Goals 2013 - an evaluation

I usually finish out each year with a review of what I achieved in the year just gone. So far I've got 2011 and 2012 reflections, and now it's time for 2013's.

First off, you can see my original goal list here. Also on that page you can see my latest updates which reflect the things I did and did not achieve. But I'll mention a few here:

I did

• make over this blog (and I think it's due for another makeover now)
• read at least 30 books (so far I've read 48)
• write at least once a week in this blog (or at least I will have achieved this after I post this month's Cephalopod post :))
• write one Globetrotter post per month [except April]
• write one (or more) book review(s) per month [except April]
• write 1k of new story per week
• participate in BuNoWriMo 2013
• participate in NaNoWriMo 2013

I did not

• read the 4 books I've been trying to read for many years - but now that I know I can read them on Kindle, I might actually be able to get them read at last!
• write one "Out & About Me" post per month (I missed September)
• post one music video per month with brief commentary (epic fail! Didn't do a single one)
• participate in NaNoEdMo 2013 (pretty sure I didn't do this; have no recollection of it anyway)
• read/edit SQUEAKY
• finalise & revise (2nd revision) SUNDOWN IIb
• finish 2nd revision of DAPHNE
• create at least one new piece of fine art per week
• scan at least 100 photos/documents per month (my scanner is also broken, so ...)

I won't even bother to talk about the "would like to achieve but not holding my breath" goals I set myself, because I definitely achieved none of them. But the above list tells me I did achieve a fair bit in 2013, even if I also failed on a few things I would have liked to achieve. All in all, I'm considering 2013 a year of high productivity in the writing area, but a bit of an epic failure in the revision area.

2014 will be different, I vow!

Sometime soon I'll outline some 2014 goals (but I can tell you now there won't be nearly as many as what you see above).

Post-NaNo slump ... ish thing (and IWSG #1)

So I finished NaNo and my word count was 106,132 words. I'm happy with the story even if I'm not yet quite happy with the writing - it is a rough draft after all. I now have twelve complete novel drafts. None of them are ready for publication or even for a final read-through by a CP or beta. So that will be my goal next year - get some of my stuff pub-ready (or at least final read-through ready).

Since NaNo ended, I've watched a lot of DVDs - Veronica Mars is my latest addiction, thanks to a friend's recommendation; and did you know there's a movie coming out next year?!! Woo! - and done very little of anything. Things are also crazy busy at work with huge projects underway (many due by year's end. ha.). So I am getting home each arvo having to resist the urge to go out and charge a 6-pack of beer to credit card. Yes, I'm also waiting eagerly for payday (story of my life lately).

So that's what's going on with me right now. And it's already December 5th!

How has the start of December gone for you guys?

P.S. I just read a news story about these guys - and I think they're awesome!

I am editing this post because I only just realised today I'm also meant to post for the IWSG - this is my first time posting, and I guess I am a bit insecure about jumping on this very large and shiny bandwagon! I have visited numerous blogs over the months/years and commented on IWSG posts - but I have always felt a bit intimidated about joining in. Silly, isn't it? But that's how I felt!

I also feel a tiny bit insecure around all the writers out there who are already published, because while I now have twelve novel drafts to my name, not one of them is publication-worthy right now. The thought of publishing something (anything), all on my own, quite frankly terrifies me. I am going to do it, but it's just plain scary. Since releasing my first CD of music, I've found out just how crap I am at selling my "wares", so to speak. And I don't doubt I'll be equally as crap at selling my book wares.

I had a taste of self-promotion when organising my first (and only) blogfest last year. That was hard enough. But trying to convince people to buy stuff I've created, as in really trying hard to talk them into it, is definitely not going to be one of my strengths.

So there you go. That's my first foray into the world if the IWSG. I'm sure I'll have more to say next time ... and yet that's another source of insecurity. What if I never have anything good to say on IWSG day ever again? :)

8-BIT CHRISTMAS (Cephalopod Coffeehouse book club)

As it's the last Friday of the month, it's time for a bunch of bloggers to post for the monthly Cephalopod Coffeehouse (a.k.a. "Friendly Gathering") hosted by The Armchair Squid. The idea behind this monthly hop is that each month, participants will post about their favourite book read in the last month.

