Well I have less than 100mb to plough through before I get my internet cut off. :(

On the plus side, I may actually get some beta-reading done, without the distraction of the terrible time waster.

Tomorrow is a child-free day and I vow to:

a) find the local swimming pool. Being fat sucks.

b) get started on the betas I owe.

Today was spent cleaning the slip covers and scatter cushion covers in the lounge. Hoorays - I has a clean lounge suite!

I shall return to regular internet cat-waxery on the first. (Labour day, as I have now discovered). Hopefully there will be some kind of vaguely positive news in my inbox when I do.

snagged off pegkerr

So, cathellisen, your LiveJournal reveals...

You are... 8% unique (blame, for example, your interest in theacracy) and 13% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy writing). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 32

(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 70% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

I have no idea what recent blog post could have given them a reading of "intellectual" though.

*shakes head*

11:56:01) Slaveboy: I've never understood the twitter thing
(11:56:04) Them's fighting words: neither
(11:56:10) Them's fighting words: OMG I'M GOING FOR A SHIT NOW
(11:56:18) Them's fighting words: OMG I'M IN THE SHOPS
(11:56:24) Them's fighting words: OMG SOMEONE LOOKED AT ME
(11:56:36) Them's fighting words: OMG WHAT A GREAT SANDWICH I JUST ATE
(11:56:52) Them's fighting words: OMG I THINK I'M GONNA BLOG ABOUT MY SANDWICH
(11:56:56) Slaveboy: *looks for "Block" button*
(11:56:59) Them's fighting words: *BLOGGED*
(11:57:21) Them's fighting words: OMG SOME ASS ON MSN JUST BLOCKED ME

Stolen from donutgirl

The Omnivore's Hundred is a list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strikethrough those you wouldn't eat on a bet.


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare( and so on... )</lj>

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

The Djinn Feast is up, for those who feel like reading my misogynistic fantatwee. *winks*

Seriously though, it was interesting to see where my head was about a year-two years? ago.

I wonder how my kids are going to turn out, I really do.

Noa is currently cleaning up her room and singing.

What is she singing, you might ask?

There's a light (over at the Frankenstein Place) (Tanith is accompanying by humming and occasionally yelling "Ka! Ka! YAY!")


Noa has also turned to me on occasion and randomly pointed out that "You agree the council must be thwarted?" (a line from The Young Ones, for those who don't know.) The grrl makes me laugh. I dig her.

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

I was actually trying to get photos of the nascent greenery, and ended up taking of the sprogs instead.

Here’s Noa

And Tanith

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

No, not from me, from like, *other* people.

First off there’s this informative thread on AW about how advances work - the whole thing is quite interesting, but the meat of it is in Gillhoughly’s post. You can’t miss it, it takes up like half the thread.

Then fellow muser Alexandra Little has being posting about her experiences at SCBWI, and she’s written a series of posts on agent and editor advice.

And just so you know that it is I, morongrrl, posting, and not a robot:

A picture of a house in my area.

You’re thrilled, I can tell.

Via sildargod

Radiohead's nude, remixed and played in a way you won't quite believe.

ZX Spectrum love

Post-novel burnout is here.


I am going to set myself random words or phrases as inspiration and then write poetry for 15 minutes.

I'll post the inspo for others who feel like joining in.

And yes, my poems will suck.

This is me not caring. :D

12:26:

I am currently on pg 423/475.

Dear god what did I have against Jek when I wrote this?

And what was with my aversion to capitalising 'palace'? Only Glynnis knows.

12:40:

Jek wanting someone to sing him to his death makes me so very sad.

13:56:

These chapters that chop and change between Jek, Sel, and Calissa during the Meke ship attack are really really short. I think they work though, so I'm leaving them for now (except one, which just got about another 250 words added.)

14:29:

The original ending had Jek saving the city, and I hated it. I scrapped the whole thing and wrote the current one. I know it's not the way some people would have it - with the protag coming back in the aftermath, but it suits the tone better as far as I'm concerned. I had a few readers mention that Jek should be more proactive here, and I read it with that in mind.

I've decided I prefer this one.

The one with Sel and Jek missioning about through the palace to reach the Well felt contrived.

15:12:

These 400 word chapters are making me feel guilty. But not *that* guilty.

15:23:

The more this book goes on, the sorrier I feel for Calissa and the way she's actually manipulated by everyone around her. (Except for Mal, because Calissa and Mal have become like my OTP *lols at self*)

16:04:

73 chapters, 104 157 words later and I'm done. I really love the ending to this book. Like, rilly rilly loff with much loff.

Sweet. I totally deserve my new piercing, my beer and my cigarette.

What's interesting is seeing the parallels that amberdulen pointed out. How Black Wings actually mirrors a lot of the themes that come up in hob.


Does this post deserve an excerpt? Probably not, but I give a shit, right?


"She will come around," Jannik said to me one night, over a pot of tea. "She's prone to temper, and used to getting her own way, but she doesn't hold on long to her hate."

"Do you think it will be better in Pelimburg?"

"Perhaps."

"What's it like?"

"Like itself." He grinned. "I don't care how bad she might have been hit, Pelimburg will rise, she's like that, full of sea-strength."

"You miss living there?"

Jannik shrugged, and poured me more tea. "Always." He looked at Mal. "You've never lived in a city where we are accepted."

I wondered then if his family were even still alive. Here we were, leaving our ghosts, only to trade them in for Jannik's and Felicita's.

