NOT a place I've been before

In all my 11 years of working at the Roque as a software engineer, I never visited the Nordic Optical Telescope. We used to joke that it was NOT one of ours. And in two years of tour guiding up there, I never went in either. It was NOT on my programme.

But now I'm writing an e-book about the observatory, and it's NOT a good idea to write about things without seeing them for myself. So I asked nicely, and they said yes, Friday afternoon. They even provided me with two very good looking guides.

It was a rush fitting it on between collecting my son from school and taking him to the hairdresser's, but it was an experience NOT to be missed.

Cheek!

Someone's started a website about Puntagorda, for tourists. Great idea.

He's publicising it by putting photos on google maps. Great idea.

He's using one of MY photos, served from MY website (so I pay for the bandwidth) and he hasn't given a picture credit, so most people would get the impression that it's his photo. Not so great.

Cheeky sod.

So I added a little text at the bottom of the photo. Now his map is publicising MY website.

A sale!

I was getting as thirsty as the ancient mariner for some writing success.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail ;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood !
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sale! a sale!

I sold my story "Screamcatcher" to "Untied Shoelaces of the Mind", and I'll be in the debut issue some time next month. So that's me happy.

My son isn't so happy. We finally got a disk for his Xbox, but he's banned from computer games mid-week so he had to wait until today to try it. And the Xbox got the dreaded "Red Ring of Death". It's almost certainly a coincidence, since Xboxes do tend to die, but it's extremely frustrating for him.

30,000 readers coming my way.

Robert M Blevins, one of the editors of Escape Velocity magazine, has put my story "Scream Quietly" up on his column at Newsvine, which gets about 30,000 visitors a month. You can read the story, leave comments, and vote on it (please!)

http://adventurebooks.newsvine.com/_news/2009/11/01/3449936-from-the-files-of-escape-velocity-scream-quietly-by-sheila-crosby-part-1-of-2-

Pepper Lantern

I've been a bit too busy for comfort lately (nothing new!), so I
asked my son how much he wanted me to carve a pumpkin, on a scale of 1
to 10.

He said, "Three".

So I carved a green pepper instead, which was quick and therefore a lot more fun.