A quest for peace often sends you away. Sometimes to a forest or jungle retreat, sometimes to a spa, and sometimes to a city depending on the kind of peace you’re looking for. Peace is; the state of not being interrupted or annoyed by worry, problems, noise, or unwanted actions. Cambridge dictionary For me, the […]
Susan and the Gangster
The calm before the storm… Tasked to document every move criminal mastermind Nick Liang makes, Private Investigartor Susan Murray chooses to draw. Part life drawing, part Method of loci memory palace, part plain old excuse. It’s like watching a live action Asian drama until she finds herself pulled into the case. Cover blown. In deep […]
Read an Ebook Week 2023
Read an ebook week (2023), runs between Sunday March 5, and Saturday 11th. Read an ebook week was “invented” in 2004 by Canadian Rita Towes and her cat Lola. Her goal was to introduce ereaders to the sceptics, but also to draw attention to little known authors. She realised her goals couldn’t be achieved alone, […]
Expectation
Expectation is a way of thinking about the future. You’re expecting a particular outcome from the actions you’re taking. Maybe you’re following a recipe expecting for a delicious meal. Or perhaps gleefully preparing a prank. Either way, your plan might go as expected, giving you the result you expect. Or something strange, and weirdly outlandish […]
Alexandria’s Adventure in Leather Soled Shoes
Inspired by a conversion with Toseland (the cobbler) I decided to give leather soled shoes another try. The weather we’ve been having (four seasons in a day) hasn’t been the best time to start. And leather soled shoes aren’t cheap, but I bought some on sale from Europe. And convinced the local Melbourne weather wasn’t […]
What’s a Good Book Like?
I’ve been reading a lot about book marketing and branding lately, asking the question, what’t a good book like? I even asked friends and colleagues, “how does a book make you feel?” As you might expect, the answers varied: What a Good Book’s Like for Me For me it’s a little more personal. My father […]
More Morning Routine
I’m not sure whether it’s because this is already an unusual year, but I’ve been thinking about more about my morning routine. Perhaps because there’s been so little else to pin the days on, and the lazy, langourous, sleepy sense of nothing much happening lasts for about 87 hours per day. My routine has grown […]
The Day the Schedule Broke
Take an ordinary moment. Add golden light and dramatic music. Now you’ve got a movie. Sandra (not Sandy, Sands or Sando) Lockwood works in a basement storage cupboard come office. That just self-destructed. Now she has Daniel Carruthers, movie star and Gorgon Studios CEO to deal with. Is it possible she’s in the right place […]
My Ghost Best Friends Books
Many of you know I like writing stories about people with ghost best friends… Well, I was recently invited by Shepherd.com to share my favourites. The hard part was narrowing it down to just five! The original request came in for Alma’s Grace, so it was lucky timing I’d just published The Ghost and Ms […]
The Cairn at the Dog Park
I noticed this cairn at the dog park today… I don’t know who left it. Or how many people added to it, or why it’s there, or in fact, anything about it at all. But when I saw it, I remembered similar cairns I saw when touring Norway. One fjord guide, as an offhand aside, […]
Agatha Christie
I’ve been watching Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen, in which Dr Lucy Worsley OBE tells us that Mrs Christie is not the person we all thought she was. Among other intersting titbits, Lucy believes Mrs Christie did lose her memory, and drawing against other sources, that she sought treatment for it. But […]
I’m Not Ready!
Somehow, we’ve arrived at January 9th, theoretically, my first day back at work, and I’m not ready. It’s not really my first day back, I’ve worked more or less through the break, taking care of business in the back office. As well as tidying it, I’ve done some analysing and assessing of my websites, newsletters […]