Good morning, Readers!

This is the last blog post before I'm officially on holidays.  As it happens, I've scheduled a whole bunch of posts to cover everything while I'm away.  I don't know if the automatic posting to Facebook will work over the holidays, but we'll find out.

There is just one day left to schedule a post, but it looks like it's going to be a guest post.  I just need to see it first.

Today will be spent writing the newsletter, which should be sent out tomorrow for those who are subscribed.

I'm looking forward to the break, and just spending time cuddling the cats and reading, relaxing and generally having time just for me.

Right, I haven't much else to say, so I want to share a picture that made it to my Facebook that made me laugh a little too hard: 

Right, have a brilliant holiday season, however you celebrate it.  I shall see you for real in the new year.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I can't believe that Christmas is so damned close.  I have the week between Christmas and the new year off, and I probably won't really be at my computer all that much during that time.  I'm not sure what, exactly I'll be during that time.  Chances are, I'll be doing a fair amount of streaming, and possibly researching, and a lot of reading.

This week, I need to prepare for that break; get all my blog posts lined up, basically.  By the by, if you'd like to do a guest blog post to go up over the holidays, I'm more than open to pitches.  It must be ready to go up by Friday, though, as I will be scheduling everything by then, and won't be doing anything after then.​  Because I'm lazy.

So, this week will be spent doing just that; coming up with blog posts to be scheduled over the break, and also the whole newsletter thing.  That needs doing, too.

That does mean, though, that my fiction writing will take a backseat this week, unless I get it all done in a day or two.

AH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH! *wheeze* AH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!  Oh, oh, I crack myself up!

How are you all preparing for the holidays?  Are you about as organised as me, and find yourself scrambling, or are you one of those unicorns that is already prepared?

Right, I have to get to work.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Despite my general apathy regarding Westerns (note: I did like the most recent remake of the Magnificent Seven, though), I have been watching a Let's Play of Red Dead Redemption 2.  I say 'watching' when what I mean is listening as I do other things.  It's great background noise for me, it seems.

The other day, during that said Let's Play, a song started playing.  It stopped me in my tracks.  I went back and researched what song it was, and then listened to it on repeat.  It's this song:

I've been hooked ever since.  There's just something so moving about the slow melancholy of this song that keeps me listening.  I love it.  A lot.

It's called Unshaken by D'Angelo.  I've never heard of D'Angelo before this, but I will certainly go looking for more of his music if it's more like this.

Incidentally, I've been looking for this song to buy and download on my iPhone, and it's not available.  I'm sad about it.  Come on, Rockstar.  Plenty of gaming studios make their soundtracks available for purchase.  AND I WANT THIS SONG, DAMN YOU!

Ahem.

Well, that is all.  I have words to put on the page.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Last night, I did not go to training, because there was none.  The hall was in use by the school, and so we skipped last night.  I didn't know what to do with myself, so I binged the rest of the new Netflix series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.  I have a couple of thoughts.

First, I want to say that I absolutely adored the series.  The characters were great, there were a tonne of hilarious moments, and some really heartfelt moments.  I was not certain about the animation style at first, but now I love it.  It's cutesy, which as a general rule, I despise, but it fit so well with the characters and the writing, that I feel it enhanced the series, rather than detracted.

Speaking of the writing, it was great.  Granted, the stories were simplistic, but it was also incredibly entertaining.  And there's a surprising amount of nuance, which arrives mostly in the form of Aurora's relationship with Catra.  It is a deep bond that is also filled with resentment and a whole bunch of abandonment issues.  I also really enjoyed the portrayal of both sides.  Everyone, be they in the lower echelons of the Horde, or princesses are people.  The 'evil' characters aren't actually evil (though Catra is getting pretty close).  Certainly Shadow Weaver and Hordak are evil, but their soldiers are simply normal folk who don't really know any better.  They're adorable, too.  I think Scorpia might be my favourite.  She's such a dope.

I'm also impressed with the variety of body types displayed here.  She-Ra has muscles.  Glimmer is a little rounder.  Perfuma is slender.  Scorpia is a husky lass.  I really enjoy seeing it.  It's not often that many if these kinds of bodies are shown, and shown as able and heroic.  As a chubby bunny, I really appreciate it.

I also was really pleasantly surprised at the appearance of a same-sex couple in the last episode.  It happened so quickly, and was not exactly explicitly stated, so it's easy to miss.  But I loved the representation.  It made me happy.

As to Aurora/She-Ra's design, I fucking adored it.  She was a teenager, built like a teenager, and as She-Ra, she was an eight foot tall teenager, built like a teenager... with a little more muscle.  I thought it was fantastic.  I am aware that there are a number of folks, almost exclusively adult men as far as I've been able to determine, who were pissed about this change.  Gone is the clearly adult figure.  I'm a bit weirded out by any man who has objections to the new design, to be honest.  She's a teenager, guys.  A teenager.  Like, you'd definitely end up in jail if she were real.

If I'm being completely honest, I was skeptical about this reboot.  I have vague memories of the original series, and I do know that I absolutely loved She-Ra as a kid (but can't quite remember why).  I also roll my eyes every time I hear the words reboot or re-make.  I am so over reboots.  So. Over. It.

