Sunday 13th February, 2011

A repeat heads-up for SWASH 2011 [External Link] and a little about writing.

Exactly as I said last week: I shall be at SWASH 2011 [External Link] at Leeds Royal Armouries on the weekend February 19th & 20th. More precisely, I shall be stooging (being an instructor’s sidekick and whipping boy) for the “Small Sword dis-arms” session on the Saturday, the instructor being Simon McGrory from the Sheffield SSS [External Link]. Entrance to the sessions and talks at SWASH is charged but members of the public will actually be able to observe the training sessions. If you’re at all interested in taking up fencing, sport or historical, or any other western martial art for that matter, it’s well worth a look.

It shouldn’t affect the website update next weekend.

In 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf news (world info on the Alex Jones’ page), I am down to the last five werewolves to kill. So I continue with the “Almost there! Woot!”. I might even get the first draft finished for the end of February. And the way I’ve been writing it means a lot of the niggles that usually get worked on in the second draft have already been sorted. But there are still plenty of spelling mistakes and plot-holes to fill, I’m sure, so I’m not promising I can get everything done for the end of March and the end of the Angry Robot Books’ [External Link] open submissions. On the other hand, they only ask for the first 5 chapters and standard synopsis-type materials, so I should be able to get that up to final draft standard. Once the story arc is nailed down, it’s just tweaking. (You do realise this is all bravado, right?)

Okay, I’m off to go cheer for Ireland against France to complete my rugby weekend. The summary so far for this weekend: Bad luck Italy, stonkingly well done England (and I managed not to boo and hiss, and everything!); Bad luck Scotland, yay the boys in red!

And, yes, I didn’t mention it last weekend because I was still sulking about the Wales-England opener. Yes, sulking. Now stop reminding me about it or I’ll sulk some more.

Sunday 6th February, 2011

A minor spring-clean on the site and some sword news (or, “Come to SWASH 2011 [External Link]!”).

So, for those who’ve been in the last week or so, you may have noticed the look of the site changing slightly from day to day. I’ve made a couple of tweaks to how text displays on the page and have then gone back through all the individual site pages (not including the diary archive) to update them to the new standard. I’ve caught a few more spelling mistakes and edited some sentences that just didn’t make sense. If you see anything that didn’t get caught that’s an obvious mistake, please let me know. For that matter, please let me know if something isn’t displaying as well as it should!

The updating also includes (as promised) the report available on the LOWE page. Although I now know where in Shropshire Zachariah LOWE (mk I) is from – what is now the Telford area – I haven’t found any further information on the family, yet. The most likely lead, oddly enough, is a christening in Worcestershire.

As you’ve been reading / I’ve been banging on about for a few months now, 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf (See the Alex Jones’ page) is my main pass-time at the moment. I’ve now written method 18 and I’m about to launch into method 19 – after walking Finn and reading through a story draft for Amber Fox [Link Defunct]. After that, 6 more werewolves to kill. Almost there! Woot!

(PS. I thoroughly recommend following through the Foxie link, as she has some interesting blog entries in general but she – like a lot of us – is not a big fan of David Cameron right now and has articulated it better than I ever will.)

Finally, the sword news. I shall be at SWASH 2011 [External Link] at Leeds Royal Armouries on the weekend February 19th & 20th. More precisely, I shall be stooging (being an instructor’s sidekick and whipping boy) for the “Small Sword dis-arms” session on the Saturday, the instructor being Simon McGrory from the Sheffield SSS [External Link]. Entrance to the sessions and talks at SWASH is charged but members of the public will actually be able to observe the training sessions. If you’re at all interested in taking up fencing, sport or historical, or any other western martial art for that matter, it’s well worth a look.

Sunday 6th December, 2009

Welcome to advent.

And that’s pretty much it for me. I am, I hasten to add, busy working on writing, CHARLESWORTHs and TABERNERs. I just have nothing to show for it. I do have some off-site bits of information for you, though.

First thing is a rather special advent calendar being run from the TTA Press site [External Link]. A different flash fiction piece is linked each day of December up until Christmas. The direct link is here: [External Link]. One of my stories is up today (I’m not sure which, I put forward 3 and asked Pete to pick based on genre).

For those of a swordsman-like inclination, 2010 SWASH is open for booking. You can find more information about the event here: [External Link]). But, in short, it’s a two day convention being held in February at the Leeds Royal Armouries. With swords. And fencing. And dinner. What’s not to like?

Finally, my vote for Christmas No.1 (although the Muppets’ version of Bohemian Rhapsody is pretty cool).