Why is reading important?

Thank you Neil Gaiman for showing us the way.  Every way.

It's safer to be a pessimist

Well, looks like it was too good to be true.  But now I won't have to name one of my future children Allegra, so fair's fair.

Name this feeling

You know that feeling you get when something that you're hoping for actually happens, and you're too scared to tell people just in case you've just imagined it, or it's a dream, or that something's bound to go wrong and you're going to lose everything because it's just too good to be true?

I have that feeling right now.  I might just have to make good on that promise of naming my fourth child something unusual.

Writing's just gone out the window today.  Funny that when I have a day to write, I'm doing everything but.

DEFCON 1

THERE IS NO NANDOS IN HERVEY BAY.

Ok, be cool, Augs.  There must be a way around this somehow.

...

...

...

Oh!  I will buy a freezer and fill it with Nandos chicken.  They're going to fly me back to Brisbane periodically for meetings and stuff, so I'll just have to be organized and have a sum of money I can exchange for chicken.

Crisis averted.

Roadtrip!!!

Wow.  Jut got back from driving four and a half hour straight and I'm feeling... surprisingly spry.  Thought I was getting too old for this shit.

On Tuesday, I got a call from a real estate agent asking me if I wanted to come and view one of the rentals on Wednesday.  I was fortunate enough to line up a couple more inspections, so I went on an impromptu road trip.

Stayed at an amazing place overnight, and apparently you can rent there, so I put in an application.  I seriously hope I get it.  I will be overjoyed if I do.  I will name my... fourth born (pending approval from the other half) after that place if I do.  If not, there's also a three bedroom apartment that has the feeling of grandma's house to it, which is also pretty cool.

Everything's right on the beach.  Talked to a guy with a metal detector and he showed me all the sinkers he found, and a pretty wicked ring.

Ducked into my new work place and said hi to everyone, then dumped about four boxes of books in my office and left my new manager, who was in a meeting, a note with a drawing to say that I'd been in.  I start on the 21st.  Hopefully I remember everyone's name.  ...Hopefully I remember some people's names.

.........hopefully I remember the receptionist's name.  I think it's Melanie. Maybe I can get away with calling her 'Mel' just in case it's a similar variant. I am a bad person.

In between it all, I got some writing done.  Started the impossible task of tackling Vert Glace Chapter 3.  Something about driving though vast, hilly country that was very inspiring for writing about Goats Island.

A Productive Day

Not so productive on the actual tasks I needed to get done, but a pretty productive day in terms of writing, and re-watching The Avengers.

I finished the second chapter of the Vert Glace re-write.  It is very dear to my heart.  I sent it to Will for reckoning.

I also got another chapter of Birthday Present up.  It's the one from Emron's POV.  I tried to make it funny.  Tried being the operative word.  :)  We shall see what happens.  It has a new follower.  I feel very loved.

And I refurnished the next chapter of Game in Play.  It always happens that when I am writing, I think that I am brilliant; a genius, a golden wordsmith.  Then, I read it over the next day and realize that the hype was just sleep deprivation.  I will sit on the chapter for a little bit longer, maybe get some feedback from my people before posting it.

But that's what I love about fictionpress. It's a place for my rough drafts.  I don't feel the pressure to be perfect there all the time.  Sure, I'd prefer not to post something riddled with errors, but it's a place where I can try out ideas and get feedback.  The process is interactive.  It's fun.

Talking about fun, my fellow writers on the Writing Challenge Story thread are still batshit awesome.  Someone needs to make this an illustrated collection.

A Plug, and not the butt kind

Garg.  I tried to post a kickass piece including examples about the Writing Challenge Story thread of the Labryinth Forum, and the formatting came out looking like arse. 

Still I wholeheartedly recommend it because of things like this:

ArcadianCrown:

She dragged her nails across the cave walls, their painted surfaces chipping as their ends began to split and fracture. Her baby-blue dress was pretty and trimmed with lace; small ribbons dotted the pockets and collars. Angry-looking stains splattered in slashes marked the front, dark and red.

"Mr Rabbit?" She called, her voice a pealing bell-like noise. "My tricky, tricky prince?"

I realize that I should be writing like this for every line of the stories I produce, but it's so damn hard ot maintain that level of word-ness (see!?!?  I'm already failing at the words) when you're also trying to focus on bigger plot elements.  

Black House Down

I just came back from watching White House Down for the third time.  It's not that I'm particularly attached to the movie (though, it was everything that the Die Hard movies have been lacking lately...), it's just that people around me who belong to different circles have wanted to see it, and I have no real aversion to seeing it again.

I do have one favourite scene in the movie.  It's when the president tells a little girl, who has a gun pointed at her head, that he can not give in to the terrorists to save her life, and she replies that she understands.  The expression on her face as she prepares for death is brilliant.  I'm surprised that anyone had the guts to write such a scene for a very mainstream movie.  I liked how the girl's actions were actually relevant to the movie, and not in an annoying way.  Well done, Emily Cale.

My mind always confused White House Down with Black Hawk Down, and my mouth compromises by calling the movie Black House Down which is quite horrifying for me and hilarious for those around me for obvious reasons.

Friday was my last day of work at my now previous job.  That evening, my partner organized a surprised 'writing retreat' at a hotel where we pigged out on room service and I tried to stay faithful to the idea by working on Vert Glace.  I've got the second chapter completely re-written, now I just have to feed it to Will and see how it comes out the other side.

Un-ended Tales Unraveled has nominated for everyone to read The Eyes of Magic.  To be honest, I've already read the first few chapters.  I read them after I read War and Her Quill because I was just that impressed.  The problem with reviewing for me is that I have to think of something smart to say...

Garg!  So many funnily captioned pictures.  I can't choose between them, so I'm going to repost them all.

A++ game it is then

The September contest results came out with Un-ended Tales Unravel on top.  Am I surprised?

Not at all. :D

If can't keep down food, let's see if beer is better...

Listening to the best of Blink 182 and drinking Kirin beer... It's slowly restoring my faith in life after the type of day I've had.

Emron is coming along swimming.  Or that can be the dragon-deer chimera in me talking.  I've been told that I am a very cheap date.

Oversharing is caring

Urg.  I'm swaying at my computer with not much sleep, and even less food in me.  It seems as though I had a disagreement with something that I ate last night.  No, disagreement is too polite a word.  I think whatever I ate set off C-4 explosives inside me and then cackled with glee as it took a joyride through the tubing of my body and out my various orifices.

Even now, my stomach groans like the wood of ancient temples being swallowed by the roots of the mountains.

Anything could happen from this point - and I don't  mean the Ellie Goulding song.

A change of View

Emron was marginally aware of Deleana’s attention as he was flocked with the good intentions of the young women of the party.  Keldary, as always, was particularly pushy with her affection, and her abundant and perfectly shaped cleavage more than made up for the drollness of her conversational content.  If he took her home tonight, it would not be because her opinions mattered to him.   

First time I've written from Emron's POV.  Fun, fun, fun.  

0000

Just reached 10 000 words for the Sasha story.  Now that's what I call L0 000VE words.

That was terrible.  I'm a terrible person.

But I had that pun in my head since 5000 words and with each passing thousand words, the urge to badpun only grew stronger.

Blood in the Water

Awesome.  Will got back to me.  I looked through his pinata coloured edits and fixed up as much as I could before I started to get dizzy and blind.  I will probably read through it again later on, notice a bunch of typos, cringe, and edit everything.

For now, it's been posted, but still a work in progress.