pluggity-plug

Whilst casting a shifty eye over 2013 and wondering how exactly I lost yet another year, I remembered I've had a few short stories published this year, all of which I forgot to mention here. So, in the spirit of catching up:

TIMES OF TROUBLE
From the lovely bods at Permuted Press comes this shiny e-book anthology of time travel tales, including my story, Let Me Take You There. I am proper chuffed to be included in with so many fantastic stories by fantastic people. It's a fab collection, even if I do say so myself.

THE BESTIARIUM VOCABULUM
An A-Z of monsters, beasts and freaks, from a stellar cast of contributing authors. And also me. :) H for Helicoprion features two of my passions, caving and prehistoric sharks.

THE HORROR EXPRESS VOLUME 4: 10TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
Likewise, I'm very chuffed that my story, Killers, has found its way into this anthology. The Horror Express has been putting out high quality fiction for... well, for ten years, like it says in the title. I was always disappointed in myself for not getting anything into the magazine, so inclusion in this anthology makes me very happy indeed.

I think that's all from 2013, although my memory is spectacular in its awfulness, so it's entirely possible I've forgotten a writing credit or two...

another year over

As we head into 2014, there's one question on everyone's lips: Where is my jetpack?

Seriously though, aren't we supposed to be living on the moon by now? This is not the technicolour future I'd been hoping for.

On the plus side, we're still here, the world is still turning, and the human race hasn't managed to accidentally or intentionally snuff itself out (yet - there's still a day and a half to go, I suppose). There have been some ups and some downs, as is life, but we've got a bright shiny new year ahead of us, full of promise, and until we pop the seal on the Schrodinger's box of 2014 we have no idea what it may bring us. It's a lovely position to be in, with the coming year so alive with potential, and I'm sure it'll remain that way until we stumble out on the other side of the bank holiday and realise that the new year looks suspiciously similar to the old year.

But regardless, best wishes to you all for 2014, hope it brings you everything lovely in life. Including jetpacks, if at all possible.

Nano, Nano

So, November then.

November is a busy month. It's Movember, for those of us with the ability/desire to grow ridiculous facial hair. It's Thanksgiving for our American friends (and also for us lucky few who have American friends over here that're willing to cook for us). It's my birthday month. It's the commencement of late night shopping and switch-on of Christmas lights and making mince pies and getting pestered about whether you've started your shopping yet. And, of course, it's NaNoWriMo.

This is my sixth year doing Nano. For six years in a row I've given up my November to write a novel.

Okay, that's not entirely true. For a start, I don't really give up that much. I'm supposed to be writing every day anyway, so really it shouldn't be that tough on me to actually, y'know, stick to a schedule. That said, writing every day is tough, even if you're used to it, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or delusional, or just one of those insufferable people who breeze through everything they do.

The other thing is... 50,000 words is one heck of an achievement, but is it a novel?

I've noticed they've changed the Nano website so it no longer infers that your 50k November-words should be one self-contained novel, but rather encourages you to work on more than one short project, or add your November word count to an existing work in progress. Which, I have to say, is probably sensible. There're only a limited number of genres where a 50k novel is the norm, especially if you're looking at publication. And trying to cram a novel into too short (or too long) a word count is never likely to work.

Something else I noticed from the site is some interesting statistics. I can't find the direct link to the page now (typical) but, for example, the most successful part of the world in terms of total word count and also average word count per participant is... Germany. Huh.

Less surprising on the stats page is that 62% of the worldwide participants this year are Nanoing for the first time. And I think that may be indicative of an inherent problem with Nano - it's difficult, and it's not for everyone. People coming to it for the first time, especially if they're not used to writing regularly, might well find it tough, get discouraged, and drop out. For every person who crosses the 50k finish line, I'd bet there's at least one other who gets so discouraged they decide the writing thing just isn't for them.

As a comparison: There's a walking competition on the Island here, called the Parish Walk. It's a circuit around the Island, totalling 85 miles, that passes through each parish. The circuit has to be completed in 24 hours. From my point of view (sitting on my spreading behind in a comfy, comfy chair) this sounds a lot like madness. 85 miles? A whole day of walking? Over some of the most up-and-downy roads we've got on the Island? Madness.

Yet people do it. A whole bunch of people. There're three people in my office alone who've completed it, and one fella who's come in first on four separate years. I know another woman who did two laps of the course, one after the other--170 miles in 48 hours.

And a startling percentage of the population have taken part at least once. Even me.

One reason why I reckon it's so popular is that finishing the whole 85 miles is not the be-all and end-all of it. There are checkpoints in each parish, and you can pick your own goal--the full monty, the half-monty, or just the first checkpoint if you fancy a five mile stroll. People will walk to beat their previous times, or to go that one parish farther. (Also, it's a massive social event, with spectators coming out of their houses to watch and give you biscuits, and one year there was a beer stall at the top of the steepest slope, but I digress.)

