Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 50

Tattoo, second stage.

So, now that I've tested out my remarkable wimpiness against the process of getting a tiny tattoo, I'm ready to launch out on something a bit more serious.  I gave the bloke at the studio my picture of the Bewcastle Cross

and asked him to turn it into a design that could actually be tattooed on.  While I was asking for the impossible, I also mentioned that I would like it to go around the cross on my shoulder.  He measured how much space there was on my arm and came up with this:

which I think is brilliant.  I'm pretty certain that no one else in the world will have one like this   So now it's just a matter of saving up for it.  No one told me that the major sacrifice involved in getting a tattoo would be financial.  But I think I can justify the outlay to myself if have it for my birthday.  (Which happens to be less than a month away.)

Norse Crisis Flowchart T shirt

This is sheer genius

 

I must get one   It's from here http://bettermyths.blogspot.com/p/shirts.html

Since there is no Lokaday

I will have to post this on a Thursday.  Slightly embarrassing though it is, here is an excerpt of the first ever novel I actually finished.  I hit on the cunning plan of telling lots of short stories – because I knew I could finish a short story – and then linking them together to create one larger tale.  It helped that I set this in the oral culture of early Anglo-Saxon England, where it would (I thought) be quite in character for people to stop whatever they were doing at intervals in order to tell each other illustrative stories.

Nowadays I suspect this is not a great way of maintaining narrative flow, but hey, I was 18 and had never written a novel or read a 'how to write' book.  Possibly it shows.

Wildfire.

Chapter One.

The Tale and the Teller

"The old man hobbled into the hall. He was a strange sight; vain as a Viking with his long white hair and beard combed and plaited. His clothes were of the old fashion and his cloak pinned with a polished bronze brooch. The children called him 'the old mare' because of this brooch; it was a pagan thing, a woman's brooch that stared at the world with the head of a horse. He had been a tall fellow, strong too, and even in his sixtieth year his eyes were bright and his voice strong. Too strong, some said.

Swinging his stick to knock the dogs and infants out of his path he made his way to his bench and sat down. When he had lifted the ale horn and found it empty he raised his voice;

"Bring me some beer!" he shouted, "And I'll tell you a tale you won't forget for the rest of your lives."

The goodwife, Alfgama, brought him ale as the darkness gathered over the hall. When the fire was lit the old man gazed into it as if he saw demons dancing, but the folk of the village gathered in beneath the cross and fondly imagined they'd left the demons outside. None of them saw the face in the fire that grinned at him with sly eyes, or with what a struggle he turned away from it, for only a moment, to drain the depths of the horn. Other faces turned to him then, and the fire watched them.

"He's drinking like a young man tonight." said Alfgama, as she brought him the flagon again, "I think we will hear more than we bargain for; it's a strange mood."

The monks blessed them and with their words Sceldwulf saw the flame-guest grimace and go. He was saddened as he began to speak.

"Be silent," he said, "And I will give you the gift of a tale. This is the tale which I have kept till last, because this is the truest tale…It happened a long time ago, as long as most of you have lived, and me only a boy of sixteen or so. We lived here, the five of us, Aethelfrith and Hild, far from anyone and on our own. There was another homestead on the other side of the mountain, where Wulfgeat is now, but I'm not going to talk about them.

It started off on a stormy night, a stormy and blustery night, and the fire raged. The sky poured down and fell on us with a loud shout, like a hammer blow. We huddled from the mountains where the stone-giants were throwing boulders and we prayed as the walls rattled. We prayed, yes we prayed with blood and herbs, while little Aesgifu, that was only four years old at that time, howled her head off.

"Thunor, Thunder, come quick and kill all these giants!" That's what we prayed, and there's no need for you to look so shocked, no-one had even heard of your god in those days.

"Thunor, come and get them! Come and smash their skulls!" that's what we prayed.

All of a sudden the noise stopped. Aesgifu stopped bawling, the wind stopped howling; silence curled about the place like the world long serpent. Even the fire stopped crackling. We forgot to breathe. Then, yes then, in the middle of that great silence came a knocking at the door that made the wood tremble.

