Cor, haven't posted in a whole week! Been busy busy with life stuff, what big chunks of time I've had have been spent very slowly uploading my old fics to scrib_lit, pecking even more slowly at my writing and Simming.

Plus the whole weekend has been very busy (again), not to mention very awkward as Mum and Stepfather have spent the weekend in Kent for the first time since the incident at Easter. Nobody mentioned my sister's continued exclusion from Mum's house - since the Stepfather reacted so badly to me trying to persuade him to be reasonable last time I was worried something similar would happen and didn't want a scene in front of the kids, plus with me & Hubs still gearing up for my FiL's funeral we really didn't want any more stress... besides, as Hubs noted, neither of us would have put it past the Stepfather just driving off with or without Mum should we 'bully' him by trying to calmly talk about the shitty situation that *he* has created. So the weekend passed without incident, but with me feeling thoroughly guilty at every moment that by visiting them at their resort and welcoming them into our home without mentioning the elephant in the room we were silently condoning the way my sister's been treated. I don't intend to play tit-for-tat and ban the Stepfather from my home over this - I think it's a very childish way to behave that sets a horrible example to my kids on how to deal with problems. But I don't know if I can go up and visit again if no steps are being made to end the stupid situation. Stepfather won't even talk to my sister at the moment - he won't even be *asked* to talk to her without throwing an eppie. I feel uncomfortable as it is socialising with him now - I'm not sure I could accept hospitality from him that's been withdrawn from my sister with no apparent reason.

Randomscribbles.co.uk is shortly to die, but will live on in scrib_lit, the one-stop Scribbles story-stop. It's a bit messy over there at the moment - only the Call Home is posted so far and I really need to put cuts on all the posts, but that's where you go if you want to look back at the real Curate's Egg that was my early ficcing.

Carry on!

Yowza. What a week it's been. Hubs has been working very long hours, Alex is still teething (but the teeth still aren't cutting) and is therefore sleeping terribly, and throughout the whole time we've had the shadow hanging over us of my Father in Law suddenly nosediving in health. As some of you know, he'd had Parkinsons from before I met him and was in a residential home with dementia for many years. He suddenly lost a lot of weight a few weeks ago though, and seemed to have pretty much given up on living. We went to Hastings on Sunday when Hubs visited him in hospital, then Hubs went to see him again on Tuesday, and first thing on Friday morning he found out that his Dad had died in the night.

Hubs is taking it on the chin at the moment - he's not one of life's mopers, and a very practical person - dementia means you slowly lose the person you loved anyway, and I think having been prepared for this for a long time and the element of relief that his Dad's suffering has ended has softened the blow somewhat. We're carrying on with our plans this weekend - seeing friends and all (except me and Alex since he's too little) going to the big bonfire night tonight. I think he'd actually find it much harder just sitting around.

Other big news is that I'm afraid I've decided it's time to let www.randomscribbles.co.uk die. It served me well over the years, but it's so easy to post writing online for free these days it's not worth me shelling out yearly for a fiction website. I'll soon be posting all the content that was on there either on this journal, or more likely I'll set up a second LJ account as a fic depository. The website will go down on the 10th, apparently. So it goes. So it goes.

Because elektra_lyte is doing me some art...

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble* of ANY pairing/character of their choosing (of ANY fandom) from me (with a prompt, if it pleases you to give me one). In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

*It will not be a 'Drabble', since it will not be exactly 100 words, but it will be a very short story or scene.

GO!

Ha! I am such a hypocrite! After being all 'I really, REALLY hate people who slag off other peoples' fanfic behind their back I had a very fun hour or so with my friend presidentalgo on Twitter this evening introducing him to the worst fanfic I've ever attempted to read. Although in my defense the fact that the author reacted to the one negative review already on her fic by going absolutely fucking apeshit both on the reviews page and on her profile, then added about 4 'anonymous' reviews all praising her to high heaven - all exactly in her very turgid and inaccessible writing style - frankly put me off leaving any helpful concrit (namely 'Oh sweet Christ, use a word that is less than five syllables long every once in a while, and don't be afraid of sentences that run for less than seven lines of text!'). There's badfic, which I don't actually mind, and then there's the self-indulgent Badfic of the egotistical thesaurus-swallowing looney (and Algo trod where I feared to tread and quickly discovered new levels to her looneydom) which is a different kettle of fish.

