Getting on a bit.

Whilst listening to the radio this morning, a terrible thought crossed my mind: in not too long a length of time I shall be beyond the age range for club 18-30 holidays. Gosh! That makes me feel old. It seems not long ago that I was only just coming into the bottom of that range at 18.

What happened to the last decade or so? Where has all the time gone? I remember as a small child the summers seemed to go on forever. It was a very long way between Christmases. Now time just flashes by. I've been trying to work out why this change in time perception occurs. It does, after all, seem to be a common perception. The best I can come up with is that when you are two or three years old, each year equates to the equivelent of a large percentage of your previous life, so seem a lot. Once you get past twenty or thirty, each year is a much smaller percentage equivelent of your entire life, so therefore appears to pass faster because there are more memories of previous time to refer to in your mind. Or something like that.

I just get annoyed that there never seems to be enough time to do all I want anymore. I feel old.

The morning after the night before.

Last night's reading went extremely well. It's the first time I've been asked to read my own work in public, but despite being a little nervous at the start there were no hitches. I got complemented on the charectorisation, the suspense in the story as well as my very clear reading voice. All-in-all a good evening, and I've been asked back to do more in the future.

I think next time I might do a reading of part one of 'Daytrippers' as this sort of lends itself to this kind of reading. I've also learnt that 11,500 words of 'Bringing home the stars' took around one hour and eight minutes to read, so the 23,000 or so words of part one of Daytrippers should be about two hours if I do a little pruning. Or I could read it in two halves.

The reading was recorded and one plan is to make the recording available as a download on the website. This may be done as the whole recording, or a part of it as it has been suggested that the recordings could be made avaiable as a recording on CD or as a *.mp3 for sale.

State of the Jenny address.

Firstly, a very quick reminder about tonight's reading. The piece will be 'Bringing home the stars' and a copy of the text is now available as an ebook. The reading begins within Second Life at 9:00pm BST. Details available in a previous post on this blog.

Other changes today (it's been a busy day) have been the uploading of a new short story to the portfolio section. This is called 'The walls have ears'. I wrote it a while ago, but it is now presented here for you to read. Incidentally, if you cannot find the link for the inventory of the entire portfolio's contents, there is a link here which also appears hidden away at the bottom of the portfolio page.

The Biography page has been updated, with a new link to 'Bringing home the stars' as well as the updated details of the cover of 'Countdown to Extinction' as well as a sneak preview of the new cover for 'Homo Superior'.

I've also found time to do some more work on my new short story. Other things including a practice run of the reading have stolen time from it, but I managed approximately another 1,000 words.

Enjoy tonight's reading! See you there.

Reading of my work.

Yay! A notice has come through about the reading I'm doing tomorrow:

Group Notice From: Harriet Gausman

SUNDAY: 1:00 PM SLT

Jenny would like to premiere her sci-fi/horror short story, 'Bringing Home the Stars'. It's a little like the film 'Event Horizon', to give you an idea of what she was aiming for with the story.

PLEASE SUPPORT JENNIFER AS THIS IS HER FIRST LIVE READING AND WE ARE ALL HERE TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER AT MILK WOOD.

GATHERING HELD AT THE ROOST, MILK WOOD MARKET

I'm reliably informed that 1:00pm SLT is equal to 9:00pm BST (8:00pm GMT). See you there!

Back in the saddle.

It's been a while since I sat down and wrote something completely new from scratch, rather than working on old things and - increasingly these days it has seemed - editing books that were written a while ago. So it is something that I'm relieved to be doing to be writing something completely new.

I'm not entirely sure yet whether it is a book or a short story. My feelings were originally that it was going to be something no longer than around 10,000 words. However, things change, and already this new piece has grown to 1,750 words just in its opening bit. So I'm wondering now whether it is actually destined to be a novella instead. Perhaps even a full-blown novel?

When I begin writing things, it can be very hard to know how long it will become. I usually have the basic idea and a few of the plot twists, but I find as I write, many other things suggest themselves. A handful of my books were intended to be books, but the rest actually grew out of short stories which when I started them I never knew that they would become so long. In fact, my longest book - 'Orb of Arawaan' - started life as a short story that remained that way for quite a few years before I finally settled down to finish it. It then grew and grew and ended up in excess of 140,000 words. So you just never can tell.

