Things and Stuff #21

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: things, people, hair, Zimmer, Bologna. 

Thing 1: 100 things
Last week was Things and Stuff #20. Here are the first hundred Things!

1: a painless edit (it was The Last Apprentice 3: The Painted War!)
2: Iron Man 3
3: this blog
4: Alexandra Palace's lottery funding
5: ironic Blogger spellcheck issues
6: The World's End trailer
7: Liz Lemon
8: trying to move house
9: Clara's role in Doctor Who
10: Empire (the magazine)'s Cannes Videblogisodes
11: prop-making for Empire (the LARP)
12: Karen Ball's Guardian sewing blog
13: Skulk edits
14: martial arts and fatness
15: The Name of the Doctor
16: what makes a bestseller
17: CEFC on The One Show
18: The Iron Price nailvarnish
19: gay girls in Gunnerkrigg Court
20: Crystal Palace get into the Premier League
21: Malorie Blackman, Children's Laureate
22: the Red Wedding
23: CEFC Coronation concert
24: bad blogging
25: kids' toy-based TV
26: exposition
27: Once
28: spooky dreams
29: prop-making for Odyssey (badly)
30: a picture of a fox
31: a skulk
32: a rabble
33: a conspiracy
34: a horde
35: a cluster
36: no editing
37: Much Ado About Joss Whedon's Garden
38: Cleolinda's Hannibal recaps
39: penthouses
40: Skulk artwork secrets (it was the logo!)

Thing #40 (c) me, technically, because Strange Chemistry very kindly let me have the rights to use the Skulk and Rabble artwork when they went under. <3 

41: Final Fantasy VII
42: Beren and Luthien
43: rereading 2013's Nano novel
44: Elle me Dit
45: too hot
46: The Drowned Man
47: alcohol
48: ARCs
49: moving out of London
50: Welcome to Night Vale
51: Skulk blog tour
52: Game of Thrones soundtracks
53: quoth the raven
54: Netgalley recommended Skulk and called Meg 'superb'!
55: JL8
56: more Skulk blog tour
57: lost my voice
58: Skulk reviews
59: the Great British Bake Off
60: my copies of Skulk failing to be delivered
61: fetching my copies of Skulk from the delivery place
62: Skulk launch party
63: geek wedding
64: more Skulk blog tour
65: Meryl Streep in a tree
66: finally moving house
67: the first draft of Rabble
68: very bad blogging
69: KITTENS

Thing #69 aka Midnight (c) me

70: graffiti herons
71: the end of Strange Chemistry
72: Disney songs in their native languages
73: Wimbledon and the World Cup
74: Victorian research (aka Hetero Interlude)
75: my cats are really cute
76: Colditz tabletop
77: secret writing clues
77: Carmen
79: writing-spot reviews
80: Spotify
81: a secret (I can exclusively reveal this was A BOOK COVER! Cannot reveal what book it was, though.)
82: CEFC Rachmaninov Vespers
83: Hannibal
84: researching a villain
85: Morning Pages
86: Undiscovered Voices 2016 opens
87: Sense8
88: 50 Shades of Flashheart
89: Pride
90: TOO HOT
91: Only Ever Yours
92: reading
93: glassblowing
94: everything is flammable
95: MsTabularasa's Shut Up And Dance vid
96: more secrets, more clues
97: Instagram
98: Bury Your Gays
99: UV2016 launches

100: Sanjay's Super Hero Squad

Thing 2: The People I Meet On The Way To Work
Apropos of absolutely nothing except that I noticed there were a lot of them, I made a photo album of some of the names I encounter when I walk to the WP office from the station. 

Thing 3: NEW HAIR
It's actually not this colour any more - after a couple of washes the light purple has faded into a lovely kind of pastel blue colour. I love it so much. I need to win the lottery and/or strike a deep vein of book royalties so I can change it even more often. Cosmic karma make that happen for me please. Cheers.

