Fourth Anniversary Giveaway!

[Giving it away]

June 14, 2006, appears to have been the date when I started this blog. I don't want to wax all sentimental about it, but I thought it might be nice to commemorate it somehow - 4 years, 48 months and 233 posts later.

So, to celebrate my fourth anniversary, I thought it might be nice to give something away. I have four books on offer, then - a novel, a book of poems, a book of short stories, and a travel book - each of them absolutely free to the first person who leaves a comment below requesting that specific title (but no fair writing in to demand the whole bunch. You'll have to fabricate a few online alter egos to pull off that one ...)

You'll also need to leave me a smailmail address, but you might prefer to do that privately, by email, so feel free to contact me here.

How about it, then? First in, first served. Apparently only 28 out of 1800 Britons bothered to stop the nice man above to collect their free, no-strings-attached, five-pound note ... The only stipulation I'll make is that I'm not going to pay international postage on the books. They're completely free within New Zealand. Beyond our shores you'll have to reimburse me the cost of a stamp ...

1. To Terezín. By Jack Ross, with an Afterword by Martin Edmond. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132. Auckland: Massey University, 2007. ii + 90 pp.
   
   
   




2. Monkey Miss Her Now. Stories by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-476-00182-X. Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004. 138 pp.
   
   
   




3. Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8. Wellington: HeadworX, 2002. 112 pp.
   
   
   




4. Nights with Giordano Bruno. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000. [xii] + 224 pp.
   
   
   

Der Berggeist

‘If there were no small pines in the fields,’ he murmured to himself. Such a fitting reference, I felt; far better than any new poem of mine could have been. I was most impressed.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki



[Monday, 3rd January – 10.55 a.m.]

Leicester has found a strange orchid, which he wishes to collect. Time for an orange-break.

Sunlight gleams

the leafy spot
we passed on the track

foaming, tannin-brown stream

miraculously green rock

“The weather’s not doing what it should be – I don’t have it properly trained” – Leicester Kyle in the Fisherman’s Rest, Granity.



Der Berggeist

Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees
– J. R. R. Tolkien



Bush-lawyer glow-worms
in the garden butcher’s
shop ground to stone
slabs Dracophyllum
Mountain Neinei Dr
Seuss Trees the yellow
orchid like
Aladdin’s cave a pothole
in the moors with water
flowing by the Christmas
bush so long
as no-one mentions
anything to do
with Christmas
green like that stone
you picked up last
time from the Gentle
Annie



[Jack Ross, Chantal’s Book (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002) 95-96].