The Dogini Diaries

Collaborative writing

The husband and I are trying to 'do' a book together. I say 'do' rather than write as I am doing all of the writing - but he's got a really important role - he's helping me devise a great plot.

I figure he's the perfect candidate... He has a little time off, he's smart, loves books, has a good imagination and is male. The last point is of particular interest to me as I want to write a fantasy/sci fi story that will appeal to both boys and girls. Plus he has a degree in physics and can tell me when the sci fi goes waaay past the possible limits and turns into... er... 'fi'.

Then I just have to get my butt in the seat and start writing. I thought that I'd relish a couple weeks off after finishing my non fiction kidsGo projects, but I'm eager to get back into the swing of things - and it's lovely to not have to do tons of research too.

 

The Hills Are Alive, With the Sound of Music(?)

Over the last couple of evenings, in the interests of Knowledge (and of finding some background music for the book trailer I spoke about last week), I've been randomly clicking albums on Jamendo.com, subjecting myself to all sorts of bizarre tunes.  

As I wasn't sure what type of music I wanted, I decided that I should start by checking out the 'tags' - ie the different categories of music that have been loaded onto the site. 

Before starting this task, I'd been smug in the knowledge that, along with retro stuff like jazz and rock, I knew what ska and emo sounded like... but looking at the mile-long list of musical styles on Jamedo, I was humbled; flabbergasted by the sheer number of genres I'd never even heard of.

It was clear that to find the perfect music was going to take a lot longer than I imagined. I managed to knock a few genres off the list of 'possibles' by name alone. I knew what I wanted wouldn't be found in the 'brutaldeathmetal', 'microtonal' or 'tribe' categories, but had no idea what chiptune, onirique or phyloexera was. There was only one way to find out...

Thankfully I managed to survive the musical surfing without making my ears bleed - though it was a close thing on occasion. I actually had quite a good time. Found some music I liked, and even some which might be suitable for the trailer. 

I also learnt that there are some genres I will never, ever warm to. Take Psicotropicodelia for example: the word looks like a parrot related disease, but the sample I listened to sounded like a horde of Orcs tearing each other to pieces and eating the remains. Mind you, if it's true that the next craze to hit YA will be zombies*, and I'm tasked with creating the trailer for a 'living dead' book, I already have the perfect music for it!

*This is a hotly contested question - Twilight spawned  many many vampire romance novels, but what will the next big thing be? Some say zombies, some say werewolves, and others say angels. I have some doubts about the zombie thing myself - you can create interesting romantic characters out of vampires (and for that matter, werewolves and angels), but the living dead? hmmmm... What do you think it will be?

Thanks to Hebedesign for the photo.

Slow Starts and Online Marketing Magic

I've been doing something very retro over the summer holidays - offline blogging, aka writing a diary. 

You'd have thought that would be enough to satisfy me, but each time I sat down with my pink notebook, I found myself missing my blogging fix and planning what I would write when I got home. 

So... it's odd that I've found it so difficult to start blogging again.

Every day since our return, I've told myself, I'll blog, once I've finished work - I'm in the middle of editing three novels for teens (not written by myself) - but there never seemed to be an end to the pile of urgent stuff, which had to be done instead. 

To be fair, due to the fact that we're nearly ready to to go to print on two of the books, there has been an unusual amount of research to do, and decisions to make. For example we've had to decide on cover design, layouts, and new-age marketing ideas such as how to go about holding an online book launch: what party games should we have? What about party favours? And, more importantly, what sort of virtual cupcakes should we serve? (Grace Lin set a pretty high bar for that kind of thing - as you can see at the online launch here, of her lovely book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.).

We pondered about blog tours. Were they effective? Who should we approach?

And the biggest project of them all - the making of the book trailer. We've been debating whether to use live action (like a film trailer) or to use photos, voice-overs and interesting film editing techniques. I think we've come to a consensus, so now all we have to figure out... is how we can persuade George Clooney to star in it.* 

See, I HAVE been busy.