"Don't open it!" cries my mother, "It's a demon!" My mother was a great teller of tales and knew of many monsters. But Wulfstan, he'd leapt over there before the hammering stopped and was reaching up to the latch. Honestly you could have floated a ship on the fear in the air. Of course, Wulfstan, being only six, he couldn't reach the bar, so mother breathed a sigh of relief…She shouldn't have done; the knocking went on and on in that silence and the way it was was like drumming, like something very old I'd forgotten. Before I knew what I was doing I was over there and swinging back the door.

And was it a demon? You might well ask: It was a man. Not young, not old either, or you wouldn't have thought it from the way he stood.

"Oh, Father," says I, "Come in out of that terrible weather. I'm sorry to have kept you in it so long, but we thought it was a bad spirit."

He laughed and walked in, trailing water. There were crystals of water around the brim of his great black hat, and his long beard glittered with it. He wore a great grey cloak, darker at the shoulders where the rain had soaked in, and pinned with an eagle-headed pin. You couldn't see his eyes for the shadow of his hat brim.

"Yes," says my father, leaping to his feet, "Come and dry by the fire. Hild, bring our guest the horn of ale. Sceldwulf, winch down the cauldron."

So in he came, without making so much as a footfall, and sat beside the fire with steam coming from him like ground mist. What a shadow he cast! Like a great grey wolf on the wall. He was quiet, quiet as a hunter and the night dared not draw breath in his presence.

"Tell me," Says my father, fingering the hilt of his dagger, "What brings a traveller like yourself here in these wild lands? The king's many leagues away, and the nearest homestead's a days journey or more, even if you don't get lost in the trees trying to find the track. There's nothing about here but fish and forest."

"To tell you the truth," says he, "The court's driven me out…Oh you needn't worry, not for any crime. The king got tired of seeing my face, so he told me to go."

At that point he took off his hat, and he smiled at us children where we sat in a corner. The others, they cringed, but I was nearly a man so I smiled back. Shall I tell you what was so terrible? Well, he had only one eye, and the socket where the other should have been was filled in with grey whetstone. That put the fear of god in us, but

"Oh," he said, "You're frightened at my eye? I lost it in a Northman raid, but the Flota that took it, he lost more. Hel got him that very night, and I wore his masked helmet for years."

Well, I think my parents believed him, and I think I did too at that time. After all, it's not so rare that a man loses a limb to the sea-wolves.

"So, you're known at the court?" my father went on. I suppose he was angling for friends in high places. If he was he couldn't have got much higher;

"Yes," said our guest, "I used to be very influential with the king, in fact I used to have a say in almost everything. Many people have profited by my advice. Now you'd think that with age respect would increase but, oh no; in comes this young foreigner and suddenly he's the most important thing in the nine worlds, and he looks at me and says," Get this devil out of here!"

And would you believe, they drove me out!"

"But your friends," my father insisted, "They surely defended you?"

"Indeed they did," Said the stranger, "But this young upstart got his retainers to kill my friends, or to drive them to the point they daren't acknowledge me publicly…So I left. There's no point in being in a place you're not wanted. Not if there's somewhere else to go."

"You'll go to Mercia then?" my father asked, sympathetically now, for the ruin of a great man by the jealousy of some mere bench-boaster is a matter for grief in all right hearted men.

"Yes, or further." he said, and that was all we got from him.

His name, he said, was Grima, but there it's a common enough name, though inauspicious. So we gave him food and ale and he slept in the best bed, but not before my mother had given him the approving eye. I think she would have been glad to get her hands on him – he had that way with him – but on the whole she was a good woman and kept her hands to herself.

He went in the morning. It must have been very early because no-one saw him go, but he left a purse of gold coins worth more than two years harvest. How we thanked his memory you may well guess.

Well that's about all we talked about for the next year. He was a strange one alright, he made me religious…A year passed, a good year with much sun and little snow; I remember the fish being particularly good, and the Autumn, when it came, was flame coloured and warm…I can see you thinking, 'That's not much of a story', but you have to be patient. I've not done the half of it yet.

One Autumn day, with the leaves floating down like funeral-blossom and the sun like honey, I was out in the apple field lazing. What did I see but, striding across our barley fields, a young man dressed like a king. He came walking towards me like a flame: A blood-red tunic he had on and a cuirass over it with the shoulder-clasps in gold and garnet. His hair was the colour of our ripe barley, and he had it bound in a red and gold fillet like those that new wives wear. His cloak was pinned with a woman's brooch.

