sorry sorry – I’ve been missing and there’s no real good reason for it.

Basically the short story is that Dad went into mental assessment, and was found not to need full time mental care but did need to go into care so that’s what’s happened. I didn’t deal with it very well and for months now I’ve been hiding away from the world in general. I haven’t been chatting, or emailing (my email inbox is at the 3,000 mark…) I haven’t been writing and I can’t even find the enthusiasm to READ. That worries me because I’ve always been a voracious reader and now I can’t stay focussed to read more than a couple of pages. I am fairly sure it’s depression but whether it’s because of Dad or the last 18 months of winter or my age I don’t know.

I have an appointment with the doc this evening, but I’m not holding out much hope that he’ll be any help.

Dad has really gone downhill. It may be the drugs but he’s almost immobile – six months ago he was fitter than me, and could run and climb ladders and the like, now he can hardly stand and he shuffles about. He’s gone almost entirely grey (this may not sound unusual for an 84 year old but he’s never been grey until now) and LOOKS 84 if not older. He doesn’t talk just sits. I am sure he knows who I am and he’s probably pleased to see me but I doubt he knows I was there and he doesn’t miss me. It’s a bit of a shock to realise that both parents have gone, especially if one is still there in shell form, at least.

I just have no interest in doing anything. Like right this minute, I’m sitting in Dad’s house and I should be packing china into boxes and frankly I can’t be arsed but I know it has to be done. Instead I’m blogging this and watching coronation street and playing freecell. I’ve just never felt like this before, and it’s not nice.

I feel better than I did, perhaps a month or so ago, perhaps that’s the better weather – I’ve been making sure I go and sit in the sun for at least half an hour a day, thanks goodness for sasha, because she has to have her run and therefore I have to go out. Thank goodness for her in general, as she refuses to let me cry which I found myself doing a lot until recently, she LAUNCHES herself onto my lap and licks me until i start laughing and all the tears have gone. She’s very anti-crying!

anyway – that’s the situation at the mo, because of my inability to want to do anything I haven’t got the house cleared/decorated/cleaned but that should all be happening in the next week or so. then i can get it rented out, but even with two decent pensions AND the rental, it’s not going to cover the £600 a week care home fee, so the rest will accumulate as a debt against the house, but it SHOULD mean that as only a portion of the fees will go against the house, there SHOULD be some money left in the equity when the house comes to me. that’s if dad goes first! I’ve also got a work experience placement to apply for, and I’m worried sick as to what to do with Sasha, she’ll have to go into kennels, I suppose as a daily boarder and I hate to do that to her. that’s if I get it, so I’ll worry about that if i do.

so, I’ll try and be around a bit more, even if it’s only once a week. I have some editing to do for “I Knew Him” which needs to be done by end of July so it will come out later in the year so I’ll keep you posted on that too.

Cheers, me dears.

I haven’t fallen off the wagon – but I came close!  I had a “couple” of drinks on Friday night and then was hit by something on saturday that I haven’t experienced since my youf – the munchies like you wouldn’t BE-LEEVE. real carbohydrate – omg i must eat them or DIEE…. munchies. I managed to get through them by making a massive bowl of pasta and putting in light soft cheese – not terribly slimming but it could have been a lot lot worse considering i had to drive past a McDonald’s.

So no major mishap and I’m still keeping on. It’s great to say “Day SIX” instead of not having started at all.

I FEEL better. More alert, more … well-being, if you get me. Even if it’s still an effort to get around. I will NOT go immobile. I will NOT.

Went to see Dad on saturday, but frankly I am beginning to wonder why – what the point is. It doesn’t make me feel any better and while it might make him happy for a minute or two, he generally gets argumentative after about ten minutes and the very moment he’s out of my eyesight for one second, he’s forgotten I ever came down. I’m still waiting to hear about his assessment and where they are going to put him next.

Finished Sasha’s jacket, but I’m not happy with it, it’s too large around the waist even though i made it a lot smaller than the pattern said but it will do for cold mornings in the car, and the forecast says we are going to get more arctic weather this week. I didn’t do cuffs around the leg holes because I think that would be too restrictive but it’s not bad. I don’t think i’d try this pattern again, but perhaps look for one for a dog with her measurements. Her trouble is she’s an extra large around the chest (takes after her mother! ) but with a tiny waist (not so much… )

I’ve never asked for money or sponsorship on this blog but I’m going to do so today.

On 21st February, I’ll be doing the Plumpy'Nut© Challenge which entails eating nothing but Plumpy'Nut© for one whole day.

http://www.plumpynut.co.uk/

This challenge is for everyone, just live off on Plumpy'Nut© for one day! This is the very same food that Merlin provides to take children from the doorstep of starvation to living health lives. Raise just £50 and help to spread the word!

What is Plumpy'Nut©?

It’s an edible peanut paste, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to feed starving children. In 2012, Merlin has saved the lives of countless children using nutty pastes just like this.

What’s the Challenge?

Plumpy'Nut© is the last resort for many children in east Africa. Some are so badly malnourished their lives are so much in danger, it can take up to eight weeks to stabilise them.

I’m hoping to raise approximately fifty quid – that’s not much is it? But it will make a difference. Fifty pounds is all that’s needed to take a starving child from malnourished to healthy, so please consider giving what you can.  Here’s my fundraising page. At no point does the money pass through my hands, so you know that it’s all going to charity and not into my pocket!!

On the day I’ll be tweeting about the experience and boring you all rigid!  I hope the threat of that spurs you into taking part too.

Had to Frog – (completely dismantle, i.e. rippit, rippit) my Jayne hat, as I finished it and 1. it was HUGE and 2. it was twisted and irredemably so. So I guess I will have to learn how to use circular needles properly, won’t i? I’m rather the sort of person who will just “open the box and start using” – I never bother to read any kind of instructions. And it gets me into trouble more often than not.

However, I’ve just ordered some wool for a big jacket. Got grey (which is not at all my colour) because basically all the cool colours were sold out or too bloody expensive and if I want to wear my lovely scarf with it, it needs to be neutral, and I wear too much black as it is.

Here’s the jacket: I did buy very cheap wool, so it will only cost me £20 for the whole thing. The wool they suggest was five quid a ball, which would have come out as £105!!! Luxurious but rather defeats the object of “saving me money by making my own clothes.” If I could afford that money, I’d be buying gorgeous things from, yanno, SHOPS.

http://www.allaboutyou.com/knitting-patterns/knits-for-women/knit-a-plus-size-jacket-free-pattern-47837

I had mouth watering moments over some lovely cable cardigans but I am going to have to work up to something like that – I’ve only done simple cables once and that was a long time ago, and am not ready to re-size an existing pattern including cables.

As for my scarf, I really don’t know what I did without it!  Not only can i wear it as a traditional scarf, but also as it’s so wide, as a headscarf/scarf, and the other day on the beach I could not only sit on it, saving me from piles from the freezing concrete sea-wall, but could also put it over my knees!

Anyway, of little interest to most of you, I know, but it’s nice to talk about something more optimistic.

I’ve been reading “Dominion” by CJ Samson and I’ll do a full review when it’s done, but I have to say that these best-selling authors aren’t any better than the rest of us. It’s a good premise (what would have happened if Britain had caved after Dunkirk and Churchill hadn’t been PM) but the pacing is frankly terrible. For some reason, Samson seems to want to tell us the ins and outs of every single character’s background which is achieved by gurt big lumping bits of backstory which KEEP shoe horning into the plot whenever it manages to get going and when the plot really starts to ramp up and get SCARY – he STILL does it by going back and telling us what somebody did earlier in the fucking day. I’m enjoying it, but I feel I’m just putting up with the crappy bits in an effort to find out what happens.

Which is something I do with Dan Brown, and it’s better than that. Not a great deal, to be honest, but a bit.

It also has the (as far as I’m concerned) frankly unforgiveable method of having the character consider his own appearance—whether it’s in a mirror or a shop reflection or whatever. PLEASE, authors. Don’t do this. We don’t really need to know that badly. And it’s easily dealt with via ANOTHER character’s POV. The backstory could have also been dealt with in the plot itself too, for the main part.

Anyway. Onwards and upwards.

Well, I’ve been down to see Dad a couple of times since he went into the Mental Ward and I don’t know if I’m not making matters worse. Probably it’s only bad for me, because I know he doesn’t remember that I’ve been there literally a few seconds after I go, but my visits consist of us sitting in a visiting lounge holding hands and him asking me over and over where he is and what he should do. The first time I went he was very dopey but yesterday he was a lot more alert, although just as confused. When I went to go he started searching for his coat and said “you can drop me off” and then when I said “no, you have to stay here” he started off with the “no, please don’t lock me in a home” as he did when he was first put into the residential home he didn’t stay in. It’s heartbreaking. The nurses – whilst not being at all as reassuring or interested in me as the care home nurses were (after all, they aren’t being paid a fortune, so I can sort of understand that) are professional and on the ball. I waved one down and she came and distracted him while another nurse let me out.

