Conflicted

I am not built to handle conflict. I suppose none of us are, if it comes to that, but my past makes it especially difficult for me to face. I have unplugged my phone, turned off my mobile, and changed a few online settings. Some people are better at dealing with this stuff. Well, that ain’t me. The first sign of a raised voice or attack to my person and I threaten to shatter into a million pieces.

Someone has chosen to hate me (or certainly to act like it) and make my life difficult. Yes, we have a full-blown personality clash, though they had that with more than just me. I do not understand how someone can so fully abdicate their personal responsibility and then hurl insults and threats on top of that. Well, be it on their conscience, though it’s still me, not them, who has to deal with the consequences.

So please forgive me if I am a little fragile for some time to come. It takes me a long while to recover from conflict, because it is absolute horror to me – trauma, essentially, like a deep wound to the soul. Perhaps someday I will heal enough to be able to withstand these things better, but in the meantime, don’t mind me if I hide away for a while.

An Educated Mind

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Written by Aristotle more than two millenia ago, these words have rung especially true to me lately. Most specifically in that it is possible to be friends with someone I disagree with. Too often today we see people tearing down each other's character because of a difference in opinion, but that is not necessary at all.

Entertain the thought. Consider the what-ifs. Cogitate on the manner of thinking, but without necessarily accepting it yourself. Yes, it is possible, and it sure makes life a lot less stressful!

The Colour of Fluff

There is a reasonable amount of information that can be deduced about a person just from looking at the fluff they produce. I have worked as a cleaner often enough to notice different types.

My own fluff, for instance, tends to be of a purplish hue and shot through with large quantities of cat hair. Of course, purple is the colour I wear most often so the fluff from these clothes fills my surroundings and then occasionally, my vacuum cleaner.

Photo: Apartment Therapy

Private houses I have cleaned do tend towards various colours, some red, some blue. Offices are mostly just plain grey. And when I worked at the deli in Germany, the moppings from the floor were deepest, darkest black, because the fruit was set out on stands inn the street and we were forever traipsing in and out in all weathers.

I realise that a lot of the things I write here are fluff. Give me time; I'm still warming to my task. In the meantime, perhaps the nature of my fluff will reveal various facets of me, and it will have been worth our time - yours and mine.

Real Dreams

These are the things that I want to do.

Write well, and love it every day.
Go on a few more cruises. Tahiti, Alaska...Antarctica?
Other travel. That's a given.
Publish what I write.
Have 10,000 readers. Then 100,000.
Read at least one book every week.
Fix my car and go down to the beach most days.
Get caught up on publishing, so that I can finally dump this guilt over slowness...
Read my slush pile and send out rejections and requests.
Start a new business angle just for the heck of it.
Improve my Maori. Ko Rangitoto toku maunga, ko Pupuke toku roto, ko Kaipatiki toku awa...
Pursue art: photography, drawing and painting.
Keep my promises: there are obligations I have made, and these I will fulfill.

Not so many words today, but important ones, perhaps.

Yeah, it's winter.

The Bestness of Friends

When I was young, I was surrounded by friends. Boys, mostly - locals and cousins. We built forts and climbed trees and explored the thistley forest that meandered up from the back of our park. I remember one girl friend, who lived maybe 10 minutes away and I can only recall meeting up a couple of times.

In my teens I hit a burst of desperate loneliness. The clique of my peers never really took me in, so I would hang with the other outcasts. As time went on, I met people with more commonalities - one here, one there. I was always the older one, having to deal with immaturities of various sorts - right on up to abandonment in a couple of cases. Even in this I tended to be overdependent, recalling my alone-years and eschewing a return.

Around eighteen I began to learn how to stand on my own for real. To see my worth apart from my friendships. It hurt, but I grew stronger, if always wistful. It was probably around that time that I gained my first actual equal friends. Two of them, and three years later when they fell in love, I left the country. Coincidence? Or was I running away? I still don't know, even though they're still among my besties.

Alone again in Germany, but not for long. There were intense friendships, since broken, some healed or on the way. In any case, I went through the wringer. Emerging to a strange empty newness, I began to write again.

The writing led me to wonderful friends. True kindred spirits, but not any nearby. No problem. I'll chat and skype and even visit, though I know it's too much to expect the same in return. I'm the travelbug with no dependents and a very mobile job, after all. Still...wistful. New Zealand's a heck of a place you know. Everyone should come.

