About Me
- Satima Flavell
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- I am based in Perth, Western Australia. You might enjoy my books - The Dagger of Dresnia, the first book of the Talismans Trilogy, is available at all good online book shops as is Book two, The Cloak of Challiver. Book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation. I trained in piano and singing at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. I also trained in dance (Scully-Borovansky, WAAPA) and drama (NIDA). Since 1987 I have been writing reviews of performances in all genres for a variety of publications, including Music Maker, ArtsWest, Dance Australia, The Australian and others. Now semi-retired, I still write occasionally for the ArtsHub website.
My books
The first two books of my trilogy, The Talismans, (The Dagger of Dresnia, and book two, The Cloak of Challiver) are available in e-book format from Smashwords, Amazon and other online sellers. Book three of the trilogy, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation.I also have a short story, 'La Belle Dame', in print - see Mythic Resonance below - as well as well as a few poems in various places.
The best way to contact me is via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/satimaflavell
Buy The Talismans
The first two books of The Talismans trilogy were published by Satalyte Publications, which, sadly, has gone out of business. However, The Dagger of Dresnia and The Cloak of Challiver are available as ebooks on the usual book-selling websites, and book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation.
The easiest way to contact me is via Facebook.
The Dagger of Dresnia
The Cloak of Challiver, Book two of The Talismans
Mythic Resonance
Mythic Resonance is an excellent anthology that includes my short story 'La Belle Dame', together with great stories from Alan Baxter, Donna Maree Hanson, Sue Burstynski, Nike Sulway and nine more fantastic authors! Just $US3.99 from Amazon.
Got a Kindle? Check out Mythic Resonance.
Follow me on Twitter
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For Readers, Writers & Editors
- A dilemma about characters
- Adelaide Writers Week, 2009
- Adjectives, commas and confusion
- An artist's conflict
- An editor's role
- Authorial voice, passive writing and the passive voice
- Common misuses: common expressions
- Common misuses: confusing words
- Common misuses: pronouns - subject and object
- Conversations with a character
- Critiquing Groups
- Does length matter?
- Dont sweat the small stuff: formatting
- Free help for writers
- How much magic is too much?
- Know your characters via astrology
- Like to be an editor?
- Modern Writing Techniques
- My best reads of 2007
- My best reads of 2008
- My favourite dead authors
- My favourite modern authors
- My influential authors
- Planning and Flimmering
- Planning vs Flimmering again
- Psychological Spec-Fic
- Readers' pet hates
- Reading, 2009
- Reality check: so you want to be a writer?
- Sensory detail is important!
- Speculative Fiction - what is it?
- Spelling reform?
- Substantive or linking verbs
- The creative cycle
- The promiscuous artist
- The revenge of omni rampant
- The value of "how-to" lists for writers
- Write a decent synopsis
- Write a review worth reading
- Writers block 1
- Writers block 2
- Writers block 3
- Writers need editors!
- Writers, Depression and Addiction
- Writing in dialect, accent or register
- Writing it Right: notes for apprentice authors
Interviews with authors
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Blog Archive
Places I've lived: Manchester, UK
Places I've lived: Gippsland, Australia
Places I've lived: Geelong, Australia
Places I've lived: Tamworth, NSW
Places I've Lived - Sydney
Places I've lived: Auckland, NZ
Places I've Lived: Mount Gambier
Places I've lived: Adelaide, SA
Places I've Lived: Perth by Day
Places I've lived: High View, WV
Places I've lived: Lynton, Devon, UK
Places I've lived: Braemar, Scotland
Places I've lived: Barre, MA, USA
Places I've Lived: Perth by Night
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Monday 11 December 2006
That old in-limbo feeling
Monday, December 11, 2006 |
Posted by
Satima Flavell
Eight weeks ago, I moved from Perth, Western Australia to Mount Gambier, South Australia, a distance of over fifteen hundred miles. I think that's about 2,500km if your mind works that way. Mine doesn't. I mislike these metres, litres and kilograms, forsooth.
Anyhow, here I am in the space between the worlds, so to speak, or at least, between lifestyles. The last quarter of the year isn't a good time to move; certainly not if you're an inveterate joiner, like me. I miss the groups I belonged to in Perth: the WA Shakespeare Club; the Society of Editors (WA); the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre, especially the Spec-Fic group and the cousin-twice-removed face-to-face critiquing group that I value so highly; the WA Society of Genealogists (specifically the Western Suburbs House Group) and the WA School of Yoga, to say nothing of the many individuals I met in other contexts such as Buddhism, Meditation and Astrology which I've moved away from to some degree in recent years. Those groups and the people in them cannot be replaced. Of course, I'll meet new friends and join other groups over here, but therein lies the rub - everything is winding down for the summer break, and just as things start to wind up again I'll be on my way to England. So, in fact, I won't be joining any groups here until the middle of next year. Nor can I look for part-time work, which I really need to supplement the pension. (It's funny how everything else is going up, but not the pension - it gets harder and harder, month by month, to feed and clothe oneself, to say nothing of luxuries like health insurance and internet access.)
