Also, I had a bit of a family crisis in which I discovered that not everything was OK between me and my sister, so that took precidence over everything.

It was kind of a miserable week, as a result, and I let my email pile up and didn’t post on my blog.  If anyone’s been wondering about my new “were-snail” icon, that’s what it’s about – the fact that if there is trouble I deal with it by drawing in my horns and huddling in my shell.

However, this week, I have finished the edit, finished the Cheyenne cover, finalized the series concept and sent off the art for covers #1 and #2, and (due to a lot of forgiveness all around) the family crisis is no longer a crisis.

So I thought I would celebrate by (finally) spending some of the money I got as a Christmas gift from my Dad and buying myself an ereader.  I was going to get a Sony, but as I scrolled down the options at Amazon.co.uk, I got distracted by the Cybook Gen 3 of which even the 3 star review said (paraphrased) “it’s a nice, basic ebook reader with no fancy stuff.”

I checked out their website, and it sounded just the job.  Also it came with a free case, and was cheaper than the Sony.  Now that I know that all the hints I’ve dropped over the past six months have been in vain and I’m getting 18th Century shoes for my birthday, I decided to buy it for myself.  More news on that when it arrives!

Also, yay!  Shining in the Sun is showing up on Samhain’s “Coming Soon” page.  First unfolding seedling of a new release

This must mean I’ll be getting a cover soon.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  While I can’t expect anything as outstanding as the cover art for Captain’s Surrender twice in a row, Samhain’s cover art is always very good.  But  it’s still nerve-wracking when you don’t have any idea at all of what you’ll get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Beecroft

Wow!  Fame!  I feel as if I’ve really arrived.  (And my children are now broadcasting it about the internet in an attempt to one-up their friends.  Your mother might be a brain surgeon, but I bet she isn’t on Wikipedia….   )   Whoever you are, oh Wikipedia Page-maker, you are a complete star.  Thank you so much   How cool is that?!

I Do Two – The Charity Anthology Promoting GLBT

Right To Marriage

in which she interviews Lee Rowan, Kris Jacen and I about the I Do anthologies.

On other news, eagle eyed LJ readers may notice that I’ve changed my LJ style.  I envied Erastes her sidebar with the pictures of her book covers on it.  So I went looking for a three column style and then tweaked it so that it (a) fits with my website and (b) doesn’t look too much like hers, I hope.  It would look less like hers if there wasn’t only a single three column layout to choose from.  Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but being unexpectedly cloned can offend.

A bonus feature is that I’ve discovered the list of links on the right hand side, and how to add more of them.  So if you have a website you would like me to list there, just comment here with the name and URL and I will add it.

And, of course, I’m trying to get my daily minimum of 1050 words written, plus answering emails, and trying to extricate myself from conversations on topics which could be interesting, could get nasty, certainly require lots of thought, and for which I just don’t have the time or energy.

And there’s real life too.  The girls went back to school yesterday after A was ill on Tuesday and R was ill on Thursday, but DH and I spent Friday at the reenactor’s market (a post on that anon).  From which we returned with enough material for me to make a frock coat and waistcoat.  That joins the “make higher class clothes for the family” to do list, which I haven’t started yet.  I did finally get 18th Century shoes, though, which is a relief, as my clogs were quite uncomfortable.  However, it adds “find appropriate buckles” to my list.

And there’s the whole feed, clothe, clean up after and taxi your family to their various activities.  Exercise has once more been abandoned as an unrealistic ideal, and bodhran practice cut back to twice a week.  I really don’t know how some writers manage all of this and a full time job too!  *Am awed*.

I guess I’d better stop blathering here and go and do some of the things I ought to do instead.

However, two very good things have also happened today

A lovely review for The Wages of Sin

One is that I got this lovely review from Val Kovalin at Obsidian Bookshelf, who really enjoyed The Wages of Sin and voted it a recommended read.  She says “I enjoyed reading The Wages of Sin and I’m a reader who usually finds ghost stories to be tedious. However, this one held my undivided attention, starting with the title, …. I liked the flashes of humor expressed by the admiral when he describes the neighbor feud, and I found Jasper and Charles to be appealing characters that I’d love to see in a sequel, practicing their unique investigative abilities.”

The full review is available here: The Wages of Sin by Alex Beecroft

and *fanfare*

Captain’s Surrender comes in joint second place in Love Romances Cafe’s Best Historical Romance of 2009 category.

I have got a button

which I will put on my website to celebrate   Thank you so much to anyone who voted for me!  You are very cool and it’s entirely appreciated.

One of the nicest things about this is that the m/m historical romance was judged in with the m/f historical romance, rather than being confined to its own little ghetto.  Congratulations too to Charlie Cochrane, whose “Lessons in Temptation” won an Honourable Mention.  Given that m/f romance is a very much bigger field than m/m, I think we did pretty well

Daniel Craig playing Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film

This threw me into a three day ferment of “so who was it then?  I’m sure I know his face from somewhere.”  And I’m happy to announce that I’ve tracked him down and it was in fact Kevin McKidd, who I knew from the Rome TV series, where he played the centurion Lucius Vorenus.

Kevin McKidd, in Roman mini-skirt (sadly not visible in this picture.)

I’m not at all ashamed at getting them mixed up, since I had them both filed in my mental category of “hard looking blond bastards.”

From Margaret Atwood

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.

From Anne Enright

(I don’t know who Anne Enright is, or what she writes, but I like so many of her rules so much that I may have to check out her work.)

The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

Try to be accurate about stuff.

Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

From AL Kennedy

Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

And from Neil Gaiman, who once again manages to be awesome:

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

I thought I’d have a go at doing my own:

1. It doesn’t matter if someone else has done it before.  You are a different person.  Your version will be different.  Don’t worry about striving for originality, just tell it the way you see it.

2. Remember all your characters are human (except for the non-humans).  Make the humans as believable and complex as you can.  Everyone’s a hero to themselves.  No one is a stereotype.  We are all individuals (except me).  In so far as it is humanly possible, make your non-humans recognizably alien.  Nothing’s worse than elves who are just humans with stuck on pointy ears.

3. Once you’ve started writing something, don’t stop until you’ve finished.  Write the first draft all the way through before you start to edit.

4. Sometimes writing will be so hard you want to clean toilets instead.  Write anyway.  No one said it would be fun all the time.

5. Don’t trust your feelings.  Your writing will sound like dreck to you one day, and transcendent the next.  Compare it with the writing of published authors who you admire.  Is it, objectively, anywhere near that standard?  If not, improve.

6. But remember that you’re probably not as bad as you think.  (Unless you think you’re a genius, in which case you’re probably a lot worse than you think.)  Get a second opinion that you trust and then trust it.

7. Writing = telling the truth as you see it.  Don’t let people tell you you don’t know your own truth, or you don’t have a right to your own stories or your own imagination.  What comes out of you is, first and foremost, yours.

8. But do your research.  If writing = telling the truth as you see it, put some effort into finding out what the truth is first.  Study, research, read, think, listen, find out stuff.  It’s one of the best things about the whole writing gig.

9. Write the book you most want to read.  That way – even if no one else likes it – you get your dream book out of the deal.

10. Don’t pay too much attention to the writing gurus.  Do it whatever way works for you.

The first one really made me squee, because I’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for a reaction from someone who was reading it from an Age of Sail perspective.  Was my ship-handling at all convincing?  Could it be read by the same sort of people who read Patrick O’Brian and not let the side down?  So hearing this was music to my ears:

“Alex Beecroft did her homework and treats the reader to compellingly written passages of ship and sail evolutions, gunnery, medicine and boat handling. There are plenty of well handled actions — single ship, cutting out, shore bombardments and fighting ashore. In particular, Beecroft showed a fine mastery of how to fight a bomb ketch. I was very impressed with her narration of ship handling and repair during a harrowing, and near-disastrous, encounter with an iceberg in the arctic.”

Huzzah!

I also got a very peculiar review which claimed that I had a shaky grasp on gay male psychology (because of course all gay men have the same psychology.)  This reviewer felt sure that I had had the pirates throw a bucket of piss over John when they were torturing him because I’d heard about water-sports and wanted to… I don’t know… make the torture scene more sexy, or something.

I’m a little sad that people can’t tell the difference between when I’m trying to write sexy and when I’m trying to write horrific.  But if he’d asked me, I could have told him that I added the bucket of piss to the scene because I was concerned that it would seem unlikely that John would survive his injuries.  I wanted to give him something that would increase his chances of pulling through.  In an era when medical knowledge had no conception of the need for sterilizing anything, dousing him in urine was the only way I could think of of getting something antiseptic on his wounds.

Having said that I enjoyed it, I think I may have liked the beginning and end much more than the middle.  I’m getting tired of the “youth discovers he’s special, gains lots of cool powers, goes through a time of testing and comes out a hero” theme.  Admittedly, it’s my fault for watching so many children’s films!  But I think on reflection that I was more interested in the doings of the gods than in what Percy and pals were up to.  All these “gods play games with the fates of men” stories seem to concentrate on the men they use as playing pieces – just once I’d like to see the story from the gods’ point of view.

The special effects were great.  I’ve never seen a better centaur in a film.  He looked positively real.  I also loved the lightning bolt.  I really enjoyed the set-up with the explanation of who Percy was.  It all began to go down hill when he got to the training camp and within minutes was taking down experienced sword-fighters by the sheer power of his bloodline.  I’m kind of fed up with this meme that all you need to do is find the thing that you’re good at.  No amount of practice, training, dedication or hard slog is required.  There are no years and years of working at your skill and perfecting it by slow degrees.  No, Harry gets on the broomstick and instantly he’s the best quidditch player ever.  Percy sticks a hand in the water and heals, and instantly he can take down the best fighter in the school.

If only it worked like that.  But it doesn’t, and the constant repetition of the idea that it does probably damages children’s ability to buckle down and actually practice hard enough to get genuinely good at things.  Grr!

Also grr to the fact that the black guy on the team was a satyr.  Is it me, or is that kind of a demeaning choice?  Initially when I saw he was on crutches, I thought “ooh, he’ll really be the god Hephaestus in disguise.  How cool !”  But no, he doesn’t even get to be a demi-god.  He gets to be a semi-bestial creature who is obsessed with sex.  That’s… not a casting decision I would have made, given the choice.

I did enjoy the first of the three questy-type things.  The overgrown garden centre was genuinely creepy.  And I liked the lotus eaters as well.  Charon was very good – he had definite grim reaper style.  But I was a little disappointed with the Hades = Hell thing.  They’re not the same at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a depiction of Hades.  That would have been something different – so I felt that was a bit of a wasted opportunity.

I don’t know that I would watch it again, but I was only a little tiny bit bored by the over-abundance of action at the end, which is a lot more than I could say for the latest Harry Potter.  And it is nice to have the Greek gods back on film.  I think I missed them, over the last 10 years.