The madness, it is contagious

Seriously? Two more Versatile Blogger nominations? Be kind to Glitterlady and Charitygirl. They appear to be somewhat confused.

Now I have to come up with some more things about myself that won't make people step away slowly. This sounds like a job for *drumroll* ex-EHOgirl.

1.  I once stapled my thumb, all the way in, and had to stay silent because an asshole was ranting at me on the phone about my inspection of his cafe. I would rather staple my thumb again than talk to that man.

2. I haven't eaten a doner kebab since I saw one of them raw when I was doing a restaurant inspection (a different one).

3. I once demonstrated exactly why you have to mark up fully glazed doors with a sight bar, by walking smack into one. At the end of a health and safety inspection.

4. I was once cross examined in court for half a day about a box I ticked on a form as a student. Definition of not fun.

5. I am currently climbing out of a fit of the sads that left this post in draft up to here for a couple of weeks. Excuses: I haz them.

6. I sometimes question how wise it is to seek publication given the damage the journey can do to your day job, your family and your mental health. You are free to read this together with the previous point and draw your own conclusions.

7. I have a very awesome day job, which deserves to have far fewer distractions in the form of pretty, publishing butterflies dancing just out of reach.

And I now aim this shiny blog award at: Dee, who can write a haiku for any occasion. You now get to blog with seven facts about yourself and nominate someone else. I've seen several versions now of how many recipients, so I'm going with up to five.

Making some new friends

I just discovered a rather wonderful sounding campaign to build platform and make new writerly blogging buddies. It's run by Rachael Harrie, and it's called the Third Writer's Platform Building Campaign.

Check it out

Sounds like a lot of fun, and a great way to meet other bloggers. Since I have been a lackadaisical blogger in the past, and this must change, I'm in. Hopefully it will deal with my tardy blogging ways. I will report back at intervals.

Say what again?

I got a Versatile Blogger Award, courtesy of the sweet but evidently misguided Rebecca Clare Smith. I am somewhat stunned, since at the point I first read the words 'blog' and 'author platform' in the same sentence, I started to feel like I was under one and all the bloggity words evaporated from my brain. I just hoped they found new and loving homes.

Now apparently, as the recipient of this *holy crap I got an* award, I get to nominate more bloggers to receive the goodness, and also have to dish out seven previously untold facts about myself.

So, I point the happy finger of cool green and yellow iconage at.... Lissa for having some great discussion of the issues raised by Disney princesses as well as lots of other interesting posts.

On to seven facts about me. Um, okay, right, so... shut up, I'm trying to think...

1. I think steak and kidney pie tastes like pee. I'm not sure whether it's the power of suggestion or whether I am the only person who is aware of this. Seriously guys, can you not taste the urine? It's kidneys; processing pee is what they do.

2. My science brain and my fiction brain have a no-fly zone in between them. It takes at least half a day for the neurons to apply for the appropriate permissions and switch over. This is why I can only crack out a decent word count on holiday, with good old fashioned pen and paper.

3. I have an approachable face. This is the only reason I can come up with for why every time I go out surveying, somebody ambles over to ask what I am doing. They never ask my colleagues. Never. Actually, maybe I just look suspicious.

4. Boy, this is tough. Time for that good old fallback, environmental health. In my previous career, I discovered that in a microwave, cornflakes begin to smoulder and people begin to phone the fire brigade a long time before the larvae infesting them are more than mildly annoyed. I also learned that you cannot seal infested cereal in a plastic bag. Mealmoths laugh at plastic bags. And then they infest the laboratory and all the other samples.

5. I learned that I cannot kill. Not even to put something out of its misery. This made covering for the pest officers something of an embarassment. Unless you mean The Boy harm, you are safe from me.

6. I learned that nothing disturbs a man more than walking into the pub toilets to find a woman with a white coat and a clipboard. Good times.

7. I am a fair shot with an air rifle. Doesn't that make you happy about fact number 5? We won't mention the fact that when I fired something with some stopping power, I fell over backwards.

So how do you market kid's books?

A popular blogger and writer of middle grade books, Nathan Bransford, recently received some negative criticism for suggesting that users of the free and hugely helpful publishing information on his blog and forum might consider buying the book (harsh, right? Your site, your rules as far as I am concerned). The post is here.

