Not A Permaculture Blog Post

Give a welcome to KS Augustin who is celebrating a book birthday at Carina Press. I asked her what she wanted to talk about and she sent me a post about her brief foray into permaculture...and government agencies.

You can bet that wasn't pretty.

I just finished reading IN ENEMY HANDS, and I adored the main characters and their dire predicaments. At one point I was at the edge of my chair saying, "Don't do it!" ...I'll leave you to wonder why I was yelling that.

If you tire of the same old science fiction, I urge you to buy this book. It's intelligent SF with a dash of romance. My favorite! Buy your copy here.

For now, I give you KS Augustin.

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I know Maria has lots of readers who are interested in homesteading and raising chickens and things like that. To those people, I'm a bit of a bust because I'm a real urban type. That's not to say that I don't think of having chickens and a pig and things like that but, in reality, I just don't have the personality for it. So people like Maria have my unwavering admiration.

However, on the way to realising that I have a truly urban outlook that precludes the kind of self- discipline that a homesteader has (not to mention the huge tracts of land), a funny thing happened. At one point in our wanderings, J and I settled in Melbourne, Australia. We bought one acre of land and built a house. And we thought, hey, one acre of land! What can we do with that?

“Chickens?” I suggested.

“A bee hive?” J loves his honey, oh my!

“I tell you what,” I said to him, “I'll ring the local Council and ask them about their regulations.”

“Good idea,” my husband says.

So, the next morning, I call Manningham City Council. “Hello,” I say, “I'd like to enquire about chickens and bees.”

“What about them?” the lady at the other end of the line asked.

“Well, how many can I keep?”

“Up to four,” she told me.

Completely straight-voiced, I asked, “Is that chickens or bees?”

Silence. “That's chickens. You'll have to talk to the State government about the bees.”

As much as I like dealing with local councils...you don't believe me, do you? No, it's true. I like spending some time with people at my local council office. For the most part, they really do try to do the right thing, and I think they're a much maligned segment of the public service population. That's not to say they don't get annoyingly pedantic from time to time but, overall, I'd rather have them there than not. Anyway, getting back to the story, although I like talking to employees of local councils, I have discovered that they do sometimes tend to be slightly diminished in the humour department.

Then again, dealing with all of us from the great unwashed public, maybe that's not surprising.

This anecdote has nothing whatsoever to do with a book I have coming out. The book, IN ENEMY HANDS, doesn't cover egg-laying or honey- gathering, although it does involve stellar mechanics, an amnesiac hero, a guy called Hen, and a weapon that can kill millions. It'll be available from Carina Press on Monday, 7 June. I hope you like it.

(Oh, and help your local council and give a local authority officer a smile today. Just to see the look of shock on her/his face, if nothing else!)

IN ENEMY HANDS

The Republic had taken everything from Moon—her research partner, her privacy, her illusions. They thought they had her under control. They were wrong.

Srin Flerovs, Moon's new research partner, is a chemically enhanced maths genius whose memory is erased every two days.

While he and Moon work on a method of bringing dead stars back to life, attraction between them flares, but that poses its own problem.

How can their love survive when Srin forgets Moon every two days?

When she discovers the lethal applications her research can be put to, Moon knows she and Srin are nothing more than pawns in a much larger game. Together, they must escape the clutches of the Republic before they become its scapegoats. But there are too many walls around them, too many eyes watching. They want to run, but they're trapped on a military vessel in the depths of space, and time is running out....

Bio

KS Augustin is a Malaysian-born writer of science-fiction, romance, and permutations of the two. She also dabbles in fantasy and contemporary action romances from time to time. She has been nominated for a CAPA award and has been a Spectrum award finalist.

She has visited, lived or worked in the UK, North America, Australia, and has now settled back in south-east Asia so she and her husband can draw breath and the kids can manage to get some education in.

Also travelling with them, with species-appropriate passports, are their two fur-shedding cats, Fluff and Squeak, and their irrepressible miniature bull terrier, Sausage.

For more on KS Augustin, visit her website and blog. You can also track her down on Facebook and Twitter. Just look for “ksaugustin”.

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Winner

Thanks to everyone who entered What's My Name contest. Radomizer selected Mike Keyton as the winner for IN ENEMY HANDS. Congrats, Mike! I will contact you for delivery details.