I can’t say I could ever work in that environment as what they seem to spend most of their time doing is chasing the patients around the place!  I couldn’t understand why they didn’t let visitors into the lounge, but now I suppose it’s because it’s a big place with a lot of (possibly) potentially dangerous people around so they can’t really say you are going to be safe unless you are in a one-to-one situation with your relative.  It’s upsetting but I’m grateful—particularly today with the six inches of snow—that he’s in somewhere warm and secure where someone is feeding him, because this is the worst weather we’ve had since he’s been as incapable as he is now and I’d have had to go over every day in the snow.

Anyway, that’s where we are at the moment, he’ll be there for up to 28 days, possibly less and then they’ll place him somewhere else. He’s been playing up at night, they say, saying that all these people have to get out of his house, and although I’m sad to hear he’s that confused, I’m glad they’ve seen that behaviour, becuase I think adult protection is the only route in the future. We’ll have to see.

It’s wonderfully snowy, snowy enough even for this snow-phile. Poor Sasha has only had a short run today, but she did love it and ran around like a loony.  Hence the slightly blurry video.

Hopefully I’ll be back on form soon, I am trying, but all I feel like doing is pulling the covers over my head to be honest!

OK – so I had a call  yesterday from the social services who were over at Dad’s nursing home, she’d gone over with 2 doctors to assess dad under the Mental Health Act and they had decided that he needed to be in a mental ward of a hospital while he’s properly assessed – sectioned in other words, poor man. I knew it would come to that, to be honest. I didn’t think the care home would be any good for him, despite all their assurances. So they took him over there last evening, and I rang first thing to see how he was copying.  The nurse I spoke to was a lot less obsequious than the care home managers (I guess it’s because the patient isn’t paying £500 a week) but he was factual and informative – said Dad had had something to eat last night and actually got some sleep after two nights of not sleeping – he was still asleep when I called in fact. The visiting times are not all day, but I’ll pop over for an hour or however long it takes sometime tomorrow – they said to ring in the morning.

It’s terribly sad for him, he’ll know that he has been taken from his home and I don’t know what they’ve told him but I actually feel less upset about it than I did a couple of days ago. I have no idea what the place is like, i suppose i’ll find out tomorrow.

Thanks to each and every one of you that has passed on your good wishes – I haven’t been able to reply to most of them, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for that.

I feel a tad lost, because I feel I’m in limbo – I feel there’s something I should be doing – my life has pretty much revolved around him for so many years and suddenly I’ve nothing to do. I suppose I’ll have to write! Stress drives that right out of the window, I’m afraid.

As for the Amazon debacle – what a load of wankers. hundreds of my reviews have been deleted – so I’m simply not going to bother in future, only on Speak Its Name and on Goodreads.

So Dad isn’t settling, despite all the care home’s reassurances that he’d be settled in nicely after a couple of days. I knew he wouldn’t be. He’s not confused enough to suddenly think it’s his home – so he’s been acting up pretty badly.

They rang me at FOUR O CLOCK – I mean for fuck’s sake – I mean what the hell was I supposed to do that they couldn’t? To tell me that he’d “abused a service user” which is jargon for he’d manhandled another inmate. Luckily I wasn’t awake at 4am or 7am when they rang, and my mobile doesn’t have much signal at home, and was downstairs anyway so I didn’t get the calls and I called them back at 9 to get the details.

Apparently he pulled an old woman out of her bed – saying that if it was HIS house, as everyone had been saying, that he wanted everyone to leave. I can sort of understand his reasoning. But that’s not good behaviour, obviously. So his doctor is going to see him today (like THAT will help…) and they are pushing to get the mental health assessment done as soon as possible. I was told that that would happen YESTERDAY but apparently it didn’t.

I think that, as things are – and I told my doctor this months and months ago – and my mother had also done the same (so it just goes to show how long this has been the case as she died 6 years ago) he’s not able to integrate into a normal retirement home – even sedated, as he is now which has made no difference at all. I think he’s going to end up in a mental home, because I don’t know how else he’s going to be managed.

Well, today he went into a home. He was all for it yesterday, when the ladies came and visited to tell him about it, but of course, he doesn’t remember them coming and he can change his mind in heartbeat (and then deny he ever had the opposite view, ever!) let alone overnight. So I didn’t pack him a bag before we went as I knew he’d object, so I just made it look like we were going out for lunch.  Once we got through the door he realised and started saying “What have you done!?” and saying he wanted to go home so they whisked me off to see his bedroom (very nice indeed with a lovely view of the courtyard garden, it’s an old Rectory) and had a talk with me with much much reassurance. Then they sneaked me out so he didn’t see me again and didn’t get more wound up. I packed a bag for him and took it back this afternoon.

Apparently it took him a couple of hours to calm down but by the time I got there he was chatting to one of the lady residents and was laughing and joking. They have told him he’s having a holiday so that I can have a holiday – which is partially true, and is actually something they can continue to tell him because he won’t know he’s been there for five minutes or five years.

But I feel like crap. Seriously like crap. I’m going to ring the Alzheimer’s society tomorrow just to talk to someone about it, and find out if there are counselling sessions or perhaps (hollow laugh) my doctor will be able to recommend somewhere (i doubt it)(he’ll probably blame it on my weight….) I feel guilty and sick and restless and although we didn’t talk much on the phone towards the end, because he didn’t hear it often, I can’t ring him and hear his voice.  I suppose i’ve got to go through all the normal symptoms with a load of added guilt, even though I know I’ve done the right thing. The only thing.

He’s being assessed tomorrow under the Mental Health Act, just in case he’s too much for them to handle, and if that happens he’ll be moved to a secure hospital and sectioned.But they say they can manage him, and I hope they can. When I was packing his bag, it was worrying the things I found – he had a hammer in his bedside table, a rolling pin in a drawer and a shillelagh by the bed. So it’s quite possible he might have hurt someone at some point.

i got very very drunk last night – and I wish I’d kept it for tonight, to be honest.

The home is a bit… faded, it has to be said – although they said that they are having an update “soon” but the social worker had already warned me that it’s not very plush but the care is excellent, and from what I’ve seen that’s true.

They don’t want me to visit for a week, which is fine, it will give me time to unwind and it will hopefully give him some time to settle in. I’m welcome to visit at any time of the day or night after that, take him out for the day etc, but i don’t really want to be doing that, because he’ll not want to go back or something. I’ll have to see how he is after his week.

Thank you to everyone who has contacted me, or commented here, on FB, on Twitter, it’s much appreciated. You’ll never know how much. I don’t know what I’d do without al of you, and that’s the truth.

The saga continues. And I don’t really understand why I have to deal with it. I know that sounds selfish, but I’m his daughter. I’m not his guardian, his wife, whatever. I’m his daughter, and yet everyone expects me to look after him 24/7 until this is all resolved. He’s got two other daughters, granted they are not in contact and I don’t know where they are anyway, but I don’t really get why “i’m responsible.” If I were to drive off on holiday, I suppose, no one would actually blame me – I could simply ring the Social services and tell them I’m off – and then they’d HAVE to do something about him, but of course, I’m not that kind of person although I truly wish I were. When I think the more base thoughts I have, and some of them are pretty base, believe me, at least I can shore myself up with the fact that I wouldn’t just drive off and desert him.

So. If you were listening yesterday, ( Read more...Collapse )

So, Thursday I hadn't been in long, and the phone went - an unusual occurrence in itself and general doesn't mean anything good--the way telegrams didn't bring good news in wartime.

It's the ambulance service who had been called out because Dad was wandering about in the middle of the road with a parcel under his arm. ( Read more...Collapse )

BLUE!  Bizarro! Who knew?

IDIOCIES OF WORD

one slippered foot=one skippered foot

ganymede handed Zeus a cup=ganymede handed Zeus a cue

he raged against his broken heart=he raced against his broken heart

Dad sweet and jolly yesterday. today we had “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE AND NEVER COME BACK!” because of the tesco shopping (no, i don’t get it either)- Sasha gets so scared, and I hate him for that.

Been over the Standish manuscript one more time and hopefully have spotted any problems so it’s off to the publisher when I can get online at home tonight. Really looking forward to the re-issue of that, and hopefully it will pull it into the eye of people who haven’t read it yet. Specially with that eye-catching new cover.

I’ve emailed Running Press about getting the rights back to Transgressions, as they had promised me an answer by the end of October(!) but of course they had already stopped for their Christmas Break so I won’t hear anything there until the New Year at the earliest.

