Microfic win

I love microfic. It's a great way to keep writing when you're contemplating whether to print off your manuscript just so that you can set fire to it. To keep my fingers away from the matches I've been playing the Tuesday Tales at Glitter Word for a while and it's really good fun. Weekly 100 word microfic competition based on a photograph and a prompt word.

And this week, I won! Yay! Thanks to Stevie for a gorgeous pic and to Lady Antimony for accepting the bri judging. Go read the other entries too. Lots of awesomeness there.  I think the pic brought out the poet in everybody this week.

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Prompt word: Ensorcell


The girl sits on the opposite bank and watches me through hair that curls like water weed. Her bare skin glistens with the pond water that drips onto the grass.

“Are you a witch?” I ask. “Here to ensorcel me?”

She tilts her head to listen to the sound and smiles at me.

“Will you talk?”

She smiles again, showing needle-sharp teeth made to tear and rend, and slips into the water. I should be running. Instead I lean over to look for her, a pale wraith in the reeds.

Her smile widens as she drags me into her pond.

You know how sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words?

Totally.

On Fantasycon 2011

I was right to look forward to Fantasycon. Well, except in the financial sense, because boy, you don't want to go there if your TBR pile is too big and you don't want to buy another book, ever. Everybody I met, I wanted to go and and buy their books afterwards. I'll never have time to write again.

It's a very strange thing to be in a hotel around people that make you want to squee like a fangirl and realise that they are normal people. Well, on the cool end of normal, actually. SFF writers know how to have a good time.

Brighton was bizarre and wonderful. I can't think of anywhere else you would walk past a group of drunken stormtroopers on the way to the restaurant. Darth Vader was out for the count on the pavement. It is a place where you can expect to see guys heading for clubs wearing pink furry boot covers and stockings. Better than television.

And the best, absolutely the best thing, for me, was that the people I was around were proud to be SFF authors. No genre shame here, no 'I wrote a book, but it's just fantasy, a bit embarrassing really but it pays the bills'. They write amazing, imaginative books with the brakes off. They made me stand a little bit taller just by association. A few days before I was ready to quit, but I came back with renewed motivation to revise my manuscript and start querying. No small part of that was down to Mhairi Simpson, who is one of the nicest people I've met and tolerated my efforts to twist her YA shapeshifter romance into furry erotica (It's all about the CLAWS, baby).

I am so going back next year.

Conference time

I am writing this blog post in my current very favourite place in the whole world. It's a little laboratory just off the hospitality lounge where conference goers have lunch and what makes it my favourite place in the world, is that I'm at this conference and I have a key. Since the conference is chock full of exciting equations, I will put this in equation form too:

Conference = lots of strangers.
Lots of strangers + lifelong social anxiety = Acute social anxiety.
Acute social anxiety + key to bolt hole = Foregone conclusion = Rosie holes up like a rat with her plate of sandwiches.

There has to be something wrong with hiding away at a conference so that you can post about how much you are looking forward to another conference, but this next one is my first Fantasycon. The only thing I know for sure about it is that this time I won't have a key to a convenient bolthole. Not unless I mug a cleaner, anyway. That seems extreme, so I'm putting my faith in the fact that they have a first timer programme and that a friend is going too. I met her on twitter and she's giving me a lift to the hotel.

So, going through my checklist:

-  Programme of events, check.
-  Too many clothes for one weekend, check.
-  Pretty business cards that make me look more like a romance writer than a fantasy writer, check.
-  Copies of Helliconia Spring and Salvage Rites to sign in case I get a chance to stal... bump into some writing idols, check.

As long as Mhairie doesn't bring an axe, I think I'm good.

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.

Endings

There is a sorrow to throwing away stored baby equipment, one that isn't there if you give it to another new parent. It is an acceptance that the time for babies is over. When you give, it is part of the celebration of new life, a passing of the torch. In the recycling centre it is an ending, the first real step towards your death.

A matter of priorities

A colossal overcommitment fail is in progress at the moment. I missed my first campaign writing game and my first dice games flash prompt because I had something big on at work that demanded my full attention. I also deflated with a sorry 'pfft' sound when I received the first less than glowing crit of my manuscript last week, and writing dropped below house cleaning on my priority list while I regrouped. That is possibly no bad thing.

Anyway, normal service will be resumed shortly.