(no subject)

Back at work since Tuesday, hence the relative quiet here in comparison to the past couple of weeks...

Woken by the postie this morning at 7am (bloody typical that this should happen on a non-work day!) with yet another copy of The Amulet of Samarkand for me. Regular readers of this journal will recall that I bought a copy which fell apart because of bad binding and I'd complained to the company. In this case, I'd complained by email and then when I got no response, I'd written a stroppy letter to them as well. I already received one replacement copy before Christmas, but neither have had the promised return postage so I could send the faulty one back - apparently the left hand at Random House does not know what the right hand is doing. ;)

So, the faulty one will shortly be going back to Amazon for a refund, since Random House don't seem to want it, and if anyone on my friends list wants my spare copy, please let me know!

Meanwhile, in other news, I may be opening up a can of worms by opining in this way but it's been on my mind most of the week. Namely, the poor quality of the submissions in the muncle Secret Santa thing (in my opinion, naturally, which may not be shared by anyone else reading this) as opposed to the submissions in the equivalents organised on lupin_snape and merry_smutmas.

Even taking into account Sturgeon's Law and the respective size of the fandoms, I was disappointed by the majority of the entries, with characterisation (again, for me) being a major sore point. I can only hope that the promised dvd issues this year will increase the number of people who've actually seen episodes of the show before they put pen to paper or pixels to screen, as the case may be, because frankly how Napoleon and Illya are being asked to behave in the vast majority of recent fic needs some closer reference to canon.