And now I'm going to post more Rollercoaster. Hypocrisy, thy name is Scribbles!

Jesus Shitting A Cracker, I'm tired today. Very early night for everybody, I think!

tin_o_biscuits was doing this writing meme, or to be more precise, youyou, as it's for anyone looking for prompts/inspiration for a ficlet and has the mental agility to type in a straight line right now - ie, not me!

I'll post the first line of all my full-length fics. You choose one and comment with a drabble/ficlet starting with the same line, unrelated to the original story. Ready? Go!
( My list (ff.net ones only, to keep the numbers down!) )

Good things today -

It is gloriously sunny and springy today, and the nice lady who runs the playgym let us in for free because we were a bit late and I only had a tenner on me.

I been done won me some Tardos Awards!
( My gongs, let me show u them! )
I other words then, that's 1 win (bizarrely, for one of the shortest, silliest fics I ever wrote) and 6 Runner-ups, which I'm pretty smug about. I'm also happy because a lot of my favourites by other people did well too.

Also, I had another wonderful orgy dream this morning - D&DC this time... obviously predicting the brilliant 'Love Stinks' glorious victory in the Best Adult Fic category. My subconcious gave me a P/E/D sandwich, with Eric in the middle. They were all loving it too, the dirty birds.

Bad things today, however - apart from my friend Bill posting a bunch of photos of me from my comfort-eating-heavy-drinking days at the paper on Faceache book, Hubs is finally back at work today having taken February off to spend some time with us. I'd forgotten how much work this at-home-mummying lark is when there's just one of you! Off to do the washing up in a sec while madam's still napping, then hang up load number two of laundry. *Sigh*

Today we went for a big fat lunch at Frankie & Benny & Joon's with the In Laws. It was goooooood. And, we did little else. Apart from wet out knickers at all the 4x4s and Beamers just swinging out from side-streets at us on the way both to and from Ashford, of course. Seriously, it was like the car had been turned into some sort of giant electromagnet for complete fucking cretins who are incapable of stopping at junctions, indicating or simply looking where they were driving. We even had a man carrying a massive sack of potatoes just slowly walking towards us as we drove. You'd think we were actually invisible.

I thought I was going to have to post a long-time-coming rant about "sporkers", nitpickers and self-proclaimed-fandom-saviours today when the STUPIDEST EVER backpedal over an unfunny 'loltypo' nitpick being pointed out to not actually be a typo occurred on one of the anal-retentive LJ Comms that I lurk on so as to scorn them from a distance. I'm not going to go into a full blown rant, though, but this really irked me.

See, my big beef with the people described above is that they tend, in my opinion, to actually be very mediocre writers. Their very public 'snarking' tends to be very frequent and without quality. I'm all for a touch of Wildean Wit in my day, but these posts are generally utterly unfunny, charmless, repetitive and dull. If this is their idea of sparkling, bitchy humour then, no. I doubt they make terrifically entertaining authors. It's not Oscar Wilde. It's not even Kim Wilde. It's like Simon Cowell taught a load of parrots how to come up with the same seven dreary puns in mildly scathing tones over and over and over and over.

