IT’S SNOWING! I haven’t had a snow day since I was 17, but I also didn’t have to go into my office job today and was going to work from home regardless. Not remotely fair, and the desire to curl up with a book is immense. The snuggle struggle is real, you guys. But I have money to make and a university course to pass, so I loaded up some podcasts and have ended up having an unusually productive day? Maybe being locked inside the house with a foot of snow on the ground is a good way to focus haha. So here is how to have a snow day as an adult!
Step 1: Ughh. Just get it together.
I got showered and dressed and put perfume on to get into ‘the work mood’, which is weird because I never wear perfume when I work from home. Clearly that should change.
Step 2: Do your physio.
Wait, that’s just me.
Step 3: Chain yourself to your desk!
Shit I’ve done so far: some market research for Etsy, a section of my course (I’m studying women’s suffrage and hellooooo the only thing I’ll ever talk about at dinner parties ever again), cleared out some of my emails and done some graphic design. One of the designs is for this very blog’s sidebar:
The other is a cool Heroes of Olympus-inspired poster I’ve wanted to do for ages:
Step 4: But take lots of breaks to make a cup of tea and stare at your snowy garden!
Do you want to build a snowman? Yes. Do you want to go outside? No.
Step 5: Check your dogs are still alive
Both dogs refused to go outside this morning. Fred inspected the garden at midday and Donnie chanced it about half an hour ago. They have the right idea.
Step 6: Rinse and repeat until 5pm
Or whenever you normally clock off when you work from home!
YOU’RE WELCOME. I have to go and do some more physio now. I might also build a snowman.
A few weeks ago I was having a day of a sort of freelancer sports day, which involves logging into a load of freelancer websites and applying for as many writing or blogging briefs as possible. Usually I shy away from product review articles, because I like Indifferent Ignorance to be my own space, and because I’m terrified I’ll find myself in Private Eye’s Street of Shame column, accidentally supporting a company that promotes the Westboro Baptists or something. A few weeks ago, though, there was a brief open to review Blood of Olympus, and to get a free hardback copy of the novel.
‘Twas like Athena herself was smiling upon me.
I’d worked out, see, that I could afford either the physical or Kindle version of the novel, but probably not both – and if I ordered the physical, I wouldn’t get it until after I came home from Greece. But the gods had spoken. Or the Internet had, anyway. I applied for the brief and got it (first time ever that’s happened, although the application was 99% me gushing about how I was planning on doing a post on the book anyway).
Since I’ve now downloaded, read and had a little dance about the novel, I reckon I’d better make good on my contract. Here is the advert, which I was told to include…
…and here is the link to purchase it on Amazon. Don’t forget that your local bookshop will almost definitely contain a copy, since Uncle Rick is hot stuff in the teenage section.
Review Time
It’s probably the best thing I’ve picked up in the last six months, and I recently started The Da Vinci Code. For what it’s worth, I reckon Uncle Rick’s writing is more engaging, and his characters are more interesting. That said, I’ve known most of them for nine other books. Dan Brown might go into more detail about history and god stuff, but Rick definitely has the edge on toilet humour – although there was a fun crossover when they both mentioned the term Pontifex, which I believe is the Pope’s Twitter handle.
In terms of the novel’s characters, some of which I care about more than I do people I actually know, most of them get what they deserve. The rest of their lives aren’t written out in a prologue, but there’s enough there that Uncle Rick could do short stories or a miniseries if he wanted (and regardless of whether he does or not, fan fiction writers will probably never be bored again). There are parts I want to read over and over and it’ll probably take another read before everything settles into my head – but when I finished it, I did not throw my Kindle across the room, which was my instinct at the end of Mark of Athena. There are no huge cliffhangers, at least not to the point where I want to march up to Uncle Rick and bop him on the nose. I’d love to pick his brain about the novel and I’d love to read short stories about certain characters more, but I’m also intrigued to see his next work. It was a solid end to two huge, detailed series, but most of all I’m jazzed that there are children reading them who have characters and plots to which they can genuinely, clearly relate. Not bad for a story about the pagan gods, huh.
