A new arrival

Big news! Just to let y'all know, my daughter Bella arrived this weekend, so I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while. So if you're wondering why I haven't responded to your fabulously interesting email/invite/request this is probably why.

Also, before I forget, I've splashed out on one of those custom urls in honour of my blog's 5th birthday. Check it out: I'm a dot com, me. Next year I want to get some of those neon undercar lights, or maybe some zebra skin upholstery. Anyway, please adjust your feed readers accordingly. See you later.

Back in the Saddle

Hello Manchester, I return to you revitalized, refreshed and burnished to a fine sheen after a long and glorious period of rest. Before I get into blogging business, a small technical issue needs dealing with: My mobile died a spectacular death a day or two before I left for America, going down and taking a slew of texts and messages with it, so if you tried to get in touch a month or so ago and I never got back to you, that's probably the reason why. Please try again and I will reply promptly using your communication mode of choice (though please note the messenger pigeons are all vacationing in the South of France this week.)


Lots to tell you about today. I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting down to it.

The Ramchizzle

I'm moving.

At any moment now, the folks at BT are going to cut the cord and I will have no internets until they see fit to connect me up in my new place - and based on my long and wearisome experience with BT I fear that may take, oh, a few weeks on the outside. Factor in Christmas-related inertia and we may be well into 2009 before I'm online again.

But the good news is I'm moving to a place with many nicknames. Ramsbottom is also known as Rammy, Rambo and, my favorite, Tup's Arse (Tup is old slang for a ram, oh American readers). It's a Pennine mill town just a hair inside the Greater Manchester border. Which will make me, like, an actual Mancunian. Or something.

Good things about Ramsbottom I've found out about so far include the delicious Ramsons, a steam train, the lovely Nuttall Park and an eerie chippie called The Wayward Tyke.

Anyone in Ramsbottom? Give us a shout.

(Ramsbottom photo from Flickr user topdogdjstew.

Is blogging dead?

Slow summer? Or has the blogging mania died down? Yes and yes. Blogging, along with every other form of media output, always slows to a trickle during the long, wet days of silly season. But it can't be denied that blogging isn't a craze anymore. Amen to that, I say.

All the cultural mavens chattering excitedly about blogging say, five years ago, have moved on to twitter about Facebooking. That means that the people who started a blog to be trendy and in-the-know have mostly drifted off, leaving their stale urls littering the blogosphere like fallen apples. The many organisations and companies eager to get a piece of the action have figured out exactly how blogging best fits in with what they do (or whether it does at all) and reconfigured things.

The result? I think people who blog now are likely to engage with it in a more substantive way. Blogging as a form of journalism and cultural comment has been subsumed into the mainstream media, while blogging as a way of publishing creative writing online continues to evolve in exciting directions.

So yes, blogging's profile has dropped a bit, but I don't think that's a bad thing. On a local level, I feel like I haven't helped much, y'know, going off and having a baby and all and not blogging much or organising blogmeets (not to overstate my own role in the Manchester scene. Ahem.) But hark! After months of me dropping hints someone has finally seized the blogmeet baton: Julia of Notebooks and MEN Online Editor Sarah Hartleyof The Mancunian Way have between them cooked up a real, live blogmeet. It's set for Wednesday, September 17 at 6pm.

The action is in two parts: first, a tour of the Manchester Evening News newsroom and Q&A with an editor there (limited numbers - go here for info. Second, a more traditional unstructured blogmeet in a nearby pub. Voting on which pub is happening at Sarah's site now. In choosing a pub, I would advise you to consider two important qualities 1.) "dive"-ness and 2.) likelihood to be empty enough to afford the gathering bloggers enough space to comfortably unwind at that thirsty hour. I will try to attend with the littlest blogger in tow, but I probably won't make it. Early evening is our fussy time.

Vacation!

It's kind of like I've been on vacation from blogging, but now I'm actually going on vacation to Vermont, for two weeks. When I return there will be news of a wildly exciting online literature project, frenzied blog awards anticipation and - hey! - more frequent blogging. Honest injun.

New blogs: The moany edition

Oh my god. I have been feverishly ill now for two weeks, and being ill is apparently much worse than normal when you're super pregnant. For one thing, your immune system is not so effective. I have drunk gallons of vitamin C drink, inhaled more steam than a sauna attendant and ingested such radioactive levels of antibiotics that I can curdle pots of bio-live yoghurt with a single glance. And for all that I feel a little better, but not much. In fact, I have to go lie down for a bit.

That's better, not so dizzy now. Okay. (Cough.) Sigh. So I guess I have some new blogs to tell you about.

Last year Susie started a pregnancy blog called Oscar or Isabelle. And then she had her baby and it turned out to be neither an Oscar nor an Isabelle, but a Milo. So she's unveiled a new wordpressy blog in which she will record her adventures with the new man in her life: Travels with my Baby.

Lovely Gill Moore, Manchester photographer and graduate of one of our blogging workshops, has started an excellent blog that features photos she admires as well as her own work, news and thoughts about photography, exhibitions and other random things. Scatterdrum: Ramblings from inside a photographer's head.

Andy Sewina has started posting a work-in-progress-novel blog, called "Space Invaders!"

Tom writes Book of the Future, which deals in technology, society and geekery. "Been going since November 2006 and though I haven't managed to keep up my intended blogging schedule over that time I'm still approaching my 90th post," he says.