I read three books during November, and I really enjoyed all of them. It was kind of hard to choose which one to review here, but I decided to review 8-BIT CHRISTMAS by Kevin Jakubowski.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC copy.

I put this on the "children's literature" shelf, even though it's narrated by an adult character looking back on his Nintento-crazed childhood. But if you were a child in the 80s, you'll probably appreciate this one.

Story:

Jake is 9 years old when the first glorious grey Nintendo Entertainment System hits the market. The richest and most spoiled kid in town gets a Nintendo and all the other kids are suddenly swarming onto his front lawn, looking for new ways to suck up to him so they can have a turn on his NES. He only lets 10 kids in at a time on weekends, so the stakes are high and the competition fierce. Kids even go so far as to surrender some of their best toys just so they can go down to the rich kid's basement and Nintendo-land.

All over town, kids begin plotting how to get their parents to give them Nintendos for Christmas. But when disaster strikes - starting with a kid's tantrum, and leading to a falling TV and ultimately a squashed dog - the town's parents are up in arms about the evils of Nintendo. The only NES in town is no longer available for weekend tournaments, and the kids are getting desperate. The parents even go so nuts they arrange for local stores to stop stocking NESes on their shelves. All the kids in Jake's class are now kissing their dreams of owning a NES of their own goodbye. But Jake isn't giving up on his dream. A stroke of inspiration gives him a new plan for how to save the town from being Nintendoless forever.

My thoughts:

I kind of LOVED this book. As a child of the '80s, but also as someone who can apparently appreciate Kevin Jakubowski's sense of humour, I was snorting with laughter at almost every turn of a page (or "turn", really, as I read this on Kindle). Also, I could relate to that whole "rich kid with a NES" thing, since we had a neighbour who had every game console known to man, while the rest of the kids in the street made do with our hand-me-down Atari.

Some parts of the book seemed a bit odd to me, for e.g. rather modern-sounding dialogue like "Dude!" which I'm not sure was authentic to the 80s. But what do I know, I was just a kid back then. Perhaps my memory is rusty. ;) I also found myself disappointed with the fact that Jake didn't get a NES for Christmas - even though he got something seriously awesome instead (and no, I don't mean the Lite Brite. haha). But yeah, all in all I thought this was a highly entertaining read, and I would recommend it to anyone who:

a) can relate to an obsessive love/fondness for Nintendo,

(I myself had a Super NES, which I bought with my own saved up pocket money at age 12, and it was still beautifully lumpy and grey)

b) loves the '80s, or

c) wants to enjoy a large number of laughs (it's the best medicine after all).

Also read in November:

☆Hard to Handle by Jessica Lemmon

☆The Almost Girl by Amalie Howard

(both courtesy of NetGalley. Thank you!)

Cephalopod Coffeehouse & Do You Have Goals?

Cephalopod Coffeehouse time! This monthly blog hop is hosted by The Armchair Squid, and is a fair bit of fun. :) The idea is to post about your favourite book read in the last month.

So far this month I've only finished reading two books (yep, I'm having flashbacks to approx. a month ago). But of those I read, the one I preferred was The Trial of Dr. Kate, which I received from Netgalley. Here is a little review (less little than last month's):

Story: This book is set in the early 1950s. Shenandoah Coleman, an ex-fighter pilot who has become a successful reporter in Memphis, returns to the town where she grew up in poverty. She's there to do research for a book she's writing, but also to speak with an old friend, Dr. Kate, who has been arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of murder. After talking to Kate, Shenandoah becomes convinced the doctor isn't guilty. Determined to help clear Kate's name, she starts investigating. At the same time, she's being stalked by the driver of a Dodge Pickup who is apparently set on running her off the road - and killing her. And she's fending off the advances of sweet-talker Bobby who gives her plenty of butterflies.

