Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers!

I had to go to Sydney mid-December for medical check-ups, so I went on from there to Canberra, where we had an early family Christmas on the 19th. It was lovely to see my family and we had an enjoyable, low-key day with some great presents exchanged and a delicious meal. I flew home on the 21st, and today, Christmas Day, Gordon and I are having a quiet day, just the two of us – and the dogs!

Fruit mince tarts are something of a tradition in our family, and although I haven’t done any Christmas baking until today, I made a batch of tarts for morning tea:

They tasted almost as good as my mother’s!

When we were talking about Christmas lunch a few weeks ago, Gordon requested ‘fish and chips and champagne.’ So that’s what we had The fish was atlantic salmon, with lemon juice and marjoram; the chips were oven baked with a touch of cracked pepper; the salad had a honey and mustard dressing; and the champagne was Moet. A delicious meal, and not too heavy!

My paternal grandmother used to make her Christmas pudding on Melbourne Cup Day, in November. I had other distractions in November and December, so I’m not as organised, but I’m making a pudding this afternoon, which we will have this evening. It won’t be quite as well aged as Nana’s, but it should still be yummy, especially with some thick cream.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope your Christmas season is a wonderful one, and that the New Year brings you many joyful days. It’s a great pleasure to interact with friends, family and readers through this blog, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, ‘company’ and good wishes. Here’s a toast to you all!

Oh, and don’t forget that other great Christmas tradition – the afternoon nap!

I was wandering around the web yesterday and found that my German publisher, Blanvalet (a division of Random House) now has the details up on their website for the release of the German-language edition of As Darkness Falls – to be released in May, 2010, under the title Schwarze Dornen. The translator is Carsten Mayer.

The cover is quite striking, although very different from both the Australian and UK editions:

While the image isn’t directly related to events in the book, I think it does effectively create a sense of menace in conflict with the natural world, which does reflect some of the themes of the book. Plus, it does catch the eye, and will make the book stand out on the shelves and tempt a reader to pick it up – and that is what a cover image is supposed to do, so therefore I like it!

The title translates (I’m pretty sure) to ‘Black Thorns’. It’s not unusual for a foreign-language edition to have a different title; translation is not as simple as just replacing words with their equivalent ones in the other language. Sometimes there isn’t an equivalent word, and many factors are taken into account; the style of the writing, the sound and rhythm of words, their meanings and subtleties within the language, the culture and cultural references, and, of course, what will appeal to the book-buying public! Schwarze Dornen sounds strong, and is probably easily remembered, plus it evokes a sense of the atmosphere of the book, so I think it’s a good title for those reasons!

At this time last year I offered signed bookplates for As Darkness Falls – and this year I’ve made more bookplates for both my books, on nice quality, adhesive photographic paper. For a limited time – until 15th December – I’ll post a signed bookplate to those who request one. The bookplates are designed to complement the covers of the books, and I write a short message and sign in the white space:

As Darkness Falls bookplate (Aust. edition)	Dark Country Bookplate (Aust. edition)
Draft As Darkness Falls bookplate (UK edition)

So, if you’ve got a copy of one of my books, or if you’re giving one as a gift, and would like a signed bookplate for it, please use the form below to request one. I will aim to post it by, at the latest, the second working day after I receive the request. Please note that for the UK edition bookplates, I’ve just requested a higher-resolution cover image, so I can make the bookplate a better quality image. I hope that will be finalised within a couple of days. I will post overseas requests by airmail, but it takes at least a day for mail just to get from here to Sydney, and at this time of the year there’s a lot for Australia Post to process, so I can’t guarantee they’ll arrive before Christmas – so the earlier your request, the better!

To request a bookplate, please provide the following information in the form below:
1. Which book, and which edition (UK or Australian) you have;
2. The name you’d like the bookplate made out to;
3. Your full name and postal address;
4. Your email address, just in case I have any queries (I will not sell, or giveaway your email address to anyone).

Kat over at BookThingo recently posted a thoughtful review of Dark Country, and she’s giving away a signed copy of the book in what I think is a lovely contest:

For a chance to win a SIGNED copy of Dark Country, in 25 words or less tell us who you consider the most romantic Aussie couple and why. It can be a book, film, real-life story, or you can make up your ultimate Aussie romance.

You need to enter over at BookThing, in the comments section of the review post, by midnight Friday Sydney time. I’m enjoying reading the entries, so do go and join in the discussion.

I’d find it hard to enter, though – there are too many Aussie romantic couples I love! From the classics – Meg and Alan from Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians, and other books; Norah and Wally from Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong books; and of course there’s also CJ Dennis’ The Sentimental Bloke and his Doreen – a little different from the previous two, being written in colloquial language, for adults, by a male writer, about a rough, working-class larrikin from Melbourne’s back streets, but wonderful and touching as The Bloke falls head over heels for Doreen.

