End of Summer Reading

I'm baaaaack. And I'm baaaaaacked up, work-wise, that is.

The trip was a complete success. From the blazing hot beach days
to the fabulous meals to the big laughs with the family to the
OMG I love my Dad and my siblings to the happy birthday Mad
celebrations.

One of my favourite moments was when four of the siblings, including me,
were cavorting in the water and Roger, second youngest and perhaps the most scarred, physically and mentally, from our tortuous childhood, paddled out to join us in a rubber raft. We were going to dump him out until he protested, citing his hydrophobia, and we actually desisted (!) Instead, we 'pushed him out to sea' (in reality, a crystal clear Canadian lake) chanting, "VIKING FUNERAL,VIKING FUNERAL!"

The whole thing was shot by his girlfriend, and my Dad can be heard commenting, "I've never seen the five of them play together before."

Sadly, on my birthday, we couldn't see the meteor showers as the sky was overcast.

(Although the honest truth is that everyone was dog tired by meteor shower night and although nobody was wimpy enough to actually say it, I think
we all felt a bit relieved by the uncooperative cloud cover because we could toddle off to bed instead of sitting up all night in awe and then making the drive to and flight out of Winnipeg in a state of exhaustion.)

I had a few hours to kill in the 'Peg the next day so I dropped in on an old
highschool pal, Jordan Van Sewell, who is an amazing artiste.




It's hard to find pictures of his work I can pirate and paste on my site, but the book shown at the top of this post, The Jester's Realm contains a ton of gorgeous images.

We picked up our conversation where we'd left off nine years ago, as old friend are apt to do. Many laughs ensued. When the time came, he drove me to the airport in a typical Winnipeg torrential downpour.

I'm heavily into the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I'd read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before my trip, and kept book number two, The Girl Who Played with Fire, for the trip. I cracked it open on the flight out, read five hundred or so pages during the week, and on the flight home I read until the plane taxied to a stop in Toronto.

I'm now reading the third and final book of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's nest.

If you haven't started reading the trilogy yet, you're in for a real treat. Start at the beginning, please, with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.



The late, alas, Stieg Larsson was a true feminist. He delivered the manuscripts for all three novels at once (freaky deaky, Tom Wolfe would say to that) and died shortly thereafter. All three books have been made into movies in Sweden and, now that the trilogy is a worldwide sensation, are about to be remade, Hollywood style. ('Cause you know the Americans have such trouble with sub-titles.)

Since I've been back I've tried to get to work only to have belated birthday celebrations getting 'in the way' day after day. But I think we're done now!

So, back to work tutoring and creating a new program for the writing school, and finishing an Amazon review of editor Sacchi Green's latest antho, the very purty, very dirty Lesbian Lust.



Oh, and any day now Michael Crawley and Laurie Clayton's exciting crime novel, The Women's Club will be flying off the printing press and into the hands of happy readers everywhere! If you can't wait (and I don't blame you) you can pre-order now!

UK

Canada

USA .



Yahoo!

Must fly!

xoxo Mad

Bush Whacking Madeline Moore

I know what you're thinking. But this is not a blog about me becoming a Domme, this is a blog about me heading off into the woods for a gathering of the clan.

Here's where I'm going, although this is a picture of the cottage under siege, whereas hopefully we won't have the lake quite so literally mere steps from our door.


Here's the nearby rapids:


The lake:


Myrtle the Turtle:


It's in Lake of the Woods. Every night the call of the loon rises and falls with the gentle waves of the lake. And on my birthday we get the Perseids, shooting stars by the bucketful, often accompanied by Northern Lights. Picture the Aurora Borealis, and not just in one colour, but three or four, green and pink and yellow rolling across the midnight sky as stars (well, meteors) streak across the sky so quickly you cannot count them as they fall!

So what's the problem, Mad?

Picture the above little cottage stacked with the family Moore. I have four brothers and sisters. Here's my big brother:


Yep, the rest are more or less just as wacky.

The thing is, while we're all funny and smart we're also hypersensitive and prone to lashing out when our feelings are hurt. And we know each other's secrets. All of them.

O. M. G.

Do I sound reticent? I love my family, really I do. As my Grandma once said, "I love every one of you little buggars, so how about that?"

How about it, indeed.

It's just, I'm not really a nature gal, anymore. I like all my comforts. I like to stay home a lot. Read. Write. Sleep. Send emails and birthday cards and occasional gifts to the gang. I'm sort of - solitary.

So why go? Simple. He wants me there.


kiss kiss. See you on the other side!



The lake at sunset.

(All pictures from the private collection of Madeline Moore.)

It's Too Darn Hot!

Oh baby it's too darn hot.

Yes, I know, I'm Canadian, I should adore these hot humid summer days but - but - it's too darn hot.


Too hot to blog.

Too hot to credit the sites these pics come from.

Too hot to write.

Too hot to eat.

Too hot to sleep.




Too hot to be sexy, unless you're this hot tamale weather girl.

Too hot to go dancing.

Too hot to whistle.

Too hot to sing.

Too hot to be funny -






Well, almost too hot to be funny.

It's just too darn hot.

