And more Samhain

We hied ourselves off to the temple last night for the Samhain ritual: a very good ritual, incorporating the attempt of some 60 people, many of them Dutch, to produce a spontaneous Blues number. Results were...mixed.

It was a good ritual, very much focused on the honouring of the dead, as it should be. After that, half the congregation decamped to the George and Pilgrim for the ale part of cakes and ale (what?) and then T and I went home, lit a fire, and got rid of all the things we've been meaning to burn. I've put in a word for some other folk as well: you know who you are.

It is a dank, grey November day. I keep wondering why it's suddenly got dark so early. Er, that would be because the clocks went back - for some reason, this year I seem to have huge difficulty getting my head around this.

I also have Glastonbury Throat, like everyone else in town. Probably because we've all been breathing ceremonially on one another.

Best of the Year/writing update

One of my Asimov's short stories, IKIRYOH, has been chosen by Teckno Books for a Best of the Year collection. I'm very pleased.

Otherwise, I am ploughing through the final (before the editor sees it, anyway) draft of the next novel, BLOODMIND, and starting work on a revised fantasy proposal in which there's been some interest. We will see.

Courtesy of Karen Traviss

Jacky Fleming's sour cartoons have amused me for years and Karen's just posted a link on her LJ:


http://www.jackyfleming.co.uk/pages/cards02.html

My favourite Fleming cartoon was one that appeared in the paper a while ago - it shows a woman on a beach, furiously texting into her mobile phone, while her husband is asleep in a deck chair. In the second frame, he wakes, and says "Are you texting the cat again?"

To which she replies "Don't be stupid. You know he can't read."

But in the final frame, husband is once more asleep and she is once more furiously texting....