Have you ever had days where you know you're uninteresting?

My cure for these is a hot bath and a good book. The good book is by Marjorie Liu (sent to me by the very kind Lyn Viehl, through her blog) and the hot bath is very fragrant. It may not make me more interesting, but it should certainly relax me.

I'm going to blame the weather. When I become a fascinating human being again, I shall tell you about fascinating things. Till then, I recommend fragrant baths and good books.

I have some fascinating posts for my Food History blog, but the server and WordPress are both being updated so I can't get to it. This dosn't stop me celebrating the nature of the posts, because while I was researching food for the ill, I found a 19th century recipe for cheap coffee (coffee for the not-well-heeled, not bad coffee). I plan to boil some up tonight and tomorrow night and have adults' coffee for two days then children's coffee for one. Or I could just have adults' cofee for one morning (it gets left overnight to make it 'clear and bright') and give it up as too much effort. Anyhow, I'll blog the experience on my food blog once it gets returned to me.

It's about 6 degrees outside now and the weather report is being determinedly optimistic and saying that overnight will be a sultry one degree. My body is predicting the negatives and is telling me to put the heater on high right now. I think I shall ignore the Bureau of Meteorology, put the heater right up high, and make ginger tea (ordinary tea is out because my trip to get milk today was foiled by the weather - one does not go out in this weather if one is not yet over one's virus - and yes, I'm using the third person because I've been reading too many nineteenth century cookbooks). The only thing can save save the BOM from being wrong is snow, which isn't imposssible, since today's cold is exceedingly damp.

My useful tip for the day is that those with scorbutic tendencies should - according to Charles Elme Francatelli, onetime Chief Cook to Queen Victoria - avoid pickled cabbage and stick to interesting recipes made using the fresh stuff.

My less useful tip is that the problem with having a warm bath to solve cold that eats away the bones is what happens when you gets out of it.

Account Structure Update
Back by popular demand, Basic Accounts will be available to all users again by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer. More information on the decision-making process and proposals relating to the future of Basic Accounts are in lj_2008.

New Themes
Two attractive and all-new Flexible Squares themes, "Circular" and "Circular Brown" are now available.


L to R: Circular and Brown

New V-Gifts
Give someone you care about the gift of enticement. With the new Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi v-gifts, all the significant people in your life will be able to share in the longing for the tasty edibles below. Plus, it reminds loved ones you think they're really sweet, really savory or just plain satisfying.


L to R: Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi

Ж-Men...but not the ones you might expect!
This week LJ Russia launched Ж-Men, a new comedy series about superheroes, inspired by the LJ communities dedicated to superheros, comics and cartoons. The title's "Ж" comes from ЖЖ, the nickname for LiveJournal in Russia.

Ж-Men's script is written by a group of LJ enthusiasts who also happen to be television professionals. Who knew? Following the premiere, five more episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks. We hope you find the series fresh and enjoyable.

This is, of course, an experiment for LiveJournal. As always, we'd love to hear what you think!

Today I'm thinking about worlds colliding.

I have an existing world for a novel. I have turned the city into a palimpsest and all sorts of extra things happen on the surface and not a one of them have any relations to what exists underneath. What exists underneath is us, our reality. What goes on top are a bunch of odd happenings. Those happenings cause teh main dynamics in the novel. My new character turns out to be the link between the two - stranded and different and very much alone.

So now you know. I doubt it's changed your day, but it certainly has helped mine.

My day was also helped by a totally awesome parcel from the students I taught last term. Also, the purchase of a strange little food service device.

Quick update: My website is no longer being redirected somewhere strange. It's seriously in need of an update, but it is now perfectly locatable.

I still have that dratted virus and those dratted allergies. You nearly had two paragraphs explaining this in great detail, but I thought better of it and deleted it. What I couldn't do today (despite having electricity after all) was write.

Does this put back my novel? Yes and no.

It's already been majorly delayed because my system is still dealing with being put way out of kilter earlier in the year. Constant allergies don't just have cute symptoms, they also leave me constantly tired, very simply. That's the 'yes' bit, and why my health comes up so much in my blog right now.

I'm not actually wasting time, but my novel is advancing very, very slowly.

The 'no' bit is because I was missing some key narrative tension for one of the major characters. It was bugging me, too. This was a worry, when the narrative tension is showing weaknesses and you're only 15% in.

