NINETEEN!

For the second time this week there were nineteen doves waiting for me when I opened the door at seven o'clock. Nineteen little white angels, with angel wings spread, making a concerted rush to get inside, eager to be fed on the little bits of cheese I was holding in both hands.

It is very hard to get out a door when there is a mass of white wings and feathered bodies trying their best to get in. But a very nice way to start the day.

Then when I bent down and opened my hands I had the usual exuberant, eager mass of angel wings beating round me. Wonderful!

TOLKIEN'S BIRTHDAY AND BOOKS

Today is Tolkien's 119th birthday, or as he would put it his eleventy-ninth.

Yesterday I ordered the proof of The Wing-Friends, an enchanting fantasy set in the ancient past that I wrote many years ago. Dorothy Butler liked it, and thought it should be published, but the publisher did not think there was enough of a market in New Zealand, so now it is being published by CreateSpace, part of Amazon. The process is very straightforward, the proof reached first-approval stage quickly and the physical book will be in my hands shortly. Once that has been checked and signed off it goes out all over the planet.

The greatest compliment ever paid it was by Dorothy Butler. I had reason to contact her many years later over someone else's book, and asked if she remembered mine. Yes, she did. A memorable story is always the best kind. I hope others find it as appealing.

Meanwhile my eBooks have continued to sell well on Amazon's Kindle Store, even when their promotion days ended, About 1500 copies so far in less than a week. The short horror-story, The Thing, is going like a rocket to my astonishment. A lot of people must like a bit of gross terror, or perhaps they see that it is like the real world: get it horribly wrong and things go horribly wrong for slightly more than 3 nanoseconds.

I am particularly pleased about my 10,000-word novelette Loving Minds, another fantasy, but a modern one. It was to a large extent inspired by a conversation I found myself next to on the Jet Raider ferry one night. It melded with other thoughts and imaginings and Loving Minds was the result. The sort of romance that can really only be dreamed of...