It was such fun to celebrate Candice and Bea Pearl in my last post. Today I’m going to talk about what I’ve been up to.
Like Sandra, I own a publishing business. In 2019, my sister and I opened Pavlova Press and we are currently publishing anthologies so we can help new voices be heard. Our latest volume is called Ngā Ripo Wai | Swirling Waters. It contains over 50 short stories or poems from 44 contributors and is written in English and Māori. The book celebrates both current connections and the history of our local region. It was here, two hundred years ago, that two Māori chiefs drew their individual marks on the Deed of Sale for about 13,000 acres of land in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. This sale allowed the establishment of the local Mission Station and the town that now has the honour of being the country’s longest continually occupied joint Māori–European settlement.
The voices in Ngā Ripo Wai | Swirling Waters come from new and experienced writers; from young and old; and from Māori, Pākehā (European New Zealanders) and other ethnicities. The writing is from people who have felt the connection and who celebrate the people and the area. The video below is from a live TV interview about the book.
Ngā Ripo Wai | Swirling Waters is by no means the first book to inter-weave two languages and I certainly hope it won’t be the last. Yara Rodrigues Fowler highlights her top ten bilingual books here. I’ve read two on the list and am looking forward to exploring some of the others. There are also a number of children’s books appearing in multi-languages in New Zealand and around the world. Take time out these holidays to read some in a language you are interested in exploring.
As well as being a publisher, I’m also a writing coach and currently have a number of clients working on novels from paranormal to crime to literary fiction, science fiction and historical fiction. Trisha Harmon is one of them. She has finished her manuscript and is now submitting to agents. Her YA novel centres around seventeen-year-old Claire who gets a second chance at love when she discovers she can see her dead boyfriend’s ghost. The domino effect of his death reveals a family secret that leads to Claire healing parts of herself that she wasn’t aware were broken. If this sounds like the sort of story you or your teenager might be interested in you can follow her writing Facebook page here – you won’t be disappointed, I promise!
If you are writing a novel and would like to join our writing support group on Facebook you can do that here.
Until next time, happy writing and reading, everyone, and please don’t leave your 2022 goals until 1 January – make them now so they don’t become just another New Year’s resolution that tails off around March.
The Wonder of Words 