#confest

*and late March… It feels like it’s been a while since I last posted here. I’ve been very busy with various things, unfortunately not many of them were writing related. The end of March was an excellent time for me, with two big book signing/sales events: Clunes Booktown and Australian Romance Readers Association ‘A Romantic Rendez-vous‘. Clunes Booktown was a two day event were a huge number…

Mementos I brought home with me:

a cool stick I found on the ground that appears to have been home to many insect eggs (and i'm not the most sensitive to these things but this stick doesn't set off trypophobia for me. I think because the holes are so tiny and this stick is so dried out and inert.) I find it especially fascinating because it looks like the twig formed a gall and then just kept on growing past that, and the gall IS the stick rather than ON the stick.

a coke spoon that I found on the ground

Durable plastic fork I found on the ground

8 bent mismatched tent pegs to fill in for the 8 missing pegs of my tent, picked up while I was walking around pulling weeds on the last day after people had packed up and left and accidentally left a tent peg behind

the 50th anniversary pendant: a replica of the pendants used as the first festival's entry token. Earned mine with 24+ hours volunteering. 😊

(my volunteer timesheet with 31 hours logged with the Rangers, plus 3 or so unlogged hours pulling weeds for my own enjoyment. (Saw a bounty board of invasive weeds, memorised the first one on the list (horehound) because there was a whole bunch of it growing around my tent and it's a suuuper distinctive and easy-to-recognise plant, and then I got to do a fun treasure hunt of Righteous Violence whenever I had nothing better to do. Also targeted scotch thistle with a vengeance whenever I saw it, which was fortunately very infrequently probably due to very many people recognising it on-sight as a noxious invasive weed and kicking its sprouts to paste.) Anyway this isn't really a memento but I'm writing it down so that I remember the follow-up step of emailing the volunteer coordinator to get my ticket refunded.)

Volunteer stickers for the 24 hour crew and for the Ranger crew

Entry wristband

List of email addresses from people who attended my workshop and would like me to email them the rest of the zines and worksheets in my Relationship Library that I didn't print out to bring to the festival.

Obligatory cockatoo feather

Many blisters on my feet.

New good friends. Some will be confest friends and some will be real-life friends

Unopened 5 pack of instant noodles and a daal curry kit, reclaimed from the swarm of 300-400 bees that had claimed them after their unknown first owner spilled a pot of honey inside their grocery bag. Bee swarm had been freaking out the allergic-to-bees people camped next to it, so they called in the Rangers. I carried the grocery bag and its swarm of bees away from their camp and into a no-camping area of the bush on the other side of the road and left it there for the bees and ants. By the last day of the festival there was no honey left and someone had reclaimed the grocery bag but not its contents, so I took them for myself. Leave no trace. :)

Well, it’s that time again where I take stock of the passage of time over the last year. It’s been a lot, I’ve done a lot of things, and I haven’t got around to a lot of things. Let’s look at the list of goals for 2025: Publish one book NaPoWriMo 2025 (April) Keep up the blog Craft projects, including crochet, painting, etc. Read 5 books Play music Focus on physical health/getting into…

It feels like it’s been a while since I checked in with this blog (though it was only a bit over a month ago). In the last few years I’ve been doing NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) in April. NaPoWriMo, led by Maureen Thorson, is inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which traditionally happens in November, and the idea is to write a new poem every day in April. This year…