I guess none of that made much sense unless you’ve read the book. Go and do it. Go.
Competition Time
Oh, didn’t I mention that before? Well, snowflakes, the people who listed the brief also asked if reviewers would like to host a competition to win a hard copy of the book. Course I would, I said, I love my wonderful fellow readers. Apart from the shitheads who post spoilers, anyway.
So if you’d like to enter a competition to win a copy of the Blood of Olympus, please leave a review on this very site with a haiku stating what you think of people who post book spoilers online. Nothing too gross please, I’m in a good mood. But gross enough that I think ‘darling, you deserve to work in the Fields of Punishment’. One haiku per bitter person, please, and be don’t forget to include an email address. Aim to have it done by Monday 20th and I’ll pick my favourite and post the winner by Saturday 25th. The dudes who ran the brief will send you the copy directly, which is good because I’m not home for another three weeks.
Working on the Indifferent Ignorance Awards because 2014 is horribly close (I always hate the imminent year, like it’s bullying the current one or something) and I’m not sure what the ‘novelty’ categories should be. I mean, I’m thinking that I should get either the best friend ever award, or best card ever award, but I think in the spirit of democracy you guys should nominate me.
The OutsideThe Inside
From Chloe’s Tumblr. This is probably a good time to mention that I also have a Tumblr. I’m mostly telling you because if anyone stumbles across it and is all “Francesca y u no tell”, you’ll know my answer – you use phrases like “y u no tell”. Plus it’s a good way of keeping track of artists I like and is a nice forum to test-drive possible future work (as well as being somewhere for me to vomit my love for various things, which I will continue to do here but with more emphasis on making sense). I’m not abandoning you, little blog. I just sometimes need somewhere to express my inner book-based feelings. Oh sod it.
School has been hard lately and I’ve had to be careful about my arm so when Waterstones outdid themselves and delivered House of Hades a day before its official release, I spent most of the afternoon reading (it counts as independent study for Latin, yes?).
Uncle Rick, you are a genius. A trolling, cliffhanger-creating genius. Between Annabeth, Piper, Hazel, Reyna and Hermione Granger, I don’t know how young girls even consider looking up to bikini-clad airheads. I even warmed to Jason. I love Bob too – and Nico… was Nico always Nico or…?
Last night (well ‘tonight’ in terms of writing this because I’m bored on the train) I saw Jesus Christ Superstar at the O2. Before I start chatting let me get one thing clear:
I like Jesus. I am also, until further notice, an atheist (or agnostic if I’ve not watched the news). I also like politics and a good theatrical rock show.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a secular-theatrical-colourful-rock ‘n’ roll-interpretation of the Passion of the Christ and I love it. C’mon, man, there’s sparkles and dancing girls and everyone’s favourite atheist comic musician and did I mention it’s just as relevant now as it was in 1973 as it was in 90AD when John wrote his gospel?
Yep, I’m calling a trip to London Religious Studies work. Anyway. The centrum of the matter is that you don’t have to like ITV to be grateful that they found a dude who can sing like this. You don’t have to believe in the proposed divinity of a story to learn from it and if you wear your second-highest heels to London then your feet will hate you the next day.
Hallelujah!
Yesterday’s version of Gethsemane was better than that, by the way. As in, my ears hurt it was so good. Ah. I’m off to write about the downsides of globalisation. Do you think I could get this in there somewhere?
I thought I should let you know that recently I’ve been rereading and discovering the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus novels respectively, and that earlier I had a boogie to Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners, which featured in a film called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which starred Logan Lerman, who also had the lead role in the film version of Percy Jackson and the Lighting Thief, and Emma Watson, who played Hermione in Harry Potter, a series to which the Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus stories are compared, because they both have roots in Greek mythology, which obviously means Rick Riordan’s been nicking ideas off JK Rowling.
I hope that knowledge made your head hurt as much as it has mine. Let’s be infinite.
Francesca's Thoughts 