This is the second selfie I've taken and put on here, this is very strange to me, I normally don't go in for selfies very much but like how could I not show this off? It's PURPLE (c) me

Thing 4: Hans Zimmer Live
I'm going on tour with Hans Zimmer next week, nbd.

Lol jk it is a huge deal. 

I am in this video! Back row second sop from the left. You can't really miss me because there are only 24 people in the choir. That's NOT VERY MANY FYI. (c) Hans Zimmer Live

I'm so excited. Some of my favourite music ever from some of my favourite movies, some of my favourite people (Hans, it turns out, is a really nice dude) and based on the gigs we did in Hammersmith Apollo a couple of years ago, some of the most fun/and challenging performing experiences I've ever had. There is a click track. There is strobe lighting. There are hundreds of bars of 7/8, a couple of top D sharps, chord progressions to make you lie down on the ground and weep with joy. And it's all the sweeter given that for a while I thought I wasn't going to be able to do these ones. That's how it goes, sometimes - but I am beyond chuffed that in fact, in this instance, this is how it's going instead.

The tour is epic and Europe-spanning and I'm doing two of the dates, with a tiny number of other Crouch End Festival Chorus singers - Wembley Arena (eee) on the 6th of April and Birmingham Barclaycard Arena on the 12th. If you are there, you will see me! I'll be the one in the middle of the sops with the violet hair trying not to weep.

Thing 5: #BCBF16
The Bologna Children's Book Fair is next week! Here's hoping that all of the publishers, rights people, agents etc survive all their meetings, sell all their books, drink a silly amount of Prosecco.

Things and Stuff #20

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: secrets, Instagram, endings, UV16, Pixar

Thing 1: [redacted]
I am a woman of many secrets at the moment.

I have been sent a thing to read. I have been sent things to watch. I have been told about a thing I might get to sing. I have written things and sent them off to be read and/or sold.

Once again, I find myself either explicitly forbidden to talk about the things or uncertain about whether it's politic to talk about the things, so let's play another round of Rosie's Cryptic Clues! (And... no, I still can't do the reveal on any of the previous clues, so don't ask.)

In no particular order (ie not the order I listed them above, ooh I'm sneaky):

 

Aliens (C) James Cameron, angels (c) William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), meme (c) The Internet, lights (c) the Internet

Thing 2: I hadn't actually logged on to Instagram in about three years
But now I have! I am rosiejbest over there and am using If This Then That (which is mostly working) to repost pics to Twitter and Facebook so now you can enjoy pictures of my cats in triplicate all over your internet. You are welcome.

And also the odd - very odd - selfie (c) me

Thing 3: these two articles about lesbian and bisexual women on television
Warning: this one is a little depressing, especially if you are LGBTQ and you like television. It's also inherently spoilery, so don't click if you're averse to hearing about character death. Lots and lots of character death.

In response to yet another dead lesbian on TV recently, Autostraddle compiled these two lists: 29 TV lesbians who got happy endings and 143 TV lesbians who were killed off.

I was talking to a straight friend who was thinking about writing a lesbian romance just the other month. She asked me for advice. My one and only piece of serious advice: please, whatever you do, don't kill off your lesbians. She seemed surprised that this was a Thing. So let me just put this out there for anyone else who may have missed this: Bury Your Gays IS A THING.

By the current Autostraddle reckoning (though they keep updating it, both numbers have been going up) I'm going to need about a hundred more happy endings before I'll accept another death without major side-eye.

Get on that, TV writers.

Thing 4: Undiscovered Voices 2016
Another SCBWI Undiscovered Voices anthology has just been released, hopefully launching the careers of another twelve writers and nine illustrators! I know we have agent news from at least four of the writers, and the winning illustrations were featured on the Guardian website.

Congratulations to all the winners, all the longlisters, and all the organisers - it was another brilliant year for undiscovered talent, here's hoping that you all get discovered very soon if you haven't been already! I know there are several of these books I am dying to read.

You can read the anthology here, and get your fix of news from the #UV2016 hashtag on Twitter!