I have chosen to live here because it's my home. My family is here - well, the core of it, even if many are scattered across the world much like my true friends. I go crazy if I spend too long away from the sea. But I will travel, and live from trip to trip.

I was raised to be inclusive, a principle in which I still believe strongly, and that means never singling out any one person as my best friend. Seems like an insult to other friends, really, and I don't want to do that. I've been betrayed often enough that I won't throw myself at anyone like I did in my teens. But if you give me reason to like you, you better believe I don't go away.

TARDIS friendship pendants, available from Etsy seller StellarForms

Photo Story: Piano Keys

In the year 2009 I enjoyed sharing a big house with a single dad, his two young daughters, and a couple of other flatmates who came and went. We rented the place together; it was high on a hill, nearly at the top of the same ridge I live on now, but much farther along to the south. It was also just across from a very large patch of bush that goes all the way down to the harbour on the inside, and this forest was big enough to get lost in and forget I was even in the city. I had a basement room, but worked mostly upstairs in the lounge, from where there was a fine view of the Hauraki Gulf not too different from what I see looking east today. So each morning I would cart my computer upstairs, and I would pass this piano in the front hallway. It was several months before I realised the door behind the piano led to a small bathroom under the stairs, which proved a useful extra facility. I vaguely recall that the girls were supposed to practise on the piano but I don't remember if they ever did. I do remember downloading sheet music for the Star Trek Voyager theme song and attempting to play it. I couldn't - and still can't - play much easier pieces, so it's no wonder I got stuck fairly quickly. However, the old piano's mismatched keys gave it great character and one day I snapped this shot.

I was asleep in my cold basement room when my father died, early one morning four years ago. Now his piano, in much better condition than the one above, stands in my house that I never would have found if the landlord at that other place hadn't decided he wanted to move in himself. I still haven't learned to play piano, not properly - but I do like to tinker, and maybe someday I'll get it right.

When friends fight

I've never been vocal on this topic before, for fear of alienating those closest to me. It seems some of that is inevitable anyway - no matter what I do. Still, it is my perhaps unreasonable hope that those who truly care for me won't be offended by my choices.

I have a personal principle that goes something like this: I'll stay friends with you if you'll stay friends with me. Simple enough. But it becomes an awful lot harder when any two of my friends have such a bad barney that they won't talk to each other any more.

(You might be surprised how often this happens.)
However, I am still talking to both.

This leaves me with a gigantic heartache - I know some of what happened, they both told me, yet I refuse to pick a side. It's not my fight. This is frequently seen as a betrayal (by one or both parties) on my part, and they distance themselves.

Never mind the fact that fights so major will often have fault on one side as well as the other. Even saying that much tends to make everyone mad at me, so I haven't, until now.

There's plenty more to say about this, and it may irritate some people. I hope that you know enough about me by now to be firm in the belief that if you are a friend o' mine, I am with you - no matter who else I am also with.

The enemy that won't let me fight it

Lethargy has a power almost equal to that of entropy.

It is, at times, an unstoppable force of nothingness. I hate it; it is my great enemy in life. We have battled many times but too often I have lost. The villain is both faceless and inside of me. These things add up to a very unfair fight.

Lethargy can be more than just a lack of motication. It also brings along a heavy dose of self-doubt. It tells me there's no point, I'm not making any difference, my writing is no good, and so on. Now on a good day I know those things aren't true, but if something's gone wrong already and I'm not up to par, lethargy can get a foothold. And by its very nature it keeps me from fighting it. What to do? Oh, I have plenty of options - go for a walk, do some actual work for money, that sort of thing. They don't always work to kick me into gear.

And so I fight on, wearying by entropy as the lethargy takes its grip...

Windup...

Partly against my better judgement, I have just accepted a translation job of over 13,000 words. Due June 5th. Heck, what can I say, I need the cash, and it's definitely more than doable. Don't let me push it all to the last day or two this time, or I will almost certainly be dead on the 6th.

What's the bet I'll get more done alongside it than I would have without? Ebook formatting and upload, a book launch party, critiquing, finishing a serial episode for Digital Dragon, reading 17 books, reading submissions, organising the Avenir project, preparing two anthologies, and hopefully a little exercise while revisiting Season Two of Doctor Who. All that plus the builders hammering around in my basement and a flatmate moving out on the weekend, not necessarily conducive to getting lots done.

I must be nuts.

