images...

Copyright 1939 Walt Disney Productions

Yesterday was a crap day, for various reasons, and above is an illustration of my self image at the moment... Today hasn't started well either, for a whole bunch of other reasons.

But in an effort to fight the forces of darkness, today, I will be mainly concentrating on...

This!

This!

And this!

--
Telly: thing about alchemy
Chocolate: as much as I can get my hands on
Mood: bloody
Writing: hope to be doing some...
Reading: Passion by Lisa Valdez
RSI/FMS: loads of it


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

****! Torturing myself with my bad reviews....

In the course of foofing about with setting up some Amazon aStores, I came across some scathingly abysmal reviews of one of my slightly older books... and needless to say, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Now, I freely admit that I'd defend a person's right to express their opinion with the last fibre of my being *and* I also freely admit that the book in question isn't one of my best... in fact, it's probably pretty much a pile of pooh. If it were me though, I'd just turn away and not bother to review... but as an author, putting my work out in the market place, I've just got to suck it up and smile if others do choose to review unfavourably. One has to accept that reader reviewers are providing a service to other readers - by preventing them wasting their money on substandard books.

Note to self...

Must.do.better.

Must.raise.my.game

Ah... chocoate beckons...

--
Telly: snooker
Chocolate: Frys Turkish Delight
Mood: fine until I went to Amazon
Writing: brainstorming Gothic Heat
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

foofing with my camera again...

Been foofing around with my camera again, trying to get a decent headshot... and out of around a hundred snaps, this was probably the only where I look like a human being rather than a mutant alien with a retrograde IQ... You might notice that, as ever, my glasses seem to be on a bit skew whiff... This always seems to happen, and I think it's because my ears are attached to my head at different heights! They're wonky! The thing is, though, that I don't actually wear my specs all the time, just for working... but I can't see the swingout LCD screen on my camera without them, so all my self taken piccies tend to be bespectacled ones!

ack, now they've done it... the snooker is on!

The World Snooker Championship is being held now, at the Crucible in Sheffield, and I'm going to have a hard time not letting it take over my life for the next couple of weeks! I'll be particularly interested in the progress of the unexpected contender shown above. More information about his prowess at The Man Who Fell Asleep.

Although I haven't actually laid down any text of Gothic Heat, I have been having some good plot and character ideas for it over the last couple of days, including a couple of lightbulbs at around 1.30am this morning, just after we turned out the light for the night. Luckily himself was fast asleep, because at least twice, I had to put the light back on and scribble down some notes. There's no way I would have remembered my bright ideas without writing them down...

--
Telly: snooker
Chocolate: lemon drizzle cake
Mood: okay
Writing: brainstorming Gothic Heat/proof checking Watching The Detective
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: general soreness


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

last day of the 'holidays'...

Well, I've been moaning and whining about having no focus and not knowing what project to work on next, haven't I? Well, now I know... and am going to have to extract the old digit and get my enormous posterior into gear!

Received an unexpected phonecall from my editor this morning, for a chat about various book ideas my agent had sent to him. We batted various plot bits to and fro, and the upshot is that it looks like I'll be doing a sequel, or linked book, to GOTHIC BLUE! Now, please remember, nothing's set in stone yet, but the new title is provisionally called GOTHIC HEAT and will be out next year...

In GB, one of the supporting players, Paula, has a brush with the baddie, the sorceress Isidora Katori... and some time after the action of the first book, Paula discovers this incident had a more lasting effect on her than she's realised. In deep trouble, she seeks help from bad boy professional mystic and sometime new age con artist Rafe Hathaway and together they go in search of answers at the mysterious Sedgewick Priory... which seems to have disappeared into a kind of English Bermuda Triangle. I only have these bare bones of a plot, as yet, but one or two v. interesting titbits are already beginning to bubble...

Editor and I also talked about a fun and very naughty contemporary, to do after GH is in the bag... and this one will be the escapades of a librarian who drawn into a web of sexual gameplaying by an enigmatic admirer who sends her lots of outrageous notes and emails and text messages... My idea is that this book is loosely set in my Stoneworld universe, and familiar settings and characters may well pop up in the course of the story...

So, in honour of finding out what to do next... I've done absolutely nothing at all today!!! But, like I say, this is the last day of doing nothing, as I can no longer afford to fritter my time away...

Tomorrow's to do list includes:

• check proofs of my story Watching the Detective
• web design for a client
• couple of invoices
• send parcel to a prize draw winner
• develop proper outline of Gothic Heat
• read stuff on mysticism, tantra
• begin rereading Gothic Blue so I know what I wrote in it
  
• try not to panic and run around waving my arms about!
  

--
Telly: Sea of Souls
Chocolate: lemon drizzle cake instead
Mood: good
Writing: thinking about Gothic Heat
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: bit sore, not too bad


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

something else to worry about

Well, Mulder is continuing to do well... no probs with her. She's eating well, her stitches don't seem to be bothering her and she's quite her normal self! What a relief!