"Have you had word from your family?"

He looked down then, and said nothing.

A candle flickered out, blown by a desert wind. "The Pelim House will have fallen," he said. "It would have been a target." He buried his head in his hands. "I do not think we will go to Eastern Pelimburg, to see the carcasses of our families."

"But perhaps we will walk on the promenade," said Felicita. I jumped - none of us had heard her come down the stairs. "And we will stand in the rain, and pretend we have just met, and are hiding under an umbrella, hoping that my mother didn't see us kiss."

Jannik even managed a smile. "A good memory."

"Was it?" She sat down and pulled a cup towards her, smiled faintly. "Oh," she said in mock-surprise. "You may be right. Certainly a memory worth repeating."

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

What Cat does when the sun is shining and the birds are singing:

Ah, I’m in lust with that bit of shiny right now.

98 pages left on hob's edits (draft 3a 4.)

I've seen the future, baby, it is murder.



snippetish:

The green eyes blink, slowly. A paw bats me from the side, an I'm sure it cracks a rib. There's pain an the snap of breaking bones.

"Sweetmeat," says the sphynx. It smells of thunderstorms.

I lash out at it with magic, tapping Sel even as he's pulled far away by the frightened blaas. All I manage is to slice across its nose. An piss it off. The sphynx growls, lowers its head to me. Its teeth are sharp, mottled yellow daggers in that lammer mouth. The smell of old meat an rot blasts down on me, making me gag. I turn my face away so that I don't have to watch as it comes in for the kill.

Something hot hits my cheek just as my ears explode with the sound of roaring thunder. I twist my head, look up to see the sphynx's head exploding in a shower of brain an bone an blood.

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

You know what I wish you could still get?

I remember passing hours immersed in the stories and poems, turning the pages with the chime. I had favourites - Gobbolino the witch’s cat, the marrog from mars, shorty the satellite, that story about the boy who painted things that came to life…

What childhood things do you wish were still available?

Bookends

I'm rather glad I never had the opportunity to pitch to an agent, because this blog is pretty much how I am in real life.* Plus they'd be trying to follow my accent, which would just make the whole thing more excruciating for the poor agent.


Still, it's probably good to remember that the person across from you is not just big scary agent person, but also human.

*just to clarify, I sometimes wonder if people ever read my blog then my writing and go, wait, what - morongrrl can string two lucid sentences together? How is that possible?

OMG SQUEE!

Can. Not. Wait.

Reading the local paper tends to put me in a pissy mood.

Who purposefully poisons koi by throwing chlorine over the wall and into the pond? I already know my area has dog-poisoners, but now I see we've moved on to fish-genocide.

Oh, and ATM bombing. South Africa, I love you, I truly do, but please to be getting a handle on the crime nao. kthnxbai.


On to more furry topics, over in Holly Black's journal they are discussing werewolves.

I haven't read all the comments but I noticed some discussion on why in the majority of stories the vampires trump the werewolves when it comes to the heroine's affections.

My thoughts - it's the subconscious idea that shagging a werewolf is not that far removed from bestiality. Oh but a vampire's a corpse! you cry. True, so let's say that vampires make necrophilia okay, why don't werewolves make bestiality just as uh...kosher?

Discuss.

:P

Dear hell-spawn,

please stop screaming at the top of your voice when things don't go your way. It would also help me greatly if you would refrain from throwing toothbrushes down the toilet.

Thanking you in advance

your mother.




david_de_beer is discussing flat rates vs pay per word in short fiction markets.

As for me, I'm slogging through hob, wondering what drugs I was on when I wrote it. The middle part has less that I want to add and more that I want to cut, but if I cut too much, then the story becomes nonsensical. Oh the drama! *presses back of her hand to her head, and takes deep calming breaths*

I'm tarted up at the moment because I have realised that I really only have one asset, and I should dress to draw attention there, and hopefully remove said attention from my pudding-belly.

My legs are cold now. Damn you, beautiful legs, damn you both. :P

Originally published at Inarticulations. You can comment here or there.

Black pepper Danish feta, black mission olives, spaghetti, swiss chard….mmmm I have the makings of a yummy supper.

Not much writing done today. Instead I took the sprogs out for milkshake and chips, and bought them new shoes. *is now bankrupt*

Bee came around last night and dropped off some more Scrubs for us. Yay, I have stuff to watch tonight.

Unisa is pissing me off because their site is made of fail and nothing ever loads. I want to study further (yeah, I know I say this every year and then never have the money for it, but I am planning this one in advance - good idea, right?) and I’m kinda stumped as to what direction to take. Since I’m not studying for a career, but purely for my own pleasure I have way more options open to me, and yeah, I’m kinda spoiled for choice. I need to focus a bit. Of course it would SO help if I could actually find the Unisa Calender pdf on their site.

Last night bslaveboy and I played Trivial Pursuit (we're such rock stars, I know) only we happen to have the UK version that we bought for R10 at the second hand shop (cheap rock stars, I might add) so we tend to get stumped by a lot of the questions.

I won, of course, so all is good and right with the world.

(The Slave let me win, he gave me an easy question on the final middle bit)

Now that I've thrilled you with the details of Sunday Evening chez Cat, I shall proceed to waste time with one of those pointless yet strangely addictive meme-things.

Right, I'm off to go shower and get to work.

( 37 things about me that you've all been dying to know )