Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm

New Year's Resolution... (plus chickens, bikes and...other stuff)

2012-01-19T11:00:00.006+11:00

I'm going to blog every week this year. Without exception. Except, obviously, for most of January...

Actually, I've been wanting to blog since the start of January – have had all sorts of things lined up to write about, but for some reason every time I start I get oddly ‘blocked’. Still, it doesn't matter, we're here now, and that's what's important.

So, first things first, Happy (very belated) New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely break, and my sincere wish for you all is that unlike me, you haven't had to go back to work yet.

This, by nature, is going to be something of a ‘newsy infodump’ of a post – so feel free to skip over it and come back next week if you wish.

Item 1 on the agenda: because this is a writing blog, after all, and because I know that you're all terribly interested in my desk, here's a link to the fantastic blog of Tristan Bancks (who, unlike other bloggers I could name, actually updates regularly) and the contribution he asked me to do for his ‘the writer's studio’ series of posts. I've always really enjoyed these particular columns on Tristan's blog – it's fascinating the multitude of environments and methods by which writers and artists and other creative people all accomplish similar goals. And, of course, it was lovely to be invited to be part of it.

Item 2: (and moving away from writing now, and into family news) we have chickens! For a few years now Imogen and I have talked about getting some chooks for the yard, but for various reasons (slightly insane dog, lack of chicken coop etc…) we have put off doing anything about it. Late last year, though, while wandering around at the fantastic Murrumbateman field day, we spotted these beautifully designed mobile chicken runs, and that (combined with the fact that our previously-mentioned dog had knee surgery last year and is no longer nearly as mobile as she used to be) inspired us to get our poultry acts together. So last week we picked up our 4 ‘girls’ (I use the quote marks there because, to be honest, there's about a 20% chance that at least one of them will turn out to be a rooster and then, soon after, dinner...) who are now happily scratching around in the yard. Their names (because I'm sure you all want to know) are Charlotte, Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose. 100 points for anyone who can spot the theme…

Charlotte (or, Lottie - as she likes to be known)

L-R: Spot, Hedwig and Rosie Primrose

Item 3: just in case you're interested. Later this year I'll be turning 40 (Shock! Horror! (And, to be honest, parental amazement, I suspect))* by that point I would like to be just a little bit fitter than I am at the moment and so Toby and I, inspired by my sister's bicycle-powered lifestyle in Holland, have set ourselves up and started cycling into work/daycare every morning. There are lots of birds, playgrounds to explore, things to look at, creeks and lakes and, of course, singing. And I'm quite certain that riding along pulling an extra 30 odd kilos of boy, bags, and child seat on my already heavy bike is probably going to do my fitness ambitions no harm at all. One of these mornings, I'll take my camera along and post some pictures of the ride. In the meantime, here we are, arriving home after ride on a 34 degree, windy afternoon...

Item 4: 2012. It's going to be a very big, and busy year for me this year – semester starts again in just a couple of weeks, and then it will be into the usual breakneck world of teaching. In June I'm convening the biennial ACLAR conference here in Canberra (with my friend Shaun Tan and the incredible Professors Clare Bradford and Kerry Mallan as our keynote speakers) the organisation of which should make the first half of this year particularly ‘interesting’. After that, our little family are off for a three-week holiday in Vietnam and Indonesia, at least one week of which will be spent on a beach with my sister, her husband, their 3 girls, my parents, and an assortment of other friends and relatives. I've also got the 2nd of my ‘Hunter’ books to get written, and my fantastic new agent and I will no doubt get to work on finding a home for the 1st one.

Plus, as promised, weekly blog posts here :-)

So, anyway–that's pretty much everything happening in my world, at the moment. From next week I'll try and get back to some more regular and focused blog posts. Welcome back to Musings… for 2012, everyone.

*I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the overuse of parenthesis in this post, and particularly for the awful nested example indicated here. (I know this bugs some people...)

Christmas, Something cool I made, plus a book...

2011-12-23T19:56:00.004+11:00

Hi Everyone,

I've been on holidays from everything for the last two weeks - including the blog (not that that probably made a noticeable difference, given my consistency here this year...), but I wanted to pop by quickly and say a happy pre-emptive Christmas, and to show off a couple of things.

We like Christmas in our house, but this year, with a 3 year old who is suddenly really understanding lots of concepts like 'Father Christmas' and 'Presents', it's proving more fun than ever. So much so, that I've spent a good chunk of this week down in my shed making him this hobby horse:

I'm really proud of it. I made it from scratch, working without plans or a template, apart from doing a bit of googling and stealing several ideas from several different pictures on line. I love working with wood - there's something ineffably theraputic about it, I think. It also gave me an excuse to buy myself the hand router that I've been wanting for about five years....

My other little bit of book related news arrived in a postpack from UQP today. I mentioned earlier this year that I'd been re-reading my 2001 novel A New Kind of Dreaming ahead of a new edition. Well, the new edition is done, and it looks just great!

Actually, I'm pretty happy to see this book all dressed up and updated. It's been a consistent performer for me for a decade now, and it's still one of the books I'm proudest of. I wrote ANKOD at a very different time in my life, when I was very, very pissed off about a lot of things, and trying to work out how I felt about them. I also wrote it at the same time as the whole issue of boat refugees was being really politicised for the first time, and I'm pleased (though also rather sad) that it still reads as fresh and relevent today as it did back when I wrote it in the late 1990's.

Anyway, that's my little pre-christmas contribution. I'm planning to bash out something else next week, but before then I hope you all have a lovely, restful and joyous Christmas.

(Not so secret) Agent!

2011-11-30T16:03:00.003+11:00

so I guess that if I'm going to maintain my spectacular 2-posts-per-month average, then I better get something done here this afternoon…

As you may have gathered from the ongoing drought of blog posts here, I'm keeping as busy as ever of late. Tomorrow, for example, I'm heading up to Sydney for the day to run an all-day masterclass with the students at Sydney Girls High School, concentrating on tips and tricks for writing character (make them real, put a piece of yourself into every character, find the ‘truth’ in every character, make sure they have a relationship with the environment of the story… and so on)

I've also, of course, been buried in a veritable pile of marking for the last couple of weeks.

Oh, and (unbelievably) Toby turned 3 last week. This event was heralded by several parties, a trip up Black Mountain tower, a really quite ludicrous number of presents, more sugar than a 3-year-old's system can reasonably handle, one incredibly over-catered barbecue lunch, and two exhausted and somewhat confused parents asking themselves; “where on earth did the last 3 years of our lives disappear to?"

And, in the midst of all that, I do actually have a bit of writing related news.

You might remember me mentioning a while ago that I finally finished my most recent book. (Of course you remember, the damn thing has taken close to 2 years, and during that time I've been constantly banging on about it being ‘almost finished’.)

You might also remember me mentioning that this time, instead of pitching it to publishers myself, I had decided to submit it to a literary agent in New York to see if they were interested in representing it (and me).

Well I'm pleased to be able to announce that they liked it. So much so in fact that I'm now happily represented by Cheryl Pientka, of Jill Grinberg Literary Management! I don't mind admitting how thrilled, and completely surprised, I was to get such a positive response from Cheryl and Jill, as during the nerve-wracking wait for a response from them I managed, pretty effectively, to convince myself that the book had no merit whatsoever. I'm also excited because my new managers handle a lot of Australian writers, including several of my friends. (Actually, I owe a huge thanks to Melina Marchetta, who did the introducing here…)

And that's where I'm at. Early in the new year I expect to be launching myself back into The Hunter, and among the other things keeping me busy at the moment is the detailed planning and mapping out of the next 3 books in the series, which I should start writing in January.

In the meantime, I have a keynote speech to write, my teaching and grading for this semester to finalise, and then in a couple of weeks the family and I are off to Perth for holidays and weddings (not ours, obviously, we did that a while ago, now.)

So that's my news, and my litany of excuses for not keeping you all up-to-date. Hope everything is good with everyone who reads this (that is, of course, assuming I have any readers left), and that you are managing to ease your way into the festive season with a minimum of stress.

Going 'Live'...

2011-11-04T09:36:00.005+11:00

You may have noticed something of a drop-off in the number of posts I've managed to put up here in the last couple of months. There are many, various, and largely uninteresting reasons for this, most of which don't bear discussion.

One of the contributing factors, though, is the fact that the special edition of the British Journal Write4Children which I have been putting together for the last 12 months (and which I believe I've mentioned here just once or twice) was due for publication at the start of November.

This, of course, meant that the last few weeks have been an ungodly world of proofreading, editing, chasing up small details, and compiling the finished journal. Hence, in part, by prolonged absence here at Musings…

But, I'm glad to say, it's all done now and the special edition went live in the middle of the night earlier this week. (For those of you who are about to click the link, it's volume 3, number 1)

I also have to say that (despite swearing several times during the process that I would never do this again) it's definitely all been worth it. I'm really thrilled at the end result, and everyone who contributed to the edition worked so hard to get it up and running (and, to everyone's surprise - especially mine - published on time!)

There are, I think (though as editor, I would) some fantastic papers in the edition. I was particularly thrilled to receive abstracts from a number of really fantastic Australian writers, as well as practising academics in the field of children's writing, and the topics exploit any addition are as diverse and wide ranging as Australian children's writing itself. Among the offerings you will find in the edition are a fantastic paper by Lucy Christopher on Stolen, one by Lili Wilkinson on her novel Pink, Rosanne Hawke discussing the role of faith in several of her books, but most notably Marrying Amira, Mark Carthew talking about Australian poetry – and paying particular attention to the state of publishing poetry for children, Kate Deller-Evans on the rising prominence of junior verse novels in Australia , and a really interesting piece by Anna Kurian from the University of Hyderabad, which takes you into the booming world of writing and publishing young adult fiction in India. For the foodies amongst you there is also a really fascinating paper by Donna Lee Brien and Adele Wessell documenting the history and impact of cookbooks written for children in Australia from the earliest colonial days through the junior Masterchef.

All in all, putting this together has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career (such as it is) to date. One of the things I didn't expect was the buzz that I would get from gathering together such an interesting and diverse range of writing, having it all peer-reviewed, and in putting out into the public are. It was also a really interesting experience for me to sit on the editorial side of the desk, and experience life on the other side. I've also made a number of really interesting new friends in the process, including Andy* and Vanessa, the journal founders and editors who were brave enough (or, depending on your perspective, silly enough) to hand their baby over to my care for a while.

In any case, now that's out of the way I'm hoping to get back to a little bit of writing and, of course, in a week marking season begins!

*who also has a very cool blog somewhere on blogger, which for some bizarre reason I can't seem to find at the moment, but will update this link when I do...

Sunset Kangaroo - University of Canberra.

2011-10-14T09:12:00.003+11:00

One of the things I love about UC is that we have a couple of large mobs of kangaroos living on the campus. I took this photo just outside my office last night, on my way out the door.

Text, and the City

2011-10-13T10:16:00.006+11:00

I know, I know… another fortnight between posts. Sorry.

But at least this time I have an interesting enough excuse. I've been doing research. Not, I hasten to add, the boring ‘reading lots of stuff out of books’ type research, but honest-to-goodness hands-on interactive FIELD research.

For about a year now me and 3 of my colleagues have been working on a project to try and find out how people interact with text when it is presented to them in unusual forms, and also to explore people's reactions to the idea of a city (any city, but in this case Canberra) when I asked to respond to it using writing, and in creative ways. Because we are highly imaginative, and creative people, we called a project ‘Text And The City’ and last weekend, which was a public holiday weekend here in the ACT, 12 months of fairly intensive planning finally came together.

To gather our data we built the word TEXT in 3 m high letters, which we then painted from top to bottom with blackboard paint. Into each letter was built an iPad and wireless keyboard which people could use to respond to a series of small questionnaires, each of which asked them to think about, and write about, Canberra in a fun and creative manner. At the same time, anyone who didn't want to use this most contemporary form of text, could use one of the most old-fashioned – we had plenty of chalk on hand for both children and adults alike to scrawl whatever they wanted onto our enormous letters.

And last weekend, we were lucky enough to get permission to run a program at floriade – the annual flower show held in Canberra, the biggest in Australia, and a highlight of the ACT calendar. As a result, we got heaps of responses from all kinds of people; from children to adults, locals to tourists, overseas visitors, teenagers, the elderly, the whole spectrum. And by the end of the day, our enormous letters looked fantastic – covered in all kinds of diverse and interesting graffiti (which, of course, we photographed obsessively).

Even the rain, which threatened to derail the project all weekend, proved not to be a major hurdle, and even though the combined weight of the letters and all of our equipment was probably something in the order of half a tonne, which we had to set up and pulled down each day, the end result was fantastic. it was lovely watching people interacting with our installation, getting right into the survey, and gradually across the course of the day turning our big TEXT into a living work of art.

So that's what I've been doing (among other things, but that's another story) for the last week or so. Now, naturally, I'm desperately trying to catch up on all the other aspects of my life which have been on hold while we've been doing text and the city. Hopefully I'll have some more news and interesting bits and pieces to write about here in the next week or so.

So long Sara, and thanks...

2011-09-29T09:53:00.007+10:00

On Monday morning, at 5 AM, Australian fantasy writer Sara Douglass died. I have spent the last couple days, among other things, trying to work out exactly how to respond to this incredibly sad event. I never met Sara, But it's fair to say that of all the Australian writers whose work has had an enormous influence upon my own writing, Sara Douglass would be right up there near the top of the list.

Sara's Crucible Trilogy remain to this day arguably the finest historical fantasy books I have ever read. Reading them – and I can particularly remember this in relation to the first book in that series, The Nameless Day – had a profound effect on the way I think about so many things; History, fantasy, narrative, the entire craft of writing and what I do, really. One of my ambitions ever since reading that particular trilogy has been to write something just a fraction as good, As engaging, as immediate and clever. Here: this is what I'm talking about;

Wynkyn de Worde had undertaken the journey between Rome and Nuremberg over one hundred times in the past fifty or so years, but never had he done so before with such a heavy heart. He had been twenty three in 1296 when the then Pope, the great Boniface VIII, had sent him north for the first time.
Twenty-three, and entrusted with a secret so horrifying, that it, and the nightmarish responsibility it carried with it, would have killed most other men. But Wynkyn was a special man, strong and dedicated, sure of the right of God, and with a faith so unshakeable that Boniface understood why the Angels had selected him as the man fit to oversee the Cleft.
“Reveal the secret to any other man," Boniface had told the young Dominican, “and you can be sure that the angels themselves will ensure your death."
- The Nameless Day, p.3

For me, that short passage (and it's only one of quite literally hundreds I could have chosen from just about any of Sara's books) catches beautifully what Sara did – she knew her characters so well, and her readers, and she had the most deft ability to bring both of them together so quickly, so engagingly, that her writing seemed just effortless.

When the news came through the other morning, and even though it was not unexpected, I still sat, shocked and quiet in my office at work with a sudden, quite profound sense of loss, as though the world was suddenly a much poorer place.

As I say, I never met Sara, and yet like so many other readers around the world hers was a life that did intersect with mine, and I am so much the richer for the experience.

My heart goes out to everyone who knew and cared for Sara Douglass, especially my very good friends Karen and Steve who I know will be feeling this loss with every fibre of their being.

So thank you Sara – for the stories, the characters, for your love of narrative and your profound understanding of human nature, which came through in every word you wrote. Tomorrow afternoon, as requested, I'll definitely raise a glass in your honour.

So, you thought I was dead?

2011-09-19T15:04:00.004+10:00

I'm not. And I won't bore you with the usual litany of excuses. Since last we spoke, I've been keeping myself busy ticking my annual performance review boxes at work, getting a new writing project underway, learning to drive my voice recognition software properly, teaching, riding horses, gardening (spring has finally sprung here in Canberra, which means that the weeds in our garden are now as high as an elephant's eye and climbing by the day) and – most importantly, as far as this blog is concerned - finishing the rewrite of The Hunter.

And a couple of hours ago, finally, I got it done. I'm really happy with it, but of course finishing a presentable draft is just the beginning of the hard work. About half an hour ago I dropped it, along with a letter of introduction and a plot synopsis, into an envelope and posted it off to a New York literary agent to whom I was recently introduced. Now it's a matter of waiting and seeing if she's interested in it enough to sign me up.

It's funny – this is the first time in over a decade that I've had to physically post my book off to someone with no guarantee of it being well received, or even published. I'd almost forgotten how odd and disconcerting the very real possibility of rejection can be.

Of course, given that I spend half my life telling my students at uni (and anyone else who will listen) that learning to take criticism and to deal with rejection is one of the key skills of being a writer, I'm really in no position to complain.

Still, I'll admit that as I dropped the envelope (with $14.80 worth of stamps on it) into the post box, there was an odd little butterfly in the pit of my stomach – an heady combination of nervousness, but also excitement; of the unpredictable, and the unknown. Who knows what's going to happen as a result of my decision to send his book straight overseas to an agent, rather than doing what I've always done and taking it directly to my publishers here in Australia? (I should add here that my reasons for making this decision are nothing to do with my publishers – I love my publishers, and they have done some fantastic things with my back catalogue in recent months – but I think I am at a point in my writing career where it is time to take a broader look at how I do things.)

So, anyway – that's where I'm at. The book (or, at least, the first 50 pages of it) is now irretrievably on its way to New York, and I can get on with writing the second one and try not to be too nervous in the meantime.

And, hopefully, with getting a few more blog posts done and re-engaging with all my mates in the twitterverse.

We Never Talk Any more (well, actually, we do…)

2011-08-26T11:14:00.006+10:00

So I mentioned last week that I recently purchased voice recognition software for my computer. I've had it for just over a week now, and I think it's safe to say that it's pretty nifty. In fact, I'm writing this while leaning against the bookcase on the far side of my office from my computer. If I wanted to (though I'm not sure why I would) I could probably even write from the men's toilets across the corridor. It's… liberating.

I got the idea, as I mentioned last week, from John Birmingham who has written the last couple of his books using the same software. I read an interview with him in which he discussed the impact that it had on his writing productivity and I thought to myself “well, if it's good enough for Birmingham, it's good enough for me!"

So I've spent the last week, quite literally, talking to myself. I have it on good authority that the other people in my building are starting to wonder exactly what's going on here in my office. Not that a writer talking to himself should be news to anyone. I think it's fair to say that my computer and I are only now, after almost 2 years together, just getting to know one another.

And, like any relationship, we've had our ups and downs in the last week. While for the most part my MacBook is remarkably attentive, there have been a few times when I just can't escape the feeling that it's just not listening!

Take this morning, for example. Having just finished my firrst close edit of The Hunter, and with my head still in the story, I decided it was time to make the best use of my new toy, (and also an opportune time to put off reading any more of the 190 odd grant applications that I have to get through before next week) to start writing the 2nd book in the Orion series.

I duly fired up Scrivner, spent a very pleasant half an hour mapping out plot points and chapters, And then, excitedly, I donned my headset.

“Okay, here we go!" I thought. “A new chapter in my writing life. It's all sweet from here."

And it was. That is, at least until I came to the word “dared", (which, FYI, I just had to spell out manually) Whereupon my computer decided that no matter what my opinion was on the matter, it wasn't going to come to the party. here, I'll show you…

He ran as fast as he did.
He ran as fast as he did.
He ran as fast as he died.
He ran as fast as he daredevil.
He ran as fast as the daring.
He ran as fast as he dead.
He ran as fast as the dead.

That should give you some idea of the problem. I tried every trick in the book; I opened up the program's vocabulary editor, found the problematic word, spent the next 5 min “training" the program and, when I went back to my book, it made no difference whatsoever; “He ran as fast as he Darren" it told me.

So, that's where we are at. For the most part I'm loving being liberated from my keyboard, and the fact that I managed to bash out just under 1000 words in just a little under half an hour is, let's face it, fantastic. But I'd be lying if I pretended that it was all smooth sailing: As well as having issues with "dared"* it also has a couple of other little habits which irritate the life out of me—automatically inserting numerals instead of spelling out numbers, for example. Still, I'm hoping that as the weeks and months progress and as my computer learns not just to recognise the sound of my voice but to love it, but these little issues will become fewer, and fewer.

It's worth a try, anyway.

Because, as they say; “only the dialling succeed!'

* just had to spell it out again, in case you were wondering.

Much better now, thanks for asking...

2011-08-17T15:25:00.003+10:00

Hi everyone,

Firstly, thanks so much for all the lovely messages of support after my bleak and depressing post from last week. You'll be pleased to know that I've managed to come through my little meltdown and am feeling much happier and more like my usual self now.

On which note I did promise that I would post something this week and, well, here we are.

Actually, in the midst of all the last week's bleakness, I did have one particularly interesting experience. I'm pleased to say that early next year the lovely people at UQP have decided to repackage my second novel “a New Kind Of Dreaming" with a spanking new cover and all-new internals.

This, of course, means that I got the oddly pleasurable task of re-proofreading the book. As a general rule, once my books are finished, I tend to send about into the big wide world without so much as a second glance. Certainly I don't think I've ever actually sat down and re-read any of my books after publication-at least not from cover to cover. So was a weird feeling to settle down last week with a story I'd written over a decade earlier, right the very start of my writing career.

It was rather strange and for the first few pages I found myself spotting things that I would gladly change if given half a chance. But of course, that wasn't the point. The point of this particular proofreading was simply to pick up on any typos which may have crept through from the original edition.

What struck me most about reading the proofs, though, was how oddly different the book seemed. The version of “A New Kind Of Dreaming" in my mind didn't at all add up with the version on the pages. The book in my memory was, somehow, fundamentally different. It's hard to pin down exactly why or how, but I couldn't shake off this odd feeling of cognitive dissonance as I work through the pages of the new edition.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm still incredibly proud of the book. It's something I wrote when I was in a very different place in my life, when I was politically very angry, and which really says a lot about both who I was and who I am today. But working through the proofs last week, it felt like reading someone else's book.

So that's my little observation for this week. Not sure if it means anything though it probably does.

And also, if this post seems a little disjointed, it's because I'm “writing" it using my fun new voice recognition software which, inspired by John Birmingham, I've gone out and gotten for myself. This is in part to increase my productivity, and also because, quite frankly, sitting at a desk in front of a screen all day was playing havoc on my back. It's kind of strange talking on my computer, but I suspect I'm going to get to like this. I'll keep you posted.

In any case, thanks again for all the support last week it really made a difference.

Cheers,
Tony

Flat.

2011-08-12T10:45:00.002+10:00

Sometimes the words just won't come to life.

On the page, in the head, on the screen.

This is where I've been for the last couple of weeks. Feeling flat.

It's happened to me a couple of times before in my creative life; periods where no matter what I do, how hard I try, I just can't make myself interested. Can't make myself interested in the stories, in playing with the words, in the ideas, in writing, even in other people's writing.

Just. Plain. Flat.

And so I disconnect, and let the words lie fallow for a while.

This, in case you haven't worked it out already, is why there's been this big black hole of silence here for the last fortnight. It's not that I haven't wanted to put some posts up, not even that I haven't had ideas of stuff to post. Just that when I go to do it, I find myself feeling... flat.

It's the same with my books. I've had the draft of The Hunter sitting, half-edited, on my desk for over a month now, and every time I pick the damn thing up, and grab my pencil, I just get a few lines worked then then... flat.

And writing. I've got two big ideas that I want to work on at the moment. Both of them things I've been keen to write for ages. Both of them ideas that I've spent hours and hours thinking about, planning, anticipating.

Both of them, currently, seem like an utter waste of time and energy.

Like I say. Flat.

Still, it will pass. These things always do. Next week the teaching semester begins again and, like it or not, I'll be pulled back into the world of words, and hopefully it'll make a few of my own words rise up of the page, take on a bit of form and function and perspective. Take on some depth.

Wow. What a depressing post. Sorry for pouring all my flat out onto you like that.

Still, if it's any consolation, I'm feeling a little bumpy now. Slightly hummocked. Ruffled, even. This bleak post has more body to it than anything I've bashed out in a month.

Which is probably a good thing.

So thank for reading. See you all here next week.

Promise.

Just a Quick One...

2011-07-25T13:44:00.002+10:00

I'm home from Noumea, where Min and Toby and I had a wonderful holiday. Unfortunately I've managed to come down with a shocking head cold, and awful backlog of work, so here, just to keep you all envious, is a photo of Toby playing on the beach that I took last week...

Something New and Purty....

2011-07-11T16:23:00.004+10:00

I've been kinda itching to tell you all about this for a while, but wanted to wait until it was all official and stuff...

I'm pleased to say that there'll be a new edition of Into White Silence coming out a little later on this year - with all sorts of spanky new features (well, a new cover, at least, and in a nice big 'C' format)

And the first shiny happy copies dropped into my mailbox while I was up in Brisbane last week. So I'm pleased to be able to share the cover with you all now...

It's also going to be available as an e-book, so if you (like me) are embracing the digital reading revolution, then you can enjoy it on your e-reader of choice.

Pulling Books Apart

2011-06-30T16:47:00.004+10:00

Sorry for the long silence. This is a recording....

I've been nose to the grindstone since getting back from Perth the other week, busily beavering away at the paper I delivered at the biennial IRSCL congress in Brisbane yesterday*. I looked at Coraline and The Graveyard Book, both by the wonderful Neil Gaiman, and examined the construction of family within them.**

So, of course, I've had to give both books a very close reading. My copy of Coraline has so many little yellow post it notes attached that it looks rather like a very odd sunflower. And The Graveyard book is even worse. For me, at least, a 'close reading' involves going through the book, pencil in hand, and literally reading it on a sentence-by-sentence basis, considering issues of construction and meaning behind pretty much every word.

All this has, of course, got me thinking...

During my visit to Perth the other week, two different people, both writers I respect enormously, told me how much they dislike academics who read into their books ideas and meanings that they never intended to be there in the first place. And I have to admit that I've read a few analytical comments about my own books in scholarly papers and had to fight the urge to bang off a quick email to the author.

But one of the central principles of literary analysis - and it's as constructed an idea as every other in the field - is that the meaning a reader, any reader - even a theory-obsessed academic -brings to a book is as valid, if not more valid, than the meaning that the author intended. There's also an argument to be made from an analytical perspective that authors are perhaps the least qualified people to comment upon the underlying social meanings that inform their writing.***

In any case, to get back to the central point of this post, one of the chief comments that writing students (and other writers) often make about having to do very close readings of books is that it can 'kill the enjoyment of the book for me'. The idea being that, in having to analyse a creative work so minutely, you lose sight of the overall beauty of it and that, in turn, doesn't help improve your writing. It's an argument I've heard a few times over the years.

And I have to say - speaking only for myself, of course - it's an argument I just can't agree with. Stephen King points out that 'if you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write', and I think you can take this a step further and argue that the more closely you allow yourself to engage with the words of other writers, the more you understand, at both a conscious and unconscious level, about your own writing.

If anything else, for me the process of doing a close reading only heightens my appreciation of other writers' works and my admiration of their skills. Seeing how the placement of a single word in the right place and time can frame up the rest of a story without you (the reader) realising it always gives me something of a thrill.

I'll give you an example from my paper -

Take Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - one of my favourite books. I've read it countless times, including the close reading I did for this paper. One of the things I picked up on when looking at the book was this, the fourth sentence of the novel, right on the first page...

The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.

There are a whole lot of things in that sentence that are really interesting in terms of my paper, but one thing that really got me is the power behind one little word there; 'almost'. As soon as you read that word you know - you just know in the back of your head - that until the knife has completed its work, one way or another, that the world is going to be a dangerous place. The word 'almost' implies such a strong sense of incompleteness, of tasks left hanging and unaccomplished, that the reader is immedately - just four sentences into the story - feeling unsettled and uneasy.

And for me, as both a writer and a reader, understanding something like that doesn't in any way diminish my capacity to enjoy the book. If anything, it heightens it. I still get all teary at the end of The Graveyard Book, perhaps even moreso now than the first time I read it.

