With my usual Christmastime headless chook-edness, I am flying through to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and safe 2012.

I will leave you with some funnies to get you through the silly season:

I love this take on the Hallelujah Chorus on YouTube.

Ho, ho, ho!

Em  xx

Happy scary, fantastical, magical Halloween. The DarkSiders are turning one!

Do you know what day it it?

Duh.  It's HALLOWEEN!  MwahahahahahaHA!

Halloween means the eternal, "should we stock up on lollies just in case someone knocks?" argument, (Honestly, I think the 500m long driveway and the screaming kids scare them off.), and the very amusing pictures of drunk pumpkins on the internet.

But it also means THE DARKSIDE DOWNUNDER IS ONE YEAR OLD!  ON HALLOWEEN!  How lovely!  How FRIGHTENING!  How FANTASTIC!

AND THEY'RE HAVING A PARTAY!  There are PRIZES and FUN!

Get in there and be a part of it!

Finally:

Hehe.  That's gross.

Yours in scariness (and a bit of ickiness),

Em.  x

I thought I'd made it when Peter Combe followed me on Twitter..

Beauty and Lace, a very awesome online women's magazine, has Q&A'd me.  I got to answers questions about me, what I was writing, me, my journey as a writer, me, SARA, me, DSDU, me, competitions, me, and eBooks.  And me.  Great stuff.  I enjoyed it greatly.

Check it out at Beauty and Lace, feel free to come and say hello, or read about my stance on eBooks, or heckle me in a loving way.  :)

Or, you might just like to read the verbal exchange Sparky and I have every time I've been out shopping.

Also, I have promised you this:

Arrrgh!

Third and final offspring offering--Bring the Anarchy

So, now you know Faith & Love.

It's time for Anarchy.

Anarchy is four.  Tomorrow.  There will be a pirate cake.  I'll take pictures.

Truly speaking, he is the anti-anarchy.  He is sweet and cute and totally led astray by his sisters.  He has a little speech thingy that means he can't put two consonants together, which is adorable at this stage, but might need looking at if it's still around when he turns twenty-one.

He is eating the icing first and matchbox cars, warm hugs and raspberries on your face with little white teeth in them.  He is bats and balls, Spiderman and Lightning McQueen.

Anarchy is also our showboat (here's where you  insert, "Like his mother." if that's what you were thinking. And rightly so.).  He likes to dance like a lunatic so Faith & Love giggle.  He loves making 'gas bomb' noises on his own forearm.  He tells great jokes.

A:  "What do you call a peanut in space?"
Me: "I don't know, Anarchy, what do you call a peanut in space?"
A:  "An Astronut!"
Me:  *headslap*  "Oy."

OR

A:  "Knock Knock."
Me:  "Who's there?"
A:  "Moustache" (pronounced with a 'mooo')
Me:  "Ah, a moustache who?"
A:  "Ummmmm..."
Me:  "Would you like a banana?"
A:  "Yes, please."  (He's very polite.)

(Of course, the proper answer to that joke, as I tell it, is, 'I moustache you a question, but I'll shave it for later.'  Snort.)

This is Anarchy under the clothesline, pretending that the blue sheet is the ocean,

 and he's diving for treasure.  He is wearing his 'better pants', which are trackies, 

but they are 'better pants' than jeans.  

But he's not all sweetness.  Despite his propensity for girly items (Nail polish, handbags, hair product.  Sparky feels a little threatened at this point, but I tell him school will soon pound all those cute quirks out of our boy.), he knows the words to some very dubious songs. This is one of his favourites.  (Which might be my fault, but I'm not copping to anything.).

Polyester Girl - Regurgitator.  
all i want you to say is nothing at all
and all i want you to do is stare at the wall
i love your plastic hair and plastic eyes
marvel at your plastic breasts and plastic thighs

my polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny

you're the perfect guy's accessory
dangling from my arm for of the pretty people to see
boy's with sassy pouts and perky glee
great for backstage and entertainment award ceremonies
***
took you for a ride up in an aeroplane
but your body burst and left an ugly stain
had to take your pieces back to the factory
it took them several weeks to get you back to me***she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world
she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world
she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world 


Yes, it's a song about a sex toy.  It's massively inappropriate and hilarious.  Sparky raises his eyebrows.  


Sparky's more of a rock dude, but does a mean falsetto of his own.  He also dances beautifully to Katy Perry on the Wii.  Something I have felt the need to video in the past.  I am keeping it for leverage, should the need ever arise.


So, those are the offspring.  In all their sassy, perky glee.  


Sparky and I would be completely lost without them.  

My Offspring, part deux. She who was actually first.

Last week, you met Love.  Was it last week?  I have no idea.  We all got some kind of indestructible virus and got sucked into a wonky time/space continuum.  Heck, it could have been in 1986.

