When I was 46...

This is me, two weeks ago :-)

It was my 47th birthday this week, so in order to keep a record of (and hopefully a brake on) my slide into senescence, here is is my annual post on Fings Wot I Have Done For the First Time Ever.

When I was forty-six, for the first time

• I bought a  Xmas-scented room-freshener (Dude, not a good start!)

• And a Kardashian Kollection dress (!) ... which I reluctantly gave away, because my boobs weren't big enough to fill it.

• I went to three nerdy non-erotica conventions: Eastercon, Nine Worlds Geekfest, and the World Fantasy Convention. I was on panels for two of these. Scary!

• I ate at a Yo Sushi with the awesome little conveyor belt thingy!! Woooo!

There were four of us, I swear

• I went to a Ripley's Believe It Or Not, which was perfect entertainment for me. My whole life is a "believe it or not."

• I read all four Gospels and the Book of Genesis all the way through. No, I never did that as a Christian. Most Christians don't.

• I went to the Chelsea Flower Show, and the world-famous Ashmolean and Pitt-Rivers museums in Oxford.

 

This is serious anthropological research, I'll have you know

• I missed a plane.

• I started a course of IPL. It hasn't worked yet.

• I bought a Kindle, and discovered just how much truly shit self-published stuff there is out there :-0

• I attended Smut by the Sea and had a great time :-)

• I took my parents on holiday abroad (and we got on well!).

• I visited three new countries: Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia. All of which are beautiful and fascinating and deserve many future return visits.

Woot! This is an ACTUAL PROP from Game of Thrones - They use false walls and doors to close off streets during filming. Taken in Split, Croatia.

• I discovered a new god.

• I swam with the fishies in the Red Sea - and didn't, despite my dire predictions, get eaten by a shark.

• My picture featured in the Daily Mail Online.

• We finished our nine-year-long Dragonlance Dungeons & Dragons campaign ...and started on campaigns in 4th Edition D&D and Deadlands. (Huzzah, more rules-systems to learn...)

• I fell in love with a BLUE WIG, and wore a bodystocking in semi-public. Twice, in fact. Different bodystockings too, but the same wig. Is lycra addictive?

• I wrote Cover Him With Darkness, the novel, and finished These Fierce Enchantments, a third short story collection. Both should be published in 2014.

• I heard the, ahem, "backward masking" on Stairway to Heaven.

• I switched to heavy-duty facecreams for Older Skin. (Boooo!)

• I went sea-kayaking (Yaaaaaay!)

• I drank a pumpkin spiced latte, and a Long Island iced tea. I ate white truffles.

• I spent a night (awake) in a nuclear bunker.

• I started wearing eyeliner every day, even in private.

On that showing I reckon I'm only halfway dead so far, give or take :-) Not many publications this year though - books are like buses: none get printed for ages and then they all come out at once. Maybe I should stop arsing around on kayaks and get stuck into some writing?