Writing Again. Mostly.

It took awhile, but I'm finally writing again. Sort of.

You see, in the nine years since I started this blog (Nine?! Seriously?!) I've had a pretty consistent method: I'd get up early and write for a couple hours before my day starts.

Then I had Charlotte.

Turns out, she also likes to get up at 6am, and her agenda has nothing to do with Daddy sitting in front of a keyboard staring off into space. That was one problem. The other is that I wasn't able to sleep more than two or three hours at a time, usually about five hours a night. Rough, but it needed doing.

I coped. My business ran off my phone whenever Baby wasn't looking, and seriously unhealthy amounts of Red Bull let me concentrate well enough to do my paying job. And more often than I should probably admit, I fell asleep at the wheel coming home from work.

Point is, no way I could concentrate enough to write. Hell, I used to fall asleep in the middle of conversations!

Then, the last couple of months, a miracle:

Little Miss started sleeping through the night. I started getting as many as five, six whole hours in a row, and my imagination started to work again.

Writing was a bit harder. It was still early for a laptop-- all I had to do was open the lid and it was palm-mashing the keyboard and other explorations-- but I was able to use pen and notebook. Sure, there were breaks here and there for a certain young lady to take over the pen and fill a few pages, or draw all over her (and her Dad's) arms and legs while saying, "Tattoo."

But I gotta tell ya, those are breaks I don't mind a bit. :)

I'll continue this again soon. Right now, a Certain Somebody wants to show me something called a 'Finger Family'...

Man Plans, God Laughs

So, back last July? I had a plan, a pretty good one I thought: Move back to the US for 3-5 years, buy a house, build some equity, come on back to New Zealand finally able to afford a house here.

Pretty good? Heck, that plan was great!

So naturally, the gods began to titter...

Fifteen years or so worth of clients got mad at me for leaving them. Most understood my reasons for going, but none of them were any too happy about it. My friends felt the same way.

One close friend even offered to use his equity to finance my mortgage.

This... complicated things. Suddenly, a home in New Zealand was a possibility. Now, my decision had pros and cons: I had to weigh the cost of moving overseas against the increased income. The opportunity to start a new tattoo shop against the loss of hundreds of loyal fans. The house I would afford in NZ against the house I'd afford in the US.

This wasn't going to be easy at all.

Until I told Hazel.

She pretty much jumped up and down and tore up all her packing lists and did a merry dance around the room. I may not be a weatherman, but I do know which way the wind blows.

I wasn't moving.

Now, you all know I have a certain commando sensibility: Adapt. Overcome. Nothing can stop me, only make me shift gears or change tactics.

So I shifted gears. I changed tactics. By the time my daughter had gone from crawling to standing, I had opened a brand new tattoo shop in a great new location, and my buddy and I started scouting houses in my potential price range.

At least, until his partner got pregnant. Now, him making that offer in the first place was HUGE. And while he hasn't said anything about taking it back, he hasn't said much about it all. This whole odyssey for me started with that thought of what I'm going to leave my child, so I totally understand. Support him, even.

But it does mean that I've had to change up again.

I have moments where I think, oh we should be closing on our house in the US right now, my new studio would be building clients, and it would be summer soon. I squelch those thoughts as quick as I can. After all, what's that Yiddish proverb? If my grandmother had testicles she'd be my grandfather? I could just as easily be in the US right now with a homesick Hazel, a studio tied up in red tape, and a child covered in mosquito bites.

And the added horror of a possible President Trump.

Oh hell no.

Charlie has gone from standing and walking to stomping all over the house and climbing on everything. We've gone from the big, expensive place that was all we could find three years ago to a smaller and less expensive house that feels more like a home. Still renting, but there you are. I'm whipping my new studio into shape, running it in a much more professional way.

And I may have my eye on one or two new opportunities. Nothing I'm ready to talk about yet-- I'm not quite ready to hear more heavenly tittering....

Hard Call

A few years ago, on a visit back to New Orleans, I had a truly fantastic dinner with CS Harris, CharlesGramlich and Sphinx Ink. (And Candy's husband Steve, but he doesn't have a blog to link to) That night, Candy said something deeply alarming...

