March 20th 2010:
I have finally succumbed to Facebook and have started up a fan page there. It will be the easiest way to contact me, and to catch up on news of forthcoming books etc etc etc. You can find me listed as Sara Douglass, Official Fan Page (the other Sara Douglass page is run by Tor and I can have no input there). Celebrate the 15th anniversary of BattleAxe by becoming a fan!
July 3rd 2009:
I continue to improve, although the psychological battle is proving harder than the physical one. I have been incredibly down recently, and one of the things I decided to do was to move the Nonsuch sub-site to its own domain, which it really deserved. So, still terribly new, is the Nonsuch Kitchen Gardens site - I still have to move much stuff into the site and I will do that over the next few weeks. It probably doesn't deserve to go live yet, but what the heck ... (the links on the front page and the page headers here will still take you back to the older site, but I will change those over once I have most of the stuff moved).
Nonsuch Kitchen Gardens has its very own, and very very new, blog! Ha! LOL So if you want you can come visit me at the blog. That only went up this morning so it has one proud, lonely, entry. ;) (I am amazed I mastered the software enough to even post a single entry.)
The garden is really what is keeping me going at the moment, so it is what I am concentrating on.
Again, thank you so much for all the emails. You just have no idea how much they have meant to me.
May 30th 2009:
Hello everyone. I went very quiet for a while as I went back into chemo for three months. But now all treatment has been finished, I am in remission, and I am cast back into the cold, dark world all by myself again. So now it is just fingers crossed that I remain cancer free and that the original cancer was not aggressive. My surgeon oncologist will be keeping a close eye on me.
I am back to trying to live a more normal life. Both cancer, surgery and 6 months of chemotherapy really knocked me about. I'm concentrating now on regaining strength and fitness.
My life now is my garden, particularly my kitchen garden. The entire garden descended into a nightmarish mess for about a year as I was ill, so I have been spending as much time as possible fighting the weeds (damn it, why is there no chemo regime for weeds??). This winter I am putting in new raised beds which will extend my food growing area and I really want to get as close to self-sufficiency in food as I can.
So that is what I have been doing.
To everyone who has emailed and written in - thank you so much, Your support has meant a great deal to me. I apologize for not answering everyone personally - but too many of you wrote! :)
I am taking most of the rest of this year off, gardening as much as I can, and then back to writing. I have a new book planned and am looking forward to starting it.
Once again - thank you for all your support.
February 14th 2009:
I'm back! Surgery was fun (not) and I am very glad to be home. I spent 4 days in ICU (my advice is to never ever have an epidural - I was one of the ones who a) reacted very badly to it and b) it didn't bloody work anyway so I had no pain relief for about 24 hours as they couldn't give anything to me as my BP had dropped so alarmingly but I must stop whining about the pain ...) then got better very suddenly and was home again on day 6 post-op. Since then it has been a slow slog each day regaining my strength from the op and coping with chemotherapy again (I re-started about 10 days post-op). But things are looking good and I am feeling well and improving each day. I have two more sessions of chemotherapy to go and I am hoping that is all I will need.
I am getting back into the garden and my enthusiasm for it is coming back. Hopefully I will get back to the gardening blog very soon. As also hopefully I will reply to my hundreds of emails sent in - thank you so much for those - you have no idea how much they have helped.
I am looking forward to autumn - it is such a lovely time of year here in Tasmania and by then my muscles should be back in tune enough for me to get in some gardening.
January 13th 2009:
Thank you so much to all who have emailed in and who are busily raking away! I have replied to many of you but I am afraid time has caught up with me over the past 10 days or so and I have been lax. I am going in for surgery tomorrow and I have been told to expect a fairly length recouperation period after it so forgive me if you do not get a reply just yet. As soon as I can muster my chemo-mush-brain into gear, however, be assured I will get around to my correspondence. Here is a pic of me completely hairless on top of Mt Wellington, taken a few weeks ago. It was cold up there!
November 23rd 2008:
I beg forgiveness for all the letters I have not answered – I will get round to it … eventually.
But there is a good reason why I haven’t and why book 3 of Dark Glass Mountain is going to be a little-ish late (how late depends on me right now).
