Report: Birdpig pies and alcohol: a cause for concern?

What did I do for Xmas? I moved around, mostly. A lot. Friends are good. They give me shelter, I give them ham; this seems inequitable, but they will do it.

To Durham on Christmas Eve, then, for dinner with shewhomust and durham_rambler and other friends who are bizarrely not on LJ. I stayed overnight and woke to coffee and Sudoku and a gift to remind me that it was Xmas; it's actually a lemon reamer, but it was presented to me as an award for Best Newcomer to SF, on account of an indisputable resemblance to an arty interpretation of a rocket ship. Yay. Can haz award!!

And then to Sue's for her traditional smoked-salmon-and-fizz Xmas breakfast party, and my now-traditional scavenge of her bookshelves (she has - or had - the Patrick O'Brian I was missing; I have it now), where we were first and I was last (as per appropriate Bible verses, etc), on account of needing to wait for Harry to come collect me. Which he did, and thence to his and Louise's house for steak tartare and spaghetti vongole and maple cheesecake, eventual teenagers and Dr Who on the biiiig screen via digital projectors and other such technology.

Being nearly L years old, I am probably too old to sleep on people's floors, but hey. There wasn't really much option, so I did that. And watched them stuff a goose on Boxing Day morning, but spurned all invitations to help eat it, because sometimes one does just have to come home to one's cats.

Oh, and parties up the road, of course: but mostly cats. I have been sat upon, and slept upon, and chewed.

And I have myself chewed birdpig pie in its first iteration, and am now making a second, with the addition of pork mince and fresh sage leaves. I liked #1, rather more than I was expecting; I'll report back on #2.

But never mind about the food, it's mostly been about the alcohol. Tut.

Alcohol and good news, if only for other people: m'friend'n'colleague moshui is seeing a degree of buzz build up over his novel Dragon in Chains, which you can still pre-order here if you're in the States and here in the UK. On the back of the fabulous starred review in Publishers' Weekly, review editor Rose Fox said this in her blog: "I've also got a few new and forthcoming books hanging around, most notably Daniel Fox's Dragon in Chains, due out from Del Rey in March. Our reviewer loved it so much that I snuck the ARC home from work as soon as I was done editing the review, and if I feel in the mood for something new, that's definitely where I'll head first." We wait, of course, to hear what she thought of it, but hey: it's good to have people talking, thinking about it, looking forward to a read. Sneaking it home from the office. moshui himself is unavoidably offline for a few days, but I see no reason why I can't bubble for him.

And now - on Saturday evening, with a pie in the oven and lots of other leftovers to be nibbling on meantime, at a time when any sensible person is slumping in front of the TV with a glass of wine and a book - I am sitting up here with a glass of wine, postponing all thoughts of supper in favour of moving my story on. I have written something at least on every day except Xmas Day, but really not very much: a page or two, each day this week. I need more. So far we have Surabaya Johnnie and the right compass in all its mystery; now we need the beautiful boy whore, tempest-toss'd. Oh, yes.