I got my first package of stuff from SFWA this morning. It made me feel like a real writer all over again. The effect may well last into tomorrow. My active membership status disappeared into the aether for about six months, but luckily the sainted Andrew Burt (SFWA VP, and of Critters fame) sorted it out for me. I can now consider myself a pro writer. Of course, outside the community of science fiction and fantasy writers, calling oneself a pro on the basis of four professional and two semi-professional sales would seem a little ridiculous. I'll hold off on getting the name plate made up yet, and may even wait to buy the castle in Scotland.

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The weather here has taken an unexpected turn, with freezing temperatures for days and a fair amount of snow. Now, you can get snow in Britain even in April, but it tends just to be flutter that's soon gone. This is good, heavy stuff, and plenty of ice. It should be good practice for the possible Siberian climate predicted for Britain in 20 years time. Depressingly, also in The Guardian is a graphic showing possible global warming effects by 2050. The range of deforestation covering South and Central America lies directly about Guyana (and various other countries) where I lived for two years. I've spent time in the Guyanese rainforests, and they really are the most stunningly beautiful places I've ever been. The idea that they might be gone in less than 50 years is really heart-rending.

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Also, in the Guardian was this thoughtful opinion piece by Jeremy Hardy on a racist joke that has seen Conservative member of parliament suspended from her party: here.

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Those of you who read Steph's journal will know that we are getting married in August. We've been planning it for quite a while, but we didn't want to hurry things too much by making it public. The idea of getting married was quite frightening enough without having to deal with all the details straight away. Of course, as soon as you announce something like that, people want to know details. We wanted some time just to get used to the idea and to enjoy it before we had to worry about anything like that. We've told most people individually now, although there are a few I haven't got around to telling yet, so I hope they forgive me if they read it here first.

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I'm fairly well recovered from my second wisdom tooth extraction. The procedure was horrendous, far worse than the first one. I thought the damned tooth would never come out, as the dentist tugged at it with ever bigger pliars. Luckily, it didn't bleed for so long this time and I could eat sooner. I still had to take a day off work because there was no way I was going to make it further than a couple of dozen feet the next day, but since then it hasn't been too bad. If I recall last time properly, it didn't actually start to hurt much until about a week afterwards, but I'm hoping that won't happen at all this time.

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I finished the first draft of my "Sci Fiction" story yesterday. It needs some tidying up because the setting shifted from England to America part way through, and I may have some American details wrong. It took far longer than I meant it too, even though it's a little under 5,000 words, because of illness, tooth extraction and so on. Nonetheless, I'm pretty pleased with it at the moment.

Now I'm finally going to get around to revising my synopsis for my children's novel. I've got some critiques on the first draft and I agree with them totally. They are insightful and clear. But I just can't work out how to apply the bloody things. I haven't a clue how to make the damned thing work, and it's holding up my novel. I would have marketed it three months ago if it wasn't for having to do a synopsis. The worst thing about it is that one never gets to stop writing synopses, even when one is a published novelist. It's just that you have to write them before the novel. Now how in hell do you do that?