News from Applecross May 2021

The latest update from Amanda Giorgis,
best-selling author of the Applecross Saga
Home news

Well, I think you could say that our summer drought has come to an end at last. What a storm we had one day last week! The rain and hail falling so fast that it couldn’t drain away on our hard-as-rock ground. There are now a few patches of green showing on the lawn, but we really do need more rain soon, please.
New Zealand’s autumn weather is often a blessing of bright sunny days with cloudless skies. It may get cold at night (we’ve had heavy frosts already), but the days make up for it, stocking up our sunshine levels to see us through the winter. 

I promised you fresh eggs in the last newsletter, but we are not quite there yet. Rosie, Daisy and Ivy are still growing into young ladies and their red combs are showing up now, so it won’t be long. There’s such pleasure in collecting eggs each day, but I always try to say thank you to whoever laid it. Holidays
Holidays

In April we took a little break from Applecross headquarters and headed west to Reefton. What a fascinating town it turned out to be. A gold mining community, thriving in the 1880s, so plenty of research material for my next few books. Reefton was the first town in New Zealand to have street lighting, even before New York apparently. As so many small towns do, its fortunes declined in recent years, but my goodness, the locals have certainly made the best of their history to encourage visitors. Even the litter bins have historical street scenes on them. We really enjoyed fossicking around the area looking for bits and pieces of industrial history, despite the heavy rain. (Note – it rains a lot more on the western side of New Zealand than it does on the East Coast!).In what is becoming a monthly update on all things ornithological, I could not help but share this photograph, taken at the ruins of Energetic Mine. This little S.Island robin got so close to me that I had to step back to fit him into my camera lens! I am rather pleased with the result though.
Reading

I am rushing through a repeat reading of Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters series at the moment. Who else is waiting with anticipation for 27th May when the story of the 7th sister is revealed? Sometimes reading a book more than once reveals things you didn’t pick up first time, and this is proving to be so. Perhaps I am a bit slow realising this, but apparently Pa Salt appears in the historical bits of all 6 books so far. Have you spotted him?

If you are looking for something purely historical to read, I have some suggestions for free downloads available at Historical Fiction for May

An Applecross Companion

You will now find a list of Applecross folk and their dogs in The Applecross Companion. I will be adding more as time goes by, although I am eagerly awaiting delivery of something that will make it a lot easier to include drawings. More next month about that!

It is still a work in progress, but you are welcome to dive on in there and take a look. Go to https://amandagiorgis.com/the-applecross-companion/ – use the password ‘Applecross’ to get access.

What do you think?
Any ideas of other things to include?
Please do email me at amanda.giorgis@icloud.com with any thoughts and suggestions.
I do love hearing from my readers with feedback (good and bad, of course).

Stories from Applecross, the Box Set
Now, I have made the presumption that, should you be reading this, you have already purchased and/or read at least one of my books in the Applecross Saga. Therefore, you may not need to buy the box set, which contains the first four books in one special ebook package. I ask you, instead, to recommend it to friends and family. Available at a reasonable price, exclusively from KOBO at https://www.kobo.com/en/ebook/stories-from-applecross

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