​Happy New Year, everyone! It is so hard to believe that 18 years have already passed since the New Millenium; a time when Kotz and I first met and camped out on the beach at Kaka Point, South Otago, to watch the dawning of the ‘new age’.

Sadly, Mr Murray Moore QSM, our great friend and the principal I both secretly and openly admired when I worked for him at Balclutha Primary School, died before Christmas. On February the 17th, 2018 there will be a special memorial service held for him at Balclutha Primary School, so we will be heading back down to Balclutha and Kaka Point, places which remain so precious in our memories.

​​This New Year, up here in Nelson, Kotz went camping again. This time it was in the stunning Abel Tasman National Park, accompanied by Ella who was visiting us from Brisbane. “Why didn’t you go?” I was asked. ”Well it’s not really my thing", was my response.

My thing was to write a blog and continue to organise my upcoming southern tour. You see, on the way to and from Balclutha I'm giving fifteen talks, so will be afforded the opportunity to laud my old boss everywhere I go. So if you’re in the vicinity, please come along and introduce yourself!  ​

 
Feb 14th  (Wed) Geraldine Public Library 2pm
Feb 15th  (Thurs) Oamaru Public Library 6pm
Feb 16th  (Fri) Lawrence Public Library 4pm
Feb 17th  (Sat) Balclutha Public Library, ”Where it all started!” 11am
Feb 19th  (Mon) Rowena Jackson Retirement Home 2pm
Feb 19th  (Mon) Invercargill Public Library, 5:30pm
Feb 20th  (Tues) Winton Memorial Hall, 11 am
Feb 20th  (Tues) Te Anau Public Library, 7pm
Feb 21st  (Wed) Gore Public Library 6:30pm


My talks are resuming mid April.  Do come along and introduce yourself, I'd love to meet you!

April 12th (Thurs) Queenstown Public Library 7pm
April 13th ( Fri)  Wanaka Public LIbrary  2pm
April 14th (Sat)  Waimate Public Library 11am
April 16th ( Mon) Ashburton Public LIbrary 7pm
April 18th ( Wed) Rangiora Public Library 7pm
 
P.S. Yes, I am still planning on touring in the North Island later in the year! I may see you there...

 

Well since my last blog I have been in Christchurch, Balclutha ( where ‘it’ all began), Dunedin, Auckland  (including the amazing zoo), Wellington and Greytown, Wairarapa.

In between I prepared and delivered a talk for about 300 9-13 year-olds at the Mapua Literary Festival, managing to keep them entertained with the help of a good moose hunting story, a wolf’s pelt and about 70 photos of bush Alaska!

 "In the Mapua Hall for 9-13 year-olds, Emma Stevens entertained with a talk, slides and wonderful items from her Alaskan adventure Walking on Ice. Briefed to please be adventurous and gory for  this young crowd of about 300, Emma fulfilled the purpose completely by bringing amongst many fascinating items and stories, a stuffed wolf's head in a bag." (Tasman Leader Sept 21). We generated a lot of heat it in there!

Along with all this travelling, talk-preparing and delivering, I have now completed recording the entire Walking on Ice memoir for radio, which began this week and will be aired every Mon, Wed and  Fri  at 10:30 am on Nelson’s Fresh FM. Each week's recordings will play again every Saturday night between 7-8 pm. 
Podcasts will be available from their website http://www.freshfm.net 

 

Ever since my arrival in Nelson ten years ago, I have been searching for Paratai’s daughter Moana, convinced that Paratai had told me she lived here.  Paratai, my Maori kuia had died when I was living in Chevak, Alaska. Last Tuesday I attended a tāngi (funeral), where I finally learned of Moana’s whereabouts. I had been searching under the wrong name!  A call later that night put us in touch.
The following day I finally met Moana, who is the image of her mother. As though Paratai was pushing us together we fell into each other’s arms. “I can feel Mum with us,” Moana said through sobs. I nodded, too choked up to speak. Hugging Moana felt just like hugging Paratai.
We found a café in the grounds of Founders Park and pored over the photo albums Moana had brought. I gave her copies of my Alaskan memoirs in which Paratai lives on. Dancing on the Tundra includes a dedication to her memory. We talked and talked and talked.

 I left Moana to attend a meeting at Fresh FM radio station.  This meeting was to pursue an idea spawned by a comment the sound technician made after recording an interview for Top of the South writers the week before.*
         “Have you considered serialising your book Walking on Ice, Emma?” Fifteen minutes later we had a verdict.  “Let’s do it!”

So hold on to your hats folks, Walking on Ice is about to be serialised, thanks to Fresh FM Nelson. It will be read...ta da te da...by ME!

The 15-20 minute-broadcast of Walking on Ice will begin on Monday Sept 25th at 10:30 am with subsequent broadcasts on Wednesday and Friday at the same time. The serial with continue to be broadcast for 7 weeks, every Mon, Wed, Fri until the story is finished. Each Saturday night at 7pm there will be a catch-up session of the previous week's recordings. 

