Slush and Satellites

Hi! Cookie?

Today I found out that I can actually make other pages for my blog, not just new blog posts. Oh and did I had fun with this. Now you have three new pages to go and visit if you so desire. The first is a little bit more about me and this blog, plus a slightly zany picture. The second and third pages are short synopses on the two novels I am currently writing/have written; Sparks and Soulless.

Speaking of Soulless, I have been doing quite a bit of writing on it today, managing again to hit the 3,000 word quota I have set for myself, bringing the total now to 64,000 words. Being able to do this gives me excited, fluttery tingles. I know that if I keep it up, I'll have the novel finished in no time at all. And then, then comes the fun part where I print out countless copies of the first few chapters of my precious baby and hope they don't end up in an agent's slush pile.

I have only ever submitted something to an agent once. This was one of the more recent versions of Sparks. It was quite a while afterwards when they sent me a very nice, polite rejection letter. My first rejection. I was actually quite thrilled. You're not a real writer until you get your first rejection, or so I've read.

If you have any tips on writing queries or getting an agent or a publisher or good links on such subjects, please don't hesitate to put them in the comments below. I'd love any help I can possibly get.

 

One such slush pile. *Cringe*

Today was interesting also for quite a few other reasons. My parents decided that it would be fun to go and cook our dinner out on a fire under the stars. And it really was. We lit the fire down the back of our property on the beach of our 'dam'. The dam is actually just a hole we dug back when we were developing the land. The tonne of red clay dirt that was removed went into building the pads for the house and my dad's giant shed. Anyway, this little hole in the ground is about eight foot or two and a bit metres at its deepest and has a water slide at the back.

So we lit the fire, waited for it to burn down to embers, then chucked some bacon and burger patties on the hotplate. When we had finished our rather delicious dinners, the fire had died down considerably, and with no moon, it was absolutely perfect star gazing weather. My family have always been avid star watchers. My father bought a powerful green laser pointer so that he could point out the satellites he saw in the sky. He also downloaded a rather ingenious application for his tablet that gives you a real time view of what objects can be seen in the sky each night. I have watched several times as the Russian International Space Station has passed overhead.

Tonight though, after spotting the normal satellites whizzing like little shooting stars across the sky, I noticed something rather odd. There  in the middle of the sky, I kept seeing something blink at me. So I sat and watched patiently - and it blinked again. My family didn't believe me until they saw it blink too. It was blinking at quite a consistent rate; about once every fifty seconds. So when we all got too cold and mosquito bitten and headed back inside, I decided to Google this strange phenomenon. The closest I can gather is that it is an old, disused communications satellite that floats up in the very outer atmosphere, moving very, very slowly. Sometimes they are sent into spins and can blink. This blink is the light from the sun reflecting of their assorted solar panels or dishes. I was actually quite proud of myself for spotting this unusual night-time occurrence.

Feeling: Happy and clean, but unusually cold for a Summer night.

Listening to: Thunderstruck by ACDC, an awesome Australian rock band.

Wearing: PJs again.

Eating: Had delicious burger as stated above, and a pine-lime flavoured popsicle for desert. It dripped into my hair while I lay on my back looking up my special little blinky piece of space-junk.