February's reading material

February is a short month, so the list this time is a little shorter (okay, so not much).... that might also have had something to do with the amount of knitting I've been doing.

Stand out book for me this month, and, shock horror, it's a shifter book.... which given my persnickertiness about the sub genre is rather surprising.  The book is The Tameness of the Wolf by Kendall McKenna.... where everyone knows about wolves, they make up a substantial part of the armed forces (a job in which they excel) and for once the dominant partner is the human.

The other favourite this month is Screwing the System by Josephine Myles.... an author whose work I generally enjoy, but this had the added D/s twist without the uber-rich Dom, the club setting or that everyone in the entire book was in the scene.

Now to the rest of the list...

1. Second Hand – Marie Sexton
2. Dirty Laundry – Heidi Cullinan
3. Acquainted with the Night – Tymber Dalton – this surprised me, it is an M-preg sci-fi story which whilst it does have repetitive sex scenes throughout kicked me in the gut at the ending.

4. Widdershins – Jordan L. Hawk
5. By the Creek – Geoff Laughton – YA (Andrew Grey’s alter ego)
6. A Volatile Rang – Andrew Grey – the whole story was totally ruined by really bad formatting on the Kindle which meant no full stop was followed by a space before the next sentence, words were run into each other and spelling and grammatical errors ran through the text.

7. He Speaks Dead – Adrienne Wilder – (pick it for me book for February) – not my usual thing, but a fairly good read

8. Sub-mission – Sage Marlowe
9. Re- Submission – Sage Marlowe – I quite enjoyed these two fairly light D/s novels which are set in the UK (must pick up the third)

10. The Tameness of the Wolf – Kendall McKenna (see above)
11. Social Skills – Sara Alva
12. Screwing the System – Josephine Myles (see above)
13. Once a Brat – Kim Dare
14. Blood Games – Faye Kellerman (not M/M) – great addition to a long running series of crime fiction books I’ve been reading since about 1992

15. Redemption by Fire – Andrew Grey (r)
16. Strengthened by Fire – Andrew Grey
17. Burnished by Fire – Andrew Grey
18. Rough Edges – Jane Davitt (short free story on Archive of Our Own – was in Toybox: Paddles originally)

19. Winter Wolf: A Werewolf Romance on Snow – S.P. Wayne – erm, major issues with this behaviour of the so called “lone wolf” behaving like a domestic dog rather than a wolf....

20. Dead in LA – Lou Harper – 2 kind of quirky paranormal detective stories which I enjoyed – I hope she continues with the series

21. Out of the Fire – Ariel Tachna (r)
22. Stroke Rate – L.M. Somerton – previously a free read online but now published, not much changed from the free version. Some issues for me about the portrayal of the D/s relationship

23. Once in a Lifetime – Ariel Tachna – nice story with no angst, drama or big misunderstanding told in the format of a diary

24. Hard Fall – James Buchanan (r)
25. Spin Out – James Buchanan (r)

I've also been dipping in and out of some reference books I bought - and looking at maps..... and sometime early next week I get to go visit the police station... okay that's not research, I got pulled over for having a break light out earlier this evening and need to go and prove I've had it fixed....

In the meantime, it's definitely bed time as I appear to be struggling to fight off the office stomach bug that's going round.... only rather than just being stomach crampy and feeling sick, my immune system has gone into overdrive and I have a stonking temperature that means I am either shivering enough to make my teeth ache or roasting...... joy!

I love my critters.... but....

Sometimes, I really don't want to have to get up at just after midnight to let the dogs out, or to have to get up at 5.30 am every morning.... I'd love to actually see if I could work out what this mysterious thing that other people call a "lie in" actually is....

I'd like to be able to get my clothes dry without the cats knocking things off the clothes airer, or pulling them off the hangers

I'd like not to feel like the mop is surgically attached to my hand, to be able to vacuum the lounge without having to empty the hoover at least five times. I'd like for some of my clothes not to actually have a dog hair on them...

I'd like to be able to leave things on the kitchen table, or on the coffee table, and not having to worry that as soon as my back was turned it would be swiped or destroyed

I'd like my books to stay on the shelves, not to have to guard my legs from the cat's claws


Then again

There is nothing like the sound of contented purring from the cat sitting on my lap, or shoulder, or curled up in the middle of my back when I lie in bed to read

There is nothing like the expression on the dogs faces when I come home from work, or when I go down to them first thing in the morning.  They will never not be pleased to see me.



I'd never part with them despite the negatives......... they are after all, when the really bad days happen, the reason I get up in a morning and carry on.

March Reading Madness.....

Every month I budged carefully put aside a small number of pennies to purchase books..... I also have a tendency to troll the interwebs looking for freebies .... as a result of which I now have 92 books currently sitting on my Kindle which have not been read.

These books are a mixture of books I've bought, chosen myself as freebies from either Amazon or the publishers site, or won in a give-away... but for some reason I have just not got round to reading them before buying more books which in my mind are newer and shinier... (I am sure they aren't really!)

So, in an effort to reduce this number I am decreeing that next month shall be......

