UH-Blogging Day

Today I'm blogging on Unusual Historicals about the Victorian medievalism (= Victorians go gaga over all things gothic). Enjoy!

Signs of Life

In case you've been wondering whether I've been abducted by horrid, slimy, green aliens.

No.

:)

It's just that the new semester has started, and the many preparations, meetings, talks and what not have kept me busy. But at least I've managed to make a bit of progress with my PhD thingie today -- here's another big hooray for armchair research via Google Books!

And the party goes on and on and on ...

Today I'm guest-blogging at FreshFiction about Writer's Block, or rather, Battling Writer's Block. Please stop by and say hi. :)

(Today was also registration day at uni -- I'm so tired now that I feel as if I were 100 years old!) (Hmmm. I guess I need to watch another one of these Cbeebies bedtime stories. *ggg*)

Making Readers

If there's one thing I love about teaching literature, it's introducing new books and authors to my students and kindling their enthusiasm for these texts. The latter doesn't always happen. There will always be people who'll be bored out of their minds by the texts we discuss in class. And you don't always get feedback from the students whether they've actually enjoyed the texts they had to read.

But once in a while something truly magical happens: once in a while you get a student falling in love with a novel, a poem, or a play from your class.

Let me tell you: it's a wonderful feeling! :)

~~*~~*~~

LolKitty courtesy of I can has cheezburger

Bedtime Stories :-)

After a day spent with Mr. Thackeray's non-heroine Becky Sharp -- delightful as she might be -- I think I deserve a very special bedtime story. (I blame this all of this on the people who talked me into watching NORTH AND SOUTH -- eeeeeeebhul people! *ggg*)



And another one:



Night, night. :)

Booklaunch Party Part 2: Online Reading

I've just uploaded a new episode of Sandy's Podchatter: to continue the celebration of my new release, I'm reading the prologue and parts of the first chapter.

Enjoy!

Remember Rafe?

Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter might remember the story of Freagar the Dark, the terrible Viking (friends call him Rafe), of which I posted the first part in the Members Section of my website.

I finished writing the story and gave it to AAR as a present for their 10th anniversary. You can now read the whole gripping tale of Freagar, his fierce crew, the unfortunate pig, and the beautiful Rosa on AAR:

"The Rose in the Storm"

Enjoy!

From the depths of a shabby office in Mainz ...

(But hey, at least it's got vanilla-coloured walls! :) )

I'm sitting here with a pile of work I don't particularly want to do, so I thought, "Why don't you make yourself a cup of tea." (Always a very good idea.) Made tea. And then I thought, "Why don't you have a look on YouTube and see what you can find about the Vicar of Dibley; after all you've bought the DVD of the finale and you really should have made sure it's a nice film, no?" So forth I ventured to YouTube (this site surely must have been invented to bring fun to poor people sitting in shabby offices on beautiful days!) and found this:



It's absolutely and completely adorable.

And Carrie was right: I should have bought the box set of the Robin Hood series straight away.

Drat.