Well, it’s finally here – the next book in The Fledgling Account series. Midway through 2020, I thought (and was told) the publication of this one was imminent. Sadly, it wasn’t. But now I’m at liberty to release it myself.
Here’s a few quick tidbits about this one:

• 1. The title references the fact that Rafen is about to become King of Siana with the allegiance of Zal Ricio ’el Nria as well. Hence, he receives the coveted title of Sovereign of the West. You may have noticed by now that all the books refer to aspects of Rafen’s character or role that is developed in each novel. Rafen, The Sianian Wolf, Servant of the King, and so on all refer to the main character and things that he does and well, is in each book.
  
• 2. The cover is fairly straightforward on this one – a bloodied sword embedded in the ground. This book contains the first full-scale battle scenes I’ve ever written, and all I can say is, that was hard work. I’m not sure I want to write full-scale battles again. They’re awfully hard to keep track of.
  3. “Is it book six or book seven?” you say. “Amazon says it’s seven in the series, but the cover says six.” Simple answer is that it’s both. I did decide to split Consort still when I republished these books, so there are still eight books in the series as Volume Five is in two halves. I did try to make Consort Part Two book 5.5 in the series on Amazon, but Amazon wouldn’t let me. What a lack of imagination! So there’s still one more to go after this one.
  4. Loads of people die in this book. But not enough to finish the series. So that’s why there’s one more. Rofl. Just kidding, that’s not very nice of me. But other authors will agree, I’m sure, that sometimes a character’s arc naturally trends towards the grave. And I’m not getting in the way of a good character arc.
  

Without further ado, here’s the link to preorder this book. It releases on May 30th. Happy reading, and thank you again for supporting this series.

​Now that I’m underway publishing The Fledgling Account myself, I’ve started releasing some new content to go with the main volumes. Some of you might be wondering what exactly this new content contains. Obviously, I can’t tell you everything, otherwise you wouldn’t want to buy them. But I can give a few teasers.
Each of these short stories are just 5000 words in length. They were originally requested by my publisher Burnett Young Books, as a way of marketing the series. The idea was that a shorter story or two might function as an entry point to the series and make the larger books more accessible. It’s a good theory anyway. So I tried to do something like this:
Phoenix Child – gives an entry point to Rafen and to Consort to the Shadows. It contains background information to Rafen (exciting scenes that I never included in the book) and foreshadows events in Consort. Some of it is written from Elizabeth’s perspective (Rafen’s mother), and some of it is written from Philippe’s perspective (the guard who eventually freed Rafen from Tarhia).
The General’s Flight – gives an entry point to The Sianian Wolf and Servant of the King. It is written from Jacob Aneurin’s perspective (the general to the Sianian army), and details harrowing events during the Lashki’s invasion of Siana in volume two of The Fledgling Account.
The Prince’s Lie – gives an entry point Rafen and Consort to the Shadows, Part One and Part Two. It’s written from Richard Patrick’s perspective (the fraud heir to the Sianian throne); and it gives a window into his childhood and teen years. I’m not going to lie – I like writing from Richard’s perspective. It’s fun feeling like you’re giving a voice to a misunderstood character.
The Taming of Sherwin – gives an entry point to Wielder of the Rod in particular. Wielder is the final instalment in The Fledgling Account series. This story is written from Sherwin’s perspective and shows his struggle against spoiler spoiler spoiler… yeah, I can’t really give you much more to go on with that one. Let’s just say it’s verrrrry different from The Taming of the Shrew.
So that’s the low down on the four short stories attached to this series.
Will there be any more? Not at this stage, I think. After writing eight full length novels and four short stories on this series, I’m feeling like the saga is pretty complete. There’s probably enough reading material attached to The Fledgling Account for now.
So enjoy some extra adventures on me and check these goodies out! And thanks to the readers who continue to support this series after so long.

 

So the reason I haven't been writing an update on The Fledgling Account series is because I didn’t have anything to write. However, I came to a decision a little before giving birth to Beatrix – that if things hadn’t improved with my publisher by the time she was three months, I would be rescinding the rights to the series and republishing myself. I notified Brimstone Fiction of this. If you’ve been reading this blog or following the series a little, you may be aware that there were times when I posted updates, saying that my publisher had told me the last books would be available by such-and-such a date. However, every time I posted about a month that the publisher had told me my books would be available in, the weeks would glide by and before I knew it, we had missed yet another of their deadlines with no publication for said books in sight. I finished writing The Fledgling Account series before I even began dating my husband of now five years. So the books have been waiting in a queue for a long time, first to be published by Burnett Young Fiction (which closed) and then to be published by Brimstone Fiction. That's not even mentioning Permuted Press, which is now part of the ancient history of my writing days. Additionally, in my contract with Brimstone Fiction, there was an option clause, meaning they would be the first publisher to have the right to accept or reject my next manuscript after the series was finished. This effectively tied up my writing career for good.
Using the out of print clauses in my contract, I have now taken back the rights to The Fledgling Account series, so that I can republish them myself and publish the last books in this saga for the first time. All books will be published as ebooks first. I have yet to figure out how to self publish a paperback, so you’ll have to be patient with me. But I can give any readers who have hung on through this arduous journey the following dates for publication, starting this month:

Rafen, Volume One – available now.
Phoenix Child, A Fledgling Story (NEWLY RELEASED SHORT STORY, $0.99 ONLY) – available now.
The Sianian Wolf, Volume Two – April 11th.
Servant of the King, Volume Three – April 18th.
The General’s Flight, A Fledgling Story (NEWLY RELEASED SHORT STORY, $0.99 ONLY) – April 25th. A soldier’s story for Anzac Day. Preorder here.
The Fourth Runi, Volume Four – May 2nd.
Consort to the Shadows, Part One, Volume Five – May 9th.
Consort to the Shadows, Part Two, Volume Six – May 16th.
The Prince’s Lie, A Fledgling Story (NEWLY RELEASED SHORT STORY, $0.99 ONLY) – May 23rd.
Sovereign of the West, Volume Six (NEWLY RELEASED NOVEL IN THE SERIES, $3.99) – May 30th.
Wielder of the Rod, Volume Seven (NEWLY RELEASED NOVEL IN THE SERIES, $3.99) – June 13th.
The Taming of Sherwin, A Fledgling Story (NEWLY RELEASED SHORT STORY, $0.99 ONLY) – June 20th.

Some of these titles will become available for pre-order in the very near future.

You will notice some of the paperbacks are still listed because Amazon still has them in their storehouses. I will get very little royalties from paperback purchases at this stage. So if you want to support the series, please consider purchasing an ebook. The short stories are only 5000 words, and they’re full of action and easy to read, so they're a good place to start. As a self-published author, I will be getting as much as 70% of the royalty for each sale of my books; whereas when I was traditionally published, sometimes I would only get 7 cents per paperback.
Lastly, if you leave a review on the ebook listings of these books on Amazon, it really really helps with author visibility, which is something I really need after my writing career being at an impasse for so long. So please consider even just dropping a rating or a one-liner. "This book gave me nightmares" - 5 stars. Something like that. I won't mind, I promise.

I look forward to finally finishing this series, one way or the other, and then moving onto some of my other manuscripts that have been sitting in cyberspace for several years now too. It's time to start sharing my stories again. 

