Bakers And Buffalo

One of my favourite stories amongst those I have written for the monthly competitions is one about the demise of the buffalo on the American prairies. Colossal numbers - many millions - of this magnificent beast were wiped out, mainly for sport, and reduced to a few thousand.

We have never seen a live buffalo, or bison, in the USA, but there are a few places where they have been saved - they are being farmed for their meat - and where you can go to see them. We intend to do so on one of our visits there. We did not expect that our first sighting of live buffalo would be in a small touwn, Oxford, in New Zealand. But here they are, two of them, in a field with two cows. Not sure what the objective is. Is the intention to breed them together? To cross them with cattle? No idea, but they are very handsome animals.

The story I have to write this month is on the theme of food. So it was very amusing to see this bakery van in Akaroa a couple of days ago. Look at the registration plate as well as the sign in the window. I think our baker friend Lorenzo (who, coincidentally)  has a bronze statue of a buffalo family near his home) would like to have this van.

Tomorrow we leave New Zeland and should be home in just over a week. This means that the hard grind will begin, objectives being at least one short story per months, "Vic's Big Walk" into paperback, and three more books published in e-format and also possibly in paperback.

Foot In The Door

Well, despite distractions such as this outside the window, I managed to get that story finished on Sunday afternoon and whizzed off to Writers' News.

I am not happy with it, but at least I am sticking to my resolution of getting an entry in every month. This one will not fulfil my other resolution of actually winning one of the competitions this year, but it will keep my foot in the door. There is a slightly broader spec for next month's competition - instead of giving a last line which you have to lead up to, the story has to be about food.

Stuck In A Hole

Maybe I shouldn't have said that - about the story flowing out through my fingers when I sit down at the keyboard.

I have written scores of stories, but for the first time ever, I have sat down with a basic, very sketchy idea of a story in my head, written a few paragraphs, then backed off, having decided I need to think more about what I am doing.

I seem to have a bit of a paranormal tale on my hands, with a very sick woman seeking shelter in a cave from a storm.. I know roughly what will happen, but am a bit stuck with how exactly to deal with it.

I have another 10 days before the story has to be whizzed into the ether, but it will be a busy ten days for us as Gay's sister is arriving from Australia tomorrow and we shall be doing a lot more driving and sightseeing than we normally do on our own, as we try to give her a taste of New Zealand.

Getting Down To Business With Descartes

I shall be starting work on the next 3 books from about July onwards.

While I am still overseas, I can do some work towards two other objectives.

One is to win a Writers' News short story competition. I can clearly do this only if I enter the competitions. I have already sent in the entry for the competition which has its closing date in mid-March. For the next one, due in mid-April, the brief is to write a story of 1500-1700 words, ending with the line "Out she walked with a spring in her step." I have no idea what I shall write yet but will be starting work on it soon. I frequently find myself in the position of sitting down to start a story with only a very vague idea of what the story will be about. Some writers have the whole thing sketched out before they start, with copious notes about plot and character by their side. Others fly more by the seat of their pants and I seem to be one of those. Something about sitting with my fingers on the keyboard seems to produce words in an order of which I had been completely unaware a few minutes before, with people taking shape and events happening almost out of my control. I hope that will happen again this time - and of a good enough quality to get to the top of the heap.

I had no idea I was going to write all of the preceding paragraph, for instance, just that I need to get cracking on the next story. It's a sort of mechanical verbosity, I suppose, rather than the audio version.

The other thing I need to do before starting on the three new books is to produce the paperback version of "Vic's Big Walk". Fortunately, I have a friend who has published through Lulu before and Gay and I have a one-week visit to England booked for June, partly to spend time with Peter preparing the paperback version. In the meantime I can correct the few typos and errors which I have been made aware of in the e-version. For instance, when describing my walk through the town of Descartes, I said that Descartes the philosopher had not made it into the famous Monty Python Philosphers Drinking song. I even checked the song to make sure I was right about this but must have been suffering from word blindness at that stage because I missed the obvious fact that he was indeed a drunken fart in the song.

I also mentioned at one stage that Jean Mortensen was the husband of Stanley. Only one person has pointed out that she was actually his wife.

Both of those errors, and a few others, will be corrected before the paperback goes to press.

Never Give Up

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly

- Proverb.

Vic's Shorts

And the third book? I mentioned that I have written many a short story for the monthly competition in Writers' News and Writing Magazine, being shortlisted several times.

The third book will be a compendium of a number of the stories I have written, and maybe one or two other items.

Swim The Atlantic?

The second of the 3 books which I am working on and which I intend to publish in the next 12 months has the working title "Swim The Atlantic?". It will be an autobiography.

If you want to know how I came by the title, click HERE to see a YouTube clip of the BBC TV news item about the finish to Vic's Big Walk: