A Mothers Day Gift For You

 

A free new story for you! 

Happy (and scary) Mothers Day!

https://tlmerrybard.com/just-one-night-in-the-land-of-fire/ 

Liminal Space

That place where things are neither one thing nor the other.  The time of day where you go from being able to see things to when you can't, or the reverse.  Doorways, windows, holes in the ground, mirrors, moments in time.    

The spaces where you are waiting for something. The spaces you sometimes need to pass through to get to the next goal or the next fun thing.  The spaces you can use to get you deeper into the Otherworld, if you Journey.

A tree like this in your inner landscape can help you to go deeper and leave behind the ratty thoughts.  Duck under it, or go through a door or a window, duck under a rock or into a cave, or pass through the base of a hollow tree like this one, the ones I call petticoat trees.  If you need something, look and it will be there.

We are in liminal space just now for a few reasons.

We have just inoculated ourselves with human helminths.  Yes we really did!  With a cluster of auto-immune conditions for me and inflammation in Andrew's joints that leaves him in pain every day, fun remnants of our Lyme Disease, we gladly added these little guys to our biospheres.

Here I am welcoming in my new tummy pets! 

The first stage is super itchy but it soon settles.  Five dots each, for five little hookworms who will moderate our immune systems symbiotically, just as they have done for humans for thousands of years. 

Now we wait. First for the 'bounce' that they say leaves you feeling fantastic for a few days or weeks, then for the time when they have reached your intestines and your body reacts a bit, and finally for the time where you hope that all comes into balance.  Liminal space.  Waiting in a place between sickness and health.  Hoping.

I am in the odd, still space between novels just now, too.  I've finally finished the proofread on the print copy of Land of Giants, and am not quite ready to start writing my next novel.  Oh, before I forget, starting tomorrow there is a half price deal on the kindle version of Land of Fire for one week, so if you want to buy the first book of the Norse World Tales at a bargain price, now is your chance!  


The AGM for our brigade has been put back two months and now we must all wait to see what happens to the leadership next year.  Liminal, and stressful. In the meantime, the dry autumn and a new idiot of a firebug has meant more fires.  This week Andrew and I got to crew the 1.4 on our own, and it was a lot of fun to be Team Merrybard.

 

That's Angus and Andy all the way back there.  They were in the Light Tanker. 
 

  
We all got a bit lost going for water to refill the tanks.  It's not surprising. There is a bloody lot of both native forest and pine plantation out there.

Nothing but trees and tracks for miles!

We ended up following another brigade, who also couldn't find the water, but they came over a rock in the rough track at one point while getting turned around, and it was a fun sight to see them up so high above us.  They make the fire vehicles tough for a good reason!

 

 
We blacked out a 20m edge around the smouldering remains and were stood down, and home we came through a stunning sunset.

Coming in to refuel the truck on the way home, and the mundane is made beautiful.
 

It rained a little today, so perhaps that is the last fire call-out we will get this season.  We'll be waiting just in case. Liminal space.

   
       

Colour!

Niamh's Afghan is coming along.  I love being able to show you the stages as it goes, and I love the colours.  As mum says, it currently looks like it is made of jewels!

 
The Proof copy of Land of Giants arrived today.  I love the cover.  It worked!  Yay!  Now I have two matching books in the series, also rather jewel-like, especially when put together.

Painted covers are rather out of fashion in this age of computer graphics, but I do like them, and love how bright all my books look on the bookshelf together. As a bonus of being a self-published author, I get to do what I like.  :)

This gorgeous dog came to the same cafe as us this week. I think he just has the loveliest expression, very like my Keech. Very self aware and conscious and kind.   I didn't go to see him as we had our two silly-buggers with us, but I took photos to show you.  I am such a sucker for black and tan, especially when you add some white.

  
Doesn't he look like a lovey?  So handsome too, and when he puts his ears up, one is right up and one is only halfway, which is totally charming as well.  :)

Our beautiful local forest is very green just now after all the rain we have had.  On Tuesday we went on the walk down by the King Jarrah that I call the Faraway tree. Tuppy had to be on her long lead because there are lots of roos out there.

 

Ahh, the Magnificent Faraway Tree is always bigger than you remember!  So hard to capture in a photo, but here I have joined two together to give you a bit of an idea.

The rest of that bit of forest is rather lovely too. Here is another ancient, character-filled  Jarrah on the same south-facing slope. 

    
I've just discovered and really been enjoying the talent of this young feller, Sigrbodr Gretarrson this week.  Here he is playing the harp.

And here he is playing guitar, a fantastic version of Wardruna's Helvegen.

Amazing!   Colour comes in sound too.  Don't you just love following the music trail on youtube?      