Fresh FM is a Community Access radio station which can be heard on 104.8 in Nelson-Tasman, 95.0 in Takaka and 88.9 in Blenheim. It also operates in the inner Nelson City area on 107.2. Apparently there is also a possibility that other FM stations will pickup the program and broadcast them in different centres.

This exciting development means that I will be creating audio files of Walking on Ice that I can subsequently release as an audio book; something that so many of you have asked for.
 
Whew…. Ain’t some days just straight out of the box?

I know it has been a while since I have written a blog, but you see it has all been the fault of numbers.  Let me explain.
 
I noticed after my last rash of blogs (I think eight in a row, a week apart), that my writings had not generated much more interest than usual.  Why was this?  Maybe, I thought, I am overloading my gentle readers. Maybe (pleasant holiday thought), I could take a bit of a rest.

Later that morning I cooked Kotz a state-of-the-art breakfast and we sat together on our sunny deck enjoying the food, the company and the array of bird activities we could spy from our eating position.
      “Look at the tuis!” Kotzman exclaimed watching two native birds sucking from the water feeder I had positioned in the front garden. Enjoying the view, food and company a thought occurred to me. Smiling sweetly at him I asked an impromptu question.
       “So sweetheart, as a wife what mark out of ten would I get?” 
I was truly confident with Kotz’s gentle nature and my spectacular attention to his every need my score would be hovering in the upper nines. Kotz looked at me and without even a loving twinkle in his eye to show any usual joking he might mean, he solemnly declared, “Six point five.”

The sound of my jaw hitting the table ricocheted around the South Island.
       “What?” I gasped, looking at him in total horror, “Why is it so low?”
     “Well honey,” Kotz said, reaching across the table, patting my hand in an apparent attempt to dissipate the shocked expression on my face. “When we came back to New Zealand ten years ago, you told me you’d show me the North Island.” He paused and looked at me wistfully.  “You know I haven’t seen any of it yet!”

That piece of important information set off an avalanche of activity.

Since then thanks to Grabaseat-cheap AIr New Zealand flights, and Airbnb, we have visited Wellington, Auckland, and are about to head to Christchurch/ Dunedin, then back to Auckland and Wellington.
This flurry of travel has of course kept me from my writing desk, and even though I am booked to give many talks up and down the country, my main focus is currently raising my score with Kotz.
 
This very morning I dared ask again.
       “Don’t worry honey,” Kotz replied happily, “you’re in the high eights!” 
Hmm, he obviously wants more travel, I thought. So if you find the blogs are a little spread out, then guess what I will be doing- playing the numbers game.

While writing my childhood memoirs, I totally lose track of the time. When my head comes up from the keyboard, I am disoriented, momentarily even forgetting which house I am in.  You see I travel back in time, and find my youthful self in my classroom, bedroom or backyard. As soon as I am there, so many related memories come flooding back. In fact, at times I can’t type fast enough to get all of those memories down.

Early in the week, I asked one of my friends about some details of our early childhood classroom. ‘Oh I can’t remember that,’ she said. I then read her some of the memoir I’d been writing about that time.  Several days later she spoke to me again, ‘It was funny Em, after you read to me it made me start thinking about that time, and now so many memories have come back!’

Many years ago, I worked as an EEG technician, running electroencephalograms to detect brain injury and evidence of seizures.  My position was in a clinic at the local psychiatric hospital, where I saw both inpatients and outpatients. Many of the inpatients were convinced I was going to give ECT, Electroconvulsive Treatment, something that the hospital had retained as part of its battery of ‘fixes’ for severe depression. The fact that I was dressed like a technician, and there was a bed for patients to lie down, also didn’t help. The names EEG and ECT looked and sounded similar to some patients and I suppose me placing wires all over the patient’s head did nothing to quell their fears, no matter how many times I tried to calmly explain that my test was painless.

One day after arriving in the clinic, a highly anxious elderly patient became gradually convinced that he recognised me. 'I know you, you performed a tonsillectomy on me in 1936!' he finally shouted, his frail body suddenly developing muscles of steel. He lunged, holding me by the throat until the two stunned orderlies accompanying him were able to loosen his grip. It was obvious something about the setting and experience had stimulated that distant memory in him.

So while immersing in and then emerging from my writing this week, I’ve been pondering this. I have thought about pockets of memory and what evokes them. I’ve even decided that helping others access their precious memories may be the most important role of a memoir writer.  A reader once told me, 'You know sharing your stories has just brought to mind, so many of mine!'

Throughout the week, and during most of the above activities, my mind kept straying back to a podcast I listened to at Ella’s suggestion; “Getting Noticed in a Noisy World with Your First Book,” with Michael Hyatt (As below).

There is just so much to organise yourself when you are a self-publishing author.  I have been thinking that I really need a PA because my daily tasks before getting to the writing part are just so time consuming.
 Here is a taste of my daily world:

• Check emails and write responses. This is the most time consuming part as emails vary so much from day to day. They may encompass responding to topics such as writing about a reader's own memories of Alaska, answering questions about some aspect of my stories, answering enquiries about upcoming talks, book orders, responding to questions about their own writing, or simply replying to a complimentary email about a reader's enjoyment of my writing.
  