At that time I didn't see his face, but let me tell you, the rest of him was beautiful…Off he went, walking like a lynx toward our house. Me I nipped round the back where I kept a loose board in the planking, one I could just slip through if I wriggled hard enough. So, when he knocked at the door I was there to answer it.

Strange to tell, there was that same soft thunder about his blows as there had been when the old man came, and I shivered a little. Father looked at me strangely from where he sat, patching the cauldron in the corner. Mother nearly slit her thumb on her fish-knife as she sliced off heads. Aesgifu, she started crying again. She always was a mardy child.

Anyway, that knocking shivered us, but we weren't as scared as last time. We'd taken no harm from the one that called himself after the one-eyed god. So, I leapt up, I was an eager one then, and I opened the door. The light came in like a golden shield, and out of its centre he stepped, bareheaded and smiling. Honestly I was knocked backwards he was that beautiful.

Dad looked at him and scowled. He used to be easy on the eyes himself and I guess he was vain. Now, he came in, smiled at my mother, so she was all of a flutter and turned to my father all serious all of a sudden, like he was a different man:

"Give me sanctuary." says he, "I'm being hunted down!" And he took hold of my father's hands like a supplicant begging a boon from a king. Then, I'll swear, he glanced at me and winked.

I thought then, "He's a wily one; a proper trickster," and maybe I guessed his name too, but I shook it off, and I said to myself, "There's trouble at court, mighty big trouble if they're sending away young nobles like him. It'll be that foreigner Grima told us of."

"For what crime?" said my father, narrow eyed he was and I think he'd guessed the stranger's name himself.

"I give bad council." said the young man, laughing.

"Not that bad, surely!" said I, and that time he looked at me longer and I was afraid. His eyes were sly and dark with a hard black humour at the surface and pain like snake-venom under it. He was hunted, you could see it.

"Do you know a man named Grima?" asked my father, "A king's councillor?"

"The only Grima I know," says the stranger, grinning, "Is Woden, ring-lord of kings."

"Maybe it was him." says I, and

"Maybe it was." He says, as if he knew it. My father snorted with disbelief. I reckon he thought we had a false bard at our table, one who'd make up a story off the top of his head to see the reaction he'd get. I thought different…

Well, we asked him who was hunting him, and how, what was his allegiance and family, and all those sorts of questions you ask a guest in your house. He wouldn't give a straight answer to anything: Said he was born of forest fire, when you know only Loki Laufeyarson, the thief of Heaven had that parentage. He said he was hunted by that same young foreigner Grima had told us of, yet he'd never heard of Grima.

You may imagine how reluctant father was to have such a liar in his house. As for me, being young then, his beauty was payment enough, and I couldn't think ill of him. I thought to myself though, who in the world would claim to be the Sly god if he wasn't? So, all the time I was watching his face like a lover, in my heart I was growing more and more afraid. I was beginning to think that he might not be lying at all.

Now I can see all you priests getting nervous, and well you might. But I'm not going to stop my story, so you'll just have to stop your ears.

Well, soon we went back to our tasks, or in my case to skiving off my tasks, and let me tell you, that day was the best there ever was. First Dad went out on a mirror smooth sea and nearly broke his nets with the

size of his catch. Then I met with a deer in the woods; just in the nick of time I was out with my bow and we had venison. Meanwhile our guest sat whetting his knife and singing old songs like witchcraft over it.

The evening was dark blue and full of stars, and a big bone moon that was swinging a sickle for the harvest above the land. We were sitting outside, warm with fire and meat, when he points up at that moon and says "Look! My grandson is eating it!" Then he tells us the tale of how the great wolf came to be born, that sired all the wolves in the world. He tells it as if he were it's father, as if he really were Loki that gave birth to Fenriswulf.

It's a fine story as you know. A fine and sweeping story, but I'll wager no-one told it that way before, nor heard it either. After it the night was cold, and we hurried in to shut that bitten moon outside.

Well, Night whipped up her horses to a fine swiftness, and we were all thinking of going to bed. We gave Loptr (That was what he called himself.) the best bed out of mere host-obligation, and Father put the wicker screen up. That was so he could try and forget we had a stranger in our midst I think. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd have told us to sit a watch, and that worried me, for my father knew a good man from a bad, at twenty paces distance.

Soon everyone was snoring, except me of course, I was thinking of that sly glance and fidgeting. Then as the night wore on I got up and went quietly inside the screen, for I wanted to see if he slept like a human being. But he wasn't sleeping.

