Dracula – read it many times.

This blog had nothing to do with Symi, apart from photos, but in reply to a question from Neil on Facebook yesterday. He asked, What is your favourite novel and why?

My reply was Dracula, which I have read many times and have three copies off including an annotated one given to me by my mum as a 13^th birthday present, and one which is a limited-edition print from the original, which Jenine and Ian gave me on my 50^th.

Why favourite? A few reasons and none of them to do with vampires. For me, it’s the construction of the story.

1, It’s told in journals and diaries, letters and memos, which not only gives you several characters’ point of view but puts you right into their story.

2, It’s a story about friendship as a group of people band together to save Main Harker, and everyone else. There are three men (Seward, Morris and Godalming) who all wanted Lucy’s hand in marriage and yet they are mates and stay that way. Spoiler alert: one of them dies, and that’s the part that moves me.

3, There’s a part in the story where the characters read each other’s journals to bring themselves up to speed. You realise, about halfway through, that the characters are now reading what you have been reading and know as much as you do. A great little gimmick that I bet most readers miss.

Just a little sidestep from the usual posts there. Have a nice day!

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Tuesday Morning

The clouds are clearing, the wind has dropped, the temperature in the office at 6.30 was a reasonable 14 degrees, and the sea down there is calm. Neil had gone off to his first aerobics class of the year, so I am expecting a lot of limping later, and I have been chained to my desk doing my usual. I had a rather startling update from the Grammarly programme I use. This is a plugin to Word (and online) that checks your grammar, and I tend to run everything through it these days. It just told me that, ‘Your vocabulary was quite voluminous last week. You used more unique words than 99% of Grammarly users.’ Probably because I spell so many words incorrectly.

I was also more productive than 99% of Grammarly users in the last 30 weeks. Apparently I wrote 158,843 words (and later had to corrected 158,842 of them, I expect). Startlingly, I was 96% more accurate than most other users, with only 1,016 miswritten words. I used 6,577 unique words – which could be something to do with working on The Witchling which has a lot of Kentish and made-up dialect in it, and my top three mistakes were all to do with missing commas in compound sentences, or not enough commas, or just incorrect use of commas. Not surprised. After that many words, I reckon I’m a bit comatose. (Comma-tose, get it?) Anyway, can’t stay long now as I have to annoy the programme a little more with another block of poor typing, so I’ll add a couple more general photos (from Neil) for today and let you get on.

Ps, Grammarly only found three issues with the above, which I have now altered.

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Village Details

So, where are we walking to today? Well, how about a wander around the old village of Horio, a place often missed by day-trippers. If you’re staying on Symi, even for a few hours, it’s possible to get up to the village by bus or taxi, or by foot. You can also hire cars and motorbikes, so there is no excuse for not visiting. When you do, you should explore the lane and the real village. You’ll see plenty of views but don’t miss the details.

I was looking through some photos Neil took recently, and a while ago, and found several that just show you details from properties and places in the village lanes. Maybe you can save a couple of these and, when you’re up here, take a walk and see if you can find them. Here are a few for you to look at. Regular visitors to the island may be able to recognise some.

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Happy Monday!

As we missed our usual Saturday photos, I thought I’d put up a few from Neil’s archive today. Some may have been taken in the summer, some last year, some last week. It’s a bit of a jumble.

Before that, an update from the desk. The Witchling is back from beta readers and a big thank you to everyone who volunteered, read, replied and helped the book become better. It’s now in its last stages of checking before being set out, but will still be a few more weeks before it’s published. Which give you enough time to read the first in the set, The Saddling (19 reviews! The most of any of my books, who will make it 20?). This and all my other books are free if you have Kindle Unlimited, by the way. So you can also pick up all the Symi books under that arrangement – links in the righthand column >>

The weather has warmed up, though it’s cloudy and a bit windy today (Sunday). If you’re planning your Symi summer sojourn, you may like to know that the Dodecanese Seaways timetable will soon be released covering dates right up until October. Their message said it will be out on 10^th February so you might want to look out for it. Okay, so now the photos.

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Symi International Film Festival 2018

A slight change to our usual Saturday Symi Photos today as there’s news about the 2018 Symi International Film Festival. I’ll be back with updates and photos next week.

Meanwhile, here’s what the film festival organisers have sent me:

Submissions are being accepted through FilmFreeway and Festhome. There are modest fees for entering films into the festival. Just click on one of the links on the website.

Categories:
Short films under 20 minutes
Feature Films
Films made on or about Symi
Premieres (world or in Greece)
Student films (evidence of being a student is compulsory).

Early Deadline 31 May 2018
Standard Deadline 30 June 2018
Final deadline 15 July 2018.

The website is here: http://www.symifilmfestival.com/

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