SERENDIPITY ON LINE

Thus morning I did some surfing,having decided to find out more about those incredibly kind total strangers who have become regular followers of my blog. I found that if I clicked on their little icons information about them would come up, including a list of other blogs they follow.

One of these was about knitting, and posted on it was a video made by the crew of HMAS OCEAN. The story line :- They heard they were returning to Australia for Christmas, so they made a lip sync of 'All I want for Christmas is You' starring just about every crew member, so I imagine it was made for them to send to their families. The cutting and editing was really good with comic touches like the officer drinking champagne in his bath, crew members wrapped as gifts and a Xmas message spelled out by human letters at the end. It was a happy video.

So I shall sign off now because I want to look at it again, and to all those people who find a way to enjoy their lives, in spite of tough living conditions and inept governments, my very best wishes for 2012 -

AND MAY ALL 366 OF THEM BE MERRY AS DECEMBER 25TH

HOW TO KILL AN ALL BLACK

C.J.Spencer is not a nice man. He got selected for the A.B.s when he was still in hid teens, married the daughter of a Rugby administrator and treated her abominably.
As his wife remarked, "Cops and rugby players are notorious wife beaters."

Now he is in a wheel chair, paralysed after a scrum collapsed, and his wife has met a really nice guy, two nice guys in fact, three if you count the Irish priest who rides a red motor bike and C.J. has to die.

How shall I dispose of him?

He could choke on a fish bone; not dramatic enough and not in keeping with the conventions of literary structure.

Some of his 'rugger bugger'mates could take him to watch a game, lose control of his wheel chair and send him plummeting off the stand.

Or the same mates could be taking on an after match pub crawl. The driver could lose control when one of them, full of beer, spews over him. The van overturns, down a cliff and/or into a rive.

Decisions decisions! I wrote the final chapter in Dublin. I just have to insert Chapter thirty one, where a nasty character who got idolised too young and couldn't hackit gets his comeuppance.

Once I kill the All Black the book will be finished.
.

LESSONS LEARNED

I once heard Lawrence Ferlinghetti, when discussing Alan Ginsberg say 'His poetics are different to mine.I have no problem with that.' It is exactly how I feel about John Locke's novels. I will not become a devoted reader, but thousands of people are, so I will not criticise his writing. But 'How I sold a million e books in 5 months' is a manual for writers who want to publish on the internet and his advice is pure gold. The first step for a would-be novellist, 'Write the best story you can.' Obvious isn't it. But that does not mean following the pattern of someone else's writing; putting Pride and Prejudice into the twenty=first century, or War and Peace into Afghanistan. So I am finishing my current novel, not with 'How to Write a Novel at my elbow, but by watching my characters without thinking 'That won't sell' whenever they do something unexpected or original. Thorny Glen is a romance between Harry Field who left school at fourteen to take over his father's dairy farm and who now owns a consortium like Fonterra, and Meryn Spencer who plays rugby, was a Black Fern in fact. And I am finding that these two have a lot of friends, enemies and associates who do interesting things which I record. John Ralston Saul, in his book 'Voltaire's Bastards' talks about the writer being 'a faithful witness'and I find myself being just that for my characters. Maybe this time I shall finish the novel, publish it and then resurrect the other four that are on disk in the bottom drawer of my desk.

LEARNING SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

When I came home in October several copies of Writers News were waiting for me. Among them a feature on John Locke. No, not that one. This John Locke is a writer who is the first self published author to sell 1,000,000, that's right,one million e books.
And he has written a book about how he did it.

So I downloaded a free Kindle Reader and bought the book. (How I sold a million e books in five months.)

I also bought two of his novels. One is a western called 'Don't Poke the Bear' about a Dodge City sheriff and his animal loving sweetheart who manages a string of prostitutes. 'The Love You Crave' is a thriller about a CIA assassin called Donovan Creed. Locke himself says they are not great literature. I would class them as Penny Dreadfuls. But they are competently written, have some original characters, like the post rapture security guard,who offers, for a fee, to look after pets for the good people who will leave earth when the Rapture begins. But at $0.99 each the cost equates to buying the daily newspaper. As Locke himself says they reach a niche of readers who want to be entertained.

But "How I sold a million...." is worth every penny of the $2.99. His style of writing is informal, rather than declamatory as in recipe books, almost like a newsy letter from a friend. Its introduction is entertaining and encouraging to unpublished writers.

His business plan is explained in a methodical, but entertaining way.

And I have now downloaded two more e books 'How to Publish and Sell Your Article on the Kindle' by Kate Harpwe and 'How to Format your e Book' by Paul Salvette, and all five books have cost me less than $10!

