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I’m on Twitter

Jan17

In my day job I have to tweet about the technical publications I’m working on. I’d been avoiding it all last year on the basis that I’m on LinkedIn and a few other places, and after all social media isn’t just Twitter. Then I had my appraisal in December and I was ‘encouraged’ to tweet. Specifically to tweet. I offered to write a blog, although I’ve no idea what I’d say, but tweeting is the thing, so tweeting it is.

And I feel a bit weird about it. It feels like going into a room crowded with strangers and shouting something random out. This makes me anxious. But of course, I am now tweeting. It’s kind of addictive. And I figured if I could tweet about boring work stuff then I should also be able to tweet about what I am passionate about – writing.

If you want to follow me, I’m @BoudicaM. Anybody else out there in this strange world? Leave your twitter names in the comments.

Viking: King’s Man

Dec20

This week I’ve read Viking: King’s Man by Tim Severin and The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge. I only intend to comment at any length on fiction as my comments are primarily my observations about how novels are written and constructed. Having said that, The Secret Life of Trees was wonderful. Trees are brilliant.

Viking: King’s Man is the final part of a trilogy. Books 1 and 2 are Odinn’s Child and Sworn Brother, both of which I read some time ago. First of all it should be noted that anything that has vikings in it is automatically good. Can’t get enough vikings. (Hmm, things that begin with V?)

The Viking trilogy is presented as a memoir written by Thorgils Leifsson at the end of a long and eventful life. It is in the first person and there’s no other pov that is really appropriate for a memoir. This format also allows the author to comment on the events that he’s relating. Severin’s scholarship is evident throughout and at times it reads more like a history text than a novel. If I wasn’t already interested in the subject matter this might have felt quite intrusive.

There’s not much more to say: overall it was an entertaining read, competently written, but didn’t stand out from the crowd.

In other news, I’ve added a link to my Bookwormr profile so you can have a look at my reading list. It’s on the right, just below the fold.

Bookwormr

Oct10

I discovered the most fun thing the other day. Well, alright, not the most fun thing, but it is pretty entertaining.

Bookwormr is social media for people who like to read. You create lists of books that you have read, are reading, or want to read. For those you’ve read you can rate them and write synopses or reviews. As it’s social media you can link to all your friends. My user name is BoudicaM and it currently says ‘BoudicaM has no friends’. Tragic, yet hilarious.

Apparently it can be linked to one’s Facebook profile, but I haven’t managed to figure that out yet.

Privacy

Aug12

I now have a facebook profile, not that there’s anything on it. I’m feeling very wary about putting any personal information out there and have set my profile up so no-one can find it. Hee.

It has me wondering about privacy. I’ve had a LinkedIn account for ages and I love it for work. It is a reasonably full profile but it’s all about the role I do for my employer. I have no qualms about people knowing that persona. Which is the point, I guess, because it is a persona. My job involves a lot of networking and having this profile helps me do my job.

And of course, I have this blog on which I occasionally bare my soul. It is anonymous though to people I don’t know in the real world and it does only display part of me (even if it is a big, important part of me).

Writing stuff down always helps me think things through and it occurs to me that my wariness of facebook has to do with my dislike of being approached with enthusiasm, or as I like to think of it, over-familiarity.

If I think seriously about privacy I recognise that I enjoy being able to google people and a lot of my information is out there already. Hmm, lots to ponder. I guess I’ll have got over it when you see a facebook widget appear in the right hand menu.

On a writing related note, I got some positive feedback on my first critique for critters and I’ve written a second. I’ve done a bit more work on the novel – I have some issues with my characters having similar names!