I have several posts on the boil, but the ideas in them seem to be taking a while to uncomplicate themselves and come out clearly. (It’s not helped by the fact that the scene I’m working on in the WIP is proceeding at glacial speed; I’m distracted.) So in lieu of a real post, I thought I would share this.
Feel free to ignore the bit at the end about the pandas (or not, Graham is always good for a laugh), but the bit at the start with the dude in the box made me laugh out loud. If you are at all Whovian, watch and giggle:
Or, if your fandoms are otherwise, check out this Cheezburger post. It includes 10 quotes from favourite movies and TV shows that are all about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and pushing on, even if times are tough. It’s cute and includes a couple of my favourites, namely the Dumbledore one and the one from my favourite fish, Dory. I quite regularly remind myself to ‘just keep swimming’!
(It’s possible that Dory isn’t my only favourite fish. I am also very, very, taken with Bruce the shark, but he is less cheerily encouraging and more terrifying. Although his stalwart efforts to treat fish as friends not food, in the face of his addiction, is admirable.)
Exhibit A, demonstrating both the fabulousness and terror of Bruce:
Hope your week is going well. Wish me luck with this scene and posts o’doom!
Today, I sent the girl and the man off to their several labours with Really Ordinary Muffins.
They contain all natural ingredients and many healthful and tasty things, and yet, the combined total is just… ordinary. Not terrible, but boring.
In itself, this is not a complete disaster. Not every recipe works. They’ll be gone soon. No harm done and my family is way too well house-trained to complain about home-baking that they didn’t make.
The thing that is getting to me is that I HAVE MADE THIS RECIPE BEFORE AND IT WAS BAD THEN TOO. And I tried it again, with some tweaking, to see if I could fix it.
Why do I do this?
It’s not as though the world is short of recipes. The internet is awash with recipes for muffins. In my own recipe stash I have at least five tried and true favourites, at least three of which are at least as healthy as these (and the other two of which are death on a plate).
And yet, I feel the need to tweak a recipe that was boring the first time. It’s as if I can’t leave any recipe behind. I am the Marine of muffins. I must maintain the faith that all recipes are worthy and can be rehabilitated.
But I’m here to say that this one really can be thrown out. I will waste no more muffin cases on these Really Ordinary Muffins. I will move on.
But if feels like a failure.
Am I completely insane, or just a little anal?
Enquiring minds want to know…
(Please note the photo above is not of my muffins. I didn’t have the heart to photograph them. I found this photo on freedigitalphotos.net and put it here as a mute testimony to what my muffins should have been and yet aren’t. RIP best intentions.)
So, yesterday, Melbourne, my town, turned on one of those glorious autumn days that make you want to frolic and gambol and otherwise bask in the sunshine and revel in being alive. And then I turned on the radio and this was on, which seemed appropriate:
Although in my case it was more go outside and loll in the hammock, rather than in bed, but you get the idea.
But I was good. I did do some work, I just did it at a coffee shop with outside tables, where I could bask in the real sunshine (and frolic in my imaginary world). And I enjoyed it. And it has put me in a good mood today, which is lovely. So I want to share some things I’m grateful for. First, at the moment, I am most pleased with this:
It’s a book. It has my name on it. It has a gorgeous cover. All of these things have existed since October last year. But now it is available in three dimensions, with actual paper between covers, for people to buy*. This makes me glad. And a little squoogly.**
(*In Australian Post shops if you are in Australia. My apologies if you aren’t! One day I will have many books and they will be available in all formats everywhere, but it is not this day. Sadly.)
(**Squoogly is a word we have invented in our house for that combination of bashful and delighted that you get when someone compliments you fulsomely – or when you see your first book available for sale.)
I am also grateful to friends who bought the book (see first photo) and took pictures of it in the wild (see both photos). They make me squoogly too! (See**, above.)
I am also pleased that we have a tiny, miraculously tiny frog in our frog tank. Last year, our little frogs successfully bred in captivity, surprising and delighting us. They produced one normal-sized frog and one we called Frodo because he was little and gorgeous. But this year, although we got spawn and even tadpoles, we didn’t get any new frogs. At least, so I thought, until I saw the tiny, tiny one the other day. He’s the size of a quarter of a thumbnail. He’s so small it was hard to believe he wasn’t just a trick of the light. But he’s real and he’s still there and he feels like a tiny miracle. I’m finding tiny tiny insects to feed him and hoping we can keep him alive and growing.
And then there’s this:
I enjoyed the Hobbit movie but best of all, I think was the dwarves singing. I sincerely hope there will be more in the next two.
And there are many more things to be happy about, but I’ve rabbited for long enough. What are you happy about today?
I’ve been writing a lot lately. This is a good thing for my fiction. Apart from getting one project finished, it also means that my fiction juices, so to speak, are flowing abundantly. My brain it truly teems with endless schemes, both good and new. I’m fired up, I’m excited, I want to write ALL THE THINGS.
Sadly, life will insist on intruding into my writing time. I managed to ignore life for a bit while I finished the project o’doom, but while I was doing so, my desk became a minefield of bits of paper with jobs-to-do on them (some of which didn’t get done, as evidenced in Monday’s post). So before I wade into the wondrous seas of NEW! SHINY! PROJECTS! I have to sort through the detritus and try to reclaim the non-writing portion of my life.
Now, clearly, I can’t do this kind of work on my own. We all know that writers are fueled by caffeine and chocolate and I am no exception (although I would also add potatoes to that list – it’s the Irish heritage). But when it comes to the tedious-but-necessary non-writing tasks, the writer needs more. I don’t just need caffeine, I need moral support with my caffeine. Someone cheerful and encouraging, but quiet and very unlikely to make ‘helpful’ suggestions. Fortunately, I have just such a friend.
