I have discovered a forgotten birthday present from my parents-in-law, which is a voucher for downloads from Amazon.co.uk. Hurray! Also, I’m going off to an internet-free, bookshop-free long weekend spent in a field, and after driving to and from France last week I’ve read all the books on my ebook reader.
These are two things that were made to be together 
So I need recommendations of books to read. Preferably ones from Amazon.co.uk and preferably ones which I can download immediately before we leave (some time in the mid afternoon today.) I’ve bought two so far, which will occupy me for the journey down to Detling and the first evening, so I’ve still got two more evenings and a return journey to fill. I’ve started to really like long car journeys as it’s the only uninterrupted time I ever get to read!
Anyone got any wonderful new finds to share? New books out which are right up my street?
like a fiddler’s elbow, that’s me this week. Wednesday was our 20th wedding anniversary, which I forgot about. Fortunately, Andrew forgot about it too, so there were no hard feelings on his side, and nothing but relief on mine. We went up North to see my Dad instead of celebrating, which made for a long day of driving through torrential rain, but we’ve chalked up a mental note of “we are permitted to buy ourselves something nice at some point, to celebrate” which is always a nice thought to carry around.
Tomorrow we’re off again to set up in preparation for Detling Military Odyssey. It’ll be the first outing for our Anglo-Saxon bed frame, but we haven’t decided yet whether we fill the frame with furs and sleep on that, or go the safe option and fill it with an air bed. A straw or feather filled mattress would be authentic, but we can’t fit one in the car.
LOL! Totally off topic (not that I had a topic in the first place,) look what I found
Possibly only funny to Brits and other people who grew up watching Captain Pugwash.
And finally (nearly) caught up on my 300 odd emails, my unpacking, washing and putting everything away, and my two days of being poleaxed by diet induced migraine, which still hasn’t entirely gone away. (Have started the Harcombe diet, as after 3 weeks of calorie counting I was utterly fed up of being hungry. But I’ve paid for it with three days of sugar withdrawal headache.)
I had a great time in France, despite the fact that yes, half of the week was practically underwater. We trekked to Mont St.Michel via the ‘park two kilometers away and take a short cut’ route across the salt marshes, and ended up having to approach like medieval pilgrims, barefoot, wading across numerous small streams. Next time we’re driving to the car park!
I’m pleased to report that St.Malo is every bit as charming as I wrote it, and I really did find a shop that sold hundreds of different weird flavoured ice-creams. They didn’t have the rice ice-cream that Darren tried in Shining in the Sun, but they did have cactus flavour. I should have tried it, but I chickened out and had nutella instead.
I see that the Out magazine article has turned into another great debate while I was gone, but I don’t feel inclined to get involved in it. I bared my soul enough in the interview. Besides, I did a lot of reading, thinking and self examination the last time the question of straight women writing m/m romance came up (and the time before that, and the time before that too) and I feel like I’ve been through the debate so often before that there’s nothing left to say.
The bottom line is, I do not believe that I am being exploitative. Even the loudest voices in the anti-mm camp insist that they are not saying that straight women shouldn’t write m/m romance. They are saying that we should do it in such a way as not to cause any more pain to the very people we’re writing about. I’m all for that. I have no desire to cause pain or insult to anyone, and I already do my best to write characters who are real people and not stereotypes. Besides, why would I want to insult my own readers? Despite what numerous magazine articles inaccurately say, I have never just written for women. What a stupid idea that is! I write for anyone who wants to read my books, regardless of gender or orientation. I am proud of the fact that a lot of gay men like my books. (I know because they’ve told me.) If they didn’t, then I would know there was a problem.
I’m off on holiday tomorrow. We’re going to go somewhere just outside St. Malo for a week. This will give me ample opportunity to look around St. Malo, where a couple of chapters of Shining in the Sun take place. I got my description of the place from guidebooks and Google street view, so I’m really interested to find out how accurate I’ve managed to be. I really should have done the holiday before writing, rather than after!
I don’t think there will be internet, so I’ll be out of reach for the next week. Here’s hoping that nothing vital happens during that time, and also that the weather in France is better than the week of cold rain we’ve had here.
OK so you probably have to be born in the USA to understand the legal shilly-shallying about Prop 8 and gay marriage in California, and what, if anything, it implies for the rest of the country. First marriage was OK, then it wasn’t, now it is again but not until next week, and the anti-marriage campaign rumbles on, so goodness knows when there will be a proper firm decision that sticks. Is this one? Can it still be reversed? I don’t understand!
Still, it’s something to see Prop 8 overturned and for people to be allowed to get married again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/us/13prop.html?_r=2&hp
Here’s hoping that this time it lasts
Oh, and if you’re wondering where the profits from the I Do anthologies are going now, they’re still going to Lambda Legal, because the fight won’t be over until there is equal marriage in every state.