The March Madness Book Reduction Month

In which:

1. I will not buy any new e-books (this starts from 27th Feb which is when I get paid and would usually go book shopping) - with the exception of what ever is picked for me as my March "pick it for me" challenge book in the M/M group.

2. I will allow myself to re-read up to five books from my Kindle archive

3. I will be allowed to download books that are free on Amazon or which I win in giveaways.  I will not go hunting for books to download for free on other sites when I can't decide which book to read next.

4. I will try and organise my GR bookshelves a little more accurately - including creating a favourites file.

5. If I am struggling to chose the next book to read I will ask for someone to pick for me from the "lurking-in-Kindleland" shelf I've created


Right, I need to find my willpower to do this..... and turn off the "one-click" button on Amazon....... for some reason I can see my knitting productivity increasing substantially with this challenge........

(betting on how long I last before I give in and buy something is allowed...)

Sparkles, herding blackberries and other weekend things...

This weekend I have been busy, well kind of....

Friday night, as usual, was a crash on the sofa and unwind evening... in which I had intended to knit but my fingers were stupidly cold so I elected to hide under the blankets and read.

Yesterday was supposed to start with a trip to the supermarket (fail!) and then housework (partial fail!) as I just couldn't find any motivation.... So I cleaned the bathroom, downstairs loo and kitchen ... and then made almond shortbread biscuits... before going off to meet up with the family for lunch.

Now I hate being late, really really hate it, it's the one thing that is almost guaranteed to wind me up to the state of tears or trantrums...... We were meant to be meeting up at 1pm, so I set off from mine at 12.20 pm... which should have been plenty of time...... only I got stuck behind some stupid person who refused to go above 30 mph, despite the speed limit being 50 and 60 mph.  Now this is out in the wilds of the White Peak (part of Derbyshire) and unfortunately the roads are too twisty for overtaking....(there might have been some rude words uttered about the other driver).... by the time it got to the point where the car in front finally turned off it was almost 1pm and I still had another 8 or so miles to go....

I eventually got there about 10 minutes late.... by which time my sister had texted me to say where was I? .... Only by there I mean that I'd made it as far as the car park.... which was full... I sat a fumed for a while till a space came free and then went to meet everyone.... by which time I was somewhat frazzled.

A nice lunch helped me calm back down.......my mother was on fine form with the inappropriate comments and lunch conversations....  luckily we are used to her... We looked at the bookshop on the way out after lunch, and I must have looked quite needy as my sister pulled the book I'd been looking at back off the shelf and bought it for me :)

Today I have been to the yarn shop (which is a dangerous thing and should only be done at this end of the month, just before pay day, so that I can't go too mad)... I actually only bought one ball of shaded grey yarn, some pipe cleaners and some toy stuffing...... so I can continue with the current mystery project (which now had it's head, body and one leg (i've not knitted the other one yet) stuffed, oh and it's ears sewn on)

After stroking yarn I was mean to go round to a friend's for lunch, but when I got there she said she didn't feel like cooking so we ended up going out....... and had a lovely meal although the service was a bit slow....... in fact at one point, whilst waiting for the apple and blackberry crumble we'd ordered for pudding to finally arrive we decided that in fact the chef had had to go and herd the blackberries from the field where they were running wild (being free range blackberries of course)... we then decided that herding blackberries could only be done by cats (dog's being too over enthusiastic and prone to squishing the blackberries) and that the chef had to be in formal kitchen whites..... I am not sure what the table next to us was thinking as we moved on after that to wondering things like... exactly how do they milk almonds (I mean, have you ever seen teats on an almond) and rice for non dairy milk.... after I suggested that child labour in China produced the rice milk because children have small enough hands to attach each grain of rice to the milking machine that it all got a bit silly......okay, well sillier....

I blame this on the fact that not being allowed caffeine I had chosen to drink "Sparkleberry" juice..... which was dark red and swirled with gold glitter (it tasted of cherries) .... sadly it did not make me sparkle when I drank it, which was very disappointing.......

All this frivolity and yet I still managed to remember to pick up some cat food on the way home so that I wasn't gnawed on by starving critters in the night........ didn't make the supermarket though which might be an issue when it comes to making my lunch tomorrow....... oh well.....

Paddling in ice water........

This evening in my kitchen we have had a small demonstration of how to build your own miniature inside lake.....

It goes like this.... a couple of days ago I noticed that there was a suspicious wet patch by the kitchen bin when I got home from work but thought nothing much about it, well apart from to glare at Ivan whilst mopping it up.  Same again last night...... and tonight..... only there appeared to be a bit more to mop tonight.....

So I puttered about in the kitchen when I got home from work, did the washing up, emptied the bin, fed the dogs, fed me, read for a bit, but before 6pm the temperatures were plummeting and I wanted the warmth generated by my gas fire so the dogs and I shuffled through to the lounge armed with kindle, phone and knitting.... and there we stayed till just after 8pm when Hope requested access to the outside world (namely by barking at me, leaping about like a loon and finally landing in my lap)

So off we went to the kitchen.........

to discover that the area by the back door was coated in about a centimetre of extremely cold water...... time to investigate further.  After checking under the sink and finding nothing amiss I realised I'd have to check behind the old washing machine (yes I have one, it's still in my kitchen, it hasn't worked for four years and I really should do something about it...... but well, yes, one day....)