Let's take the comment that annoyed me as an example. In a very unfunny 'Summary Spork' (in which, I think the point is to go through the first page of a handful of popular fandoms, select a handful of perfectly valid, coherent, interesting sounding summaries because they can't be arsed to dig for all the mental ones that are buried out there and make at best, obvious and unfunny, at worst, just plain weird jokes about them) somebody started pointing and laughing that an author had warned of 'a sombre tone'. LOL!!! SHE MISSPELLED 'SOMBER'!!!! OH THE HIGHLARITY!!! A non-American pointed out that 'sombre' is the correct way that those crazy-passported Foreign Folk across the water spell the word. Now, if you weren't a cunt, your response to that would surely be 'Wow. Really? Huh. Well, you learn something new every day. Makes sense, what with the whole 'centre/center, theatre/theater thing, now that I think of it.' If you weren't a cunt. The trouble is, that generally, people who make a big fuss and bother publicly nitpicking the fine details of other authors, usually behind said authors backs, in order, I can only assume, to make them appear better writers by comparison and to validate their own startling mediocrities, are cunts. The most usual backpedal I see when it's pointed out to one of these nitpickers (not always Americans, but usually, I'm sorry to say, my American chums) that the poor author they think they're ripping to shreds for their terrible spelling errors is actually just using British English is 'Well, it's a US Fandom so they should be using US English', which in itself is one of the most idiotic arguments I ever heard. Do you go around complaining to non-English speakers that their Harry Potter Fanfic should be in English, not German/Spanish/Whatever because it's an English Fandom? No. If you write a Spirited Away Fanfic do you do it in perfect Japanese throughout? WELL WHY NOT, MORON, IT'S SET IN JAPAN?!?!? Quick, let's all take the piss out of Shakespeare for not writing Hamlet in fucking Danish. Luckily, nobody (that I know of) has whined to me about this in my D&DC or TNG fics because if they did, seriously, they'd get a PM Box full of my uppity Limey rage. However, in this case even that stupid backpedal was invalid, since it was a Dr Who summary she was having a go at. Her answer to being pointed out that she was wrong was simply magnificent in its stupidity and arrogance. You know what it was...? Ready? 'Well, it looks stupid spelled that way'. OH NOEZ! THE AGONY!!! Seriously, I'm halfway through phoning the people at the OED right now to tell them they'd better change it to the proper American way this instant because it LOOKS STUPID!

Actually, this has turned into a rant, for which I apologise. It's just that, as a writer, while I very much value the considered constructive criticism of others, whether they be writers or not, these people drive me up the fucking wall. They don't amuse, they don't inform, they aren't constructive, their arrogance makes them impossible to have a rational discourse with, they just seem to exist to pick away at others in order to draw attention to themselves - like an inept school bully.

If you want to write, then write. If you want to read, then read. If you have feedback, that's what the fucking comments boxes and reviews boxes are for. If you genuinely think someone has room for improvement then tell them to their faces. Bitching's not funny unless you have the mental age of 11. Really. It's just shit.

I ought really to be working on this ere short film script application since the deadline's coming up, but I'm back here again instead. Tra-la-la-la-laaa.

There have been many things to cheer me over the last couple of days since I was in a pregno-funk earlier this week.

Firstly, when looking for the Sledgehammer video on the youtubes I also found this:



The video to Officially The Most Cheerfulest Song Evar.

Secondly, I have fabbo new Tardos banners to share -






Particularly love the Zombie Dad one! This zombie's a wee bit riper than Charlie, mind... I may scribble a little jot of the image I have in my mind of Zombie Charles someday.

Thirdly, Vi's language is continuing to simply explode. She's coming out with new phrases constantly, and can now count up to ten and tell you the names of basic shapes. I think the latter is thanks to her new favourite programme, 'Mister Maker', which she insists on calling 'Makey Makey'... which has, of course, stuck and will forever be the name of both the programme and the presenter as far as I'm concerned.

Fourthly, I'm really starting to properly bump now. It still largely depends on what clothes I wear, but generally I do look properly pregnant rather than just fat. Bought a new maternity top today since H&M were giving out 20% off vouchers and I have a gift card for it anyway. Tis pretty and springy - there are colours in the maternity ranges once more - rejoice!

Oh yes, and it was sunny all day when it was forecast to pelt down with more snow. BONUS!

Weekend, weekend, where did you go? Oh well, with Hubs still off, every day's like a holiday!