And of course, this raises the question of whether or not Neil Gaiman deliberately placed that little word, 'almost' there to achieve that effect, or whether it's just a happy co-incidence, or whether I'm simply reading far too much into the book.

In all honesty, I suspect the answer to that question is: 'yes'. My feeling is that Neil Gaiman is far too accomplished a craftsman to not be aware, at some level, of the impact of every single word in his stories. I know I've had long discussions with my editors over the placement of individual words on many occasions.

I also know, from personal experience, that often the decision as to which words to include or not include aren't made on a conscious level, but are made in an instant - a hundredth of a second - at some instinctual level while you're writing, but that doesn't mean that you're not still making them.

And I also know - regardless of what Neil Gaiman himself intended - the effect that word 'almost' has upon me, as both a reader, a student of writing, and a practitioner of it. And at that one, Neil Gaiman's intentions (with all due respect to the man) become irrelevent.

So for me, at least, pulling books apart is part of the joy of reading them.

*A conference which has, to this point, had many highlights, one of which was me stepping into a duckpond up to my waist while walking through the botanical gardens on my way to catch the train to the airport to come home last night. Luckily I had spare clothes in my backpack. And enough money on me to afford a new pair of shoes on my way through town...

**I could, at this point, bang on using words and phrases like 'unravelling the liminal spaces', and 'transgressions of thresholds' and 'Freudian signifiers of the heimlich and unheimlich' and 'Lacanian o/Other' but, trust me, you've got better things to do with your life...

*** Though that's a whole other blog post...

Youth Literature Days...

2011-06-17T18:06:00.004+10:00

Today I'm halfway through my stay at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, and it's been a great week, if a busy one. I've been presenting as part of the FCLC's series of Youth Literature Days, which are always full on, but fantastic fun.

I was lucky enough, back in about 2003 or 4, to be involved in the setting up of the first Youth Lit Days (or YLD's, as they shall henceforth be known), and it's a program that I'll happily keep coming back for. I think it's pretty safe to say that there's nothing else like it in Australia.

Once each term, groups of students between years 9-12 meet up at the centre and spend a day working and writing together. The days are mentored by various writers - the groups I've been working with this week have, for example, worked so far with people like Markus Zusak, Bridget Lowry, James Roy, Julia Lawrinson and heaps of others. Next term they've got Isobelle Carmody coming and in term 4, Simon Higgins.

YLD's tend to be a sort of win-win situation for all involved; the students selected (the criteria for selection is that you have to be interested and committed to writing. That's all. Grades etc... aren't important, just a love of putting words on pages) get the opportunity to work with some amazing and diverse writers, they get exposed to different ways of thinking about writing and stories, and different ways of approaching the various parts of the writing process. The writers, for their part, get to work with big groups of bright, motivated young writers, all of whom have actively chosen to be part of the program. From my point of view, I come out of YLD's really tired, but refreshed and excited.

And some of the writing produced... wow!

So that's how I'm spending my week. This week I've been doing days at the Centre in Fremantle with groups in their first and second years of the program. Next monday I'm doing one last day at the centre with a group who've been coming for four years now, and then Leslie (the centre director) and I head down south to Bunbury for a few days down there.

I can't help but wish there'd been something like this around when I was a teenager - would have been just the sort of thing I'd have loved. Still, at least I get to be involved with them now.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Off we go again...

2011-06-07T14:14:00.003+10:00

So, I'm sitting here in the main reading room of the National Library of Australia, waiting for a book to come up from the stacks, so that I can not embarrass myself at the IRSCL Conference I'm speaking at in Brisbane in July. I won't pretend I'm not a little nervous about this paper, for a whole pile of reasons that I'm not going to go into right at the moment, but I'm sure that when this particular book* pops out of the little hatchway things will get a lot better.

I hope.

Still, on the upside, the 20 minute wait between logging a book request and having it appear on the shelves gives me a chance to pop over here and post a long overdue blog.

Since last we spoke, I've been buried in writing stuff. I've also had the printout of The Hunter** sitting on the coffee table in my office, staring accusingly at me, and quite literally whispering "edit me... you know you want to...." into the back of my mind*** I'm really hanging out to get my red pen out and start slashing away, but am restraining myself until I'm in Perth next week, because editing is just the perfect way to fill the evenings while away from home.

On the subject of which, I'm about to head over for a couple of weeks at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, which is just one of my favourite places in the world to work. I'll be doing a series of their Youth Literature Days, which are always fantastic. Also talking at the WA State Librarians Conference this saturday, and doing some sessions with the lovely Coral Tulloch (who is almost wholly responsible for encouraging me to go to Antarctica a few years back) at the FCLC open day on Sunday 19th June. If you're in Fremantle, and near the centre, please do come on by and say G'Day.

Then I'm home again for a week, which will doubtless be spent bashing out the rest of the paper which has currently got me sitting at the NLA, then up to Brisbane for the IRSCL, then back for a week, then off to Noumea for a week of (Shock! Horror!) ACTUAL HOLIDAYS!

So I'm keeping busy.

In the meantime, there've been all sorts of things I've wanted to blog about, including this incredibly stupid article from the Wall Street Journal, which rests upon all sorts of broad generalisations, and provides a fantastic example of how to cherry pick a genre in order to prove your (uninformed) point, but sadly time has gotten away from me, and all sorts of other bloggers have done a nice job of unpacking the piece, in any case.

I also recently read up a whole lot about Mary E. Patchett, and specifically her 1953 book Ajax the Warrior as the foundation for a book chapter I was invited to put together. It was a fascinating little journey into one of the little known byways of Australian Literary History.

In any case, the trolley has just popped out with a whole pile of books on it including, I suspect, the one I'm waiting for, so I'm off to be a happy little researcher for the next little while.

*New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Fiction, by Bradford, Mallan and Stephens, (2008), just in case you were wondering....
** Formerly known as Orion, but I've changed the title.
*** Actually, this might not in fact be true. I've been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman lately, and I suspect it's messing with my subconscious....

Stumbling Over the Finishing Line

2011-05-25T16:49:00.002+10:00

So I've been a little quiet of late. That's largely due to the usual end-of-semester marking frenzy, and also a trip to Sydney last weekend.

But, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I've got bigger news.

About an hour ago, I FINALLY FINISHED MY NEXT BOOK!

Thank God.

Sure, when I started it, my plan was for it to take six months (it's only 55,000 words, after all, how long can that take?) and it's ended up taking almost bang on eighteen. And during that time it's felt like a complete monkey on my back.

But now, it's done. And I've got a nice warm pile of paper, hot off the printers, sitting here on the table beside me, just waiting for me to launch into it with a red pen, and start slicing the crap (of which there is an abundance) out of it.

This, for those of you who've been silly enough to hang around here for the last year and a half, is my action / adventure book. It's different to all my other stuff. It's faster paced. Sillier. And has been a lot of fun to write. It's also intended to be the first of a series of (probably) four or five books. Which means that I'm really going to have to speed up my output a little, I suspect.

It's a strange feeling, finishing the first draft. There's an odd mixture of elation and relief, in equal parts. I've now got this big blank(ish) space looming in front of me, which I can fill with all sorts of other projects and ideas. I'll be able to sleep at night without worrying about this book possibly never being completed. And, of course, I've got to start editing it, now, which is where the fun really starts. Particularly for a book that's been written in as many fits and starts as this one.

Still, it's done. And soon, I might need some proofreaders. 13 - 16 year old guys with a penchant for action would be ideal.

Volunteers, anyone?

Oh where, oh where did the last decade go?

2011-05-10T14:06:00.003+10:00

So I turned 39 last Saturday. I've been meaning t0 put this post up ever since, but - and this pretty much sums up the topic of this particular post - I've just plain been too busy. You can see my space filler of a post last week if you want the details*

But, as is the way with these things, I did get a little reflective over the weekend. Not least because I read this column here, by Aussie author and all-round-nice-person Bec Sparrow, hard upon the heels of having a long conversation with Min along the lines of 'what the hell happened to my 30's?'

Because, I'll be honest, I feel as though my 20's lasted about a decade, and my 30's roughly 5 minutes.

Still, when you do some comparative analysis** I think there's a pretty clear answer as to why.

During my 20's I:

Rowed Boats
Did Triathlons
Trained for rowing and triathlons.
Taught
Had relationships which lasted no longer than 6 months.
Sailed on a tall ship twice a year.
(Towards the end) wrote 1 book.

And that's about it, really. Now, let's look at the intervening 9(ish) years.

During my 30's I:

Wrote a book
Changed career
Moved interstate
Wrote another book
Moved back interstate
Got engaged
Wrote another book
Started a PhD
Wrote another book
Maintained a touring schedule which kept me away from home roughly 3 months out of every year.
Wrote another book
Got married
Bought an old run down house
Renovated old run down house
Finished PhD
Went to Antarctica
Wrote another book
Moved interstate.
Wrote another book
Bought another house
Sold renovated house
Wrote another book
Changed career (again)
Gave up touring schedule
Became a father
Wrote another book.

So, all things considered, I'm not overly surprised that I feel as though I missed a few years there. I've been - as has been mentioned on this blog a few times - rather busy.

It's really funny, though - I can remember being a teenager and wondering what my life would be like when I was 30. It's safe to say that I was pretty much incorrect on all counts. Now I'm 39, in the third year of my current career, and working incredibly hard to build up my research and academic profile. My writing career is ticking along nicely enough, even if I'm not getting nearly the writing time I'd like. And my family - both my immediate and extended family - continues to be the absolute joy of my life.***

Which is not a bad way to have spent a decade, in my opinion.

Even if I can't remember most of it...

* Nothing's changed...
** And let's face it, I'm a literary studies academic. Comparative analysis is what it's all about.
*** On that, I also became an uncle again last weekend. Birthday. Unclehood. A good weekend...

Just to Clarify...

2011-05-02T15:29:00.002+10:00

...I'm not dead. Nor in a coma. Just horribly, horribly, horribly busy.

Last week I got to the point where I had so much stuff on my plate that I got a bit, well, I guess 'paralysed' is probably the best way to describe it. For a couple of days there, I felt like I was going backwards with just about everything, with the result that a lot of things got pretty much dropped from my agenda. Like blogging, for example.

But I'm slowly getting back on top of things again now - my marking is - touch wood - almost done* I've only got four more lectures and one more class to deliver, and that's my teaching finished for the semester. Then I've got another insane amount of marking to get through, but such is life... I've got a book chapter and a conference paper to get written before the 10th of June, when I head off to Perth for three weeks work at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre. Most of the papers for the journal I'm editing have come in, and so I'm in the process of chasing up peer reviewers for them. Three weeks ago, Melina Marchetta came and worked with our students at UC, and was *fantastic*. Last week we hosted Easter lunch for our extended Canberra family - all 11 of them - in our backyard. We also dyed eggs, using traditional wax and dyes, which was great fun. I'll admit that I watched most of the Royal Wedding, but went to bed before they went driving in Prince Charles' Aston Martin, which was probably the most interesting part of the whole thing. Toby is sleeping through the nights. Last night I cooked rosemary smoked ribs in the Weber. This morning I got to ride a nice little pony named Woody, and together we did some lovely canter transitions, and also trotted in spirals, which was a lot of fun. While I was doing that, Obama was announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden. I'm not unhappy about the fact that he's been chased down, but the degree of enthusiasm in some of the celebrations are making me slightly uncomfortable. I've never liked the idea of retribution as a cause for celebration. Not for anyone. Even Bin Laden.

Phew.

So, that's about that.

I'm hoping to have life more or less back under control by the end of this week, and so I'll hopefully have the energy to put a bit of time and thought into some decent blog posts.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

*this despite my stupid bloody version of MS Word for Mac freezing up randomly every couple of hours, and forcing me to lose up to 40 minutes of work at a time**
** Yes, I know about saving my work as I go. But, you know, sometimes you just forget. And those are almost inevetably the ones where my machine decides to give me the wheel of death...

On Being Notable...

2011-04-12T11:38:00.003+10:00

Just time to bash out a quick post before the midday announcement of the Children's Book Council of Australia's annual 'Book of the Year' shortlist.

I found out about half an hour ago that my book 'Daywards' has made the list of 2010's Notable Books, which puts it in contention for the shortlist (though I'll be honest and declare that I think it's probably an outsider) alongside some lovely people and fantastic writers. Michael Pryor, Melina Marchetta, James Roy, Cassandra Golds, Kirsty Murray, Scottie Gardner, Cath Crowley, Randa Abdel-Fatah and lots of others. Whatever happens fifteen minutes from now, it's really lovely to see my book on the same list as all theirs and before they make the big announcementI just wanted to say congratulations to all of the notable writers. I couldn't hope to be in better company.

Happy Birthday to Us!

2011-04-08T09:04:00.003+10:00

It might have been 20 years ago today that Sergent Pepper taught his men to play *, but it was 2 years ago tomorrow (which is, of course, a screen free saturday, so no blogging for me then...) that I sat down at my computer here at UC and decided, on a whim as much as anything else, to start a blog. And while my first post over at Goodreads wasn't exactly a work of online genius, more a tribute to my digital incompetence, at least it was the start of something.

And look at the dizzying heights the last two years have seen us soar to - 173 posts! (A good percentage of them about Toby) 27 followers! Occasional comments! Number 75 on the list of the Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs!** Entire fortnights passing with no posts! Months with posts every day! Strident criticism of the opposition! Strident criticism of the Government! Irritating Songs! Other Irritating Songs! Even Kevin Bacon! Goodness, what a ride it's been.

And of course, now that the blog is 2 years old, I can expect it to become recalcitrant, and to keep me up at nights, and to wake me up early in the morning, and to blow bubbles in its milk. Luckily I've had recent experience dealing with all those behaviours, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

In all seriousness, though, I didn't really start this blog with any plans or intentions for it. It was originally just a kind of idle curiosity which made me click the 'create blog' button on Goodreads. If I'm being honest I expected it to just fizzle out after a couple of months, as these things so often tend to do. But it didn't. Musings... has somehow managed to worm its way into my life, and despite my occasional long silences, I've got to say that I've gotten so much more out of blogging than I ever expected to.

It's put me back in touch with old friends. It's helped me to clarify a lot of my ideas about writing and why I do it. If nothing else, it's made me write regularly and (some of the time, at least) thoughtfully. Also, looking back across the last couple of years of posts - and this is something I didn't expect at all - it's become a sort of record of a fairly huge couple of years of my life, which is something I've never done before.

I'm not a diarist - never have been. Never really saw the point, to be honest. I kept a diary for about a year and a half when I was a teenager and then, thankfully, I burned it. Keeping a day to day (or, let's be honest, week-to-week) record of my thoughts and life always seemed a little pointless.

But reviewing the last couple of years of posts here, I'm actually amazed at how many things I've forgotten. In the last two years I've gone from itinerant writer to full time academic, and this place has recorded that. I've met some wonderful people in the last couple of years, and it's great having them dotted throughout here. Some of my friends have achieved great things, from having first books (or trilogies - Katie, I'm looking at you here...) published, through to winning quite incredible awards, and it's been lovely having a place to celebrate them. My own books have done some good things, too, and it's nice having a record of when and where, though I'm slightly worried about just how long I've been working on 'Orion'.***

And, of course, I'm grateful to have a sort of living record of Toby's first couple of years.

So anyway, there's no real point to this post, except to say thanks to those of you who take the time to read it. I'm sure you must have much better things to do with your lives, but I doubt I'd keep writing it if nobody ever looked at it, and I've gotten so much more out of the process than I'd ever expected to so.... you know... cheers!

*or, then again, it might not have been. I'm not massively familiar with the Beatles musicology, to be honest...
**Which is just the kind of statistical achievement that makes me love the internet.
***I know I keep saying this, but it's nearly finished now. Honestly. Less than 2000 words to go. I got some writing done this week, too...

Successful Friends.

2011-03-30T10:17:00.007+11:00

I'm not sure if writing this particular post is a good idea, or if I'll be able to actually capture in words what I'm thinking about at the moment, but I think the subject matter is actually one of those really important aspects of being a writer which is rarely, or never, discussed, so I'm going to have a bash at it. I'm hoping it won't seem too self-involved or whiney. Please bear with me, if you have the patience...

It's a funny thing, this writing game.

When I first got into this business, just after UQP accepted 'The Darkness', but before it had even hit the shelves, I had a long chat with James Moloney. It was a great conversation, and one I remember to this day. We talked about all sorts of things - what I hoped to achieve, where I thought writing might take me, what type of writer I wanted to be.

Jim did me the enormous favour of asking me a lot of the questions which people new to the publishing business really need to be asked. Hard questions. Important questions.

He asked me things like; "How are you going to deal with bad reviews?" (not, you'll note, 'what will you do if you get some bad reviews?' but, 'How will you deal with it WHEN it happens?')

He asked me; "What will you respond when someone tells you to your face that they didn't particularly like your book."

We discussed "What will you do when you miss out on an award which you really thought you'd win?"

And he asked me; "How will you deal with other people's success?"*

It was, I think, one of the most important discussions of my life. I owe Jim an enormous debt of thanks for making me really confront some of these darker aspects of the relationship between writing and ego, early on in my career.

Because the answers to those questions can, in many ways, define the writer you become. So much of this writing world is about rejection, in some form or another - from the moment you get your first form letter from a publisher, to the moment you miss out on a shortlisting, or get overlooked in a writers festival program, or miss out on your fifth or sixth consecutive grant application**.

And it can be even more subtle, even more insidious: One of the conversations I hate the most in the world is when I'm out in company and someone mentions that I'm 'a writer'. Generally nowadays if people ask me 'what do you do for a living?' I just tell them I'm an academic, and try and move the conversation on as fast as possible. Often, though, it'll come out that I'm a writer, and the inevetable follow up question is 'What have you written?'

It's never the questioner's fault that they haven't read any of my books, or heard of me. There are millions of books out there, after all, and I'm the first to admit that mine aren't generally well known. And there are plenty of writers out there who I wouldn't recognise from a bar of soap. And, for all that, it's not like I feel the need for my work to be recognised by everyone. But I still really hate that moment; the blank look of 'failure-to-register' which usually flickers across someone's face when told a couple of my titles is, to be brutally honest, horrible. Crushing.

It's irrational, I know. Egocentric, certainly. But horrible nonetheless.

But it's something which - I suspect - every writer experiences. And with it comes the feeling that you're wasting your life. That you don't have any real talent. That the last thing you wrote was pointless, and that the thing you're currently working on will be worse.

George Orwell summed it up best. In his seminal essay 'Why I Write', he attributed his drive to be 'a writer' to four central influences, all of which - in different proportions - play a part in driving a writer to pursue his or her craft, often at the expense of other aspects of their life.

The first of these, he suggests, is 'sheer egoism'.

...Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc etc. It is humbug to pretned that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristing with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, wiht the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition - in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self centred than journalists, though less interested in money... (1968:3)

I can't say that I disagree with Orwell's take on the role of the ego. (Though it's important to add that ego is only part of the mix. He also suggests that 'Aesthetic enthusiasm, Historical Impulse and Political Purpose are the three other driving influences behind a writer's writings, and this works fine for me. Although I also think you can make a pretty good argument for 'ego' being the driving force behind each of them, too...)

Every writer I know has an ego. It's not a bad thing. It's actually one of the tools of the trade and, as Orwell suggested, an essential one. It's ego which keeps you going in the face of the lukewarm or downright bad reviews - especially important in this age of 'Goodreads' and 'Amazon', where everyone has the right and capacity to publish their opinions on everything. It's ego that helps you ignore the little voice in the back of your head which whispers 'this is shit' in your ear as you write. It's ego that helps steady your hand when you click your Manuscript off to a publisher, or an agent, for the first time. It's ego that calms your nerves when you step on stage at a writer's festival, or just in a local library talking to a book club.

So yes, it's a tool. Part of the toolbox. But it's a tool which can get out of control and do a lot of damage. A little like an angle grinder. Your ego can also - if you let it - tear you apart, make you crave acceptance, make you expect certain privileges, make you view other people's successes as your own failings and, in short, can make you into a not very nice person to be around. It can make you say things you later regret, come off as arrogant or just downright rude. It can make you behave in ways you can't believe, looking back. I've been guilty of all these in the course of my writing career.

But - and this is the important part - it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom, and it's important to remember that. It's all a matter of perspective, which is why the questions that Jim asked me, way back in 1998, were so important.

Take that last one, for example. "How will you deal with other people's success?"

This one's a biggie. It can, I suspect, either make or break a writer, and it's one of those things you have to make a conscious decision about. You have to, I think, decide that you're going to celebrate other writer's successes, and not take personally the fact that your own works might not be getting the same recognition. That way lies madness. And the bottom line is that someone else's success, or talent, or ability, shouldn't (doesn't) have any impact at all on the value of your own work. I don't love my books any more, or any less when they win or miss out on awards. It's not like I'd have written them any differently (the book of mine which I think is one of the best stories I've ever written is also the one that never even got a shortlisting for a single award, is still on its first print run and which never really took off here in Australia, and yet I wouldn't change a word of it.)

When I started writing seriously, I made two good friends early on in the piece. (Actually, I made a lot of good friends, but I'm going to concentrate on two in particular). One was a young bloke named Markus, who was about my age, has a similar sense of humour to me, and who Imogen and I really clicked with during a literature festival out in Ipswich one weekend. The other was an illustrator- a guy named Shaun, who'd done a couple of books with my friend Gary Crew, and was - like me - a Perth boy. I actually bought a couple of Shaun's early artworks, because I liked them so much.***

A couple of days ago, Shaun was awarded the Astrid Lindgren prize, which is quite good. He also won another rather good prize earlier this year...

Markus, in 2005, penned a little book which, among other things, went to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. A few weeks ago it was mentioned on the brilliant sitcom 'Modern Family'.

All of which, let's face it, is awesome. Shaun and Markus are two of the nicest people I know, and two of the most talented, and I can't think of anyone else more deserving of the accolades they've received. You'd have to be a fairly self involved tosser to say otherwise.

But - and this is, I guess, the point of this long ramble - I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a couple of moments of - not jealousy or envy - but wistfulness. A couple of moments when I've watched these mates of mine achieving the most incredible things and wondered if perhaps I should have done some things differently. Wondered if, perhaps, I'm not as good a writer as I think I am (I'm pretty sure I'm not, actually...)

Do I begrudge my successful friends their wins? Of course not. If nothing else, the 'trickle down' effect means that their success is good for every other YA and children's writer. Including me. And watching their achievements has made me reassess a few of the decisions I've made in my writing career, and decide to - better late than never - remedy them.

More importantly, it's much more fun being able to revel in other people's successes. Much, much more fun. It's much nicer at the end of the day to go to bed delighted for your colleagues than it is wishing it was you.

And when the little ego voice cuts in, it's also a vital skill to be able to silence it and, in my experience, one of the best ways of doing this is to make that conscious decision to celebrate your field of practice and everyone involved in it, and not to treat it as a competition.

Which is what I try to do nowadays, with everything. And it helps turn those wistful moments into something positive, something useful.

So big (HUGE) congrats to Shaun, for both his Academy Award (BTW, if you haven't seen his film of 'The Lost Thing', then you really need to do yourself a favour and get your hands on it.) and for his winning of the Astrid Lindgren Prize. I can't think of a more deserving winner.

*I should mention that I am, for readability purposes, paraphrasing his questions into neat little bundles here, but all this was discussed in a conversation that lasted more than a couple of hours...
** All of these are based on experience, sadly.
*** Which turned out to be a really good decision.

Throughness and Connection

2011-03-24T10:43:00.005+11:00

Last monday night (yes, I know it's thursday already, and yes, I know I said I'd blog more regularly this week...) I was lucky enough to present the grand prizes at the annual ACT English Teachers Association Litlinks writing competition. This is the third year in a row that I've been lucky enough to be invited to be the final judge of this really fantastic writing showcase, and every year the job seems to get more and more difficult. This years entries were probably the most difficult I've ever had to decide between. Huge congratulations to all the young writers who entered.

But that's not really what I want to talk about today. Or at least, not entirely. Today I want to share some of the ideas I talked about in my speech at the awards ceremony, and one in particular, because I think it's a lovely writerly idea that is worth putting out there.

So today I'm going to talk about horse riding. I'm also going to steal shamelessly from another writer.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've recently taken up horse riding and it's quickly become the little pool of zen in the middle of my week*

The only way to act around horses is to stay calm and measured, and to exude a sort of inner peace and restraint in your movements and in your mental attitude. If you don't do this, the horse picks up on it. Then they kick you. Unless you're already up on their back, in which case they throw you off. Then they kick you.**

And even if they don't kick you, if the rider on their back is overworking them, or dragging at the bit, or slumping and throwing their weight around, or constantly kicking and poking with their heels, then horses get grumpy, and stubborn, and refuse to do what they're told. Which is fair enough. I'd do the same.

So it's a good idea, when working with horses, to really get yourself into a good headspace. To get into a mental space where you're working with the horse, rather than trying to impose your will upon it.

All this I worked out pretty early on in the piece. About three minutes into my first trip to the riding school, actually, as I watched a couple of other people having a lesson. And the result of having to get myself into that 'zen' headspace is that, at the end of the lesson, when I swing down off the horse, I find myself incredibly relaxed, calm and refreshed. And that feeling generally stays with me for the rest of the day. It makes work easier, it makes me happier and more fun to be around, and - best of all - it makes me write better. I've noticed this. Riding puts me into a really good headspace for writing.

And it's not just me, either.

Late last week, while doing some research for a lecture, I came across an article written by the fantastic British writer Meg Rosoff. It's (as you would expect) a beautifully written reflection on how she goes about the business of writing, and the forces that come into play, and - to my surprise - about the relationship between horseriding and the process of writing. You can read the whole paper HERE - it's in volume II, number I.

What particularly resonated with me in Rosoff's piece, though, was towards the end, when she talks about two of the central skills that horse riders strive for in their riding - 'Throughness' and 'openness'. I'm going to quote her directly here, because she expresses this idea much better than I can:

I took up horse riding at the age of 50. I hadn’t ridden in more than 35 years, and even then, not properly. For anyone who thinks horse riding involves sitting on a horse, kicking it to go fast, and pulling on the reins to slow down, may I begin by saying that it is fantastically more complex than that.

It involves great strength, balance, lightness, decisiveness, and humility. It requires a willingness to partner, to communicate, to trust -- but never to relinquish responsibility or trust too much. Two of the most important concepts associated with riding are ‘throughness’ and ‘connection.’

The United States Dressage Federation defines throughness as ‘The supple, elastic, unblocked, connected state that permits an unrestricted flow of energy from back to front and front to back. Synonymous with the German term "Durchlaessigkeit," or "throughlettingness.” ’ Connection is defined as a state “in which there is no blockage, break, or slack in the circuit that joins horse and rider into a single harmonious unit; the unrestricted flow of energy and influence from and through the
rider to and throughout the horse, and back to the rider.”

Now think, for a minute, of the subconscious mind as the horse and the conscious mind as the rider. If the rider is too strong, too stiff or unsympathetic, the horse becomes inaccessible and difficult to control, or dull and resistant. The object of dressage is to create a fluid exchange of understanding and energy between horse and rider; an advanced dressage rider is often described as asking questions that the horse answers.

In writing, this powerful flow of energy cannot be faked, any more than it can in riding. A book written from the conscious, controlled mind will feel as stiff and lifeless as an insensitive rider on a resentful horse. Or a singer’s voice coming from the head rather than the chest and diaphragm. Or a ball thrown from the elbow. Writing (like riding, or singing or playing a musical instrument, or painting or playing cricket or thinking about the universe) requires the deep psychological resonance of the subconscious mind. It requires connection and throughness, and only then will the reader feel the surge of power that a clever borrowed voice never achieves.

I love this idea. I love particularly the notion that when I'm writing, I'm trying not to impose myself upon the words, but to allow the words to flow through me. Some days I achieve this, some days I don't. I love the notion that a good dressage rider asks questions that the horse answers - (I spend a lot of time teaching workshops on the value of questions as a narrative driver, and so this also rings very true with me).