This piece is called 'The long summer of war' and is an idea I had back in my very creative period earlier on this year when I was churning out short stories at the rate of one or more every week. I had this idea, born out of a dream, where xenophobic islanders have to welcome outsiders during wartime who they see as trying to usurp their jobs and their way of life. The piece centres on the difficulties faced by those moving in, as well as the hostility of the islanders. Thrown in for good measure is the relationship between the outsiders and one of the islanders who overcomes the peer pressure to be xenophobic to grow to get on with the newcomers. Or something like that.

At the moment time seems to be very much at a premium though, and I just don't have the time that I would have liked to devote to this. So I'll do what I can when I can and have no firm completion date set. Anyway, I firmly believe that no fiction writer can set themselves a firm deadline and ever really expect to meet it unless they give themselves a stupidly long time (four years to write a book is not a real deadline!).

I'm also wanting to get another short story on the portfolio section of the site. I have a few in reserve that were written a while ago that have finished doing the magazine thing. I have in mind to put up some time this month one called 'The walls have ears' that I'm sure I've mentioned before. Next month's will probably be the short but sweet 'Spending a Penny'. I give no guarentee though that I will make this a regular monthly thing. I'm not actually a big fan of writing short stories, so you are more likely to see me end up tolling away on another long book manuscript.

Tonight though the 'day' job beckons, so my time at the keyboard is being curtailed, unfortunately. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll get some more done. But then it is a busy weekend with family visiting, Zoë's birthday and the reading of 'Bringing home the stars' on Sunday: don't miss it! Details on http://www.jennifer-kirk.com

Of revision and new editions.

The last couple of weeks have been busy on the writing front, although that may not have been entirely apparent from my bloggings. It has not so much been new material, as revisiting older stuff and finally getting around to editing out errors and anything else I wasn't quite happy with.

The most obvious result of this work will be seen as the new edition of 'Countdown to Extinction' whose edit was, quite frankly, long overdue. The book was originally written a few years ago - I actually forget when exactly. It is book two of the Syndicates trilogy, though in a curious manner which I may have mentioned before, the third book was written first, followed by the first then the second. They were published in order though. The third book, 'Syndicate Dawn', underwent a major revision before publishing and the original version (which was significantly longer) has never hit the bookstands. The first two though were published with only little tampering by my editor of the time who was hired after a curious encounter in Henley.

I've never been entirely happy with the text of these two books, and after undertaking a major revision of book three before its first publication I resolved that maybe it was time to revisit old ground. Some of the feedback received for 'Countdown to Extinction' had revolved around the errors in it. Grammer was an issue, to be truthful.

Writing is like any other activity. It gets better with practice, especially if you are a professional author. By the time my sixth book was accepted for publication, the first few were looking a little amateur in my eyes by comparison. 'Daytrippers', being very short, got the first makeover though outwardly there was no change to the cover. 'Countdown to Extinction' has conversely taken a lot of work. One section that I was never happy with was cut from near the beginning of the book, and several other sections have had rewrites. I've also done a comprehensive overhaul of all the text making sure that spelling and - more importantly based on feedback - grammer was one hundred percent. Now, English is not an entirely rigid language, but sometimes there are just better and clearer ways of saying the same thing. I also have slightly better understanding of the uses of a semi-colon; they're more than just one half of a winking smilie face!

I've also taken the opportunity to ask the wonderful cover artist who did 'The Atlantic Connection' to do a new cover for it. Perhaps now it will look significantly more like a sci-fi novel and less like a biology or gardening textbook. The original image was picked very quickly, by the way, when it became apparent that the artwork I wanted from the start would be prohibitively expensive to have scanned; it was a large oil painting. Royalties and copyright wasn't an issue, but you try scanning at high resolution a painting that measures nearly eight square feet!

The reading I'm doing on Sunday can now be done in the knowledge that at least if people were to feel motivated enough to buy copies of my work off the back of it, I would feel less embaressed about some of my earlier works. There is also a plan ultimately to release 'Bringing home the Stars' as the title piece in an anthology between myself and another up and coming author. It would contain a variety of short stories not available in print at the present time. I am also wondering whether to include a few of the short stories that subsequently became expanded to form the basis of some of my other work. Sometimes it might be nice to see where books came from, ideas-wise.

