(We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites)
I feel I’m in a time tunnel. Egads! It’s June already and I’m pondering what happened to May. Oh well.
Since my last post, I have sent The Founders’ Legacy off for a proofread. It’s due back later this month.
Gentleman Magician is waiting on some beta reader comments.
And I decided to publish my Regency Romance Tainted Lady, under my Dani Kristoff name as Dani’s books are more mainstream paranormal romance. I found a great cover. It features an older heroine and is a second chance romance. And being me there are feminist undertones.
I am currently restructuring Tainted Lady. I thought I had mostly restructured it but alas, I had not and I need to work through it carefully. It is only the beginning that I’ve chopped up, after feedback from a Romance Writers of Australia competition. Fab feedback btw. I also need to make a few tweaks to my hero. However, for some reason I keep getting stuck on chapter one. I mean you can rewrite a chapter one a gazillion times, you know.
In other news, I am vacating my craft room for my grandson. However, this is cathartic and important. I’ve built up a bit of a mess since I last moved back into my craft room so it is good to sort through things, find bits of patterns and work out what I want to keep handy and what can be safely stored. I have made it quite clear that everything needs to be accessible so I am labelling as well as sorting and tidying. This is a threefold problem as the garage needs to be sorted and that is long overdue. For where may I ask will the craft stuff go? I have a floor loom that needs to be moved and I may want to you know weave something. I am hoping for a garage that is tidy and accessible. I have been in there to look for a power tool and said I’m going to buy a new one as I can’t find the one we have. Yes, it is that bad. The major sorting was instigated by a collapsing ceiling in the garage and then roof repairs which has a ripple effect. The other element is rearranging the library, which is currently a dormitory, and working out where to put stuff. All very disruptive to one’s writing routine.
I am progressively going through my hard drive and will publish more things perhaps next year. It’s clean up time!
Next appearance is Newcastle Next Book Boyfriend Link here. Saturday 13 June, 2026 93.0 to 4.30
This book is coming along nicely. I have been tweaking the cover using Bookcoverzone. I’ve not done this before. I usually just say what’s on the cover but this site lets you tinker yourself. You would not believe how many iterations I have put the app through to get to this. No changes to the image, just the titling.
I think this is where I’m going to leave it.
I haven’t started on the blurb yet would you believe. That can be hard work but I’ve been side tracked by writing administration tasks. You may not have heard that the book aggregator Draft to Digital brought in a fee for low selling authors. This was mostly due to some shenanigans by nefarious players. They also had to limit how many titles you could upload. I don’t think I make the minimum and most of my Draft To Digital sales are with Barnes and Noble so as I have an account there, I figured I would delist all my books and relist on Barnes and Noble. And there is a lot of books and it’s not a quick job. So…I am getting there…
A bit about The Founders’ Legacy. I wrote this book as part of my PhD in Creative Writing, where I researched feminism in popular romance fiction. Now you might wonder why I wrote a future SF book featuring genderless humans. You see I started thinking about equality and how that would look in its purest form. I was thinking of unconscious bias and how that would be eliminated if you couldn’t tell if a person was a man or woman or something else by their names.
If you took it another step, by the way they looked so what if they looked the same, no gender, no traditional families, or how much money they earned if they all looked and dressed similarly and earned the same money or got the same food, shelter, leisure etc. Then I also thought about how you would maintain that….so a domed city, bio-dome thing with supplementary water and various power sources so this culture could perpetuate itself and add the social conditioning, and also enforcement of the rules and you have Frequil, where everyone is free and equal…
The Giver by Lois Lowry has been cited as a text with similar themes. A small community, traditional family groups changed, social conditioning and chemical conditioning and some weird stuff in there too. I can see the similarity in themes here. However, I had not heard of this book when I wrote The Founders’ Legacy, initially called Sihem.
My influences were Logan’s Run, the movie. The book is a tad different in the ages and things it uses, but yes a domed city and an post-apocalyptic outside.There are rules and when rules are broken things happen.
