So I’m officially 22

Can’t say it feels much different from being 21… My birthday was on the fourth. So far my twenty-second year is not going well. Still can’t write, have barely enough money to breathe etc. etc.

 

In other news, am having much fun at work, and am still alive. It’s my sister’s birthday today, and she is going to kill me because I haven’t gotten her a present yet.

I think I might be about to get fired.

I made a huge mistake, and I think I’m about to lose my job.

Wold you do this?

Would you work eight extra hours while you’re sick, on fifteen minutes’ notice?
Because apparently I should have.

In any case.

I have finished The Naked God, and it’s like a genie popped out of nowhere to grant me all my wishes. I really loved that book.

In other news, Albert was an Asshole Royal last night – dragging me out to his friends’ place until ten when he knows I have to be at work at six, and then fucking off to some other friends untill bloody midnihgt. He also said they phoned him to go, but I was tired, not deaf. They never phoned him. So either he went there out of his own will, or he never went there at all. And thus was out doing godknowswhat with godknowswho. He also smoked all my cigarettes.

To sum up: I hate my job, I love the book, and Albert is a pain.

Seriously. Everyone in the world must read this.

Speaking as someone who has my novel open in the background while I surf the web and try to catch up on all the blogs I want to read, go read this.
You’re missing our if you don’t.

Moral Question

As we all know, I have the well-rounded moral sense of an alley cat.
Which is why I am appealing to you, the Internet, to help me out here.

My Moral Question

Is it moral/ethical to be for something in general, but not in your specific case? Like, a big cause or whatever. If you champion a cause without actually wanting to apply it to you, does that make you a bad person?
note: not talking about laws and/or religions, obviously, because as far as I know if you believe in the laws of a religion, you’re supposed to believe that they apply to you first. Obviously if you’re diddling your daughter and campaigning against child abuse that does make you a bad person.

I mean, in the sense of, say, interracial or gay marriage. I’m all for people being able to marry whoever they want to, no matter what shape, size or colour they are.
But me, personally?
I generally prefer my partners to be white and male.

Does the face that I support interracial relationships and gay marriage despite never intending to practice either make me a hypocrite?

Anyway, I was just wondering that

OMFG I actually Knew a President!

Have you ever indulged yourself and Googled various people you know to see if they show up? Well, I was Googling my grandfather, and his name came up along with Marais Viljoen. Now, I knew Oom Marais. Not well, but well enough to sit on his lap when I was a little girl (not like that you perv!). His wife taught me to knit. Not terribly successfuly, but I was six. So that part’s to be expected.
And only now do I find out he USED TO BE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA? Why was I not told? Think of all the mortal terror I could have inflicted on the other kids at school!
I could have threatened to send the Secret Police after them!
Muahahahahahahah!

Except nobody ever told me, and so my evil empire never happened.
Foiled again.

Weekend coming up…working again

Going to be at work this weekend. Just like last weekend and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that…

Well. So, Albert might have a new job. Yayness is me, as this will mean that I will once again be able to sit down. Boredom does strange things to that man.

My so-Called Life

So, last week, I was off for two days. I come back, and there is no internet. Oh, how I suffered! Working Sunday late shift in a hotel with no internet? Not fun. And then, on Monday…no internet. Still. Picture me sitting in front of computer, burning incense for the Internet Gods.
BERNICE: Oh, Lords of All Knowledge, wherefore hast thou forsaken me?
THE INTERNET: Because you just said wherefore in cold blood. Also, don’t you have work?
BERNICE: Work? What is this work? Why do you use these big words that hurt my brain, O Internet?
INTERNET: Because you are an idiot. Go away, and try to do some actual, y’know, work?
BERNICE: I will now ponder the meaning of these wise revelations from the Internet. Ommm, awarreeeya, gangalosh, rrrrammarooooja….
PEOPLE AT WORK: Is she going into withdrawal? Do we need to call an ambulance?
The internet got fixed just before I knocked off on Monday for another mysterious two days off (I suspect that they just didn’t want me to have the weekend off because there’s a big conference coming in and we all know how much I love conferences )
And now, finally, I have internet. Yay for something to do at work!