Muddled Madeline Moore

Oh where oh where have you been,
Madeline?
Oh where oh where have you been?
I been here,
I been there,
I been floating on air,
I been making the hip happy scene.



Hey there faithful reader - uh, I mean - readers! How's it hanging, and I don't mean that wacky participle, either. I mean - Hmmm - what does 'How's it hanging?' mean, anyhoo?

Here's a happy dude hanging out in Ghana. It's from the blog: http://bojanglesinghana.blogspot.com/



I found it by searching "Sexy Guys Hanging Out"

First I searched "Sexy Guys" and got stuff like this:



which is good, I know, but not exactly what I'm after. You know, I want a sexy guy, um, hanging out. So I searched that and got mr. bojangles in Ghana.

And then I was stunned. By the realization that I'm afraid to search 'guys with their cocks hanging out' or 'big dicks' or something. Huh? Moi, Madeline Moore? Afraid of smut? Well, if I search 'big dicks' I'll probably get something like this pic of a young Jared Leto touching himself.

I suppose it's okay,
if you're a Jared Leto fan, but -
hey, wait a minute -
when did I stop being a Jared Leto fan?

Looks like the question must be begged:
WTF, Madeline!
U goin' all uptight snooty chick on us or what?

I should think not. Gasp! I mean - No freakin' way! I kin prove it, too. Would an uptight snooty chick post this pic on her blog?



Lookit her, all cute in her French maid's costume, sniffin' some guy's underpants.
Actually, the thing I like best about this picture is that it's called 'nurse+ad. jpg'
'Oh nurse! Night nurse! My pain is getting worse!' That's what I'd say.
He'd say 'Oh nurse! It hurts so bad! Please sniff my pants and in so doing relieve my agony! He'd add, sweetly, 'And if you'd do it wearing a French Maid costume, I'd be most obliged.'

This has been fun. Except for the cloud sofa, which is from www.markstechnologynews.com, all the above images were found by searching 'sexy guys' or 'sexy guys hanging out', even the nurse cleverly disguised as a maid.

I'm off to bend my rep before it gets all straight and narrow. How? By writing a story I've been noodling for the last ten days or so and submitting it to Sacchi Green's upcoming antho Lesbian Cops, which is just about the best title I've seen in awhile.

I wonder what I'd get if I searched images of lesbian cops . . .



Ah, one of the officers from the TV show 'The Wire'. Now, what if I search 'Lesbian cops hanging out . . .'

Crime Time

It's been so long since I've posted that I almost got lost getting here. For a mad moment I thought I was Jeremy's fedora . . .

But I'm okay now. The thing is, I've been *helping* my dear friends Laurie Clayton and Michael Crawley. They've written a crime novel for Max Crimes, a new imprint from John Blake Publishing Limited, created especially for Maxim Jakubowski.



And they've been busy! See, John Blake Publishing sends the copy edited manuscript to the authors, in this case Michael and Laurie. The master document is also sent via email. The authors are asked to go through the copy edited hard copy and accept or reject changes. Then the authors make the accepted changes to the master document.
When the process is complete, the master is emailed back to John Blake Publishing.

I pale to think that at one time I thought I might be a good copy editor. Gasp.
The hard copy of The Women's Club was covered in comments and symbols. She (we know in this case the c.e. was a she) did not miss a thing. From the embarrassingly obvious (Johnny Walker should be Johnnie Walker) to the minutest detail (ellipses is done like so: space dot space dot space dot space) and beyond (an en dash is different from an em dash is different from a hyphen, doncha know.)

I do now!



Actually, poor Laurie worked on it solo for about two weeks, agonizing over each suggested change. One day she opened the emailed copy (which is called, appropriately enough, soft copy)and worked on it all day without actually ever saving it to her computer.

The work was lost. She lost her mind.

After that, Michael took over. He, having a much greater ego than she, zipped through the rest of the document accepting and rejecting and making the accepted changes to the soft copy and voila!

Once the doc had been emailed back to the publisher, it was time to get their publicity package together.

Publicity package? Huh?

That's right! Along with the usual bio and cv they were asked a number of questions pertinent to the process of publicizing their novel. And once that was done, an eight by ten glossy of each of the authors was requested.

Ye Gods!

Yesterday Laurie (fresh from the hairdresser's) and Michael (fresh from a nap) experienced their very first photo shoot. Nothin' fancy, you understand.

The digital pictures were sent off to John Blake's Head of Marketing, thus completing their latest round of work on The Women's Club.

Phew.

The front and back cover is ready. When the novel is published in the fall, and I'll make sure to let you know the date when we - er - they do, they'll receive their third and final advance.

Third? You mean? Yes, John Blake gives their authors a first advance on signing of the contract and a second when the completed manuscript is accepted. A third when the book is published.

Oh Gawd it's all so civilized. But then, from the signing of the contract to the novel's publication is about a year, so there's time to do all this stuff.

It's been great. I'm really excited. You know, for Michael and Laurie.

And don't they make a nice couple when they're all cleaned up and smiling for the camera?



'I love my editor' picture from www.gawker.com
Copy edited page of Toronto Star from http://fletter.tumblr.com