Some might wonder how I can have such free reign to fiddle with my books after they are published. Well, that is the beauty of Print On Demand (POD) that is rapidly taking over in the publishing World for all but the bigger selling books. The system means that books are held electronically until an order is placed, then printed on a digital press one at a time. The end result is slightly more expensive than a mass printed book, though in looks is indistinguishable from it. The advantage is that some poor sap at my publishers doesn't have to justify a warehouse filled with thousands of copies of my book.

POD should not be confused with vanity press. It isn't. It is a different way of printing a book made possible by the advances in computer and printing technology. A vanity press simply takes an author's money to publish books. I, thankfully, receive royalties back from my publisher and it didn't cost me anything. That's the wonders of proper publishing for you. Of course, the ultimate vanity press is paying another author to write your book for you. I have little time for Katie Price (aka Jordon) who I believe did just this. It is sickening that just because she is a celebrity the book World fauns over her, when in a move of ultimate hypocrisy, they usually look down their nose at vanity authors.

New revision finally done for 'Countdown to Extinction'

I have just completed the new revision of 'Countdown to Extinction'. It's been a long time in the pipeline because of other work and writing commitments, but I've finally been through and made all the corrections and edits that I wanted. I suppose it comes with the territory that writing is like anything else: the more you do it and practice, the better you get. I look back now on my earlier stuff and see all the flaws. Hopefully the revised edition of 'Countdown to Extinction' goes some way to making it a much better book. It isn't as extensive an edit job as Terry Pratchett did for the second edition of 'The Carpet People' but at least I can be happier with it now.

The next job will be the cover. Zoë is handling this, and as long as all is ready for the start of the weekend then all will be on time. That way it all should be ready in time to tie in with the reading I'm doing on Sunday of 'Bringing Home the Stars' (see earlier post). It also gets another job that has been on my to-do list for too long. What's next underneath in the pile?

Of time and next Sunday.

Gosh! I seem to have had a lot to moan about of late. So I thought that maybe it was time to say something about positive stuff.

As you well know, there is an upcoming book reading on Sunday the 21st of September (see previous post about it for details). I've decided I ought to combine the run up to this with trying to finish off the revision of 'Countdown to Extinction'. I've talked about the plans before. They involve a revision of the text as well as an all-new cover. The original cover artwork I never liked. It looked too much, in my opinion, like a biology textbook. So the same talented artist who did the cover to 'The Atlantic Connection' is going to also have a go.

I've been very impressed by some of her CG style artwork, which in some ways has a similar quality to the partial CG look of some of the covers to the Gollancz SF Masterworks series. We've talked a little about what to have, and she has a couple of ideas. We'll see what comes together before the weekend; it's scary how fast time goes.

I still need to do a few practice read-throughs for 'Bringing Home the Stars' for Sunday. I want to be ever so familiar with the text so that I'm not prone to stumbling or losing my place. I also want to check that it sounds right when read aloud and that there are no points where I find flaws in the text that don't read well. It did go through extensive editing though, so hopefully at least this aspect won't be a problem.

There is a plan to put together a book of short stories from both myself and Zoë Robinson under the over arcing title of 'Bringing Home the Stars'. Whether anything comes of this idea, mooted some weeks ago, remains to be seen. I need to complete the next short story that I have been working on though to have enough material for my half. Again, it is all about time. I don't know where time goes, but it seems to dribble away like water in a seive. Or some other such metaphor like that.

Today is the last day of the holidays, and it seems that already there is so much to take up my time. I need to be able to cut back down to three or four days on the 'day' job, but at the moment it seems I am feeling obliged to work every hour there is. Oh bring back the first half of this year when I seemed so productive on my writing!

Of all the cheek

Inevitably upon the return home from a few days away, there is a mound of mail waiting to be opened. This trip prooved no exception. Strangely, for a change, most of it was for me. Unsurprising, much was junk mail. How do they know I live here? I have made a habit of telling most people and organisations that I live at my parents' house, yet the junk mail follows me around. I can only deduce that the council has sold on my details, contrary to the Data Protection Act, without my consent.

One of the letters was from a literary agent who I had cause to write to. How disappointing to receive in reply a form rejection. Of course, that seems normal these days from such people, but in this case they stooped low enough to be named and shamed for their unprofessionalism.

