Catching up for a cup of tea

First and foremost, thank you to my impressive array of readers , including News! Just let me know if you would like one of my entertaining articles in your publication. Negotiations are always open, especially for promotional interviews for Kingdom of Nerada! Perhaps you can come up with a glam photo!

Well it’s that time of year again. So we are at that stage, a rare stage for us. It’s called Time to Catch Up! The challenges have evaporated and we are victors with good news to share.  So it is very safe to catch up now, in the winter chill, catch up for a proverbial cup-of-tea or coffee, but more likely a meal at a cafe among clicking and clacking of cutlery and crockery. So here’s the cup and the teapot. I still don’t know how I managed to paint it, but it has a certain appeal.

I am gradually approaching bookshops with my new novels. Kingdom of Nerada has been under development for about seven years and is quite refined now, though I am looking for more images of the updated cover on the web. See below, for this is the first print edition and a new release.  The second novel, The Faery Enchantment, is also available and both are in digital as well as print. I am seeking reviews from interested fantasy readers, especially children and young adults.https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=marie+lukic&i=stripbooks&crid=58I5MXPPM1R&sprefix=marie+lukic%2Cstripbooks%2C277&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

I read at a Busybird Open Night recently, and had a great response to the opening chapter of Isabella Airyfairyabelous & the Sleepy Dragon. While writing, I had rehearsed that opening chapter until the sequence clicked into place. But now everyone wants a photo for my author bio, and I have very few I am fond of. A woman in her sixties hunting for a glamorous photo after a cold. Let’s face it, like many in their sixties, I have developed the perceptive ability to see through beauty and am now able to see the light within each one of us! About time! Just think about this situation. In art a few years ago, we drew portraits with wrinkles! Wrinkly portraits. We paid attention to the colours and textures etc, but that was years ago.

More than that, there is something of the soul that goes missing in the face when we wear makeup–and that’s coming from a makeupaholic–and perhaps it’s a good thing to hide all those imperfections and maybe less soul and less about our lives in our faces is worthwhile, after all. We can see I’m conflicted here. On the one hand, I am supposed to embrace each new wrinkle as evidence I have lived a full and less than disastrous life, but on the other hand the fresh beauty of youth is like a sweet dew adorned flower. The grand children are just such paragons of perfection, especially when they are asleep.

A seaside holiday may bring colour to my cheeks soon, but in the meantime, it’s back to the classroom for casual teaching as the Melbourne chill turns mornings frosty.