Meet My New Book.
It’s been ages since my last update – and now its time for me to sit and work out just exactly what I’ve been doing that’s taken a whole month to do…I think it must have been fun because the time simply flew by. One of the nice things along the way was an invitation by my local library to become a living book. I wasn’t sure what a living book had to do other than walk around out the front of the library doors dressed as a book with a sign on me saying ‘come in’…I wasn’t too sure that this was a look that I wanted to encourage. But no, my good friend Jo assured me that it is not about standing outside in a sandwich board…its all about being inside and being ‘borrowed’ by people who would like to ask me questions about my life and what it’s like to be an author. So I said yes, and on November 6th in Murwillumbah Library I will be available to borrow. Perhaps someone might like to borrow me and take me out to dinner in a posh restaurant…nah! its strictly library and book talk.
The big news is how popular my new book is proving to be. Its called ‘My Silent World’ and its about facing new challenges. It’s a particularly unusual challenge this time as it involves a young girl who is having a cochlea implant inserted in her ear which will allow her to hear. Imagine how that would be! My first husband, Peter, was partially deaf and had to have hearing aids to allow him to hear more clearly – and, as it turned out, to hear many things that he’d not heard for a very long time. His first experience with his new hearing aid was to walk around our house looking very, very worried. He was becoming quite alarmed as he could hear something that he assumed would explode as it was becoming louder and louder. Finally he traced it to the electic jug which was working up to a boil…so you can maybe begin to imagine your world filled with sounds that you hadn’t heard before. Perhaps there might be so many that you’d prefer your perfectly silent world. I thought very long and hard about writing this book – eventhough it has only so few words and one of the things that prompted me to go ahead was a conversation that I read about between a very famous doctor called Oliver Sachs and a friend who was blind. When Oliver asked his friend if he wouldn’t prefer to have sight if it could be given to him, his friend asked Oliver – right back again – how he might like to suddenly have x-ray vision. Everything that he knew would be changed; simple things like unlocking the front door would suddenly become a new experience because the keys would have to be located in an x-ray puzzle of many objects all of them visible at once, and then the key hole in the door found from all the other information that would be x-rayed straight out to you. Sometimes I think about a perfect world and how easy it is to forget that everybody’s world is perfect to them in its own way.
On the 28th October I’m off to Cootamundra to visit EA Southee Public School and Cootamundra High School – I’m really looking forward to it in a big way – I haven’t been to good old Cootamundra for years and I can’t wait to see what its like. I’m keen to work with the students there – I think I might tell them about the Adventures of a Late Night Swearer and Pyro Watson and The Hidden Treasure and all the other stuff to do with being an author (and a bit about the new dog, Bonsai the Brave who is the Leader of The Pack – its a bit sad the Pack is only two very old Maltese – I’m sure he’d like some younger, feistier members of his gang).
A quick end note on Bonsai The Brave – he has had a new kitten to play with for the last few weeks. Sadly its not mine and had to go home to its mother in Armidale so Bonsai is punishing me by chewing up my shoes, my flowers, the toilet roll (which I found floating in the pool like a sad soggy lily blossom) and then just sitting and frowning in my general direction while I work at my new story (which is about Oliver Briskett and the Ghost’s Story). I think he still loves me deep down though – he’s first on the bed at night!
So, take care and have fun – if you can do both at the same time. If you can’t…oops, don’t know the answer to that one.
Love Nette xxx