Thank you.

Thank you!

It’s been a great journey. My bush work takes us all over Australia. The stories for Cielo have been written on lunch breaks, hours into cutting through barbed vines, as our team pushed up, into the gorges and mountains of tropical Far North Queensland. Once even while listening to a pack of dingos hunt. In the Mowbray River valley Elena and I called home. After work tree arbouring, wet with sweet and biting green ants. In hospital for a week. On red desert roads on the way to the next job. In Outback truck stops. Building temperate rainforests in the gullies of Victoria’s South East. In Peruvian airports and Venezuelan shacks. In southern Tasmania while building remote walking tracks across some of the tallest, most spectacular coastal cliffs in the world. Oyster farming in Boomer Bay.

Cielo, Elena and I, our family of three, living life so that stories might follow.

It has not been a chore, but a privilege. Thank you again, to those that were there at the start, to those who hopped on board. If even one story made you laugh, cry, feel some kind of wonder, if your child or children enjoyed it, then all the stories were worth it. Every letter of every one.

I’d like to thank my wife, for her love and patience. She is Heaven. My baby girl! Damien Cave, who’s New York Times piece tipped everything on its head in glorious and chaotic ways. And David H. Laurence CVII for being a great bloke and his brilliant audio of Dragon Heart.

The primary reaction to finishing, for me, is frustration. Already, within a day, I have another 14 ideas. Already I’m dreading rereading many of the stories, wishing I was less tired, so that I could have done them better. The pride will come when Cielo is old enough to read and draw a story or two.

I might still publish a few new tales on here. Certainly post some of the art from the readers from all around the world!

But, obviously, don’t wait for me. Stories are everywhere. Write them, draw them, whether you think you can draw or not! Of course you can! Share their joy.

I never decide what the next writing project will be until I have finished the current one. I’m going to get some sleep on the weekend then chose a path. There is publisher interest, which is nice.

Hopefully, we’ll meet in stories. In wonder and tall tales.

And you can say hi to my family, and we can say hi to yours.

Thank you again, one more time.

Cielo’s Dad, Matt Zurbo xo