(no subject)

I'm watching England v France. There is a rumour there was another match on, but I've reached an agreement with a friend that, if I'm nice about England, he won't mention the other match. I spent the entire night tossing and turning having nightmares about Wales beating Ireland, and I wake up to find out I have remarkably prophetic dreams. If only I could dream up the lottery numbers.

A sign of how bad the recession is - the most recent Waitrose advert trying to rebrand Waitrose as a value retailer.

~~~~

The Much-Delayed Book Meme - Day 10 - Favourite Classic Book

With my usual complaints that this is a difficult question, and I'm also deliberately not giving one answer because I plan to use that book as an answer for a different question.

So I shall give another of my favourites as the answer to this.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Ignore all your preconceptions, because 9/10ths of what people who haven't read it imagine as being prototypically Dracula is from the Bela Lugosi film.

It's not a gothic horror, if anything it's the forces of late 19th/early 20th century engineering and progress versus old feudalism and superstition. For some unknown reason, very few of the adaptations play upon that.

And then you have the Count himself. While he does have a bit of a tragic line about being the last of his clan, it's also made quite clear that's because he's an agent of the devil who sold his soul / forfeited it at what basically amounts to a demonic seminary.

Also, it's quite clear that the reason he's in the state he's in is that the local peasants know how to protect themselves, and the only people he and the brides can attack are the aged and babies. This is not a heroic demon, he's a monster. The reason he wants an English country house is because the locals in England don't know the rules to keep him and his out, because one of the downsides of progress is that it consigns local knowledge to the dustbin of superstition without considering whether it might be useful.

It's very much of it's time but in a good way, and it's full of interest and it moves forward and the different character who write the different parts of it all sound different.

It's also quite a quick read if anyone's interested.

( The Other Days )

Submission Call

From someone I know through a different account -

Carina Science Fiction Holiday Submissions Call

Carina Press is pleased to announce a call for submissions for our 2012 holiday collections. This will be the only open collection call for 2012 and is an excellent opportunity for authors interested in participating in the normally by-invitation-only Carina Press collections.

Carina is looking for science fiction novellas with a winter holiday theme, to be published digitally both individually and as a collection in December 2012. The novellas should be from 18,000 to 35,000 words and feature science fiction elements as integral to the novella. The stories do not need to be romance, or even have romance elements, but can be straight science fiction, or science fiction with romantic elements, and can also feature elements of mystery, thriller, horror or other sub-genres. Additionally, there is no set heat level for these stories, so they can have no sex, or be ultra-sexy, or anything in between.

I recognize that saying simply “science fiction” leaves room for a tremendous amount of interpretation within the genre. However, this is preferable as I feel narrowing it down too much might leave out something amazing.

Essentially, we’re looking for interesting, creative, well-written stories within the science fiction genre that will appeal to readers’ imaginations and add to our growing catalog of science fiction stories.

The science fiction holiday collection will be edited by Angela James and supported by a marketing and promotion campaign both online and in print. In addition, each author chosen to contribute to the anthology will receive a set number of limited-edition print copies for their own use in giveaways and contests (or to decorate their own bookshelves).

To submit, please send your completed manuscript and synopsis, along with query letter to submissions@carinapress.com by March 15th, 20112. In the subject line, please put SciFi Holiday: Manuscript Title and Author

All submissions will be reviewed and final decision made by April 30th, 2012.

For questions about this call for submissions, please email Angela James at submissions@carinapress.com

For more information about Carina Press, and to read the submission guidelines, please visit www.carinapress.com

*permission to forward granted*