offended by rank OBJECTIFICATION of writers

http://agrammar.tumblr.com/post/1127991128/offended-by-rank-objectification-of-writers

LOL!  This is all completely true.  My poor husband!

19th Sept – party like a pirate on Speak Its Name

Hi-diddley dee, a pirate’s life for me…

It’s Talk Like a Pirate day on Sunday 19th September – we’d love to
celebrate here on Speak Its Name.

Why not post links to pictures of you (or your pets) in pirate garb (or
other nautical gear)? Post Pirate slashy drabbles (not fanfic, please),
pirate limericks and piratical excerpts. There will be prizes, although
whether the awarding of same will follow the pirate code, who knows?

Erastes will help celebrate the day by listing piratey books on the
Macaronis blog.

More details once we’ve spliced the mainbrace.

Yaar.  This post be plundered wholesale from that scourge of the seven seas, Charlie Cochrane.  Pass it on, my hearties, if you don’t want to be fished to the cathead by the mizzen spanker!

Ely Con, very short report

This has to be very short as I have just sliced through the top of my finger on one of those vegetable guillotine thingies, trying to make home-made crisps.  Fortunately I got my 1000 words in for the day first, but I’ve got to say I don’t advise typing with your finger swathed in elastoplast.  At least it seems to have stopped bleeding.

So this will be a short report – Ely con was slightly smaller than we expected.  We had about 25 people express an interest in coming, but only 12 turned up.  However, 12 felt like a good amount because the room was quite small.  We were able to draw up 4 tables and sit around in a circle and still be heard by everyone.

I’d been having nightmares that we would all arrive, talk for about half an hour and then lapse into silence which needed breaking up with scheduled events and me trying to think of something to say.  But it didn’t happen that way.  We only really stopped talking in order to do the two quizzes.  I was thinking “OK, we’ll do introductions and the Q&A session and then I’ll put out refreshments,” but the Q&A session went on so long that we all started picking at the food in the middle of it.  Then we got to the final three quarters of an hour and realized that we hadn’t discussed next year, we hadn’t done the book swap/signing, and everything needed washing and clearing away because the library shut at 4pm.

So I never got to the book table, as I was washing up.  However, I’d much rather have had it that way than have tumbleweeds blowing across because we couldn’t stand each other and couldn’t think of anything to say.  As it was, I can happily say that most of us have gone from being acquaintances to being friends.  It was really nice to know there are real people on the other end of those pixels.  Somehow that doesn’t sink in until you’ve met them.

Next year we are going to go for something bigger, based in Reading (so it will have good rail and even air links – it’s close to Heathrow) which lasts for a full day and is possibly held in a hotel, so that people don’t have to travel back on the same day.  It will be some time in July, and we’d love to see more writers, more readers, publishers, agents etc.  We’d also love to hear your ideas for what you might like to see during a one day conference.  If you think you’re interested in helping to organize, offering a panel of some sort, or any other idea, drop in at the newly re-named UK_meet community and help make next year bigger and better 🙂

Reposted from Bearing Witness

http://bearing-witness.dreamwidth.org/6988.html

Rev. Chuck Currie on why he established the Facebook group “People of Faith Opposed to the Burning of the Qur’an” – Currie is a United Church of Christ Minister in Northwest USA.

And in related news: Currie’s access to Facebook was halted for approx. 24 hours, then reinstated. Facebook has apparently refused to explain why.

If you’re wondering if there’s anything you can do to demonstrate your belief that the days of holy war were a huge mistake which ought not to be repeated, and not God’s will at all, you can always go and add yourself to the page’s fans.

Still ill

This is getting a little tedious.  Still coughing like I’m trying to turn myself inside out.  I thought my lungs were making a sound like popping candy, so I went to the doctor, who was unimpressed and said “no, they’re not, that’s just your throat.”  This apparently makes it tantamount to being a whiny hypochondriac, turning up at her door after 5 days of not sleeping because I can’t lie down and breathe at the same time.  Shame on me!

I’ve got to be better by Sunday because the Ely meet-up is happening!  Currently there’s no way I can sit through four hours of meeting and pizza afterwards, but I suppose there’s still three days left in which to improve.  Grr!  I would really quite like to be over this by now.

At least yesterday I did manage to cut out my new semi-circular cloak, and I am more or less up to hemming it, so I can achieve something today.  I hope!

Recommendations please?

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?

In and out

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.

Back from France.

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.

Shining in the Rain?

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.

Um… yay!

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.