Pizza and Swedes

Grr. Frustratingly unproductive weekend, caused partly by the momentary glimmerings of a social life and partly by my own hopelessness and indolence.

Friday night through to Saturday afternoon were taken up with sister-in-law, friends, goddaughter, pizza and beer... thanks to the last of which, the remainder of Saturday was also thoroughly unproductive. Sister-in-law's visit was very pleasant altogether, though, and I'm not complaining. Friday night we explored an as-yet-unvisited pub near to the new house, which had a parrot. Lunch on Saturday, with all the items on the above list, was also very enjoyable. It turns out that, as I rather suspected, Zerodegrees do damn good food as well as damn good beer. The bastards.

Since then, I've written around 1000 words, realised that some of my chapters would work better a different way round, clarified some plot points and made a few notes towards the epilogue; all of which is rather less achievement than it might sound, and certainly doesn't match my chapter-a-weekend target. Never mind, I'm sure I can catch up.

Meanwhile, a couple of worthwhile snippets relating to stuff that's already safely written and published. Mags L. Halliday, the author of the forthcoming Faction Paradox novel Warring States, has written a pendant to her novel, set in the City of the Saved after her characters' deaths. (That's not a spoiler, incidentally, as the City happens after everybody's deaths.) The piece, which is called "The Night Is Long and Dreams are Legion" (and which is great), is being published in issue 15 of the Mythmakers fanzine. [Edit: Actually issue 14.]

In unrelated news, one of my fellow-contributors to A Life Worth Living -- Mark "Sin" Deniz, who contributed the story "Welcome to the Machine", has been interviewed in Norrkopings Tidningar. (At least, I think it's an interview.) I mention this solely because it's rather exciting to see a big photo of the book in a major national newspaper, even if it does happen to be a Swedish one I'd never previously heard of.

The book's heroine is referred to as "kultmässiga science fiction-hjältinnan professor Bernice Summerfield". Remember, you heard it here first.