What I did then was wrong so I won't dwell on it. Wrong I mean by the old laws and wrong by the new…You're leaving are you, you priests? Take your foreign god and lose yourselves outside if you won't hear an old man's confession, and have my curse on you. As for the rest of you this is my last tale so you may as well hear me out…Now as I say, I know what I did was wrong, but I don't say I was sorry for it. He was beautiful, and I loved him, and that's all there is to it. But, on the whole it was lucky I woke up before my father or, god or no god, he'd not have left our house alive.

Now what it was that woke me was a knocking at the door, so I pulled on my things and opened it with the tip of my father's spear. Lo and Behold, it was Grima;

"Quickly boy," he says, "Take your family and hide in the trees, the King has run me to ground."

Fallen off the internet

I think it's a result of having finished Under the Hill and sent it off on its first stage in the submissions process, but last week I found myself wanting to do anything but write.  Or at least, I wanted to write fanfiction just to please myself rather than writing anything that could be vaguely saleable.  I spent most of the days trying to tear myself away from reading, reading, reading anything I could get my hands on – which was unfortunate, as I had editing and cover art to do, and I was supposed to be re-writing an old story to expand it into a novella.

I get the impression that now there's a vacuum where UtH had been, I'm trying to suck something in to fill it, but I don't know what that thing is, so I'm reading everything indiscriminately in order to find it.  None of which would be a problem if I didn't have other things I ought to be doing.  I really hate multitasking!

On the 'things I have been reading' front, and after seeing my friends list filling up with squee about A Game of Thrones, I tried reading that.  But I seem to be fed up of pseudo medieval fantasy worlds featuring oppressed womenfolk, soap-opera style relationships, a pervasive feeling of doom, and politics.  I get the impression that no good can come of anything that happens from page one onwards, am I wrong?

I may try the book of the film of On Stranger Tides, now that I've decided I'm not going to see the film after all. 

I think – writing wise – that I don't really want to be writing this novella.  I want to be brainstorming something new.  But on the other hand there's only 5000 words between me and getting this thing finished, and I feel strongly that I ought to be getting it out of the way first.  The trouble is the more excited I get about the idea of doing something new, the more I don't want to be doing this old thing.  If actually started to sit down and develop a new idea it would probably just make that ten times worse.

And speaking of old things, having re-read my first ever novel, I've got to say that while it's not as bad as it might have been, it's not as good as it could be either.  You can tell that I'm trying to make it sound like a Norse saga – it's all very laconic and full of alliteration – but I strongly suspect I wouldn't be happy to have it seen until I'd done some re-writing, reformatting and expansion on it first.  I'll post an extract of it next post so that you can see for yourself what I mean.

The solution to all my ebook problems

One of the better things since sliced bread, is Calibre, which I downloaded for free this morning.  I wanted to send The Witch's Boy to a reviewer, but he only accepted .epub files, and WB only came in .pdf or .mobi format.  Now, thanks to the magic of Calibre, I can just convert my .mobi file into an .epub file and send him that.

One of the reasons why I haven't been on a total ebook spending spree on Amazon was that I have a Cybook Gen ereader, not a Kindle, and Kindle's DRM prevented me reading any of their books on my ereader, even if I had paid good money to buy them. 

Kindle for PC is all very well, but I don't want to have to take my PC with me when I'm on holiday, or going to the shops, or waiting for the bus, or any one of those places where I would normally take a book with me.  Also, to be frank, I'm just never going to sit down and read a book on the computer.  The eyestrain!  The piles!  The constant feeling that I ought to be doing something useful instead.

Now, with the aid of some Calibre plugins, available here, I can also convert kindle books (legally purchased by me) into books I can actually read on my own personal e-reader.  Shocking thought! The appalling consequences for Amazon from this are that I might actually start buying their ebooks now.  Well, I would, if only all the ones I wanted were available in my country, but I guess that's a grouch for another day.

Two new anthologies

We now have confirmed publication dates for both the UK meet related anthologies, along with a list of the confirmed contributors so far (this will be added to, as we approach D-day). A really good blend of oldies and newbies.

British Flash – to be published on 16th June as a free ebook

Contributing authors: Alex Beecroft, Stevie Carroll, Charlie Cochrane,
Erastes, Elin Gregory, Sandra Lindsey, Clare London, JL Merrow,
Josephine Myles, Zahra Owens, Caroline Stephens, Lisa Worrall and
Serena Yates.

