I’ve been sick, and today is the first day I’ve felt well enough to actually work in far too long, so I’m beginning to chip away at the things I’d fallen behind on. One of those things is sharing reviews of my work. I got a new one for Shades of Green a while ago. The reviewer won a copy on GoodReads and she said, in part:

I liked this story, it was quick and to the point, and didn’t really need to be any longer. And it was nice to be surprised by the ending.

She gave it 3.5 stars out of 5, and her full review is right here at her website Spoilers and Nuts.

You know, I’m still not happy to be unemployed, but I am beginning to feel like my life is more under control than it has been. For the longest time I’ve been doing too much and trying desperately to try and figure out how to balance things and where to cut back. Now I’m getting things done and the other day I almost managed to do everything on my to-do list. I realise how pathetic that sounds, but it’s absolutely true. And it’s progress. Could be that I’ll go back to work sooner or later, but right now I’m truly enjoying feeling like I’m climbing out of the hole I’d plunged myself into.

We’ll have to wait and see if NaNoWriMo plunges me right back into the pit. It could happen. I have a basic premise for the story and one character and that’s it. Not exactly a strong platform to go into NaNo on, but it’s what I have so I’m going to work it. My plan is to embrace this as a chance to feel out the story and find out how to tell it. I don’t expect anything good but I’m not going to resort to any of the word-padding ideas so popular in November. We’ll see how it goes.

In other news, my poem After The Storm is up at Tales of the Zombie War. They have a comment option so you can tell me how much you hate it (Kidding, please don’t. I want you to like it. Like it, I say! :-p).

Finally, World of Warcraft has recently gone through a very disruptive patch. It’s been kinda crazy and overwhelming, in no small part because I have far too many characters with too many specs that I need to relearn how to play. Still, I’m muddling through. Right before the patch, however, I allowed my WoW nerdiness and my fiction writing to collide and snuck off to take a screenshot to share.

Please note, this screenshot is rather spoilerific if you’ve not read Shades of Green. Also, if you’ve not read Shades of Green you won’t likely find it very amusing, so click with caution.

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An important part of writing is being alive, and one way to extend my life (and increase the quality of it) is regular exercise. I am not a sporty person, I don’t like taking walks for the sake of the walk, or well, most exercise-y things. Still, I know from past expirience that if I establish a routine that includes working out I will do it, even when I don’t feel like it, and eventually my body will come to crave the exercise. I still won’t like it, but it will feel good as well as bad, so I’ll do it.

That makes me sound a little crazy doesn’t it? It’s true, but more importantly it’s a long way to go to get here: I need an accountability partner to help me set that initial routine.

I had one a while back and things were going great. We’d check in with each other every day and complain about how much our workout hurt (in this case it was The 30-Day Shred) or celebrate that it was getting easier. It was very motivating to me and on several days when I normally would have not exercised (and justified it to myself somehow) I forced myself to suck it up and just do it, because I knew my partner would be working out even though she didn’t want to.

Sadly my partner had an (unrelated) accident and a couple new developments that meant she has to take some time off working out like we were. Without her there to help motivate me, my working out also collapsed.

Jo is going to be my new accountability partner, but I thought I’d also put this out to the universe in case anyone else is interested in getting in on the ‘action’ I’ll be beginning to workout again on October 1st which gives you a little bit to talk yourself into doing this with me and dropping me a line (on either blog or email ). The more the merrier!

Also, there are only two more days left to enter the Goodreads contest to win a copy of Shades of Green:

Clicky, clicky. The more the merrier there too

Lastly, the image at the top is one I took of Danica the other day. I <3 the reflections in the bubble

I’m sick. I don’t do sick well, I turn into a whiny, sniffly, self-pitying mess. Good times! So I spent most of yesterday doing those things, which is why I didn’t get a blog entry done. Today I’m feeling slightly better, so I’m whining less, but still feel like I’m in a cold medication-induced brain fog. So, my blog entry is going to be a mindless and shameless self-interested plug. Forgive me?

I’m giving away a copy of Shades of Green at Goodreads. You should enter to win

/shameless plug

*sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough*

So, I consulted the random number generator and it chose a winner from the subscribers of my mailing list. It did, and I’m pleased to announce the Patricia W. will receive a free copy of Shades of Green just as soon as she emails me and sends me her mailing address. I have also dropped her an email to let her know.

Congrats Patricia!

Do you want to win a copy too? Like I said I’ll be running a contest closer to the release of Lost and Found to give away a copy of Shades of Green, but instead of having to like, think of something interesting to blog about, I’ve also decided to do another giveaway on GoodReads:

Also, if you use Goodreads and we aren’t friends there? We really need to rectify that Send me an invite, I would love to hook up with all my friends over there.

This poor story has gone through so much and so many names. The very first scene I wrote for it, the one that inspired the rest, was a meant to be a stand-alone story (it failed) called “What Makes a Man”. Then I expanded on the story and it was called “On a Mission”, then that story became a section of the novel-in-stories called “Swamp Story”, which was then renamed “Blood and Stone”. I eventually decided it didn’t work as a novel-in-stories and ripped it apart. This story got the title “There” with its sequel (which is now part of the same story) being called “And Back Again”. Interestingly, another part of that novel-in-stories was recently published as “Shades of Green”. But I digress.