Most of term one has now elapsed, and Easter is just around the corner. It's surprising to think about. This morning in the shops, I had a moment where I saw some Easter eggs for sale and thought: "I was buying these just the other day - they must be really discounted now, it's ages since Easter!" It took my actually looking at the full price to realise that these eggs were for Easter next weekend. Face palm. 
It's been a busy term, full of music and song and moments where I've realised I've got too much on for my own good. Holly has adapted well to both of us working. We still have time to enjoy with her. We've done lots of swimming with her over summer and are now enjoying taking longer walks as the weather gets cooler. She is fascinated with horses and birds. She is now standing without any support sometimes, and she's walking up and down the furniture and looking rather pleased with herself. Her sleeps during the day have become fewer and fewer, which keeps me on my toes. She also eats simply everything - many things she shouldn't, but the plus side is that she basically never refuses food. We can present her with zucchini and carrot, and she munches it down delightedly and cries when it's gone. She likes her sweet stuff though, and it's getting a lot harder to eat stuff around her without her wanting a bit of it. Recently, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor eating chocolate cake. A second later, a hand swooped out of the air and grabbed a massive handful of my cake and icing. Holly had crawled up rather quietly, stood up with the support of the armchair behind me, and positioned herself to do some looting.
It was looking horrifically dry just a week or two ago, and we were all wondering how the town water supply was going to go over winter. The local Weir was down to just 20%. Thankfully, God answered our prayers and we had nearly 100 ml in one week. Areas around us had much more, and the streams and creeks that contribute to the Weir supplied it with so much water it started overflowing. We're delighted that everything is green again and our creek and Weir are full. However, for many people (particularly not far south of us), this latest rain event has caused a lot of devastation. In one case in Sydney, an entire house floated away in the flood waters. It goes to show that it needs to rain a heck of a lot elsewhere for Chinchilla to have just enough to get through winter!
My last kayak on the local creek was beautiful. I saw seven turtles, a wedge-tailed eagle, several swamp wallabies, and lots of water fowl, all happily enjoying the water. The algae bloom has almost all gone from the surface of the water there.
In the meantime, the transition of my Fledgling Account books to Brimstone Fiction is taking longer than expected, unfortunately. I will update the links for the books on my "Store" page once the transition is more or less finalised. I'm writing other things in the meantime.
Life seems to be slowly going back to normal. Certainly this March has been a sight better than last March. I've been asked to sing at the town's Anzac Day service again. Hopefully this time all goes ahead.
Perhaps one of the most exciting things in the last term has been that my husband Michael was granted permanent residency. After a long and arduous application process and an extremely long wait, our partner visa application for him has finally paid off. Hopefully the next stop is citizenship! We were phoned by the department of immigration about Holly's status, as they were using this to help make a decision on Michael's application. The man on the phone suggested that if we applied for an Australian passport for Holly, it might help things move faster. I had just gotten myself organised enough to do this when the grant came through even before the passport had been sent to us. So now Holly has an Australian passport and really nowhere to go, as borders are still mostly shut and international travel is strongly discouraged. It's kind of weird that Holly has an Australian passport but Michael and I don't. I didn't even think of renewing Australian the last time I renewed my passport, so I got a New Zealand one. It was inconvenient in the extreme to be on a New Zealand passport when we immigrated, as every time I applied for something that Australians were able to get but New Zealanders weren't, I was challenged about my nationality. I did provide my citizenship certificate as ID, but it still messed me up every time. Anyhow, two of us are citizens of Australia and one of us is now a permanent resident. It certainly gives me a great deal of peace of mind.
I shall leave you with some pictures as always - shots I've snapped of wildlife and our family and things I've seen around in the last couple of months. Unfortunately, we've had a bit of wildlife inside. The mouse population has been intense in Chinchilla lately. I'm torn between wanting snakes to eat them all and not wanting too many snakes around!