Tea & Crumpet – to be published by JMS Books on 3rd July as an ebook. Print copies should be available in time for the Meet. All profits to future UK meets.

Contributing authors: Alex Beecroft, Stevie Carroll, Jennie Caldwell,
Charlie Cochrane, Elin Gregory, Clare London, Anna Marie May, JL
Merrow, Josephine Myles, Zahra Owens, Jay Rookwood, Chris Smith, Lisa
Worrall and Serena Yates.

My stories are "Benefits of Peace," and "Riding with Hob", a historical and a paranormal.

We're still getting entries in, so the line-ups are likely to be longer in the end.

Thoughts about Thor

The first ever novel I wrote and finished (as opposed to abandoning 5 chapters in) was a historical fantasy that featured Loki interfering with the lives of people in two Anglo-Saxon villages, while simultaneously re-telling some of his adventures from the Norse myths.  It was called "Wildfire (in his own words)" and seeing the film has inspired me to dig it out again and see if anything can be done with it.  I'm thinking that if it's not too awful, it might be fun as a free serial or something.

Anyway, I'm a big Loki fan, though I've forgotten a great deal since the days when I knew a lot about him.  (I do know enough to snort and go "he's Odin's blood-brother, not his adopted son!"  But actually that leaves him in a very similar place of not quite belonging, so I don't mind the change.)

I also have a large box in the attic crammed with The Mighty Thor comics, also left over from 20-odd years ago, when a new issue was the highlight of my week.  So there was never any doubt about whether I would go and see the film.  I went as soon as it opened, and saw it in 3D.  Reactions below:

 

It's not worth seeing in 3D.  Although the sequences in Asgard are beautiful, they don't really use the three dimensions, and they would be equally good in 2D.

I enjoyed it and would like to see it again, but boy is it full of stuff to give the thoughtful viewer pause.

On a trivial level, I was extremely miffed that they had been faithful to the comic and kept the warriors three.  I hated them in the comic.  Who thought it would be a great idea to add the three musketeers to Norse myth?  Only someone who was tone deaf to the quality of a mythos, clearly.  Rubbish in the comic, just as bad in the film.

On a less trivial level, I was kind of staggered that we were supposed to accept that Odin was a good father, while also accepting that both Thor and Loki could both have grown to maturity with the idea that genocide was a good thing.  Seriously, All Father, never telling your children that the wholesale slaughter of another race is a bad thing makes it your fault that your kids grew up to be douchebags.  Nor is it something you can fix by stripping one of them of his divinity and hoping that the humans will teach him some ethics.  Worst father in the universe.

On an even less trivial level, though linked to the last point, I found it all but impossible to believe that the Asgardians were the good guys.  They stopped the Jotunn from destroying Earth, so far so good.  But then they stole their defeated enemy's source of magic/power, thus condemning them to permanent ruin.  And to add injury to injury, Odin also stole Laufey's son.  (I gasped in horror in the cinema, and was startled to find I was the only one doing so).  After which Odin educated his children to regard their defeated foes as monsters, leading the kids (I use the term loosely to describe a bunch of adults who ought to know better) to think that it would be a great idea to test their manhood by going – fully tooled up – and picking fights with an already disarmed and defeated people.  What a bunch of bullying thugs.)

At any rate, after establishing that Odin was the worst parent in the universe and also a very bad king, and that Thor was a muscle-bound jerk, I found myself even more predisposed to be desperately sorry for Loki.  And for a long and enjoyable time I was able to believe that the film itself might be aware that he had some cause for grievance, and might actually be going for something in the way of nuance.

I often hope this of movie villains.  It seems I never learn that a child with black slicked back hair, dressed in dark green, is inevitably going to turn out evil.  If only I could learn this simple fact so I could get stuck in to hating people properly on the evidence of colour coding!  Silly me!

Loki seemed very allegorical to me in this film.  He's 'feminine' in the sense that he is physically weaker than Thor, he uses magic and deception to get his way, where Thor (and Odin) use the 'masculine' power of physical force.  And I've started wondering recently whether power created by force or the threat of force is really so very much more noble than power created by persuasion, even if that persuasion involves lies.

When I said to my husband that I felt desperately sorry for Loki, he said "why?", which I thought was a fair question, though it surprised me that he didn't see or feel it himself.  But here's a child who wants to grow up to be equal to his brother – but he is different, he cannot conform to the warrior stereotype which is the only way in his society to gain acceptance.  His natural gifts of intelligence and magic are regarded as slightly despicable, and even when he uses them to prove that he's just as capable as his brother, he cannot gain praise or acceptance.

If he wishes to be accepted and valued, the only way he can do it is by accepting a subordinate position – and why should he be subordinate?  Because of an accident of birth? Because his society says that his perfectly good talents are not as praiseworthy as the ability to beat people up? To me, as a person who happens to have been born female, this dilemma is one that resonates with me.  It's not that I want to be superior, but I understand the desire to be equal in a world whose power structure is set up to only value a kind of power that I don't and will never have.  Who in this world really wants to be second-best?

There's also a sense in which Loki is clearly a character of colour, disenfranchised of his own culture & raised in the dominant one, but never quite considered as good as one of their own.

Both of those things make it grindingly sad to me that there cannot be a happy ending for Loki  in this film (or franchise) – that he is destined to be a villain.  On a meta level it just seems to reinforce the feeling that unless you're capable of playing by the rules of patriarchy you will always be second rate.  That beating people up trumps out-thinking them every time.  And on a personal in-this-film level, it seems so damn unfair to have two children (as Odin's honest but cruel dialogue puts it) "both of whom are born to be kings, but only one of whom will ascend the throne."  Maybe – just maybe, Odin – if you'd left the boy with his own people they could both have been kings. 

So yes, that part of the film made me sad in a thinky sort of way.  The other part of the film (involving Natalie Portman as a storm chasing scientist finding a ripped but delusional stranger in the desert) was slightly more amusing, but far more forgettable.  I do believe I've seen it all before in every other superhero film.  I must have zoned out during that part because I can't remember where anyone said anything at all that would have caused Thor to suddenly rethink his entire ethical standpoint.  Possibly the power of love alone brought his conversion about without the need for conversation, thought or debate (because talking to people with a view to changing their minds is evil, right?)

A writer's life is not an idle one

Under the Hill is officially finished!  Huzzah!  I must say – even though it probably counts as blowing my own trumpet – that I love it.  I'm sure it's a good sign when you finish writing a book and immediately want to tell everyone about it so that they can enjoy it too.  (Either that or I'm just delusional.)

150K (roughly) of fantasy novel, all inspired by one walk on extra from an episode of Dr. Who.  Thank you to whoever cast tank-top man as a nameless nobody at the end of the universe

you will never know what you have unleashed

So, normally I would have a day off after having finished a novel that took me the greater part of two years to write, but I've just found out that my copy edits on "By Honor Betrayed" are due to arrive tomorrow.  And in the mean time I've got four stories for the UK Meet anthologies to edit, and two pieces of cover art to do.  (Oh, and I'm dancing out tonight, so I don't have the evening to work in.)

Remind me again why I thought leaving my 9-5 job would lead to less stress?

A day on the diet

I'm still wasting away on this diet, having lost 2 stone 4lb so far.  (A stone is 14lb, so that's 32lb in total).  Only 8lb more to go before I hit my target of 11 stone, which will take me into the 'healthy' range of the BMI.

I'm losing between 1-2lbs a week, but that has been prolonged by the fact that I hit a plateau just after Christmas when I stayed around the 12 stone mark and spent six weeks dieting but seeing no change at all.  Fortunately it then started to shift again in February, and I'm back on the regular loss of 1-2lbs a week.

I don't know that I've managed to locate what makes this diet work.  It's certainly not calorie counting, because I can eat as much as I like of certain foods, and we even get "oh, well, obviously you haven't been eating enough," as one of the standard pieces of advice for people who don't lose weight in a week.  One of the rules of this diet is to eat often and not allow yourself to get hungry.

That suits me down to the ground.  I think the secret of this diet is some kind of combination of low-fat and food-combining.  But whatever it is, it results in meals that are big, tasty and filling, and no need to go without snacks.  I thought I'd show you a typical day, so you could see.  Bear in mind that I'm a vegetarian.  The lack of meat is not the diet's fault but mine

Breakfast

Two weetabix from daily allowance of "Healthy Extra" Fibre choices (I get two of these choices a day, so I could spend my other one on a couple of slices of bread later in the day if I wanted.  In practice I rarely use both.)  Milk on weetabix and in coffee from 350ml allowance of skimmed milk per day.  One of my Healthy Extra Fat choices (I get two of these a day too, which allows me to have a small amount of milk & cheese every day.)  And a banana, of which I'm allowed an unlimited supply.