Oh, yes. And CSS, the company Albert was working for…no longer exists. As of Tuesday, he’s officially unemployed. First thing my mom said? ‘You know you can always move back home, honey.’ I love my mom, but sometimes I could murder her with a sock and two peanuts.
And yesterday I broke my father’s computer. Well, not exactly broke broke. It just…doesn’t work anymore. And it’s kind of my fault. And my flash, which contained the newest draft of my book, all my Maya fic, a lot of dribs and drabs that I’ve written over the years…corrupt. Completely skrood. I’m going to have to format it if I ever want to use it again. All that lovely data…Lady Luck’s a bitch.

In other news, Gabriel? Very good. For a given value of good. My personal value of good is basically: Does it have Teh Eye Candy?
The answer here is a resounding YES! Everyone is hot, from Gabriel the tattooed arcangel to the fallen angel-cum-hooker (pun srsly not intended). Best yet? Gabriel has glowing blue eyes just like the Fremen from Dune! *cue fangirly love-fest*. Plus I think the same actor might have actually played in Dune. As Paul Atreides, actually. Let me know if anyone knows for a fact that that’s not true.

Quentin Tarantino has more issues than the Daily Planet

Seriously. Watch Death Proof and you’ll see why. He’s a genius, of course, but he’s also more than a little mental, seems to me. He has this skill with that moment where you realize something really horrendous is going to happen to a character, but they don’t. And he draws this moment out for ages, while you’re sitting on the edge of your seat screaming at the screen like a demented person, hoping that by some miracle they’ll actually listen to you for once.
Alas, they never do.

In other news, I am reading The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton. As brilliant, if not more so, than the one before. Al Capone takes over the world, for crying out loud!
This book is the source of much joy, and also many panicky phone calls to my brother along the lines of ‘this and this and this just happened and please you have to tell me if Character X is going to be okay!’
But also, the book sucks rotten eggs. Because I am almost finished with it, and I won’t be able to get the next one for three weeks! muttermuttersulkfret.

In other other news, I have decided that reading too much grown-up Heinlein and too many bodice-rippers when I was young has permanently warped my mind and left me with the morals of an alley-cat. Haven’t decided whether I care or not.

Inspiration strikes like a thermonuclear warhead!

I have had a brainstorm. That’s like a brainfart, but it makes actual sense.
See, lately, as you might have noticed, I have been having some trouble writing. And now, I have finally figured out why that is.
You see, when I started my Monster Book of Doom, I had a pretty clear idea of what was going to happen. But in the process of actually writing it, the whole feel of the stoyr has changed. I’ve gone back so many times and rewritten things that I no longer know what the central plot actually is. Hence, writer’s block.

So, to cure this most horrible of diseases, I have hit upon this: I am writing a detailed – and I do mean detailed – plot summary. Chapter-by-chapter he-did-she-did-this-happened and why. It’s like an old legend – he went there and did this and this is why, and so this happened.
As I’m writing – I’m only at Chapter 2 – I can actually feel the plot crystallizing in my mind, becoming if not set in stone, at least set in wax. It might melt and re-form later, but at least I don’t feel like I have a Hydra by the tail anymore.

I’ve never been an outliner, you see. My previous stories (all part of a monster of a saga involving much drama, many beautiful people and a practically infinite number of things happening for no apparent reason) were all very organic. They happened, more than they got written. But while a seven-thousand page multi-fandom fic involving Captain Picard, the Zerg (Starcraft), Spock, the Elves (Tolkien’s version), Gandalf, Data, sentient spaceships, vampires, people from another dimension, gods, demons, evil gods, suicidal immortals revered as gods, drugs and the sexual morals of someone who’s read way, way too many bodice-ripper romances, was great fun to write, not to mention a great way to spend the years between nine and nineteen, it didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

But this one has a plot, and I happen to think it’s a pretty damn good one. I just have to figure out what parts to include, since some of the things I’ve done either don’t fit the plot, or actually contradict pretty much everything else.
So, my Writing To-Do-List runs as so:

* Figure out plot.
* Decide whether antag is good or Evil (very important)
* Finish Plot Summary of Doom
* Rewrite Parts that don’t work while preserving parts that do.
* Edit Book
* Query Agent
* Get Published.
* Die happy

*dances around the office happily*

I am no longer flailing about! Well, I am flailing about, but now I’m flailing about with a plan!