I've just sent out the first round of the new short story sub - if anyone has signed up and NOT received it, please let me know and I will send you your fiction asap.

*

In other news, it is exceptionally hot. The Levels are lovely - covered in cow parsley and charnock, and there are cuckoos. The house is in some disarray, since Pickle the elder cat (I think) managed to kick a tin of red paint off the shelf, and Lily trod in it, with all 4 paws, then ran through the kitchen. I have just found Pickle sitting in the frying pan.

spiffikins asked:

Looking back at our own efforts, we had lots of battles :) I've love to hear how you applied these rules to situations where your son didn't want to do something, like have his bath or get dressed/put his shoes on for school or participate in the day to day activities of helping out (setting the table, doing dishes, doing homework) - it seems we always had conflict, and the majority of it with my brother was getting him to do something that he didn't want to do, but that needed to be done.

I’ve been thinking about this today while at work shelving books - which hopefully will not result in too many mis-shelved novels.

( This answer was too long for the comment thread, which is why it’s a post. )

This story contains magic and references to Addergoole but no slavery, sex, or violence.

For rix_scaedu's Commissioned Prompt.

Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here here (and on LJ).

After These Walls Can Talk, Housewarming, and As Safe as Houses

Dodger is from When the Gods Attacked..


( Read more... )

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347359.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 29: Rec a Marvel Tumblr blog



MARVEL WOMEN KICKING ASS

...Because there are so many good female characters at Marvel
...Because the latest entries were on Sif, Dazzler, Mystique, Storm, and Magma

Not that this is a surprise or anything.

Reviewing the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

I liked this book, and why not -- an in-depth defense of people like me! Although I confess, I never thought that introverts would need to be explained to extroverts. I thought we were self-evident, and it was the other, noisy, dominant half of the world that was inexplicable. (They still are.) It possibly needs a companion volume -- Noisy: the hegemony of people with nothing helpful to say who still won't shut up, or something.

Click on the text to read the rest of it.

I've had this one on hold at the library for some time -- I'm up to being #121 on the list of 112 copies, so I'm getting there.

This entry was originally posted at http://mmegaera.dreamwidth.org/374942.html. Please comment here or there.

Continuing flash series! I'm going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today's icon:

Shooting Star

Icon by later_tuesday

Yeah, the first one of the Asteroid-hits took us by surprise. I mean, shooting stars didn't hit the earth that hard very frequently, and when they did - crater, some rock, that was it.

Nobody expected there to be sentient life, not in that first one. And, because the government did a quick and thorough job of covering it up (I know, I was there), the rest of the world wasn't expecting the second one, either, or the third.
( Read more... )

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347128.html. You can comment here or there.

I am observing lately that my doodles sell well. This is not a surprise: you’re always going to find more people with $30 than $3000. I’ve known this since my first livestream, even. And it’s deeply pleasing, because I make art, and the art leaves my hands, and I get some money in. If I didn’t enjoy the doodling, I wouldn’t be doing the Kickstarter Monday.

…but some part of me really, really wants to do the big ambitious pieces that no one can afford.

This is the point where treating art like a business will cause angst.

All people who do creative work for money recognize this particular conundrum. The extent to which we bow to Business Manager is the extent to which we thrive financially. But we wouldn’t be Artists if we didn’t fight for the reins… and if we didn’t feel it was our divine duty to win them and run off with the bit in our teeth on our madcap joys, screaming defiance.

Mirrored from MCAH Online.

This is not exactly a review.

However, not too long ago, at the end of a long week, traveling to a conference that I had helped organize, leading a day-long workshop, running two short sessions... by the end of the week, I was exhausted. So when we got up at 4 in the morning to go to the airport for the flight home, I was tired, depressed, ready to run away and hide.

And First Blood, by Sarah A. Hoyt writing as Sarah Marques, was just the medicine I needed. I got to meet Rene D'Herblay, despised by his father and older brother, relegated to the seminary -- and watched him fight the vampires who have taken over France. With communion wine, a flower pot... and, well, you will have to read the novella.

Anyway, I read it sitting in the airport and on the airplane. And by the time I got to the end, when the three friends got together to say "one for all" and "all for one" and the final line, where René embraces his fantasies and names himself...

I very nearly got up and cheered in the middle of the airplane!

So if you like that kind of a story, with swashbuckling heroes learning to stand up for what is right... I think you'll like First Blood. I know I did. And if you want to stand up and cheer, I'll understand.

First Blood is available here
http://nakedreader.com/storefront/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=108

OK, y'all, here is the situation: 14-year-old girl, longtime friend of the family and of me, is totally into THE AVENGERS and *especially* into Captain America. She likes that he's polite, old-fashioned, and a butt-kicker, and she has apologetically confessed to even liking Cap's hair, which notion she was sure that I would find weird and incomprehensible. She finds Cap inspiring enough to try writing a couple of poems about him. She draws, and has asked me to choose a good picture of Captain America so she can try to draw from it, though she specifically requested that it not be a picture of Cap shirtless.

As you may be able to tell, she's at a point where there are vague stirrings but she is not particularly comfortable with sex. That's all fine. My problem is that she is a 14-year-old girl, and I am a grown-ass man, and Captain America fanfic (like AVENGERS fanfic in general) is full of porn. Even if she were into that, it would be horrifyingly inappropriate for me to send her recs of it (for reference: see again "*14-year-old girl*" and "*grown-ass man*"). The Pit of Voles doesn't stock porn, but the AVENGERS recs I've seen have all been of fic on LJ, DW, or AO3, and I don't have time to weed through the dross at FF.net to find good stories, so that doesn't work. (EDIT: I was considering bowdlerizing a few stories, but no, that really wouldn't work, either. I'm going through AO3 with character and content filters on ATM.)

So I would be very grateful if anyone could please pass on some gen or at least non-pornographic Captain America recs, fanart included.

Also, I'm not as close to her 16-year-old sister (oddly, given that the 16-year-old and I have *remarkably* similar personalities, we mainly communicate through the 14-year-old), but can report that she is into Thor, so if anybody has some extra for Thor that'd be well appreciated too.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.