was the spoilers, my friends, the spoilers. I never like to know the ending of a book before I've read it. I'm not a Last Page Looker. With the panic and furore about extracts on the web, reviews that reveal the plot and the general chit chat in the media about Harry's possible fate, I realised that sooner or later I might tune into something that would tell me what happens before I get the chance to discover it for myself. That would annoy me, and annoyed koalas have teeth and claws and a family to use them on.

So I bought the book. And after I bought it and made myself part of the fastest-selling-book-ever-on-the-planet phenomenon I started to feel slightly...dirty. Something started nibbling at the edges of my brain. It was the memory of the devious ways of marketing men. Of sweaty fifty-year olds that flick through catalogues of pretty young things commenting on their boobs, then pick 200 of them to leer over in the board room, and then send the chosen beauties to city bars to order a specific high-alocohol drink simply so they can tell the person next to them how yummy it is, like drinking chocolate pudding, and then move on to another bar to do the same thing, and again, and again, and again...

So what if the spoilers, the reviews, the general chit chat that the publishers, the agents, the marketing men are all so upset about are not an accident? What if behind the scenes the marketing men are rubbing their chubby little hands together and saying:

'Top hole Aubrey, that little 'accident' in sending out early review copies really worked! You even fooled the New York Times into doing our work for us! Now the muggles will rush out and buy the book as soon as possible so they don't find out the ending before they read it!'

'How about that spiffing little spoiler you managed to arrange by losing a manuscript on the train! Sheer genius, Carruthers.'

'And all those fake blogs Geoffrey's been working on down in the basement. The ones he's been writing for the past two years, simply so he can start posting hints and discussions that the muggles think come from real people!'

'I say chaps, it's been a team effort and we are all simply marvellous! Another Choccy Fizz? It tastes just like dessert you know. Chin chin!'

Here's a something...

...from the start of a short story. It's up on Evil Editor at the moment, and doing OK, despite the harrowing topic. It's a hard one to write, but I'd like to finish it, even if I have to do it bit by bit.


Ethan had the face of child, but the scalp of an old man. Tendrils of blue veins reached out under the pale skin, curving and parting like rivers searching for the sea. Rivers in winter, sluggishly winding under ice, compelled to struggle and flow to their destination, even when the surface lay still and silent.

Nothing in this room smelt of life, nothing offered freshness and perfume; only the sharp, nose-biting scent of intervention, blended with bleach, vomit and old food. On the bed Ethan was barely a wrinkle under the crisp-cornered sheets. The only thing that moved was his dummy, pumping in his mouth under closed eyes. The suck-suck-sucking sound of him working at the little rubber teat pulsed rhythmically against the humming of the machines propelling the medicine into his system. The machines that were keeping him alive.

Abby should have got rid of his dummy. Told him that if he’d give it to the poor kids Santa would bring him a special present. That’s what I did with my kids.

I suppose he can suck it for as long as he wants now.

‘Visit,’ her mother said, when she met me at the supermarket. ‘Please visit. They had lots of visitors at first; from the pre-school, from playgroup, but now…’ Her eyes gleamed bright with uncried tears, her mouth burst with unspoken words: ‘now there is no hope.’

‘They need their old friends,’ was what she actually said.

And after three months of procrastination...

...I'm finally into the rewrite of the novel fondly known as 'Maureen'. The first draft of this was young adult; but something bugged me about that and it turns out that Maureen was actually grown-up the whole time - well, at least on the outside. How she becomes adult on the inside is kind of the point of the novel, along with a bit of a murder mystery.

It's also going wholeheartedly into dialect, well, not to an incomprehensible level, but I've learned from some of my recent reading, that, yanno, it's OK to write the language that I heard around me throughout my childhood. As a Scot, I have the right, and hopefully the ability, to do that. I have a slight concern that it might be a turn off for some readers, but I'm not going completely Irvine Welsh and I'm doing very little phonetic representation. I loathe people who write dialect as 'Ah canna do verrrry much the day.' We're not idiots in Scotland. We're perfectly capable of realising that although we may pronounce 'I' as 'Ah', that's not how it's written, also the rolled 'r's are completely normal to us and not something to be remarked upon (we're sorry for those of you that can't say the 'r' and the 'ch' sounds, you poor dears). I'm trying to show the dialect via the vocabulary and the rhythm; with a minimum of phonetic representation and no 'och aye the noos'.

Interestingly, writing and thinking in my home tongue is bringing it out of my mouth too, and I think there's been a marked increase in the strength of my accent in the last week or so, not to mention some new words for the kid koalas to learn. Ah, the multicultural life.