The Truth About Rudolph et al

Am persuaded to save my last post for a shorty, so here's an early festive joke instead:

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers until after they have given birth in the spring.

Therefore, if we are to go by every available depiction of Santa's entourage, every one of them - from Rudolph to Blitzen - is a girl.

We should have known. Only women, while pregnant, would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

Another Hit!

It took until I actually read the letter to realise I'd sold another story. I didn't notice that the envelope had been addressed to my writing name, that the postmark was Dundee (home of D. C. Thomson), and that it contained one of my easily identifiable SAEs (neatly folded and returned, bless 'em).

So, as proof that my first sale was not a fluke, The People's Friend have asked to buy one too. Am terribly chuffed. They gave me great feedback with some early rejections, but I had failed to make any further progress, and had given up subbing to them. This was the first thing I'd sent them in over eighteen months.

I don't have a publication date, but you can be sure I'll let you know!

For information: they'd had the story since the middle of March, so if you are awaiting a reply from the Far North, have faith. Your sub is not down the back of the radiator just yet.

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Thank you to everyone who has signed the Chambers petition (more links in the post below). If you've haven't yet indulged me by signing, please consider doing so. You'll be in good company; Ian Rankin (possibly even the real one) did today.

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Just to complete my day, I have been retweeted by @TheXFactor (who have a following of nearly 42,000); but I shan't mention such popularist nonsense on this blog. You're all much too highbrow for that, aren't you?

Save Chambers!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have occasionally mentioned Chambers Dictionary, well, just once or twice...

Its parent company, Hachette (there's an apt name if I ever heard one) decided last month that it would be a good idea to close the Edinburgh office, out of which Chambers has worked for 190 years - for no doubt sound financial reasons, but no sound human reasons - and split ChambersHarrup between the faceless leviathans of Hodder and Larousse.

A petition has been started in the hope of saving the Edinburgh office - with its twenty-seven real people doing real jobs - and prevent Chambers being subsumed. PLEASE SIGN UP!

Links:
Save Chambers Petition (you don't have to donate to iPetition)
Buy Chambers Dictionary! (Nothing compares with a real one!!)
@ChambersOnline (on Twitter)
Chambers Online Dictionary (The online version)
Clishmaclaver (ChambersOnline's Brilliant Blog)

The background story can be read on the Publishing Scotland website, and in The Scotsman.

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Footnote, 16/11/09: the Chambers office is now due to close by New Year, with half the staff having left by the end of November. I am at a loss to describe how angry this makes me feel, and how sad I am. Bean-counters - I wonder how you sleep.

On Fogginess, Precipices & Isolation

The summit of Braeriach, as only the truly bonkers will ever see it:

The drop over the edge is 1,000', or more, depending on whether you bounce left or right as you go!

Having descended out of the cloud, Strath Spey shows in all its majesty. Only four hours to go...


And my favourite photo from August (a patched-together screen-bending panorama). This is Loch Avon:

A Big Hill and a Healthy Soul

Have been in Scotland for five days, walking and climbing. Feeling stronger and stronger every day. Well, not today, but that's because I climbed a particularly big hill yesterday. Big enough for me to exclaim on the way up, at least twice, what the hell am I doing here? and whose idea was this again? Er... mine; but a good idea nonetheless.

The big hill was Braeriach, at 4,252' the third highest in Scotland. It is also one of the more isolated peaks in the Cairngorms, requiring a two-hour walk to reach the lower slopes. The photo is not mine - it was foggy and snowy yesterday, so much so that I turned back just 200 yards from the summit. You can see why...

Tomorrow I start for home, 600 miles and another world away. I won't get to come here again until next year, and I am already missing the battering wind, and crunch crunch crunch of my feet on some remote mountain path.

But my body is completely better, and I think my soul is now better too.

What's good for your soul?

A Small Confession

Hello folks!
Sorry for the appallingly long absence. Been continuing to struggle with poor health, but in the last few weeks, I think I might, actually, finally, be better. It's been eight months...

Anyway, my small confession is that I sold a story. About a month ago, whilst on holiday in Scotland (how perfect is that) I received an email from the adorable Jill Finlay at The Weekly News, asking to buy a 1000-word twist-in-the-tale. Well, having been writing shorties for two and a half years, and having sold precisely... nothing... up to that point, you can imagine how carefully I had to consider my answer.

