At ANZAC, remember all

Today is April 25th. 101 years ago, soldiers from around the world fought on the shores of Gallipoli. Throughout the country, New Zealanders will be attending services commemorating the lives lost in the fight for our freedom.Read More

Musical Support

Many of us have that one special someone in our lives that helps drive us forward. It doesn’t need to be a spouse or partner. It could be a parent, a sibling… a friend. They are the one person that will help you pick up the pieces when your world comes crashing down around you. For me, that one person is my husband.Read More

Editing Headaches…

Editing... The dreaded beast seems to have come to haunt me again. Just when I thought I had finished with this manuscript, there it is again. The revisions just go on, and on, and on, and on... Did I mention that they go on and on?

When you're writing, it's the inner critic that whispers sweet little nothings about self-doubt that just won't go away. If you're anything like me, you type so fast that sometimes your brain struggles to keep up; the spelling goes out the window and the autocorrect monster just gobbles up that carefully chosen word... without you noticing!

But the editor in me can't just let a new piece of writing go unchecked. I always go back and reread what I had written after a break (even a break as short as a toilet break). I see the punctuation errors, the grammar flaws, and the faults in the writing itself. I struggle in a big way to shut off the editor brain long enough to actually do any writing.

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A Flag Conundrum

You may or may not know, but my home country, New Zealand, is currently trying to decide whether we will change our national flag or not. By comparison to all the other horrible things going on in the world, this one decision is minor, but it's actually quite important. A flag helps define a nation's identity on the international scene. However, in this case...

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Why do we have earthquakes? Let the children explain…

On February 22, 2011, at 12:51pm (NZST), a 6.3 magnitude quake hit. The epicentre was only 10 km (6 miles) from the centre of Christchurch and at a depth of 5 km (3.1 miles). The residents of Christchurch had been living with aftershocks from a 7.1 quake that occurred 6 months prior. While the quake was not as strong as the September quake, the surface effect forces were far greater. The simultaneous vertical and horizontal ground movement was near impossible for buildings to survive. An already quake-crippled city was decimated.

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