Merry Christmas

As we wind our way toward the Christmas and New Year holidays, I wanted to take a few moments and thank you for your friendship and support over the last twelve months.

2014 has been a great year for me and a one I’ll remember fondly. First highlight was having my short story, Banib the Bunyip win second prize in the 2013 Melton Short Story Competition. In January I learnt that my debut novel Kundela was commended in the FAW National Literary Awards.

An author may write in isolation, but when the manuscript is as good as they can get it, there is still more to do. If the writer is smart or lucky, they will find an editor with the skills to take their story and make it into a prize winning novel. Merlene Fawdry waved her magic over the manuscript for Kundela and I can’t thank her enough for the work she put in. She made it into a winner.

Unless a book sells, as a writer you feel as if you have under achieved, so I’d like to thank all of the book sellers who put Kundela on their shelves, your support of an independent writer is empowering.

Writers need readers too and to all of you who bought enough copies of Kundela to make a reprint necessary, I’m thankful. Feed back is like food to someone like me and to those who said how much they enjoyed the book thank you. Your encouragement empowers my resolve to write.

This year I finished another novel, an adventure set in Melbourne. Toby Farrier is a fifteen year old boy living with his grandfather. Toby gets into all manner of trouble, when he sets course to solve the riddle of a desk that has lain, locked and forgotten since 1930.

Currently I am working on the second book in the Kundela series. I have planned another children’s novel which I hope to start soon. Both manuscripts should be finished by this time next year.

 

Ruth and I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and we hope you enjoy a happy and prosperous New Year.

Once again thanks for the continued support

Les Gillespie's Gold Roadblock

As I started my NaNoWriMo challenge I flew into the word count, but writing Gods are fickle and tossed a problem to me. I had written myself into a conundrum, Jeff was in the outback writing a poem to Tilly and for once I couldn't make it work.  Rough little rhymes are usually something that come to me fast and unforced, but when I required one in Chapter 20, I failed. Pressure off and I penned this poem in a few minutes.

Today I toss it out into the ether for any poets to read, rewrite and make better. It may not appear in the final draft, but the poem Adnymathanha Stars has helped me finish chapter 21 and power into the rest of the novel.

Leave me a comment with your changes or thoughts.

 

 

 

Adnyamathanha Stars

Throw open your curtains and turn out the light

Fear not the shadows, I’m with you tonight

Peer out of your window and look up to the stars

For I’m sending you kisses on light waves from Mars

 

All alone on my swag I stare into the night

Longing to touch you and hold you so tight

With each little moon beam, that falls on your face

I’m sending my love song, from this ancient place

 

I’m sleeping in places where my ancestors slept

Where stories of wisdom and old secrets, are kept

Now I see far above me vast constellations of stars

And know if I lost you, on my heart there’d be scars

 

Two nights ‘til I see you and my days will just drag

Two slow days of more listening, to young fellas brag

Two more days of them bitching, their unending moan

And at the end of these days, my darling, I’m home

 

So sleep well in our bed of springs, latex and foam

For I’m lying tonight on a mound of red clay and loam

Take kisses from moon beams that land on your cheek

Store in a glass, my candle of love ‘til the end of the week

 

Throw open your curtains and turn out the light

Fear not the shadows, I’m with you tonight

Out of your window look these old Adnyamathanha stars

And know I’m sending my kisses on light waves from Mars

Wishes

I Wish

I wish I had a Puppy

I wish his name was Ben

I wish my little puppy

I wish he'd use a pen

I wish he’d tell a story

I wish he’d tell a tale

I wish my little puppy

Could do more than wag his tail

Statement Lies

This is another one minute exercise from our Wordsmiths group. The idea was to write a story or poem using obvious untruths. Here is my answer to the challenge.

Statement Lies, a Poem

 

The sky is red the sea is dry

Time stands still when you cry

 

A mother’s hug is never warm

A child is quiet when it’s born

A belted dog will wag it’s tail

A fire siren does not wail

Ode to Aging

Ode to Aging

 

Now I’m growing older

And soon my time is done

I think about my travels

And victories I’ve won

Glory days of endless sunshine

And days of flooding rain

 

I remember holding close to you

To minimise your pain

Sobs that shook you to the core

I don’t want to see again

I felt your lips with loving kisses

No man could love you more

Once

During one of our writing exercises this year, the group decided to try writing several one minute sessions to make a story or poem. The idea being to use a word drawn from a hat. This is one of my offerings and the word I drew for this one was once.

 

 

ONCE

 

Once there was a hobbit

Once there was a hole

Once there was a table

Once in the hobbits hole

Once he took a pot of tea

Once he made a cake

 

Once I made a visit

Once to the hobbit hole

Once I ate with him his cake

Once in that hobbit hole

Once I drank with him his tea

Once I dreamt that he was me

Allen Gibb the toddler who left home and came home a boy with polio

Allen Gibb is one man trying to help raise awareness to the way Polio ravages not only children but adults too. Australia had an inclusive immunisation programme that had eliminated the disease by the mid eighties and now we are under threat of it's return by people who for unknown reasons are refusing to immunise their children. I will post more of his story later, but as Allen now faces post polio syndrome, with the disease returning and further reducing his capabilities it may be timely to look at what he had to endure as a child. This poster shows the contraptions he was tied into to help him carry on and play as best he could with other children.

As Poster boy for the Crippled Children's Association he was doing his bit back then.

Now older and more world worn, Allen might disagree with the comments of the letter to the Down Every Street Appeal's helpers, but he would agree that the cause is still worth fighting for.

Mate I salute you.

We will soon have more to relay as Allen tells us his perspective of being a child suffering with this disease and how it is revisiting him now. In the meantime, we ask that you investigate the benefits of immunisation yourself, before saying no to immunising your childtren.