We seem to be on track for Christmas – only more house cleaning and food shopping to do. I woke up this morning with the excellent news that Arsenal beat Hull 3-0 and promptly demanded a celebratory sleep-in. Well more to the point I was up for too much in the middle of the night and needed a sleep-in, but whatever. I haven’t had one in a very very long time and Jemima was bizarrely compliant, allowing me to sleep for most of the morning. Raeli was less compliant, of course.

I’m trying to finish up the last couple of work-ish things before I say to hell with it and just allow myself to be on holiday. I wrote a story for  girliejones‘s anthology of suburban fantasy, Sprawl, but I gave it to my honey to read and he agrees it needs another act. Damn it. Might have to work late tonight. At least another act means I don’t have to beg and plead for an exception to be made for her wordcount rules…

I sent the finished Creature Court maps off to the publisher today – I know it’s pointless because the chances of them still being in the office between now and January are next to nothing, but they are finished and that is the important thing. I really want to post some of the drafts and talk about the process that went into producing them – a fascinating collaboration with my mother, one of the most professional and efficient artists that I have ever met – but it feels a bit squicky to do that when a) the publisher hasn’t approved them yet and b) Mum might not actually like her early drafts being put on display. So if I do that it will be much closer to the publication date and with her permission.

Which means of course that anything I say about it will be without illustration and thus not nearly as interesting as it could be. Still, I wanted to state for the record that despite some of the stress and drama of our first couple of map meetings the process as a whole was incredibly cool.
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As some of you know, I’ve gone a touch insane about football (soccer to Americans and Australians) thanks to my attachment to Arsenal and Premier League over the last year and a bit. While I do love our boys, something that has been getting to me more and more is the marginalisation and invisibility of women’s football. I have complained about the lack of coverage, in the media and in the presentation of games on TV, and the overwhelming assumption that no one is going to be interested. I’m interested! And not just because, you know, Arsenal Ladies rocks. So far my support has been fairly limited. I follow the Guardian news feed for women’s football in the UK, I keep an eye out for news stories elsewhere, and I’ve even started taking an interest in Australian soccer!

The trouble with living in Tasmania is that we don’t have a state team (the same is true for Aussie Rules) which means if you want to barrack for a team you have to choose them for some other reason. But, hey. My team is Arsenal and I’m pretty sure I’ve never even been to their area of London before. I’m not even sure where it is. I’d have to look at a map. And I have been so busy being obsessed with all things Arsenal that I haven’t got around to thinking about or choosing an Aussie team. I told myself that, you know, I’d wait until there was some women’s soccer before I got interested in the more local stuff. Or until my daughter gets on her own team.

But as it turns out, the Australian women’s “pro” W-League (I’m sure you can imagine why it’s in inverted commas, and has nothing to do with whether or not the players have a professional attitude) is going strong in its second season and I was delighted beyond all reason when it turned out the ABC was screening some W-League games on Saturday afternoons. So I decided to choose a team.

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I’m catching up on the Alan Davies “It’s Up For Grabs Now” football podcast, which is awesome (especially the Alan Davies impersonation of Arsene Wenger – priceless) but sadly this is last week’s episode and features Alan’s list of the 6 players we need to stay fit all season if we want to have a chance at winning the league… including Robin Van Persie, sob! If only our players were not so fragile.

Brilliant writing day, with various people turning up to Nano with me – I ticked along with a reasonably respectable word count but things just took off plotwise just as my last guest left and I ended up 800 words over today’s goal, the most ahead I have been all months! Ah, angst, don’t you love it? Also I ended up accidentally poisoning someone which was most definitely not planned. Oops.

I only stopped writing because a certain little madam woke up, and I have still not figured out how to type and breastfeed at the same time (this is a lie, actually, it’s just a personal choice to not make her feel more neglected than is obviously inevitable)

Despite the temptation to do nothing but chat all the time I am loving this writing with other people thing. Makes me feel more like this is a real job and not just this random typing hobby.

Thanks everyone who replied to the podcast post on LJ, I am downloading heaps of stuff right now.

Some time ago, round about the time that LJ feeds stopped working for a week with no explanation, I switched to a Bloglines account for my non-LJ reading.  girliejones complained at the time that she wouldn’t be able to see what I was reading. So, here’s some linkage of the best blog entries I’ve read in the last few days:

Justine Larbalestier talks about stereotypes in fiction and how to transcend them, with particular reference to the protagonist of Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s brilliant Dairy Queen trilogy. (I have the third volume on my to read shelf, have been hanging out for it for months and cannot bring myself to pick it up, I think because I’m so sad this is the last one).

And if that interests you, check out Kaia Landelius reviewing the first volume of that series, over at Jumbled Words.

Jonathan Strahan starts blogging at Tor with a post about the editor’s responsibility to stretch beyond his own instant responses to fiction, and consider the wider audience. With bonus shout out to the Last Short Story crew, which includes your truly.

(speaking of Last Short Story, I should be whiling away this last hour of the afternoon catching up on the end of my reading but as you can see, I’m not, sometimes I even procrastinate my procrastination…)

Laurell K Hamilton posts with astonishing honesty about the breakdown of her first marriage and the relationship between that marriage and her Merry Gentry books (note – spoilers for Book 10 apparently though I have to say it wasn’t a thing that surprised me and I’ve only read the first 3 or so)

Sarah Rees Brennan reviews some of her recent romance reads – and makes them sound awesome, I have to say!

Agent Kristin covers the Harlequin e-publishing/self-publishing/vanity press announcements, and then reports on the angry response, culminating in a RWA-Harlequin smackdown.

Still on romance, Jessica at Romancing the Blog discusses the at times uncomfortable relationship between romance fiction, feminists and the cosmetics industry.

Finally, in the single link not relating to writing or editing, Laurie at Body Impolitic on blackface in fashion.

There really are no words to decribe the glee that this picture gives me. No words at all. This picture makes the world a happier place.

(via the Kickette, who also saw fit to inform the world that Arshavin chose the shark suit, and the others had to make do with what they got)