So... the plan was, this: come home, recover from the wedding and the shopping in Melbourne, write a few chapters of The Chaos Crystal and then toddle off to Supanova in Sydney in October, followed by a leisurely few weeks making like a database administrator while I fill in for someone on leave, and of course, coming home each night to knock out another chapter of my soon-to-be-overdue manuscript.

Scratch that plan...

Turns out October starts tomorrow and Supanova is in 2 weeks time. And the temporary "I think it starts at the end of October for a couple of weeks" real-live-job gig  starts on Monday. And it doesn't just go for "a couple of weeks", either. It's 6 weeks of actual, real live work! What was I thinking, saying yes to that???

Oh, and the builders rang to say they'd be back on Monday to start work on the rest of the renovations...

There's no way I'm missing Supanova. Sam Jones (you know... Flash!...Ahaaa!, Saviour of the Universe!) and Nicholas Brendan from Buffy will be there, among others, not to mention it'll be a great chance to catch up with Sonny Whitelaw, Marianne De Pierres, Marv Wolfman (we all bonded at Supanova in Brisbane earlier this year like high-school kids... hehehe). And I get to sign books on the Borders stand for two days and do some panels, too, which are great at Supanova because they're often filled with game designers rather than normal fantasy/sci-fi readers (is "normal fantasy/sci-fi readers an oxymoron?), and we get asked some really fascinating questions:) Which isn't to say we don't get asked fascinating questions by fantasy/sci-fi readers, but I have been asked if I understood the existential implications of Rocky III at a con once, so I think it's not unreasonable that I get a little worried....

Anyway, if you live in Sydney had don't have your tickets yet... get cracking, kids! It'll be a blast:) You can get them from Ticketek now.

So, I had to bite the bullet and ring the department Friday and tell them I'd be on the job for less than 6 days before I wanted 5 days off to visit Sydney. (I said it was for a conference. Which it is. Sort of) 

Now I have to get organised. I have to get the builders started. I have to organise the electrician and the cable guy to cable the wall before it's plastered. I have to finish the Palace of Impossible Dreams line edit and send it back. I have to finish the Wolfblade UK proof-read. And I'm up to having to write 2353 words a day in order to get The Chaos Crystal in on time. And I have to remember how to use Access, which I haven't even opened since the last time I temped in this job.

And for the next few days I am going to lie away at night wondering if anybody in the Department remembers that memo I sent on my final day when I was temping there the last time, telling them their big project was a complete waste of time and money, because I thought I'd never be back... *gulp*

The other review for Warlord that my Google Gizmo found for me comes from Curled Up With a Good Book.

This is a fairly long review, but as usual, with curledup.com's reviews (or, at least, in my experience, the reviews done by David Roy on their behalf), is scupulously fair and balanced. The word telethon doesn't appear once. Nor are there any pointless or irrelevant references to the Bush Administration. Eat your heart out Harriet Klausner:)

(Note to Glenda Larke - there is no mention of the word orgasm, either, Glenda. I suspect you only get one of those references in a review in lifetime. Unless you write books that deal with that sort of thing. Or you could fake it...hahahaha)

Be warned, the full review does contain spoilers from Wolfblade and Warrior. Naturally, this abridged version I've posted here only includes all the bits that make me sound talented and brilliant, while excluding anything even remotely hinting at criticism:)

"Jennifer Fallon is the most entertaining “new” fantasy writer I’ve found in a long time. Her books consistently grip me to the point that I almost have trouble savoring them; I have to race through them to see what she does with her characters....

Fallon’s gift for characterization again manifests itself in Warlord. These characters, who we’ve seen go through trials and trevails in both Wolfblade and Warrior, continue their growth, especially Damin. He really comes into his own in the book, becoming the character we’re familiar with from the “Hythrun Chronicles” books. He’s intelligent and compassionate but scary when he’s angry. We don’t necessarily get to see the rage that can possess him here, but it’s definitely simmering below the surface.

Marla is once again exquisite. She’s become the master manipulator, but Fallon also allows her to grow, and to eventually realize what she has become... She’s fully three-dimensional, and while she’s not always likeable, she’s always interesting to read about.

As is usual, Fallon’s prose is lovely, and her plotting is excellent. The ends of her chapters leave you wanting more, and some of them hit you like a punch to the gut...

...Prequels aren’t always successful, especially when we already know how everything turns out... Fallon succeeds not only in setting up ...two characters for the previous trilogy but also in examining the dangers when you become a mirror image of the person you’re trying to destroy. ...

