testing blog it!!

I'm not sure if I posted this link when it went up what with the mad whirl last week was so here it is :D Rie over at Author Offerings was kind enough to let me waffle on about my latest release Sunlight & Slavery...

http://authorofferings.blogspot.com/2009/06/author-offerings-from-mina-carter.html

You know, I'm having one of *those* months. You know the kind, the ones where you tread water like mad but never actually get anywhere.

At least, it seems that way. But anyway, let me catch you up on the news. Sunlight & Slavery is out and I've had some fantastic reviews on that one which brings the biggest smile to my face imaginable. On the submissions side, I wrote a story, Faery Dust, for the Last Call series which was just accepted by Changeling Press *VBG* and I also have Hawk's Warden out which I've got my fingers crossed for.

On the writing side, I'm just in the middle of the third in the Moonlight & Magic series, Deception & Desire, but took time out to go away this weekend with the family. I did mean to get some writing done but, for some reason, whenever it looked like I might get the laptop out, brat wanted to snuggle or read a story, or have a nap with Mummy. Naps with toddlers rule big time, even if you do get dribbled on and they snore in your ear. She's normally past the nap stage now but with all we were doing she was worn out and... you know? I really missed nap times with her. When she was tiny we used to snuggle down on the bed at one o'clock and have a sleep. It was nice. Probably why I always get sleepy at one now though...

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I don't often tell people but I am fascinated by where I came from. Not geographically, although that's just as interesting in some respects, but from a people point of view. Who my ancestors were and that sort of thing. Not necessarily hundreds and hundreds of years ago but relatively recently. One of my recurrent 'what if's' is the thought of meeting say my grandmother at my age and having a chat and a cup of tea with her, my great grandmother (the original Mina Carter) and so forth.

The whole idea fascinates me, I mean, I know names and dates... I know where these people fit into the family tree but I don't KNOW them. I have my memories of my grandmother, but they're a child's memories and likewise my mother's memories of my great-grandmother (who died before I was born). But I think it would be wonderful to know them as people, find out what made them tick, try and see things in them that were passed down to me.

They passed on a lot. From someone I got the ability to make ice-cream. Real, thick, creamy homemade ice-cream. It's something I didn't think anything of until someone else told me there was a knack to it, so someone gave me that. I can shoot - used to be a markswoman (which has lapsed because guns in britian after Dunblane, not so easy now) - which I get from someone else. Hard to tell that one actually since both sides of my family have immense military connections. One of my grandfathers was an explosives expert but I've never tried blowing anything up. You never know, I might be good at that too! So lots of little things that I can do, or find easy to learn and I'd love to know where that ability came from. I can pretty much make anything with my hands, so perhaps that's the skill rather than the individual abilities themselves, perhaps it's just an umbrella thing.

Anyway, messages through time.

I keep a book for my daughter. It has photos, the tags from when she was born, little momento's through her life. And I add letters everynow and then, catching her up with where we are and whatnot as though I am talking to her across the years when she is at the age I am now. Telling her all the little things she does that make me smile, recounting stories and how I feel. It sometimes something I feel silly doing, I don't know why but it's something I feel I need to do. So *touch wood* if anything ever goes wrong and she's without us then she can look back and see how much she is loved.

Well, I felt silly about it until today.

I went down to my fathers office to collect some paperwork from there and whilst I was there I picked up an old book. It's a book of fairytales that's been on the shelf in there for years. It was mine from my childhood and I wanted to get it to start reading them to my daughter. Out of habit I opened it up to look in the fly-leaf and there's a message written there I had forgotten all about. It's from my grandmother, to me. It says...

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That's right, Moira Rogers is at it again with the fantastic contests!! Get hooked on a series is the latest over at http://moirarogers.com/?q=node/347.

There's 50 books up for grabs, each the first book in a series. There's some seriously interesting looking books on there, so go take a look, see what strikes your fancy... *wanders off to put her own entry in*

... the need for a bracelet. Wait, that doesn't work does it?

Lol, never mind. I've gotten into chain maille jewelry in a big way thanks to a friend (yes, Mr Price, you know who you are!) and this is one of my latest creations.



Pretty isn't it? I'm well impressed with myself. The links were brought for this one but I'm starting to make my own jump rings - mainly in copper because I have shed loads of it in the garage. :D And there's a great sense of satisfaction in turning a coil of wire into something so pretty!

