Dean Mayes's Blog

I went for a long walk yesterday. I took a path along Adelaide’s west parklands to the West Terrace Cemetery and back again. All told it was about 5 kilometres and I felt really good – given that I am still recovering from my ruptured Achilles tendon and broken ankle.

I find the cemetery a calming place – not at all disturbing or ghostly or any of the cliches one associates with a grave yard. Rather, I find it a place of stories; of lives lived. I find myself constructing narratives around th...

I don’t know why it captured my eye. It was just another spine on a shelf of dozens of other spines. I’m talking about book spines by the way. A secondhand bookshop I have come to frequent here in Adelaide has amassed the most amazing collection of Penguin paperback titles – from the classic orange covers of great and small fiction, the green of of crime fiction, the blue of biography and memoirs, the red of the great dramas.

The cerise of the cover which caught my eye denoted travel and adv...

There’s a place here in South Australia that I have wanted to visit ever since I moved here in the mid 90’s but somehow, never got around to it.

In the Clare Valley – roughly a 90 minute drive from Adelaide and tucked away in rolling green meadows reminiscent of the English countryside, stands a magnificent time capsule in the form of Martindale Hall.

It is a mansion built in the Georgian style that was constructed between 1879 and 1880 by the Bowman family who lived in the mansion and wo...

My journal prompt for today asks the following;

Can I keep my cool when receiving disturbing news?

Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman, The Daily Stoic Journal.

I know I need to keep my cool. We all do. It is the stoic ideal state of mind as we travel through our daily lives. A virtue that supposedly shields us from the worst impulses of our behaviour. The truth is, I don’t always keep my cool. In fact, I suck at it – most of the time.

I haven’t been very good at keeping my cool. In part,...

Today, I’m sharing a thought provoking piece from a really compelling writer and thinker in this space, Kevin G. Drendel.

While I have opened myself to Christian thinking, I have yet to have definitive experience of God that I can certain about.

I realise I have a long way to go.

DFA.

If your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body is full of darkness

God Meets Us Where We Are: But Will You Know Him When You Meet Him?

The most frightening book I have ever read is the 1982 graphic novel “When The Wind Blows” by Raymond Briggs. Released at the height of the Cold War 1980’s, it was a visual parable against nuclear war, told with painfully little dialogue. Because, of course, it didn’t need any. Through a series of strip cartoons, we watch a loving couple grapple with a nuclear calamity. Throughout, they keep a very British “Keep Calm & Carry On” attitude, even as apocalyptic conseuquences become clear.

I remember when I got my pen licence in Grade 3. I was so proud. Mrs Fuhnell gave out brightly coloured certificates and I treasured mine for what seemed like ages.

Last week, I got my clearance certificate from my surgeon, allowing me to return to work after six long months of surgery, recovery and rehabilitation after rupturing my Achilles tendon.

Holding that sheet of paper in my hand felt a lot like that pen licence from a half a lifetime ago.

I can be a Nurse again.

DF...

I took an interest in a recent episode of “The Minefield” on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National in which a discussion around political slogans and buzz words caught my attention and had me thinking for quite a few days afterwards.

In the after glow of Australia’s recent federal election, in which the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was returned to office with a significantly increased majority in both the House Of Representatives and the Senate, a new...

I have to confess that, as a writer, I haven’t been overly good in at writing on the fly. It used to be the way I’d start my stories and writing projects. I was proud of being a perennial “pantster”. As I have continued to hone my craft over the years however, I have become more reliant on planning and plotting my projects, knowing how they begin and progress towards a conclusion, accounting for plot, character and narrative ahead of time and writing to a plan.

As I continue to recover at hom...

I have written about a lovely author friend of mine, Darlene Foster, who I met when I first became published with Central Avenue Publishing. Darlene is an author of a lovely series of books for young adults called “Amanda In…” where her protagonist Amanda travels all over the world and has adventures in many and varied exotic place. Over the years, Darlene & I have shared some lovely conversations, supported each other’s writing and maintained a friendship that endures despite Darlene living in ...