When I See You...

When I see my friends online, that little green dot, so tantalising, my finger itches to click it. We could be changing the world right now if we talked! If only I didn't have this other work to do. And the day's so beautiful. I should go out for a walk, gain some refreshment from the sea air. Again, the work stops me. And I want to talk - always, always talk - but I don't want to bother anyone, get in the way, or discover I'm in a mood that doesn't benefit you in the exchange. So I leave you alone, for now, but mark my words...the time will come.

A Future Visit to the Past

I'm scared stiff. Not a circumstance that happens very often, but this is one of them. You see, next week I'm about to take a trip into the milieu of my past life, reconnecting with a bunch of people I used to know from worship camps. It's a different camp (www.kiwisong.co.nz), but in the same spirit, and many of the same folks will be there. I don't particularly want to learn about worship - been there, done that, suffered the abuse - but my creative mind remembers all too well that my best writing is done in church, and what better way to give myself a jildy than to spend all week at a camp? In a lovely remote coastal location no less?

The thing I'm really scared about is that most if not all of these old friends are of the highly prophetic type. Yes, I know that's a good thing. A real good thing in fact. But that means there's a very good chance that God might speak to me. He and I have observed silence for so long that I know I'll be a little awkward, even if he isn't. He might see fit to give me clues about just what it is that is still broken inside of me after severe spiritual abuse as a worship leader. There might be tears and healing. Or there might not. I'm trying not to set any expectations, because I could be setting myself up for disappointment. Then again, I can't expect to show up in this state in such a spiritually charged atmosphere and have nothing happen.

I will be meeting some of the very people who once prophesied I would go to Germany. Now, for sure they're not responsible for the abuse that happened while I was there. Not even God is responsible for that, actually. Still, it'll be weird telling them what a disaster it turned out to be (Did you miss that story? Part 1 Part 2).

I guess I'm also scared that someone will tell me what I'm doing wrong, as many others have done over the years. Get over it, they said. You have to worship whether you feel like it or not. Well, folks, I'm sorry. My worship fuse is blown, and it's going to take more than "getting over it" to be able to even sing in church again. Sure, I've found other ways to express my joie de vivre, such as it is. But writing a story is much harder than writing a song, let me tell you.

Which brings me to a problem: all this terror is crippling my ability to write. I'm on a deadline; need to write at least one story today, and get it critiqued, edited and submitted by the end of the week. Yesterday all I did was rearrange my room and my office area. Didn't even tidy up first. With the result that the mess is just elsewhere now. Mountains of clothes by the bed. An overflowing in-tray of paperwork to file. Every seat (well, 4 out of 5) piled high with random stuff. A sink full of dishes, a stinky cat litterbox. No doubt all this mess is just an external sign of the chaos within. And I've never been able to write amidst a mess.

Each night I tell myself I won't turn on the computer in the morning until I've tidied up. But then I have to have it on to play music while I'm tidying - and the music does help my composure, thank the Lord for Mike, composer extraordinaire. So I end up checking my mail and everything anyway, and the room is not tidy, and I do not write.

Haven't had any human contact for 48 hours, except online; that's likely to change today, though I'd rather stay a hermit. Can you hear me tearing my hair out? I have a long list of stuff to finish this week, and zero ability to get started on it. Creative work requires a good frame of mind, and that I do not have right now.

So, I'm sorry about the gut-spilling here, but if you weren't put off by the title, it's your own problem, and I'd like to call you friend. Will God speak to me next week through old (or new) friends? I cannot say. All I know is that probably, nothing will be the same.

Lateness, Life, and Obligations

Today I got a large blue sack in the mail. Inside was a foot-long box. It contained just ten books, five each of Splashdown's new releases. The sack, in my opinion, was overkill - but certainly fun.

I have been feeling rather overwhelmed lately, and not getting near enough done as I believe myself capable of. In need of a brainstorming session, perhaps, a mind map on a very large piece of paper, or the inside of that there sack. Pursued by the suspicion that I've forgotten something very important, while on the inside crying out for peace.

The things filling up each day seem to fall into one of three categories: obligations, which have to come first; things that are late, and thus quite urgent; and then there are the other things that make up real life.

Obligations include working and taking care of my boarders - shopping and cooking mainly. I love to cook, but it takes a lot of time out of my best part of the day, since I start getting active in the late afternoon and then have to stop and make dinner. And work, yes, earning money, but thank goodness it's irregular and some of it is at will to be taken on as I wish or not.

