I’ve wanted to get a decent camera for a very long time now. I finally did it. I bought a Nikon d60 this weekend. I’m told it’s a pretty good camera for a photography newbie, and I definitely fall into that category since I haven’t used an SLR camera since photo class in junior high. I picked up an extra lens for it (haven’t started playing with it yet) and also an inexpensive digital camera for Danica to use. We’d been talking about getting her a camera for a while now so we could stop buying disposable ones for all the times we wanted her to be able to take pictures and hearing Jay Lake mention an urban photo safari with his daughter spurred me to action.

It was kinda yucky out today so Dani and I had to change our planned expedition to a neighbourhood park and just hang out in the backyard. It worked out pretty well though, we each got to get to know our cameras a bit better and take a few shots. I’m very, very pleased with my camera and I have a few shots to share.

The obligatory dog picture. I was going to start with a shot I took of Dani, but I figured a good ‘Wow! Dog!’ response would grab your attention and hold it while I showed off my beautiful little girl and a bit of our backyard. So this is Atreyu, my dog. We call him Tre. I love him.

Danica, who I also love. Even more than I love Tre, but don’t tell him that. It would make him sad. Dani’s eleven. Maybe it’s just my parental fear talking but she looks older than eleven to me in this picture…and, quite often, just in general.

(more…)

Belinda McBride is having a Halloween in May event at her blog and on her mailing list. All month she has been having guest bloggers pop by and write about paranormal expiriences, Samhain or Halloween. I am lucky enough to be one of those guest authors.

Yesterday I was scrambling to find something to write about because I’d forgotten that the topic was meant to be Halloween/Samhain/Paranormal themed…which meant the topic I’d planned to write on wouldn’t work. Wewps. It all worked out in the end, though.

Halloween has always been important to me, so I talked a little bit about that and how what it’s meant to me has changed through my life. Please, take a look if you’re even vaguely interested All comments left on that blog entry (on Belinda’s blog, not mine) will be entered into a draw to win a copy of Sister Margaret.

On a sort of related note I’m curious. If you have received a free copy of Sister Margaret from me and I sent it to you via Fictionwise, did you get it? I’m asking because I’ve given out a fair number of e-books that way and still there are only two reviews for Sister Margaret on the website. If people just aren’t giving reviews that’s fine, but I really want to make sure that people are getting the copies I’ve promised them.

Right, so yes, I’m blogging at Belinda’s today. Check it out by clicking here. Thanks

I’m the memoirist of the day over at SmithMag again today. Yay! You can read my six word story here if you’re interested.

Wheee!

Now I’m off to think of something to write for the guest blogging spot I think I’m doing tomorrow. Should be fun. Wish me luck LOL

I really wanted to love this book. I truly did, but I don’t.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I am wildly crazy in love with the movie…and the book is not the same as the movie. At least not yet. I am at page 160 out of 280 and the main character from the movie has just appeared in the book. This doesn’t work for me. Even if the second half of the novel is the same storyline as the movie, it won’t work for me — because I don’t like knowing all about the zombies before we go into that part of the story.

The descriptions in this book are beautiful…well, often grotesque, but beautifully-written. For example (warning, profanity and ya know, horror-y stuff below:

“What the fuck? Hey! Is somebody in here?”

Les grabs one of the plastic jugs. The side has been cut away. Les turns the opening upward. It holds a crazy tiara of stingers; bright, gleaming needles fill the space. Never touch us, don’t even look at us for very long. When the door opens behind him, Les swings the jug, releasing a swarm of tiny missles across a man’s face and chest. The needles grab skin with their tips, and some, pushed by the weight of other  syringes, are plunged deeper. The view from inside this man’s body would appear something like the night sky in the city, thousands of stars becoming visible. In the countr, millions. One of the needles slides precisely into his tearduct, destroying its tiny architecture before burrowin far enough to permanently ruin the man’s ability to narrow his eyes. This particular jab also causes the man to flip a gun out of his hand. The gun slams heavily against the back of the toiler, cracking it, and then spins halfway around the rim before being carried to the bottom by the weight of its handle. The man collapses against the wall, disbelieving — you don’t just do that — and he watches Les retreive the weapon from the bowl.

The first thing to exit the gun is a twist-tie drool of toilet water. The second is a speeding bullet.

I love it. I really do. In fact, the descriptions are so fantastic throughout this novel (at least what I’ve read of it) that I would happily forgive it for not being the movie I adore and enjoy it on its own merits…if it weren’t so much work. Now, perhaps I’m biased because I’m struggling through a literature course for my degree right now. The stories and poems I have to read for it are work. I don’t understand much of them at first reading and have to re-read and re-read and then read interpretations of them. It’s work. I suspect that course is also influencing my enjoyment of Pontypool Changes Everything because it too, requires some work for me.

This is why I’m only giving up on reading it for now. I hope to come back to it in a few weeks or months and read it and see if I like it better, but for now, it’s work.

I thought, at first, maybe I’m just not smart enough to get this, but Jo said it was work for him too, and he’s pretty clever, so…maybe it’s just meant to be confusing…or work…

In the morning, children in full hockey gear skate across the purple and red ice, weaving around an obstacle course of tan corpses. Several of the dear stand frozen, and the children cut down all but two. They become the opposing nets of a makeshift hockey rink. A heart thawed over a small fire is used to draw the centre line and goal creases. A great deal of time is spent disembowelling the baby creatures so that their frozen feces can be used as pucks; however, having never eaten, their little bodies are as clean as packaged straws. The children settle for the mother’s hoof, which twists off easily.

Again, another beautifully-written grotesque scene…but…is it real? Within the story I can’t tell if this is meant to be read literally or if it’s meant to be a metaphor for something, or if Tony Burgess just thought it was awesome and had to include it. I, too, think it’s awesome, but it confuses me. It’s how a chapter starts…and right after this bit the story switches to something completely unrelated and this deer/hockey scene isn’t mentioned again (that I can remember off-hand). I just don’t get it.

So again, I hope to come back to Pontypool Changes Everything sometime sooner rather than later and I hope I can write a glowing review at that time, but for right now I’m mostly just left scratching my head.

…I think I may have figured out my crossposting problem — I was making things far more difficult than they needed to be.

That is, if I HAVE figured out the issue.

Wish me luck.

ETA: It worked! Yay! This means if you have been following my Rhonda Parrish blog on LJ via the rss feed you don’t need to do that anymore. Wh00t!