@ Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 – 14:32:21
Missing: yes, I have been ~ terribly terribly sorry.
In action: yes, I have been. I've been beavering away on the novel in progress, and I'm blogging my progress here:
The Dead beats: Novel in Progress
Do feel free to pop in & have a look ~ all comments and criticisms welcome (ish!)
Cheers
Kate
@ Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 – 14:17:50
Missing: yes, I have been ~ terribly terribly sorry.
In action: yes, I have been. I've been beavering away on the novel in progress, and I'm blogging my progress here:
The Dead beats: Novel in Progress
Do feel free to pop in & have a look ~ all comments and criticisms welcome (ish!)
Cheers
Kate
@ Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2006 – 13:51:31
This was a bittersweet experience for me: on the one hand I was thrilled to be published, but on the other I was annoyed that we litle writers were seen as so dispensible and unimportant that upholding their end of the payment deal was optional.
I'm nothing if not determined and pro-active, so i logged onto moneyclaim.gov.uk and filed a court order for the non-payment, including the £30 fee for issue of the order and £20.00 to cover lost interest and time wasted spent chasing the blasted non-payment.
I had a cheque for the lot within five days.
Result!
Of course they'll never publish me again, but I can do without that sort of "help" in the early stages of my career.
Lesson learnt: writers have agents because they get screwed over a lot a lot a lot.
@ Monday, Sep. 25, 2006 – 13:43:35
.....or so Glamour magazine would have you believe:
Magazine requested 'photogenic' war widows By Guy Adams
Published: 22 September 2006
The editor of Glamour magazine has apologised after a reporter issued an appeal for "photogenic" modern war widows.
Jo Elvin said she was "outraged and sorry" that Military Families Against the War had been sent an e-mail asking if they could provide case-studies of women, aged between 30 and 38, whose husbands had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
[from the Independent]
Gawker has kindly elaborated, with the news that the email stated:
"Glamour is very looks-conscious so, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, they need to be photogenic, or at least comfortable in front of a camera! [...] The editor likes to approve each case history, so when I send her a short bio ("X is aged X and lost her husband X in the war X") she likes to see a jpeg pic too. I know this is a big ask, but it's something she demands! Hey ho!"
Classy. Very classy. And to think that fashion journalists are decried as vacous toothpicks who'd sell their grandmother's kidneys for an over-sized handbag and have an IQ equivalent to a catwalk model's waist size .......
@ Tuesday, Sep. 19, 2006 – 15:04:58
You may remember this , when I was thrilled to have a story accepted for Writer's Forum magazine. My first published piece, my first step onto that first rung of the writing ladder, the slowly advancing hangover of reality when it became painfully clear that the bastards were going to rip me off by not paying me! THREE times I've asked for the cheque now, and three times I've been fobbed off with vague excuses and meaningless promises that it will be "looked into". Latest is that I may have to contact the publisher directly myself to get it. WHY THE HELL SHOULD I?????? Your magazine published my piece, now pay me for it.
Writer's Forum ~ don't buy it! They treat their authors like crap.
@ Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 – 14:04:51
Forward! Concertgoers put yobs to flight as band plays Great Escape
Steven Morris, Friday July 7, 2006 The Guardian
A group of drunken youths thought they had picked an easy target when they decided to disrupt a brass band's open-air concert watched by a crowd of pensioners. But they thought again when the band struck up the theme from The Great Escape and - as one - a Dad's Army of around 20 war veterans rose from their deckchairs and advanced towards the mob, prompting them to turn on their heels and flee.
Les Brown, 78, a former RAF pilot who served in Egypt during the second world war, said: "We got so fed up with these little toerags, some of us decided to stop them. The Great Escape music came on and I looked round and caught glimpses of other people obviously thinking the same as me. We stood up and kissed our wives and marched towards them. It felt like I was back in the war, coming up against a fierce foe.
"But we were a determined lot. We might be old, but these youngsters didn't stand a chance in hell. I've never seen a group of young men look so scared as when we started advancing."
The showdown flared in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, on Sunday, as the yobs - aged between 18 and 25 - spilled out of pubs after the World Cup.
They descended on Grove Park, carrying crates of beer and began playing football close to the bandstand where the Redland Wind Band was entertaining around 300 people. It continued to play - until a ball was launched at the conductor, who halted the performance.
The band provided a suitably stirring tune as the pensioners, some with sticks, others on Zimmer frames, advanced on the 30-odd youngsters shouting: "Forward!" and "Away with you!" To the surprise of some, they obeyed.
John Horler, 60, who runs the cafe in the park, said: "Suddenly, about 20 of us, mostly aged 60 or 70, got up from our chairs and advanced. It was amazing - totally spontaneous - and the kids could see we meant business. It was like a scene out of Dad's Army. Maybe it was the Dunkirk spirit that spurred us all on."
Marvellous stuff!
@ Thursday, Jul. 06, 2006 – 13:51:02
I am currently working on a piece about running & writing, how I feel the two counteract and complement one a another, how they're both hard as hell to get started at but better than almost anything else once you're in the flow.