The late things. Ouch. Mostly to do with writing and publishing. A story due here, another there. Large numbers of books to be read and reviewed, many with deadlines. Marketing my own books, following up on reviewers, all that sort of thing. A full-to-bursting Acquisitions folder for Splashdown's author talent quest. Keeping tabs on projects in the works for upcoming release. Website tweaks. Bookkeeping.

And the Life things. Things my passion calls me to pursue. Painting. Writing. Walking on the beach. Reading - that two-foot stack of novels isn't getting any smaller. Snuggling the cat. Sleeping plenty. Yep, I need that to stay sane. Plus other random spice like playing bodhran (haven't done that in weeks) or a little exercise.

So what's my solution? Keep calm, in any case. Don't panic. Don't try and do everything at once, either. If some things end up taking longer than I thought, well, okay. So be it.

Do what must be done. Do it well. Work enough to survive, but no more.

Fight for space to let passions flow free. Without them, there is no spark.

Each of the three areas - late stuff, life, and obligations - contains about an equal amount of stuff. So I figure to try doing one, then another, and another. One by one. Don't know as I'll ever get done, but it's my aim to keep 'em more or less equal.

And the publishing? That IS a passion. Just one that requires a lot more time input than any other. Patience, I tell myself. All in good time. No need to overreact and puff up the issues till they are as big as that sack around a handful of books. Cause the books are what it's all about, really...

Déjà Vu

It was even the same taxi driver.

Two weeks earlier, my flatmate and I were both up insanely early - she didn't need to be, but wanted to give me a send-off for my trip. I left the cat snoozing under the warm covers. Oh-dark-thirty, a glance out the kitchen window told us the taxi was early. Gulp down the tea, heave luggage out the door. She helped me with the bags and waved enthusiastically as the taxi driver attempted to reverse out of the driveway and ended up making mud off the edge of the concrete.

Then, it was a happy occasion. And it was a wonderful trip, as you'll know if you've read my recent Friday posts.

Just one day after I got back, my flatmate got news that her mother is battling cancer. Quickly, she booked a flight to leave the country and be with her. Sooner than anyone could have imagined, we were both up insanely early again, both dragging bags out to the taxi again, where the driver inquired whether I'd had a good holiday.

He mangled the grass strip again on his way out. Anyone'd think the concrete wasn't wide enough. But as I waved my friend away and turned to go inside, shut out the cold and get back in my bed where the cat still waited, I pondered how two situations that looked so much alike could be so utterly different.

I suppose my point is that no matter what you see with your eyes, the facts of the matter can vary greatly. In part, this is what we do as writers: we observe, and add a different background to the same actions we have seen from the people around us. Or we place the scenario in an invented world. What if the house were a space station and the taxi were a shuttle? Suddenly the grip of winter seems more ominous, as if it could come close to the icy vacuum of space. Perhaps it is as close as one may come in these parts.

And so the endless cycle of greetings and partings goes on, and who knows what it will bring? I've got three spare bedrooms now...

On Surviving Abuse, Part 2

See last Monday's post for the first part.

Maybe this psychological abuse is one reason that the book I was driven to write, right after I finished the first one, was all about mind control. In Legendary Space Pilgrims, I describe a physical and invasive form of emotional manipulation and a journey to freedom. No doubt it carries reflections of my own pilgrimage in liberating my thoughts once more.

That picture was taken in the thick of it. I imagine I look a bit harrowed. Trying to talk myself into not rocking the boat, because that would just get me hurt.

A similar manipulative effect was thrust on my prayer life. As we prayed together in the group, this man would often interrupt and ask why I prayed this or that and whether I had asked God if that was the right thing to pray, because he was certain it wasn't. So I learned to spout highly spiritual prayers tailored to please the leader, but which came nowhere near my own heart. To this day I will not pray aloud in a group. In fact, I don't pray at all in the usual sense, not even in my head. Hence the companionable silence with God. I don't think he minds. He's not like that.


For years it was hard to even enter a church. Yet I insisted on doing it, because it remained the best place to meet people with similar moral standards to my own. Funnily enough, the same year I left the scene of that group, I ended up leading worship for several months with the guitar in a little church in Balbriggan, Ireland, due to sheer need - they had no one else to do it. They were very supportive and didn't notice the stiffness I felt. Anyway, back in New Zealand after that, all through last year, I would frequently run out of church services to weep profusely for reasons I couldn't pinpoint. Looking back I think it was grief for the faith I once had, the trust in the Spirit's guidance which had been so thoroughly destroyed.