​So, we are nearly a month into the new year! Term is about to resume, and with it will come a large amount of music-teaching related busyness. However, I do love my job, so there isn’t much to fear there. I am continuing writing and have just completed another book project which needs some good edits now. My Fledgling Account books are currently unavailable due to my publisher changing the branding on them from Burnett Young to Brimstone Fiction. Hopefully, the unavailability will be very temporary.
My husband and Holly and I were most fortunate in that we were able to go away for some time in early January, just south of the Queensland border. It was a beautiful location, and we enjoyed several lovely beach days and then a couple more days where we occupied ourselves with board games and low-key exploration of the area. It’s hard to do anything particularly adventurous with a baby. However, we still enjoyed ourselves very much, and I think Holly was enchanted by the different sights as well. She certainly ate rather a lot of sand. She is growing very well and is now pulling herself up on furniture and standing up with support. At seven months, this is rather unexpected, but one cannot get in the way of progress I suppose! We had the joy of getting her baptised recently and having some friends around to celebrate with us. She is so used to the water she didn't even blink an eyelid during the ceremony.
During the holidays, I’ve also been kayaking several times. My husband and I kayaked on one of the lakes near our Airbnb in New South Wales. I’ve also been down to the Weir a couple of times too. After one of these trips, I decided that I might get a small hard-shelled kayak just for myself to use. Michael and I used to kayak a lot together in our inflatable double kayak. This has become harder with Holly, as she doesn’t always enjoy sitting still in the kayak for a long period of time. So one day, I took the inflatable out by myself. Unfortunately, I had never blown it up when the seals were completely off before. Normally I put Holly’s life jacket on while Michael did this part. This meant I failed to put the seals on correctly before blowing it up. Anyhow, I was enjoying my kayak but decided I should start heading back so that I was on time to feed Holly back at home. As I turned around, I started to notice the front of the kayak was rising into the air, ever so slightly. Probably just the difference in weight – one person in it instead of two people and a baby, I thought to myself. I continued, but after a couple of minutes noticed with concern that the sides were beginning to fold inwards.
Strange.
I carried on a little further and then realised the back of the kayak was starting to rise too. If you’ve ever made a paper boat and accidentally squished it, you will have an accurate mental image for what the kayak was beginning to resemble. Obviously, it’s very difficult to paddle something that is slowly folding up. I did my best, now understanding properly that I was sinking. I didn’t have a life jacket on, but the water wasn’t rough, and I knew I could swim to shore. I was just worried about what might happen to my camera and car key. I decided that the best I could do would be to attain the nearest stretch of shoreline and then drag the kayak along as I walked back to the boat ramp. The trouble was, it didn’t look like I was going to reach the shoreline at all. I began to paddle more slowly, but still just as firm, so that the kayak didn’t go down too fast. I was – to my relief – able to make it to the ski run on the Weir, which was dry due to the lack of rain. Just as I got there, the kayak went completely under water. I climbed out into the mud and pulled it up.
Things were about to get more embarrassing. The good thing about the ski run was that it connected eventually to the boat ramp, so I could drive my car there and pick the kayak up. The bad thing was it meant walking back without a boat, which would look odd to anyone who had seen me depart. With any luck, no one would have seen me depart. I headed back with my paddle. When I got to my car, an entire family moved toward me.
“Where’s your boat?”
Great. “It sank.”
A general gasp of horror.
“It’s okay, I’m going to drive down and pick it up now.”
Of course, I checked it for leaks when I got home and was surprised I couldn’t find any. Surely it must have had a major hole to do that! It was Michael, of course, who discovered it was because I had put the seals on wrong. That was probably the most embarrassing moment of all. Total face palm.
Anyway, it gave me a Pirates of the Carribbean moment, coming into the shore gallantly while my boat sank underneath me. I have now purchased a small hard-shell kayak that’s easy to transport and less complicated to set up. Set up for my new kayak: carry down to water – drop in water – get in. On my last trip, I did not sink. A much better experience.
Anyhow, I shall have less time to go about sinking kayaks now that the term is about to begin. I shall leave you all with some photos to enjoy from the holidays, taken by yours truly.

Well, here it is - the obligatory New Year’s post. I almost didn’t write it, to be honest. But then I got to thinking, and I realised I have nothing major to be disappointed about. I’ve many reasons, in fact, to be happy and even proud.
I’m not into all those memes about 2020 and 2021. People saying “walk in nice and slow and don’t touch anything” or “no one is posting about 2021 being my year - y’all are scared, aren’t you?” I don’t buy into that sort of thing. I’m not one of these people damning 2020. It’s hardly as if we can blame a year, anymore than one might blame a season or April Fool’s Day. Man is responsible for the evolution of the coronavirus, and man is responsible for the response to it - the erroneous belief that we can in fact control the path of a novel disease and carve one more step in the stairway to the perfect life. 

I'm not under any pretensions, however, that 2021 will be any better from a pandemic perspective. I'm praying that there'll be significantly more common sense influencing decisions made by governing authorities. I'm hoping that people will learn that thriving in life is worth as much - well, actually, more - than plain old surviving. I'm hoping that our governments will understand this and respect people's desires to live well and be autonomous. I'm hoping medical treatments will be utilised without unnecessary politics. But who really knows?

