Okay. Here we go...

Righto. So tomorrow morning, after two years of work, the 2012 ACLAR conference begins here in Canberra at the National Library of Australia. We're opening at midday with a keynote address from a scholar I've long admired- Deakin university's Clare Bradford. On Thursday we have Shaun Tan keynoting, and then on friday Professor Kerry Mallan from QUT - another incredible thinker and scholar, and just a perfect fit for this particular event.

Plus, of course, we've got a whole range of other interesting and exciting papers from scholars, writers, students and interested parties from all points of the children's literature compass.

We've got 75 ish delegates, from all over Australia, New Zealand, the US, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and (I'm pretty sure) a few other places.

We've got a function on Thursday night, with Shaun's academy award winning film The Lost Thing being screened, followed by an in conversation with Genevieve Jacobs, one of our fantastic ABC Canberra presenters, who is generously giving up her evening to help out.

At this point, I've got delegate bags done, running sheets and checklists organised, catering ready to go, a little gang of brave volunteers prepared to run the length and width of the NLA to make sure that all goes according to plan, I've done the first airport run, followed by some of the worst navigating I've done in the five years since we moved to Canberra (Poor Clare got a tour of all of the most 'exciting' parts of the parliamentary triangle while I attempted to track down her hotel*)

Oh, yes, and I've also written my own paper, which I'm delivering tomorrow afternoon in the second concurrent session**. I'm talking about American author John Green's most recent novel The Fault in Our Stars. I'm not sure how it'll go down, actually. Because JG - who I've met, like, and admire tremendously as both a person and a writer - has a spectuacularly devoted fanbase, and while I'm not being gratuitously critical of his book***, I am looking at it through a specifically academic lens, and calling a couple of aspects of it into question. But nicely. So I'm hoping nobody will get upset. It's part of the difficulty of being both a children's and YA writer and a children's and YA literature scholar. Even though the two jobs have, in many ways, a really lovely synergy to them, the latter often requires you to adopt a very different perspective on books and writing, and to look at them through a quite specific theoretical and critical focus. It's not always the most comfortable situation to be in. But it is what we do. And it's important - and I really believe this - that scholarly discourse be fearless and objective, so that it is able to make a really solid contribution to the cultural life of a society.

But enough of me on that particular bandwagon...

In any case. I am (touch wood) organised. And it's only taken 24 months!

And to take my mind off things, before I go home tonight, I'm going to a party! Actually, I'm speaking at the party. I'm launching the debut book by one of my colleagues here at the Uni of Canberra - one of our masters students and tutors, Ben Stubbs. Any regular readers of the Sydney Morning Herald will probably recognise Ben's name, because over the past few years, he's become one of their more prolific travel writers. But he's also been working on 'Ticket To Paradise' - the story of his hunt for the descendants of the Australian colony of Cosme, which was established in Paraguay during the early 20th century, by a group of disaffected Queensland shearers, who set off across the Pacific intending to establish their own socialist utopia.

It's an incredible read - Ben has infused every page with a real sense of place and adventure, and paints such vivid portraits of the people and their lives today. It's just fascinating. It's also a work backed up by formidable research, lending it a wonderful sense of authenticity.

So congratulations Ben! I'm so honoured to have been asked to officially send Ticket to Paradise out into the world.

Speaking of which, I'd better go and iron my Tux in preparation.**** 

*(which I've actually stayed at twice!)
**Doing a paper at my own conference seemed like such a good idea. In February.
*** Which I enjoyed a great deal.
**** Joke. I don't actually own a tux. And if I did, I doubt I'd ever wear it.

Wool. (And no, this is not a post about my wife...)

... despite the fact that she is well into all things wooly.*

Actually, technically, I guess we do have Min to thank for this post, because she's the one who put me on to Wool. If you haven't clicked the link yet, I'm not talking about the warm stuff we make from sheep, and which we have a room full of at home. I'm talking about the e-book by Hugh Howey.

