Coming about

I'm not doing such a great job of actually charting my writing life on here, but that's about to change, as my writing life is revving up to high speed — things I've been working on for a while are starting to bear fruit. I was made redundant in February and am now quite excited by the possibilities that are opening up. So, in brief (-ish):

I've applied for and gained a place at Aber Uni to do my PhD in Creative Writing, something I've wanted to do for a long, long time. It's not funded but I'm still hoping to find some, and hey, every student comes out debt-raddled, so why not me?

I've scored a contract to write a how-to surfing book for Need2Know, who so far are a totally brilliant company.

I've been messed about, upset and now despair of every government body/office that is supposed to offer help to those who need it, and indeed have paid a ton of National Insurance for it. (Hey, it can't all be positive!)

I've moved back to Wales - I miss my friends and the opportunities in Cornwall, but it was well past time and I just love being home.

I have applied for a part time job at an amazing place and am crossing everything that I get it - working by the water, learning to sail, loads of opps to create and build on to make a difference.

I got a little something published on Matador.com, an excellent travel website. (Incidentally, the five years no holiday will become eight…no chance of a trip!) (Update - I got on the front page! And $25…I thought it was a free thing.)

I learned to play poker.

More to come on all, except maybe the poker. This blog will probably become a guide to life as a postgrad student, which hopefully people will find useful.

Axegrinder

It’s the subs who catch the malignant tuna

What do magazines do without their subs? Miss howlers like these - funny as. I wish I'd kept a list of the ones I've come across that are specific to surfing, but I'd not have had the time.

QI - which interesting dead person are you?

I am Mary Kingsley, Victorian explorer and writer. Sounds about right. Some of these things are crap, but this one's good.

blogging dying?

Anything but blogging!

I've definitely been writing less on my personal blogs, and it is partly because I'm loving Twitter and getting deep into feeds on GoogleReader, but I certainly don't think blogging's dying. It's just evolving. On many of my favourite blogs, posts are shorter, more immediate, and provide little more than a jumping-off point. As people's readers become stuffed with feeds and their follow count rises and more commercial interests muscle in, there's just less room for updates and fully-formed opinion on absolutely everything.

How many tabs do you have open right now?

And then we get on to the subject of concentration span and how long one web page will hold anyone's interest these days…

Hmm and this one says it even better. I do feel that my ramblings on what a great surf I had are now no longer relevant to anyone, and I update and post much more frequently on the professional blogs I maintain. So often, in fact, that I often have to pretend I am one of my other colleagues so I don't look like a total geek. And to make them look good.

brain droppings

Gosh, where have I been? Head down on SurfGirl, mostly, and dreaming up a fantasical magical fantasy novel.

Seren's new catalogue popped through my door, and I want…all of it. But especially the Mabinogion retellings. Another idea that I never quite followed through on. Literally cannot wait for the Niall Griffiths one! (I am determined to make it to his Ty Newydd workshop.)

Death of the iBook is also making life difficult. I dream of a backlit keyboard and unibody, 13 inches and 250GB of Apple goodness…

The Surfing Tribe

I did some work on The Surfing Tribe, which is out now. It's turned out amazing. It's such an epic bit of work, so many facts and figures, stories collated, never-seen photos sourced. It caused untold amounts of heartache, rows and headaches, but now it's here, I'm proud to have had a (small) hand in it.

More info here >>

(Signed copies available… I know this all sounds like just a plug but not really, I'm just impressed with how it came out.)

Headline Analyzer

"What is the Headline Analyzer?

This free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score."

Cool huh? I must be a pretty poor copywriter, because I'm not getting very high scores! And I'll admit, I was actually looking for a headline generator. When your editor has decided that a good title for an article about Europe would be, er, 'Europe' and you have to think something up at the last minute, boy would a headline generator be useful. I'll keep looking…otherwise I might have to use my brain, and it's not co-operating today.

Oh this is fun too - word association. I had it passing after 105. (Why do my threads always turn to filth after about 20? Hmm.)