I had a very weird dream last night. Full details are a little fuzzy (as so often happens with dreams of course), but it was all to do with me trying to oust a terrorist plot to blow up a student house somewhere in Prague. No, don’t ask me where that came from, I’ve already been there and my brain refuses to explain itself.
I’ve been featured on the wonderful Free Flying Press blog! This blog features indie publishers and their own sexy fantasy novels, so how could I pass up the opportunity to be featured?
You can read the interview here. Thanks for featuring me!
I’ve been meaning to post this for a few weeks now, but kept getting distracted. Anyway, I stumbled upon this interesting 30-question ‘words we all misuse’ quiz:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/words-we-all-misuse-quiz.htm?mkcpgn=6043612134764
It’s pretty pedantic, but I rather expect that from a quiz that is basically intended to make you feel all linguistically superior. Question 7 pokes fun at Alanis Morisette – like so many have done before – by pointing out that most of the things in her hit ‘Ironic’ are anything but ironic. There’s the good old ‘then-than’ and ‘they’re/there’ mix-up. I breezed my way through faultlessly.
Until I got to question 23…
This caught my eye in my daily Metro newspaper this week:
It really warmed my heart, because if I had four million quid to spare, this is exactly what I would do with it.
A number of years ago I made the decision to stop donating to human charities, because I am a (not-so-closet) misanthrope and am of the belief that humans are not worth spending money on. I feel this way in a large part because we are fucking up our planet at an ever-accelerating rate, and in the process of doing so we’re trampling over every single animal that comes in our path. Tigers? Hey, let’s kill them all for ‘medicines’ which never did and never will work. Rhinos? I hear powdered rhino horn gives you the most amazing sexual prowess! Elephants? Dude, I really need some ivory ornaments in my home, because that picture from Ikea just doesn’t cut it. Lions? Let’s go hunting!
Arseholes.
Instead, any charity money I spend goes on animal charities. Specifically to the WWF, specifically for tiger conservation, and I also support the RSPCA, specifically for cat rescue pods. Animals need protection from humans, because if you’re fucking up a human they can at least shout at you for doing so, or ask you why the fuck you’re being such a twat. Animals can’t, so they need all the protection we can give them.*
So there you go, well done to you, Leo, you’re my hero of the week.
*Except pandas. Fuck pandas.
This is an idea I’ve been playing around with for a while, and hope to turn into a regular (weekly?) feature. For all I know this may be the first and only post, but I like the general idea, so I’m going to try and run with it.
The idea is to take one thing per week that’s grabbed my attention for whatever reason, and devote a blog post to it. Often these things will be relating to books, languages and other generic writery kind of things, but I don’t really want to limit myself to that. As I said, I’ll just try and run with it.
Goddamn it, world, did you have to?
Okay, David Bowie was bad, but on a personal level it didn’t hit me that much. I admired the man (and oh, Jared in Labyrinth!), but there it ended. Alan Rickman, however…
Fuck, the man was one of my heroes. No one could do weary sarcasm as well as him, and I loved him in films like Galaxy Quest and Dogma. He made Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves not only watchable, but entertaining as well. Need I mention Die Hard? And seriously, no one, absolutely no one else could have played Snape.
Kinda feel like my heart has been cut out with a spoon. Yes, it was dull. It hurts more. 😦
Some day I should write a blog post about titles and how much I hate them. That said, it would probably end up just being a thousand variations of ‘I hate having to think of titles’. I’m not just talking book titles (my three books have the most uninspiring titles in the history of titling), but also short story titles and blog post titles. Gah, Hate them hate them hate them!
Anyway, that’s not what I’m going to talk about today, I’m going to talk about poetry.
Sorry, no post today. I CBA.
The wonderful people at Fantasy Review Barn have kindly agreed to run a giveaway for my first book, The Ritual. This is an old-fashioned paper copy, and I’ll even sign it for you! To enter the giveaway, view the details here:
http://www.fantasyreviewbarn.com/2015/05/16/international-giveaway-the-ritual-by-erica-dakin/
Spread the word!
Just a quick reminder to you all that my first novel, The Ritual, is currently available for FREE (Kindle only), while my second novel is half price. Both special offers will last until Sunday.
Links are in the top right hand corner of this page.
Theft and Sorcery 