I wrote the first half page of a new novel today. I figured that this new novel would be even more fun than the one I started a while back. Mainly it would be more fun because I've reached that awkward point in the last one where I've set stuff up but it hasn't all really begun to roll forwards. It's very tempting to keep doing this, of course, write a bit then start something new. Starting stories is easy. Carrying them all the way through isn't. Still, I think it's worth writing the beginning of stories down when they come to you. It firms the ideas in my mind and I can come back to them later.

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Today was a beautiful autumn day, sunny and warm, with the trees turning colour and the air fresh. We walked through the woods in the valley with Nika and picked blackberries again. The blackberries in the valley are almost done, but the ones higher up are still good. I reckon we've got another week or two of them before they're all finished so we're going to make the most of them. Free fruit = good.

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I spent most of Friday working on a website design for work. I'm not a natural designer. I don't have a whole lot of artistic ability, so it's a matter of a lot of trial and error and a lot of looking at other sites. Still, I have something that I'm reasonably happy with, at least to be going on with. Now I just need to get on and create the pages and I can launch it (once X number of people have all stuck their oars in and asked for something completely different). It's only going to be a transitional site anyway, as we will probably get a professional design done at some point, but there's no point waiting for that to do the content.

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I've been getting a bit behind on reviewing stories for my other journal--too busy recently. I've put up a review of the new Neverary and the next one will be the October Realms of Fantasy, then I'm considering doing Lone Star Stories and I still have to get back to the double issue of F&SF that I've been meaning to look at for a month.

I'm probably going to stop looking at the semi-pro mags for a while after this round. One of the main reasons for doing reviews is for me to look more closely at how stories are structured. I'm not learning a lot from most of the semi-pros. The mistakes many of the stories make there are mistakes I don't think I make anymore, and although there are some good stories in those magazines, I need to analyse stories that are better than what I'm capable of at the moment to improve.

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We (re-)invented mango and banana smoothies yesterday. We used one large mango, three bananas and a cup of apple juice. It was delicious, but next time I'll use one less banana and I think it'll be even better.