I just got an email in my inbox today to say the release date for Sunlight & Slavery has been brought forwards to May 29th.

Eeeeep! I only just finished adding an extra scene LOL But it's all good, I'm grinning like a cheshire cat here. Between that and my tendancy to bounce like tigger I'm sure I present a right sight at times.

I'm afraid I don't have cover art just yet to show you but as soon as it arrives I'll plaster it all over the place!

*Giggle for the morning*

Why does this sound sooooo familiar?


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Sorry... couldn't resist. When things like this appear on the net, they really need sharing.

So, what does it for me about this picture? Well, apart from the fact I think Jensen Ackles is the one of the prettiest, sexiest men out there? In this one it's the laughter. Somethings obviously tickled him pink there and I dunno, a smile from anyone is attractive isn't it?

Anyway, pretties aside, I'm guest blogging over at You gotta read Reviews today, check it out!
http://yougottareadguest.blogspot.com/2009/04/so.html

Not always!!

I've been looking at chainmail jewellry for a while but it was all getting the right size rings and whatnot and very confusing. So when I saw this late one night whilst mooching about the net I ordered it on a whim.

And now I'm hooked!! They're great fun to do and it turned out pretty much exactly as you see it there. This is my version (excuse crap photo here...)

It was one of those 'I'll settle in and get everything done I need to get done' weekends. Or it was meant to be.

Did it happen?

Did it buggary!!

I can't even remember what happened on the different days other than I it was chaos and I now have far more grey than I did before. Here's the round up...

I screwed up my laptop. Pure and simple. I was installing a program and it went 'Urrrk! Not having that' and died on me. Did the 'boot up, windows did not shut down properly, start windows normally?' milarky. Only it didn't start windows, normally, abnormally or any other bloody way. Twenty four hours and three failed recovery attempts later and I called it quits and it's now in the repair shop getting stripped and vista *hiss* reinstalled.

So now I'm back on my old XP machine, which has had all the rubbish programs stripped off it and pretty much just contains word, photoshop, firefox and IM. My base necessities so to speak, although at a pinch I can get by without photoshop for a while. But not at the moment, since I have a cover to complete in the next couple of days.

On the plus side, this particular little rainstorm came with a silver (or at least pewter) lining. In an attempt to do something else I dragged out an OLD OLD laptop. It's a compaq presario 2100, about six years old. It looks like a brick and it's got under 200mb ram. I've only kept it because it was my first laptop and I was kinda sentimental. It's battery is useless so it only runs on mains power and because the power got cut it screwed windows as well. Now, I'm not going to pay to have something that old stripped and rebuilt buuuuuuuut...

In the midst of my 'oh hell, what do I do to get this back?' nightmare with the big Vista laptop (which could eat this one for breakfast seriously) I came across a mention of something called 'Puppy Linux' which is a whole operating system which boots from a CD or USB. So, I thought what the hell. It's useless as it is and this thing says it won't alter anything on the pc anyway. I didn't have anything to loose so I downloaded it and burnt it to disc (fairly simple, burn the iso to a disc, make sure it's bootable).

It works!!

It's so simple it's unreal. Booted first time from the disc and there's a little bit of setup - basically asking you what mouse you have and what keyboard layout you want - and it was there. The interface is a little clunky compared to windows but hell, it's running at lightening speeds on something out the ark!! Amazing.

I've not played a lot with it yet but the basic install has enough toys to get you up and running on basic officey type tasks. It has a word processor and a spreadsheet program. It EVEN connected to my wireless set up here using a real dodgy old BT voyager card - all with the minimum of fuss.

To say I am impressed is an understatement. It removes the - if my pc screws up how am I going to get to the interwebz or work? - issue. I'm still a windows person because there are no alternatives to word and photoshop for what I need them for (that I'm aware of) but hell, this has definately made me think about these things and look more into alternatives. And the fact that they can run on old kit impresses me (part scot so I don't like throwing ANYTHING away).

Even better Mr C - who is the biggest technophobe out there - LIKES the interface. He cannot work windows but this one? He was off and playing happily within a few minutes. Sure all he wants to do is look at youtube but he has his own mail now AND he can get to it. You never know he might actually do more than look at porn one day.

So, Puppy Linux is over here if you're looking.. http://www.puppylinux.org/

Okay, moving on now we have the PC dealy out the way....