The Blake Friedman agency appears to use their form letters to attempt to sell books by their clients. Apparently they have a stash of them they are trying to sell. Now how amateur is that? Not to mention galling. What a bunch of unprofessional time wasters. Now, I was offered my first three book deal back in 2002. Whilst I do not have an agent (because they seem a fussy bunch reluctant to do anything other than accept a dead cert licence-to-print-money - and even then only maybe) I do not appreciate the hard sell from an agency trying to sell their own books about "how to pitch to a publisher". Teach my Grandmother how to suck eggs why don't you? I already know, and with six books under my belt, I'm already successful enough in my own little way thankyou-very-much. I might not be bestselling just yet, but at least I'm not a timewaster trying to con young hopefuls into buying tat. Well, at any rate, their form letter prooved amusing.

All those successful authors turned down by a great many short-sighted agents over the years spring to mind. Enid Blyton, Stephen King, Joanne Rowling.... It's a long list that prooves that the publishing World has more than its fair share of visionless people who really ought to know better.

A change of plan and annoyance at the back room tosswits destroying the sport of F1

The holiday didn't go quite as planned, because the caravan site called on Thursday morning to say they were very flooded. Well, how nice of them to bother calling on the previous week when the flooding occured instead of trying to waste our time by calling on the morning of our arrival. What were they expecting us to do with our booked off time at such short notice? What if we had travelled early to call in at places on the way? I have to say that I am not impressed with the attitude of those running the site for that reason.

As it happened we were about to leave when the call came through. A hurried call around several other sites in North Wales revealed that they too were either flooded or fully booked. In the end we decided to leave the caravan and head north to Durham to visit the soon-to-be in-laws. It's been a nice few days, if truth be told, and we've had the change of scenery that we needed as well as visiting family.

As I settle down awaiting the Italian Grand Prix this afternoon, I cannot begin to express my disgust at the tosswits who decide to cheat the results behind the scenes of Grand Prixs. After Lewis Hamilton legitamately won last race (and I've rewatched the footage several times and agree with most people that he did not cheat) the tosswits have decided to change the results. What other sport would tolerate faceless imbeciles changing the results afterwards? Can you imagine football fans tolerating watching a match only to find out the following day that the team that lost actually won? I think not.

For me this is another nail in the coffin of F1. I only hope that in the court case fighting this bullshit on the 22nd the Judge thoroughly slaps down the FIA and fines them into oblivion for their deceitful cheating of the results after the races. This isn't the first time that these imbeciles have tried to destroy the sport for what appears to be their desire to cheat the results. Have they a lot of money riding on bets for the Ferrari drivers to win the World Championship? Are they so incompitant that they cannot see that the world regards them as fools intent on destroying F1 as a popular sport?

I digress :)

Has it really been twelve years?

This weekend is my first proper holiday in a very long time. I think the last holiday I went on was to Tenerife, and provided some of the inspiration to parts of some of my books. But that was before I was even at University; 1996 seems for some reason to be a year that springs to mind.

We're only going to north Wales, but as Zoë has never been to Wales at all, it's all new to her. At least we don't have to go through the pain of baggage reclamation and the like because we're driving out there. We're even taking our accomodation with us hitched to the car's towbar in the form of a caravan, so it isn't like the living arrangements out there are subject to being disappointing.

I have to say, I am looking forward to it. It's only five days, but it will be nice to be away with Zoë for the first time in a situation that can be called a holiday. There's plenty to go and see out there. We picked a site by Caernarfon because it was easy walking distance to the town, the Welsh Highland Railway, the castle, and was a short drive from Llanberis, Snowdon, the Ffestiniog railway and Portmeirion.

Hopefully the weather will be nice, though September can be changeable. However the rest of the Summer this year has been very little to go by, so it can't exactly get much worse. Fingers crossed it's good.

How to snub your sister - step one

This weekend has been upsetting to say the least. It was my little sister's wedding, and as a mark of how much it seems I am appreciated in the family, I was the only immediate family member who had not been asked to be involved in any way. My older sister was the chief Bridesmaid, and the Groom's sisters were asked to be flowergirls - they never held a flower, but they were asked so that they felt a part of the family and that they meant something to my sister. There were other roles for other people; friends and other family members. But I wasn't asked to be any of them. It seems everyone else meant enough to her to be asked, except me.

I cannot begin to express just how cutting that insult, whether intended or not, was. I was left feeling like a third hand and a hinderance that was unwanted within the family. There's a not really a lot to say about the empty feeling of seeing every member of my immediate family on the top table together, whilst I get relegated to a table at the back for the wedding breakfast. Some of the Groom's extended family did not even realise there was another sister. I felt like a distant relative.