Throughness, and Connection. They're not skills that I have in my riding, yet. At this point, I'm still working at not falling off. But, all the same, I love the idea of them, and already they're skills I'm working towards, every single lesson. From the moment I walk into the stable to bridle up my horse, to the moment I put him away and untack him again at the end.

And they're not skills that I always have in my writing. But, just like in riding, they're something to strive towards, with every sentence, and every paragraph.

*technically, as my lessons are usually on Mondays, it's become a pool of Zen at the start of my week. Unless you count my weeks from Thursday, in the same manner as the financial year starts in July...

** Just to be clear, I wrote that paragraph for comic effect - in reality all the horses I've come across to date have been incredibly tolerant and not even slightly psycopathic. Which, given the rather un-coordinated way I ride them at this point, is a testament to their stoicism. I haven't been kicked at all.

Embarrassed Silence....

2011-03-18T11:25:00.004+11:00

So the last you heard from me was during the middle of the Perth Writer's Festival, where I was having a great time. And I was. I wrote my last entry up in a nearby pub and, after completing it, I walked out the door and straight into an old friend and housemate of mine who I haven't seen in probably 5 years or so, and who told me that he and his wife are pregnant. So we went back into the pub. Then another friend of mine, who I also haven't seen in ages (I'm really quite bad at keeping in touch with people) rang to tell me that he and his wife are pregnant. A definite pattern was emerging. So we stayed in the pub. Then I had dinner. Then I went to my hotel and drank a lot of water. Then I slept - a glorious, uninterrupted night's sleep.

The following morning I felt good. Some might say surprisingly good. Got off to the festival out at the University of WA, I phoned up one of Imogen and my old friends who I knew was at the festival that day and we arranged to meet that evening, after my final session, for a glass of wine and a catch up. Then I was planning to get to some of the evening events. After that, I had my first session for the day - a fantastic panel on Writing Australian Speculative Fiction, with (among others) my very good friend Margo Lanagan. We had a good time riffing off each other, and there was a good crowd and some fantastic questions.

Then off to the signing tent for half an hour or so. Then I bolted down half a sandwich, gave my son a cuddle (He'd arrived with grandparents just before my panel session) and then off to take a 3 hour workshop on writing fantasy. I was really looking forward to this workshop - it was one I'd not done before, and I'd put together some (in my opinion, at least) really interesting and fun stuff.

And it started well. The first hour was great, and the fifteen or so people who'd signed up were all lovely and engaged. The lecture theatre was a little gloomy, though, and so we had all the flourescent lights on.

The flickering, hard, white, flourescent lights.

About an hour into the workshop, while standing up the front of the lecture theatre, I noticed something a little odd - I couldn't read the monitor screen for my powerpoint projection any more. All I could see was a growing, pixellated blur. I also felt very suddenly nauseaus.

And this could only mean one thing...

Migraine.

I used to get a lot of migraines in my late teens and early 20's. I know the warning signs, and the first one of them is that my vision goes. That brings with it an odd sensation of 'spaciness', of feeling completely light headed and spun out. Light gets irritating at first and then, usually a couple of hours after the vision problems, the headache hits and, once that happens, nothing makes a dent in it. If I can gulp down some strong painkillers and get myself to a darkened room as soon as the vision thing starts, then the headache isn't usually too bad, and sometimes doesn't come at all.

Of course, it's a bit difficult to do that in front of a lecture theatre full of people who've all done me the courtesy of coming along to work with me. Especially when you're only about halfway through a workshop.

It was horribly embarrassing. I had to stop in the middle of a sentence, explain what was happening in my head, ask if anybody had any painkillers (one lovely person had some Panadol, which I knocked back like a junkie) and would they mind terribly if I turned all the lights off.

With the lecture theatre then plunged into darkness, and one of the lovely festival volunteers fetching me some fruit (I suspect that plunging blood sugar is one of the triggering factors for these) we all ploughed on with the workshop.

To be honest, I can't actually remember much of the rest of the afternoon. I know I got through to the end of the workshop, and then the festival got me back to the hotel quick smart. I remember vaguely getting some dinner into me ($50.00 for a plate of pasta. Thanks, room service...) and then it was lights out, both literally and metaphorically.

When I woke up the following morning, the headache had gone. I still felt spacey and a little light sensitive, but at least I was functional. Then it was back out to the festival for my final presentation - 40 minutes talking about my family on an outdoor stage during 'family day'. Lots of kids. Lots of old friends who I managed to talk to for about three minutes. As part of that presentation, Toby made his stage debut, bringing up some props for one of my stories.

Then another long night's sleep, and then on monday morning I checked out and headed up to my parent's place to pick up Toby. That afternoon we flew home to Canberra. Tuesday was back to work and 234 waiting emails, which took me most of last week to clear. This week's been similarly jammed, which is why I haven't written anything here (or anywhere else, for that matter - Orion is still firmly parked, about 3500 words from completion.)

In the meantime, one of my good friends has won an Oscar, the world has shaken in New Zealand and Japan, causing unspeakable suffering which I can't bring myself to write about, I've continued my weekly horseriding lessons, and life has basically continued at a breakneck pace.

Anyway, it's probably time I signed off from this long ramble. From next week I'm going to try and get back into my regular writing routine again, which will include blogging again. Actually, next monday evening, I'm involved in something exciting, which I'll tell you all about next week.

PWF day one

2011-03-03T20:34:00.003+11:00

Okay, this'll be short, because I'm typing it up on mi iPad, having to use the HTML edit function to enter text, while drinking a (admittedly rather nice) beer in a pub near my hotel.

I've just finished my first really enjoyable day at the PWF, spoke to a couple of groups, both of which, though small, were really interested and good fun to be with. I also got to catch up with writer friends, including (and I'll apologize now for the lack of links in this post - iPad issues. I'll plug them in later on my computer. If I remember...) Margo Lanagan, Melina Marchetta, Brian Faulkner, and Bernard Beckett. I also got to meet the lovely Wendy Orr, though owing to a small brain fart on my part (thanks largely to the fact that I had bee. Awake since 5.00am, due to having a toddler still on Canberra time) i referred to her as an illustrator. She isn't, of course, she's a fantastic writer. And also very gracious.

While I was doing my festival gigs, Toby, who has been something of a little champion the last few days, was off playing with an assortment of grandparents. I suspect there was probably sugar and ice-cream involved. Then he went home with my mum and dad to their place, and I went and checked in to the festival hotel. We did this because the hotel is just a few minutes from the festival, whereas my folks house is a little over an hours drive away, usually through Heavy traffic. Festival gigs, though a lot of fun, are also a lot of hard work, so minimizing the commute is a good idea.

Of course, this means that, for the first time ever, Toby is spending more than one night away from both min and I. And, I'll be honest with you, it feels a little strange. Even though he's with two of the four people I'd trust most in the world with him, its still rather strange to be suddenly away from him, especially after the last few days, which have included some of the most intense parenting I've done to date - traveling and getting him settled with mum and dad.

The weirdness factor is also, I i, coming from the fact that now I'm essentially a tourist in my own town. On the way back to the hotel from the festival this afternoon, our driver took us through Kings Park (again, apologies for lack of links and images. But you can look it up, if your interested) Ten years or so ago, I used to do cycle training in Kings Park three nights a week. Today, in a bus full of interstate visitors, it was a little like seeing the place and the city again, turlough different eyes. Same with staying in town. It's strange - familiar but different. Actually there's a touch of the uncanny about it, which is something I'm going to be talking about in my workshop this saturday, so I guess that gives me an example to draw on.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and my autocorrect is inserting all sorts of weird rubbish into this post, so I'm going to stop. In short:

Festival: good
Perth: good, if weird
Toby: missing him (but looking forward to uninterrupted night sleep plus sleep in)

TalK to you all later.

Perth Writer's Festival, plus a day at the Show

2011-03-02T19:14:00.005+11:00

Okay, I know, I'm a bad blogger. Sadly the last couple of weeks have, thanks to a combination of sickness, work and preparation for a writer's festival, been a veritable catalogue of exhaustion.

Still, here I am now, in my parent's house in Greenmount (Toby and I got here yesterday to discover that, thanks to a freak storm which had swept across Perth the previous day, mum and dad hadn't had power for more than 24 hours. Luckily my dad, who is perhaps the most resourceful bloke I know, had managed to borrow and rig up a generator, so at least we had cold beer (for me) and icecream (for Toby)) The trip across was actually pretty good. Toby was voted best child on the plane by everyone sitting around us, which was gratifying, and we both basked in all the help and attention that a lone father travelling with a garrulous two year old can generate.

Tomorrow, I launch into my programme at the Perth Writer's Festival, starting with their schools day. These are always a great deal of fun - I had a ball earlier this year at the Sydney Writer's Festival schools days, and I'm sure that the Perth day tomorrow will be just as good. In the afternoon, I'm doing a session with New Zealand Writer Bernard Beckett, who I met a couple of years ago at Reading Matters in Melbourne, and whose novel Genesis is still one of my favourite YA speculative fiction novels ever.

On Saturday, I'm lucky enough to be chatting with my friend Margo Lanagan, who continues to make me horribly jealous of her capacity to write the most imaginative, gut wrenching short stories (and novels) I've ever read. We're going to be chatting along with Will Elliot, who I've never met, but am really looking forward to crossing paths with.

That's one of the things I love about writer's festivals, actually - I always meet new and interesting people. In Sydney last year I met another Kiwi, Brian Faulkner, and we had a great time doing our panel session there together. On Saturday, Margo, Will and I are talking about The Magic of Oz - is there an 'Australian' Fantasy voice? (And does it matter...)

I'm also taking a workshop that afternoon, looking at fantastic worlds. There are still places available, I notice, in case you're, you know, in Perth and bored. I'll be talking about Freud, Asimov, and Isobelle Carmody, among others. It should be a lot of fun.

In any case, the evening is fast approaching here, and (now that the power is back on) Mum and Toby and I are heading up to the local pool for a little bit of a dip. So I'm going to leave you with a few photos taken last weekend, when Min and I took our little boy to the Canberra Show. We did well this year - we managed to spend four hours there, and left without any showbags, and after only minimal junk food consumption. We walked about ten kilometres. We got dusty and thirsty. There were donkey rides. And fire engines. And facepainting. Fun was had by
all...

Whistling up the Hellhounds...

2011-02-17T14:24:00.007+11:00

So shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison apologises. Not for the basic and fundamental inhumanity of his suggestion that those refugees who recently lost family members in the Christmas Island boat wreck (including the 9 year old boy who lost both of his parents and his brother in the disaster) not be allowed to attend the funerals of their family members, but he apologises for the timing of his comments for the same day of said funerals.

Gutter politics at its finest, Scott.

In this post, I'm not going to delve into murky depths of why I'm so socially and politically outraged over this. Other people have already done that very nicely, and far more politely than I could.

Instead, though, I want to offer a couple of tangential thoughts and observations on the whole thing:

Firstly, Mr. Morrison raised as his chief objection the $300,000 cost to the taxpayer of chartering a plane to bring the refugees from Christmas Island to Sydney for the funeral. Well, I guess that, viewed from a certain perspectives*, this might be seen as a fair enough point for any taxpayer, even a member of the Opposition, to make.

So I'll pay him that one.

And I mean that quite literally. According to the World Bank, Australia currently has a population of 21,874,900 people. That flight, therefore, cost us roughly $0.0137 AUD per person. Bearing in mind that not all of those counted in the population figures will be taxpayers, let's round that up to $0.02 a head. And given that we no longer have 0.02c coins in the Australian currency, I'll round it up again to 0.05c.

Because Mr Morrison is so upset at the cost, I'll volunteer, here and now, to pitch in his 5c for him. I'll drop a 5c coin in the post this afternoon, addressed to his electoral office. That ought to help him calm down a little.

He can even keep the change. He might be able to use it to buy his soul back.

In the meantime, here are a couple of little pictures, and one story, you (and Mr. Morrison) might be interested in:

This is a photograph of Christmas Island, taken about two or three kilometres along the coast from the Australian Immigration Detention Centre:

This is one of the Island's few beaches. I took this picture a few years ago, when I was lucky enough to do a tour of the Indian Ocean Territories, one of which I grew up on. Christmas Island is one of the most beautiful, but also frighteningly remote and inaccessible places I've ever been. To get to this 'beach' I had to 4wd and hike through dense tropical rainforest for about half an hour, before climbing down the cliffs you can see. This particular beach is only accessible on calm days at low tide. The rest of the time it's underwater.

As is most of the Island's waterline. In fact, the vast majority of the coast of Christmas Island looks like this:

Or, from close-up:

Those photos were also taken on a relatively calm day. When the seas are up, as they were on the day the refugee boat smashed against the rocks, it's far more savage. Far less forgiving. Far more brutal. It's one of the most stunning places but also one of the most psychologically daunting landscapes I've ever visited.

It's also isolated - Christmas Island was, for many years, the resting place of an unknown sailor, generally believed to have been one of the survivors of the sinking of the HMAS Sydney in 1941**. The body of the sailor, which was pulled out of the ocean at Christmas Island in 1942, was buried in an unmarked grave in the Island cemetery and within just a few short years, even the grave itself had vanished; swallowed up by the remorseless encroachment of the rainforest. Not until 2006 was the body found again and returned, still unidentified, to Australia. I was told about this story during my visit and it struck me at the time as one of the most sad and lonely tales I'd ever heard. The terrible isolation of that death and the inability of anyone to honour that sailor's memory with even passing remembrance was, I thought, as much a quirk of geography as it was the fortunes of war. For so many years, that man lay in a lost grave; unknown, unvisited, and unremarked. Even had he been identified, those who'd known and loved him would have been unable to visit his grave, thanks to the isolation and remoteness of his resting place.

And it saddens me that, 70 years later, there are still people in our community, including some of our 'leaders', who'd consign the survivors of that ill fated refugee boat to a similar burial - in a place so remote and inaccessable that their deaths would also, eventually, go unremembered and unacknowledged by those closest to them. Or, alternatively, who'd deny those who survived the tragedy the catharsis of closure - who'd attempt to score political points by denying those survivors, including that little boy, the opportunity to properly farewell their loved ones. Their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and children. And all for less than 1 cent of their taxes. All to appeal to 'popular' sentiment.

But it's not just Mr. Morrison who's attracted my ire.

One more picture:

This is a photograph I took, during my visit, of the Australian Immigration Detention Centre under construction. It's built at the far end of the island, as far as it's possible to get from the main settlement at Flying Fish Cove. It's surrounded on three sides, as you can see, by dense tropical rainforest which ends abruptly at those sheer coastal cliffs. On the fourth side, it's separated from the rest of the Island by barbed wire fences.

And, at 9.00 this morning, the minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen M.P, allowed that 9 year old boy, who'd been orphaned on the wild coast of Christmas Island, to be taken from Sydney, where he'd just buried his parents and brother and where he has living relatives, and put on a plane back to Christmas Island.

And at that particular piece of inhumanity, words fail me.

*the point of view of a rabble rousing bottom feeder, for example

** Survivor of the battle and sinking. Clearly not a survivor in the broader sense of the term.

Horsing Around

2011-02-13T08:51:00.006+11:00

When I was a kid - probably about 12 or 13 years old - I used to love going horse riding. There was a little riding school near our place which took weekend trail rides up a bridle trail into the national park. 3 hours would cost you (From memory) something in the order of $30, which was a lot of money for a 12 year old, but through both saving my $5.00 per week pocket money, and a fairly lethal combination of nagging and pleading mum and dad, for a while there I got to go reasonably regularly - perhaps once a month.

Then, when we went camping on our holidays, there was usually a trail ride involved somewhere. One of my favourite camping places was Denmark, on the south coast of WA, where there was a little riding business set up right beside the campground, and $5.00 got you a 20 minute stroll around the sand dunes and along the beach (where, if you were lucky, they'd amp the pace up to a slow trot and, one time, a canter!)

What I really wanted to do, though, was take riding lessons. But these were, sadly, very expensive, and I had to just make do with what I could get.

And then, of course, life moved on and things like music lessons, swimming training, high school, uni etc... all filled my hours, and my odd obsession with horse riding faded away. (I call it odd simply because, for me at least, it seemed like a strange thing to have connected with - my family were never into horses. Never owned one, never really had anything to do with them at all, so yeah - odd.)

Until lately. For the last couple of years I've been looking about for a hobby. Something to do that isn't work, writing or parenthood. Don't get me wrong - I actually love all of those aspects of my life, which makes me a pretty lucky guy - but I'd gotten to feeling that between them they'd become my entire life - taking up every waking minute, and every last joule of energy. I toyed, about a year ago, with taking up gliding - another thing I experienced as a kid and have since wanted to do for years and years, and got as far as doing a couple of trial flights with the local gliding club, which I loved. Gliding, though, is particularly time intensive, even as a learner. At least one day out of every second weekend, (or even every weekend) would be required, and leaving Min with the increasingly demanding and energetic 2 year old just wasn't fair.

Then, about 6 months ago, one of my students turned up for a supervision meeting at uni straight from her weekly riding lesson.

And that reminded me...

So for the second half of last year, I procrastinated. I looked at riding schools, and talked to a few people, but really - riding lessons? Surely that was for 13 year olds and so on. Then my wife's uncle and his family moved down from Hong Kong, and he and I got talking. His little girl is a mad keen (and fantastic) rider, and M. had decided to take a few lessons himself.

And a plan was hatched. We'd take lessons together. And so M. booked us in at the school my student (and several others) had recommended. Then he promptly had to pull out of the first lesson, but I was excited, so decided to go anyway.

Which is how, last friday afternoon, I ended up at the Forest Park Riding School, putting on some borrowed boots and an uncomfortable helmet, and leading a large brown horse (who I seem to remember was named 'Pokey'*, but I suspect I'm wrong about that) out into the middle of their indoor arena for a half hour introductory lesson.

This, you understand, was just to see if I still enjoyed it, and thought it might be something I could do occasionally.

That decision took about 30 seconds. I loved it.

Turns out that:

a) Despite it being probably 30 years since I was last on horseback, I can still remember a lot about it and,

b) Even years later, when you're out of shape and unfit, 8 years of cycling and triathlon does great things for your balance and also, surprisingly, horseriding technique.

I had a great half an hour and, by the end of it, was even able to get up to a canter (for about half a lap, before Pokey decided that he'd had enough, and it was time to stop...**)

And I got off all buzzy and happy and excited.

And, even better, because one of the key elements of getting on well with a horse seems to be staying calm, it was a lovely half an hour of thinking about nothing except for me and the horse - work, writing - everything else just vanished for a while. And I came out of the stable at the end of the lesson feeling incredibly refreshed as a result.

So, yesterday I went out and got myself some proper boots and jodphurs***, and I'm now hanging out for my next lesson, in just a little over a week. Once I'm feeling vaguely confident, I might even get a picture taken to post here.

The really good thing, though, is that the little recharge has given me an unexpected drive to want to get back to all the other stuff now, especially my writing - Orion is still not finished (though it's ticked past 50,000 words now, and I can smell the ending looming up - and now I'm all fired up to drive it home, hopefully this week.)

So all in all, horseriding looks like being a good decision. And, after all, I live in The Man from Snowy River country, so I imagine it'll only be a matter of time until I'm doing this:

*Actually, I think he had a different name, but Pokey is the name which has, for some reason, lodged in my head, and so for the purposes of this blog entry, Pokey he shall be...

**In fairness to Pokey, this was actually my fault - I was so excited about finally getting us up to speed that I promptly pulled back on the reins.

*** Do yourself a favour and don't try and imagine me wearing jodphurs. Just don't...

Aaaand.... back to reality...

2011-02-07T16:42:00.002+11:00

So it's the first day of semester here, today.

For the first time in a couple of months, the campus is thronging with students. There are lines to get into the bookshop. The nearest parking spaces are roughly 45km away. Someone is driving a lawnmower outside my office window*

As is my custom at this time of the year, I've spent a good proportion of the day trying to lever several hundred students into just-slightly-fewer-than-several-hundred-places. It's up there with doing a Rubik's Cube. Or self surgery. It generally works out okay in the end, though. By this time next week, touch wood, everyone will be happily allocated to a class which (almost) suits them.

Actually, I think it's going to be a really good semester. Numbers in my classes are up on last year, which is gratifying (and much better than the alternative), and we're doing some fun things in both of them. Later in the semester, we have the lovely Melina Marchetta coming to visit and speak to us (we're studying her fantastic novel The Piper's Son as part of my Lit Studies unit) and in a month or so I'm off to the Perth Writer's Festival. With Toby in tow. Which should be fun.

I'm also within spitting distance of finishing the much procrastinated 'Orion' (which I'm thinking I'm going to have to rename, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) As of this afternoon, it's at 48,500 words out of an anticipated 50,000**

Of course, late last week I decided that the big final scenes, which I was just launching into, needed to be set not in Melbourne, as I'd originally planned*** but in New York. Luckily I have spent more than a little bit of time in the Big Apple, and so it shouldn't be too big a leap to move things there, though it has involved a few days of re-visiting my old travel photos, and cruising around in Google Earth (what did we writers do before Google Earth? How did we cope?)

I've also had to research private jets, plus a few other interesting bits and pieces that I'd never expected to have to delve into.

So, all things considered, writing wise things are looking up. Today's writing time was a little interrupted by the necessities of life, but from tomorrow I should be back into my daily routine, as per the schedule. Yay.

And then, hopefully within the next week, Orion will be finished. More than 12 months in the making, but finished.

Then I only have four more books to write in that series...

*to be fair, this is nothing to do with the influx of students, and everything to do with, you know, building maintenance.
**Though, to be honest, there's no way I'm going to be able to finish it in 2500 words, and it'll probably blow out closer to 60. But then I'll edit the hell out of it.
***Not, I want to make it clear, that I have anything against Melbourne. I love Melbourne. It's just that Melbourne didn't love this chapter...

A Terrifying Night

2011-02-03T11:58:00.003+11:00

So, I guess I'm a fully qualified parent, now. Well and truly off my 'P' plates*

Tuesday in Canberra was a good day, if a little hot. (38 degrees** here and humid as hell) By 5.00pm our un-airconditioned house was like a sauna, so Imogen, Toby and I decamped to my mother-in-law's place for a few hours because:

a) She has a swimming pool and
b) She's a three minute walk from a very nice Vietnamese restaurant, and the thought of not cooking or cleaning up afterward had a lot of appeal.

At my MIL's, we had a lovely swim and then strolled down in the cooling evening and enjoyed a feast of Vietnamese food. Then, as the sun finally dropped below the horizon and some of the oppressiveness went out of the day, our little family headed home again to our house on the other side of Canberra. It was still quite warm inside (a solid 34 degrees), but we opened all the windows and doors, put on the fans, and gradually the house began to cool. We gave our - by then very tired - boy a quick cool shower, read him a book, and put him to bed, just like normal. He went out like a light.

Min and I sat up for a while, watched some TV, drank some water and then, at around 10.00pm, went to bed ourselves. We read for an hour or so and, by 11 O'clock the house had cooled sufficiently for us to get to sleep. A last quick check on Toby, who was sleeping soundly, and then lights out.

Until a few minutes after 3.00am, when we woke up to the horrific sound of a 2-year-old in the next room, struggling to breathe.

I don't think I've ever been so terrified as I was when I ran into Toby's room to find him kneeling on his bed, gasping like a grounded fish. His little stomach was sucking hard up into his ribs with every choking breath, and he was trying to cry but didn't have the wind for it. I sat on his bed and he tried to claw his way up me. Min was already on the phone to her mum (who, as luck would have it, is a GP) and searching frantically for the Ventolin inhaler which Toby'd been prescribed a year or so ago, during a bout of bronchitis.

This wasn't bronchitis, though, or asthma - I knew that much. He could breathe out easily enough, but was only getting the tiniest amount of air in. He didn't seem to have anything in his mouth or throat and he wasn't turning blue, but he was panicking and getting increasingly desperate.

As were his parents. We tried without success to get some Ventolin into him, but he was thrashing around so much that we couldn't get the mask over his face, or even just lever the inhaler into his mouth.

"Get him to hospital. Now." Amanda (my M.I.L) told us on the phone and within two minutes the three of us were in the car, racing to the emergency department at Calvary hospital. Amanda phoned ahead and told them we were coming.

At the hospital (which is right beside my work, and which we reached in a considerably faster time than it generally takes me to get to the office) Min ran in with Toby while I parked. By the time I got inside, Toby was in a bed in the emergency ward with about five people working on him. The nice nurse at the ED reassured me that he was okay, and going to be fine.

It was croup. Severe croup, which had swelled the tissues below his larynx to the point where his breathing was restricted. They gave him adrenaline, and steroids, and Ventolin, and oxygen and, over the course of the next hour, his blood O2 saturation levels normalised, and he calmed down. As did Min and I.

Then, at about 5.30, they transferred him to the pediatric unit at Canberra hospital. This involved a ride in an ambulance which, from Toby's point of view was the best thing ever! (He's still talking about it this morning.)

We stayed at Canberra hospital for another 3 or so hours, while Toby was checked over again and monitored. Then, at about 8.00am, they discharged us. Min had to go straight in to work and I took our - now wide awake and perky - little boy home again. I was exhausted, whereas Toby, who'd recently had both a large dose of adrenaline pumped into his system and a ride in an ambulance, was buzzing.

I stayed home with him yesterday, working from the kitchen table while Toby played contentedly. He's got an awful, hacking cough and his voice sounds a little strange, but otherwise he seems fine.

Last night thunderstorms rolled over Canberra and scrubbed the heat and humidity from the air. Toby slept soundly all night. Min and I fell into an exhausted sleep, but still woke up at the slightest cough or bump from his room, checking him every couple of hours.

Today life returned to normal. I'm back at work. I got a couple of hours of great writing done. Toby is back at daycare and Min at ANU.

It's funny - typing all this up, the fear is so fresh and real in my memory, but at the same time the fact that everything is okay and life has just ticked back to normal makes it all seem like a kind of displaced dream.

And I'm lucky, too. We can go back to normal - this is just one of those things that happen. Kids get croup all the time, though not always so suddenly and not always so severely. But at least we live in a country with a wonderful health system, and the security of knowing that we can deal with these things.

And at least, unlike so many people up in North Queensland this morning, Min and Toby and I have a 'normality' to return to.

So today I'm feeling very tired, very wrung out, but also very, very lucky.

* Another one for my overseas friends: in Australia, once you get your driver's licence, you spend a couple of years on your 'P' (for probationary) plates, which means that you have to display a large red 'P' plate on the front and rear of your vehicle, and are subject to an adjusted set of road rules with lower speed limits, 0% blood alcohol allowance and a few other bits and pieces... Once you get through your probationary period without losing your licence, then you're a fully fledged driver, and can pull down the 'P' plates.

** 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit

Bob the Brandname.... Can we sell it?

2011-01-25T20:00:00.009+11:00

A few years ago, my good friend Karen wrote a little book called Consuming Innocence. If you haven't read it, then you should get your hands on a copy. It's a fascinating, frightening read. She takes you into the world of Big Marketing - deconstructing both the impact of modern mass marketing on our children, and the techniques which a lot of big brands use to increase their market penetration.

One of the big techniques utilised by marketing departments is to try and expose their brand and / or logo to as many children, as young as possible. To get them 'imprinted', if you will, so that certain brands and concepts form a 'natural' part of that child's social world. This, I recall reading somewhere, is the reason that a certain Large-American-Theme-Park,-Movie,-Television-And-Music Company is happy to have their copyrighted characters printed onto the crotch of nappies; toddlers and babies spend an inordinate amount of time lying on their backs with their feet in the air, staring at that particular part of their anatomy and in the process becoming firm friends with whichever cartoon characters happen to be staring back at them.

Karen's book looks at a lot of this kind of stuff, and takes you deeper into both the psychology and the economics involved, and some of the numbers are staggering. I won't say more than that about the book here, but it's something I think all parents should have a read of.

