Ever since I planted my meadow a couple of years ago our garden has been full of wildlife and weeds.
You need a machete to get to the clawfoot herb bath on the cliff edge, and when you get there you find the deer and the possums and the orange-bellied parrots and platypus have eaten almost everything.
That’s a good thing, obviously, but it’s also pretty annoying. And what with the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees I’m beginning to feel like I’ve outgrown myself.
Our garden has been organic for years and it teems and swarms. All the Sydney rain only makes it worse. I mean better.
As a way of trying to exert some control over this rampant Eden I’ve deployed Melissa as a scarecrow on the frangipani tree. We tried to give Melissa away a few months ago but no-one wanted her. What is wrong with you people?! Anyway, now I’m glad we’ve still got her.
She has real human hair. I’m pretty sure Melissa is the only scarecrow in Forest Lodge who needs her hair styled after it rains otherwise she looks bedraggled, and unlikely to scare a brown bear.
It’s early days into this experiment but I know she scares the shit out of me when I’m out in the garden and forget she’s there, looking down on me with her perfect, tousled hair.
***
And just in time for Christmas… my novel will be published in November! If I’m clever enough to manage the uploads and downloads and the jpegs and the .docs.
THE DEAD BED will be available as an e-book on most platforms: kindle, kobo, apple books, etc and print on demand if you are old fashioned like me and prefer to read a print copy.
As one literary agent said (in declining to offer me a contract): “You write really well and have a very good, understated comic voice… I was immediately engaged by the narrative. Ben, Patrick and Claire are all sympathetic characters.”
I hope you’ll all agree when you download/buy a copy and give me an honest (compulsory) 5* review! You’ll definitely recognise AblokeAbroad in the text, location, and ‘understated comic voice’ – even though it’s written by someone called Robert Edsall. It’s a family/crime/suspense novel.
I really hope you’ll forgo a coffee and buy the book. Or even better, buy the coffee and buy the book! Live large.
It’s deliberately a ripping yarn with chapter titles and everything. Set in Forest Lodge! What could possibly go wrong?
You’ll have to buy the book to find out.
AblokeAbroad 