Breaking the Dry Spell

After a frustrating week of detailed editing of a terrible manuscript ongeopolitical developments (how do you convince a recalcitrant writer who wants to write of politics as a ménage à trois ) and equally frustrating negotiation of rights, yours truly broke the alcohol and Literotica reading dry spell.

                                                   Fried Chicken and Waffles

The former with a bourbon cocktail (Sweet Carolina) which was ok though the rhubarb flavouring was bleh...Loved the Chicken and Waffles though. When a friend remarked on the Georgia peaches salad, discreet me almost gave the game away with the remark that the last time someone talked to me about Georgia peaches, it was not of the fruit variety :D

The latter was kinda uneven though I'd come across a story that was quite decent and almost quite nostalgic in that I'd been reminded of OX. Though on closer inspection, I could tell it wasn't someone too acquainted with the system. LOL lightly put, don't bother doing the deed in a punt, it's a bad idea unless you like inhaling or swallowing the waters of the Cherwell.As for hiding in tall grass, ehh, there ain't much of that not even near the deer park. :D Don't ask me how I know, you don't want to know.  

Writing was non-existent though I've got inspiration for the next project haha :D

                                     

                                                           Sweet Carolina

Have a good week everyone! 

The WTF weekend

If this is any indication of the next two months, as my horoscope obsessed friend tells me ( I think I'm more freaked out by her gloom and doom tactics than the real horoscope itself. I've not even read that thing myself Face savoring delicious food), I'm gonna go hide out for a while.


For everyone who's asked about DF part 2, sorry, gonna take a couple of weeks because I need to complete The Original Sin series - because I feel bad for the readers who have been waiting for almost a year and because unless I complete the series, it'll bug me and I can't write book 2 . So, sorry, read part 1 or my other stories in the meantime.


I'm going into evil mode at least for the Original Sin conclusion. I'm fitting revenge and a timescale of almost 18 years into the conclusion so it'll be lengthy and may not be free from inconsistency. I think readers may like Cicely quite a bit since she throws off her victim costume and becomes all twisted and evil. Warning: It can get quite bad, like revenger's tragedy bad.I know this has been said several times but it's bad enough to attract haters, hence the hesitation.


With that cheery thought, I leave you this wisdom from  Molière The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it. 

Procrastination

Call me the master/mistress of procrastination but I've managed yet again to not write anything over the weekend. Again. Oh yeah, there are the usual excuses: another round of tests at the doctor's. Then the social media stuff (but that too was shelved). But really, it's all been about the weather (no seriously, it's about the weather) and exhaustion. I called timeout for the drama classes. I'm pretty sure the kids were relieved though a couple of the more enthusiastic ones were starting to whine over possible impact on finals. Despite getting about six hours of sleep, I'm still exhausted and feeling hung over though I haven't had any serious alcohol since a long time ago. Plus, just doing some of the social media stuff made me all blurry eyed and sleepy. 
 
I blame the heatwave. It's so hot I swear I'm sweating like some guy next to a barbecue pit. Though my friends remind me women don't sweat, we're supposed to gently perspire, like some vanilla scented candle I guess - snort- ok, it's just crude me but I sweat, so there. That means endless chugging of fruit juices and ice cold water. The only advantage is because of all the sweat, I no longer have 1980s Morgan Fairchild hair - by the way, I hate being told that - or that dry puffy lion mane look. It's actually less wig-like and no longer crackles. A friend once swore he was hit by static electricity when he touched my hair. Now, it's a miracle sweat isn't dripping off it. Silver linings!
  
It's a bit hard to think of writing hot stuff when the weather is this hot. Seems everyone else is thinking dirty except for moi. Me? It's like seriously, anything that makes it hotter and more sweaty is a bad idea.Anyway, I was able to entertain a dirty-minded friend with my klutziness. Poking a straw through a cup of fresh pineapple juice shouldn't lead to dirty jokes but it did in my case. Clumsy me held the cup too close to myself and when I slammed the straw into the sealed cup, the foam on the top of the juice jetted out and I ended up having mini splotches of foam on my face and all over the front of my clothes. Apart from going WTF and trying to wipe the stuff off, I was trying not to glare at my friends who were busting their guts laughing. Only after I'd clean up fruit juice eruption and they could stop laughing enough to make sense did they reveal that they thought I looked like one of those amateur porn videos where the female participant had biological fluids all over her face or front at the end of the video. One of them even cracked a joke about me skipping the boring foreplay and getting straight to the money shot. With friends like these, how could anything go wrong, right?
 
