Blog Update

via maid-en-china

How's your New Year so far, dear readers? Mine's been good - I've been keeping up a solid level of editing work in the evenings, a bit more excercise, even some experimental cooking.

I've been shifting around the format of the blog a bit. I recently gave in to my Tumblr urges (you can 'follow' me here if you're a Tumblr user). I've been syndicating particularly interesting posts here, so blog readers won't miss out.

I'll be regularly 're-blogging' pictures, discussions etc that I find interesting. Anything reposted will contain links back to the original source. I'll also be scrapping the weekly poetry, because I've ran out of steam for that. The ease of Tumblr means updates will hopefully be regular, and fresh content will always be up on the site no matter how distracted I get by work or life.

There's been a lot of talk on the web about "blogger's burn-out", when people get worn out by constantly having to produce new posts. I enjoy sharing interesting videos, art, comics, news articles and whatnot, so by mixing a little more of that into the blog it makes life a bit easier for me.

As always, let me know if you like/dislike the change and drop me a link to your own Tumblrs, if you use them. If not, have you tried it? I initially disliked the fact that it's basically just blogs of people reposting content, without creating anything themselves, but it's grown on me as a platform for discussion - and it helps that the Tumblr system itself is ridiculously easy to use and syndicates quite smoothly with WordPress through Feedwordpress.

And, as a thanks for reading this far, have some Sherlock comics found on Tumblr:

“sherlock isn’t he dangerous”

“nonsense. he follows me around, he compliments my intelligence, he tries to bite me occasionally… the same as it ever was.”

Much more awesome Sherlock art can be found on reapersun's Tumblr. Some images are NSFW.

7×7 Links

As part of YA Highway's Roadtrip Wednesday, Colin D Smith and I managed to stumble into each other - and it was clear fast that this guy has blogging down to a tee. If you leave a comment on his blog, you're instantly part of this community of awesome people. It's great.

So of course when he selected me for the 7x7 Link Award, after searching my brain for suitable posts, I had to join in. For the award, you need to a pick a post from your blog for each of the 7 categories, and then award the 7x7 Link Award to 3 other great blogs.

Okay, let's give this thing a shot.

The categories for the award are:

Most Beautiful: This was the trickiest category for me to pick, because none of my blog posts are trying to be beautiful - they try to start discussions, or deadpan about events, but being pretty isn't really on their itinerary. I'm going to go with Blog Post to a Haggis - it rambles, but it does contain a nod to the great poet Robert Burns and it brings in a lot of people Googling for haggis. It's also inspired me to post poetry once and a while on this blog, because poetry is cool.

Most Helpful: Lauren Kate's Advice on Editing is a nicely-written, solid piece of professional advice that deserves more attention.

Most Popular: Exotic Sweets! Fancy Candy! seems to be answering a lot of people's questions about sweeties from around the world. It also brought me a step closer to understanding America's amazingness.

Most Controversial:  While it was mostly met with agreement over points that annoyed readers, my Fallen review managed to ruffle one commenter's set of not-so-angelic feathers:

WDF?? Y THE HELL R THEY PROPER DISSING TWILIGHT AND STEPHENIE MEYER. IF THEY DNT HAVE NOTHING NICE TO SAY ABOUT IT, THEN THEY SHOULDN’T CHAT!!!

And waaaay back in a post about a bad experience in publishing, I ended up in an argument with a commenter known as 'Cranky' who thought I was ungrateful for complaining about being screwed over. We declared handbags at dawn and the comment thread dissolved into beautiful friendship.

Most Successful: This is another category I'm having trouble with, so I'm giving this one to the Deep Fried Mars Bars Adventures. The success is that I survived those artery clogging things, with the bonus success is that I may have given other people the idea to try them.

Most Underrated: The time one of my foreign publishers tried to use Final Fantasy X box art for my book cover still makes me laugh. Another reason why writers should play video games. Lauren Kate's advice on editing comes in second place.

Most Prideworthy: Man, I'm just gonna say the whole thing. I love you, blog, and I love you readers. It's nice to yell into the void and hear someone chatting back.

AND NOW, THE BIG IMPORTANT PART - THE AWESOMESAUCE GUYS AND GIRLS I AM TAGGING TWEETING COERCING NOMINATING FOR THE AWARD:

Suitchef.com - The most dapper suit-adorned English chef you will find in Scotland. I'm being a git here, because I don't think he's got 7 posts up yet to nominate. Consider it a future goal, Josh? Also, his URL makes me think of sous chef and that's clever.

Ryan Graudin - This up-and-coming YA superstar writer is all kinds of awesome, with amusing video blogs and an uncanny ability to push herself to new levels of brilliance with every novel.

MissAdventure - Is that URL also a pun? I am fairly sure it is, and I am impressed. Kate's posts are smart and helpful in ways that will make you want to cuddle her across the internet. She writes YA, and when the fateful day comes that her works get published I will celebrate all night long because when I read her work, her characters stay in my head forever after.

Now I'm off to tweak this site's theme, draft a few posts, lurk some wonderful blogs and hate my own hesitation when it comes to finishing the final act of my latest manuscript revision. I think I've gotten so hung up on the structure of acts and climaxes and the oh-god-everyone-else-is-better-than-me that I've frozen up. Still, if I keep chipping away at the writers block I'll get through - and I've scribbled 'WRITERS WRITE' on my notebook so many times I might as well get it tattooed.

Stephen Fry on Language

Our moving-in today got pushed back a week. I'm not impressed. Here's an awesome video.

Stephen Fry discussing language, and grammar pedants. I'm guilty of grumbling about a lot of these, but as usual, Stephen is spot on.

6 minutes long (but I could listen to this man all day).

Invershneckie

The musician 'The Steve Kelly' has recently put up a track about Inverness-shire. It's tongue-in-cheek and not for the faint of heart or ear - it's also brilliant.

Invershneckie (it's the fuckeen business) by thestevekelly

With all the force of a great typhoon!

I've had this song stuck in my head all day.

Such an awesome scene.

"Did they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?"

Actually, yeah, they kinda did.