Sabotage

I used to be the type of reader who folds the corner of the page to keep place, but I transitioned to bookmarks. I'm always losing the bookmarks, so I use my expired railway tickets, since I get a new one of those each week.

Picture my face when Pepper (small black dancing cat) trots up to a book innocently sitting on the floor, neatly pulls the railway ticket out, and trots off.

Too much of this house counts as cat toys.

Sheer Self-Indulgence

Final Fantasy XIV is coming up in a few short months, and while I will be able to run the game, I won't be able to run the game 'pretty'.

I want my pretty.

Which is an excellent excuse for a computer upgrade. Mmm, Alienware.

Cover Pipe-Dreams

I've been working on cover ideas lately - mere mental amusement at this stage since I have no books in production. Since covers are generally not something authors have much say in, I've always assumed that I would be very lucky if I ended up with an image I even liked, let alone an ideal, and for many years I've never put any energy into covers.

Thinking about what would be exactly right has made me realise how important covers are to me. I don't want just any cover, I want something which truly encapsulates the story.

Medair's cover has been with me for the last year or so - an image of her collapsed in a dark room, caught as ever between action and inaction, guilt and despair, while a fire burns outside the door.

Champion's followed along - Soren, made puppet by the Rose - and then Stained Glass Monsters, which wants to be about a sunlit Faille, instead of either Rennyn or Kendall. And now I have the covers for Cass's tale (and some new titles) which revolve around that typical schoolgirl's backpack.

As the year grinds on, I grow ever more eager for these stories to be tangible things, to have them on my shelf, to have something people can read.

I've never been a patient person.

Predators

Not bad at all. No really glaring logical errors (beyond, perhaps, identifying a plant when you're on an alien planet). I do wonder where I ran across one of the major plot developments (or if I'd unconsciously put the clues together), but it didn't spoil the story for me.

Not such a classic as Predator was, but worth watching.

Too Stupid to Live

Two-thirds through an otherwise enjoyable cosy mystery, the main character discovers a photograph showing an object linked to a murder, suggesting that it was once in a certain house. Instead of taking the photograph to the police, even though the police are in this case sympathetic to her cause, she goes to the house to check if the object is still there.

In part cosies require characters who will poke and pry and get involved in other people's murders. But it's a strong negative for me to follow a character into unnecessary danger in the face of a more obvious step.

The rest of the story worked, and I'll read further into the series. But TSTL syndrome is something I definitely hope to avoid in my own writing.