 


 

What a relief!

6 weeks post Op!  I finally get to vacuum my own floors!  It's taking me three goes to do it, and I'm holding my tum with one hand while I do it, but it is still a great relief.  I'm not sure anyone loves cleaning floors, but it is awful to be unable to do them when you want to, the way you want to!

I've been knuckling down on getting Land of Giants going this week.  The book's cover art is now ready for watercolour.  I'll do a 'stages of art' post soon but for now here is a detail of Lem from the final drawing. I love it and think I have managed to keep that feel in the ink stage.  Hopefully it will remain into the colour stage too.  If you've read Land of Fire, you'll remember Lily's housemate, Lem.  He gets to be front of stage this book around!

The Illawarra Flame Tree is still flowering but a lot of the pretty blossoms have started falling.  The car looks like it is going to a wedding, and the road outside is covered in red flowers that have blown away as we take off.

There are a lot on the ground too.

Sweet Rosie.  This morning mum met the guy who owns one of her litter brothers, Ranger.  He reckons he is a fantastic dog and they love him to bits, and people are always asking where they got him because they want a dog like him too.  So lovely when your planned litter turns out as well as that one did.  You can't always be so lucky even when you do your best to get it right, but mum really did it right, and got lucky too, with Rosie and her brothers and sister.

"I'm kind of interested in the ball."

What a dear girl she is.


Funny Tuppence is a bit more 'complex,' shall we say.

"I will hyp-not-o-size the ball to throw itself with the power of my gaze!"

Whose turn will it be?

Angus is somewhere in the middle between his mama and sister.  He is certainly more complex than Rosie and has a lot more up and down moods, but he is nowhere near as intense as Tuppy.  They are all so different, aren't they.  To say that any dog will turn out the same as long as you raise them right is doing both the dog and the owner a disservice.  They require individual training and management just like any parent of multiple kids will tell you.  To think anything else is to reduce dogs to mindless automatons of response, which they are definitely not!   

Note husband's grubby, dusty feet from two circuits of the paddock.  Yep, summer is here now!

Ok, time for the next and hopefully final stage of floor vacuuming, then time to do some more editing on my book.  Have a good weekend!  Put some fun and adventure in it!        

     
 

 

    

      

Wildflower Time and Other news.

Well, I've finished the first draft of book number eleven!  "Land of Giants," sequel to, "Land of Fire," is done!  Over seven months of writing five days a week, and 118 267 words later!

I'm very pleased with how it came out in the end, though just like my readers I am always sorry to leave my characters behind.  It was lovely to revisit Lily, Perry, Bu, Brodie and all the rest, and this time, side characters Andy and Lem got to shine.

Six weeks, give or take, to let it ease out of my mind so it feels fresh and I'll go back in for the second draft.

I'm not going to start writing another book at once as i often do.  It's time for a spring clean here and with fire season just around the corner, we'll be busier with the brigade too.

The vegie gardens need a little TLC too!

I've already got ideas brewing for the next book, though, involving a sequel to, "Chicken Soup for Satan," and a revisit to Satan Smith and his lovely German shepherd, Ghost, and their fun housemates... and spooky things of course!

So, without a couple of hours a day stuck to my desk straining my brain, it feels a bit like holiday time for me!  The spring is in the air, and our walk this morning was blissful; crisp but warm, and the sun was shining in that clear way it has in spring.

Tuppy is having some off lead privileges to see how she goes now she is five and a bit more settled.  So far so good! 

These orchids were beside the path.

And the flame pea type plants, of which there are a multitude of different varieties, were out brightly in the sun, like little jewels amongst the green.

On Thursday, when we went to walk in the reserve across the road, this patch of Leschenaultia was glowing bright.  It is the thickest patch I've seen for a while.  Tuppy had just been sitting up for a treat, which is why she looks like she's doing a dressage levade.  :)  

  
And the Sundews were sparkling in the sun. They are well named, as each little spot of sticky sap, set to catch insects, picks up the sun like a tiny spot of dew and they truly do sparkle.    

Twinkle twinkle little Sundew!

I have about two granny squares left to go on the latest afghan, so am exploring colours and ways to join them this time.  What do you think?  Too much yellow? Will certainly brighten up all the green!

This wall painting was in a cool book cafe yesterday where I went to wait for two hours because I'd got my appointment time for a doctor wrong!  D'oh!  

Was an interesting thing, though.  I got there way too early but the person who went in before me was a lovely lady and fellow lymie who I am friends with on Fb but have never met in person, so we got to hug at last, and have a lovely chat while she and her delightful partner, Thommo, waited to go in.  