Last night however, I realised that all of those excuses were just that - excuses, and that the real reason for my inaction was that I didn't know what to blog about. Like the person who feels guilty at not writing a long overdue letter, but continues to put off writing it until he has enough time to pen a huge, wonderfully entertaining missive (ie never), I'd been stymied by the huge list of things I could/should/would maybe blog about.

So, I decided to ditch the entire list. But then, I still had the dilemma of what to write.

My summer holiday? Yes, I thought, I should at least mention my trip, but, what aspect of it?

The modern and classical art I sought out around Europe? The gastronomic delights? Philosophical musings on communism? My compulsion to bake scones everyday whilst in Cornwall - with related trivia about how clotted cream is made? Should I ramble on about architecture? Document the fishing trip from hell (hint: some of the fisherfolk fed the fish their breakfast)? 

For a while, I even toyed with the idea of transcribing my entire paper diary to the blog.

You'll be glad to hear I decided against it. Nor will I upload the hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of photos I took - mainly because I'm saving them to enthrall/bore the pants off any friend who professes an interest in them, and doesn't change the subject quickly enough when I offer to fetch the photo album(s). 

Friends, consider yourself warned.

Luckily, whilst procrastinating, I stumbled upon this site, and had a brainwave... I would encapsulate my five and a half week journey around Czech Republic/Austria/Italy/UK; of being awed by sights both natural and man made; of walking all day till we were footsore to sitting in a traffic jam for hours; of being roasted by the sun and alternately shivering in the biting coastal winds; of eating, drinking and relaxing with friends and family, into a haiku.

Here it is:

A summer of fun

It was hot, and cold.

we walked, saw sights, laughed with friends.

roll on next summer!

*I am, unfortunately, kidding.  

On Addictions and Operation Declutter

The declutter fairy perched on my right shoulder was wearing a simple shift, was barefoot and had her hair tied up in a pony tail. No make-up, naturally. Every time I picked something up to inspect it, she'd glance up and say airily, "Yeah, that's junk. Chuck it."

The packrat fairy on my left shoulder wasn't so calm. Clutching the lapels of her 1980s power suit, she shifted her Bag o' Stuff (containing essentials such as an 8-track player, a pair of espadrilles, a Duran Duran album and an instrument of torture called the Epilator), smoothed down her 70s perm, and hollered: "NO, DON'T DO IT! IT MIGHT COME IN USEFUL!"

If you guessed from the above that I was spring cleaning, and that the inner me often channels the packrat fairy, you'd be right.

I did manage to ditch a lot of junk by gritting my teeth and barely looking before consigning the items to the bin bag. But then came the hard bit: Decluttering the bookshelves.

I admit it. I have a problem. 

It's called Ican'tpassabookshopwithoutgoinginandbuyingstuffitis. 

I also have a related condition called butIlovethatbookandcan'tpossiblygetridofititis. 

OK, full disclosure. My name is Mio Debnam and I am a book addict.

I console myself that it is better than having an addiction to something really expensive and bad for your health, like heroin... or designer heels (yes, really - shoes are bad for the health of both your wallet and your feet! Have you seen this season's killer heels? Tres sexy, and just dandy if you only have to walk the red carpet, but totally blister and bunion inducing otherwise).

Books are educational, interesting, eye opening and mind expanding, and can be shared with friends and family... Plus as someone who works in the publishing industry, I have an excuse to love and collect books - right? 

As I sat there, making excuses so that I didn't have to start the annual bookshelf clear out, I suddenly remembered a news article I'd read about someone who had obsessively collected books and magazines until their home was full to the brim of teetering stacks of text. The collector had come to a grisly end, due to a book avalanche.

Whilst my family wasn't in any danger of being buried alive, looking at the profusion of bookshelves in my home - each shelf tightly packed, mostly two books deep - and the piles of books stacked in various places, I did have to acknowledge that Something Had To Be Done.

