some excellent news

Current work: fiction
Listening to: Sheryl Crow
Reading: Nicola Cornick, Unmasked (enjoying this one hugely)

Yesterday, I think I made the fastest sale of my life. Not even a proper outline. I sent a seriously brief suggestion to my ed, expecting him to remind me that there's a recession on and to say he'd think about it if I sent a proper outline in, but he emailed me straight back, saying, ‘Delivery when?’ April next year, to give me time to do the pics (this one is Essex). Result: ‘Contract on way to Dot.’

Blimey! Had to write a quick email to my lovely agent to apologise for inadvertently jumping the gun.

OK, so local history doesn’t pay: but this is food for the soul. It means that I have two new books to think about now, and most importantly this gives me my safety valve for the next year’s worth of sticky patches. (This is advance planning rather than paranoia, by the way: Dad’s illness isn’t predictable, so we have OK patches and bad patches. Research gets me through the bad bits. Think that’s why the last bad one hit me so hard – I didn’t have anything officially lined up at that point.)

Had a fantastic day out with the kids yesterday. The plan was to see Bolt, but it was an afternoon performance and I prefer morning ones (so we also get lunch out and a bit of pottering about, and then get home just before DH, so I can go back to work without feeling guilty). So we went to see Monsters vs Aliens… the 3D version.

I was blown away by the animation and the sheer detail. When something hit the ground, you actually saw the dust flying up. And the 3D effects… they’re not like when I was a kid (or even like it was when my two were a bit younger – one of the Spy Kids films came out as a 3D version). For a start, the glasses aren’t cardboard, with one eye covered in red and one in green or blue. These are like ordinary glasses, with grey/blue lenses. And if you take the glasses off during the film (of course I did – I wanted to see how it worked), the picture is faintly fuzzy but otherwise the same as the normal film – no garish pink and green haloes like you get in the old-fashioned ones.

There were also trailers in 3D. One was for Coralline (a possibility, though Madam might find it a bit too scary) and another for Ice Age 3 (that’s a definite – I enjoyed the first one a lot, though why has it taken me so long to twig that lovely Ray Romano does the voiceover?).

Verdict on the film? The storyline wasn’t gripping, but the animation was good enough to keep me going, and I think the experience was worth the premium ticket price.

Bolt will be tomorrow’s treat (plus a visit to my mate Steve's exhibition).

Plan for today: wait in for the weekly shop delivery, then run errands for Dad and take the kids to visit him.

The other event yesterday was that my new Pandora glass bead arrived. In the catalogue, it looks magenta. In the flesh, it was much paler, so I was quite disappointed. Princess Style Queen mentioned that it fits her colour scheme far more than mine, and she was absolutely right: I handed it over. While we were examining the difference between the catalogue and the bead itself, I showed her the new gold Murano glass beads - and the one I really like (I've seen it, and it's gorgeous). 'Oooh, yes! Now THAT would look really nice on your bracelet...' Yup, but the price is a tad over my guilt threshold, and it might push DH into an enormous hissy fit. As I want him to build me another bookcase (yes, I could build it myself - but he's the one with the estate car, so I need him to pick it up for me), I decided to play it safe...