It certainly re-enforced my determination not to allow Toby (as much as was practicably possible) to be willingly inculcated into the sort of consumer culture that we spend our lives moving within. And, for the most part, we've been pretty successful. We don't buy him clothes or merchandise with big brands or characters on them, we avoid having the television on when he's up (though I'll admit to a couple of transgressions here; both shows involving trains. The boy is obsessed with trains and, to be honest, some times it's nice to be able to take ten minutes to get a load of washing done...) We deliberately sent him to a daycare which doesn't have or use television, but which has a whole lot of (un-branded, un-merchandise-y) toys and activities to fill the days.

And yet, despite all our best efforts, Toby uttered three terrifying words tonight*;

"Bob the Builder."

He said it while pointing to a picture of said cartoon builder in a catalogue which came with a 'Bananas in Pyjamas' DVD he'd been given for Christmas. The thing is, he knew who BTB was.

Which was news to Min and I. To the best of our knowledge, Toby has never seen an episode of BTB, nor read a BTB picture book. He doesn't have a BTB lunchbox, or any BTB clothes, or nappies, or wet wipes, or any of the myriad other objects which carry the BTB brand. The closest he's come to BTB is that he has a BTB-branded toy sander, which another friend gave him for Christmas** and which, since the moment it came out of the box, he's been convinced is a hairdryer just like his grandmother's.***

As far as we knew, Toby had never even heard the phrase 'Bob the Builder', let alone become familiar enough with the product to be able to pick it from a catalogue.

It's a triumph of market penetration; Bob the builder is firmly on Toby's radar, despite all our best efforts.

And, for me at least, the scarier aspect of this is the realisation that already, at just two-and-a-bit-years of age, Toby is already living and learning in a world of pop culture, brands, and highly targeted advertising. And at the same time as he's soaking up language, music, movement, numbers and everything else, he's soaking up brand identification, and it would seem that there's little we can do about it.

Except, perhaps, to introduce him tomorrow to 'Bob the Ballerina...'****

*actually, it's been an evening of landmarks. He also climbed out of his cot, fell on his head, and precipitated the sudden and unexpected conversion of said cot into a 'big boy's bed.' He's now tucked up firmly asleep under a sheet, while Min and I wait for the first 'thump' of boy hitting carpet...

**Toby did well out of last Christmas. We needed to borrow an extra suitcase just to get his presents back from Perth

*** A belief we have very wholeheartedly continued to cultivate...

**** Which, if truth be told, I've just spent two hours creating. That's how serious I am about this...

Writing Rhythms

2011-01-20T16:17:00.003+11:00

So I'm here to report in, and the news is good.

My new-look-don't-you-dare-interrupt-me writing time programme is (so far, touch wood) working a treat. All it's taken is a polite sign on my office door, and the self control to turn off my phone, email, twitter reader, iPad, and mobile for the first two hours of every morning. Oh, and the self control to stop writing at the end of my 2 hours.

And, in the last week or so, I've put out a little over 12,000 words. This is about a third of my sum total for the previous 12 months of writing.

What has struck me most, though, is that this is kinda different to all the writing I've done previously. In years gone by* I used to write in intense 'blocks' of time - putting perhaps a couple of months of the year aside and just burying myself in my current book for up to 8 or 9 hours a day. The writing took over my head, and my life.

Nowdays, of course, I don't have that luxury. Last year one of the problems I faced was that I kept putting off my writing until a suitable block of time presented itself. And, of course, it didn't. Hence my horribly low word count, and lack of a 2011 book.

So, as I mentioned in my last post, this year I've adopted a different approach. I've got 2 hours a day - the first two hours. I get into my office, shut out the world, and write. From 8.30 until 10.30 each morning, there's just me, and the pattering rhythm of my keyboard. At 10.30 I make myself stop - regardless of where I'm at, or how much I'm enjoying it - and get on with the myriad other tasks which make up my days.**

The thing which has surprised me the most is how quickly those two hours have become one of the best bits of my day - something I actively look forward to. And that, in turn, is having a positive effect on the writing. I'm hoping this continues - one of the problems with my old 'intense' approach was that, especially towards the end of a book, I'd find myself feeling burnt out and unmotivated. Sure, I was knocking out perhaps 10,000 words in a day, but I was wiped at the end of it, and even more so the following morning.

But not any more. It turns out that 2 hours is, generally speaking, enough time for me to really get into the rhythm of the writing, and to turn out about 2000 words (give or take, it was only 1200 yesterday, but they were good words, IMHO). And then, at the end of it, I've got something to look forward to the following morning.

The funny thing is that, early on in my writing career, I used to hear writers - big name writers - talk about their writing methodologies and I used to dismiss out of hand those who used the '1000 words per day' or similar approaches. I just knew they wouldn't work for me: writing was too BIG to be contained like that. Too spontaneous. Writing couldn't be contained to a number of words or a period of time - it had to be free and unfettered and all-consuming.

And, at the time, that was the right (write?) philosophy for me.

But - I guess like all things - needs must when the devil drives, and as my life and attitude to writing has changed so too have my needs in terms of time and approach. It's just taken me a while to realise it. I might even be able to attempt NANOWRIMO this year. Perhaps.

What about you? How do you write?

*ie: before marriage, fatherhood and full time work at a University
** Naturally I don't do this on weekends. The EBA*** I worked out with myself 6 years ago is quite emphatic on that point...
*** For Rivka and my other overseas readers: EBA = Enterprise Bargaining Agreement - a draconian piece of industrial relations legislation, and a hangover from the days of Australia's last conservative government. Now, thankfully, overturned...

Writing Again...

2011-01-13T15:17:00.003+11:00

As a general rule, I'm pretty good at time management. I think it's one of those things that you learn by natural attrition when you first hit out as a writer. I know that my productivity in the first couple of months after I left high school teaching was pretty much through the floor. The sudden luxury of being able to go to the movies in the middle of the day, or the beach, or the pool, or even just the post office, was one which pretty much killed my writing for a while there.

Of course, you very quickly work out that if you're not writing, then you soon won't be eating, and so like most writers I learned fast that if I wanted to get things done, then I needed to be more proactive (Urgh! I hate that word...) about making time to write. I guess most people would call it 'self discipline'

But, in the last 12 months, to be honest, I've slipped a bit. In 2009, I wrote roughly 100,000 words of creative stuff. Last year, I managed only 32,000.

This is just my creative writing, though. Last year I also put out roughly 50,000 words in lecture notes, 10,000 words in journal articles, and a good whack of time writing for this blog.

So I'm not a complete time-waster, it's just that I've allowed my writing to take a second place to some of the other writing priorities in my life.

Which brings me to my new year's resolution for this year. I'm going to do my darnedest to write for at least two hours every day. I've blocked out the first two hours of the day on my calendar, put a polite sign on the office door and now I get to work, turn off my phone, don't fire up my email, place my iPad in a drawer, and get to work. And so far this week I've managed to put out the best part of 5000 words, which isn't too bad, given that it always takes me a few days to get back into the rhythm of a book, especially if it's one I haven't worked on for a while. In this case, it's been six months since I wrote a single word of my current book, so I'm pretty happy to be getting back into the swing of it. It's kind of comfortable, falling back into a writing routine.

All going well, my current book should be finished in a couple of weeks (this is the long-awaited adventure thingy), and then I can turn my attention to a few other exciting little ideas that have been churning around in the dark corners of my mind.

Of Droughts, and Flooding Rains

2011-01-11T10:35:00.005+11:00

My heart is breaking this morning.

A few years ago, when Imogen and I lived in Brisbane, just after I left teaching and hit out as a full-time writer, I made my living doing speaking engagments. Most of them were in the areas around Brisbane; little towns like Toogoolawah, Laidley, Toowoomba and numerous others. I got to know the Lockyer Valley and the Warrigal Highway very well indeed.

In the small town of Laidley, I worked with students from the high school - I particularly remember Laidley because one of those students - I won't name her - kept in touch with me for years after my visit; she used to email me when things happened; often big and sometimes awful things - a friend's death, moving away from home. She used to say what a huge impact my visit had on her. Though I never told her this, her sporadic emails helped me understand small town life in Australia from a teenage point of view, and had a real impact on my writing; her voice was utterly authentic and her emails gave me a real sense of the sometimes crushing difficulties that come with being an adolescent in such a small and isolated community. And even though I haven't heard from her for a few years, now, I've always had very fond memories of Laidley and the kids I worked with there.

A couple of years ago I was invited to the 'Voices on the Range' festival in Toowoomba. I spent a lovely week there, living in one of the most beautiful B&B's I've ever seen, and talking to some of the most engaging and enthusiastic audiences of school students that I've ever come across. I also had the time to explore Toowoomba properly - it's the most beautiful little town, perched on top of the Great Dividing Range like a sentinal at the edge of the vast Darling Downs.

This morning I, like so many other Australians, woke to the news that this beautiful part of the country, filled with people I've met, laughed with, worked with and lived with, is facing one of its darkest hours.

When I toured Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, the whole area was in the grip of drought. In a couple of towns, I was advised not to drink the tap water, because the dams were running dry and there was a lot of sediment in the drinking water. The folks who lived there were living their lives under some of the most stringent water restriction laws in the country.

Last year - finally - the drought broke.

And yesterday afternoon, in an example of just how savage and unforgiving this country can be, a storm of such savage intensity that it's been described as an 'inland tsunami' hit Toowoomba; taking lives, destroying homes, and wreaking utter, utter havoc.

After Toowoomba, the waters dropped down the height of the Great Dividing Range, causing rivers and streams to flood in moments; the waters rising 9 or 10 metres above their usual banks, and sweeping away everything before them as they surged down the plain towards Brisbane.

Laidley, was among the towns hit hard. But not the only one.

So today, as families across the plains from Brisbane all the way west to the foothills are battling against the rising waters, my heart is breaking for them. And for my many friends in Brisbane, who are bracing for the now almost inevitable floods as the water makes its way out to sea via the Brisbane River.

Good luck, all of you. You're in my thoughts.

Hip Hop Happy New Year...

2010-12-30T13:35:00.004+11:00

New Year's Eve tomorrow. Unbelievable.

2010 has, on the whole, been a pretty amazing year for me and the family. Toby has turned from a baby into a little boy, work has been crazy busy but really rewarding and satisfying. I've published my first scholarly papers, spoken at my first academic conference, seen the last of the 'Darklands' books finally hit the shelves, become an iAddict, been invited to edit the special edition of Write4Children, won a teaching award, gone to the Sydney Writer's Festival, visited with my sister and her two gorgeous girls in Perth in July, had the worst case of tonsillitis EVER, and just generally kept very, very busy. Min has been busily beavering away at her PhD, which is shaping up nicely now and Toby has been, well... you'll see...

The last couple of weeks, you might have noticed my absence here at Musings... and also on Twitter. This is because, after all the above mentioned hijinks, I decided that my Christmas holidays would be just that - holidays - and so in the spirit of Susan Maushart I rewarded myself with something of a 'shutdown'. The only things I've used my iPad for in the last couple of weeks have been reading and the odd game of 'Plants vs Zombies.' It's been nice. Refreshing, even.

So 2010 has, on the whole, been a good year.

And so, to 2011, which is shaping up to be another busy one: Perth Writer's Festival in March, the new edition of Into White Silence coming out some time in the new year, another big year of teaching, a big conference to speak at in July (I'm talking about Neil Gaiman - yay!), a book chapter to write, the special edition to put together, a house to renovate and, of course, a family to keep on their toes :)

Speaking of which, here's my new year's gift to you all. It's our current favourite song in the WHOLE WORLD! And it comes with some pretty mad dance moves, too. What spins me out the most is remembering that this time last year Toby had just started walking, and look at him go now...*

So happy new year, everyone. Hope you have a relaxing and restful start to 2011. Thanks to those of you who've been reading this meandering little blog during the last year, and who have taken the time to let me know.

In the meantime, Party on!

*Apologies for: a) the shaky camera work , (b) my 'singing' and (c) partially putting my thumb over the camera lens for the middle bit. It's still pretty cute, though, IMHO...

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

2010-12-23T18:33:00.002+11:00

It's the silly season again. This time last year, Toby wasn't walking. How time has passed.

Before I get onto the 'What I've been up to' part of this blog entry, I'm going to throw in an idea that Min came across the other day and which, I think, is lovely.

I don't know what it's like in your family but in mine, in the past, Christmas has tended to be, well, rather stressy. There's a lot of lead up to 'The Big Day' and a lot of planning and panic and pressure and, from time to time, Christmas itself has become more of a chore than a celebration; desperately trying to cram everything in to the one little window of time.

Not this year though - Min read somewhere that the best way to deal with Christmas is to engage in a little 'mental shift' and to think of it not as one single day on which everything must be perfect, but to think of it as a season - a couple of weeks of relaxing, family, cooking, shopping, and taking it easy. This takes the pressure off, and makes the whole thing fun. We've been thinking of things from this perspective and, I have to say, it's turning out to be one of the most lovely festive seasons I can recall.

So, anyway, what have I been up to since I saw you all last?

Well, for the most part, and aside from a little administrative work this last week, I've been having a holiday from, well, life.

A couple of weeks ago, with all my teaching for the year done, my marks submitted and my admin up to date, Min and Toby and I came across to Perth to stay with my Mum and Dad for a few weeks, and to attend the wedding of an old friend of ours.

The wedding itself was on Rottnest Island, which is one of my favourite places in the world - it's a little daggy, rather run down, the accomodation is basic and they gouge every possible cent out of you while you're there ($6 cucumber, anyone?), but it has the most beautiful beaches, no television reception, no cars or internet, and within 10 minutes of getting off the ferry, you can feel the rest of the world slipping away. It's a lovely thing, and just the ticket after a fairly full-on year of work and family. Mum and Dad came over with us and had some much enjoyed 'Toby time'. We swum at The Basin, ate at the bakery, and generally caught up on sleep and reading.

And our friend's wedding was lovely, too.

Then back to Perth for a combination of pre-christmas prep, family catch ups, planning some home renovations for when we return to Canberra in a couple of weeks and, for me, starting the wheels in motion for a special edition of a scholarly journal which I've been asked to guest-edit for late next year.

This is pretty exciting, actually. The journal is a U.K. based, online publication called Write4Children, and has a really nice broad approach to the scholarship of children's writing, encompassing both theory and practice. I'm curating a special Australasian Edition, and have had some very interesting and exciting abstracts submitted. At the moment I'm considering how to form up and shape the edition in terms of threads and ideas, and then when I get back in January I'll be getting onto the selected writers, chasing up the finished pieces, organising the peer review process, then copy and proof editing. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm very excited to think that at the end of it there'll be a really solid and permanent contribution to scholarship, and one which I had a big hand in putting together.

I'm also champing at the bit to get back so that I can start writing again. This year I have some big plans. Hopefully.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. Right now it's about 35 degrees outside here in Perth, whereas back home it was snowing a couple of days ago in Yass, which is about 45 minutes up the road from our house. I think I'd rather be here, though the forecast for Christmas is for 38 degrees, and that'll really test things out.

In any case, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas with your families. I'll be back for a New Year's Post some time in the next week or so, probably once we're back home again.

A Brief Break

2010-12-17T10:56:00.004+11:00

Hi Everyone -

Just letting you know that I'm not abandoning my post here (well, at least not permanently)

I'm just taking a week or so holiday with the family in Perth, and will be back to blogging again soon.

Cheers
Tony

... And Flooding Rains

2010-12-09T14:07:00.004+11:00

Just a quick one, for the moment, as I'm about to walk out of my office for the final time this year and in four hours I have to be on a plane to Perth.

Which is not a bad thing, the way events are moving here in Canberra at the moment. Like a lot of the east coast, we've had some rain in the last few weeks. So much so that there is a fair bit of flooding going on. This morning they started evacuating Queanbean, and earlier today they opened up all the floodgates on Scrivener Dam for the first time in, well, pretty much forever. (Actually, I seem to recall reading somewhere that this last happened in 1976)

To give you a rough idea, here are a couple of photos that one of my colleagues took, a little earlier today. The first is of Scrivener Dam (For those not in the know, Scrivener is the Dam which creates Lake Burley Griffin, which is, in turn, the main water body around which Canberra is built)

(Photo: Greg Battye)

This one shows four of the five floodgates open (the fifth, closed, is on the right of the picture) and the water pouring into the Molongolo River, which is usually a slow moving, muddy trickle, but which now looks like this:

(Photo: Greg Battye)

In any case, it's a good time to be leaving Canberra. Preferably not in an Ark, either, though I suspect that's not far away.

As of ten minutes from now, I'm actually on leave and this time tomorrow will be sitting out the front of a little house on Rottnest Island in Perth, along with Min, Toby and my parents. I imagine that there'll be beer involved.

Anyway, as I have a few little bits and pieces to do before I can leave, I'm going to sign off now.

Cheerful Reading

2010-11-30T15:22:00.005+11:00

I've just recently (thanks largely to having a few chunks of unexpected downtime last week) finished reading Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy, which he wrapped up with the hugely satisfying Monsters of Men. I'm now about to launch into the second book of Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy, having chewed through the first book in a single day on the weekend.*

I'm not going to post my reviews of them here. That's what Goodreads is for, but I am struck by something which I think I'll probably do a little thinking about in months to come:

During the 1980's and into the early 1990's in the late to-immediate-post cold war era, there was an explosion (for want of a better term) of Australian post-apocalyptic YA fiction, much of it speculative. I'm sure you can think of more than a few titles which threw their YA protagonists into 'end-of-the-world' type scenarios. Victor Kelleher's Taronga was one of my favourites.

Now I'm wondering if we're seeing the beginnings of a similar thing happening, but on a more global scale. The post-apocalyptic being very much used in YA as a social response to wider issues. But now the focus has moved, slightly; Patrick Ness' books deal with power, government and control. I'm only a little way into Suzanne Collin's trilogy, but can see similar concerns there which touch on ideas like the social contract and totalitarianism. A few weeks ago, at an artist's talk here at UC, I spoke about how the global political climate during the years following on from 9/11 had an enormous impact upon my Darklands books, and particularly Skyfall.

It's interesting, I think, to consider the possible forces that shape our written culture, and particularly to look at the sort of material our adolescent readers are engaging with, and in this terror-aware world in which we now live, I suspect there's some pretty strong influences just starting to reveal themselves.

Dunno. This is a little off-the-top-of-my-head, rather garbled and definately in need of some further consideration.

What about you? Do you have any suggestions for contemporary YA spec-fic that might be wrestling with some of this stuff?

*which is a good effort, but not as good as Imogen, who managed to get through the entire trilogy in a single day.

What? It's Friday Already? (or, the week my tonsils went psycho)

2010-11-26T10:30:00.005+11:00

(With apologies to Allie at Hyperbole and a Half)

I'll be completely honest with you - to a certain extent, everything is still a little bit hazy.

That's probably the lingering effects of the codeine.

I'm also a bit light-headed still, but a week without food (or coffee!) will do that to you, I'm told.

Still, at least I'm here. That's something.

It's not been a good week.

It started well. Sunday saw Imogen's cousins return to Australia to live here in Canberra after 17 years in Hong Kong. We met them at the airport, took them back to their temporary accomodation, cooked up a lovely BBQ lunch*, then took them to their new Canberra house for a walk around and to make plans for what to do before they move in. It was lovely. A nice family afternoon.

Little did I know that, while we were having such a nice time, this was happening in my mouth**:

By the time we got home from Min's cousins' house, I was feeling decidedly unwell. Headache. Niggling sore throat, and just utterly, utterly wiped out and exhausted. Toby went to bed at 6.30. I went to bed at 6.40.

By 6.00 am the following day, the situation had deteriorated significantly:

I called in work and cancelled. Min called up our local doctor and made an appointment. She took me in. The doctor looked down my throat for about two seconds and then made the following diagnosis:

"Ewwwwwwergh!!!!!!!"

That's about the last thing I can remember, to be honest. From that point on, I've been on heavy painkillers, and anti-biotics. For a while there on monday and tuesday my throat was so swollen that the only thing I could swallow was water, and even that hurt.

Wednesday I perked up a little bit as the antibiotics took effect. I think I only slept about 14 hours that day.

Yesterday I was a lot better, and today well enough to come into work for a little bit.

So that was my week. In the meantime, I've missed Toby's second birthday***, a valuable week of marking time, plus my writing student's annual 'Get Real' exhibition, which I'm quite upset about, plus god knows how many other things.

Still, it could be worse. And my mum and Dad are here for the weekend, which always helps when a boy is sick.

Have a good weekend all. Don't upset your tonsils...

* which, on reflection, I should have eaten a lot more of...
** Musings from an outer spiral arm proudly presents, for the first time anywhere on the interwebz: Loltonsils!
*** Technically I didn't miss it - I was there for it, just not entirely awake the whole time.

Music

2010-11-20T13:51:00.005+11:00

I love music. Hell, thanks to Penni Russon, I just spent my entire week's coffee money buying the new Paul Kelly app for my iPad* I grew up playing music: piano, organ** and then later guitar.

Min is also musical: she plays violin, and sings like an angel. For our wedding present, a number of our immediate family clubbed together and bought us the piano which now sits in pride of place in the lounge room.

I love listening to music. When I write, I'll often have something playing softly in the background or through my headphones, if I'm at work. Usually classical. My faves are all the ones you'd expect: Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Bach. At home, I can't do anything houseworky without something on the stereo: Paul Kelly, the Oils, Crowded House, Missy Elliot and numerous others.

So I guess it's natural that Toby seems to like music, too. He's in a house full of it, surrounded by instruments and encouraged to sing and dance at every opportunity. We recently got him his first guitar - $15.00 from Paddy's Markets in Sydney, and worth at least twice that for the enjoyment it's giving both of us***

He's also showing the odd sign of becoming a Jazz musician when he's older, too...

And then, of course, there's the piano...

It's a good way to grow up, I think.

*Incidentally, Penni, you're right: awesome. Just frikking awesome. Everything in life should be that awesome.
** Don't bother making jokes about it. Trust me, I've heard 'em all.
*** We do an awesome duet of 'From Saint Kilda to King's Cross'.

On Meeting Writers

2010-11-19T19:27:00.003+11:00

I won't bother apologising for the long break between updates. It's marking season at Uni, and you can imagine the fun of that for yourself.

I'll tell you a couple of bits and pieces though...

Yesterday, I met David Malouf. He came to UC to work with some of our students, and deliver a couple of lectures (neither of which I was able to get to, owing to teaching and other commitments, worse luck.) I did get to meet him and chat for a couple of minutes though.

I'll be honest with you and admit that I thought I was over being impressed by meeting authors. Until I became one (whatever that means) I used to hold writers in pretty high regard. One of my fond memories of childhood is Roald Dahl sending a casette tape to accept the WA Young Readers Book Award, right back in the 1980's when I was about 12 years old : I remember being so thrilled to hear his actual voice, and he apologised for not being able to get there to accept the award personally. It was a pivotal moment of my childhood. Seriously.

When I first got published, one of the best parts of the whole thing was suddenly finding myself thrust into this world full of people whose names I'd been intimately acquainted with - often for years - as the authors of books I loved. One of the most memorable moments of my first time at the Somerset Festival of Literature in Queensland was finding myself swimming in the hotel pool beside Isobelle Carmody.*

Of course, you soon work out that authors are just like you - people who write.** And it wasn't long before I managed to get my obsessive author-fanboy geek out of my system.

Until yesterday.

Did I mention that I met David Malouf?

I stood there, trying desperately to make conversation, all the while wrestling with the fact that this friendly, unassuming bloke wrote some of what I consider to be the most important and beautiful Australian novels of the last century. He wrote Remembering Babylon, for goodness sake*** He writes gorgeous poetry. Geoffry Smart did a portrait of him. Other people write long and often utterly misguided literary critiques of his words.

And when we were introduced, I shook his hand and do you know what I said to him?

"Uhm. It's a pleasure to meet you." (pause, awkwardly, then: ) "I'm a huge admirer of your work."

Yep. I became a cliche. A tonguetied one, at that.

*sigh*

Still, it's nice to know, in a way, that the mystique is still there for me, especially in this open-access, ultra connected age that we live in. It's nice to know that that the little kid who sat in the WA state library and just marvelled at hearing his favourite author speak is still tucked away inside there somewhere.

*I almost drowned, then and there...
** bear in mind that this was before web 2.0, so there was none of this instant blog and twitter access that we have nowdays. Authors had a lot more, I dunno... mystique, I guess.
*** I used to teach Remembering Babylon to year 12's as part of English Lit. It was a book that opened a lot of minds, including my own.

Back from the Dead...

2010-11-08T16:21:00.003+11:00

Right, a proper post today. Sort of.

So the last couple of weeks have been utterly brutal, in a lot of ways. I've never had so little time to do anything other than the essentials. Each morning when I get out of bed, every minute of the day ahead is already accounted for. This explains the lack of blogging, and the general silence of me in the twitterverse and everything. And this looks set to continue for at least the next couple of weeks.

There have, however, been a few high points.

The most recent, as of just a couple of hours ago, was the announcement of the winners of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for this year. As I talked about earlier in the year, this is the first time that YA and children's writing have had their own categories, and with prize money equal to that of the 'grown ups', too. I'm absolutely thrilled to see Bill Condon take the inagural prize for his Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God. Bill is - I've thought this for a number of years now - one of the most under-rated writers in Australia at the moment. A few years ago I did a reader's report on his novel No Worries and it struck me at the time as one of the most interesting and profound pieces of YA fiction I'd read in years. He's also one of the nicest, most quietly spoken and humble people you could hope to meet. I can't think of a better recipient for this important prize. (Though I'd have been equally as pleased to see any of the shortlisted writers pick up the gong - it was a brilliant shortlist, I thought).

I'm also particularly pleased because Confessions... is another Woolshed Press book, just like Into White Silence, and my longtime friend and editor Leonie Tyle was the one who commissioned and worked on it - it's a fantastic feather in her cap, and an honour that's been a long time coming.

So well done both of them.

In other news - I mentioned in my last post that I'm currently in love with Scrivener 2.0. This is quite simply the most useful writing tool that I've come across in years. A few people have commented here and on Twitter about their own love for it, and I fully understand where they're coming from. For $50 ish dollars, this is worth every cent. I particularly like the corkboard function, which enables me to do my planning and structuring, but also to jump quickly and simply between various points in my MSS. It also has brilliant research functionality which enables you to dump in anything - images, pdf's, whatever, and to associate them with whichever part of your document you intend to use them.

At this point, I'm using it for both fiction and academic writing, and finding it soooo useful for both.

And finally, on the subject of academic writing, you might remember that a few weeks ago now I posted about the impending release of my first two actual research papers. Well, the first of them is now out and about and, because it's in a free online journal, you can even read it!*

It's actually very strange, seeing it up there live and for real. It reminds me of the giddy anticipation I felt when my first book hit the shelves - kind of like standing at the start of some new and exciting avenue in your life.

Anyway, it's stopped raining outside, and so I'm going to take the opportunity to go and get Toby from daycare without getting wet. Or struck by lightning.

See you all later. It's good to be back...

*If you can't get to sleep tonight, I'd recommend it. Particularly the first half...

Status: Alive, but Brain Dead. (ie: A Zombie)

2010-11-03T16:47:00.002+11:00

Yeah, I know, it's been two weeks. Argh.

In truth, this is a bit of a place filler, because I'm about to walk out the door to pick up the kidlet from daycare, and that's the best bit of my day at the moment.

The last couple of weeks haven't so much slipped by as screamed past at several times the legal limit, while leaning out the window and blowing Vuvuzula. I've been buried, utterly, utterly buried in myriad teaching, marking, endless seminars, trying desperately to get some writing done, getting prepped for the big end-of-semester influx coming up in a couple of weeks, visiting with my brother and sister in law during a flying visit to Sydney, and just generally being dad to an energetic 2 year old.

And, by the time I get home of an evening, I've been feeling utterly brain-dead. Staring at screens all day'll do that to you, so I'm afraid I've neglected you all. And will probably continue to do so until next week.