So, taking a deep breath and squaring my shoulders, I began. I started on the top shelf - the one for maps, travel guides etc. Instantly, my hand alighted on something which looked like a surefire 'chuck' - a 1982 guide called 'Nightlife in London'. 

I carried it confidently over to the discard pile, but then I started wondering if I might need it for research reasons - to add period flavour to a book I've outlined, which is partly set in 80s London. After a bit of dithering, I put it on the 'maybe' pile instead.

One by one, deep into the night I went through my shelves. It was a painful experience. Many, many hours later, I finished. I had a tiny pile of books for the bin - beloved books which had made the cut in previous years, but were now so old, so musty, mouldy and spotted, that I was afraid they would give anyone who opened them a dastardly lung disorder.

There was a larger pile of repeats. As we are known as a book loving family, many of the gifts we receive are books. Often, we already have a copy... or two, or three - if the book happened to be a bestseller and several people had the same idea. 

Then, finally, there was the Maybe pile - a vast stack of over a hundred books for all ages... Books that we had enjoyed but I felt we might be able to part with, if absolutely necessary. 

At that point, I had to totter to bed, exhausted with the emotional turmoil I'd had to endure in choosing which books to discard.

The next day, I called the husband (who was on the other side of the world, on a business trip) for moral support. "I'm not sure - some of the maybe books might come into use when I need to talk about a particular style of writing, or a particular author, or for research, or for..." I babbled, part hoping that he would agree and tell me to reinstate them all.

Luckily, the husband is a clever fellow. He murmured in an understanding way, then reasoned quietly: "But, if you clear some shelf space, you will be able to buy more when we go to the UK." 

He'd hit on the only reason good enough to make me let go.

Within a couple of hours, I'd contacted charities, and arranged for various friends to come and take all they wanted. And now, a few days later, our home is looking far sleeker and clutter free than it has in ages.

I'm so proud that I managed to do it - and the fact that lots of people have new books to enjoy puts a smile on my face too.  I'm totally Mrs Smug. 

Now all I have left to do, is to buy an extra large suitcase to fill with all those new releases, and countdown to departure - Waterstones and Foyles, here I come!

Essays, Chyrons, Babies and Other Indigestible Things

I read some essays written by teenagers this week. They were, for the most part, pretty good. 

However... I couldn't help but feel nostalgic for the days when a thesaurus wasn't just a single mouse click away.

Not that I'm against using a thesaurus to search for the 'perfect' word, of course - a word that more finely captures the nuances of what you want to say. It's just that, these days, people don't seem to care so much about finding the right word, as finding a longer, more intellectual sounding word, with which to gussy up their writing. 

I suspect that some don't even bother to check the exact meaning of the new word, before clicking 'accept'.

Take an example I found in one of the essays: the writer used words like pontificate and ameliorate in a sentence that (I think) sets out to say: 'Let's consider how the situation could be improved'.

What bugged me the most, was the fact that the writer clearly hadn't bothered to look up the definition of 'pontificate', which is: 'to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner'*, though, ironically, it was rather apt, as pompous was exactly how the sentence sounded. 

There were other examples, in other essays. In some cases, large clusters of obscure/complex/important sounding words were used in long multi-clause sentences to say something so simple, that I had to read the sentences a couple of times to make sure there wasn't a hidden meaning. There wasn't.

As I worked through the stack, a memory of a long-ago tea party popped unbidden into my mind: The tea party in question had been organised to celebrate the long awaited visit of someone's sister - a very forthright and outspoken lady. Unfortunately for all concerned, the visitor sat next to the chatterbox of the group. 

As the afternoon progressed, the visitor became visibly irate at the unceasing stream of machine gun chatter being directed at her. Several times she tried to interject, and failed. Finally, she'd had enough. Surging to her feet, she spat out, "God! Did you swallow a radio for breakfast or something?!" and stomped off, leaving an uncomfortable silence.

I guess I must have been feeling irritated too, as it was her remark that came back to me as I shuffled through the papers. Only, in my mind, the word 'radio' had been replaced by the word 'thesaurus'... and it was followed by the uncharitable thought that, though a thesaurus had been swallowed, it clearly hadn't been fully digested!

