Will Knott

I'll admit that sometimes best intentions don't work out as well as expected.
I joined the LBC, the Loose Bloggers Consortium the idea was that I'd write more.

Then life got in the way. In my case, a new job in a new city.

Well, I'm about to return home*. I have plans, and things to work out (and a new job). But I think I'll have regular time to sit down. Eventually as I don't know my time-table properly and I have at least 3 games to write for the classes I'm mentoring.
But one of my half brain-farted ideas was to write a book.
Or at least a story… so…

I'm wondering if instead of writing the usual "insight based on the topic of the week" if I could get away with writing an essay or a short story with the topic in mind.
And furthermore, string all the stories in to a (semi?) coherent narrative.

I do have the characters in mind, but I didn't have the, well, will to do it.
I can either do these as the usual LBC posts, or pull these off for a different day of the week (I might also re-wind the clock back to the start of January to give me a run up).

Besides, according to some self-help books you need to declare your intentions to do X, that way you can't back away from X.

So, any objections at this attempt to help myself to actually do something unusual?

* It's complicated, but I'm not going to explain personal geography on a system that archives and logs everything I write

This is a Loose Bloggers Consortium post on the theme of “Self Help”.
To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, …
Delirious, Maria/Gaelikaa, Maria SilverFox OCD writer, Padmum, Paul, Ramana, The Old Fossil, Grannymar.

She was touched to receive the exquisitely packaged chocolates.

Her next of kin discovered that crema was a hazelnut cream and not a vanilla cream. When the nuts touched her throat, it swelled from anaphylaxis shock.

This almost tweetable murder mystery is a Loose Bloggers Consortium post on the theme of “Touched”. And was not written in the local accident and emergency.
To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, …
Delirious, Maria/Gaelikaa, Maria SilverFox OCD writer, Padmum, Paul, Ramana, The Old Fossil, Grannymar.

Sometimes a lie is just as good

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comics: rhymes with witch
rhymes with witch: the last trick-or-treaters part 19 october 12, 2012.

It appears that the New York City based missing unicorn meme has made its way to Ireland.

Admittedly its possible, given the high magic fields in the country and the people. Eoin Colfer pointed this out a while back in his first Artemis Fowl book.

It IS non-fiction, right?

Seán Bán Breathnach is a feature of Radio na Gaelacht and has been broadcasting for decades. But his loosing it and crying when the results at the Women's Boxing at the 2012 London Olympics announcing the gold medal for Katie Taylor is a thing of, well, wow.

I love how he compares her to the famous women of Ireland (Mná na hÉireann). The thing is, for a little while, the whole country went a touch mad from happiness, including people like me who had no idea what was going on.

Still, #Ledgebag was created for people like her.

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Katie Taylor, Olympic Gold in Irish
Katie Taylor, Olympic Gold in Irish (mp3)

View at audioboo.fm

This is a Loose Bloggers Consortium post on the themes of “Olympics” and “Editing”.
To find out that the others in the consortium think, check out, …
Delirious, Maria/Gaelikaa, Maria SilverFox OCD writer, Padmum, Paul, Ramana, The Old Fossil, Grannymar.

I’ve not forgotten about the missed topics, “Earliest memory” requires time and baking, while the “deadlines” post may require state clearance once I’ve coded up the data.

Ray Bradbury, author of some of the finest science fiction died today. It turned out that he wrote a piece for this month's Sci-Fi themed edition of The New Yorker. In his memory, that piece "Take me Home" and his November 1947 piece "I See You Never" are now free to all readers in the New Yorker archives.

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Ray Bradbury in The New Yorker
Ray Bradbury, the author of “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and many other classics of science fiction and fantasy, died this morning, at the age of ninety-one. Bradbury published two pie…

“Bad dragon. I only told you to blow the bloody dwarfs off” — overheard

Small conversations on Twitter can sometimes lead to other things. What came up from George was this video of the opening credits of Hawaii Five 0.

Then Conor O’Neill pointed out that the TV show probably caused a huge increase in tourist numbers to Hawaii. So I got to wondering if it is possible to crowd source a script for a television series to show off Ireland at its finest.

A procedural drama might be easy, but there are a few catches. Only a few squads work throughout Ireland, homicide naturally is one of them, but most murders probably won’t attract a lot of tourists. Actually that isn’t true, deaths, even fake ones attract crowds, but would they spend?

Instead, let’s look at romance. Supernatural romance. Vampires are very popular when it comes to romance at the moment. Look at True Blood or the Twilight series for proof. However, the vampire area crowded. So let me think of a different set of supernatural lovers.

