Sylvia A. Winters's Blog, page 3

Rat Updates: The Boys Arrive

It’s highly likely that few people caremuch about my rats except me (well, me and the rescues I get them from) and that writing about them a lot is boring for people, but they take up a large chunk of my life and I like talking about them, so I will.

Mahogany had her lump removal on Friday. Her scar is going to be HUGE. It extends all the way from her front left armpit to halfway down her body. Apparently the lump we could see was only a very small portion of what was actually there. She’s ju...

Wintering

I finally saw Sisters of Mercy, a band whose music I’ve loved since I was about thirteen years old, live last week. It was far more packed in there than I expected, but then they’re probably right at the top of the popular goth music list andI didn’t see anyone younger than us there (sob). It wasn’tas good as I expected to be honest as the vocals kept sinking into the music and I couldn’t really make out the words which was a shame, and the band was mostly hidden in smoke (which was kind of c...

Obsessing over Rats (again)

It’s hammering it down outside today.My clothes had only just dried after getting to work soaked when I had to leave again. When I got back, I found it was raining inside my boiler as well, meaning no heating. So my clothes are still drying five hours later and everything from the boiler cupboard is in a big sopping mess in our hallway. I’m just surprised it wasn’t the internet that broke, because that’s what usually goes.

I’m a bit stuck on the story I’ve been working on lately. I hit 40k an...

Hallowe’en Giveaway (closed)

The best holiday of the year has finally arrived: Hallowe’en! The leaves are well and truly turned, breath fogs in the air, and the streets are littered with mouldering pieces of smashed up pumpkin.

To celebrate I’m holding a small giveaway of two of my current e-book titles:Bat’s Children and The Lightning Moon.

Bat’s Children is a short (20,000 word) historical m/m romance novella, set in Wales in the early 18th century and featuring a family of lawless highwaymen.

The Lightning Moon is a...

Hallowe’en Giveaway

The best holiday of the year has finally arrived: Hallowe’en! The leaves are well and truly turned, breath fogs in the air, and the streets are littered with mouldering pieces of smashed up pumpkin.

To celebrate I’m holding a small giveaway of two of my current e-book titles:Bat’s Children and The Lightning Moon.

Bat’s Children is a short (20,000 word) historical m/m romance novella, set in Wales in the early 18th century and featuring a family of lawless highwaymen.

The Lightning Moon is a...

On Naming Characters

Naming characters is maybe one of my favourite things in the writing process. It’s fun, interesting, and sometimes a little frustrating. I’ve been writing in one way or another since I was a kid, and for my 12th birthday one of my best friends bought me a baby names book. She probablybought it for me just so I’d stop calling my characters thingslike Topaz and Obsidian. I think that book really sparked my interest in names and their meanings, and yes, I did stop choosing ridiculously frivolous...

Free Read: Underneath

It’s a nice, slow Sunday, so I wrote a thing. Enjoy!

Chelsea hunched her shoulders against the drizzling rain and quickened her pace. Her train had been delayed by nearly two hours and she was eager to get home. Not that there was much waiting for her except the usual soap operas, dinnerand a bottle of wine for one. It was exactly a year, almost to the hour now, that Raina had disappeared, gone out to the shop for tortilla chips and never returned. For a while, Chelsea had been hopeful. She’...

The Bestiary

One of my earlier stories, The Dog in the Mist, was written for LT3’sThe Bestiary collection. I wrote this story during a very rainy summer when I wasn’t working anywhere near as much as I wanted to be, and I think the story reflects that. It’s set on Dartmoor, which can be a very bleak landscape, and the plot is largely based on local legends.The Bestiary is going out of print at the end of this month, so if you want to read The Dog in the Mist, or any of the other stories, now is quite poss...

Starting on a Down Note

Well, September has kicked off to a good start. To cut a long(ish) story short, I now have no rats of my own, and am just down to the two foster rats. I lost Ren a couple of days ago, my favourite rat probably ever, literally the day after we lost Milo, the funny little rat I took on for a friend not even three weeks before.

It’s going to be very weird when the foster rats leave. I’ve been keeping rats for four and a half continuous years now. I’m so used to having them around. Feeding them,...

Boomtown!

This weekend my friends and I jumped in a car and headed down to Hampshire for Boomtown festival. The queue for the carpark was about an hour, but we had snacks, music, and were all excited enough that we didn’t mind the wait. There were a lot of old camper vans broken down along the way, people jumping out and trying to push them uphill.

It felt like we had arrived a day late when we got there. There were cans and bottles littered all over the place, people staggering around and shouting, dr...