However, having slept on it, I see things in a more charitable light, now. As regular readers of this blog know, I'm occasionally guilty of using a big word myself (though never in an attempt to make myself seem more erudite... er, I mean, clever...), and I love looking up the etymology of different words (remember this?), so I had to concede that it must be a good thing that kids are actively trying to expand their vocabulary. 

Just as long as they don't lose sight of the fact that long and complicated isn't necessarily better than simple, lucid and concise, and that words grouped together in a thesaurus don't always mean the same thing.

Speaking of expanding one's vocab, I added a word to my vocabulary too this week. The word 'chyron' to be precise.

Also known as the 'lower third', 'superbar', 'name strap', 'aston', or more prosaically, 'caption', the chyron is the text or graphic (eg the name/title of the person being interviewed or the tag-line of a news story) which you see on the bottom bit of your television screen. The word itself is derived from the name of a major US supplier of caption generators.

But I haven't told you the best bit yet - I encountered the word when I read a news story on Huffington Post titled 'Chyron of the Day - Baby found in Sandwich'. It concerned a news story about a baby that had been kidnapped by the father. Luckily, the child had been found safe and sound in a town called, drum roll please, Sandwich, USA.

'Mothers and headline writers alike celebrated', says the post, above a screen shot of a news story with the caption, 'Police have found missing 11-month old baby in Sandwich'! 

Isn't that a corker? It awoke my 9 year old soul and made me giggle. If you ever find a similarly 'punny' headline or chyron, do write in and tell me - I love 'em!

*pontificate also means to carry out the duties of a pontiff (ie high ranking cleric - eg pope) but somehow I don't think that is what the writer was saying either!

Thanks to Sakurako Kitsa for the photo above.

Cheese!

It's been a busy month. I kept starting blog posts, but tasks such as having to work through piles of editing, reviewing manuscripts, and the making of giant cheeses (more on that later) and rats masks kept getting in the way... as well as the important task of supporting the daughter through a month of GCSE exams, and helping the son learn his lines for the school play.

As it turned out, the easiest tasks turned out to be the last two, whilst the most difficult was the manufacturing of fifty four rat masks for the P6 production - who would have thought that making and attaching cardboard and paperclip nose bridges to a bunch of EVA masks could be so time consuming? 

The most satisfying task, however, was the making of the cheese.

"WHAT?" I hear you gasp. "Making a giant cheese was more satisfying than helping the offspring?!"

Um, yes. 

In all fairness, this was mainly due to the fact that the offspring were pretty organised with their exam/school play prep, and apart from needing hugs, regular meals and the occasional chunk of chocolate, were fairly self sufficient. I had to keep telling myself that this was a good thing, and that it was all thanks to the years of selfless nagging that I'd done in the past, but it did make me feel slightly redundant.

The cheese, however, was completely helpless. It couldn't do a thing for itself. 

It was completely dependent on me from the moment I described the size of the wedge I needed to the man in the polystyrene shop, to the minute I finished painting 3D 'holes' onto its dayglo yellow surface. I'll let you in on a little secret - it was nice to feel so needed, and it was scary how proud I was to have 'given birth' to it.

When it made its appearance later that week in the school play, I felt a surge of pride which was almost, but not quite, as big as the one that hit me when the son strode out on the stage as the evil Mayor of Hamelin. 

I must say though, that the son's sense of comic timing and his singing was a lot better than that of the cheese, which was rather stiff, and inaudible to boot.

It's lucky, then, that it was the son, rather than the cheese, who had to deliver the valedictorian speech at graduation a little later on...

The day after my son and cheese's triumphant stage debut felt like a huge anticlimax. The school had closed with very little notice after the performance and the graduation,  (the two events having been hastily brought forward due to the government closure of all kindergartens and primary schools to stop the spread of swine flu), and after weeks of frantic activity, we suddenly had nothing to do. The daughter was grumpy, as she still had two exams left, the son was bored, and I felt exhausted.

