G’day and Happy Australia Day.

The ironic thing is, by the time you read this, Australia Day will actually be over — in Australia, anyway, thanks to the International Date line.  But it’s still officially Australia Day where I am.  So I’m saying G’day to all the Australians like me, who are parked in places far from the homeland and, like me, don’t get to have the day off to celebrate, watch fireworks, and melt under what is often one of the hottest days of the year.

Have a great day!

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So Mark hits me with the news that he had to pick up some wrestler from the airport at the crack of dawn on Saturday, and because they’re not heading to Red Deer for the evening’s show until noon (Red Deer is only a couple of hours south of here), said wrestler would have to come and park at our place for a few hours.

Mark had the grace to ask if I minded, although he did tack the question on at the very end.

I shrugged and said I had no intentions of entertaining the man.  Mark could do all the talking and distracting.  The two of them could talk shop for four hours and I could get on with my writing schedule in blissful peace.

Then Mark dropped the other shoe.  “Um…he’s Australian.  From Byron Bay.”

Which made this wrestler a mate from the olde sod, but from the wrong bloody side.  Byron Bay is in New South Wales.  Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.

I sniffed and said I thought I might be able to spare a moment or two to say hello.

Scott Justice, I found out, is really young.  As in (god, I can’t even believe I’m saying this out loud and in public) around the same age as my oldest son.  I was frantically washing dishes when he walked in, and my first impression was oh my god, I’ve just seen my first surfing dude since I left high school.  Bleach blonde hair, tan, and white teeth.  And charm.  Lots and lots of Australian charm.

Australians have this cultural bias towards heading overseas to travel and see the world as soon as they’re old enough for their own passport.  It’s hardwired into the brain because we imbibe so much foreign television, movies, books, magazines and more.  We think globally in a way that most countries just don’t.  Australians travel compulsively and often.  But they nearly always come home.  The idea of upping stakes and moving to a different continent just to break into a career choice is something we might consider, but few would actually follow through on — especially guys in their early twenties, like Scott.  But that’s what Scott did.

He moved to Canada on a working visa just to break into professional wrestling.  He had no friends and few contacts when he moved here.  His one ambition was to move closer to the heart of professional wrestling to try to break in.  He’s been in Canada for a couple of years, and he’s making waves in the professional wrestling scene.

But that’s not what prompted this post.

I offered him breakfast, and he asked hopefully if I had any Vegemite.  We didn’t, but we knew where to get some, so Mark took him to our local Save-on-Foods and bought him a couple of jars of (very expensive imported) Vegemite, and he tucked into toast and Vegemite for a late breakfast.

But the really interesting thing about Scott is what I found out later.

He must have been suffering from the lingering effects of concussion from an earlier match, because throughout the day, he kept vomiting.  Right up until showtime in Red Deer, he was sick to his stomach, and spent most of the time lying down and queasy.  Now, a lot of guys, even professional wrestlers, would have bailed on the match.  Mark watched Scott, though, three minutes before his entrance get up from where he was lying, shake it off, square his shoulders, and head out to pull off a wrestling match every bit as good as any other wrestler out there than night.

There wasn’t a murmur of complaint from him the entire day.  He met his commitment to the booker and delivered.

Wow.

Professionalism is one thing.  This was on another plane entirely.  Call it true grit, sheer bloody stubbornness, insanity, or the courage of youth…but it’s the sort of strength that makes the difference between good and great.

It’ll be interesting to see where Scott ends up in the next few years.

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Split Enz, the Aussie/Kiwi punk/rock/vaudeville/swing band from the ’7os and ’80s, released their first compilation album to mark their tenth anniversary, in 1983.  They called it Enz of an Era, thinking it was a fitting tribute to ten good years.

Which it was.

They had no idea at the time that Split Enz would be disbanded less than a year later, in 1984, after a massive world tour.

