Frustration all Round (or saved by some fungi)

I’ve been on two kinds of journey today.

One has been very real; through the mountains of Eastern Victoria.

The other has been entirely in my head; it has been through the outline of my WIP.

Both have involved frustration of one kind and another.


My WIP has essentially languished for the past couple of months. I have written a few pages now and then. However, my limited creative time has been largely tied up with preparing Veiled in Shadows for publication and working on the beginnings (planning stage) of a marketing campaign.

I should say a little about the WIP. It is tentatively titled Veiled in Storms. The WIP is the second of a series of four stand alone novels that I have planned.
The first Veiled in Shadows, is set in the years 1937- 1945 and follows a number of characters against the backdrop of war and the Holocaust.
The WIP Veiled in Storms runs from 1941 – 1949. A few of the characters in the first book appear in the second but the backdrop shifts to the war in the East and the terror of Stalin’s reign.

Both books have a backdrop of world changing historical events. But in both books the main focus is on the characters, events may create challenges for my characters but what I am interested in is how they respond and grow (or otherwise).

So as I say my WIP has been languishing. That is something I want to rectify.
So today as Deb and I drove out to the East, I had my plot and what I have already written running through my head.
I ran into a problem. I realised that too much of what I have written so far is bogged down in the realities of the war in the East. I don’t want my WIP to become just a ‘war book’. Yes it is set in the war, but like the first it is meant to be about characters not events.

So frustration of frustration, most of the many thousands of words I have already written will never make it into the final book. The only saving grace is that most of what I have already created will become ‘back story’. My characters will be shaped (or even scarred) by the events they pass through but most of it will be simply touched on in the book rather than being the main narrative thread.

So most of what I have already written will be (figuratively speaking) mulched and turned back into the soil of my imagination.

Anyway back to the real world. Deb and I set off into the mountains of Eastern Victoria today. We had intended to go to a State Forest Reserve to see a tree called the ‘Ada Tree’.
The Ada tree is reputed to be the largest tree remaining in Victoria, so it sounded like it was worth the effort of a bit of a trek.

Anyway, after a lazy morning off we went. We drove to the east to the Yarra Valley before cutting south east into the mountains.

After driving along a windy mountain highway we turned off the main road onto what is essentially a series of unsealed forestry trails.

This firts piccie shows a fork in the trail about 20 km (13 miles) from the main road. As you can see it was wet and muddy today.

The reason for our stop: to look at a logged forestry coup.
A ‘coup’ is an Australian forestry term for a portion of a few acres in a state forest that is logged for timber.

After the area is logged the remains of the trees are burnt in-situ. You end up with a mess like this.Now before this apparently wanton destruction elicits howls of outrage I should say a little about Victorian forestry practice.

This coup, like most of state owned forest in Victoria has been logged this way before. This second piccie shows a few large tree stumps. The tall one in the foreground is an old stump that was cut a long time ago (I would guess 60 – 80 years) by hand saw and axe. The low stump in the middle ground is a recent chainsaw cut stump. The low stump is a tree that has grown since this coup was previously logged.
The trees in the background are all young (probably 10 – 15 years) and are in a neighbouring coup that is being regenerated. Victorian forestry is probably as close to a long term sustainable industry as you can get.

The burning of the waste is the first step of regeneration. Many Aussie tree seeds won’t germinate until there is wood ash in the soil. It is a trait that helps the native forest regenerate after a bushfire. Rather than clearing large areas forestry will log a small area and then leave it to regenerate for decades before touching it again.

So a state forest will be a mosaic of areas of trees of differing ages. In terms of native vegetation and most wildlife it works really well to both have an industry and preserve diversity.

There have been problems though. Some species of possum and bird have become quite rare in the forestry areas. The reason for this seems to be a lack of very old trees with suitable hollows for nesting.