My thoughts: I quite enjoyed this book for the setting, because I don't really know anything about American history or Tennessee (I'm Australian and when I was at school we really didn't learn any American history except as it related to the World Wars, etc.). Sometimes I found that problems were resolved a little too quickly, like when we finally learned the identity of the Dodge driver. This character harboured hatred toward Shenandoah that had built up over many years (like, fifteen years), but in a matter of minutes Shenandoah managed to diffuse the situation and make everything "okay" again. There was also the fact that at one point, a fair few people died on the same day for unrelated reasons, and some of the deaths were really ... unexpected. :) Not that that doesn't happen in reality. It just seemed a bit strange in this case.

The truth that came out in the end about the murder victim was quite a surprise to me, as was the trial verdict. All in all, I found this a slightly strange read, but I did enjoy "visiting" that part of America (I have in fact visited Tennessee, but only to drive through it). And I was glad when the book ended so I could go back to the cooler weather we were enjoying here in Western Australia at that time. (Sadly, it's starting to heat up now)

I've been participating in this monthly blog hop hosted by Misha Gericke and, as I've neglected to mention before purely because I didn't even realise it, Beth Fred. :) It's a hop where participants reporton how their "big dream" goals are coming along. My goal isn't really the biggest I could have gone for, nor the biggest that I have in my head, but it's the one I really, desperately want to achieve for right now, so that's why I chose it. Anyway, my goal is to:

publish something by the end of 2013

And how have I gone with it since last month?

Back then, I'd received great feedback from my awesome CP Damyanti, but hadn't done anything about it yet. Since then I've managed a rewrite of chapter 1, and now I've received feedback from Damyanti on the rewrite. It was encouraging feedback, as it gave me the impression I'm headed in the right direction. For now I'm going to let the feedback settle, and move onto rewriting the next few chapters.

I don't know that I'll have all this done before year's end, given that November will be NaNo month. I honestly can't see publishing my novella by year's end. But I'm not giving up hope yet. The above will be my goal until the year is over and done.

Travel Series: LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY

Here we are for another Globetrotters post, and this time we're bringing the 1998 world trip to a close at last. Before I get on with that, just one quick little note - I started this series back on September 1st, 2011. For the most part I've managed to post a travel "snippet" once a month since then, but next year posts may become a little more sparse. Then again, maybe they won't!

Okay, let's get on with today's post.

Luxembourg & Germany

I'm completely serious when I say these are the only two photos I appear to have from this leg of the journey. Either I lost a film somewhere (highly likely), or I was just too over it all to take more than two photos (unlikely, despite the fact that I was very over it all). I do have a travel journal entry or two from this time, so I thought I'd share some of that writing:

We travelled to Germany overland from France and via Luxembourg. Dad and I spent about ten minutes in that little country [Luxembourg], just so we could say when asked that we’d been there. Then we moved on, Germany in our sights.

We travelled beside the great river, heading steadily north. It was wine country and we tried to find out where we could sample some wines, but nothing was free, so we forgot about it.

Germany struck me as being very green and lush. I guess that’s what generally colder weather will do for a nation. I was no longer used to the browns, reds, yellows and dead grasses of Australia, since I had just travelled through America in the tail-end of winter — places like Oregon and Washington State were what I had in mind as I looked around me [in Germany] — but I still took note of the landscape as decidedly German.

I must tell you now, in hindsight, that I really don't know what a "decidedly German" landscape is like. I guess when I wrote that, I just felt influenced by the knowledge of where I was or something.

Anyway, I am going to wrap this post up now, and admit that I'm feeling a little bit bittersweet about the 1998 trip reminiscence ending! But I have plenty more travel stories to tell, and I will be moving onto those sometime, somehow. Maybe even next month? I'm going to leave you with a couple of photos my dad took during our trip in 1998. They're less landscape and more us (okay, mostly me):

Not sure where this was, but I like the look of dry amusement on my face.

New Zealand - North Island. It really is beautiful. You should go!

In the middle of nowhere, in Australia, trying to figure out where to go next.