I happen to be a huge Split Enz fan.  And not just because they’re from Australia and New Zealand, although I wasn’t when they were alive and kicking.  Wish I was.  I would have loved to have seen that world tour.  I’ve heard the live albums and I’m brought to a staggered stand-still every time.  Alas, I haven’t got around to inventing time travel in real life, yet.

However…

There is a point to this seemingly random trivia about a long-gone band with weird hair-cuts, so bear with me.

Split Enz may have disbanded back in 1980, but Neil and Tim Finn, two of the core band members, re-invented themselves.  They created another band, Crowded House, and continued in their prolific and talented way to churn out album after album of astonishingly good and uniquely different rock music — this time without the weird haircuts.

Crowded House is still producing albums and doing world tours in 2011.  I’m a member of their Facebook fan page, and own all the albums.  I’m listening to Crowded House as I write this post.  A Split Enz song — Message to my Girl — in my husband’s personalized ring tone on my cellphone, while a Crowded House song – Weather with You – is the generalized ring tone for anyone else who calls me.

I don’t do concerts.

But if Crowded House came (back) to Edmonton, I’d buy tickets over the odds to go see them.  They’re that good, live.  (I missed the last concert they did here by two weeks – I was out of town.)

And here’s my point.

Everything has a natural cycle.  The year, trees, seasons, bands…and books.

Today, seven of my books reach the end of their current cycle.  They’ve been released from Ellora’s Cave, and going “out of print” for a while.

While they’re on hiatus, I will be cleaning them up, having them edited and repackaged with new covers, possibly new titles, additional content and special features, and republished in new formats and pricing.

The seven titles are:

Betting With Lucifer

Dare to Return

Dead Again

Dead Double

Diana By the Moon

Eyes of a Stranger

Thief in the Night

While the books are on hiatus, their pages will show them as unavailable and out-of-print.  I’ve already made the changes to those pages.  It’s possible you’ll still be able to buy copies here and there until supplies of print issues are sold out, but you won’t be able to buy copies of the EC editions directly from Amazon, or Ellora’s Cave, after today.

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I’m almost scared to start blogging again.  There’s a small mountain of news, tasks, and dust to blow off the site.

Not to mention about 800 photos we took in Australia that I should really comb through to share the best of with you, that I never really had time to upload while I was on the road.

But I have to start somewhere, so I’m just diving in.  I figure it’ll all sort itself out as I go along and if I don’t start now, I’ll never start, y’know?

So, let’s start with good news.  From my in-box while I was away:

Blood Knot, my erotic paranormal MMF romance, was selected for Coffeetime Romance’s Reviewer Recommended Award.  The award recognizes outstanding writing styles in all book types and genres. The reviewer who nominated Blood Knot told me:  “Your book has received this award because I feel it is above and beyond a 5 Cup Rating. I was simply amazed at your writing talent!”

To check out the award nomination, click here.  The original 5 cup review is here.

______

Fatal Wild Child also received a very nice 4-star review from Coffee Time Romance, that included the magic words: “This is one of the best romantic suspense novels I have read this year.”  That was an email worth opening!

I’ve posted an excerpt of the review on the book’s page (here), and of course pasted it all over Facebook and Twitter. :)

_____

Fatal Wild Child emerged onto the secondary markets while I was away.  You can now buy it at Barnes & Noble, Apple and Sony and I’ve added buy links to the book’s page.

_____

Smashwords will soon be adding mobile apps to the list of formats they offer readers, which means you will be able buy formats for Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and HP’s WebOS.  I’ve been reading my books on my cellphone for years.  It appears that many other readers have been, too, if Smashwords are making this move to provide formats for mobile phones.  In Japan, reading on your cellphone is the norm, which is why ebook covers are so small and simple.  With the first surge of popularity in ebook reading passing on and early adopters are already looking around for the next cool gadget to play with, perhaps there might be a secondary wave of movement toward cellphone reading as people merge their handheld devices into one convenient all-in-0ne handheld.

____

That’s it for now.  I’ll be back, I’m sure.  As soon as I hit “publish” I’m sure I’ll think of something else…!

