Jump to content

Blogs

Featured Entries

  • Cia

    Weekly Wrap Up (Sept. 20 - Sept. 26)

    By Cia

    While the Wildone is away, you get Cia to play. Okay, so I'm totally not playing. Saturday was my day of getting stuff DONE. Chores, laundry, errands, kidult stuff, the hubby took his dad to a funeral 2 hours away and had my car, it's fall so I made homemade chicken pot pie and then there was a SPIDER on the CEILING and my son told me to get it. I almost had to kill him. It. I mean it. The spider. Then he did it like a good son who is NOT afraid of his mother. 😇 Sunday is for fun though. My daug
    • 4 comments
    • 32 views

Sunday, bloody Sunday

10am I was dragged from what I vaguely recollect being quite a nice dream by the damn telephone. I'd got to bed around 4am after being suckered into clicking on a pop up ad that took me to a site for laser eye surgery - facinating, but sleep would have been healthier. So I shamble to the phone and it's M my 'soul mate', you know, the one I want to shag senseless but am too frightened to ask.   We were supposed to be at a car boot sale (English 'boot' = US 'trunk') at midday. This basically inv
Camy

Camy

2

How long should a story be

I am frankly amazed at how some authors produce huge quantities of quality writing week after week, so I googled and thought I'd post some facts from Lee Masterton's article: 'How long should should your story be' Short Story 1,000 - 7,500 words The 'regular' short story, usually found in periodicals or anthology collections. Most 'genre' zines will features works at this length.   Novellette 7,500 - 20,000 words Often a novellette-length work is difficult to sell to a publisher. It is co
Camy

Camy

1

Buxom Babes

I've spent a good portion of the last couple of days thinking about the form of the human body and why it is that I'm attracted to guys rather than women? I love women, and to use a cliche a lot of my best friends are women, but...   I work with a bunch of people I really have nothing in common with, which is annoying. In the UK we have a paper called 'The Sun' and on page three everyday is the naked breasted babe with coyly arranged knickers hiding nothing. The paper is left (I get in late so
Camy

Camy

0

This week David Gilmour is my God

Since it seems to be de rigueur to have a track of the day, which btw I think is wonderful, I thought I'd waffle on about my album of the week. And definitely in my list of all time favourites.   I'm obsessed with Pink Floyd. Always have been I guess, though this week I'm hugely into 'The Division Bell' Two songs in particular both fit the me of now, and the lifestate I'm in.   'What do you want from me?' is the first, especially the lines: Do you want my blood, do you want my tears What
Camy

Camy

1

A sad pre-Easter tale

Yesterday.   Half way through a boring day at work my other half phoned. She was in floods of tears. We live in the country and one of the four cats, Percy (Sir Perseus Plumb-Puss, a big black bruiser of a softy) had brought in a baby Bunny. Alive.   I arrived home in trepidation. I'm the man (chortle) and as such, and if required, I'm the bastard who has to put poor defenceless beasties out of their misery. Spiders I don't have a problem with: Glass on top, magazine beneath and then a swift
Camy

Camy

3

Why Blog?

I've been sitting here looking at a blank screen for nearly twenty minutes, and it suddenly struck me why? why do I feel the need to blog - as neat a euphemism for cathartic soul cleansing as one could hope for. Now the Church is in decline, perhaps blogging is the only true confessional left to us. Not that I've ever been to confession...   I blog because I think I have something to add to the day to day 'diary' of my life. But why here? Well... I feel safe here, in that I can say things abou
Camy

Camy

2

Hey, look, over there! It's Elvis!

Bah. Characters are a pain. I should be working on the rewrite of the last two chapters of Yankee, or on its sequel, or on Wild Life, or even (gasp!) actual Real Work. Instead... instead I'm cleaning out someone's basement. Metaphorically, at least.   At least this thing should be shortish, probably about as long as Firegrass was.   To tease, here's a bit of the beginning of this untitled thing:   Untitled Story   "William," Ben said, his voice thick with accusation. "What did you do?"
TheZot

TheZot

0

Sunday drear and damp

It's raining. It's miserable, and yet I'm ok, when to all intents and purposes I should be as miserable as the day.   I've got so much to do, and I can't get my head around any of it. So here I sit loitering, reading blogs, and trying desperately to find something to take my mind off reality.   I work, amongst other things, building websites. I have updates to three of them, yet it's Sunday, and I'm playing the 'Lords day of rest' card. Come tomorrow I know I'll probably regret the wasted ho
Camy

Camy

2

Colliding!

I got tapped to write a chapter of Collision, the round-robin murder mystery thing that a bunch of authors are working on. Chapter 14, "Running to Stand Still", is up on AwesomeDude, DeweyWriter, and CRVBOY. Enjoy.   (Amusingly, there's been exactly one piece of mail about it so far, asking when chapter 15's coming out, and that showed up about an hour after chapter 14 went live...)
TheZot

TheZot

3

It's a bad sign, but of what?

I'm not entirely sure which is the worse thing, the fact that iTunes has an unnatural fondness for the KMFDM in my music library, or that I find it fits my mood. One or the other's probably worrisome.   At least it's interspersing Evanescence occasionally, just for a change of pace.
TheZot

TheZot

0

Coolness and Delight

Birthdays are very peculiar things. When you're a small they're wonderful. You get STUFF, often a party, and mostly people are nice to you... You can get away with an awful lot of mischief too!   Then you get to a point where the Birthday becomes... a weency bit of a drag. You celebrate because you feel you should rather than wanting too, and you often find you're celebrating to make other people happy; and honestly, that's just perverse.   That's where I was: 'Jaded' would encapsulate the f
Camy

Camy

2

Inspiration comes from the strangest places

Yesterday was, on the whole, a crap day. Which was kind of strange, because it was also weirdly productive.   The crap part was entirely personal, as we took my dog to the vets and had her euthanized last night. This wasn't something that was unexpected -- she was 16 and had a slowly progressing neurodegenerative problem that was destroying the myelin sheathing around her nerves, and over the weekend we hit the point where she had no control in her hind end and only spotty bladder and bowel co
TheZot

TheZot

0

The B Season

The local Birthday season starts in just under five minutes. All my friends appear to be either Pisces or Aries... Is this odd? I must start reading horoscopes. Possibly. Anyway Tomorrow/Today it's me. According to my stats here I shall be 100. That's old! Gosh.   Camy (the old)
Camy

Camy

2

Sunday

OCD. Hmm. Both Kevin and Patricky think they have it, and I just wrote a reply on Patricky's blog saying it was all twaddle. Then it crossed my mind that I have it too!   Whenever I go to the beach I have to find a stone with a hole in it. I mean it's not a total compulsion, but I do get annoyed if I have to leave without finding one. Luckily there are lots of stones with holes in them, otherwise I'd probably need a straight jacket.   This 'stone with hole' thing started a year or so ago. N
Camy

Camy

2

Rocky Mountain Oysters

I was trying to think of another name for this blog: I ponder a lot, and really 'A bunch of Balls' wasn't doing it for me. So I googled, as you do, and damn me if the truth is worse than any of my putrid mental fictions.   Those who live in the good old US probably know already that Rocky Mountain Oysters are Bulls Bollocks cooked and apparently eaten with a side helping of Chips. I was, and still am frankly amazed, and feeling rather squeamish.   Yelch. Real Oysters are bad enough.   Cam
Camy

Camy

5

Art, science, and craft

Or "On the nature of writing". Or something like that.   I figured it was time to stop just bitching about the things in my writing I'm not happy about and actually start doing something about it. It's too late in the semester to sign up for a writing class at the local community college, but it's never too late to read about writing, so I've started.   A while back I picked up a copy of "Characters and Viewpoint" by Orson Scott Card (on the recommendation of The Pecman, who wrote the storie
TheZot

TheZot

2

Points to ponder.

I need an editor. I thought I probably might need an Editor at some point but after reading some of the excellent prose on this site, and having read a lot of utter twaddle elsewhere it finally struck me that one of the main differences was Editor. With Editor good, without bad.   So now I want one, how to go about it? I know there is a thread about the subject, and having read it I'm no further forward. It seems to me that the relationship between Author and Editor is a bit like a marriage...
Camy

Camy

3

After A comes C, right?

So I finished the draft for the story that I've been currently blocking on (if you were in chat the other night you got to see me ambush Dio and Myr -- sorry guys. And no, the Jell-o pictures will never see the light of day ever! ) and sent it away to be poked at by folks who're good at poking things. I've already gone and fiddled with my index page to give it a spot, along with teasing about a few other stories in the same series that are in a sufficient state to figure they will be done, even
TheZot

TheZot

2

I have this picture in my head, see...

And I just can't get the !@#$ thing expressed right on paper. Or screen. Whatever. You know, actually written in writing. I hate that.   This may be the biggest problem I have as a writer, actually getting into words the things I see in my head. I can't draw them, so all I can do is describe them, and, well, words just fail me. Or I fail them. Something like that.   Feelings I can do, I can manage mildly poetic cadence that'll carry you along, and I'm pretty sure I can amuse, but damn me if
TheZot

TheZot

4

Blogging Schizophrenia

I'm rather like that parrot in the Monty Python sketch. I'm pining, but not for the fjords. I want... I want some defining person to enter my life and tell me that it's really all going to be OK.   I blog here (well duh) and elsewhere too. Here I am probably as whole as I can be, in that I'm reasonably happy to discuss my sexuality; or as happy as I'm going to be anywhere I guess. However, and here's the rub: I can't be completely 'me' without talking about what else I do, and that scares the
Camy

Camy

5

Albert's Day - Chapter 4

Albert's Day Chapter 4 This chapter contains my first real attempt at writing a sex scene. It was hard (pun definitely not intended) really hard, and I am amazed at how long it took.   I have a few notes I thought I'd share... Though please don't let them put you off reading the story.   1 - Never ever EVER write in the third person. It makes everything so much harder than it has to be. 2 - Here's an idea. Work out a plot before beginning 3 - Frequent shorter chapters are better than lo
Camy

Camy

2

Albert's Day - Chapter 3

Albert's Day Chapter 3 is up for its sins.   I was trying to work, and all I could think about was the story. I've come to the conclusion this is probably not good, but it is necessary. After all, characters, whether in real life or fiction, have lives; and those lives are important... Especially to the one writing them. Fail and they die; not on the page necessarily, but in the readers heart.   I've said that I hate serials because you never know 1) if the writer will bother to finish it, a
Camy

Camy

4
×
×
  • Create New...