Thing 5: this Pixar short made me cry, twice

Things and Stuff #19

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: utter loathing, a silver lining, and three random nice things

Thing 1: I hated Only Ever Yours, and here is why

[Trigger warning, and spoiler for what I'm about to say: fictional sexual and emotional abuse, but mostly self-image problems and fatshaming, so much fatshaming I can barely breathe, so much I swear it has given me an actual crick in my neck from spending so much time recently feeling furious and upset.]

Only Ever Yours is The Handmaid's Tale for teenagers, so you know it's going to be pretty grim. And it is: this is a universe in which terrible, terrible things are completely normal. This is a universe where girls are groomed literally their entire lives to be perfect, submissive, blank slates. When they turn 16 they will become either wives who are killed at 30, or sex slaves who last less long than that, or sexless teachers who impose these same things on younger girls until they drop dead...

And the absolute worst thing the main character or anyone else in this world can imagine happening to them is to end up looking like me.

KILL IT WITH FIRE (c) Louise O'Neill. This is presented out of context by necessity, but also I think reading it out of context may be the closest you can get to experiencing it the way I did...

I understand that the book is meant to be condemning this attitude, making it so extreme as to be ridiculous, mirroring the thoughts of an anorexic person onto an entire culture to show how absurd the whole thing is. I understand that it's a dystopia and in that context of course the main character would feel like that. I understand.

But excuse me if I don't care. Excuse me if I can't quite focus on the worldbuilding while reading the point of view of a character who believes I am so disgusting I do not deserve to live.

This is not theoretical. When it's as constant as this, it just stops being about the context. I don't care what the author was trying to do. What she actually did was write phrases like 'nobody will ever love a fat girl' over and over and over again. What she did was have her main character be so obsessed with her weight that she does herself an injury, and violently humiliate girls who put on a few pounds (leaving me wondering what the hell these people would do if they saw me - quite possibly have a heart attack and die, which would be fine by me). 

You are god damn right I'm taking this personally. 

I think the real problem is that when it comes to this aspect of the book, this is not some wild dystopian fantasy she's presenting here. This is what people really think.

If you are not fat, you might not know this, or might not care. But this is exactly what people think about people like me. And it's not just airbrushed supermodels in all the magazines and hateful scum on the internet: in a Yougov survey I took recently, about 70% of respondents agreed that people like me should be refused medical care until they lost weight.

Refused. Medical. Care.

I respect people, especially other fat people, who can read this book and simply see its obsession with how disgusting we are as a cautionary tale of where society could go. I totally respect people who can be disturbed by the book as a whole, and tut, and say how awful, we should feel sympathy for these girls because they are victims.

I am not that person. I hated this book and I hated all the characters, and it was a reaction of pure self-preservation, because they hated me first. If I had bought it in paperback instead of ebook I would probably burn it, not because it was a bad book that nobody should ever read, but because I feel the need to exorcise it from my life.

(I really didn't need the abrupt and shallow gay panic section either - yet another example of 'oooooh look at my fancy subtext' without anything to back it up - or the utter lack of any redeeming features in any of the female characters who we actually get to spend any time with, that is until the one good boy comes along and shows the painfully stupid main character the error of her bitchy ways. To be honest, the nihilism of it all struck me as profoundly unfeminist in places. But y'know, mostly the fat thing.)

Thing 2: the silver lining

I've read more in the couple of weeks since I finished Only Ever Yours than I have in ages. I don't know if it's because my day job and my sideline both involve so much written fiction, or what, but reading for pleasure had started to feel a bit of a chore. But in the last week I devoured The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman, which I adored and which made me cry in the good way, and I'm a good chunk into Wake by Anna Hope, which is also really great so far. I think that Only Ever Yours has reset the bar for books I read so incredibly low that I'm finding a whole new joy in it now.

Thing 3, 4 and 5: three things to cheer me up after I've made myself tense and sad writing about this

I had some really good related news last week and also this video is really pretty and soothing (c) Bandana Glassworks

Good advice, Mister J (c) via alias-milamber on Tumblr, I don't know who made the image but the cosplayer is Anthony Misiano

Pure joy (c) Walk The Moon, too many movies to list and MsTabularasa on Youtube

Things and Stuff #18

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: UV2016, Sense8, Flashheart, Pride, Weather

Thing 1: Get discovered!