I’ve enjoyed my stay in this world, an interesting world where Fallon refuses to bow down to political correctness... Fallon presents the world as it is, warts and all, and doesn’t try to make the story an allegory for real-world events. Instead, she tells an enjoyable tale, for which Warlord is the finale. I like that in an author, and I’ll miss these characters when I move on. That’s the sign that an author has done her job, and done it well..."

If you want to read the reasoned, rational and far less biased version, you'll have to go here.

I should have spent the day sorting out the house after being away for nearly 2 weeks, but there are a depressing number of window envelopes in the mail pile, so I decided to ignore them. No major financial institution in this country is going to fold if I don't pay them until next week. Then I found something to distract me. Google came to the rescue with it's automatic alert gizmo, letting me know of some more reviews, giving me a perfectly good reason to ignore anything remotely resembling ordinary everyday responsibilties.

God bless automated search gizmos, I say. I should introduce the Google Gizmo to Geraldine. Then I could have a GGG that works on the WWW...  or maybe I'd have a GPS that searches out whether or not roads actually exist, before sending you down them...

But I digress. The Google Gizmo alerted me to a review of Warlord on The Romantic Times site, which rather nicely says... This last book in Fallon's Wolfblade Trilogy can be read as a stand-alone, but it's better read as part of the set. Fallon does a great job of weaving interesting characters into great plots. This is an excellent read.

Aren't they sweet? Of course, they're not as quite as blunt, or as concise, as another review I saw of Stargate SG-1: Roswell, posted on Gateworld the other day which proclaimed...

I have two words. 'Fanboy orgasm'.

There's not a lot more you can add to a review like that:)

Well, I made it home in one piece. Ended up driving over 6500 km and have 0.03 credit left on my credit card:)

Firstborn now tells me it's a limit, not a target... dammit. I thought I was on a winner there.

Rumour has it they want the money back, too, but I'll believe that when I see it. Geraldine was very quiet today, mostly because I didn't turn her on. There is only one road between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs. Even I am not so geographically-challenged that I needed a GPS to find my way home:)

Wore a new t-shirt today, however, that says "God's busy. Can I help?" which got a comment at every single place I stopped along the way, including a ten minute review of The Da Vinci Code (bestest book he's ever, ever, ever read) from the guy at the service station in Coober Pedy who thought the t-shirt indicated my interest in religion.

I even got back to Alice in time to review Stardust for the ABC. Now I have to write a review, I suppose, and post it for them, too.

But right now, I'm going to take my dogs for a walk. I bought a really groovy doggy walker for Fluffy in Melbourne (her hips give out on long walks) and the other dogs look like they could do with the exercise. I know I could. Three days of sitting in a car is harder on the old body than it used to be:)

I have a sore throat too, but that's from singing along with the CD's in the car at the top of my voice because nobody else could hear me... I love long drives on my own:)

Clearly, today is Wide Load Wednesday in South Australia. This is the only reason I can think of to account for all the whopping great trucks trundling along the road with police escorts, because they're carrying, well, wide loads.

Mind you, I'm not talking road trains, which don't bother me at all, or a little bit over the edge-ish wide loads. I am talking taking up both sides of the road and we'll have-to-take-the-power-lines- down type of wide loads. You know, like houses...

A have a few words to say about people who move houses (pay attention, Trudi) on trucks. You can get your house onto a truck, fair enough, if you're willing to pay for it. And the police will give you a groovy escort with lights flashing and even sirens, if you're lucky. And then you can move your house. At about 10kph. That means all the other cars on the road, driven by people who might want to reach their destination 900klm away in daylight, because after dusk, there's a serious kangaroo/feral camel/wild horse/crazy emu problem on the roads in the outback and it's dangerous... well, these people do not appreciate sitting behind a house, bimbling along at 10kph, adding a whole hour and a half to their already-9-hour-long trip, because someone woke up one morning and said, hey! I've got a great idea! Let's move the house...

Are you listening, Trudi? :)

So, other than the 6 houses (yes, that's right, 6 of the bloody things) and two other wide loads that looked like alien spacecraft (actually, I  have no idea what they were, but they were big and round and covered with tarps), I have arrived in Coober Pedy in one piece. Geraldine behaved herself and didn't try to send me off into a mine shaft, this time, too, and the cop who was chasing me for speeding broke off the chase to go after someone heading in the other direction who was obviously speeding way more than I was. Talk about lucky.... hehehe.

The only mystery that now remains unsolved (other than what was under those tarps with the police escort), what what the University of Michigan was doing 200klms south of Coober Pedy, in the middle of nowhere, driving slowly along the Stuart Highway in car covered in flashing yellow lights.

Don't have any idea what they were doing, but they were doing it very conscientiously:)