Now I think it is fairly common knowledge that you're pretty much on your own as a debut author when it comes to book publicity, and you have to do things to try to sell your book yourself. I have to be honest, just the thought of it makes me nauseous. Given that the internet is where a very large number of books are sold, an internet presence is necessary.

So what do you do if you are writing for an age that has limited access to the internet? This was raised in a comment by Maureen Crisp on Roni Loren's blog, and I think she has a huge point.

Children of 9-12 don't have unrestricted access to the internet and they don't exactly read a lot of blogs. They are too young to (officially) use social media, and as a stranger, you shouldn't even be trying to reach them directly. It's clear that you are trying to reach them via their parents and teachers.

Now I think that Nathan did exactly what you need to do to reach readers in a previous post, which was to post his first chapter online. Check it out. In fact, sit down with your offspring and check it out together. I follow his blog because I'm a baby writer, so I saw it, and I sat down with The Boy and we read it together. The Boy loved it, so I ordered the book and he is reading it now. But how many parents use the internet to read with their child?

It strikes me that I can't be the only parent of a child who finds an author he likes and ploughs through the backlist. We have hammered Roald Dahl, Dick King Smith, Francesca Simon and several others. Box sets abound in my house. He reads one, and he wants the rest. Writing tasters are what float my boat too. If I read a short story I love on the internet and the author bio says they have a book out, I go looking for it. Disappointingly, I haven't always been able to find it, which means a lost sale for that author. Note: if your bio mentions a book, make sure we can buy it, please.

So wouldn't it be great if there was a site or a network dedicated to free short stories or first chapters from published authors, where we can introduce our children to their writing in a safe online environment and see if it's a hit? The Boy's school gives them limited internet access to use sites like Cool Math Games. How about Cool Stories too? Maybe with enhanced content like games and puzzles to go with them.

Or is this wishful thinking?

So what kind of a blog am I?

Image courtesy of Mark du Toit

Last night I read an entry on Rachelle Gardner's blog about what she doesn't like to see on writer's blogs, to the extent that it might give her second thoughts about representing them, and it made me wonder what the purpose of this blog was. I wondered because of the last two categories:

- a writer whose blog has irregular and infrequent posts
- a blog that is really unfocused and doesn't know what it's about.

Um. Guilty. Of the first, definitely, and probably the second too.

I'm not seeking representation, because there's that whole pesky write a great book thing you have to do first, so first of all I guess it isn't a shop window. In six months I'll start sweating about that one, maybe.

I'm the last person in the world who should be dispensing writerly advice to people. I figure getting a clue is a necessary precursor before you start trying to influence other people, so that rules that one out too.

Links to useful advice and interesting things by other people? That would be cool. If I could find them. I'm usually the last to any given party. On a side note, it is a great tragedy that my good buddy En doesn't blog. She finds the best, most mind boggling links on the internet, ever. Maybe I could just pass them along and take the credit? Nah. Not cool.

I have many things I would love to blog about, but I think a measure of respect for your workplace and the people you encounter day to day is important. I have so many health inspector stories that go untold unless I'm with other health inspectors. Or tipsy. A table of health inspectors can clear a circle around them in a restaurant once they get going, especially if there's wine on the table.  

Nope, I think most of all, it's a way to keep up with friends I've made on posting boards that I drifted away from. People who liked my stories and encouraged me to keep going. I like to let them know what's going on, and to ramble on about The Old Git and The Boy, because I love them and find them endlessly interesting.

In the end it's not a writer's blog, just Rosie's blog, who may be a writer but is a lot of other things first. I can live with that.

Coming out to play

I have built up a rather alarming to-be-read pile over the last year or so. Books that were given to me and books that I bought and forgot about are scattered all around the house, and I have promised myself a catch up session for a long time.

Then I found Wendy the Super Librarian's blog. She is hosting the TBR challenge this year, where you pick a book a month from your to-be-read pile and review it on your blog. Awesome idea. I am so in. I will be dipping into my hotch-potch of books, which are a mixture of SFF, chick-lit and thrillers, and jumping into the fray.

