After a long day of travel, I arrived at our family home on the Island. Here’s what I found:
* Incredible humidity. Everything outside felt wet and mildewy.
* The furniture in the house rearranged because we had had the floors refinished.
* 97 messages on the answering machine, all left sometime over the last 7 months, most from telemarketers.
* Petrol at nearly $5 a gallon and, needless to say, lots of complaining about it.
* An enormous list of to-do’s imminently needing to be done to get the house up and running.
* A screen full of emails to be answered including notification of a new review of “Tangled Roots” to be found here in The Fringe Report.
The reviewer also actually quotes from the book in her article on New York here, which is, to be honest, pretty cool. (Reading the review was scary, though. It’s generally very, very complimentary but with some negativish bits in the middle. But I’m taking the fact that I was able to read it all the way to the end as a sign of creeping mental heath).
On the Island I also found:
*Beautiful flowers everywhere.
* Quiet.
* A world of slow-moving people
(and even slower internet connections).
* People walking barefoot in the middle of the street.
* Sand dunes, fishing trawlers, sailboat riggings clanging in the breeze, those diamond sparkles of sunlight on the water.
*And the statue we bought in Cambodia of King Jayavarman VII still safely guarding our home on the backporch. (This photo here isn’t of our statue although the face is the same.
I took a great photo of it to show you, but although I bluetoothed it to my computer from my phone, it won’t upload onto the blog. The little spinning wheel just goes on forever. Actually, this happens to most of the photos I take on my phone and try to put here. And ideas?).
Clearly, it’s going to take me a while to unwind and get back onto “Island time.” But I’m hopeful.
Hope you’re getting settled now & adjusting to ‘island time’. Your island sounds fantastic. A laid back gettaway! More piccies please, I’d love to see more of it if your camera phone plays nice. Hope the writing flows fast. Kat 🙂
Gosh, your Island sounds wonderful, despite the telemarketers and the petrol prices. I am not going to read any reviews of Tangled Roots til I have read it myself, there’s self-restraint for ya. I hope my copy is on its way.
Enjoy the slowness! And re: pics, try and open the pics in a graphics program (I recommend Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ and save them as JPEG but reduce their size (there is a Resize option) to less than 100kb. They should upload quicker. Hope that helps!
Sounds idyllic – have fun
Once you get everything sorted you will feel right at home (can empathise with the humidity…it’s rainy season here so it kinda feels a bit like breathing soup at the moment).
Like Tania, I’m not reading any reviews (except from bloggers like DJ) till I have read your novel. I was gutted as my friend wasn’t able to bring me a copy – hopefully one is now on it’s way to me cause I can’t wait to read it!!
C x
I’m very envious of your island summer! Hope you have a wonderful time and gradually ease yourself back into the writing…
I am off to the Orkneys next week, though I don’t think people will be walking barefoot down the middle of the street there 🙂 I imagine we’ll all be heavy-booted!