This time last year, we were getting ready to leave for a Sydney Christmas with our daughter and her husband. Christmas was family and seafood, and even a few days on the Central Coast before driving down to Melbourne via the Southern Highlands. Bushfires had already started before we left and I had brought some C3V FFP3 R masks I´d bought online from a German company to take with us. I wore mine in smoky Melbourne. Then back to Sydney where the skyline also became smoky for a few days. Then rain and flash flooding and COVID19. We were meant to fly back mid-March, but Vienna airport was closed so we had to wait till eventually getting a flight early July. Back in Vienna, some health niggles I managed to get over.
So, taking up from my last blog post, here is the Cairo Zoom recording hosted by Arab World Books.
I´m pleased to be on board WordCity Monthly as fiction editor and here are the four latest issues:
In other news, three chapters of my GUT story (part of my novelette in flash wip on telepathy being the next frontier beyond telecommunications), which I had submitted during Sydney lockdown were accepted for inclusion in a multimedia anthology entitled Outer Space / Inner Minds, edited by David Reiter of IP (Interactive Publications), Australia.
My novel in flash, Winds of Change, was accepted for publication by a small American independent publisher and I´m grateful to Nick Gerrard in Czechia for having suggested I submit to Breaking Rules Publishing – the name did it for me, I must confess.
All the Beautiful Liars kept garnering reviews, with the latest in Metropole, Vienna´s English-speaking print and online magazine. Advance copies of the paperback, which will be available worldwide next year are already on sale in Vienna from Shakespeare and Company Booksellers and directly from me. Of the books I sell directly, I donate 5 Euros to a small charitable association PCs für Alle which upcycles old and no longer used PCs and laptops and gives them to individuals, NGOs and schools in need, for even in rich countries like Austria, not every family can afford the equipment for the online schooling of their children.
In November I participated in Flash Nano 2020 led by Nancy Stohlman and wrote a flash every day in November. Since I was affected by the work of PCs für Alle, my flashes made a story and the German version called Romeo und Juia in Corona is being serialized on the PCs für Alle Facebook page.
In December I did a novel in flash course with Nancy Stohlman and have worked out, I think, what to do with the afore-mentioned GUT story.
The things that happen when you´re all over the place. 😉
Oh, and there have been rejections, too. I need to do much more work on my smell novel, Ambergris, so am looking forward to working with Debi Alper again around Easter.
But in other good news I´ll have an article in Women writers, Women’s Books in January, after an 11-year hiatus, and I´m thrilled to say that I´ll also have a tiny piece on flash fiction in the Spring issue of World Literature Today.
In 2021, I hope to start learning how to podcast and with the help of my son-in-law have ordered the proper not-too-expensive equipment so that I can be ready in February to contribute to Darcie Friesen Hossack´s workshop at the International Human Rights Art Festival.
So let´s look forward to a new year that will bring light and understanding as I extend my greetings of the season to you all, and leave you as always with Onwards!
On that note, please also enjoy the work of a young Australian creative in Australia´s Blue Mountains.
Tilly´s Table 
Tilly`s Table 
Tilly´s Table 
Tilly´s Table
Happy New Year, I’m happy these constant lockdowns didn’t affect too much your work and creativity. I just wanted to tell you that I just finished your novel “All the Beautiful Liars” (bought at Shakespeare & company) and I really enjoyed it. I’m a Portuguese photographer married to an Austrian. I find the past is still something very difficult to talk about in Austria.
You write very well about those difficulties. It reminded me of a talk years ago in Strasbourg about the war. There were Jewish who had returned after the war ended, former members of the French resistance and men who had been forced to fight for the Wehrmacht. One of those men got up and started shaking and crying. He explained he had fought for the Germans because he had been forced to enlist. He had never spoken about that to his children. That was the first time because he had been carrying the shame ever since.
I will be looking forward to read your next novel.
Hi Maria,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m so glad you enjoyed the book and that you bought it at my favourite bookshop. I do have a second novel in the works which I am currently revising, so knowing readers are waiting is good motivation. Thank you.
Allbest and stay safe,
Sylvia
I would call that a very successful year, in spite of all the obstacles and unexpected things thrown at you! Wishing you the very best in the New Year too. A much better year for all of us!
Thank you! And all best to you, too, and stay safe. The only way, methinks, is onwards!
You are blossoming this year – in spite of all the setbacks. One of your traits is that you never moan! And I know that all this apparent good luck is founded on hard work -like a swan, serene on the surface, working under the waterline. May 2021 bring another good harvest too.(If swans have harvests, that is.)
Ha! Thanks Pat. Now, that’s an image: the harvesting swan working under the waterline 😉 Allbest to you and stay safe.
Wish you a merry Christmas and all the best for 2021! Stay alive! Peter
Thanks, Peter. I´ll try. You, too. We have stuff to do.