With family in New Zealand - I'm on the far left.

This was after my breakdown in Europe, once I had decided to go home early.

Me and a glacier, I'm pretty sure. Probably Switzerland.

Italy, I think. There was an art exhibition with free wine and snacks (of course we were there), a bridge over water, and this photo.

Airport, early on in the trip. Probably Sydney, on our way to NZ.

Thinking about 2014

Near the end of last year, I did a "Goals 2012" reflection post, where I talked about my various failures and achievements of the year. A few days later, I talked about my plans for 2013. Of the four things I mentioned in that latter post, I've done three of them. One of those three things was releasing a physical CD full of my music. The others were less of a big deal, but I'm glad I did achieve some things. Still, there are plenty of things I haven't done so far this year that I wanted to do. While I'm not quite ready to look at my Goals 2013 page and evaluate failures/achievements yet, I will be doing that sometime in December.

Actually, though, I'm already looking to next year. In 2014, I really want to change how I approach achieving goals. I want to focus on novel revision (that has been the plan the last 2 years, but other stuff has often got in the way of me actually achieving much there). I want to make it a goal not necessarily to get a particular number of projects revised, but to at least try to do, say, one chapter a night (this could be unrealistic). I have so many projects to my name that I will definitely not run out of work. I'd also like to schedule in some breaks from writing/blogging. I've never done that before. So, I guess you can see that I'm not entirely clear on what I'll be doing next year, but I do want things to change. I've tended to be quite regimented in my goal-achieving plans, and it did work at first, but it's no longer quite as effective.

One thing I can say is that I'd dearly love to finally get that Grimm Brothers book off my "currently reading" shelf at GoodReads. But that does require me doing up little reviews of each story. I just really want to get that done.

Anyway ... I'll write more about my 2014 plans as they slowly solidify. For now, I just wanted to say that I'm thinking about it. And umm, considering I've written 11 novels so far, and all of them need revision, I do have plenty of work to be going on with. ;)

Wahoo, it's NaNoWriMo time! (nearly)

The most exciting thing about NaNoWriMo 2013 so far is what I just found on their site moments ago - awesome 2013 graphics, which I shall scatter throughout this blog post.

I particularly love the 1980s videogame-style ones. :)

Are you participating in NaNo '13? I am, and my username remains the same as it has always been - yoghurtelf. There's actually no reason at all for me to have that username, since even back in 2002 when I first "enrolled" in NaNo, I wasn't a huge fan of yoghurt. I can say that I'm a fan of elves, but I haven't read any books with elves for well over a decade now (I used to be all about the fantasy, but I've branched out a lot since then). Let's just say that I love Terry Brooks's Shannara series, though I have yet to read any of Lord of the Rings (I did read The Hobbit as both a kid and an adult, and I loved it every time).

Anyway, dairy and me don't mix too well, but I am still overly fond of my NaNo name, and so I plan to keep it forever.

This year for NaNo, I'm writing a YA contemporary with "darkish" themes. I wrote the same sort of book this June for BuNoWriMo, and this was the other idea I was throwing around. It was either that, or this, and since I wrote that back then, I'm writing this now. Well, not now, but in November.

Will I see you guys typing away madly (or scribbling, as some people still prefer to do) during November?

P.S. If you're a long-term participant in NaNo and think this idea is cool, vote for it!! It appears to be leading the charge and the more votes it gets, the more quickly it should be implemented. Yay!

Yup, I'm a NaNo nerd. And proud.

[O&AM] Cats vs. dogs

This month I'm going to talk about something very near (literally and figuratively both) to my heart: CATS! More specifically I'm addressing that age-old question: do you prefer cats or dogs? All I can do is answer for myself, but I definitely look forward to seeing what you guys think on the matter (I already know what some of you out there think). So, let's get down to the matter at hand:

Cats vs. dogs

Some people are dog people, and some people are cat people. Sometimes people are just general animal people, with no clear "winner". And of course there are people who just don't like animals at all (I don't understand these people). I guess I don't really understand the universal creature lovers, either, because how can you love a two-inch-long flying cockroach as it zooms straight at your face ready to scuttle around in your hair? EW. But anyway ... moving on.

