The name of that book I mentioned yesterday is The Midnight Disease and I'll get the author for this spot by the time I get this online. Her name is Alice Flaherty. While I did my thing last night, posting blog entries, reading other blogs and email, I tracked down the book and requested it from the library, an easy enough thing to do. I couldn't recall the title but remembered some of the key words in the sub title. That helped a lot. I even found an interview with the author here.

But what to write about today? It's a tough one sometimes to come and sit here without a thought in my head on what I'm going to write. Perhaps I'll write about the places I like to write the way Dawn did the other day.

There's a place I go with the other members of the writing centre I'm part of usually twice a year on weekend writer's retreats. I haven't been this year, at all, but that's not surprising. I have a new baby and am certain the last thing my fellow writers want is for me to bring him along. I know they love me, but that would be stretching the friendships a bit too far. I missed the one at the end of last year because it happened at the same time as Father's Day here in Australia. It feels like ages since I've been there. I love the place so much I've even taken my family there and we've stayed to enjoy the place together. The land itself has a real peaceful presence. There's a calm as you walk around the property, breathing in the scent of the bush and the river.

There's a house and that's where we stay when I go with the writers. It's a massive, but simple place with nine bedrooms and twelve beds. Apart from being a wonderful place to stay the woman who owns it doesn't even charge very much to stay per night. There's also a couple of old rail carriages on the property, some caravans, too. My family has used the old rail carriages several times. Things are rough, but not as rough as camping. You get to sleep in a real bed and cook in the simple kitchen, if you like. We also cook out on the fire when we feel like it.

But I love to go out into the bush early in the morning when all I can hear is the screech of the black cockatoos as they chase the dawn light through the trees. I love to take my journal with me and sit on a rock and write. Anything I write there is electric. It's the atmosphere. When with the group we create amazing stories, poetry and pieces in our informal workshops. We read them aloud and I'm stunned by what each of us create with our imaginations and pens and just by being at that place.

There's a certain magic to it, I think, even though that sounds somewhat childish. Even when I'm there with my family we all draw or paint and write and sit in the silence easily. Poetry I've written there has been published. Other ideas that came to me there have gone on to be real. It's my favourite place to write. Even though I'm happy to sit at one of my favourite cafes and pen my prose, too.