The Further Adventures of Freddy and Jason

Last year, The Boy and I wrote a story together. Freddy's Itchy Bottom was a riot to write, and one of the best things we have ever done together. I am no education expert but seriously, try it with your kids. It brought his literacy back from the grave of lost small boy interest. I printed and bound a couple of copies and he is sooo proud of them.

He wants to do another one, and since the second draft of my solo endeavour is out for critique at the moment, tonight seemed a good time to start.

He has blown me away. We plotted out the first section tonight in lieu of a bedtime story, and only stopped because it's a school night. It is going to be a wild adventure of secret treasure, a race to find it and pranks. Many, many pranks.

I can't wait.

Milestone!

Image courtesy of Mark du Toit

Good day today. Really good day.

1. The second draft of the novel is finished and out for crit. Unless you count the rewrite which happens in between pen and paper and the keyboard, in which case it's the third. No matter. Point is, time for a few days off and that thing called life. First step, render the house fit for human habitation again. That deadline led to some serious lifestyle collateral damage.

2. Unexpected pressie arrived from bestest writing buddy in the post. I'll be reading Magical Words and reviewing in due course.

3. The Old Git has just installed me an in-the-wall vacuum cleaner. I have wanted one of these for years. Just plug the hose in the wall and away I go. I have been using his builder's cleaner, Henry, for five years since the Vax died from dog hair abuse.

4. The Boy ate spinach tonight for the first time and loved it. Small Boy + Leafy Green Vegetable = Major Maternal Score. I have a foolproof recipe for Spinach Pie that can convert the most die-hard green vegetable hater. It is bundled up with bacon, egg, onions and lots and lots of cheese (cottage and cheddar)  in a puff pasty case. It is yummy. And probably horrendously fattening, but the spinach cancels that out. In my humble opinion.

5. Big glass of madeira wine and China Mieville's Kraken next to me. I have been hoarding it as a reward for finishing the book, and it will be my February review for the TBR 2011 Challenge. January will be Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs, which I just finished.

On with the reading.

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.

A year in Rosieland

There were high points and low points in Rosieland this year. Pictures feel like the way to go:

 


Goodnight Ted. We miss you.

Proud mother is proud.

Who says you can't make great friends on the internet?

13m drop + 41 year old mother = audible abject terror.

It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed some more.

And finally, there was the labour of love and horror that morphed from a flash piece to a novel under the gentle whip hand of Hurricane Cathy. I didn't enter it in the competition in the end. Too many words in too short a time, and I wanted the time to polish it and make it as good as it can possibly be.      

58000 / 80000 words. 73% done!

2011 is the Year of Finish the Damn Book.

Heh heh, hair

 Beloved baby brother has just been given a kitten for Christmas by his wife. He is smitten with his itty bitty kitty.


Of course, it occurs to me that after years of enduring, and occasionally complaining about, the dog hair that is a permanent fixture in Rosieland, he's going to have pet hair to vacuum up himself.

It would be unfair of me to give an evil laugh, right?

Introducing Rosie Lane

My tutor is a very scary woman. Her positivity drags you along in her wake and makes you dream dreams you thought you'd shut away in a box under your bed as 'things that would be wonderful but aren't going to happen in this lifetime'. My box had a ribbon round it. It was pretty and closed and I was in a nice cosy comfort zone where I didn't have anything to measure up to.

But no longer, because I signed up to study with Hurricane Cathy. The upshot is that I now have a pen name after years of vacillating. The first Rosie Lane short story will debut at Agilitynet soon.