For us, it's been a landmark sort of year for our family. Michael and I had a baby, and Holly has been a real source of joy and normality to us. There's nothing like a baby to remind you about the impracticality of social distancing rules. Holly is now nearly seven months. She is full of energy and enthusiasm for life. She crawls about and loves to feed herself bread and bun and broccoli. She's cut two teeth, and you see them often when she smiles. She loves to play games and hear music.
Michael's teaching has gone well this year, and he's done some study on the side. I taught singing, piano, and literacy extension for the best part of three terms, but took a bit over a term off on maternity leave. I also wrote three book-sized projects, which will be waiting in the wings like many of my other projects while The Fledgling Account is finished. The revisions were completed on my seventh book, so that one will be releasing soon in 2021. And then there is just one book left in that series. I signed a new publishing contract that saw my books switch companies although stay with the same figurehead. I did some performing and interestingly enough tried some recording with a new microphone my husband and I bought. I made an album for my daughter and one for family and friends. We explored northern Queensland for the first time and took a holiday with Holly to the Gold Coast later in the year. I grieved the loss of my dear Yorkie Peyton and adopted another dog, but unfortunately had to give her up when she didn't want to play second fiddle to Holly, even after four months of trying to make it work. Bella, our second dog, now lives with a lady across town, who dotes on her. I give her haircuts every six weeks, so I still see her then. We've made it through 2020 with achievements on the side and a beautiful little daughter.
There are certainly things that could have been so much better about 2020. There are wounds that still hurt. But we have been blessed despite those things, and as the song says, "I know who holds tomorrow". So I don't need to walk in real quietly and not touch things and hold my breath or whatever the memes say. There's lots that's uncertain. But I know the most important Certainty, and He controls the future.
The pictures with this post are some reminders that good things can happen even during a pandemic.
Happy New Year to you all.

This article has been supplied by Sheila Johnson, a wellness blogger who reached out to me. I love mindfulness exercises and enjoy my own Pilates and Yoga workouts at home - I think keeping physically active and limber is great for authors, who are often stuck in one position for long periods at a time - ​Y K Willemse

By Sheila Johnson

How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your yoga practice? If you’re like many yogis, you’ve had to shift your practice from the studio to home to comply with self-isolation orders. But practicing yoga on your own isn’t always easy, especially if you’re used to following a class instructor. Luckily, you have access to several tools that can help you keep your practice going—and even take it to the next level! From beginner-friendly yoga apps to advanced props, here are some ways to get the most out of your at-home practice.
 
Seek Guidance from a Pro
 
While you may not be able to attend your regular yoga classes, you can still access guidance from professional instructors. For example, many studios introduced live virtual training sessions so you can still enjoy a one-on-one yoga experience in your own home. Personal yoga training sessions are great for beginners who don’t know where to start, but also for more experienced yogis who are looking to improve their practice. Many yoga studios have also transitioned to offer virtual classes during the pandemic. If you’re on a tight budget, look for free online classes or search for yoga channels on YouTube.
 
Invest in Tech Upgrades
 
If you’re going to be following along with instructional yoga videos or attending virtual classes, make sure you have the right tech so you can enjoy a seamless practice. Few things are more frustrating than dealing with a buffering video, laggy live stream, shoddy internet connection, or a yoga app that constantly crashes when you’re trying to flow through a sequence. This could be a great opportunity to invest in a few tech upgrades! Treat yourself to a new smartphone and consider upgrading to a faster, more reliable internet connection.
 
Create Your Own Flow
 
If you’re ready to take your practice somewhere new, try coming up with your own yoga sequence. You’re a writer, so use your creativity to your advantage! Yoga Journal recommends familiarizing yourself with a basic yoga flow template. Begin with opening poses to wake up your muscles, move through a few sun salutations to invigorate your body, and incorporate some standing poses to prepare your body for backbends, inversions, and twists. When it’s time to wind down your session, choose some calming poses such as seated meditation and corpse pose. Use these building blocks to build and shape your own practice!
 
Try a Few Props
 
Incorporating yoga props into your practice is an excellent way to take things to another level. If you’re a beginner, yoga props can help you build strength, balance, and flexibility as you learn your way around different poses. Many beginners use props as a source of support in difficult bending and reaching poses. If you consider yourself an experienced yogi, props can add an element of challenge to balance poses, and can even help you get the hang of those trickier poses that have always eluded you. Some great props to add to your at-home practice include bolsters, blocks, straps, and a yoga wheel.
 