For close on 6 months I have been feeling shocking – it got dramatically worse 4 months ago since when I haven’t been able to work at all. Even making a cheese sandwich to eat has required monumental mental and physical effort. Doctors have spent a lot of time and a lot more of my money trying to decide what was wrong with me, coming up with roughly a different diagnosis per week, but fortunately (or not, as the case may be) they finally managed to settle on a firm diagnosis about 3 weeks ago, since when my life has been turned upside down several times over.
I have been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, so now I am on a course of chemotherapy, to be punctuated with major surgery in January-ish of next year, followed by more chemotherapy. I am happy to have a diagnosis (although I did try desperately to renegotiate back to one of the earlier ones!) and more than happy to now have a course of therapy and A Plan for the future.
Happily the chemotherapy has been working fairly well – even though I have just the one course of it thus far. I had a hellish week following the chemo, but the week following that has been rather good – yesterday I cooked myself a pork roast and vegetables! You have no idea what an achievement that was for me – not simply being able to eat a meal like that after months of constant nausea and vomiting, but finding the mental and physical energy to prepare it, too. I have been happily snacking on delicious roast pork ever since. So I am feeling fairly positive. Pork does that for me.
I have an amazing team of two oncologists (one surgical, one medical), one oncology nurse, one set of chemotherapy nurses and an awful lot of support from my friends and family, which has been awesome. Sometimes you don’t realise just what is out there for you until something like this happens. I am very positive for the future, but I am also looking forward to taking at least a year out to concentrate on me rather than write. Sara Douglass will be taking a break, so Sara Warneke can concentrate on herself for the time being.
But there is something some of you might like to do for me, if you wish. I have many friends who live very far away, and all of them wanted to do something, but what? Well, many of them have joined my Rake Squad.
I have a visualisation thing I do regularly. I visualise I live in a beautiful walled orchard. It has only six trees, but that’s enough for one person. There is emerald green grass and white daisies growing between the trees and stretching to the sandstone walls, and the sun shines down on the orchard with a soft, lovely light. But a gribbly black monster has taken up residence in one of the trees, and he’s casting down all kinds of black fungus-laden leaves about the place.
Each day I go in there and I rake all those black leaves up and then take them out to the incinerator through the cast iron gate in the wall and burn them to white ash. I can do that much, at least. I can’t do much about the gribbly black monster just yet, except poke him with my rake and curse him in words I can’t print here and tell him he’s not going to get my orchard, thank you very much, and wait for my tree surgeon (Penny the surgeon) to come on in and cut him out, but in the meantime raking up the fungus-laden leaves is important. I was explaining this to a distant friend and she said, “I’ll come in and rake, too!” and suddenly I have lots of people in there raking and manning the incinerator and the table of tea and cream puffs and whiskey (someone insisted on the whiskey) set up for the rakers by the raging incinerator.
So if you’d like to join the Rake Squad you have no idea how much I’d appreciate it. Those black leaves sometimes accumulate a little too quickly, and some days I am too sick and too down-hearted to go in and rake myself. I am unashamedly asking for a bit of help with the raking. You can send me an email at sde(at)oldlondonmaps.com just to let me know you’ll be in there raking occasionally – the Rake Squad could always use a few more rakers!
Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about that cold pork in the fridge so must dash for now. Thanks to everyone for their patience regarding their letters – I will get about to replying eventually, but likely not for a little bit yet.
May 3rd 2008: It is pretty embarrassing to leave it this long, isn't it! I have been writing, but basically trying to leave the Douglass side of my life alone as much as possible. The garden really dominates my life.
But to news. The Twisted Citadel should be out in Australia and new Zealand in early June - I am not sure of UK and USA publishing dates. I am currently well into the third book, tentatively titled The River Angels. I have also completed a story for Jack Dann's new anthology, Dreaming Again. The story is called "This Way to the Exit" and returns to my obsession with historic London, this time to the abandoned Underground stations which have always fascinated me. I have also agreed to do a novella for Jack for his Legends anthology due out sometime in the distant future. The Legends book is asking authors to return to one of their best known worlds and/or characters and to write a short novel on that subject. Interesting ... who should I choose?
HarperCollins USA is running a free giveaway of The Serpent Bride e-book to coincide with the publication of The Twisted Citadel. You can access the giveaway here, but the offer is only for US citizens.