Now I no longer grieve, but I have not regained what was lost. Rather, I have found a peace with the way things are. I'm thankful for all I have been given - and it is not inconsequential - and when I write, often it is as if the words come spiralling down from heaven to my screen. If that isn't living with God, I don't know what is. Woe betide any who push me and insist I'm not doing it right. Insistence is exactly what damaged me. I am now allergic to pressure and power plays. The life and the faith I have now is vastly different to what used to be, but I would go so far as to say it's better.

There are many who would say I'm not a real Christian, because of not praying, or my irreverent use of church services to write stories, or because I am sick to the stomach with what is known as Christian evangelism. That's okay. You can think what you like. Maybe I'm not a Christian according to your standards. But you know what? I don't think I care. And what's more...I don't think God cares, either.

On Surviving Abuse, Part 1

I'm a survivor.

It's been a long time coming, this post. Even now I'm trying to avoid writing it. But I owe my friends an explanation, at least of the sort that can be given in public, as to why me and God co-exist peacefully rather than partaking of talk and action as Christians seem to like to do.

You see, the abuse I suffered increasingly over a four-year period was not physical. It was psychological, spiritual, and personal. It slammed me right at the hinge of my faith and snapped a fair few choice ligaments.

At the centre of the horror stands a man who still haunts my dreams, telling me I will never be sufficient, in that absolutely convinced voice of his that will permit no argument. It came as a surprise when he stepped in to lead a loose prayer group I had been involved with, yet he took the reins and set off at a gallop. I cannot call him a pastor, for he was never that.

He meant it well. Of that I have no doubt. It's just that he seemed perpetually unable and unwilling to consider the viewpoints of others, or that he might be wrong in his assessments of the miserable flock he had been given. Any disagreement at all, no matter how slight, was met with anger like a brick wall. No, let me rephrase that. Like the Great Wall of China, coming at you on the back of a hundred tanks. We either gave in and agreed, or remained stubborn and received a thorough verbal shredding. Me being the rather hard-headed type, I ended up getting hammered often, at times to the point of screaming.

The matters we disagreed on? I've forgotten most of them. They were probably minor. But one thing that came up again and again was the direction taken in the music. We were the kind of group who didn't like to plan out how many times to sing a song or its verses or chorus or bridge or instrumentals, or even which songs to sing. We'd just start into it and reach into the Spirit inside us for guidance on where we felt it should go next. If you're not familiar with that practice, don't weird out on me, it's called free worship and it can be a lot of fun, even making up spontaneous songs on the spot.

Well, you guessed it. We disagreed on just where the Spirit was leading us. I had to learn to quash my own sense of listening in favour of the leader's. Did I mention my position was actually the worship leader? Yeah. It got tricky. Often. Many, many times, too often to count, I would lead a song in one direction, only to be stopped short and admonished for hearing wrong - and this in front of everyone in the meeting. The meetings were never large, but it gouged my soul nonetheless. He taught that every note we played had to be guided by the Spirit - and not only that, but it had to match up to what he believed the Spirit was saying. So an incredible heavy stiffness and uncertainty came into every note of our worship. I never knew when I was going to be right or wrong, commended or berated.

All the while, I was trying to convince myself that he was right and I was wrong, as it was the only way to go on. I have not trusted myself to attempt free worship since leaving that group. Since free worship was the source of inspiration for my songwriting, guess what? I haven't written any songs since then either. Oh yeah, and I've pretty much stopped playing the guitar. While in Ireland I took up the bodhran, a nice, safe percussion instrument without the necessity for leadership - just spicing things up, which suits me fine.

More next Monday. Quicklink to part 2 here. In the meantime, I sure would appreciate some virtual hugs.

On Being Happy

Sometimes I think I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

However, that didn't stop me from spilling cold tea all over myself just as I was formulating that sentence. The cup was fuller than I thought it was, you see.

Anyway. Sure I'm lucky. I live in New Zealand. People say we're not patriotic, but have you seen the proportion of locals wearing a touristy T-shirt? I say we just show it differently.

