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Aussie Expats Update – The Risks of A Break in the Juggle of Life
Well, here we are starting the second week of January. Yeeeeesh. I’m sure there are a lot of people getting ramped back up again for work, or university, or the countless other things that require our energy and attention. I wish you all luck, but for me, the end of the tunnel is in sight. Well, this immediate tunnel, at least. After my psychology exam next week I’m due for a blissful month off from lectures and assessments, during which I will theoretically achieve monumental goals—like splitting the atom or starting (and finishing) my next manuscript, or becoming a world-famous blogger—and in all likelihood won’t achieve much at all… Other…
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Writerly Habits
Habits are a tricky business. You put a whole heap of work into creating a routine, sticking diligently to it and instilling positive practices… And then you take a couple of weeks holiday— or you get caught up with work, or university, or partying, or whatever else it is you like doing with your time—and then your lovingly-cultivated habit is dead, and you have to somehow resurrect it or build a new one. Damn. Anyway, that’s me, right about now. I feel like I was (for the most part) tracking pretty well last year with regularly blogging, working on my novel and keeping my head above water with uni and…
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Aussie Expats – A 2016 Recap and The Year Ahead
HELLO EVERYONE!! Well, it wouldn’t be the end of the year without an obligatory ‘look at everything we did’ kind of post, so I’m going to do one, mostly because it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that 2016 was a big year. Mammoth actually. Those always seem to happen when you’re getting ready to put up your feet and tell everyone that ‘last year was huge, we’ll take it down a notch for this one’… Actually, as you go along in life (it seems to me), there’s nothing but big years. And they speed up, until they’re flying past and slipping through your outstretched hands. At least that’s how…
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Aussie Expats Update – Some Pre-Christmas Adventures!
Hello world! It’s TWO sleeps until Christmas: TWO! How time flies and how crazy it is to think that soon the jolly fat man will be bringing joy and gifts to everyone. Exciting times. It’s been some time since I posted; I decided last week that there hadn’t been enough happening to write an update post, especially as I was also trying (and failing, it turned out) to get ahead with uni so I’d have less to do this week while James is off work. Yet, despite our silence, we actually have been doing things (yes, I’m proud). Last week was mostly focused on trying to get through uni and…
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Aussie Expats Update – The Long Slide into Holidays!
Happy Friday people everywhere! As we slowly slip and slide our way down the final path into the break (James is off from the 17th), it seems that the days are far too long, and the mornings far too cold, for continuing to do anything more than hibernate, drink eggnog and eat fatty meals like oxtail stew and braised beef short ribs. Sadly, until the break, we’re stuck with early morning PT sessions for James… Though I really can’t complain because my brain has been creating some strange and fascinating things in my early morning free-writing sessions. For those of you who’ve been waiting and chewing their fingernails to the…
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Writing An Author Bio
Happy Monday! So, if you caught my post last week, you’ll know that I recently received an honourable mention in the inaugural Fiction War—hurray! I received an email from the event coordinators not long afterwards which requested that all finalists submit an author biography and issued a mental sigh of relief that obviously this wouldn’t apply to me, and I wouldn’t have to figure this out, because I’m not a finalist… But I sent them a reply email, just to confirm. Turns out I still had to do one. The sticking point? I’ve never written a biography about myself before. I mean, to give you some idea of where I…
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Aussie Expats Update – Writing Wins & December Socialising
Friiiiiiday! AND December, the month of Santa, chocolate, eggnog, presents, a brief stint of holidays for both James and I (which is a serious change from Aus, where our long break is over Christmas) and maybe a white Christmas (come on Oklahoma, you can do it!). Needless to say, I’m excited. Part of that could be to do with the fact that I’ve submitted my Ancient History assignment (after a real struggle!) and I’m feeling a little more on top of my study—I had to pay the piper this week after our frivolities in Kansas last week—and we put up our tree together yesterday. Okay, okay, it doesn’t sound like…
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The Final Waiting
The moonlight shattered around the darkness of her shadow on the ground. In the still air, the silence—peace, or simply violence without a voice?—felt as fragile as a frozen pane of glass, and she breathed softly, lest it fracture. A bird whistled to itself far above, then stopped abruptly, as though it too knew what lay at stake. A whisper of a breeze caught at her clothing, the raking of icy claws across her skin making the tiny hairs stand on end. She fought against the shiver that threatened to rattle its way up her spine: she needed to be still, still and silent. She was waiting again, below the…
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Aussie Expats Update – Archery Adventures, Food Bank & Fantastic Beasts
Everybody, How, on earth, is it Friday again?? Don’t get me wrong, Fridays are awesome (although, one might argue, somewhat less so if you’re not actually working and therefore you don’t deserve to celebrate Fridays as much—and thus you also probably should be continuing to write/study over the weekend anyway), but right now it feels like the year is disappearing. Days and weeks and even months are vanishing like delicious, multicoloured gobstopper rings, and soon it’ll be Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then NYE… and then 2016 will end. I’m looking forward to doing a ‘2016 Recap’ post prior to that point, because this one has been a bit of a doozy…
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Aussie Expats Update – Projects New and Old, and Babysitting!
Happy Friday everyone! Remembrance Day (the Australian version of Veteran’s Day, for any Americans who are confused by that term) was yesterday back home, but since it’s the 11th here, it means a chance to think about what armed servicemen and servicewomen have sacrificed for their countries and their loved ones. Especially for us, that’s pretty important—in a world rent by conflict, it’s vital that we remember what the cost of peace and democracy here, and what responsibilities we each individually have to make the world a better, safer and more accepting place in order to honour those who have fought for, and protected, our way of life. But it…