Now, I'll be completely honest and admit (and I can't escape the feeling that I'm about to paint a big target on my back with some people by saying this) that I'm not a massive admirer of an awful lot of self-published e-books. I've read a few, and some of them have been okay. And some of them have been just goddammed awful**.  Very few grab and engage me as much as commercially published (in digital form or otherwise) writing though. I often find myself, even with the good ones, wishing the writer had just learned to self-edit a little more critically, or paid someone to do it for them. Don't get me wrong - there's an awful lot that's exciting about writers having the capacity to 'do it for themselves', and I'm all for it as a general principle. It's just that - to my mind at least*** - it often feels to me that in some of these books the crafting of the writing isn't quite as developed as the ideas driving the story, or the packaging of it.****

But, by God, Wool makes me take all these preconceptions and throw them out the window.

This is great writing. And great reading. Without a doubt one of the finest pieces of sci-fi I've read in a long time. Min got the omnibus edition (Wool 1-5) on her Kindle and loaned it to me (one excellent decision by Hugh Howey was to allow digital loaning of his work), and I chewed through it in two days, reading until 1.30 in the morning. And this at a time when I, frankly, needed every bit of sleep I could muster.

I'm not going to even touch upon the plot - I don't want to risk spoilering any aspect of it. It's too good for that. All I'll say, though, is that it's beautifully written - Howey's capacity to establish and build tension is second to none, and his flair for characterisation reminded me somewhat of Stephen King - and just as importantly, it's beautifully crafted; not a word out of place. It's not a single stand-alone novel, but a series of novellas, a form which has lately been overlooked in publishing, and which harks back to some of the greats of the sci-fi genre; Asimov, Phillip K Dick. And the world of these books. Oh. My. God.

So. In short, if you have a digital reading device, then do yourself a favour and get this. You won't regret it. I promise.


*We got her a loom for her birthday. It made her very, very happy.
**for any potential or current self published e-book authors reading this, don't take it personally. It's not you, it's me.
*** and this is my blog, so my mind is all you get...
**** but then, I'm a commercial writer who teaches creative writing at a university***** so my perspective is not likely to be everyone's.
***** ie: a wanker

A Premiere Event

Wednesday night this week sees the world premiere of a newly adapted stage version of Nathan Nuttboard Upstaged, presented by the Redfoot theatre company at Hale School in Perth. Sadly, owing to the vagaries of conference organisation and end-of-semester grading, I'm not going to be able to get over to Perth to see the show (at least, not on this occasion...) but I'm very excited, nevertheless.

I was big into theatre when I was at high school. In fact, a good chunk of Upstaged draws upon my experiences as a member of the inaugural La Salle College Theatre Group. (Not the 'stage-kiss' scene, though. That was all my own creation. Seriously...) so it's thrilling to know that the first time one of my books has been converted to the stage, it's being done by a fantastic little youth theatre company in my hometown. And I'm really pleased they chose to do Upstaged, which is - I think - one of the most 'stageable' books I've written.

Anyway, even though I've written a direct email to the cast and crew, I just wanted to post something here to say break a leg to all involved, and thanks for taking my work and making it real. Can't wait to see it on DVD!

On the Life of a Chicken

So among all the fun and games of the last month (don't ask. Just... don't...), on monday this week I had to take Lottie, one of our Silky chickens, to the vet.

And, trust me, you haven't lived until you've sat in the waiting room of your local veterinary hospital, holding a box with a fluffy looking chicken in it on your lap, surrounded by sniggering dog and cat owners.

Lottie was our biggest, fattest, oldest chicken. Though not that old - she was only about 10 weeks when we got her, a couple of months ago. She was the first to start laying, and had been contentiously producing 6 eggs per week for the last three weeks or so. Until last Thursday, when she went off the lay, and started spending all day flopped in her nesting box. Which was decidedly unlike her.*

My first thought was that she was egg-bound, though the symptoms didn't quite fit. Either way, on Saturday I took her to the vet, who had a look, found no egg, and said to keep an eye on her and bring her back on Monday morning if she didn't come good.

And, sadly, she didn't.

So monday morning, bright and early, I popped her back in her box and we toddled back over to the vet, who gave poor Lottie another good going over, and again found no evidence of an egg. What she did find, sadly, was a large tumor growing in Lottie's abdomen. Apparently it's a problem that this particular breed are genetically disposed to. We didn't know that at the time.

So there was, sadly, nothing for it. Lottie didn't come home from the vet.

Which, as you can imagine, was quite upsetting for all of us. Mainly because we're one of those silly families who does things like giving their chickens names and treating them like pets. Still, you have to be pragmatic about these things. That's life, after all.

