This is almost certainly the round that False Colors gets trashed. I’ve been watching the first two rounds, and FC tends to get around 300 votes, while Zero at the Bone gets around 600. I strongly suspect that me begging for votes is not going to make any difference. So I won’t beg, I’ll just say “if you liked False Colors enough to feel like voting for it, then your novel needs you now” 🙂 And thank you in advance if you decide to go and support it 🙂
Voting is here http://dabwaha.com/blog/2010/03/25/round-3-set-1-of-2/
While chatting with tiggothy yesterday about men’s voices, and why I had made John in False Colors a counter tenor, I suddenly remembered this vid, which had been recommended to me by someone on my FL. I can’t quite remember who. Was it charliecochrane? Maybe. Anyway, I thought that everyone might like to see it, as it’s just lovely. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, my e-reader arrived! Naturally I would have preferred an iPAD, but I can’t justify spending that much on any kind of electronic device. I was going to buy a Sony e-reader, but when I puttered about Amazon looking for one, I came across a special offer for the Cybook 3 Gen, which cost less than the Sony and came with a protective case thrown in. All Amazon’s reviews were positive (unlike the reviews for the Sony), so I decided to go for the Cybook.
Read the rest of this entry »
You can now use your iPhone to get marriage equality back on the ballot in California! Please share this with as many people as possible. We need this to go viral! Let’s repeal Prop 8 NOW!
Sign the Petition here!:
http://restoreequality2010.com/ipod.htm.
Check out the full article here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-20225-SF-LGBT-Issues-Examiner~y2010m3d16-Repeal-Prop-8-Theres-an-App-for-that-iPhones-help-restore-marriage-equality-in-CA
Thanks,
Jay Matthew
ErasetheH8 Campaign
It’s selection time in the Smart Bitches’ annual DABWAHA contest which is a kind of knock down, drag out, contest between an initial selection of 64 books. They go up against each other in several rounds of voting until there’s only one left.
This year, False Colors is in the starting blocks in the LGBT section, facing desperately stiff competition, so if anyone fancied going and voting it through to the next category, that would be fab! (If you fancy voting for one of the other books instead, that’s also fair enough 🙂 )
It’s kind of complicated to explain, so I’ve linked to the explanatory post first, but this is where the actual voting goes on.
I’m very chuffed indeed to be even in the first round, but trying to avoid getting my hopes up any further, as there’s every possibility that the first round will be as far as I get 🙂
Every so often I get frustrated at all the things I can’t do as someone who isn’t able to draw and must content themselves with photoshopping pictures. (Where “photoshopping” in my case = “manipulating using the Gimp”) There are so few available pictures of people in historical clothes out there, that I’m really going to have to find some method for taking modern pictures and making them look old.
So today I thought I’d start small and see if I could take a modern photo of a guy in a modern Arabic headscarf and turn him into an oil painting of a man in a turban which might do for something historical.
From 
to 
in five fairly longwinded stages.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve just had an email asking me if I was any relation to Admiral Beecroft. This gave me pause for thought, partly because I don’t know of any Admiral Beecroft. Do you?
And partly because I wouldn’t know if he was a relative even if he was. The Beecroft side of the family is my mother’s, and I don’t know even what my grandparents’ first names were, let alone any relatives further back than that.
When I was googling to see if I could find Admiral Beecroft, I did come across a John Beecroft, British Consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin who had splendid mutton-chop whiskers and apparently was
“H.M.’s first consul for Bights of Benin and Biafra. In this capacity he did very good work and was instrumental in making many of the treaties for the suppression of the export slave trade. The naval expedition of 1841 up the Niger under Captain Bird Allen would have suftered even more terribly than it did had it not been for the prompt action taken by Governor Beecroft in going to their rescue. Governor Beecroft was the first to discover and survey the Cross river as far as the rapids.”
It would be interesting if he was a relative, but I have no way of knowing (not without some hefty genealogical research for which I don’t have the tools or time.) He probably wasn’t, though. I’ve always thought we were a lot more lower deck than that.
When I first had the idea for Under the Hill, back when it was Away with the Faeries, it was going to be a 30K novella. It was going to be a kind of lighthearted paranormal romance with some elves and ghosts and morris dancing. It was going to feature a bloke who worked in a bank, and another bloke who had been in the RAF before he was shot down by a UFO. And it was going to be a pretty plain m/m romance with some entertaining tomfoolery in the land of Faerie.
Then Chris decided he had a big mysterious secret.
Then Ben decided he had to have a bigger mysterious secret than Chris.
Then George, Chris’ old flame, turned up out of nowhere and said “I’m still alive, you know! Also trapped in Elfland. Help!”
Then Sumala turned up and said “yes, and there aren’t enough female characters, so I need a story!”
Then Oonagh, Queen of the elves, felt it was important to kidnap some people in order to explain to them why she was doing all this kidnapping of people.
There were incidents with a photocopier and well dressing, but that was OK because they had always been meant to be there.
But then Oonagh acquired a rival in the shape of Liadain, and suddenly the elves had politics. And Chris got arrested for murder, Ben got brainwashed, George got put in suspended animation, and Sumala discovered that the elves are mobilizing for war…
And then I realized I didn’t really have a romance on my hands any more.
The damn thing keeps growing and growing and getting more complicated, and now it’s in the process of getting a spine transplant, because I can’t get all the elvish stuff into the story if it’s only a story about Ben and Chris and how they fall for each other. It’s going to have to be a story about elves first, and a love story (love triangle? love square?) afterwards. But that means there needs to be something new to drive the plot. A fantasy can’t stand up on its own if it’s built around the skeleton of a romance. It would only end up being a deformed romance if it tried, and I can’t imagine a deformed romance doing anyone any good.
The worst thing is I’ve written 40K of it as a romance, and I don’t know how much of that will survive the transition into fantasy. I keep going back to the drawing board with this one and re-plotting it. I’ll be very glad when it fixes itself into one shape so I can start actually writing it again. I feel as if I’m trying to run up a down escalator with this one at the moment.
So I fell off the internet last week, due to having my final proofreading edit of Shining in the Sun with a deadline of one week to finish. Also cover art to make for an upcoming book by Cheyenne Publishing. Also cover art for a new series of Age of Sail novels coming out from Bristlecone Pine Press. (I had to come up with a concept for the series, so that all 5 books would look similar while all being individual, find pictures that the writer liked and felt were appropriate for each book, and then make the first cover in the full size version.
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.
Through the wonders of Google Alert, I discovered today that somebody has made a Wikipedia page for me!
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?!