Ian Hough is the author of a book called Perry Boys about Manc football and culture in the 70s and 80s. He also writes a blog called The Nameless Thing, at which you can read about his theory of The Four Quadrants of Manchester.*

"The 4 quadrants are sectors, regions in Greater Manchester County, which possess definite identity and character, fault-lines in the ancient crust of our city. Just as Paris’ arrondissements are arrayed as a gigantic snailshell, in a tight clockwise spiral around the central core, so are Manchester’s degrees of suchness concentrically packed, like jam roly-poly about its lively heart..."

(*Unless you're from Partington, in which case you should not read it. It'll just make you angry.)

Finally, Manchester socialite Miss Coco LaVerne has arrived to pretty up our general area of the blogosphere. In her own words, Coco is "an enigma, a spectacular incarnation of beauty and grace." Welcome Coco. Now I'm going back to bed.

Service bulletin

I got this comment today:

"Appreciating being kept up with new blogs - but what's happening to your own blog? We've not heard from you, yourself, in ages. What fun are you having without us, eh?"

Indeed. Well you might ask. I'd like to say that my social life has become so thrilling that blogging has simply fallen by the wayside, because I can't find time to log on between all the champagne brunches and late suppers and falling out of taxis and dancing on tables 'til dawn. Ha.

In actual fact, I am rather pregnant. A few blogging folks already know, having seen me in my (increasingly) fleshy incarnation, but I've not written about it here because... erm, well, I get a bit shy sometimes. But I'm having a girl sometime in early May. I'll definitely keep you posted. In the meantime, here's a picture:



And so, that's why I haven't been blogging as much lately. Because being pregnant makes you very, very tired. Most of my creative energy is apparently going into constructing a tiny person, and what's left over is spread pretty thin. Frankly, it's all I can do to keep up with the day job, and sometimes this even involves leading workshops in which I am teaching lovely people how to write blogs, and I am chagrined to note that my own blog doesn't exactly conform to the "post at least once a week" rule.

I have continued to post updates about new blogs because it's important, and because there are so many new ones being born every month in Manc that I am determined to keep up with them. But I am aware that my blog has been (whisper it) kinda boring and impersonal lately. I'm working on it. Your patience is appreciated.

NaNoWriMo time again

For the second year in a row I'm going to be one of the thousands of folks all over the world trying to write 50,000 words during the month of November. Yep, it's National Novel Writing Month. Gulp.

It is utterly mad, but not impossible. You have to write about 1500 words a day, which is manageable, I think, if you have a lot of time to devote to it and can be merciless with yourself about not taking a day off. Not even Sundays. I did it last year, but was less militant about days off than I should have been, and had to make up for my slackness at the end. This year will be different, dammit!

There are quite a lot of folks in Manchester taking part. If any of you bloggers are in there, give me a shout: my codename is yankunian. And if anyone's thinking about it, I'd urge you to try it. It's a very effective kick in the ass for lots of people, and kind of fun, when you aren't tearing your hair out.

Of course, all that novelwriting means my blogging will suffer, but I'll try to check in once a week or so and keep updating the blogroll with those pesky new blogs that keep cropping up all over the place. And someone mentioned the possibilty of a Manchester Bloggers' gathering in December. A Chrismukkah blogmeet maybe?

On holiday

Am busy eating maple creemees, swimming in the lake and reading comic books. Normal service will resume in a week or so.

Wednesday is art day

I've been terrible at the posting. Really, what kind of example am I to young bloggers? But I've been recovering from a week at Arvon's Science Fiction and Fantasy writing course (which I highly recommend) along with a bunch of lovely people including Graham Joyce and Liz Williams. Go buy their books! Though I've now let my alter-ego as an SF/Fantasy writer out of the bag. Shit. My alter ego has its own blog, and I may even start posting on it one day. Finishing novel more important, though.

To make amends for being a bad blogger I bring you some arty, Manchester-specific news:

This Friday there's a pretty cool gig at Greenroom. In connection with the launch of Castlefield Gallery's show To The Left of the Rising Sun, Iceland-based artist and composer Ben Frost performs work from his latest album. They say: "Influenced by the stark natural environment of his new home country and the contrasting abysmal winter darkness and endless summer light, Frost’s soundscape references the Baroque and the sublime and carries its audience into unexplored territories."

Next door same night, it's the opening of the Cornerhouse's ArtRadio project, which looks interesting.

There's a call for participants for a performance event as part of the Manchester International Festival. They say:

We are looking to find 90 people by Friday who are willing to share stories about someone who has vanished from their lives (either because of a relationship breakdown, death, relocation, paranormal disappearance, etc.) Artist Michael Mayhew will then use these stories as the basis for his performance piece. If you would like to share your story, please contact ag at michaelmayhew.com to book a slot on June 29th.

Also, Manchester-based artist Paul Harfleet has a great blog where he writes a lot about his practice, which I'm adding to the blogroll. Some of you may know him as one half of the duo behind Apartment, the artist-run exhibition space that happens to also be Paul's council tower block flat.

You can do amazing things with dominoes

I'm gonna be away all this week in sunny Heptonstall, West Yorks. So here's a video to keep you amused (the song is Ankle Injuries by Fujiya & Miyagi)and keep me from feeling like a blogslacker. Kind of.

Travel advisory

Oh, and if you're wondering why I have been so quiet lately, I'm back home in the states dealing with a difficult situation offline. Blogging service should continue to be intermittent for the forseeable future. Go read some of those blogs over there, to your right.