Jenni Ogden, Off-Grid Writer

Welcome to my new blog about life off-grid on Great Barrier Island! The intent is to post at least once a month…

For those of you who live in the Northern Hemisphere, our seasons are reversed here so it is early summer in NZ, and mainland city dwellers are going crazy with the stresses of Christmas coming up, on top of preparing for the long summer break. Basically NZ closes from about the 26th December until the end of January when everyone in the towns and cities pack their car – and sometimes their boat -- full of kids, wine, food, pets, surfboards, fishing rods, camping gear, hiking boots and a change of clothes, and head off for a beach or a river somewhere. Everyone already living on a beach or river pack up and go to a different beach or river.  Read More 

Before Christmas I am determined to complete a good draft of a chapter for my book Trouble In Mind titled “The Singer or the Song?” about a young woman with temporal lobe epilepsy who had to make a very difficult decision – whether to risk losing her ability to learn new songs or even her ability to sing, by undergoing a neurosurgical operation that could cure her debilitating epileptic seizures.  Read More 

Holidays are a perfect time to read novels, although I read novels all year. I have just finished Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue, which I loved -- five-year-old Jack’s voice was masterful -- and Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That: A Novel. Read More