Kirsty Brooks

heroism in animals

2010-07-14T13:08:00.001+09:30

Some people think of animals as 'dumb brutes' without thought or obligation. My experiences seem to prove this is not true, and my sense of having so many animals come through my little house has proven it to me, if not to you. I never looked for it. I just loved animals since I was tiny, felt them to be my friends, my best friends really, the ones I'd tell everything to and who knew when I hurt. I have a kelpie who knows when I have panic attacks and leaps onto the bed, where i usually fall when such an event occurs and sits with me, often wraps his arms around me and calms me down. His breath becomes mine. I settle and relax, his care makes me feel foolish but no longer alone. And he is brave. The other evening I wheeled out two enormous avairies so the birds could enjoy the sunshine - we'd been having weeks of cold and rain. they sat and warmed their feathers, then enjoyed a light summer rain, stretching their wings and sqwaking protectively as sparrows and pigeons, ducks and our chickens came to enjoy the same. I covered them up with blankets and two tarps to keep them dry if it rained - and went to bed.
in the middle of hte night, Marshall, my Kelpie licked my face, padded at my arms, and finally stood over me. i had ear plugs in to block the interresting sounds my partner Stuart sometimes makes, and I love the incredible silence it provicdes, allowing me to lie and imagine scenes for my books as i drift into sleep. but this evening there was no chance of a quiet night, because as i pulled my ear plugs out, I could hear the rain hurtling against the tiny house, the thunder and lightening. And I ran outside.
Both avairies had tipped over and neither were attached to their bases. Birds could have easily escaped, or been crushed. I was in a pani but trying to stay calm because there was much to do - and prepare for. I ran back to get my spectacles and woke up Stuart and we both ran out into the rain and hail, expecting the worst, but it had only just happpened, the avairies were intact, no one had escaped, We stood them up and dragged them under cover, changed their blanket covers and checked each bird. The only injury was a budgie with a sore foot, who was fine the next day. marshall had saved their lives, these birds he harrassed sometimes in the sunshine, leapt up and occassionally barked at. He'd been determined to wake me up when I hadn't heard the danger - and I will never risk it again.
thank you Marshall

another act of bravery came from another, much smaler source and had a totally diffeerent result. When i adopted six handicapped finches, Barney would often fall into his water bowl, his wings were broken and I made a sort of ramp and cushion environemnt for him. I set his avairy next to my deska nd checked him constantly. Too often i had to rescue him, roll him over, put him back up top, take him out of water he'd drown in, but our contact made me love him all the more, because the more I did this, the less he'd fight it. he knew i was tryign to help him, i guess.
He showed such courage I guess, that he won the heart of the best girl in the place, and the beautiful white finch, Polly, became his girlfriend, occassionally rolling him over, feeding him, sitting with him, fighting off bullies and generally making his life so much more excellent than i ever could.
Then we moved house, and we had more room for birds in my study, so i kept three avairies in there (eventually featured on ABC Radio) some months later i bought some tiny reed woven nests for the finches, who had grown in number when people knew I'd take them in - i loved their song, industry, and sweetness. One morning I went to get Barney from his nest, and he'd died in the night. But still cuddled next to him was his forever girlfriend, Polly, the prettiest finch in the whole avairy, who had always stuck with him. Even in death she had stayed to keep him warm.
Listening to: meditation CDs
Eating: Jelly cakes
Thinking About: Love
Watching: Masterchef - which is the weirdest thing - I hate tv, cooking, sometimes even food. I've even been cooking...
Reading: 'Redbird' by Rick Bragg
Wearing: All my clothes at once - it's freezing...
Writing:My YA series and loving it.

Stories I can't change because I never had a hand in writing them

2010-06-17T18:53:00.023+09:30

Mark Twain said: 'Courage is not the lack of fear it is acting in spite of it.'
So many things that I do now are to fill the gaps of what I didn't do before. To replace a memory over one I'm ashamed of, to do something I didn't do before, only still to lie in bed, horrified by what I did - or did not do one day, someday long ago or yesterday. My errors might look small to some, but they loom like bolders on the road to me. they may seem insignificant because the ones that keep me up at night, and soak my loyal dog's coat with tears on days when the sun just never seems to make it through my window and creep along the pillow to me - are usually, almost exclusively, related to animals.
People might have thought me foolish, or weak or softhearted or just too easily brought to tears, I know i've been told to many times to count that I'm just 'too sensitive' or 'too busy thinking of the past, and not the future,' but it's life that swings a club at my sense of dignity and life - and why we're here and if I fail in small steps, then the larger ones are not strong enough to get me where I want to go, and that's to know I did right, when I could, and didn't fear being foolish in the process of it.
So I get parking tickets when I jump the curb to leave my car and guide baby ducks across a main road because one day I follwed a mother duck and her ducklings down lanes and through gardens, not knowing how to help them, and not realising I was - no doubt - scaring the crap out of them and leading them somewhere they'd never escape. I've rescued ducklings from courtyards and pried them from prickle bucshes, only to have them die on the way home because I forgot to bring a hot water bottle, or food. Regrets are many and about as prickly as those damn bushes, and yet, unlike those scratches, I still feel the pinch on days like these lately when it's cold and wet and I wonder what the hell all the animals do, when my own chickens huddle by my back door and wrestle with each otherr to try to get inside and the tree in my window is waving like a child at an airplane just landed.
So I don't mind making a fool of myself because I know i'm lucky, to be warm, to have the chance to help, even one animals if not any that cross my crooked path, and that the misery that so often lands in my mind and stops me from doing anything more than remembering the worst of myself and the world, isn't going to do anyone any good, but still makes it hard for me to swing my legs over the bed and get to it. Because sometimes it is hard to be the only one singing the song, alone, out of key, and so often missing the right notes, so that animals die as often as they live, and my huge back yard is a mass of tiny graves, but I still try to make it pretty anyway. But just because trying to help is so often embarrassing or hurtful or hard or pointless or the beginning of a hardship I'd not expected, doesn't mean I let myself ignore what i see anymore. I can't keep driving past the dog that looks lost, or the corpse of the animals that is drawing birds to the middle of the road where they're getting a meal for a minute only to get crushed and add to the attraction.