But don't let it get you down, I'll be back, and have lots of interesting things to write about. My new love affair with Scrivener,* for one thing...

In the meantime, though, it's time to go home to bed.

Back soon.

Promise.

*seriously, if you write , you NEED this on your machine. I don't know how I lived without it...

I Caved In...

2010-10-21T10:49:00.002+11:00

I'm in the middle of three crazy days at the moment, where pretty much every single minute of every single day has been accounted for, with the result that certain things, like blogging, have taken a backseat. That's why there's been this deafening silence here since last week.

But, anyway...

I love my iPad* for all sorts of reasons. It seems like every time I turn around, I'm finding a new use for it. I'm running all my class lists and records off it nowadays, as well as all my lectures, marking and meeting notes, meaning that my teaching has become virtually paperless in the last couple of months. I use the calendar function on it for all my appointments, and unlike my old paper diary, I actually use the calendar, which has made for a more efficient life. I'm using it for design (like the blog title up there), email, internet, magazines, journals and all sorts of other things.

But there was one function I was determined not to capitalise on. Determined.

I wasn't going to read books on it.

Now, call me old fashioned, but I'm one of those people who always claimed to like my books printed. On good, old fashioned trees. And that hasn't changed. I like being able to hold a book, to heft it in my hand and feel the weight of it. I like the smell of paper and the texture of it. I like the soft crinkle of paper as you flick the page. I like (don't hate me for this) being able to dog-ear the page I'm on.**

So when I got my iPad, I decided that the one thing it wouldn't be is an e-book reader.

Until the other day, when a colleague of mine presented a fantastic paper here at the uni, about the future of the book. She also has an iPad and, unlike me, is an avid reader on it. In her talk, she broke down a lot of the objections regularly raised in relation to the e-reader. She talked about the economics, the portability and the convenience, but for me the moment she changed my mind about this particular issue was when she talked about the tactile aesthetics of reading on the iPad.

She made the point - and I can't argue with her on it at all - that the iPad is, in its own way, just as much a sensory and tactile piece of reading equipment as a book. The smoothness of the screen below your fingertip, the oh-so-subtly muted polish of the machined aluminium chassis, the cosiness of surruptitious reading at night with the lights off, the tweaking of font size, brightness, contrast and 'paper' colour until you're looking at exactly the reading surface you want to look at.

That was what got me. It's not about having the same tactile reading experience as with a book, but it's still about tactile engagement with the words on the page.

So, last weekend, I bit the bullet and bought my first e-book on Amazon. John Birmingham's After America. I'm roughly halfway through it now.

And, I have to say, I'm enjoying reading it. Even aside from the fact that its a damn good read, the iPad is almost always with me nowdays, and therefore so is my book. When I have five spare minutes*** I've got reading material. When I'm eating and couldn't normally manage both a thick bestseller and my food, the iBook is a one-handed operation.

The tactile stuff is living up to its promise, too.

So, reluctantly, I have to admit it. I'm... well, not a convert; I'm still going to be buying 'proper' books, and I don't think a book will feel quite 'real' to my until I'm holding those bound and covered pages in my hot little hand. But I won't not be buying e-books, either. They've definitely got their place.

*I might have mentioned this already...
** But only in my own books, of course.
*** something that hasn't happened since 7.00 last tuesday morning

Such a Perfect Day

2010-10-16T19:23:00.003+11:00

Of course, I probably shouldn't be referencing Lou Reed in the title, because unlike his - let's be honest - fairly ironic take on the perfect day, today actually was pretty damn good.

I was a little worried that this weekend might be a bit of a trial, actually. I mentioned it in my last post. But today was lovely.

The little angel slept in! Until almost 7.30!*

Then we cooked a slap-up breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms and toast with coffee (for me) and a toby-cino (for him)

Then, off to the pool. Foolish dad thought that on a freezing, blustery 7-degree Canberra morning that the indoor pool would be almost deserted. Shows what I know. Turns out that Belconnen pool was the most popular place in Canberra this morning. Still, no matter, we spent a very pleasant hour-and-a-half floating, splashing, playing in the fountains, jumping off the wall and sinking like a stone to the bottom of the pool.**

Home. Light lunch, and then Toby had a nice little 2.5 hour nap, while Dad did the housework and got stuff ready for next week.***

Then it was off to my Mother-in-Law's house, to take her up on her very generous offer of a Toby-Sleepover.

After dropping the bub off, I headed into civic for an early meal, a beer, and a very pleasant couple of hours reading 'After America' by the versatile John Birmingham which I took great delight downloading to my iPad for $16.00 while standing in Borders beside the $39.00 hard copy. (Sorry, John, but sometimes you gotta make a selfish decision...)

Now I'm home. Just had a shower in our lovely new bathroom, got a glass of nice Clare Valley Reisling in hand and a bit of Crowded House playing softly. The heater's going, the dog's curled up at my feet, and tomorrow I can even sleep in until 8, or even 8.15 if I want.

And sure, the house feels absurdly empty without either Min or Toby in it. And sure, I keep fighting back the urge to ring and just check and 'see how things are going', but that's fatherhood for you. Min'll be back home monday morning, (at the moment, she's having a day off touristing and shopping in Copenhagen) and Toby tomorrow, so I'm going to just enjoy a rare night to myself. Probably in bed with JB's book.

Yep. Pretty much a perfect day.

*7.30 might not sound like much of a sleep in to anyone reading this who isn't/hasn't been the parent of a toddler, but - trust me on this - 7.30 is like 11.00 in normal world time (which is a little like dog-years)

**Only a couple of times.

***And played Farm Frenzy 2 on his iPhone

Just Reporting In

2010-10-15T13:34:00.002+11:00

As predicted, solo parenting week has been, well, rather hectic. And exhausting*

It's all going well, though - thanks largely to insane amounts of rather OTT organisation on my part beforehand.

Of course, tomorrow and sunday will be the big test - how will Tony cope without the relief of daycare? Will he start speaking about himself in the first person? Other rhetorical questions?

I'll keep you posted.

*though this wasn't helped by the fact that certain family members chose Wednesday night to wake up and yell every hour or so...

I'd Like To Thank The Academy...

2010-10-12T19:48:00.003+11:00

Just a short one, this evening. Night two of solo parenting going well. The scary thing is that I've put Toby to bed for the second time since Imogen left, and she still hasn't arrived at her final destination. The joys of international travel.

Anyway... I've picked up a couple of accolades in my time, for various things, but it has recently been brought to my attention that our humble blog here has made the list!

(You'll have to look closely to find us. Down near the bottom. At number 98, to be precise.)

So there you go. Made the top 100. Out of 126. That's almost as good as some of my year eleven maths results.

Thanks followers (and non-followers) I couldn't have done it without you.

Flying Solo

2010-10-11T18:10:00.004+11:00

A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, Min got invited to coach the ANU team in the second annual Copenhagen Negotiation Competition which means, of course, that she's off to Copenhagen.

Actually, as I write this, she's just taken off from Sydney, launching into a 30 hour effort - Denmark via Bankok and London. Luckily, I'm told that Princess Mary greets all Australian visitors to Denmark at the airport with a can of VB and some Vegemite on toast. I'm not sure how true this is, but I like to think it'll happen.

And, of course, the other upshot is that I'm a solo parent for the week. Yep, just me and Toby, batching it.

Thus far it's going well. We've watched an episode of playschool, made sausages, mash and peas for dinner ** Then (as tends to happen with dinner nowdays) Toby threw the mother of all tantrums, had a bath, and went to bed, where he fell asleep in an instant.

So now I'm sitting alone, in a suddenly very quiet and empty house. I've also done two loads of washing, already. In a while, I might go sit outside and have a beer and contemplate the next seven days. I've got my meals planned, the shopping done, Toby's daycare bag already packed for tomorrow, our lunches made, and have swept the floors. I'm organised. Bring it on, I say.

And, of course, I've been thinking about single parenting. This is the first time I've had all the parental duties to myself for any extended period. (I've done some short hops before, of course, but never even a complete overnight.) Min's done it several times while I've been off for various writer's festivals and uni obligations, but this is my first time in the pilot's seat.

It's kinda daunting, in its own way. Already, after just a few hours, I'm finding myself thinking differently. More logistically, for one thing. But I'm also looking forward to it - I really need to know that I can do something like this.

So, anyway, if there isn't a lot of blog action from me this week, you can probably guess that it's because I'm knee deep in toddler-town.

Should be fun. And, of course, one day I'll use the experience in a book.

**this particular dinner is something of a tradition in my family: when I was a kid, whenever mum was away, Dad made bangers and mash. I've got fond memories of eating bangers and mash for dinner on the night after my sister was born, so I felt kind of obliged to carry on the tradition.

It's a Love Story...

2010-10-10T11:23:00.005+11:00

...don't worry. I'm not about to go all Taylor Swift on you.*

But as today is the 10th of October, 2010 (ie: 10/10/10) I thought I'd tell you a true love story.

This couple I know, who shall (for the moment, at least) remain nameless, have been together for quite a while, now. In fact, one of their early dates, during their first year of seeing each other, was on the 6th June, 1966. (6/6/66). They went to a restaurant in Perth - a steakhouse located at 680, Oxford street, Mt. Hawthorn.

That night, the bloke in question asked the girl in question** if she'd like to have dinner there with him again, eleven-and-a-bit years later, on the 7/7/77. Her reply, only semi-seriously, I suspect, was that she'd probably have four kids by then, which could make it difficult.

"Doesn't matter. Bring them along." was his reply.

Eleven-and-a-bit years later, they did indeed go out to dinner again. At the same steakhouse. The girl was only half correct; at that point, there were only two kids, and the third well on the way. (And the two, despite being invited, were actually dumped with their grandparents for the night. But that's kinda beside the point.)

Then (You can probably see where this is leading) on the 8/8/88, they went there again. By now, the steakhouse had become a modern French joint, and on this occasion the kids - all three of them - did come along.

On the 9/9/99, the family went again. By this point, the restaurant was Thai. Their eldest son brought his (then) girlfriend.***

Tonight, that couple will be heading off to the Royal Thai Restaurant, at 680, Oxford Street, Mt Hawthorn, for dinner. This year, just like in 1966, it'll be just the two of them. Their eldest now lives in Canberra with his wife and son. The middle child and his wife are off hiking in southern Patagonia, and their youngest lives in the USA with her husband and kids.

I hope mum and dad have a fantastic evening. And I can't help but wonder what they must have talked about that evening back in 1966, and if they even considered the possiblity that almost half-a-century later they'd be sitting down together in the same restaurant (or the same place, at least) with their family spread across the world, all of us very far apart, but still very, very close.

Happy 10/10/10 Marg and Dave. Enjoy yourselves.

*though I will admit, here in very small letters at the bottom of the page, to owning the CD. And to occasionally playing it. And singing along. Usually while house cleaning...

**I know you've all worked out that it's my parents by now, but I'm going for dramatic effect here, so go with me on this, okay?

***Not, sadly, his current wife, although that would have made for a much better story...

Just A Short List...

2010-10-07T13:35:00.006+11:00

Gotta be quick with this one, owing to an impending meeting, but I wanted to mention that the shortlist for the ACT Book of the Year Award was announced yesterday. This is the one I sat on the judging panel for earlier this year, and I'm really thrilled to see the list finally out in the public.

Carving so many fantastic books down to a shortlist of only five was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, but I (and the other judges on the panel) are all really happy with this final list. Owing to my position as judge, I'm not going to make any comments about them at the moment, other than to mention that the shortlist, in no particular order, is:

The Lake Woman, by Alan Gould

Rugged Beyond Imagination, by Matthew Higgins

Valley of Grace, by Marion Halligan

Bills of Rights in Australia, by Andrew Byrnes, Hilary Charlesworth, and Gabrielle McKinnon.
The Blue Plateau, by Mark Tredinnick

Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors, and also to the rest of the very talented ACT and regional writers who entered - it was a fantastic privilege to read all your wonderful books.

The Referee's Decision is Final

2010-10-06T08:51:00.006+11:00

In the last week, I've submitted my first two articles for refereed journals - one here in Australia, and one overseas. Both were accepted for publication, which is good news. Both came back with overall positive reports from the peer reviewers*

It's funny, though - after ten years in the writing industry, countless newspaper and magazine reviews, not to mention editorial and readers reports, I thought I was done with nervousness about putting something I'd written 'out there'.

Turns out that I was wrong.

I've got pretty clear memories of the day that The Darkness was released, waaay back in 2000. I remember knocking off from work (one of the longest school days of my life) and driving directly to my local Dymocks bookstore, in the Morley Galleria. Before going into the shop I stood outside for a couple of moments and reminded myself that there was no point rushing in, because the book wouldn't be there, anyway. But, once I entered and made my way to the 'young adult' shelves, right at the back of the shop beside the 'alternate lifestyles' section, there, to my shock, was a single copy of my little blue book, parked spine-out on the shelves beside Nick Earls' 48 Shades of Brown and all five million copies of David and Leigh Eddings' The Belgariad.

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

Mainly because, up until that point, the whole 'publishing a book' thing hadn't been real - it'd been a sort of abstract idea, but with nothing tangible to show for it. Suddenly though, there was a copy of my book - my book - with my name on the front cover, sitting in a public bookstore for anybody with a spare $14.00 to just walk in and purchase, whenever they wanted. They didn't need to ask my permission, or wait for me to send them the latest draft of the MSS. Hell, they didn't even have to know me.

And, it also occurred to me in that moment, perhaps just a little too late, that when they read it, they didn't have to like it. My writing was 'out there' in the public eye, and totally open to criticism.

One of the most nerve-wracking realisations of my life.

Over the years, and the course of another ten books, I've gotten past that feeling. Nowdays when a book hits the shelves I just treat it with more of a resigned shrug and a que sera sera. Naturally some people won't like it. Hopefully more people will. Either way there's nothing I can do about it. I pretty much thought I'd gotten through the nerves.

Which is why I'm a little surprised to find myself so suddenly twitchy about these peer review articles. The thought that they're going to be published in proper academic journals is not an all together comfortable one, even though I'm happy with both pieces and it's an intrinsic aspect of my job. But still - it's one thing having my creative writing published; that's just stories, after all. These are somehow... different.

I think it's because academic writing is published for one specific purpose: to encourage debate. And discussion. And (occasionally) argument. We've all heard horror stories about academic feuds which have taken place in the pages of various journals and textbooks, sometimes for decades. There's also a strong and very edgy body of scholars who have specialised for years in the study of writing and children's literature and - if I'm being honest - I'm very aware that I might be seen as treading on some toes by weighing in to the conversation. Bloody upstart.

Of course, I know most of this is completely in my mind. Without exception, all the academics that I've met in the last couple of years at conferences, festivals, symposiums and other such functions have been nothing but lovely and supportive.

But that doesn't kill the nerves, though. I think only time and getting a few more of these under my belt will do that.

*For anyone not familiar with the workings of academic publishing, it goes like this: you submit your piece to your chosen journal who then send it out to (usually) two or three anonymous peer reviewers - other academics familiar with your field. They read the article, make any suggestions that occur to them, decide whether or not your arguments and / or data are academically sound**, and recommend either for / against publication in the journal. Once (if) it's published, you get points from the national research assessment bodies, which earns your university money, which means you get to keep your job. Which is nice.

**or, alternatively, full of shit.

It's all about Horizons...

2010-09-29T13:35:00.006+10:00

There's a little content box a bit down on the right hand side of your screen there which speaks to my inner geek* - it's the NASA 'Photo of the Day' application.

Anyway, last week, (on friday or saturday, I think...) those of you with an appreciation for all things spacey might have noticed the following photograph there:

This is the Space Shuttle Discovery, rolling out to the launchpad for her final flight, scheduled for November 1. After she returns to earth for the last time, there's one flight (the Endeavour) scheduled for February 2011, and then a possible flight by the Atlantis in June. After that, it's all over for the Space Shuttle Programme, which is something I find terribly sad, in its own way.

Why? Like everything, it's all about childhood, really.

Here, from 1981, is a pic of the Columbia lifting off on her maiden voyage, and the first ever space shuttle mission - STS-1:

And here, if you're interested, is the same moment captured on grainy shaky film.

I've got vivid memories of this moment. When they launched Columbia, I was 9 years old, and living at Cocos. There was no TV on the islands, but a few lucky families had those new fangled 'Video Cassette Recorders' and got relatives and friends in Perth to tape shows and post them up on the fortnightly supply flight. These tapes were handed around the island from family to family, many of them literally played to pieces.

Someone taped the launch of the Columbia, and I remember watching it with my dad, on our blurry little portable TV and feeling utterly blown away by the power and grandeur of it.

But more than that - it was the ingenuity which really got me: men and women had built this thing - this spectacular machine - and now, as we watched them on our little screen on a tiny speck of an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, they were setting off into space on it. I guess that part of the power of that moment for me was the fact that, as I mentioned yesterday, on the Islands our horizons were so tiny - everywhere you looked was empty ocean. To a nine year old, living in such a tiny little world, watching a machine like the Columbia leap into the sky was more than just cool - it was liberating. For my 9-year-old self, it was a moment filled with possibilities.

And so now, when I look at that picture of Discovery on her way out to make that leap for the final time, and when I think about the end of the shuttle era fast approaching, I can't help but feel kinda sad - it's not just the end of a technology; it's the end of a tiny little sliver of my childhood.

Of course there'll be other spaceships, and other grand moments, but none will ever quite match the power of that instant viewed through the eyes of a child.

I guess that's one of the reasons I love writing for kids.

It's all about horizons.

*if we're being honest, my 'inner geek' isn't that far in. Just below the skin, really. Except for the bits where it breaks through...

On Two (or three) Wheels

2010-09-28T10:20:00.002+10:00

A little housekeeping, first.

The astute among you* will have noticed a new banner at the top. I made it on my iPad, using a funky little text design app called 'Type Drawing'. I'm not convinced that I've got it completely right yet, but I kinda like the idea. Let me know what you think...

Now, down to business.

Bikes have been a big part of my life for a long time now. When I was a kid, growing up on the Cocos Islands, our bikes were our ticket to freedom; the island we lived on, called West Island was a long skinny, flat coral raft, about 7 kilometres long and about 500 metres across at its widest point. It was also about 2 metres above sea level. As kids, we must have explored every accessible inch of that island on our bikes. We rode them out onto reefs, along beaches, into mangroves (every bike on the island was painted in this sort of thick black tarry paint, to prevent them rusting out within three weeks, and so we pretty much rode them anywhere. I remember being awfully upset seeing my shiny blue bike disappear into the island workshop, and re-appear a couple of days later looking exactly the same as everyone elses...) and even up and down the island's runway.**

As an adult, in my 20's, I got into triathlon in a big way, and spent countless hours cruising around Perth and Fremantle with my cycling mates. Most saturday mornings we'd hit out from the uni at around 6.30ish, and put in a 50-80k ride, usually around the river and up the beaches, and stopping for breakfast down in Fremantle, or perhaps up in the hills, if we were feeling energetic. A few times a year we'd do a big ride down to Mandurah or Rockingham and back, notching up a hundred+ kilometres in the morning, and then going home to sleep all afternoon. I've got some really good memories of trundling around Perth with the boys, chatting and taking in the scenery.

Since moving to Canberra, my cycling has dropped off a fair bit. A year or so ago I traded in my racer for a more practical commuter bike, with big fat tyres and suspension, for the ride in to work, but I don't do it nearly as often as I should. Partly this is because the state of the roads and cycle paths is pretty disgraceful here, but mainly because of the high prevalence of utter bogans with whom you have to share the road.***

But still, I love being out on a bike and, for as long as I can remember, cycling has been one of the big pleasures of life for me.

I particularly remember my first bike. Don't know how old I was when I got it, but it was a red tricycle, with white wheels. I can clearly recall riding endlessly up and down the path around our house, and probably had my mother living in constant fear that I'd set off down our (incredibly steep and unforgiving) driveway**** My trike had a little platform on the back, which you could stand on and use to scoot the bike along and this - most importantly - was shaped like an aeroplane wing, with little 'go fast' ridges and a slightly scalloped trailing edge.

I can't remember what happened to my little red tricycle. I guess it got thrown out eventually.

But anyway, a week or so back, we decided that it was time we got a bike for Toby. He's been scooting around on one at daycare, and loving it.

So we went to Toys R Us, and spent a good chunk of time considering the relative merits of the multitude of models on display: did we want one with parental steering? mini-bucket seats? horns and rear-vision mirrors? seat belts? a sun shade? Drink bottle holders?***** Should we get him the one in neon green plastic, or bright blue plastic? (Or would getting him a blue one be buying into gender stereotyping?) We were determined to avoid the various merchandised ones, which ruled out the Elmo, Thomas and Bob the Builder Bikes******

Then, just when it seemed all hope was lost, we spotted it. Right up on the top shelf, on sale.

A little, shiny, red metal tricycle, with white wheels.

It looked eerily familiar. And it was perfect.

And Toby loves it...

*ie: all my readers.

** there was this great system: if a plane was landing, a siren would go off, and you had about three minutes to get off the runway and to a safe distance. I suspect this has probably changed in the intervening years.

*** On my last ride in to work, about 6 months ago, I was almost killed by a P-Plated commodore full of idiots who deliberately swerved into the bike lane at 80kph, passing within about 2cm of my handlbars, while one of them leaned out the window to whack me on my helmet. Sadly this isn't the first time something like this has happened to me here in Canberra, and I've been a bit loathe to get back on the bike since.

**** I never did. Though I did spend a disproportionate amount of my childhood trying to persuade my brother to give it a go...

***** I am not making any of that up.
****** That either....

Young Over-Achievers...

2010-09-25T09:40:00.006+10:00

A rare saturday blog post from me, owing to Toby having a sleepover at his grandmother's house last night!

I mentioned in my last blog that I was off to launch a book on Wednesday night.

The book in question was The Griffin's War by Katie J Taylor, one of my former Uni of Canberra students, and a very impressive young woman.

I've mentioned Katie here before, but thought I'd talk about her in a little more detail here. Hopefully she won't mind.

Firstly, here's the book I launched for her this week ---->

If you look closely at the fine print at the top of the cover, you'll notice that this is book 3 of her trilogy The Fallen Moon.

And if you look at the date of my last post, about Katie's first book in the series, you'll notice that it's dated almost exactly a year ago.

That's right. In the last 12 months, Katie has put out not one, or two, but an entire trilogy of very readable, *very* hefty fantasy books. And she's already finished the drafts of the next three in this world she's created. The 'Fallen Moon' books are also just about to hit the shelves in the USA.

Speaking as someone who took the better part of an entire decade to put out my own spec-fic trilogy, I can only take my hat off in admiration. In fact, I think it's safe to say that Katie is one of the most prolific writers I've ever met.

But that's Katie for you. If you ever get a chance to meet her, and to listen to her speak, then you should take it - she's a fascinating writer to talk to. After just a few minutes, it quickly becomes clear that Katie is a writer whose characters are utterly alive in her head. The minutiae of her worlds are similarly alive to her. As someone who works in a very different way, and who has a very different approach to narrative, it's quite amazing to be privvy to such a dedicated young writer.

At the launch the other night, she made a fantastic speech - she talked about her recent experiences at World Con in Melbourne (which, sadly, I didn't manage to extricate myself from the rest of my life in time to attend) and the realisation she came to one night there, having met so many of the world's top spec fic writers (She has a copy of her book with some incredible signatures in it, including - and I'm very jealous of this - George R.R. Martin!) that really the writing game isn't about yourself as a writer, or about the success or otherwise of your books, (that way lies madness), but it's about other people - your readers. It was an incredible thing for someone still starting out in this industry to talk about: I'd been at this game a lot longer than Katie before I came to a similar realisation, and when I did, I think that in many ways it was a moment that really released me from constraints in my writing - It was fantastic to hear Katie talk about it in such a thoughtful and reflective fashion.

So congratulations to Katie on The Fallen Moon (I'm not going to spoiler it here, but have reviewed all the books on Goodreads for anyone interested), and also to Harper Voyager for taking on such a talented young writer and giving her such a supportive start to what will, I suspect, be a very long and productive writing career.

A Little More on Inertia

2010-09-22T12:05:00.006+10:00

Last week I wrote briefly about inertia.

This was largely because I didn't feel like I was having a particularly good week. I got a lot of little stuff done, but somehow the big stuff (like writing, for example, or working on the couple of academic papers that I've been plugging away at for what feels like forever) wasn't getting done, and not for lack of time, but motivation.

In my rather bleak post last week, I put this down to inertia, and suggested that; ...it's irritating when the brain and the willpower don't come into alignment. For a writer, it's dangerous.

But today, I'm going to disagree with that.*

Because after due thought and consideration, I've come to the conclusion that inertia isn't dangerous, or even bad. It's a necessary part of the whole creative process.

At the moment, I've got my next book sitting on my computer, almost finished. It's somewhere in the region of about 35,000 words, and I expect it'll top out at around 50ish. (It's going to be a lot shorter than my last few books, which is not a bad thing, in my opinion.) It's been at that point for roughly two months now, on a sort of jumpy pause, halfway through chapter twenty-three.

But where last week I was letting this really bother me, the weekend gave me a chance to recharge my batteries and get a little perspective. (There's nothing like working in the garden to help clear the mind...)

And the conclusion I've reached is this: The book will finish itself when it's ready to be finished.

Now, I suspect that this isn't the way a lot of writers work, or think. But it's the way I need to work and think, for a few reasons.

One is because this book is going to be an important one for me. It's different to all my other stuff; very different. It's much more commercial than most of my previous works, but that's not a bad thing. Up to date, it still has an awful lot of me in it; I'm enjoying writing it, I'm loving the story, and most importantly I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I want all this to continue right through the draft. This book is going to involve a little bit of re-imagining of myself and my writing, and if I try to force it out onto the page, all I'll end up with is a disingenuous piece of writing, that has nothing of myself in it. So for that reason, I'm loathe to try and force it out.

Another reason is that the reality of my life now is very different from what it was a couple of years ago. Back then - when I was writing 'Into White Silence' for example, I had the luxury of being able to put a couple of months aside and just bury myself in writing. Not so much any more - now I have fatherly duties which take up (and are the best part of) most of my weekends. I have my job at uni, which is work I love doing - both the teaching and researching - but which leaves me mentally wiped at the end of most days. Time has become a commodity, and if there's one thing that good, genuine writing needs, it's time. So I'll just have to accept the fact that I might need to space my writing more widely across the year, and get used to writing in those periods where I have my mojo on.

Finally there's the requirements of the book itself. During these last couple of months of inertia, I realised the other day, I've been mentally tweaking, exploring and shifting a lot of tiny aspects of the story around in my head, and improving it as a result. This makes me wonder if, just perhaps, this story isn't ready to be confined to the page quite yet.

So there you have it. I'm reversing my position on inertia. For the moment, at least. It's not dangerous, it's natural and probably necessary.

Now, I'm going to have a nap...

* I read somewhere that all good blogs engage in public debate. Well, that's just what I'm doing here. Only with myself.

What I Did on My Weekend...

2010-09-20T09:56:00.005+10:00

If there are a few typos in this post, then I'll apologise. I've got some minor typing issues at the moment, mainly to do with the fact that my left thumb is currently encased in an enormous bandage.

If you follow me on Twitter, and if you were following along last friday night, then you'll already know the sad saga of my evening. But, for those of you who weren't* here's the abbreviated version:

Friday night, Min and I planned to do a chinese steamboat dinner - yum. We had scallops, pork, beef and chicken all marinading, along with yummy enoki mushrooms, cloud ear fungus*, and a simmering stock of chicken infused with szechuan peppers and soy and tsing zao.

Oh, yeah, and cabbage. That Chinese cabbage called Wombok.

And it was the cabbage that brought me unstuck. I was cutting it up in to managable pieces when I managed to almost slice the top off my left thumb. It was a lovely cut - an almost perfect circle, with just a tiny little hinge holding my fingertip onto the rest of my finger.

And there was some bleeding, too.

