Category: My Family

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A Labour of eLove

It’s always good to celebrate creative successes. This is one of those times.

eloves me, eloves me notWhen I first met my partner Linda she had started working on the novel she always wanted to write. That was six years ago, and the novel has certainly had its stops and starts over that time. Writing is not always an easy thing to do, and there were times when life just got in the way and it became difficult for her to keep moving that cursor to the right. However, I’m pleased to say that over the last few months she’s really pushed herself to finish writing the manuscript, and over the last few weeks it’s been through seemingly endless revisions and edits, fine tuning of words and sentences, and onto the final processes of typesetting and preparation for publication.

I’m proud to say that Linda’s first novel is now finished, published and available.

The novel, eloves me, eloves me not, is a contemporary love story in which 39 year old Kayte Wexford realises that she still hasn’t met her Mr Right and so decides to give Internet dating a try. As the story unfolds she experiences some hilarious, fascinating and occasionally scary insights into the pros and cons of finding love online. It’s a clever, wonderfully well written story, with interesting plot lines and an ending you probably won’t see coming. It’s got some really funny scenes in it, some others that get quite hot and steamy, and it cleverly weaves in a lot of useful lessons about finding love and staying safe in the age of the Internet. If you’ve ever tried Internet dating there will probably be lots of scenes and characters you will recognise and identify with!

I’m particularly proud of the fact that Linda decided to self-publish the book. As an independent author and publisher, she gets to have total creative control over the end product. She got to write the story exactly how she wanted it to be written. She came up with the vision for the cover artwork and managed a design contest through 99designs.com to bring it to reality. She leveraged a group of friends from around the world to read the first draft and offer constructive feedback. She got it typeset exactly how she wanted it. She managed the publication process through CreateSpace.com (Amazon’s self publishing division) as well as creating ebooks through Kindle Direct Publishing and SmashWords.com.

Of course, self-publishing is a double edged sword. While you get to maintain full creative control over the final product, you’re also responsible for creating awareness and demand for it. Right now, she’s working hard to spread the word that a) the book exists, and b) people should read it!

Needless to say, I’m incredibly proud of what she’s done, and would like to support her as much as possible. So, if you know someone who would enjoy reading an intelligent, funny and contemporary love story, please tell them about eloves me, eloves me not. It’s available through Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions, and on SmashWords in just about every other format, including epub and mobi. (It’s coming soon to the Apple iBooks Store, Barnes and Noble and the Nook Store, but SmashWords can provide all those formats right now). If you know someone who would like the paperback version, may I suggest they get it through her CreateSpace store… it’s exactly the same price and version of the book as Amazon, but CreateSpace offers the best royalty payments for independent authors.

You can find out more at www.elovesmeelovesmenot.com

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Virtual Busking her way to Japan

My daughter Kate loves to sing.  She discovered this ability a few years ago when she came home from school and announced that she wanted to try out for a solo part in a local performing arts concert.  Although we always thought she had a nice voice that could carry a tune, we had totally missed the fact that she was actually quite talented vocally and so her intention to sing solo at this concert was a bit of a surprise.  Long story short, she has discovered her voice and is working hard at developing it further.  She’s done workshops and music camps and is now working with a singing coach.  She really does love to sing.

She was recently selected to be part of the Talent Advancement Program (TAP), a program for kids with musical talent aged 13 to 18.  For the 23 kids selected to be part of TAP, it’s a pretty special group to be take part of.  They get to learn and grow by actually performing in front of people.  Tomorrow, they are all performing at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, next week they do a gig for some senior citizens, and so on.  All great experience.

From the 23 kids involved, 16 of them were chosen to take part in a cultural exchange to Japan later this year.  Our local city, Bankstown, has a sister city arrangement with Suita, a city just outside Osaka.  The kids will be going over in October, performing in local schools in Suita and living with a host family for 5 days. They also get to travel on the Bullet Train, see a bit more of Japan, and even perform at Tokyo Disneyland.  It will be quite the experience for a 13 year old girl!

As parents, you want your kids to have experiences like this.  The things she will see and experience on this trip will be amazing. To be immersed in a different culture for 10 days, especially one like Japan which has such different customs and food, will be awesome and unforgettable.

Of course, it comes at a cost. Despite the fact that the TAP program subsidises part of the airfare, there is still a significant cost involved in going. As excited as Kate was to have been selected, she was also quite apprehensive about accepting because of that cost. Despite that, her mother and I will try to find the money because we think it’s an experience worth having.  To help out, the TAP kids were encouraged to come up with ways of doing some fundraising to help contribute to the costs of the trip.

So Kate came up with an idea. She collected a bunch of videos of her singing and put them together on a website as a sort of “virtual busking” site. The videos were added to YouTube and embedded in the site so that viewers can watch, and a “tipjar” connected to Paypal in case anyone wants to make a donation to her trip. She asked me for a hand with some of the technical stuff, but the rest of it was all her idea.

I’m very proud of her, not just for being part of a group like TAP, but also for her initiative in wanting to find an innovative way to raise some money to cover this cost.  She’s telling family and friends about it, but I said I’d also try to help spread the word about it via Twitter and the blogosphere. I hope you take a moment to check it out, leave an encouraging comment on the discussion tabs, and possibly even drop a small donation in her tip jar.  I know she would appreciate it greatly.

The site is at www.katebetcher.com.

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Wrapped in Cotton Wool

As a parent, it’s a fine line we walk sometimes in knowing where the boundaries are for your kids. We want to protect them from danger and shield them from hurt. At the same time, we need to allow them to experience the world and learn to interact with it in meaningful ways. This paradox of safety versus experience is a tricky balance to get right, but I’m convinced that we are probably the most overprotective generation of parents in history. A recent post here listed a number of tongue-in-cheek example of how much we seem to overreact to things that would have been much less of a drama a few years ago. How many of you went out playing all day when you were a kid, and the only rule was to be home by dark? No “Call me when you get there to let me know you arrived ok”… just “Bye dear, have fun playing!”

This video from the TED Talks series, called “5 Dangerous Things you should let your Children do” makes a similar observation that maybe we need to just lighten up a bit on our kids. Take a look…


In our schools I find we are developing the same, if not worse, overprotective behaviours. My last school insisted on having staff members walking the children across the road after school (it’s a high school!) – I found this laughable… we have them in class all day teaching them to be mature and independent thinkers and then we won’t let them cross a street without assistance. Our excursion (field trip) program became impossibly hard to work with over the past few years due to all the excessive safety regulations and the need to “guarantee” a safe environment outside the school. You can never get a total guarantee that a situation will be 100% safe – of course you want it to be as safe as possible – but when you start to compromise the creation of situations and environments in which to learn because there may be a small risk involved… I don’t know, that just seems silly to me. Life has sharp edges. Deal with it.

No one wants to see children get hurt, that’s for certain. Regardless of whether your role is that of teacher or parent, I’m sure we all want to see our children stay safe. My own daughter was bitten on the face by a dog a few years ago and the feeling of sheer panic and distress I felt as a parent as I looked down as the blood streaming out of the huge gash torn in her cheek was an indescribable anguish. But would I say to her to now stay away from all dogs? No way. She loves dogs. She’s fallen off a bike and skinned her leg a few times, but that doesn’t mean she should never ride a bike again. In the process of living, sometimes you’ll get a bit knocked around. That, quite literally, is life.

Kids – just like adults – need to occasionally go through some of the painful parts of life if they are to experience the wonder of what it means to live.