So, my point, if point indeed I have, is that you've got to set your own goals, and you can't look at what everyone else is doing. Yes, some bugger is always going to come in far ahead of everyone else. But they're also the bugger who's out training every evening while I'm at home watching Masterchef. We can't all "win"... unless we define our own parameters of what winning is, and why we want to get there.

Don't get me wrong. I love NaNoWriMo. Like I say, this is my sixth year of participation, resulting in five completed novels and one large messy chunk of rubbish that makes me wince every time I look at it, and I'll hopefully be right here again next year. But, really, it's a pain, isn't it? I'm knackered, my house is a mess, I'm sick of looking at this stupid story, and I had to write on my birthday (I know, diddums). On the plus side, I've got ninety percent of a book, which is more than I had on 1st November.

So... sorry, this seems to be another blog post where I just complain without making any kind of solid point. Big hugs and congratulations to everyone who's taken part in Nano this year--even if you didn't "win", you still won, and don't let a website tell you differently.

Also, it's December on Sunday so we're officially in the run up to Christmas. Blimey, that snuck up on us, didn't it?

"You're Superman... and you're not going to save me."

A bit late to the game, I know, but we finally caught up with Iron Man 3 last night, and were pleasantly surprised. I think it helped that my expectations had been set so low, just by virtue of this being the third in a series, that I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

(as usual, movie discussion = spoilers, on the off chance I'm not the only person who hadn't seen it)

A few things I especially liked: One, it was set at Christmas. When was the last time we had a Christmas action movie? I'm looking forward to watching it on a double-bill with Die Hard. Two, the movie anticipated our expectations being low. It introduced the cliche of the middle-eastern bad guy, and we just groaned and rolled our eyes, because what do you expect from the third in a franchise? So when it played its cute little twist, it was a genuine and pleasing surprise. Three, it had a precocious kid who didn't make me want to throw things at the TV, which is a total rarity.

Also, it had one sequence I really liked. It was the utterly ridiculous stunt where Air Force One gets depressurised and all the presidential staff get slooped out at ten thousand feet. Again, I liked it because it confounded my expectations. As soon as the civilian-slooping started, I thought, "that's a bit harsh, what have those poor incidental characters done to deserve that?" because I figured they had already been written out of the script. I expected Tony Stark to maybe save the plane then continue his search for the president. What I didn't expect was for him to jump out of the plane and save everyone.

Why not? After all, it's exactly what a superhero would do. It's exactly what we should expect from a superhero. And yet... so many superheroes in recent movies have become worryingly blase about human life. Too often, incidental civilians die without anyone giving them a second thought. As much as I loved Avengers Assemble, how many people died during the awesome final battle? What about the end sequence of Star Trek: Into Darkness? And don't even get me started on Man of Steel.

So it was surprising and refreshing to see Iron Man acting like a superhero and rescuing the eleven hapless civilians, even if it was one of the more ridiculous sequences in recent times (I was also tickled when, on watching the special features, we realised how many times they had to shove those poor stuntpeople out of a plane in order to get the necessary shots).

If you want my opinion (and if you don't, why the heck are you reading my blog?), superheroes are, by definition, more than human in physical terms, and therefore, it's what they do (or don't do) that defines their humanity. Clark Kent spends half his life working a nine-to-five job and being normal, even though he obviously doesn't have to. Bruce Banner has to literally struggle to be a person rather than a monster. If you're a mutant, how can you prove to yourself and the world that you're still human at heart?

One of my favourite issues of Garth Ennis' superlative Hitman comic involved Tommy Monaghan meeting Superman. It was a coincidental meeting, on a rooftop in the Cauldron. Supes was, at that time, agonising over a recent incident where he'd gone to rescue a space shuttle that was about to explode. He had saved the shuttle and all of the crew... except for one astronaut, who he'd thought was already lost. By the time he realised the man was still alive, trapped outside the shuttle, it was too late to save him.

The story illustrated that Superman can't save everyone. But he has to try, because he's Superman, and if he fails, he has to at least acknowledge the fact that he's failed. Superheroes can't be careless about human life, not if they want to retain their own humanity.

I'm on my soap box a little, so I'll stop, but this is something I feel quite strongly about (not sure if you can tell). We shouldn't be surprised when heroes act like heroes. Shane Black apparently gets that. Someone needs to go tell Zach Snyder.

I'll lend them a big stick to reinforce their point, if it helps.

so, farewell then

It looks like my beloved old website might be ceasing its existence, mostly because I can't really justify spending $130 renewing it this year. I'm not sure what this will mean for the site, but I suspect it may be going offline shortly. Which is a great shame, since I've had it for over ten years now. But on the other hand I haven't exactly been using it to its full extent. Certainly not to $130-worth of extent.

So I've spent my weekend hurriedly downloading the various content off the site and saving it to my hard drive. To be honest, I've not used the site as a proper website - I've used it as a dumping ground and/or backup area. Sorting through it has been like dragging boxes out from under the bed. You never really know what's in them.

I've mentioned that I'm a hoarder, right? Turns out it applies to virtual content as well.

