Spiky Spoken Word (by sarah)

This Friday I am going to be reading my poetry and depending on how brave I'm feeling maybe some of my sort of rap/performance geek poetry at the Frog and Fiddle . It costs about £4 to get in I think and on top of that there is A F Harold who is well worth a watch for his interesting poems (I'm not biased because he used one of my cats names in his Tweet Poetry for the Cheltenham Lit Festival honest!). There is also Men Diamler and Brown Torpedo who I have been meaning to blog about for ages and have like photos of performances and stuff but haven't gotten round to yet!

Men Diamler is what I think of as a sort Nick Cave / White Strips mix with a dark middle English ring to it. He weaves fantastical and often tragic tails in his music and yes I am a fan 😉

Brown Torpedo are erm... well the only way I can think of describing them off the top of my head is, I suppose - Trippy with that sort ethereal swerl allowing dreams of the present day - or something Simon from Uni would make us all listen too and then tell me they don't exist and I imagined them the next day!

Benign Polyp Gone (by sarah)

Alaric's fleshy lump is gone from his scalp - they used elctro-quatrazitiation which will leave a small scar but hey it's in his hair and even if he lost all his hair it wouldn't really show. there is a black, burn/scab thing there at the moment and there was a line of scabby blood from it yesterday evening which scared poor Jeany :/

But it is smaller than the lump was! It was apparently a benign polyp which my family thinks is haliourous as we call each other polyp (as in colonial organisms re: biology and not swellings and lesions re: medical).

I'm applying eye cream of all things too it as it is the best stuff to stop infection of which there is a bit of a risk as they couldn't put a dressing on it - I assume this is not large though or they'd have shaved him or asked us to shave him again.

It is a big relief 🙂 I think I was more worried about it than him.

Lump Removal (by sarah)

Alaric is going in for his lump removal today - it is only minor surgery so shouldn't be too bad. He is also on the more fierce fungal killing medicine which is making him a little under the weather - still I think he'll feel much better once all of this is over!

Plus strange fleshy lumps on your scalp need to go!

NaNo Madness and its Cohorts (by sarah)

I am planning on doing NaNoWriMo again this year - this is National Novel Writing Month - the challenge? To write 50, 000 words in a month - what is being termed a novel but I would consider a novella!

I did this last year and finished with more than 60 K words and met some great people who became my friends 🙂 Local and internationally. Unfortunatly I have already missed the launch parties but hope to be able to get along to a few write-ins (meet ups in coffee shops where you appear with laptops and dare each other to write or alternatively just chat!).

I plan to finish/continue the story I started last year which is slightly cheating but as I view this as my writing goal for the month - I think that's ok. You can follow my progress on Purple Monster - were I keep all my notes, reviews of research material, and raw as I write them chapters of the story! I often bung in the odd writing tip or link to an interesting article. There are a few flash fictions that are based in The Punks universe though at a slightly earlier time period, these can be found on Magenta Monster.

I was going to carry on writing the story all the way through last year but even towards the end of November last year I started having issues with simply not knowing enough about the time period half the novel is set in - ie Tudor England. I have spent alot of time reading history books and I got away with taking over our LoveFilm queue for half the year where I got out all the films and documentories based in the time period I could find. (And yes I know the films are not accurate but sometimes they give you something to go and research!).

As I am also using some alternative tech in the story I have been researching this too - namely optronics and what large scale social computing would be like if centralised and not the internet. Half the story is set in the near future and is basically cyber punk so I have been reading my way through the cyber punk novels we have in the house.

I want to beat last years word count 🙂 But being pregnant and stuff means that this may be tricky - I am however still going to try.

The other challenge I am doing is PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) which I also did last year - this makes a nice counter balance to the Nano for me. And as I have had a great reaction from Jean from stories that came out of this and the picture book writing week - I am definatly doing this again! I am keeping track of all this stuff on Orange Monster if anyone is interested!

I am also doing the rewrite of a novel I hope to submit to the Terry Pratchette Prize so all in all that is a lot of work and I am aware I probably will not get it all done especially with my hands acting up the way they are - but I can but try. And at the end of the day anything I get done is a bonus 🙂

Eco-Council (by sarah)

Jean has been accepted onto the Eco-Council at school - this was something she came home saying she wanted to do and so she made a card with things on it that represented environmental issues to her (so it was all dolphins and stuff) and then dictated what she wanted to say to me.

It was stuff like 'I am good at putting things in the compost bins and can tell other people how to do it right and stuff' The word stuff did come up a few times :/

She then attempted to write it all herself into the card which went a bit arrey as she had written quiet a bit on why she wanted to be on the Eco-Council all of which omitted the presance of the shiny badge they get to wear!

I was suprised she could even actually enter for it and checked with the school! Then there was getting the letter into school - Jean kept checking her bag but after she got home from school 'the letters still there mummy!' panicked wail. We'd gone through the fact that she might not get a place but she was determined to try - so in the end she handed it personally to the Head Master at their end of project display.

And she got in!

She is very happen about this even though it means she doesn't get much play on Wednesdays - the meetings being at lunch time. This is week three of meetings and she still seems happy with it 🙂 The main issue is getting her to hold her cardi properlly so that the badge doesn't get scraped across the ground - we've already had tears where she thought she had lost it but Daddy had just put the other cardigan on her.