Bursting into print again

My new book comes off the printing press this week. Compared to my other books it’s minimal, at 11,000 words and 40 pages. But a lot of work went into it, and not just the recent writing and layout. It’s a of decades of learning and doing.

This is a handbook about researching, writing, producing and publishing family history books, and it developed out of talks I’ve done at the National Library this year. Well, to be precise, one of the talks hasn’t happened yet – it’s next month.

A solution to the W(h)anganui woes

Why  change Wanganui’s spelling to Whanganui? Surely not because whanganui means ‘large harbour’? Where’s the large harbour?

Looks like a wide upside-down river to me.

Let’s steer clear of both warring factions and, in the interests of accuracy, go for a new name altogether: Waipara North.

Wai= water.

Para=sediment, mud.

Spring has sprung

Click to enlarge

During spring our property in Martinborough is an exciting place to return to each weekend. Everything, including daffodils, is busting out all over. It’s quite a contrast to our place in Ngaio, Wellington, where most of the vegetation is New Zealand native and is mostly green all year round.

Java meets the great outdoors

Over the last two weekends, our new Burmese kitten, Java, has been introduced to the great outdoors. He’s coped very well and had a wonderful time. New sights, new scents, grass under his feet, meeting the neighbour’s cat, climbing trees, birds – close, though fortunately not yet personal.

Java takes cover under an artichoke plant. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Here are some little videos of the action.

Climbing a tree for the very first time:

Meeting the neighbour’s cat:

Meeting the neighbour’s cat  again:

Startled by birds – a flock of sparrows flew suddenly over his head. This video got the following comment on YouTube: “It very nice. Cat is good eating in my country but I dont do this.”

Chasing a bit of apple tree pruning:

Java reclining at the end of his big day out

“It very nice. Cat is good eating in my country but I dont do this.”

Blogging for genealogists

Earlier this year, during the NZ National Library’s family history month, I was asked to give a talk on Writing and publishing your family history. I felt a bit of a fraud really. I had written and published a family history book – Going Abroad – but it was way back in 1997. Since then, I have helped other people research and produce their books, but I haven’t been a practitioner in my own right for more than ten years. But Going Abroad was well reviewed when it first came out and sold well, not just to my own family. There seems to be some residual glory, because I’ve been asked to repeat my presentation in November, as part of a Friends of the National Library lecture series on the changing face of modern publishing.

During my first presentation, I mentioned the tremendous help now available on the Internet to family history researchers. There’s much more information and resources on the Net now than there was in the 1990s when I did my research.

One of my suggestions was that people starting a family history project should establish a blog. Not a general blog, but one devoted specifically to their family history project. It could be made public but it could also be a private blog restricted to people who have been given a password.