When the moon is close, 14% or so larger than usual.
Well it looks that way, anyway.
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Today is Anzac Day. My dad was nearly an Anzac. He was part of the 1st AIF, sent to reinforce the troops at Gallipoli. They landed first in Egypt, but by then, the withdrawal was decided upon and his unit was sent to France instead.
There, his job was to drive mule trains of munitions to the front. He was at the Battle of Ypres.
Whatever he saw, he never mentioned.
After the war, it was almost a year before he was home again, even though he was not regular army. There were no ships to bring back the non-wounded…
This photo I took at the War Memorial in King’s Park Western Australia. A couple of ravens are standing on the wall contemplating the names of two horrendous slaughter grounds for young men: Ypres and the Somme.
And we still haven’t learned a thing.
Most authors these days use beta readers, generous folk who are prepared to read an unedited book in manuscript form and give their comments, all aimed at making it better.
My friend and beta reader, Donna Hanson, is interviewing various authors about this process.
You can see her blog here.
And my interview answers here.
I have just been killing myself laughing at the comments over at this: A Forum of Ice and Fire
I shan’t comment on being called a “girl” (as I think the poster of the topic actually meant women) …but I am wondering what planet some of those leaving comments live on.
About half the fanmail I get comes from women.
Leaving aside paranormal urban fantasy such as Twilight, with its female teenage following, I know just as many female readers of epic fantasy as I know men readers.
I myself – over the past year or so – have read male writers such as Peter V. Brett, Patrick Rothfuss, Robert V.S. Reddick, M.D. Lachlan, Adrian Tchaikosvsky, Ben Aaronovitch, Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie, Tad Williams and Paul Hoffman. And of course, I read George R.R.Martin. And a stack of women fantasy writers as well.
My closest friend who lives around here reads the same books I do. And you know what? Our respective husbands don’t read fantasy at all. Ever.
However, I imagine many of those posting on the site will just say in answer: “Ah, then you’re the exception.”
So maybe I will ask…do you think female fantasy writers don’t like fantasy? (And once again, I’m not talking urban or romantic fantasy of the kind that male readers largely seem to dodge.)
Try telling the following people they don’t like fantasy and see how far you get:
Kate Elliott. Jennifer Fallon. Alma Alexander.
Alison Goodman. Robin Hobb. N.K.Jemisin.
J.K.Rowling. Martha Wells. Margo Lanagan.
Julian May. Rowena Corey Daniels. Michelle West.
Trudi Canavan. Mary Victoria. Jo Anderton.
Lois Mcmaster Bujold. Karen Miller. Patricia Wrede.
Fiona McIntosh. Tansy Raynor Roberts.
Kate Forsyth. Celia Friedman. Katherine Kerr.
Jennifer Roberson. Pamela Freeman. Carol Berg.
Kim Westwood. Sara Douglass. Lynn Flewelling.
And that’s just a start — all the names that popped into my head in the last few minutes. I am sure if I spent half an hour thinking, I could put up the names of 100 women writers who write the large fantasy canvas. And I wouldn’t mind betting that everyone of them LOVES epic fantasy and reads a great deal of it.
And I’d love to ask everyone of the writers mentioned what proportion of their fanmail is from female readers!
So I’m trying to work in my den, and in walks a neighbour’s cat. I shoo it out.
And some time later in walks another cat. I shoo that one out.
And then I become aware of mysterious noises. Soft thuds and rattles. So I think: cat.
Every time I leave my den to investigate I can’t see anything. Until, eventually, I realise the garden is being bombed … by honey guavas, hundreds of them, falling from the sky, rattling through the leaves and thudding to the ground like pink grenades:
And as you see, some of them are half eaten. Definitely not cats to blame, then.
And here is one of the culprits: a long-tailed macaque. There were two of them, one with a very young baby. And the rain of guavas continued until they spotted me and my camera. Oh, and they were aided and abetted in their theft by a grey-bellied squirrel…
OK, back to work.
So one of my old friends returned to her old haunts…
Neither of us could resist a poke around the birding spots we’d made our own so long ago. Idiot Glenda left her camera at home, so the photos on this page were taken by Gill, who is much better looking than me, as you can tell.
We started at the old mining pools of Bidor, where we picked up gems like Cotton Pygmy-Goose, and lots of waterbirds such as Little Grebes, three species of Egrets, Purple Gallinule. And loads of open country birds, Yellow Wagtail and 2 species of bee-eaters among them. The lake area below yielded 15 species of bird in 15 minutes.
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| Bidor mining pool |
And there are other things to look at too, like water lilies and this Chinese shrine under a tree…
Along the road we saw a courting Crested Goshawk fluffing out his flank feathers into white cotton balls and winnowing his wings.
