When I was ten and eleven years old, this was some of the most exciting art I could imagine (It’s the box art from the 1985 Transformers toys, painted by a guy called Jeffrey Mangiat).
More Than Meets The Eye
Testing, Testing
Hello, technology. Assuming this works, I am writing this on a Kindle; it was a birthday present and an attempt for me to get off the laptop as I know it but still be able to check the Internet, email and whatever in evenings and weekends. I made myself a promise, awhile back, to GET OFF THE COMPUTER when I wasn’t working, if only because I spend so much time working and need to change my environment some time without going crazy. It’s been good for me, but having this Kindle has been really nice to just do fun things online without feeling like I should work. Plus, it’s gotten me obsessed with the format of Kindle Singles and other cheap, short digital books. More on that later, I suspect.
This Is What 38 Feels Like
My birthday gifts to myself: Catching up on deadlines (I think? This is where I discover there’s something that’s slipped through the cracks) and stopping for the weekend. Seriously; I have been working on weekends for the last few weeks, and that’s just meant that I’ve been working seven days a week for varying amounts of time. That is, as the kids say, bananas and I’m taking happy advantage of the chance to, you know, relax over the next couple of days.
We’ll see how long it is until I get bored.
Oh, and I’m also going to shave finally, and maybe buy myself a book to read on my Kindle or something, too. That’s not too ridiculous, right…?
(To everyone who sent me birthday wishes on Facebook or Twitter: Thank you very, very much. I’m genuinely kind of humbled by them all.)
And Welcome To Our Show Tonight
Yes, I accidentally took the weekend off. Or, at least, took the weekend off from here; the reason for that was actually that I had real, paying work to do instead, and it was one of those “Sorry, blog, I don’t want to spend any more time in front of a computer screen than I absolutely have to” things for the last few days. I will try harder from now on, honest.
Oh! And it’s October, officially the best month of the year because I have a birthday in a few days. So, there’s that.
Hello again.
“Can It Be Some Harbinger of Hope — When Hope Is Almost Gone?”
Sleeping In
You know it’s not going to be a good day when you wake up late, from weird (but not especially bad, per se) dreams in which you get lost in a foreign city without your glasses, but manage to find refuge from the rain in a workshop that backs onto multiple different locations all around the world (It was a specific type of location, but frustratingly, I can’t remember what type). There’s a lot to be done this week in general, and sleeping in and having odd dreams distract you afterwards isn’t what I need right now, thankyouverymuch, brain.
A Pox On Your Sales And Your Novels!
[I]f you fail to keep our promise, may other writers anticipate your plots, may your publishers do you down in your contracts, may strangers sue you for libel, may your pages swarm with misprints and may your sales continually diminish. Amen.
That’s part of the initiation ceremony British mystery writers had to go through in order to join the wonderfully named Detection Club in the 1930s, written by Dorothy Sayers and available here. You can learn more about the Detection Club here.
Do The Romp
As you might suspect, vacation has kicked my ass. Or, rather, trying to get back into things after vacation, considering the amount of work I had to juggle today to catch up and meet deadlines and the like (We only got back into town last night). Expect a weekend of trying to more calmly get my equilibrium, and then some catching up next week, I think. Sorry for the continued radio silence…
“THIS Is The Place!”
“If You See A Man, Flash”