Schedule Time for Yoga
 
Your yoga practice is one of the most important parts of your day. Practicing yoga can help you cope with pandemic-related stress, maintain your physical fitness while gyms are closed, and keep your mind healthy while you’re hunkered down at home. It’s easy to let healthy habits slip when you’re experiencing drastic changes to your daily routine, so make sure you schedule time for yoga every day. You could even use goal-setting apps to monitor your progress over time! And don’t forget that you’ll benefit from keeping your yoga space as tidy as possible; clutter can make you anxious, so be mindful of your surroundings.
 
How Yoga Can Help Writers and Others in Creative Industries
 
If you still don’t feel inspired to start a home-based practice, consider this: While yoga has physical and mental health benefits for everyone, it offers unique advantages to writers and other people who work in artistic fields. For one thing, the mindfulness component of yoga can boost your creativity, and for another, taking on a challenging variation of a pose pushes you to find a new perspective. Both of these perks can benefit your writing immediately after a yoga session, and the more you practice, the more you’ll notice them over the long term.
 
While many people (writers included!) have had to put their lives on hold during the pandemic, your yoga practice doesn’t have to take a hiatus. Enjoying a productive home yoga practice is easier than you may think! With a few simple tools, and maybe even the help of a great virtual instructor, you’ll be back on the mat in no time.
 
For more articles that can benefit writers from all walks of life, stop by Writer Sanctuary

Well, much of 2020 has passed, and it's been a very strange year indeed. I was thinking back over it the other night and recalling how it started with a trip up north for Michael and I - and then the tragic loss of our beloved little dog Peyton - then the declaration of a pandemic - and then the birth of our first child, followed by the signing of a new contract for my books, a spell of maternity leave, and then a return to work. There are some things about 2020 that I have hated and that still hurt. There are other things that I'm so grateful for. Holly, of course, is a great source of joy.

I have to admit - I'm becoming very tired of the restrictions and the ongoing panic. Can one be "over" panic? I certainly am. The mainstream news media, fueled by patrons with one set of opinions, continues to hype the importance of lock downs, social distancing, and mask wearing. But the more information I see and the more research I've done, the more I think these three measures have done a terrible amount of harm to the world. Lock downs have stripped people of human rights, healthy hobbies, jobs, and crucial family and friend get togethers that bolster mental health and make life sweet. The despair at times through the year has seemed overwhelming. Social distancing seems to me to have bred mistrust between people and put emotional distance between fellow human beings. (And who would have thought politicians would one day legislate against hugs? And hand shakes?) It depends who you ask about masks, but there is a reasonable amount of research that suggests mask wearing does not work. There is good scientific evidence that mask wearing makes the sick sicker (imagine wearing a dirty handkerchief over your face all day when you've got a bad flu, and you get the picture). And, at the risk of stating the obvious, mask wearing inhibits communication with other people and takes away hugely important parts of human interactions (facial expressions and of course smiles, which everyone needs after a year like this). The WHO recently said that lock downs do not work, and we've seen in America even in states that have religiously locked down that the virus has still spread. I'm not saying I have any solutions to the problem of Covid. But I do wish that the authorities in question would actually value quality of life as much as continued existence. Covid restrictions have taken away some things from us that are priceless. Life is not simply existence at any cost. Life involves far more than that, and truly living involves thriving. I think thriving has been difficult to do this year.
All this said, I don't want to be political here. I'm merely expressing my feelings on the matter. I'm sure I'm not the only one fed up at times. I'm sure there will be people who disagree with the above as well, and you are most entitled to do so. Freedom of opinion and speech is important.