I refuse to believe that none of my family realised that this was going to make me feel unwelcome. It would be a snub in any family to leave just one sibling excluded from everything. People I have talked to have all said it seemed strange that my sister would leave just me out in this way. If it was a genuine oversight by her, then why did no-one mention "Won't Jenny feel put out by being the only immediate family member left out of everything on the day?". You know, even one of our cousins was asked to do a reading in the church. Am I really so distant a relative to my own family? No-one even thought to smooth things out beforehand by talking to me and perhaps giving a reasonable explanation as to why I was being left out. There might have been a reasonable explanation, but no-one bothered to tell me. I was left to feel like I was being shut out. The message being sent was received as "Jenny is the only immediate family member who doesn't mean enough to her sister to be asked to be involved". Anyone else in the same situation would have seen it as the same.

It did not help that the venue for the wedding breakfast and evening event was the worst hotel I have ever come across in all my time of travelling the country. Now, I don't normally drop names. I think that's tacky, and looks like I'm either hinting for freebies, bigging myself up or just trying to score cheap points on the internet. But in this case I'll make an exception because I would not want anyone else to suffer a similar bad weekend. Steer clear of the Holiday Inn in Bolton, because being mugged offers a better experience and value for money than staying there.

There was supposed to be a member of staff directing traffic, because of problems with the car parks being overfull. He apparently could not be bothered to do his job, so around forty cars of guests were left milling around driving through overflowed carparks with nowhere to park. It took us over an hour to find somewhere, only to find that the carpark had to be vacated by 6:30pm. The hotel staff seriously were expecting guests who had paid for a room, and were supposed to be going to a meal with wine and champagne to not drink just so they could spend the evening intermittantly shuffling their cars around. After complaining, I got a space in the staff carpark, but it wasn't much help to many other guests.

The vegetarian starters that were ordered didn't appear, even when asked several times. The serving staff seemed more interested in fobbing the vegetarians off by quickly placing prawn cocktails on multiple occasions in front of them, as if they might get bored of being vegetarian. They served me mushrooms in my food, despite being notified before hand that I had a mushroom allergy.

The room we had was apparently 'executive' but I only dread to think how bad the standard rooms would have been. The interconnecting door into the next room was left unlocked when we arrived and was only locked when I complained. The air conditioning didn't work, and the heating seemed to be stuck on at a sweltering level. Despite Bolton being a soft water area, the cold pipes were disgorging scum-laden and discoloured water. The room had a double bed, but was laid out as a single (one towel, one set of drinks, one biscuit, etc). The light in the bathroom was also suffering from electrical buzzing noises and flickering - one not to touch with a bare finger. Last but not least, the bed seemed to slop inwards from both sides, making it uncomfortable for two people to sleep in. I managed a grand total of three hours sleep, though a further four hours were spent trying to get cool and comfortable and failing.

The breakfast bar was poorly placed, ensuring that staff with hot plates of food and dirties were forced to push their way through the queue at all times. Several of the tables were also swamped by queuers - I would not have liked to have sat there. There were also, like the parking spaces, too few places for the people coming down to eat from the rooms. The hotel felt like it had the facilities for a hotel a quarter of its size. The one plus side was we complained so bitterly that we were promised by the hotel manager a full refund. It still was not worth the stay for free. I cannot reccomend the Bolton Holiday Inn under any circumstances. I will also be avoiding any Holiday Inn too, just in case they are all bad, such was the poor experience.

All in all a rubbish weekend. Made to feel superfluous by my family. Was I not deemed by my sister to mean enough to her to be asked to be involved? Everyone else it seems was deemed to mean enough to her to be asked.

Lost: One Summer. Answers to the name of Mr. Biggles.

The last couple of nights have shown a downturn in the only aspect of the weather that has been remotely summery. The heat and humidity have gone, to be replaced by a cold Autumnul nip in the air. So that was our Summer then? I think we had no more than half a dozen days over the entire year where you could safely say the weather was like a real Summer.

Last night I slept wearing a jumper. It's something I do when the weather gets colder, and it works. I have several big comfy jumpers that are really comfortable to wear to bed and not too hot or scratchy either. When the weather gets even colder still, I leave my socks on as well. It works. Especially in this climate of gas being ridiculously over priced, it means in more practical terms that we can probably last an extra month before the central heating is required again.