Allow me to introduce Bruce:
For those of you not familiar with the concept, Bruce is a tea-cosy. He is made of wool (what else? he’s a sheep) and sits over my adorable small, just-for-me-sized teapot and keeps the tea warm. He is special for several reasons.
First, and possibly most important, he’s adorable. He makes me smile and trust me, when I’m sorting out finances and the like, I need all the help I can get with that. Second, he’s hand-knitted and being in the presence of awesome handcrafts also makes me very happy. Third, he was a gift, from my Mum and one of my sisters, who found him in a craft shop and had to bring him home. (There is nothing that shows our kinship more than our inability to leave in a shop a truly fabulous piece of craftiness.) Fourth, he is the perfect size for my little teapot, which was a gift from another sister, which has a serendipity that pleases me. And fifth, his name is Bruce and for reasons I can’t explain, it’s a name that makes me smile. Especially when given to a sheep tea-cosy (The sister who bought him named him, once again demonstrating the kinship.)
Although, now that I think about it, we are not the only people amused by the name Bruce for animals…
Although my Bruce is, I’m sure you’ll agree cuter. And not as dangerous.
I just hope that he has as much stamina as a shark. Because I foresee him getting something of a workout over the next few days as I detangle the cat’s-cradle of crud I’m drowning in. Wish us luck!
I’m sorry my lovelies, but I’m still stuck in manuscript hospital with this book. But I was sent this as inspiration by a friend the other day and I thought I’d share it with you, since it’s gorgeous. I haven’t been watching it, of course, just having the music in the background, but the video is a gorgeous compilation and I’d forgotten how much I like this song.
I hope it inspires you, too and I’ll be back on blogging deck soon!
whoops! Just discovered that won’t embed, but you can still watch in on YouTube. And in the meantime, for a laugh try this one:
Forgive my temporary absence from the blogging – I’m off having Easter-tide festivities with the family. If this is a religious time for you, I hope it has been blessed and brings all the renewal the season is meant to. If it’s just a holiday time, then, likewise! For my Jewish friends who have recently celebrated Passover, I hope it was wonderful for you and thank you to those who shared pictures of your Seder plates – I have learned something this year and hope to learn more!
And now, because it amuses me every time I see it, I offer an irreverent ode to the season of chocolate bunnies. I don’t know where this picture originated, but if anyone does know, please tell me, as I would like to thank them!
I’ve just had a conversation with an author friend that made my blood boil and my hair curl and I want to share it with you because YOU HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE THIS BETTER.
Seriously, how many things is that true of? Not many. But this is a situation that you, as a reader, as a consumer can have a direct and meaningful influence on.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to PRE-ORDER THE BOOKS YOU WANT TO READ.
What, you say? Why? What difference does it make when I buy them? Surely the sale is what matters?
I have been absent from the bloggery for a while. For those who noticed, I’m sorry, truly. It’s not that I haven’t had ideas for posts. My brain it teems with schemes (as usual). But a couple of things got in the way of me getting them onto the blog. The pictures below show the fun one:
I have been out of town. In Brisbane, Queensland, to be precise at the very wonderful Australian Romance Readers’ Convention, run by the even more wonderful Australian Romance Readers Association. (If you love Romance, you really should check them out. And give them money. And come to the next ARRC!)
At this wonderful weekend, I got to be An Author. And talk about being one (a talk which involved a miniature T-Rex for reasons not even I can explain). And attend an author signing. AN AUTHOR SIGNING! ON THE SITTING DOWN SIDE OF THE DESK! SQUEEEEEE!
You meet a lot of lovely people on the interwebs. One I met recently is writer Terri Giuliano Long, who is this year, hosting a fun blog hop to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
I signed up to join the hop a while ago, not knowing quite what I’d write about. The prompt was to talk about our favourite romantic reads. Should be easy, I thought. I have plenty of those. But that was my undoing. I thought of too many!
So then I decided to think outside of books. And I remembered that, much as I love a romantic story, my favourite kind of romantic read isn’t printed inside the covers of a book, but by hand on a piece of paper:
Love letters.
Once they were common but are they a lost art in this electronic age? I hope not. What can compare to sneaking away somewhere private to read, over and over again, someone express their love for you? It’s a special kind of bliss.
Maybe this Valentine’s day, instead of buying flowers or chocolates or going out, we should take the time to put down in words how wonderful life is ’cause our beloved is in the world. (With apologies to Elton John. )
To get you in the mood, here’s one I prepared earlier, in response to a similar prompt on the RWA blog, for my Valentine:
Please note this is A Big Thing, not actually MY Big Thing… (It’s the CSIRO Radio Telescope at Parkes, Australia. A favourite Big Thing)
I’m delighted to be part of The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. I’ve been asked to answer ten questions about what I’m working on and then tag other authors to do the same.
Some of these questions were easy and some were trickier, but it was fun to do! I’m quite excited to talk about this novel as it’s a rewrite of the first novel I ever wrote and I’m really looking forward to see how the transformation works out. I can’t wait to give it to my stalwart beta reader, who has read every word I have ever written, and see how she likes it!
To continue the ‘hop’ you can follow the links at the bottom of this post. I hope you like reading about MY next big thing (even if it’s not the world’s). If you have questions, please ask, happy to answer. If you are a reviewer and interested in receiving an ARC when it comes out I’d be very happy to hear from you. Just drop me a note in the comments or on the contact form.
1: What is the working title of your book?
Playing by the Rules
2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
A scene popped into my head one day; two best friends discussing the best way to get over a dumping. I wrote that scene many years ago now and it sat in a drawer (literally, a filing cabinet drawer) for many years until I dragged it out and started thinking about how these two friends had got to this scene and where they would go from there.
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