So I have been rather remiss at updating. Well I have no excuse except the same excuses that everyone has at the end of the year - CHRISTMAS! Too much to do in too little time.

And also no time to do the things I *planned* to do. Yes I did have a whole bunch of things planned to do over Christmas and New Year and somehow - pouf - and all the time has run out. I have also been very busy craftwise as well, but again I need more hours in the day to fit it all in.

I had even been collecting books I was planning to read over Christmas, can you believe that? And then, what happens? I don’t get to read ANY of them. Yup that’s right, they are all still sitting on the shelf waiting for me to remember them.

But enough about my problems with time management. Here are the books we will be reading next month (Feb) with the book group. Groups will be staggered so you won’t be required to read three books at the same time if you wanted to join in all three discussions.

LOST SOULS - Poppy Z Brite

THE SKEWED THRONE - Joshua Palmatier (Joshua will be joining us for the discussion)

WORKING FOR THE DEVIL - Lilith Saintcrow

So come one, come all and chat about these great books with us next month.

(cross-posted EOTC/LJ)

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Originally published at The Official Empire of the Cat blog. You can comment here or there.

January 2008 Book Discussions

Welcome to the new year! Below are the first books we will be discussing as a group for 2008. Please feel free to join us:

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Science Fiction Classic)

Twilight - Stephanie Meyer (Young Adult Fantasy)

Two for the Dough - Janet Evanovich (Crime Caper)

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Originally published at The Official Empire of the Cat blog. You can comment here or there.

Ok all you writers and budding writers and people who want to be budding writers, NanoWriMo starts in just over a month, so who is up for the challenge?

What is NaNoWriMo and what is the challenge?

National Novel Writing Month 1-30 November
The Challenge is to write 50,000 words starting on 1st November and finishing on or before 30th November.

So who wants to give it a try and join our Writing Group in the process?

Book Addicts Writing Group <—– clickie the linkie and let’s get planning. Oh yeah, no writing before 1st November, but we can plan, plan, plan and talk, talk, talk

Besides which you will be helping me and I really need the help lol  I have a ton of work to do and two new courses starting today, and I need to keep motivated and squeeze NaNo in too, so come on!

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Originally published at The Official Empire of the Cat blog. You can comment here or there.

Book Group 2008

We are currently seeking suggestions for books to read with the group next year, and to that end, have started some suggestion threads.

You can find them in the Online Book Group 2008 board. You will have to be a current member and logged in, to be able to see the board.

We are looking for suggestions in the following categories:

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, & Horror

Contemporary & Modern Fiction

Crime, Mystery & Thriller

Romance, Paranormal Romance, Chicklit Suggestions

Non-Fiction & Biography

Classic & Historical Fiction

Within these categories you can include Children’s and Young Adult books, books to movie books, prize-winning books etc.

We are already committed to continuing some books in series, so you do not need to suggest those books as they are already scheduled.

We will consider discussing books that were discussed with the Book Group in 2006 for those who may have missed some excellent books, but not 2007, as that is too recent to be done again.

Next year’s Book Group will have a bit of an overhaul, and will be much simpler to use thanks to a nifty new feature. In addition to the monthly and weekly discussions, Book Buddy, and My 52 Books, there will be a few new challenges for you Book Addicts to get your teeth into!

Keep checking the forum for more updates and information.

* suggestions have to be made in the forum threads for them to be considered, otherwise it would be chaos.

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Originally published at The Official Empire of the Cat blog. You can comment here or there.

So after a few weeks of planning, I actually got to work on my new website at the weekend.  Everything was on hold because of Uni exams etc.  This one is a private family website which will basically revolve around a forum so that people can interact rather than just have a static website.  I started on Friday just setting up the basics, deciding on a name, and then spent most of yesterday modifying it. 

We are all so very bad at keeping in touch with each other that I thought (since I semm to spend half my life online) we should give keeping in touch online a try.  So I have emailed everyone in the family that I know has an email address, and hopefully they will email their contacts in turn, and maybe I will actually get to meet some of my scattered family, even if its only online at first.  I get so sick of everyone missing birthdays or not realising some big event is coming up or just not bothering to tell people they are going on holiday or moving etc.  So I thought we could at least try and keep in touch this way.