I’m also going to contact Jean Wossit at “Noble" whatever its called now, because – once again—he said he’d be able to tell me if I could have the rights back to Last Gasp weeks ago and I’ve heard nothing. I was promised that it would be promoted and put onto all sorts of 3rd party sites but seeing as how the royalties were again this time about 50p if that has been done—which I doubt—it’s made no difference to the sales. I seriously think that it would be better if all four authors published their parts separately. I know it would make more money for each of us that way. A four novella book (specially in print which is huge and ugly) puts people off I think and of course you don’t sell four times as much, you only get to share in a fourth of a normal sale. Lesson Learned, I think.

Finished my scarf – it’s not quite as long as I wanted it, but sadly I almost ran out of purple wool so I won’t be able to do a slouch hat that matches (bought the wool as a job lot on ebay with no bands or makers name or colour name so I have no idea what it is other than purple and green 4 play) so the decreasing doesn’t exactly match the increasing but you’d only notice with a tape measure. it’s SO WARM it’s wonderful and wide enough to use as a headscarf and a scarf at the same time. Going to carry on with the Jayne Hat now (which matches nothing I own, but never mind, Big Damn Heroes) and if it’s too big when I’ve done it, I’ll probably unpick it (or tink it, as I’ve heard the knitting world name is for it!) and start again with perhaps 100 stitches rather than 120.

Watched Ripper Street and Moon last night – Ripper Street was… Good Lord what HAS happened to BBC costume drama? It’s like they’ve fallen into the 50 Shades of Grey universe and they’ve got to make it as scandalous as possible or they are terrified that people won’t watch. Surely they could have learned a lesson from Downton Abbey where you can have 85 minutes of NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENING OTHER THAN AT THE END but it’s all so beautifully shot, beautifully locationed, beautifully costumed and beautifully acted no-one actually notices that the script is a pile of poo.

Ripper Street . The trouble is I know I’m going to stick with it for the meantime anyway, because, like millions of others I’m addicted to costume drama and the BBC know this. But … gah! it was almost unwatchable as far as I was concerned. When the characters weren’t mumbling out of the sides of their mouths (Jerome, please enunciate a little better!) they were drowned out by the sound effects or crowd noises and when people did have long speeches, mostly Wossit MacFadyen, what he said was so funny it wasn’t true. They were probably trying to make him unique and give him a unique voice but there was no explanation why he was using language more suited to Garrow’s Law than nearly 100 years later. Or perhaps he was given dialect words like “feared of no one” but when it comes out of the cut-glass accent of Macfadyens voice it doesn’t work. For gods sake GIVE US A REASON why he’s talking like a nitwit! It’s not good enough that “it’s in the past” because no one else was talking like that.

The plot line involved Victorian Snuff Movies. Yes. Really. The trouble with this being—not so much that someone was doing it, because as (I think it was) Bill Bailey said recently in QI – it took about ten minutes from the person who invented photography to work out he could take pictures of naked women, so I’m sure such things existed—but the bad research that in 1889 MacFadyen “detected” that the stills he spotted could possibly some new fangled invention, where the (gasp!) photographs could be shown to move.

REALLY.And when he found the miscreant he bellowed “whatever comes of this, whatever punishments, that device is extraordinary!” er… well, considered that moving pictures had been around for about 30 years prior to 1889 it’s not EXACTLY cutting edge. But perhaps wherever MacFadyen had been in his Georgian Yokel time tunnel he really hadn’t heard of Muybridge and Lumiere. 

The research relating to the tube stations was way off too. But then I’m picky about this stuff.

As for “Moon” – it was an interesting little piece and I can understand why it was critically acclaimed. Good for Zowie Bowie to hide his light under a bushel and bill himself as his changed name of Duncan Jones. I enjoyed it but it also suffered from Mumbling Syndrome (and no, there’s nothing wrong with my ears) and I didn’t quite get how he escaped but it was an interesting concept although a little dull all round and had shades of Bladerunner and 2001 A Space Odyssey all over it.

Talking of Bladerunner, started to watch that after Moon but couldn’t stick it. Listen, Ridley. I GREW UP WITH THE ORIGINAL VERSION. I LOVE THE ORIGINAL VERSION. GIVE IT BACK TO ME. MAKE IT AVAILABLE TO BUY. I want the voiceover. It JUST DOESN’T WORK WITHOUT IT. Without it, it’s just a pretty film with long boring silences.

Drinking myself into the new year so whatever you are doing tonight, be safe and I hope 2013 brings me much of what you want and work for.

Oh – and if you fancy voting for me over at the m/m Goodreads polls as BEST AUTHOR!!!! then please do!

http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=1af2af8b-773e-4236-ab9e-c4affac951c5

Well it was a quiet Christmas. Christmas Day was pretty ghastly, to be honest as Dad was in one of his worst moods and arguing with me whatever I said. It’s difficult to explain how he is, he’s not completely ga-ga as it were, he obviously thinks he’s quite compos mentis in his own head but he has no logical centre, or is losing it. He’ll put a dinner plate in his underwear drawer and then when I say “why did you put this in here?” he’ll say “I didn’t” and if I were to push it he’d be two steps from shouting me out of the house. So I no longer ask and I no longer push. On Christmas Day I was in the kitchen and said “please can you get me the breadknife” and he handed me a wooden spoon, “is this what you wanted?” So when I say it’s Christmas he just looks at me or says “Christmas, eh?” but he has no connection with it. You and I would automatically think “oh no, I didn’t get her a present” but he just looks up and then carries on with whatever he was doing. So that’s why it was a bit of a hard day – and when I served up his dinner (lovely rib of beef with all the christmassy trimmings, I didn’t even get a thank you, I was stupid enough to complain about it and then he was shouting and stomping off. Again. Sigh. Of course two minutes later he’s completely forgotten about it and there’s no point me asking for an apology because he completely denies he ever said anything nasty or shouted at all.

Another thing is that he doesn’t DO anything. Leisure activities that is. He’s never had any hobbies at all, which is pretty odd for a bloke, they generally have one thing that they are fanatical about. Doesn’t care about sports, doesn’t do any arts or crafts, doesn't do crosswords or jigsaws. If I’m not here to bring him a paper, I think he just reads older ones and wanders about the place. I’m learning that whatever he and mum did in their life was obviously all fuelled by her, the holidays, the fishing, the decorating… It worries me at times that he’s fit as a flea – far fitter than me – has nothing at all wrong with him aside from a touch of arthritis in his hands – and could easily live another 20 years and if (hollow laugh) i were to live that long, I’d be 70 odd and … well, you get the whining. (ETA: He’s just kicked off again over the stew when i asked him to get sideplates instead of putting the bread on the table and he’s thrown my coat and laptop bag into the hall and told  me to get out, and i’m lurking in the kitchen as I need to cook his supper and his food for tomorrow and it’s my day off.)

Well, sorry about that, that was a tad maudlin wasn’t it? I think it helps to get it off your chest though, or your shoulders so thanks for listening.

Most of the rest of the time I spent offline eating cheese and biscuits, watching TV—which was in the main pretty dire—and knitting. I’ve been working on my purple and green (sounds horrible, but isn’t) scarf. I got a great bargain on six big hanks of wool on ebay for only £4 and so I’m knitting it until it’s about twelve feet long. It’s also quite wide –wider than I meant it to be but I’ve discovered that it will go over my head because of that which is serendipitous and being the colour it is it doesn’t show the bally cats’ hair that everything i own is covered in. I’ll upload a picture later, for some reason this laptop doesn’t find my bluetooth connection on my phone neither does it find it when i plug it in. I love technology. not.

*snort*

1. I think the right person got voted off on Strictly Come Dancing this week.( Read more...Collapse )

2. I have water on the knee. Or bustitis, or gout. or something. it’s red, hot and painful. No point yelling at me to see the doctor. There’s very little he can do and he’ll automatically blame my weight (which will be right) – but he has no intention of helping me with that, so what’s the point of just going for more pills to placate? If I was a drug addict or a smoker or an alcoholic, he’d HAVE to put me in a programme to help me, but fat people are still treated like pariahs. (see the “I still haven’t had an MRI despite this heart problem” issue…)

3. Just finished COLD DAYS by Jim Butcher and wow wow wow!  Enjoyed it hugely. ( Read more...Collapse )

4. Decided to put “Gentleman of Fortune” away for the moment and get on with the gardening thingy because GOFortune needs mapping out. It’s not a mystery as in “whodunnit” so much, but more of a “follow the trail” and if I need to scatter red herrings and chekov guns in, it’s going to need more than “make it up as you go along.” So I’m aiming for 1000 words on The Gardening One today. or bust.

It’s very odd – my editor has a problem with only my manuscripts – I’ve turned off Tracked Changes, and have accepted all the changes into the document and yet they are showing up – both sets – on his computer!  My mss’s are the only one he has this problem with and I have no idea why. Anyway, I’ve changed the docx to a doc and hope that solves the problem.