"Hmm... ouch." I said, very calmly.***

Then, with Toby asleep in bed, we called my brother in Law - the awesome Joe - who drove all the way across Canberra on a friday night, picked me up and took me to the emergency room at Calvary hospital, where I had the following conversation with the Triage nurse.

Me: Hi. I've managed to slice open the tip of my finger.
TN: How.
Me: With a kitchen knife, while making dinner.
TN: What were you cutting up?
Me: Uhm... Cabbage.
TN: (slightly incredulous) Cabbage?
Me: Yeah.
TN: Is your tetanus shot up to date?****
Me: Yes.
TN: Okay. Well, sit down and wait over there. But I should warn you that there are people in the waiting room who've been there since three this afternoon*****, so you're looking at a minimum 5 hour wait. Probably closer to 6 or 7.
Me: You're kidding?
TN: *Shrugs*

So at that point, and resisting the urge to point out that it would have been quicker to drive to Sydney and get it looked at there, I left, choosing home surgery as a more viable alternative. Luckily, while stopping at a late night chemist on the way home to pick up supplies, the nice pharmacist suggest I go to the medical centre down the road and just three minutes from the emergency room of the hospital which is open every night until ten. I went there. I didn't have to wait. I got the top stitched back onto my thumb. I find myself questioning why TN didn't just send me right there in the first place, but I guess she had her reasons.

Then Joe drove me home. It was 10.30. Min had put the steamboat stuff back in the fridge and ordered a pizza.

Saturday morning here was one of those gorgeous spring days, which in Canberra are particularly lovely; cool, damp, sunny. You can taste the season in the air. We'd planned to get to work at taming our feral garden, and weren't about to let the fact that I had a thumb encased in bandages stop us. Saturday morning saw the three of us outside in our wellies, weeding, digging, planting.

One of the first things we did when we bought our Canberra house was to build two big garden beds and fill them up with good soil. And for first couple of years that we lived here, our garden beds were the envy of the suburb: silverbeet, cucumbers, zucchini, spinach, garlic, spring onions, basil, coriander, rosemary, sage and, of course, tomatoes. Lots and lots of heirloom tomatoes. Black Russians, Green Zebras, Golden cherries, Romas, Black Krims, and others I can't quite remember. At one point, we had about seven different species of tomato in our gardens. Right through summer we ate them with everything: a thick sliced Black Russian, on toast, with a liberal sprinkling of salt for breakfast on a summer morning is just delightful. As summer wore on, we got ourselves a preserving kit and started bottling and during the winter months, when all outside was dark, cold and dead, we had the pleasure of opening our own jars - filled with garden tomato, basil leaves and a dash of balsamic vinegar - every time we needed them.

Then, a couple of years ago, things changed. Toby came along and, for some reason, last year's gardening was less than successful.

Now, though, he's old enough to toddle around out there too, and to 'help'. Occasionally he even pulls out weeds, and not plants.

So Saturday morning was great; the three of us out in the sun, under our flowering plum tree, with the dog, getting in seedlings and pulling out all the winter-dead plants and prepping the soil for the upcoming growing season. With the wet winter now behind us, it promises to be a really good season, and we're going to make the most of it. Right now our broad beans are flowering profusely, promising a nice crop before a lot longer (one of the things I love about early summer is the broad bean harvest; such an earthy, springy taste, and they grow through winter. And they're good for the soil, too...) Our third generation parsley plant is going nuts, and our oregano and sage have come back to life. We also have a cos lettuce growing out the side of one of the garden beds, where it self-seeded last year.

The garden has become one of the big pleasures of our lives (Oh god, I've become my parents!) and last weekend it was just fantastic introducing Toby to it, too.

Anyway, I should get on with my day, and stop bothering you all.

*ie: anyone who thinks that life deserves more than 140 characters
** Black. Looks like a cloud crossed with an ear. Texture a bit like seaweed. Min loves it
*** Or words to that effect.
**** I didn't know you could get tetanus from cabbage, either.
***** At that point, it was 8.30

Bathrooms. Books. Workshops. Inertia.

2010-09-14T15:37:00.005+10:00

Let's start with inertia, shall we?

Perhaps its because the ongoing saga of our bathroom renovations has thrown the last three weeks of our lives into utter disarray, or perhaps it's because I've got the middle-of-semester blues, or perhaps I'm just having a flat spell, but the last couple of weeks I've been finding it increasingly difficult to fight the overwhelming urge to do nothing. It's a little like everything has ground to a halt, and I just can't find it in me to get going again.

Which is utter crap, of course, I've got about a million and one things to do, most of them distressingly soon. Blog posts, for example. But still it's irritating when the brain and the willpower don't come into alignment. For a writer, it's dangerous.

Okay. Enough with the whinging. Now on to workshops...

Last friday I spent the day up in Sydney working with a group of fantastic young writers, and also fellow scribblers Jacqueline Moriarty and Suzanne Gervay run by the New South Wales CBC and held at the Australian Maritime Museum which, in addition to being a fantastic venue, is also the home of the Endeavour Replica, which I helped to build, rig and sail in Fremantle back in the early 1990's. Part of the day was a tour of the ship, which I haven't set foot aboard since it left Fremantle, and it was lovely to be back aboard her.

The rest of the day was fantastic - one of the best parts of this job is meeting and working with young writers, and a number of the guys and girls at the workshop have already done some incredible writing.

Tomorrow, I'm working at UC with students from Gold Creek High School, as part of our 'Uni Student for a Day' program, and that also promises to be fun.

Books:

I recently finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy (another of those big holes in my reading which I've been intending to fill for ages). It had quite an impact on me. I may have raved about it slightly at Goodreads. As I mentioned in my review, I think that one of the main reasons this book resonated so strongly with me was because of the portrayal of fatherhood within it. It captures all the utter powerlessness and desperation that comes with being a parent, and particularly a father (IMHO). It's a thoroughly beautiful, if completely gut-wrenching book.

Finally, Bathrooms:

In theory, our bathroom should be more-or-less finished tomorrow, except that while I've been typing up this post, our bathroom guy just called to let me know that there's been a problem with a benchtop, and we'll have to wait until thursday. This isn't overly surprising. Lately, I've been feeling a little bit like I'm on Grand Designs. I keep expecting to turn around to find Kevin McLeod in our hallway, looking terribly earnest and just slightly smug and saying something like "Tony and Imogen are convinced that they're going to come in on time and on budget*, but I'm at all convinced that they'll be able to achieve such an ambitious schedule on a project like this..."

Still, I can't complain. As of last night, at least we have a functioning shower again for the first time in three weeks.** This, if nothing else, has had a dramatic impact upon our quality of life. I'll stick some pics up here when it's all done***

Anyway, that's the brief summary of life at the moment. With a bit of luck tomorrow will see me in a more cheerful mood.

*We haven't. On either count.
** I smell a lot better, now.
*** Next year, on current projections.

Those Pesky Kids...

2010-09-02T13:17:00.003+10:00

Here's something one of my students found glued into the endpaper of one of the books from our library, circa about 1982:

Says it all, really...

Into the Depths of Chaos

2010-08-30T11:16:00.004+10:00

I've been resisting the urge for the last week to post yet another little lefty rant here, and to propose that at the moment - with both the major political parties effectively on good behaviour bonds and desperately trying to look stable and responsible, while the public service run the country - we're getting the best political governance we've had for a decade and-we-should-consider-just-leaving-things-this-way.

I'm not going to do that, however. Because, let's face it. There's no point.

So, instead, I'm going to talk about bathrooms.

Specifically, our bathroom. Or what remains of it.

It's amazing the way that the loss of one little room can throw an entire family into complete chaos. Until a week or so ago, I wouldn't have believed it possible, but - trust me on this - it's absolutely the case. Even a bathroom which is, let's face it, pretty much a single purpose room.

A while back, we decided to have our bathroom done up. We made this decision for two reasons:

1. Our house was designed and built (along with every other house in our neighbourhood) in the 1970's as a 'Guvvy'; that is, to be used as 'government housing' for either government workers who had to move to Canberra, or for low income housing. This means that the house was built to a plan, a budget, and a certain standard*. When we purchased it, a lot of the house had already been renovated, but not the bathroom. We inherited the original, 1970's bathroom, complete with narrow, shallow, enamel-less bath, peeling water damaged paint, mouldy roof, uneven water-catching floor and permanently dirt-ingrained grouting.

2. The whole room, like pretty much anything built in Canberra in the 1970's, was lined with asbestos.**

So a few weeks ago we bit the bullet, organised some quotes, and chose a nice bloke to do up the bathroom. We picked out new taps, showerhead, tiles... all the usual stuff. We try not to think too much about the dollars involved.

Of course, the downside was that we'd have no bathroom for a couple of weeks, but we consoled ourselves with the fact that we'd booked the renovation in for spring, when it'd be getting warmer, and our respective workloads would be a little under control.

"We'll manage." Min and I told each other. "How difficult can it be?"

Well, quite difficult, as it turns out.

Partly because our bathroom man had a cancellation, and bumped our job forward a month-and-a-half, which put it into the busiest part of the uni semester for me, and the trailing-but-still-bloody-cold final weeks of the Canberra winter. Still, at least we'll have our lovely new bathroom sooner.

In the meantime, though, we're facing down the challenges of a house where all the bathroom stuff (and it's incredible just how much stuff can come out of such a small room - Toby's bath toys alone filled a green bag, which is now sitting outside on the back porch) is crammed into whichever cupboard or horizontal surface will hold it. Then there's the challenge of keeping a toddler out of a room which currently:

Has no door and
Has drying concrete on the floor, drying waterproofer on the walls, a gaping hole where the shower drain used to be, power sockets hanging out of the walls and a sharp steel strip along the floor where the new shower base will sit. In other words, it's the most interesting room in the house at the moment.

Then finally there's the fact that, well, we don't have a shower. I'll be honest here; I like my showers. Especially in the mornings. It's safe to say that after coffee, a shower is perhaps the most important part of my daily routine. I'm one of those people who doesn't actually feel conscious until I've had my morning shower. At the moment, I'm showering in the bathroom down the hall from my office at work, by which point I've usually been up for hours, and feel like a sort of grotty zombie, and the feeling never really goes away.

It's not all bad, though. For one thing, our new bathroom, when it's done, will be lovely. It'll be the first time that both of us have owned and lived in a house with a really *nice* bathroom. It'll help us pretend we're on holidays in a hotel.

Also, from a personal perspective, I love watching professional tradespeople at work. I'm someone who likes building things and working with my hands, and have had various degrees of success with various projects. Min and I (with help from family) did most of the renovation work on our old house in Perth ourselves, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It also gave me an appreciation for the skill involved in creating and constructing so many of the things we take for granted. Like bathrooms, for example. There's a lot of pleasure to be had from watching people who really know what they're doing, and at the moment, I can't wait to get home in the evenings and see what the guys have done during the day - and because the job started with a complete strip out of the whole room, I get to watch it on a step-by-step basis, which is teaching me a lot, too.

So it's not all bad. Sure, the house is in disarray and we can't park our cars in the garage at the moment (mainly because it's full of tiles and wall paneling), but there are a lot of pluses, too.

And, of course, in a couple of weeks, we'll have the largest shower in Canberra.

Now that's worth waiting for.

*low
** Actually, turns out that this also applies to the toilet and laundry, neither of which are covered in the existing reno, and the latter of which I did up myself last year. Oops.

Who I Voted For...

2010-08-21T22:35:00.002+10:00

Today, for the first time in my voting life, I didn't cast my vote for the Australian Labor Party in either the house of reps, or the Senate.

And, I'll be honest, it hurt. It wasn't an easy decision.

I'm also sitting here now, at 10.40 on election night, looking down the barrel of a Liberal minority government, with Tony bloody Abbot as Prime Minister, and wondering what the hell happened to common sense in this country.

But, and I want to be totally clear on this, I don't regret my voting decision - not for a moment.

When I stood there in that polling booth this morning, Imogen was in the booth next door, and Toby was standing between us, holding our hands. And when I looked at those ballot papers, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't vote for a party which backflipped on the CPRS, which stopped processing of refugees for political gain, which is committed to coal power at the expense of funding alternative energy sources and which has, during the last couple of months, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is more concerned with winning government - at whatever cost - than it is with governing. But mostly I couldn't vote for a party which is so utterly ruthless in regard to environmental policy that it didn't have the moral fortitude or political courage to set an ambitious, or difficult emissions reduction target for this country.

And, of course, the only alternative was the Liberals. Might as well vote for Kerry Packer.

So, for the record, I voted for the Greens in both houses, and preferenced Labor. Neither of my first preference candidates managed to get up, but that doesn't really matter, because that's not who I was really voting for.

This morning in the polling booth, I looked down at my son standing there, and I voted for my grandkids.

And, from the looks of the voting figures, most notably the first preference figures for the Greens, I wasn't the only one.

As we sit here on the verge of three years of complete parliamentary shitfight, I just hope to God the major parties get the message that I, and a lot of other Australians, sent them today, in no uncertain terms.

Get it India!

2010-08-18T15:00:00.004+10:00

I'll start by apologising for the bad pun in the title. Ever since I became a father, I just can't seem to get away from the bad 'dad' jokes.

Anyway...

A few years ago now, back at the turn of the century, Imogen and I attended a W.A. Premier's Literary Award dinner at the State Library of Western Australia. At the dinner, I sat next to one of the other shortlisted authors; this blonde woman from Melbourne named Kirsty Murray, whose book Zarconi's Magic Flying Fish got up that evening to win the prize for best children's book.

We had a great night, all of us, and Kirsty and I kept in touch as the decade progressed.

Kirsty writes (among other things) historical fiction - it's one of her real passions. I've heard her talk about it on a couple of occasions (actually, I've got vague recollections of the two of us doing a panel on the subject at some-writer's-festival-or-other, but I can't recall any specifics, so it's quite possible that my brain is just making it up.)

In any case, the point is that not only does she write historical fiction, but she writes it beautifully. Reading her books is reading the work of a true craftsperson - her dedication to her art is evident in every carefully chosen word, and every perfectly constructed sentence. For me, the difficult part about historical fiction isn't so much finding material to write about - the past is just loaded with tiny and intriguing little cul-de-sac's of narrative just begging to be explored - but making the past come to life; getting all the tiny details and elements correct, but also writing in such a way as to capture the sensory aspects of a time and place which I can have no direct experience of.

Kirsty is an absolute master of this, however, and a few weeks ago she asked me if I'd launch her latest novel India Dark here in Canberra, and - as I mentioned at the time - I was thrilled to be able to agree.

Even more thrilled to get the book in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

On Monday afternoon, I took a break from my reading for the ACT Book of the Year Award* and picked up Kirsty's book.

At midnight on monday, I finished it.

And, I have to say, I'm so thrilled to be launching it. It's beautiful. The writing and storytelling is sublime, but most impressive (for me, at least) is the way that Kirsty has taken a fascinating chapter of Australian history, and breathed life into it; utterly convincing, utterly believable, and utterly engaging life.

I'm not going to go into the specifics of the plot and so on here - I'll save that for my launch speech on friday evening. Suffice to say that it's a fantastic achievement, and everyone should read it.

Congratulations, Kirsty.

*In case you're wondering, as of this morning my reading status there is: 6 books to go, 6 days to the judge's meeting. It's probably going to be closer than the election. More interesting, too.

Words Words Words Words Words Worlds....

2010-08-12T16:02:00.003+10:00

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that it didn't take me long after my July Blog-a-thon to slip back into my bad old ways, aren't you.

Well, have I got news for you!

Uhm.

You're right.

Still, here I am. With bronchitis, nonetheless. But the antibiotics are cutting in now, and I can go for up to half an hour without coughing, which is nice.

Anyway, on to the serious stuff.

I spend my life swimming in words: when I'm not writing them, I'm speaking them or reading them, or assessing them. My 'spare time' is spent either weaving them together or pulling them apart. My own words, other people's words - doesn't matter.

Worlds of words.

And, of course, the upshot of this is that - like most people - most of the time nowadays I take words for granted. It's gotta be a pretty special set of words to leap off a page and catch my attention, and most of the time I just swim through them without noticing how beautiful - how powerful and miraculous - even the simplest word is.

The reason I mention it is that Toby is starting to talk at the moment.

Well, technically he's been talking for a little while, now, a couple of months at least. He started his first basic words back in about April or May; 'mum' 'water' 'milk', that sort of thing.

But lately, something has gone 'click' in that little brain of his, and now he's picking up words on a daily basis: he repeats whatever we say. He points excitedly at anything he recognises and tells us what we're looking at (Drives home are great fun; 'Car! Car! Car! Bus! Car! Car! Car! Truck! Car! Tiger!*)

Every word is a delight, to him and to me. The sheer joy that is written all over his little face at just having that simple, most basic skill of communication; the ability to name an object, and the connection that comes with it, reminds me every time of the sheer beauty of human communication; of what it brings to a life, and of what you can do with it.

This was really driven home to me when we were in Perth a couple of weeks ago. To Min and my amazement, Toby's cousin, Meri, who's about 18 months older than him and therefore a much more fluent speaker, could talk to him, and understand exactly what he was saying to her, even when we couldn't.

"Toby is thirsty. He wants water." She'd tell us, and suddenly the last five minutes of Toby trying to climb up onto the kitchen bench made sense.

"Toby's being silly." Meri informed us one evening, just as our son tried his best to stick his tongue into a dripping tap.

Watching the two of them talk - and they had long conversations on a few occasions - was one of the delights of the trip. Just like watching this little growing miracle of language is an ongoing delight now.

If nothing else, it's been a really good reminder to me not to take my words for granted - every single little utterance that Toby makes is hard fought for; he struggles to get his tongue around difficult sounds, or to tack on that extra syllable, or to pick one word out of a string of others. But when he gets it, there's delight all round.

And as a final, vaguely related offering, here's a video that's been doing my head in slightly. It's an Italian parody of a 60's pop song, sung in gibberish, but designed to sound like American English. You'll go nuts trying to 'interpret' it.

Which, at the moment, is probably how Toby is experiencing the world, too.

*I said his vocab was expanding, but we're still working on the difference between a cat and a tiger...

Launching my Family

2010-08-05T13:20:00.004+10:00

Right, so I promised a write up on the launch that we had for 'Daywards' at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre while I was in Perth last week.

To be honest, I thought I was a bit over book launches - for my own books, at least. I didn't launch Into White Silence or the last couple of Nathan Nuttboard books, largely because I couldn't really see the point.

I'm actually regretting that decision now - I think it was a mistake.

I'll explain why.

Last tuesday night was a lovely evening. And I know that as the author of the book in question I'm undoubtedly a little biased, but the whole night had a really nice feel about it. Perhaps this was just because people kept saying nice things about me and my book, or because we got the booze out well before the speeches, or just because almost everyone there was related to me in one way or another, but there was a good vibe going on.

Before we got to the formal bit of the launch, there was a lot of catching up: People I haven't seen in years turned up out of the woodwork for this one including; our old neighbours from Greenmount with their little girl who I last saw when she was about 11, and who is now 18 and about 7 feet tall. My cousin (who I used to share a house with) and her husband who I thought were still living in England. My old piano teacher from when I was a kid and her son, who's read A New Kind of Dreaming. My former colleague from the Trinity library, Rosemary. Past teachers. Old friends. All sorts of unexpected surprises.

And, of course, family. My sister and her two girls were there. Toby was there - tearing around the place with his cousins and making all sorts of noise (He kept walking up to the posters and exclaiming 'Dadda!' at the top of his voice, which I thoroughly approved of.)

And Mum. And Dad. We'll get back to them shortly.

First, we were all welcomed by the Director of the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, Lesley Reece. It's difficult for me to describe Lesley, except to say that she is one of the most incredible women I know. She set up the FCLC, seventeen years ago and has worked tirelessly ever since to turn it into one of the single most important and unique educational and cultural institutions in the country. She was the person responsible for supporting and encouraging my writing career: she put me in touch with Gary Crew, right back in 1997, and persuaded him that I was worth mentoring in my writing. Once I got published, she stood behind my books and ensured that I was able to get as much coverage for them as possible in the west. When I left teaching to become a full time writer, Lesley again worked on my behalf - finding me suitable speaking and teaching gigs to keep the wolf from the door.

And more than just patronage, Lesley (and her teams at the FCLC through the years) have also become close friends - to the point where, when Min and I were looking for a venue for our wedding, we asked if we could hold it on the Lawns of the Lit Centre, and Lesley agreed without hesitation.

The Fremantle Children's Literature Centre has been a special place for me and my family in the ten years that it took me to write this trilogy, and it was a delight to see the final book of the three go out into the world from the main gallery there.

Anyway...

Once everyone was welcomed, the book was launched by Melissa Parke, the federal MP for Fremantle, who I met a couple of years ago at another book launch, and who really impressed me at the time for her commitment to the lit centre, and to reading and children's literature generally. She's also a speculative fiction fan, which wins her huge points in my book.

And she did an incredible job - there she was, in the middle of an Election campaign, and yet she still found the time to not only launch the book, but also to read the entire trilogy beforehand! That's well over 1000 pages, which she got through in just a couple of weeks, while still campaigning for her seat. And not only did she read the books, but she thought about them, too. She picked up on all the little threads and ideas in the book that I'd hoped people would get but which, as a writer, you're never really certain have come through. Writers don't often get to experience someone doing such a close reading of their work, at least, not to our faces, and it was incredibly gratifying. I have a copy of her speech, which I'll tack on to the end of this post for anyone interested to have a look at. I'm sure she won't mind...

After she'd launched the book, I did a short and passably coherent speech; "thank you blah blah blah..." and then sat down again, expecting to get on with some serious book signing and wine drinking.

Except for one minor detail. Lesley had made other plans. She announced that we had another speaker.

I'll admit that I groaned, inwardly. One thing I kinda dislike are book launches with too many speeches, or speeches that go for too long.

Then it got worse. The person Lesley invited to the podium was...

...my mother.

Now, I should explain a little something here. Many years ago, I spoke at my brother and sister's 21st Birthday parties. I thought I spoke really well at both. Sure, I might have sworn perhaps once or twice. Certainly not more than three times. And nothing I said was even remotely outrageous. And so I was rather surprised when the family then voted to place an embargo on me ever speaking in public at family gatherings, ever again.

That didn't necessarily stop me, though. I just moved my venue a little. Those of you who've heard me tell stories about my writing will know that my family tend to, well, feature rather heavily. And not always in the most flattering light. Mum in particular gets a bit of a hard time in a couple of my stories.*

And, for some years now, Lesley has been threatening to find an occasion to give my mother the right of reply.

I really should have seen that coming, shouldn't I?

So mum got up to speak, and I poured myself a big glass of wine.

And she made a lovely speech, although she did dredge up several bits of my early writing which I was certain I'd destroyed some years ago. And she did tend to overstate a few things. But it was nice hearing her talk about what it's like to be the parent of a writer, and how proud she and dad are of the fact.

That was when I worked it out: book launches are for other people, not me.

Kinda obvious, really, but being the egocentric git that I am, it hadn't actually occurred to me that the idea of launching a book is to give people a chance to celebrate it, and each other, and the story, and their relationship to it. It's really got bugger all to do with the author, when all is said and done. Stories, after all, are one of the things that connect people to one another, and book launches are an example of that, writ large.

So, that's my booklaunch story. At the end of the evening, everyone went home happy; it was a lovely night and a celebration not just of my book, but of all books, of family, friends, the past and the future, of children and life.

My kind of a night out, really.

*stories which, I might add, are all COMPLETELY TRUE and not in any way exaggerated. Much.

Melissa Parke's Speech from the Launch for 'Daywards' at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, Tuesday 27th August, 2010

I’d like to acknowledge the Noongar people as the traditional owners of the land we’re meeting on and pay respect to their elders past and present – this acknowledgment is particularly significant tonight as we talk about a book that greatly honours Indigenous knowledge and skills and connection to the land.

When I was asked quite recently to launch Tony Eaton’s book Daywards, as the third book of the Darklands trilogy I said (channelling Kevin Rudd) “Fair Suck of the Sauce Bottle Lesley! We’ve got an election coming and I can’t see myself having time to read one book let alone three.”

But what with Lesley’s persuasive powers, and me being a long-time lover of science fantasy books, and having enjoyed meeting Tony at the launch of another book – Marc Greenwood and Frane Lessac’s Simpson and his Donkey - I found myself agreeing to launch this book.

And I’m so glad I did. The target readership is young adults and upwards. I am definitely in the upwards part of that age bracket and I thoroughly enjoyed all three books. They can each be read on their own but I do think it’s worth experiencing each one in turn.

The entire story is set 1000 years into the future and it’s a future that is eerily familiar and frighteningly believable as we confront a harsh and unrelentingly hot and contaminated Australian landscape that is the result of late 21st century large-scale climate change causing the destabilisation of a large number of fission reactors and waste storage facilities throughout the world. In this world, there are two groups of people trying to survive.

In the first book, Nightpeople, part of the earth is closed off from the rest of the world by a huge wall and is sparsely populated by small tribes of elderly people called Darklanders, a few of whom are dreamers in the style of Aboriginal elders, who connect spiritually with the land and the life that lives within it, such as snakes, lizards and wild dogs, and sources of water.

The main character in the first book is Saria, the last of her race to be born and she is spirited away as a baby to be looked after in a secret valley until she is a teenager. She is then called upon to answer her destiny which involves actually leaving her land in a search for her mother who was taken by the Nightpeople to domed cities in the sky.
In the book Skyfall, we meet the other group of people trying to survive in this post-apocalyptic environment. They are the Skypeople or ‘Nightpeople’ so called because they can only travel at night as they have no ability to withstand the sun’s radiation. They live in artificial technological domed cities in the sky and have no direct contact with the environment. The upper classes live in luxury in the highest domes, albeit with protein supplements as their only food source, while there is an underclass serving them that lives in poverty. One of the domed sky cities is called Port city – reminding one of Fremantle - and there is a part of Port City called North Port Central, calling to mind the north port quay proposal to build futuristic dubai-style islands off the coast of Fremantle. Could this be our own doomed future helpfully described for us by Tony?

In the trilogy, the skypeople fear that their artificial society is breaking down both physically and socially and so they study the darklanders in order to understand their genetic makeup and see if they can isolate the genes that make people viable outdoors in the contaminated hot climate.

Saria was brought to the domed city in the sky by the skypeople to be studied. She meets Lari – a young man and – to cut to the chase, they team up to start their own clan which mingles the races of the earth and the sky to produce people who can withstand the harsh effects of the sun and the atmosphere outside of the domes without having to wear a special suit. In the third book Daywards the clan lives in caves in the forest, surviving by hunting and gathering, although there are still skypeople coming to study them. Saria – the heroine from the first book – is by now an elderly woman and she seeks to returns to her home in the Darklands.
The main young female character in Daywards is Dara. In the end, Dara is faced with the choice of returning with Saria to the Darklands or of going with the skypeople in order to see what kind of common future may be forged between the two peoples in this book. I won’t give the story away by saying what she chooses.

Although set 1000 years into the future these stories seem familiar to us in WA. For instance, Dara remembers her father showing her the giant forests down south. Not far from Port city there is the crumbling city of Per. There are animals called hoppers which from the description bear a great similarity to kangaroos. Dara’s favourite expletive is “Shi”, which bears a remarkable resemblance to a word in contemporary usage.

Like all of the best high-level science fantasy, this trilogy takes on the important imaginative task of casting a series of current trends and issues forward into a social and physical scenario that examines the consequence of heading down that path.
With phrases like “the blasted remains of a great human folly” the trilogy is a powerful warning of what could happen if we don’t act on climate change; if we don’t act to save the diversity of earth’s species, a large number of which are here in Australia; and if we don’t properly manage our precious sources of water.

