Submarine Dream

Just realised I never posted about this really, really odd dream I had the other day. Basically, I was on a submarine, and I was diving with this other guy and we got into a fight while we were swimming around, and he went a bit deep and the pressure killed him, but I could withstand the pressure better and so it didn't kill me. And then everyone was blaming me for the fact that he was dead (including myself). Then for some reason I was in English Lit and everyone was pretty hostile to me but Martin was asking like if it was all ok and telling me that it wasn't really my fault.

Frog Dream

I have been ordered not to tell my brother about this as it would probably freak him out. Anyway, we were going camping, and at first we were sleeping in tents, but then it was really the caravan (several times larger than reality because most of the youth group at church seemed to be there as well as my parents and brother and me) and someone warned us about frogs. In the morning, we discovered what they meant when James got fed up of waiting for the bathroom and decided to go to the toilet block. He opened the awning up, and there were frogs everywhere, and I mean everywhere. They literally coated the ground. And then one jumped on him, and he screamed and squealed. We pushed him out and mum warned him not to wear socks, because otherwise they'd get frog juice on them, because he was having to walk on top of frogs to get anywhere, squishing them. It was pretty horrible. And freaky.

English Lit

I have come to the conclusion that a compliment from Martin means about ten times more than from any other teacher. Which is strange because you'd think with my history teacher being such a strict marker it would be the other way around, but no. I really want to do well in English Lit, and it's not just because of the determination I throw at everything regardless. He photocopied my essay the other day and handed out a copy of it to everyone, along with a copy of someone else's (he removed names to protect identity of people involved, so I don't know) and I was dead chuffed that he gave it an A* and such nice comments. Same with my story, although that didn't have a grade or anything, he did say nice things about it. Which made me feel all happy. :D

633 Squadron Operation Safeguard

I didn't realise they were still doing new ones. This one only came out two years ago! And there was me thinking that the series finished years ago and the author was dead. Shows how much I know. And also that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover and the fact taht it seems pretty old and so realistic that it sounds like it was written perhaps even during the Second World War. This book is remarkably well written, and the characters are so real, it seems as though they could step off the pages and greet you in the pub. And try to chat you up if you're wearing a skirt. I was a tiny bit upset by the fact that he introduced the two main characters of this one for such a short amount of time, it would've been nice to read about them again. But strangely, I didn't get all emotional at the ending, which kind of surprises me, but it just seemed right, if you know what I mean. I really want to read the other books of the series, but I can't seem to find them all. Never mind. Got it out the library today, had to walk home from the park and ride lugging it along with me because I got a load of books and they didn't all fit in my backpack with my college stuff and my parents didn't notice their phones going off asking for a lift, and I've finished it already. Not that it's a hugely short book, just that it's so good you don't particularly want to put it down and I suppose it is short in comparison to the Tom Clancy ones I've been reading. Well worth the trouble of finding them, the 633 Squadron books are really quite impressive. As evidenced by the fact I thought they were written far nearer the time. A lot of research must have gone into them. And the characterisation is really quite incredible. I suppose Frederick E Smith has got the whole 'show don't tell' business Martin's always talking about off to a fine art. In fact, it's pretty clear he has. So, I recommend you take the trouble of trying to find the 633 Squadron books. Even if war stories aren't really your thing, I think this one in particular speaks about things that go beyond just the action and excitement, which is well written, but goes even deeper into the moral rights and wrongs and so on, which is written even better if that's possible. Yeh, can you tell I like these books? In short: READ THEM! :D

Point of Contact

I've just started a new blog. Have a look why don't you? It's at: http://pointofcontact317.blogspot.com . Just thought I'd let you all know. It shouldn't impact on how often I post on here, though I might crosspost (is that a word? Well, it is now) some stuff on both. Don't know. Will have to see how it works out.

Shadows in the Sky

I've just finished it. Feeling rather chuffed with the fact that I've written a story in three weeks and it's about 100000 words long. Shall have to check up on that once I rescue the bit I kind of left on the college network... Anyway, it's finished. I'm really quite happy with it, and have ideas for not only a prequel but also a sequel now.

Shadow of the Minotaur

This is the first book in the Legendeer trilogy by Alan Gibbons. It's really, really good. He came to my school once, and I've got a signed copy of it :D and I read it last night. Yeh, I know, I should've gone to bed really, I'm tired now, I've stayed up late too many nights in a row, all the rest of it, but the truth was, I couldn't put it down. Ok, I've read it once before. But I love the going into a computer game idea. Perhaps it's done a little more creatively in Epic (can't remember the author, sorry), but you can hardly say it's done poorly in the Shadow of the Minotaur. Greek myths galore, and a teenage hero I found myself relating too. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've been bullied too, and would like nothing better than to become a hero in a different world, able to deal with things in a different way, a way that seems more noble than tattling to teachers. Which I did in the end. But I have learnt how to escape into stories of my own. So maybe that's the good thing that's come out of it. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that. Still, it's a good book this one. I'd recommend it. It's not quite top of my list of books to recommend, but I wouldn't say don't bother with it. Worth the effort, and it's not a monster size like the Tom Clancy ones I've been reading, so it won't take too long anyway.

Blest

It was Blest last night, great fun. Really enjoyed it. Lukas was speaking, about opening doors for people and not missing opportunities. I'm gonna try and get more involved with it. I've been a couple of times now, although I missed the last one cos I was ill *waaa!*. Anyway. It was at this little church that looks like half of it's been sawn off. We watched our little video again, that our group did for Fresh Manna.

