Best Damn Title, and other praise

Just quickly (I am supposed to be working, y'know...?), here's a review of the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror vol 21, which includes my story "The House of Mechanical Pain". Which the reviewer liked. Yay!

Status

I didn't make it to the Lit & Phil this morning, shock horror: I had local shopping to do and my veggie bag to collect, which both take me in totally the other direction.

Every time I stay home, though, I get caught out by Old Thinking. Old Thinking says "of course I can work at home, I've been doing it for thirty-some years already, for cryin' out loud! It's what I do!" etc.

And so I stay home, and - well, yes, I do work. But I also read LJ and browse the internets, and am distracted by the cats, and possibly glance out of the window every now and then, and wonder what's on the telly, and check the e-mail in a paranoid fashion, and and and.

And I thought I was going to have to report a morning short of pages; and I almost do but not quite, tho' largely by dint of staying here till two in the afternoon. Anyway: one page before coffee and two more after shopping etc makes three, which is just about okay so long as I get a decent run this afternoon and hang on till the evening.

Also, having inspected my veggie bag, I want to fling down defiance at littlebutfierce and her claim to the World's Smallest Cauliflower. Hee. Is tiny. But I'm sure it'll be delicious, and it sure won't take long to cook.

Also, for those of you worried about young Barry, I have to report that he was caught his morning chasing his own tail in the bathtub. Also trying to raid the kibble-bin. He may be feeling better. Still waiting for evidence of his internal consistency...

And now it's lunchtime. Fried sausage and eggs, I think. With sauerkraut. On toast.

Humph

LiveJournal is doing it again, this not-going-to-send-you-email-notifications thing. Is very boring. I thought they'd fixed it this morning, but apparently not.

*is very bored*

I can haz raynbo

This is foolish, but

( my rainbow, let me show you it )

Seven pages a day

Pages: eight. Yay! I needed one spare, if I was actually going to make fifty for the week. And of course a spare could always come in handy, any day I come up short; this is still only Wednesday... (And a hard slog today has been, and I never thought I'd manage it, only we had a late spurt there to the end of the chapter.)

Words: 2462

Zukotou:

Is down, apparently. Again. That'll be a NaNoWriMo thing, I expect. Sigh. Still:

120,847/125,000

It's official: this book will be over-length. But not too much. Bearing in mind that vol one came out at 195,000/125,000, more or less, in its equivalent first draft.

Perhaps this book is Desperately Short of Stuff? *worries*

Chapter is finished, battle continues; now we will see it from the other side of the river. What's the opposite of distaff? From the blokey point of view, anyway. And, literally, the other side of the river.

In other news, I am going to poach my teeny-tiny cauliflower in the same water I just poached a small smoked gammon in. And then I'm going to boil pasta in the same vegetably-bacony-salty water. And then I'm going to make a cheese sauce and combine all into a pasta-and-cheese-with-cauliflower-and-bacon dish. With mushrooms. And cherry tomatoes on the top, under the grilled cheese. And there will be spices also in the sauce, because I believe entirely in overkill.

And then I'm going to watch the extended version of The Two Towers, and that will be my evening, and so goodnight...

Why must I be so, so, so very like myself?

Oh, this is not good. I cannot find the Harry Hoad papers.

They are, for certain sure, in this room. Somewhere. I have a fairly firm conviction that I put them in a smart folder, which is black with red lacings, so as to keep them safe and prominent. I cannot find the folder.

The other possibility is that they went in a plain brown envelope with "Harry Hoad" or some such written on the cover. Can't find one of those either.

Anyone who knows this room, or me, won't be in the least surprised. Nor am I; it's been nearly a year, and there has been some fairly major reorganisation going on in here, and I don't have a place to put other people's family papers, which is why it may have gone anywhere. Actually I thought it might have gone nowhere, I thought I might find it right here on the desk, under archaeological layers of accumulated papers - but no. Not that.

Which means, well, I don't know where to look. Not, probably, in any of the twelve filing-cabinet drawers; they're all full of old manuscripts and such. More likely it's in one of the many, many document boxes. Or one of the plastic crates. Or one of the heaps of loose paper. Or one of the cats could have knocked it behind a filing cabinet. Or...

I don't know where to start.

And I have a novel to finish.

*utters bad words, aimed mostly at self*

ETA: Sod, and double sod. I found the smart folder. Empty. The papers are somewhere else. Now I don't even know what I'm looking for...