So, the re-write of Standish has gone off to the editor, we have a shiny new cover and now all we have to do is wait for the edits and release, which should be summer 2013.

I’m also expecting the edits back for “I Knew Him” at any point now, so that will be another excuse not to write anything. But I must. No more procrastination!

Talking of procrastination…

I always used to be a knitter. My mother taught me when I was six and ill in bed and although I’ve never tried anything complicated like cabling or lacework or blah de blah i was always good at really complicated colour patterns, like Aztec designs or Fair Isle and the like. So recently I’ve been buying up wools and needles (because for the life of me can’t find my old workbag anywhere) and have got two projects on the go:

A Tardis Scarf

and a Jayne Cobb hat.

A sort of scarfy/shawly thing

Don’t worry, I won’t be wearing them both in the park at the same time; I’m already the loony with the mad dog who doesn’t actually walk her dog but sits it—how mad would I look with both of those items on?  However I am veering towards the “when I am old I shall wear purple” because well, I’ve always worn purple metaphorically and I don’t see why being old should be an obstacle. I suppose a Jayne hat would have been more sensible in more muted colours than the original but hell, then it wouldn’t be a Jayne hat, would it?

I’m only doing the 3rd one because I ground to a halt with the Tardis as the white wool hasn’t arrived yet and I had a huge batch of purple wool and green wool in 4ply and this scarfy thing said knit two yarns together and the effect is rather interesting.

Anyway – that’s about all the procrastination news.

In other news:

Elin Gregory (whose light is so far under a bushel you have to use a tunnel to see it) has a new book out this week:  A Gay Historical called On a Lee Shore which is a great nautical adventure. I had the privilege of pre-reading the book (I don’t qualify what I do as “editing”) and it’s really really good. An adventure story with gay characters which is what the genre needs imho.  GO BUY IT IT’S GREAT.

Well I promised I would share with you as soon as I had something to share, and here it is:

Designed by the supremely talented Ben Baldwin – who did “Mere Mortals” too. Ben has a knack of getting right to the heart of a book, and this cover does just that, I think. Hope you agree. Click on the thumbnail to see the big version, it's worth it! Thank you, Lethe Press, it's just lovely!

I’ve been tagged by Fiona Glass to do this meme. Her post was on the 6th and can be found here – well worth checking out, as are all the others, so follow the chain! I was thrilled to be tagged, too!

What is the working title of your book?( Read more...Collapse )

By Gum it’s parky. minus 2 here today and a smattering of snow overnight – so don’t go believing the weathermen who say “snow on hills” because there’s no bloody hills around here.

The Speak Its Name advent calendar has started and we’ve had nine great posts so far and there are many many many more to come—and a chance every day to win something just by leaving a comment. There are also questions to save up every day until the 24th when you can send them all in—if you can answer them all, some are fiendish, mwahahahaha—to win a bundle of at least 2 books and some assorted goodies yet to be decided.

Sasha’s coat arrived and here she is modelling it. She’s not terribly impressed as you can see, in fact it only just fits around her very wide chest (takes after her mother in that respect) but it’s only for the car in the mornings, when it’s freezing and she shivers. She won’t have to shame herself by wearing it in the park because she runs around like a loon and gets hot if anything.

Other than that, no news really – I know I’ve been awol but I do find it easier to keep people up to date with tweets during the day (@erastes) than slogging through a livejournal post.

One of my publishers RANG ME the other day – it made me feel like a PROPER author – Lethe Press. Steve Berman just wanted to touch base and find out where we were in relation to getting the MSS of Standish out to him. I had pretty much been hiding under the table where it had been concerned, but I’ve promised him it by the end of the year. It will be out in Summer 2013 hopefully so watch out for that. I also spoke to the cover designer (the lovely and talented Ben Baldwin) who I pitched two ideas for a cover and he’s running with one of them – can’t tell you any more than that right now as I’d like it to be a surprise.

I should begin the copy edits on “I Knew Him” in the new year too, and will work on “Gentleman of Fortune” (hate that title) to aim to get that over to Lethe by March. I know I can do it, it’s just i’ve let myself get out of focus and haven’t been setting myself any routines. If I’ve got the time to play stupid zynga games all day, I’ve got time to do 1000 words.

Been mostly assassinating recently. Not been very  impressed – you can read my first impressions and quarter of the way through play thoughts over on my game journal:

www.binerdial.wordpress.com

I have written a BIT – about a chapter over the last month, which is pathetic but I have been editing Standish too, depurpling it – not entirely, more like down to a mild lavender perhaps – and cutting RIGHT back on the weeping protagonists. Ambrose, you’ll be pleased to hear does not burst into tears at every opportunity, although I couldn’t excise it entirely because he’s a soppy girl’s blouse at first.

What I’m working on is Gentleman of Fortune (although I like that title less and less as the work goes on) which is the 1941 London based Blitz spyish drama. I like the main character, I like the secondaries, but I have no idea what’s going to happen and that could be a problem with a mystery kind of fing…

And for my last trick – a (rather dark, sorry) picture of Sasha asleep. Yes, fast asleep. She’s not normal. *shakes head*

'It's an old soldiers' song,' he said.

'Really, sarge? But it's about angels.'

Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise
up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with
dirty bits.

'As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,' he said. I've seen old
men cry when they sing it,' he added.

'Why? It sounds cheerful.'

They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes.
You'll learn. I know you will.

--Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

All the little angels rise up, rise up,
all the little angels rise up high!
How do they rise up, rise up, rise up,
How do they rise up, rise up high?

They rise heads up, heads up, heads up, they rise heads up, heads up high

All the little angels rise up, rise up,
All the little angels rise up high!
How do they rise up, rise up, rise up,
How do they rise up, rise up high?

They rise knees up, knees up, knees up, they rise knees up, knees up high! All the little angels rise up, rise up,
All the little angels rise up high!
How do they rise up, rise up, rise up,
How do they rise up, rise up high?

They rise feet up, feet up, feet up, they rise feet up, feet up high!

All the little angels rise up, rise up,
All the little angels rise up high!

I am becoming more and more disillusioned and bored with Downton Abbey. I’ll probably continue to watch it for the rest of its natural life, but I wonder, quite honestly, how much of a life it has left because the plot element is almost zero.

( entire post cut for spoilersCollapse )

Thanks to all the lovely people who wished me a happy birthday – Dad hasn’t a Scooby when my birthday is now, and if he did he wouldn’t remember to get me anything, so to have a influx of lovely messages from all around the world always seems very magical to me. The weather has been perfect, cool and blue with loads of golden leaves, just how I remember Hallowe’en from my childhood. I had cake and ate exactly what i felt like and played computer games all day. That’s what birthdays should be about! I had over 300 messages – I mean – wow!

THANK YOU!

With apologies to AA Milne for stealing and changing the pronoun

Erastes the Author
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled her
Into
Her bed.
They gave her what goes
With a cold in the nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.
They wondered
If wheezles
Could turn
Into measles,
If sneezles
Would turn
Into mumps;
They examined her chest
For a rash,
And the rest
Of his body for swellings and lumps.
They sent for some doctors
In sneezles
And wheezles
To tell them what ought
To be done.
All sorts and conditions
Of famous physicians
Came hurrying round
At a run.
They all made a note
Of the state of her throat,
They asked if she suffered from thirst;
They asked if the sneezles
Came after the wheezles,
Or if the first sneezle
Came first.
They said, "If you teazle
A sneezle
Or wheezle,
A measle
May easily grow.
But humour or pleazle
The wheezle
Or sneezle,
The measle
Will certainly go."
They expounded the reazles
For sneezles
And wheezles,
The manner of measles
When new.
They said "If she freezles
In draughts and in breezles,
Then PHTHEEZLES
May even ensue."

 

THE ALPHA MALE BLOGSPOT - 200 place to visit, 200 prizes to win!

What is your favorite thing about Alpha Heroes? Well, we authors are ready to share our favorite Alpha Males, our favorite things about them, and everything sexy and heated about those Alpha Males you can think of. *wink* Starting on Friday and ending on Oct 22nd, over 200 Authors and Bloggers will share their favorite things about those sexy men we know and love.

And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

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My post is over on my website so please pop over and comment there – you’ll be in the running for now only my prize but the bumper prize too.

You’ve got to love (sarcastic face) the pure idiocy of some help desks:

I’ve been trying to order Assassin’s Creed 3 from GAME. However, I want to have it on the day of release and on reading their FAQ it seems i have to order UK Order Express – all their deliveries are normally free, but UK Order Express will post it in advance.

So, I go through the motions, get to the checkout online and there’s no option for UK Order Express delivery.