I think we had a barbecue or went to a barbecue no more than three times, and at one of those the weather turned a little damp in that traditional British way as soon as we lit it. Where did the Summer go? I think it decided to take this year off and go out to Abu Dhabi to top up on its tan? After all, it must be nice to get a change of scenery. It's like when there's a bank holiday, why don't the banks head off to the beach with a creak of masonary and a jangle of those pens on chains they have? I certainly would.

We were going to go into Manchester today, but a quick snap poll (involving looking out of the window and seeing the weather) meant that we've cut things back to just going into Bolton. I have an eye examination there at just before four anyway (just routine, no need to worry) so we decided we can probably do everything we want within walking distance of home. At least then we won't get quite as wet. Or at any rate; that is the plan.

I want a particular piece of what Zoë laughably describes as my 'train porn'. That is, I collect model railway stuff. It was something my Father managed to get me interested in when I and my sisters were very small. I suppose faced with three girls, he had to try really hard for his excuse to have a train set to play with. Luckily for him I took the bait and have been interested ever since. There is a small yet expensive shop in Bolton, but these days it works out cheaper than the cost of petrol to drive to the cheaper shop in Burnley or paying for it to be posted from Liverpool or Sheffield. In my office there is an oak chest (family heirloom - it's made from timber salvaged when a tea clipper was broken up in the 1930s in Hull). It is literally full with model railway locomotives and wagons. Occasionally I get them out to play with them. More often I add bits to them. The chest is long since full, and I have crates on top of the wardrobe now. There is also a small model railway which was photopgraphed for an article in the magazine 'Model Rail' though I have yet to see it in print.

We also want to browse books (you can never have too many books!) and I need more underwear. I realised the other day that some of the stuff in my smalls drawer dates from as far ago as 1998 (though, I should add, not all). When I was 19 I suppose some of this stuff was considered pretty sexy when I was out doing the student thing on the pull at parties in short skirts. But I tell you; red lace knickers are a tragic sight when they've spent ten years travelling intermittantly through the fluff cycle on the washing machine.

Short story reading now confirmed.

Firm details on the reading of my work:

Jennifer will be reading her short story, Bringing home the stars at Milk Wood in Second Life on Sunday 21st September at 9pm (UK time - 1pm Second Life time). She would love to see you there.

Book reading moved and a cushion on the throne.

First things first, a bit of housekeeping before I get on to today's rant. The Second Life book reading of "Bringing home the stars" has been put back by two weeks to the weekend of the 20th/21st of September. The reason for this is because my publicist insisted on having extra time so that proper advertising for the event can be put in place. Something about "maximum exposure" was muttered, so I leave these things in her capable hands.

Yesterday a little habit I have got me thinking when I caught myself doing it yet again. As a little background, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and one of the things I obsess about is toilet hygiene. Zoë will testify to this fact. I tend to be very uncomfortable in using a toilet until I have used it a few times. One of the worst things I find is having to use a public toilet when out and about.

In my travels I have had to use more than a few skanky ones. You remember that scene in the film Trainspotting? The 'worst toilet in Scotland' scene? Well, I've found a few that try to come close to that. The ones that make me despair are the ones that have a little sign saying: 'these toilets checked every hour'. What does the checker do? Have a look around then go back to their boss to say: "Still swimming in piss; no need to add any more".

Some of the worst offenders have been in some of the places that you would have least expected it. The toilets in the Morrisons distribution centre by the goods inward desk are really bad. I never went in, but the stench that leached out around the door and the tails from white-faced punters as they exited were enough. Other supermarket chains are not exempt. Sainsbury's at their Haydock distribution centre have one that is so bad that some-one has had enough and cocooned the door with 'Danger - do not enter' signs and a note saying the bowl was blocked and brimming over with crap. I hate to think which group of skanky idiots went to the effort of brimming the bowl up with their turds; that takes effort to be that fetid.

No matter what, if a toilet is useable or has to be used, I always then start my OCD ritual. First thing is wiping the seat with some loo roll, in case of any surface splashes. Then I lay out a seat of yet more loo roll so that no part of me actually has to touch any part of the toilet seat. They I use another piece of loo roll to protect my hand from the flusher - well, people who have just wiped their bottoms were touching that.

I wonder if I am not alone. Does anyone else go to such trouble as to lay the loo roll cushion out before they sit down?

