Ending Alice is out



Photo by kind permission of http://www.freefoto.com/


Ending Alice is now out at the Science in my Fiction blog and will be available in an anthology in the future. Please check out their site. Lots of interesting thoughts about the reality of science and how it fits into fiction. As the owner of a good natured but over-strong and rather silly dog, the post about keeping the giant mammals of the past today tickled my funny bone. Boy can I see how that one would work. Sunday mornings in the park would never be the same again.

Oh son? A word?

There is no picture to accompany this post. The reasons will become apparent shortly.

The Boy is in trouble when I get home.

I use my own camera when I need to take photographs at work because it's easy to use. That being the case, the last time I needed to take it out on a job, I downloaded all the holiday photos already on it and dumped them in a folder on my work computer so that I could put them on a memory stick later and take them home. I forgot about them until today.

ROSA: It is lunchtime. It is cold out. I know, I will read blogs at my desk while I eat this sandwich.
ROSA: Maybe my blog could stand a new post too.

Rosa thinks for a while.

ROSA: Posts are hard. Posts are work. Maybe I'll just add some pictures along the bottom instead. I have photos on this computer.

Rosa looks at the holiday pictures in the personal folder on her work computer.

SON OF ROSA AND FRIEND: Hey, did you ever wonder what happened when you left the camera unattended in the tent and went for a massage? Observe these photographs of our bare bottoms.
ROSA: This is my WORK COMPUTER! I am so fired.
SON OF ROSA: And here are some photographs of my winkle.
ROSA: Never mind fired, I am going to prison.

The Boy is in sooo much trouble when I get home.

Siren Song is out



Image by kind permission of Mark du Toit   http://www.marktoon.co.uk/blobs.htm



Siren Song was published today at Every Day Fiction. It's an interesting one because the stories can be voted on by readers. They can also comment, which is always a nail biting experience for me. I tend to spend my life with my hands over my eyes whimpering, "Like me like me please like me." Yes, I've heard all about this constructive-feedback-helping-you-to-grow-as-a-writer thing and it sounds eminently sensible on paper. However, in all things approval related the emotional part of my brain has a death grip on the steering wheel. The logical part of my brain is keen to see what strangers think of the story and doesn't want my friends dropping in to give it a 5/5 in the name of support. The emotional side reserves the right to torture me about what people might think, and whisper that it has been at least five minutes since I checked for new comments.

At what age do we finally manage to jettison our insecurities and be whole people? And since that day is not yet for me, does anyone know how many calories there are in a set of fingernails?

And there's more...

Image by kind permission of Mark du Toit   http://www.marktoon.co.uk/blobs.htm

I am a very happy bunny this week. I received another story acceptance, from Every Day Fiction for a 500 word flash story called Siren Song, and a request out of the blue for a bio to go with my little ten minute practice pieces at Thinking Ten. It seems they are thinking of using one of them to use in their published collection.

At this rate I'm going to have to drop the idea that I write just to entertain friends and family and produce some new material for submission to outside markets.  I also have to decide whether to revive and submit the three or so I have left in storage or retire them gracefully. I would quite like to find homes for the shorties. The chapter story is going into the 'what the heck were you thinking' file as too depressing and showing disturbing early signs of Mary Suedom. Sorry, folks, if you were waiting for the long threatened Shadow Puppets prequel. Morwen is headed for the round circular file as part of my self-education and improvement programme. Since my right index finger is now aching on a daily basis and I plan to cut my mouse-using time right back to the essentials, surfing the web daily while I delude myself that I'm about to start the next chapter is not an option. Time to move on.

Moving on is very much a core theme of my life at the moment. The Old Git and I have been working hard at home for the last couple of months. He is decorating like a madman and building us a new kitchen, while I remove years of clutter from corners and cupboards. It feels good to get rid of the heaps of stuff that were crowding us and were never going to be used again.

Thing is, I'm in chuck-happy mode and the fanfiction is starting to feel like part of the clutter. I will soon delete the fanfiction pages, or at minimum break the link from this blog. The best thing would be to bookmark the stories at Perfectly Plum vault 2 if you want to keep reading them. I had a world of fun and made a lot of friends writing the stories so I don't plan to delete them altogether, but there won't be any more.