Things To Do

This weekend is the first weekend for the best part of two months for which I have no plans. I'm not going anywhere; I don't have anyone coming to visit; I haven't arranged to go out with anyone. This is actually quite a nice feeling. I might actually get around to some of the things that have piled up whilst I've been busy. Not necessarily important or vital things, mind...

• Finish The Master And Margarita (~150 pages remaining).


• Finish Singularity Sky (~225 pages remaining).


• Write reviews of the above.


• Watch the last three Firefly episodes.


• Watch at least the first episode of Dead Like Me to see what all the fuss is about.


• Go to see Cypher, or Bellville Rendezvous, or both. If they're out. Failing that, go and see Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army tonight.


• Finish writing the piece for flyingsauce.


• Investigate how much power showers cost.


• Investigate how long it take to travel to Cheltenham by (a) road and (b) rail, and whether it make sense to try to find somewhere to stay overnight.


• I'm going to be on holiday for that whole week, plus a couple extra days either side, so I need to work out what else I'm going to do with myself.

Meanwhile, this may be of interest to some:

Avast, me hearties! Welcome to the one and only, official, accept-no-substitutes Talk Like A Pirate Day website.

Save Our Short Story

See here:

The aims of the campaign are to:
* Increase the number and visibility of high quality outlets for short fiction
* Give the short story form more prestige and a higher profile
* Enable writers to specialise in the short story form
* Encourage and promote exciting short fiction.

What are we doing?
* Research
* Raising the profile
* Online anthology
* Sharing experience

Basically, the centrepiece is the online anthology Endangered Species, which publishes two short stories a month and is edited by Val McDermid. It even mentions genre fiction specifically, so all in all it seems like a fundamentally Good Thing. That said, the suggestion that the site will only be running until July '04 - twelve months in total - is a little disappointing. Maybe if it's a success (however they're going to define success), they'll keep it running longer.