The writer's blog

It's a fast read, with dialogue that sounds like dinner at our house when the entire whanau is over.  If you really want to know where the stories come from its been soaking into me my entire life.  Uncles, aunties, cousins, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers etc etc etc  But I created the world and the characters who are in it.  None of them are direct lifts from real life. 
None of them.   (Except the manic pixie vegan.  She is actually real.)
Language
One of the major complaints I've had about the books is the language some of my characters use.  I was at a Trust Board meeting a while ago, won't say which one it was, but a woman who had read my first book (although hadn't even bought it, she'd borrowed it off her sister) said that she liked the book but she didn't like the swearing in it. 
She said it wasn't realistic.
The next moment, another board member said, 'The c*nt next door came over to my f*cking house, and told my Moko to shut the f*ck up or he was going to call the f*cking police on them.  So I told him he could shove his f*cking complaint up his f*cking arse and if he didn't f*ck off I'd punch his f*cking face in.'  This is quoted verbatim.  And this wasn't a kid who said this it was a grandmother.
Hmmm...unrealistic? 
 No, I don't think so.
I grew up in a family where swearwords are used as punctuation.   I don't believe 'unintelligent' people swear.  Stephen Fry swears and he is one of the most brilliant men in the world.  My father swears and he's a genius.  I swear, a lot, and I'm not an idiot, I just like the feel of the words.  So if you don't like swear words, don't read my books.
My books are authentically me
Things in it  happen all around me especially the closeness of whanau, hence yesterday...Easter Sunday and I was at the Marae with my whanau.
I was in the wharekai with my niece Terina getting a shared lunch together while my whanau were out planting trees in a Wetland we are creating.  It is close to our Marae and it used to be where my ancestors gathered kai before it was all turned into farmland. 
 Now we are taking it back to it's natural state as Wetlands are in danger all over the world which puts our water table in crisis.  Not to mention flooding due to climate change and all the other crisis that we, as humans, need to deal with.  If you want to know more about the project click on this.  Wetlands project.

The third book in the trilogy is NOT a stand alone Novel. 
Sorry everyone who told me it should be,  It's not.  I don't consider the second book 'Feather from the Kakahu' a stand alone book either. But that's me. ( I have run into disagreements about that fact from people who have read it - without the first one - and like it) 
My husband who is a great reader of Fantasy fiction introduced me to a genre of books where the book series go on forever and ever and a lot of the writers go from book to book with no back story trusting people will read the books before it.  Very Lord of the Rings.
If I am wrong.  I am willing to live with it.  Being wrong won't shoot me dead.  Besides, the books aren't that expensive and they should be in the Library and if they aren't, get the Library to buy it in.
I read the last draft of 'Thread through the Whariki' all the way through
This is a first for me - usually by the time a book is finished I am OVER it.  I have spent 3 - 6 years in the process of writing the thing, re-writing, crafting, having editors telling me it doesn't work, pulling it apart, putting it back together again, changing, rewriting, changing...and so on and so on and so on.  So honestly by end of it all I don't want to read it all at once.  I don't want to see it ever, ever again.
But this time I did and I liked it. 
Which shocked me. 
With this book is the end of a journey, but its also the beginning of a new thing for me. 
Right at this moment I am editing four books I wrote a few years ago, one is a romance, one is a mystery. 
The  other two are contemporary fiction very similar to the genre of Heart of the Tapu Stone and Feather from the Kakahu.  One is set in Porirua and the other Wellington and Martinborough.  
I found out that the first book I had published
A junior reader 'My two homes' has probably been read by every child in NZ over the last six years so I've already achieved my ultimate dream.  After that, every thing else is a bonus.
So Finally welcome to my office, please come in, sit down :)
This folks is where I work every day.  I keep all my library books in the basket as I have about 2000 books of my own (maybe an exaggeration I've never actually counted them) 
On the bed you can see my redundant cell phone that no longer works as 2 degrees has rendered the technology obsolete.  Rip the hell off.  Ah Well.