(thanks to calcinations)

The Council for British Archaeology has put a bunch of old material online.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/books/backlist

And there, right at the top of the list is a symposium report dating back to 1955: Romano–British villas: some current problems

They're extremely brief articles, but they represent, more or less, the level of knowledge that my protag would have - Roman villas are not her field, so she'd be a bit behind. Or rather, this is the minimum level of knowledge she would have, on a raw, nobody is certain, putting forward different theories level.

Yay.

( Writing stats behind here... )

Because I was out doing fieldwork and taking photos, I didn't have as much writing time today. I'll try and do a few extra words tomorrow to make up.

NaNoWriMo (Zanna and the God-King): 1775 new words:

Zanna and the God-King
5,790/ 50,000 (12%)

...last night... when I suddenly feel a sting on my right pinky - felt as if I had tried to stroke a piece of wood the wrong way and got a splinter for my pains. I shook my hand, lifted it to inspect... and saw blood.

And then I saw one of THESE little bastards scuttling away into the shadows.

I had just been PINCERED. In my own damned office. I was completely outraged.

Still am.

There's still a chunk of my finger missing where the little monster decided to experimentally chomp me. And now he's tasted blood. Maybe he'll come back with an army of his buddies. If I am suddenly seen to disappear, this may be why. I will have been EATEN.

[GROWL]

I wrote 536 words yesterday, but was too tired to post about them.

Today I haven't written at all -- but I have done something else. I have written and sent off this week's crit to critters. Not the best crit I've written, I'm afraid, I mostly made sure I had the required 200 words. Anyway, now my ratio should be past 75% again -- and on Wednesday Blood Magic will be sent out. I can't make up my mind whether I'm excited or terrified.

I hope someone will say something useful.

Today was another day of field work. While G and his students toiled away with measuring tapes, clipboards and the soil auger, I pootled around experimenting with my zoom/macro lens.

I am vaguely putting a collection of my best photos together with a view of possibly thinking about the LRPS. I have a few nice landscapes, but I need some variety, so I'm playing with macro at the moment. This bracket fungus was, I think, today's best shot.



The Coed y Brenin (lit. Forest of the King) is a temperate rainforest. These are found in various parts of the world, including here in Wales. ( More photos behind here... )

---

Now off to do my NaNo words...

Straight from the publisher:

The Fix will "stay online as an archive for a while, and then close down."

That is sad, sad news.

JDawson

879 words, bringing my average to about 766.

I had to stay up a bit late for the final push, since during the day I got distracted by researching actual Sjælland law (written in Danish even more mediæval than I'm used to) and then by the distressing revelation that I've had the wrong dominical letter written down for 1527, and have done something else wonky which has put my lunar calendar a couple of weeks out of wack, with plot-destroying results. I shall have to fix it in the rewrite. :-(

I found a good market for my dark fantasy story, "Sins of the Mother," - an anthology with a submission deadline of Nov 30th. I have the final draft posted on OWW right now, so I need to take it down, polish it up, and submit it asap. I never wait until the deadline approaches because that's one of my pet peeves at the magazine. So I shall strive to submit it before Wednesday. It'll be a nice change of pace, and the anthology seems like the perfect fit.

BTW, the story was originally written for a dark elves anthology years ago, but I didn't have it fleshed out well enough at the time to work. Now I think it's as good as it's going to get, so it's time to stop sitting on it and get it published.

I haven't had a single thing published in 2009, and even if I sent out everything I have, there's little chance of fixing that now. I wish I was one of those people who kept stories rotating through markets, but I get distracted and forget about them. Shame on me...

I can't decide what I'll post next on the workshop. I need to have something posted when I get back to my list of reviews to do;)

JDawson

EDIT: Decided to use a bout of insomnia to remove my post from OWW, edit the story, and submit it to Blade Red Dark Pages – Volume 1. So that's done...

More of the housekeeping: filled in the scene during the fencing lesson involving an analogy with dancing that gets referenced later. More clean-up of the earlier transcription. For the next missing scene I need to invent a quotation from an obscure esoteric poet over whom my two protagonists will have their first bonding moment. (The actual quotation won't be important, only that one quotes it, the other recognizes it, and the conversation spins briefly off into philosophy to both of their surprise and delight.)

Dear Yuletide Writer:

First of all, thank you!

( Read more... )

Also possibly helpful, but feel free to ignore if it doesn't suit you: cool bits (story tropes & elements I am particularly vulnerable to).

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you, for whatever reasons. This isn't your top 15 canon or even books you'd necessarily recommend, just books that have made their mark on you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Mine are not under the cut because... dude, it's fourteen lines. In no particular order:

The Orphan's Tales by Cat Valente
Carpe Jugulum and Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole
The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Wall of Blood by Fred Leo Brown
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Magic's Price series by Mercedes Lackey
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Intergalactic Pig by William Sleator
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
The Magic Shop books by Bruce Coville
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois MacMaster Bujold
Freakanomics

Also, I am in need of a HOMG IT'S TWENTY BELOW AND I RIDE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION coat. Unfortunately, most of the parka-length (or longer) coats I've seen are either really expensive or really ugly, i.e. possessed of fake fur.

So if anyone else has a suggestion, I'm willing to take it.

I did it I did it I did it! My script runs! Yay for nominations!

So I decided that I was going to work on Miledrop this month. Before this my first draft was around 45k, and I've gone through and revised about 10k of that, with a fair bit of work. A wordcount isn't going to accurately represent the new work because I've also been tightening things up as I go. I decided that the effort & new work probably equaled about 25%, so I credited myself about 2300 words for NaNo. Sure I could be further, but then, I'm also on a road trip with lots of social obligations and two 18month old babies.

Yeah, I know real NaNo is new words only, but I'm cheating, so there. Still, I think 25% seems fair, especially since at that rate it'll take me to new words before I'm done with my 50k. Anyone else who is doing the same sorta thing have an algorithm for determing NaNo progress they'd care to share?