Author Archives: toearlyretirement

Is this good tired?

28 Sunday May 2023

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This weekend I attended a writers retreat with members of the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild. We were in a house down on the beautiful, cold, rainy, Mornington Peninsula. Nineteen writers all together, inspiring each other and learning from one another. I came home today, and I’m super tired. Partially in the brain-full-of-new-information way, and partially in the physical way. Driving an hour or so each way, sleeping in a strange bed, all added up to being pretty wrecked this evening. And I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Still, I was very pleased I went. I learned a lot of great new stuff from the presenter, Rachel Bailey, on story and scene structure. It was great to be able to look at my writing and being able to see (most of) the principles being applied already. Knowledge is always beneficial for honing ones craft, and there were parts that I’d seen before which were reinforced, other parts that were new, and some that were presented in a different way that made more sense.

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com

I’m excited to apply what I’ve learned to my writing. And to be more patient with myself; given writing is not my main source of income, I can be slow on my deadlines, move them, since I’ve set them for myself. I will continue to write, at my own pace, taking into account my capacity and other commitments.

If I had been thinking about it, I would have taken some photos at the retreat to make this post more interesting, but I didn’t, so please accept this dreary beachscape from Pexel instead. I look forward to showing you some new stuff in the coming months.

30 Poems in 30 Days

01 Monday May 2023

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And now it’s over again for the year. I managed to do all thirty, though not all on their allocated day. At least one I missed as I came down with the dreaded COVID about a week ago. Thankfully, I’m feeling much improved, though not quite back to previous levels of health.

I’m going to leave the poems to mature for a while before going back to revise them. I don’t know whether many of them will be deemed worth publishing at any time. My poetry group has dissolved, and as yet I haven’t found a new one so I’ll have to find someone else to workshop my poems with, informally perhaps.

Did anyone else do anything fun writing wise (or otherwise) through April?

Now that the poetry challenge has finished, I’ll move back to some of my other prose works. I didn’t do any work on those projects while I was doing NaPoWriMo, but that’s to be expected.

NaPoWriMo 2023

27 Monday Mar 2023

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People who have followed by blog for a while will know that I have done a NaPoWriMo a few times previously. The basic idea is that I write a poem every day for the month of April. The woman who started it, Maureen Thorson, provides prompts each day, but they’re optional, so sometimes I don’t use them.

I’ve come up with most of my poetry content using this one-month marathon for the last few years, most of my other writing is prose based, so the requirement to think in a different form is a great challenge.

I’ve been out of the habit of daily writing for a while, I write every couple of days but there was a period a few years ago where daily writing was much more frequent. I still journal each morning, and I don’t count this towards the daily writing target.

I’m meeting with a couple of poets on Wednesday in an effort to revamp or recreate a poetry group where I can workshop my work. It’s at the least a time for me to read other people’s poems, I’m not very good at that either.

The boundaries imposed by a daily prompt, and a daily output requirement, have generated a lot of good work from me in the past, and I hope this will continue. I’ve stopped doing NaNoWriMo for my prose, as the practise is no longer useful, but I still see value in the poetry version.

Is anyone else doing it? We could hold one another accountable, or perhaps if you’re local to Melbourne/Naarm we could get a coffee and write together.

In all of that I’m going to try to get to some Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows as well, which starts on Friday 30 March. Things are picking up again after a couple of years of staying inside and waiting.

Do you like audiobooks?

19 Sunday Mar 2023

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I’m pleased to say I’ve taken advantage of a new offering from Apple Books to have two of my novels read by their AI book narrators. See the links to these two books below:

My Mother’s Secret

Discovering the Franklins

I’m curious to see how these turn out, and would love for some of my readers to try them out. Feel free to send me some feedback.

There are a couple of other AI narration services which I will be looking into them in the next few months.

AI is a controversial area, however if it helps people who don’t like reading in text to access more books, I’m happy to give it a try.

Everything has it’s season

03 Friday Mar 2023

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The trees around my house have noticed that it’s been autumn for three days and have thus shed a bunch of leaves. It feels very early in the year to be having autumn, but perhaps it’s more about Melbourne having not really had a summer. It was cold and wet until the end of December and January and February were suspiciously cool.