Spent today taking my youngest to the dentist. This is pretty much the story of the holidays – non stop ferrying one or the other of them about. Though I can’t be hard on her for needing to go to the dentist, poor child!
In writerly news, I have just passed the 100,000 word mark on Under the Hill and I know now that it is going to get finished and polished and become a proper manuscript. There were moments there where I thought this would be the first thing I had abandoned unfinished since starting to write professionally, but now I’ve reached the point where I know that isn’t the case. It’s going to take some whopping revision, but I know I can do it, and make it as good as it can be, given my skill level. Still approximately another 50K to go before that can happen, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m positive it isn’t an oncoming dragon.
Having said that, though, what with girls solidly at home, visiting relatives (and the cleaning up before, thereof) and doing laundry in preparation for going to France next week, I haven’t managed a word today. I may have to go and do some now. That or get depressed.
Am also determined to do a couple of novellas before Christmas, just so that I can have written and finished at least one new thing this year. I’m thinking that a Space Opera one would be quite fun.
Was captivated by Inception, and I’ve now been to see it three times, but despite an initial burst of “I want to read fanfic,” finding <lj user=”inceptionfic”> and doing just that for three days, I find that I don’t really want to get into the fandom after all. I’m not quite sure why not. It’s a funny feeling, liking something so much that I want to see it again, but not wanting to write it – or even particularly read about it. I suppose it could be because I have an ever increasing list of other writing I ought to be doing, including:
Finish UtH (another 50K words)
Whirlwind Lads (m/m historical, 100K words)
Possible murder mystery (~70K)
m/m Pirate novella (30K)
m/m Space Opera (30K)
Possible m/m contemporary novella (30K)
I guess that’s enough to be getting on with, without adding Inception fic!
and I may have a new fandom What an excellent film! I do like a film where I come away from it with a head that feels as if it’s been stuffed full of new and interesting things to think about.
I’m not a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio, and this hasn’t really changed that. He’s a good actor, but I’ve yet to like one of his characters, and the only drawback to Inception was that I didn’t like him – and he’s the hero. A lot of the emotional punch of the thing must come from his attempts to get over his wife’s death and make his way home to his children. So the fact that I loved the film even without caring about the hero’s quest must mean that if you did care about him, it would be even better.
His not-quite-dead-enough wife was a fantastic character, though, and wonderfully scary. Also the inception, which had – as a side effect – the healing of a man’s relationship with his unloving father, was touching and involving enough to make up for the fact that I didn’t care about Leo and his guilt issues. Cillian Murphy played a blinder as the young businessman whose father’s last word to him is “disappointed.” Is it kind of sad that I cared about the mark more than I cared about the hero? I don’t know – it may just show that the film works on lots of different levels.
But what’s making me feel really fannish about the film is the performances of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy as the team’s point man (Arthur) and identity forger (Eames). Not only do they hit my competence kink fair and square, being extremely clever and good at what they do, but Arthur is a slender zero-gravity action hero in a smart suit, and Eames is an amused, slightly cynical but soft at heart, gender-bending con man. And he’s English, without being evil! Marvel of marvels! I was waiting, all the way through, for him to betray everyone, and then he didn’t, and I was amazed (and grateful.)
They clearly have this lovely, longsuffering relationship with each other that I badly want to see slashed. And surely the fact that at one point Eames turns himself into a woman (it’s a dream-world, and turning himself into other people is his speciality) and attempts to pick up the mark must mean there’s an infinite variety of interesting possibilities to play with there.
There’s a lovely little Eames & Arthur moment at the end of this trailer which provided me with one of the biggest laughs of the film.
Here is a much better review than mine, if you are wondering what on earth I’m waffling on about.
Cassie at Joyfully Reviewed has done a lovely review of Shining in the Sun. She says
I wasn’t sure how I would feel about Shining in the Sun, given that Alex Beecroft is primarily a historical writer. After reading it, I can only say I hope Ms. Beecroft decides to write another contemporary soon, because Shining in the Sun was excellent!
Which makes me very happy indeed As does her description of the characters and the plot. I’m curious to find that people seem to like Alec more than Darren, in general, though, because I like Darren more than Alec. It’s interesting to know that author partiality doesn’t come through
(though rather expensive liquid history at that.) Naval lovers with more money than sense can now buy a bottle of authentic Navy rum, from the Royal Navy’s last remaining stocks, held in stone flagons in HM bonded warehouses since “Black Tot Day” in 1970, when the tradition of the daily rum ration for Royal Navy sailors finally came to an end. You too can drink the rum that Nelson drank! Only £600 a bottle 
Still, this site almost makes it seem worth the money: Black Tot Rum If I had £600 to waste, I’d definitely be tempted.