Anyway, as a result of that, a bad mood and a horoscope that warns of serious delays till end of June (gack 2 months to go!) courtesy of a gal pal who reads them, any writing is gonna be postponed for at least a week. Sorry guys and gals.
 
 

 One of those few times when I'm glad I'm not a guy! I don't own rights to the picture above, it's just for laughs :P

Review of Darknet

Title: Darknet
Author: Matthew Mather
Genre: SciFi Thriller


Matthew Mather's Darknet asks the question "What do you do when you're
hunted by an autonomous corporation/AI?" In Darknet, the answer is
supplied by Jake O'Connell and his random gang of tech whizzes who,
between running for their lives from violent/sinister/sadistic enemies
directed by a nameless omniscient entity, manage to cause global
financial chaos, upset a psychotic ex-armed forces killer and save
family members and the world all within a month. (Don't you love the
rapidity of it all, now just to catch a breath, phew)

What puzzled me:
If Bluebridge presumably monitored and tracked Sean Womack through
London vis social media (yes, the sinister side of photos and selfies
- and you thought it was merely the sticks that were a menace),
wouldn't it have been easier tracking him through the ubiquitous big
brother cameras. There were millions of those all over London, no
reason for them not to be within the Square Mile. And these would have
been far more efficient. I would have thought that plus those pesky
helicopters mentioned in the opening chapter would be far more
sinister. The bus was freaky, not least because public transport
(including those cabs) have a history of mounting sidewalks even if
it's rare these days.

Conflicted by: The Mohawks. Love the twists and turns but laying cable
that's necessary for the kind of operations described in the book would be
difficult if not impossible. Still, like the idea. Also  echoes the militant/civil
standoffs reported in recent months, which increases the feel of proximity to
real life.

What resonated:
Jin's plight of being mistaken for a murderer when her
cousin Shen gets bumped off after that talk about Yamamoto. The part
about the angle of the video is pretty true. Plus, presumably,
Bluebridge is able to manipulate lift systems means it went far beyond
the capabilities in the case of Sean.

Overall impression:
Like it quite a bit. Personally, Bluebridge is not quite Bridgewater in reality.
AI aside, it sounds like a hybrid of Amazon and Renaissance, the latter
being one of the biggest and most notorious quants mecca. The recruitment
of physicists and mathematicians before they even graduate MSc was in full
blast 20 years ago, that was part of the reason why some finalists started
sprouting Beemers in their final year. There were quite a number of talent
writing and trading based on logarithms without really understanding
what lay beneath them.Then a series of bubbles and blowups dealt
heavy blows from 2000 onwards. Things aren't quite the same these days
though there were some instances of revival. As for the dark (and sinister)
transactions, the major players have been authorised to run market maker
and dark pools operations for a long time. Of course, no one really knows
what goes on in dark pools, if the recent rumours and investigations
surrounding dark pools is anything to go by, some of those involved
aren't all that aware of what's going on. Opacity and risk have multiplied,
all or most authorised by the powers that be.

The whole premise of emotionless rules-based
system is the much vaunted case for everything from intelligent homes
to driverless cars. After reading this, what was said at a tech
convention yours truly attended earlier this year became all the
creepier. The head honchos of all the major tech giants and attention
grabbing startups were at the convention and more than one head of
innovation wiseguy said "Taking the human out of the equation means
removing the errors and reducing fatalities." Looking back, I wish I
had read this before the convention.

It's worse when you remember that almost all aspects of tech that
currently run in our lives evolved from military research, how far a
stretch is it that the cardinal rule of do not kill is subverted or
ignored altogether.

I think Jake O'Connell and Sheldon would agree that taking the human
out of the equation would prove to be the start of a slippery slope
into the nightmare that Darknet presents.

Disclosure: I purchased a copy of Darknet. This is not a paid review.
And there have been no inducements or payments made in return for this review.


Rating: 4*

I do not own the image displayed here, it's the book cover of the Amazon edition of the book.
Google Matthew Mather for his blog and links to his books.

Friday Musings

It's been a roller coaster of a Friday:

Not so great _visiting the doctor for more tests

And no, don't want to write doc based erotica. Seriously, you wouldn't either if you've dated one.


What's great: Congratulations to a fellow author DFWBeast for becoming a LW Hall-of-Famer! Readers, please read and vote!

What's ambivalent: blowing my diet in one day - a perk of being in Asia 0 eating all of the below for half the cost in the UK!

There is a reason why I am this size! Time to repent??  LOL!

What A Week

It's been a crazy week and readers should know when I start a post with these words, it's never a harbinger of anything great LOL

Okay, let's start with the bad news. I'm officially a target for trolls and eroticanazis. People have been 1* bombing the stories on Literotica. Not sure if they know they're being tracked BTW. So here's my response: All friends and readers, please read and vote objectively. If it's truly awful, vote it awful. If it's average, vote average. Just don't let the haters who haven't even read the stuff win. Anyone willing to join in the battle, click here!

