It is time I reminded that exclusive coterie of people who may or may not read my blogs what my primary purpose is in writing said blogs. It is not merely to serve up choice vignettes of people, places, and current issues for their consumption. My rationale is much more mercenary: to encourage them to buy my book, and spread the word about me and my book to others who might be interested in buying it.
With that in mind, I recycle here a brief I first prepared to advertise an ‘author event’ featuring me and my book at the local library in Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia. The event, planned months in advance, was held on 18 May 2019. Yes, for you people who live in Oz, you’ve got it. That was the date of the recent federal election. I did try to contact the prime minister to tell him the date was already taken. He wouldn’t budge.
So, how did the event go? One person turned up.
With apologies to my one loyal follower, I feel the need to spruik to a wider audience. For all you big-city sophisticates in Oz and beyond, here then is the spiel (slightly edited) that went out to residents of the Capricorn Coast in central Queensland, complete with mug-shot of me:
‘Greetings to you sun-drenched folk on the Capricorn Coast. Please let me introduce myself. My name is Terry Deague. I live in Keppel Sands, just down the road so to speak. I have written a book that may interest you.
‘It is called Where Pademelons Play. It is a work of fiction that, given a bit of a conceptual jiggle/juggle, can be persuaded to slot into the ‘magic realism’ genre.
‘I am a retired scientist with a PhD in photonuclear physics, from the University of Melbourne in that great city in the south. In the 1970s, I worked as a ‘boffin’ in the then BHP research labs at Newcastle, a bit further north.
‘In the mid-1970s, I wrote a review paper entitled Global Atmospheric Consequences of the Combustion of Fossil Fuels which (as might be imagined) was ground breaking at the time.
‘On the literary front, I have had a short story published in the Australian literary journal Tabloid Story in the 1970s, and a screenplay funded by Film Victoria in the 1980s but never produced.
‘I returned to imaginative writing some time after semi-retirement to Keppel Sands in 1995. My first novel, which I prefer to call A Presentation, is entitled Where Pademelons Play.
‘Shame on you if you don’t know what a pademelon is!‘