Free Offer - Humya's Gifts Series

After blogging about doing something with Humya's Gifts Series I got out the trusty list of Australian publishers, few who accept unsolicited manuscripts, saw the usual, 'respond in 6 - 12 months', a cheeky list of what you can and cannot do and how they will 'destroy any submissions' which don't comply and I decided life's too short for that kind of BS. So, instead I made my life shorter by deciding to give it away free and then had enormous IT problems that stole 24 hours of it.

But the short of it is that if you have an e-reader that handles pdf files, or you or your child are prepared to read it electronically, all four of the series are available at www.togetherpress.com you'll see the big thumbs up girl (Krissey) on the right, click the Krissey!

For those of you who've read Who Killed Dave? it's somewhat similar in style, but without the grisly/sex bits. Krissey, the main character is ... well let's just say that when I finished writing the series I missed her. I carried her around in my head for four years, I grew really attached to her. She became real. I suspect she's the kind of kid I'd like to have been brave enough to be. (I was painfully shy and nerdy).

The four books, The Alone Spot Experiment, Blacksnake Road, Light Riders and The Gift of Goodbye are all about 25,000 words in length - they're aimed at the early teen market (and younger, kids read up, they won't read down). Girls and guys, women and men have read the series and enjoyed them. So if you're fond of a giggle... though The Gift of Goodbye, while it has its giggly bits... is a tear jerker.

In the nature of all things free, feel just as free to tell others or put it on any freebie websites you belong to. I'm not asking for anything, but if you or your kids do read them, love 'em or hate 'em, I'd appreciate it if you could send in a quick review.

Straw bale rendering workshop

Forgot to mention that the outside of the house isn't completely rendered yet. Internally it's complete, the back wall or the weather wall is almost complete, but the other three sides only have two coats on them. So we're offering people the once in a lifetime offer (yeah, who's kidding who) to help us complete the rendering with a rendering workshop on...

February 4-5 - Saturday and Sunday
From 10.30 – 4pm

& the following weekend 11 & 12 February
(either date optional)

Woofers welcome to stay the week
The house is at completion with the internal walls fully rendered.
Lunch provided

I figure I've pretty much perfected the no-crack straw bale rendering process

and don't need to do it all myself anymore :-)

Who Killed Dave? The Movie

Well actually Who Killed Dave? is not a movie yet - it's just a screenplay. I've taken a month off work to do a lot of things, (a part from sit in the house and gloat) one of them doing a final re-write and send it off to producers.

I've been reflecting that in the last five years I've not completed anything new. (I wrote Who Killed Dave? in 2006). I've been working in dribs and drabs for the past three years on Louis(e), a literary novel based on the life of the first European woman to stand on Tasmanian soil. Louise was a French woman who posed as a man on the Recherche, one of the two ships that came in 1790 as part of D’Entrecasteaux’s scientific expedition. The facts of the story are relatively few when it comes to the part she played. But it's fascinating. I've not tried to recreate someone's life before. It's difficult as I'm not sure I have a 'licence' to say things about someone that may not be true. Putting a voice to a fictitious character is easy, putting it to a historical character, even if they have been dead for over 200 years... it always feels so darn libellous.

I've also spent time re-editing Humya's Gifts a four part story for young people that I wrote some years ago. I had a literary agent pick up on it, but the market is so small in Australia it didn't go anywhere. I re-read yesterday and laughed and cried the whole way through. I'm going to send it off to see if anyone else does too.

I feel like I'm on the brink... now the house is finished I can finally focus on something other than work, uni, and a huge garden. Hey Trev, what do you want to do once the house is complete? “Plenty of gardening and some work to pay off the house.”

One book I don't want to write is a 'Straw bale House adventure'- ready to move on.

In da House!

When I wake up it's either the light coming through the window, or the accumulation of baa-ing, bleeting, grunting animals who've quickly worked out that we've moved, it's morning and if they carry on enough they might get breakfast early.