That said, this is one I liked.  A lot.  It was wonderfully funny, very sweet, and just... made me feel really good.  It's been a while since I've watched and enjoyed a series specifically designed to make someone feel good.  Most of my viewing is quite dark, to be honest.  I usually find things designed to make people feel good were tacky, cringy, and annoying.  This was none of these.

I highly recommend this series, particularly if you need an adorable pick-me-up.

Best friend squad!

Right, I'm off to do things.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Life is weird isn't it?

Right now, mine is incredibly boring.  I wake up at stupid o'clock in the morning, go to the gym, go to work, write, hopefully make my word count, and, depending on the day, go home, to go training, or live stream a game.  As a result, I don't really have all that much to say.  I'm sitting on some possible news, but it's barely even a thought at present, and I'm going to wait until it become more concrete before I mention it more.

I will say that I hit my writing goal yesterday, but I'm not thrilled with the result.  There is a high probability that I'll delete it today and writing something else.  We'll see.  Still, it's going relatively well, and I'm happy with that.  The trick will be to keep it up over the holidays.  I'm worried that if I get out of the routine, it'll be months of struggling to get back into one.

The holidays are great for disrupting routine.

I'm grasping at straws to find stuff to talk about, so I'm going to leave it here and let everyone get on with their days.

Hope your day is wondeful!

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

This weekend was lovely.

Saturday was the last class of the semester for my women's only martial arts.  Our group celebrated Sunday with axe-throwing and a dinner afterwards.

I have discovered that I am terrible at axe-throwing, but there is something so incredibly satisfying about having the axe land, and having to yank it out of the wood afterwards.  I really enjoyed it, and would love to do it again.  Also, FYI, this would be a great date night.

At axe-throwing, we played for a small trophy, and have since decided that every year, we will play for said trophy.  Granted, my chances are decidedly slim, but it's a fun tradition to have started.

Dinner afterwards was equally great.

Can I just say, I adore my students.  They're such wonderful people, and it makes me happy to teach them.

Writing last week went fairly well.  I'm a third of the way through the projected work count for the draft, and the ending arrived in more detail, and it's far more exiting than the one word sentence I had the basically explained the ending without explaining the ending, if you'll catch my drift.  I'm really excited to be writing the ending.  Now the challenge is to build tension so that no one is sure how the ending will pan out for our hero.

Which I can't explain further, or I'll be giving away the entire series.  I really want to, though.  I've gotten over the doldrums with this series and I'm thoroughly excited by it again, and I'm desperate to share it.  That said, I'll be really thrilled when I'm done rewriting the thing.

I probably won't get rough draft of Outcast done by the end of this year, unfortunately.  That would have been nice, if only because then I could start the second book of the Avalon series in the new year.  Just a little bit of life tidiness that would have been nice, is all.

Also this weekend, I received an email that made me blink, but might be a nice way to expand my reach a little bit.  So there's that.

Right, I have to get set up to write today.  I hope everyone's weekend was lovely.  What did you get up to?  Let me know in the comments below.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

These are the names of the fourteen women who, 29 years ago, were gunned down while attending their studies at École Polytechnique in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Their crime?  Womanhood.

They had the audacity to be women in university, working towards degrees, as part of plans for a career.

There murderer?  A twenty-five year old man who proclaimed he was fighting feminism.  He had a list of women he considered to be feminists.  It was his murder list.

It is absolutely obvious that this horrible massacre was directly tied to misogyny, and the prevalence of the dehumanising of women, even now, however much others want to proclaim it the actions of a singular madman. Nothing happens in a vacuum.  Things have not improved, either.

There was not a single woman in my circle who so much as raised their brows in surprise at the "incel" news that made the rounds this year.  The surprise belonged wholly to the men in my life.  Every woman is constantly bowed by the explicit and implicit messages that we are considered inferior, not-human, things for consumption rather than people with thoughts, feelings and dreams.

From the advertisements that tell men that their Xmas must-haves are snazzy suits, and women's must-haves are 'fancy little knickers,' or in magazines that put women in submissive positions with men standing around them, from jackasses shouting at women from their cars, or interrupting their days, and not taking no for an answer (to the point of becoming fucking violent), to devaluing language surrounding feminised behaviour.... this shit is everywhere.

As a woman, I often feel like I'm at war, and the goal is simply the right to be; to exist as myself without harassment or degradation.  The constantly having to push back is exhausting.  Being able to stand upright feels, at times, impossible; like I'm carrying a burden that was not mine to carry.  I have to shrink myself to make room for the inflated importance of the men around me.  It's cloying, claustrophobic, leaving me feeling like I can't breathe.

The restrictions placed upon me, based solely on my gender, often leave me reeling.

And this, after all the fights that have granted women freedoms unseen in the west since the Iron Age.

Oh, no.  You read that right.  Women in the Iron Age (I'm thinking specifically of Ireland, right now, as that is the place where we can find codified laws) fared better than women do today.  Just without antibiotics.  Or epidurals.

Anyway, the point is, fourteen women lost their lives.  Certainly, it was one angry man behind those murders, but it was also thousands of years of the dehumanisation of women.

We're not better today than we were then.  All you have to do is open your eyes and look around to see it.  But we can be.

Today, take the time to honour these women, who died simply for being women.  Take a stand beside the women in your life.

Now I'm going off to forget about the state of the world right now and write.

​Ciao!