Lunch

Mushroom omelette, cooked with Fry Light spray-on cooking oil, with baked beans (I use reduced sugar and salt beans because I want to, but I don't have to.)  This is all free (unrestricted) food, so if I was still hungry after that plateful, I could have another one.

Afternoon Tea (snack)

I get hungry again around 4pm, so a bowl full of frozen fruit salad topped with zero fat fromage frais keeps the wolf at bay.  I use frozen fruit rather than fresh because it keeps better and is less expensive.  And again, it's unrestricted, so I can eat as much as I want of it.

Dinner

Cauliflower and broccoli curry on boiled brown rice.  I use brown rice because I want to – I prefer it and think it keeps me full longer than white.  This is all free food too, so I can eat as much as I can find room for, and then come back for seconds later if I like.

Pretty much I can use any vegetable or fruit you can think of (except avocado, which is too fatty) in any combination with pasta, potatoes, rice, noodles, couscous, quinoa, any pulses and beans and any amount of spices.  Also any zero-fat yoghurt, skimmed milk cheese & fromage frais, and eggs.  That gives me a pretty wide variety of food I can eat without calculating points, or incurring guilt.  Then I have treat points I can use up on chocolate/nuts/desserts/eating out/extra bread or extra real cheese etc.

I still can't get over sitting down to a heaped plate of homemade chips, egg & (vegetarian) sausages and knowing that it's diet food.  But over two stone lost since September 2010 can't be argued with in terms of evidence that it does in fact work. 

I did once lose an equivalent amount through a combination of strict calorie counting and exercise, but I was ravenously hungry for the whole two years, and I did not enjoy the exercise, so as soon as I reached my target on that one, I stopped doing both things and put it all back on.  It was unmaintenable for me because I thought then, and still think, that being thin was not worth the grief.

With this diet, however, I can imagine myself staying on a slightly tweaked-for-maintenance version for the rest of my life.  It has the bonus that it's all very healthy, and having to make things from fresh ingredients is teaching me to cook for the first time in my life.  (Not something I particularly enjoy, but something from which I get a certain feeling of accomplishment.)

And yes, I can't deny I get a pang at having to go for the fruit salad (again!) when everyone else is eating fruitcake and brownies and caramel slices.  But it's a pang I can live with, when I consider how much more stamina I have, and how I've suddenly gone from being the person who was ill most in my family to being the person who is ill least.

Witch's Boy big giveaway (with caveat)

I really meant to have some sort of launch event for this, and then it turned out to be the week of the Livejournal DDOS attacks.  Most of the people who comment on my posts do so on Livejournal, so I felt that doing anything while it was down was not a good time.

Then, when it started working again, I had mostly forgotten I ever intended to do anything.  I really need to get a tweed jacket and a pipe because all my life I've been the model of an absent-minded professor.  (Actually I was asked to do post-graduate work in Philosophy when I was at university, and I often think that saying "I'd rather do some research into the cult of the horse in early Anglo-Saxon England" was the wrong decision.  I should have stayed in academia, pondering the meaning of the universe.  I'm certainly temperamentally suited to the job.)

For example, just take the way that I've gone completely off the point there.

Dragging myself back to the point with some effort – I was meaning to have some kind of event to celebrate the relaunch of The Witch's Boy.  However, now that a fortnight has already passed, it seems a bit late.  So what I'm going to do instead is give away a copy to the first ten people who ask for one.

However, there is a slight catch.  As you can see from the page for the Kindle version of the book, it has no reviews at all.  So, because there's no such thing as a free lunch, I would ask that anyone who receives a copy review it on Amazon afterwards, please.  It doesn't have to be a long or complicated review – I'd be happy with a single sentence.  It doesn't have to be a good review – if you hated it, go ahead and say so.  But if you could just put up a short summary of what you honestly thought of it, that would be excellent.

So, if you'd like a free copy and you're willing to write a brief review afterwards and put it up on Amazon, just give me your name and I'll send you a copy in an e-format of your choice