The free Kindle reader is great for reading at my computer, but I am now saving up for one that I can slip into my pocket when I travel. Big expensive airport novels have become outdated. When my son Frank and his wife went on their world tour recently they took e readers, loaded with dozens of books, and it weighed less than one conventional airport novel.

Please Santa Claus, you know what I want for Christmas!

MAKING A CHOICE

I heard someone say that people spend more time choosing their new car than they do voting for their government. They probably do. But if I am to believe my neighbours there are two sure ways to cast one's vote effectively. They are

1. Vote for the best looking candidate. Last election I heard a lot of young voters (female)say they voted National because 'John Key is so nice looking.'

2. Vote against the most experienced candidates. "Oh, she was all right, but it's time for a change."

My letter box has been stuffed with cards and fliers and leaflets from minor parties, and they raised some interesting issues, not the text of the leaflets, but the meaningless generalities heavily laced with weasel words, designed to attract voters without informing them of attitudes to issues or giving any hint of who, or what interest paid for it.
In fact, any electioneering printed on expensive paper automatically loses my vote.
Doesn't leave much choice does it.Perhaps I could do a 'write in' vote for a candidate who made us proud to be New Zealanders, who lead his team with modesty and panache, and it better looking than our current P.M. who?
Richie McCaw of course!

I WISH I HAD WRITTEN THESE

George McDonald Fraser was a screenwriter and the author of THE FLASHMAN NOVELS, a series of picaresque comedies using the amoral character from Tom Brown's Schooldays as the narrator.
IVAN DUNN is a New Zealand journalist. He describes his nove
THE LEGEND OF BEAU BAXTER
as a work of 'faction' a mixture of fiction and historical trutch.
'what might have happened on the 1924 tour'.
Remember 1924 of course not, Not even I was born then, but if I say 1924, the INVINCIBLES tour, anybody who knows what an egg shaped ball is for will say,
'1924 of course THE INVINCIBLES tour of England Wales Ireland Scotland and France, they went through unbeaten.' Yeah Right!
IVAN DUNN, who knows his rugby, and its history, has invented BEAU BAXTER, eighteen years old and son of a Cherokee Indian who is snatched from a labouring job in a timberyard to play rugby, gets selected to go on tour with Waaka Nathan, the Brownlees and all that crowd, visits a stately home and learns fox hunting, dines with Royalty. The blurb on the back says, 'more sex and less etiquette than Rugby historians would have us believe.'
BEAU BAXTER is a joyful romp, in the most hilarious Flashman tradition. I can't wait for the film to come out and I do hope Ivan Dunn writes more novels.

THE LEGEND OF BEAU BAXTER by IVAN DUNN ISBN978-1-86950-823-4 pubolished 2010 by HARPER COLLINS

PELE'S CHILDREN by JAN VERNON is a chapbook by reclusive Temuka author and poet Jan Vernon. It is a poem that tells a story of Pele and Merlin, obsessed with volcanoes, and their children, not forgetting the tuatara. Jan shared it with some of us, privileged to be her friends, and we all responded in the same way, 'THIS HAS TO BE PUBLISHED'in fact another writer friend sent Jan an e mail that said 'Don't you dare die before this is published.'

Easier said than done as Jan is not young and was awaiting hip surgery.But Jan Hill did the editing, another friend painted the illustrations,and the result is
PELE'S CHILDREN by JAN VERNON ISBN 978-0430-19409-3

Now I am not going to tell you any more of the story, or comment on the strength of the poetry, but I shall reiterate what we have been telling Jam,

this is a significant piece of work, a new direction is New Zealand writing.' Some time in the future it will be a classic.

CAROL AND TONY ARE YOU OUT THERE SOMEWHERE?

I moved down here from Wairarapa in 2001. When the carrier delivered my seventeen cartons of books and carefully bubblewrapped box of pictures this was among them, obviously left in the packing of someone else's belongings. How to find the real owners and return their treasure? I scrolled through the every internet page I could think of, but got nowhere, put it carefully away and forgot about it because I was getting ready to visit Turkey and Greece.

So now I am trying to clear my house so my daughters in law will not have too much clearing up to do when I finally leave it.

so CAROL CHIN and TONY PADUJE

who were married on

APRIL 24 1993

I would like to return your beautiful stitched wedding souvenir to you.

I hope you still love and cherish each other as the panel suggests and if you will ring me at 03-431-3911

and give me an address I shall pack it and send it..

With apologies for not returning it sooner.