We then headed towards the ricefields of Ulu Dedap area. There was plenty to see along the way, such as the proliferaton of swiftlet motels. These ugly buildings are springing up everywhere, adorned with loudspeakers that play the endless twittering of the Edible-nest Swiftlet, ad infinitum. This brings the birds in to nest within the dark, airconditioned rooms, accessible only by tiny holes in the walls. Their initial nest will be stolen from under them, they’ll build again and hatch their brood. This nest will be used after the young fly.
Somehow bird saliva doesn’t appeal to me, but you can kid people into anything with the right marketing and a lack of scientific evidence.
And here we have a very productive crop — these trees were in seed everywhere. When I was a kid, it was in fact an important important product for us because it stuffed our mattresses and pillows in Australia.
Yep, this is kapok. It was in season, the white fluff that carries the tiny seeds blowing on the wind in every village we passed through…
Here’s the tree itself on the right.
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| Ulu Dedap Ricefields |
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| Lesser Adjutant |
The ricefields were fairly barren of raptors, apart from Kites: Brahminy in abundance, and a couple of Black, plus one Black-shouldered. Egrets and herons and pond-herons were there in all sizes and colours, a couple of stilts and Wood Sandpipers, a snipe, Common Sandpipers.The big event of the morning, though, were nineteen Lesser Adjutant storks both on the ground and kettling up into the air.
That strange little birdhouse on a pole in the photo is for roosting or nesting barn owls, encouraged because they eat rats in the fields.
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| Cattle Egret in breeding plumage |
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| Blue-tailed Bee-eater |
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| Large-billed Crow |
On the way north we came across a troop of Long-tailed Macaques which included a lot of youngsters. They were crossing the road in front of us, so I stopped the car and we waited. The final contingent of the group were very sensibly reluctant to walk in front of the car, and headed over the road on a tightrope instead, which was very entertaining.
After meeting top-birding friends in Taiping, we had a couple of days under their wing –Taiping Lake Gardens (with its nesting hornbills and the fabulous roost of egrets and night-herons; as the day shift comes in, the night shift flies out); Kamunting mining pools where the pratincoles (below) were all over the place….
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| Oriental Pratincole |
And the cattle egrets were doing what they do best: sit on the cattle.
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| Water Buffalo up to their necks in weed-covered water |
A morning on Maxwell Hill (Bukit Larut) resulted in 4 Blue Nuthatches at a nest. We dipped on the White-throated Rock Thrush (but I saw it there will Gill years ago). We ended the trip in Kuala Gula, picking up a rare Milky Stork and a Rusty-rumped Warbler (once called Pallas’ Grasshopper-warbler), Silver Leaf-monkeys, four species of kingfisher and a Spotted Wood Owl, plus the usual suspects of herons, redshanks and mangrove birds.
Believe me, there is nothing better than a few days spent with special friends birding.
Stormlord’s Exile, that is. Not me, just my book.
Seven times I have had a book or two up for the award (Best Fantasy Novel of the year), and seven times a book has been shortlisted. So I am one happy camper.
I hasten to say I’ve also never won the award, having lost out to a selection of superb Aussie writers over the years: Sean Williams, Trudi Canavan, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Garth Nix, Juliet Marillier, Lian Hearn.
It would be nice to win one day, but believe me, it’s GREAT to be shortlisted.
One of the special things about the Aurealis is that it is a judged reward and everyone involved is a volunteer. It is only possible because those people — the organisers and the judges — make it possible. So thanks to everyone involved.
Awards night is May 12th. In Sydney. Oddly enough, I will be in Perth (hoping to meet up with any interested others that night, to celebrate the winners and commiserate with those who didn’t…)
My absolute favourite one-star review was for Stormlord’s Exile (the last book in a trilogy) at the Barnes and Noble page. Here it is, in its entirety:
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What a wastes
Only worth reading because you bought the first two in the trilogy.
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And my absolute un-favourite review? The turkey who also gave the book a one-star review, without comment, long before it was published, or indeed before the ARCS (preview copies) were even available. In other words, they can’t possibly have read it, or even seen it. I suspect it must have been someone who was pissed off by a blog post of mine, or something similar.
Along Forest Trails…
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| A palm fighting for light in the understorey |
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| Liana curling on the right… |
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| Bahaya Rengas – beware the rengas tree. Some people react very badly, leading to anaphylaxis. |
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| A flower-strewn path. Forest trees often have millions of tiny flowers. |
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| And here’s a look at those flowers on the path |
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| Forest pool |
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| The beginning of the climb up Mount Perlis |
