Following my partner’s tragic death about a year ago, I decided I was too fragile to commit to the intensity required to complete my third novel, so instead I decided to compile an anthology of blogs I had published on my webpage immediately before, during, and immediately after the COVID years. The anthology is completed, and will soon be in print. The picture above will be the front cover, and tells you the title.
I anticipate the anthology will be available to you before Christmas.
Being non-fiction, this latest of my literary ventures represents a move away from my preferred genre, i.e. fiction in the form of the novel. In the future, I plan to revert to form. In fact, I have already had a second look at my planned third novel. This third novel is where I shall go next.
Each blog in Love, Death, the Cosmos, and the Kitchen Sink has a photograph, usually in colour, attached. Some of these photos are mine and some are from stock. So, I’ve had to go with colour printing instead of my usual black and white. This makes the printing more expensive, which will be reflected in the price to consumer.
But the production values in my anthology will be excellent, as they have been in the two novels – Where Pademelons Play and The Spaceman – I have published so far. Why shouldn’t the overall physical appearance of something as precious as a book be as good as it can be?
To give you an overview, I reproduce here the blurb that will appear on the back cover of the book. I have written this blurb in first person. I felt this was appropriate given the very personal nature of the blogs I have anthologized.
‘Over the years I, scientist turned writer of fiction, have taken to writing blogs, describing my musings, memories, and misgivings. I now publish a selection of these blogs covering the years just prior to the Covid pandemic, the Covid years themselves, and the years we have presumed and hoped are post-Covid.
There are eighty-one blogs so there’s something here for everyone. There’s the burning of rainforests not to mention the rest of the country. There’s the epic – and perhaps eternal – struggle between education and ignorance. There’s the spectacle of my life-partner Janet in poses both humorous and sublime.
And here you’ll also find the first woman in Australia to die of AIDS, the art of the dedicated conspiracy theorist, the wonderland of the cosmos, the denial of anthropogenic climate change which science tells us is essentially undeniable, the passage of Vladimir Putin and I – in our respective journeys – right by each other like ships in the night, the magic of Japanese food dance and art, the beauty of birds, the road trips forced upon us by the Covid years, the spectre of Artificial Intelligence with its inherent – and potentially dire – problems, and my love of the small coastal village in Queensland where I live. And on it goes.
My pretence of distant and disinterested observer in all of this was rudely interrupted when my partner Janet died accidentally and suddenly. Then I found myself blogging in the depths of despair about my reaction to the most traumatic event a person will experience in their lifetime outside of a war zone.
Terry Deague‘