It's a whole hell of a lot better than the sting of regret, and the soaking wet coat of my dog when I finish crying, knowing it doesn't make a pinch of difference to regret it now unless I do something to make it up. so i do a lot of weird things that I don't tell anyone about, and hope that they wallpaper over the hurt and regret and grief of what i did or did not do before. A lifetime ago or just yesterday. Because mistakes are so easy to make, and effort is so hard when you know you're the only one thinking this way - or so it feels some days.
So i bundle up courage, and arm myself with the knowledge that if I fail, it's not without trying, and that's almost as good as succeeding, somehow, sometimes. Pity it doesn't feel that way in my heart.
So if anyone saw me raging at my finches in their aviary a couple days ago, swaying with the beginnings of the flu and misery, you'd think i was nuts. And I guess i am a lot of the time, because it's nuts to think you can ever make up for the past, for not having any courage, or for caring about what people think. I'm way past that point now, so the raging at finches as small as an eyeball made sense to me then and still does now.
Because as is often the case, I had a box of broken finches that the bird shop gave me. They do this sometimes, and once they even held a family of beautiful yellow budgerigars because the owner couldn't care for them and she wanted them to go to a 'good home'. That was one of the really shiny days I felt maybe I really had made a home, rather than an animal's halfway house, or hospice and that i was doing some good, even if it was for a couple yellow budgerigars who hopped into that aviary and seemed to think they were in a kissing booth. I know I sound sorry for myself, because I am - today. It's a black day and I have them sometimes, months of them, once, a couple years of them and never when I expect them and always when I'm weak and sore and unprepared, and it's like a car-napping, I'm caught suspended, and I just fold up and gasp at the thought that once I was able to work a whole day. Just changing the case on the pillow is exhausting on a black day. How did I write stories, whole books? A series of them? and plan others? Apply for grants, go to lectures, teach lectures? it seemed like an impossible dream, my real life, when it fell into those black days.
Lately, the black days were blown away by the spring breeze of hope and good writing and great books, love, and weather. But it still creeps up on me on days like this and I fear for what's not being done - what I'm missing on this one precious day - just as much as i fear that it's the beginning of a couple years worth of blackness and shame, regret, pain and misery. But I don't think so. Not today. Not for me. I've got a story to write anyway, and I can't write when I'm black I can barely think beyond the horror of what I'd drawn to me. How will my animals survive if I can't even leave my room? How will I tell everyone I can't do what I planned? All those plans ... they seem extraordinary. made by someone else. Who thought I was someone else entirely. How did I make them? Why? It seems impossible to consider doing anything other than lying here, on those black days. and there were so many of them, I don't want anymore, it's a waste of a life. My life, creeping by, sweeping by me, waving slightly as it passes. It's black depression and I am relieved every morning when I can't smell it sitting on my heart so heavy it hurts to carry around. Each day it's not here I smile, relieved. And so i do what I know it hates, what will surely drive it away forever - something that will at least try to make up for the images and memories and things i did that slide over me like sweat when I'm black. I try to banish depression by doing the opposite of everything it feeds off. And embarrassing myself by being 'too sensitive' is no punishment at all. I'll make a fool of myself all over town if it does one aniamls some good and stomps on the crystal clear memory that tears my heart out when I'm black at night, with the smell of my dog's patient, kind, ever waiting coat in my face as if that had been his job since he was born and abandoned somewhereup in the hills of south australia. He sits on the bed covering my feet, toes, or just leaning against me, and if he hears me cry, he just moves himself closer, and presses on in.
I swear on mornings after nights like that that I'll get better but it's like asking someone to sew their own fingers back on.Iit takes more than your own head to fix itself. I swear to myself I won't let myself self lose this story like I lost a couple back in those black days three years ago, when nothing felt like me, nothing came in, or went out, I was just like a girl made of wood, with yellow hair she didn't even have the strength to wash. Bad days indeed and not just for those had to look at me.
Ii know sometimes, lots of times, I do a good thing, but it's the times i don't, that I fail, that shines brighter in my mind, and is so often the reason I'm 'just too sensitive', so I try hard not to think about them, which is about as helpful as not looking at doughnuts at the Krispy Kreme stand as you go through Melbourne airport.
I can look out my window and see them now, splashing in the water bowls and picking each other over, preening and making friends with the bird in the mirror, swinging on little plastic swings and always, always gossiping.
There's always room in my aviary for another couple birds, especially ones as big as an eyeball, right? but I didn't know one of these birds would make me cry at nights for a week, just because no bird would sit with him.
And if you've seen a bunch of finches you'll know they sit up close, snuggle up, especially in the cold. and it's been cold enough not to be able to sleep sometimes this past week or two.
But despite this one, black with a red beak, meaning he was a male charcoal I called little dude, because he was couldn't fly too well, but spent his days jump/flying from branch to swing to another branch and another swing (this is why, mum, my aviaries are so full of stuff, it's not because I don't want them to fly, to be free, I dream of it often enough I think half the time they are, in a way. At least they're not in a box, and they're outside and they're as free as i can make them until one day I have an aviary I dreamt of once, that covered the whole garden and yet let the little ones without legs, or a wing or an eye, still stay safe. That would sure be an good aviary then and I'd no doubt fill it about as much as they are now...but that stuff is there because they can't fly, mum, and they need these steps. I swear. I tell you every visit but you still shake your head and tell me there's too much 'crap' in those aviaries for a poor bird to fly' one day I hope you'll understand at last) then he'd get a fright about something and fall all the way down. i coated the bottom of the cage with soft baby blankets from the opp shop but they got wet so often I spent more time changing them. He hopped out the door once when I was changing the seed and water and I just picked him up and put him back in, but for a moment he saw the world without those bars and I wish now i'd just let him sit a while longer. I forget what it is to be always behind something when I'm not sick or sorry about something and shoved up inside my house without need to leave. At least the choice is my own.
So after a weekend of migraine so bad i had the doc come give me a shot in my behind I can still feel five days later, like a muscle I never had, I went out to change water and seed, feeling frail and cranky and regretful of a weekend spent with frozen peas on my head and the sense of my brains being squeezed to tight to work anymore. I once sliced my forehead deep on each side to let out the pressure, I'd lost my mind so much with the pain. I know slightly better now.

and little dude was splayed out, half frozen in a bowl of water as deep as my first knuckle. So my little dude didn't live with me longer than a week, and despite thinking i should put him in a cage, bring him inside, I knew finches loved company. Most finches anyway. No one more than this finch. I couldn't bring him in alone. But this one, despite his efforts, despite courage and strength and determination I would watch with open mouthed admiration from my desk as he jumped and flew ever higher each day, trying to get to the top where the pretty white finches hung out, like a four year old kid crashing his way through the back of the bus, hoping to sit with the cool kids. Despite everything I tried to do, he never had a friend to cuddle up with, never had anyone to press against when it blew so hard all the loose buckets and brooms and dog toys in the yard flew up against the shed and for the first time, the butterfly chairs really did get a chance to fly. I wrote in another blog about a finch who had a friend so loyal she stayed with him as he died, as his body went cold in the nest beside her.
I thought that was a sad story and I guess it really is, but there's always something worse. That's why the black days are worse than any I've had with fever or flu or post ops when I'd lie on the floor to change the dressings so i cwouldn't hit my head on the bath as i fainted, or migraines so sharp they make me slice into my temple with a half blunt kitchen knife until I could feel pain somewhere other than behind my right eye, because my brain just never shuts up when it's got something to say, and most days it just seems to want to tell me sad stories.
I wish one day it would shut the hell up, but I know then I'll not have another day to try to make up for those stories I hate so damn much. I think it's better to let my brain slowly edge them out, wallpaper over them with the good ones I try to crack open and look at, on those black days.
So if you see me raging at birds who won't make friends with a little crippled guy who spent his days trying to get high enough to sit with the prettiest ones in their nests, or stomping out of shops because they sell glue traps that leave mice to die of wretchedness and starvation while we watch, or fight for the right to be able to park in a clearway when it's the only way I can get to the ducklings raining down from the trees in the footpath, or any of the other stuff I do that makes my family wonder whether that fall from a hammock really did knock something loose in my mind. I wish I didn't care so damn much either way. I wish I could just drive by the hurt like i've seen people drive by a scared dog loose on the road.
Listening to: 'Rain, birds, and the whine of my dog urging me to take him to the dog park despite the rain
Eating: cup o' soup and Darrell Lea rocky road - it's so good without the glace cherries
Thinking About: see above
Watching: You tube videos that make me laugh
Reading: 'A world of baby names' for my current book
Wearing: Enough clothes to make my arms stick straight out from my shoulders
Writing: My YA series, still looking forward to writing it more than anything, even chocolate. I love this stage.

Ideas on writing #1

2010-04-09T08:29:00.004+09:30

1) Write as often as you can. this might not be every day for some but every week for others, but write enough so that you feel proud and not guilty. Once you reply to someone's frankly rather rude question 'What do you do?' and at least one of your replies is 'I love writing, I write, I'm writing something', etc then you've just nailed the lid onto your coffin of free time. And opened a tiny - untraceable - bottle of guilt that will waft its scent about your house car, person for the rest of your days. Unless you write enough to feel satisfied, then the stink will dissipate - a little. Write as much as you can each time you have free time. Your family may break apart, you never have the sex anymore, your animals are fed only every second day, your garden looks like a dump, you lose weight, gain weight, get pimples and wrinkles at the same time, your house looks like the caravan salvaged from that self-same dump and balanced on an old fridge that houses rats, and your clothes are so rank people take a step back when you open the door, but you are, now, a writer.

2) If you weren't enough for yourself, others, your heart, your church, your soul, your friends, or your lover before you got published, you won't be enough for any of them after you get published. it's nice it's fun, it's a soft little secret you can carry around with you for the rest of your life like being able to carry your teddy or blanky or invisible friend around with you in your purse and not be chided or kicked to the ground and beaten, but you do pay David Beckham's ransom for it in a plethora of unexpected and freakish ways.

3) By writing enough to feel slightly more satisfaction than guilt, you will hopefully have several dozen manuscripts and be about to find the Holy Grail of writers - Your Voice. Treasure it. It's what editors and agents are looking for. but Your Voice does not have to be something that is so determinedly distinctive anyone could pick you out of a lineup with the greatest of writers just by seeing you write one word. One sentence - maybe. You might write in such a lean spare style, or you might like the odd adjective (but you shouldn't, they're like Two-Dollar Shop chocolate easter eggs) or you might have a smear of uncontrollable whimsy, but if it's what comes after having written so much, let it be, keep writing, it's yours, gaze at it like your bright red screaming wrinkly baby covered in your own blood and smile like a simpleton, you've done it. It might not be quite what you hoped for, but you did it. Be grateful for small mercies - and remember, no one else but another writer will understand and they'll probably smile sarcastically at your anyway or ring and laugh about you to your other best friend. Try to ignore it.