There's the lingering joy of stretching out on a king size mattress (the bed beneath is still at pre-manufacture stage)before going for an early morning wee. And it's 'whoa wee'... it's only just around the corner, no need to go outside anymore. The room is warm, no risk of icy condensation dripping down the back of your neck. Washing my hands afterwards - no need to turn on a pump first. And the bowl... well it's beautiful, the old one had spent fifty years under someone's house and was a sickly shade of stained yellow. This is first of many moments of gratification. The bathroom, well I keep saying it's a luxury model. It's clean, spare, almost zen, the whole house is actually. After five years of roughing it in a 6 X 3 metre shed, a small bathroom add on and a 23 foot caravan and squeezing all our meagre belongings in it... it's heaven. I love observing how the light falls on every surface on a 24 hour basis. A moonlight night doing a circuit of all the rooms is just as rewarding.

Unpacking the unnecessary things like decorative carvings, lamps and pots - they all finally see the daylight. It's been so long I'd forgotten some of them.

We're not finished, Trev's tiling the bathroom still, I've just finished repatching mud work and re liming some pf the walls, I'm yet to re-oil all the window frames and deck. Trev has the skirtings to complete, there are only two internal doors in the whole house, beading needs to happen on the ceiling lining, and the kitchen benchs have yet to be built. But none of that matters. We're living in the house where the temperature is generally always 20 -22 degrees regardless of what's happening outside. It's all come together and the wait has been worth every last windy day of, 'is the shed going to blow away?' bit of it. Our mortgage falls into the range we had anticipated, but the house is better than.

We're on a bit of a high and constant self-congratulations is starting to get a bit old - it's been a long haul... the hard part is over. Maybe one day soon I'll even convince Trev that his uniform of patched, stained and altogether too grubby overalls can help fill the rag bag. But I suspect not.

Photos to come...

Swarmin'

Finally had a day in the garden,the weeds had all my carrots and onions by the throat and were choking them. Three weeds in (or should I say out)and Trev was by my side.
'What the hell?' he says. I look up and there's a frenzied cloud of bees or the Bohr Model (that symbol of atomic energy with the whizzing atoms) X 10,000. I had a swarm.

I'd been wanting to have a go at catching a swarm. Already hot, when suited up in three layers, gumboots, gloves and a hooded, netted hat I'm sweating and looking not unlike someone about to go into a radioactive area. Trev's made a beeline for town and left the property. Caleb has been winched away from the computer long enough to open gates for me and stand guard in case any 000 calls need to be made.

The bees have congregated in a two year old almond tree and inconveniently wound themselves between a main stem of the tree and the support post. Not good. I have my tree loppers, a large cardboard box, my smoker at the ready. But I soon realise three hands are required to lop the branch, and hold a kilo or so of bees on the branch with another. I try to use the side of my body as a left hand when I lop. But it's a fail. The branch hits the ground and there's a kilo of pissed off bees. I wait for them to reassemble around the queen and settle down before picking them up and depositing the branch into the box. A bit of pruning and it's in.

There are still heaps of bees on the ground, but they get the idea the queen is in the box and conveniently crawl in with her. I sit the box in the shade and place a wet sheet over it to keep them cool.

I go stick my head in a bucket of cold water and try to conert the colour of my face to something a little more becoming than puce.

Trev, my own personal carpenter arrives back and he quickly makes up a new hive base and lid. Soldering wax onto frames while I lug down a pallet and find a spot for the new hive.

The theory is, you lay down a sheet in front of the new hive and dump the box of bees at its doorstep and watch them crawl in. I dumped them, they crawled in. My doubts erased.

I now had one depleted hive and one new hive. I thought my beekeeping over for the day. Off I go with the whippersnipper. An hour or so later and I come within inches of whippersnipping a second swarm of bees. They're on the ground in long grass. This is not supposed to be the way it happens. What do you do with bees in the grass and bad weather coming? You decide, what the hell you'll drop a cardboard box over top of the lot and they can crawl in and out of the small slot at the top. They'll find their own way out and to safety when they're ready.

Two days later... There's still a lot of activity in the box. I lift up an edge and yep, they're making it a permanent home. There's an odd frass build up on the ground. They're eating the box. Keep it up and they will literally, 'eat themselves out of house and home'.

My own personal carpenter and Ehren (who thought he was coming to Tassie for a holiday) help me rig up a third hive body. I cut the top off the cardboard hive and lay the dangling wax comb they've made in between frames of the hive and only partially close the lid. They're going to have to get used to crawling through the entrance hole at the base before I close it.