Submissions for Undiscovered Voices 2016 are officially open, and you should submit something! (If you are an unagented, unpublished writer or illustrator of children's books.) As a winner and now organising helper, I honestly can't recommend it enough. Also, do yourself a favour and go and read the guest blogs on the UV website - the wisdom there is better than anything I can do here right now.

Thing 2: It's a bit gr8

Listen, if you hate foreigners, LGBT people, TV with a more interesting cast than it has mythology, or joy, then Sense8 is not going to be for you. 

Literally everybody else needs to give this series a chance. It's about eight people who suddenly start being able to slip into each others' lives even though they're all living thousands of miles away from each other. The how and the why of it genuinely doesn't matter. 

Although this relatively non-spoilery clip demonstrates nicely how it works visually and emotionally and is well worth a watch.

What matters is that each one of these characters is a beautiful perfect cupcake of a human being - they mess up, they make mistakes, they spend rather too much screentime staring into the middle distance looking melancholy, Riley, but on the whole their little faces are perfect and watching them interact is an intensely joyful experience. 

The other day, I was bemoaning having to read a book featuring not one character I actually liked and wishing for something entertaining where good people did good things. My prayers were answered. The Wachowskis know us. They know how we like our relationships, our action sequences, our sex scenes (of which there are quite a few, and they're almost all queer, and it's amazing, because I'm not sure if I mentioned but this is one of the most stunningly queer shows I've ever seen. I put off finishing Orange is the New Black for this, I'm even not kidding. Some shows do this delicate little flirty dance around queer characters and relationships like ooh, don't you like my fancy subtext, isn't it pretty, and then run a mile when they see actual queers taking them at their unspoken word. Sense8 comes along and stomps all over that shit with big rainbow boots on and it's wonderful). 

PRECIOUS LESBIAN BABIES AND ONE OF THEM IS TRANS AND THE OTHER ONE IS FREEMA AGYEMAN WITH A GIANT HAMMER (C) LAURAHOLLIS ON TUMBLR

I think that some people don't like it because they are bothered by the fact that it is very consciously diverse and its message of universal human experience is a little heavy handed. Those people are wrong and can sod off. I think some other people may not like it because they think it's slow or because the mythology tastes of Lost and Heroes, in that there's not much of it and it's likely that if explanations do come they will be incomplete or unsatisfying. Those people are probably right, and can also sod off. 

Thing 3: Laters, Bladder

A late entry that I spotted this morning, the tumblr 50shadesofFlashheart is perfect. Enjoy. 

Genuine Grey quotes, genuine Rik Mayall faces (c) 50shadesofFlashheart 

Thing 4: Pride

Pride happened. I didn't go to any marches. I was proud in my own way, which mostly involved sitting at home playing Skyrim (of which probably more another week). 

I was happy for the people who went to the big marches and had a great time, and I was moved by people who marched in other countries where there's less corporate sponsorship and more rubber bullets. I was really happy for Americans, who can now marry in all 50 states, and I was really happy for people in Mozambique, where homosexuality was legalized in June. 

My point is... I can believe that marriage equality in the USA is important for cultural awareness reasons, and because actual American queers wanted it, and still acknowledge that marriage is not the only thing we need to be fighting for, that this Onion article is basically bang on. And I can think that Pride as an event sounds pretty tiring and believe that there's all sorts of internalised rubbish and corporate bullshit going on, and still be proud. 

And anyone who wants to suggest that either thing precludes the other is welcome to fight me. 