Forestry has taken some steps towards rectifying this. This third (not very good) piccie of the coup shows a couple of large trees that have been left. These are designated ‘habitat’ trees that either already have hollows or are expected to develop hollows as the bush regenerates here.

It’s a good idea, and a step in the right direction. But if forestry really want to solve this habitat problem in the long run, I suspect they will have to leave more large trees standing in each coup that they log.

So back to the car, which as you can see from this piccie was already very muddy.

We arrived at the Ada Tree Reserve car park.

Frustration again, what with one delay and another it was already 4:00 pm. With winter the sun sets early and the cloudy wet day meant it would be dark in less than an hour. Not nearly enough time to do the return walk to the Ada tree itself (about 3 km or 1.8 miles of bush track).
Getting lost in the bush in the dark is not one of my hobbies.

So like my WIP we had to re-jig what was left of the day.

Deb ensconced herself in the car with some knitting and I set off to see what I could photograph in the immediate vicinity of the car park.

First, in the car park itself an old tree stump. This stump was cut before the days of chainsaws with old hand axe and crosscut saw.I can tell by the height of the stump that it is old, with a modern chainsaw you’d simply cut through the tree close to the base.
In the old days they cut a tree above the wide buttresses to minimise the amount of timber they had to cut through by hand.

This notch was cut part way up the stump. The timber getters would then stand on a plank inserted into the notch and cut away at the tree by hand.

The muddy posterior of the car caught my attention briefly before I ventured a short distance into the bush.The main thing I found to photograph is a huge number of fungi that are busy putting out their fruiting bodies at the moment. Fungi love the wet winter weather.

These orange mushrooms were growing in the soil.These odd little mushroom-like bodies protruded from a decaying moss-covered stump.These little beauties were sprouting from the bark of a living tree.They were tiny, with the heads of the 'mushrooms' about the size of a fingernail.

The same delicate little fellows viewed from below.
It's worth clicking on these piccies to get an enlarged view.

I spotted these ragged looking little fungi at the base of a stump as I went back to the car.It was getting late so we began heading home.

On the side of the road not far from the first coup I spotted this odd sculpture.
I presume some bored forestry worker has been busy during a lunch break.The result, a throne and table carved out of solid tree stumps with a chain saw.

The throne had a grand view down a logging trail into the mist wreathed mountains beyond.

Mornington

Back at the start of autumn Deb and I shot down to the Mornington Peninsular at the south end of Port Phillip Bay.
As you can see from the map (copied from Google Maps) Melbourne Sits at the Northern end of the bay.The first place we stopped was Rosebud about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the city.

Well inside the bay Rosebud was sheltered from a southerly wind on the day.Along the beach is a fairly rare sight for Oz, brightly painted beach huts.Deb and I had a bit of a poke around.

Deb set off across this bridge at one end of the beach while I did my usual trick of playing with my camera.This stern looking fellow is a “Pacific Gull”. They are a large species of gull around the size of a fully grown chicken.

This guy is actually a juvenile pacific gull, they don’t grow adult plumage until their second year.

I’ve included a piccie of the “baby” with some more regular silver gulls to give you an idea of the relative size.After snapping away happily I noticed that in the distant haze I could see the skyscrapers of the city poking up over the horizon.After a bit Deb came back with an abalone shell she had found among the rocks.
On the way back to the car I snapped this Banksia flower
Then we hopped back on the road for a short drive to overlook the open ocean of Bass Straight (near Portsea on the map).
Unlike the bay the wind was whipping into the shore and only a few hardy souls could be seen strolling on the beach.One final sight before we turned for home was this wave cut arch which is known as “London Bridge”. There are at least a couple of other natural arches along the Victorian coast named after London Bridge.
Aussies can be a boring lot when it comes to place names.

News!! (and a Request)

As promised a little while ago I have some news of my book Veiled in Shadows.
Essentially my news is fairly straight forward.

Finally, after much hair tearing, endless delays caused but the intrusion of other aspects of my life, going back over my MS I don’t know how many times, I have all my files for the book ready for uploading to the printing company Lightning Source.

