Root and Branch in print!

This was a thrill! The postman just delivered, and here I am ... "Root and Branch" by Jen Downes. Very cool indeed. This is the first time I've had a physical contributor's copy in my hands, and I have to say, it's an extremely nice experience. Gives one a little incentive to be busy, and write.

Speaking of which, with The Hesperides done, I turned my attention of urban fantasy, and Dark is The Valley is very close to done now. Two novels down, and the only fly in the ointment is that the pandemic is going ballistic in the UK and US, which of course is the marketplace for such books. It would be a waste of time and material to try for agency representation at this moment, so all we can do is cruise along. Finish the books, put them away, always go on with the next project ... wait for 2021 at the earliest, to seek an agent. By then, I might have three or four novels ready to shop around.

But for today ... contributor's copy! So very nice!

And in case anyone is so inclined, let me paste in the link for the page where it can be purchased: https://dimshores.bigcartel.com/product/dim-shores-presents-volume-1-anthology-2nd-edition

Splish, splash! Eastern Rosellas --

On Tuesday, Dave and I took the day and went to Morialta, as I've been promising myself I would. A fine, sunny day after rain ... the waterfall ought to be running (it was), and we should see some bush birds, and photograph them.

Well ... I miscalculated somewhat regarding the birds: Morialta is waaay too busy these days to be a good place for birding. The small bush birds (wrens, honey eaters, whistlers, warblers, the whole gang of them) are far, far away; every time there's a lull and they begin to come back down, the next gaggle of shrieking kids comes storming along, and they're gone again. So --

I got just a few opportunities to photograph birds, and missed two of them! But one of those opportunities was a real treat. A pair of Eastern Rosellas, taking a bath in a creek just off the side of the path. I took about thirty frames, and these are the best. (More of Morialta to come, when I get the chance to go through the images.)

Kinda reminds you of home!

It's not very often the temperature sinks so low in this neck of the woods, especially in this day and age of global warming (Siberia just had a May which was 10C higher than normal, on average). Dave saw -3.3C on the road near Clarendon this morning, and in several places stopped to photograph the frost. We're talking seriously cold here. Cold enough for snow to actually stick/lie, if it fell. You could come out of your home and find a foot of snow on the paddock. Not that it would stay for long. By mid-morning it would be gone; but --!!

So naturally Dave was out riding in it ... which had to remind him of the arctic conditions he grew up accustomed to. It certainly reminds me of the winter chill when Mike and I were kids ... waking up to a car covered in frost or snow; seeing the inside of the bedroom window covered in beautiful ice crystals ... and later, in  Glenelg in the early 1970s, hearing the milkman crunching through the frosty lawn to leave milk bottles (remember those?) on the doorstep...

All images in this post are by Dave, with his trusty phone. All I've done is give them a tweak to bring out the best in them! Aren't phone cameras amazing these days? (And all I was working with are the compressed versions, recaptured off his facebook page.)

Welcome, Winter ... brrrrr!

Autumn has definitely become winter ... and its cold enough to be shivery in the hills even around noon. Dave was out cycling this morning and reported seeing zero temperatures in the Clarendon region. We're just a couple of weeks short of the winter solstice, and the rain is coming quite regularly, so ... happy, happy! The creeks are running --

-- and the hills are green. What a joy, and also what a jolt to realize that it's only five months since half of Australia seemed to be on fire. This can be such a harsh country; but the truth is, few places in the world are much, if any, better these days. England is having its own drought now, which seems so bizarre; I must remind myself, we left the UK almost fifty years ago, and it isn't the place we remember. So...

When we went to Belair NP yesterday, the plan was to photograph lichen, moss and fungus, and really get the hang of macro, using the new camera. The hardest thing was judging the day just right, but this time we scored! Perfect weather, patches of sun, right after a lot of rain. And after a great deal of experimentation, I think I'm about 90% through the process of getting macro worked out to the point where it's reliable, results guaranteed every time. There still some to hash out, but it's all about fine points now. Details. Am very happy with the work the camera is doing.

On the way home, we stopped several times for shots of the evening light on the paddocks around Blewitt Springs. I haven't even got to those images yet ... I took about 600 frames yesterday, so I'm still sorting! I like what I'm seeing here. Now, if I can just kick the sinus infection I came down with overnight, I can get back to the book I'm supposed to be writing. Am on the last lap now, and it seems to be taking forever....

Not that there's any rush. I have a feeling that the pandemic will hill America hard in the next week or two, and the last thing publishers will want is to deal with foreign newbies. The timing for this really stunk. Ah, well! You live and learn.