4) Reward yourself on accomplishing goals. Whether you wrote one sentence, or one chapter or half the book, if you had trouble sliding yourself along the cold concrete floor of your home/24 hour car-repair shop to your desk and shake at every touch of the keyboard, and can't lift your eyes to look at what you've written (which is no doubt in All Caps or separated into two thousand sections of the 'To' line of your email program) and your neck is cramped between the clutching muscles of your pinched shoulder blades and your eyes burn with tears and your one weirdly long pinkie finger nail keeps hitting the delete button and you're sweating so much the keyboard is starting o send up smoke signals to the local tech shop, then you must give yourself some reward for writing instead of killing yourself or eating your body weight in easter eggs. Be it big or small, live yourself a tiny smile, be your own best friend, as they say. Today you may eat fresh food, or unspoiled milk, or wear clean underwear. you are a clever clogs, the bees knees. Treat yourself like it.

Listening to: The Sea Thieves
Eating: Muesli from Spoon in Port Fairy
Thinking About: How nice Rain is
Watching: The Rain and Spicks and Specks from last night
Reading: The Road by Cormack McCarthy
Wearing: White Chiffon Dressing Gown which i now notice is a teensy bit see-through and I just chatted with the neighbours while letting out my two remaining chickens (one died over the weekend) and I was trying to chat while weeping and pulling my hair because she was an excellent chicken (and apparently, the only layer). Can't wait to have the neighbours over for drinks soon. Want to adopt more ex-battery hens to give them some decent life but am now aware of how they are less farm animals for produce and more familiars/dearly loved pets. Damn it all to hell.
Writing: Essay on panic attacks. chapter for The Tequila Bikini. Very long shopping list.

Teenage Hoon Boys in Cars - Not what you'd expect

2010-04-01T15:55:00.005+10:30

Boys in Cars
There are a few more hoons in my area than I used to find in St Peters and the city and Malvern and Norwood and Stirling and North AdelaIde - all the places I've lived in before in Adelaide. Some of them are perceived as 'fancy' but they still have boys in cars. I prefer where I'm living by far, mostly because there's a great neighbourhood feel here, there's no snobbism at all, even fewer topiaries (a personal dislike) and ladies who think they're better than other people because they have big hair and huge (often fake glitzy designer sunglasses. I often (sometimes accidentally) have big hair and big sunglasses but I think I'm a dork so i hope I don't get mistaken for these obnoxious types. Who knows? Knowing yourself, let alone seeing how people see you from the outside, is tricky. I can't imagine, it's usual a good start to try to be humble before nature and not people, good natured before people and nature, and treat with both with respect.

I have changed my mind about Boys in Cars. I have three incident where they have been extremely helpful to the point of saving my mum's life and helping me find lost dogs.

1) My mum fell down a steeply inclined driveway and really messed up her face, flaps of skin, thirty stitches were needed, two black eyes, she was a sight. But a couple Boys In Cars came and sat with her while my dad ran off to get help. Lucky they did because a huge 4WD pulled out of the driveway where she was lying almost unconcious and the boys stopped the car just in time before they ran over my mum. seeing as she's been fighting the good fight against Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for about five years now - and so far winning, being run over by a Camden Tractor would have been a serious bummer.

2) Christmas Day my partner and i parked our car in a pub carpark with a roller door. after hijinks and excellent lunch and fun with my mum's side of the family we went to dgo home, only to find the carpark locked. Everyone knows it's impossible to get a cab on Christmas Day unless you order it on boxing Day the year before so we were bummed. Then I found a way in, and figured out how to use the manual override on the door to get us out. Only problme was, on pulling the door down after the car came out, the pieces of metal closed over to form one straight flat piece of door after being coiled up into a roll on the roof - and cruched the tips of all my fingers as it went. After pulling them out and screaming I apparently ran onto the road and then fainted. A Car of Boys took the corner on two wheels, stopped, jumped out and helped me - thinking I'd been hit by a car. They and my partner helped me to go down to the beach where I soaked my crushed fingers in the icy water as i sobbed pathetically. A month later I had a bunch of fingernails removed.

3) Three little teacup poodles got out on the street near the dog park where I take Marshall for his afternoon blitz/nutter session. Their owner was frantic and I parked the car askew and ran up to ask what was wrong, we saw the dogs up on a side street and raced after them, but by then they'd disappeared, several streets later, - and me totally lost in an area I only knew of because each street is named after a car (i.e. holden, corolla, Fiesta, etc) I hit a cross roads and a car full of boys rolled to a stop before they ran me down.
I signaled without thinking, squaring my hands off to indicate something small, and then held up three fingers. The car stopped, the radio turned down and they pointed in the right direction, askedover the only slightly deafening rap music if I wanted help. it was only as I was running off where they'd pointed that I realised I'd done it all without considering they looked like they were about to do a drive-by, Monster truck wheels, tattoos visible on hands heads, fingers, sunnnies over hooded eyes and behind that - expressions of deep mental disturbance, music louder than a baby's scream, but they were more helpful than a half dozen people I ran into on the way to find these dogs in a garden, lazily eating some slower dog's dinner a half hour later, exactly where they'd pointed me to.

Listening to: Juno soundtrack
Eating: tofu green curry
Thinking About: if budgies mate for life
Watching: budgies mating
Reading: The Age and The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald from a couple weeks back - there's a late pile on my couch
Wearing: stacked black boots, short dresses my mum says show my undercarriage. Thus also Bike shorts that make me look like I'm wearing a full body slenderiser that's just failed it's job
Writing: this, I guess.

Danger At Safe distance - and How animals set a high standard of life

2010-03-31T12:14:00.018+10:30

Kirsty Brooks on crime fiction and other things both anecdotal and animal related - what we learn from animals and how we can make life better by just thinking each chore/job/moment through a little more. Our lives are far far too short to waste doing things we hate.

Crime has always been wildly attractive to me. Being a middle-class private school teenager who spent my time mooning over Johnny Depp in 21 Jump Street and dancing in my bedroom, I also learned that reading a book a day didn’t create the basis for a full and exciting social life. I was, clearly, a criminal in the making.

Nicking a pack of Burger Rings, being late returning library books, and learning to smoke (only to accept a ‘jazzed’ cigarette and ending up at the local beach, trying to ‘return all the seaweed to the ocean’) merged to create a foundation of ‘fine line’ mistakes that saw me unemployed, at twenty three, with only my vast collection of books and a maxed out credit card to distinguish me from the other bewildered over-educated kids in Adelaide. Or the nearest street kid.

Until one night…

It was the most boring party I’d ever been to. Fifteen drug-addled Goths sitting around a fire staring at the visions within. A girl with a white rat on her shoulder was talking monotonously about her crappy life. And I was sinking into an emotional funereal dirge.

And then something happened to change it all.

The mix of tequila, raspberry cordial and Savoury Shapes began to have an unexpected effect on me. While everyone else was slumped in personal torment, I got lively. And a little chatty…

I told the pink-haired smell-bomb on my left about the day I broke into Leyland Brothers World (a theme park wedged inside a fake Uluru in New South Wales) and had my photo taken with my head stuck through dozens of celebrity cardboard cut-outs before the cops arrived. She smiled (tightly, but it was something).

Spurred on, I told the tiny shrunken child/man on my other side about the sad day I drank the bong water. He seemed unsurprised, but at least he was looking at me.

And so was the spunky guy in a dented top hat. I moved seamlessly on to the time I drove my friend to her gigs as a sex-worker before she abruptly left town owing me a thousand bucks. Now even the shaky host was watching. Someone laughed.

Drunk on popularity and not a little Stone’s Ginger Wine that Edward Clammyhands thrust at me, I scrabbled around in my brain - which suddenly felt large and unnaturally shiny – for more stories.

I told them about buying drugs in a motel, only to have to climb out the window as the local drug lord kicked in the door to eliminate the competition (either that or he was just keen to buy some speed so heavily cut with Ajax I had a nose bleed for two weeks).

And soon, every single red-stained, black-rimmed eye in the room was focussed on…Me.

And then the funereal dirge girl opened some chips. The spunk changed the music. A tall bloke looked like he might start dancing but he was just adjusting his hair.

However, a strange thing was happening in the world’s most negative of places - there was merriment at a Goth party. Okay, so this was mostly because I was happy to reveal myself as a gormless simpleton but I realised something else. Sure, I’d done a lot of totally stupid things in my life, but somehow in the retelling they seemed less sad and directionless and more - if I was very, very careful - entertaining.

And, just so you know this wasn’t in any way an epiphany or pivotal moment, five years later I used some of these stories in my first novel. And then, not the next month, or even the next year, Wakefield Press published it as Lady Luck.

And thus encouraged, I wrote another one. And it got picked up by another publisher. So I wrote another. And another.

And since then, I have been asked if there is a secret to getting published.

Mostly I tell people that there is no secret. If you write a book that’s good enough to make people want to read the next page then you’re doing well. And if most pages in the manuscript do this, then the manuscript will be published.

Writing is not just self-expression. It’s the skill of communicating to someone else; of touching someone (not in a rude way) through your words. And my awareness of the (rather large) gap between what I liked reading, and what I’d previously been writing, helped me immeasurably.

Article Interval

Here's my one-eyed Galah - Bernie 'Boo' who, to me, defines the determination, endless hope and love of what you do - somehow despite the setbacks - that you need to become a successful writer. He was given to me after several potential carers didn't like his one-eyed-ness.

As it turned out, it was their loss as he's the perfect writing bird - sitting on my shoulder and shouting out words if I get forgetful or tired. Telling me who's left messages on my answering machine (I hate the phone and struggle the check messages each day ) and just defines affection, devotion and fun. so I've put him in here, no connection with this article except that my intention, always is to but to make you think about all the animals who might need your help and to think of how tough life is for an animal who has much to give - and never get the chance to give it - who can't find the right person - or is stuck in a cage with no one to talk to. He's so good he came to my TAFE lecture last night to prove this point of determination and hope to my wonderful students in the Write Fiction - The Novel class.

End of Interval

The night at the crap party changed my life. And not just because I pashed the spunky guy.

Because I did have a secret to getting my writing published.

And it was this.

I learned to consider who I was telling stories to. I learned to think of what I would like someone to talk to me about at a suicide-inducing party. I would want to be distracted, I’d want to learn stuff, (even if it’s just ‘Don’t throw Leyland Brothers merchandise at the police’) and with some careful editing, a story becomes more than an anecdote. It became entertainment.

And this insight became a window into things that my somewhat sharper readers might not be as crazy or brave or careless or stupid enough to get involved in. It’s danger at a safe distance. And, with a nod to the Goth party, it’s also not entirely unlike The Smiths’ lyric – ‘I can laugh about it now but at the time it was terrible’.

And terrible things intrigue people, not just because they are engaging, but because we are glad we aren’t there, and so we can (hopefully) also laugh, or cry or empathise, but because for a lot of people, danger is limited to leaving their bike helmet unclipped or putting their recycling in someone else’s bin. Crime fiction is alluring for the very reason it’s fiction, readers can escape into it, or away from it. The very nature of crime - the uncontrollable threat - is now in the reader’s hands. It has been tamed.

See, here’s the thing. Editors want to buy your manuscript. They want you to get published as much as you do. But this will only happen when you write something that other people want to read just as much as you want to write it.

Crime fiction could be called the ultimate voyeurism because it deals characters a bad hand and then lets us watch while they try to make the best of things. And if the basic premise of good fiction applies (that characters prove themselves in situations of conflict, both internal and external) then crime fiction offers up some amazing opportunities.

But this tag of voyeurism applies to most genres of fiction. Reading books, from biographies to SF, is a form of nosiness. We’re poking ourselves into other people’s lives; peering into their lounge-room, bedroom, coffin or headspace.

And in making the most of my (more apparent in hindsight) total disregard for personal safety I found a great basis for my writing that helped a lot in creating my ‘screwball’ crime novels and I have since written five, with three more under contract.

I love writing characters who struggle with the concept of good and evil, who have unusual lives, and with this mix I’ve slid neatly into a sub-genre that sees my books categorised under Chick lit, Humour, Crime, Popular and Romance Fiction.

In fact, every bookstore seems to shelve my books differently, but as long as they’re there, I’m very lucky, and happy. Because this is the best job in the world. It’s not just about sharing what’s in your heart, or mind, it’s about connecting with readers through the pages of a book. And knowing who my reader is has helped me reach her (and increasingly, to my surprise, him).

Crime fiction is created to divert, entertain, and go somewhere we’ve not been before, whether that’s into the mind of a killer, the house of a victim or the dressing room of the local Peek-a-boo cubicle.

And I can promise you that it’s a hell of a lot more fun than doing that stuff for real.

End of article - beginning of small aside.

Here are three of my birds - finches who started out with problems - Almondine (black and red finch) only had one half leg but adapted by being an amazing flier. The Dude (black and grey) couldn't fly and was always falling off his perch, so he made an excellent nest from where he ruled over the aviary. Tiny tiny (Firetail red and grey finch) escaped in and out of the bars of my aviary and eventually took longer and longer trips, Now he leaves for weeks and then comes back, has a feed and sits with the other finches and seems to tell them all his adventures. They all figured out ways to make their lives better.

I try to take a tip from them every day, look at my life, how I write, what my unconscious routine is, and try to find ways to make it easier, more pleasant, more efficient - usually so i have more time to do the things I love - play with my animals, read, write, etc. So now I wash my dishes with a book propped up on the window sill in one of those recipe holders made of clear plastic and have my meditation music playing - because I hate washing dishes. I used to let them stack up until I was using plastic cutlery. Now I do it every day because it gives me a chance to read and relax. (p.s Am also getting a small dishwasher to fit into my camper sized kitchen will also make that process easier...Soon I hope, as soon as I pay for my clear hanging bubble chair for the front verandah)

____________________

This article (without the asides or pictures) was first published in the VIC Writers’ Centre newsletter and then the Sisters in Crime newsletter - Stiletto.

Listening to: having just returned from Port Fairy (a wonderful relaxing, quiet and warm hearted town in victoria for a sisters in crime panel at the terrific Blarney books I listened to the audio book of A.M. Homes' novel 'This Book will Change Your Life'

Eating: Argh, ye gods... Honestly it's just far far too much traveling makes me eat sweets. 'Lady' week makes me eat sweets. Being happy makes me eat sweets (and both the holiday - possibly first holiday I was actually relaxed in for years, and returning to my excellent cuddling animals did this - Pedro the white rabbit hopped up into my lap this morning and got snuggled so much there's rabbit hair all over the place. Lucky that Shannon, my favourite cleaner is coming tomorrow) - I got addicted to the muesli at Spoons, a wonderful Port Fairy cafe and even got some to take home. am not usually a muesli person but this was heaven.

Also 'Frantic Whisk' biscuits bought at the car wash before returning 4WD Kluger - terrific fun to drive long distance) to my mum. Especially good are the Nougat Rounds. Getting excited about easter and accompanying chocolate, also worried about not fitting into clothes. which emotion shall will? Only time - and quality of chocolate - will tell. Personally, despite living in town with both excellent Bracegrindles and Haighs chocolate and a weakness created twenty years ago for Swiss Gloary white truffles, I'm a sucker for the Red Tulip Elegant Rabbit. they're just so... damn elegant.

Thinking About: How lucky I am to love going on holidays and look forward to coming home too. I missed Marshall starting at the end of the bed and ending up in my arms. I missed Bernie boo cuddling and commenting on everything. I missed the constant song and chatter and tweet and whistle of my canaries, finches and cockatiels outside my writing window. I'm looking forward to three or more baby finches emerging from a nest up top of my aviary.

Unlike my canaries (who sometimes just toss the babies if there's something wrong with them - and I try to save them with mixed results - they're usually right). The finches are great parents and Hamster is always there as baby sitter/surrogate mum if anythign goes wrong - I posted a film I made onto Youtube of her doing her thing feeding adopted baby finches - quite a remarkable sight) I missed Monty trying to Woo Opie and Opie doing the equivalent of swatting him over the head by sort of batting him with a wing and going to the next branch, where he continues to serenade her for hours. He's a great singer but he needs a new song.

I missed cuddling my rabbit Pedro and having her make little happy noises and then leap about, bum high in the air, ready for chasing and hide and seek games. I didn't miss the mess of a backyard as we're in the baby steps of getting the whole thing redone - with my design that I have to finish and clear with the landscaper.

Watching: Nothing on TV except Animal Rescue show - usually on Wednesday, but it's been off the last couple of weeks so I must restrain myself. Old eps of Ned and Stacy that I found in perfect plastic wrap condition in the opshop for $2. Finches outside my window making nests with such industry and ingenuity.

Wearing: The KB Innovative Nightie/Dress(TM). I bought a bunch of excellent/almost flattering/soft dresses a couple months ago. As a gormless aside I also hate socks and wearing shoes at home (something Radio National caught in a picture they took during their Writers' Rooms' series - who knew they'd take pics for a radio interview?)