Trying to write an original short film script at the moment for a contest. Got really far with it yesterday then decided it needed a complete rewrite and have spent today ignoring it. I don't think I'll meet the deadline, do you? Oh well, I think it's a pretty good idea and I've got some nice dialogue in there already. If I don't enter the contest (or if I do and get nowhere) then at least I'll have it on standby for something else. The most annoying part of this is that the organisation I'm doing it for demand a writer's CV as part of your application. As hard as writing a well structured, original, engaging short film is, it's actually a greater work of fiction making my handful of original projects not look completely laughable :(

So yeah, I've been ignoring that today and putting my creative efforts instead into that very enjoyable hobby that will never count as Proper Writing to these Proper People - me fanfic! It doesn't help the case of my original work that the Rollercoaster bunnies are biting hard at the moment. I'm doing a Time's Arrow set story right now and have discovered that getting the lion's share of the ensemble cast together and settling them down for an evening in a cramped 19th Century Bedsit together creates a whole world of Hilarious Consequences. Seriously, they haven't actually done anything useful for several pages, it's been like a wonderful sandbox for me to have them just loiter around exchanging vaguely sarcastic witticisms with one another. Here, for example, is an excerpt of which I am particularly proud:
( from 'Baby Got Your Head Screwed On' Ch2 - talking cock... )Yeah. It's pretty much that, for about three pages at present :)
Oh, and I got more shiny, shiny banners from Tardos! ( Let me show u them! )

Told you there'd be a round 2 of the Explosions Quiz! Not as many this time, these are just the ones I couldn't wrangle out of the memory stick the other day. Name that Kaboom!
( Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey )

Also, huge thanks to anyone who has nominated me for Tardos. I couldn't help but notice that the categories I've been nominated most for are 'humour' and 'slash'. Yeah; cock and lulz - that pretty much does sum me up. I truly am a capering jester in the big bad world of the intertubes - I'd almost go as far as to call myself a prattling nincompoop. Anyhoo, whether I win owt in the end or not, it's a massive honour to be nominated amongst some real classics. Plus, I now have a pretty huge rec list of the nominated fics that I have yet to read... read 'Rise Up, Sir John' and started 'Survival' today, I have loads to get through - what a treat!

Best of luck to all of you who are in the running, guys. I don't really mean that - we are rivals now, you and I. I shall hunt you down and destroy you. May the best wo/man win death to all those who oppose me. Laters! I kill you!

The Angry Rain God (let's call him Nigel) decided to spew forth a torrent of freezing rain upon me all morning. The ducks were having a whale of a time, since all of a sudden their river had spread nicely to encompass much of the riverbank and rather a lot of Sainsbury's car park, allowing them to paddle about a whole new watery world like a bunch of little ducky Columbuses (Columbi...?) Me - not so much. I got very wet and very cold. Add to that the fact that Vi has a streaming cold and I think I'm starting to come down with it too, so I wasn't in the greatest of moods this morning.

Then along came Pushy Playgym Mum - the 'get your baby out of the way' one that I had a run-in with last year, who made me quite literally CAPSLOCK WITH RAGE. In fact, that was the only way that I could rationalise my feelings in my own mind. Those specific words - capslock with rage. I think I may spend too much time on the intartubes. Anyhoo, she introduced herself to me with the line 'My daughter's having a go on that car after your daughter is, yeah? Because they're for everybody to share, not just for one or two kids to keep hold of all the time' without apparently noticing a, the paradoxical nature of her statement or b, the fact that I was already trying to cajole Vi out of the car she was playing with since I was aware she'd been on it a while and other kids were waiting. In retrospect it might have been a passive-aggressive swipe at one of the mums of the other kids in the cars, since I'd noticed her kid get into some fisticuffs over another car shortly before, but that's beside the point. There's no way that I was going to stop other children besides her kid getting in it after Vi, so I assumed the only point of her speech was, in essence, 'get your baby out of the way'. All it did was royally put my back up and stress me out, since Vi was still ignoring my suggestions that she play elsewhere and now I had this ugly bitch breathing down my neck. In the end I pulled Violet out of the car - she'd been in it for her fair share anyway, but I wanted to get the Hell away from that woman. And then Pushy Mum was all 'Oh, you don't have to get her out of it *now*!' I told her curtly that Vi had been in it for ages, but that wasn't the point. The point was that now, her kid had run off to play with something else. As I walked away, she physically had hold of the car and was refusing to let any toddlers play with it as she tried to attract her kid's attention. i later caught her taking a badminton raquet off a little girl. Bitch. CAPSLOCK BITCH.