This week, you get to meet Faith.  She is our eldest offspring, who is in the last embers of her eighth year.  I have always thought she was lucky, because her birthdate is three numbers repeated.  

Faith is a glass half full and heading towards overflowing.  She is always Up, and dragging everybody, no matter how grumpy we are, into Up with her.  

She is the one who is always trying to make you smile.  Most often, she succeeds.  Especially when she dances like MC Hammer.

She is netball and razor scooters, popcorn and Total Drama Action, iPods and pop music.  

She is Sparky's girl.  

One of her favourite things to say is that she got Mum's face and personality and Dad's sporting ability.  She is extremely lucky it wasn't the other way around, because I am the physical activity antichrist and she'd look funny with facial hair.  

Here she is, quite a few years ago, peeking out from under Sparky's arm.  Yes, they are on a kayak.  They do things like that.  It's when they're doing it together that she's happiest.  

She is our lovely big girl.  

There is one more child, saved for next week.  

In the meantime, here's something to keep you laughing until then.  In a former life I taught German in schools, so I love this one:

My Offspring, Part 1 (which is actually instalment 2)

Please allow me to introduce our second child, Love (6).  Not her real name of course, but since she refuses to use her real name, it's moot.  

Love is all about..the love.  She is fairies and drawing, independence and relationships.  She was a sick baby, so now she has a pain threshold of fifteen out of ten.  This means there will often be blood that she hasn't noticed, running down her forehead, or her arm.

You will most often find her chasing one of the cats to put it in a receptacle of some kind to cart around, or riding her bike, singing lewd Rihanna songs she has no idea about the meaning of.

She is cute, but feisty.

And every night, at bed time--without fail--she'll tell Sparky and me that she loves us.

L's & G's--I give you, Love.

What an inspiration...

Ha!  Did you think I was going to post another picture of Hugh Jackman sans shirt?  While that is always a distinct possibility, I actually wanted to talk about something other than the male form today.

I know, what's with that?

Anna Hackett, author of a number of awesome Nocturne Bites and one-third of our sensational critiquing trio is blogging over at LoveCats at the moment about Finding Inspiration.  Anna is not someone to pass over a picture of Hugh's pecs either (just one of the reasons I adore her), but this time she's talking about her quotes about courage.  I know for sure that she collects them, because every now and then she'll shoot a few to Rach and me when we're feeling morbid, or stupid or like writers better suited to asking, "Would you like fries with that?" than "How's the GMC for this character?".  It's awesome.  I've even found a use for a few lately.

I've just recently had a CP-encouraged epiphany about my writing.  While I still looove paranormal and fantasy, I just don't think I'm a great one to write it.  A few months ago, I had two rejections--bang, bang--and, while one was quite positive, I struggled to get my head back in it's right place.  It happens to everyone.

God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers. 

Dustin Hoffman

Now, Anna and Rach had been telling--you know, hinting to--me for quite some time that perhaps I wasn't quite being true to my writerly voice.  We're talking glass-half-full, !!!, joke-cracking emails and conversations, versus the dark, angst-ridden, emotion-heavy paranormal pieces I was writing.  For a long time, I kept on writing it because I just plain wanted to.

Which is fine.  I learned a lot.

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. 

Ray Bradbury

Really, at least I was writing.  

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

                                                                                                             Woody Allen

In that time, I clocked up five rejections (I know, compared to some peoples' experience, this is weeny.  I know).  It was a bit of a PITA.  I toyed with stopping.  You know.  NOT WRITING.  

Couldn't do it.   

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Confucius

When I stopped teaching full-time, I thought, "Woohoo!  No more homework!"  And here I was, banging away at a computer at night again.  Felt like I'd come full-circle.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter de Vries

I was confused, uncertain about the craft, quite certain about my suckiness and, frankly, a little bit bonkers about it all.  

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

                                                                                                              Scott Adams

But, I was certain I was starting from pretty much the same place as most writers--Ground Zero.  I mean, we're all just the same basic creatures, with two arms and two legs (for the most part), right?  If X could write something that spoke to the populace at some level, why the hell couldn't I?  I had to face it--it was my authorial voice.  Paranormal was not working for me.  Boohoo.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

To that rather exciting end, I've switched lanes!  I've started a Aussie-based romcom and I'm LOVING it.  It's kinda squeeful.  As gut-churningly scary as it is to veer from what you know, I've done the right thing.  I think.  

Never throw up on an editor.

                                                                                                              Ellen Datlow

I'm so glad I took the advice of my marvellous, wondrous CP's.  They are, with or without quotes, truly inspirational.

If you're needing inspiration, jump online and google some quotes, head over to LoveCats to share with Anna.  It's amazing how much of that wisdom you can apply to your own writerly life.  

Never laugh at live dragons.

JRR Tolkein

Finally, because you've been completely marvellous to read right to the end of this gargantuan post, here's a small thank you from moi.  Yes, it's a wet HUGH!  Hehe.