Shopping-deprived Sandy let lose

I bought my very first MP3-player today. It's an iriver T30, and it's green. I was a bit peeved when I came home, checked out their website and realized there's a red version, too. Red would have been so nice and fitting for a romance writer, don't you think so, too? On the other hand, snake-green is definitely something unexpected. So there ...

Besides, that little green thingy is way cool! And it can do voice recordings!!! Very good voice recordings!!! Yay!

Also bought a new mouse pad. Nah. Cut "new". Bought a mouse pad. What I was using before was book. And the mouse had already rubbed the color of the cover off. Now I've got a real mouse pad depicting two little kitties. (Yes, you're right, it's a bit cheesy.) (But only a bit!)

What else did I buy?

Oh yes: HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE!!!!!! The DVD is out, Sandy is happy. :O)

Will go off to bed now, since tomorrow will be the day of horrors: a whole day of oral exams. *sigh* (I hope by now my students know that there wasn't a stupid Celtic invasion ...)

Good night! Nos da!

More pics ...

... from the carnival parade in Mainz. There's a saying here that "Petrus is en Meenzer", which translates as "Peter is a Mainzer" (besides, it also shows the similarities between Germanic languages *g*) and this year this proved to be true once more: yesterday the weather was just fine with even a bit of sunshine. Yet today, it's grey and dreary with snow in between. Yes, St. Peter, the guy responsible for the weather, is a Mainzer indeed. :O)

Mainzer Kleppergarde, with the field marshal on a rocking horse

Mainzer Schwellköpp ("Mainzer Swell-Heads")






the German Michel tries to shoot himself with the petrol cock
because of the high petrol prices in Germany

PS on the muffins

Remember those horrid chocolate-cranberry muffins I told you about? Well, not only did they taste crap, no, they also ruined my muffin baking tray.

Crap.

Rosenmontag: More Carnival!

I hope you all had a nice weekend -- I spent mine with just an eeny-weeny bit of corrections, trying to find a suitable MP3-player without being trampled to death on Saturday, and alternating between playing couch-potato and discovering the exciting world of podcasts on Sunday. Oh yes, and ordering an internet flatrate. (Endless hours of surfing the net, here I come!)

But I promised to bring you more on carnival in Germany. On the weekend the street carnival with parades started and today, on "Rosenmontag", there were the big carnival parades in Mainz, Düsseldorf and Cologne. Here are some impressions from Mainz (pictures are all from the ZDF coverage of the parade):

the cathedral in Mainz

Gutenberg is also a fan of carnival :O)

the Mainzer Ranzengarde:

the uniforms of the carnival guards in Mainz go back to uniforms of real regiments that were stationed here at one time or another

Helau!

It's carnival time in Germany! I just watched the carnival session of Mainz on TV, the legendary "Mainz bleibt Mainz" (or, "Meenz bleibt Meenz"). Mainz is one of the strongholds of the political carnival (Fassenacht) in the Rhineland and presenters at those carnival sessions usually don't hold back when they comment on things that happened in Germany in the past year (this year popular topics included the general election in 05, the new government, especially our new female chancellor, Bush's visit to Mainz, and, of course, the neverending local rivalery between Mainz and Wiesbaden, separated by the Rhine, and the fact that thanks to the postWWII-administration parts of Mainz went to Wiesbaden, which is still a sore point with the people of Mainz).

Among the regular presenters are Der Bote vom Bundestag (The Messenger from the Bundestag) and Johannes Gutenberg. And each year "Mainz bleibt Mainz" ends with the Mainzer Hofsänger, a male choir.

Duh ...

Even more corrections.

Does this never end???

(Note to self: Be meaner next semester. Much meaner!!! So mean your students quake in their shoes when you enter the room! Or better: be so mean they run screaming out of the room!) (Really, it wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have to teach 50 people per course... *sigh*)

Midnight Chatter

Those people at amazon.co.uk really know how to make a girl happy: TLB sales rank right now is 6,683. :O)

And a yet another review went up at Historical Romance Writers The reviewer, lilith, has many lovely things to say, e.g., "Why you should read this book? First: the characters. Lilian and Troy are excellently researched persons. And they have a history...and boy, what a history!! . . . Second: the relationship between Lilian and Troy. Obviously, it was quite a feat to make these two fall in love after what they went through at each other's hands. The misunderstandings here are believable (in some romances they feel contrived and far-fetched) and most of all very well explained by each character's point of view." :O)

Hmm ... too bad I can't send lilith a big, fat cyberhug for making my day.

