Coatiwednesdi

When I was briefly a student at St Andrews in the '70s, fashion and practicality both dictated ex-military greatcoats for male warmth in winter. I really liked mine, and might've worn it in the summer too. Might've done.

Later, I had a WW1 leather overcoat: worn soft as butter and tissue-tender. I really liked that too.

Half my new friends here in California - actually, possibly more than half - are now or have for ever been in the SCA, and like to dress up in clothes of other times. I made it very clear to Karen that I Do Not Do Dressing-Up.

Then we got married. In a Victorian house. In Victorian dress. I loved my clothes, and still do. And made it very clear to Karen that this was a one-off, that I Still Did Not Do Dressing-Up.

Ahem. Apparently, even living in the sun here, my greatcoat-fetish has not died.

I am now the rather delighted possessor of one of these. Without lieutenant's stripes; I am unranked. Officially it is a West Point cadet's caped overcoat, but I like to think it also has an air of the US civil war about it, on account of my having just written a story set therein.

Now, how do I make it entirely clear to Karen that I Still Do Not Do Dressing-Up...?

SF/F/H: an open call

Harper Voyager is having a brief (first two weeks of October) open submission call, for unagented manuscripts. If you have something full-length and finished and looking for a home, it would probably be worth submitting.

Hell, if I had a copy of that YA fantasy I wrote a few years back, I might submit myself. Unhappily I can't even remember what the thing was called, let alone where to look for it.

In other work-opportunities that I'm probably going to miss, I was invited today to join an Arts Council mentoring scheme. Which I would love to do, it's my favourite kind of paid work (I had a pet goth once, who wanted to be Anne Rice; she was fab, and so was her writing), but of course it's in England and I'm not and I'm doubtful that everything could be done online; mentoring needs at least a little face-to-face. But I have enquired anyway.

Now I want to see them all again

As with the movies, I found this hundred-things-you-didn't-know-about-LotR [purist warning: that is LotR-the-movies, not the book] more fun than I'd expected. Apparently I have a trivia bone after all, or else it's just that my Middle-Earth bone is all-encompassing. It's another of those parts of me that got stuck early; I come over all teenage at any exposure.

Also, I particularly draw your attention to fact 76. This puts me and Christopher Lee in a club of seriously limited membership, though I dare swear there are more than we two who qualify: hands up who else has met both Tolkien and Gandalf? (Also, of course, Mr Lee is excluded from the even-more exclusive club of those who have met Tolkien and Gandalf and Saruman. But I'm there. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone...?)

Talking of great fantasy epics...

Here's something else I enjoyed more than I expected to:

the evolution of a multi-layered illustration, in hurry-up time. It still takes ten minutes, but show it full-screen, sit back and enjoy. I've seen Bryan Talbot do this kind of thing live, and it still impresses the hell out of me.