The Kalbarri Cliff Coast

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Kalbarri had still more to offer us than I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Spectacular walks along the coast and into coastal gorges and beaches…like these:
Mushroom Rock

I know this looks as if someone dripped vanilla ice cream on reddish sandstone, but…

That white stuff is hard white rock embedded in millenia-ancient sandstone, and finally uncovered by erosion

No, no one painted the rocks with circles. These are the rocks, just as they appear.

And no, I didn’t adjust the colour.

Ok, this one had a bit of human help.

But not this one.

There is a coastal cliff walk which produces scenery like this.

And this.

Here, the path is made for you.

And this is what it looks like at sunset.
Tumblagooda Sandstone. It rocks…

Kalbarri, at the mouth of the Murchison

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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The Murchison River is supposedly 850 kms long (510 miles), the second largest river in Australia after the Murray-Darling. I say supposedly, because…well, in common with many Australian rivers, much of it is dry riverbed more often than not.

The river’s entrance can be as calm as a puddle, but more often, it’s a swirling, breaker-washed patch of water that demands a Z-shaped route through jagged rocks.

Here, you can see the rocks clawing out into the entrance; unfortunately you can’t see the humpbacked whale that was repeatedly breeching and whacking its tail right there. (Damn digital cameras that click after the action is over…)

Further upstream, life is calmer, with pelicans and Black-fronted Dotterels and Red-capped Plovers resting on a sandbar…

…while above, people picnic at the foot of Tumblagooda Hill. Tumblagooda Sandstone — 400 to 500m years old –gives it that red colour.

  Kalbarri and the Murchison at dusk.

And wow, it was a place of incredible sunsets.

And windswept shores.

We all had our hobbies to pursue, like me with my birding. Spot the cuckoo (photo, left)
A Pallid Cuckoo
Husband with 
his fishing.

A trip begins

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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If you don’t like blogs about places, then proceed no further. I’m blogging about our three week trip into the central districts of a state that is bigger than Texas, New Zealand, Japan and the British Isles combined, plus some.
Western Australia.
It’s a BIG place.

And this was Day One:
Fremantle to Kalbarri. Over 600 kms.
We left before dawn…
Just south of Geraldton, the trees all lean away from the coast…
…like this one. That’s the trunk on the lefthand side.
Lunch was a picnic north of Geraldton on the Chapman River
And this was our rig.
Some farming scenery north of Geraldton.
Still further north in the afternoon, the trees become bushes and the sky broadens and brightens…
And before nightfall, we were in Kalbarri. In the caravan park on the estuary.
And this was a Kalbarri sunset.

Revisiting the Inspiration for “The Aware”

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Some of you will remember a village called Creed (if I remember correctly) in the first book of the Isles of Glory. The entire book was set on a sand spit called Gorthan Spit, and the village was built of blocks made of an accretion of tiny white shells, washed ashore, and then cemented by time…

Well, above and below is the quarry for just such blocks.
In the past, these blocks were used for every from gravestones of children or drowned sailors:
 

To Churches:

Fonts:

Houses or Restaurants:

With time, the white shells mellow, stained by the dust of red soils.
And so here I was this week, revisiting Denham, Shark Bay, Western Australia, where the germ of an idea originated and started a whole train of thought.
.

The result was The Aware.

Inspiration from Havenstar

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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 Sometimes lovely things happen to writers, and this is one of them: when you find out that what you have written has inspired the creation of another art form.

Some of you may remember Havenstar, and the tainting that occurred to some of the people of that land when they crossed the areas of instability. 

Anastasiya Honchar, a Costume Design student, read and enjoyed Havenstar as a child. For a Foundation project, she designed the costume of a woman in Havenstar who “struggled through a doorway sideways because her skirts were too wide
to enter any other way“.

 
Anastasiya says the reason she chose such an obscure character is “because I wanted
to use my own imagination in terms of looks and personality, basing on
your description of the world. I imagined she would be quite extravagant
and ostentatious (hence the wide skirts). I thought that she could be
tainted as a peacock, which would suit her personality…”

This artwork is the result. You can see more of Anastasiya’s work here.

Thank you, Anastasiya. I think it’s lovely, and holds true to the spirit of the book.

                                                                                                            

THIEFTAKER

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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THIEFTAKER, by D. B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)


Boston, 
Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
August 26, 1765

Thieftaker is historical fantasy, set in Boston before the American Revolution…

Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker of some notoriety, and a conjurer of some
skill, is hired by a murdered girl’s father to find her killer. Soon he is
swept up in a storm of intrigue and magic, politics and treachery.

David is one of my favourite authors… so check this one out!

Sample chapters here.

Animals in my house…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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No, nothing so prosaic as a dog or a cat of some fish in a tank. Last night I spent much time chasing a tree frog around my study, and through the forest of wires and cords under the desk, even across the keyboard of my Mac…
This thing has legs on it like a high jumper and can leave me standing flat-footed any time. It also has suckered toes that enable it to go straight up vertical walls and windows. In the end, I gave up. Twenty-four hours later I have finally managed to shut it in the bathroom with the window open, in the faint hope that it will actually leave.
Earlier today I was sitting in the lounge room when I heard what sounded like a dried leaf being hustled by a wind along the brick-paving outside. Only there wasn’t a wind. I stood up, just in time to see a treeshrew* hauling a large, very dry leaf from the guava tree over the doorstep into the lounge room, which struck me as a strange thing for it to be doing.
Treeshrews are hysterical little creatures that live in a heightened state of terror, so he shot off in a blur of fur the moment I moved. (Which is why I have never managed to get a decent photo of one.)
It wasn’t until later that I discovered she must have been leaf-moving for quite some time because the bottom shelf of my bookcase had a stash of dry leaves hidden behind the books… Just as well I found out before she gave birth.
(*that’s the misnamed creature that doesn’t live in trees {at least ours don’t} and isn’t a shrew, or even a rodent of any kind. It looks a bit like a slim squirrel with a pointed face)

From a different perspective…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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All too often, the only fantasy we read is that written by white Westerners with a Christian or Jewish religous/cultural background. It is therefore a joy to read the occasional book, written in English, that taps into another culture, penned by someone who has more than a touristy knowledge of it.

I’m white and Western, but I have lived 80% of my (long!) adult life in Muslim and Asian or African societies, married to someone who is neither white nor western nor Christian. Which is one of the reasons I try to tap into this experience in my world building. Certainly, I will be doing this in my new trilogy, and the title of the first book, “The Lascar’s Dagger” gives a hint of this. There’s even a possibility that somewhere in my nuclear-scientist husband’s ancestry, there was a lascar… My husband was after all, born in a place which was once one of the world’s great ports (Malacca), and his lineage originates from Muslim Aceh in Sumatra.
Throne of the Crescent Moon Cover
But I digress. This blog post is not about me, but to point in the direction of another writer, American-born, but of Arab descent, who has also tapped into his non-white, non-western, non-Christian cultural background with his first novel.

His name is Saladin Ahmed. And his first book is called “Throne of the Crescent Moon“.

“The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, land of djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and
heretics, Khalifs and killers, is at the boiling point of a power
struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief
known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a
series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the
Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind
these killings….“

His blog is here. Scroll down to read one of his short stories.

If you want to buy the throne of the crescent Moon, you can do it best from Saladin’s website here.