Things have improved a bit in the last few days - the son has lots of exciting things planned, and the daughter having finished her exams, is much happier and is officially on holiday. 

She's out celebrating the end of term tonight, by going to the late show of a movie with her friends, so I'm in the novel position of waiting up for her.

Instead of pacing, I've been filling my time by blogging, but I've been watching the clock, too. The husband is away in New York and the son is in bed so it's quiet in the flat. I only have the cheese to keep me company... and, as I said before, it's not much of a conversationalist.

I'm starting to feel a bit of the old 'empty nester syndrome' again.

Perhaps I would feel better if I were to create another giant polystyrene foodstuff? 

Let's see... I've made a giant peach (the son, who is called James, wanted to go to a Book Parade one year as 'James and the Giant Peach', so...) and a giant cheese.... 

What next? 

A gigantic char siu bao? (I wouldn't even have to paint the polystyrene!), a watermelon?? A pork pie?

Any insipration and ideas will be gratefully accepted!

 

Are you experiencing Getting Olderitis yet?

Recently, a friend asked me if the daughter's graphic tablet (a sort of electronic drawing pad linked to the computer) was easy to use. 

To my shame, I had to admit that whether one deemed it 'easy to use' or not, depended on who you were. 

Although I consider myself quite able with technology, I didn't do very well with the graphic tablet. The results of an hour's worth of fiddling were a few monochrome chicken scratchings. The daughter, on the other hand, started producing astonishingly detailed works of art using multiple 'brushes', 'pens', filters and colours, not more than three seconds after it came out of the box. 

I could blame the failure, on my well documented lack of artistic talent - people routinely mistake drawings I've done as the work of my offspring when they were toddlers (newsflash: by age three, they were both far more talented than I am presently) - but actually I think my main problem was Getting Olderitis.

You know how parents say things like, "Just wait until you're older/have children/have to look after a family. THEN you'll understand," while their child rolls their eyes, sighs and looks (not surreptitiously enough) at their watch? 

Well, I'm finally beginning to understand what they were talking about.

How many of you have, upon seeing your parents bumbling around, snatched the video recorder controller from them in a fit of teenage exasperation, set the recording times, and returned the controller with a condescending smile? 

Did you also mutter, "I'm never going to be that inept when I'M older!" while you were 'helping' them? 

I'm guilty of both the above.

However, having fallen on the other side of the fence a few times of late, I've resolved to be more patient in the future, when my mother calls and says dramatically,  "The computer is broken again: the email I was typing disappeared while I was typing it!"

To be fair, I've kept up pretty well. I'm still very au fait with the software and bits of equipment I use - I troubleshoot all my computer issues, I know and can use all the different settings on my camera , and I can even operate my hi-tech oven, which came with a manual that rivalled the phone directory for thickness. 

But, I seem to have lost that instinct young people have, for effortlessly being able to operate any and all electronic gizmos without so much as a passing look at an instruction booklet.

Getting Olderitis is scary. You think that you have it beat, then it sneaks up on you and coshes you on the head when you least expect it.

Here's another example. I thought that I could operate every standard appliance in the house. I mean, how hard could it be, right?

Well, due to the fact that I never watch TV - I much prefer to read or go to the cinema (another symptom of Getting Olderitis?) - I found myself in the embarrassing position of being unable to make the TV work the other day, when the cable man came to check it. Who could have guessed that you had to turn the stereo on too? In the end, I had to call the son out. He looked at me, rolled his eyes... turned it on, and exited.

Well, at least he didn't sigh or look at his watch.

Things can only get worse, as kids continue to get more savvy. Some parents are already finding out the hard way. For example, did you hear about the 3-year old in Wellington, who, chancing upon an internet auction site her mum had been buying toys on, bid on, and won the auction for a NZ$12,300 earth excavator?

Apparently the first her mum knew about it was when she got an email from the vendor saying, 'I think you'll love this digger' and the accompanying bill!