The first thing my mum said was: 'Why aren't you wearing shoes! You look like a bum!'- Anyway, I was constantly getting caught out in the nick by a handy man when our house was getting work done on it (an old, gorgeous, beachy looking flat/triangle roofed ranch house) as I don't like wearing nighties - I get all caught up in them, but these were different, maybe dresses are the key! So now in colder weather I can get out of bed and 'Be Dressed Already' - Hair and make up aside - this lazy approach to fashion also helps me work and write more efficiently and I can shower when I want to - which is often after I've got my work done for the day and can do less essential stuff (like this), etc.

The joys of working from home.

And believe me because I have asked - I do not stink. Clean your teeth, wear deodorant, drench yourself in perfume, you might get away with it. The teeth thing is essential, especially after a meal. and make your hair not stand up and your eye shadow and lipstick should be wiped from out of your ears and nose or wherever it goes during the night if you're not a good face washing person before you go to bed. If you do, as I do, often crash face first into bed, sometimes not in The KB Innovative Nightie/Dress(TM) but a glitter mini-dress with stacked party shoes still on.

Reading: Just finished '61 Hours' - the latest Lee Child Book. I am most frustrated by the 'to be continued' tag. Hate it on TV, hate it in books. Still, he promises another book later in the year so I'll have to not get too cranky when I go hear him talk in April. Also some real crime books on importing exporting illegal drugs in Australia for writing' The Tequila Bikini'. At the writers' panel on Sunday in Port Fairy I fessed up to trying to do my own research - especially the fun stuff - but this import/export bit is out of my league, sadly. I read a chapter this morning where there was a Glut of Cocaine in 1992, i.e. They couldn't get rid of it... Cripes. Just that sentence was a heart-starter.

Oh, and I forgot, another thing...

Rabbits and baby chicks at easter

And don't buy a rabbit or baby chicken for Easter unless you are prepared to care for them like your own children. And if you regret buying it because you realise this rabbit is too good for you and you made a Bad Decision, admit to it (and don't do what people I've seen do - which is a myriad of things but these are the kinder ones - if you can believe it - they drown them, leave them to live out their sad lives in the bathtub with crappy pellets, leave them out in the hutch and expect them to live on the dry dead grass and rain that falls in their feed bowl, leave the hutch open hoping they'll escape, kill them and eat them for dinner. etc) Yes, this is true and worse. Sometimes you might understand why I like animals more than many people, but I persist in trying to believe that the world, and humans are essentially good. I try, I really do. I have chickens and a rabbit and they are cool, but you need to be cooler. Being cool means knowing yourself and being able to reach inside your heart and understand if you really can care for a fully grown chicken or rabbit for the rest of their lives.

And if you still decide to get a Rabbit, desex it. And if you really think you don't want it anymore - take it to a proper shelter, or email me... Yes, you might incur my wrath but then I'll give you some advice or take it off your hands. Remember, most rabbits don't like being picked up and played with. chocolate is much better for you than my disapproval. BUT, if you sincerely want a rabbit. Go to the Small Animals Rescue Sites that dot the internet, there are loads of excellent rabbits who are desperate for homes.

Here is a picture of Pedro, who is great. She (Yes, I thought she was a boy until I got her desexed) sleeps during the day and is lively just when I am lively - i.e. night time. But I carried her around and and watched her and tested her out and made sure she was the kind of rabbit I wanted - which was a house rabbit (i.e small hutch inside, but roams the house, has kitty litter trays where she needs them (in three small corners of the house) and fresh leaves, thistles, and special hay each day, corn on the cob and her fancy pellets.

She rewards me by running towards me, cuddling up to me, and licking my arms and playing with me. I clean out her litter trays, water and feed bowls each day and clean her area, make her new cardboard box houses to destroy and hide in (they must have two doors or they won't use them) and like any animal, they involve work as well as fun, but she is also very funny, loving and kind. I crouch down to hug her and if I have to carry her, I use both hands to hold her tight to my body so she knows she's safe.

Well, Ciao, my little rays of sunshine, my lovely pals. Go do something good today. One good thing for you, one for someone else. you'll be amazed how much better you feel about the latter than the former. Trust me.

Interview with Matilda

2008-12-02T09:23:00.003+10:30

The following is an interview I did earlier in the year with the excellent Matilda lit blog website (http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/matilda/). It's chock full of good things (despite having me visit occasionally)

March 04, 2008

Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot: Kirsty Brooks

1. Your books have been described as "Romantic comedy meets noir crime". Does living in Adelaide - sometimes described as the weird crime capital of Australia - have anything to do with your choice of genres? Or is it just the quality of the wine that makes the difference?

Ah, yes. The crime weirdness. I think it's just distilled (check excellent relevant wine reference...) by population and our hysterical tabloid newspaper. I am a keen reader of interstate papers to get some perspective, but yes, if you only read The Advertiser you'd think we were the kinky crime capital of the world (very exciting in theory but not so in real life). In fact, one of the reason the publishers at Hachette (Livre - Hodder headline) were so quick to sign my first three books was because they thought I did a good job of making Adelaide "seem exciting", which is a glimpse at the other side of the opinion coin, that Adelaide is all church spires and hedges. Being a private school girl with a doctor, lawyer and school teacher in the family, I get to explore a lot of the seedy underbelly of our fine city without losing the boring beige posh sensibilities I've been brought up with... It's an interesting parallel to why I think crime fiction makes for such interesting reading - it's danger at a safe distance. So, reading about danger is exhilarating, but I get to do all the dodgy things late at night, but still (hopefully) duck home and drink good red wine until my heart stops leaping about in my chest. As someone who runs like toddler on acid and is prone to a good thumping faint, I am the very model of a crap sleuth, so I base a lot of Cassidy's misadventures on (sadly) real life.

2. What do you have planned for your next publication?

I'm writing the next in the series, The Tequila Bikini, but publication dates are up in the air at the moment. I get a lot of emails from fans asking where it is, which is very encouraging. I'm glad they have so much faith in me (and my characters). I'm a "seat of the pants" kind of writer, so I tend to paint my characters into a corner and then get hot and cold and have to go lie down when I realise I have to now try to get them out again (and without a deux ex machina or magic wand I have to do it with characters who have very little experience, or skills of any kind. It stretches my imagination at times... I'm also sketching out a YA series, and writing bits of that when I get a chance (I've just bought my first home after decades of share housing, flats, apartments and co-ops - all of which have delivered in terms of storylines - a wonderfully kitsch seventies house with room dividers and excellent drop lamps in classy gold and brown so I'm finally able to build built-in bookshelves and I can finally get a dog (or three) and chickens, to go with the eleven birds I already live with (all but two are "rescue animals" and it's only after they get home that I realise why it's possible no one wanted them... But I love them so much for being, well really badly behaved. Six are reasonably benign handicapped finches who are remarkably brilliant and resourceful, as well as five Machiavellian parrots who all think they are my sidekick and protector and spend much of the days warning me about various Holden Blimps and stray balloons in the sky, and marching about checking down drains and under doors for intruders). My time is pretty limited but I find if I don't write every day I go nuts (the stories just play out in my head until I get them down). I have what my doctor refers to as "an unquiet mind..." I'm totally sure it's a compliment.

3. Do you read much Australian crime fiction? Can you give us a few standouts that you've read recently? What do you think of the current state of the Australian crime fiction scene?

Australian crime fiction is fit right now. Totally spunky and looking great. I'm always jealous of Melbourne based writers who get to attend the excellent Sisters in Crime meetings at Leo's spaghetti bar on a regular basis. I've been invited there a few times and been refreshed and happy for months afterwards, enjoying the company of other writers and readers (although one night when I spoke with the glorious Tara Moss, I had a woman fast asleep in the seats about two feet in front of me, which was off putting until I realised if anyone can sleep in the presence of Ms. Moss, she must be really exhausted and deserve the nap - or be mashed on drugs). I love reading local crime fiction, but I must confess my faves are American - Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton mostly. I even wrote Ms. Grafton a fan letter, and got a reply. It's still in my purse, I was so excited (getting older just can't stop someone being a nerd). I am also a fan of Shane Maloney (who I travelled around Victoria with for a libraries tour, we had a great time, persuading our very patient libraries PR dude to stop at oppshops and various crap historic sites). And Peter Corris, Leigh Redhead and Tara Moss. I find I'm a fan of their work as well as the writers themselves. We are very fortunate to have such great, supportive communities like this. It's the same in SF, I've found. Genre writers are lucky to be able to have little cliques, but also be well received in the general community. (Hmm, that sounds a little like we're on the "special bus"). I probably meant to say that commercial/popular fiction embraces our genres very kindly and we're lucky for it, while still have a little niche of support too.