I write an email to customer services and get an auto-response back saying they normally respond within 48 hours (speedy then <<<—more sarcasm) but due to an unprecedentedly huge use they are not meeting that target.

After six days I got pissed off and as they had ignored my email chasing them up on day four, I started being rude via Twitter. Ah – the wonders of Twitter.  That got a response!  They asked me to DM and I pointed out my problem. “all i wanted to know was how to order special delivery on ASsCreed3 on pre order as it's not an option on checkout”

Lo and behold I had an email almost immediately.

And this is what it said; (although I think you can probably guess…)

I can confirm that you need to select UK Order Express which will cost £4.95, however this should ensure that your order arrives on release date.

I MEAN.

IS IT ME???? it’s not me, is it?

Ok – here’s a classic piece of dialogue from Castle season 5 episode 2 which niftily demonstrates “You know, Bob” writing and makes me want to reach for the cut-throat razor.

Beckett: The department has a strict policy about co-workers dating.

Castle: But as I’m not technically being paid, we aren’t co-workers. Look, no one is going to find out, I haven’t even told Alexis or my mother.

Bethett: That’s because they are both in Europe, celebrating her graduation.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, Castle really needed to be told that. Goodness, perhaps he’d forgotten. (let’s not dwell on why he’s not over there, that’s irrelevant to my need to go on a rampage in the Castle writing room….)

Writers: Don’t do this.

This is actually an action shot, and she’s running quite fast but she looks like she’s standing still. I’ve been trying to get her catching the frisbee but the shutter speed is so slow that by the time i take it she’s long gone and all there is to see is grass.

The frisbee is great, it’s soft rubber and although it doesn’t fly as well as a solid one, it’s safe for her to snatch out of the air no matter what position it’s in and it won’t hurt her mouth. click on the pic to get the really cheeky expression on her face.

1. What happened the ENTAIL, pray?  ( Read more...Collapse )

SOOOOOOOO – that being said. How the buggeration is, as he gets a bit financially strapped, Lord Grantham that is able to suddenly say “oh well, never mind, I’ll have to sell the monstrosity and we can all go and live in this hovel, cough, sorry, enormous OTHER house I appear to have over here.”

Inquiring minds need to know, Mr Fellowes. *folds arms*

2. I absolutely refuse to believe that a family of such standing would—as Edith rightly said—accept a chauffeur into the family and yet turn away A LORD OF THE REALM WITH A FUCK OFF GIRT BIG HOUSE just because ( Read more...Collapse )

3. What the bloody hell was the whole Bates thing about? ( Read more...Collapse )

4. As my good friend Henri says – (reverting back to Edith’s marriage) – ( Read more...Collapse )

5. Thomas. Now I love Thomas. ( Read more...Collapse )

Thoughts gratefully received, btw – in case you can explain any of these (particularly the Entail) or have a grumble of your own….

Been AWOL a bit recently, and I apologise for that. I really admire people who can “blog” about subjects on a regular basis. It’s as much as I can do to scrawl down a few thoughts. Guess I won’t be a famous diarist when I’m dead.

Healthwise - I’m over the anaemia, thank goodness, although it’s taken it’s time and OMG I really really don’t want to go through that again. I live in fear of another period so I need to get down the Family Planning Clinic asap. I am forcing myself to walk small distances each day, even if it’s only to the next bench in the park.

Writing wise, I’m editing Standish for re-release, and working on the WIP and looking forward to the edits on “I Knew Him.” Busy busy!

I’ve joined “m/m sprint” a nice little Facebook group where you say “hello, I’m writing, anyone want to join me,” give yourself a target and others can write or edit at the same time. I’ve long been aware that I don’t really fall into the Writer in a Garrett mode and that I prefer someone to be along for the ride – that’s my fanfic roots showing I think – plus the very telling fact that as a toddler I refused to walk unless people were applauding. So nothing much has changed. Anyway, I’ve done over 2k of “Gentleman of Fortune” this week which is now around the 14k mark, which is a nice respectable – “you can’t give up now” percentage of around 18%. Which is nearly a fifth! Doesn’t sound so daunting when you put it like that. I have absolutely NO CLUE what’s going to happen, but for me that’s all part of the fun. It’s when I know what’s going to happen that i find the process boring and want someone else to write it for me.

Haven’t spoken much about Sasha recently, but she continues to be a delight. she’s matured into a beautiful, solid dog with muscles where I don’t even have places and she’s incredibly clever. Too much so really, because when we do training she usually anticipates what I want (we are working on “crawl” at the moment) and she’ll do ALL her tricks at once just to make me happy, all at once hoping that one of them is the right one. She’s also become a bit of a “helping hands” dog recently and has learned to pick stuff up that I drop, which is quite useful. Amusing this morning as I was arranging a bookshelf and she was passing up the books from the floor!

Anyway, here’s a recent pic. She was asleep and snoring. *snort*

I probably shouldn’t be callooh callaying at all, as the contract isn’t signed yet, but I think I can announce that I KNEW HIM has been sold to Lethe Press.

I KNEW HIM – as the title suggests – takes themes from Hamlet. The main theme being a young man who comes down from University to find that his mother is planning to marry his Uncle. It’s set in Somerset in 1922 and the reason I chose this period was that the 1921 marriage act allowed a wife to do this for the first time since about 1560. But the law had been in place for such a long time people were genuinely shocked about it.

Also, the main character – the Hamlet character, is homosexual, and I’ve long been of the opinion that Shakespeare meant Hamlet to be homosexual but perhaps wasn’t brave enough to be as overt with it as Marlowe was in Edward II. When looked at it from that perspective, much of what Hamlet does in the play(particularly to Ophelia) makes a lot more sense.

As you can tell from this burble, I haven’t yet written a blurb.

Anyway, I’m pleased as punch that a great press like Lethe has taken it on, and I’ll keep you posted as to release dates etc.

Pink cava for me tonight! (again prematurely but what the hell). FRABJOUS.

1. Or as near to normal as I ever am! I’m still “out of puff” but that’s a matter of stamina now, because of weight and because of being knocked off my feet for a month. I went into the shop and back to the car and I was puffing afterwards, but believe me that’s a hell of a different proposition from “I don’t have enough oxygen in my body for this shit.” and it’s hard to explain the difference unless you’ve experienced it. The out of breathness I can work on, and I will, I’m going to walk a little every day, even if it’s only around Dad’s garden a couple of times. I went (finally, after being told a sneaky place to park close to the back of the hosp) to get my blood tested yesterday and seriously it was like running a marathon even with the reduced distance. My legs were like JELLY. I need to do some walking even if it’s only marching on the spot while I’m watching the TV.

2. Took Sasha to the beach yesterday which was glorious a lovely azure September day with a warm breeze. She adores it, but she’s hugely embarrassing because she won’t get her paws wet. I’d like to paddle and see if I can encourage her, but I’m not fit enough for that yet. I threw the ball into the sea twice and she just ran up and down the edge getting ever more desperate until some bloke who was paddling rescued the ball. Twice. Then he laughed and said “Are you sure she’s not a cat?” Oh, the shame, particularly when the spaniels, and yorkshire terriers, and labradors all came past, sploshing around in the shallows and getting wet over their ears.

3. Bought Sasha a Kong frisbee with my Amazon US vouchers and she’s sulking that I won’t let her play with it in the house. I’m meeeeen, apparently.

4. I’m hosting the Carina Press Twitter Feed (@Carinapress) this week and there’s a competition running there until this evening in celebration of yesterday’s Talk Like A Pirate Day (my 8th I believe…) – give me your Spoof Pirate Titles and the funniest will win an ebook of either of my Carina Press Titles. Don’t do it here, do it on the twitter feed.

5. It’s COLD today. Spring to Autumn this year. I blame Spring and Autumn Watch.

How you lot? Missed me?

( A Town Called MercyCollapse )

Why part four I hear you ask? Well, you’ll have to ask Ian that one…

Going to post a reason on a regular basis – hope you’ll share your reasons.

I feel better in myself today, if that makes sense. ( Read more...Collapse )

THANK YOU to everyone who has IM’d, emailed and sent best wishes. My entire social life these days is wrapped up on the net, so to have so many people concerned and asking for regular updates is a real blessing.Sadly Dad doesn’t retain the information in his head for longer than a minute, and I have now given up trying to make him try.

As for Doctor Who this week, I actually enjoyed it. I’ve seen a few blog posts here and there wondering what the thread is this season, and I sort of hope that there isn’t one, and it’s just a case of the Doctor being dragged around the universe by the Tardis being where he needs to be, yanno, like it used to be. The Ponds can disappear any time they like the sooner the better, or Amy, anyway. Keep Rory. Loved the idea of Rory’s Dad rushing around with the Gang, although I wish they’d SHOW us that instead of “Doctor with Hot Girl Companion” you know we are capable of watching the Doctor with a male companion – there is precedent. Wasn’t really sure why the Doctor was quite so desperate to put the dinos back – or even that he had a concept of extinction but I went with it. 

