One more month gone, but at last I'm writing again. In January I was in near despair - just couldn't seem to get really involved in the new book, and totally daunted by the difficulty of research into late nineteenth century Germany.

Now, after a month of solid reading and writing, I'm still daunted, but at least finding enough material to, I hope, give some authenticity to what I'm doing. Though, as I commented to someone yesterday, it's such a mix of pleasure and pain. When I'm actually sitting at the keyboard, seeing words emerge and characters develop their own lives and lines of print appear, I have the most satisfying sense of contentment. ie the writing process is great. Next day I read what I have written and despair sets in - what rubbish! what boring tedious trash!  ie  process fine; product miserable. But, because I'm tenacious, I battle on.

I guess what I'm writing is 'faction' - a fictional novel based on a thin thread of family lore  and set in a country and era that I'm trying to make as authentic as possible. I say authentic rather than accurate - two very different things. It's a topic that has occupied my thinking during this last month, as last week I had the pleasure of being the launch person for Maureen Mitson's new book 'Esther's Wars' - and that too I'd class as faction. Set in the 1910 to 1925 era in the SA Riverland and the Adelaide Hills, I found its topicality interesting, and her research into that period of anti-German hostility had been meticulously done. It meshed so well with my personal background and tales by my parents of their experiences during those years in a small Lutheran German enclave in the Albury area, and also with my own extensive post-grad research into the closing of the Lutheran schools in SA during the World War 1 years. I was really impressed by Maureen's knowledge of the time.

So I'm back into writing prose, and feeling oddly deprived at lack of poetry in my life. However, it's pleasing to find that I'll have two poems in the 2016 Friendly Street Anthology when it appears mid-year, and some in the coming Polestar. I could do with some reassurance at this stage, with about 40,000 words of the new novel written, of which a very small percentage satisfies me! Ah, the joys of writing ....

I've never thought of this website as a blog, but more that the News/Events page could act as an occasional check on what is happening in my writing life. So this morning is a long-delayed revisiting of the last months of 2016 but, if I'm being honest, a delaying strategy ... Rather than getting on with the new novel, which is not going well, I'll turn my attention to something - anything! - that will put off the moment of return to 1860s Germany. Which is where I ought to be, and should be feeling more like an inhabitant than the interloper role I seem to be finding myself in. The reason is lack of resources - it is indeed hard to find material in English that will take me into the world of small peasants in Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this is slowing me down badly.

So, let's return to 2016 instead. The eighth book, Of llamas and piranhas, my collected 'daily poems' from South America, is still on the publishing schedule of Ginninderra Press, but it will be April at the earliest before we see it in print, with its black and white photographs accompanying the poems. Meanwhile, I have one custom-made copy in full cover, courtesy of David Harris and the Photobook Company, and it's a joy to hold, and behold. It's had a wonderful reception from those who have looked through it, which is very reassuring.

Apart from that, the usual crop of acceptances and rejections - pretty well balanced actually, and I've had the pleasure of a number of poems in various small journals and anthologies. It's always a special delight to have a poem published in the Canberra Times, and November saw my poem, 'Magnolia', featured there. New writing has been mainly verse. The long trip to Canberra, then to Brisbane, for a series of family Christmases, inspired  some poems whose origins were the countryside that we passed, and particularly our rain forest stay in Lamington National Park. A beautiful place, and rich in bird life. But I'd have to admit that the last few months have been focused more on living than on writing, and particularly family life, as we travelled from place to place to celebrate Christmas with various offspring.

But now it's time to return to work, and Book 9 is calling ....

Last day in September, and theoretically we're well and truly into Spring. So where's the sunshine? Instead we've had the worst week of massive typhoon-like storms, lightning strikes, flooded rivers and torrential downpours, with so much damage done that it makes a mockery of Spring as a season and adds further warning about a future with global warming.

So once again I'm cowering over a radiator, and it's a chance to update this infrequent 'latest news' page. So what is the news? Best bit, perhaps, that Ginninderra Press have accepted my South American poems for publication either end of this year or early 2017 - and with black and white photographs to match the poems. Our own domestic production one-off book has colour photos, thanks to David's production skills and Photobook Club, but that would make a publisher version prohibitively expensive. I'm just happy that there will be graphics with the text. Their request, for 'a more enticing title', led  me to some hard thinking, and we're all happy with the final result - the book will be called Of llamas and piranhas - and I've written a name poem to go with that title. Watch this space for when it will become available ...

Other good news has included some successes with poems; some published in The Mozzie and in Tamba, also in the Ginninderra Press publication of social justice poems that marked their twenty year celebrations, First Refuge. I was really happy to be included in this, and also to be short-listed for both the Polestar Writers' Journal competitions, poetry and prose, though I wasn't to win either.

However, a very pleasing email to tell me that mine had been the winning entry in a West Australian photography association's contest for this year, where twenty winning photographs were offered to writers throughout Australia to try their hands at a poem or prose piece to match each photo. It's the sort of writing I really enjoy, and I've now learned that the term for this is ekphrasis - writing that grows out of and responds to a graphic artist's visual creation.  My poem, Ambiguous White, will be published next month together with a reproduction of the painting that inspired it, in what promises to be a super-spendid luxury limited edition book, In my View. Unfortunately I can't get to Perth for the book launch, but WA friends will attend for me and pick up my copy.

And outside it's still raining - I keep coming back to that very famous line by a very famous writer: "And the rain, it raineth every day."   Too true.