Christmas Fun

I love it when people go to that extra little bit of trouble to make Christmas special and fun.
This is what someone in my neighborhood did.

 Brilliant, isn't it? It looks so lifelike, the first time I saw it I got quite a start.  From any angle it looks completely real.

People keep stopping to take photos and they often lift back the wig to check what's beneath.

I love that someone's taken the trouble to make such a fun and clever display to give us all a laugh at Christmas. They've gone to a lot of trouble, too — you can't really see it but the writing on the car door says "R&N Reindeer". The car is an old "ute" (utility truck) — a bit of a classic car in Australia.

(Following up a comment from Theo, I looked up the history of the ute, and turns out it's a fascinating one — and came from a request from an Australian woman farmer in the 1930's to the Ford Australia factory in Geelong to give her a car she could use to drive to church in, as well as take the pigs to market. The story is here.)

I also love that in the couple of weeks or so that it's been here, on a fairly busy street, nobody has damaged it or interfered with it.

Thank you neighbors.

All the best for Christmas and the holidays. Peace on earth.

An Exciting Package

A courier just came to the door with a lovely big box. Great, I thought, copies of The Autumn Bride in time for Christmas. But no, instead, the box contained a pile of foreign editions of my books.

There were two in Indonesian (they're the ones in the pic with the title in English), all four French editions of Les Archanges Du Diable (love that French series title — The Devil's Archangels, instead of the Devil Riders), a copy of Princessa Furtiva, (Stolen Princess, or maybe Secret Princess in Spanish) and a Japanese edition of the Accidental Wedding. 

The titles in other languages aren't always the same as the ones in English, and I always find it interesting to see what they've named them. The only ones I can read are the French ones (and then not all that well, so please forgive me if I've translated the titles wrongly or clumsily) and from right to left in the top line of the photo, they are "Rider of the Storm,"(The Stolen Princess),  "Lady of my Torments," (His Captive Lady),  "A Lady to Marry,"(To Catch a Bride)  and "Nothing But Passion," (The Accidental Wedding.)

 I love getting my foreign editions — and so do the libraries I usually donate them to.

Men in Trees

I have a very large gum tree in front of my house. It's the biggest tree in the street, and I do love it. In spring it's always filled with rainbow lorikeets, feasting on the red blossoms, and chittering with delight, and there's a possum who lives there, too.

But gum trees are notorious for dropping branches without warning, and each time we have a storm or a big wind, I've worried that the branch that overhangs the house might fall on it.

Yesterday I had a tree man come to talk about removing a fig tree from the back garden. Don't get me wrong — I adore figs and if this tree ever produced an edible fig it'd be the most pampered tree in the garden, but it doesn't. The figs are always dry and inedible, so I've finally given up on it and it's being removed right this minute.

Anyway I asked the tree man about the gum tree — I was worried he'd say the best thing was to chip it down, but he said "Yep, we can prune back the overhanging branches and it'll be fine." So yay, I have a bad fig tree gone, and a newly pruned gum tree, so the lorikeets will stay happy and the possum will still have a home.

And if you ask me, tree men are heroes.

FREE STORY

 For a short time only, Destiny Romance (an e-book division of Penguin) is giving away a free copy of my little Scottish story, The Laird's Vow. 

To get it, all you have to do is register at the Destiny website — it's free, there are no obligations and you'll get my story. 

It's a 15,000 word historical set in Scotland and was originally published in the Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance. To find out more about the story, or read an excerpt, go to The Laird's Vow page

A day out

Yesterday I drove a visiting writer friend down to Queenscliff, on the beach, where she was going to do a week of intensive work on a joint project with another writer friend. It was a glorious Spring day — clear and sunny with a balmy breeze — a gift after a patch of cold, rainy, miserable weather.

My original plan was to take my friend there, have lunch with them and then go back home, where I had a mound of work waiting for me, but it was so beautiful I allowed myself to be talked into a walk. A long walk. And then dinner.

 We walked around the salt water inlet — Swan Bay and saw pelicans, black swans, seagulls and oystercatchers

There's a group of steam engine enthusiasts who, on certain days, run a little engine from Queenscliff to Drysdale — it's a Thomas the Tank Engine choo-choo train, with the face on the front, and there's even a Fat Controller, who looked wonderful in his top hat and formal coat.

I didn't take a photo of the front, with Thomas's face, and I missed the Fat Controller, but here's the little train choofing past us, with a bunch of happy kids on board.

We took the dog, too.

 After Swan Bay we cut across (Queenscliff is a kind of small promontory) and got our first glimpse of the ocean. 

On the way we saw a beautiful Eastern Rosella sitting in a bottle brush tree. Isn't he a handsome fellow?

We wandered back along the ocean beach, picking up shells and the occasional bit of sea-glass (for my jewellery) and admiring the contents of the rock-pools. Here are baby mussels growing in colonies around the edge of a rock pool — they're only visible for a few hours of the day.

It was so refreshing and cleansing to be on the beach in the sun.

We rounded the point, one of the heads of Port Phillip Bay, where there is an old fort built on top of and into the rocky outcrop. I loved the sea-worn rocks.

 Once inside the bay, the beach was strewn with seaweed of all kinds, including an amazing variety of pink seaweed. I gathered some of the pink ones up but I haven't sorted them out yet for a photo. But here's one little clump.

And the seaweed didn't stop this little girl from creating a fabulous sand castle.

It was only an afternoon, really, but when I drove home last night I felt as though I'd had a little holiday.

The Persimmon Tree

I dropped over to a friend of mine's house yesterday, and remembered to take a photo of one of my favorite trees ever — the persimmon tree in her back garden. This is the view from her lounge room — gorgeous, isn't it?

It's beautiful all year round — even bare of leaves, the tree has such a glorious shape.

It's also amazingly prolific and bears hundreds of gorgeous orange fruits. I love persimmons—well, I did once I learned how to eat them. These ones are the kind you need to leave to ripen until they're very soft and the skin looks transparent and ready to split— you'd think they were almost rotten, but instead, they're soft and utterly delicious. My favorite way to eat them is just to scrape the pulp out and drizzle it over vanilla ice-cream. Bliss.

Some years ago I tasted a black sapote — an almost chocolate-tasting persimmon, grown in the tropics. My friend Barbara Hannay introduced me to them some years ago, first as black sapote ice-cream — deeeelish!—and then as just the fruit, and I was hooked. I keep wondering whether I could grow one down here in our cold/temperate climate. I figure if orange persimmons can grow and fruit here, why not black ones? One can only try.

More conference pics

I promised you some more photos of the RWAust conference and here they are. Eloisa James giving a fabulously inspiring speech.

Three gorgeous galz in red — Bronwyn Jameson, Fiona McArthur and Trish Morey talking to Rachel Treasure, who was at her first RWA conference dinner.

 The fabulous Helen Bianchin is the inaugural Australian Romance Hall of Fame member. She got a standing ovation, naturally. That's Barbara Hannay with her in the pic.

Mark Antony.... or perhaps Richard Burton at the 1950's cocktail party. 

 Christina Brooke and Denise Rossetti in their 1950's cocktail frocks.

The wonderful Emma Darcy with editor Jo, who was wearing her "womanfuzzy" headdress— it's a fun award we give at the Harlequin author dinner.

The authors at the ARRA signing — all but Eloisa James who was delayed at the airport and arrived just after the photo was taken. I'm right up the back on the left.