New Beginnings and Other Stuff

I resigned as Equipment Officer for my Brigade this week.  It is affecting my health.  It is not the fires or caring for the station and vehicles, though you would expect it to be those.  No, it is the bloody meetings!  Jeezuz!

This is the card I got from our darling 1st Lieutenant. So nice to know I am appreciated.   

A fellow dog lover, as you can see.  :D  The crochet reference is because I crochet during the meetings, which he says rather reminds him of the ladies who would knit while sitting in the front row audience of the guillotine during the French Revolution.  Sometimes, the meetings feel almost as deadly!  Crocheting gives my fingers something to do when I get upset and makes the long pointless hours of conflict seem to be more useful.  Seemed.  Ha!  No longer!      

I'll still be going to fires and a member of the brigade, but as a non-officer I don't have to go to meetings, and I am having a rest from doing their social media too.  I would not say I regret the last two years, because it has taught me so much, given me wonderful new friends, and shown me new aspects of my own courage and ability, so it is all good.  Change is good too, as is letting go of that which is not serving your best interests.       

With my mind and time not taken up with brigade matters and stresses, hopefully I can find mental space to start writing the next novel. Novel number 12!  Who'da thunk it!  Next will be a sequel to Chicken Soup for Satan.  I think.  Am rather tempted to write another Freya novel, since I have so much fun writing her stories and I think I need some light writing, because Land of Giants took it out of me a lot.  I put so much into that book and it shows, but it was hard too.  We'll see.  I would love to be back in the world of Satan Smith and his lovely dog, Ghost, too.  I've missed them, especially Ghost.  The characters of my books, especially the animal ones, become so real to me because when I write them I can really see them and know their moods and likes and dislikes and funny ways, and miss their presence just as if they were one of my own pets.  Sometimes I want to own a White Shepherd just so I can have Ghost with me again, but of course she or he wouldn't be him anyway.  I'll just have to write him another story.    

My sister PJ's photo of the original art on her wall, together with the print book.

Let's see, what else?  My chookies made me giggle a lot this week when they discovered our pile of jarrah sawdust and took to dismantling it with great gusto.

Nobody knows how to enjoy life like a chicken!  Please ignore Nanny Ogg's vulture-like appearance.  She is currently molting, apparently only on her head and neck!  It is growing back in fairly quickly, thank goodness.  She was genuinely bald at first, with nothing but grey pins all over her head and neck.  Yikes!

Niamh's afghan is still growing and getting close to finished. Not sure how many more rows,  Perhaps six or seven, but the rows take quite a while to get around now.  There is something so cosy about snuggling under something you are still making.

This has been my view a lot this week.   I took four pics to take in all of the the tree, and google made them into a panorama for me.  

  

My tummy has been a lot better but i haven't felt up to much work around the place yet.  What I have been able to do is drag a chair around the autumnal driveway, following the sunny spots and playing my lyre.  This is the Singing Jarrah who lives right by our cottage.  I have been practicing my tree song ready to record it, and this tree loves me to sing and play near it, in fact it enjoys being near all of our daily interactions. I hadn't expected that when I went to talk to it.  Most trees are very communal and interested in other living beings and even humans, especially trees who live in close proximity to us.  As you can see, this one is very close to the cottage indeed!

What else?  Oh yes, I said I'd show you an 'after' shot of the tv/bookshelf area.  This is it now.  Much neater, and now we can get to the books behind by just rolling the cabinet out.  

Not the most spectacular sunset for colour, but it was so very gentle and pretty and hopeful. 

As the sun sets on one thing, it rises on another.  I have plans for new ways to be useful to my community.  More on that soon. 

          

     



      

   

Dogs of my High Pack: Trudy

Trudy was the first dog who was all mine.  She was brought into our home by my evil stepdad, who rescued her and was also the cause of her death.  This pretty much sums up our life with him right there.

I don't have many photos.  I have two, and also one very faded instagram of her condition when she arrived, because she was so very thin and we might need proof of that. She had been tied to a sprinkler at a local market gardener's block.  The vet said she was very close to death by starvation.  My stepdad just took her to save her.

She was a beautiful purebred German Shepherd. She was fairly dark look at, but all of her undercoat was creamy.  As I soon learned when she blew her coat and we brushed bags and bags of creamy fluff out of her!   

At first we could only feed her boiled chicken and rice because her stomach was so damaged.  Since she was only a young dog who had been deprived a long time, she proceeded to grow and grow instead of gaining weight around her ribs, and we got tsked at a lot. At one point I actually felt like putting a sign around her neck to say that we weren't the ones who had starved her!

I had started Uni that year, studying to be an early childhood teacher.  I felt very out of place there, not sure I was in the right course, not really fitting in with my fellow prospective teachers, not getting assignments done on time, or at all.  Looking back, I was intellectually ok to be there, but emotionally I was not.  In the evening, though, I could come home to Trudy and we would go for lovely walks, and oh we loved each other.

I remember how it felt to lie on a bed and use my big dog's ribs as my pillow to read books.  She never minded.   The closer the better, she reckoned.

Like a lot of dogs who didn't get a good start, she wasn't so great at keeping an eye on you when walking, so I kept her on lead.  Anyway she was frightened of men she didn't know, so it was safer. I used to smile to see people cross the road to avoid her, when I knew that if they had come much closer she would have popped behind my legs and timidly peeped out at them as we passed.  She was so gentle.

We did have lovely times at a very large property, more than 2000 acres, where I would go on weekends to help with a horse trail-ride business.  She could run loose up there. It was so safe.  She made great friends with the other dogs there and they would go off rabbiting together while we messed about with horses. She got very good at joining the other dogs in helping us herd in extra mounts if we needed them.  It was such a cool place for a young person and her dog to be.  Like living in a Western movie.

One time, Trudy, was off with the other dogs when we took a trip in a car across to the far side of the property, and we had gone some kilometres before I noticed that Trudy was galloping up behind us, having tracked us, I know not how, all that way.  Her tongue was out a mile and covered with dust!

She would scratch up my car if left in it, and apparently also cried when I was at Uni.  This was her undoing.  We were told there had been a complaint to the shire about her barking by the neighbour.   I know now that it was my stepfather, who had never meant me to keep her when he rescued her and who was prone to making this sort of trouble, at times just for attention or drama.  This was one of his dichotomies: that he loved animals and had a soft heart, but would hurt them too if it suited him.

We had three dogs and should only have two.  I argued but was told that we would have to rehome her. Rather than give up my beloved dog, I took her up to the property where we had been so happy and they said they would keep her for me while I worked out what to do. I should have known that she would not be happy there without me.  She went missing and was found killed on the road.  I found her.  It was a very terrible night.

I still remember the confused faces of my poor neighbours when I knocked on the door in floods of tears and told them I hoped they were happy because my dog was dead.  We didn't yet know all that my stepfather was capable of.

I'm sorry that I didn't keep you safe, Trudy.  We should have had many more years together. 

I don't much like posting sad things here, but Trudy is the last of the dogs of my high pack, and she deserves to have her story too.

It seemed very appropriate to tell her tale today, since my sister and her family have today said goodbye to their loyal and beautiful Freyja at last.  Each and every loss of our family dogs has been very much in my mind, as they always are when we farewell another.

Oh they are so worth it, but Rudyard Kipling had it right when he said, "Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware, of giving your heart to a dog to tear."
                            

 

                       

Chicken Soup for Satan: First pages free to read.

So, my latest book, "Chicken Soup for Satan," has gone live on Kindle at Amazon for 99 US cents  It's going to take a bit longer to get the printed version proofed and up for sale, but what the heck, here's the full cover:

And here's the first five pages to tempt you.  Enjoy!

Chapter 1

My name is Satan.  Satan Smith, to be exact.  I'm a rough, tough Aussie bloke and nobody messes with me.  Except my mother.  But then, she's a force of nature and even the real Satan would have feared her.

Right now I'm living under the shadow of Ma full time because I got evicted from my crummy flat.  My black t-shirts have knife edge creases ironed into them.  My coolest old jeans all have nerdy patches on them.  The dog's been washed so white he hurts your eyes.  It's hell.  It's hell, and that's why I'm off after work to some suburb that is almost in the sticks to check out a share rental.  Anything has to be better than living back with your parents when you're twenty-seven.

Da's already up and at the kitchen table, even though I leave for work pretty early.  “I'm going to shoot off, now oul' Feller,” I tell him, my Scouse accent much thicker than usual.  He understands you better if you use the accent of his hometown in England.

“In a bit, son,” he replies, waving a hand vaguely, eyes on the paper.  He's already wearing his budgie smugglers and nothing else, just waiting for Ma to show up from whatever thing she is cleaning around the place and come with him to the beach.  He already looks like a piece of wrinkled beef jerky.  More sun is the last thing he needs, but he and Ma spend most of their time down there.  I think they reckon if they aren't at the beach all day every day then they've wasted their emigration or something.

I shove my wallet in my back pocket and Ghost, my white German Shepherd, sees that as the sign it is and slips out from under the table, a happy jabber starting up straight away.  Geez, that dog.  Talks more than any human I ever met.   His long fluffy tail wags from side to side so hard it hits his own sides as he precedes me down the hallway to the front door, his nails clicking on the tiles.  I'm glad that someone is happy the day is beginning, because I'm not.

It's five thirty in the morning, but I've got to be right up to Perth from Bunbury by seven thirty.  That's the other reason why I have to move; the commute is a killer.   Even though I love driving my ute, four hours a day on top of a hard day's work gets to be too much really fast, and the fuel bill is a killer.  At least now summer is here it's light already.  Doing the drive in the dark was the pits.

In the double driveway of my parent's beachside bungalow, I squeeze past the old folk's Prius, beep the lock on my ute and open the door so Ghost can jump into the passenger seat.  In no time The Nazgul; beautiful,  black and powerful, my greatest pride and joy after my dog, is purring up the South West Highway en-route to my job.  I've got Led Zep lll going full bore to ease me into the drive and wake me up at the same time.  I've got the passenger side window cracked enough for Ghost to get his head out so he can yodel his way up the highway.  Maybe the commute isn't so bad.  Beats being home with Ma and Da all day.  I'd kill myself in a week if they didn't smother me to death first.

Zep is followed by a bit of Kill 'em all by Metallica, and then I slip on a bit of guilty pleasure and listen to the Chieftains while we're on the main drag with no need to stop and no-one to hear it but me. By the time I pull up outside the shed I work in, the Zep is back on.  I wouldn't want my boss thinking I was a folk-loving woose.

It's one of a row of similar big shed/workshops in the Canning Vale industrial area.  They all start pretty early around here, so you can already hear angle-grinders and hammering and all sorts going on.  My boss won't be in for a while yet, so Ghost and I have the place to ourselves while I unlock the front and back doors for a bit of a breeze through and get going taking out yesterday's newly moulded statues.

Yep, I'm a rough, tough Aussie bloke, who makes birdbaths and statues for a living.  Gnomes too.  And worse.  What can I say, I fell into the job and I've got few qualifications to get anything better.  Anyway, I like it.  Derek, the boss, leaves me pretty much alone and he likes to have a bevvy as much as the next man.  I get to have Ghost with me, which is helpful because the silly sod would trash the house if I had to leave him home.

I like it, too, because I get to spend plenty of time outside, even if it is only in the tiny, fenced, baking-hot yard out the back where we run the cement mixer and keep the sand and blue metal.  My tan is nearly as good as Ma and Da's after being out there a few hours a day.  The whole family tans dark brown at the slightest bit of sun anyway.  A touch of the black Irish, my Da says, like a lot of Liverpool has.

I heave the first statue up onto the wheely stand.  Ouch!  Good morning, sore back.  It's the base for a cherub birdbath.  Heavy and awkward.  It's a layered conglomerate of half-cured concrete, which has been poured wet into rubber to make the details on the concrete. Over that goes a heavy fibre-glass casing, which is bolted onto the whole lot to stop the rubber bulging out and letting the finished product get miss-shaped and weirdly fat.  We usually do the birdbaths first but sometimes I get wild and do something different.  Variety being the spice of life and all.  I get the battery drill and start undoing all the bolts that hold the casing together, dropping each nut and bolt into a bucket as I go.  There will be hundreds more of these undone by midmorning.

Ghost goes into the little yard and sun-bakes in the early morning sun, laying on the dirtiest bit of concrete dust he can find.  He'll be grey on one side when he gets up, and by the end of the day he'll be grey from dust all over. Take that, Ma!

Once the pieces of the fibre-glass cover have been carefully wedged away from the rubber mould underneath, I start peeling the rubber up.  My knuckles start to bleed straight away, the sores from yesterday and and the day before and day before soon opening up again.  You have to get your fingers under the mould as you drag it up and your knuckles rub against the half-set concrete.  It's as good as sandpaper, with the added fun of burning lime. If I wasn't so rough and tough, I'd wear gloves, but I wouldn't want Derek seeing me do that.  He'd think less of me. He's got knuckles like bits of raw meat.

I've got the mould partway up the birdbath, so I pick it up and put it back on the floor.  Hello again, sore back.  It's not warmed up yet.  Soon it'll be warm, and by the end of the day it'll be freezing back up and I'll feel a hundred.

