Tag: Nanima

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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!

Continue reading “Nanima is Published”
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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.