• Prepare books from internet sales; signing, addressing and placing book marks and business cards inside. Put packages by front door for posting.
• Respond to or ask questions about development of my website, an ongoing and evolving process.
• Check the number of books, postage bags, bookmarks, business cards remaining and reorder as needed.
• Talk with my printer about further print runs and where to send them.
• Decide on an outfit, “Which quspuk this time?” for an upcoming talk.
• Prepare book bags, artefacts and spare books for an upcoming talk.
• Charm Kotz in the hopes he will accompany me to said talk.
• Worry about getting talks into the North Island, “How can I do that?”
• Check calendar for upcoming appointments.
• Make any necessary bookings for upcoming talks.
• Try to write 500 words of my new writing project.
• Write blog.

Having thought about all this, I am realizing that Kotz is a actually a very good PA for me and I am lucky. He provides ongoing positive encouragement, even when I am exhausted. He gives me reminders – ”What’s happening this week, honey?” He is my box and luggage-toter, as well as my postie.  His ears are always flapping to hear any piece of writing I may be doing.
 
So I am grateful for my very own PA; even if he does continue to puff on his beloved cigars when I read to him, leaving me wondering if it is the cigars or the writing that lowers his lids in definite pleasure.

My public speaking journey really began back in 2008 when I gave a talk at the Motueka Community Centre. This first public talk was organised by Anne, a secretary at the nearby Parklands School who heard me speak, show some Alaskan artefacts to one of the classes, and watched the enthralled reaction. "Would you be  happy to share your stories to a local community group, Emma?" she asked. Since that initial meeting I have been invited to speak to many groups, probably well over sixty by now, all subsequent invitations spawned from members of my audiences, and through word of mouth. 
 
I had actually planned on writing an Alaskan memoir before this public speaking circuit began. It was why I wrote regular newsletters home in my early years of living in bush Alaska; knowing the newsletters would remind me of details of the adventures I was having. These early presentations confirmed that desire. My audiences told me, “Write your stories down Emma, we’d love to read  them!”

The whole situation was caused by under-supply. There were not enough books out on display. Having had so many public speaking experiences by now, I was cross that I had arrived under-prepared. I usually carry extra stock with me in my car. Kotz and I had driven to Christchurch from Nelson via Hanmer Springs where I inadvertently left the extra box of books in our motel room.  After the talk, Kotz was fielding as many questions as I was and we were both unable to carefully monitor the book sales.
 
I contacted the club to let them know, as well as to offer a sparkling new copy of the book to swap for the less than pristine copy in some poor buyer’s hands. I await contact with bated breath...
The journey of a self-published author is one of continuous learning and improvement but you know, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have spent the last week in Auckland, doing interviews for radio and TV, catching up with my editor Jo, all the while fielding the most common question, “So what’s next?”
 
It is not that I haven’t contemplated that question; indeed it has been humming under the daily demands of promoting Dancing on The Tundra. However this current trip - I am writing this at Wellington airport en route from Auckland home to Nelson - has given me time and distance for clearer focus and so, ta dah de dah, I have finally decided what’s next!

These stories always managed to bring the 8-13 year-olds to a total hush, while I teased out the climax, sometimes not finishing the story till the following day. “To be continued, ” I would tell them.
I imagined their interest was spawned in hearing stories about their teacher’s childhood growing up in Whanganui; some of the painful, funny and naughty things she did (too)?  I have since shared those stories with Aboriginal, Eskimo and Kiwi children, and their universal appeal has remained as strong as ever.
 
One of my pupils from my alternative school days recently wrote, “Your stories were always engrossing Emma, they contained a simple but profound message. I loved them!”

​So now gentle reader, you can say, “I know what Emma is publishing next!”

https://www.facebook.com/thecafenz/   ( Go to the page scroll down and click on videos and voilà!)

One of the highlights of this past week was entertaining an Alaskan husband and wife who have both been bush pilots. We met this couple via the NZ Society of Authors, when I gave a talk about my Alaskan memoirs.  Both Gary and I were greatly entertained over lunch at our place, at their stories of flying in white-out conditions, their hunting and fishing escapades involving the Alaskan favourite characters: salmon, caribou, moose and bears, and their ‘near miss’ or ‘lucky me’ stories.

But the downside of all of this reminiscing is that it sets the mind back to Alaska, that great white place of adventure in the Far North, and unsettles the equilibrium of ‘just being at home’. Any quiet enjoyment of the mundane is thrown askew; hedge trimming, rose pruning or a gentle wander along the country road don’t really seem to cut it when images of rearing grizzlies and murky flying conditions are only a recent memory away.

This weekend I am preparing to fly to Auckland to record another radio interview and head into the TVNZ studios to talk about my writing on TV3’s breakfast programme, The Café.
 
That more exciting prospect is now looming in my mind, cleverly subverting the ordinary while I attempt to select appropriate attire to wear, wonder about the effects of Cyclone Cook on my travel plans, and enjoy the luxury of the more hectic and exhilarating schedule of a self-published author.
I guess this writing business does have its upsides…