April
4th 2007: The
Serpent Bride will be out next month - in
Australia and NZ certainly, and I think in the
US, but am not sure about the UK. Am still stuck
in Book 2 of the series - the title now keeps
changing with the wind as HarperCollins seems
to like nothing I suggest. Oh well. So Book 2
... I have almost finished the first draft, jut
a few scenes to go. Shocking end which I am looking
forward to.
January
21st 2007: Well,
I obviously went and got a life, didn't I! It
has been six months since I wrote anything. I
gardened - see Nonsuch.
And gardened, and gardened some more. The garden
just ate me for six months.
Now
I am back to writing - The Twisted Tower
which will be Book II in the Darkglass Mountain
series.
Oh,
and still doing some gardening.
June
30th 2006: Thank
God, Serpent Bride has gone! I can now resume
a life ...
I
am in the process of answering all correspondence
- my deepest apologies for not getting to you
as soon as I should but they letters are on their
way out now.
Also
note that the Nonsuch garden journey is now at
a different
site - I haven't changed the links on this
site yet but will shortly.
June
2nd 2006: STILL
lost in the rewrite of Serpent Bride. Almost there.
Another 2 weeks and it will be off to HarperCollins.
This has been such an enormous job. I love the
plot and characters, but just trying to get that
damn pyramid right ... *sigh* Getting the first
book in a series right is always nerve wracking.
May
18th 2006: Lost
in the rewrite of Serpent Bride- the character
of Isaiah has been problematical, but I believe
I have sorted him now. I expect to be buried in
this rewrite for several more weeks ... then I
can get to my correspondence. I apologise if you
have written in and not yet received a reply.
At the moment everything I have is going to the
rewrite, but I promise to write as soon as I have
sent the book off.
April
11th 2006: Well,
if you're reading this then both you and I will
have made the ISP jump satisfactorily! Hope everything
is working - I still have to fully test the site
(if a page is missing - it will be here
soon!). Many thanks to Hasweb
hosting for such a brilliant deal.
To
celebrate an almost painless switchover, I have put
up a page on The Serpent Bride.
April
10th 2006: I
am having terrible hassles with my current ISP and shall
be swapping to a new one ASAP. There may be some problems
with the site over the next week or so - apologies if
it goes down.
March
25th 2006: Am
nearing the end of a massive first draft of Serpent
Bride. Sigh. getting very big ... may have to lose
some battle scenes. I think we're going to have a very
attenuated war to finish this book! Oh, and I've discovered
a new and somewhat different race of Icarii lurking
about in the mountains. Never knew they were there.
Very interesting. Almost Icarii ... but they've had
some strange blood mixed in with them at some point.
Hate
it that daylight saving is extending this long just
to accommodate sport ....
Landscaping
has just started on the garden at Nonsuch - Yay!
February
19th 2006: Have
been off in the Tasmanian wilderness for a week ...
and then the wilderness of a migraine for another week.
I preferred the first week.
Another
venture between myself and some colleagues - as many
of you know I love maps and engravings, mostly of London.
The entire collection will eventually be going on the
web at the Old
London Map site. This is, like the Garden
History site, still very new, but just watch it
grow over the next year ...
January
31st 2006: I
can never resist playing about on the web ...
it is an addiction, truly. I took down most of
the medieval stuff from this site when it was
reorganised, but now I have started a new web
site where much of it will re-appear. It is still
very very new (as in less than 24 hours new!),
but more articles will be going up there as I
get a few minutes spare here and there. While
concentrating on garden history, it also has a
growing section on medieval, and eventually Renaissance
and Baroque life. You
may visit here.
January
29th 2006: You'll
notice that some google ads now appear at the top of
most pages. I wish I could say that Google and I have
conducted a multi-million dollar deal, but in reality
I am merely trying to recoup some of the costs of maintaining
the site. I apologise to those who feel they are intrusive.
January
17th 2006: Writing,
writing, writing - 300 pages deep into the Serpent Bride.
David
Ogden in Iraq - your photograph left for you by express
post this morning - hope it reaches you Okay. It isn't
everyone gets a signed photo, you know. :)