And, short though it was, Lottie did at least have a good life. She wandered freely around the yard with her sisters, tormenting our dog on her running lead and stripping bare our corn crop. She picked aphids off the roses, fertilised the garden beds (and the path, and the back steps...), and gave me an excuse to buy myself new gumboots.

And, importantly, she reminded Min and I about the value of food. It's been good, owning chickens, and seeing them as real animals. It's made us re-assess our spending habits when it comes to meat, and think a lot more closely about the ethics of what we use and what we waste. It's connected us a little more closely some of the realities of life that modern life can make us forget or overlook.

When I was 19, I was convinced that by the time I turned 40, I'd be living somewhere like London or New York. I'd be wealthy. I'd be setting the world on fire.

As it turned out, I spent the last day of my 30's,  a week or so back, here in Canberra cleaning out the chicken coop, and then driving out with my wife and son to the Collector Pumpkin Festival. And, to be honest, it was the perfect end to my third decade. I wouldn't have had it any other way. It turns out that, for me, the best way to turn 40 was to do it with chickens. And pumpkins. Sure, it's not where I imagined myself when I was in my 20's - it's so much better. And Lottie and her three siblings are part of that.

Later this year, we're going to get a replacement chicken. We're thinking of calling her Lottie 2.

That's for later, though.

Have a good week, everyone.

*Yes. Chickens have personalities. I was surprised to learn it, too.

What I did on My Weekend.

Busy busy... blah blah blah... busy.... no time to post... sorry... blah blah*

So last year for his birthday, Min and I bought her brother, my awesome BIL a half day stunt driving course as his present. I was very jealous. So for Christmas, Min got the same thing for me.

Then we were both very excited. We picked a date. We booked ourselves in. We talked about it. A lot.

Then, three days before we were due to drive up to Sydney for the experience, the NSW Traffic Police shut down the operation, apparently on the basis that the Eastern Creek Raceway qualifies as a public road, and that we were therefore obligated to drive according to the road rules. Which don't allow for driving on two wheels, jumping over ramps, or doing high speed handbrake turns. More's the pity**

Luckily, we'd purchased our experiences through Redballoon, who have a great returns policy, so we decided to cast around for something else.

Then we found this.

Now, I'm something of an aviation junkie. I might have mentioned this before. My dad was a pilot, and worked for the Civil Aviation Authority so I grew up on airports and around planes. I like planes. A lot. When I'm rich and famous***, I'm going to actually get my pilot's license.

In the meantime, I've also spent more than a few hours playing with Microsoft Flight Simulator****

So this was ideal. And a couple of weeks ago, we drove up to Bankstown airport for the afternoon, and spent two hours pretending to be pilots. And despite a few technical issues with the simulator (having to fly it from the co-pilot's seat, for example) it was awesome fun. I won't bore you with the entire 2 hour, 20 minute video (though I can, if you're interested...) but here we are flying the short hop from the new Hong Kong airport across to the old one - which had one of the more difficult and spectacular landings anywhere in the world. I'm off camera in the (co) Pilot's seat, with my BIL right in front of camera. Excuse the dodgy takeoff, too (and the language!) - the simulator's rudder pedals were a little... awkward.

... and who says grown-ups shouldn't play with toys?


*You've heard all this before, so I've decided to condense. 
** Not really. I'm actually a big fan of road rules.
*** Clearly not in the foreseeable future.
**** Though sadly, not for the last couple of years, owing to lack of suitable computer, and lack of suitable time.

Telephones, or why technology is bad for writers.

Don't worry. I'm sitting here bashing this out using my speech recognition software, while searching out links and images on my new iPad. I don't really think technology is bad for writers. Or at least, not bad for writing...

You might remember that late last year, among all the fun and games that is the silly season,  my lovely publishers at University of Queensland Press put out the new edition of my 2001 book A New Kind Of Dreaming. One of the nice things about having a new edition released is that it gives you the kind of reassurance that your writing hasn't dated.

Actually, this is something I often tell writing students to be very aware of, particularly when writing young adult fiction – there's this difficult balancing act  between being relevant and contemporary, and being too ‘trendy’ (for want of a better term), in which case you run a very real risk of your work becoming very quickly dated. The first of my Nathan Nuttboard books, for example, includes a scene where the main character and his sister have a fight because she's stolen the batteries to his Discman CD player. Remember those? When I wrote that book they'd been around for about a twenty years, and were – in my opinion – just the coolest things ever. And they were exactly what a boy of Nathan's age would've used to wile away the hours of a long car journey.

