Jacey Bedford's Journal

Good year? Bad year?

Good on the whole, I think. Nobody died. Nobody started a feud. Nobody got sick. That's a win already. Only two days to go. So far, so good! Of course, nobody won the lottery either, but, hey, that just makes us the same as (almost) everyone else.

Business? Steady. No surprises. No huge profits, but we ain't gone broke yet. One piece of bad news on the band front, but the effects won't kick in until 2010. Credit crunch is certainly not helping but we'll see what the new year brings before we panic.

Best Beloved? Making progress on his pet project - the barn restoration. Lost a tooth - by breaking the stump of a crown - very annoying. Wish we could afford the £2,000 for a proper bridge or titanium post. That's when having no spare cash is a bummer.

Kids? Number One Son returned from one scholarship in the USA and embarked on another in Rome. Number One Daughter secured a permanent production job with a TV company and got engaged to her partner.

Parents? Only one left between us (my mum) and at nearly eighty-four she's spry and still driving her 'old ladies' around, many of whom are younger than she is.

Writing? Two short stories published, but no book deal yet despite a couple of apparent near misses. Did 60,000 words on a new book in November, pacing alongside NaNoWriMo, proving once more I'm a burst writer and if I need to crank out the wordage, I can.

Village? Got the £230,000 lottery grant to rebuild the village hall that we've been working on for the best part of three years. (Well done, team!)

Village Festival? Bugger! Another wettish year. Didn't make a loss but could have done so much better with a sunny day.

Personal? Got new hairstyle. Need new legs.

Happy 2009 to one and all.

From several people

( Behind the cut )

After an appalling failure to read much at all in the first half of the year I finally managed to get reading in the last couple of months. My total for 2008 is still abysmal, though.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Memory, Winterfair Gifts, Diplomatic Immunity, Komarr, Falling Free, A Civil Campaign, Labyrith. The Curse of Chalion (reread)

Tania Huff: The Fire's Stone (reread)

Mercedes Lackey: Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, Magic's Price

Karen Traviss: Judge, Star Wars Republic Commando Series 'Order 66' (For god's sake don't dismiss Karen's Republic Commando books as franchise fiction, they're as good as any military SF you'll find and a lot better than most.)

Liz Williams: The Demon and the City

Jaine Fenn: Principles of Angels

Alan Garner: Thursbitch

J. V. Jones: The Barbed Coil

Terry Pratchett: The Last Continent

Rachel Caine: Thin Air

N.M. Browne: Warriors of Alavna, Warriors of Camlann (and the next one in manuscript - thanks Nicky!)

Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair

Trudi Canavan: The Magician's Guild, The Novice, The High Lord

Robin Hobb: The first in the Soldier Son trilogy, but I threw it at the wall when nothing had happened after the first 300 pages and blanked its name from my mind. Pity because i liked the first Farseer trilogy.

Terry Goodkind: Wizard's First Rule (Pressed on me by a friend. I skipped huge chunks of the middle bit and refused the next in like politely. And what was all that BDSM bit about?? And they're making this into a TV series??? Oh.)

And of course there was Fabulous Whitby edited by Sue Thomason and Liz Williams, and Mystery Date, edited by Denise Little, both anthologies containing one of my stories.

There are probably more but they've slipped my mind for now. It's not such a short list as I feared, but I appear to be guilty of a) reading only fantasy and light SF and b) reading mostly books by women authors.

Ho-hum...