Another inspiration would be Star Trek Next Generation The Outcast episode, where they meet a planet full of same gender and one of them wants to express gender and be female and become Riker’s lover. Anyway, the strong theme in that was about difference, the intolerance of difference. This was more of a pro-Gay episode.
I use romance novels within this story as they inform Tal and Gen, my two main characters, about gender roles, some feminist issues and about the world the Founders came from.
A feature of the Founders’ Legacy is the use of non-gendered pronouns ‘si’, ‘sis’ and ‘sim’. The pronoun sihe is an honorific and sihem a collective noun, This can make the novel hard to read and my trial readers generally said that they substituted ‘he’ or ‘her’. I found that when I read Ancilliary Justice as the AI character could not differentiate between sexes so called them all she. I found my brain kept wanting to know if it was a man or a woman. It was sort of a weird affect. The Founders’ Legacy takes that a step further. The other realisation comes when you realise how gendered our language is and how the brain wants to slot people into categories.
The book blurs utopian and distopian themes and is, I think, a young adult, adult cross over. While there is romance in there it is more science fiction, I believe.
On the weekend, I popped up to Exeter for a four day Regency Weekend experience. I’d been sewing like crazy in the days leading up, even though my eye wasn’t the best. April was definitely a sewing month! I also helped a friend make her first Regency dress but that was over a few months.
I went to the Regency Weekend last year. It’s a smallish event, in that it’s not huge. Last year I managed to get a cancellation ticket. This year I bought the ticket in time and managed to choose a number of workshops.
My first workshop was a one on one consult with Adrienne Unger on making a Regency gown with a sari. I had two saris with me. One I bought at the Jane Austen Festival a number of years ago and one was from Matthew’s mother. We spread the saris out on the floor. Unfortunately, Matthew’s mother’s one, which was silk Georgette had been damaged, probably by moths. The other one was fine. With my pattern pieces we worked out how to make the most of the fabric and embroidery. Adrienne had a couple of amazing dresses to show me too. We took photos so I would remember which bit went where. Then I went to our accommodation.
I shared with Bronwyn again and it was fab. We did our hair, helped each other tie up dresses and do up buttons. It was lovely.
Here is a pic of me doing my bun. I was trying to guage if the hair covered the insert.
I had decided I wasn’t buying anything. Hahahaha! There was so much stuff this year. I bought a cloak (had no idea I wanted one) from Ericka’s table and a bum roll and sparkly buttons, a chemisette and lovely reticule from a lady called Kerry. Kimberley had a table of the most amazing hats. She was really talented. I was tempted but the one I liked, a yellow soft bonnet was taken. I did by a fancy ruffled cap though. I bought fabric, which I swore I would not do but it was a pretty white cotton with green block print. And I am a sucker for green.
This year I had a number of workshops. I would have done more but I can’t be in two places at once. Imagine that. First up was Regency Water colours, a sort of beginner thing and it was great. I loved it. I’m not a great artist. See I am showing this below.
My next workshop was a ruffled cap. Which was great as I have been meaning to make one. The fact that I had bought one earlier in the day was not important. A girl needs more than one cap.
The ruffled cap under my bonnet. The one I bought, not the one I made.
Here is me in the sprigged muslin print that I made the day before.
That night was the banquet and I wore my new white frock, made from cotton Ikea curtains, a sort of homespun feel, I think and an overdress made from Kimono fabric that my friend Maxine gave me for a birthday years ago. It had been moth damaged on the outer part of the roll but the rest of the fabric was fine. See pic below.
I found I forgot a shawl, gloves, ribbon and a few other things. I had to buy shoes because I remembered my jiffy slippers with the shoe roses had fallen apart. Dinner was yummy. All of my table mates just coincidentally came from Canberra. There must have been some kind of ethereal tie there.
Saturday
Two more workshops. I swear I felt busy. The first began at 9.00am and it was a double session to make a walking bonnet. Now I have bonnets galore and aspirations to make more, trim some and so on. However, the shape of this bonnet is not one I have attempted before. Even as a double session, we did not finish. I managed to get the structure done and I will need to cover it and so forth. Here is a pic of what we were attempting.
