55 000 words!

So, writing is still going well on Freya and the Hairy Goddess.  I went over the 55 000 word mark on Friday.  In other writing news. a box of print copies of Webriders, Land of Fire, and Freya and the Golden Bear showed up this week.  Amazing to see my work in a stack of books! I plan on donating one of each to the local library, and the rest will be here in case anyone local wants to buy a copy.  They look so pretty together!  

  
We've finally had some rain here.  It is lovely to see green coming back to our land.

I feel really lucky, and I bet the trees do too, as sometimes we have to wait until mid May for real rain.  This year the autumn weather has even beaten the deciduous trees, who are only just beginning to colour up.  Some years they grow leaves, colour, and lose leaves, and hardly get to feel a drop of rain on them! 


It hasn't done my tomato plants much good though.  I've taken the nets off so the birds can have the last of the fruit.  
    

The mutant plant is still growing, and it is definitely a pumpkin.  A Kent I'm guessing since that is one of our fave pumpkins to eat and the seeds end up in the chook scraps.  

It has one little fruit on it and a few flowers still... but I'm pretty sure the winter is going to beat it!

I love the way the autumn light shines across our place on Autumn mornings.

This is the garden along the front of mum's house, looking lovely.  Autumn for us is rather Springy as plants come to life and bloom after the long, dry, hot summers that crush them so. 

I think it is time to start wearing my new shoes, don't you?  These old favorites have done as much service as they are going to!

I hate having to give up comfy shoes for new ones, even if my new ones are volleys again and will soon be just as comfortable.

I've been playing the lyre every day.  I love how versatile it is and the organic way you can use both hands to play it.   People enjoyed seeing the video I posted last post, so here is another player who has way more skills than me, and who has electrified his lyre so he can add extra effects.  He is doing a translated version of a very old Anglo-Saxon Poem, Wanderer. A very different style to the last one, but haunting and lovely.

This weekend the plan is to spend lots of time painting the new cover for the print version of Cunning Plans. I'll take pics as I go so I can do a step by step post, but this is the under-drawing.  I've already drawn back over that to fix up areas I wasn't happy with, and today will get the paints back out and start painting in earnest.