I’m going to recommend that all of my parliamentary colleagues read it.
At a time when we have our first female PM – who as Lesley has noted has visited the Fremantle Children’s Literature centre when she was Minister for Education and acting PM - it is also appropriate to note the strong female characters in this trilogy who are called upon to save this future world that has been seared in the shifting and the burning. Saria and Dara are the most powerful characters because they are interconnected with the Earth and life on it and can harness that energy to devastating effect as we see throughout the trilogy but particularly in the thrilling climax in Daywards.

In an era when modern Australia is still only beginning to fully recognise and value the contribution of Aboriginal people to its history, its present and to its future, this trilogy is an acknowledgement of Aboriginal people’s connection to the land and a signal that we can learn from those who have respected the earth for thousands of years. It is also a celebration of family and of appreciation for both youth and elders in our community.

Finally, at a time when fear of ‘the other’ is such a feature of Australian community opinion on asylum-seekers and refugees, the trilogy has an important message about the need for diverse peoples to work together to try to understand and esteem each other as the only way we will ultimately all survive. We may at some stage all be boat or sky people or darklanders, needing to leave our homes and forge a new life elsewhere with other peoples in order to survive. If we do the right thing by the planet then hopefully our successors will not need to build sky domes made of plascrete and clearcrete to protect them from the atmosphere and will not a thousand years into the future find our detritus washed up on the beach. As described in the book “unidentifiable foam and rubber shapes, tangles of fine polymer mesh, lumps of weathered plascrete, all of it aeons old and all of it still clinging to the otherwise pristine beach like ancient tumours, stubbornly refusing to vanish even with the inexorable passage of time”.

I’d like to thank Tony for this fantastic series - it is beautifully written, tremendously thought-provoking and utterly believable. I note Tony’s comment that it has taken him 10 years to write and how happy he is to finally finish this epic, but I must ask Anthony to reconsider this decision as I really want to know what happens next! You know when you’ve read something fantastic because when you get to the end you are reluctant to put it down and you feel a bit lost. I certainly feel sad to have lost my method of election escapism but I am grateful to Tony and to Lesley for the lovely moments I have had reading these books. I’d also now like to suggest a prequel to tell us what exactly went wrong on earth that resulted in large scale climate change with its catastrophic consequences. Perhaps such a prequel could start with a conference in Copenhagen. Just an idea Tony.

Congratulations again on this beautiful book and thankyou for inviting me to be a part of it.

Why the Wheels Came off at the Final Corner...

2010-08-01T15:11:00.003+10:00

So, my I will Post Every Day During July thing was going really nicely, up until about 48 hours ago, when things here plunged into a black hole of silence, which took us through to today, August first.

It's a pity, really - I enjoyed my (almost) daily blogging; having the obligation to produce something every day was good for my writing. Good for making me think a little more engagingly about my blog and do a little more planning for it. I was kinda sad to see it all fizzle out like that.

I'm sure you're all wondering 'What happened?'

Well, in two words: "Food Poisoning."

Friday, we took Toby and his cousins to the Zoo. We had a wonderful day. Took a lot of photos to use for the blog, saw tigers (they go 'Grrrrrrrrr') rode on the Merry-go-round (or 'carousel', if you happen to come from Texas), watched the elephant show, and all the other stuff that one does at the zoo. We also - and this is the important bit - ate lunch. Specifically one hot dog and one burger, which Min and I shared.

Then, at eleven p.m. friday night, I started throwing up.

I'll spare you the rest of the details. Trust me, you don't want 'em. It wasn't pretty. Suffice to say that by the time we got onto our plane home yesterday afternoon, both Min and I were sick as dogs, I'd had an anti-nausea injection from the only GP in Perth who'd fit us in at short notice, (Min's symptoms cut in just a little too late for the needle, but we got some pills into her) we'd dosed up on all sorts of other medications, and went through the longest four-hour-flight of our lives.

Luckily, we were picked up at the airport by Min's mum, who took us all home to her place and proceeded to look after Toby while Min and I slept for twelve hours.

So now it's Sunday afternoon. We've been home a couple of hours, are just getting unpacked, washing on, heater on, a very happy puppy at our feet, and are all feeling a lot better than we were this time yesterday.

And in the meantime, the end of my blogging July just sort of slipped past. Sorry about that, everyone, but at least my final excuse was a doozy.

In any case, I've got a few little bits and pieces that I'm going to post about during the next few days and weeks. While I'm not going to keep up daily posting, I'm going to shoot for a very achievable 3 posts per week, or thereabouts from here on in.

So, cheers to anyone who bothered reading my July ramblings - thanks for your patience.

Now, I'm going to try and eat some dry toast and vegemite...

2010-07-29T01:15:00.004+10:00

Another of those short, late night, meeting my obligations and little else posts, I'm afraid. I've made a bit of a habit of it this week, I know, but in my defense, we've been absolutely booked solid. Today we were out of e house at 8.30 this morning, and only got back about half an hour ago (it's currently 11.17pm). This is a big day by any standards, it's a particularly big day for a toddler, but Toby has been a complete champion about it. Today's highlight was watching him and his two cousins in the bath together at my parent's house. There was splashing, and squealing in abundance. And I got soaked, even though I was standing a solid three feet away from the edge of the tub.

I should also take this opportunity to apologise for the largish number of typos In the last few blogs. Ive been blogging from the iPad which, while I still love it to pieces, isn't the most accurate keyboard in the universe.

Last night we had the Perth launch for Skyfall at the Fremantle Childrens Literature centre. I want to do a proper post about this sometime in the next few days, so I wont say anything more here apart from the fact that it was a lovely evening. With a very big surprise for me included.

Anyway, that's my token effort for tonight. Off to bed now, another big day tomorrow.

Cheers all,

Happiness is a Warm Gun

2010-07-27T18:53:00.003+10:00

Lennon was being ironic, of course, and not without good reason.

I've never been a gun person. Never really got the whole fascination with firearms thing like a lot of other people, especially guys. When the other boys my age were drawing guns, I was generally drawing airplanes. As an adult, I think its reasonably safe to say that I'm anti-guns. Min and I are agreed on the fact that we won't be buying toy guns for Toby, or even really anything resembling a gun. During our visit to the USA last year, one of the most confronting things for me was watching a little girl getting measured up for her first handgun, in an outdoor store in Texas. She can't have been older than ten or eleven, and the idea of inculcating somebody into 'gun culture' at so young an age is a difficult one for me to come to terms with.

So no, not into guns.

But, I'm also a writer, and currently working on a book I which my protagonist is intimately familiar with weapons of all sorts, including guns.

Which, naturally, poses some problems.

The main one being that, while I'm writing the book in such a way as not to glorify gun use, I still feel very strongly that its the responsibility of a writer to get the details correct - my character uses a handgun, on more than one occasion. I've already written one of the scenes in which this happens, and like always, I did some homework before writing it: a lot of reading up on various types of guns, calibre of ammunition, weights, recoils, type and shape of grip, number of bullets in the magazine, that sort of thing. But, when push came to shove, the scene just didn't rIng true. All the reading in the world wasn't enough to tell me what it feels like to fire a handgun, especially a weapon designed for one purpose only - to kill or injure another human being.

So, this morning, I took myself to a shooting range here in Perth, hired a Ruger 9mm automatic pistol - the same model that I'd chosen for my character, was taught the basics of handgun handling and operation, and then left alone to blast away at some targets.

And, despite my misgivings, I'm glad I did it. For a number of reasons.

Firstly, the physical sensation was nothing like I'd expected. The feel of the gun in my hand, the leap of the recoil, the concussion of the noise, the smell of the gunpowder, the smell of gun oil, the satisfying 'ka-ching' of the spent cartridge ejecting from the firing chamber, the pleasure of seeing a hole punched in your target downrange.

Yes, I'll admit it: I actually enjoyed the experience.

Firing a handgun is a tactile experience, and a powerful one. There's implicit menace and danger in that lump of metal, and when you pick it up off the bench, slot home the magazine and release the safety, there's an odd feeling of implicit power, even in the controlled environment of a shooting range.

I'm also glad I went because of what I learned, and that the whole point of doing research, when all is said and done. By the time I'd shot off my 30 rounds, and then had a good chat to both the range technician and the range manager, I realized that I'd given my character the wrong gun, for the wrong purpose, and based on wrong interpretation of what I'd read. I'm going to be reworking those scenes in my book when get home next week.

I'm also glad I went because it gave me an unexpected respect for the people who handle and use weapons as part of their day to day lives: the police, the military. I never really understood, at a visceral level, how much those sort of jobs include the power of life and death. I know for certain now that I could never point a weapon like that at someone and pull the trigger, or probably even cope with the possibility that I might have to.

So, all in all, a valuable and interesting experience.

Am I still anti gun? Yes. Perhaps even more so. Especially small, concealable, automatic weapons like the one I fired today.

Am I still anti gun-people? Not so much. I won't be rushing back to the firing range, or taking up Olympic shooting, but at least now I can understand, to a degree, some of the appeal.

Kids, Family, Holidays and Sliding

2010-07-26T17:27:00.003+10:00

We just got back from three hours in "Kidz Paradise" with Toby, his two cousins, one of my sister's Perth friends and her three kids, all under the age of 5. Aside from the fact that the proprietors can't spell 'Kids', it was a lot of fun.

Three hours of climbing, bouncing, sliding, ball pits, more climbing, running, climbing, sliding and bouncing.

And the kids were quite active, too.

There's that old biblical saying - you know the one; 'When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' (1 Corinthians, 13:11)

Now, far be it from me to contradict the bible* but I don't think that the people responsible for Corinthians factored in 'Kidz Paradise', because I have to tell you, I suspect that I had more fun than Toby. In fact, it's fair to say that as soon as we were through the gate, my childish ways came storming back with avengence.

Of course, someone had to keep a close eye on Toby. And help him through the ball room. And up the climbing net. And down the ceiling-height tube slide. Even if he didn't think he wanted to go.

And, after all, what are fathers for?

You know the best bit? Adults were free! It cost us $7.00 for Toby, not a cent for me.

So I'm thinking of going back tomorrow, without the kids...

Actually, jokes aside, it has to be said that I wasn't the only person above 5 years of age crawling around in that playground maze. There were an awful lot of fathers, and mothers, and various other adult role models in there too. And they all seemed to be having just as much fun as I was. And watching us all, I realised that it was so much fun not just because it gave us an excuse to revisit our childhood, but it was an excuse to revisit our childhood with our own kids - and to share in theirs.

And so while, for the most part, I have put aside my childish ways, I'm also kinda pleased to discover that having a Toby in my life gives me an excuse to revisit them, every now and then.

I'm still thinking of going back tomorrow without him, though ;)

*actually, this is something of an overstatement. I've been known to contradict the bible on a couple of occasions. I haven't been smited for it, either. Yet. I'm told it's just a matter of time...

They say you can never go home again...

2010-07-25T20:17:00.006+10:00

So we're back in Perth, where we (well, Min and I) grew up and, as always, it's lovely to be back again.

Thinking about it this afternoon, it occurred to me that it's been about 18 months since I was last here. This is the longest time I've been away from Perth since I was 10 years old. And it's rather odd, coming back after so long. It's still home, of course, it's still a place I know more intimately than anywhere else in this big, wide world, still a place I love, still one of the most stunning spots you could ever hope to end up. This morning we had our breakfast at Cottesloe beach, which was glowing in the morning sunlight, the Indian ocean its usual, unique deep blue. Twenty kilometers across the channel, Rottnest island crouched on the horizon. We've got a cottage booked there in December for a week - a WA traditional holiday.

As I say, stunning.

But, strangely, this Perth - the one we flew into last night isn't the city where I grew up, and today I realized that for the first time.

Seeing Perth today was like looking at something terribly familiar, but just slightly skewed - the elements of the place, the fundamentals and the essentials are all still there, but somehow now it just feels ... Different. It's still home, but not completely. Or not In the same way, perhaps.

Not sure exactly why this is, or if it'll fade as this week goes on, but it's interesting.

Anyway, it's now 11.30 at night ( see, told you I'd post every day, if possible. How's that for dedication?) it's been a long day and I'm pretty certain this post is one of the least coherent I've ever done, , so I'm going to turn the light out and hit the sack.

Night everyone, wherever you are.

If We Could Have a Holiday...

2010-07-23T20:49:00.003+10:00

Actually, we can!

As of 5.00pm this afternoon, I'm on holidays! For a whole week.

Tomorrow night, Imogen, Toby and I fly out for Perth, where we'll spend the week with our respective families.

The reason for this little jaunt is that my sister, Sue, who lives in Texas with her family, is out visiting for a few weeks with her two little girls, so it's a great opportunity to get all the kids in the family together in the one place with some of their grandparents. They arrived in Perth yesterday, after a marathon 28ish hours on planes, all the way from Houstin to Perth, via L.A and Sydney. It makes tomorrow night's flight for us look like a doddle. (Especially when you consider that Sue did the trip solo, travelling with a 3 year old and a 1 year old and no sedatives.)

It's one of the difficult things about this modern world, actually - my poor parents have three grandkids at present - two who live in the USA and one in Canberra. Actually, in part this is the nature of life in Perth - it's one of the most lovely places in the whole world, but also one of the most isolated, and as a result, young people tend to move away from it, especially when they're building careers and /or families which can often take them to far-flung corners of the world. Or Canberra. And as much as I love our life here in the nation's capital, especially during election season, I do regularly regret the fact that my folks don't get regular 'Toby time'. If nothing else, we could use the free babysitting.

Luckily, though, there's always skype, and so Toby does at least get to see and talk to Grandma Margie and Poppa Dave (they picked the names, not me) regularly. And my mother has become an absolute master of the "Skype Toddler Game" - the things she can come up with to play across a computer link have to be seen to be believed.

So it'll be a lovely week. We've got my youngest niece's Christening, the booklaunch for Daywards, a trip to the zoo, and just a lot of general hanging out and being a family to look forward to.

And, of course, blogging. (Now that Trish has put the pressure on for me to see this thing through properly.... ;)

I'm also going to fire a handgun. But more about that next week.

In any case, we're just about ready to go. This afternoon I downloaded an entire series of 'The Wiggles' onto my iPad, which I'm hoping will help all of us get through the flight. (We generally enforce a 'no screens' rule with Toby, so this should be a real treat. Or at least enough to stop him trying to climb onto the other passengers. Fingers crossed.)

So wish us luck. I won't be blogging tomorrow - screen free and intracontinental saturday and all that - but I'll shoot a few posts in from Perth.

Cheers, everyone.

India Dark

2010-07-22T15:40:00.007+10:00

It's always an incredible honour when someone asks you to launch their book for them. Especially so when that someone is a writer who you've admired for years.

Which is why I'm really thrilled to have been invited to launch India Dark, by the incredible Kirsty Murray.

I first met Kirsty almost exactly a decade ago, at the Western Australian Premier's Literary Awards in 2000, when her book Zarconi's Magic Flying Fish and my first novel The Darkness were both on the shorlists. It was a good night, and we both came away winners, which always adds to the evening.

We've kept in touch ever since, and a month or so back, I was delighted to accept her invitation to launch her latest novel India Dark, here in Canberra in August.

Kirsty is a beautiful writer, and I've got my spanky new copy of India Dark sitting here on the desk beside me. I haven't started it yet, but am taking it away on holidays with me next week, and will read it then. It looks fantastic, and I cannot wait to get into it.

In the meantime, if you're in or near Canberra on the evening of Friday the 20th August, then please come along and help us send this book out into the big wide world. The details are:

Venue: Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1-3 Lawry Place, Macquarie, ACT
Time: 6.00 - 8.00pm
RSVP: email books@Asiabookroom.com or phone (02) 6251 5191 before Wed 18th August.

It'll be a great evening.

In Training

2010-07-21T15:40:00.004+10:00

This one is primarily for Darcy, who made the very salient observation in response to this post last week that 'Trains are Always Cool.'

Indeed they are.

Especially if you're 19 months old, it would appear.

In response to our son's current obsessive affair with all things locomotive, and in an effort to utterly wear him out on a rainy saturday afternoon, last weekend we took him to visit Cockington Green Gardens. You may now snigger at the name, if you wish.*

Now, Cockington Green isn't for everyone. Imogen has fond memories of being regularly taken there as a child by her Grandmother, every time they visited Canberra. When we visited, the general crowd fitted into three categories:

1. Grandparents with their grandkiddies.

2. Parents with their kiddies.

3. Perplexed Indian Tourists.

It's a bit difficult to describe Cockington Green, except to say that it is, perhaps, one of the oddest places I've ever visited. There are lots of lovely, beautifully tended, English cottage-style gardens, all filled with miniature buildings. Miniature windmills. Miniature houses. Miniature villiage greens, soccer matches, canal locks complete with barges, a miniature hedge maze, miniature stonehenge, even a *bizarre* miniature tableau of what appeared to be four policemen burying someone alive while watched by a Franciscan Monk.**

And, of course, miniature railways.

Running between the tiny towns and buildings are tiny railways, of various scales and types, ranging from little steam trains to a funicular railway up an embankment, to a high-speed British intercity train, right up to the granddady of them all; a ride-on, gas-fired steam engine, which putters around the gardens at a suitably sedentary pace.

As you can imagine, Toby loved it:

The Miniature Steam Train. You can see Toby and Imogen at the back of the first carriage. They wouldn't let me drive it. Yet...

He especially loved the ride along train which, being steam-powered, made all the right hissing, chuffing and whistling noises. His father was rather impressed with this, too.

I should confess my longer term fascination with model railways here: My grandfather, on dad's side, had the most awesome miniature railway set, mounted on an enormous table which winched away into the roof of his garage. It was a proper miniature gauge railway, with stations and points, and tunnels, and sidings and a dozen small engines and rolling stock. There was even a train with a mail car that automatically snatched miniature mailbags from the a tiny gantry hanging at the end of one of the tiny station. When Grandad Percy fired up the train set - that was hours of entertainment, right there.

After he died, the trainset got pulled apart and passed around a little bit until it ended up with my dad, but we didn't have room to set it up, so it's currently in its component parts - most of the rolling stock still in their original boxes, because that's the sort of bloke my Grandfather was - in the attic at mum and dad's house. One day, when I have a house with enough rooms, I've got every intention of bringing that train set back to life.

In the meantime, there's Cockington Green...

The upshot of all this is that, at the end of our visit, we bought season passes. That's right. Unlimited entry. To the tiny village place with the semi-obscene name, the bizarre miniature cops-burying-people-alive scenario and the little trains. We only have to visit one more time to make it pay for itself. And besides, I'm hoping that if I take him there often enough, they'll let me drive the steam train, thus not only making the passes super-worthwhile, but also enabling me to live out one of the archetypal childhood fantasies.

So, if anyone's coming to Canberra and fancies a ride on a little steam train, shoot me an email...

* I know I sure did.

** It occurs to me now that I should have got a photo of that one. Perhaps next time...

One of those crappy little blog posts

2010-07-20T20:53:00.003+10:00

Because I'm in bed, it's been a horribly long day, involving a sick wife, two cars on the other side of Canberra, a brother in law who went above and beyond the call of duty, two takeaway Turkish pide pizzas, and a book on the impact of Charles Darwin on Australian scientific and religious philosophy. And I still managed to get 4000 words written. And I've decided that next week I'm going to shoot a handgun. But I'll post more on that tomorrow. For tonight, I'm merely meeting my most basic blogging obligations. Sorry about that.

A Language Warning.

2010-07-19T15:40:00.004+10:00

Not going to write a great deal here, today, chiefly because I had a particularly good writing day today, having clocked up just a touch over 4000 words since I started writing at 11.00 this morning.

So, I'm a little typed out at this point in the afternoon.

It's strange, though, because last week I had a complete shocker - at least in writing terms. Got perhaps a couple of hundred words down, in dribs and drabs, and found it almost impossible to get myself settled into the rhythm of the story, so I kept giving up and finding other things to do, and while this is good for my wider productivity, it's not good for my writing career. It's not writer's block or anything like that - I know what I'm going to write, and I know I have to write it, and I know how it's going to come out. It's just the opposite of writer's block, in fact - it's writer's procrastination.

It's not the first time this has happened to me, and it probably won't be the last, either. In part, I think it occurs due to what I generally refer to as the 'This is all shit' phenemenon.

This is something which most writers I know deal with from time to time. With me it's pretty much a constant occurance. Put simply, when I'm writing something, generally there's a large part of my mental energy taken up with telling myself how completely and utterly crap it is. At the same time as I'm plugging the words out onto my computer, there's a little bit in the back of my brain which is constantly whispering 'this is shit. this is shit. this is shit..."

Of course, it generally isn't shit. Well, not more than about 50% of the time, anyway. It's all a matter of perception and self belief.

For me, one of the biggest writing hurdles is just shutting that little voice out and keeping on writing, secure in the knowledge that it probably isn't as bad as I think it is, and that even if what I've written turns out to be unreadable, I'll probably still be able to salvage a couple of hundred words from it. After all, if you don't write anything - even rubbish - then you never get anything written.

But, sometimes, it's just too difficult to get past the feeling that you're going nowhere fast. Especially if you have a lot of other things on your plate, which is the situation I was in last week. And on those occasions, it can be a bit of a vicious spiral; the less you write, the less you want to write. It's why momentum is so important with writing.

So, anyway, this morning I took the Labour Party's election advice and just 'moved forward'* And by mid afternoon, the 'this is shit' voice had finally quietened down a little. By the time I knocked off, about fifteen minutes ago, my book had just ticked over 20,000 words, which is always a nice milestone to hit. I also made a fairly major decision regarding the narrative voice, which means I'm probably going to have to go back and do a bit of rewriting before I get a lot further, but that's all positive stuff. It means I'm re-engaging with the story.

And that's what helps keep the momentum going.

So, wish me luck for tomorrow. If you see me on twitter too often, then shoot me abusive messages.

I'll thank you for it.

Promise.

*Couldn't let a post go by without some sort of a political reference. It is an election campaign at the moment, after all...

Electioneering...

2010-07-18T13:26:00.002+10:00

It won't come as news to anyone that our PM Julia Gillard follows this blog, so I just want to give her a big shout out and say thanks for waving to Toby on the way out of Government House yesterday morning.

We'd been doing a little early morning shopping in Manuka, and on the way home turned on the radio to hear the news that the PM had toddled off to visit the Governor General and ask her to dissolve parliament.

"Well," we thought, "there's no point living in the nation's capital and not making the most of these sort of opportunities. Besides, Yarralumla's on the way home. Sort of."

So we took a quick diversion out to the edge of the lovely parklands that surround the GG's official residence, parked there along with a surprisingly large number of others, and within 30 seconds, the Prime Minister's official motorcade (2 cars, including hers) cruised past.

From the front seat of the PM's vehicle (replete with the little fluttering Australian flags that John Howard had restored to the fleet) the PM gave Toby a big wave as they passed. They didn't stop though, I expect she had other priorities, which was a pity - I was hoping Toby could be the first kissed baby of the campaign...

It was kinda fun, all things considered. And, let's face it, probably the highlight of the upcoming election campaign.

Usually I love elections. I don't know if you've spotted it from reading this blog, but I'm something of a politics tragic. I blame my undergraduate degree for this, specifically my honours year. I did my honours in Political Science* and have been somewhat hooked on the game ever since. So generally when an election is announced, I'm ecstatic at the thought of all the good stuff to come: spurious election commercials, Anthony Green**, accusations of Nazism, Pork Barrelling and, of course, election night.

Last election evening - that glorious night back in 2007 which saw the fall of the Howard government in such spectacular style - I remember well. Or at least, I remember the first half of it. We had a few people around for dinner and to watch the telecast from the National Tally Room (Did I mention that Imogen is also a political tragic? It's a dangerous combination...). I can remember the early counting - the breathless anticipation of the Eden Monaro Result, the first indications from Bennelong that perhaps Howard himself would lose his seat, the increasing sense of jubilation... all of it is as clear as a bell in my memory. I remember dashing out to the local bottle shop at about 9.00 and buying the last four bottles of champagne in the place (we're in a *very* safe Labour seat here...). I remember getting the bottles home safely. After that, things get a little blurry...

So generally speaking, elections get me fired up. Not so much this time, though. This time it all feels just a little too tinged with hopelessness. The whole exercise seems a little futile.

One the one hand, we have the Liberals, led by Tony Abbot. There's no way I'd have voted that direction even before Abbot took over. Now it's just not an option. I'd link to the gratutious image of him in his budgie smugglers*** as evidence in support of this position but let's face it - we're going to see so much of that image in the next five weeks, that there's no point.

And on the other hand, there's Labor. I blogged about their spectacular 'Lurch to the Right' a couple of weeks ago, and don't have the energy or heart to revisit it today. Needless to say that a vote for the current Labor Party doesn't really feel like a vote for Labor. More like a vote for 'Liberal Lite', or even the 'Marginal Electorate Redneck Representative Party'.

*Sigh*

Still, at least it's only a 5 week campaign this time round, so at least it'll all be over soon.

That's something, I guess.

* (I actually wanted to do it in English Literature, but owing to a nasty breakup with my first girlfriend, and not wanting to ever be in the same room as her EVER AGAIN, I decided that it made more sense to finish my degree off in my secondary area of interest, rather than my primary one. Such are the ways of the heart. But, anyway...)

** For our overseas readers - Anthony Green is the Australian Broadcasting Commission's political guru, and something of a cult figure among Australian Politics Junkies

*** again, for the non-aussies: Speedos, Racing bathers, CJ's, briefs etc.... the current leader of the opposition has something of a predilection for being seen in them. Also mountain biking. And hiking.

Prime Ministerial Stuff....

2010-07-16T14:40:00.003+10:00

Okay, so I missed yesterday. Sorry 'bout that. The day started okay, but then from about 11am onwards it spiralled into a succession of meetings which didn't end until 8.30 last night. By which time, under the Chatham House Rules regarding meetings, I'm not permitted to post anything in public. (That, at least, is my interpretation of the CHR's. I got it from quality radio station 2UE)

And it's a pity, because yesterday morning, the minister for Arts, The Environment, poorly synched videos, dressing gowns, bandanas and Silly Dancing, Peter Garret (MHR) announced the shortlists for the Prime Ministers Literary Awards, including - as I talked about the other day - the contenders for both the children's and Young Adult categories. (I for one was both surprised and a little bit sad not to see Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle make the list. Clearly when this particular government knifes you in the back, they do it wholesale...)

Still, aside from this obvious oversight, I'm thrilled at the names on the lists, and will be waiting with interest to see who makes it to the winner's podium.

I'll also be embarking on filling a few holes in my reading, once I get my reading for the ACT Book of the Year out of the way.

I'm particularly looking forward to reading the YA list (and it shames me to admit that at the moment, I haven't read a single one of the titles which made the list, though I do have Jarvis 24 (By David Metzenthen), Stolen (Lucy Christopher), and The Museum of Mary Child (Cassandra Golds) sitting on the shelves in my office, in my 'To Read' pile. But first I Must. Read. The. BOTY. Candidates....

Still, it's just a pleasure reading the list, seeing so many of my writing friends and colleagues names appearing on it, and feeling like my field of writing is getting some real high profile national acknowledgement by the wider literary community, for the first time in, well, forever.

So congratulations to all the shortlisted writers, in all the categories, but especially to those who've made these inaugural children's and YA lists. I'm delighted for you all, and couldn't hope to see a better bunch of names up there representing our little world.

FTW - all of you.

The Words You Don't Say, Unless you have an Hour to Spare

2010-07-14T19:11:00.003+10:00

Parenthood is all about education, as Min and I are discovering.

Not Toby's education, you understand. That's pretty much looking after itself.

No, it's all about our education.

And, believe me, we're learning a lot.

Mainly in the area of psychology. Which is odd. After almost a decade as a secondary teacher, and then just as long doing school visits and speaking gigs, I thought I knew a thing or two about how to communicate with kids, how to get them onside and all that.

Which just goes to show what an idiot I was.

Nowdays, when it comes to being masters of devious manipulation, both Min and I are well on our way to becoming, well, not experts, but not complete idiots, either. Of course the fact that we're so rapidly developing the classic parental skills such as 'bait and switch', 'distract and act' and of course 'cave in without appearing to' in order to deal with a child who's not yet two years old probably says more about us than it does about him.