So how, you might ask, am I managing to travel to England? It's courtesy of my sister Clare, who lives there and always has, having elected to remain when the rest of the family emigrated in the fifties. It will be wonderful to see her and other rellies, and also the many e-cousins I've met through my family history research. My last chance to see the old country - now, that's exciting! It's something I'm really looking forward to, although I won't let myself get too excited this early or I'll be like a kid in the weeks before a birthday: only sixty more sleeps; forty-nine; twenty-four... No, I'll be patient and try to live day by day until St Valentine comes and carries me back to Perth, whence I fly out to Dubai and then Heathrow - whoopee!
Meantime, I'm in limbo. Not only am I failing to settle in properly here in Mount Gambier, but my life seems to be on hold. I've done precious little writing these last few months. It hardly seems worth doing much to my new flat - after all, anything could happen before next June and I could well have to move again by then. Yet one can waste a lifetime through inaction - I'll just wait until after Christmas, until I get a job, until the plot of the novel clarifies, until, until, until.
My Buddhist training is niggling me about being present in this very moment and not allowing myself to be ruled by attachment to past or future. Every week in limbo is a week wasted, but any other action--or non-action--seems too hard. But is Too Hard a good reason for dawdling in limbo? I'll think about it and let you know:-)
Anyhow, here I am in the space between the worlds, so to speak, or at least, between lifestyles. The last quarter of the year isn't a good time to move; certainly not if you're an inveterate joiner, like me. I miss the groups I belonged to in Perth: the WA Shakespeare Club; the Society of Editors (WA); the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre, especially the Spec-Fic group and the cousin-twice-removed face-to-face critiquing group that I value so highly; the WA Society of Genealogists (specifically the Western Suburbs House Group) and the WA School of Yoga, to say nothing of the many individuals I met in other contexts such as Buddhism, Meditation and Astrology which I've moved away from to some degree in recent years. Those groups and the people in them cannot be replaced. Of course, I'll meet new friends and join other groups over here, but therein lies the rub - everything is winding down for the summer break, and just as things start to wind up again I'll be on my way to England. So, in fact, I won't be joining any groups here until the middle of next year. Nor can I look for part-time work, which I really need to supplement the pension. (It's funny how everything else is going up, but not the pension - it gets harder and harder, month by month, to feed and clothe oneself, to say nothing of luxuries like health insurance and internet access.)
So how, you might ask, am I managing to travel to England? It's courtesy of my sister Clare, who lives there and always has, having elected to remain when the rest of the family emigrated in the fifties. It will be wonderful to see her and other rellies, and also the many e-cousins I've met through my family history research. My last chance to see the old country - now, that's exciting! It's something I'm really looking forward to, although I won't let myself get too excited this early or I'll be like a kid in the weeks before a birthday: only sixty more sleeps; forty-nine; twenty-four... No, I'll be patient and try to live day by day until St Valentine comes and carries me back to Perth, whence I fly out to Dubai and then Heathrow - whoopee!
Meantime, I'm in limbo. Not only am I failing to settle in properly here in Mount Gambier, but my life seems to be on hold. I've done precious little writing these last few months. It hardly seems worth doing much to my new flat - after all, anything could happen before next June and I could well have to move again by then. Yet one can waste a lifetime through inaction - I'll just wait until after Christmas, until I get a job, until the plot of the novel clarifies, until, until, until.
My Buddhist training is niggling me about being present in this very moment and not allowing myself to be ruled by attachment to past or future. Every week in limbo is a week wasted, but any other action--or non-action--seems too hard. But is Too Hard a good reason for dawdling in limbo? I'll think about it and let you know:-)
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3 comments:
That waiting for something gap is the pits, isn't it. You can't get organised because of all sorts of reasons (which are all valid by the way) but you're left even more unsettled because you can't.
That's it in a nutshell, Helen. I guess your life right now (if you can see past Christmas!)centres on Waiting for Clarion...
Truer words wus niver spuck, Karen. It looks as though you don't need to come and leave a message, since telepathy is obviously working fine. It occurred to me yesterday that writing was the answer. Write anything, write drivel - but write. So I'm doing a spot of family history writing, which is often more than a little speculative in nature:-) The novel will gradually be writing itself in the depths in the meantime and will burst forth in glory when it's ready.
At least, I hope it will...