First up, I have a gorgeous new box set, just out today, to share, and then, there’s a personal story that illustrates how I think stories come together: with bits and pieces attracted like iron filings to the original inspiration magnet.
Shattered Worlds
23 EXCLUSIVE Fantasy, PNR and Dystopian novels.
ONLY 99 cents for a limited time!
Escape into twenty-three epic worlds that will leave you breathless.
From dystopian nightmares to gorgeous steampunk and fantasy settings to fairy-tale retellings and beyond, SHATTERED WORLDS has every story you’ve been dying to get your hands on!
This unique Young Adult/New Adult collection, inspired by the creative minds of today’s New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling authors, promises to satisfy your cravings for action and adventure as you experience rune magic and time-travel, overthrow corrupt governments, meet reapers and aliens, battle dragons, fall hopelessly in love, and break ancient curses, right alongside some of the bravest characters in fantasy fiction!
Each book within this collection is exclusive to the set and can’t be found anywhere else.
Rembember, it’s only 99c for a short time.
AMAZON LINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07145KYN9/
NOOK LINK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shattered-worlds-jl-weil/1126377745
iBOOKS LINK: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/shattered-worlds/id1234810320?mt=11
WEBSITE: https://www.shatteredworldsboxset.com/
TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnwx0A0Gy8U
Local History
On Sunday I visited the Art Gallery of Western Australia. I’ve loved that place since I was a kid. Walking up and down its central circular staircase is part of the ritual, spiral your way to the art! Anyways, while I was there I checked out a couple of Indigenous art exhibitions.
I stopped and just chilled with artworks by Alick Tipoti and Sandra Hill. Both were powerful in different ways, telling a story of culture and existence.
But the work that really affected me was by an unnamed artist, a painting on paperbark in a corner of the room by the entrance. There was a bit of background provided on the painting. The gallery had purchased the artwork from a woman who remembered being with her dad when he bought it from a Noongar artist at the Naval Base Hotel in the 1930s or 1940s.
I grew up (in the 1970/80s) in Naval Base, which was renamed Hope Valley, before being flattened to become an industrial park. It’s in the southern metropolitan section of Western Australia’s capital city, Perth.
The background on the painting’s provenance added that the unnamed local indigenous artist had lived with his family by Bibra Lake (which is a large and swampy lake a few miles from Naval Base where generations of kids remember playing – and watching out for snakes!).
I was talking with Mum about the painting and that it had been sold at the Naval Base Hotel, at which point (she grew up in Naval Base in the 1950/60s) she said, “no, it wouldn’t have been sold at the Naval Base Pub.” Which was where I’d mistakenly assumed the sale had taken place. It’s the only pub that I knew was there, although it’s gone now.
“There was a hotel before that,” Mum said. “Where the Alcoa refinery stands now. There was a shop there and a post office.” And she went on about how she’d loved the houses that used to stand near it, along the main road.
While we talked, I remembered how her mum had mentioned an older man recalling that Noongar people had camped at a swamp near where our home had been. Mum and I discussed how it would have been close enough that the artist could have strolled from his camp to the hotel and shops. There would have been a small community, too small to be called a township, but still… We were talking about a forgotten history.
I guess I wanted to share with you how a story falls into place with pieces from here and there collecting around an initial inspiration (in this case, the painting and its recorded accompanying history).
P.S. Remember Desert Devil is out on Thursday!