Quick Chatter

The blog had a visitor from Rambach in Hessen. Funny. That's the name of the butler in THE CASTLE OF WOLFENBACH. Rambach. In honour of Hermann Rambach, who wrote so much about the history of Waldkirch (= Kirchwalden in TCoW). :O)

More Corrections ...

... and things start to get frustrating: as far as we know today there was NO Celtic invasion of Britain. Indeed there was NO homogenous people "The Celts" at any time. That is largely a fiction of historians.

And there was no large-scale christianization of Britain during Roman times -- the Roman gods were much more important for quite a long time. And those people who did become Christians, did NOT become Catholics, for heaven's sake!

Can you tell I'm annoyed? These must have been two of the cases when I speak Chinese in class without noticing...

Weakly waving

Still buried in corrections. Mind-maps, it is today. Must have spoken Chinese in this course, too. *sigh*

"Der Erlkönig" (the abridged version)

I found this on the net and burst into giggles. So I just had to share (even though it's in German. Sorry!):

Vater und Kind

reiten geschwind

durch Nacht und Wind.

Kommt ein Mann,

quatscht sie an,

ob der Kleine mitkommen kann.

Vater sagt "Nee!"

Kind sagt "Bäh"

Kommen nach Haus,

Kind tot, aus!

Crafty Old Hen

The next time I'm at uni (= next Tuesday), the registration for my seminar will start. Umpteen little students will be sitting in front of my office. And we all know how boring waiting can be, right? So I guess it's my moral obligation to keep these poor people entertained. Right? Which is why I went and stocked up the excerpt-envelope taped to my door.

I didn't choose the branding scene, though.

Hmm.

Do you think it would reduce student numbers if I would use the branding scene???

And yet another one ...

Muffins are done and edible (well, at least I think they're edible). But, unfortunately, they taste like ...

... crap.

Duh.

And here I wanted to surprise my colleagues with those wonderful cranberry-chocolate muffins. :-/ (Well, I could still surprise them, I guess. With those horrid cranberry-chocolate muffins. And we would all save the money we usually spend in the university canteen!)

MORAL: Stay away from those muffin mixes that come in bottles.

And another one (especially for Carolyn :O) )

Am currently engaged in heroic battle with chocolate-cranberry-muffins. I suspect I used too many cranberries.

Hmmm.

(Stay tuned for further adventures with the chocolate-cranberry-muffins: Will they be done anytime soon? Will they be edible? Will Sandra's colleagues survive them??? *waving towards Mainz*)

A few days too late

On 17 Feb 1856, Heinrich Heine, one of Germany's greatest poets, died in exile in France. He is one of my favourite German poets, combining lyricism with subtle, but biting irony. Many of his poems reveal the shallowness and hypocrisy of German society during the Restauration -- and as you can imagine those in power did not like this (or him) in the least. He became a victim of censorship, yet the people at his publisher's (Hoffmann & Campe) were crafty and managed to smuggle his books across several German borders in the disguise of cookbooks.

I guess my favourite Heine poem would be "Die schlesischen Weber", a poem about the weaver riots in Silesia in June 1844. Later in the century, it inspired Gerhard Hauptmann to write the play Die Weber. The poem gives a voice to the weavers, who curse God, king and country for letting them alone in their misery, and swear to weave the thrice-cursed shroud for Old Germany. Each stanza ends with "Wir weben, wir weben!" ("We're weaving, we're weaving!") -- almost like a bordun accompaniment. It lends the poem a powerful and threatening quality.

Yet the best known poem by Heine is probably the one on the Lorelei ("Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten / Daß ich so traurig bin . . . "), which was later put to music and is now sung with great enthusiasm on the tourist ships on the Rhine. :O)

Nuthing Interesting ...

... just more corrections. (Did you know that Martin Luther King travelled back in time to start the Reformation? Fancy that!)

