Tales From The Edge Of My Living Room

Notes From About 2.30pm 16th July 2013

As I sit in my garden watching my son playing in the paddling pool I consider what a balmy and slightly barmy day I have had. It has been blazing hot and full of funny interactions. I am thinking of the cold San Miguel that is sat in the fridge waiting for me. It will be my reward later this evening, my reward for getting through the day without any heat induced rage incidents. Not that I am prone to incidents of rage but you never know, it is bloody hot and this heat leaves you in a prime position to slide right off the Falling Down Scale.

My funniest interaction today came at my local branch of Tesco express, I was in there trying to buy some ready meals for my Nan and I enquired where the vegetarian section was. I was advised by a weary looking employee that “this is a convenience store, we don’t do vegetarian meals just normal food”. As a veggie myself I am used to being viewed with such open suspicion, so I wryly remarked that the last thing they needed was abnormal vegetarians wondering about their store. The employee started to nod her head in agreement but checked herself as she detected a note of sarcasm in my voice. My Nan was ready to write to the store manager in outrage but I just smiled and thought about what a good anecdote it would make (look out for an extended rant on this subject sometime soon).

In my “Tales From The Edge Of My Living Room” column I hope to share with you some amusing stories, articles that I have written and anything that seems to occur to me in the process of writing, my frustrations and my hopes, my successes and failures. It has been a decent couple of weeks on the writing front with another feature article now confirmed to appear in issue 47 of Star Trek Magazine. The article contains an interview with New York Times bestselling author David Mack and I am really looking forward to seeing the finished piece in print. David Mack was lovely to communicate with and very giving of his time and generous with the insights that he gave me into his writing process. I have just finished reading his excellent Cold Equations Trilogy and I have included a link to his website below.

I have also had another feature article warmly received (weather related pun intended) by an editor at another publication. I will not name this publication yet as the writer part of my brain is telling me it will put the mockers on it, even though the rational part of my brain is telling me that this sort of superstition is complete bullshit. I have written several poems, 5,000 words of my novel and downloaded a trial of Scrivener, which seems an excellent piece of software and just what I have been looking for. The feedback from all my friends in the blogosphere has been appreciated and has given me great encouragement and has re-confirmed to me that there is such a lot of wonderfully talented people out in the world and a great community of like-minded souls. That thought will be something I remind myself of the next time I have a bit of a creative dip or an out-and-out “I am crap and am not doing this anymore” type of moment.

Another interesting thing I have signed up for this week is the Bloggers For Peace initiative. It is a really interesting and worthwhile project. To find out more I highly recommend clicking on the bloggers for peace badge that I have put on my home page and this will direct you to more information about “bloggers for peace”.

I have also had a couple of rejections over the last few weeks but all in all I feel that I am winning, in fact I might just reward myself with a nice San Miguel.

David Mack’s Website – http://www.infinitydog.com/