I haven't been around much, recently.

I wanted to mention that I am going to make a print-on-demand book of about a hundred of my formal poems. You can download the PDF for nothing and read it that way if you like. At some point in the near future there will be a printed version of the same thing. I always welcome comment and criticism.

Yesterday I went to mass first thing. Our priest had just come back from seeing his new granddaughter and was full of the news; it was very happy.

Then I went on to the dentist. They took X-rays of my teeth, but I kept gagging on the thing they put in your mouth, so they had to take a picture with the big X-ray machine. For that I had to take some of my piercings out, and some of them healed up in the time it took to put them back in again.

The dentist was very friendly and helpful. He says I have a broken wisdom tooth, and it'll have to come out. That will be next Tuesday, when the dental surgeon comes in. Until then, I have painkillers.

In the time I was waiting for the dentist, I mostly finished the last chapter but four of the current novel. I believe I might be able to get it done entirely today (Thursday) if I put my mind to it.

Later I went shopping for new trousers with Fin, since we're going to Tracy's wedding.

I cooked dinner (it was ravioli and meatballs) and while I cooked I talked to Kit on the phone: it was her birthday. So it was a pretty good day.

I've said this before, but I'll reiterate: anyone is welcome to a copy of Not Ordinarily Borrowable in exchange for posting a review (not necessarily a positive one!). Print publications are awesome, and blog posts are good too. Sending you PDFs is easier to manage, but I can post you a paper copy if needs be.

tl;dr: Borrowable didn't get into the third round because it's middle-grade fiction and this is a YA competition.

That means the synopsis was one of 2,000 selected (1,000 in each category) as possible winners from about 10,000 entries. Now the editors will read the first couple of chapters and decide whether it should go into the quarterfinal 500, which will be announced on March 23rd.

• Androcles and the Lion, Shaw Alphabet Edition (the hardback, not the paperback as in that video)
• Knuth's Art of Computer Programming
• Advanced CORBA programming with C++ (not sure what that's doing there)
• The X Window System, Scheifler & Gettys
• Elements of New Testament Greek
• The Sidney Sussex College Annual
• Thoughtcrime Experiments
• The Scheme Programming Language
• Ender's Game

I think I should sort them better.

I made this earlier this week; it was pretty simple. I thought I'd post an image in case anyone would like to see what it looks like.



I doubt anyone would want the whole thing, but if you do, it exists.

Those of you who don't read me on Twitter may like to know that Not Ordinarily Borrowable is now available on smashwords.com, where you can pay US$1.99 (about £1.20) to read the whole thing in HTML or PDF right in your browser, or download it in a variety of ebook formats. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

(And it's passed manual inspection there, which means that the book will be available on Barnes and Noble's ebooks site, in a few days.)