Whoops...

Looking yourself up (and down)

Today, I googled myself - for the first time in years. I decided to do so, as a result of someone telling me that they had looked me up on the 'Net. Luckily, nothing untoward turned up, and I breathed a big sigh of relief. Not because I do anything dodgy, mind, but because the last time someone started off the sentence with, "I googled you today..." it was followed by, "...did you know that some of the links take you to a porn site?"

Imagine my horror, when I discovered that someone had taken vast sections of a writing website and somehow grafted it onto their porn site, so that anyone doing a search of a writer featured on the latter would be directed to a page with extremely dubious content. 

It took Google several days to fix the problem, and the writers' site had to close down  to sort out the cyber-mugging. Whilst all this was happening, I chewed my nails and obsessed about the number of people who might have seen the link and wondered about my character.

Fortunately, at about the day 2 mark, I had a reality check and realised, that as I wasn't Angelina Jolie (or even Angelina Ballerina), it was very unlikely that anyone had googled me at all, apart from the person who had called me. Which was a relief... 

I also realised that I was lucky to have a unique name - a blend of an unusual Japanese name and a fairly uncommon English surname - as this makes the odds of any other Mio Debnams being out there, doing dodgy things and sullying 'our' good name, very low. 

Mind you, even having a naughty homonymous self isn't the worst case scenario - just imagine if you were the other Britney Spears - or 'No, no, not that Michael Jackson'!

How bad would that be? It makes the mind boggle doesn't it?

Let's do a social experiment... Next time you're on Google, look yourself up, and let me know if you find any alternative You, and whether they look like the type of person you wouldn't mind being, or would definitely NOT want to be!

Telling Tales

Well I did it, I actually managed to write 7 picture book drafts in 7 days. Of them, at least three are rather pathetic, but I think that two, or maybe even three have hope, given a rewrite and a spot of judicious polishing. 

Having said that, due to the breakneck speed of the NaPiBoWriWee challenge I haven't looked at the stories since I finished each one, so it's entirely possible that I'll open the documents next week (when possible I leave any new writing 'in my drawer' for at least a week before assessing it) and find out that they are dreadful. 

If that happens, I've resolved to try to save at least two of them! As Jack Gantos told us during his HK visit, writing the first draft is about 30% of the work. The rest is rewriting and honing. He claimed that this was his favourite part of the writing process. I can't say it's mine, but it is sort of exciting when you revisit something and find that it has promise. Fingers crossed that it happens this time!

In the meanwhile, I've been thinking about stories of a slightly different nature. The son's year group at school are about to start writing biographies of each other, and I've been invited in, to give a talk about why and how anecdotes are necessary in a biography to liven it up and to show (rather than tell) the reader what the subject is really like.

To find good examples of anecdotes, I've been trawling through a Word document I've been adding to since 1995 when the daughter first started saying hilarious things worth recording. The document, which runs to 31 pages and is nearly 15,000 words in length, is packed with memorable quotes from both the daughter and son with a few guest entries from other people, such as my mother*.

As the son will be in the audience for my talk, I (sadistically?) decided to pick out some funny anecdotes about him, to illustrate my points. Needless to say, he was horrified. In an effort to stop me, he told me that I would have to pay him, "a lot of money," were I to do such a heinous thing.

He was taken aback when I countered with a quick, "how much?" then engaged in a lively bargaining session. The upshot was that I managed to win the right to tell an anecdote about him for seventy HK dollars (less than US$10) - a small price to pay, especially considering I'd forgotten to give him his pocket money for the last three weeks. 

Little does he know that I've moved on from the anecdote about his sleeping habits which I'd been talking about at the time, and have instead settled on one concerning a nappy, a poo, and a large dog. Will he still talk to me after Wednesday? I hope so, as he's very amusing to chat to.

Stay tuned...