Stunning isn’t it?
Today I wore a sari based dress I hand sewed because I like to now and again. The fabric appears to be a fine cotton or muslin so hand stitching seemed to be the way to go. I figure I might wear it four or five times before it distintergrates.
The one below is an outdoor shot. See my lovely reticule I bought from Kerry?
The afternoon workshop was on turbans, where we played around with scarves. I forgot to bring mine but I did have left over fabric. This is what I came up with, but I think I would make it into a headdress, rather than a wrap around turban.
Sunday is picnic day so around 9.30 we front up to the venue and pack our picnic lunch and then have morning tea. There’s a coach to take people to Goldenvale, where there is carriage rides, archery, music, maypole, house tours and sitting around eating and chatting.
This dress is an older dress I made for one of the Jane Austen Festival. I am a bit plumper than then so wrap around was a tad, not wrapped enough.
Curious ornament on the tackle. This was a beautiful horse.
I did not do the maypole but I watched. There was live music and you can see the musicians in the background. It was a lovely afternoon as the weather was mild. Last year was freezing.
I fear my archery skills have not improved at all, even with a lighter bow the second time. Also, my petticoat fell down. I used bias binding as a tie and that has seams which separated. Next time I’ll use tape. The blue dress next to me is the dress Kristy and I made together. Isn’t it great. Ikea curtain and such a lovely drape on it.
I want to go next year too so must put it in my diary. The catering was wonderful. Morning and afternoon teas, Rout biscuits, scones, jam and cream, some kind of yummy biscuit with carraway seeds. I must get the recipe for that. A lovely roast meal and syllabub for the banquet, soup and bread before the ball, then a late supper. I tried the Regency white soup and it was yummy.
So many nice people, some from New Zealand, as far aways at Queensland and Victoria. I swear most people are looking at other people’s gowns. Mmmm I didn’t know you could do that. Oh what a nice way to do a trim. Oh my your spencer is to die for. Triple capes on your pelise? And so on. There were a few children there and that was lovely too. I’d call it wholesome fun.
I have had some trouble with my feet so I did not dance at all. Usually I can fit in a dance workshop or two but didn’t. I watched the dancing from the sidelines and loved it.
I know I’m a nerdy weirdo but I do not care. I loved it.
Given all that is happening in the world right, it is hard to deal with things. My doomscrolling is almost non-existent because I can’t bear it.
With my economics learning, I know things are just going to get worse in Australia as we deal with the Iran war fall out. Inflation is not anyone’s friend and coming so close after the pandemic and all those income support payments people got (that have to be paid back somehow) it’s a double punch. The Iran war situation is not over and we were already priming for this oil shock. We thought it might be a short one but alas…no. The Government’s budget is a tough one. I can feel the austerity vibes.
Forget tarrifs! They were hard, unpredicatable and so on. Forget the old world order. The rules have been tossed out.
I think wars, famine, disease outbreaks make one feel a bit hopeless and disempowered. There isn’t much one individual can do about any of it.
I try to think of ways to influence what is going on around me and ways I can help contribute to mine and others’ well being.
I walk in the neighbourhood a lot. It’s suburbia, there were are hills, trees, birds, magnificent sky. People walk their dogs, or just walk about. I figure if I want a nice neighbourhood, I should say ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’ and ‘Cute dog. Can I pat it?’ People usually say hi back. This might seem a small thing but it helps create a neighbourly, neighbourhood.
Also, getting out in a beautiful day lifts the spirits. How can you not be calmed by trees, and nature. It kind of fills me up. Today I went in a different direction. Up the hill into the nature reserve. I was taking a picture of the view when someone said ‘Morning!’ I hadn’t heard them approached and startled. Once I had got myself together I said Good morning back. He said ‘It’s a great view.’ Walking back toward home, there was a big group walking towards me, a men’s group maybe. We exchanged good mornings and it felt nice, you know.
I also started looking a view from say a water colourist perspective. Not that I am a watercolourist, but I do aspire to try one day. The photos below are some that I took.