Fae.

Fae, Bean Sí, leprechauns, the fairies. Those stories that lasted a long time in Ireland, and in the Irish legends they were mostly human adult sized and frequently mistaken for beautiful men and women (there are a few children sized ones too). Eoin Colfer is still writing about them in his Artemis Fowl series. His is a coming of age story for a master teenage criminal who keeps crossing paths with the fairy police force responsible for covering up the existence of the mystical folk, the L.E.P. Recon squad. I think this story should be about someone human discovering that the tales of the Bean Sí and the changelings aren’t fairy tales.

Fae Play. Cute name. The building works on the Hill of Tara that came about through the M3 should be a nice starting ground. What would happen if the people in the fairy tales, from Tír na nÓg, from the Fenian Cycle, from the stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann showed up. Them or, more sensibly, their descendants (the really odd thing about the ancient Irish gods was that they could grow old and die. Eventually, even if it takes 300 or 900 years, so descendants it is).

The series would be set in modern day Ireland, and with creatures across the land and tied to nature, they would naturally be set in places able to show off some of the country’s beauty. I can almost see selkies surfing in the North West.  A kelpie in Killarney. A kiss in the moonscape of the Burren.

Could it work? Goodness knows, but given that “supernatural romance” now has its own section in book shops, it worth knocking together something to make in to a web series at least.

From the fevered brain of Rick O’Shea, comes the story of a boy, a blog and an open grave.

no that’s wrong. Its Rick’s fault, he had an idea. A group pop culture blog, and he asked a few people to join in.

And for some unknown reason, he asked me.

I’ll admit that I have a shed load of tracks to review and put up there, but I’m also going to be posting about the impacts of technology on culture, and the impacts of culture on technology.

I need to thank a few people to get this going. So Thanks to to AJ, Rick, Darren, Sinead and Pedro for doing all the heavy lifting in getting the systems running. And a lot of the early posts (oops).

Now, I just have to write.

take care,

Will Knott

A wise woman pointed out that it is perfectly reasonable to talk predictions for the year ahead up to and including 31 January! Well I’m going to type about resolutions.

Yes its a bit late to talk about new year resolutions, but here goes.

Get in to fights again

I ended up dropping out of Capoeira in 2008. A mixture of class clashes and commuting.  Now I can start again, probably from scratch. Of course, if that fails I may be asking for a different kind of trouble. In short, I need to do something which involves a bit of movement.

In camera

I got caught up in an interesting discussion about “what makes a photoblog” om Twitter, well lots. I play with photography, but I think its time I moved up to a better camera. I’m not going D-SLR this year, but I have my eye on something and I want my wallet to match. On a related note, I need to go to more events. Since I’m sort of bi-locational at the moment, when the weather gets brighter things might get interesting.

More sleep

An idea stolen off Phil IcedCoffee; I just need to get to bed earlier. As if that all.

Re: cycling

It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones. — Chloe Sevigny. I’ve copied this quote off Tim Ferris‘ resolutions.  And I’ve copied this resolution from last year. This year I think I’m a commutable distance to work, but without showering facilities things could get sticky. Still given the Mad Cow traffic holdups, cycling to the office may not be a bad idea. The only reason I’m delaying this one is making sure I can do it, and timing a weekend run first.

Change the decor

Now that I’m the master of my own domain, it almost been a year since I moved in. Its time to redecorate a little. I had planned to use the Carrington theme with pallet swaps and image swaps (its the one Joe Scanlon is using) but I recently stumbled across a theme on Smashing Magazine which is almost perfect. Things may look a little odd here over the next few weeks.

I had also planned on trying out the Google Friend Connect here too, but I’m not so sure now.

Write more fiction. Read more fiction.

I more or less stopped reading fiction when my studies restarted. With the exception of one Cory Doctorow (which I inhaled in one weekend), the Pseudopod short story horror podcast and the NSFW Tales fomthe MU novel experiment in blog form,  I’ve not read anything for a while. To that end I’ve finally started reading “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (for historical reasons) and a few others thanks to the DailyLit. I’ll take suggested reads from their list please.

The spippets feel too small for me, but I’ll live.

As for writing. When I took part in the Blogmas Christmas Carol, I liked it.

it had been years since I last wrote fiction, and I’d like to start again. A few short stories may appear here. I also have an idea for a very free form group fiction blog. Ask if you’re interested.

Well, thats it. I can see the cycling waning again this year, and I don’t know if I can find an accessable Capoeira group, but the others are managable.

What do you think?

Will Knott