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Well, I’m on-line.  And I’m in Australia.  These two facts, put together, constitute a small miracle.

My Mum, Bunty. Taken just five minutes ago, with my cellphone. I'm sitting on my Mum and Dad's back patio writing this post. It's nearly 30 degrees Celsius (86 Farenheit) and there's a kookaburra chattering in a gum tree behind me.

It has been a helluva week, lemme tell you.  The flight(s) to Australia…don’t get me started.  Whoever invented long haul flights must have been been related to Torquemada.  It took 24 hours to decompress after we arrived.  The first 12 hours you think you’re just fine.  Then the impact catches up with you, slams into you and dumps you on the ground bleeding and gasping for breath.  I wiped out like a beached fish.  I could barely string sentences together. Oh man…!

Once I was coherent again, I innocently tried to find the nearest public WiFi network to check email and see if my kids had burned down our house or remembered to feed the cats yet…

And so began a saga that ended with us shelling out for an expensive stick modem that will give me satellite broadband Internet access anywhere in the state of Western Australia for the entire month — prepaid of course.  It turns out that there are no public networks in the small town where my parents live.  And no (sob!) Starbucks!  There wasn’t any Internet cafes, either.  The nearest Internet cafe was in Perth, the state’s capital city, an hour’s train ride away…

My dad, John.

As we are about to head off in a van that is Australia’s version of a Winnebago, touring the state for 20 days, schlepping back to Perth to check email each day is out of the question.

So, a stick modem and satellite access it is.  Damn, what a pain, huh?  Access wherever I go.  What a bitch.  :)

And here was I thinking I would have been suffering DT’s by the end of the month, using public networks….

Tomorrow we pick up the van, pack it, and Tuesday we head out on the road.  Somewhere in there, I should probably get some writing done.

No related posts.

As you read this, I will be strapped into my seat and white knuckling my way through the first take-off of a marathon 38 hour milk-run series of flights to Perth, Western Australia.  For the first time since I landed in Canada on October 4, 1996, I’m heading back “home” for a visit — although Canada is as much home, if not more so, than Australia now.

In order to get the cheapest tickets possible, Mark and I had to suck in a smidgen over 26 hours of flight time sandwiched with 12 hours of layovers. We’re stopping in Seattle, L.A., Auckland, and Melbourne, before we finally hit Perth.  The L.A. — Auckland leg, thanks to the International Date Line, technically takes two days to complete!

We’ll be in Australia for all of May, and my Internet connection will be sketchy at best.  I’ll be roaming for public networks where I can, and uploading posts and photos of our travels.  We’re going to be travelling all over the south-west of the state and I’ll take lots of photos and write posts in advance.  In the odd times when I get a connection, I’ll post.

See you then.

Tracy

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Passport photos.  Ugh.  Have you ever seen good ones?  Even beautiful people are reduced to ugly on the details page of their passport.  And no, you’re not getting to see mine. <shudder>  I realize why you’re not allowed to smile in them (have you ever smiled at an Immigration Officer?), but for some reason, authorities seem to go out of their way to ensure that people look as unflattering as possible in their passport photos.

And why am I obsessing about passport photos?

Well, I’m starting to think about packing.  It’s the 15th, and on May 2 Mark and I head to Western Australia for the rest of May.  It’ll be my first trip back since I came to Canada in 1996.  It’ll be Mark’s first time in Australia at all.

So I’m looking at my passport photo and wondering…is that what they’re going to see?  And what am I going to see?

I’ve heard of people going back “home” after such a long time, and hating it, because it’s changed so much and people have dared to move on and have very nice lives without them.

I’ve also heard the opposite.  People who have gone home, realized how much they’ve internally pined for what they’ve left behind, and now have a serious dilemma on their hands because they really want to stay, but they have a whole established life in their new country.

Or neither of the above could happen.  I could have a very nice trip, and be glad to step on the plane back home to Canada.

That’s what goes through my mind when I flip open my passport and see that ugly, ugly photo.

I confess, I’m a bit nervous.

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