Pride (c) Pride (Pathe/BBC Films technically)

Thing 5: A guide to the operation of your Rosie unit in warm weather

Brr, it's a bit chilly outside
All systems online, ready player one, receiving loud and clear

Average temperature
Systems running

What a lovely day!
Most systems running normally, stress alert activated, please monitor your unit carefully and back up any important files

Woo, summer is here! I wish I was at the beach today!
WARNING, WARNING, DO NOT ACTIVATE, TODDLER-STYLE MELTDOWN IMMINENT. Restrict access to other units. Verbal instructions will not be saved into memory. Do not allow unit to use public transport. Under no circumstances allow unit to attempt shopping. Rage venting systems online, stand well back. Public property destruction mode in 3, 2, 1...

Heatwave
error no rosie detected please reboot

Things and Stuff #17

Secrets, Vespers, Vids, Villains, Pages


Thing 1: A Thing
I saw a thing. I'm absolutely not allowed to talk about it.

Having secrets is kinda fun actually.

My face when I got that one email (c) Cybill/the internet

Thing 2: Beautiful music in beautiful places
The next CEFC concerts are coming up really quite soon, like much sooner than I realised, and I need to knuckle down and practice my ppp top Es and my Old Slavonic Russian Ls (unfortunately, I think I biologically cannot do the Ls the way they're meant to be done, but maybe I can learn to fudge it...)

Gorgeous poster (c) CEFC

We're doing Rachmaninov's Vespers and some other gorgeous a capella pieces in two concerts in July - Friday the 10th in Southwark Cathedral and Saturday the 18th in St John's College Chapel, Cambridge. It's amazing music and it's going to be wonderful - potentially dodgy Russian Ls notwithstanding.

Thing 3: The Return of the Fancy Cannibal
This won't be news to anyone who follows me on any social media, but for anyone who missed it: a long time ago back in the mists of time (Things and Stuff #8 to be exact), I recommended the marvellous Cleolinda's wonderful Hannibal recaps. I stand by that rec, especially for people who don't think the show itself would be for them, but now I have a follow up rec, and it is this:

Watch Hannibal.

Restless Hugh Dancy gif and amazing comment both (c) NBC's Hannibal Tumblr account which is a work of genius all by itself

I was only reading the recaps back then, but then Cleo had to take a break from recapping and I needed to know what happened next, so I started watching.

This show is my jam, you guys. It's just come back for its third season and stuff is happening and people are dead and people are not dead and the fandom is already making plushie versions of people's horrifying visions and the queerbaiting continues to be beautiful, frustrating and hilarious in pretty much equal measure, and it's all so great I swear if you haven't given it a chance yet, you need to. (I also still recommend Cleolinda's recaps, Storify posts and entire twitter feed basically as a way to help you process all of the amazing stuff you are about to witness.)

Like this beautiful nonsense (c) NBC

I have no looming book deadline so I might be spending a chunk of this weekend making Hannibal fanvids because that is how much I mean this squee. A Lot, is how much.

Thing 4: Researching the research
I've come to the point in my current work-in-progress book where the hero needs to encounter the villain for the first time. Unfortunately, even though I have most of a plot in mind, my villain is distinctly vague. I know all sorts of things about him already - it's just his motivation and methods that are still a little fuzzy. Hmm.

So I've spent this week doing a lot of Googling around the setting and themes of the book trying to research some of the directions I could go off in looking for a really good evil motive. It's exciting, because at the moment it could be almost anything, but intimidating for the exact same reason.

Thing 5: Morning Pages
Morning pages is this exercise from The Artist's Way, which is a whole big hippy scheme of how to improve your life and creativity which you have to buy the book or videos to actually access in full - I haven't ever done that, I could, but I'm pretty sure it would be a form of procrastination for me, and I'm not sure how much of the hippy crystals stuff I would be able to stomach anyway.

But I saw morning pages recommended on a blog a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd try it out. Basically, every morning before you do anything else (at least, before you do any work) you write three longhand pages of whatever rubbish passes through your head. As mundane or silly or angsty as you like.

Basically like this (c) Eddie Izzard

It's supposed to help you sort your thoughts out and get down all the little things that are hanging out in your head so that they're codified and not so scary when you've finished. And it does kind of work, sort of. I haven't had any huge revelations of my inner self or fantastic flights of imagination - but I have also definitely had a few better days because I've written down what I expect to have to deal with that day and how I feel about it.