And yes, the good news, of sorts. My latest story is out. Reception was mixed as usual. The concluding segment will not be posted for at least a month. I'll be working on the conclusion to Original Sin because it's been lagging for a long time and I feel bad towards readers who've supported that storyline. Warning: It's not pretty and rather twisted. So those who are squeamish are advised not to read.

And while we're on the topic, I would like to thank all beta readers, particularly DFWB, who probably did the equivalent of pulling me back from the cliff in terms of the writing.

Enjoy the reads and let me know what you think. I'm gonna indulge in my fave obsession: Food!

Schokolade nuss! Actually that's from Easter, the chocolate I forgot to eat. Hope you guys are enjoying your sweets too!

Boaties, Corrupting JL and Writing Erotica

Or Why I won't write erotica in another language

Another Easter is upon us and so is another boat race.

It's convoluted how rowing, the corruption of an innocent and erotica are connected so bear with me.

I've never quite stopped associating rowers with players probably because I'd inadvertently interrupted the erm 'coitus' process of the male crew captain as a fresher. Well, as a poor fresher (think church mouse poor, kinda like me now lol), everything you purchase needs to make sense. So after being suckered into buying one of those boaties shirts, I was reminded that if I didn't go pick up my shirt, it'll be good luck trying to squeeze into one which was too small. It was a freezing winter afternoon and I'd been trying to track down the captain who apparently held all the shirts. This was like the 2nd or 3rd round I'd run round to get to his room. It was quite clear from some sounds that he was in or at least someone was, there was giggling and stuff. But each time I knocked on the door, they'd just go quiet, yeah brilliant, like I wouldn't know you're in there!Anyway, the second time I'd knocked till he kinda responded and said come back later. I went off to dinner at the hall and came back and he was still otherwise occupied. Ok, I'm sure some people would have said cut the guy some slack. But seriously, it's  freezing and dark out there and I wasn't going to walk back to accommodations and then back to the main college again. So I persisted and he finally opened the door, barely dressed and pissed and he said something sarcastic which I don't remember and frankly didn't give a damn about.

I didn't really feel guilty about interrupting this guy's happy hour. C'mon, if he'd been decent, I'd have felt some guilt but with Mr Personality, I just snorted and left. Think his companion was more amused than anything else, after all I heard giggling. Upshot was when I told a senior about the guy and how I'd interrupted the love fest, that senior went like that was probably a mistake because his girlfriend was either having class or was away on competition. I said well he certainly was banging something giggly. That's when it hit everyone, it wasn't just interrupting happy hour, it was interrupting a cheating asshole.

Part of the process of my corruption at college also had something to do with boaties. May not have mentioned it before but Germans have more or less been involved in corrupting me at various stages. A German introduced me to schnapps followed by hard alcohol and that began my journey down that path. Another German showed me porn, one of which was this video of a porn film from the 80s or 90s and the soundtrack was in German. The guy obviously had no idea that this ex-convent student had no sexual experience. While he was rattling on about how German was the worst language to declare love and to have sex talk in. All the while I was staring at this porn film and thinking if that's what sex is all about, it's seriously crude and  off putting. For goodness sake, the moaning and groaning was so fake. And we started laughing when the guy started yelling out this German word. It was so weird and fake it was hilarious.

When I told my friend that, he went, I told you, German is not a great language for love or sex..

Think it was a day later or so when we went to "support" a friend who was having his training on for the intercollege boat races. Training for boaties typically starts at 3-4am but that day was a Saturday so I guess they had it later. Anyway, despite what Bloomberg says, rowing at almost all levels, even in The Boat Race with the light blues is dominated by the American and German students, the Brit representatives are usually the UK rowing representatives for international or Olympic competitions. Anyway, so the boat captain for that college was doubling up as coach that day and think he was coaching the second boat, and he started yelling in German. My friend and I heard him going "Schneller, schneller!" And we just burst out laughing. So the entire boat crew just rowed past staring at the spectators who were laughing uncontrollably. The coach glared at us but had no idea what was so hilarious. He never guessed what he was yelling was the exact same phrase on that porn video. Never been able to refrain from laughing at that since then.

And so in tribute to my corrupt friends in college, I can't write erotica in another language, it just won't feel right. LOL

Anyway, I'm cheering on the dark blues for their race today. Kick some light blues ass! Go OUBC!

Latest update: Cantabs won. Aww, there's always next year!