I had a surreal moment the other day. I was on our district library website, searching for a book on French explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand, when . . .
That cover looks familiar. The title of that book is the same as mine!! No, wait. It IS my book!
New items for June 2022 were displayed in a carousel smack bang in the centre of the screen, and On Jacaranda Street was on display. Ashgrove Park is already in the library, so now, On Jacaranda Street can sit next to it.
Those two novels (95 k and 115k, respectively), plus Where Sunflowers Grow and my poetry collection (Cats, Dogs and Feathered Cats), were all written, edited and published in just under two years (check the My Books tab for more details). I've been plotting my Harold Chesterfield novel (you can catch up here and here) and had planned to start writing on June 1.
But . . . a few roadblocks. First, the amount of editing I've been doing - mainly fantasy novels - has kept my head down and tail up throughout April and most of May. Then on May 5, my beloved English Pointer, Zsa Zsa, crossed the rainbow bridge. She was 11 years old, and it hit me very, very hard.
So, I found reading therapeutic and borrowed a mountain of books from the library. Follow me on Goodreads because I am always reading, even when I'm writing novels. I had a certain focus in mind for my Harold Chesterfield novel and had been researching, but . . .
The plot has done a 180. It's nothing like I had in mind, but I think it's more exciting and will certainly be challenging to write. It's still a crime/mystery novel set in Sydney in the late 1920s (or possibly early 1930s). Characters have come out of nowhere, and I'll be spending June and July nailing things down for an August 1 start. No title yet, but that will come.