The A to Z Challenge: Z is for Zealand

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer who in 1642 became the first European known to have visited New Zealand. He named the land he had encountered "Staten Landt", as he believed it might be linked to a Staten Landt in South America. The following year another Dutch navigator showed that the South American Staten Landt was a small island, not part of a continent, so cartographers changed Tasman's name to Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. Captain Cook anglicised the name to New Zealand, and that's stuck, although we now sometimes call our country "Aotearoa [land of the long white cloud] New Zealand".

It's an odd accident of history that our country has been named after an area that's physically so different, but these days New Zealand very much has its own identity.

New Zealand is a land of mountains and lakes, coasts and forests. It's the setting for my books, and it's my home.

Lake Manapouri

Milford Sound

Bay of Plenty

Milford Track

Beech forest, Te Anau

Mt Taranaki

Blue Pool, near Wanaka

Kepler Track

(Photographs all taken on our travels around the country.)

We've reached the end of the challenge! Thank you for your company on the journey.

New Year's Day

The New Year arrives early in New Zealand, thanks to our position close to the Date Line. So it's already eleven hours old as I write this. 2010 has got off to a pleasant start, including leftover méthode champenoise for breakfast.

Musing over 2009:
- I substantially edited Sentence of Marriage, removing most of what made up the first five chapters and reducing the word count by over 20,000. I also tightened and polished the three later books.
- I joined Authonomy in November 2008, so I've been a member for all of 2009. Sentence of Marriage has been in Authonomy's top 40 for the last few months. More importantly, I've received useful feedback and real encouragement, and have had the chance to read some fine manuscripts. I've also had a lot of fun there.
- I put my books on Smashwords, which has itself made huge progress this year as an increasingly high profile e-book provider. Sentence of Marriage is currently at number 15 on Smashwords' Top 100 list, and has had almost 3,000 downloads.
- I've had fine reviews on WorkingGirlReviews for Sentence of Marriage and Mud and Gold.
- I've made some progress on my WIP, most importantly in getting to know the characters who make their first appearance in this volume.

Looking ahead for 2010:
- I'd like to see a completed first draft of my WIP by the end of the year. It will take the series from 1912 to the mid-1920s, so will include the years of the First World War (though from the point of view of those left at home, not at the Front), a new area of research for me. The whole book is going to demand much research, a thought I relish.
- I'm hoping for more reviews (Sentence of Marriage was accepted for review by a site specialising in historical fiction on 31 December), and to gain more visibility for my books.
- I have a list of ideas for future books that keeps expanding, much to my delight.
- I hope to keep growing and improving as a writer (which, as Mr Collins said to Lizzie, perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier).

Happy New Year to everyone reading this.

An Avenue of Lime Trees

Last month we spent some time in the pretty little Wairarapa settlement of Greytown. From the time it was bypassed by the railway line, "development" left Greytown behind. As a result, it's well-endowed with Victorian buildings, both commercial and residential, and is now a popular spot for weekend visitors.

But what I specially wanted to see was the lime tree avenue in the Soldiers' Memorial Park.

Every town in New Zealand, small or large, has a war memorial of some sort, put up after World War I. Most often it's a tall monument known as a cenotaph. In Greytown the townsfolk did something different: they planted an avenue of lime trees. One tree for every soldier from the district who died in the war. One hundred and seventeen trees.

A town that before the war had a population of 1,123 lost 117 men in that war. There cannot have been a family left unscathed. Not a household that didn't lose a husband, a brother, a son. Girls who lost their sweethearts; women who never did meet the men who might have become their husbands. Farms "let go" because the strong young men who would have worked it never came home. As we walked along that long avenue, speaking in the hush that such a place evokes, it was a more powerful illustration of loss than any page of figures could be.

This week in New Zealand history

1 November 1898: the New Zealand Old-Age Pensions Act came into law, the first measure of its type in the British Empire.

The pension was modest (£18 a year), carefully means-tested, and had a racist element in its careful exclusion of "Chinese or other Asiatics". It was also limited to persons "deemed to be of good character"; no drunkards or fallen women allowed.

But for those fortunate enough to be eligible, the pension made the difference between destitution and a measure of security. It was the first stirrings of what eventually became New Zealand's social welfare system.

New Website

I have a website with some background information to my novels. Snippets of New Zealand history, as well as a description of the geographical setting.

The site is here.