I, on the other hand, am doing terribly... as usual... My to do list is a mile long, I'm achieving v. little to nil, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be writing next... same old same old...

And this morning I hear news of yet another damning report about a medicine I've been taking for a long time. More cancer scares... sigh... Sometimes you really just don't know what to do, do you? To fix one problem, you create another... health is just one great series of knock-on effects... the entire human constitution is like a plate balancing act. You move to correct a wobbling platter, and somewhere else, another starts to teeter or drops off the pole entirely.... At least that's the way it feels to me, and I know that I'm far from the only person who's struggling to keep everything spinning! Not by a long chalk... There must be millions... billions of us out there trying to stay on an even health keel against the odds.




--
Telly: not yet
Chocolate: not yet
Mood: peed off
Writing: not yet
Reading: not yet
RSI/FMS: aching all over


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

She's home!

Everything went smoothly. No problems. Nothing sinister in the little cyst they removed. She's supposed to take it easy and have just a light meal tonight... and the photo above is of her having her fifth light meal since she got home!!! She has three little stitches that have to come out in ten days, but as she doesn't seem to be paying much attention to them, the vet says she doesn't need one of those giant collars... Which is super, because she's such a tiny thing that a whopping great collar would be quite an encumbrance for her.

It's so lovely to have Mulder back... she's only been away since 8am this morning, but I still missed her!

--
Telly: documentary about Herod the Great
Chocolate: Tesco Belgian Milk
Mood: okay
Writing: none
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: bit sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Please have a good thought for....

MULDER

My little baby has just been taken to the vet for an operation... It's routine, to remove a small cyst on her chin that has been gradually growing for several years. But I still worry and I hate that she has to undergo an ordeal. She's such a character and a precious little mite, and it's been particularly hard to have to starve her overnight, because as you can see from the above she really, really loves her food! Hopefully, though, the op will be relatively minor and go smoothly and she'll quickly be back on top form, eating everything in sight, and possessed of an elegant super sleek chinline again!

I'm guesting again...

Read an interview with me today at:

Dark Ice Goddess' Musings

Many thanks to Nicole for inviting me to her blog. :)


--
Telly: CSI:NY
Chocolate: Tesco Belgian Milk
Mood: out of sorts
Writing: nothing
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: quite grim


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

The name's Gump... Forrest Gump

I'm really on a Casino Royale tip at the moment... am watching it over again. I'm loving Daniel Craig in the role too, but here's a Bond I would quite like to have seen...

The name's Da Costa... Portia Da Costa

Well, I've finally watched the new James Bond movie... months and months after most people, of course, but I can't remember the last time I actually went to the pictures. I always wait until the DVDs come out...

I am very impressed with Daniel Craig as Bond. Which isn't what I expected. I was quite fond of Pierce... I thought he was the best bond since Sean and I really wanted to see him continue in the role. When I heard he was passing on it, I must admit that I then wanted it to be Clive Owen, because he's got the 007 look somehow... I was shocked when I heard it was DC... and I just didn't see him as Bond, because of the hair, I suppose, although I'd seen him on the telly and in films and rated him as an actor. But he's great! He's a rough, craggy, rambunctious Bond, forever getting bloody and battered... and really very, very cold at times, in a totally appropriate and very ruthlessly sexy way. I like it that he's a universe away from the burlesque Bond of Roger Moore, although I enjoyed the Moore Bond movies in a comedy relief sort of way. There was nothing of the Bond books in those movies, but there is in the new version of Casino Royale in an updated sort of way. Although I think there's slightly more humour in the books somehow... Book Bond can be quite droll at times, but DC's Bond is more sardonically humorous in a very hardcase and bitter way. I also liked the judicious and relevant use of modern technology. It's utilised in a very real world sort of way, a bit like it is in the Bourne movies. [I do love Bourne... and Matt Damon is faberooney... but he's just that bit too pretty for a deadly killer... although maybe that makes him a more effective deadly killer, 'cos you don't expect it!]

What I'd like to see sometime is a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service with Daniel Craig as Bond. Sorry, George L. but you were never Bond for me [and for a lot of folk, I guess] and that's a shame, because the story was very good, with more scope for exploring the emotional side of Bond.

ps. don't forget to slide over to Lustbites and comment, eh?

pps. lisaf... where are you? There's a prize with your name on it if you send me your snail mail addie!!!

--
Telly: Casino Royale
Chocolate: Tesco Hazelnut
Mood: okay
Writing: not today...
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

posting at LUSTBITES again today

I'm here!

Sweeter Than Wine

Please nip over, read and leave a comment if you feel so inclined. There's a chance to win an ebook download for the commenter picked out of the hat!

I may be back here later in the day... with some thoughts on Casino Royale - the movie rather than the book. Am watching it in teabreaks... and am v. impressed!

--
Telly: Casino Royale
Chocolate: last of my easter egg
Mood: goodish
Writing: thinking about a contemp idea
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: bit sore, not too bad


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!