Vague Maunderings

This blog's gone quiet again over the past week. Sorry about that.

I've been busy over half term trying to finish off 'The Long Midwinter', the short story for Big Finish that I mentioned back here (and briefly also here).

This has ended up taking all my time, so that the things which I haven't done which I intended to include the following:
1. Finishing off the Ossian's Reach proposal, or indeed even starting the sample chapter thereof;
2. Doing any work on the other synopsis, Unearthing the Princess, or on the other other one which doesn't have a title yet either [1];
3. Finding a 'non-religious' reading for my brother's wedding at the end of the month;
4. Finding a new suit for my brother's wedding at the end of the month;
5. Finding a wedding present for my brother's etcetera;
6. Getting any reading done.
And now, of course, I'm back at work, and feeling tired and fed up and pissed off and overworked, despite the holiday.

(I'm still planning a writeup of our trip to Portmeirion at some point soon, although though the photos are mostly useless. A combination of bright sunlight, cheap digital technology and personal incompetence, I suspect.)

It's not even as if 'The Long Midwinter', in its current draft, is good enough to actually satisfy me that it's finished. The dialogue needs work, and it's too talky anyway, and some of the scene-setting is clunky. It's all very frustrating. That's something else that's due at the end of the month, though, so I have a bit of time to rectify that, within the constraints I've been given.

More cheerfully, I found myself with an unexpected £30 over the half-term (some complicated knock-on effect of my late Granny's will, not that she died particularly recently), and blew it all on books at Borders. Hurrah. I now have the supposedly excellent China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, the S.F. Masterworks edition of Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time trilogy and Michael Marshall's Blood of Angels, the follow-up to The Straw Men and The Lonely Dead, to read. (Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is clearly a work in progress, and likely to remain so for some time.)

I was also entertained by the finale of Desperate Housewives -- amused by Carlos' comeuppance, shocked by Rex's death and how dark it was, satisfied by the resolution of the mystery (I guessed some time ago that it was actually Mary Alice and not Paul who killed Dierdre, but Mike being Zach's father still came as something of a surprise) and only a little irritated by the limpness of the cliffhanger. And Season 2 has Alfre Woodard in it. Hurrah again.

Still no sightings of Wildthyme on Top, although apparently there are early indications that it might start turning up on people's doormats sometime soon. (If they've ordered them, of course. I don't mean just at random.)

So... has anyone else got their copy of Peculiar Lives yet?


[1] This is no longer the potential proposal I mentioned previously called Alvin's Brood. Not that any of this is going to mean anything to anybody outside my head.