we'll go and get married and no one will know

The Bump in Things

Undertaking my revisions should not make me feel like this, but for some reason it does. Sometimes I worry that like Nathanael West I am 'polishing the corpse' but mostly I think that with every draft it gets closer. I remember Antoni Jach saying the Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children, like, a hundred times. Not that I read Salman Rushdie. Not that I'm trying to write Midnight's Children. Anyway, it's May. If you happen to be at Horsham library at 7.30pm on Tuesday night or Warracknabeal library at 2pm Wednesday afternoon I will be there. Come say 'Hi'. I will tell you about this great little book I read called Ghost in the Water by Edward Chitham, where the main character, a Black Country girl and history buff says: "Once a thing happens it makes a sort of bump in things, and you can't iron the bump out." I will also tell you that red wine is the devil and Bob Stewart's Up Like the Swallow is about perfect for driving around Autumnal Castlemaine. Also I enjoyed reading this 'Where is he now' thread ... In other news I am eating lots of soup.

RIP Maurice Sendak

I took her to a dance and then I didn't see her all night

So I went to Dig it Up this week. It was a brave* and nostalgic thing to do - one of the earliest gigs I went to was the Hoodoos at Festy Hall back in 1985 or 86. Anyway, just to say, they were in top form! I should look so good in skinny jeans and pointy boots. And there were lots of familiar faces and it was like the whole world was smoking. Also the Sonics were wild and shouty.I have been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately - I go see the Hoodoo Gurus, I come home and my husband's watching The Likely Lads. Today in my WIP my character Marlon says:"Is it some kind of deficiency in me that means I keep going back? Is it something like, you can’t imagine a future until you accept the past? I sound like Mum’s friend Josephine, but I’m not quite ready to tell about her. Another time." Anyway, also just to say, I would totally be Dave Faulkner's dog in this video. *terrible weather,what to wear, daytime drinking, big bad city etc

Autumn/Winter CJ Workshop

AUTUMN/WINTER CREATIVE JOURNALING WORKSHOP


SUNDAY JUNE 10th

The Readers, Vincent St, Daylesford
10-3.30

Tea and cake

Join Simmone Howell and Lisa D'Onofrio for the Autumn/Winter Creative Journaling Workshop. This is a time of balance, when we stop and relax and enjoy the fruits of our personal harvests. It is also a time of preparation. We have devised a set of writing and journaling exercises on the themes of memory, restoration, hope and gratitude. If you’re faced with block or at the start of a new project out one-day workshop is sure to get the cogs whirring.
Please note: THERE ARE ONLY A FEW PLACES LEFT!
If you have any enquiries contact us at: writeasrain@zoho.com

clean cut kids gone crazy

So I have a fondness for tales of young lovers on the run. My current WIP is a variation on this theme. And I have just been re-reading Jack Sargeant's Born Bad, the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate - which includes his thesis 'Gun Crazy - Notes on a Cinematic Sub-Genre'. From the back: investigates the cinematic legacy of the archetypal gun-crazy killer couple, including such films as Badlands, Wild at Heart, true Romance and Natural Born Killers* ...

And I've been watching some movies...


Pretty Poison is packaged as 'Before Natural Born Killers there was ...' and the trailer also makes much of the clean-cut kids gone crazy element ... BUT it's a much deeper film than that. Anthony Perkins suffers delusions, has to work in the real world, as a coping mechanism he invents a CIA psyche and then manages to pick up sociopath Sue-Ann - and their courtship is charming until the real world problems (work, probation officer, mother) intervene ...I remember seeing this odd little movie as a teenager and then couldn't find it for a long time ...in my mind it was filed next to What Became of Jack and Jill, which I have the paperback tie-in for, but can't find anywhere ...and Goodbye Gemini, (which gets bonus points for having the most fab soundtrack in the world.)But obvs there are many more. So my question to you is:

What's your favourite Young Lovers on the Run film??


 





*I hate how Natural Born Killers has become the shorthand for this genre. I thought it was blowsy and cruel and I don't go for ugly nineties aesthetic.

Book Giveaway - Losing It by Julia Lawrinson

I am a month behind in my Australian Women Writer's Book Challenge BUT here is March's book review and giveaway.

I have been waiting to read Julia Lawrinson's Losing It ever since I first heard her talk about it - a few years ago now, they tend to slip into each other -  her tag was Doing it for Girls*.... Now if you do not know, Doing it is a book by Melvin Burgess. It's about three boys on the make (seeds of The Inbetweeners) and it's very funny, scabrous and real.

It starts like this: ""Ok," said Jonathan. "The choice is this. You either have to shag Jenny Gibson - or else that homeless woman who begs spare change outside Cramner's bakers."

Losing it is about FOUR girls on the make. It is also funny and real. It's sensitive without being sappy.  It starts like this: "Who wouldn't you have sex with, even if you were going to get paid a hundred thousand dollars?" Bree said as she poured a touch of lemonade over four glasses of vodka.

Well, I love both books and it was great to read them side by side. Imagine if we lived in a world where contemporary YA could be studied alongside, say, The Go-Between. If I was a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and quietly steaming in that way that girls have to be because they're not allowed to be disgusting or outlandish - I would fall into Losing It...Each of the four stories is self-contained and compelling. The girls make a bet to lose their virginity before Schoolies, but each has different motivation and outcomes. Lawrinson writes with heart and spirit and humour. There are no sermons, the world is presented in all its variegated light. Female teenage desire is writ normal, as it should be but rarely is. **

So: the spirit of giving up the goods, I offer my lightly thumbed copy of Losing It to a random commenter. To win, please leave a comment! Also please, note that I am quite slow at getting to the post office but I will get there eventually!

*And I thought, I want to do that too! But I often get this with Julia's books, she did, after all write The Push, a most excellent novel set about Sydney's Push
 ** Also: Julia Lawrinson goes there! She write about female masturbation. I love this quote from Keris Stainton whose Della Says OMG! also went there... "The one thing I do think is almost entirely missing from teen fiction aimed at girls, is female masturbation. There are only a few novels that even mention it at all and that's just baffling to me because it's such an important part of female sexuality and something that you discover - and often struggle with - as a teen." Source: http://absolutevanilla.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/interview-with-ya-author-keris-stainton.html)