Here's hoping it's early enough in the season for all three hives to thrive before winter.

Learnt alot this week in my beekeeping adventures.

One Rant Support

Trev and I have an agreement that we listen to each others rants and make supportive comments. But it tends to be a bit one sided. I rant, he listens. He rarely rants and when he does I, well... I tend to not support wild and exhausting rants about things like changes in sporting seasons and the lack of cricket on the radio. Sorry Trev.

However, Trev has gone for a new audience on Facebook where he posts some wild and woolley and entertaining raves. My rant support rates are way down. Hope this boosts them.

Some of you may have gotten the idea that I hate ducks and would prefer they were no longer the blight on my life they have until now been. This is true; what those of you who know me as a mild mannered fellow of little colour and few words may not realise is that this – let’s not call it hatred, more a malevolent indifference - applies to all animals, especially those we laughingly call domestic,... as well as certain select and pestilential birds, insects and other assorted life forms for which invective is inadequate but that I have not the time to name.

Trev in his longer haired days with Ehren, his gorgeous son

So in this humanitarian and far sighted vein, I move away from the duck and turn my eyes to chooks. There is a strong scriptural base to much of my ranting, and these thoughts on the chook are no different. Those of you familiar with Genesis (the book, not the band) will know that chapter 1 verse 32 says: “and on the eighth day, after having a bit of a spell, God created the chook and he saw that it was very good.” Now, some biblical commentators aver that on the seventh day, God rested the rest of a deity well pleased with his work, but I think that he was just totally stuffed after all that creating – I know creating tires me out – and that’s why the chook is missing a few vital parts, most notably the brain.

Genesis goes on to detail something of a falling out between God and man. Genesis 3 gives us the details:
And then the man, Adam, spake, saying, “Lord, that chook is everywhere in our garden; it scratcheth out the new seeds thou providest and crapeth over every surface and the light of intelligence shines not in its eyes.”
And God replied, saying, “ Speak not thus of my creations, thou into whose deplorable hide I blew breath but two days ago”
Then Adam (perhaps a trifle unwisely) said unto God “ Lord, if thou art too thick to realise that all this ‘on the second day god created’ business is a metaphor and that we’re really talking geological time scales here, that’s too bad; the fact remains the bird is an idiot and you stuffed it up”.
Then God waxed exceeding wroth and said unto Adam” Get thee gone from my garden; show thy face there no more and hereafter blame all thy woes on thy woman, who I created whilst thou weren’t looking.”

And so it happened. Where they got that far-fetched tale about the snake and the apple, I’ll never know.

Turdus Merula

The Latin name for this years main garden pest.

It's the blackbird. Last year we had one and it ate every last raspberry, seemingly on it's own. We killed it. It took several weeks with a small mesh box propped up on a stick with a string trailing through the shed window before I was able to pull it in time and catch the wee bugger. It felt terrible to kill him. He was just doing his thing. Not his fault that some dick-(ybird) decided he missed the sound of a blackbird in his English garden and voluntarily introduced them, all for the sound of it's cheerful note a couple of hundred years ago.

This year the garden is full of the sound of 'tok, tok.'
No doubt counting down their last seconds as we work out ways to stop their clocks - permanently. Gone were the cherries of last year, the strawberries too. This year forewarned is fore-armed. Though arming oneself against a sea of troublesome birds is illegal. It's not the culling of birds that's an issue but the owning of a firearm without appropriate cause and license. We don't live on the prerequisite number of acres and while there have been times I would gladly have bought a slug gun (and shot slugs with it too) it's simply not going to happen.

Instead we invested in six posts, heavy duty wire, star pickets, 100 metres of bird netting and a whole day digging holes, sewing netting and generally getting sun burnt. The raspberry cage looks great. It creates a kind of outdoor indoors that excludes birds of all sorts, hopefully any probing possums and the odd opportunistic Caleb-has-left-the-gate-open-again-Goat. It's been an expensive exercise. Onto strawberry saving measures next week.

Oh, the linocut was inspired by my garden 'friends'. I decided to have a go at lino-cutting and had thought to be inspired by native Tasmanian flora and fauna. Yet somehow this dark feathered, yellow beaked fiend eventuated. Insidious beast.

Who or what would you like to permanently eradicate from your garden?