In the assorted boxes of my old website, I've found a vast and varied array of crap. There are at least three of my trunk novels, for a start, which were at one point (shamefully) available online but which had their links disabled some time ago. There're also hundreds of pictures, drawings, scraps of writing, webcomic pages, and random things I'd completely forgotten existed.

I'd forgotten, for example, a series of semi-fictionalised stories I wrote ten years ago about me and my friends, featuring an account of the time I attempted to ask out the man who would later become my husband. Boy, I'm glad that's still in existence. I'd forgotten most of my WWE fanfiction. I'd forgotten I spent a period of time dressing up teddy bears in hilarious costumes and making a calendar of them.

It's taken me approximately six hours just to download all this random content. How many hours did I put into creating the site? It's just ridiculous. Especially considering that the majority of it wasn't accessible to the general public, it was just a mess of untitled pages and dead-end links. I'm considering copy-pasting all of the stories, fanfics, terrible poems and the rest into one big document just to get an idea of the volume of word count that's there.

I've always argued that you need to write a million words of crap before you start doing anything good. My old website might be the proof of that.

So, anyway, it looks like it might be farewell to the old applepastie site. On the plus side, it may be the impetus I need to create something better. Something I might update every now and again.

Although, I suspect if I got a new site, the first thing I would do is to upload all the old crap back onto it so it's not cluttering my hard drive. Because, hoarder.

visiting sunny Los Santos

So, we've just finished GTA V. Don't worry, no spoilers - if you've got this far without being told anything about the ending, kudos, I won't spoil it for you.

I'm a big fan of the GTA series. It's given our household hours of entertainment, shared memories, and occasional moments of trauma (the last instalment made my husband phone me at work to have a cry, for example). We've all thoroughly enjoyed V. For myself, the jumping physics were worth the price of admission alone. Running up to a fence, attempting to jump over it and instead catching your shins and face planting into the concrete? Never gets old (except maybe when it happens during a crucial moment in a chase sequence).

So it feels churlish at best for me to complain, especially when my complaint boils down to... where are the girl characters at?

Accusing GTA of misogyny is like complaining the sea is a bit wet and smells of fish. It's kinda what it does. But still, by this point in time... no playable female characters? No significant female characters at all, in fact, who aren't wife/girlfriend/daughter, and also highly shrill and annoying? The male characters are equally unlikable, granted, but they're also hella-fun to play. So, Rockstar, what's your excuse?

Girls don't play GTA? You're not even going to try that one. Anyone who brings up that argument can go stand in the corner with the "Games Cause IRL Violence" crowd, because your reasoning is just as valid. Girls aren't our target audience? Okay, that feels closer--let's face it, the target audience for these games always has been and always will be 14 year old boys, or those who are still 14 years old in their hearts (and their pants). But, extrapolating from that, are you inferring boys don't like girl characters? That they might put down a game because it's got a female character in the lead? I'm not sure that argument is going to fly either.

Girls are less interesting as characters because they don't act like Trevor Philips? I think we can call shenanigans on that as well. I know plenty of women who are (hypothetically) capable of drinking, fighting, stealing cars, or passing out drunk on beaches amongst the bludgeoned corpses of their other party-goers. Hypothetically, as I say.

So what's up? I don't get it. And, I know it's not a major point in the grand scheme of things, but with the amount of effort Rockstar go to building worlds and realistic characters and interesting missions and Trevor Philips, would it really be so difficult to write some female characters into the game? When I saw the poster art of the woman being arrested by the female police officer, I was really hopefully for this instalment. I would've liked to see someone like that running amok in Los Santos.

Will this prevent GTA V taking the coveted Game Of The Year trophy at the Rakie Awards 2013? Ehhh, it's possible. More likely it'll either be the ridiculous, repeated, unnecessary use of the N-word, or the existance of Bioshock Infinite. But misogyny doesn't help, that's for sure.

poetry break

Procrastination

I love to write, I do, it's true
But there's so much else I need to do
With children and housework my schedule's tight
I don't have the time to just sit down and write
Hours are long, concentration is tough
Excuses are easy; self-discipline's rough

"I don't feel well, I'm far too tired
I cannot work when uninspired
The dishes need doing; the ironing too
This pen is the wrong shade of blue
The day's too early; now it's too late
I cannot work with Windows 8
My chair's uncomfy, my desk's not right
But Breaking Bad is on tonight...
Before I start I need to plan
As much plot detail as I can
I need to research, plan, rewrite
Procrastination just feels right

And what is this life if without care
We can't sit in our underwear
And drink a beer and watch TV?"
A novel's so much work, you see
Ten thousand hours we might spend
On just one work, and at the end
Who knows if it will be a fright?
Who knows if we will get it right?

Now the sun is out, the sky is blue
There's so much else that we could do
Than sit inside and type and stare
(Though sometimes in our underwear)
At half-filled pages and dead end plots
And character arcs tied up in knots

It's so much work, this daily grind
Procrastination suits me fine