Our street has a Signal chat group. Our neighbour next door dropped notes into people’s letter boxes and asked if people wanted in. Most of us did. It aslo incorporates the street behind as well. Great for organising things like Halloween for the kids and so on. It is a really nice group of people. I had Christmas drinks on our decks one year. Not everyone came but a few did and it was nice to put faces to names. I think this chat group has helped create a lovely neighbourhood. We can post about snakes, or kangaroos on the street. Sometimes neighbours say ‘I’ve put a box of lemons out. Help yourself.’ OR “Zuccinis going if you want them.” Anyhow, I think this is a positive thing. We even tell the street if we are going away and there are housesitters. Or if someone has a teenager to feed the cat etc.
My partner volunteers at the Food Co-Op and he really believes in their ethos. He picks up left over bread from a bakery and delivers it to the Co-Op and one day a week to our local community centre. The bread goes to people in need, rather than the tip.
Other things we can do to whether difficult periods is donate a can of food to the local food bank. We have one in the next suburb and we can also leave food at the Pool and Leisure centre. I drop books there to the community book swap thing as well.
Other friends I know do things like make scarves for homeless people or Ukraine. These were woven, but crochet is fine. A beanie with left over wool.
To help others doesn’t have to cost much money but it usually costs time. I am still working on where I want to put my effort in. I am currently working parttime but that is going to end soon.
I’ve done my share of committees in local associations-community housing, writing, writing centre.
I feel grateful to have been on this Earth for 66 years. It has not been easy but I am here now and like it or not I have to live through whatever gets thrown my way. I also recognise my priviledge. I have a roof over my head, food and clothing. I can indulge my craft pursuits.
So here are the photos I took this morning. I thought most would make a good water colour painting.
I took a wrong turn but thought this was an interesting composition.
I know nothing much about water colouring and I am not an artist. But I though the dark foreground and the layering of hills, cloud and sky was interesting.
Another view with contrasts.
I thought the road curving away was interesting. I don’t think the photo does it justtice.
Gentleman Magician is at 40,000 words. This is going to be a novella and I think I can finish it soon. I just have to write the ending scenes. I’m so excited. It’s taken me a bit longer to write than I planned but I have enjoyed not rushing. The Cry Havoc series continues. Steampunk and magic, with a side order of sandwiches. I’m really excited to be exploring the relationship between Edward Huntington, Ambrose Fulton and Jasper Heaton.
After I’ve done a bit of research, I’ll be starting Book Five, The Amethyst Way, featuring Jemima of course, and an adventure for Milly. Not sure I’ll write the prequel novella about Jemima’s father and mother but we shall see.
I’ve given up shopping my PhD novel, The Founders’ Legacy, to agents and publishers. The small Australian presses I had in mind are closed to subs. I have a feeling it’s a bit woke for the current climate in the USA and bad economics and global uncertainty don’t help either. Anyway, I did try. So the other day, I found a cover. Let me know what you think. It is SF YA/Adult cross over. I’ve got to work on the blurb. This is what I have so far:
Sixteen-year-old Tal is graduating from pod life and dreams of developing an experiential history machine to explore the past. When Tal’s research project is initially refused, that future seems impossible. After negotiation, approval is granted on two conditions: Tal must stay clear of the Founders’ lives and work alongside a young genius named Gen.
While mining data in the city’s systems, Tal uncovers the Founders’ arbitrary decisions that shaped Frequil’s genderless society. Fictional texts from the past introduce the idea of binary gender. Drawn by forbidden knowledge, Tal and Gen use their invention to experience what it was like to live as a pre-Frequil man and woman. As their bond deepens, the biological template that made Tal genderless begins to break down…
The Founders’ Legacy explores gender, love, and autonomy in a society that believes these concepts are no longer relevant.
In other news, I have eye surgery on Thursday for the fast growing cataract that is the result of my previous eye surgery, the vitrectomy ilast September. I’m half blind and typing this is fraught!
I have one upcoming appearance June 12, Newcastle Book Boyfriend. I’m heading to a Regency Weekend on the 14th and I’m madly sewing for it. Between writing and craft and bad posture I hurt.
