janthie.bsky.social
Amateur bread baker, cat botherer, book addict, writer:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0841RPQBS/allbooks
In a former life: freelance translator, copywriter & journalist; pub cook, and night manager in a Dutch hotel for the homeless for 17 years.
1,619 posts
337 followers
85 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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Congratulations!
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As if there wasn't enough insanity/evil to spread around.
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The one on the lower right. Such perfect side-eye.
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I have a better memory than I thought I had.
I remembered reading this, seven years ago, and I now smiled and chuckled along with my seven-year-younger self.
I hope you're not stopping? That restaurant review was fun but I'd miss the family columns.
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May Chuck be better than you hope and may the chemo be a nothingburger embuggerance.
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I don't even know that brand, yet I know I can agree totally.
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I was very lucky (I mean: Google?!) to find a mill here in Czechia that grinds local wheat & accepts orders, from 4 to 60+ kilos of flour.
They send it out once a week, for logistic reasons & to guarantee it will always arrive within two weeks.
So I'm sorted for organic, stoneground wholemeal & rye.
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It may depend if you cross borders?
I was always travelling while having long hair & beard & shabbily dressed.
It seemed too risky to have the loose leaf tea in a pouch, or in my case more likely a plastic bag.
I was always asked where I went & what I carried. Having the shop packaging seemed wise.
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I had rice with coconut milk & fruit for breakfast, and ate what was left for lunch, so a nice and cosy start of the day.
I'm too lazy to get up but my one and only big poppy is flowering, so that counts for peaceful?
No complaints about either adjective anyway.
May calm & peaceful find you too.
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I stopped travelling quite some time ago but I remember I started travelling with various loose leaf teas, bought in my* teas store and still unopened, in my mid-twenties, so I must have done it close to three decades.
*Of course I was someone who had and talked about 'my' tea store.
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Someone here got an insane review by a reader who was offended that the writer had dared to introduce humour to a genre that should be free from humour.
(I can't remember but I guess some incel with firm opinions about his favourite genre; I'm guessing SF or fantasy.
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I would have gone for the salad for the first one. (That recipe looks good though.)
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It does depend a bit?
I write pretty sloppy first drafts, because my overall goal is to get to the end of it.
So, halfway through, I may realise (for instance) that a certain character requires more depth (or removing) but I will only act on that after the first draft is done.
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I started snacking on frozen watermelon again. I'll keep doing that - but I will add this to my repertoire. In a slightly simplified form. Without the walnuts. I have three walnut trees and the first few years I overdid things, walnut-consumption-wise.
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Damn. The shop is out of courgettes, till Monday. Oh well, I'll survive.
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Just what I need! Thank you.
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Still only one thing to say after listening to the pod & debriefing:
'Oy!'
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You would know this, I'm sure, but wasn't PN supposed to have a really big brain too?
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This is a novel though, not a novella, so the old minimum price was €6 (and a bit.)
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Being there
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I don't even want to be tall. Average, or a bit under, would be totally fine.
I merely object to feeling like Danny DeVito each time I'm facing some 30-year-old (or younger) Dutch guy.
(I read that thanks to these baby-bloomers, we are now the on average tallest country in the world. Bastards!)
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Decades ago I visited my parents. The door bell rang and since I was closest I opened the door.
A young guy stood there. Later my parents explained he was the neighbours' kid. I had babysat him but the last time I'd seen him he was about belt height. Now he was at least a head taller than me.
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I am, or was, of average height. Up till thirty years after my birth that remained true, until the bastard babies born in the late Eighties or early Nineties, shot up from that respectable average of 1.80* to create an average of 2 metres** or a bit more.
*5.9 foot
**6.5 foot.
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Have your eyes closed throughout, maybe wearing earplugs that take down the orchestra to a murmur and will probably* still allow you to hear when someone starts singing.
Make sure to keep your eyes closed when you pretend you're in a pub, listening to people doing karaoke.
*If not: such a shame.
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He put you through the DT mangle, so something unrelated? (If you ever can say that.)
So, Needful Things.
It is one wild carnival ride and his absolute funniest book (if you're a bit warped.)
It is serious and sad in places (and I still don't know what Sk has against dogs) but it's mostly fun.
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Great crust & crumb (again.)
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Do what you can, yes, but also be kind to your body.
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Yah. He would say something rude and then either hug you or say 'I love you, son' or both.
So,
Part two: there are possibles.
Part one: a dead cert.
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If he was a rapist, the only crime I want to see her convicted for is probably just a misdemeanour anyway:
Littering.
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I'm straight but I used to do it because the hearing in one ear was crap.
(They're both now equally bad at what they were designed for, so I could be part of the experiment again, if I still went to restaurants, which I don't. Though I'm sure I'm easy to categorise in many other ways.)
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I don't ask for or listen to the feedback of anyone else though; they can have the finished product.
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I am incredibly lucky that I have two first readers who both have improved my manuscripts.
Both have good story brains but the first is also a good proofreader who catches remaining typos and other mistakes.
The second points out how the stories could improve.
They are both always right.
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Laughter is booming inside my skull; like that of Satan having won another soul with a shiny bit of shit temptation.
I might have felt slightly more sympathetic, if this lazy thief did not hold her 'commercial' audience in such contempt.
Begone, you feeble nitwit, be trapped forever in AI Hell.
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No idea.
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And not even ending up as a pig on Circe's island.
Mind you, I already dislike the idea of Nolan directing it.
The Coen brothers would have been perfect for this.
I mean, a shaggy dog story, with Gods!
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Same to you.
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We lived close to train tracks when I was young (6-14).
I wasn't a great sleeper even then and, lying in bed, stuck in half-asleep land, I found the sound of freight trains soothing and I would often imagine riding on them who knows where.
(I still have a soft spot for hearing distant trains.)
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I always listen to TS in bed.
I'm also an early riser in the summer months, turning off the lights around midnight.
Meaning that ideally I should be in bed at nine... in 35 minutes...?
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I need to do the last bits of editing tidying up on two books, then we'll see.
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My next novella may a detective story. Working title & subtitle:
Murder in the library
(Please tell me you are joking)
It should be very silly. I typed a short opening scene, with the ghost of the murder victim looking at his corpse. I may use him as gloomy & passive onlooker throughout.
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I hate to say it but his hair looked even worse when be had enough hair to cover his scalp.