A couple of weeks ago, I asked the Conflux programmers if we could do a little something to celebrate Jan Howard Finder, aka the Wimbat, who unfortunately died a few weeks ago. Yesterday I received an email letting me know it was being worked into the program for 4.00 pm on the Friday, which was kind of them, and asking me for a blurb they could put into the program book.

Here's what I wrote:

Jan Howard Finder, aka the Wombat, was a US fan who loved Australia. He worked tirelessly to help save the rare northern hairy-nosed wombat, and arranged Tolkien conventions(he was working on one when he died). When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he bought a bright red Corvette and went travelling in it. A few weeks ago, we got the sad news of his passing, from his friend Lin Daniel, who's organising Wombatcon in his honour. If you knew him, please drop in and chat about him, share funny memories, and photos, if you have any, or read from his favourite stories,eg The Hobbit, Phryne Fisher books.

Think of this as a personal invite to any of my friends who will be at Conflux and if there are any friends who knew him, but won't be there, and would like to send a message to be read out, or a photo to share, that would be great! Email me at sbursztynski@gmail.com.

I've had a lot of fun and games learning to get my stuff into ebook. Really, I started the experiment so I could ebook my students' work. That has had its own problems, including all the restrictions placed on their iPad usage, such as not being able to email me their work, and then I found they had only been given the Kindle app,which means only Mobi or PDF(which opens okay on Kindle, but without a cover, so not as attractive for kids who want to feel published). They can't use iBooks because their access to the App Store has been blocked, since kids will be kids and download games. I can understand that, but it makes things difficult for me.

Anyway, I have downloaded the Creative Bookbuilder app, which I'm still learning to use, and still can't figure out how to replace "Chapter One" with the story's title. But while doing all this for my students, I thought I might as well make use of the app to put together some previously-published stories of mine, in hopes people will go out and buy my books and the publications in which the stories appeared, such as Light Touch Paper Stand Clear, which is on this year's Ditmars for Best Collection - deservedly so! - along with one of the stories from it - not mine, alas, but good news all the same. And Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, which has gone to 57 issues and is the only Australian spec fic magazine to be still available in print form. And Mythic Resonance, which should also, IMO, have been up there on the Ditmars list. That one is nearly sold out in print form and Specusphere is closing, alas, but you can still get MR in ebook form.


Anyway, here's a link to the page on my web site where you can download an ePub version of some of my ASIM stories and my 2012 stories which are eligible for this year's Chronos Awards:

http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/my-asim-stories-back-up.html

If you need PDF, contact me -alas, CBB doesn't do Mobi, but it does do PDF which you can open on Kindle if you like. And, to be blunt, I'd very much like to see at least one of my stories on the Chronos Awards short list, if you're in Australia and can nominate(you have till Easter Monday). Anyone can nominate, you only have to be a member to vote. And if you're not in Australia, you can still download, read and hopefully enjoy. These ebooks are free! I've had two requests for PDFs so far, both outside Australia!

First posted on The Great Raven blog

In previous posts I waxed lyrical about the possibilities of creating ebooks with my class. I came back to work with some great ideas. Kids love the idea of seeing their names on or in a book as much as the rest of us. It's certainly something that never palls for me. And, all going well, perhaps the kids could do their own ebooks.

But when I came back and checked out the kids' school iPads I found that so much was blocked on the school system that my ideas fizzled out. They have Pages and Keynote on their little computers, but can't email their work to their teachers. They're supposed to have access to the App Store, but most can't download from it. And some don't have it on their iPads anyway.I am told that they should be able to do it - the IT teacher was on leave the first four weeks of school and needs to get up to date before he can help there. So they can't even download iBooks(the school gave them the Kindle app) although some can - one girl with her own Apple ID downloaded iBooks and is now happily discovering Beatrix Potter and other classics on Gutenberg. Others find the Apple ID is the school's - they can't log in. Talk about messy! Thank goodness for kidblog.org, which enabled me to set up a class blog from which I hopefully can copy and paste posts into my Blogger class blog and from there to - thank heaven! - Ebook Glue!

But last night I looked for web sites which offered free ebook making. I found one that seemed similar to Ebook Glue and tested it out, only to find that you had to pay $5 for your crude ebook!

Then I found another one which looked promising: in return for putting up with a few ads, you get free access to ebook creation. It was designed for class use. If it worked, my students, especially those with learning issues, could make their own ebooks. I tested it out. But I don't think it was designed for iPads. I couldn't turn the book's pages. It doesn't download, it's only for online reading. And they can't even share their online ebooks because you have to have access to email or social networks - all blocked!

Back to Ebook Glue, but no ebooks made by the students. Sigh!