What I didn’t like is ( Read more...Collapse )

What think you, fellow Doctor buffs? My knowledge of Old Series is limited because unlike the Americans, it hasn’t been shown on UK TV for decades. I’d like to know what you think about that “execution.”

Batman Parodies: Brilliant and a much needed laugh http://www.empireonline.com/features/batman-parody-sketches/p11

Listen, authors. You need an agent for one thing. To get you in the doors of publishers which say “no unsolicited manscripts” or “agency representation only”. In fact the former statement does NOT, despite what people think, mean you must have an agent, it just means they don’t want you to send your book to them, either in partial or in full to them without being ASKED. What they’d like you to do with this statement is to send a QUERY LETTER – and that’s what you should do. You don’t need an agent to do that for you, believe me.( Read more...Collapse )

( Read more...Collapse )

Someone asked me on twitter about an antiquated French word and there was a short discussion (after all it is Twitter) about whether people liked foreign words inserted into a book to “give a flavour” and remind people that the people are actually speaking a foreign language, even though the book is written in English.

What do you think about that?

Personally it irritates the hell out of me. The only way I think it works is when the object described is alien to western eyes, and there’s no translation for it. Like “obi” for example (traditional sash) or other Japanese words. As long as the explanation is given gently in context, then that word becomes the staple word for that thing.

However, what I CAN’T STAND to the extent I want to stabbity stabbity is when a person’s speech is peppered with the words of the language he’s speaking. E.g (not from anything) “Ah, bien, Louis, you are here, we must hurry to save La Reine, vite!”

I mean, the book is set in France. We are reading them in English because it’s a novel. They are speaking French. So why are they speaking double-French? Or double Spanish, or double whatever language they are “really” speaking…

The only exception to this, to my mind would be if all the characters were speaking another language apart from their own and they interspersed their sentences with words from their language. Poirot is a good example of this: “Tiens, Hastings! I have been stupid! Je suis un imbecile! Nom de Nom!”

But what do you think? Do tell!

In other news - I’m pretty anaemic, despite scarfing down iron pills—prescription strength—for a couple of days. I wish there was some way to tell in advance when this was going to happen so I could get ironed up in advance. I do take normal iron pills every day, but the super-strength ones help me get back to normal. I’m tired, gasping for air—even talking—and want to go to bed. I think that I’ll do dad’s lunch and then go home. It just makes me completely “meh” about everything. I open a word file and I just get tired looking at it. Can’t concentrate on a tv programme, can’t concentrate to read a book. I hate it.

I’ve just discovered that there’s a fucking TREATMENT for Menorrhagia: It’s called Endometrial Oblation (which sounds like something out of Philip Pulman) and it involves burning away the lining of the womb, permanently. Can’t be done at childbearing age, for obvious reasons, but why the fuck hasn’t my doctor suggested it? It can be done in outpatients for Christ's sake. Oh, I know why. Because he’s a MAN and he can’t BELIEVE that my periods are anywhere near as ghastly as I make them out to be. Yeah, that’s right. We treat our periods in the same way that men treat fishing stories.

I’ll be having a word with my doctor next week…

The Rainbow Bloghop is here!

Pop over to the Blog and find out what it's all about - there's LOADS of freebies and giveaways, not only from the authors themselves (over 70 have signed up, so there's 70 chances of a prize) but over 40 prizes from the publishers too! ALSO the blog itself, run by Rainbow Book Reviews is offering 4 x $25 book vouchers.

So, basically, you'd be mad not to take part - because I reckon no one's a loser, even if they read all the great blog posts. (Mine won't be great, though. :))

 

What does writing LGBTQ fiction mean to me?

I admit that these kind of brainy questions baffle me, not that I’m actually a dumbo, or I hope I’m not, it’s probably more laziness that I don’t want to interrogate myself that closely and find either there’s a million and one answers, or worse still I’m as shallow as a pancake and there’s no answer at all other than “well, everyone does Sci-fi so well...”  Or it could be that having answered that kind of question to journalists in the past and had my words skewed, misinterpreted, misreported, garbled and just plain changed has put me off—not to mention the shit storm of wank and supposition and guesswork and slagging off that follows such articles.

I started writing gay fiction professionally after I’d started writing within fanfiction. I started pretty much straight away—about 3 months after writing my first fanfiction, and I wrote both types for several years side –by-side. But the main reasons for wanting to write gay fiction (at the time, romance) professionally were:

1. I couldn’t sell fanfiction and I wanted to make some money from a skill I didn’t really know I had


2. I loved the idea of the genre


3. There wasn’t much gay romance out there, could NOT understand why.

I could see—and so could loads of others it seems as the explosion seemed to happen all at once—that there was a definite niche in the market that people were writing, but no one much was publishing. At the time of me starting Standish I was only aware of two gay historical novels on the market that had been published at that time and they were “The Price of Temptation” by M J Pearson and “Ransom” by Lee Rowan.

  

Anyway, despite this, I finished Standish and started pimping around. I contacted Seventh Window Publications (publishers of MJ Pearson) but they were very small at the time and didn’t have any space for new books, and so I started sending out to the big companies. You know, Harper Collins, Penguin and Doubleday and Random House and the like. I pointed out how there was this niche and surely someone should be filling it (although I didn’t put it like that.)

The rejections were pretty legion, but some of them were polite and one or two were very complimentary, but I got the feeling that most of them were thinking “Egad!  A Gay Regency?!!!! What the hell am I supposed to do with this? No one in their right mind will want to read it! Mother, avert your eyes!”

Feeling a little dented, I contacted a couple of the authors, Michael Jensen, who had published a gay historical: Firelands; and Scott and Scott (now sadly split up, but who then ran the self published line of "Romentic" books) and got nice replies from both.

Michael said he’d tried, but the whole “no one will want to read this” ethos was depressing and anyway, he was being much more successful being editor in chief of www.afterelton.com - which he's since left).

Scott and Scott sympathised hugely and said that they had had exactly the same problems, they knew that gay men wanted romance (I mean who doesn’t) and in the end they did the most sensible thing for them and had self-published their line of Romentics.

Eventually I did get published. First a few short stories, and then Standish. I stuck it out, refused a couple of offers and got what I wanted, a paperback deal and things have improved slowly since. But I do find myself frustrated with writing gay fiction. Don’t get me wrong, it’s what I love to write, want to write and I can’t see myself writing anything else even if I started to specialise in sci-fi rather than historical, my protags would still be gay, but as a woman—albiet bisexual—writing gay fiction, and even worse crime, some of it ROMANCE I find myself marginalised on all sides.



The Romance World doesn’t really want anything to do with writers like me. Granted things are changing, but when you have spent--like I, and many of my contemporaries have—eight years being treated like an author with the cooties, literally “Ew, I don’t want to read that stuff” (that's pretty much a direct quote from readers on Romantic Times) then when things do start to change, as they are, one can’t help but be extremely cautious.

Some of my peers have embraced the changes better than I, have run off happily to the big romance conferences and I hope, I really do, that they were treated as equals because that what they deserve. But I remember the bad old days when pioneers such as Laura Baumbach was treated appallingly at that notorious Romance conference, and I wonder how truthful this thawing of attitude towards gay romance really is. After all, despite their article in this month’s magazine, and how Romantic Times say that they now embrace the genre, it’s not listed on their website as a searchable genre, so I’m assuming they haven’t yet actually reviewed any of it. Glbt and m/m rendered no results  - “gay” produced a few, but there’s only about nine reviews since September 2011.

Then there’s the other side, where the gay literati lurk. Many of them still think—despite books from Phillipa Gregory, Annie Proulx, Maria McAnn and many others—that women simply can’t write gay fiction, and or romance.

Granted much of the genre is written by straight women and some authors admit that they are writing it for straight women and that's not a crime, but gay romance picked up this stigma right at the beginning "by straight women, for straight women" and that's made it very hard for any woman, straight, bisexual, FTM, to be take at all seriously by what they should be considering their peers. There were tons of articles, each one promising that they would handle the subject differently--but in the end their theme was "Why are women so obsessed with gay sex?"

Oh the journalists had their fun. "Is that a bellows in your tunic or are you just pleased to see me?" but mostly the tone was "mystifying genre." Very encouraging.

Some of the reaction was downright hateful at first, which was painful to read. I stupidly thought that a group that had dealt with prejudice and exclusion for so many years and fought it would be more accepting, not less. It is depressing that even now, some short story anthologies won't accept anything written by a woman. The fact that I feel more male than female isn't relevant, I'm not Trans and so I don't count. And that kinda sucks.