"Bringing home the Stars" reading

New update:

Second life at 7:00pm on this Sunday the 7th. I will be reading "Bringing home the Stars" which is a sci-fi/horror story which is completely new. More details to come! Hope to see you all there :)

How much?!

I love it when I am so right in the face of a crowd of doubters. Huddling in Wakefield in a little shelter as the rain sluiced down hard and the jagged forks of lightning marched across the sky, One man commented forlornly that his car was in a carpark at the other end of the site and he was going to get soaked. I pointed to the sky and told him that the harder it falls, the shorter the squall. He didn't believe me, but I told him to wait five minutes, as the sky was lighter in the upwind direction. The whole crowd swore blind I would be wrong, but I wasn't. Sure enough, the rain eased and the clouds parted and sunshine ruled the evening!

I get to go to some interesting places in my travels. Yesterday I went to a factory where they prepare fresh fruit salads for supermarkets all over the country. Now, usually refrigerated factories stink. It's a sort of gone off milk smell that is foul. But this one smelt (I suppose obviously given what they were making) of fruit. It was very nice indeed. Over the years I've been to many places, but this certainly came joint first as smelling the best (along with a factory that made incense oils).

I filled my car with petrol last night. It's one of those things that I have to do with trepidation every so often. It's been a shock for the last year filling it up, since ever since I learnt to drive petrol was fairly stable at costing about £30 to top up my tank. Now it can cost wildly differing amounts up to frightning levels. For the last three monthsd I've been taking to putting £20 in and struggling on. It's less frightning that way. But next week Zoë and I are out to North Wales on a caravanning week, and we'll need a full tank to go so I squeezed the filler, watched the pump readout and hoped for the best. It clicked full at 24p under £40. Ouch! Still, it was just over half a tank, and I was wondering if it was going to be closer to £50. Petrol isn't quite £5 a gallon at the moment, but that's still a lot of money to travel given the rip off price and unreliability of public transport means that often car is the only serious choice. Don't get me started on that argument!

I also checked the tyre pressures. I think I may have mentioned something about this before. For years I've pumped car tyres to 32PSI and never thought any different. With high fuel prices, rolling resistance became more of an interest, so I read the manual for the car. It sits on sporty low profile alloys, and apparently these should be inflated to 40PSI at the back and 36 PSI at the front. For the last two weeks I have been trying these pressures, and it seems to run better. The only thing is that three of the five tyres (yes, I always remember to check the spare too - never know when you need it) lose pressure, though never lower than 32PSI. It means remembering to pump up the tyres every time I fill up I suppose.

I have noticed with the high fuel prices more people driving slower on the motorways. Only a select few arrogant arseholes still insist at travelling at warp speed. I too have curbed my speed, and totter along never faster than 65, and usually at bang on 60. Sometimes I think it is rather tragic that my 170bhp turbocharged and sportified monster never gets unleashed any more. I think on paper it is good for around 130mph+, but it's been several years since it went anywhere near there. I seem to remember though at that speed you could watch the fuel gauge dropping every mile.

Second Life book reading of "Bringing home the stars".

I've been asked about doing a reading of my work online. This is now arranged for some time on this coming Sunday, in the evening (GMT/BST). Time will be confirmed later on this week. It will be held in the online community 'Second Life' but the details are being handled by some-one else so I will post everything as soon as I know.

I had a choice of two things that immediately sprang to mind as suitable. One was to read part one of 'Daytrippers' and the other was to read my short story 'Bringing home the stars'. In the end I've been persuaded to read the latter as I've been told that something unavailable elsewhere might be good for interesting more people to attend. So the World premier of this piece it will be!

It will be the first time I've done a book reading of my work before. I've done a book signing (which was weird; very weird) before but that's about it. I'm going to spend some time this week familiarising myself with the text of the piece. It's around 11,500 words long, so it is shorter than part one of 'Daytrippers'. I'm told that readings usually aim for about an hour in leagnth, so I'll need to bare this in mind when I do my practice read-throughs.

Now, I used to work on radio as a presenter and a producer, so it can't be too bad. Because this will be being done in an online virtual World, I suspect that the end result will be that it will feel no different from when I used to pre-record stuff at home. I've also been asked to record the reading and make it available as a podcast through the website for those newfangled ipod things.

Is this going up in the World? As long as I don't make an idiot of myself then I'll be happy; I'm an easy girl to please at times.