Reading, writing & slumping

No church today - bliss. Or rather Lord H went as he was on server duties, so represented the household accordingly. And it was - horror of horrors - a baptism service, and I don't do those, given my deep child-hating tendencies. It's my belief that all babies/children are inherently dull and when they're born they all look like Winston Churchill but without the cigar. Though I suppose that's not entirely fair - there are some children I like, but only one or two and then only because they have real personalities and so count as small people, rather than children per se. Even so, they'll still be a hell of a lot more interesting when they hit their twenties. Thank God this is a child-free zone.

I have spent the time getting another 1000 words of "The Gifting" done, so I now have 99,006 - only 994 to go before the big 100K!! And I've finished a hell of a lot of books, including:

(a) "Wherever", a poetry anthology from Cinnamon Press (http://www.cinnamonpress.com) which has a poem by ... um ... me in it. I also enjoyed the offerings from Michael Smith, one from Claudia Jessop and those by Linda Benninghof. All good stuff, but Smith was far and away the best. Though it does gall me to say it wasn't me, of course ... Hell, I'm only human.

(b) "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" by Susan Jeffers - some good positive stuff in there which I shall try to remember, but it did become rather wearing towards the end. I'm not really sure I can aim for perfection, to be honest. Simple survival would be nice.

(c) "Not Dark Yet" by Nick Maes. I thought this was well-written but really didn't have much to it. Gay boy meets older straight woman. Falls in love. Woman dies. Um, haven't we heard this story before? And I do think it was really a long short story dressed up as a novel and needed rather a lot of cutting to bring it to perfection (assuming that can be achieved of course ...). But I would pick up another Maes again, if one came up.

Ooh, and the lovely Sue Haywood (http://www.teafriendsandchocolate.com/sue/) has been talking me up in her blog - so thanks hugely for that, Sue. Much appreciated. I think you're rather wonderful too. And the equally wonderful Becky (http://www.myspace.com/edie1964) has ordered a copy of "A Stranger's Table" so has doubled my weekend sales joy factor - thank you, Becky! I'll post it off to you on Monday. I've also discovered that the Eurocrime blog (http://eurocrime.blogspot.com) has included me on their new crime book listings for both "A Dangerous Man" (http://www.flamebooks.com) and my ancient first novel, "The Hit List" (gay crime comedy) so that's nice too - though, if I were being honest, I wouldn't recommend my first novel if you've not read it before. It shrieks "first novel" whenever I open it (rarely) and demands changes (lots of them) that I frankly can't be arsed to make. Still, I know in my heart that I had to write THL (Jamie) in order to get to ADM (Michael), so I do have something to thank it for.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching the repeat of "Ugly Betty", which I do enjoy, even though it doesn't really know whether it's a comedy or a drama. I think it's starting to leap over the fence to drama now, but it should have started off there in the first place and then we'd all have known where we were.

Tonight, I will attempt to ring mother, and do some serious slumping over "Lewis" on tv. Bliss. Ooh, and a weird thing happened at lunch - we suddenly heard distant knocking and then an enormous bird flew past the window. I suspect we've been caught up in a temporal anomaly and there are now dinosaurs in the loft and pterodactyls in the garden. Ah well, we live in interesting times.

This week's haiku:

One skeleton tree
carries evening skies tonight,
sweat poured out in stars.

Today's nice things:

1. Getting caught up in "The Gifting" for a while
2. Reading
3. Nice news from Sue, Becky & Eurocrime (3 in 1, I know, but hell it is Sunday ...).

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk