Liz Williams's Blog, page 43

Ritual

This has been a tough winter for Glastonbury, what with the snow and the economy, so when a fellow shopkeeper suggested jokingly on Facebook that we do a morale-boosting town-wide ritual, for the prosperity and health of the community, a lot of people thought this might be a nice idea. We ended up with about 30-35 people.

Jamie and I ended up leading the ritual: we lit a censer at the Market Cross and everyone wrote their wishes on paper and cast them into the fire. Then, still smouldering, w...

End of January

It's been cold and grey in the main, but some days have had that odd quality of light which suggests spring and on Tuesday there was an extraordinary sunset, gold and pink and lilac: I remember similar pink-gold evening skies in Hong Kong, but such an intensity of colour is unusual here.

We've made a number of visits to the Bird Reserve this week. Our walk on Tuesday saw us circled by a pair of swans, flying round and round with huge slow strokes of their wings. There are flocks of them out o...

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...

RIP the Codmother

The Codmother has died: Connie Brown, who ran a chip shop in Pembroke, and who has been working up until the age of 102, just died in hospital (her first hospitalisation). She worked 6 days a week for 80 years. Since many of my Pembrokeshire relatives made it into their 90s, I can only conclude that it must be genetic. Or chips.

French peasant day

I've spent today at home, working on manuscripts and taking a break mid-day to clear up some of the fallen wood in the orchard. We have a lot of old apple trees and some fell in the winter storms, so while Trevor chainsawed, I carted logs to the woodshed. I'm now smug about this because it has started to rain quite heavily.

We now have a cassoulet on the stove, banana bread in the oven and a decent bottle of white wine opened. I'm going through one of those phases of reading cook books - main...

Crossed Genres fundraiser for Haiti

Crossed Genres are running a 'donate for Haiti' campaign here:

http://crossedgenres.com/haiti/

If you read the free story below and like it, pop back to the CG site and consider making a donation.



A Glass of Shadow
By
Liz Williams


"A glass of shadow, por favore," I said to the hovering waiter. My Italian wasn't up to much these days: a schoolboy legacy of a handful of words. But I remembered drinking wine here in Venice for the first time, at the age of sixteen, daring under the disapproving eye o...

Snow no more

The snow has almost all gone now, leaving slush and mud in its wake. I had a day off yesterday and took the dogs down onto the peat moor: our usual walk to the river has been interrupted as they are cutting into the peat and making a new channel. The reed beds were still mired in a thick layer of ice, but there are catkins on the alder trees and the branches are full of little birds - chaffinches and bluetits.

The dogs all came back with black feet from racing across the peat.

I am back at wo...

Sherlock Holmes

So, E and I went to see this last night. Trevor has a touch of the old man-flu and could not join us. Drove to Yeovil in, appropriately, a pea-souper which at least put us in the mood.

Spoilers under the cut.

We both thought it was very good. OK, the plot is dodgy. Sherlock Holmes plots are often on the ropy side, including the original books. Naturally, I find much to like in mad late 19th C occult societies. (I don't go big on initiatory lineages, but mine kicks off with McGregor Mathers, P...

Sad cat is sad

There is a terrible howling outside the hall door because Cobweb cannot sneak into the upstairs study and hide in the airing cupboard, outside which she pees. I cleaned the carpets on Thursday and this is war. But the howls are heart rending (remember the poor sad dog that wasn't, outside the Doors in the Dark is Rising? Worse than that).

Meanwhile Sid has recovered from the wyrms, but has lost the bottom half of one fang, so that he looks piratical rather than vampiric. I have always had an a...

Writing workshops - London and Glastonbury

I'm scheduling a couple of 2 day workshops in London and Glastonbury on the 20th-21st February (Glastonbury) and the 20th-21st March (London).

This particular workshop is directed at people who are aiming at publication and covers the basics of:

- short story writing
- novel writing
- preparing work for publication
- marketing your work
- contacting agents and publishers
- genre as an industry

There are a maximum of 15 places and no entry criteria. We will not be doing a lot of writing during the wo...