I have finished listening to Well of Ascension. I was a bit teary at the end. Old Brandon did a slight of hand at the last minute and caught me by surprise. It was a great series. Thank you Brandon Sanderson.
With my partner, Matthew, we are listening to Dead Lies Dreaming by Charlie Stross. We have motored through the Laundry Files and this book is a bit different. It’s not first person point of view and it switches point of view sometimes a bit quickly in the audio book. I miss Bob though.
I’m reading a couple of books as well, currently on Emma Grey’s Pictures of You. And I have a queue of other books some started and some not.
I’m trying to keep a record of what I am reading and listening to, as during the year I lose track and end up wondering if I have read anything at all. So I’m trying to do less doom scrolling and more reading fiction. I must admit that hasn’t been easy the last few weeks, what with traveling and world events.
All this uncertainty and chaos upsets me and I’m sure other people too.
The Gentleman Magician draft is over 21,000 words. It’s going to be a novella so I hope to finish it this week. But tomorrow, is a sewing day. I’m helping a friend make a Regency bib fronted gown. I want to make one for me as well.
Here is a picture from the weekend at the Australian Romance Readers Romantic Rendezvous. It is quite appropriate. I’m trying not to laugh.
Many thanks to Chris for conducting the series. As I read through them I note everyone is different.
I’m now home for a little bit after lots of travelling about. We saw Evior on Saturday in Sydney. My feet hurt as there was no seating. However, the concert was amazing.
Next trip is to Ourimbah for Books and Beyond on April 12. Drop in as it’s free.
I wrestle with feelings of inadequacy a lot of the time. I doubt myself and I definitely have imposter syndrome. When I studied for my PhD I had these feelings. But my supervisor told me he had imposter syndrome too and that most of the academics at my faculty did.
Thoughts like: Why am I bothering? No one cares! You aren’t good enough? Stop kidding yourself. You can’t write good stories.
Naturally, I don’t like this negative self talk. Just like I don’t like telling myself I look bad or old or fat. I’ve been doing that for years. My youngest daughter says it’s body dysmorphia. I look at photos and think, hell I looked good back then, but I thought I was fat, ugly, old. Hahaha!
I had very low self esteem growing up and I have fought long and hard to get where I am. You know the drill, one of many siblings, dysfunctional home life, child abuse and so on.
You think at aged 65 I’d know better. Sorry to disappoint. However, I try very hard not to let these negative thoughts win. I focus on what makes me happy and I write stories because I like to do that, I enjoy it. Well most of the time. It is not always easy to sit down and write. Inspiration doesn’t always come when you want it, even when you know the story you want to write. I think that’s where the negative talk comes in, when it is not easy. The evil part of my brain starts telling me to just go watch some screen, or go shopping, or do other things like craft. Believe me I feel negative feelings about my craft too. I can pick holes in anything I make and I know where I could have done better.
I just have a weird brain.
Yesterday, I was thinking about how long I’ve been writing. I started around 2000 so nearly 26 years. I didn’t get published until 2013 with Rayessa and the Space Pirates, but I had written a lot in that time. The funny thing is that Rayessa and the Space Pirates had been sitting in my hard drive for years. It originally started as a short story for a CSFG anthology called Elsewhere. I was working at the audit office and I thought it would be cool to have a space auditor and the story was going along very well, but when space pirates turned up, well I couldn’t finish it. So I wrote another story for Elsewhere called ‘Other’ and continued on with Rayessa and the Space Pirates as a short novel. Now, I did submit it to places but didn’t get anywhere so it lingered in the darkness until I went to my first Romance Writers of Australia Conference where several publishers were seeking submissions for ebooks. It was then I realised that my SF story also had a romance arc. So Escape took it and published it and the sequel Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures. I don’t know if I’d call it a success. I did earn royalties and it is my most pirated book judging by the Google alerts.