I'm mostly an animal lover in that I care about the welfare of all animals (I even feel sorry for theose scuttly disgusting cockroaches as they die very slow deaths in my vicinity). But there is one type of animal I love most of all: CATS! Not only do I love cats, but I have a slight aversion to dogs, even though I have known a few that I actually liked. In the contest of cat vs. dog, cats definitely are the winners in my world. And here are some reasons I love cats:

• they are totally weird (okay, dogs are weird too)
• they don't smell (well, sometimes my boy cat smells after he's done a stressed-out poo in his carrier after a vet trip)
• they're not completely needy (welllll, yeah, my boy cat craves attention and walks around the house meowing if something's not quite to his liking)
• they purr. ha! dogs don't purr! (at least I haven't heard of a dog purring)
• they don't sniff crotches
• they don't eat their own poo or spew, or anybody else's
• they are generally very neat and tidy when it comes to toilet time, i.e. you don't need to carry a poo bag around with you to clean up after them
• you don't have to bathe them (until they get really old and can't bathe themselves)

I think you get the picture here. I love cats, and while I can admire dogs for their silliness, their cute personalities, and their very cute faces, I definitely prefer them not to be near me. The two dogs I've loved most in the world are dogs that are incredibly well-behaved and placid. And yet there have been dogs associated with my family that were the naughtiest dogs ever to live, and I loved them too. But that's more a case of "you can't choose your family, but you still have to love 'em." :P

Are you a cat person, a dog person, both, or neither?

Cephalopod Coffeehouse, Follow Fest & Goal Update

Woah, dudes and dudettes, I have three things on today, and they are:

Cephalopod Coffeehouse bookclub (a monthly blog hoppin' book club where participants talk about the best book they read in the last month, and hosted by the wondrous Armchair Squid)

Follow Fest (a 5-day blogfest designed to let participants meet other writers and build their own platforms. It's hosted by Melissa Maygrove)

Do You Have A Goal? (a monthly blog hop in which participants update each other on where they're at on the journey to achieving some seriously crazy-big goals. This one's hosted by Misha Gericke)

So, with so many things to do in just one post, I guess I better get on with it! And I'll try to keep it all fairly brief. :)

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I've only finished two books in September so far, if you don't count my friend's book that took me quite a bit of the month to finish (she's Icelandic, living in Sweden, and while the bizarre story was intriguing enough, I was fascinated more by descriptions of Iceland where I now want to visit even more than I already did). Anyway, for this month's Cephalopod post I thought I'd mention Hart Johnson's A FLOCK OF ILL OMENS, and slightly expand on the tiny (mildly spoilerific) GoodReads review I put up:

Hart Johnson's A FLOCK OF ILL OMENS was a quick, easy read that I basically devoured, and immediately wanted to move onto part 2. The story contains multiple POVs, but the characters though spread throughout the US are all connected somehow. Things get off to a pretty dramatic (and deadly) start, and I'm very curious to see how things unfold in future instalments. 

Am I the only one who feels sorry for the seagulls? :P 

Bring on part ii! :)

So, that's my Cephalopod entry for September.

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I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to visiting all the other participants. For now, here's my "stuff":

Name: Trisha F.
Fiction or nonfiction?: Fiction, but I have considered writing travel memoir
What genres do you write?: Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Paranormal, Dystopian, Women's Fiction, Chick Lit
Are you published?: I have a poem published with Vine Leaves, and that's it so far. :)
Do you do anything in addition to writing?: I'm a fine artist and singer-songwriter.

Where can people connect with you?:

• Blog 
• Twitter
• Facebook (at the moment I only have a FB page for my band)
• Goodreads (personal)
• Google+
• LinkedIn

Is there anything else you’d like us to know?: 

I love cats, Bailey's, reading, travelling to far-away (or even really near) places, and finding writer friends I can really connect with for our mutual benefit. :)

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Last month I reported that I had basically sucked at working towards my goal at the time, which was getting a novella ready for query-writing by August's end. I failed at that, and have since chosen a new goal:

publish something by the end of 2013

So far I must say that I am sucking at achieving this goal, too. But I can say I at least have notes from my lovely CP that I can move forward with. And I do have some ideas for how to rewrite. But rewriting isn't really where I wanted to be by now. I wanted to be polishing and verging on self-publishing. Still, at least I have something to work with, and some plan for how to move forward. :)

Cephalopod Coffeehouse bookclub & Goal update (LMG revisions)

Today it's the monthly Cephalopod Coffeehouse book club meeting, hosted by the very groovy Armchair Squid. I'm sharing some medium-sized book reviews.

 Bitter Like Orange Peel - Jessica Bell :: Jessica Bell's latest offering is the story of a messed-up family riddled with secrets and lies. Over the course of the book, the great blanket of lies begins to unravel, with that saying "the truth will out" being constantly proven. Honestly, I sometimes wondered if this family would ever get its poo together. And I'm not really sure they did, even by the book's end. At least I can say they made progress. Jessica Bell is a beautiful writer with a knack for writing "difficult", complicated characters. Most of the characters in this book I wanted to slap really hard a lot of the time. The end of the book didn't feel like much of an end - more like there was a clean slate and the family finally had a chance to start fresh. Without lies, this time. I feel like I need to wish them good luck!

True Grit - Charles Portis :: Quite a few years ago, one of my aunties told me I should read this book. Now that I finally have, I can see what she meant when she told me, "It's fantastic!" I loved it to bits. The character of Mattie Ross is truly loveable and admirable, and as one review in a famous magazine said, she sure knows what it means to have "true grit". There were other characters to get a kick out of, too, a colourful cast of people with really cool names like "Rooster" Cogburn, La Boeuf, and Lucky Ned Pepper. Tom Chaney was a good name for an "outlaw" too, I suppose. But Rooster was a great character who really did have the "true grit" Mattie was seeking in others all through the book. I can definitely see myself re-reading this book in future. And I'll have to check out the movie, even if I'm not convinced it can do the book justice.

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult :: I finally read this, many years after it was first "hot", and can say that it's a great book. I wasn't expecting the  ending, and I hear they changed it in the movie - I can imagine how they might've done so, but I'd have to watch it to find out. Which I will do, someday. In this book, characters do things I totally did not agree with, but I could still see their reasons, and understand their predicaments. Jodi Picoult writes family pain and characters in crisis so well, and makes you hurt along with them. Sometimes I did feel that I was being manipulated (like with at least one scene narrated by Anna that just verged on a bit too dramatic), but I guess these characters had the right to some dramatic flair!

Sister - Rosamund Lupton :: I remember reading about this book on somebody's blog and thinking I would have to read it. I've done so now, and I really enjoyed the read, even if I found it quite a strange experience. The story was gripping, and for the most part well written, but I found Lupton's use of commas really odd. And yet her book was generally written in a beautiful, poetic style. The story itself? Very gripping, and with a gasp-worthy, haunting twist at the end. In the back of the copy I read, there's an interview with the author where she is asked a question about the twist - did that really happen? She answers that she feels it did, but that it's up to the individual reader to make up their own mind. I'm the sort of person who can't really believe something's real unless there is 100% blatant "yes, it is real and here is all the proof" confirmation. So I'm not really sure what I believe. But I'm sure as heck still wondering. So, if you like crime/thriller from an amateur sleuth perspective, I definitely recommend this read.

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Also today is the Do You Have A Goal? (DYHAG for short, or so I'm referring to it) monthly bloghop, which is hosted by Misha Gericke.

The goal I chose was to:

get LMG ready for QueryCon by end of August

So, how have I done with this goal since I signed up for Misha's hop?