*My mother, who I credit for giving me a kooky sense of humour, appears in the Best Quotes document several times. How could I not include the person, who, amongst other things, once hissed, "there's a really rude woman who is always staring at me, whenever I glance over," before pointing discreetly to a mirror about six metres away. To be fair, as she was getting her hair done, she didn't have her specs on, and she did roar with laughter when informed that the rude woman was her own reflection!

The Big Singalong, 'Aporkalypse' and A Book A Day Challenge

Last Tuesday, a choir composed of 850 kids from eleven local junior schools held a concert. The son was in the choir so I was one of the adoring crowd. The performance was excellent - the kids, all decked out in blue, sang (tunefully) with gusto and verve - as well as clapping and dancing in perfect synchrony.

All quite amazing considering that they'd rehearsed as a single entity for the first time that day. We were all impressed...

It's a shame the stadium staff weren't as impressive. In the middle of one song, a cleaner suddenly appeared, stage left, holding a mop. Seemingly unaware of the hundreds of singing children around her, she wandered through the middle of the choir. It was like a scene out of a Monty Python sketch. Reaching the centre of the 'stage', she stopped and looked around in wonderment, before putting her head down and plodding on. Eventually, she disappeared into the exit, stage right, dragging her mop behind her.

To the choir's credit, they didn't miss a note!

Actually, it's lucky that the concert took place when it did, as if it had been next Tuesday, the chances are it might have been postponed or cancelled. Since the confirmation that a Mexican  visitor has been diagnosed with swine flu, Hong Kong has gone into hypersafe mode, and rumours are swirling about that schools may be closed again.

Strangely, both my children are praying that the rumours remain just that. The daughter, who is currently on study leave pending her GCSE exams, doesn't want schools to close because, "That would be, like, so unfair, since we're having our study leave and it doesn't help us!" whilst the son is really looking forward to his P6 summer production, the graduation parties and all the fun events lined up this term and would hate to miss any.

Apart from nagging everyone to wash their hands, I'm keeping fairly calm about the potential 'Aporkalypse' (as the situation has been brilliantly named by Maggie Koerth-Barker) - even though the fact that there are people walking around town in masks, and all antiseptic wipes have sold out, are a horrible echo of the 2003 SARS ordeal.

As the patient himself is said to be recovering, I've reserved my pity for the poor guests staying at the Wanchai Metropark Hotel - the hotel in which the Mexican invalid had been staying. According to local news, as soon as swine flu was confirmed, the government sent men dressed in white biohazard suits, masks and hats to quarantine the hotel, sealing all the staff and the hotel guests inside for seven days. 

The government has also put out an appeal for the Metropark guests (rumoured to number fifty or so) who are AWOL, to identify themselves. Presumably, they were out when the men in white arrived, and decided that going back was probably not a good idea. I'd be curious to find out how many do put their hands up, in light of the fact that their honesty will result in them being incarcerated in a potentially disease ridden hotel for a week.

In the meantime, we've been warned to avoid crowded areas. This has proved difficult - as everyone, including ourselves, has out and about enjoying the sunshine and the public holidays. Even the country parks have been packed with people. Tomorrow, we've planned another walk and a lunch out, but what we're most eagerly anticipating, is a trip to the cinema to watch the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. 

A friend of mine has already started avoiding cinemas for fear of disease, but as the husband, in a fit of enthusiasm, has booked seats for the 9.40 am show, I'm guessing that it won't be too crowded anyway. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyhow, I haven't really got time to worry about swine flu, as I've been too busy panicking about falling behind on my writing... I'm taking part in the inaugural NaPiBoWriWee this week - which is short for National Picture Book Writing Week. This event challenges writers around the world to write seven complete picture books in seven days (read more about it on the blog of author Paula Yoo.)

I managed to complete the NaNoWriMo last year (where you have to write a 50,000 word novel in a month) so I thought it would be easy, but it's been tough thinking up seven engaging story ideas - as every idea that comes to mind seems to feature a pig... 

I'm going to bed now, with a notebook by my bedside, in the hopes that some inspired non-porcine idea will come to me in my dreams. Wish me luck!