So yeah, I recommend it as a thing to try. You might not like it. But you might.

Things and Stuff #16

Tabletop, new, Carmen, cafes, Spotify

Thing 1: Dungeons and Dutchmen

I started playing tabletop for the first time ever and I LOVE IT. It's not D+D - it's actually a Swedish system called Mutant which is being translated sort-of-on-the-fly by our brilliant GM. It's a WW2 supernatural horror game set in Colditz castle (not remotely the setting the system was designed for!) and we're all POWs. I'm playing a very short, very strong, rather clumsy young Dutch pilot called Peter Kappel who has a secret Jewish girlfriend back at home and a French ghost lady who seems invested in my well-being, at least enough to do things like help heal me when I critically failed an agility roll and fell off the roof of the castle, breaking half my ribs. It was awesome.

Thing 2: New secret exciting projects

I've been pretty busy writing things recently - and I can't really talk about any of them. Some of them are commissioned, written, edited... but won't be coming out any time soon. Some are out there now in the ether being read by editors who I hope will love them. Some of them are packaged/ghostwritten. Some of them are my very own brand new things.

So because I can't be more specific about any of these, here are a selection of CLUES. Check back again in like six months to a year and we can talk about what some of these mean...

Thing 3: Carmen, a three-dimensional tempty temptress

A friend gave us tickets to see Carmen at the ENO, and it was great. Carmen isn't one of the operas I know very well - going in, my general impression was that Carmen is very sexy, there's a bullfight that everyone's very excited about, and everyone dies. I was pretty much spot on, but I was also really impressed with how the central relationships were handled. 

Carmen was extremely sexy. She was brilliant. A brittle queen living under the constant gaze of men who treat her as a sex object - but still her own person, even if that person is flawed as hell. In the end, Carmen is killed by a soldier she seduced and persuaded to desert for her. And that is incredibly problematic - if the soldier's descent into jealous fury and violence is portrayed, as it normally is, as all Carmen's fault. Normally, the soldier is a naive boy who is tempted and corrupted by Carmen herself, the tempty temptress. 

L-R: two of the other wonderful things about this Carmen, and Carmen (Clare Presland as Mercedes, Rhian Lois as Frasquita, Justina Gringyte as Carmen) (C) John Snelling, Getty Images

But the ENO production I saw was incredibly even-handed and non-judgemental of her - instead of some kind of innocent, the soldier was clearly just as broken as her. The violence was there, right from the beginning. The jealousy was very firmly framed as his problem. Carmen was allowed to be her sexy, tempty, manipulative, practical self, and the production didn't make any of that seem like grounds for murder. I was really impressed.

Thing 4: The habitat of the common or garden writer

As per 2, I've been working quite hard over the last couple of months. I like writing outside my house, as an attempt to trick my brain into think that I'm Going To Work, so I've been bouncing between locations, renting tables for a couple of hours at the cost of a large latte, and I thought I would write up some reviews...  

The British Library cafe

Pros: free wifi, free entry, incredibly beautiful inspiring surroundings. Cons: expensive coffee, squeaky chairs, get there early if you need a plug because a lot of other people had the same idea.

Starbucks, Muswell Hill

Pros: it's a Starbucks. Dim and cool downstairs area for Serious Concentration, celebrity-spotting opportunities (Eastenders actors mostly). Cons: bit cramped, often full of yummy mummies and/or obnoxiously good-looking teenagers. 

Great Northern trains from Cambridge to King's Cross and back again

Pros: total isolation, no wifi, chat between customers frowned upon, nice scenery to stare at. Cons: cripplingly expensive in the long term, fierce competition for seats at rush hour and in the evening, if you don't get to a table you might be sitting on the floor, which is cold and full of bicycles

Costa Coffee, Holborn

Pros: it's a Costa - as Starbucks, no variation, no surprises. Close to the office, nice staff, not too crowded if you get there early. Cons: aggressively air-conditioned, I'm really bored of all the sandwiches, the staff know me by sight now so I have to vary my drink order so as not to feel like a weirdo. 