Notice I say “printing company” rather than “self-publishing company”. That is because Lightning Source is plain and simple a printer.

Unlike many vanity presses masquerading as “self-publishing” Lighting Source is a printer. They don’t try to sell you various “services” to “improve” your manuscript. They don’t sell you packages to market your book.

You have to do it all: editing; layout; cover; uploading the files for the cover and body; supplying an ISBN. Also, you set the retail price and decide on wholesale discount and returns policy. In short you are the publisher. (Some of you will remember I registered a business as a small publisher a while ago)

After that they list the book on Ingram (of which they are a subsidiary) so book stores can order it and they make it available to mobs like Amazon and The Book Depository (in Aussie English a mob is not a group of gangsters but any group).

So after tonight I have to wait for Lightning Source to send me a “proof” copy of the bound book to make a final check. Once I approve that (assuming I don’t need any last minute changes) I am in the market.

So that is my big news. I am on the way!!!!

This is such a relief after far too much time bogged down in the last few details.
I am really excited, in fact I should probably say ecstatic about having got this far.

I have a little fantasy that once this all happens I will be able to spend more time working on my WIP. In reality I guess that if I want Veiled in Shadows to work I am quite likely to have less time to spend on the WIP.
I am going to have to market my baby myself. And that is going to be a big job!

The trick over the coming months is to come up with clever ways to increase my visibility. In terms of efficiency that effort has to be mainly targeted on the web.
In comparison to markets overseas, in Oz the market is tiny (there are only 20 million of us in the whole country).

SO now for my request.
As I said I have to come up with ways of marketing my little piece.
Now last night I came up with a few words that I hope are punchy, brief and raise interest in the book.

But I am no marketing expert, so I was hoping to ask all my blogosphere friends to do me a big favour and have a look and comment.

Here we go:

In a world divided by conflict.
In a storm that consumes friend and foe alike.


In a war fought in the shadows…
those who live may do so at the cost of their humanity.


Two lovers united by passion
…and divided by hate.


As they fight for survival…
their most implacable foe might be one another.


What do you think?
Would that attract your interest?
What kind of book does it sound like?
And are there any improvements I could make?

Finally a couple of piccies I took yesterday arvo/evening.

A rainbow in the Yarra Valley
After so many years of drought it is a real luxury to see the decent rain continuing past the occasional downpour. A rainbow is just icing!

The Sunset over Yarra Glen

A Tale of Two Castlemaines: Part II

Way back in January I posted about some of the research I was doing for my WIP.
I talked about a trip I was planning to a WWII era RAN (Royal Australian Navy) minesweeper.

As I said then I was researching the ship on which one of my characters serves for part of WWII.

Being in the RN (Royal Navy) operating out of Russian ports Ronnie is likely to have served on a Halcyon Class minesweeper. So it seemed too good to pass up an opportunity to visit a similar ship that is preserved as a floating museum at Williamstown in Melbourne.

What is the link to Castlemaine? Well during the war Australian shipyards built 60 Bathurst Class minesweepers.

The only surviving example is HMAS Castlemaine, named for the very town I last posted about.

Castlemaine served as an escort vessel for convoys in Australian waters for much of the war. In 1942 it participated in an operation running commandos to Timor in which its sister ship HMAS Armidale was sunk by Japanese aircraft.

After the war, Castlemaine served around Hong Kong clearing thousands of sea-mines sown in the area by both sides during the war. Then for some decades the Castlemaine was used as a training ship by the RAN.

Finally in 1973 HMAS Castlemaine was gifted to the Maritime Trust of Australia to serve as a museum ship. Today it is lovingly maintained and opened to the public by a dedicated group of volunteers.

So one sunny day I tootled off to Williamstown to do a tour of the Castlemaine.