In my creative world, my poetry group has recently dissolved. I joined in 2015, which seems like a lifetime ago really, and I have been attending on a monthly basis (or there abouts) since then. It’s strange to not have the group there, encouraging me, forcing me to write at least twelve poems per year if only to have something to bring to the meetings.

I’ve put out some feelers to other writers who might be interested in starting an alternate group, probably on the same monthly basis, but it’s not what I would call settled at this stage. Fingers crossed I can smoothly transition into comparable relationship with some other poets.

It’s strange to think about the passage of time. Especially with the two years or so that were hijacked with COVID and the restrictions of that, not to mention my car accident and the recovery from that. It feels a little like we’re still in 2019 but I also feel a lot older than I did back then.

I posted recently on my Facebook that I was becoming more cottage core in my old age. I’m approaching 40 (it’s next year but it still feels quite soon) and my interests seem to be more and more domestic. I crochet, I bake, cook, garden, and think about interior decorating much more than I ever did when I was a young person.

Work in progress shawl over a bunch of new yarn I accidentally bought.

Sometimes I look at young people and wonder if they’re some sort of alien species. So much energy and faith in the world. I’m very tired and cynical by comparison. I don’t remember being that exuberant, but I suppose I must have been more excitable than I am nowadays.

Not to say that I dislike the new version of me; I’m quite content to be more of a homebody than I used to be. The two years or so of lockdowns didn’t help in getting me out of the habit of going out to see bands etc. Maybe 2023 will be a year to get back into going outside, but maybe that’s not something that I want anymore.

If you’re a Melbourne based poet and would like to get involved with a workshop group, feel free to email me. Otherwise, wish me luck in organising a new group.

It’s lauch day for Singular Purpose!

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Singular Purpose, the sequel to my 2021 book, Singular Focus, is available to buy now! I’m very excited for you to read what’s been happening with Freya, Jacob and Dinah and what new trouble they’ve been dragged into.

You can order ebook copies through all the usual places using the link here.

Hard copy orders can also be made through me directly, email me here to find out how.

You don’t have to have read the first one, but it will definitely help. I hope you’re ready for some exciting urban fantasy adventures; you’re going to love it.

Singular Purpose available to read in two weeks!

18 Wednesday Jan 2023

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Singular Purpose, the sequel to my 2021 book, Singular Focus, is available to buy in two weeks! I’m very excited for you to read what’s been happening with Freya, Jacob and Dinah and what new trouble they’ve been dragged into.

You can preorder ebook copies through all the usual places using the link here.

Hard copy orders can also be made through me directly, email me here to find out how.

You don’t have to have read the first one, but it will definitely help. I hope you’re ready for some exciting urban fantasy adventures; you’re going to love it.

Welcome to 2023!

01 Sunday Jan 2023

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The last days of 2022 have been really rough – Mum wasn’t well at Christmas and wasn’t able to participate in the family event, plus my back pain issue has been really fared up for some reason. I’m ready to welcome in a new year with hopefully a few less challenges.

As usual, I’m setting some goals for the next year.

  • Publish Singular Purpose
  • Finish manuscript for horror short story collection and/or another novel
  • NaPoWriMo 2022 (April)
  • Keep up the blog
  • Craft projects, including crochet, painting, etc.
  • Read 5 books
  • Music performance
  • Travel/holiday

This list is shorter and more vague than some of my other lists. I’m trying to keep things a bit looser to cater to the various obstacles that might come up in the year that require my time and attention.

The horror short story collection is in progress, I have one quite short and one that might be about 20k already drafted. I also have a manuscript for a rom com that I wrote a while ago and have been rewriting that might be ready to publish for 2024.

NaPoWriMo has been a good exercise to keep my poetry practice going. To be honest I don’t do much poetry outside of April so I think that will be good. Plus it’s a smaller commitment than NaNoWriMo (which could take 2 hrs per day); it only takes about 30min per day.

In terms of craft and painting, these are mostly just for myself. I’ve been crocheting a little to keep my hands busy when watchin TV to stop myself scrolling through FaceBook endlessly. It does rely a bit on having some energy and not being in too much pain, so this might be up and down depending on how other things are going in my life.

I’ve added reading to the list, I noticed this year that I haven’t been doing much reading. I read three or four as part of my judging for the Romance Writers of Australia book of the year awards, but otherwise onle one or two. I have a huge ‘to read’ pile, including a few that were gifts that I haven’t gotten, it might be nice to get through some of them.