Despite the pandemic related issues, I have continued singing and writing over the past month, and have enjoyed teaching my students again. The weather has started to sizzle here, and swimming is a must when it can be done. We have taken Holly out to swim, and she has also been kayaking with us on the Weir. We've seen some interesting wildlife recently. It's been my first time seeing large numbers of locusts. They seem to have moved on from our town now. I went over to the other side of town to photograph the bat colony that has unfortunately taken up residence in one person's backyard. As my camera was clicking, the lady who owned the property came out to speak with me. Internally, I was panicking as I thought I was about to get into trouble. But she told me: "Come in, please. You'll get much better pictures in my backyard."
So I came with her under a large umbrella (the umbrella is an important poop and urine shield when one lives with a colony of bats) and took some photographs in her backyard. She explained to me what it was like living with a bat colony, and I was amazed at her endurance. At one point, the squealing of hundreds of bats was deafening, and we had to yell to hear each other. The bats frequently argue over which branch they're roosting on, and of course, some noises in a residential area will set them off and distress them. When I saw what this lady was living through, I contacted the ABC about it and suggested they do a story on it, hoping this would enable her to get some support so that she can move the bats on. The story spread nationally, and some of my photographs made it into the article.
It was fascinating seeing the comments on Facebook. Those who commented on ABC Southern Queensland's link were mainly sympathetic, many of them being country folk who understood the reality of bat colonies. Those who commented on the national link were mainly city people, who didn't seem to understand the situation as well. I would agree that we should take care of our native animals. I wouldn't agree that just because a large and destructive colony has settled in this woman's backyard that she should pack up and go to a rest home (as some unkindly suggested)! Anyway, the bats are a continued saga in Chinchilla. While they seem endangered in cities near the coast, out in regional towns their numbers swell. It is safe to say there are often more bats in Chinchilla and surrounds than there are people.

I have heard from my publisher that my first six books will be available through Brimstone Fiction by the end of the month. Within five months from this, according to our contract, the last two books in the series will be published. And then The Fledgling Account will be complete. It seems crazy to have an end date for such a large series, but there it is. We're nearly there.

In the meantime, I wish whoever is reading this well. Stay well, try to enjoy life, and don't fall prey to the fear associated with this pandemic. This too will pass (and soon, I sincerely hope).

It truly has been an age since I last wrote, and here we are in October, and I'm nearly finished maternity leave, and Christmas is just around the corner. It's certainly crazy to think about. Part of the reason I was waiting to do an update was because I wanted to write about the next step in my publishing journey, once everything was finalised.

It has all been finalised now, and I can officially update you. My Fledgling Account series is no longer going to be published by Burnett Young Books, which is closing its doors. Instead, my books are all being shifted over to Brimstone Fiction, a publishing house that has been going a bit longer than Burnett Young and is apparently doing quite well. We now also have deadlines for the last books as well. The transition process might take as long as two months, but once that is done, my next two books (the last ones in the series) will be released within the five months after that. So The Fledgling Account series will be completed in 2021, and once that is done, it will be time for me to consider new projects.
Having an end date for the series is exciting. It will be the biggest project I've ever done in my life. I've written easily over 1,000,000 words in this series, what with all the drafts of each book, and scenes that I've written for my own benefit or edited out. The entire series once it is published will likely be approximately 800,000 words in total. This is of course the reason I used to feel stressed in uni when I had a 2000 word limit. It seemed impossible for anything to be that short!

In the meantime, things on the home front are busy as usual. I'm returning to work soon, and I've no idea how I will find that now that I'm a Mum. But I've already been a working Mum with the revisions I've had to do for my publishing company anyway. It'll just be a different sort of work.
Holly is doing excellently. She is now approximately four months old and full of smiles. This week she starts solids, and judging by today, she hasn't done too badly at all. But who knows? With a baby, tomorrow everything changes. Anyhow, she brings us great joy, and I'm very proud of my little girl.

We have been lucky enough to enjoy our holidays too. It's always a gamble in the present times, whether one can go away or not. But we were able to travel to the coast for a few days, and Holly had her first taste of the seaside and her first time in a pool. The weather was lovely, although more moderate than it is out bush. We are already getting 30 degree days, and it shan't be long before the temperature climbs back up to 37s and 39s. Holly has been kayaking with us too, in her little life jacket and togs. She seems to enjoy the pelicans and wallabies, but when she starts grizzling we paddle extra fast to get back to the car and ride home for her nap.
I'm still writing and singing and playing piano. In some ways, I feel much the way I used to before a baby. In other ways, I don't. For a start, it's much easier to get an achy back after childbirth. And breast feeding, while natural, is one of the weirdest things on earth. I miss other people, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to going back to work in some shape or form. 
So the holidays end and maternity leave gradually ends, and another new normal begins for us. I am looking forward to our new adventures.