News! Third short story goes to contract!

No, NOT my art. Found it on Pinterest
and would love to give a credit here
if anyone can provide it???

Am very thrilled today, because my third short story has been picked up by a fantasy anthology soon to be published in Queensland. The volume's theme is dragons ... always a favorite subject; and yesterday I signed the contract for Pet Shop Dragons, to appear in Hordes of the Great Fire Wyrms: a dragon anthology, in around June, 2019.

This is tremendous news. It marks my third story in print. The first was Pearls That Were His Eyes, a science fiction piece which appeared in Shoreline of Infinity #11, in the UK. Then came Father O'Neill's Confession, a historical urban fantasy in Terra! Tara! Terror!, from Flatiron Publishing in the US. Pet Shop Dragons could also be called historical urban fantasy, in that it's an a/u 1905, without being even 0.5% steampunk.

So nice to be placing stories here and there! In fact, after doing volumes and volumes of art in the last six months, I need to get my head down and write some more.

See below for the covers to the two issues that are currently in print. I'll blog again when the dragon anthology is released. Might even have sold another short piece by then ... nothing is impossible. I've come to love writing as much as art, so ... let's do this.


Otherwise, things are slow and steady on the run-up to Christmas. The gift shopping is all done, the tree is up, the presents are wrapped -- even half the grocery shopping is done, anything that could be stuffed into the freezer or cupboard. We should be able to sail into the holidays with nothing to do but kick back and enjoy.

This will be our second Christmas without Mom, and I have to be honest: I'm missing her a lot. A few days ago, December 10 would have been her 89th birthday, but in all honesty, with her health so broken down, she's in a better position, watching the festivities from a dimension removed.

(Me? Ha!Torn ligament in lumbar, plantar fasciitis, patella tendinitis, hip bursitis ... and you wonder why I haven't blogged since before I had two surgeries to fix my gallbladder problem last year?! I could tell you a story called Hell Year ... but I won't. Before you were halfway through, you'd be glazed over and reaching for either the vodka or the valium. So I'll spare you, and we'll pick up the pieces and drive onward...)

For the moment, it's mostly about art for me, since I recently discovered a new paint program, Krita. It's open source, and almost the equivalent of the top-end programs, such as Corel Painter -- which I couldn't afford without wining State Lotto, if only because I'd have to update all my hardware before I could run them. However, Krita runs happily on my hardware, and the program itself is both vastly challenging and vastly rewarding. Am starting to do some very nice work in it, and this is still very, very early days. Got my big toe in the water. Next comes the foot, then the ankle... I have high hopes that in six months I'll be showing Krita art on line with good reason to be proud of it.

Christmas lights, 2018

You know, something, just something has me convinced that it might be Christmas. Off hand, I can't think quite what it could be, but ...!

Seriously, people do amazing things with the new LED light systems, and there's one particular street, Nari Drive at Lonsdale (the map at left is uploaded full size for readability: click on it) where residents really get into the fine art of turning their homes and gardens into miniature theme parks for the holidays. What they've done with lights must have cost a fortune, and also it wouldn't be quick to set this lot up (and take it all down again in January or February ... Aussies tend to leave the decorations up for a long time. We're also spoiled rotten in terms of climate: notice that these lights are strung among green trees and shrubs). Uh huh: summertime down under.

As you cruise up to the curve in Nari Drive, you see that the whole street's illuminated:

...and that street is full of cars cruising slowly, and people walking by to see the show. It's quite the event. I took a lot of photos, because I knew half of them would be blurred (after dark, in a moving car? It's borderline astonishing that I got good shots at all), and here are the best:

And to top it all off, the crescent moon was high, setting in the west and bright enough for the whole disk to be visible to the naked eye. The night was warm and lovely...

...and thanks to Dave for arriving home from work at about nine at night, and saying, "Grab your camera and jump in the car. You have to see this." Great! 😃

The cat and the Christmas Tree. It's THAT time of year again...

What more can you say? The poem says it all, so I'll call it good and post this...

Santa Goes Bush and Gets Blitzed, Aussie Style

"Santa goes bush" ... or, "Santa Spotting" ... or, "Father Christmas takes a long overdue holiday in the antipodes, and rather overdoes things" ... or, "We seem to have been invaded by Saint Nick Clones, they've been spotted everywhere, doing -- well, everything you can do in the Clarendon - Kangarilla area in late December!" To put this into context:

IT IS THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER. SEE?

...which makes it all the more delicious when Aussies decide to make the Silly Season just a little sillier than it usually is. Santa has been caught driving tractors, fishing, climbing ladders, impersonating Elvis (not elves...), sitting in trees, riding bikes, getting caught in hay bales, taking a pit stop, getting blitzed and passing out on the roadside. Uh huh.

There are hundreds of these Santas all over the place between Clarendon and Kangarilla. Dave and I took a drive and a photographed a FEW. Here are some of what I think are the best. It was a lot of fun -- I hope the residents of the area do it again next year, as they did last!

...and after all of the above, we're not the slightest bit surprised to find Santa blitzed, having performed the proverbial face-plant on the roadside ... albeit with the assistance of a box of something red from Berri Estates. Ahem. [Nudge, wink]

It looks like being a lovely Christmas, weather-wise. Not to hot, and not stormy -- which can happen when the weather breaks in mid-summer: crash, boom, thunder and humidity. Dave, Mike and I are all set for the three day break from reality, though it's going to be somewhat strange this year: the first Christmas without Mom. I'm sure she'll be here in spirit. And I'm sure she'd have enjoy the "Santa Spotting." 

Let me close with a few more landscapes from the Clarendon - Kangarilla area, to put this bit of seasonal silliness into context. Yes, vineyards in full green, hills burned brown (camera misbehaving like a [insert favorite expletive] the whole time...!) and -- well, I'll just shush-up now and let the pictures speak for themselves: