I read a blurb on the book the other day that caused me to laugh out loud. Which, believe me, doesn't usually go down too well in a library... but I couldn't help it. The worst bit is that the subject matter is intended to be rather serious and heart-wrenching, so I felt bad about laughing at it.

For a second or two.

Then I laughed some more.

The blurb starts thusly: Willow O'Keefe is born with osteogenesis imperfecta...

Which is a huge laugh, right? Small child, constantly in pain. I wasn't laughing at that bit, OK?

It continues:

...[a]s her family struggles to cover medial expenses, her mother Charlotte decides to file a wrongful birth lawsuit against her obstetrician for compensation that might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow.

But it means Charlotte has to say in a court of law that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she'd known about the disability in advance. And the obstetrician she's suing isn't just her physician - she's her best friend.

It shouldn't make me laugh, right?

And yet, I can't help it. It's just one tragedy after another until it reaches ridiculous proportions. There's no way I could take a book like that seriously. I mean, you might as well write a blurb that says:

Adorable, pig-tailed child gets a kitten, which dies. She gets a new kitten which digs up the old kitten AND EATS IT. Then dies.

Blurbs are such hit and miss things, though, aren't they? One of my favourite books as a teenager was Obernewtyn and I almost didn't read it because of the blurb, which read like some stock-standard, post-apocalyptic story of the far future.

It also makes me think that I could come up with a pretty amusingly tragic blurb for that doomed first draft of Black Fiddle. Behold:

Jeannie lives a happy, carefree life with her music-loving family until a deadly plague begins to eat away at the land. She and her sister are sent to fend for themselves in the city while the rest of her family falls victim to the plague, leaving them as ophans among strangers. They face prejudice and starvation, forcing Jeannie to sell the precious family heirloom entrusted to her by her grandmother: the Black Fiddle of Barnet.

In a cruel twist of fate, Jeannie's sister is stolen away by Sidhe trapped in the mortal realm seeking a way home... and the only thing that can bring her back is the fiddle Jeannie just sold.

And so on and woe and wailing and woe on woe-tarts with extra woe topping.

Sure, we're all searching for a twist or to submit our characters to the utmost levels of torment in some vain attempt at retribution for ruining our lives and our sleep and our sanity with their insistence on having their stories written. But there's a point where it just goes too far and you break through the walls of tragedy and tension, straight into the realms of ridiculousness.

So has anyone else read any laughably melodramatic blurbs lately? Or, better still: how would you write a blurb of your current WIP (novel, short story, ficlet - whatever it may be) to make it so ridiculously tragic that people are already reaching for the tissues before they even open the cover?

Don't ask me how my writing's going unless you want me to lie and tell you how I'm at least ten chapters into the most amazing book ever and it's all going so swimmingly due to my superlative organisational skills and equally amazing self-discipline.

Don't make me lie to you like that.

In more exciting news, I present to you the calendar the ma gave me as part of my Christmas present. She seems somehow to have purchased a "caption your own lolcats" calendar. Seriously. Every picture has cats in the stupidest poses imaginable. December in particular had me crying with laughter.

In the interests of democracy and... laziness and all of that stuff, I thought I'd ask my ever-witty flist to suggest some captions for January's cat. It's probably the most boring of the bunch, but I think the angle of the paw and the fact that it's surrounded by flowers has some promise. Caption my calendarlolcat!

Please. :)

( Venture under here for the pic... )

I don’t do memes.  Really  I don’t.

But...

Sometimes they’re just too hilarious to pass up.


I am beyond amused at the idea of librarians a-leaping all about the library, joyfully tossing the books back onto the shelves.  The reality is that library technicians usually do that - but it appears they’re too busy drumming, so it’s all left to the leaping librarians.

And I do believe that the eight Turleses are all reading the same book: How to Conquer the Universe Using Exotic Fruits.

I love how it begins to make sense, though.  “Seven books a-writing” - oh, if only.  If only the stupid things wrote themselves.  I hope everyone appreciates all these self-writing books I’m giving away.

As enamoured as I am of the reading Turleses (eight of them!  It’s like a dream come true...), I think my favourite is that last one.  It would certainly give Rushton and Dameon something to do when Elspeth abandons both of them to go off and save the world by angsting at it relentlessly.

Number of times I grinned inanely today: too many to count.  What can I say?  I was having a good day.

Number of grade five children who invaded our library: *in denial*  We’re not getting more tomorrow!  Tell me we’re not getting more tomorrow!

Actually, it’s not that bad.  They're kind of cute, really. I thought I was incredibly grown up when I was in grade five; after all, I was ten years old!  That’s double figures!  It’s a little odd to realise how small I actually was.

Number of silly things accidentally posted to LJ: only one, thank goodness.  I blame my stupid work for blocking LJ, as this forced me to use email to post work-written entries in.  Formerly, if I typed “b” into the address box while composing an email, it brought up my home email first.  Now, it brings up my posting-to-LJ email and I entirely forgot this when I quickly typed in a sentence I wanted to send home.

It wasn’t until I was waiting for my second bus that I realised what I’d done.

Number of people who stared at me while I tried not to laugh out loud at my mistake: uncertain.

Number of times I was grateful it wasn’t a line from the other fic that already involves the description “half-naked” (and is probably going to go downhill from there): Many.  Many!

Number of car number-plates sniggered at on the way home: one.  But it said ‘PWP’!  I’m allowed to snigger at that.  Maturity of mind is over-rated.

Number of Timothies accidentally snubbed: one.  I couldn’t help it.  I’d just logged into msn, was talking to two people (one of whom was my dad) and was trying to get rid of sundry evidence of earlier LJ-related stupidity.  Also, there was the small matter of the cup of tea I was trying to make.  There’s only so much multi-tasking a girl can do.

I am experiencing a bizarre idea to write silly stories.  And I mean incredibly silly stories.  The sort of things that might turn up in a really bad film pitch in a Hollywood studio or something.  For example:

Character One switches bodies with Character Two by accident; hilarity ensues!  (Also, some sort of lesson to do with respecting others, blah blah, very touching, can I fall asleep now? - will occur.)

Or:

A girl who has lost her ability to feel emotions has teamed up with a man who may or may not have a Jekyll and Hyde complex.  They solve crime!

Or:

A and B are mixing a love potion to use on their friends when an accident occurs and it affects them intead.  But they can’t stand each other!  Hi-jinks ensue...
(Rated M for abuse of dessicated animal parts)


See what I mean?  Silly stories.  Hackneyed things full of stereotyped characters and recycled plots.  And these examples aren’t simply plucked from the air: they are actual stories that I am working on.

I don’t think there’s any harm to them, though.  It occurs to me that I need to do more writing practice and there are worse ways to practise writing than to play around with unoriginal plots.  At least, I think there are...

Dear Jane (aka the pushy damn furniture-obsessed character of mine who now thinks she’s my muse),

OK, you win.  I’ll write the cursed fic, even if it wasn’t the one you wanted.

On the up side, huzzah for making Flit snort tea up her nose when I gave her the one line summary of said fic.  Who knew that mere ten words could result in tea-drowned sinuses of Flitness?  Knowing that the flippyfrog now has tea-clogged sinuses makes me feel much better about the whole ‘being ordered around by an imaginary character’ situation.


Dear holidays,

Well, there you are at long last.  Thank-you for finally arriving!  For a while there, you were an hallucination, a mirage on the barren, holiday-less desert of my life.  Now, be a dear and try to last as long as you can.  There’s a twelve-week term on the horizon...


Dear TV,

Well, it was nice while it lasted.  During our many years together, you entertained me well and I have a great big basket of fond memories of that time.  I know this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me, but I think it’s time to end this.  Don’t be sad – there are so many more fish in the sea people out there who will love you and treat you well.  I’ve simply come to realise that we’ve both changed and it’s time to move on.  I need more from a relationship and you just can’t give that to me.

I’m sorry.  I hope we can still be friends after this, but please don’t ask for anything more of me.


Dear Internet,

Huzzah!  I finally dumped that poxy TV so now we can be with each other forever and take mushy long walks on the beach at sunset whilst calmly ignoring the mosquitoes and the broken shells stabbing into our feet!  We will be together forever, I know it!

*snuggles*


Dear Microsoft Word,

Hey, guess what?  When I type three asterisks in a row, I actually don’t want you to turn it into some shoddy-looking line of dodgy black rectangles.  Amazingly, I simply want to have three asterisks in a row.  I guess this is just too much for you to comprehend.

I don’t care what they told you; you can’t read my mind, so please to stop trying.


Dear Wireless Internet,

Welcome to our house! Now I’ll never get any writing done... but at least I can distract myself from this fate by being mesmerised by your prettily-blinking lights!


Dear Jane (aka the pushy damn furniture-obsessed character of mine who now thinks she’s my muse),

*shakes fist*

A while ago, I wrote a story with the rather over-long title of Why I Ran Away and Joined the Nunnery.  It was a fun story to write and I'd like to try and get it published eventually.  As it is, it needs a little work.

But this is not why I'm here today.  No, the reason for that concerns one of the characters within the story.  Namely, Ikvar, Destroyer of Worlds.

I don't know where Ikvar came from.  I really don't.  I blame the main character's grandmother, actually.  After all, she was the one who ran off and consorted with demons in the underworld.  And then brought one of them to the wedding of the main character's sister.

So there they were: Ellerie (my main character), her grandmother and Ikvar, Destroyer of Worlds, standing around making small talk.  I think Ellerie's grandmother was trying to prove something, to be honest.  Perhaps she wanted everyone to know that you're never too old to have a fling with a demon of the underworld...  It was the first scene I wrote, although it comes about half-way through the story.  And it goes a little like this:

It was easy to say when the trouble started. It was when my grandma turned up with her latest beau on her arm. Beacuse that beau just happened to be Ikvar, Destroyer of Worlds. "Well well, a wedding," said Ikvar, exuding an actual aura of pure darkness. "Did you bring our present, dear?" Grandma asked. "I ate it," Ikvar said, looking malevolently sheepish. "You ate an entire orchestra?" Grandma asked. Ikvar blushed. "There's my little Ellerie," Grandma said, dragging Ikvar over to meet me. We shook hands politely, which left me feeling extremely nauseous. "So this is Ardor," Ikvar said with a sneer. "Weaklings. They have no-one who could defy me. I could destroy it with a single thought!" "Not now, dear," Grandma said. Ikvar burped.  The sound had a distinctly musical flavour. (link)

I love Ikvar dearly, even though he's a minor character in the story.  He has a handy of habit of incinerating inconvenient people and setting things on fire.  I accept that this latter trait is not always handy, but it certainly would be if you were cold.  Or wanted to burn a city to the ground.  Or something.

Nevertheless, he is insanely powerful, quite evil and very black of heart.

So imagine how I felt when I saw an email from Ikvar in my email in-box this morning.



It made my day, that email.  Alas, I have no idea where I got the name from: it just popped into my head and made itself at home.  I didn't even stop to think there might a real Ikvar, Destroyer of Worlds...