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
My Blog List
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How to Focus Like a Monk with Jamie Kreiner - We live in a world full of constant notifications, interruptions, and complications. If only we could get away from it all, the peace and quiet would allow...5 hours ago
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Book Review-Shadowfell… - This is a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Again, I have the first book and must source the next two. The tale is temptingly incomplete. Jill Smith’s Rev...14 hours ago
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Mirror, Mirror - Soon after the publication of my debut novel, a friend posted on my Facebook page: “Julie, I could hear and see you in Lia. She reminded me so much of yo...21 hours ago
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A home: feels like a whirlwind - We’ve been home exactly one week. I was telling Matthew that I haven’t found my groove yet. I’m currently grooveless. Last post was from London. I don’t th...3 weeks ago
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‘The Noble Salvidge’ in conversation with Will Yeoman at York Writers’ Festival - On April 13th I will be attending the York Writers’ Festival and appearing in conversation with WritingWA’s Will Yeoman. It looks like a really interesting...3 weeks ago
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Trip to Brazil 2024 - Landing in the Megalopolis of Sao Paulo On February 7th I flew to Sao Paulo, Brazil to start a 17 day teachi...3 weeks ago
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#2 - WEP Get Together - March 2024 - Hello fellow WEPpers and friends! Welcome to the second WEP Get Together! *Starting in April, we go bi-monthly. * The WEP team decided to keep in to...3 weeks ago
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New chat on the Lovecraft Ezine - I had a great chat with Mike Davis of the Lovercraft Ezine. We talked about about social media for creators, about small-town horror, about my books, and...5 weeks ago
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Happy Public Domain Day 2024, the end of copyright for 1928 works - My annual reminder that January 1st is Public Domain Day, and this year copyright has ended for books, movies, and music first published in the U.S. in 192...2 months ago
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#347 - I've been querying agents for the last 6-months and have over 50 rejections. I'm not sure if my novel isn't very interesting/sellable or if my query let...7 months ago
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Favourite Sites
- Alan Baxter
- Andrew McKiernan
- Bren McDibble
- Celestine Lyons
- Guy Gavriel Kay
- Hal Spacejock (Simon Haynes)
- Inventing Reality
- Jacqueline Carey
- Jennifer Fallon
- Jessica Rydill
- Jessica Vivien
- Joel Fagin
- Juliet Marillier
- KA Bedford
- Karen Miller
- KSP Writers Centre
- Lynn Flewelling
- Marianne de Pierres
- Phill Berrie
- Ryan Flavell
- Satima's Professional Editing Services
- SF Novelists' Blog
- SF Signal
- Shane Jiraiya Cummings
- Society of Editors, WA
- Stephen Thompson
- Yellow wallpaper
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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Tuesday 20 January 2015
Are we all back on deck?
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 |
Posted by
Satima Flavell
Wow, time gets away from us over the Christmas-New Year period! January is waning and it's hard to believe that it's over a month since I last posted. And it's not as if I've been busy or active in any productive kind of way. I'd love to tell you that I've been adding the finishing touches to The Cloak of Challiver, but I'd be lying. It's still with an editor friend for final critiquing before I send it off to Satalyte Publishing.
What I have been doing is lazing about, reading a little, watching TV, playing on Facebook, writing a few emails (but I'm still less than half way down the list of annual newsletters from folk I love to stay in touch with at least once or twice a year) and going out socialising to celebrate the holiday season. Truth to tell, I'm getting lazy in my old age. Besides, summer in this part of the world (Perth, Western Australia) is HOT. Very hot indeed. Days are rarely under 30 degrees Celsius, and not infrequently the mercury rises to over forty! Good ice-cream weather.
Part of the problem is that everything except socialising stops for December and often January too, so my usual activities have been replaced by social outings. I had a lovely afternoon last Saturday, for instance, with friends from the Shakespeare Club of Western Australia at the home of one of our members. But keep-fit classes have started again now, and I'm teaching theatrical dance at the annual Summer School of Trinity School for Seniors. Several new ladies are trying the class out, and I do hope they like it enough to sign on for first term. The problem there, of course, is that they are new to dance and might find it hard to slot into the existing group, yet there aren't enough of them to start a second class. We'll see what happens next month!
Only a few more weeks until belly dancing and yoga start up again, too. Maybe by then I will have exercised off at least part of the three kilos that have suddenly appeared on the scales due to cake, mince pies and lack of exercise. But right now, after just a couple of keep-fit classes I feel heavy, weary and achy all over!
I think I'll just go to the fridge and get another ice-cream ...
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8 comments:
Naughty girl, keep away from the ice cream. You shouldn't even have any in the fridge. Three kilos? I would be pulling out my hair.
Seeing as I weighed 83 kilos three months ago another three haven't made much difference to my fitness or appearance. I will lose it fairly easily once all my fitness classes get going again. However, I retain water so I always look kind of bloated, and diuretics don't seem to help much. :-(
We don't use kilos so had to convert. That is heavier than I am, I am surprised. Don't think diuretics are much use, can't take them any more anyway, get cramp.
I drink a lot of water because I'm prone to cramps and migraines, but I think the real culprit is coffee. I've cut down on it in the last week or two and I think I'm a bit less bloated. It could be contributing to the overweight as well since I like lots of milk in coffee. No sugar, though.
I haven't had milk or sugar in coffee since I was a kid. Nor do I drink a lot of water, but I do drink a lot of decaf coffee every day. As for cramps, which I get more of from taking a statin, I eat a banana every day and take quinine pills too. If I have cramp, which is luckily not often now, I drink some tonic water. I don't get migraines often either any more, seem to have more or less grown out of them. The worst one I ever had was from drinking fully leaded coffee in Portugal. The caffeine really did me in there.
Yes, I've learnt to drink decaf, too. A 'real' coffee tends to make me buzz these days, so I only have one when I know I need to be a bit 'up'.
Now I'm on medication for hiatus hernia, I can handle more caffeine than I did and often drink regular coffee at the bowling alley. It's that or none.
Sounds like we're in a lot of the same clubs, health-wise, Jo!