4. What do you think could be done to better promote Australian authors either at home or abroad (or both)?

We've had some great news stories of late, so we're lucky to have a lot of interest, both locally and abroad. I think it's always a good news story if writers are doing something different, or unusual, so I got a fair bit of publicity writing about Adelaide, although so many people said I should focus on Sydney (or Paris, London or New York) or I wouldn't get published in this genre. I figured, with all the research I was doing (i.e. Drinking in dodgy bars and strip joints, meeting strippers and trying my hand at pole dancing - I still have a scar on my leg from that. Well, from having to wear stilettos while practising anyway. It's true what they say about stiletto heels...), I would keep one thing true, which was the setting, but then I got all wish-fulfilment and put all the things I WANTED Adelaide to have in there as well, so there are bars where I think they should be (close to where I used to live in the city) and the style I liked, with familiar spots like universities and shops, and my sort of long slow bars tucked in there (a small bit of Melbourne moved to the Adelaide side streets). Oddly, much of those ideas are actually real now, so either I have the ear of the local Licensing and Alcohol Authority or I am just blessed with the many gifts of the psychic (as deeply opposed to psychiatric). Still, we have to compete on an international level, so we have to be as good, if not better than what's already out there. Publicity won't change anything other than maybe bringing some things to a publisher or reader's attention. A keen reader becomes a fan and then becomes someone who relates to you, and I've found writing is a wonderful way to learn that you're 1) not alone in your odd thoughts and 2) able to connect with other like minded people in a useful way.

5. If your fictional character could meet any fictional character who would you like it to be and why?

Oh, I think Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone could teach Cassidy Blair a thing or ten. At first glance I imagined them together at a shooting range, but actually, Cassidy would just get a lot more out of learning to be as neat and organised and responsible as Kinsey. And patience. Definitely our Cassidy could learn a little of that...

Notes:
Kirsty Brooks is the author of the Cassidy Blair series of novels, which include The Happiness Punch, The Vodka Dialogue and The Millionaire Float.
Her website can be found here.

Posted by larrikin at March 4, 2008 01:52 PM

metrosexuality

2008-10-03T20:27:00.001+09:30

Metrosexuality
Kirsty Brooks

The metrosexual male is a fascinating beast, even if only to himself. No matter what gender, it's always going to be a bonus if you're slim, trim and good-looking. Some people just need to work harder at it than others. And the focus on beauty products and fashion for the male heterosexual has become a booming market.

But no matter what gender, a bloated self-interest will always eventually be irritating, no matter how pretty the package. I've successfully cocked up relationships with macho guys, suave young hipsters, sensitive snags and nerds, but no matter their choice in style, the essential issues is that whoever you’re having a relationship with, you don’t want to fight over who gets to wear the Saba jumper. You’ve got better things to do, like take off the jumper in order to have lots of the sex.

I know some girls who think the perfect man would be a gay guy who's still wildly attracted to them. I can see their point. On paper, gay men have all the qualities; style, humour, a great sense of fun, but ultimately, those attributes are clichés. If you buy into that you also get vanity and that struggle over the jumper

The poster boys for metrosexuality, David Beckham, Mark Wahlberg, Ian Thorpe, are just three guys in the limelight where there are millions struggling with similar pressures to be successful at work while cooking like Jamie Oliver, dressing like George Clooney and making love like Hugh Hefner, but are these realistic expectations? Probably not, but then most women don’t really expect all that (with the possible exception of Posh Spice) because they know how hard it is to maintain all of that and still look shaggable.

So are today’s single girls really looking for someone who can compete with them for the space in the cabinet as well as in the bathroom? Last Saturday night, in Adelaide’s ski lodge theme club complete with reindeer horns, I spoke to a handful of women who spent their time between drinks lamenting the lack of gentlemen in their lives. There was no mention of the lack of men who know how to be gentle to their follicles. If we’re throwing around terms, how about retrosexuality?

How to be suave, cool, respectful, strong and woo the ladies? I’d put my casino chips on retrosexuality. I’d bet that if you ran a poll, there would be more women out there who’d rate good manners over good skin care. Just look at Tony Bennett.

Mark Wahlberg can only dream of such celebrity longevity and respect. So when you’re jostling with your partner for the best spot in front of the mirror, remember this, vanity never looked good on anyone.

Mortification

2008-10-03T20:20:00.003+09:30

Well, I read a wonderful, gloaming, clever book about writers - stories of things not going well about anythign really, serious writers being funny, stoic writers being self effacing, funny writers being terrified in misery.

I understood this.

When I started going to writer's festivals writers seemed to me to be lighter beings - not gods - I didn't know them, but greater than good. the very best of men and women. And who was I? I just wanted to write the stories that bugged me day and night - almost to madness sometimes, now even still. So i tried and somehow, wonderfully, succeeded, for some times, perhaps.

Who knows for how long but how long is life/ I am grateful for every day since I wished I were dead.

And this day was not one of them.

Well, not as dark anyway.

So I wrote what i would have submitted had an kind soul asked me this terrible question. We maybe/might all have one or twelve responses. this is one of mine.

I have many more, of course...

Because without them, you have not lived - and died.

Kirsty Brooks - Mortification

They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. But as my mother would retort, ‘Who’s they? If they told you to jump off a building, would you do it?’

Possibly. More so now. Because I’ve realised there isn’t enough time to turn some humiliating memories into hilarious anecdotes. Even if science gets all that nanotechnology sorted out and we get the chance to wander the earth for longer than hygienically necessary. Not nearly enough time...

I’d say there are two types of mortification. There’s the one that will transform immediately into a sheepish story at the bar, that brings forth new friends, shared horrors, admiring glances, beer as food, free love and camaraderie. And the other: a brutality of sweaty, gimpish others chained in a foul smelling puddle in the corner of your brain. Let’s haul one out for an airing, a hose down.

So which to choose? My hands twitch in sad fascination at the thought. The signing where no one turned up, not even the bloke who organised it? The reading where I learnt that the humour of sexual misconduct isn’t shared by, well, anyone? The festival where I realised at the end of the day that my dress was transparent? The panel with Tara Moss where I felt like a overweight man?

How about the book launch? Oh, yes…

At the launch of my fourth book, The Vodka Dialogue, they served cocktails from the recipe in the book, the bookshop was full, there were point-of-sale coasters and huge foam glasses with the book title on them, and I’d be coming from a photo shoot where the stylist had promised I’d look like Veronica Lake. Brave words but I believed her. It was going to be cool.

The thing of it is, however. I’m not cool. Never have been. And that afternoon, straight off the plane, I was styled into the chick from Fleetwood Mac, with 80s rock star hair, more make-up than even I wear, and an outfit that promised sexual favours for a gold coin donation. I had ten minutes to try to flatten the hair down in a taxi but when I got to the bookshop, everything was marvellous. Things were looking up. Maybe I was cool after all.

The new cool me had a few blue cocktails. Then, as I happily thanked my publisher, publicist and editor, a friend approached, exclaiming how it was great I’d lost weight but kept my ‘boobs’. How it was great I wasn’t fat any more. I had another drink. Then in my speech I apologised too long for my bad hair. Not shrewd but not a disaster, just sort of brainless. And so I had a few more drinks.

Then I started lurching about the room, engaging in conversation with strangers. Having a few more drinks. We, or possibly just I, talked about all sorts of things. Relationship breakdowns, failed books, dating, falling asleep in waffle-weave hotel robes and ending up covered with little squares, successful books, sex, incontinence, lovers, losing weight and keeping tits, wiping blue cocktails off the stock with your handbag. Everyone was my dearest friend.

And there were hours of this, we laughed, some cried, a select few danced, and then everyone started lining up in front of me. It was a bit weird until I realised they’d all bought my book and wanted it signed. Of course. I knew this. I was a professional. What I didn’t know was that a new gimp was waiting to join the brutality.

Because even before I’d drunk all the bright blue cocktails, I was incapable of retaining names. This is possibly due to years of the beer as food thing, although I (dimly) remember that my brain had to be recalled by the manufacturer even at school. I can’t trust it any longer. Socially, the problem can usually be sidestepped, however, and I force friends to introduce themselves, I call everyone by vague endearments, I stay home, writing, and try not to meet new people. Hopelessly transparent, of course, but I get by.

And here were all my new friends, kindly, with smiles of pleasure, lined up for their book to be signed, personally, to them. And one after the other, I had to grasp their book, smile dazzlingly at them, praying for a moment of clarity, a little nudge of memory. But instead the little gimp sat down, chained himself to the rest of the crew and settled in for the ride.