I started work on a family tree a couple of years back and that was quite difficult and I came to a bit of a dead end, so I am hoping that having more immediate contact with more family members might help solve some of the mysteries in the tree too.  I have many uncles, aunts and cousins that I have never met.  Some of that is due to me travelling and living in other countries but also because of weird family disputes way back so far that no one can even remember what they were about in the first place.  And some of it is just down to the fact that people in this country just don't travel very much!  So you get a card at Christmas and maybe meet at a funeral or something!   (Speaking of funerals, the last one I was at, I had to keep asking someone who was not related to tell me who everyone was as I had never met half of them before)

I have set it up under clans since all of them are Scottish originally, so when you go to register on the site, you get to select your family crest and family name group and the country you are in so you get a little flag.  I had a lot of fun with that bit and creating all the crest badges.  lol I am such a sad case.  All extended family are included too, so for example my brother's wifes family, my cousins in-laws etc.  I think it's going to be really cool and a good way to let kids safely use a site on the internet and get some great experience and meet their relations. It has a 'myspace without the idiots' feel to it  with extended profiles, friends lists, wishlists, comments, and also chat, gallery, and arcade and shop like my other sites. Depending on how it goes we might open it to 'family friends' too for those really-close-they-are-almost-related friends.  I am visualizing arcade battles and family secret santas, family gatherings and never missing another birthday again lol.  In reality I will probably have a bunch of people who are not familiar with computers, the internet, message boards, or have the ability to type, all asking me the same questions over and over again. Some of the older generations may have some problems but there are plenty of younger people to help them out. So long as we can get past that stage and no one gives up then I think we have the makings of a real live family tree.

On Friday I got in touch with one of my Uncles on my dad's side.  It was really exciting.  I havent seen him for over 10 years and he lives about 2 hours away, and I don't really know him at all.  I don't know any of his kids, though I found out on Friday that two of them are in the US and one of them is a teacher in California somewhere.  I had no idea since I didnt even know what their names were!  On my mum's side I only know one Uncle, as they all went into the armed forces when they left school and then scattered all over the world, so I have never met any of them. I even have an uncle in the Mounties!  I am hoping somehow to track them all down and make it easier for us all to stay connected - assuming they want to of course lol

So today I am almost at the stage where I can direct everyone to go register.  It did take me most of the day yesterday due to the amount of modifying and I found myself wishing I got paid by the hour for that kind of work.  That could be quite lucratrive if anyone was willing to pay for that stuff lol.  I enjoyed doing it but it can be quite tiring as you have to really concentrate and not screw anything up and no two installations ever work out the same way.

I think I may even have been dreaming about this last night hahaha

Other news is that the Empire of the Cat is coming up on its second birthday in a couple of weeks.  We have started a countdown and a birthday postathon and will be having other celebrations, competitions and prizes etc as we get closer to the actual anniversary day.  Doing all this work over the weekend has seriously put me behind in the postathon, so I have some major catching up to do!

The Empire has expanded!  Yay!

If you havent visited recently, well there have been some changes.

There's a new theme on every part of the site, inlcuding the Book Addict's ,and it looks really purty. 

We also finished testing and playing with efiction and now its really for action.  All it needs now is for people to join up and join in.  We will be using it for all kinds of writing, including fanfic, but not only fanfic, since most of our current members don't dabble, or drabble, or... you know what I mean.

My other blog is linked up and the gallery, so all I need to do now is find the time to add stuff to them.

And if you have never visited or havent for a long time, well we also have another Forum.  The Green Room  The focus is on arts and entertainment, and we even have a couple of bona fide professional artists on the forum, for all those art-related questions.  We are currently working our way through BtVS from Season 1 so we can watch them as they should be, in order with Angel, eventually, one day, when we get that far, and talking about our favourite movies and music.

Oh and I am not studying, which is what I'm really supposed to be doing now, but I keep getting distracted looking at fonts on the font group, then I end up downloading more fonts, and well you can imagine.

Book Group of the Month - August 2006!!!

Ok, it's 2am but I'm excited lol

Our Online Book Group just got selected to be Book Group of the Month on a Book Group Directory site in the UK - big deal you say, well it is a big deal to me and I'm very happy about it so shut up and be happy for me being happy

(warning:  rambling may occur due to being so late at night and I'm tired)

We got selected back in June and I've had to wait all this time as they have July off and don't update the site again until August.  I was really hoping we could be bgotm forJuly and then it would tie in with our Birthday celebration but August is good too.

So for anyone who is interested, here is the link to the 'interview'  lol 

book group of the month




*faints*

I set myself a task today; four things I wanted to get out the way so I could move on and do other things...

It's 12 hours later and I haven't even looked at one of them haha

I have spent nearly a whole day in front of this computer and I really can't tell you what I have been doing - not very much my mum would say lol

Sometimes I wish I had a clone as there seems to be so many ideas that I have and just not enough hours in the day to get them all done.

And here's something funny to ponder... I'm entering nano this year so I think I will then be into negative time