What are the odds that of all this doctor's patients, it should be sweet Tammy who I was there in time to meet at last, by a pure fluke?  Thanks for that, Universe!  I appreciate it! 

Anyway, the wall at the cafe. I think this is rather a good motto for life actually.  :)

It reminds me of this lovely pair of photos that Michelle got at a burn yesterday while I was off sipping tea and eating cake in a cafe in the big city!   Being Fireys is mostly serious, and hard work too, but it is 'right work' and there is a joy in that, and in being with one's team-mates.  This is my sister Jen, who has now fully qualified to be a firefighter, and Andy.

 

     

Can't even begin to tell you how much I adore these photos.  :D

There is another hazard reduction burn on tonight and this one I will probably get to, at last!  We only have a small window between too wet and too dry to do these burns, so for a few weeks it gets pretty hectic.  I'm glad the flu has finally cleared long enough for me to feel up to the job!    

              

Creativitiy in the deeps of winter. And pink boots.

Do you like my new pink work boots? Sis came with me to try on Firey boots to fit her and I found these and, well, the rest is history.  Nice to be chainsawing in something a little tougher than Volleys.  :)

It's been a creative week here. Hit the 60 000 word mark on Land of Giants and having a good time rolling out the Megafauna and tricky bad guys to test my characters. I'd say 60 000 words is about the halfway mark for this book, since I'd planned it being about 120 000 all up, a similar word count to Land of Fire.  Halfway!  Yay me!

Also this week I composed a little tune that I've been calling, "Muninn's Journey." This week, rather than work on the song I have been adapting, I just felt like plinking away on my lyre and purely composing, something I haven't done for a little while.

It's been a good week for sitting by the fire playing music.  Cold!  Cold for here anyway!  

So, I got my little song sorted, then videoed it with my phone so I would have a recording in case I forgot some of it, always a danger until I get around to roughly annotating it. I think I would normally play it through twice, or perhaps each half twice at once. This is just once, through, with usual deliberate mistakes.  :P 

Here is Muninn's Journey, via belly cam. I know, I know, I missed most of my hand, but the tummy angles were just wrong for any better view.  :D

It's also been a good week for crocheting.  Cyrano likes it best if I crochet up at the table, which I do for more complex things like my slouchie beanie.  It's finished, by the way!  Wove in the last ends just today.  I love it!  Feel like it was made for me!  (Which of course it was!)


I haven't got a pic of me wearing it yet.  Andrew did get this pic the other night of Cyrano and I enjoying some quality crochet time, while we listened to Bram Stoker's Dracula on audiobook.

Wednesday night we went to drum circle and had a good time.   We've missed it the last few weeks for one reason and another, so was good to get Old Goaty out and really go for it. 

It's been a very good week!  Hope yours was too!  Tonight is the local folk and blues club, and tomorrow is Fireys!  Yay!   

    

A Fun Excerpt From "Land of Fire".

I am currently rereading, "Land of Fire" to get my headset in the right place to start writing the sequel next week.

I've got to the entrance of the irrepressible Brodie, and have been enjoying it so much I thought you might like to have a read of it too.

Enjoy!

Perry hung up his fifth cheesecloth shirt in a row, and above this line of dripping hippydom an apparition leapt into view from around the side of the house. It had wild, fine, orange hair that blew out like a halo about its head, a blunt, jolly face, forearms like orange-furred treetrunks, a broad, naked, furry chest, and it wore a kilt and nothing else.

   The apparition’s name was Brodie Mac Brodie, and the last time Perry had seen him was at a medieval event in Sydney, where he had been the best fighter on the day, as he usually was, which had included thrashing Perry’s arse from one end of the Eric to the other. Brodie and Perry went way back, back to their early teen years at least, and they had always been friends.

   “M’Lord Peregrine!” Brodie roared, and swept a flashy bow that left his hair even more excited than before.

   Not big on fast reactions, Perry was still standing behind his shirts, peg in hand and mouth agape. A larger-than-life Australian Highlander in your backyard didn’t happen every day, not even to Perry. He scrambled for his wits and ducked under the washing to come give Brodie a hug.

   “Bloody hell!” Perry groaned as he was hugged back (groaned because all the air was being crushed out of his chest). “What are you doing in Perth, you mad bugger?”

   “I’ve come to stay with you of course,” Brodie answered, looking not at all offended at being called a mad bugger, probably because he was one. “Well, that and I wangled a short short-term contract over here. Going to have my arse in the river of gold for three months! Two weeks on the rig, one week off, which I want to spend every minute of with you!”