Tatties, Cambridge

Pros: big space, usually a table except at busy times, nice basic fry-ups and similar cafe fare. Cons: no plugs, not as cheap as it feels like it should be. 

Waterstones cafe, Cambridge

Pros: I mean it's all right I suppose. Cons: I mean there definitely isn't always a table and usually a plug, I don't at all recommend the dais level with the lovely natural light, it isn't remotely inspiring to write books in a lovely bookshop, there isn't at all a nice studious atmosphere because of the Cambridge students doing their homework there, and the food is only mostly excellent. This is definitely not my secret new favourite place in the city. 

My kitchen table

Pros: 10 seconds from my bed, completely free, always get a spot, bra optional. Cons: BYO coffee, 10 seconds from my bed, fast wifi and nothing to stop you playing Dragon Age or watching Netflix instead of working, a bit filthy, management never cleans away the empty mugs. 

Thing 5: I'm a bit obsessed with Spotify.

I promise I haven't been paid to say this, but Spotify is pretty great. There's a playlist someone made with 280 straight hours of musicals. And there's the Lauren Laverne People's Playlist, and there's the new Duke Special album (Look Out Machines, IT'S REALLY GOOD). This is not news to anybody but me, but you guys. Music is good! I like that I have so much access to it! 

Oh god it's so good. Listen to Statues and Son of the Left Hand (C) Duke Special

Things and Stuff #15

Post-Chem, music, sportsball, research, [insert fifth thing here]

Thing 1: a post-Strange-Chemistry life
Strange Chemistry closed down two weeks ago today. I've been busy - finishing one story, restarting another, rehearsing for the Proms and recording at Abbey Road, trying to persuade my cats that they want to be stroked (they don't), attending Transpose, watching Orange is the New Black and Agents of SHIELD, reading The P45 Diaries (so far I'm unconvinced but it's for Book Club). Plus, working on some very exciting stories for WP. Just... getting on with things.

Out-of-context Batman cancan gif, surprisingly apt actually (C) the internet

I have started to make some tentative Plans about what will happen to Rabble, but nothing I can elaborate on yet. Watch this space! As @maggiemassacre pointed out to me on Twitter, Amazon US changed Rabble's listing, not to delete it altogether, but to reschedule it for 2035. I can promise you right here and now, Rabble will appear in some kind of readable form before 2035...

Thing 2: this 8tracks playlist
Songs from animated movies, sung in the language from the country where the story is set. Can You Feel The Love Tonight in an African language and (I can't remember which - 8tracks hides the track list until you've listened to it, which is sort of cool but right now mostly annoying) is a highlight. Under The Sea in Danish - but still in a Caribbean accent - is surreal but also fairly awesome.

Thing 3: Sportsball!
I am unusually invested in how well the sports people sports their sports - mostly down to the office sweepstake we have going in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. But it might all be over by the end of the day! I am rooting for Columbia to deliver an upset against Brazil this evening. Similarly, my Wimbledon sweepstake tennis player Federer is about to step onto Centre Court right now. Come on, sports people! Sports the ball! Sports it really well!

Unfortunately I won't get to see either sportsball meeting, I will be at choir attempting to get my head around some tricky Russian accidentals (c) Psych/the internet

Thing 4: I lost my keys and found my inspiration
This actually happened a month or two ago, only days after handing in the second draft of Rabble, but I suddenly remembered about it today. I was searching inside the sofa for my lost keys when I unearthed the notebook in which I started collecting my research for my next book, which I was doing when Skulk sold to Strange Chemistry and my writing focus abruptly swung back around to foxes and magic stones.

Here is an exclusive, quasi-representative glimpse of the kind of thing you can expect from this book:

Hetero interlude (c) me from Porter, James and Mayhew.

Thing 5: my cats are really cute

I mean, I'm just saying. 

Why yes, I did run out of Things (c) me