In the meantime I recommend that you check out this excellent post, which replicates my thoughts on running almost exactly:
Hello, It's Me.: Running vs. Cycling
"I like running because it is simple and, on a good day, can free me like nothing else. Running is just about me and the machine that is my body. Although I have managed to spend a lot of money on running-related gear over the years, the only thing that is really necessary is a good pair of shoes. Well, and a good sports bra. But that's really it. [.....]
I guess I must have a bit of masochist in me too because I also really like the aspect of running that forces me to summon up from deep within the vast amounts of sheer will that are required to keep my body going even as my mind does everything in its power to convince me that I can't. It's like a battle within myself and some days it's hard to predict the outcome. But every finish feels like a victory - whether it's a race or a tough hill workout or a recovery run with Otis.
Hell, just lacing up my shoes feels like an accomplishment some days. And I'll take it. I also respect running because it's tough. And there's no cheating or in-between. You can't coast or glide to recover - you're either running or you're not. And the difference between the two is all up to me. I like that. Even though sometimes I hate it."
And this is another great post from the same blogger, again about running.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Honorary degrees for media names. This infuriates me, it really does. Even as a twenty-one year old graduee, sitting in the convocation hall in July, hungover and dangerously over-heating in that stupid cloak & mortar board, I remember feeling a sense of complete coutrage when they wheeled some journalist I'd never heard of onto the stage, waxed lyrical about him for twenty minutes then accorded him the exact same honours as those of us who had worked for our degrees. These days I am even more irate about it: I am currently working full-time (9-5- monday to friday) and STUDYING FOR MY SECONG DEGREE IN THE EVENINGS AND AT WEEKENDS. Add to that the other stuff which is either essential (supermarket shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, showering, paying bills, etc etc) and the self-indulgent luxury stuff (running, writing, socialising once in a blue moon, sleeping) and I am generally to be found in such a state of exhaustion that I could cry. Silly me ~ instead I should be poncing around in a wanky car a la Clarkson & wait for a degree to fall into my lap.
"Celebrating the award with [Billy Connolly] in 2001 was his wife Pamela Stephenson, who five years earlier had completed six years' study for a PhD in clinical psychology at the California Graduate Institute. In the light of Connolly's honorary degree, one really wonders why she bothered." Indeed.
@ Wednesday, Jun. 28, 2006 – 13:49:45
Sounds like a pub, that does ~ "The Jellyfish & Labyrinth"
In a Related Story, Keira Knightley Spotted Scouring the Beach for Buried Treasure
Guy: My gawd, what is that?
Chick: What?
Guy: This thing here. Medical waste is washing up on the shore.
Chick: What are you talking about?
Guy: Right there. It's a breast implant.
Chick: It's a jellyfish, you ninny.
Guy: I wondered why there were so many.
--Jersey shore
********
I am reading, and absolutely loving, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (no, not the coke- snorting coat-hanger with the inexplicable predeliction for skanky smack-heads and curiously 24-7 child-care arrangements, thankfully. After Naomi Campbell's Swan I think we can do without anymore model-author-whatever reinventions. Although "Naomi Campbell's Anger Management Handbook" might be a seller....). Anyway, back to the book ~ it's fantastic ~ beautifully written, impeccably researched (I assume ~ I'm not so hot on the history of 13th Century France that I'd spot any glaring errors) and it's a riveting, undulating, kick-ass "girls can be Indiana Jones, too" thrilling read. I've got about 250 pages to go (it's a doorstep!)and I'm already getting sad that I'll be finished soon.
Incidentally, anyone know how to get into www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk? It's very frustrating!
@ Wednesday, Jun. 14, 2006 – 16:42:22
Last night I saw the single most terrifying TV advert of my life.
No, not the one with the "juddery man", or the scary BBC digital heads, or the drink-driving ones. This was an advert for anti-ageing toothpaste. Yes, indeed. Some glossy-maned "mature" lady (i.e. over 25, but probably under 40, this is TV land after all) snips how she doesn't mind the odd wrinkle or grey hair (she is, ironically, botoxed up the the hairline of her expensively highlighted Jemima Khan 'do) but when her gums started to age, well stone the crows but that was a stage too far!
Luckily some science boffins have had the foresight to invent anti-ageing toothpaste, which improves gum health by a wholly unquantifiable (here comes the science bit) "73%". 73% of what, exactly? And can we expect that soon cosmetic dentists will come forward with a further six symptoms of haggard gums, seeing as how there are a whole seven signs of ageing skin (cheers Mr Olay) and seven unsightly signs of unhealthy hair (kudos, Pantene)?
Which part of our rapidly decaying selves will be next to be hauled under the microscope for intense scrutiny and declared unfit for public view due to its failure to defy the laws of phsyics and temporal progression? Don't know about anyone else, but my inner ear canal is nowhere near as pink and perky as it was when I was 21. Gap in the market, eh?
@ Thursday, Jun. 01, 2006 – 10:06:34
Is anyone else having this problem? I'm getting a lot of visitors leaving comments which appear to be copy/pasted from a news article (never anything to do with the post they are commenting on), which then includes a link which leads to a porn site.
Anyone else getting this? I don't want to limit my comments to friends only, but it may be the only way to prevent it.
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