Dark Diva Reviews gave Rockstar 4 delightful divas :D

"...the heroine, Zette Mathews, was the Rock star. She’s not an arrogant character but one that I could identify with, sexy, talented and unspoiled. In addition, I was thrilled that Zette wasn’t a perfect model thin type but had curves like most women... A little blackmail added some nice tension and a jumping off point for the story. The sex scenes were enticing and had the right mix of physical and emotion... J.J succeeded in being a better man to get his woman and I was glad to see a happy ending.

Overall, I would recommend Rockstar for a fun read about a strong heroine."

Read the full review

Four divas :D I'm off doing the tigger dance again to day and after the weekend, that review was wonderful. Em Epe also mentions Logan, who is one of the secondary characters in Rockstar. She mentions that she'd like to see a story about Logan *grins happily* I'm really impressed with that, that Logan caught the imagination as he is the hero of 'Playing with Fyre'. I know it's not done to request reviewers based on comments they've made in reviews but when Fyre comes out I'm kinda hoping Em Epe reviews it as well. Would be cool to see what she thought of it and whether it lived up to expectations. :D

Dark Embrace has a release date! It's on the Cobblestone Press release schedule for 1st May which is this friday!! My heads all in a whirl at the moment but it's all good :D So friday night will be party night. I'm fairly sure there's a release day chat on friday night. I'll gather more details and post them up before then!

We went to see AC/DC on the Black Ice tour last night.

One word. Awesome.

Now, if you know me, you'll know I very, very rarely use that word. But there is no other way to describe it. It was quite literally amazing. It was a rock concert yes, so it was loud. But this was beyond loud, it was music experienced on a physical level. There were banks of amps like you wouldn't believe and the sound reverberated through your body with each beat.

The atmosphere was fantastic and the sheer diversity of people? Again, amazing. There were the guys like Mr C. with the old tour tshirts on. The guy sat next to us was proudly proclaiming that the tshirt he was wearing was older than the brother in law who was accompanying him. Mr C's tshirt was from the Razor's edge tour so was approximately eighteen years old. Me, I wore a boring black tee, and switched to a tour shirt after a quick visit to the merchandise stand.

That being said... I have a gripe. Large is NOT a bloody size 12-14. Unless you're a twig. Com'on! That's gotta be medium surely? I'd love to know what model they size these bloody things on! I brought the large and well, I couldn't have brought a smaller one because it wouldn't have fit in a-hem, certain areas. I'm not that busty either, but hey, it was a new experience having my bust addressed instead of my face. At first it was a novel experience but the novelty soon wore off. By the end of the night, I could cheerfully have swung for people over it.

So, back to the show. The supporting act were 'The Answer'. Good band, sounded good. Will check them out on itunes later. Cute guitar player.

But AC/DC... words fail me. At first I hadn't realised they'd come on stage. This kid ran on, and as there were a lot of kids dressed up in the Angus schoolboy uniform, I actually thought one of them had gotten on stage. It was only when the rest of the band followed him I realised it actually WAS Angus. He's tiny!!

The stage show was out of this world. There was a HUGE train to start with. With different effects for different songs, like for TNT, there were flame jets. Whole lotta Rosie was of course accompanied by a massive blow up doll doing something entirely inappropriate with her hand.

Not that Brian got to sing for the start of that song, or for some of the others. It must be extremely flattering for any band to have the audience know every song, practically from the first chord or two, which was what was happening. And with Rosie, Johnson didn't actually sing into well into the song. At first he was waving the crowd on and the noise level was immense with us all singing. Then we all just carried on and he was laughing (could see him on the big screen) and had this look on his face like 'well, I can't actually get a word in edgeways here so carry on'.

Overall, there was much singing, Mr C and I are both absolutely hoarse this morning, my legs hurt from jumping up and down like mad for two hours and my ears only stopped ringing about an hour ago. I will no doubt go on and on about this for DAYS now. It was literally that good.

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This is how I feel at the moment. We are initial coffee-hit this morning. I have a cold. I slept in and I have waaaaaaaaay too much to do to sleep in.

WE HAVE AC/DC TONIGHT!!



*HUGE Grin* We're going to the NEC, Birmingham to see what I think is the last show of the UK leg in the Black Ice tour. I'm so excited (or I will be after the caffeine hits)