I get to sit here in my eagle's nest room, the main road traffic swinging around behind me, the ocean mostly visible ahead unless it's raining quite severely - it may be 5km to the beach as the crow flies, but it's near enough to catch the variations in the water's tone: icy green to deep turquoise to winter grey to bright green - and I get to work for my living at my own pace and whim, while also pursuing the author and publisher type passions.

It may be cold - the house is not insulated or heated - and often it may seem too silent, though thank goodness for my flatmates. There may be bugs and ants and stiff windows and doors and a scratchy phone line and a huge power bill in winter, but somehow none of that matters. I'm lucky to have it, yeah, and the mortgage too I guess, because not everyone can just walk in and get one.

Missing Dad is the thorn in my bliss. It's been nearly a year now. A year in heaven already. Wow. I hope he's enjoying it. My oldest friend is certain he'll be arguing theology with God. I wouldn't put it past him. Mum dreamed he'd been put in charge of a city up there. Oh yeah. That'll suit just fine.

I get to sit here. Write. Be at peace with the world. And dream of other places, real and imagined. So I'm happy. In my own way. In spite of the thorns of loss and past trauma. Nothing lasts forever, does it...

So what is it that makes you happy?

On Being Single

There's that word again. Single. As if it was a disease or something. Just as well I don't look my age, or I'd be getting a lot more of those sympathetic glances that hurt more than they help.

I was going to say it came about through something-or-other, but that doesn't work, because I've never been anything else but single, barring a couple of long-distance relationships that didn't really come up to scratch. So it can't have "come about" at all. Although, and I'm certain of this, it has been sustained by a factor or two, such as spending seven years of my twenties in Germany, where there was a shocking dearth of nice guys who weren't already taken.

I admit, I had three proposals while I was there: from an old man, a mental patient, and an illegal immigrant. I shall be so bold as to say I don't think any of those count.

Of course one is never prevented from standing on the beach if one is alone, nor other beautiful things. I write, and beat my bodhran, and make sticky chocolate pudding, and share my bed with the cat.

But occasionally, this state of constant aloneness frustrates me. I twitch and pace and fidget and eat chocolate and go shopping when I don't really need to and let my mother talk me into expensive holidays, although that has always ended up to be a good thing so far.

It doesn't help that I work at home in both of my chosen careers and never have to leave the house except to fetch food and go to church. I spend nearly all my time in church writing stories, by the way; I find the atmosphere very inspirational, to say the least. Or is it that there are no distractions there as there always are at home?

There's always God, I suppose. He's around here somewhere. Doesn't go away, and all that. But I don't bother him much. We just enjoy a companionable silence, for the most part, and I think I have an understanding with him that it's okay.

I am well aware there are definite advantages to the singleness thing, and I enjoy them to the full. Particularly the no-kids thing. It may not last forever, and I would not want it to, but I want to make the most of this state of relative freedom to run after dreams and blog in the middle of the night and sleep at odd hours because I can. It's wonderful.

Pretty much all of my best friends are of the online type, that is, they do not live in the same country as me. If you're reading this, chances are you're one of them.

Every email, every @reply tweet, every comment on a blog or Facebook, is like a handshake or a steady look in the eyes or a high five.

So don't be a stranger. Leave me a virtual mark of your presence in my life. What do you have to say about singleness?

On Blogging

Join me for a coffee? Or in this case, a hot chocolate that is truly a work of art, courtesy of the Tui Coffee Lounge in Paeroa, the generally accepted halfway point on a journey from Auckland to Tauranga...

New house. Been here a couple months now.

New week. Yup, that's what they call Monday.

New approach. Time for one of those on this blog. It's been neglected far too much, considering all the people that want to read it - so my stats say - and so I'm trying for a new beginning.

Once a week the post will likely be my travel article which also appears in the Colorado City News. This could be on pretty much any place I've been to and have a notion to write about, accompanied by hack photography and sometimes a video.

Other than that, there are a bunch of great ideas I've seen other bloggers (and authors) put to good use - such as the Reading List and Scribbler's Scoreboard (thanks Fred for those) in which I shall summarise writing activity, submissions of short stories, progress on my novels, etc. I guess I will do something similar for the publishing side of what I do, which will be a cross-post at the Splashdown Books blog.

And then there's that other stuff, the stuff to write "just because", the random poems (with many thanks to Chila for the prodding!), the "thinky things" (here's looking at you, Cat), and whatever else may occur to me.

Anyway, thanks for being here and coming along for the ride. I wonder where it'll take us?