Lathany

Various things from the last few days:
- I told work that I was planning to make spag bol on Friday evening. A said she'd looked up the recipe, wondering what sort of exotic thing it was and then realised. "Doesn't say much for my Italian roots," she commented ruefully.
- In Monster Hunter World, for the first time I played for an hour or so without Mr Fox as I had some catch-up to do. Half-way through his Palico (NPC sidekick) turned up to help me. And talked to my Palico about how great his Monster Hunter was.
- Bea and I tried nail varnish from A-England (with thanks to Antonia). Hers is purple and mine is blue. So far the colour is lovely, but both needed multiple coats.
- I've proof-read nine short stories this weekend (three of them mine) as my writers' group is going to print them in a book.
- Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil is rather good, and I plan to write a review now I've finished it. It's an indie game involving ghost gadgets, general creepiness and an OK plot/concept.
- XCom Chimera Squad is both rather different from standard XCom and rather awesome.

I woke up to a cat in the face. Reeve wanted his breakfast. At least there was purring.

I had lunch in Ealing with venta, Martin and Chris C. There was a ham/gammon roast (we're not sure which). We then did Writers - our last one of 2018. However, we've already scheduled the first couple of months of 2019.

Now I'm writing my end of year entry. I'll finish it tomorrow, but as I've got other things on I thought I'd start it now.

My first week of work was busy but it's over and I managed to finish the things I needed to do. It was helped along by my train reading: Flesh Wounds - Chris Brookmyre. Flesh Wounds is the third book of his detective sequence (the others are Where the Bodies are Buried and When the Devil Drives). As for the previous two, I liked the plot and I liked the continued development of Jasmine, Catherine and Glen. Also - the reveal was good if not unexpected. I don't know whether he'll write any more of these as this third book does tie up many loose ends. As a trilogy I recommend it.

It's also been a fairly busy week for me socially (well, by my standards anyway). On Monday night we have an unexpected visitor in the form of bateleur's friend Gavin. He turned up because he was travelling from Dublin to Seattle and his first flight was so late that he missed the connection. So he came for dinner and overnight before he travelled back (he works at Wizards of the Coast and stayed with us over Xmas/New Year two years ago when we visited Windsor Castle if that rings any bells for anyone). On Wednesday there was the usual The Secret World. As Alistair complained about the screenshot on Gplus, here's another with all the characters clearly in it outside Dracula's tomb.



Thursday was Writers' Triangle with the second half of an Xmas story from chrestomancy, the first half of a new story from venta and my latest chapter. Then yesterday I ran Warhammer 40K - the last part of the Itazen arc involving both parties. The group saved the planet and also saved the third Inquisitor that they didn't like very much. They saw a battle between Space Marines (Sons of Orar - I've declared Itazen as their original home planet in slight contradiction to other sources) and Chaos Space Marines (Sons of Cyclops - although raising questions about where their non-Pyskers came from) - plus a Daemon possessing a Terminator Librarian. They killed the corrupt Governor and saw two corrupted ships destroyed. There are a few outstanding issues to take forward though:

• Who corrupted a black ship and how?
• Did the Governor bring chaos from his home planet?
• What is in the history of the Sons of Orar?
• What does the holy symbol do?
• What does the corrupted black ship mean for Marcus (Alistair's character) as he travelled in it himself?

I expect the next sessions to be separate again and following different threads of these.

I've also been playing more The Longest Journey. Here's a screenshot of the evil mage's castle.



Today bateleur has gone to Cambridge for a concert being held in his sister's memory. I'm at home to look after the duo and do the school run.

