Each morning I check the Earth Wind Map
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=132.13,-30.00,1002
and this morning I found the above. That is a cyclone which I have learned has been given the name Narelle. You probably know what I think about giving storms names, but that is a rather attractive one. The storm itself is expected to be making landfall about now as a Category 5 near Cape Melville in far northern Queensland. I know that coast better than most, having sailed it four times in four different boats. There are very few people up there, which is one of the reasons I like it. I hope they survive.
I have become obsolete, if I was’t always.
I saw my demise in the above chart from the WASHINGTON POST yesterday. Writers and authors are a very small dot on the extreme right.
Another reason not to want to be young now.
Ah, well, it was good while it lasted.
I have just finished the second rewrite of GANNET 6. I may go over it again sometime, but not immediately.
Immediately I have to sort out formatting. I write on my 11” iPad Pro with attached Apple keyboard case using Apple’s Pages app. Unfortunately Pages for IOS does not export perfectly to anything, including my MacBook Air. So I have a lot of clerical work to do. I expect this is a task that AI could do quite quickly, but learning how to use AI to perform that task seems more complicated than just doing it myself, and since I am now obsolete, I have the time.
I have been asked what I will do with the book when it is publishable.
All my publishers, editors and agents have either retired or died. That happens when you get to be 84. I have sent out four queries. One to a publisher. Three to agents. I will wait awhile to see if I get any replies. This is like being twenty again and unpublished, when I am old and very published. I am curious to see what happens, but I will not wait long.
I think the book in its present form is not publishable except as an e-book. There are too many charts and photographs for it to be profitable in paper. I am willing to make some compromises, but, while I am a writer/obsolete, I think the reader’s experience of the voyage is much enhanced by the images. So most likely I will publish it in a Kindle edition myself. If so, I will price it modestly and donate all the vast royalties to charity. I wrote the book for the same reason I made the voyage: because it is what I do. Not for money, which of course makes it a very suspicious activity in our society.
Some poems.
A few of you may remember that I have posted this one before. I just came across it again in JAPANESE DEATH POEMS.
You may have read this in an English Literature class.
An excerpt from Lord Byron’s DON JUAN of particular interest to me.
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