Journeys on a Sunday

I started this day with writing. (Well, to be exact, I started this day with feeding the cats, munching a few oat cookies and then arguing with one of the cats -- the one responsible for the ripped finger -- who could use my desk.) I worked on the snippet which precedes the arrival at the museum. Since the scene starts in Amy's room ("Amy put on her bonnet and eyed herself critically in the mirror.") and ends at the museum a ride in a carriage was involved. Now for me, one of the most difficult things to write is transporting characters from point A to point B: you can't just jump from the townhouse to the museum; you can just write "And they drove to the museum."; no, I always feel I have to convey a sense of the ride or the journey itself. Yet at the same time, the description shouldn't be too long, else it would bore most readers to tears. So what I'm usually aiming for is to give readers a fleeting impression of said journey. I think of this as doing an impressionist painting: you just want to give a hint of things that are there and keep everything blurred around the edges. The journey itself is contracted into just a few sentences. Thus sights which would normally (i.e. in real life) be far apart, fall together as if in a collage:

Soon they were all bundled into Lord Munthorpe's landau, its hoods pulled down so they could bask in the rays of the golden October sun. It sparkled on the windows of the houses they passed and made the trees in the squares and parks glitter like flitter-gold. They joined the flow of carriages in Oxford Street, most of them no doubt directed towards Hyde Park. Lord Munthorpe's landau, however, turned east towards Tottenham Court.

Sunday Mutterings

No doubt you will be beyond yourselves with happiness to hear that my finger did not fall off during the night. *g* I'm not so sure about the fun scar, though. It might just look as if I'm too stupid to handle a knife.

No playing with the Muse today, but working on -- yes, that's right -- corrections.

It's correction time, my dears

Yesterday I got that pile of 41 end-of-term exams -- and found out this morning that even the easiest, fill-in and multiple-choice unit of questions takes me 1 1/2 hours to correct thanks to the sheer amount of exams. And I haven't even started yet with the long-essay questions! Argh! Argh! Argh!

Spent the afternoon at uni with some other stuff.

Oh yes, and one of my cats sliced my finger first thing in the morning. And now it looks ... uhm ... strange. (The finger, not the cat.)

Oh yes, you're absolutely right: It's been a splendid day indeed.

BUT, to end on a more cheerful note (even though this is, of course, my blog and I'm entitled to whine here as much as I like) (while you, of course, have to feel sorry for me and post encouraging comments) (you can also send chocolate, if you like): yesterday (before the exam, that is: got to uni waaaaaaay early to prevent getting stuck in horrible traffic jam on A66) I sketched the outline for a new story, tentatively titled BETRAYED. Or perhaps, BETRAYAL. And there's going to be another gay couple! Yay!

And now you'll have to excuse me: I'll need to operate on my finger ...

PS: Question

How can I persuade my cat that the research paper I have to correct is not a good place to park her kitty butt on???

Argh!

I do hope my students aren't allergic to cats.

On the other hand ...

Would cat hair all over research papers keep student numbers in my courses low??? (Since I'm apparently a total loser when it comes to being the Horror Schwab.)

More on the Reading

Can you tell I'm excited about the planned reading?

I am totally excited about the planned reading!!! :O)

Actually, I'm so excited about the reading I put together the whole programme today. Now I just need to make sure my programme fits my planned time frame. And I'll probably need to rewrite the abridged scene from WOLFENBACH some more to make it flow more smoothly.

Furthermore, I worked on BEWITCHED this morning. With this book I was so determined not to stray from the straight path, i.e., writing the whole dratted thing chronologically instead of patchwork-wise. Then I bought the lovely, lovely notebook for drafting later scenes (telling myself it's not "real" writing when you use a pen instead of a 'puter keyboard) (haha!). Then, about four weeks or so ago, I thought that maybe it wouldn't be totally bad if I used the AlphaSmart for drafting later scenes (telling myself any sort writing is good, so would you please shut up and get on with it). Now, this morning, I firmly intended to work on the museum scene (remember the Romantic Moment in front of the British Museum?), but well, which scene did pop open on the AlphaSmart? The going-skating scene which comes much later in the novel.

Hmmm ....

Do you think I could get away with blaming it on the AlphaSmart?

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope your day was filled with chocolate and roses! :O)

~*~~*~~*~

Some exciting news: I'll be doing a public reading in Mainz on 19 May! Yay! I'm looking forward to that!!! I hope many of you will be able to come -- so I won't have to resort to reading to the singing reindeer in the Hiwi-Zimmer. :O)

Some not so nice news: I probably won't be able to make it to the chat tonight. I'm just so, so tired (another day spent at uni). And I have some more research papers to correct before I'll get a pile of 45 end-of-term exams on Thursday. :-/

Another new thing: I've just added a link to the site feed of my blog. I have not the foggiest how this site feed thingy is supposed to work, so I can't even tell whether it works or not, but still, I hope it does. :O)

~*~~*~~*~

And here, in celebration of Valentine's Day, my favourite love poem from DD's Checkmate (also known as the poem that makes me cry on a regular basis).

Tant que je vive, mon coeur ne changera

Pour nulle vivante, taut soit elle bonne ou sage,

Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige.

Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera.

~*~

(As long as I live my heart will not change,

for none living, however good or wise,

brave and influential, of noble lineage.

My choice is made, another will not be made.)

Regency Author Chat at Mystic Castle

There's been a change of plans: the Regency Author Night at The Mystic Castle will be tomorrow night (or the morning after tomorrow, depending on where you live). If you've got time, please come and join the fun!

I Did It Again

Bought more notebooks today.

Well, one is a calendar (no, haven't had one of those yet). The other is for promo ideas. I'm currently planning a reading sometime in May. I thought about doing it in June. BUUUUUT ...

June, Germany. Germany, June -- ring a bell?

Exactly, June is the Month of Soccer. Not a good month to do a reading, unless I want to do a reading in a very ... uhm ... intimate setting. Like in my office. With myself alone. (Well, of course, I could always fetch the toy reindeer -- sings when you press its tummy -- from my old office and do a reading for the reindeer. While it sings "Rudolph the Red-Nose-Reindeer".) (And after half an hour I'll be probably about to jump out of the window or ready to kill Rudolph.)

So May it is. :O)

Sleepless in Frankfurt

It's 2:30 a.m. in my corner of the world and I wanted to go to bed hours ago. Unfortunately the academic muse had other plans. And since only very foolish people let ideas slip by without taking notes, I sat down at my 'puter and worked some more on my diss.

Now even more books pile up on my desk, and I feel as if something dropped onto my head. (A book most likely.)


Good night everybody!

Uhm ...

Still no creative writing done. Instead I worked on my diss today and made good progress there. Now my desk looks like a battlefield. Yipee!

Oh, and did I mention that I ordered even more books yesterday? It's all in the name of research. I'm sure you understand. *g*

In addition, had some lovely new marketing ideas. Hmmm ... there might be interesting new things waiting for you in the future! (I.e. be afraid!) (Be very afraid!)

:O)

My Muse Is Bored

As you might have gathered from the last few blog-posts, I didn't get any creative writing done in the past few days. And consequently my Muse sits twiddling her thumbs. And whenever Muse gets bored because I'm not listening to her, she pays me back by giving me the most vivid, disturbing dreams at night. She might make me write romances, but when it comes to dreams, she makes me live through thrillers. Wonderful.

Sooooo ....

... I guess I really need to go and play with her. Creative output, here I come! :O)

Friday Night Chatter ... er ... Stutter

More corrections today. Strong suspicion that I not only speak Chinese, but also write Chinese. Duh.

Ate too many sweets. (What's new?)

Went to see Pinter's Ashes to Ashes, staged by friends of mine , this evening. Was, as always, highly impressed, yet harboured dark thoughts of wringing necks of people who leave their bluidy cell phones on during a play.

Ate more sweets. (Still nothing new.)

Will go to bed now. 'night! :O)

The Problem with Research Books ...

... is that they induce you to buy even more research books.

Earlier this day I read the chapter "Boys and Girls Come out to Play" in Ackroyd's London Encyclopedia, which, as the title clearly suggests, deals with children in London as well as children's games, songs and rhymes. Inspired, I dug out my copy of Iona and Peter Opie's The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes to find further information on some of the rhymes Ackroyd mentions. (Sometimes it becomes glaringly obvious how much I enjoyed studying folklore! *g*) And there, in turn, I found a reference to Gammer Gurton's Garland, apparently a collection of nursery rhymes from 1810. "Ha!" I thought. "A Regency collection of nursery rhymes!" So, of course, I had to check it out. And of course, since there was one really cheap reprint from the 1970s available on abebooks (a bargain compared to the other copies listed!), I had to buy it. And since there was also a very cheap edition of Norman Douglas' London Street Games (mentioned by Ackroyd) available, I just had to .... well, you get the drift.

But the real problem is that only 14 months after I moved into the new flat there is no more shelf space left.

And no room for more bookshelves.

Hmph.

Suffering

Just came home after 12 hours of uni (*thumping head against wall*), looked forward to lounging on the couch, watching TV and munching cereals, and then --

-- I discovered the kitty poo in the hallway.

Booohoooo!

Would somebody please come and make it go away?????

First Day of Conquering the New Office

Have I already mentioned that I've got a new office at uni? It's snug, it's yellow, it isn't frequented by 1000 people. Which means now there's hope I can actually get some work done at uni. Yay!

So, as a kind of mini blog-celebration, here's the rest of that kiss started somewhere below:

And she -

- let him.

He felt her arms around his shoulders and her fingers kneading his neck as if to spurn him on.

On and on, until she moaned in his arms and his body was on fire for her.

He came up, gasping for air, her face so near to his, he could see the fine pores of her skin. Her eyes opened, languid and drugged one moment, then sparkling with laughter. Her breath little puffs on his face.

"Extraordinary."

:O)

A Great Book-Day

Don't you just love the days you can start with a book while still lying snug in bed?

Since my attention span in regard to books is somewhat short these days (start to read a book and get bored after 70 pages), I did a reread of one of my favourite Berte Bratt novels (she wrote stories for young girls, quite often with romantic elements): Das Leben wird schöner, Anne. Hmmm, it was wonderfully nostalgic!

Furthermore, I got two amazon parcels today: one with Jennifer Crusie's What the Lady Wants and the other with Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography. And when I went to the supermarket, I bought the German edition of Elizabeth Peters' Seeing a Large Cat. (Because it was so wonderfully cheap.) (Really!) This will be my first Amelia Peabody novel, and I'm looking forward to it. If I'm not mistaken I've heard it mention somewhere that there's a Francis Crawford reference in one of the Amelia Peabody mysteries (if only I'd know in which one!). So apparently Elizabeth Peters is a Dorothy Dunnett fan, too. You just gotta love people who love Dunnett. And Francis Crawford in particular! :O)

Homepage Updating

I spent most of the weekend updating my homepage (yes, I still need that long!): I've added the missing TLB reviews on the review page and, what's more, created a LILY BRAND Miscellany page. So far, it features a story I wrote either during or after a writer's block when working on THE LILY BRAND (which back then was still STRAIGHT TO THE HEART).

One of the members of my old crit group, the wonderful Lady LaLa (she's the one who's also responsible for my wet-and-naked-Fenris scene, parts of which I blogged on 3 september!), would once a week post a homework for us and thus make us exercise our writing-muscles. That particular exercise consisted of writing something which included the sentence "Hand me my pants" in direct speech. And as you will see, I had got stuck at the beginning of Chapter 3 of STRAIGHT TO THE HEART, while Lillian was waiting for the call of the thrush that would start the escape from Camille's mansion.

Anyway, I hope you'll have a look at the homepage and will let me know what you think about the additions. :O) Enjoy!

The book that will put a smile on your face :O)

A totally cute children's book I found during a shopping spree in Frankfurt. The wombat mostly sleeps, eats, and ravages the garden of her humans (while fighting horrible battles with doormats or looking for more carrots).

Taking stock after another PhD Project Day

The daily output when doing academic writing is even more depressing than the output for creative writing: Today I managed only 4 pages. And almost all of that text was already written. I mostly just edited the text and added footnotes.

Hmph.

But on a more positive note: on AAR my book and I are still on the lists for Most-Hanky Read, Most Tortured Hero, Best Villain, Best Buried Treasure and Best Debut Author. Yay!

Polls, Polls, Polls

German romance readers have chosen THE LILY BRAND as Best 2005 Romance in English! Yay! (Needless to say I'll be running around with a big, fat grin for the rest of the day.) :O)

Here's the link to the results page.

For your amusement this evening ...

(Especially for all of you who are mostly strangers in Romance-Land.)

... the only three-armed heroine in romance!!!

Christina Dodd's lucky heroine in CASTLES IN THE AIR not only has all her teeth, no, the lucky gal also has (completely by accident) three arms -- and thus made romance history! And Christina Dodd probably the most talked-about person at RWA nationals 1993. :O) You can find the full story here.

Thursday Dilemma

Here's the problem: I've written an article for our student magazine HOWL and now I'm wondering whether one of the phrases I used is real English or a Germanism. I've already asked a few people and they all said they wouldn't use the phrase. BUT when I googled it, I found it on sites obviously written by native speakers of English. Sooo ... it's all argh!

The sentence in question reads as follows:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that great events cast shadows ahead. Indeed, they might even cast shadows across a whole continent.

So will my boss drop dead as a doornail when he reads this or not? Thoughts? Ideas? Anything?

Romance Poll

AAR are currently doing their annual Reader Poll for 2005, and THE LILY BRAND is listed as one of the Best Buried Treasures, Troy as one of the Most Tortured Heroes and myself as Best Debut Author! :O) Yay!

Readers can vote until midnight, February 19.