Tomorrow is the last day of August. I have so far sent chapters 1-4 of LMG to a CP and got feedback. I have since sent chapters 5-6 off, and doubt I'll get feedback before August ends. There are twenty chapters in this novella. So, I guess you could say I didn't achieve my goal. And you want to know why? I'm a slacker. That is the sole reason for it. I should have read through the whole thing by now and polished it up, fleshed it out where it needs fleshing, etc.. But instead I have watched the entire series of Gilmore Girls.

And it's been awesome.

So, yeah, I totally blame myself for not meeting my goal. But luckily I'm not that miserable about it. I'm content to just keep on plugging away at this thing. Because it's true that I really should just work on one writing project at a time. When I try to do bits of everything, I do nothing.

Travel Series: FRANCE (1998)

Last time in this travel series, I was telling you guys about our time in Italy in 1998. From Italy we drove to the French Riviera, passing through Monaco, Nice, etc., on our way back to France. You might recall we had previously passed through France on the way to Switzerland, but after Italy we were heading back to France to do things properly. I'm guessing that from Nice we headed north to Lyon, and then to Paris.

Heading for Nice, Marseilles, etc.

As close as I got to the Tour.

On the 7th of May we made it to Paris, and I wrote the following postcard to Mum:


Date: 7/5/98
Place: Paris, France

Unfortunately, due to my present condition (homesick, sore neck, travelling with Dad) I'm unable to enjoy this famous city as I usually would (I think). The only thing that cheers me slightly is that we're gonna have a coffee. I've seen the Tour d'Eiffel and I'm gonna see the Louvre, so what do I have to complain about...?

...DAD!

Yes, I admit I was really fed up with old Daddo by this point, and vice versa. But we were sore (pretty sure I had a neck vertebra out of alignment), tired and stressed out. For introverted me, it had been pretty wearing existing in such close quarters with Dad for all these long months. But I still managed to enjoy Paris, and here's how:

• Dad's funny pronunciations of French places/names, i.e. "Mooli", "Chomps Eleese"
• A quote from Dad that is now famous in my family:
• "... two guys came up to [Dad] and asked, 'vous parlez anglaise?' and he said, 'sorry, I only speak English', and they said, 'we were asking you if you spoke English'."
• Drinking wine in the car outside the Ritz where Princess Diana had been staying that fateful night - to Dad's fascination and my horror, a busload of tourists rocked up and created a veritable discotheque of flash photography
• I checked out CD prices and thought they were very decent - 4 Francs 30 each (yep, it was Francs back then: "liberté, égalité, fraternité"!)
• I had a crepe (chocolate and hazelnut sauce) served by a lovely French waitress who gave me a free postcard and told me my French was "très bien"
• I finally visited the Louvre, though the first day I tried it was closed (about a week earlier there had been a theft of a work by Corot)
• And yes, I saw the Eiffel Tower (see above).

I remember this better from last year's (2012) visit.

Outside the Louvre.

I have no recollection of these dudes.

Grumpy on the day the Louvre was closed.

And I finally got inside.

We stayed in Paris longer than in many other places we visited, solely because of the Louvre being closed that first time I tried to get in. Having studied art history in school, Paris was one of the places I had been most excited about. But I now realise this wasn't actually the end of my 1998 trip (shows how foggy one's memory can get). From France we travelled on through Luxembourg into Germany, where we stayed with some family. So next time, I'll talk about all that. For today, I'll leave you with a link to a page I've created that has links to all my Globetrotter posts to date. Click HERE.

[O&AM] Things I've inherited from my family

I've inherited a lot of things from my parents - Mum's green eyes, Dad's height. Oh, and this curly hair came at me from both directions. I also think I got my sarcasm from one of my aunties on Mum's side. But when I was little I was the spitting image of an aunty on my Dad's side, to the extent that Dad would often call me by her name. Oh, and my mum definitely loves to travel, but I think I got the "bug" from Dad.

There are also more bothersome things that run in my family:

• Skin cancer
• High cholesterol
• Arthritis

I already know I got hit with the cancer stick, though thankfully I've only had the "undeadly" kind so far. I also inherited that high cholesterol thing, so no matter how healthy I am my levels are probably going to be a little bit higher than most women my age. The arthritis may manifest itself later on in life, but for now I'm free of that.