Then there’s also D’Arcy Niland’s Call Me When the Cross Turns Over – the Cross in the title referring to the Southern Cross constellation – with it’s story of Barbie Cazabon and Jack ‘Fascinatin’ Kippilaw. These are two great characters, neither of them perfect, but definitely a great match, despite the trials they endure before they finally work it all out. The book is out of print now, but if you like Australian literature from the 1950s, it’s worth checking second-hand book shops for it.

As for real-life romantic couples, since I was a small child, I was always inspired by my aunt and uncle, Eileen and Arthur:

This is a photo through glass of a scan of a photo – but aren’t those smiles just beautiful? In my memory, they were like that all the time – aware of each other, devoted to each other, and showing that love constantly in many ways. Much older than my parents, they had grandchildren around my age, and it was wonderful a few months ago when one of the grandchildren and his wife came and stayed with us – and they smiled at each other in just the same way

Things have been quiet here on the blog lately because I’ve been in Sydney, dealing with more medical dramas. I headed down to Sydney on the 9th for surgery on the 11th, hoping I’d only be in hospital a night or two, but planning to stay in Sydney for a week or so afterwards, close to major hospitals and specialists. Unfortunately, the surgery (attempting to insert a stent inside the existing stents in my cerebral aneurysm) did not go well, and despite the best efforts of my wonderful doctors, I ended up with multiple complications – a small brain hemorrhage, some damage to the retina in my right eye, an abdominal bleed, and a tear in my femoral artery which gave me a large bruise/haematoma on almost my entire upper right leg. So, as a result, I was eight days in hospital, and had to have further surgery to repair the femoral artery, and it’s taken me a while to get back to something approaching normal health. So I do apologise for any unanswered emails, comments etc lately – I’m slowly catching up, now I’m out and about.

A week of bed-rest does give one plenty of time to observe the surreal nature of hospital life. In addition to being a patient in one several times, my first full-time job was in the personnel office of a city hospital, so I have multiple perspectives on the world. One of my favourite authors for a good fun read is Terry Pratchett, and I love his DiscWorld series and the way in which he uses the narrow edge between reality and absurdity to highlight the strengths, depths and frailities of humanity (and dwarves, trolls, witches, and Death….)

So, for those of you who have both read Pratchett and experienced a long hospital stay, it will probably come as no surprise that I idled away some of the long, long hours wondering how Mr Pratchett might write a book about hospitals. There are plenty of absurdities and strange customs in hospitworld and I’m sure he’d have great fun with it. If you’ve not read Pratchett, most of the rest of this post will not make any sense

Hospital time is a law unto itself. An event scheduled for 10am is almost guaranteed NOT to occur at any time with a ‘10′ in it, and there is probably some strange mathematical formula involving parabolic equations and corkscrew time movements with a relationship of inverse proportions to the length of time for which the patient has had to fast! (And a note of warning here – do not read certain Nora Roberts novels while fasting prior to an operation, because her descriptions of food are too damn good.)

Speaking of food, it’s all catered for en masse these days, to keep costs down. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the taste of hospital scrambled eggs manages, by some distortion of the senses, to remain on the palate for at least 72 hours. (The pannacotta, however, was quite enjoyable – although that may have been a relative enjoyment, rather than a perfect one.)

There are certain elements of hospital administration, many reflected in hospital forms that require completion by the patient, that make it entirely easy to suspect that one (or more) hospital administrators may in fact be orangutans. And of course, there has to be a controlling force behind the whole system to keep it running, and given that every piece of hospital linen (towels, sheets etc) has either printed or woven into the fabric the stern pronouncement that it is the property of Central Sydney Health Service, in large unfriendly letters, I did not find it had to imagine a Patrician-like character overseeing the supply and distribution chain, and terrifying all involved with dire threats if a single sheet or towel is not properly accounted for.

But on the plus side, of course, there’s the magic – the medical kind – and the variety of lively personalities of the wizards doctors and nurses who practice it. I was very well cared for, by some wonderful and interesting people. One of my doctors – unbeknown to him – also helped me to envision the hero I’m currently writing a little more clearly, as he had a similar focus, dedication, courtesy and gentleness that I’d given my hero, as well as being very good-looking. A couple of the young female doctors also gave me some more insight into my heroine, who just happens to be a doctor So, there were some positives about the experience.

I’ve been back home for a few days now, and it was lovely to come back to the peace and serenity of the bush after the weeks in the city. I have to take things a bit easy for a while, but my strength is gradually rebuilding, and I’m now doing most of my normal activities – just a little more slowly than usual, with frequent rest breaks!

I’ll be heading back to Sydney in a couple of weeks for some specialists’ appointments, and then going on down to Canberra for an early Christmas celebration with my family, then back home again to have Summer Solstice and Christmas with Gordon. And throughout it all I’ll be working on book 3, as I’m currently still hoping to meet my January deadline. My characters, Mark and Kate, are having a challenging time – although I did write the hospital scenes before my recent experiences!