Anyway. It's stopped raining now, and it's Saturday tomorrow. I am still(!) doing my character plotting notes for the last New Adventure - Done all of The Seven now and it's already over 4 pages long. Just Venger and pretty much every guest character that's been in the New Adventures left, then. Oy, this is massive. Have also been writing a teensy bit of the ending to Rollercoaster... not that I'm anywhere near the end yet, I've just been thinking a lot about how I'm going to end it lately, and the bunnies need a carrot.

Had epic dreams last night - one involved a big Sleb networking function where I successfully pitched The Specials but when the guy who wanted to read the script gave me his number I couldn't get my phone to store it. Then I had another dream where I wrote about the first dream on LJ. I really am spending too much time on the internet, aren't I?

I am starting to enjoy some of the food that I went off in early pregnancy again, and feel up to cooking properly more and more often, which is a good thing. Made a mac cheese tonight (which I hadn't been able to stomach a couple of weeks ago) and followed my random craving for avocado with it. Yeah, I'm still getting weird, short lived cravings. Besides the avocado today for the last week or so it's been fizzy pop, which I'm usually not at all fussed about. And not just any old fizzy pop either, but caffeinated fizzy pop - cola is good, but what I really want is root beer or dandelion & burdock. Was overjoyed to find some root beer in Sainsbury's the other day and got through the whole two litre bottle in two days. Lots of caffeine + pregnant lady = not good. I think I'm just about managing to stay under the recommended maximum amount, but I'd still rather not cram lots of sugar and caffeine into myself. Am on sugar free D&B at the moment since it sates the craving, but since the sweetners in it have a bitter aftertaste it's not The Tastiest Thing In The World, Ever like the normal stuff is, so hopefully I won't want it so much.

Finally got my noms for Treasures of Tardos out - or at least the ones that I could think of. There may or may not be a sudden influx of E/D orientated fics popping up in the 'best romance' section of the nominations - don't let anyone tell you kids I'm not predictable. And Sealy, have you taken Cold Light of Day down?!? I couldn't find it. Boo!

Crossing the tees and dotting the eyes of another Rollercoaster chapter at the mo (did you get the email, realmlife?) and then I deffo have to do some more Zombie Dad. Or at least, stare blankly for a while longer as I attempt to remember what the Hell I was meaning to do with it.

Woo-hoo! Some of my D&DC stories have been nominated for tardos_treasure awards! Absolutely no idea how to get a brag button on my User Info page unless it comes with an idiot-proof copy-and-paste code though I'm afraid, Rummi.

Also... O Most Wonderful is Slash? I'd say it was one of those naughty cheating genderswap deelies that Slash Purists get cross about. 'Do they have to be the opposite gender to find each other attractive? OMG, the homophobic, it burns', etcetera. Not that I'm complaining, of course - thank you to whoever nominated me :) I agree with whoever nominated Charlie for a gong - I am terribly proud of Zombie Dad!

In other news, me and hubs came up with a new Saturday Evening Light Entertainment Dale Winton Vehicle for BBC1 - Ring In The Face. BRING ON THE RING!

Bleurgh. Haven't got to sleep until very late for the past two nights. Not sure why. Actually, last night it might have had to do with the Chinese we ate (for some reason, I never sleep well after eating Chinese), the nap I took during Vi's nap to feel a little more human and the fact that we finally got a working PS3 and were able to play with our new toys. Lara Croft might have been scampering around a sinking freighter for a while after midnight. Anyway, the result is, I'm tired. Yesterday I felt like a zombie with a headache (do zombies get headaches?) today I just feel like a normal zombie.

