Anna's Place

Has been hellish busy for a while now. This is a good thing, generally. Apart from a visit to the dentist for a filling which was amazingly untraumatic until I had to pay the bill, it means I have been visiting other people's blogs and pimping my two ebooks due for release this week, and it means the various muses have been cooperating and I have been writing many many words on my original fic. This, unfortunately, has left me waaay behind on my Potterverse fic. Which, to quote one of the most brilliant authors out there, is an embuggerance.

Still, Sea-Change is with striking distance of the end, then I'll put it aside for a short while so I can come back to it with a fresh eye to start work on the second draft. Then I will *have* to get back to my vampire fic. Fox Hunt has been sitting there patiently for a few months now - well, it was its own fault for deciding to inflict me with the bloody Writer's Block.

Once Sea-Change is out of the first draft stage, I can go back to my usual pattern of sharing my writing day between original fic and fanfic. I hope!

Title: Boggart
Author/Artist: Quillanna
Word Count: 100 + 1 for title
Rating: Gen
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made by me etc
Summary: What does Snape need for his Riddiculus?


( Boggart )

This does my pseudo-Celtic heart no end of good.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080211/tuk-white-stag-sighting-in-scotland-dba1618_1.html

I've given up on my LJ account, and I'll be sticking with IJ for the foreseeable future. Partly this is because sooner or later I'll be posting my Snarry fic and while Harry is over-age in it, I'd just as soon avoid the Nanny-state hysteria and hoo-hah over there.

My brain cell is functioning a little better today, mainly because the central heating is working again and the grey matter no longer wants to go into hibernation.

I've got some RL editing work to do, then it's back to Harry and that wall.

Thanks to inamac reminding me, my HP canon query has been solved. Am now continuing with 'Sufficient Unto the Day', and 'Served Cold' is back on the back-burner...

PS - And belated thanks to aunty_marion for her input as well!

Well, it's back and I have to confess to a bit of disappointment. On the plus side I liked the edginess of the tight-knit team faced with the returned Jack. Yes, they're pleased he's back but they don't trust him and it shows. Gwen has stepped aside and let him be leader again but it rankles as far as I could see. They are no longer a team of five, but four + one. Jack is going to have to make a real effort to win them back 100% and it'll take more than his 1000 Watt smile and sex appeal to do it.

I am glad that Ianto is a part of that team. He was grossly under-used in the first series, but now he is a vital cog in a smooth-running unit and all four of them work well together.

Overall though, I thought the acting was stilted, and only the Ianto/Jack scene had any real emotion to it. the Gwen/Jack dynamics were on the nauseating side, and I was irritated on Rhys's behalf that she would accept him and his ring as second-best. I am not sure about John. He looks good in an Adam Ant kind of way but his menace and danger aura struck me as more petty than anything else, even when he was chucking people off buildings or into crates.

Maybe they will all grow back into their roles.

But what threw me out of every scene she was in was Gwen's unfortunate resemblance to Leela. If ever they make a live action version of Futurama, that girl would walk straight into the part. Mouth, chin, expressions, all spot-on - the only thing she currently lacks is the one eye...

At the moment I am struggling to find some sympathy/empathy with the characters...

I hate to say this but I'm beginning to think that Captain Jack works far better as a partner to a really strong character [like a Doctor...any Doctor...] than he does as the lead in his own show. Jack should be on the Tardis.

Finally got to see 'Enchanted' - a familt outing and it went a lot smoother than some. The grand-brats were actually well-behaved for once.

The film was pleasant enough, if a bit bland, but what made it for me was Timothy Spall channeling Alan Rickman for all he was worth! At times he had the intonation and pitch absolutely spot-on!

Brilliant, Mr. Spall.

Trying to catch up...


Looking back, I have been travelling since August, often with little internet access, and I am now wildly out of touch with everything. I'm home for a while, completely penniless but very happy as well as tired. I now need to save like crazy to try to get to Las Vegas in November 2008.

Not much writing got done on my travels, but my HP story has firmed up a lot more in my mind. I wish I wasn't such a slow writer sometimes, it allows too much of a plot/character log-jam to build up in my head.

So JKR announces that Dumbledore was gay. Oh, heavens. What a shocking surprise. Not.

My first reaction was, is she now going to spill the truth about Aberforth and the goats? My second was why the hell didn't the bloody woman have the guts/professionalism to give the info in the actual book, along with all the other snippets she's been releasing since DH was released? Harry's job, Snape's portrait, for instance, and maybe others I haven't heard about.

If these details weren't 'relevant' enough to appear in DH, why bring them up now?

Daughter-in-law thinks that as far as the Dumblefore info is concerned, it's for the publicity such an announcement would generate.

I'm supposed to be the cynical bitch in this household.

Just got back from a weekend medievaling at Pembroke Castle - weather was fantastic, lots of people came to see us, and they want us back next year. On the down side I made a complete pig's ear of Anello. Well, I hadn't danced it for about eight months and it was new to me then! The other court dances went fine, I didn't put a foot wrong. So did the country dances, though I chickened out of Horses' Branle on the second day. That one starts off fast and gets faster as it goes along!

Now I am getting packed up for my trip to America on Saturday. I'm off to Vermont for a week, then down to Illinois for another two - come back home for a few days then I'm off to Greece for eight days. Then that's it for foreign travel until I've saved up some more cash.

I've got my PDA and thumb-board working, so I'm aiming to get some writing done on the flight. My WTP DH Challenge story still hasn't got a title, but I'm sure one will present itself sooner or later. I've also got DH on the PDA, so I'll read it through again. Not just for the Challenge story, I'm on an HP DH discussion panel at Zebra-Con in Chicago so I'll need to have it fresh in my head.

When I get back, hopefully I'll have something in the HP line ready to post - unbeta'ed, though, which can't be helped. The kind and long-suffering soul who beta's my Highlander stuff is not a Potterfan, and Snarry is waaaay outside her comfort zone *g*