Yesterday, while I was writing, a really eerie guy suddenly appeared. I don't know enough about him yet to write any more. I need to sort him out. He is totally the solution to previously-absent narrative tension at key points. He even explains two major decisions. I just can't quite get over how he suddenly appeared and scared the life out of me and two of my characters. At midnight. No, this is not a vampire novel. I have no idea what he is, but he's not a vampire.

I shall be writing tomorrow, but that will mainly be menus and dinner parties and most of it will probably disappear later on. I need to work with my structure to fathom the new character and how he fits in, and I decided from very early on that my underlying structure would be a series of dinner parties.

This is the stuff that holds it together for me, you understand, not the stuff that holds it together for the reader.* I have a perfectly normal plotline going on in the foreground, but I needed a way of reminding myself exactly which character needed to be in focus and why and a way of bringing them back together so that the changing relationships weren't too impossible to follow. Dinner parties seemed good for that. There's some yummy food in them, too.

If anyone wants, I can give you a post a month with a menu and recipes, since all you wildly enthusiastic beta readers cannot be happy with me right now. (Resort to bribes? Gillian? Constantly.)

If I can't write (because typing really is hard work today - getting this post up has taken way longer than usual) then I can research my new character tonight and tomorrow I can do recipes and menus and fit him properly into the plot. Then I'm going to inform my legs and my virus that the first shall be healed and the second entirely gone and lo, I shall write significant quantites before teaching begins. I still want to finish it before October. October is going to be super-ultra busy.

* Some people use really cool computer programs - I use really cool menus. This time, anyhow.

another sad farewell, this one not so unexpected. Briese lived hard and played harder, and when he finally went down, there was nothing left to fight it with. But all my life he was around. So thank you, Briese, for the decades of laughter, and pool games; blunt advice, and brusque encouragement; and the sheer volume of people you firmly, and completely straight faced, convinced that you were my grandfather. Watching them lay you to rest in the churchyard, a plot of land originally owned by your family, was way too hard.

The evening is definitely better than the day. This is because the Australian Speculative Fiction Blog Carnival is up. Yay!!!!

For the first time ever, this was Carnival by committee. Thank you, Karen (chair extraordinaire) and the rest of the Conflux committee. A special thank you to kitzen_kat, who volunteered to help (saving me a bunch of work) when we were one person short: she did her bit under rather complicated and difficult circumstances, too.

Since the French almost beat the British in colonising Australia, I'm going to call this version "The Bastille Affair." This means that anyone who wants to toast the Conflux Committee should do so with fine wine. We have had too many mixed drinks recently, and need to work on our wine palates now (that meeting has to be one of the oddest I have ever attended - and the minutes are already out!).

PS That last paragraph is not a hint to take advantage of being on the Conflux site and to register before the prices rise and to book for the Prohibition banquet. Well, maybe it *is* a hint, but it's a subtle one. This means you might have to feign surprise if you suddenly realise there are only 2 weeks before registration goes up by $40 and you might have to say "Well, while I'm here, I might as well book." Or not.

PPS Last year's Minicon is up on the site now (I didn't do it - it was Mr Herring!) if anyone wants to take a look and see what sort of things were asked of whom. Some of those discussions are rather strong arguments for turning up this year.

Today was so skewiff that I didn't get lunch till 4 pm. I have managed to acquire a sinus headache and a sore neck, because obviously everything else wrong wasn't quite enough.

I haven't written any fiction, either. This isn't so much because of being unwell, though that was a contributing factor. It's because all sorts of things happened late around me and I had to process things much more than I expected and it all took longer than I expected (45 minutes turned into 6 hours!) and it came out of my own worktime.

You would not have liked me this morning. As I've been saying this last hour, "Gillian is now available with 30% less grumble."

I can get that down to 70% less grumble if only friends and colleagues would allow me my writing time. Writing fiction helps keep me sane and all I've written during this winter has been a short story. Which was good, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Too many people want to be the single, sole exception to being allowed to contact me during my quiet time or to expect me to be free because they are.

I shall write tonight, regardless of aches, pains and obligations because I'm reaching the stage where I'm not nice to know. I'm never nice to know when I ought to be writing but find myself doing everything but.

So, tonight's plans. Coffee with Kate and Stu as a break in my writing - for the record, they asked me days ago, so the visit was planned and my writing was planned around it. They are not producers of grump. Painrelievers to help with the writing. A salad late instead of dinner because lunch wasn't till 4 pm. If anyone rings and I'm not at a natural break, I shall not answer the phone. No single, sole exceptions. Not even for family or my best friends. Tonight I shall write 3,000 words.

