(no subject)

You know, I thought maybe it was just a shortening attention span that made it impossible for me to read most of the new Sherlock Holmes stories kicking around since the film came out. I thought I had some kind of mental problem. When I was nine I had no trouble at all reading the canon, though admittedly I was not grasping some of the subtlety therein.

The thing is, though, that I'm not sure it is my fault, given my expectations. So many of the new stories being posted start with this huge wall of very formal text, and as much as I respect and admire the drive to emulate the historical style, this needs to be said: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not generally a wall of text kind of guy. The Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories are both a demonstration of the deductive arts and the Victorian equivalent of a badass action flick.

( BE BOLD. OPEN YOUR NOVEL WITH A COCAINE INJECTION. )

(no subject)

A little while ago gypsylady linked a few of us to an Ed Hardy "Tiger" shirt that cruentum rather fancied, Ed Hardy being a running joke amongst the Askworld kids. The suggestion arose of adding the Welsh Red Dragon to the back of the shirt in question, and then I thought, you know what, why add a dragon to a pre-existing shirt when you can slam together an ancient symbol of national pride and a tattoo artist selling out to the man?

( Y Ddraig Ed. )

I feel we have been a force for positive surrealism on the internet lately.

(no subject)

Uh. So.

This morning: sprained my wrist opening a jar of jam.

This afternoon: won a blog award.

Look, I try to have some perspective on my life, but it's sometimes very difficult.

They announced the Author Blog Awards winners at the London Book Fair this "evening" (evening London time), and I am among the winners.

Apparently there were three categories: Microblog, Published Author Blog, and Unpublished Author Blog, which is nice, because the odds even out a little, I think. Big congratulations to Emily Benet, who won for Published Author Blog, and to Neil Gaiman, who won for Microblog. I am in exalted company, kids, and a little bit freaked out.

I do want to say thank you all for voting, though, and thank you for being a part of my corner of the internet. The reason Nameless exists*, the reason Extribulum exists as a concept, is that I have a population of friends and colleagues and readers willing to play with me. You guys are what make the blog go. Don't think for a minute I ever forget that.

* Oh hay teeny tiny plug for everyone visiting to find out who Sam Starbuck is. Sorry! The PR man in me got the best of my self-control.

Unfortunately I am writing this in the ten minutes before my lunch break so it's rather hasty, but there will be more thoughts on this later.

This also gives me a comfortable hour in which to stop hyperventilating.

(no subject)

Very few events in life can't be put in perspective by a peanut butter sandwich.

Including the fact that either LJ has crashed or our work server suddenly doesn't like it, because I can't respond to comments or get my journal to load. Livejournal's timing has always sucked, but this feels like some kind of vendetta.

Just for documentation's sake, the official Author Blog Awards announcement not-on-twitter is here. Fun new blogs to read!

I've been pondering and I think it is apt that these awards reward the voters with prizes, rather than the bloggers -- the spirit of digital media, and social networking to support print media, is very much driven by a desire to connect to readers. Reader participation is vital to the whole process. It certainly is for me. And that is, if not the point, at least a happy side effect of widely-available, instantaneous mass communication -- forging a stronger bond with the people you tell your stories to, so that you can learn how to tell them better, and what kind to tell.

To be honest, I dashed off the last post and ran off to lunch expecting to have a lot more to say, but that pretty much covers my bases.

Meanwhile, the security audit at work goes on. Happily, one of our staff had flowers sent to her today and she's not in, so she told me to put them in water and I could keep them on my desk. Roses and crocuses do brighten the spreadsheet mire I'm slogging through.