So, one lesson, don’t throw stuff away. Just because the stars don’t align, they might again in different circumstances. Anyway, time has moved on, the rights came back to me and now I have self-published my previously published books and my new stuff. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up on traditional publishing. I dabble but my life isn’t going to stop. A lot of things need to align with traditional publishing. It’s great when they do but they don’t always. If you try an agent, then they need to like what you are writing, have an idea of where to market it etc. Then, publishers need to like it too…but then there’s the acquisitions meeting where other people weigh in, the marketers, for example. I have had a few turn downs after acquisitions that said the Australian market was too small. With Ruby Heart a senior editor told me how much the liked it but then it didn’t get picked up.
Moral of the story is don’t give up. Haha! But also don’t listen to your negative talk. Write because that is what you live for. Sure, I’m going to give up one day. But right now I have ideas, I have drafted manuscripts that I’m tinkering with or trying to get an agent for. I have been writing for a very long time so I have a backlog. I hope to move some of these this year.
So I’m working on Gentleman Magician – a Cry Havoc novella and I have another novella planned and Book Five to write. Hopefully this year. I’m a bit behind on my plans (yes I made plans) but I hope to get there this year on these.
I have a Regency Romance The Tainted Lady I drafted before 2016. Sadly the market has changed and where I was going to submit that is a dead end. However, I did get some valuable feedback on it from a RWA competition and I’ve started revising it and I know what I need to do to get that dusted. Don’t be surprised if that gets published this year.
I drafted a young adult portal fantasy called Into the Dark Glass, that too is in a state of redraft. My then agent didn’t like it and couldn’t tell me why so in the intervening ten years I’ve been mulling it over and I have a restructure in mind. I tinker but haven’t got far. There is always a new project calling me away.
My Phd novel is currently been shopped around. I finished a revision of that in January.
I have a middle grade fantasy, Grandma Neebs: Through the Pantry Door, which I’ve shopped to Australian publishers and got nowhere. I really like this one because at its core its about family and love. Apparently there is a glut of middle grade fantasy at the moment but this has some horror elements. This will need an illustrator so that will depend on $ if I am to self publish it. Decision postponed.
Also in my hard drive is a feminist SF novella, which I want to revisit and maybe publish. And I have some Blood Crowd short stories that could be a collection if I wrote one or two more stories for it. Picture Vampires in Chicago with werewolves and gangsters. If there is more then I have forgotten.
I don’t write to trends or to the market. Some people do and it works for them. I don’t make a lot of money and recently even reviews are hard to come by. I’m writing what I love and I hope that readers like what I do. That’s what feeds my soul.
Sometimes what gets published has been years in the making. I hope to improve my productivity because I have more stories to write.
I am guilty…but…I’ve been travelling and I’m not good with writing while traveling. I maybe wrote a sentence. First trip was NZ, north island, and then work, and then travelling locally with a visiting relative. We had a fab time, Sydney Opera House, Wildlife Retreat, Newport, Tea Gardens and then a steam train ride in Canberra.
However, I’m now at home for a little bit, except I’ll be in Sydney on Sunday for the ARRA Romantic Rendezvous event at Rydges Central in Albion street. More information here. Tickets will be at the door now. There are panels as well as book sales. Do come along and meet some great authors. I’ll be on a panel too.
April 12 I’ll be in Ourimbah for Books and Beyond.
With the state of the world as it is, wars, particularly Iran, it’s not easy to stop doom scrolling and think happy thoughts. Book sales plummet, naturally. Uncertainty hits book sales hard, I believe. Cost of living increases and so on. On the other hand, writing (and reading) can take your mind off things or in other words let you escape. So now I’m home and settled in my brain, I shall get back onto Gentleman Magician and stop dilly dallying around. I know I can finish it quickly as I’ve had the story in my head for weeks, working out the kinks.
I have a bit of personal admin too. Boob squashing appointment -booked, spa afternoon-Thursday, screen door installation tomorrow etc. A newsletter to write, books to read…
I dabbled with TikTok but I’m going to delete my account. I can’t do it justice. I think it’s a great tool but I want my creativity focus to be on writing. Besides most of my followers are dodgy blokes who tell me I’m beautiful or bots or scammers and there are a few genuine people there and some great advice and stuff with book tok. I can still experience all that but my content sucks!