Here's a request from Simon Petrie, the author of flight 404/The Hunt For Red Leicester. Come on, guys, they took away our nine planet solar system without even asking how we all felt about it, so at least we can have a vote on names for some of Pluto's moons. The web site is run by SETI. I'll let Simon tell you about it himself:


"I have a slightly unusual request ...

Please help me name Pluto's fourth moon. I'd like it to be called 'Erebus'. It's important that 'Erebus' is the name chosen for it, so as not to spoil a story I had published last year.

They're also looking for a name for the fifth moon. I don't care what that gets called, it can be called any old thing for all I care, I didn't write about it. But I'd like fourth moon to wind up with the name Erebus, if it's at all possible. The dignity of my first pro sale depends on it.

For those who want the long story ...

In June 2011 a team at the SETI institute, led by Mark Showalter, discovered Pluto's fourth moon (and, a year or so later, its fifth moon). The two objects are still waiting for names. In September 2011 I found out about a competition to write a story using a scientific discovery made within the last 12 months, and I chose Pluto's fourth moon as the kernel around which to wrap my entry. I needed an underworld-themed name for Moon 4, and 'Erebus' struck me as a likely contender. ('Cerberus' is another likely choice, but there's already an asteroid of that name.) Three days before I finished the story, the contest folded ... so I decided to try out the story elsewhere. The thing you need to realise here is that astronomical objects are normally named fairly promptly, within just a few months of discovery, so I figured any place that took the story would not get around to publishing it before the moon's real name had been finalised. I was wrong. Redstone SF, the second or third place I sent the story, took it, and it appeared in their August 2012 issue, just before they went into hiatus. The name had still not been finalised by the astronomical community, so my original placeholder/best guess of 'Erebus' stayed in the story.

Now Mark Showalter, the leader of the team that discovered the fourth and fifth moons, is holding an Internet competition to see what the most popular names are, from a list of about a dozen underworld-themed names, and 'Erebus' is one of those names ... you can vote between now and Monday Feb 25th, once per day if you feel like it, to make your voice heard. The url is: http://www.plutorocks.com/. If you choose to vote for 'Erebus' and for one other name on the list, you'd make a struggling SF writer very happy.

(Oh, and if you're willing / able to signal-boost this entirely self-serving request, I'd be eternally grateful.)

Cheers, Simon"

I love Project Gutenberg! There are so many classics, so much useful stuff. I already have some Andrew Lang fairy tales(so far just the Blue Fairy Book), but on the Sur La Lune Fairytales site I found Joseph Jacobs, who collected English, Celtic and other folk tales in the nineteenth century and while you could read them on the web site, complete with notes, I opted to get at least one of the books on Gutenberg. I started with the English Fairy Tales book. Even the introduction is charming. He argues that while there aren't too many fairies in them, you aren't going to get children asking their nurse or grandmother for "another folk-tale/ nursery tale."

I have browsed through some of them, as well as the Celtic ones, which I've just looked at on Sur La Lune and found versions of Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, the Pied Piper, Cinderella, The Juniper Tree and Clever Else. I keep thinking,"hang on, I've read this somewhere!" And of course, I have. There are a lot of stories that just keep turning up over and over, in countries unconnected with each other. I have found a Native American version of Cinderella, among others, the one where the sisters only pretend to see the gorgeous spirit warrior and she is chosen because she can. I've read that one before, but found it again on the Sur La Lune site - a fabulous web site for anyone researching folk tales for writing.

There are evil stepmothers everywhere and heroes and heroines who break their promises to supernatural beings and live happily ever after. Serve them right for trusting humans!

It's all handy for the writing. There are some good stories to be played with out there!

I'm trying not to think too much about the year to come. The timetable at this stage is scary, with most of my class time with my new home room lumped together on Fridays plus a literacy period, so I won't be in the library much on Fridays. And they have removed a period of Pathways to make room for more maths so I not only have to work out how to get the fundraising unit done in half the time, but I'm "underalloted" so will get pulled out of the library for covering other people's classes more often than I like.

So, no, I'm thinking holidays. Yesterday was the first day of 2013. I washed the floors, cleaned the bathroom and wrote a few hundred words of my novel. Hopefully I will write some more today.

And while I was doing my house cleaning, I had some dough rising. My poor oven has been out of action for quite a while, so today or tomorrow I will be calling a plumber to see if I can get it fixed finally. But meanwhile I've discovered pan-fried bread - flat bread rather like naan, which takes about fifteen minutes to make, counting the time you spend mixing. I got it from the Internet, on Taste.com.au

And yesterday I made use of the Greek cookbook my library tech, Lucy, gave me before the holidays, to make pita bread. It uses yeast. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but most of the pitot rose high enough to be rolls - flattish hamburger bun type rolls. And guess what? Delicious! :-) So maybe if I can work out why it happened I will do it on purpose next time. I had one this morning with a delicious soft cheese left over from my Yuletide picnic. Yum! I have no idea how it would toast, but hopefully I will have finished all my pita breads before they get stale.