And so, agonisingly, I had to haltingly, apologetically, ask their name. Dozens and dozens of times. Soon I was giddy with it, and by the tenth signing also rapidly shooting through the five stages of sobriety, hitting remorse and self-loathing just as the last guests left.

As I thanked my publisher for an insightful editor, a terrific launch, a gorgeous book, I hit shame. Because there, with my big hair and my new book and my stupid ‘boobs’, I was the worst sort of arsehole. Not someone who just makes a fool of themselves, but someone who makes a fool of others.

For shame…

Three things

2008-08-07T18:33:00.003+09:30

1)It's impossibly Cruella De Ville for the Will Truman character on WILL & GRACE to be so well baked into a scrumptious man shaped snack. He is gay, (perfect, but maybe not so), but then, not so gay in real life - i.e. quanrdy/confusion/excitement. Dreadful business all over my tiny all mixed business shop specialising in snacks and GIFTABLES (Yes, it's a word, according to one of many mass market bridal salons on Payneham Road - one of the ones that make me laugh - the joy of weirdness never leaves me.)
2) Driving a 4WD makes you feel like you're at monster trucks. It is far too excellent for real life. My mum leant me her 4Wd so I could pick up an aviary and a couple birds who needed a home and I can't give it back. i've used it to move rocks, churn up grass, intimidate people who seem nice. It's like I'm Queen of the Road. I will have to give it back. It hurts to be just one of the people being intimidated by silly big monster trucks on the road again. I want my own truck. But I don/t. what do I want? Maybe not to have ever known the power and not to have driven into a Highbury Park'N'Shop and yelled 'Run, save yourselves tiny minions!'.
no wonder those Malvern/Burnside oldies are such bad drivers. I've always wondered what the crash rate is at the Burnside Village (i.e. inside mall with no lighting - Crappy suburban mall crammed with chain stores anyone?). village... I've never known a village to have so many shops selling outsized lady/man shirts with 'fancy' collars and cheese.
3) Well, maybe on the cheese issue I'm wrong.

Reading, writing and finding you.

2008-07-31T17:37:00.004+09:30

Hello!
I have fingers sticky with glue because I've been putting buttons (I am a nerdy button collector) around my many pin-boards (I pin up ideas, images, character features, clothes ideas - for characters - story ideas, pictures of a dog who looks like Hound, a parrot who looks like Jock, nightclubs, all the stuff I rip and stick and have been doing since I was a teenager - there are four boxes in my shed filled with these ideas and images for future stories, characters, settings, scenes, etc - but despite sticky fingers, I wanted to post what has occurred to me in my thought times of the day (i.e in the bath/shower)
1) Everyone who responds to my blogs emails me directly. I don't know why, but I think I have shy readers. Anyway, thank you. I'm not making this up. It's a curiosity shop in my head.
2) I have been overwhelmed (actually not that hard to overwhelm me, as I'm so often underwhelmed by people, but still true) by people subscribing to my mailing list for the Cassidy Blair books and sending me nice emails about them. My last book was published over a year ago, and there's been very little publicity compared to the others, and yet suddenly, all these lovely people have let me know that they like Cassidy Blair, that they think her (mis)adventures are great, that they can relate to her and her friends and adventures and that despite now having to often order the books specially through their bookshops (my current favourite bookstore is Matilda's in Stirling. They have WONDERFUL stock - although not many of mine, which doesn't actually undermine previous praise), or on the internet, they tell me with many exclamation marks and smiley faces that they will still do so. I am so happy. You are nice people.
30 i dont know why I am so interested in my local bottle recycling place. I like taking my bottle s and cans there and getting my (spookily always between $8 -9) but I have realised some of it is because there are people there who take their ten cans there to get money to buy food. Also, there are huge containers full of empty bottle and cans and they look amazing. and the fellows there are so cheery even though they have a bit of a tricky job, going through bottles and cans all day, especially at the moment when it is so $%&*! cold here. I guess, however, that like New York (my comparison), it is nicer in winter than in summer. and smells nicer (still NY).
Does anyone know why only South australia pays 5 cents for their recycling cans. it keeps hte streets clean and poor people get money. It is wise.
Listening to: 'Lullaby for Cain' sung by Sinead O'Connor and my canaries. They are amazing! Everyone should have birds. If I was Queen of the World...
Eating: um... leftover MarsBar slice... And Frousse (strawberry)
Thinking About: why I have had a headache for a week. Sucky. Also about watching 'The Shawshank Redemption' again. Am in that sort of mood. and that now I have to take Marshall to Dog Training as Disco Stu is totally over it. I used to really like just sitting there talking to people about dogs and eating scones with Jam and cream for $1.50 on a Sunday morning. That's all fucked now. Still, Marshall is an excellent dog. But not worth giving up scones for. Am moody.
Watching: So you think you can Dance - only it's not nearly as great as when people auditioned with their truly original dance moves. Now it's all choreographed crap. i think I'll give it a miss as am most disappointed. I fell slightly in love with the dude who said that all he had was his friends and his dancing.
Wearing: Trackies, PETA T-shirt and hoody. I can't wear jumpers or socks no matter the weather, they make me feel weird, all bundled up too tight. So yes, cold, but not bundled at least.
Reading: Animal Liberation newsletter. Yes, I can be as square about how appallingly we treat animals in our lives as Mr Strong.

Things I regret

2008-07-17T20:48:00.002+09:30

1) Family of ducks on Rundle Street in Kent Town, pover the hackney Road - where ducks try to travel so much and there are no fucking signs anywhere warning drivers. They took them all down and for so many days in season I run around stopping traffic like a dickhead, while people beep and yell, trying to get these ducklings across the road. I do it a lot but it doesn't mean I feel any better because I failed one little family and it seems they were the ones that needed saving the most.
I'm worried this year because I don't live there anymore, and in my area, there are heaps of duck warning signs and mostly people drive pretty slowly anyway, because there are road-abouts.
anyway, I'm rambling. this is the story:
Because these guys were trying to cross the road, got distracted by traffic, sent down behind old houses in kent Town, i followed them, trying to guide them to the road where I'd hold back the traffic, the but noise must have been to bad and they got stuck in someone's back yard. i wish i'd done more, and known how to get them out, how to get her to the river, how to know who to call, how to get them to safety and to stop people in their pointless drives to get this duck to the river where she could look after her ducklings. The were so vulnerable, and she was too - she could fly to safety but she wouldn't leave her ducklings. and I couldn't help them. I'm learning a lot now about animals and animals rescue but it won't make up for not being able t help them. I can only hope that there was someone else that day who could do something more than I could. A hell of a lot more. I sucked that day and I can't go down that road without thinking of those ducklings and their mother's panic. As my post office was right there - the reason I saw them in the first place - I thought of them every day for three years. It made me really really sad.
2) My dear friends borrowed this incredible beach house at Wallaroo - it was right by the beach - PON the beach. the water would rush up against the concrete walls covered in shells and rocks - huge albatross like seagulls stormed about like bouncers. I loved it. We slept in camp beds and held hands across the space. We ate toast and read books and my friend and I lay about in pools of water created by sand and the drift of ocean while her boyfriend practised karate in the sand nearby. then a fishing boat pulled up on the beach and they showed us what they'd caught - a cat fish.
The saddest animals I've ever seen. Huge wise, sad, eyes. I looked at him and he looked back - no judgement, just sadness for me, for us. How crappy we were.
I wish I'd offered the fisherman some money to put the fish back in the ocean. I wish I'd just offered him money - pretended we'd kill it, and then snuck around and let it go, but I was frozen in misery. I let him down. I was crap.
I'll never forget that animal's eyes, so sad for us, for me. Pity, as he went off to be dragged in an old sack and stared at and mocked and teased. Pity for us.
And we deserved it.
I kept a photo from a magazine (I have four crates of cutting from magazines and newspapers of animals and things I might write about one day) and when I find it l'll post it here and you'll see what I mean, maybe. I hope so.