There's one more thing I thank my family for passing onto me, and that's the creative genes that keep me busy and constantly inspired. So, I thank my family for the stuff they generously passed on to me. I'll even take the pesky health afflictions if it means I get to keep the rest. :)

Teensy tiny little writing slump?

I have actually set myself a little goal, and it is to get my novella ("Lost, Missing, Gone") polished up in time for QueryCon 2013 in September. I set this goal the other day, and even publicly recorded my goal (which I just wrote as "gole" ... wow, I'm going good ay?) over at Misha Gericke's Five Year Project blog. I haven't actually started polishing it yet, well not since I settled on it for realz as a goal - a single goal I will concentrate on to the detriment of all other goals. It's been polished previously, but more in a proof-reading sort of way than anything else. But at least I've chosen my single project, right?

Oh, wait, I have other stuff to get done - namely stuff for my musical collaboration reciprocation (I owe Billy some GarageBand files and two in particular) - and I also wanted to get a short story of mine polished enough to submit to a magazine by the end of this month of August. But I've been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls (yes, I do love that show) and that's just kind of taken up all my time. ;)

I've probably lost my writerly mojo a little bit ever since June (and BuNoWriMo) ended. At least I managed to get those 50k written, and then I moved house. Not long later, I also managed to add to those 50k until I was done with the story (in very rough draft form). But I'm sure the writing bug is going to come back and bite me in the butt at any moment. After all, I can feel the creativity bubbling away inside me. It's just not spewing out just yet. I guess you could say I've had a little break, and that little break may continue for a few more days. But I do hope that Gilmore Girls breaks its hold on me sometime soon.

Will I have to wait until I've finished all 7 seasons? (I'm on season 4 right now)

What's keeping you from your goals, if anything?

Travel Series: ITALY

Last time in my Globetrotters series, I talked about my travels through Switzerland in 1998. This time I'll talk about the next stop, Italy, in which we spent little time but saw quite a lot. Italy isn't a huge country, particularly when you're coming from a place like Australia, but it's still got a heck of a lot of detail to it. During my time in Italy I saw:

Suburban roadside ruins.

• gondolas
• a Dali exhibit
• a replica of the statue of David (sadly didn't see the real deal, but with only an hour or two to spare the lines were just too long)
• real Italian pizza
• real greasy Italian dudes trying to seduce me on the street
• the Coliseum (from the outside, anyway)
• ancient ruins just sitting in the middle of suburban Roman streets
• the leaning tower of Pisa (a.k.a. "the tower of Pizza" according to Dad)
• tiny Italian towns you weren't meant to drive in - which we, of course, drove in.

Me outside the Coliseum in Roma - we didn't go in.

We crossed into Italy from Switzerland in a hire car, and drove through Milan (not stopping) to Venice. Venice was kind of smelly (algae), and I was grumpy (we didn't go on a gondola). From Venice we drove on to Florence, where I saw a Dali exhibition. Dad wasn't as impressed with Florence as he had been with Venice, but in my book at least it smelled better (and there was Dali!).

Venezia, 1998.

Also in Florence, I saw a procession of Beetles (no, really, look:

Italian beetles!

) going through the streets honking. I tried to visit the real statue of David but settled for a still-pretty-massive replica. And plus, Daaaali:

Some Dali magic in Firenze.

Rome was next, and there I saw ruins, including the Coliseum. We got a coffee from McDonald's one day, and were surprised to receive a tiny "shot" cup with about an inch of strong black coffee in the bottom. After we left Rome, we headed north via numerous towns, including Pisa with its famous leaning tower - we didn't go closer than this, I think because it was closed to the public:

The leaning tower, on a definite slant.

We also drove through Livorno, a little Italian town my uncle had lived in and taught in for 8 years.

Well, folks, that about sums up the Italian leg - and almost the entire 1998 trip too. Next time I'll cover the very last part of the trip, and then it'll be time to move onto other travels I've done. :)