So there I am. Between a rock--and...another rock. But hells bells, I'm a limpet, you won't shift me without some massive leverage. I'm staying!

The trouble is, I don't, and never feel that I write "M/M" - however that's catagorised these days. I'm happy to write short romances for Carina, but I have this need to tell ordinary stories about gay protagonists in earlier times. Or adventure stories where the protagonists are gay and that's not actually the driving force. Right from the beginning--with Standish I felt hemmed in by the Happy Ever After, and that's probably due to my realism/cynicism, call it what you will. No one really has a HEA, let's be frank. Even if they are happily married--like my parents were--for 60 years. Sooner or later there's an unhappy ending lurking there.

I don't write for straight women. I don't write for women. I don't write even for men. I write the stories that pop into my head and everything else is like some huge funfair bonus! I'm more than delighted to get emails from anyone, saying they've read the books, but I don't aim my books at anyone. I think second guessing the market (or at least for me) will mean I end up writing something more homogenised.  But I do know that I was right in my initial assessment of that "missing market" - gay men DO want gay romance. More importantly for me, they want gay historical fiction, be it category romance or not.

And I know that because those gay men have emailed in their hundreds. Not just to me. Everyone I know has had emails from gay men—yes, actual gay men(!) saying how much they enjoyed these books.

I remember the first email I got of this ilk. Having been so convinced that there was a niche for gay romance, I was thrilled beyond words when I got my first email from a male reader. He said he’d been buying Mills and Boons het version just so he could have one gorgeous man in historical clothing. To find that someone was writing about gay men in history made him very happy.

His email made me very happy too. As has every email/tweet/IM/letter I've had since. I may not be writing particularly to please you, but I'm wag-dog mad with happiness when I find out I have. Thank you, whoever you are, and whatever you have between your legs and whoever you have in your bed.  Thanks for just being accepting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To win a copy of Mere Mortals (or, if you already have that, just name your book) please leave a comment, and I'll pick a winner on 1st September. Thank you for reading, now GO - read the other blog posts and have a great blog hop.

Erastes

How to over-write a sentence.

Quinn grabbed Rafe’s arm and pulled him into the room, the feel of the bare forearm, exposed from the flowing shirt that was pushed up to his elbows, seemed hot beneath his hand.

And to make your creator go BWAH? as well.

It’s hot. 28 degrees today, 34 yesterday and so I’m in a ranty mood. (More especially as as soon as I arrived at Dad’s I got pounced on by the owners of the house next door who are trying to sell the bungalow who accused Dad of throwing teabags up against the windows there. There’s no point trying to have that conversation with Dad, whether it’s true or not.

Anyway. THE ARCHERS.

We have an established gay couple in the show, but no lesbians that I can recall – it’s a comfortable gay relationship, accepted by simply everyone and they are married and until recently very happily settled.

However, something came out of left field this week, that has made me wave my Bisexual button with a vengeance. Harry has been in the show a while, and hasn’t really had any role to play other than getting a job as a milkman and competing for all the local girls with his flatmate. He has been shown as positively aggressively heterosexual, and even followed one of the Polish temporary workers back to Poland before coming home empty handed.

This week, he’d gone on holiday with Fallon (the young woman whose mother owns the pub, keep up do) and Jazzer and today I found out he never made it back because he’d met up with an old flame and they have trotted off into the sunset. And the old flame was a man.

It was SO FUCKING LAME. And hugely git-like on the behalf of the writers, because they probably thought “oh, how can we write Harry out of the show and give him an interesting end, as his life in Ambridge has been so tedious up to now?” and so they gave us this.. duhn duhn duhn…. disappearance to spice it all up and to give the residents of Ambridge something to talk about for another five minutes. They seem to have gone all coy in their language recently as the dialogue was much like this:

“You mean to say that…”

“What?”

“Well, you know… he’s…”

“Yes, exactly.”

“But he was all over that Polish girl!”

The conversation then goes on to say how the “Polish girl” had never been right for him and how lovely it was he had found his true love.

Not a MENTION of his obvious bisexuality. Once again the red-headed stepchild of the GL(B)T “family” (although it is very like a family, the Simpsons, the Borgias, the Corleones…) is invisible and sitting in a corner Not Being Named. It was a cop-out and although there was a massive opportunity to raise the awareness of bisexuality, the writers just went with “oh, he was gay all along.”

Pah.

Pah, I say. And double Pah.

And also: Speak its Name is running their interview spot again, thanks to the lovely Elin Gregory who is mirroring her Comfy Chair posts there. If you want a spot, slip either me or Elin an email. however, authors, I would be grateful if you were 1. at least a little familiar with the blog before applying and 2. Don’t start preaching to me me on the policy of the site and saying how limiting it is. There are plenty of other places that do interviews, but at Speak Its Name we do gay historicals. That’s all.

yesterday I was recovering from stupid cellulitis and today it’s 34 degrees in the sun, 31 in the shade. So am lying down with a “I atent dead but wish i was” sign on. Poor dog is hot as hell too. been alternating between cool bath and couch.

air conditioning? LOL – what is that?

Had a horrible temperature last night of about 102  (all gone now, these things only last about 12 hours) and my mind was amusing me as I tossed and turned by giving me re-runs of The Big Bang Theory. Suddenly I thought “This is stupid, I don’t want to watch ones I’ve seen before, I’m a writer, invent some new episodes!” So my mind obliged and promptly had Haroun and Tanweer (the gay indian couple mentioned in The Grasshopper Experiment) who came to stay on holiday with Leonard and Sheldon – and Leonard was talking to Haroun about their relationship, and Haroun said “oh, we have an open relationship – but Tanweer doesn’t know that, of course.” I spent the rest of the horrible night worrying about Tanweer!

Stupid brain.

When I told her that:

1. She had misrepresented her  item (she said it was fully functioning, and it hadn't been converted to modern phone lines, so how could she KNOW?)
2. She had tried to blackmail me for good feedback "change your negative feedback for me and I'll return your money" (Ebay slapped her for this.)
3. I was NEVER going to change my feedback because I’m not satisfied!
4. She could have the phone back WHEN she paid me the postage for it, which she had not done. The law in England states that with a breach of contract, the aggrieved party has to be put back into a position as if the transaction had not taken place i.e. she had to return my money AND pay for return postage.

She didn't like that.

Here's her response. It's rather poetic.  I rather think English isn't her first language.

you know what
so take the phone itself for free
and then you're gonna
Matchstick Men and beggar
I do not care for that already.
bon appetit
Enjoy your meal.
to never again
no more such people like you
I wish I wore

Firstly, I think publishers underuse the promotional capability of ebooks, but that’s up to them. It seems an ideal place to link to books and videos and goodness knows what, it surprises me how many don’t.

Secondly, I get sick and tired of chapters not being put at the beginning of an ebook, and if they are – they aren’t LINKED – what’s with that?  Who wants to hit “page forward” sixty times, looking for the last place you were at, or if you want to read a particular chapter again?

Thirdly, PUBLISHERS. PLEASE PUT YOUR PROMO NEWSLETTERS and letters of thanks and letters regarding piracy and gawd knows what fucking else AT THE END OF THE BOOK. The amount of persiflage I have to get through to find the start of books sometimes reminds me of this wonderful Danny Kaye moment.

I was hugely cynical before the games, like many many Brits. I think we were all pretty sure that we, as a nation of “try, but oh dear, we didn’t succeeders” (except perhaps in invasion) couldn’t pull off something as massive. After all, the last one we had was called The Austerity Games in 1948 and was run on a shoestring. I for one was concerned that London was grind to a gridlock, no-one would get anywhere they wanted to go and that someone would take the opportunity to bomb something, somewhere.

But bugger me sideways if the old bulldog spirit didn’t take over. Danny Boyle had me at “hello” with his opening ceremony, and I sat like a child, open mouthed as we raped the land, built dark satanic mills and had the Beatles march past Isenbard Kingdom Brunel. The volunteers turned into more sincere Disney workers, laughing, joking, dancing and helping the visitors in whatever they needed, and Londoners wore bright colours, came out in the daylight, and talked to each other. It was some kind of miracle.

I won’t bang on about how many medals, because that’s rather been done to death – but it was the human stories that brought the games to life. These underpaid semi-amateur people who have to go to school and to work and who still have to get up at five or earlier to cycle or run or swim or get a horse ready to work and find thirty hours or more in a week to train. My favourite events of course were the equestrian events, and that was just about all I watched from beginning to end, but i caught other things as they happened.

