Vacaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation! (AKA, holiday)

I'm a total deadbeat, I know.  Truth is, I just hit sudden burnout about two weeks ago.  I've been over to EE's maybe twice, haven't hardly checked duotrope at all, and haven't written anything.  Don't know why, don't care much, but I know from experience that it's temporary burnout and I hope to be my frolicky, verbose old self when I get back from holiday.  Yes, that's right, bloglodytes, I'm going on hols for three whole weeks.  During these three weeks I will:

1. Recharge my writing bats.  I will sit in cafés (if my kids let me :) and listen to bits of dialog in English, check books out of libraries in English, and oil my grey cells with donuts, in English.  
2. Listen to my sis-in-law's belly and see if anybody says anything (in English).
3. Visit my bestest friend from college and make damn sure she's still totally silly.  Adjust her husbands silly-bone, if necessary, until he's worthy of her.  
4.  Visit the Old Man With The Beard, aka, Dad.  He only speaks English.
5.  Shop!  Shop shop shop!  Shooooooooooooooooooooooop!  Did I mention shop?
6  Eat donuts and cakes with salt in them!  This is the downfall of continental baking.  They don't put that pinch of salt in, and I CAN'T TASTE A FUCKING THING.  
7.  Eat lots of ethnic food.  Order it all in English.
8.  Go hiking to burn off said donuts, cake and food.  Talk to trees in English, and know that they understand.
9.  Teach my nephews how to burp properly.  In English.
10.  Hide when it's time to come home again.  ;)


I'll be around til the end of next week, packing and buying prezzies and doing laundry, but after that I won't be back til mid-October.  :)

Attention All Editors:

Next one to tell my how wonderful my story is and then reject it gets a dozen donuts up the wazoo. You have been warned.

(PS, since using real donuts would be a tragic waste, I'll be using a gene manipulated donut-shaped variety of cactus.)

Bookworms

Last weekend we went to the Gnomengarten. It's a sculpture garden with the most fantastic things, as well as the most fantastic person, Jürg Ernst.

The offspring liked this top one because the bookworms are so cute. we liked them all, but I am a sucker for anything that includes duckweed. Don't know why. It was a lovely day!

Just a Bit of Fun

Maybe I'm the last one to see this and you've all read it already, but I thought it was worth linking to this rejection letter.

Be sure to scroll down and read the breathtaking scenes the blogger posts to illustrate just what a loss this was to Harlequin.

(Joel Stickley, eat your heart out!)

State of the Nation

So here's the poop:

I've been over what has become known as "The Fucking Fairy Story" so many times it literally giveth me a headache. I wonder if someone has written a paper on this phenomenon, let's call it the "Bruised Synapse Phenomenon." Like someone hitting the same key on the piano over and over and over.... Don't get me wrong, I still love the story, but after six rejections, I've tweaked and revised it soooooooo often, it's gone numb. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, bloglodytes? I mean, I try to have a read-through and I hear Terry Jones's voice screaming "Not this record! Not this record!"

What? I'm making even less sense than usual today? Well. Rejection makes me a bit loopy. Especially meanypants ones where the editor is foul and condescending because I was ignorant enough not to know that etiquette dictates that I wait double the stated response time to query. Is this really true? I'll admit, I'm still relatively new to this game, so I'd truly love to hear from you all. Anyway, their estimated RT was 60 days, Duotrope had them averaging 42, and it had been 90. Was I really supposed to wait 120 days?

The fun part is that when it came to actual feedback (and I'm smart enough not to look it in the mouth, even if it comes in a cranky package) her complaints were almost all limited to mechanics- which I admit may have been a bit sloppy- standard typing in the US calls for two spaces after a period, over here it's one, so I'm horribly inconsistent. Also, she complained about my not-standard-American spelling of a word. I was grateful for this, because when I looked it up, I discovered that it indeed was standard American spelling, but my character is Irish and they tend to follow British spelling rules, so even though her snark was unjustified, she did me a favour. Or favor. She also complained about a boggy beginning, which I totally agreed with. I had added a rather explanatory paragraph to satisfy someone else who didn't know anything about fairies, or mounds, or Ireland, but I never liked it. So, at the end of the day, it was valuable feedback.

Actually, The whole thing wouldn't have left such a bad taste in my mouth if it weren't for her famous and well-published tendency to blacklist anyone who has the audacity to make simultaneous submissions in her court.

On a completely different note:
They're tearing up the street in front of my lovely garden shed writing space! *pout*
What an awful racket! Nevermind. I'm going to try and finish the story I was working on about the strange little boy, before the Koala gets me.

Happy Writing.

Call for Donuts

Well, thanks to Fairy Hedgehog and The Man With the Beard I now have donuts on my blog. Anyone out there having trouble reading it? It didn't seem to want to let me change the default colour of the text- the template wants it white, and while some templates let you change, this one didn't. So the background is Puce. We love puce, don't we? Yes, I can hear you nodding.

(ok, update: I did figure out how to change the text colour (why do they list that in a different place for every template? silly.) but I'm kind of getting used to the puce. But seriously, is anyone finding it hard on the eyes?)

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you out there have access to large numbers of beautifully decorated donuts and would be willing to take a photograph of them. I nicked this photograph from somewhere on the web as a temporary measure, and it will probably be autumn before I get to donut-land. Anybody good at photography?

Of course, if you'd just like to send me a couple dozen by express mail, I could take the pics myself, save you the trouble...

P.S.

Does anybody know when blogger is going to allow us to upload our own backgrounds?  I'm still waiting for a picture of donuts...