Still, we're learning a lot. Toby is training us up nicely.

His favourite tactic is the one best described by the brilliant US author/illustrator Mo Willems in his picture book Knuffle Bunny (an almost perfect literary work, IMHO, and definitely one for the parents...) as "Going Boneless"

By using this one simple technique, our little angel has taught us the following:

Don't ask 'Do you want a bath?' Just put him in it.
Similarly, don't ask 'Are you ready to get out of the bath'. He'll let us know when he's ready by trying to climb out an nearly braining himself in the process.
No, he doesn't want peas.
No, he doesn't want to sit in his high chair.
The expensive coffee machine is actually a toy.
If he wants to go in his carseat, he'll tell us. Not the other way around.
Our iPhones are, in fact, his iPhones (I've gone to great lengths to ensure that he doesn't yet know of the existence of the iPad....)
Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury's 'Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes' is the pinnacle of contemporary literature.

And, of course, we've learned the magic word. The one that you just don't use under any circumstances. Not, that is, unless you're prepared to spend the next hour (or two, or three) on the floor being wordlessly instructed by a 19 month old.

And that word?

(I hesitate to even type it, even though he's been in bed asleep for the last hour. Oh well, here goes...)

"Train"

I have no idea why, but the boy is obsessed by trains at the moment. From the second he wakes up, until the moment we put him back into his cot it's "Choo Choo?" (deliberate question mark there, you need a rising inflection to get the full effect.)

And if either Min or I even hint at the word "train" then it's all over for us, for quite some time. Out comes the Brio, and the Thomas set, and the Fischer Price. And then down we all go to floor level.

I'll be honest with you, despite everything, including my better judgement, I say 'Train' quite often....

From one Extreme to the Other

2010-07-13T12:09:00.004+10:00

After yesterday's little piece of ludditeism about 'Why I don't do Facebook', and in response to the comment there from Penni, I thought I'd answer her question: Do I want an iPad?

Well, that kinda depends.

Don't get me wrong - I love mine. I'm glad I got it, and the longer I have it, the more useful it's proving to be, but it definitely wouldn't be for everyone.

So, for what it's worth, here's my take on it:

1. Things I love

The Tactile Experience. Let's get the superficial one out of the way first, shall we? The iPad is, purely and simply, just lovely to touch. Running your finger across the screen feels nice. The back is comfortably curved and carved out of the same brushed aluminium as the Macbook Pro computers. It's pretty to look at; when you activate it, the resolution and picture quality is superb, photographs look stunning, hi-def apps are a pleasure to behold. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the iPad is a great piece of design.
Email. For me, this is a biggie. The email app is fast, efficient, and easy to use. In terms of having easily portable access to my email, and the capacity to quickly read and reply to long emails, without having to poke away at the tiny keys on my phone, the iPad is ideal for me.
Portable documents. Tomorrow I have to go to a meeting where I'll require something in the order of 45 different documents. Instead of lugging along a big lever arch file of printouts, I've simply dumped the PDF's into my iPad. This has some nice environmental aspects to it, too.
Mobile internet. While in my meeting, I'll be able to easily read webcomics under the table, without having to squint at the tiny screen on my phone. It'll also be very useful when we're in Perth in a couple of weeks, staying in a house with no internet access. (Yes, they do still exist...) It's also proven very handy already in a couple of meetings where things have needed to be looked up quickly - being able to just pull info off the web in seconds is a very handy thing indeed.
The calendar function. Is nice. And clear. And handy. Though I have had a few issues Synching it properly with my Macbook.
The e-readers. Now, I'm still more a fan of the 'real' book; I don't particularly like reading off a screen, even one like the iPad's which has been well designed for the purpose. BUT there are some real upsides to having e-reading capability in this digital age. Most notably, the ability to download free first chapters from Amazon (to the free Kindle app) and preview before buying the real thing. This I'm liking a lot.
Magazines and Newspapers. At this point, there's a dearth of decent Australian newspaper content for the iPad (The only app that I've been able to find is the one for 'The Australian' which is (a) a crappy newspaper and (b)mainly made up of content you can already get for free from their website. This, though, will no doubt change, and fast. A number of commentators have suggested that the iPad might well be the saviour of the newspaper, and I can see why. At the moment, I use the ABC website for my news fixes, and it's pretty good. I've also got the app which allows me to purchase 'The Monthly' direct to my iPad, for about $5.00, in full text and imagery detail. This is a really nice feature. I've also rediscovered my love of comics (sorry, graphic novels) though the Marvel and DC comic apps, which function in a similar way.

The Bookshelf of Tomorrow...?

2. Things I Don't Love Quite so Much...

The keyboard interface is a bigger version of the one on the iPhone, and works well enough, but careful proofreading is required. It is possible to buy a small wireless keyboard for the iPad, and this would be a worthwhile investment if planning to produce anything substantive on it. I tried a couple of blog posts, and ended up switching back to my computer, just because it was a lot easier to type.
Lack of a camera. A lot has been made of this missing feature, and rightly so. Given the web-based functionality of the device, in this day and age it's just plain silly not to include a camera for skyping purposes and so on. Still, I guess they have to save something for the next model.
The speakers. Are good, but not brilliant. They're also all located on the same side of the chassis, which effectively negates any proper stereo effect, unless you're wearing headphones. With headphones, however, the results are beautiful.
Calendar syncing - as mentioned earlier, I've had a few teething issues here, which I suspect are more the result of user error than any major glitches in the system. It's not the most intuitive aspect of the device, though, which is the problem, from my point of view.

All in all then, the iPad may be for you, or not. Or you might want to hold out a couple of years until the next generation of them comes out, by which point they will have addressed a lot of these sort of issues. There's no doubt, though, from my perspective, and especially if you combine it with something like 'mobile me' (which I haven't done), that this is a pretty revolutionary and useful bit of technology.

So, do you want an iPad? I'd say definitely. Who wouldn't? (that's rhetorical, by the way, 12 months ago I wouldn't have. See yesterday's post for details)

Do you need an iPad? That depends very much on you.

A Status Update:

2010-07-12T16:02:00.006+10:00

This afternoon I started a Facebook page.

Now don't get excited and go looking for me there. If I've done it properly, you shouldn't be able to find me. Which, I know, kind of defeats the purpose.

But, the thing is, it's not for me, it's for a class I'm teaching next semester, just an information conduit for the students, to save them having to wade through the university email system to get info about what's going on in the course. I'm told that several of them use Facebook quite often.

And nothing more.

You see, the thing is, I don't do Facebook. I'm one of those deeply suspicious and slightly paranoid types who just blanches at the thought of putting a 'personal profile' up online for all to see. Or even for those I choose to let in. The idea of being 'tagged' in photos that I have no control over irritates the life out of me. It's why I like blogging, I think. So setting up an account for this class is really a step into a frightening new world for me.

There are a few other reasons I don't 'do' Facebook.

Time. I have precious little of it to play with as it is. And from what I've seen, Facebook is one of those things which has the potential to just suck down hours and hours of your life, if you are the type of person to get obsessive about these sort of things. Which I am.
Privacy. I read an article on Facebook somewhere recently. I think it might have been in Time magazine, but aren't completely certain. It had a lot of stuff in it about how the rise of Facebook has 'redefined privacy'. That's fine, but I liked the old definition. I already run a blog, a website, a reading and writing profile at Goodreads, and have a slight addiction to Twitter. And I think that's about as much of me as the internet deserves.
Good old fashioned ludditeism. You know, for someone as oddly fascinated and addicted to technology as me (gently strokes iPad, which hasn't left my side for a week), I've got this little thread of my personality that just plain distrusts technological change. I fight against it, but every now and then it rears its ugly head. I suspect this is one of those occasions.
Plain and simple pig-headedness. This is another of those traits of mine. I think mum must have overdone it with the old "Just because everyone else is jumping off a bridge, doesn't mean that you should..." type of wisdoms when I was a kid, because I can tend to be, well, rather contrary. And the more people tell me I really should do something, the longer I'm likely to hold out against it. I was the third last person in the universe to get a mobile phone. I was still using dial up internet in 2005.
**See below

Of course, I know that I'm in an increasing minority, but that doesn't bother me. I also know that there are a lot of very good reasons for joining Facebook, and that a lot of people get a whole pile of pleasure from being members. I know about people for whom Facebook or other social networking sites have been - quite literally - lifesavers, and for whom the opportunity to build and maintain online relationships with other people has allowed them to escape their own circumstances and live comparatively normal lives.

So this isn't in any way an attack upon Facebook, nor upon those who use and love it. It's more an observation that social media is many things to many people, and that it's a good idea to be a little choosy when selecting the various aspect of your online persona. And for me, Facebook just doesn't sit well.

Now Twitter, on the other hand....

*In the interests of disclosure, I should also add that when I eventually fold on these things, I tend to fold rather hard. For example the fact that until 6 months ago I was a militant PC user, and held Mac products in complete and utter disregard. Now I own all of them. Now that I've dabbled in the dark arts of Facebook, it's quite possible that in two weeks I'll have a full profile up and running, and will be spending 22 hours a day writing comments on people's walls, while playing Mafia wars at the same time...

** I should also probably add 'ignorance' to the list. I'm not fully cognisant of the ins and outs of Facebook, and can't be bothered becoming so. It would be a good idea to read everything in this post in the light of that fact.

Uhmm.. So you know that whole blogging every day thing?

2010-07-11T22:10:00.003+10:00

Okay, so I've had a few issues the last couple of days. Mainly to do with the fact that at about 3.00 Friday afternoon my voice went all wonky, then just went away completely. By Friday evening, I was a croaking whispering disaster area. I spent most of Saturday in bed (which wasn't nearly as good as it sounds), and a good chunk of today, also.

So apologies from the disease factory. I'm going to work from home tomorrow, so as not to infect everyone else at work with whatever this lurgy is, and will hopefully get something a little more substantive posted then.

Or I might just stay in bed again.

Only a Quick One Today

2010-07-08T21:56:00.002+10:00

Just to point out that yesterday, I posted my political rant, and then this afternoon this happened

So I guess this means the PM is reading this blog.

At least, that's the explanation I like ;)

A Lefty Political Rant. (Because this is a blog, after all)

2010-07-07T11:41:00.008+10:00

*This is probably the rantiest thing I've ever posted. Don't Say I Didn't Warn You...*

In his penultimate address to the nation, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Currently on holidays, still tweeting rather forlornly under the "KevinRuddPM" username) made a point of emphasising that under his continued leadership (Which, at that point, he had no idea was going to be approximately nine hours) Australian Government Policy wouldn't "Lurch to the right on the issue of asylum seekers"

It's an interesting remark for him to have made, in the light of all that's followed.

I'll admit that when Julia Gilliard took over the top job, I came to it from a conflicted point of view.

On the one hand, I was thrilled to witness the arrival of our first female PM, although I felt a little cheated that it didn't happen at an election, and thus didn't feel like a real achievement. (And yes, I do know how the Australian electoral system works, and that the PM isn't elected by the people but by the party and all that, but it is what it is. It didn't feel quite real.)

I also like Julia Gilliard, as both a person and as a politician. She's from the Victorian left faction, which is where my natural sympathies tend to lie. She also didn't have my mother shot by her security detail when mum accosted her in the carpark at Canberra airport a couple of years ago, which gets her big brownie points in my book.

BUT - I'm also in the school of thought that believes you don't oust a sitting Prime Minister unless things are terminal. As in, unless he or she is regularly appearing on the balcony of Parliament House with a rifle and shooting at visiting schoolkids, or something similar. You sure as shit don't do it just months before a federal election, which, according to a lot of the pundits I've read, you're not likely to lose in any case! You don't do it to a PM who has successfully steered the country through the GFC without putting it into recession. You don't do it in response to pressure from the mining lobby, and you don't do it at the behest of the NSW right. Call me old fashioned, but an awful lot about the spill of June 24th just plain rankled with me.

Still, politics is a dirty game and, true believer or not, sometimes there's no point maintaining your rage. All you can do is accept things for what they are, offer your regrets to the outgoing PM, don't 'unfollow' the poor blighter on Twitter, and look forward to happier times ahead.

Which was my plan.

Until yesterday, when our new PM announced her intention to address the Asylum seeker issue through the establishment of an offshore processing facility in East Timor. Or, put another way, Pacific Solution 2.0 (And, despite protests to the contrary, there's an awful lot to suggest that this 'solution' to the refugee issue isn't meeting our international human rights obligations so much as 'managing' them for political harm minimisation.)

"Lurch to the Right" Indeed. Makes you wonder just what sort of pressures the former PM was under in regard to this area of policy.

In her 'softening up' speech, the day before announcing the East Timor proposal, the PM suggested that the debate on asylum seekers was hindered by the fact that people felt the need to be 'politically correct' in regard to the issue, and that everyone should openly express their concerns and worries.

Okay then, here's mine:

I'm concerned and worried that our politicians and BOTH major political parties spend far too much time worrying about and pandering to the perceived political clout of ignorant, racist elements of our society in marginal electorates than they do considering the humane and morally just possibilities of the asylum issue.

I'm concerned and worried that our elected leaders, who should be leading and taking the high ethical, moral and social road are so scared of taking a hit in the polls that they would prefer to give ongoing credibility to inhumane and paranoid opinions of talkback radio jocks and bigoted rednecks. And I don't even care all that much that the bigoted rednecks might be a major demographic in the aforementioned marginal electorates - if enough pollies from both sides of the equation had a little more moral fibre in regard to this issue, then perhaps it wouldn't be an issue. At the moment, I'm pissed off at both sides of politics, but I'll still end up having to vote for one of them; let's extend that privilige to all Australians.

I'm concerned and worried that we as a country allow and encourage certain elements of our media to fuel and fan the fires of ignorance, and to make 'issues' out of xenophobia, rather than trying to encourage thoughtful and open debate.

I'm concerned and worried that our willingness to embrace the issue of 'illegal immigrants' (who aren't in any technical sense of the word, illegal) and 'border security' and turn it into a three-yearly palaver of fear-mongering is putting us increasingly out of step with world standards and with the obligations of civilised nations.

This is the point that Tim Hollo - Greens media advisor - made beautifully when writing for Crikey yesterday:

Australia is not an island.

Not on this increasingly small globe, it isn’t. And it’s not earth-shattering to note that population is an issue of far greater significance globally than it is locally. Population stresses overseas dwarf any here in Australia. With business-as-usual approaches to foreign policy, aid and climate, those stresses will inevitably boil over and inexorably head our way.

And, here's Barry Cassidy, writing at The Drum, on the issue, taking a somewhat more balanced approach to mine.

Of course, it's all very well for me to sit here and rant away. What about a solution?

Well, for what it's worth, here's mine.

Go ahead with the proposed 'Regional Processing Facility'. But do it properly, not as the cover for yet another shonky 'keep them offshore' campaign. Get the region on board. New Zealand, Indonesia, East Timor - all the local stakeholders. Put together a joint funding plan and build a state-of-the art immigration processing facility where unofficial immigrants can have their applications for asylum assessed, processed and acted upon with a minimum of psychological and emotional harm.

But - and here's the thing - build the damn thing in Australia. In a capital city - Perth or Darwin, perhaps, where there's appropriate infrastructure, a large labour pool to help with the processing, and the capacity to build the requisite facilities at minimum expense, without having to ship supplies and expertise to some out-of-the-way island. Build it somewhere with the infrastructure to allow pending applicants to live comparatively 'normal' lives, preferably in the community, while they have their applications processed. In short, take responsibility for our international obligations; don't just manage them along the most politically expedient lines.

Yes, it means allowing asylum seekers ashore on the mainland, and yes, that gives us certain obligations to them, but so what? As a signatory to the UN declaration of human rights, this shouldn't be a big deal. We have those obligations anyway. The moment one of our patrol boats - flying the Australian Naval Ensign from its stern - intercepts a refugee boat in international waters, we have those obligations. The moment one of our coastwatch planes identifies a boat of asylum seekers approaching Australian waters, we have those obligations. The moment we sent our troops into Afghanistan, we took on an obligation to the people of that country and - from my point of view, at least - this is just another aspect of that same obligation.

You might be getting the impression that I'm rather pissed about this. And I am. For a plethora of reasons, but primarily because this is not the sort of government I signed up for when I voted labour in 1997*. This is the sort of government I voted to get rid of.

*okay, so I'm a decade out, unlike our asylum seeker policy, which is 50 years out...

Edit to add THIS LINK which is, I think, the best thing I've read to date on this subject matter, and speaks my argument above with a great deal more clarity.

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged....

2010-07-06T14:22:00.003+10:00

Nothing like a bit of old fashioned biblical wisdom to kick off a post. Especially this one which - according to my blogger records - is my 100th post! (Actually, now I think about it, it's probably about my 110th, because before I set up shop here at blogspot, I kicked things off over at Goodreads)

Either way, it's an achievement that calls for celebration. Or at least a biblical title. Just because.

At the moment, I'm buried in the middle of judging for the ACT Book of the Year Award. This means that I've got until the middle of August to read through about 25 books and then pick a single 'Book of the Year' from among them.

Naturally, I can't say anything about the specifics here, but it's probably okay to mention that they're a diverse range of books, covering just about every possible genre, readership, subject matter and style.

Of course, as a writer, I've been on the other side of the equation many times: having your books entered for various prizes and competitions is all part of the publishing game. And in all honesty, it can be one of the more difficult aspects of the job. Of course, it's lovely when you win one; it means recognition, praise, sometimes even a cheque.

Prizes are also important in that they contribute to the cultural zeitgeist: the type of books selected for shortlisting in a significant prize like the Miles Franklin or the Booker will often reveal an awful lot about a society's concerns and preconceptions.

And then there's the value that big prizes add to various fields of creative practice: earlier this year, it was announced that the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award would be expanded to include two new categories: Children's and Young Adult Fiction. With a tax-free prize of $100,000 per category, this is by far and away the richest and most lucrative prize for children's and YA writing in the country. For one lucky Aussie writer (and it won't, sadly, be me. At least not this year,) that prize has the potential to make an enormous difference to their writing career - aside from the prestige and profile that'll come with it, there's also the fact that - for most of us - 100 grand is an unthinkable amount of income - it'll allow the winner to actually write for a while, instead of having to eke out their living in other ways.

Aside from the benefits to the individual winner, though, there's also the broader cultural consideration: the addition of these two categories, and the placing of them on equal footing with the 'adult' literature and 'history' categories is a significant shot in the arm for all Australian writers of children's and YA fiction, because it's a very positive indication of wider acceptance of the importance of children's and YA literature in the broader literary discourse. (I actually talked about this on The Book Show on Radio National earlier on this year - link here, if you're interested) Just the fact that RN was prepared to run a 20 minute discussion on the subject is a sign of the impact that prizes of this magnitude have in terms of a field of writing's cultural capital.

But, of course, competitions need to be judged, and the process of judging requires judges, and as soon as you find yourself in that position, you quickly come to the unpleasant realisation that the process of judging other people's creativity is, ultimately, a process concerned more with exclusion than with inclusion. It's a process of bringing to bear your own personal experiences, likes, dislikes, knowledge and opinions on the creative output of other people, most of whom wil generally be very different from you. It is, in short, a horribly subjective process, no matter how much you wish it would be otherwise.

As a writer, I work very hard not to tie any self worth to my successes or failures in literary prizes - you can't afford to. It's difficult, though, and I know writer's who've been crushed at being overlooked in competitions which they felt their 'babies' should have won. And, with a different set of judges, perhaps they might have.

Because from a judge's point of view, that's the biggest challenge - reading these books and knowing from experience the hours of labour behind every last one of them, and that it's my job to help select one - just one - for the honour of being 'the winner'. Yes, it's a subjective process. It has to be. But it's an important process, too - it's a contribution to broader society, and someone needs to do it.

Ultimately, all I can do is read each book with care and an open mind, talk honestly and thoughtfully about them with the other judges, and we'll see where we end up. And whichever book does eventually get across the line, it's important to remember that the selection of a 'winner' is a judgement upon the perceived merits of that one book - not the perceived weaknesses of all the others.

A Cold Morning and Me.

2010-07-05T16:14:00.006+10:00

There's just something about cold mornings which really appeals to me. In that way, I'm perfectly suited to life here in Canberra.

This morning, when I got out of bed at 7.00, it was a heady -3.5 degrees outside, and the view through the kitchen window was of a world rimed with white. The frost was so heavily settled that for a moment or two I actually thought it might have snowed during the evening: the roof of the house across the road was coated with a thin skin of darkly glimmering ice. In the vegie garden, our sage bush glistened silver. Out beside the BBQ, the black oven mitt which I'd accidentally left out there last night while retrieving our dinner from the Weber was frozen firmly onto the glass top of our patio table, and cocooned with frost.

Stepping out into the dawn, still dressed in my flannel PJ's and a dressing gown, the cold seared the back of my mouth and my breath clouded and hung, motionless around my head forseveral seconds. Even through my heavy-soled ugg boots, I fancied I could feel the cold radiating upwards from the ground. Not a bird called, not a soul moved, the sun was hidden behind the wreathing fog. Yesterday's washing hung stiff and solid on the clothesline - cardboard t shirts and rigid the towels that we'd used to wash the dog on the weekend.

On these mornings, you feel the cold as though from outside yourself; beyond your senses. It's more than just the numbing of skin and the prickling of tiny hairs. On these mornings, the cold is a light blanket; enfolding, embracing; it doesn't flow through you so much as wrap itself around you and settle over your whole self.

On these mornings the cold brings with it an odd, almost indefinable sense of tranquility; as through the world has stopped, paused for thought, just ceased - momentarily - to function, perhaps in contemplation of the day and week ahead.

Back in the kitchen the coffee machine hisses, the heater thrums warm air into the room, Radio National chatters softly in the corner, and from his bedroom I can hear Toby starting to stir. I sip my coffee - the heat of it ticklish in my still chilled mouth - and allow the thawing of it to creep through me.

I really like cold mornings.

Screen free saturdays

2010-07-04T16:33:00.005+10:00

Now, I'm certain that the astute among you a have noticed that already, just three days into July, and I've already managed to break my commitment to post something here every day. This is because I forgot to factor in screen free Saturdays. This is something that Min and I have been doing (well, attempting - with various degrees of success), for the last month or so. Simply put, we try, on Saturdays, not to use any screens. That means no computers, no iPhones, no television, and this week - to my horror - no brand new iPad. (Alright, I'll admit right now that I did cheat a couple of times yesterday, and steal a few quick moments with my new toy while Toby was asleep, but for the most part I did okay)

We got the idea from hearing Susan Maushart talking about her new book at the Sydney writers festival in May. She and her family went "off the grid" for six months, and this got us talking about the degree to which various forms of screen time have imposed themselves, by degrees, upon our day to day lives. Those of you who follow this blog will know that, for some members of this family, at least, our relationship with screens - of various types - is really something close to an obsession. Especially since someone introduced me to the products of the evil empire that is Apple Corporation. And so I'll admit that I came to the notion of screen free Saturdays with just a little trepidation.

But you know something? I really like them. Saturdays have become my excuse not to check my email, and in doing so to completely get all work-related matters out of my head for a while. They've re acquainted me with the pleasures of working in the garden and around the house. Of taking the dog out for exercise. Of board games. Of reading for pleasure, rather than work. It means that we do stuff together as a family. Not that we didn't before, you understand, but it just takes one major distraction and timesink out of our days.

Screen Free Saturdays have also driven home to me the degree to which this new, ultra connected age in which we find ourselves (and I know that if my grandkids ever read that last sentence, they're going to piss themselves laughing) imposes an odd, subconscious, sense of obligation upon us, just as much as it connects us. The first time we did screen free saturday, I felt guilty for not checking my email at least a couple of times. What if one of my students had a question about something? What if somebody had emailled me with an urgent query about an upcoming event?

But, of course, when I did get to my email on Sunday morning, neither event had occured. And if they had, it wouldn't have mattered. It was all in my head, and that's - I think - the most useful aspect of screen free Saturdays for me; they remind me that I don't need to be connected all the time. At least, not to the rest of the world. And in not being connected to the rest of the world, I get time to work on my connections with my nearest and dearest, which is far more important. No offence intended.

So while I'll have to hold my hand up and plead guilty-as-charged over my lapse yesterday, I won't be apologising for it. Yesterday we took Toby and Chelsea to the local dog park for a run around. We went to the farmer's markets and did our shopping for the week. We did some cooking. We did a little work around the house and in the garden. All in all, it was a good, screen free day.

Of course, it has to be Saturdays, because tonight is "Masterchef" night.

And, after all, you have to have priorities ;)

Day Two: Going Strong

2010-07-02T13:51:00.003+10:00

See, a post a day. Not hard at all. The challenge will be keeping them interesting. And not resorting to lists and links of other people's content.

Speaking of which...

I've been working at home this morning, in a manner of speaking. Actually, the first hour and a half was spent tracking down and buying the last iPad in Canberra. (Well, probably not technically the last, but pretty damn close to, I suspect). It's rather nice, and shiny, and will be useful for work and travel. And lots of other things, I'm sure. Like meetings - I've been going to lots of meetings lately, and conferences, too.

That's my position on the matter, anyway.

Actually, on the subject of taking positions, a friend of mine, who'd prefer to remain nameless, is among those bashing away at this blog here and provides some thoughtful (and more than occasionally amusing) ideas for general consideration.

I've also, in recent months, been thoroughly enjoying the contributions to the blogosphere made by one John Birmingham who is - in my humble opinion, one of Australia's most versatile and edgy writers. JB's blog is a ripper and hits that nice, and often hard-to-achieve balance between provocation, humour, and intelligent social commentary.

Anyway, I've got a brand spanking new iPad sitting here on the table beside me and so, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and play.

See y'all tomorrow

Okay, then. Here we go...

2010-07-01T10:01:00.007+10:00

A post every day for a month. How hard can that be, right?

At the risk of kicking things off with blatant self promotion, there's a little event coming up in Perth in a few weeks which it might be worth flagging:

Tuesday the 27th July, at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, in (of course) Fremantle. (The FCLC is the same place where both Nightpeople and Skyfall were officially shoved onto an unsuspecting public, (and also, oddly enough, where Imogen and I got married) so I'm thrilled, as you can imagine, to have the chance to finish the trilogy off in the manner to which it's become accustomed.) If you're in Perth (or, you know, want to fly to Perth from wherever you are,) please let me know if you'd like to come along. The more the merrier.

The book will be launched by the Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke I met Melissa a couple of years ago at a function, soon after her election to parliament, and since then she's proven to be a great supporter of the FCLC, and of literacy generally. She's also an avid spec-fic reader, so I'm really pleased to have her as the launcher.

And, as long as I'm on matters Darkland-y, while doing a trawl for some reviews of my books for the new-look anthonyeaton.com website (which is almost done, and looking really nice) I found this:

Which is, I think, pretty cool in its own way. Just the fact that someone took the time to really think about the book and then talk about it so intelligently is pretty nice, from my point of view. Even if she didn't like the characters or story (and, I'll be honest, she's not the first to make that observation...) I tried to send her a response but to do so I need to sign up for a youtube account and don't really want to. Either way, if you ever read this, Anna, then thanks.

It's probably also worth mentioning that, following on from her comments, setting 'Nightpeople' in an Australian context was a very deliberate response to the fact that a lot (though not all) of spec fic by Australian Writers tends to be set in worlds that are either completely 'other' or based on a European and often medieval framework. There are very good commercial and artistic reasons for this, but with the Darklands books I really wanted to challenge this trope a little, so it's really nice to know that this aspect of the books worked out for some readers. (I'm also not the first to do this, by a long shot. Sean Williams, among others, has written some *awesome* antipodean spec fic. (Actually, his 'Books of the Change' were among the big inspirations for the Darklands Trilogy - they're awesome!)

Anyway, day one of my month of blogging and I've already resorted to banging on about myself. I'll try for something a little more interesting tomorrow. Promise.