My favourite moment of the games? it should be the 26 year old Charlotte smashing through 90 points to take the team gold medal for dressage (our first ever dressage medal in the olympics, we used to suck, big time) but it' isn’t. After all the weeping and gnashing of teeth of athletes were sobbed in the camera about “how they’d let everyone down” by getting a silver, seeing Tom Daley’s utter utter jubilation when he won his bronze medal was, for me, the crowning moment of a fantastic games. I won’t be alive the next time we host, I’m sure, so I’m glad I was around for this.

(I also liked Mrs Grumpy Mo Farah who seemed to be nagging him when he came up to hug her, but then I’m English, I can’t help but find the funny in things.)

I suppose we’ll get back to normal soon, and we’ll be avoiding each others eyes in public and being little repressed islands again, but I hope it lasts until after the Paralympics.

What was your favourite moment?

As you may know, I’ve been trying to get Standish into ebook form for some time, and I’ve been having discussions about PD Publishing regarding this. We’ve decided—on a purely mutual agreement—that the rights will now revert to me, for all formats.

I’m really excited because Lethe Press have made me an offer for it, which I’ve accepted and I’ll be able to rework the book completely, give it a much-needed overhaul (particularly in relation to the POV switches *grin*) and take out the major mistake that must not be named. Then I’ll get a spiffy new cover, a relaunch and it’ll finally be available not only as a pretty paperback, but also as an ebook. There was an illustrator interested at some point, but she never followed through. *sadness*

I know that SOME PEOPLE have probably already got an e-version of Standish on their readers and smack wrist if you have, as it wasn’t ever available in that form!

Just a word about PD Publishing, in case people think I left them for any acrimonious reasons, I absolutely had no problem with them. They have never missed a royalty payment, their statements have always been spot on, and I’ve always found them to be prompt in replying, courteous and professional.  It was a ten year contract, and in this fast moving world, within the m/m genre, that’s a bit too long. It’s been out in print with PD for six years now, so it had a good run. The cover (although I shall always be fond of it, and it’s sort of iconic for me) looks a bit old, and as I said, the book badly needs a rewrite.

So! Watch this space! I need to get reversion letters signed, and new contracts signed and I’ll let you know when you can expect the Lethe version to be out. I’m really excited about it. 

Why Mary I hear you ask? It was gehayi's suggestion, because she's a RENAULT!  LOL

She's an ugly-bugly, but my Micra spectacularly failed its MOT so I had to get another in a massive hurry. She's cleared me out financially too, so my aim is to GET ROYALTIES to replump up the coffers. Thank God for royalties in the first place, or I couldn't have afforded her at all. She's 8 years old, but she's only done 24K - so I'm just hoping she's not a Cut and Shut or something...If I had an accident, I've be driving in one direction and Sasha would be speeding off in the other half...And there are muddy footprints in it already...

She drives very nicely, and for the first time in my life i have ELECTRIC WINDOWS!!! and a CD player!! woo hoo!! The radio manual is bigger than the car manual... and written by frenchmen. incomprehensible.

1) Answer the 10 questions below.

2) Spread the fun and tag 5 more awesome people to participate.

1. What is the title of your book / WIP?

Gentleman of Fortune

2. Where did the idea of the book come from?

I’m not sure, usually I’m bunnied by something, but I suddenly had a vision of a man running through the Blitz blackout, on rain-slicked cobbled streets, chasing someone and I didn’t know who or why. I’d wanted to write a sort of spy thing for a while. This isn’t exactly a spy thing, but then I’m not quite sure what it is either.

3. What genre would your book fall under?

Gay historical fiction, plus thriller i suppose

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Difficult, because I’m not (now) a writer who has their character gaze into a mirror and describe himself meticulously (gag). I used to be, but nowadays I just let the reader imagine the characters more often than not.

But if I had to find someone... *rummages around in the interwebz*

Tyrone Power, perhaps. Not in his urbane, well-slicked back look, but more like this, but perhaps not so extreme as this.

5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Ha ha ha.

1940's private eye agrees to help an old lover out, and finds himself embroiled in a tangled web of deceit, danger and dead ends. Literally. (oops, two)

6. Is your book published or represented?

No,  it's a WIP - it will probably be represented by my agent, though (Prof Jim Schiavone)

7. How long did it take you to write it?

Only 10k in so far. It will probably take me until the spring.

8. What other books in your genre would you compare it to?

I'm entirely ignorant of other thrillers in the genre. Hopefully it will be more film noir than anything m/m-y.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this book?

Philip Marlowe

10. Tell us anything else that might pique our interest in your book.

Well, Foster - the main character - Doug Foster - is pretty much a law unto himself. He's a private eye, but he considers London to be "his patch" and with the war, the police have enough to do and sometimes, criminals fall through the cracks and that's when Foster comes in. He gets them off the streets, one way, or another.

I can't tag people, it's too intimidating, but please do it if you want, and let me know and i'll link to it.

To all Noble Romance Authors:

My name is Jean Gombart and I am the new CEO of Noble Romance Publishing, LLC.

Attached is a press release that gives you some further information but I wanted to send out this email to all the current NRP authors.
Contrary to anything you may have heard, Noble Romance is a financially solid company

with zero outside debt and we are committed to not only continuing the work of the last 5 years but also to taking the company to the next level.
To that end, I am certainly available to receive any suggestions that you as authors would like to send.

What I have seen so far tells me that my first two orders of business priority are as follows:

1. I want to assure that the process of calculating and paying royalties is prioritized so that you can always count on receiving a timely and accurate royalty statement when due along with appropriate payment.

2. I want to significantly increase the sales of all existing NRP published books.
Certainly we also want to give the appropriate attention to books in process, support of author promotions, and other issues important to you, but my belief is that executing on these first two priorities will best serve NRP and it's strong group of exceptional authors.

I look forward to working with each of you and invite you to email me at JGombart@NobleRomance.com.
Best Regards,

And the Press release itself:

Noble Romance Publishing
Po Box 467423 Atlanta,
GA 31146-7424

Press Release Noble Romance Publishing Appointment of New CEO

Atlanta, GA, July 30, 2012:

Noble Romance Publishing today announced the appointment of Jean Marc Philippe Gombart as CEO Jean holds a Masters Degree in International Business from the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, France and comes to Noble Romance with 20 plus years of executive experience.

Born in France and having managed businesses on 5 continents, Jean is fluent in 4 languages including English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Jean will be leading the further expansion and improvement of Noble Romance's existing eBooks and print books publishing business.

About Noble Romance Publishing:

Established in 2007 Noble Romance Publishing, LLC is a royalty-paying, full-service e-publisher of superior quality, cutting-edge romance and erotica. Noble also publishes young adult novels in all sub-genres through Noble Young Adult. We challenge our authors to take risks, to push the envelope while still maintaining their story's integrity, the combination of which is guaranteed to satisfy even the most discerning reader.

For more information, please contact faith@nobleromance.com

For Release 5 p.m. EST, July 30, 2012

The opening ceremony for the Olympics was Just AMAZING. Boyle was right that he could never deliver the kind of WOW that China did, that was something else entirely, but what Boyle did was to garner all the best and the worst of the British, going from an agricultural feudal society to Dark Satanic Mills (in spectacular fashion, sort of like going from Hobbiton to Isengard in five minutes), and a sense of FUN (the Queen even had an acting cameo with James Bond) and a very broad sense of Humour. The highlight for me was Mr Bean playing the one note in the Chariot of Fire theme, and dropping into a doze to dream of those hunky runners on the beach.

But there were so many great moments. I was dreading it, to be honest, because our segment at the closing ceremony of the Beijing games was buttock curlingly embarrassing, and I thought it might all be like that, but somehow it encapsulated so very much that was great about England, and some of the Not So Great. One error though, they had a section on children’s literature and The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—although invented by Roald Dahl—was NOT in Ian Fleming’s book, he was purely a film creation.

I wish I’d been there, but I’m sure I got a better view from my sofa. If you haven’t seen it—then it’s really worth watching.

As for Noble Publishing—the temptation to call them Ig-Noble is quite strong. within the newly formed authors group we have a mole, one of the authors who feels that she is loyal to Noble. She (for ease, could be male for all I know) is passing all the emails from the group up to Jill and/or Jill’s daughter Natasha Noble/Lopez and said Natasha, who styles herself as and “executive assistant” has been emailing some of the authors personally and haranguing them and threatening them with legal actions. I have no idea if this is with Jim Noble’s or Jill Noble’s permission. I won’t say “without their knowledge” because they’d have to have their heads stuck up their bums not to have noticed the broo-ha ha going on, as more and more people post about it.

However, the latest in the saga is that Natasha states that “royalties will be paid” and that Jim is unlikely to return anyone’s rights.  And there will be a statement sometime on Monday. Considering we were promised a statement on Friday, I admit to not taking this terribly seriously. However, we will see.

I’m just glad I’m only in with them for one novella, and not 8 or 12 like some of the authors. More news when I have it.