Possibilities excite

No words, at least not yet. No words, but possibilities.

Reflections of Elephants

What happens when Bradley Trevor Greive AM, Mark Tredinnick, Ashley Hay, Christopher Reid, Tony Park, and a herd of experts, writers, poets and animal lovers put their words to some of the most amazing elephant photography ever?

Something very special. And all proceeds from sales are donated to the Askari Project, saving the last great Tuskers of East Africa.

Google Reflections of Elephants to find the best retail deal on this amazing book.

Fiction Flirtations

It's always a challenge, turning the words of an expert into literary prose. So, with a nod to Lou Grossfeldt...


You make no sound. You are slow and deliberate. With experience, you come to understand you can never truly hide from them. After millennia here, they have the advantage. You’re a trespasser in their world. In time you learn their rules, and you comply. Hiding yourself is a mistake. Predators hide. Danger lurks unseen. So you stay in their view. When you are visible and non-threatening, you can progress. Day after day you repeat the process, until you become a forest fixture. That’s the plan. 

Our Primate Family

We're very close now. Our Primate Family is now available for pre-release order at http://www.melbournebooks.com.au/our-primate-family.html.

Jane Goodall and Books

If you read my post about the books that changed me, you'll know Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man is one of those editions. My personally signed copy of this book is one of my greatest treasures. Until very recently, I was sure that could not be topped.

But then...

I am in the final stages of completing a book with zoo keeper, Lou Grossfeldt, called Our Primate Family. Lou is one of Australia's most respected experts on primate husbandry and her work takes her around the world helping the world's endangered primates. So respected is Lou's work, that the one and only Jane Goodall has written the Foreword for Our Primate Family. She read our manuscript - gave us her support. Her words are as beautiful and eloquent and generous as the woman herself. The honour of sharing pages with such an icon overwhelms.

Our Primate Family will be released in the 2nd quarter of 2015. More to follow...

First Love

Why dream of others – times or places or people – when there is so much love in the here and now. Sit. Be still. Let cloud drifts send shade collages across a eucalypt canopy, while angophoras bloom with chalky flocks of cockatoos. Breathe a joyful breeze of cut lawn and coffee and roasting vegetables. Let the dollarbirds cackle and roll across the spun-sugar sky and the wattlebirds yelp inside callistemon thickets while mother whipbird flips and hops through a mulch mountain at the feet of one filled with irrational discontent.

A Foray into Facts

I never really wanted to write non-fiction. To me, non-fiction is work. It’s earning a crust, or making a dollar ... insert your own cliché. Fiction was always my thing. In fiction you can play make-believe. It’s your own personal world – your very own little lies. But somewhere along the line, I decided to write some truth. I made the foray into fact, I discovered some amazing people, and knew their stories needed to be shared...

Snake Catcher hits the stores in the next week or so. It was a book born of an idea; born of a hunch; born of a following. It’s a book for reptile lovers – or not. It’s a book for animal lovers – or not. It’s a book for people who like a good story – and doesn’t everyone like one of those?

Tony Harrison is the Gold Coast snake man – though this is a term we mere mortals can no longer use; perhaps that will be the subject of a future edition – and I’ve long been fascinated by Tony’s work. His passion for reptiles. I’ve subscribed to his YouTube channel. His videos are informative and entertaining. Unique. Nothing else I’ve seen is quite the same. As I watched his stories, I thought they were the kind of truths I might be able to write. Conservation through story-telling. So I made contact. We hatched a plan and we found a publisher. And that project reaches its zenith very soon... when Snake Catcher reaches our shores, and gets to meet her public.

Baw Baw Reflections

I may have found the ultimate writing space: on a balcony overlooking the Snow Gums of the Mt Baw Baw National Park. There's no better place to wait for words - sipping a coffee to the eternal water music of the East Tanjil River. The only downside - I wasn't there long enough.

New DB Allen story now on sale

I'm really pleased to see the second of my 'Modern Relationships' stories is now available as an e-book. The Rainbow Blindness has been a difficult baby to birth, but I hope the labour pains will be worth it. It's a hard story. Covering controversial ground. It wasn't easy to write. Or produce. I'm glad we persisted.

My thanks to those who toiled ... the Silky Oak Press crew especially.

To everyone else - please enjoy.

Blue Mask Gal loves Aiden's

Here is a fantastic review by of Aiden's Alibi by a blogger/reader in the U.S.

http://the-gal-in-the-blue-mask.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/aidens-alibi.html

Good Aiden

It was really pleasing to see encouraging sales results for Aiden's Alibi. In it's first week, the book peaked at #3 in the short fiction section of the Aussie Amazon store and made it into the top 5% of all sales on amazon.com.

If you've read the book and you liked it, please consider returning to amazon to write a review.

And if you don't yet own a copy, you can buy it here.

New Australian Story

Anyone who has written, and tried to have their work published, will know how hard that goal is to achieve. That’s why I’m so pleased that my first complete book – a novella written under the pen name D.B Allen – has just been published and listed on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

 

Aiden’s Alibi is the story of a guy called James Davison. James has lost his wife and after a year, he still wonders if he can move on. Then he meets Aiden’s mother. So is she the answer, or just another question? Is this the real thing, or something else altogether? James’s life is about to get a lot more complicated.

Thanks to the team at Silky Oak Press for hours of hard work on the manuscript, especially Juliette, whose stunning cover art for this book still blows me away. Even if you don’t much like reading, and if you can spare a couple of dollars, you should buy this book just for the cover. If you don’t have a Kindle – no worries – you can download a free e-reader from Amazon as well.

If you like Aiden’s Alibi, please give it a review on Amazon. And then tell your friends! There are plenty more stories to follow!

If you are in Australia click here 

 

If you are in another country click here:

 

So you think you can...

So you think you can write?

But you'd like to be better?

Professional Critique services now available.

Email me at coachwoodcritique@gmail.com for more information.

Singo sentence

Wrote this lolling by a resort pool on Sentosa in Singapore...

The sky like a monsoon - water and air as one - frangipani flowers and sunscreen, marine diesel and Tiger beer, durian fruit and Java birds, the jungle, the city ... and me.  

Short Story online

It's nothing spectacular, but it's a start I guess...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sja1HSzYM3o

Week of Words

It's been an interesting week of words - this first week of July. A policy on vacancy management in community housing. A magazine story about a malnourished orange monkey. Reviewing copy edit for a short story pending publishing. Rewriting a manuscript that's almost old enough to go to big school. Emails and gmails and social media of many colours.

So how's your week been?

Old Stones - Fresh Lesson

After fifty years together, The Rolling Stones gave their first headline performance at the famous Glastonbury music festival last week. Now I’m a long-term fan, but the general consensus was that this performance was the best ever seen at Glastonbury and maybe the best show the Stones have given in decades. So I gave it a look. Oh yes... Mick Jagger – a few weeks short of his 70^th birthday – strutting and jumping, energy bursting out of a body that never really could contain itself. Keith Richards, stalking the stage, pumping out those menacing, growling riffs; back in control of the engine room for the biggest band on earth. Even Charlie Watts, renowned for his glumness, seemed to have a permanent smile on his face for the entire set. The crowd was massive, and wild. Flags and chanting voices. Fire and music. The Somerset earth vibrating. The director of the festival summed it up best when he said, “I pity next years’ headliners, trying to top that.”

The whole thing got me thinking – here are men, artists, in their late sixties and early seventies. Men wealthy beyond imagination. Men who have no need to perform or work another day in their lives. Men beyond pension age. They had nothing to gain playing Glastonbury. In front of a massive audience – many of whom were not Stones fans – they could have looked very silly. Yet, they walked out onto that already famous stage and gave a performance to beat them all. How? Why? I can’t help but think it’s the passion for their art. It’s the enjoyment they get from playing together and having an audience come along for the ride. I know the sentiment is a touch clichéd, but if you love what you do for a living, it never seems like work. Glastonbury was a fresh life lesson, from men who have done a lot of living. Love what you do, do it better and better, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Like that idea? I like it - yes I do.

Last Ride

For those of you in Sydney, there is a good movie on this Saturday night (June 15th) on SBS. "Last Ride" is based on the novel by Denise Young and stars Hugo Weaving. Despite a limited cinema run, the film received high praise from critics.

If you can't see the film, the book The Last Ride is available on Kindle and in other e-book formats. It won a Premier's Award a few years back. It has solid 5 star ratings and is a gritty, realistic Australian story. 

Rainforest Reflections

About five years ago I started a project which was going to be a coffee table type book. Photographs and nature writing. Never finished it. I still have plans however...

Anyway, here is a piece from it that I quite like.

Toonumbar moves again. Seasonal change has found even this isolated remnant of the Big Scrub. Fruit fall is underway, sprinkling the leaf litter with pinpricks of colour.

And the air above the canopy fills with the rushing beats of a hundred pairs of wings, twisting into the branches until the trees begin to bear smoky grey flowers. The Topknots know when to arrive.

And the old Carpet Snake knows the increased sun means his winter fast is at an end and hunting can begin. While the whipbird’s breeding calls echo between the last surviving trunks of Red Cedar.

And up though the canopy, the blue sky becomes blanketed by a chromatic silver veneer. Soon there will be thunder and lightning and wind and warm forest rain. Toonumbar moves again.

Achievements...

The postman came today - as he does most days - but aside from the usual bills, this time he had a parcel for me. The Rolf Boldrewood Literary Award comes with a nice little cheque for first place, but also a bronze statue of dear old Rolf himself. It was the bust that arrived with today's post. And while winning cash is nice - hey, we all need to live - the tangibility of a little award; it's lustre and shine; the heaviness of the bronze; the craft of the sculptor; seeing my name on the plaque; kind of means more. It helps make all those redrafts and struggles for good sentences seem worthwhile. Almost like an achievement...