Category: Nanima

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The 4-book Nanima Series is Now Complete

The fourth and final book of the Nanima Series, The Flat, is now complete and available. It is deeply satisfying to finish not just The Flat, but the whole series, which has been a friend, confidant, and challenge for the past four years.

Spanning four deeply personal and spiritually rich books—Nanima, Geboor, Sonder, and The Flat—the series follows Maliyan, an insightful and grounded seeker whose path unfolds across the quiet towns and wild landscapes of rural Australia.

The first book, Nanima, was inspired by the rural area my family comes from in NSW, Australia. When I began writing the second book, Geboor, I moved from the city to country Victoria. It and the following books were shaped by the two rural towns I’ve lived in since then.

Alongside Maliyan are Luna—intuitive, witty, and playfully avoidant as he learns to love truly—and Bell-Bell, whose brilliance and volatility reflect the challenges of change and the yearning for wholeness.

The Nanima Series offers not just a story, but a spiritual companion. It invites you to walk the path of growth, to listen deeply to the land and your own spirit, and to remember that evolution is both quiet and profound. 

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The Flat (Book 4 of Nanima Series): Paperboy (Chapters 1 to 2)

Here is the beginning of The Flat (Book 4 of the Nanima Series).

PAPERBOY

Chapter 1: Happy Dreams

“Happy dreams,” said Luna as he opened the bedroom door for Iggy to enter. 

“Sleep well,” said Maliyan as she headed for the bathroom. 

“I will,” said Luna. “The night is so quiet at your house that I feel like I’m in a cocoon.”

He was used to the hustle and bustle, traffic and horns, yelling and late-night laughing of inner-city life.

At the end of his Christmas holiday break, Luna was ready to tell Maliyan that he never left for the northern city and was still in the southern one near her. When he initially decided to move back north, he gave notice on his flat. By the time he decided that he was no longer going, his flat had been leased to someone else, so he was homeless. Maliyan offered him her spare room, assuming he wouldn’t take it. He did take it. The last time they lived together was summer, two years ago, in Nanima, in the shophouse of Luna Tiks.

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Sonder (Book 3 of Nanima Series) has Been Published!

Sonder (Book 3 of Nanima Series) has now been published! It is available as an e-book and paperback, and the audiobook will soon be published.

When you are closest to making a breakthrough in your personal growth, your fear throws up the greatest intensity. It will do whatever it can to deter you from moving ahead. That is the nature of human consciousness and growth. If you succumb to its frightening and treacherous threats, pick yourself up and try again. With perseverance, your fear will exit the scene, and you will be standing in a sparkling new world. The problems encountered by those closest to Maliyan intensify as their paths intertwine more densely and their individual journeys traverse sinuous inner terrain. The rhythm and beauty of the natural environment around them comforts and pushes them ever onwards.—Sonder

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Nanima Series

If you haven’t started the Nanima Series yet, you may like to! Here are a few reviews:

  1. I gobbled up Nanima. It’s so comforting to have your presence through these books. I very much relate to the narrator, so curiously and wisely witnessing this world. 
  2. A spiritual experience. An unusual fiction. Goddard’s book is a great depiction without being stereotypical.
  3. Spiritual in the best way.
  4. A story with something special.
  5. Well written and thought-provoking. 

Available as single books, combined volumes, and audiobooks from most online outlets. The Nanima Series is a unique story journalling the inner evolution of a spiritual seeker within the context of her relationships and life. It is set in the equally unique environment of rural Australia.

As Audiobook

Google Play  Audible, Amazon

Or, if you are on Spotify (Premium), you can listen to all my audiobooks for free.

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Geboor (Book 2 of Nanima Series) is Now Available!

Geboor (Book 2 of Nanima Series) is now live! It is available in different formats:

  1. Geboor (paperback and ebook)
  2. Geboor (audiobook)
  3. Nanima Series: Combined Volume Books 1 and 2 (paperback and ebook)

The Nanima Series is a unique story journalling the inner evolution of a spiritual seeker within the context of her relationships and life. It is set in the equally unique environment of rural Australia and has many important messages about the value of the Earth around us and the earth within us. Both ensure our health and happiness.

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Nanima Series Background

Here are some real-life places on which the fictional places of the Nanima Series are based.

  • The fictional town of Nanima is rural Wellington, N.S.W., Australia.
  • The main female character has adopted the Aboriginal name of Maliyan, the Wiradjuri name for wedge-tailed eagle (totem for the Binjang mob of Wellington).
  • Fictional Luna Tiks cafe (Four Cats) is across the road from the empty, pink dance school.
  • Cathedral Cave (Wellington Caves) is where Maliyan meets the spirit of Wandaang, who wants his ancestor’s bones back.
  • The tiny fictional town of Yan Yan Gurt (where Maliyan’s ancestors come from) is Stuart Town.
  • Historic Stuart Town cemetery is the Yan Yan Gurt cemetery where Maliyan senses her ancestor’s spirits.
  • The mystic artist character, Euroka, gets his name from a family property in the area.
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Geboor (Book 2 of Nanima Series): Shophouse

“I think you are on the spectrum, boo,” said Luna.

Maliyan laughed and thought, Always the joker.

Luna wasn’t smiling and continued sympathetically, “Lots of people are. I mean, I like people on the spectrum. I find them interesting.”

Maliyan wasn’t sure what was worse—Luna’s diagnosis of her mental state or his trying to make it better by kindly reassuring her that, regardless, it was fine with him. It made it all the funnier or all the more disturbing.

Being in the middle of making a sandwich, he didn’t look up but said, “That’s why you don’t get jokes. You take things literally. Your brain is wired differently.”

Maliyan had been living in the shophouse since late spring when Euroka returned from Uluru and took back his hut. After some teething problems, she, Luna, and Iggy adjusted to each other’s fairly constant company in a small space.  At first, Maliyan thought that Luna suggested she move in because Euroka was back and her own house was rented until the end of summer. However, after a while, she suspected that he had other motives. Sometimes, she thought it was because he felt she was strange enough without getting more so down on the Bell all by herself. This morning’s conversation about her mental state seemed to support that hypothesis.

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Nanima is Published

Nanima (Book 1 of Nanima Series) is now available on Amazon in paperback and ebook. The audiobook will be available in 2 weeks. This new fiction series is located in an Australian rural town, Wellington, N.S.W. (Nanima in the story). It is the area my family come from. My grandfather was a pioneer farmer and made his house from the stones of the river. Farming has been in the family for generations. The series follows the lives of characters I hope you will come to love and welcome into your heart and mind. My writing style is short and succinct—easy to read. However, the messages about life and relationships are both easy and difficult. As is always the case, things seem simple when we understand them, but when we don’t…big mess!

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Nanima (Book 1 of Nanima Series): Discovery

Happy new year, 2022. May you make the most of this year. Here is the beginning of a new story to start the year!

Nanima lay in a pretty-as-a-picture valley at the joining point of two living, breathing rivers. The small country town had an English name, but Nanima was its ancient-as-the-rivers Aboriginal one. When discovering it, English explorer, Oxley, said, “It is beautifully picturesque.” Of course, he didn’t really discover it. Even before the local people knew it, the valley and rivers knew themselves.

When you live from the land, which ultimately all of us do, soil is everything. Forgetting this is at our peril. The rich Nanima soil spread its generosity well beyond the banks of the rivers and fed the trees, the long-time people, the soon-to-arrive Chinese who would befriend the Aborigines as fellow under-rated people, and the incoming white folk with their eyes on grain and stock. Amongst the early white settlers were men who were good and men who were bad. Either way, the soil and rivers fed them, their children, and their grandchildren.