I knew she'd lived in Australia. I didn't know she'd been there for over fifteen years, or that she'd been heartbroken to return to the US.

I remember feeling a chill. I'd only lived in New Zealand twelve or thirteen years at that point. Suddenly, those years didn't seem long enough.

Why, I asked, would she ever leave a place she loved? Her answer:

Family.

What a relief. I was about as alone, and as lonely as a body could get. My parents were used to having me on the other side of the world. Family, that single, treacherous, weighted word, had no hold on me.

I was safe.

But things change. Things always change.

Now I have a daughter. And lost a father. Either would be a pretty major event, and I got both less than six months apart. No surprise that my perspective has shifted. My world is different now, and every time my girls smile at me, I'm reminded that my decisions don't just affect me anymore.

We're leaving New Zealand.

It's been a hard decision, but in the end it comes down to carrots and sticks.

On the one hand, we could raise our daughter here. I make a decent living, enough to support us all. But the cost of living is high-- high enough that we get by, and not much else. Since the earthquake destroyed our housing stock, rents have gone insane. Our house is warm and dry, and over $2000 a month. The average price to buy-- the average, now-- is $485,000, and banks don't want to talk to you without a 20% deposit. For me, like a lot of people here, home ownership is out of the question.

And I want a house. It never bothered me before-- most artist are so far below the poverty line that just paying the bills is a triumph-- but now that's just not enough. I want equity. Permanence. Something to pass on to Charlotte when I go. In the US, the average house is $136,000, and there are a lot more options for finance. Like, a lot. As dreams go, that one's in easy reach.

And then there's family. My wee girl already lost one grandparent. I want her to see as much as possible of the ones she has left. Moving, I can put her family in England and her family in Atlanta within a few hours of her. And afford to make those trips too.

I'm going to miss Christchurch. I really am.

But this city is broken. The city I loved, with its relaxed and easygoing people, its heritage buildings and Edwardian feel, its art galleries and opera house and vibrant public life, that city is gone. It died one afternoon in 2011. The place we live now is road cones and single lane traffic, the country's largest consumers of alcohol and antidepressants, fields of rubble and clattering jackhammers. Government types in ill-fitting suits are using my city as a testing ground for conservative social engineering. No matter how badly an idea has been repudiated in the past, they're determined to try it again.

The social engineering aside, our Mayor and City Council swear that all the other inconveniences are temporary. Just stick with us, they say, and this place will be even better than it was before!

In twenty or thirty years.

I love this place. These people. I'll never be able to fully leave-- especially because my daughter is a triple-citizen, and I want her to be a part of her New Zealand heritage. So I'll come back. To visit.

Meantime, I've got a life to build.  

Voice

(What follows is the text of the eulogy I wrote for my father's funeral...)

When I think of my father, I think of his voice.

Trained by the Church in a day when priests had to reach the back pews without microphones, my father's voice was a wonderful instrument. Deep and rolling, the pure low rumble of it calmed my childhood fears. Allowed to boom, his voice could rattle the windows. A sudden sneeze in a department store when we were kids was so loud a salesgirl was startled into noodle-limbed terror.

His voice was lively, agile. Tales told around the dinner table had the whole family laughing until our sides ached and tears streamed from our eyes. Stories of his childhood and family, of life in the priesthood, of his coworkers at the bank... In his hands, every voice acted out, his timing so perfect, all of these everyday stories became so funny we forgot to breathe.

His voice, for me, will always be the voice of the Bible. Every year, in the weeks leading up to Christmas and Easter, there would be after-dinner readings of scripture. Those readings, and the discussions that followed, were a door into the world of his faith.

Dad saw churches-- whatever the denomination-- as human institutions, mortal and flawed. But God's love was constant and absolute, bigger than man's frailty. For him, faith wasn't something you do for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning in a special building. It was the bedrock his life was built on. His love for his wife, his children, his grandchildren. All were different expressions of his relationship with a kind and loving God.

His love of God was his life. He and Mom met when he was still a priest. Their mutual faith brought them together. It united them in forty-eight years of marriage.

Once, when Tania and I were little, he woke to the sound of someone breaking into the house. I can't imagine how he felt. No baseball bat in the closet, no gun in a drawer. That wasn't my father. Instead, with two sleeping children and an intruder forcing his way into our home, my father walked naked out into the lounge to talk to him.

That voice worked its magic. By the time the cops arrived-- hours later-- Dad and the burglar had shared a pot of coffee and some serious conversation. He sent the police away and took the burglar to rehab.

That was faith-- his faith-- in action.

It was how he lived every day. Secure in God's love, and living the message of compassion and Christian charity.

As we grew, his children made choices he didn't always approve of. Choices he sometimes didn't understand. But he had faith in us, faith that the paths we walked were part of God's love.

Looking back, despite all the twists in the road, he may well have been right. :)

Over time, my father's voice softened. Chelsea and Kristen, Cameron and Brennan and Brandon, may have missed out on the lively entertainer and firebrand preacher. But they had the joy of growing up with a wonderful and soft-spoken grandfather. His church eventually forgave him for falling in love, agreeing that a family was in fact God's plan for him and welcoming him back with open arms. My father was happy. Truly happy. His voice grew more gentle now, often little more than a low murmur.

As the years wore on, his voice became a whisper. The last time I saw him, he spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him at all.

On May 18, at 12.24am, that voice fell silent.

I miss him. We all do. It's hard to think that we've had our last good talk, whether about serious matters like books we enjoy, or something silly like politics. It's hard to think that his voice is gone.

Except, it's not. I still hear him. We all do, everyone here today, can hear him right now. Whenever I face a choice-- between selfishness and love, between fear and doing the right thing-- it's his voice, his faith that guide me. And when I hear myself laugh with my daughter, it's his voice I hear.

So, this happened....

Her name is Charlotte Grace, and we call her Charlie. She was pretty much the coolest birthday present I could have imagined.

I was going to write something witty and clever, but it's been two month now. I've had to accept that witty and clever just aren't much on offer.... Maybe once she sleeps through the night. Maybe a few weeks after she leaves for college.

Work on the new book is going slower than I might like, but it's going. I carry pen and notebook everywhere, jot a few words as and how I can. Several times so far, I've fallen asleep in mid-sugar. I mean, sentence. I've fallen asleep mid-sentence. 

Can't wait to re-read the first draft on THIS one :)

Live, and FREE!

The new book, PRODIGAL, is finally out, and for the next few days, it's absolutely FREE!

Download your copy here :)

Wrong Dinosaur

Seriously-- a year?!?!?! A whole f**king YEAR since my last post?!?!?!?!

That's just taking the piss, that is.

Oh, and what a year it's been. Lot of personal stuff I won't go into here (odd of me, I know-- but I did have that year, remember...), but mostly it's been the year of the Book That Damn Near Broke Me.

Seriously, I think I came closer to quitting than ever before. Days would pass, sometimes as much as a week, where I would dutifully sit in front of my screen and stare. Just... stare.

Y'see, I had this bright idea: I was going to polish up all those rough drafts I've got sitting around and trot them out the door. I put in the months of writing them, it'd be nice if folks got to read them, right?

Wrong.

I picked out a tidy little thriller. Young woman comes home after a long absence, trouble ensues. Pretty straight ahead.

If I'd just hit the spellcheck and sent it on its way, life would have been different. But noooooo... I was missing stuff. All this great potential between her and the Sheriff, and her and the local crime boss, and I skated right past it. I skated past a lot of things.

I told myself, "I'll just flesh it out some."

Yeah, right.

Maybe 2000 words of that original draft survived. Once I started going deeper into my heroine's family, her history, and the way those bonds pull at us, my old plot didn't work. My ending didn't work. My beginning changed.

I had to rethink my dinosaur.



When I was a kid, T Rex stood upright. My wee plastic dinosaurs had him standing straight up, just like the skeletons in the museums. (Old picture of one up top) Oh, and he lumbered too. I remember that. Turns out, we all had it wrong. T Rex was a low--crouching, fast-moving nightmare.

Hopefully the new book will be too.

PRODIGAL will be available before Christmas. I hope. :)