Anyway, between feeling like crappity and mashing buttons like a spoid, I have been Entertaining. Ian's down for new year and Dr Floheim dropped by last night as well. Ian supplied us with an A3 sheet of paper covered in stream-of-conciousness ramblings, and we all amused (by which, I mean 'bewildered and irritated') Flo by making up German words for his benefit. You will all be pleased to hear that the Toilet has now been rebranded in German as the Autoscheisseflushen... with an umlaut over the last u. We then decided to write a trilogy of Auquatic Thrillers - in the first, a group of convicts fall of a bridge in Paris (Criminally In Seine), in the second, a group of people born outside of wedlock fall off the Isle of Wight Ferry (In Solent Bastards) and in the third, a group of Scousers try to travel to Cairo by Submarine (Deep In De Nile). Sounds like a winner! Oh, and I broke husband by doing an impression of the Queen having her tits fall out at an inconvenient moment. Larks.

I've been getting loads of fairly random reviews for my fics. All very complimentary, just odd that I've had four since yesterday despite not updating recently. Evidentally everybody's had enough of talking to their families and decided to hit the interwebbez instead.

Happy New Year, everybody peeps!

Today is my & hubs' anniversary - 4 whole years!

Violet has decided to celebrate this by being an absolute nightmare to put down for her nap - two attempts so far have ended with her screaming herself into such a tizzy that it's taken ages to calm her down. God knows what's up with her. Attempt number three right now after sitting with her til she was practically asleep seems to have worked, but that was a *war*. Took nearly an hour. Cup of tea in a sec - I think I deserved it!

Thank you for my review, Fay! Funnily enough, that's the second old short fic that I'd almost forgotten about to get a review from out of the blue in a week. I like it when that happens :)

Oh, and I'm writing a Dixon Hill adventure into Rollercoaster at the moment, due to take place mid Season 4... it is so much fun. I'm deliberately trying to make the narrative voice as Pulpy as possible. I've already used the word 'Frisco' and the sentence 'the blonde’s coquettishly crossed legs just went on and on until Doomsday'. Add to that the ubiquitous Holodeck Malfunction, a three-way Detective Crossover and characters regularly breaking the Dixon Hill-verse 4th Wall and you've got yourself a very silly Scribbles. The title is going to be '"Merde", He Wrote'. Joy! I might even throw in Luxemburg's Finest Crimefighting Duo Jean D'Arme and Jacques Ouze (most likely played by O'Brien and Barclay) for shits and giggles.

Right.

Tea for me.

Ooooh, watched Who now! ( spoilers )

In other news, that WotW/TNG plot bunny seriously needs to bugger off and leave me alone, since:

a, It would be another epic bugger and I've got enough on my plate with the New Adventures and Rollercoaster, and really should be getting back to The Specials and other original stuff.

b, I would need to know a fuckload of background info on the ST Universe - loads more than I do now.

c, I'm still not convinced it would work - if the Martians that Wells wrote about were to turn up in the 24th Century... even if they waited until a moment when the Federation were reeling from a Borg attack (I'd set it, like, a couple of days after First Contact) I'm not sure they'd be as devastating as I'd need them to be. Plus I'd want the people on Earth to respond in a much darker, more chaotic, less Star Trek kinda way.

But it's becoming a really developed idea - from a single scene with Our Valiant Heroes becoming split up in a massive panicked stampede through an under-attack Paris I now know (sort-of) how it would end, plot threads and physical journeys for the different split-up grouplets, new characters, a Klingon called Trevor Perkins, an algae-covered and oxidised-to-buggery Statue of Liberty whirling through the air into crowds of petrified onlookers (hellooooo Cloverfiled Ref!) and the line 'My garments are crawling with Cholera and I am about to act as Live Bait to a ferocious, terrifying foe for the second time in a fortnight. On the whole, I have better days.'

Stop it, bunny. You are adorable, but you must begone.

First off -



I've had a headache all day today - it's still sort-of in the background. However, many things have cheered me...

- My many presents. There's the one which made me cry a little bit, it was so unexpected and wonderful (and very hush-hush at the moment, I'm afraid - *mysterious*), there's one I got for myself a few days ago that has finally arrived, along with new pressies for Vi that I can also enjoy.

