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Hi all, After weeks of doing little writing, except Divine magazine articles, I actually did some editing of my novella last week. Yaaa me. And things are looking good for this week as I have caught up with other activities like gardening and newspaper reading. I still need to strip the rest of the paint off a picket fence and paint it, followed by painting new guttering. Novella It is amazing how the plot needed to change in my novella after I substituted an ipad for a newspaper. My main character had been reading a newspaper, but as the story is set about a decade into the future, I decided to give him something more advanced, an ipad. He then needed something to carry it in, so I gave him a backpack. In the novella he has to make a hasty exit. He had previously just dropped the newspaper and ran, but now he had to try and bundle his ipad into his backpack while lurching for the exit. Those in pursuit catch up with him. Previously they grabbed at his clothing, now the...

Hi all, Global Warming I’ve been catching up on my newspaper reading and the global warming debate is not going well. Clive Hamilton in last Wednesday’s Age sums it up well: “What do Australians want? The answer is clear. We want symbols of action but not action itself. We want to hear words that make us fell good about ourselves but none that ask us to make any sacrifice. We care about climate change, but we hate the idea of having to do anything about it.” Even with my household’s limited resources and income we have tried to decrease our contribution to global warming, while people on much larger incomes do nothing, except whinge. We have installed solar hot water and a rain water tank. We upgraded the gas heater to one with a thermostat. Every light fitting has one of those energy saving light bulbs in it. We grow a lot of our vegetables and fruit. We don’t have a car, instead we walk everywhere. The only good thing about global warming is it makes it very...

Hi all, I had a bugger of a week last week. It all seemed to be about damage control. I went to the dentist and found out I needed a bit of work. She directed me to an x-ray clinic for a mouth shot. I found out I need to go and see an oral surgeon to get a wisdom tooth and its neighbour pulled. Their roots are too close to a nerve for the dentist to pull. Just the removal of those two teeth will cost me somewhere between $1500 and $2000. I also need a root canal ($1500) and a cap on a front tooth ($1450) and some other things done. All up the initial bill was around $6,000. As I am trying to survive on a part-time writing job and newstart, I don’t have that sort of money lying around. But by the end of the week, it looked like I can get onto a special medicare programme for those with chronic illnesses (like my ulcerative colitis). It pays up to $4650 over two years. My GP says I am eligible and is currently, I hope, doing the paperwork. I’ve made appointments for c...

Hi all, Last week was one stressed out week, but compared to how this week has started it was like sitting in front of the telly watching a Red Dwarf marathon with a keg of beer. One good thing has happened in the last couple of days, I have a new article up on Divine about self-publishing ebooks . It contains a warning that authors should not expect to make any money out of selling ebooks. Hopefully I will make time to finish an article on universal remotes that I was supposed to finish last week. No editing of novella, little reading, just one moment of stress after the other. I am definitely on a roll. Graham.