Random Story has a name!

I just thought I'd tell you all. Random Story has at last found itself a title. I mean, it only took me about 90000 words of story to find that. Anyway. It's called: Shadows in the Sky.

Tenpin Bowling and MacDonalds. And the Works is closing down...

Went to Tenpin bowling today with some friends from college. Well, a friend from college/bookclub and her friend. Anyway, it was good fun. Managed somehow or other to win! How I don't know. Enjoyed it. Scored 87 points. Which isn't bad, although we did have the sides up. Went to MacDonalds after, which was kind of fun. Food wasn't too bad either. Wandered into town. The Works is closing down! *sobs* I like the Works. Good shop. Oh well. I got a book in the clearance thing, on WWII airplanes. Pity they didn't have anything on WWI, but there never seems to be anything on those airplanes, even though they were way more interesting. In some respects. I've recently come to find an interest in jets and stuff though. Blame Top Gun for that. And Random Story, which was inspired by Top Gun. Still. Interesting stuff.

Another ten thousand word day

Wrote another ten thousand words on random story yesterday. Quite chuffed with that achievement, since I still went to college and did all that stuff. It's coming on pretty well still. Getting near the end as well. I know roughly what I want to happen there, but I'll have to wait and see how that turns out. Especially with Cowboy's mysterious mission and the reappearance of Butcher. Who is currently a little narked with Cowboy, but I have no idea why... Oh, and I have an idea about what to do with Lauren. A tiny little suspicion. But I don't know whether to run with it or not. It seems kind of cruel on Cowboy...

11000 word day, whoo!

I just realised I never posted to mark my highest ever daily word count (as far as I know) on Sunday, which was 11187 words...
Random story is going pretty well. Would be nice if I could finish it all off today, but that's not going to happen. Have too much story left to write. Never mind. Might still manage it in less than three weeks. Shall have to see.

Form, and how useless it is...

Tutorial is absolutely completely and utterly useless. We wasted ages, trying to find out what this stupid COPE thing is. I tried to force our tutor into giving us a straight answer by saying 'what do we actually write', but she waffled and wouldn't give it straight. I don't think she's capable of doing it. Humph. Wouldn't be too bad apart from that. Be nice if I had someone like Martin for form. Then it wouldn't be such a momentous waste of time. Although an hour a week is hardly a huge amount of time to waste. And it was less today, only half an hour before we managed to run off...

History Rant

Yeh, I just figured I'd get it off my chest here, rather than exploding elsewhere. Probably a wise move. I'm just really annoyed about a couple of things. For one, my history teacher said she'd mark our mock exams over the holidays if we e-mailed them to her, and then she'd send us back the marks and give us more detailed feedback on the day we came back. Still not marked them, or if she has, she hasn't told me about it. Wonder if she ever will bother now. Then she set us loads of homework. Two one page profiles on 'important' people (Roger Fenton and William Russell) which was actually kind of hard, especially William Russell because he shares his name with about a million people, one of whom was a lord and alive at the time of the Crimean War, so I had to be pretty careful getting info for that, and we had a couple of source questions to do, and she told us to watch this forty-five minute film clip she'd put on moodle. That's a lot of work, you have to admit, especially when you consider it's not actually that long since we did the exam. I did all of it, apart from the film, which I watched the first half of, decided to watch the second half the next day and she changed the name of it. Got to lesson on Tuesday, and she said 'who's done the biographies, show me', and I was one of two people who'd done it. Ok, maybe half a dozen or so had missed the previous lesson because of exams, but still. That still makes it about 20% who'd done the work she set. And she just said she'd be nagging them about it. Which she hasn't done today. Oh well. Such is life. It was pretty interesting, researching those two guys, I have to admit. And I got to give Notebook a proper try, and it was pretty useful I have to say. Apparently it's being scrapped, which is crazy. It's a great application.

The Sum of All Fears

Another Jack Ryan book by Tom Clancy. You'll get fed up of me reviewing these sooner than I get fed up of reading them. Anyway, it was very good. I liked the fact that he didn't stop the bomb going off and stuff, and how detailed the stuff with the nuclear bomb was. It was incredibly believable and realistic. The fact that I love the character of Mr Clark leads me to say he was perhaps underutilised again, especially near the start of the book, although he did get a bit of a look in nearer the end. I was annoyed by the blurb again though. It gives away way too much. Ok, I know that if you go by proportions, giving away stuff that happens maybe half way through the book, maybe a little beyond, isn't such a big deal. But when the book is a thousand pages long, that's a bit far in to start giving details of the plot away as far as I'm concerned. It did have a good plot though. A nuclear bomb, set off by terrorists but made to look as though it were the Russians (I'm giving away no more than the blurb here), an incompetant president... Anyway, worth reading. Trying to work out the chronology of these books is hard though. I think there's another one between this and Executive Orders, which is the next along that I have. Hmm, Fantastic Fiction isn't loading at the moment. Oh well, I'll check later. Or just get on and read Executive Orders (I've already started it, but stopped to read ones that came before after I got them, because it seemed logical to me, and so I kind of suspect there's another in between). Anyway, it's a good book, worth the time it takes to read it, although it did feel like it took a while to really get started. And I almost found myself favouring the president over Jack at one point. But I guess that's how you make characters realistic, by not making them perfect.