If the Carnival goes up (which it should), you'll find it at the Conflux blog. I'll give you a permalink and do the fanfare thing when the post is up *and* I have electricity back.

Tomorrow I promise to be nicer. May the niceness last until the electrictiy is back on!

Tomorrow you can't ring me anyway, in case you were wondering. My electricty will be out.

sartorias has an interesting conversation on the most craptastic advice given to aspiring writers going on here

linebyline
A writing prompt where members respond to single phrases and use them in their posts.

plants
A community for green thumbs, botany enthusiasts and lovers of plant life.

mst3k
The LiveJournal destination for Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans.

Today would be a lovely day if I lived inside a different body. It makes me wonder if I get extra brownie points towards something cool in my next life for tolerating the vehicle I inhabit in this one.

There is good news about my writing. The bad news is that the good news is all secret. I have three little secrets clutched to my chest. It's just like it was a few months ago, but with a new set of stuff in hiding. Of the three secrets, one is 100% definitive (or will be tomorrow night, when I can find someone to witness my end of the contract), the other is waiting for contract exchange and the third is terribly nebulous but in awesome company.

If anyone needs to contact me this week, avoid Wednesday. I shall be electricty-free on Wednesday. I plan to power up G'eeek (my laptop) the night before so I have a choice between writing or sleeping. I am not permitted to play computer games on G'eeek. I'll have leftover hot water, so I could always shower and do messages and buy some hot chocolate and sit somewhere comfy and read or write, too. I'm just not allowed to play computer games.

I don't know why I'm electricity-free. I had a letter telling me there would be no power and that it would last all day. It's one way to cut winter heating bills.

Last night was just a tad odd. It was almost entirely sleepless (see paragraph one) and little strange events plopped into my night, just like the sound of a slow dripping tap. My favourite was a receipt in Hebrew dropping out of The Egyptologist (which is the book by my bed this week).

I had been contemplating the feeling of personal betrayal. It probably won't apply to my fiction because I can't get it to work out without all my characters whining madly, but I was trying so very hard to make it work: the first word on the receipt read "Bitrei." Once I stopped and realised that 'bitrei' in Hebrew is in no way linked to 'betray' in English I felt less concerned about my life turning into a paranormal soapie. I also looked to see if I could actually understand anything else on the receipt. I could, but not much*. I could understand that someone had bought 2 books for 50 something. I could also understand that the bookshop is in Rehovot. That's the trouble with second looks: they turn something from strange into quite mundane. This is why I chose a dripping tap analogy. You start thinking you're being stalked by some sort of supernatural footsteps, then you wake up properly and turn off the tap.

*My Hebrew is marginally bether than my Japanese. My Japanese though, is way more colourful. To be honest, I have way too little of either, though what I have, I use with conviction, especially the insults.

Simon and Garfunkle sang that they were a rock. Hah! The truth is out, they are actually bricks. 

Lego Bricks 

An emotional day, from tears:
For I will always be your Mother;
And Keith will always be your Dad.

to laughter:
I can tell you all Max would have loved football, and he'd have been great at it, and he'd have hated math.

pride:
as they suported each other through this most difficult of days.

and love:
to see all my children together, hugging their brother when he most needed it.

Oh, but I want so very much to talk about the short stories I'm reading. I want to unintentionally mimic curious alignments of words. I want to gripe about the small things that could have improved a tale or the idiot things that make me laugh. I want to rejoice in the perfect turn of phrase and laugh at the affinity of ideas and worlds that I suddenly find that I share with some other writer whose name I don't yet know.

I can't, though. I have to wait till the other judges are ready and then we must talk discretely, privately.

What I can do is finish before Dr Who. After Dr Who I will watch more of ROD (another anime series Conor decided might suit me), which makes me entirely happy in the centre of my being. Also, I want to adopt Anita.

I've taken pain killers and rubbed balm on my acheing muscles and, now I know I have a virus can work right through it. Must work right through it. I have a lot to do this week. This is why I've instituted such a robust reward system.

I rested this morning and will rest tonight. This afternoon is dedicated to finishing the entries for the Conflux short story competition. Silently. Not being able to chat about it is battering bits of my soul. It's straining my mind, just as the virus is straining my body.

There's a justice in this. No-one outside the judging circle and the committee will know the results until October. This will most certainly strain your patience.

Who was the nice person who gave me a virus? I need to thank them. I also need to return all the symptoms: I'm bored with them already, you see.