Up until October 2023, I had written and published two novels, and written about one-third of my next novel. Then Janet, my partner of more than 33 years’ duration, died unexpectedly and accidentally. This event threw me into a state of not inconsiderable confusion, and brought on a protracted period of grief for me,
As a consequence, I decided to put aside for a time the partially completed novel I’d been working on, and instead attend to something quite different. Entitled Love, Death, the Cosmos, and the Kitchen Sink, it would be an anthology of the best and/or the most relevant posts/blogs I had written since January 2019. The design that will form the basis of its cover when published, a design attributable to local artist Edwina Mullany, is shown here.
I am in effect re-inventing myself at least for the time being. Or perhaps I should say that necessity has pushed me to the point where there is no other option for me except re-invention. Below, I reproduce my first draft of the Forward to this proposed anthology, which might serve to explain more fully this necessity. You are also invited, of course, to read the anthology itself when it comes out.
Forward
You may regard this compilation as my take on Love, Death, the Cosmos, and the Kitchen Sink (promised in its eponymous title), as I perceived such matters from 2019 to 2024, and duly rendered as blogs on my webpage (https://terrydeague.com). So, in toto, these blogs are a form of personal diary covering this period of my life, a diary of my musings, my misgivings, and sometimes of my most defining experiences. It is a diary that has always been open to the world at large, and I like to think read by quite a few of its inhabitants.
I confess that, for the purposes of this compilation, I have treated my blogs as if they were first drafts, and have taken the liberty of making what I consider to be significant improvements to them before anthologizing them. Will you forgive me on this score? Please indulge my fetish and let me aspire to perfection if I so choose. I promise I’ll not pursue perfection to the extent it becomes the enemy of the good.
My scientific background, evident in both my qualifications and my experience, necessarily informs what I write. How could it be otherwise? One might generally suppose my major scientific accomplishment to be my Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Melbourne but, on the grounds of the breadth of knowledge I have acquired in the field of physics (and I fancy in many other fields besides), I have taken yet another liberty: that of commenting with impunity on matters outside of my specialty. Do I seem arrogant? Am I up myself? I’d maintain that all of us who have lived in this world for a time, and have been halfway curious about the way it works, are entitled to be both specialists and generalists.
The accidental death, in October 2023, of my beloved partner, Janet Ward, of more than thirty three years standing, had the effect of rendering me pretty well incapable of any sensible action, an effect I insist was wholly proportionate to the incomprehensible loss I was now destined to endure. I was well into my third novel up to this point but, subsequent to my tragic bereavement, found I lacked the power of intense application necessary to continue with a project of such moment. Janet, my anchor while I wrote, was no longer available to me for this (or indeed for any) purpose. To my chagrin, accompanied by blackest disappointment, I found that nor was I available to her for any purpose.
I’m confident the power to write novels will return to me in time but, in the interim, I’m embarking on what I assume to be this less demanding venture, one which I hope shall be no less engaging to readers, and which could have the added advantage of being cathartic for me.
The least I can do is dedicate my efforts in this regard to the memory of Janet. I duly do so.