On the book writing front, I’ve been working on The Tainted Lady, a Regency romance, and I think I worked out what to do about Richard. He needed more, he needed an impediment to his own happiness. I had some great feedback on the beginning from a Romance Writers of Australia contest. That one is nearly there and as my target markets have closed, this might end up being self published.
I’ve been shopping my PhD novel. A couple of rejections so far. However, I think all the work I needed to do for that one is done.
I have two more things on the back burner, a YA portal fantasy, Into the Dark Glass, I need to finish the restructure of that one and may add more world building and characters. The other was a reverse harem regency romance, called Louisa’s Choice, which is also all in my head, but not all on paper. If only my body was as productive as my brain!
Anyway, it’s time for me to leave you to it. Below is a not very good photo of me on the deck at the Wildlife Retreat Hotel at Taronga. I think my seven year old granddaughter snapped me.
Instead of something thoughtful, you get the ‘hello I’m back from New Zealand’ and no I haven’t written any more Gentleman Magician.
Rather than a trip of my own, I was driving my sister around to her relatives and then to some places she wanted to go. Bonus for me was that my friend Wendy came for the sightseeing part.
It was nice for me too to see Kylie’s family. She lost her husband just over a year ago to lung cancer and it’s been hard on her. So seeing everyone again was nice as it wasn’t with a palliative care and funeral attached to it.
We visited Kaeo, which I’ve never been to before and that farm we stayed in was very picturesque and comfortable. I met a friend in Mangonui, nearby and that was a treat for company and location. Sightseeing consisted of Hamilton-for the must see Hamilton Gardens. I pushed Kylie around in a wheel chair so I got a work out. My sister has COPD so doing all that walking wasn’t going to be fun. Hobbiton was booked out for most of February so we couldn’t get there. We think there might have been filming…who knows. Next we popped down the road to Rotorua. I did a bit of walking looking for free bubbling mud pits but to not avail.
The big thing we did there was a Maori Culture evening at Te Paa Tuu Here (it’s written differently but my keyboard is not cooperating.) This was really good. What is fascinating is that this it the third time I’ve been there. Previously it was called Tamaki Maori Village. And that was the Pophiri (welcome), village tour looking at Maori crafts, passtimes etc, Kapa Haka (Maori singing and dancing traditional songs) and then the feed, a big hangi, with dessert etc. I went the first time 23 years ago, after a recommendation from a Maori in law. Then I took Matthew about 12 years ago. My son went about two years ago and he told me it was different now. The food is high end, Maori food inspired canapes, entrees and mains. And that is what we found. It’s quite pricey but we all thought it was worth it when you factor in all the people and the amazing food. When we got to the village part, we got some tea made from native Kawakawa I think, and a canape or two. Then we did mini workshops, poi, sticks, history, haka. And more canapes. The last one was a kumuar crisp, with venison and blueberry chutney on it. So good.
The entertainment was really good too, some great singing. Then we went for the feed. There were green lip mussels, and as I don’t eat fish I got a substitute for the white bait. The mains had hangi vegetables and stuffing, some lamb, we had waygu beef rib, and roast duck and hangi lamb. Then dessert. On the bus home I was quite full. I ate way too much!
Anyhow, it is great to see this venue still operating and being taken over by young people. Well done guys.
We booked a boat trip on Lake Taupo but unfortunately when we got there, it was too windy and it was cancelled so we headed back to Rotorua. We stayed in and drank wine and ate cheese. Wendy and I had a great feed in EAT STREET too.
Now I’m at my desk, intending to so some writing. Earlier I cleaned out the pantry due to a weevil infestation. And I practiced some bookbinding. One of them ended up in the bin! However, there is sewing to do and other craft things.
Not only didn’t I write during my trip I didn’t walk as much so I’ve trying to walk everyday since I’ve been back. However, more social events might interrupt these good intentions.
I am also trying to read more and I’m keeping a log. I’m currently reading Pictures of You by Emma Grey.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 