Wildlife Wednesday - babies?

Egg laying, January 2014

Back in January, I had a surreal experience in seeing a water dragon laying eggs. You can see the post here and I popped the photo on here - such a wonder!

The other day I was around the same area (walking down the track to the beach) when I came across these two little guys.

They were maybe 6 cm long (about 1/3 of the adult female). Not exactly where the eggs were laid, but close by.

Posing Water Dragon, March 2014

It was an exciting moment to see the young after seeing eggs being laid. I know the chances of them being hatched from the eggs I watched being laid, are slim, but still, life cycles are wonderful.

Young Water Dragon, March 2014

I loved the guy who posed for me. He was fearless - maybe it's a she :)

More photos than words today - hope you don't mind!

Sunday Story - writing lessons

Don't doubt - you can make it!

In this world of publishing, so much happens behind closed doors and with 'secrecy'. You have to wait until contracts are signed, before announcing new books. Sometimes you have to work on new stories in a shroud on secrecy. You get lost in your world of creating and waiting, creating and waiting. Sometimes you're floundering and you forget the thrill of readers reading and relating to your stories.

This week the writing world has given me some lessons. Lessons I will no doubt forget, but if I write them here, I have a better chance of finding them next time I forget!

I got royalty statements this week, which shows how many books you've sold, and if you're lucky, you may get paid. My lesson: people do buy my books. I never know. My sales aren't great so I don't really change Amazon rank, and they aren't recorded on Novel Rank any more because they're low. So it's a mystery. Books are there but who knows what happens behind the screen. But now I do! Even after 18 months, my short story A Real Online Fantasy is selling copies, which means people are reading what I write. And that is such a thrill.

This week, I was asked to do some collaboration. This is exciting and terrifying all at once. I was stoked to be asked, but scared about pulling my weight. My lesson: Make friends, you never know when you can help each other. I'm not too bad at collecting people, even though I'm a bit of a hermit. I don't collect lots of life-long bosom-buddy friends, but I have lots of friendly acquaintances/friends. I'm the person who sends Christmas cards and wishes to a heap of people and some of them, that's our only contact all year. But I like knowing that they came into my life for a reason, and I like to acknowledge that they're still a big part of me. It may seem corny, but I appreciate people who've done something for me.

I've also learned to trust my writing process. When things haven't gone so well, I've tried other things but now I've found a way that works for me, and I'm beginning to trust it. This week my trust got tested, but I stuck with it and was rewarded. So, My Lesson: trust my writing process.

It's been a bit of a huge week, and dealt me up one more writing lesson - My Lesson: Don't doubt yourself. I've been working on something for over 5 years. I didn't follow the normal path (of course, it's me!) and I've had no success because of this. But persistence, good encouraging friends, and much work, has finally meant that someone connected with my story. I was at a real decision point with this and if I didn't have positive feedback, I thought I'd have to succumb and change what I wanted to do (conform). But now I don't. And I'm keen to see how my idea works (or doesn't). But in the world of secrecy, I can't tell you more :)

Does the world ever hit you with a week's worth of writing lessons?

Phallic Friday - erotic dreams

Do you dream? I'm a dreamer. Almost every night I have a dream (or multiple dreams) that I mostly remember. Often they make completely no sense at all, but sometimes they're good for stories! Sometimes I even have the most erotic dream where I wake all hot and sweaty, and bloody disappointed!! :)

Lately, I've been having a few of those erotic dreams that have my heart racing, sweat beading on my skin, and tingles running through me. My lover isn't anyone I know, well, not really. The damn hero out of Deep Diving has taken residence in my brain. How the hell has he done that?

Last night, I met him in a pre-planned surprise my husband organised (and if that ever happens, someone has actually swapped my husband with a stranger!). It was incredible. The pre-planned surprise ended up being exact scenes from my book - and drat, no, not the sex! We had a swim and lunch on the beach. The exact lunch in my story. The swim wasn't the same as the story, it was at a local beach here, not on Lord Howe.

A few weeks back, I had the hot steamy dream with DD's hero, but it wasn't exactly like the book and I woke waaaaayyyyy too soon. He's popped in a few times like that. But last night was weird. It wasn't sex, it was the getting to know you stuff. But I didn't learn anything new. So why did he come visit?

All my other story heroes have taken their ending and gone. Even if I've only written a scene for them, they've accepted that and gone. And my stories don't always end happily ever after. Sometimes it's just a one-off sex encounter (like Pain Surfer) - and the surfer dude is long gone. In A Real Online Fantasy, I left it open for a second installment by not having his fantasy fulfilled... yet he's gone. In The Virginity Mission, I never thought Mac and Jason would end up married forever - he's her first love and I wasn't convinced they last forever - but they were both happy where I left them. In DD, Sam must be happy because she's gone. But him? No. He's still annoying me - in the nicest possible ways :)

What do you do to get rid of your dream lover? How do you cope with hot, steamy dreams that are burned on your mind for the rest of the day? Anyone had any experience with this? Or have I totally lost my marbles this time?

Wildlife Wednesday - deep diving whales

No idea what whale this is, but I think it's a whale :)

Oh WOW! I just read this news article (here) that says scientists have been studying whales off California and have recorded a Cuvier's Beaked Whale diving to a depth of 3.2km. WOW! Just wow!

Imagine the water pressure at that depth? It says it's equivalent of 320 atmospheres.

And the longest dive lasted for 137 minutes - yep, over 2 hours!

That's some feat!

They recorded 1100 dives, with the average being 1.4km. That's a lot of diving.

This fascinates me. We don't really know much about the inhabitants of the ocean. But why would a whale dive that far? It would have to be chasing food, right? Big giant squid of the deep?

We have these whales around Australia, they know this because of strandings, not sightings. Here's some Aussie info on them.

They're about 8m long for females, up to 10m for males.

They like deep water and are rarely found in waters less than 1km deep (and after the diving info, this is understandable, any shallower would be boring for them :) ).

Oh, they eat mostly oceanic squid. And one found off Victoria had up to 500 individual squid in its stomach. That's a LOT of squid.

I wonder if they chase a big squid to those depths, or if there was a huge mass of squid down there that the whale went down to eat.

Nature is fascinating :)