Since the duo left on Sunday I have:

• Given blood - given the timing (post that monthly thing) I was very surprised to have no problems with iron levels and was whisked off to a bed... well, fairly slowly. They were extremely busy, apparently it's one of their busiest locations (plus being a Sunday thing makes it busy). The blood giving went well, but afterwards I discovered a large bruise. I usually have a small one where the needle goes in but this was much bigger, much darker and triangular. I think it surrounds the needle area. It's an equilateral triangle with sides of about an inch long. How the hell did I get a triangular bruise? It doesn't hurt though.
• Tidied and cooked - On Monday we finally tackled the lounge and removed all the wrapping bits and relocated all the presents before vacuuming it so it looked presentable. Because we had a quisalan on Monday evening. Food was small turkey pittas with pots of things (cashew nuts, cheese chunks, olives, etc), king prawn pasta and chocolate pots. We started with gin and tonics, moved on to Orvietto and finished with coffee. We talked into the early hours of Tuesday and quisalan stayed over.
• Been a fairy - Yesterday we watched bateleur design levels and then played Little Big Planet. I started with my usual sack-outfits (the red-haired bride and the Spanish outfit 'cos they both have trains) then quisalan and I redesigned... as can be seen on bateleur's journal.
• Played The Lost Crown - The other thing I've been doing over the last few days is playing this. Turns out that it's not just by the Dark Fall creator, it's also a sort of sequel. A ghost hunter who is also looking for the crown of Anglia (hey, I come from there!). It's early days, but so far, so spooky. I dreamed about it last night.
• Started planning new book - Having not written anything pretty much all year, I'm finally getting some ideas together for a new book. Hopefully the lack of OU next year will mean I'll get on and write it too.

I've finally finished OU assignment number 3, so I feel it's time for an update.

( rather a lot of TV and some roleplaying )

And I love the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack.

Which plays are well enough known that the average¹ reader would:
(a) have heard of
(b) know one or more characters of (specifically the male lead).

I want a choice of plays for a piece of writing I'm doing.

---

¹ No, I wouldn't like to define average. Take your best guess!

Is there a word for when you tell the truth but it isn't believed by the person you're speaking to? Particularly if it's obvious to the audience that it's the truth.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a chapter as "any of the separate parts into which a book or other piece of text is divided, usually numbered or given a title".

After three books, it's pretty clear that I have different ideas about chapters to most published (real) authors. To me, a chapter is a specific scene and when the characters have had their say (or, specifically, the narrator has) then the scene is over. With Mourn's Gift I subdivided chapters into parts, usually based on narration (eg. there was a big celebration which I narrated from nine viewpoints, each viewpoint was a different part). However, the net result seems to be far more chapters than in published books (where authors will often switch between voices and events all under the same part or chapter) and I wonder about the differences.

Do people care about chapters and how long they are? Or think that there is a "right" use for them? Also, should they have names or only consecutive numbers (although some authors make a deliberate effort not to follow this convention; eg. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time)?

Toddler-wise, Ryan is expressing his destructive nature. A lot. He's ripped up six books and left a lot of scratch marks on Beatrice. Hopefully this will be a short phase.

Last night (whilst watching Q&A from Alias season one) I was summoned upstairs by a bawling Ryan. There was something new in his cot - Beatrice. She had climbed out from the lower bunk to the windowsill, moved along the windowsill and then dropped into his cot. Only one problem - she couldn't get out again.

I fished her out, calmed my upset son and went back downstairs to finish my box-watching. This morning I went in to collect them both for breakfast and discovered Beatrice back in the cot again. It looks like this is going to be her thing for the month (I wish she'd gone for potty training instead). Oh well, better get used to it.

This week is the Last Week Before Playgroup, (although Mother and Toddler groups will be re-starting). I met Vicki on my way to Tesco and she reassured me that the playgroup would not ring up on the first morning asking me to remove the duo and never darken their door again (although she did give Ryan a thoughtful look as she said this). I believe her. Mostly. If all goes according to plan then I'll have a couple of free hours two mornings a week. But only if all goes according to plan.

Writing-wise no big news. Roland Versus Sophie is waiting for printer paper before I get a copy bound. This means that Empty-handed goes back to being my main writing task. I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but may still finish by Christmas.

Oh, and I'm enjoying my new coffees (a present from quisalan as mentioned here). The Vietnamese one is slightly more bitter than I'm used to (I mostly drink Columbian) but the Pico Duarte (Dominican Republic) is lovely. However it should not describe itself as "chocolate tasting" because it doesn't. In fact, I've never met a coffee which did, despite this being a popular descriptive phrase. But then maybe I'm just a bit picky about chocolate.