   Perry can be forgiven for looking dismayed for just a second before he managed to get that welcoming smile back on his face: Brodie Mac Brodie, whose real name was lost to the mists of childhood, and perhaps these days only seen on those oil rig contracts and the like, was as bad as Perry’s parents for living what was to most people only a hobby. He was Mad Medievalist incarnate, an odd thing to find in an Electrician, but there you have it.

   “What’s the local group like?” he asked, and Perry needed no further explanation to know that he was asking about the local members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA, which back in Sydney filled Brodie’s life as well as providing him with a family.

   “I don’t actually know,” Perry had to admit. “I came over here to be normal for a while.”

   “What’s normal, my friend?” Brodie asked, and gave some mysterious, probably bare, area under his kilt a good scratch.

   “Not kilts as streetwear, that’s for sure,” Perry rejoindered, “and not spending all your social life poncing around in tights.”

   “Neither you nor I wear tights, unless you’ve changed your persona,” Brodie answered happily, “and kilts are fashionable. Come help me get my gear off your front lawn. The taxi guy wanted to leave in a hurry.”

   “Saw your weapons or something, did he?”

   “My helm, actually,” Brodie said, and grinned a lunatic grin. “I’ve got a new one.”

   The new helm proved to be polished steel with a particularly scary stylized face on it, although, as Perry pointed out, it wasn’t as scary as Brodie’s own mug when he got going.

   They lumped all of Brodie’s gear into the house; his small case of clothing, his large bag full of rattan weapons, his huge trunk full of armour, and the heavy, scary helm. All of it went into Perry’s spare room, which was also his junk room.

   Brodie professed himself happy with the old mattress on the floor amongst the piles of Perry’s old computer components and his multitude of stacked books, and dropped his gear randomly in any available space.

             “Now,” he told Perry, “we get pissed together!”

     

Questions to the Author... and Fireys, and Labradors.

 Poor old Angus.  Mum has decided not to breed with him, so he got to go and have his family jewels removed last week.  Right now he has to wear an Elizabethan collar to stop him pulling out his stitches, poor darling.   In a couple of weeks he'll be a happier dog, because he won't be always wanting something he'll never get, but in the meantime, well, he needs lots of snuggles and loving. Luckily Uncle Andyroo the best dog-patter in town, is always ready to give comfort.

He's handling the cone of shame very well, but since he's always a bit of a blonker who thinks he should only stop AFTER he's run into you, he is even more dangerous with this thing sticking out in front of him. Beware the Angus, or you'll be taken off at the knees!

"Comfort me! I is still your prince!"

I finally got round to making the video where I answer some reader questions about my writing.  Only took me a year, I think!   Heh, had to laugh at the Aussie accent, which one tends to notice more on recordings than in real life.  I missed my opportunity to say, "Dog's arse!" though, which I said for some reason yesterday (as you do) and cracked myself up at how strong an accent Aussies have when we come out with that particular bit of classiness.  :)   "Dog's Arrrrrse!"

Anyway, I hope it's of interest to you, especially if you write, or want to write, novels yourself.  I'm always keen to hear how other people do these things and I'm sure other writers are too.   

Dear Da, thank you for the wiggly eyebrows!  

Firey's was mega hot on the weekend, but we still did a burnover drill and then an exercise to see how far we could get our water using all the hoses and the pumps on both vehicles, plus a water truck at the end pumping as well.

From the water truck to the 1.4, at least a 100 metres, I think:

  

Then from the 1.4 to the light tanker, tucked away down the track there: 

All up, we got about 225 metres, with good water pressure.  Hope we never have to do this at a fire, but it is good to practice joining all the various types of hoses.  There were plenty of people there, luckily, so making up the hoses again was soon done, and back to the station for a cold drink!  

Andrew Branson going to check if they want the water on yet.

It's going to be over 40C for a few days in a row this week. That's 105 for you Fahrenheit people.  You can smell the super-heated eucalyptus volatiles in the air, just waiting for a spark to set them off into a fire. There is already one going, right back down near the one that burned the town of Yarloop the other week.  Not again!  The poor buggers!  Wish us sun-shriveled West Aussies a bit of luck and no more fires this week please!  

In the meantime, we do our outside chores early, and hide inside as much as we can during the middle of the day, though we do go outside for wanders, since it's not good to stay in the aircon too long. Makes you headachey and dumb.

My poor chookies are having wallows made to help them survive the heat, and of course the dogs and kitty come inside with us.     

Tuppence is a funny one when it comes to cuddles.  She has always been so highly reactive to everything, and she finds touching a bit too much for her very quickly, but she still craves it, a bit like some cats.  Daddy keeps trying.  Some days she relaxes into it for a little while.

We figure that by the time she's ten, she might start enjoying it all the time!