Outside of a Dog

I'm not normally one to post the slightly-narcissistic, me-me-me posts on this blog, but a) its mine, and b) no one will read it anyway, so fuck it, I'm posting anyway. I'm normally going to try and keep this review/genre news/comment focussed but, as I said, hey hum.

You may have notice by that yellow ball in the sky ("It burns my eyes!"), but its SUMMER. This is wonderful, in that I can now relax outside. It is also wonderful because, as a university student, I now have 5 months (5 fricking months) with nothing to do.

I finished my essays on 30th April, and thus am free. Second year at uni over. Freedom is mine. And I'm a little daunted by it. I have a student loan to live on and little else, and thus job hunting is the order of the day - applied for one at Foyles, and a couple of bits-and-bobs jobs, but I'd love a decent one.

More excitingly, however, I'm applying for Work Experiences to continue my hunt for a place in publishing come the end of my degree. I'll be working on my Work-in-Progress (12,000 down, 100k+ to go, as well as short stories as and when the mood takes me. I've submitted a review for publication elsewhere. I've submitted a short story to the Pandemonium: Ash chapbook from those Pornokitschie humans.

I've spent the last week, pretty much, at genre-y events (roundup to come at the end of the week).

All in all, I feel productive.

And I haven't even mentioned the reading:

 Not Pictured: Kate Griffin (Because I haven't bought it yet), Neal Gaiman's Neverwhere (its in a cardboard box...), Jonathan Stroud's Amulet of Samarkand (Box.), whatever else I can think of.

I've decided to get a headstart on my dissertation, by reading all the books I'm doing it on over the summer. I will, of course, review them on here. They are genre-y, after all.

A big thanks to the excellent peeps at Fantasy Faction for linking me to ALL THE LONDON BOOKS when I posted a thread over there. I'm looking at maybe 10-15 or so over the summer, with view of whittling that down when I start writing. I know for certain that Tom Pollock's The City's Son (& probably the sequel), China Mieville's King Rat and Un-Lun-Dun (& possibly Kraken), and Paul Cornell's London Falling will all be in the dissertation proper.

Dissertation has slowly morphed from an unwielding so much London stuff into the slightly-more-wieldy-but-still-prone-to-falling-over London Within and London Without - looking at books where there is a 'normal' London that overlays an 'under' London, which only a select few can access. If you have any advice/suggestion, whether critical or novels/short stories/plays/interpretie dance troupes, please leave them in the comments!

So yeah. Narcissism a-go-go. Summer will be busy.