It's quite heavy and a sodding awkward shape to move

but I managed.... to discover the valve on the cold water inlet pipe was bust and water was spraying out the valve in a mini water fall effect.... with some assistance of a spanner I managed to turn the valve so it was shut off and the water stopped.... I then used the amazing theory of "duct tape fixed everything" to cover the whole valve until I can get a plumber out to look at it..... I've put the washing machine back.... well if I didn't the dogs would only try getting behind it and get themselves stuck or something silly...... and the floor is now covered in old towels in case I have to get up in the night to let the dogs out as knowing my luck I'd end up going over and landing on my backside on a freezing cold damp floor at 2 am!

What once was free....

It may just be me, but it is bothering me.....

I used to read a lot of online m/m fiction - through sites such as Literotica and nifty - now fair enough there is an awful lot of crap out there, but there were some genuinely good stories, some of which hung around online to be read for several years but which have now disappeared.

Now whilst I appreciate there has been some problems with people stealing these works and passing them off as their own when they self publish them, and I understand that any author would want to protect their work, but I am finding more and more stories that I liked are being pulled and then appearing as soon to be published books (well novellas some aren't very long) on Goodreads.

Don't get me wrong, some of these stories are good enough to be published and do deserve a wider audience..... some of these are stories I've read and enjoyed and in some cases gone back to re-read ....but do I really want to pay for a copy now?

Caveat here - there is one story that was free online that I know the author is in the process of editing and re-working for submission and I will be buying that if it gets picked up as it was one of my all time favourites and comfort reads.

I respect the right of the author to do what they want with their story...... but I also reserve the right not to pay £3 - £4 for something that I've read before for free.  Okay, so if the author has made changes from the original free version before publishing I might be tempted to buy it - but if it's exactly the same story??  Trouble is, I can usually only find this out when I've bought it and then it's not returnable.

I also wonder if this sort of thing, particularly when the stories haven't been reviewed and edited (and there are certain publishers accepting these stories that I will be avoiding), is contributing towards the decline in the standard of M/M books being put out generally?

Goodness.... almost a social life!

Sunday night has rolled round again...... and for once I've actually had a weekend involving being social!

Friday night admittedly was a bit of a wash out as 15 minutes before I was due to leave work the fire alarms sounded and we all got evacuated... only I wasn't on the 1st floor where I usually live, but on the 5th...... which meant having to walk down 10 flights of stairs.... because it wasn't a drill (the coffee shop had set something alight!) I couldn't stay in the muster point on the stair well, which I would usually do in a drill if I wasn't on my own floor, instead I had to evacuate...... 10 flights of stairs, standing outside in the freezing cold for 20 minutes then getting back upstairs (thankfully only 2 flights) and coming down again so I could go home for the weekend resulted in my arthritis kicking me in the backside...... resulting in a joyous pain reaction when I unceremoniously threw up in the corner of the car park as I got to my car.... suffice to say Friday night was a bit of a wash out involving rather heavy pain killers and lying flat.

Thankfully the weather has improved and it's been bright and more importantly dry for a few days so by Saturday morning though a bit stiff I didn't feel too bad.  I did the supermarket run first thing - with mother, which is always fun.  I decided the home deliveries whilst easy were costing me too much and resulting in me buying things I didn't eat so ended up throwing out.

Shopping safely away and I got to head out into Derbyshire to have lunch and spend the afternoon with a friend, who was also in need of getting out the house for the day.  It's amazing how long lunch can last when you start talking .... thankfully the cafe we went to weren't bothered by us taking up a table for so long.  The cafe is attached to a bookshop, so we had to have a short browse before leaving.... and I seem to have accidentally purchased real books..... 3 of them are reference books and only 1 a novel so I count this as reasonable on the grounds that the majority are for research.  After lunch we went off to play in the local craft shops where she got carried away looking at pretty fabrics for patchwork and I stroked yarn, but refrained from buying anything.

Today I went for Sunday lunch with the family at my sisters...... which involved much merriment and discovering that if you unexpectedly poke Mavis the cat when she's sleeping she makes the cutest noise ever... poor cat got a bit pissed off with us by the 5th time....

I also received late Christmas presents this weekend.... some of my favourite salted caramel chocolates and some fancy cup cake cases from my friend yesterday (and had to apologise profusely because I am disorganised and haven't bought her present yet).  Then today my sister, who last weekend took her partner to meet my dad for the first time, handed me a mug that dad's other half had bought for me, well had made, which appears black, but when you put a hot drink in it pictures show up.... mine has pictures of the evil naked cats on it (mum and sister got mugs with their cats on).... I shall take it to work tomorrow to frighten everyone with the ugly cats.

I suppose I should go get organised for tomorrow....... though I have made my lunch already.... after last week I decided to avoid the sharp knives at dawn fiasco I would be organised this week and make my lunch whilst I was awake!