My first impression of the Castlemaine as I approached it was “Isn’t it small.”Closer up it looks larger, but still small to be home to a crew of over 70 for months at a time.

I guess I was not specifically interested in the Castlemaine rather I wanted to get a feel for the similar ship my character Ronnie would have served on.

Boarding the Castlemaine the first thing you see is the floats that were used to tow cables behind the ship to literally sweep for mines. I want Ronnie to see Russia from British eyes during the war. One of the best ways I can do that is putting him on a minesweeper, because many RN sweepers operated out of Murmansk and Archangel for long stretches during the war.

Down in the bowels of the stern is the “steering gear compartment” a sort of auxiliary wheel used if the bridge was damaged in combat.Forward of that, but still below the waterline is the “engine room” which is filled with a maze of pipes.The upper deck, looking astern to the rear anti-aircraft gun. Castlemaine’s guns look out over a busy marina these days.On the foredeck is the main armament, a 4 inch naval gun.The lifeboats hang in their davits, loyally waiting service that will never come.Inside the superstructure on this upper deck is the captain’s cabin. On Ronnie’s ship this would have been his quarters and office where he conducted the business of running the ship.

From beside the captain’s cabin is a steep ladder up to the bridge.I guess the warning sign is a later addition. This is exactly the sort of ladder I have already imagined Ronnie bashing his head on in an emergency.

The Castlemaine’s Bridge is enclosed. Most RN minesweepers had a bridge open to the elements.I can only imagine what a watch on a bridge like that might be like in the winter’s dark north of the Arctic Circle.

You’ll have to excuse me I have some imagining to do.

A Tale of Two Castlemaines: Part I

Well this week has (so far) been very hectic.

Yesterday, I was in the city from 4:00 am to run a team of volunteers in Melbourne City Council’s annual “Street Count” program. To Council’s credit they are attempting to be proactive in addressing the problem of homelessness in the city.

Street Count is an attempt at getting a snapshot of the number of people sleeping rough in the city to inform their policy development. Local charities and individuals are asked to help with labour for the count.

So from 4:00 am I was watching the safety of three groups of volunteers as they checked a large area along the Yarra River and around Flinders Street Station.

Flinders Street Station Source Wilkimedia commons

Last Year it was cold and wet for the whole count. Fortunately, this year it was dry. Although, down here in the Southern Hemisphere winter is setting in so it was cold (by Oz standards) and dark the whole time.

I’m pleased to say all volunteers returned safely to the count HQ, without incident. We all shared a hot breakfast to warm up while we completed the debrief session.

Now, my Uncle Harry Tour guide hat is going on again.

Maybe a month ago on one of our day trips, Deb and I shot up towards Castlemaine in central Victoria, a couple of hours drive from home.

On the way up I paused to take a few piccies of places that grabbed my attention.

In Kilmore there is an old Town Hall with a grand facade.

But if you look behind it is no more than a front.

We then passed Hanging Rock which featured in Peter Weir’s 1975 movie Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Like so many other places in Victoria, Castlemaine is a former gold rush town that was founded during the 1850s.

At a site called Red Hill on the outskirts of Castlemaine are the relics of some of the old gold diggings.

This area contains shattered remains of the original hill.

As no remediation work was ever carried out on the old diggings what is left of the hill continues to erode away.

These old iron pipes were used in the area to carry water for sluicing the gold. If you look closely you can see they are riveted together from smaller strips. They have been hand made by local blacksmiths!

In the town itself are the grand buildings typical of the newly prosperous Nineteenth Century communities.

The town hall

The courthouse

The “Imperial Hotel” has fallen on hard times, but the front still has the most intricate wrought iron lacework.

The grandest building is probably the “New” post office opened in 1875.

And tucked behind the post office is the Nineteenth Century version of the internet: the telegraph office. Opened in 1857 Castlemaine’s telegraph office is the oldest remaining telegraph office Australia.

Last, but very far from least, The Castlemaine library opened in 1855 and still in use.