Yeeeeeessss!!!

So, to all you struggling newbies, let me also confess that I have subbed over fifty stories to get that hit. So keep going. I won't give you the J. A. Konrath quote again, but how about this one by Tim Clare, via Sally Zigmond and Womagwriter: "Getting published is about practising until you're really good, then persevering until you're really lucky."

Am writing this now, having just received payment for my story. Real money, in my back account! I'm not going to spend it yet - I'm about to go back to Scotland for a week and could do with an emergency float - but as soon as I've got some spare (next month... always next month...) I'm going to put it towards a red iPod nano. If you buy directly from Apple, they'll engrave it for free, so I'm going to have them put: "This is what I bought with my first short-story payment." I know it won't last for ever, and I can hear my (late) mother chastising me bitterly about this fact, but hell, it'll give me loads of pleasure while I have it, and perhaps I'll have earned some more shorty cash by the time it stops working. Yey!

What will you/did you spend your first-writing earnings on?

Reorganisation

I've been meaning to move those bookshelves for months, but my sticking point was moving all the books first. Ten shelves, double stacked... you can see my problem. I don't think the small girl set out to help, but she emptied the first shelf most effectively, and somewhat more quickly than I would have done.

Perhaps I should have explained the myriad of reasons why I hadn't wanted her to do what she was doing, but it wouldn't necessarily have stopped her having another go when my back was turned. I should have known, though, especially as she's such a chip off the old block, and I was an incurable shelf-climber too. Needless to say, a double-stacked shelfful of books on her head gave her pause for thought - at least while she drew breath for the wail.

Anyway, she got me started on the book-removal process, and my bookshelves are now happily reinstalled on the opposite side of the room. Now, having painted two walls already, I can paint a third.

This is part of an exciting development in the Room of my Own saga: having undergone a domestic rearrangement towards the end of last year, I suddenly found that I didn't have to convert the loft to find my own space after all. It might have taken me a while to start getting organised (been proper poorly, long term, as has my dad)*, but things are obviously on the up: not only have I moved the books today, but I am blogging again too, see?

*Thank you to those who have kept in touch by other means. Your messages have been much appreciated. I can assure you that I am now, finally, on the road to recovery (as is my dad).

Nothing More than Shameless Advertising...

...of some of my blogmates' books:

Heaven Can Wait by Cally Taylor

Hens Reunited Lucy Diamond

How to Write & Sell Short Stories Della Galton

Clishmaclaver

Last month I posted about Chambers Online dictionary (here), and have been following their blog, Clishmaclaver, ever since. If you've not been over to see them yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. Recent posts have such inviting titles as: A Hairy Situation, Not Everything from Mexico is Bad, Textual Intercourse (you'll have to read it!), and The Emergence of Gambit, as well as the one I mentioned previously, Filth.

Those of you with a love of words - and I suspect many readers of this blog have a fairly intimate relationship with words - will find Clishmaclaver a great place to lose a few hours broaden your education. They also Tweet @ChambersOnline.

And if you don't know what Clishmaclaver means, I invite you to look it up in the dictionary!

Comfort Blankets

Having declared not so long ago that I had abandoned N1 for N3, I made the mistake of using one of my protagonists from N1 for Sally Q's Character Workshop earlier this year. I stupidly went and fell in love with him, and the bloody book, all over again. The trouble is (excuse coming up here...) we've been together a lot of years now, this book and I, and it's like a mad bad old friend without whom I can't quite bear to live, despite its appalling treatment of me (or should that be the other way around?).

Okay, I admit it, N1 is my comfort blanket. I feel particularly safe fiddling with chapter fourteen; I like that bit best.

Oh, Leigh! I hear you cry in exasperation. You'll never get a damn thing done like this.

I know. I know.

Sooo, I have to tell you that, having been re-inspired by many happenings this year, I am killing all my darlings (including a few characters), cutting out a terrifying amount of crap, and oh-so improving the rest. Such fun!

When you edit, do you, like me, find yourself going back over the same favourite bits over and over, or are you ruthless and determined and plough on through? (Or do you, even more like me, sit and procrastinate on Blogger/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/iTunes, etc.?)