On the ledge above Barton Underway, where three narrow passages meet the stairs down from the square, she pauses for a moment and looks up. She has heard the hum of the engine, just a little closer than it should be. A jutting section of cliff shades this spot from the lighthouse beams, and the sun has gone, so when the airship slides into view the only light comes from its three blue-tinted spots, which pin the target down, dazzled. I chuckle.

- You’re cruel, Mal.

- How can I be cruel if I’m not human, Harry?

[	Tags	|	clarion west, write-a-thon	]
[	mood	|	chipper	]

As I detailed in this post, I am sponsoring people to nag me to get my novel edited during the Write-a-Thon. Nothing I love more than punishment.  Please click the link to see how you can help.

Chapter One  is due for circulation on Thursday 25th June.

Current tally is $1.

• Stay at the con hotel if the other hotels are not within walking distance. Those buses are baaad news.
• That said, leave the con hotel as often as possible and try to get some daylight.
• Always sit near the door, especially in the panels that may touch on politicial issues.
• Talk to people you don't know, especially if you've never heard of them.

• Do not speak if you haven't been called on.
• A panel is not a platform for you to yell at innocent bystanders about the evils of the State or your personal preference for Bejeweled over World of Warcraft, whilst preventing more interesting people from discussing the topic at hand.
• This remains true even if you are on the panel.

Posted via email from Roz's posterous

(from The Persistent Illusionist)

[	Tags	|	writing	]
[	Current Location	|	Abidjan	]
[	mood	|	pleased	]

What prompts this post are feelings of guilt at a failure to use LJ; the ass-kickingly awesomemthielbar has given me a shout-out regarding my first semi-pro-flavoured publication. I only posted the news on FB. You can line up to slap me, I can take it. So: hurrah, Haunt-Type Experience is in the current issue of Black Static (issue 9). It's reviewed here.
 

I haven't seen it and I won't see it until 5th March, when I get back to Bristol from Cote d'Ivoire. I'm dying to see what artwork I've got.

 

[	Tags	|	nanowrimo, trains	]
[	Current Location	|	Between London and York	]
[	mood	|	contemplative	]

I'm on a train, travelling from the family home in London to a party in York. It makes a delicious change from the Bristol - London commute and the journeys between those two cities and the middle of the country - Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester - that I'd grown so inredibly weary of while I was working for the bank.

This train is the express from London to Edinburgh, capital to capital, and it's old and a bit tatty, but lusciously comfortable and understated. It also has free WiFi. Best of all, there's hardly anyone on it, so I get to sprawl about and have an entire table to myself. Bliss.

What I should be doing, rather than updating LJ (though my LJ is sorely neglected and will have to have rust treatment soon if I don't start caring for it better) is working on my 2008 NaNoWriMo project. It's going slowly, but when I manage to get into it, it's a lot of fun. It's a post-apocalyptic journey narrative, centred on a young girl who's trying to find ways to survive in an unfriendly world. There's no great message, and I'm allowing myself to use every cliche ever invented. This is NaNo. That's what NaNo's all about. The terrific thing is that it's allowing me to explore the world we've been building for my Great (ly Unrealistic) MMORPG project. I do find it harder to write without an emotional core to the work though. It's hard for me to write from my head instead of my guts. Good practice though.

I just wish I could go faster. It seems that the more I write the slower I do it.

I thought that travelling less in the real world would allow me to travel further in my head. I'd be less tired, less stressed, there'd be room for my imagination to leap forth in all directions... instead I feel itchy, and that I need to be moving, moving, moving. I wish I had my own train, like the Queen. I could trundle up and down Britain, looking at fields go past the window, rolling along above all the stones and mud.

[	Tags	|	clarion west	]
[	mood	|	nostalgic	]

Only a short one cause I'm still jetlagged as hell.

It is very, very peculiar being back in Seattle one year on.  At first I felt calm, and that was strange, because I was high as a kite for everything I remember of CW '07. Then the memories started to crowd in, and became increasingly coloured with emotion.

I could see my classmate's faces in my mind and hear their voices far more clearly than I've been able to do for a while. I kept expecting them to come round the corners in the U-district any moment, or be sitting waiting for me in the bookstore, or Coffee and Comics, or one of the restaurants. Even though the sorority house they're in is different, even as I realised what was missing were the dreadful smells and spooky atmosphere of our sorority, I could smell those smells and feel that spooky atmosphere. It was trippy, and it's a mercy it was in a different house, 'cause if it had been ours I think my head would have popped off.

Anyway I am certainly looking forward to seeing more of *my* Clarion, having sat taping sheets into boxes while the bright young things of '08 said their goodbyes. It feels like no time, and thousands of years since we were doing that.