Image and excerpt from Nathan Nuttboard Hits the Beach

The thought of another 6 hours of tractor music and Nadine whispering “crap" every five seconds was almost too much to take. I dug around behind the seat and pulled out my Discman. At least I could do something about the music.

I put in my favourite CD, Machines of Blood and Glory. I don't actually like the music all that much, but Narelle absolutely hates it, so I tend to play quite a bit. The best thing about a Discman is that you can turn the volume up loud enough so that only the sound of the drumbeats escapes through the earphones. It's a little bit like having a mozzie buzzing around your ears in the middle of the night. Totally annoying, and there's nothing you can do about it. It would drive both of the girls crazy. I pressed play.

Nathan Nuttboard Hits the Beach was published in early 2002, hitting the shelves and almost immediately finding a solid readership and getting good reviews. What I hadn't factored in, however, was that a few months earlier – on 23 October, 2001, to be precise – the Apple Computer company had announced a funky new product. An odd little music playing device they called the iPod. And, of course, within 2 years the Discman as a piece of technology was effectively dead in the water. And so was that chapter of my book. I couldn't have timed it worse.

But of course, that's the problem with trying to write for posterity; you can't. It's impossible to predict – especially in this day and age, with technology being what it is – what the digital landscape is going to look like in 6 months, let alone in 10 years.

That's why I was thrilled when UQP agreed to re-release and repackage Dreaming – It's really nice to have a vote of confidence in the fact that I'm not the only one who feels that the book is still relevant and worth keeping on the shelves.

And I'm pleased to see that other people think so too; the talented Steph Bowe earlier this week posted this lovely review of the new edition on her blog. And she makes a very good point about telephones, too. Certainly when I was bashing out the first draft of Dreaming, in the late 1990s, mobile phones were technology on the increase, but certainly not as widespread or as powerful as they are today. In fact, the school where I was teaching at the time had a policy that all students with mobile phones were to turn them in at the office at the start of the day, and pick them up at the end. This was a school with roughly 800 students. There were regularly about 9 phones in the collection box. I don't imagine any school would even try enforcing such a policy today.

And, as Steph points out in her review, the rise of the mobile phone has in many ways made life a lot more difficult for the writer of realist action/adventure. Her observation that "about 90% of problems in novels can be solved with a phone call or text…" is so true.

Luckily, however, even mobiles have their weaknesses. Flat batteries, signal holes, or they might be attached to the Virgin mobile network in Canberra. There is a solution, of course, and that's to simply  set everything in a slightly alternative world or near future. But I suspect that's not entirely sustainable. All you can really do is 'future proof' your writing as much as is possible, try not to rely too much on contemporary trends and jargon, and cross your fingers.

In any case, thanks, Steph, for the lovely review. It's really nice to know that the book is still working after all these years.

And now I'm off to start work on my next novel. It's about a girl who develops a 'One Direction' app for her iPad2  ;)

Hiatus...

Hi.

Remember me?

I'm the guy that used to blog here, on a semi-regular basis.

Not lately though.

To be honest with you, I've been feeling really bad about my complete lack of bloggage in the last month or two, but I just haven't had the energy. Or the time.

Of course, the reasons are all the usual ones: utterly snowed under at work, teaching load, organising conference* having to host every communicable virus visiting Canberra, etc... etc... etc...

Plus that nasty old inertia - which I think I've mentioned here before. It's had me in a headlock the last month or two, and as a result I haven't written anything. Not an academic paper, not a goodreads review, not a book, not a blog post. I've written lectures, and a few tweets, a couple of grant applications, some peer reviews, a bunch of judge's comments for a writing competition, and a shitload of emails. So. Many. Emails. But nothing in the creative department.

And now, I feel a bit like Andrew McDonald.

But there is news. Most of it good. And many things to write about, so in the days ahead I'm going to do my best to ease back into the writing habit again, and get some stuff up. It won't be earth shattering or ground breaking, for the most part, but at least it'll be writing. Which is, after all, what it's all about.

So bear with me. I'll be back soon.

Promise.


*which is coming along nicely, by the way.