Just a short post. Today it has been three years since we said goodbye to my wonderful father. And he was wonderful. I did a eulogy at the funeral and afterwards, someone who had come with her husband approached me to say she wished she had known him.

Dad was my one-man fan club. He promoted my books everywhere. He argued with bookshop owners who hadn't put my books in the window, and made his friends buy them, even if their grandchildren were about a year old. "So? Are they going to go off?" he argued, adding that with all the research I had done, they wouldn't get that much information in a set of encyclopaedias.

Even when he was dying, he made friends of all the nurses, some of whom grieved for him, even though it was their job to work with the dying, what they saw all the time. He lent a copy of my nephew's band's CD to a doctor, bragging about his gifted family.

I wish he had been around to see my first novel published.

And Dad loved the Internet. He was a true silver surfer. If he had still been with us, I would have bought him an iPad, because he would have adored that. He used to get out of bed early each morning to read the newspapers on line - with an iPad, he could have taken his computer back to bed to read the papers.

I just have to glance across the room to see the floor to ceiling book case he built for me in his last few months.

After breakfast, before I start to do my housework, I will light a memorial candle for him. It's a Christmas gift from a workmate, actually, of all things, scented with peppermint. She tells me it's pure wax, no artificial stuff in it. I will remember how he used to suck peppermint to hide the smell of cigarettes, when he was supposed to be giving up smoking (he did, eventually, and harassed my sister to get her to give up).

Just a little memory shared with you.

Today I went for my first viewing of The Hobbit part 1. I met my nephew Max, my work friend Jasna and her son Kris. Kris was the only one of us who hadn't read any Tolkien, but he enjoyed it. Jasna and I intend to see it in Gold Class as soon as we can.

I can only say,"Wow!" Yes, it had lots of extra stuff, but the extras mostly showed us what had only been mentioned in the novel and in a film, show is usually better than tell. You got to see the Dwarves fleeing from their home - and I would SWEAR there were some recognisable women among them!

There was also the scene which explains how Thorin Oakenshield got that cognomen. Some very good battles in this movie, I thought. Thranduil made a brief appearance, looking like something out of an Arthur Rackham art work, riding a deer. 

Azog the Goblin/Orc was still alive and acting as a villain chasing the Dwarves. It kind of works, because there are orcs after them anyway, after the scenes in Goblin Town, so why not keep it consistent? 

The scenery was glorious, there was a new gorgeous Howard Shore score, which worked in the leitmotifs from LOTR and it was generally a pleasure to return to Middle Earth. There were some nicely cheeky bits in the Rivendell scene. Probably Tolkien wouldn't have cared for them, but I couldn't help giggling at the dinner scene where the Dwarves have to eat salad("Do they have chips?" one asks plaintively) while a female elf plays the flute( they later chop up some furniture for a fire and try to roast lettuce!). 

This is not a review, just me sharing, so I'll leave it there, but go and see it if you haven't. It's a delight.

I  have just enjoyed a lovely brekkie of toast with homemade jam(not mine, I can't do jam, but my library technician gives me jam and marmalade made from fruit on her own trees), leaf tea and fresh fruit, courtesy of my sister, who went shopping yesterday at the market. Cherries, apricots and peaches - yum!

Now to head off to town, where I will be giving a box of liqueur chocolates to my favourite bookseller and his wife and may find myself buying something - aargh! I just can't resist! Then I'll see if the Vic market is open and buy some more fresh fruit and perhaps cheese. Some rolls for tomorrow's beach picnic, though I may have some pan bread, which I have learned to make.

Next Target to see if I can get a bedside lamp, as mine has inconveniently died on me, leaving it difficult to read in bed without having the light on, unless I use my torch(imagine reading by torchlight in your own home instead of defying parental curfew!)

And then see what I have forgotten. I have a number of friends who don't do email and really must keep my promise to write letters. One last gift to post overseas - okay, it's going to be late, but it was that way last year and this time I have something delightful for her. She won't mind.

I've put up my new World In Your Kitchen calendar in the kitchen, looking forward to cooking the vegetarian recipes in it. My library tech, Lucy, as well as jam and kourabiedes, gave me a sweets calendar, which has recipes for such goodies as coconut ice and lemon drops - can't wait! And a Greek cook book with fascinating background information.

Not my holy day, but no reason not to enjoy - after all, my friends take trouble to wish me well on my holy days. Why, as a friend once asked me, waste a perfectly good holiday just because it isn't yours? 

Happy festive season, everyone!