On a side note, Wendy has a list of librarian romances on her site. Who knew there were so many? Since my current WIP has a love affair with a librarian in it, I really had to come out and play. I consider it serendipity.

First review is due on the 19th. Time to pick over the pile and find somethhing to read.

Scream has a home

Static Movement has accepted The Scream for its August issue, which has me jumping up and down with glee. I'm back on the horse. Now to brush the rust off the armour and think about submitting some new material.

Image by kind permission of http://www.foxtrotters.tripod.com/

Back on the horse

After a long, long break I'm writing and submitting again. I'm having fun, although that will probably change when I get my first rejection back. I plan to start with the flash stories and ignore the full length projects that buried me last time. That way lies despair and blank pages that laugh at me and my pencil until we both sag like chocolate teapots.

The owners of the magazine that folded before The Scream saw the light of day have released it, so I'm starting there.

Wish me luck.

Permission to comment?

A friend recently asked a question on her blog about why people look down on romance. I planned to give my opinion as a comment on her blog but, as sometimes happens with me, it turned into a long ramble that really needed its own space.

So, permission requested to (affectionately) state an alternative position, complete with weak analogies and personal preferences.

I think a disclaimer is called for here before I begin. Everybody should be allowed to read what they enjoy without judgement. Bottom line: peeps is peeps and there are no wrong answers. However, that said, I have my opinions.

First of all, I put my hand on my heart and state that I'm a genre person. After a long period reading sci-fi and fantasy, where I started to feel I'd already read the same story several times whenever I picked up something new, I branched out into chick-lit comedies, mysteries and thrillers and enjoyed them. In the same vein I tried to branch out into romance and literary fiction. With both I found myself unsatisfied.

In the case of the literary fiction I couldn't quite believe that I'd got to the end and still nothing had happened. I felt like I'd wasted x hundred pages waiting for them to get interesting and they never did. After a few experiences like that I shrugged my shoulders and moved on, having decided that clearly it went over my head and I would just stick with the populist stuff.

I was more surprised that I couldn't enjoy romances. In most of the books I had read in other genres, the romance and human interaction was what made the book for me. Yes, I wanted to know whether they saved the world or found the killer, but whether they got together was equally, if not more important to me. So why couldn't I enjoy a book where the getting together was the main theme and not the side plot?

The best way I can put it is to compare it to food. To me, eggs on hot buttered toast is delicious comfort food; one of those magic combinations. In an ill-considered flirtation with the South Beach diet a few years ago I tried to give up the toast and just eat the eggs. Within a week I was ready to kill someone if I saw another egg without bread. It just lacked everything that made the combination so appealing.

Romance is my egg; it just doesn't work on its own. That is not to say that it is impossible for me to enjoy a romance, ever, but I need more. Give me suspense, some action and adventure, or mystery, and I'll lap it up. Snuggle that romance up with a comedy, the way Jennifer Crusie does, and I'll beg for more. Combine it with fantasy or sci-fi? Well first of all, you'll have to be a superb writer because they are uneasy bedfellows. A bad sci-fi romance can set a new definition for bad, but do it well and I'll worship you. I have yet to see it, so if somebody can point me in the right direction that would be wonderful. Paranormal romance isn't it. That's just romance with added fangs, fur or ectoplasm (delete as necessary).

It occurs to me as I scribble that perhaps our problem is the labels. Why do stories have to be one thing or the other? Why does so much romance lack other content to make it interesting? I'd like to read more stories that challenge genre and open my reading experience up.

And just because snark is my nature and I can only suppress it for so long, I will say that good romance is my egg waiting for bread. In my dabbling in the genre I have read some terrible ones where both hero and heroine failed my 'do you want to push them both under a bus' test with honours. Please protect me from sappiness, plotless potboilers and TSTL (too stupid to live) protagonists, because even bread can't save some things.

Thought you'd quit writing, huh?

Alas, not fiction, but an article about LED lighting to submit to a trade journal.

The moral of the story is never let your boss know you write as a hobby. It will come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.

You called it what?

The Old Git is a whiz at plumbing, electrics and getting under site manager's skins while managing to never do anything they can punish him for. He is often the most irritating man on any given building site; convinced that he knows better than anybody else and not slow to tell them. The most irritating thing of all is that he's usually right when challenged, and it would take more reading time to prove him wrong than anybody has to spend.

