EDITORIAL

January 2007

Happy New Year! We call it Hogmanay in Scotland, but I hope you had a great New Year's Eve. Personally I've always seen it as being a bit of an anticlimax but I did try to get something out of the night. Another year older and time to reflect on the last twelve months.

It has been quite a year. We started last New Year with a blanket of white and ended it with unseasonal torrential rain that managed to burst the River Forth and bring traffic across Scotland to a grinding halt. It seems that global warming is set to be a major political agenda in the next few years. Let's hope our politicians see sense and implement real change instead of more useless bylaws that do nothing but make life harder for ordinary folks.

The trial of Saddam Hussein captured our attention last year, as did his hanging in the closing hours of 2006. Other points of interest was the admission that Tony Blair really is going to resign, he means it this time! We hope. Our war on terror drags on and on, the body counts get higher and higher and the way the war is reported it reminds me of previous wars that started with grand ideals and descended into ridiculous farce. I read an interesting quote from the late US biographer, Carl Sandberg.

One day they'll make a war and nobody will come.

Let's hope that day is soon because I for one am sick of the eternal breast beating and justification for blowing each other to kingdom come. The curse of this decade would have to be fundamentalism, whether it's Islamic or Christian, it all has the capacity to destroy us.

And so I ended the old year with a moment to reflect on my writing career, which has undergone a few ups and downs. One thing that has bugged me is my inability to find time to write. We all have excuses don't we? Too tired, not enough time, we have to finish that book, watch that movie, tidy the house and what did we have to get from the store?

You get the picture don't you? There is always a time to write, even if it's a few words. One interesting exercise I have being doing lately is free writing. I sit and write the first things that come into my head, ignoring punctuation and structure. I am recording an image in my head for posterity and using that as a jumping off point for a new story. It seems to work for me.

At the moment I'm working on more erotic stories and The Slasher. One of the challenges for the working writer is simply finishing work! Many of us have some wonderful excuses for not finishing a piece, but not one good reason. I think anyone who knows my personal situation would excuse me from writing for the rest of my life. One of the keys to writing success is finishing the story, even if it's not up to your standard. You can always edit, rewrite and try again, but you can't rewrite a piece that hasn't been written yet. I think in spite of my failure to crack the big time with Eurofiction, it has taught me to work to a deadline and just send it in, even if it's not your very best. Finish the story and then decide what you're going to do with it, don't stop halfway through. That's like starting a workout routine and stopping for breath and a can of Coke. If you keep doing that, you'll never finish the workout.

Stop making excuses and starting writing!!! That's my New Year's resolution anyway.

Erotic Fables finally closed its doors after a mere twelve months on the web. We all got an email informing us of the fact and so now I own all my own stories again. I will be including them in an anthology of erotic women's stories to be published in the near future. Don't ask me when, I'm still trying to catch up with edting The Slasher and Code Blue. I have updated my erotic page however to include a few stories now that they're all mine.

I hope this year brings everything you hoped for, keep smiling and keep checking the site for regular updates.

Poet/Songwriter,
Luba Yamskaya
Meditating

Visit her newest page here

Got a book you need reviewed?
Email me here.

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