Music performance I’m keeping vague, I’m not sure the fate of Wasted Monday at the moment, and if it falls over I may or may not have time to another band or group. I also plan to continue with my piano lessons and the teacher likes to have twice yearly concerts with her students, so I’ll have that to fall back on.

I added a travel/holiday item. The last time I really went anywhere on a holiday was 2019, when I visited Morocco. It was pre-pandemic, and pre-car accident, so it will be different travelling now, but I hope it will be enjoyable (and doable) in 2023. I visited Brisbane briefly for a wedding in 2022 but it was just for the weekend; a fairly low-key dipping my toe back into the travel waters.

I will continue to experiment with cooking and pottering in my small garden. It’s looking a bit overgrown after a big burst this summer; my berries are producing a lot so that’s fun, though the fruit trees have yet to produce anything, maybe next year.

May you all have a beautiful 2023 in whatever form that takes for you. I look forward to seeing some of you in person and I hope you’ll enjoy keeping up with my work here and in publication.

End of year round up 2022

26 Monday Dec 2022

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This year has felt very long. I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s felt like 2022 has been going for a while. In comparison to 2020, it’s been pretty good but there have been plenty of challenges to work through.

I changed jobs, or more accurately I changed employers for my day job; the job itself performs the same function. After almost six years with the previous day job, I took an opportunity with a similar, but much larger organisation. I’ve got to know most of my key stakeholders, and people have started coming to me directly with questions.

So back to the wrap-up. In my 2022 goals post from January, I had a few things I wanted to achieve; some I’ve done, some I haven’t.

  • Publish two manuscripts (titles and covers coming soon)
  • Finish manuscript for Singular Focus 2 (working title)
  • NaPoWriMo 2022 (April)
  • NaNoWriMo 2022 (November)
  • Keep up the blog
  • Painting projects, including a proposal for a mural in my apartment building hallway
  • Wasted Monday performances*
  • Piano open mic performance*

The first two I can tick off; Sins of the Father and The Mother’s Fault were published early in the year. And I’m finalising edits on my sequel to Singular Focus, now available for pre-order: Singular Purpose. I have a few changes still to be done, then a final proofread, and it will be ready to go live 1 February 2023.

NaPoWriMo went well, I managed my goal of one poem for every day in April. Some of them were excellent, and have been workshopped with my poetry group, and some others will stay in the vault not to be read by the general public.

After that, my goals were harder to keep. The new job is more hours than the previous job, in addition to which I’ve had some chronic pain issues and other stuff that have hindered my ability to do projects.

I decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year, I’ve done a fair amount of writing over the year and November turned out to be a hectic month.

I kept up entries on the blog, perhaps not as many as I would have liked, but I’m counting that one.

My painting projects did not happen either, though I spent some time learning how to crochet instead. The mural project for my apartment building didn’t happen. It’s a big project, and I don’t have capacity to do all that planning and painting and everything that goes along with it. Especially given that the hallway is a public space, I would feel pressure to get it done quickly which would be an added level of difficulty.

As for music, I’ve still been having piano lessons with a local teacher every week, but I haven’t managed to do any open mics. I’m not ready to play piano in front of strangers, plus I don’t know enough songs well enough for a whole 15-minute set. My piano teacher arranges small concerts with her students every six months or so, and I played in those.

The band is on a bit of a hiatus, we’re all busy and one of our members is moving back overseas soon. Maybe I’ll have time for more performance stuff next year, but maybe not. Since the pandemic I’ve been more of a home body than I used to be. It could be that the the world has changed, and of course the lingering threat of catching the plague, but it might just be that I’m getting older, and more tired.

I’ve had a number of challenging situations in the last few months, some interpersonal conflict in my volunteer work, and a family member involved in an accident and caring duties associated with that. I’ve been feeling a distinct kinship with Bilbo when he describes feeling ‘thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.’

I’ve enjoyed being able to go out and socialise with people, I’ve seen a couple of gigs, had some excellent gatherings, and caught up with friends. On the other hand, I’ve had a couple of colds which didn’t happen when I was stuck inside not seeing anyone, I guess there are drawbacks to interacting with other people.

I’m not much good at resting, I hope next year I’ll be able to balance things more effectively. I haven’t decided what to put on my 2023 goals list yet; I’ll think about it over the next few days and post my goals in my first post of the new year. I hope to see you there.