You need some leverage to get the rubber off, which is why I get it back on the floor.  It's like a huge, tight yellow condom and tends to stick where the concrete is driest too.  Then if you pull too roughly, the damned top of the birdbath breaks off and you've ruined it.  If you do that too often in a day, Derek gets mad, or as Da would say, “gets a cob on.”  Derek mad is a scary sight, even though he's only about five foot ten or so tall.  He's one of those nuggety Scotsmen who grew up fighting and his eyes flash flame when he's angry.  It should be him with the nickname of Satan, not me.  I'm not giving it up, though.  I earned that name.

I put my feet both sides of the statue's base, mindful not to put boot marks on it, bend over and take the rubber in both my hands, then slowly stand up, peeling the mould off as I go.  Phew.  In one piece and not too many air bubbles either.  One down, a couple of hundred different things to go before I can start mixing the concrete to make the batch I'll take out tomorrow morning.  Ah well, I've got my dog, I've got the radio blasting, and the Jiffy food van will be along soon.  Life could be much worse.

I've done it all so many times before, I've got time to let my mind drift to think about this afternoon and the share house I am going to look at.  I know they let you have a friendly dog because that was in the ad.  Wouldn't bother to look if they didn't.   

Ghost is friendly.  He looks a bit intimidating but he's really a total woose.  Not that you'd blame him.   Poor sod must have had a rotten life before we found him out the back here one morning, cowering in the corner between the fence and the big rubbish bin.  You could hardly tell he was white, he was so filthy.  He was about five months old, the vet reckoned.  His half-mast puppy ears looked like they might never come up and he looked a right mongrel.  Maybe that was why he got dumped.   

All I know is that I coaxed him out of his hidey spot and into my arms and he's been my soul mate ever since.  Once you have the love of a Shepherd, you know what real love is.  And the joke's on the dumpers, because his ears grew up to stand tall, and he filled out into the most handsome dog I've ever seen.  I'm biased, but you'd have to be blind not to see it.  He looks like Rin Tin Tin, only white.  He has the wisest brown eyes, a black nose and grinning mouth, and his coat would put a polar bear to shame.  He's never got over being scared of strange men, though.  I don't mind.  I'm a bit the same.  You never know what the bastards will do.

Birth of the Cover Art for my soon to be published book, Chicken Soup for Satan

Well, this has been a bit of a production!  I've drawn an awful lot of German Shepherds getting ready for the final piece.  Not that that was a hardship, as I think they have beautiful heads, and every subject you draw and paint teaches you new things, especially if you tackle it more than once.

It began with pages like this of thumbnails.  I've posted this one before but, eh, it is the beginning of the journey, so it needs to go here too.
  

Next I drew bigger images, sorting out how to fit the dog and bowl on the page, keeping in mind that the book format is skinnier than my paper.  I needed room for the title and author text, and I also practiced drawing the doggy character from the book, Ghost, in more detail. Once I settled on a composition, I did my final drawing.

 That image had to be darkened a lot in iphoto.  I drew very lightly.

After that I put in my first washes on the background.  The paper I was using didn't hold up very well to washing.  It's only a pad of water colour paper.  Not the best quality.  Still, it was a start I could work with.

More washes followed.

I kind of like this stage.  Spooky! Fits the theme of the book, but Ghost is not one of the spooky things in it, so on I went.


At this stage I began to work in more detail.

Aww, the character of of Ghost was coming out very nicely by now!  Pupils and some other little detailed touches still needed to be done, and I was worried about the paper being over-worked, so I got out the Aquarelles for the last few bits.

After that Andyroo kindly helped me photograph the image, and then I resized it to fit the book cover ready to add text in Gimp.

What do you think?

I got a splash of hot magenta on his forehead right back at the start and it didn't quite wash out properly, but luckily I can fix that in Gimp.  Bless you Gimp!

For the back cover, I just couldn't think of any image to use that wouldn't give too much away, or give the wrong impression about the book, so I have just washed a full page to match the texture of the background in the front cover.  I'm trying to do a different spine colour for each book, just for fun, and this one is obviously going to be purple!  :) 

There are many, many artists in the world who would do a much better job of this sort of art than me.  I would consider myself a novelist first and foremost, but I do enjoy the challenge of doing my own cover art, and I hope you enjoy seeing them in progress!

Final editing is part way done, and soon the book will be available.  Exciting! This is the first book I have finished in many years, since before I got sick with Lyme disease more than a decade ago. To be returning to my creative life means more than this bard can express in words.