Friday in Summer

For what it’s worth, I finished the first draft of my novel, except the last chapter in January 2006. I couldn’t finish the ending until I had visited the area and made sure of a few details. The story was being hosted at Blogspot, but I moved it to a postkiwi.com server. It was supposed to be an Australian novel, but it turned into a very New Zealand one, so it belongs on the postkiwi site, really. It’s provisionally called Friday in Summer and I have learned a lot about blogging from the whole summer experience.

These are some of the photos that I used for inspiration: Sander’s photo of the Church of the Good Shepherd, a photo to prove that you can if you really want to, swim in the waters of Lake Tekapo and not die of hypothermia and a photo of the McKenzie monument. The links are on the blog sidebars. I would encourage readers to visit Sander’s site for the best Tekapo photos I have seen.

The McKenzie Country in the heart of the South Island of New Zealand is named after the sheep-rustler James McKenzie, who discovered the pass over the Dalgety Hills in his pursuit of a hidden passage for the sheep he stole from the rich sheep farmers of South Canterbury. The monument marks a special place in the story of the McKenzie Pass and is written in three languages: English Gaelic and Maori.