- I got an unexpected email from my dear Spuddie, who I don't contact as often as I should.

- Finishing 'Trust' by Orangeblossom and 'The Silver Veil' as it stands so far while getting Vi down for her nap. Data/Tasha and Eric/Diana goodness, all in one reading session. Joy!

- I have a playdate booked with my work friend and his twins for tomorrow.

- Violet has learned to take off her pyjamas. I realised this when I came downstairs after my shower to find her still happily watching Pocoyo in her playpen, in only her nappy, with her pyjamas flung the other side of the playpen!

- She has also learned to say 'cuddle' (or, 'cuggle', to be more precise). Nothing sweeter than a giant hug after her naptime with that little girl patting me on the back of the head and saying 'cuggle, cuggle' in my ear!

- Plus playgym wasn't at all full today, and, while none of the people who are giving me the uncomfortable feeling were there, the nice lady with the nice twins that Vi gets on with was.

So, in spite of a day long mal-du-tete and Vi having a late, short daytime nap it's been jolly nice today. Huzzah!

We have a canine! (a toothie-peg, that is, not a bow-wow) Confusingly, it's a top one (the bottom set usually come through first, as has been the way with all of her other teeth) and she still only has the four molars - I thought babies were supposed to get their back molars before their canines. So she's going to look like a little vampire for a bit with only a top set of fangs. A bit of gumache meant that she took forever to settle down for sleep, but shes finally nodded off now. Went to Baby Dance class this morning! Was ridiculously early, we were home again by quarter past ten, which threw me out for the rest of the day, since when we go out for morning activities we're usually not back til near lunchtime - everything felt like it was an hour later than it actually was. Anyhoo, Vi seemed to enjoy the class - not so much having to sit still with Mummy while we went through the songs' actions when she wanted to be running around, but when the music was going she was too distracted to attempt escape and allowed me to Shake Her Hands Like This, And Stamp Her Feet Like Thaaaaaat, and so on. She much preferred the end bit of the class where she got to play with ribbon sticks and a parachute. Doing the Hokey-Cokey with a 10kg toddler in your arms at 10 in the morning is a rubbish idea, though. I nearly died!

I think the big problem with my writer's block this week has been that the fic that's been in my mind all the time, that I'm constantly thinking about how I'm going to work it, is Rollercoaster, which I have to put on hold until LoveFilm send me Season 2 of TNG (don't want to buy it, since I recall it not being very good. I shouldn't have bought S1, really, either). I know almost exactly how the scenes should go, but I'm definitely not going to write a chapter around a TV episode I haven't seen in a good decade. I also want to watch and see if there are any episodes before that that would have had good Data/Tasha potential, had she been in the land of the living.

It's not like I haven't got other projects on the boil - I've got the New Adventures still, and I really have to crack on with The Specials, but I just haven't felt able to work on either of them, barring a little light editing work on the Specials, and not writing agitates me. Which is why I'm very glad of the D&DC Fic Festival. Set to work on one of my prompts during my nap-break, and have got more than 1/2 way already. Quite happy with it, although I've now changed my mind about the end twist so bits of it will need a rewrite. This should be just what I need to get me out of this furze. plus I got a lovely review for Rollercoaster yesterday, which supplied a much-needed ego puff!

Only three votes in the poll so far, and one of them's mine. Vote, vote, people! Which is better - a giant battle cruiser plummeting through the atmosphere, spewing out fighter craft and then turning into a sonic boom and a fiery outline, metres from the surface, or a weeping man pushing a donkey wheel in a frozen cave, like a bitter, bug-eyed Lara Croft, in order to make a five mile wide tropical island disappear in a burst of purple light, leaving nought but a wake trail and a very confused helecopter? THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE, PEOPLE!!!

More of the now unnamed Data/Tasha story (I've managed yet again to give a story of mine the same title as a similar story already up on FF.net, so I'm going to change mine just as soon as I can think of another title... why do I keep doing that?!?)

The first paragraph is actually a postscript to the previous chapter that I haven't added yet.
( Wonderland )