The trouble with being a full-time coursebook writer is that you’re always preparing lessons for others to teach.
With the drawn-out publishing process, there’s about a year’s development from concept to finished work. Even then, the book has to jump through bureaucratic hoops to be approved by the relevant education…
For a few years, starting in 2017, I wrote answers on Quora. It was my debut as an online writer.
As writing experiences go, it was a mixed bag. I wrote on diverse topics that I thought I knew something about. In a rather plain, ‘educational’ style which I thought…
(Start with part 1, here.)
It is done.
I finished her late last night, then poured myself a celebratory glass of single malt whisky. My favourite drop from the Lark Distillery down in Tassie: peaty and smoky, melting on my tongue.
The weather was suitably dramatic. Lightning rent the darkness…
(Start with part one, here.)
I like to sit out on my porch in the predawn light, aswim in the sounds of the waking bush. Each morning this is my routine, before feeding Skipper and taking him for our morning constitutional.
Above the constant yet ever-changing chuckle of the water…
Bespoke Emotions Ltd
Discreet cranial patches. Avoid the embarrassment of feeling inappropriate emotions at important life milestones. 21st birthday party? Wedding? Birth of your first-born? Funeral of a loved one?
These are not cheap, cloned emotions but genuine, lived emotional blends — unique to the individual who donated them.
Be…
(Start with part one, here.)
Wood will guide the carver’s hand. It will tell you what it wants to be.
That’s why I avoid power tools, use them only for the crudest of bulk removal. A power saw will tear through grain; an angle-grinder will gnaw out ugly chunks. They…
(Start with part one, here.)
I wake at three thirty. It’s inky black outside. A warm night for November.
Fevered, I scribble down the gift of my unconscious mind, commit it to paper before it fades. I cover sheet after sheet with charcoal and pencil sketches.
Then, as day breaks…
She is mine. Or at least, six metres of her. Diameter one-and-a-half metres. Weight approximately seven tonnes. Delivered today on Ken Mathers’ flatbed truck. The result of a year’s worth of favours called in and more than a few strings pulled at Parks Victoria.
For years she lay alongside the…
I created a Facebook page for ‘Steve Fendt Stories’ a few days ago. That’s it. Sorry, the title was shameless clickbait.
Moving swiftly onward …
Everyone, including me, likes to belly-ache about Facebook, but let’s face it: FB has its uses. It’s good for for keeping vaguely in touch with…
Rain patters and clatters in the metal gutter outside my study window.
There’s heavy rain forecast for the next 24 hours: 25–40 mm. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the roof will leak — again.
Our house in Oxford, a typical English terraced house of the 1980s, was…
