Saturday, March 02, 2013

Blog love

There are two new blogs that I've found in the last few months. Both are women, both are writers.

The first is AWineDark Sea, written by a woman called Sarah Toa. She lives somewhere in WA, not in Perth, not in Fremantle, but somewhere she describes as 'Down South'; and place beachy and boaty and fishy. Her photographs are beautiful and so is her prose. Her life seems fantastic, and I mean that in the true sense of the word: it seems ethereal and other-worldly to me, sitting here in the city on the south-east coast. She seems to be in some exotic locale, a place so far away as to be in another country, and in my mind she is. I LOVE how my imagination constructs such an 'over there' positioning for her, and it seems ye olde worlde too, with her tales of sea-faring and fishing and gruff, salted men who probably have beards and don't like to talk too much.

A WineDark Sea

The other one is also about location as well as words for me. Dianne Gray lives in another spot in this country that holds a lot of mystery for me. She lives in far north Queensland (I think) and at the moment has just received delivery of a 100-year-old Rugby Union Club building, to be fixed-up and made habitable on her home property. To see the photos of the house site, with sugar cane (I guess, it is so. This ignorant land-lubber/city-slicker doesn't really know) is, again, thrilling. Even though I have never met Dianne and I have never been there, it's a vicarious pleasure and it's deep and quite inexplicable really.

Dianne Gray

11 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Melba said...

So. Those two were spam, maybe I will try blocking anon comments and see how it goes. The traffic is increasing, it's doubled in the last few months so... annoying.

Dianne Gray said...

This is great - thank you so much for the mention! Yes - it's a sugar cane farm ;) I love your blog here.

sarah toa said...

Hello there Melba and thanks for the mention! Now ... exotic is anything further than ... mmm dunno.
I haven't posted many fishing stories lately, as I got another job (in an office, me- twitchy as anything). Thanks for reminding me that I once was an exotic fisherwoman.
I do love your blog too. Unsure which one at the moment to put on my sidebar - suggestions?
Yes, the spammers are driving me nuts too. they have been especially vigorous the last month.

Melba said...

Hi Dianne and Sarah, thanks for visiting you two. Dianne, I thought it was sugar cane, so I'm quite pleased I'm not as rural-ignorant as I thought. Sarah, if you are talking about your real name blog, put my real name one on it; if you're talking about this one, put it on your Sarah Toa one. You don't link to your real one from Toa do you? I want to keep my traffic-flow one way, if that makes sense, that is I haven't linked from this one to my real name one, but I've linked from that to this. Email me if this confuses you. I've got your Sarah Toa on this one and intend to put your real name one on my real name one.

sarah toa said...

Yes, I get all that. Your philosophy works for me. I saw that you added Salt Story (thanks). At some stage I will link from A WineDark Sea to Salt Story but I haven't completed constructing it yet. Anyhoo, in the meantime ...

Anonymous said...

Dunno if you know this or even if it matters at all, but with the way search engines work, one-way linking probably isn't going to offer much protection.

Melba said...

Yeah, I know that Alex, and realise that cats have been let out of bags in this comment thread and that with a couple of clicks you can find out who I am easily, but I don't care that much, I'm just going to go with it. Say you knew my real name (you probs do already, God knows you're smart and I've been reasonably careful but not extremely so) it doesn't matter to me... It's not about protection as much as keeping separate spaces for different purposes, if you know what I mean. Keeping this place where I'm Melba and this is where I just do my normal thing and have certain conversations. The other spaces are more professional (though only *slightly*)and they are more my public space. This is a little bit more private and anonymous but it is linked to from there. Just no links from here to there. This is the end of the road, the dead end where shit can get weird and we can talk about anal sex and swear and be all edgy. Cause we do that all the time, don't we?

Anonymous said...

You're probably right Melbs, but I don't think I really want to find your other blog; because it's not a place for shit to get weird where we talk about anal sex and swear and be all edgy like we always do. As long as you keep this place open, I think I'd rather talk shit here with Melba than have "proper" discussions with serious-writer-lady somewhere else. (That sounds like I'm crapping on your new blog but it's not meant to)

Still, if you need any technically orientated advice on the new place, you can always give us a yell.

Melba said...

That is right, the other place isn't for that stuff, it's for talking about how adverbs are bad and tips on how to proofread manuscripts and that kind of stuff. And thanks for the offer of tech stuff there, appreciate it, for you are my guru, you know that.