Completely distracted today by an idea. My son is 34 and my grandson is 2. My son messages me with photos of fungi. I send my grandson photos of my cat, and of interesting stuff I’m doing.
So, the idea. I got my son’s Duplo down from the attic, built a staircase to get the Duplo figures out of their box, should they be bored in there, and took photos. Sent them.
Have yet to hear of the junior’s reaction, his parent sent me the usual.
… is my daily grind. I’m laboring somewhere in the middle of the middle book, writing and rewriting the same chapter. It’s new, recently inserted. Zebe, seeking revenge for her twin sister’s misfortune, needs more time than the main plot can spare to put her conspiracy into place. Hence, her own POV chapter.
But will she/won’t she achieve her goal? I’m finding that the original problem will not go away. Zebe’s sub-plot is too strenuous and intricate in its early stages to seamlessly be integrated into the main plot immediately before its stated take-off.
All it needs, you will be saying, is for the one plot-line to be stretched and the other to be shrunk until there is integration. That’s a paper and pencil task. I’ll keep you posted.
My second concern is that Meld is far stranger than Mongrel. A large party of alien ladies must be accommodated in Meld–Tardi Malko, protagonist extraordinaire, is the one in the picture to carry them–at the same time that he lives his life?
Because, while the alien ladies impinge on TM’s life big time, there are other things going on in it. How to do them justice, I’m wondering.
Then I wonder whether I’m being too optimistic? That I’m trying to stuff too much into the novel? I’ve already moved the end of Meld to the beginning of Part 3, Morph, where it might work better.
I feel like I’m having to learn to write again. My normal prose seems not strong enough to carry the weight of meaning the characters in this book will need to carry. So far this weekend, I’ve been re-reading How-To books such as Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass.
This is the 83rd fungus I have observed in Brunswick Valley Heritage Park, a white crust … type 13 … that apparently parasitizes the undersides of ‘waxy’ and ‘pikelet-like’ brackets.
My filing system is littered with labels like that. Crusts get a number. Polypores and Agarics get descriptive words if I don’t have any other clue.
Fungi have three main life-styles. They are parasitic, like the one above, living on other organisms; they are saprophytic, consuming dead wood … if we didn’t have saprophytic fungi we’d be neck-deep in wood; and they can be mycorrhizal in habit.
Mycorrhizal fungi help keep us alive, by helping to keep 95% of plants alive. They help plants to gain more nutrients and moisture when plants and trees themselves can’t reach, by extending plant roots with fungal mycelium.
Page 2 of Mongrel, Book 1 of the DOOMED? Series; Link to Page 1 https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/ritadeheer385131918.blog/194
Up again. Quick look around to see what there was to see. On the glassy water’s surface, his surfboard rose a finger-width. The swell? He counted seconds. Cooler water from the depths raised goose bumps on his skin. Twenty. The board lifted again. Yep. It’s the swell.
Grung grung grung grung grung grung.
A vibration? He sank to feel it better.
Rung grung. Rung grung. Rung grung.
Has to be a boat engine. A fisherman on his way home? Up again to the surface.
The swell increased noticeably in strength and height while Tardi trod water waiting for the boat to pass and the water to calm after the boat’s passage.
RUU-UU-UNG. GRUU-UU-UNG. RUU-UU-UNG. GRUU-UU-UNG!
The water trembled and he with it. The increasing swell with him in the trough between two wave crests hid the boat till the last moment. It was coming straight for him! His heart hammered at his ribs. Frantically he sculled back down. The boat crunched down on his surfboard. Displaced water punched him down, hard.
Oof!
He slid along the wreck then along the sharp coral. Toxins from the coral flamed through him like a fire front ahead of a storm wind. He breathed in water. His chest burned. Lungs bulged. He was drifting away. Fading out.
Wait! He had to live! He had to live for his little brother Steve. Up! Up! Up!
Slivers of skin and trails of blood rose and twirled alongside as he exploded through the water ceiling, coughing, snorting, sucking in air with rasping gasps. His blood clouded the surrounding water. How long before a shark came nosing by? Where was the damned boat?
A huge pink tongue slurped over his back, wiping off blood and threads from his clothes and … Was that something in his mind? The toxins were at work already? For a moment, he forgot how to swim. Then he remembered Steve and spat out bloodied seawater. He kicked hard and hauled seawater from in front.
MONGREL by Rita de Heer (2019) books2read.com
UBL: https://books2read.com/u/bW9Pgq
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Spent the morning strolling around #MaslenArboretum (tree collection) with some of the people who look after it and are constantly improving it.
They accompanied me on my pre pre fungi walk ahead of the pre fungi walk with the organiser of #BigScrubDay, which in its turn is ahead of the day when I will lead a #FungiWalk.
The biggest problem is no rain so no fruiting bodies to show off. I’ll probably have to call the walk something like Evidence of Fungi in the Arboretum.
I’ve been on the low-FODMAP diet for nearly five years now and dragon fruit is one of the seven fruits I’m allowed to eat.
But it’s the only fruit on my list of can’t-be-bothered foods.
It’s beautiful to look at, I’ll grant you. I find it hard to eat past its perfume-like scent and its taste is little better than that vegetable beloved by many older Australians, the choko… it’s that bland.
This is page 1 of Mongrel Part 1 of the Doomed? series. If you like what you read, hasten to your favorite ebook distributor, the 99c sale ends on 14 July.
1: Tardi
Tardi Malko dived down the water column to where the wrecked trawler lay on its side six meters below, the water as cool and smooth as satin bed-sheets. He stopped a meter above the wreck, sculling with his hands. He’d break the perfection of the display if he touched down, but now that he’d seen the silver coral, he definitely wanted to use it in the video clip he intended to submit for the Virtual Surfing job.
He smiled closed-mouthed to not let any water in. Oh yes! This little addition is going to swing the vote my way, he thought. He swam up for a breath, aiming for the dark torpedo shape of his surfboard floating above.
Out of habit, he checked for triangular fins when his head broke through the surface of the water. Not that he expected any of the really wild wildlife that passed through; not the season for it.
In the east it was still too bright to see much, with the rising sun seeming to hang only a couple of hand-widths above the horizon. He turned, scooping at the water with his hands and kicking with his feet. The Byron Shire coast was dark blue and rumpled with hills. The surface of the sea had the bronze tints of a Roman mirror, no wind and still no swell. His surfboard only moved because he’d troubled the water near it.
Deep breath.
He dived, squeezing his eyebrows together to adjust the goggles for magnification. On the way down, he flicked the side of the goggles near his left temple to switch to the cam function. With the goggles videoing, he swept his gaze back and forth over the silvery clumps for a background sequence of the squared pattern. There were ten rows of the clumps on the near-horizontal side of the wreck. To create a pattern like this the coral must have been seeded.
Up for a breath, and down again.
The early sunlight trembled through the turquoise water and reflected off what looked like barbs, the coral’s hair-like structures. The sun’s rays glancing over the hairs must cause the shimmering effect people had told him about. Good score, Tar-boy. All my problems solved.
MONGREL by Rita de Heer (2019) books2read.com
UBL: https://books2read.com/u/bW9Pgq
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