It has been a very long time since I've been here, but I'm in a clearing out sort of a mood, and I thought I would tidy up my accounts on FF.net (how many years since I've been there!) and AO3. Some things written years ago hold up to re-reading, but many of them do not, and can stay hidden in their distant corners of the internet. I posted some ( Read more... )

(Excuse all the Blackadder references)

I was browsing in two large bookshops today, and both of them had a section (a labelled, discrete section, mark you) for Paranormal Romance. Am I so behind the times I have never noticed this sub-genre before? Or is it genuinely new? (And it's all brooding vampires being in love with you forever, yes?)

Also, it ( Read more... )

I am broken, I think.

I can't finish a book. Keep starting, keep leaving them and wandering off to stare at walls. Three on the go at the moment (A Clockwork Orange, The Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, Penguin History of the USA) and all are languishing under the bed. No attention span. I keep making lists, on the theory that I can organise ( Read more... )

Sometimes, you have to be quite ingenious if you are going to find the time to get your book read. There are hours and hours of reading in a novel (I would say six to ten, on average) and how do you fit that into a hectic modern lifestyle?

Some of my techniques include:

• staying up late - I can sleep after chapter 9.
• getting up early - I can get out of ( Read more... )

I have finished by Christmas shopping and cards, I have finished the first draft of my Yuletide fic, I am nearly finished my piercefic  entry; generally I have ticked off everything on my epic list of things to do.

As a pat on back - or stomach, I guess, - I made osprey_archer 's awesome cookies - which were incredibly awesome, I have to say. I am currently expiring of ( Read more... )

The winter is coming, the nights are drawing in, and that means I might actually write something constructive. What it probably means is I will moan about not being able to get outdoor things done, re-read old books, and watch TV. I'm watching Merlin on BBC One at the moment. If you suspend your disbelief (too clean! all so pretty!), it's great ( Read more... )

EDIT - of course, this is in response to the challenge at team_fen

My first instinct, of course, was to go for crack!fic, but I thought I'd go for a little science first. I wonder how much Scanrans are affected by the Midnight Sun, and also by the Polar Night. I bet three months of night gives you plenty of time to plan an invasion, and three months of ( Read more... )

I was reading an article about "coping with stress" in a magazine at work.
Not that I felt excessively stressed - I was in fact chatting to a colleague and trying to resist the box of chocolates on the counter. It was an educational piece; apparently "adaptive strategies" reduce stress and have long term benefits. These include;

• Using humour or ( Read more... )

I made a little pact with myself that I was only going to post fic on this journal, not ramble about my boring life. However, having had a rubbish day/week/month at work, and generally feeling blue, I went online, and what did I find? Wonderful icons that made me grin, courtesy of
( Read more... )

I've been going through a really intense reading phase recently...

The more I read, the more I realise how much influence older books have had, how the same stories are told in different ways, how the same characters crop up again and again.  If you've read Terry Pratchett, basically, yes, L-Space exists

"Poor Things", by Alisdair Gray draws on ( Read more... )