Flaxroots Productions - Blog

FlaxFlower 2025

19/1/2025

Wishing everyone a healthful and peaceful year ahead

It’s hard to believe, for me at least, but FlaxFlower reviews is starting its 12th year.
  In the past 11 years FlaxFlower has published 480 reviews of New Zealand books.
  Books of all sorts and genres – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, novels, biographies and autobiographies, histories, books for children, short story collections – from hundreds of New Zealand authors.
  I have been able to achieve this because of the stable of willing reviewers who give their time and expertise free, as I do. My grateful thanks to them all.
  You can access all past reviews on the FlaxFlower page. For specific titles see Review index which will lead you to the review via the relevant month in Archives column on the left of the FlaxFlower page.

NOW AUDIOBOOKS

23/7/2024

First, treebooks then e-books now audiobooks

For my own reading, I'm still in the middle. I prefer to sight books
and LOVE my kindle which gives me access to thousands of books
without taking up shelf-space.
But I certainly appreciate the value of audiobooks to bring books to
new groups of 'readers' (a more acceptable term to me than consumers.)

So I have had two of my fiction books made into audiobooks

Available on multiple sites
look for them wherever you get yours.

There's another to follow soon.

WRITING COMPETITION FOR STUDENTS

26/5/2024

Theatre in Sydney

14/4/2024

Who will be in Sydney during the coming week?

If so, treat yourself to an evening of theatre at the
Short & Sweet festival,
this coming week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7.30pm,
& 6:30pm on Sunday
at Turner Hall, 19 Mary Ann St, Ultimo, Sydney
One of my plays is in the programme of 12 short plays

ABOUT FELICIA
Written by Bronwyn Elsmore / Directed by Owen Gill

You can book here
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/shortsweetsydney/1155127?

Normal transmission is resumed

18/3/2024

I don’t know if you noticed, but this website went into spasm for a while - it wasn’t displaying, and wouldn’t open even for me.
Thank you to those followers who emailed wishing luck with getting the FlaxFlower page back online.
I don’t know about the luck – it actually took concerted effort over 3 days getting advice and contacting different agencies. It seems that in making the shifts in their system, between Weebly, Godaddy, GoogleWorkspace, and Square, with cloudflare threatening to complicate things further, somewhere it all got stuffed up. After communicating with people in each agency, I suspect they themselves don’t know how it all works.
Many help personnel contacted – bots and human, via email, chatlinks, international phone calls – kept shuffling us back and forwards between them. Umpteen changes of customer numbers, passwords, A-records, DNS, IP addresses, and who knows how many other letters of the alphabet were involved.
After supposedly simple fixes failed, a team of three collaborated on Friday night to make sense of all the contradictory information, and find the way to victory. Think Dumbledore and Professors Snape and McGonagall merging their wand-power against Voldemort. 🪄🪄🪄 The heavy firepower came from my clever son, aka Dumbledore, with my contribution probably more equivalent to Ginny Weasley rather than McGonagall.

Four hours on, after further frustration heaped upon frustration, not to mention the payment of a new additional annual fee, right on the witching hour of midnight on Friday, a breakthrough!!
🤞🤞🤞normal service should resume. I certainly hope so, as I haven’t the heart to go through all that again!

FUN SIZE FESTIVAL

7/3/2024

I'm delighted to say I've discovered a new theatre, and I'm more than happy to recommend it.
Covert Theatre in Ponsonby Auckland is a gem - comfortable, friendly, and with frequent comedy shows.
Their 'Fun Size Festival' on this month 7-16 March, brings to the stage 5 short plays - one of my own, "Staunch", included along with others by Elle Collins, Karl Fleet, Nathan McIntosh, Angela Pope.

For more details -
https://www.coverttheatre.com/

FlaxFlower 2024

3/1/2024

🎉 Tau Hou hari 2024 🎉

Wow, FlaxFlower reviews has completed 10 years — it’s hard to believe!
At the start I thought I’d give it a go for a year and see how it went. At that time, 2014,
I was prompted by the lack of places NZ authors could get reviews of their books. Especially indie authors who are seldom accepted for the few main outlets
such as The Listener and Radio NZ.
Sadly, the situation hasn’t improved a lot.
On the bright side, over those 10 years FlaxFlower has published reviews of
447 books, all written by Kiwi authors.
I’ve been thinking ten years might seem a good place to call a halt,
but since the problem still exists, and while there are quality and valued reviewers
willing to give their time, I’ll carry on.
Very best wishes for the coming year, with lots of good reading!

Update on the gig below

2/10/2023

The play reading in Auckland
went very well,
thanks to four splendid actors
and an enthusiastic audience who braved lousy weather to come
into the central city.

Thank you
Monica Cheung-Fuk, Grae Minors, Donna Verey, David Charteris

FREE play reading

5/9/2023

Live play reading in Auckland

The theme for the Auckland Heritage Festival 2023 is Peace, Love and Protest.
As part of the programme there will be a reading of my play
FALLOUT – the Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
by Bronwyn Elsmore
It is a free event, on Saturday 30 September, at 2 pm,
Performance & Speaking Space in Central City Library, 44-46 Lorne Street, Auckland.

With:
David Charteris Grae Minors Valerie Rissetto Donna Verey

E kore e ngaro he takere waka nui
The keel of a great canoe cannot be lost.

What I learned from the Coronation

7/5/2023

A new word. New to me, anyway.
Until this year I had never heard the word coronate, as in a verb meaning to crown.
The first few times I came across it, I thought that’s ignorant – everyone knows it’s simply ‘to crown’. After encountering several more mentions, I looked it up.
It turns out I was one who was ignorant – at least in some parts of the world.
According to some dictionaries, it is legitimate.
But not all. Though Merriam-Webster is happy to acknowledge it, the Oxford English dictionary, that long-time bastion of English usage, seems less willing. One of my print editions, admittedly old now, doesn’t list it; another only as a botanical term (having a crown or corona), and an online search came back with ‘We were unable to find anything about coronate’.
Collins, it seems, has had to add it as ‘in American English’.
New usage perhaps? One source says it was first recorded c. 1623. So, 400 years. I guess that’s long enough to prove itself worthy of acceptance.
So, King Charles lll has been coronated, at least on the west side of the Atlantic, and I have been further educated.