What a shame his talents don't extend to spelling and emails.

I had to interrupt the hour before school when everything is rushed to show him how to attach an invoice to an email.  While he was searching for the email, I spotted an invoice titled 'Vaginia' in his work folder.

He refused to tell me what Virginia thought when she received her invoice. He also claimed that my horrified laughter was putting him off finding his document.

Still, at least it was sent months ago. The time for angry phone calls is probably past. Maybe he gave her a paper copy and she never saw the document title.

I really, really hope so.

Liking the 11th Doctor

Sometimes I get to watch Doctor Who. Not on television, my word no, because idiots put it on at times that seven year olds are still awake. Seven year olds that get scared. Seven year olds that get scared and have nightmares. Seven year olds that can only sleep after nightmares when they are in Mummy's bed. Seven year olds that can only sleep after nightmares when they are in Mummy's bed with a big handful of her hair to pull and twist and....

I guess mummies have their own versions of nightmares.

But, in a move that makes me forgive the BBC and accept that they are not, in fact, idiots, the BBC give me a chance to download the episodes and watch them on my computer with their I-player. It's a big moment in the world of Doctor Who because the Tenth Doctor just exited and a new actor took over to be the Eleventh Doctor.

(For those that have been tragically deprived of the Doctor Who experience, he's a time travelling alien that can regenerate into a new body. Everything you ever needed to know and probably a lot more that you didn't here.)

I was a very big fan of the Tenth Doctor, as played by David Tennant, and when he announced that he was leaving the role I was disappointed. The new actor, Matt Smith, was so young, I just couldn't see him pulling it off.

Wrong, Rosa. Very, very wrong. He is fantastic. His first episode was fantastic. I will be downloading many more episodes to watch in the dead of night when scaredy seven year olds are sleeping.

In their own beds.

The Eleventh Hour
(I think you have to be in the UK to download it though)

To tweet or not to tweet

I'm flirting with the idea of a twitter account to go with this blog. My last encounter with twitter didn't last long because I was worried that people might read my tweets and think, "Who is this idiot and why on earth would we employ her?" Got to at least pretend to be a professional.

I realised the problem when a colleague friended me on facebook, and a few weeks later my feed informed me that he was a fan of rough sex. Kind of hard to see someone the same way after that. That and having my boss, in-laws and teenage nieces and nephews on my friends list rather puts me off posting any silliness myself.

It makes me sore tempted to do some Rosa tweets, or at least post some one liners here now and then. Who knows, I might even start writing again.

Yeah, maybe not.

New layout

Blogger just updated their templates and I decided a change would be nice, since I know no code and rely on others to do it for me. I rather like this one.

Cute moment at about midnight last night. While I was standing in the hallway watching, the Boy got out of bed still largely asleep, picked up a fleece blanket and tried several times to put his arms into non-existent sleeves. I took it off him and put him back into bed, and he went back to sleep without ever properly waking up in the first place. He didn't remember a thing about it this morning.

Dee, I loves you this much

Okay, I don't have a picture to go with that statement. Dee will just have to imagine the rib-cracking hug I would inflict on her for fixing my title so that everything was in the right place. I love it very, very muchly. I now feel good to go.

However, it's nearly midnight, my time. Me turning into a pumpkin this close to halloween might be hazardous to my health, and my day tomorrow will be filled with numbers. Lots and lots of numbers, with many traps for the unwary and the sleepy.

So, just a tiddler then. My significant other, the Old Git, took this photograph a few years ago. Can you spot the dog?

Oooh, shiny

So many new toys, so few computing skills.

This is my new home since I've decided that I've seen as much of those irresponsible 'magic bullet' diet ads as I can stomach on my livejournal. Time to take my flowery ramblings and literal shaggy dog stories to a place that doesn't promise dangerously fast weight loss and the miraculous return of lost youth. I plan to play with the features for a while before posting in earnest.

No doubt there will be random, nauseating changes in colour and continual tinkering with profiles, paragraphs and pictures until I get the hang of it.

And here I will stop, since the middle dog is giving me pleading looks that speak of starvation and neglect. It's all of four hours since he last ate, the poor waif.