I”ve got a new title. A good title. This tale’s forever title. For better or worse, till death…you get the idea.

The title is

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Book ratings are tricky things. I think the thing which contributes the most to their trickiness is time.

How much I (or you, I’m betting) enjoy a particular book has a lot to do with when I read it. How old I am, what’s going on in my life, what book I read just before it. These are all things that alter how I feel about a book. For example, when I set up my Goodreads account however long ago, I couldn’t stand having an empty virtual bookshelf but I certainly wasn’t about to go through and add every book I could remember reading. My compromise was for me to add the books from the shelf nearest to me (or maybe the two nearest me, I don’t remember). Adding the books was easy enough, but rating them was a little trickier.

Between about the ages of 11 and 13 I read a lot of VC Andrews. A LOT. I devoured them. Now, if I were to read them today I suspect I would like them only slightly more than I did Twilight, which is to say, not very freaking much. But I’d loved them then, so how should I rate them?

I think, in the end, I gave them 5 stars because when I read them, I loved them.

Thus, I say again, book ratings are tricky things…and if you look at my Goodreads bookshelf and the stars I gave a particular book make you scratch your head because it seems out of character? Remember that time totally has to play a part.

Book reviews are also tricky things. I am not very good at writing them but there are loads of people who are. One of those people is Fate, the blogger behind The Fickle Hand of Fate. Fate agreed to review Shades of Green.

Rhonda’s strength definitely looks to be in the area of plotting, (Twists! Reversals! A totally unexpected ending, but still a square peg in a square hole!) and worldbuilding…

Fate didn’t love it unconditionally, however. You should read her complete review here. She makes a lot of very good points, which I should totally address in another blog entry because this one is getting a bit long

Oh, and the picture? I took it. That flower is the result of some ‘blooming tea’. I like tea while I read…and um…yeah, that’s as strong as the connection gets to the content of the blog I’m afraid. It’s pretty though, no?

The lovely Lototy from Coffee Time Romance reviewed Shades of Green today. She gave it 3 coffee cups out of five. She articulates the issues she has with the story, the ending especially I think, but also has some nice things to say like:

The visuals in this story are most amazing, and keep you intrigued with the characters as well as their environment.

You can read her complete review by clicking on the picture above, or by clicking here

In other news, my friend Scott’s book BREATHERS is on the ballot for a Stoker award this year, and the award ceremony is this weekend. Good luck Scott (it’s not bad luck to say that, I hope). I’ll be thinking of you

This is Absinthe. I’m currently sitting on the sofa while I work and she is pressed up against my side being an adorable little purr-ball.

Shortly after I made my blog post yesterday Kari Wolfe from Imperfect Clarity posted an interview she’d done of me a while back. It might be interesting to you. You can see it here.

Also? I’m bad. I totally forgot to mention that I am giving away three copies of Shades of Green on Goodreads. You can enter to win by clicking here. Also, while you’re there why not friend me? My profile is here and I’d love to have some more friends over there. I really enjoy seeing what people are reading and quite often pick up books based on recomendations from my friends.

March is a crazy month around here. It really is and it always has been. My birthday and two of my siblings birthdays are all in March. Now that I’m a grown up (in theory anyway) it’s still frenetic. Jo’s birthday is in March, as are several members of our extended family. It’s also exam time at the university which means Jo is really, really busy at work. Between setting the exams, help sessions, supervising exams, marking them and answering loads and loads of student’s emails there’s not a whole lot of ‘down’ time. As if that weren’t enough, schools always seem to plan things for March; meetings, info sessions, student performances…

It’s crazy!

We’re halfway through though, which is yay!

I heard back from Clarion, they said thanks but no thanks. I also applied to Clarion West and am waiting to hear back from them with my fingers crossed. I’d prefer CW over Clarion, actually, so I’m not overly disappointed about Clarion. Besides, did you see who’s teaching there this year? I bet the competition was pretty crazy. Which is not to imply it isn’t for CW as well.

I will be disappointed if I don’t get into Clarion West, but not destroyed. This is a good thing. A very good thing. I want to go, but I don’t -need- to go. We’ll see what happens

While I wait I’m writing a lot. I’m doing a pretty good job of sticking with my plan to write each morning when I have my coffee. So far as a result I’ve got one poem, a pretty darn good short story and have almost finished another short. They are all first drafts, but since I find revising easier than getting the first draft done, that’s a pretty big hurdle. I’ll be sharing the second short story (in all it’s first draft glory, I’m afraid) with my newsletter readers…tomorrow. I won’t have time to finish it today.

The last (but, as they say, not least) thing I wanted to share today was this. It’s a review of Shades of Green, this time by an unbiased reviewer. Zeek from The Way I See It reviewed Shades of Green and, for the most part, he liked it. He said some nice things about the story, including that he enjoyed the world and could see how it would be the springboard for more stories, and also made me smile with this.

…there is much potential and its obvious the author has her craft honed already, so in the end this story gets a 3.9 out of 5 from me.

I like it when people think I have honed my craft. I know I have so much more to learn, but it’s wonderful to feel as though I’m progressing steadily.

Oh, and what’s with the picture of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco? Nothing. I took it last summer when we were on vacation and I like it. That’s all.