Liz Williams's Blog, page 39

The Write Fantastic

I made it up to Oxford yesterday to the 5th anniversary celebrations of the Write Fantastic, a writers' collective which I have recently joined - good company, including Ian Watson, Ian Whates, Sarah Ash, Juliet McKenna, desperance , la_marquise_de and others. Many thanks to Juliet and the team for organising such a good event. It was held at St Hilda's College - a lovely venue for this sort of thing (though it did lack coffee. Geoff Ryman is now the new God of Coffee, you'll be pleased to hea...

A government would be nice

...but what we'll get is horse trading.

Locally, Tessa Munt (Liberal) has won in my constituency, replacing the Tory who has held this region for 27 years: the final blow to him was charging several hundred sacks of horse manure as Parliamentary expenses. Please feel free to make the obvious jokes. Commonly held wisdom that you could put a dog in a blue rosette round here has finally been disproved.

The BNP got shafted in Barking, and told to get out and stay out. There is a Green MP in Brigh...

Dept of: you couldn't make it up

What with the BNP having fisticuffs, the rest of us profoundly underwhelmed, and now the link below, this really is not turning out to be a positive day for any party, is it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/northamptonshire/8664260.stm

"The politician had to be hauled to safety after the aircraft plummeted to the ground when an election banner declaring 'Vote for your country, vote UKIP' apparently became tangled on the tail fin."

I voted

It's going to be severely depressing whatever happens.

(Lib Dem, for the record. The local candidate is female and has a reasonable reputation, though I don't trust her party leader).

OKaaay

Just on the offchance, does anyone know any neurologists? I have an unofficial question for one (not related to my health, btw, or that of anyone around me).

Repost: Creative Writing Tutoring

As some of you know, I have been working for Adventures in Fiction, a creative writing mentoring programme based in London, which takes a limited number of apprentices each year for various genres. I will now be offering this service privately, and hope to be able to offer it both online and in person (I met my previous student on a regular basis, but this is dependent on geographical location!).

I will only be dealing with SF, Fantasy and Horror, or any related sub-genres, and will be offeri...

Vote against greed

Driving back through our neighbouring village last night, I saw that pretty much every house had an election poster, but not the usual ones. Instead, it's a small black and white poster which reads VOTE AGAINST GREED:

http://www.voteagainstgreed.co.uk/

They're not a political party, and they won't tell you how to vote. It's really just a sign that says 'I'm pissed off with the lot of them' and it is, essentially, futile* - except that it does show just how many people are irate enough to put a ...

Quoth the raven...

...what the raven actually quoth was 'Ek!Ek!Ek!' followed by a duck and shuffle of the neck and a quick grab at the fingers of the person who was unwise enough to try to tickle him.

He appeared in Benedict St this afternoon. His name is Bran and he comes from the local falconry: his keeper has been showing him around town as a publicity exercise. We might be hiring him for a ritual at some point. He is a wily, clever bird, like most ravens, and capable of working out the combination lock to h...

Weekend

Pagan Federation conference yesterday - we attended two of the talks (Jules Vayne on chaos magick and Chris Crowley on grail legends in Brittany). The Jal Folk Theatre once more failed to show up, leaving a 2 hour hole in the middle of the afternoon schedule. No comment, except praise for the people who stepped into the breach.

I have been working today. J has been running a Defence Against the Dark Arts workshop and hopefully will be around to run it again, unlike his predecessors at Hogwarts...

Night Shade

First of all, a big thank-you to everyone who commented on the previous thread. I very much appreciate your support and your kindness, both for myself and for my novels.

I have had an email from Jeremy Lassen in which he has unreservedly apologised for Night Shade's lack of communication. He has taken personal responsibility for this, and has referred to my public post as 'completely justified.'

I've accepted his apology and hope that we can now move on. I am in negotiations with a couple of a...