A certain young man does not wish to go to sleep. He is serenading me from his bedroom. His song goes like this (and this is verbatim, I’m typing as he sings): We’re a mom and son Moooom and son and we have to stick together or we’ll (mumble) and that would be unnecessary and i’d be sad forever and you’d be sad too! because i’d be sad until the end! of! this! day!” Please listen to me or it will be the end of the world and we won’t…
Author: mizkit
Writing Wednesday: Elevator Pitches
A fellow writer over on Twitter was asking for example elevator pitches to show to some of her friends as examples, and since I’ve got, oh, eight or seventeen of them that I’ve been using for years, I threw several of them at her. An elevator pitch is what you want to have prepared for when you find yourself in an elevator with the high-powered head editor of your favourite publishing house and she says, “Oh, you’re a writer? What are you working on?” This is not the moment to…
Recent Reads: The Dragon, the Witch & the Railroad
I have loads of personal history with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Seashell Archives series, which she wrote in the early eighties, and which I discovered, uh, probably in the early 80s, although possibly in the mid-80s :), and quite adored. They were light funny epic fantasy with cursed or bewitched heroines, and I’d never read anything quite like them. I met Annie in Ireland in the early 90s, and she was very supportive of me being a writer. I sent her a copy of URBAN SHAMAN when it was published. We…
International Transgender Day of Visibility
I didn’t know when I got up this morning that March 31st is the International Transgender Day of Visibility, but I discovered it was when I logged into Twitter. Its purpose is to support transgendered people and to raise their profile to help cisgendered people to start recognizing that there are a lot of transgender people out there. (Cisgendered: identifying with the gender one is assigned at birth. I’ve only come across this term in the past year or so, and I’m not particularly proud to admit that my first…
Picoreview: Cinderella
Picoreview: Cinderella: Surprisingly good. Surprisingly dark! And that dress, wow. Cate Blanchett is, of course, splendid as the Wicked Stepmother, who was–in Ever After they managed to make the stepmother a more interesting than simply evil character, and Disney stepped up the game again with her. In everything save her treatment of Cinderella, I frankly admired her. She wasn’t good, but she was willing to use what she had to get what she needed, and…yeah. Pretty terrific characterisation for what could easily be a cut-out villain. Lily James was lovely…