KUNDELA Replica

In my quest to find out as much as I can about the pointing bone in my story Kundela I decided to try and replicate something that may have been made. Research shows that after the bone has been charged with mystic power and the target pointed at, for the kundela to work it had to be destroyed. These weapons were the burnt in a ritual fire and that is possibly why few exist today.

To discover what kind of materials were used I spent days checking and reading everything I could about the different ways a kadaicha man may have made and used the bone. As most kundelas are made from emu or kangaroo bones I figured if I kept a lookout on an interstate trip I might find one or the other that had been killed in a road accident and I would have the main element of my replica.

Fortunately while resting the dog on the side of the Adelaide road, he started sniffing around under a wattle tree and found the skeleton of a dead kangaroo . Now all I needed were a few feathers, something to replicate human hair and spinifex gum. I couldn't find spinifex but a gum tree provided a rich red resin that could be heated and moulded to make a pad on the handle end of the bone. Some twine was found and plaited to make the strap.

Using a fine cutoff wheel in an angle grinder I began shaping the bones. I took two tibia bones from the skeleton, these showed greenstick fractures, the animal had been hit by a vehicle of some sort and crawled into the scrub to die. Using the cutoff disc I tapered both bones and cleaned them with a burnishing pad.

The photo below shows my finished replica.

Research in to the construction of a Kundela

Today I thought I should spend a bit of time finding out how a Kundela is made and came across this wonderful diagram of the skeleton of a kangaroo. Just check out the size of the bones in their feet. No wonder they can hop.

Link: <a href="http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/animal-kingdom/marsupial-mammals/kangaroo/skeleton-kangaroo.php"><img src="http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/images/animal-kingdom/marsupial-mammals/kangaroo/skeleton-kangaroo.jpg" alt="skeleton of a kangaroo - Visual Dictionary Online" title="skeleton of a kangaroo - Visual Dictionary Online" /></a>

Interesting Article on E-publishing by Alan Kholer

Thanks to Fleur McDonald for posting this link on Facebook. Alan Kholer delves into the e-publishing market and opened the post to receive some interesting and informative comments.

Here is the link to get you there:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-30/kohler-video-has-not-killed-the-bookworm/4490404?WT.svl=theDrum

The Wordsmiths of Melton are back for 2013

Had a great day today catching up with a few of the gang from last years writing group. It was interesting to hear about everyone's holidays their writing and plans for this year.

Thanks to Les, Julee, Caitlin, Sonia and Tracey for you company at lunch today. I will miss you guys.

As a few of us won't be with the group this year, there are a couple of places available for anyone interested in writing. From a personal point of view, I found the fellowship of other writers a great benefit to me, and they encourage you when the words won't flow. The group has planned a few workshops to support their critiquing meetings for the coming year and you can get more details from the Melton Library of if you wish to contact me I will get Julee to get in touch with you.

Have a successful year Wordsmiths

To Self Publish or Not? That is the Question.

Having finished my novel KUNDELA I have sent out samples to different publishers. Having religiously followed their submission guidelines in the hope that someone would chance upon my masterpiece, I have checked the e-mail inbox daily with dissapointment. Weeks of waiting and with response times now passing I have to face the possibility of not being picked up on this first round of enquiry letters.

I have been through most of the self publish websites and now have would be publishers from all over the world willing to publish and market my book for a fee, in some cases a rather large fee. I don't have that kind of money to spend, and I'm not sure that Francis from Frisco can be bothered with the marketing plan my novel needs. I think it's an opportunity for them to make money from the author rather than the other way around.

Taking the view that I'm a trades person with a commodity to sell takes the marketing of  KUNDELA into an area I know well. I've spent all of my previous career in sales and marketing so I have the skills. What I don't have is the contacts, therefore I will need an agent or at the very least the contacts an agent has. The first question raised now, is how do I do I gain that knowledge. Therefore I started to research the people who have been in a similar situation to me and gone on to become successful and published authors.

From my research I find that it is necessary to embrace rejection as something that teaches you a lesson, and to learn from it. Another point I found helpful was to create a business plan for your proposal. To sell anything you need to know everything about it, what it is, what products it competes with, the strengths and weaknesses of both yours and your competitor's product.

Now I am on a quest to structure a business plan for KUNDELA, complete with a marketing plan, sales strategy and finance plan. Now I find that I'm on familiar ground with a product to sell.

Proving that writing is a business.


One of the sites I found helpful was a Youtube Interview  by Stacey Cochran with John Fuhrman as his quest. It is over 50 minutes long but contains some wonderful information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKLr9eWucrw

Time to start tapping into my inner teenager.

Writing Toby Farrier has caused me to rethink many things not the least of is the way we talk today. I guess any novel sets the time and place by the words that the characters use and Toby has thrown up the occasional challenge as I don't spend a lot of time with people of his age.

Maybe I should get out more, I have plenty of contact with those either side of their teens but with Toby I'm having a bit of trouble with dialogue used by the modern teenager. If it wasn't so hot today I'd park myself on a bench at McDonald's or one of our many other fast food outlets and scam some of their dialogue with some selective eavesdropping.

Writing tends to make you question everything we do and say. Sometimes when words like AWESOME,  EPIC and LIKE outnumber the nouns in a sentence I realise our language is a changing thing and I need a different approach. Just trying to understand today's young people speak made me think about the way we speak within in our different groups. Often for the same people this will vary and the use of swearing is demonstrative of this.
Among a rough group of mates out fishing or hunting I will find myself swearing along with the other members. Believe me we can fill the day with profanities that would make a shearer blush. IN another instance I might be with the very same people at a seminar or similar and we are all contained or restrained in our speech, demonstrating to those around us that butter wouldn't melt in our mouths.

There lies my conundrum I need to picture time, place and people as I write dialogue. Not easy but can be done.

Hang on McDonald's do ice-cream and I can justify it with research. Now where are those
keys to the air conditioned car.

Pat Baird's Story

Check out today's interview with Pat about his time in the tractor industry by clicking on this link: http://machinerymen.blogspot.com.au/