When the dark cloud sweeps over, this is what I think about. This stuff. I have loads of regrets, but these are the ones that stick to my ribs. This and a thousand others.
It's terrible to be alive. It's a joy to be alive.
Listening to: The utterly glorious silence of a Thursday night not living next to a pub
Thinking about: What the next chapter in my book will do to Cassidy.
Watching: My dog trying to unravel my Machiavellian knot of clothes tied over a liver treat bar he loves - he's going crazy trying to get to it. Excellent crazy, he's such a great dog.
Wearing: Chewed shoes
Reading: Last weekend's Sunday Age

Highbury rocks my tiny world

2008-07-17T18:18:00.004+09:30

I moved from a lifetime of inner city living, sharehousing in eatern suburbs bungalows and semi snazzy Norwood apartments. I became thoroughly sick of all the fake crap that comes with these neighbourhoods. I got sick of people dressing up like hookers for their grocery shopping, of all the crap shops selling crap fake Louis Vuitton bags, all the crappy cafes that make you stand at the cash registers to order each part of your (crappy) meal, and all the concrete, and lack of sense of neighborhood. No one says hello on the streets, or the parks, despite me always saying hello - yes it's nerdy but it's nice too, OKAY! - and they don't even have headphones stuck in their ears. I know it's not me being a weirdo because in Highbury, everyone says hello, or at least gives me a George Clooney style manly nod.
Although my neighbours at my last place in Norwood were terrific, the wankers streaming constantly out of the Alma pub were so appalling it almost put me off the human race forever. Not being all that enamored with them in the first place, this wasn't hard, so I frantically looked for somewhere else to go before I grew too grumpy to write screw ball romantic comedies any more.
So I moved to Highbury, a 60s style ranch house. There are loads of reasons I love Highbury, I will list them all one day, but so far, here are a few:
1) Kids ride BMX bikes and hang out on the corner, and although they offer to carry your shopping and say hello, they also graffitit and seem to be skipping school. They are immediately my type of dudes. They think I'm an old lady who needs her shopping carried, but still, I feel at home.
2) My local post office doesn't make me wait hours to get my mail. In fact, they see my coming and have it ready on the counter.
3) The local 7 day deli has a notice board with lots of hot offers for accommodation, lost parrots, things for sale, and dog groomers. It also has a chinese restaurant next door that has milk crates for chairs, broken table and two dead cars out back. See attached pic.
4) I've never lived somewhere with so many hair salons and dog groomers. considering The Norwood Parade had a hair salon every second store, this is huge.
5) Linear park is amazing, a constant rejuvinating place full of ducks and finches and three types of herons and lots of people walking their dogs and saying hello or nodding manfully. Okay, so I used to be able to go to Linear Park through St Peters before, but so far i've not had anyone flash me, try to steal my bag, or ask me out on a date (in the bushes close by) like I did in St Peters.
6) People give way to me in shops. Sure, they tail gate like MF's in cars, but in person, they are seriously polite dudes. They open doors, say things like 'ladies first' and smile (and not just at my boobs).
7) People don't stare at me if I go to the shops in my pyjamas or tracksuit pants. In fact the latter is just normal in Highbury. If I did this in Norwood I'd run into three of my mums' friends and six girls I went to school/uni with and my mum would have called me by the afternoon in an outrage about my ''performance'. So I don't get so tense just trying to do the shopping and people don't stare at me if I talk to myself. They are polite about other people's differences. It's nice.
8) I saw a guy with a stocking over his head in the car next to me. He looked jumpy. And it wasn't even a Chaser style prank. I was very excited. and I didn't give chase because in Highbury we're polite about other people's differences.
Listening to: My conscience
Eating: most of the ingredients I bought to make slice for my niece's birthday party.
Thinking about: having some Quickeze
Watching: Twin Peaks
Wearing: Anything warm - tons of things piled on me like a mountain goat.
Reading: Danny Wallace and the centre of the universe - does this guy wax between this eyebrows or what?

Kirsty's inappropriate top tip # 2

2008-06-25T10:57:00.006+09:30

Treat others as you wish to be treated, and treat those you love better than guests - explained below!
1) Why do people get all frocked up for strangers, or I guess, friends, but when they're home, with people they (hopefully) adore, they go scruff, wipe off the makeup, slip on the dreadful slippers, let their arse hang out? I know it's comfortable, and fun too, and perfect when feeling poorly, or cold. but treat your loved ones as well as you'd (curiously) treat your guests. Dress up for them too, and not just when you're going out. Of course people love you for who you are, but treat them too. It's another of life's pleasures to make someone you love smile, or tell you they adore you. In or out of trackies.

I do get teased frequently by friends for wearing skirts all the time but I just have a lot of skirts. And I like them. I like retro clothes, I like the 50s, 60s, and thus, skirts. Okay, so i have work skirts, digging holes skirts, party skirts, see through skirts, too small skirts. Huge balloon skirts ballet skirts, tennis skirts, mermaid skirts.. I like 'em.

However, oddly, I am a tomboy inside (Example: I spend yesterday smashing down three outbuildings with my dad so I could use the material to build my new chook shed) but I don't own shorts and hopefully never will. I wore my scruffiest skirt and T-shirt instead. And my black walking shoes with the tongues ripped out by my lovely dog.) and mostly I like dressing up. Not necessarily in fancy gear, but just in, like costumes. Not to be a cowboy, or a waitress necesarily, although I do that at times too, but in differnt ways, to be different people. I sometimes even do this while I'm writing, to get into the story.

Yeah, I know, - nutter.

But I hate shopping (anywhere except opp-shops - I love the discovery, and the treasure aspect of oppshops, but retail, I'm bored of it - So I took ages trying to find something to wear yesterday that wasn't a party dress - not because I don't have track pants, but because the ones I have are all still in storage, waiting for our bookshelves to be put up, and so then I can unpack the 40 boxes of books, and hopefully somewhere under there will also be thre boxes of winter clothes, and my scrubs).

Okay, yes, I know I have odd ideas, however, I see a strange link between how people scruff up around the house, take off their fancy duds and get into yesterday's smelly track suit, and how quite a few people I know only live in two rooms of their house. the rest of it is all laid out for visitors, all clean and sparkling and with guest towels and soaps you can't use (they get dusted, i know) . I think this is totally weird. the opposite of style. why give guests, people you obviously think you should impress, the very best of you? It doesn't make sense.

I guess it's when people care more about how others think of them, than how they think of themselves?

Again I can talk with (some) authority on this because I've done it myself - thought I was lower than sludge on a bottom feeders gut, but also, the other - saving beautiful things for special, kept nice shower gels for special occasions, but one day I realised TODAY was the special occasion.

After all the weird shit i've done, I think I'm sometimes lucky to be alive (in fact we're all lucky to be alive) or not in jail (yeah, well, another story) so why not celebrate today.

I think we're all worried about the future, other people's ideas of us, thinking we need to save for a rainy day. Well, I'm looking outside (I have huge windows in every room of this sixties place, which I love. Also open plan Ranch style house, so there's no special room for guests because, well, each room is special, mostly because it's got birds, or books, or my dog in there (oh, no cancel that last bit, he still thinks he's a lap dog and is trying to climb up on my lap.

Marshall (pictured here with Amber, my mum's Labradoodle)
spends his days looking for the best bit of sun in the house, or leaning against me, or trying to drag my stuff out of my office, or staring in deep love at Harper, by green budgie who talks a LOT. I know it's love because Harper flew out the other day and Marshall got close enough to eat him, and snuffled him instead).

Anyway, I digress. My hope is that people will try to overcome the urge to save the very best of themselves, and their houses, their things, their lives, for guests (ie.e strangers, or not particularly good friends if they need to be so impressed by you, they don't know you too well) and give it all to those you love, those you spend your days with, those who, if you lost them, you'd be a wreck without. Because that crap does happen and you'll always regret not dancing around in your best undies for your boyfriend when you were saving them for some special occasion that never arrived, so please, dance in your undies. it's good for your health. You can even leave the curtains open if you live in a decent street ( a little Air Supply, Guns and Roses or Destiny's Child is good enough for me, but then I have truly crap taste in music).

And that shower gel, if it's one of my favourites ('Rock Star' soap from LUSH, 'Summer Hill' from Crabtree & Evelyn) use the damn stuff now! It shouldn't be wasted, it's against the law, or something.

Be happy now, today, this minute, if you can. If there's something you have, that will make you happy, otr those around you happy, do it now! Imagine if you missed the chance? and imagine if you used that crappy old piece of Imperial Leather (If IL is a posh soap, the International Roast is a fancy European blend coffee).

You might notice I'm a big fan of nice smells (and ranting in the mornings).

2)Boys of a certain age, and lifestyle, seem to forget that pyjamas are clothes. In fact they're clothes you sweat and snuffle in for (hopefully) about eight hours. They need to be washed. After each use. Like you do your clothes. Seriously.

And bed sheets, after four/five days. I swear. GIrls like nice smells too. If you're not getting laid, this might be the reason, and if a girl is anywhere near your sheets and pyjamas or whatever you use as pyjamas) then you might be in - once. Make it twice and make sure the sheets are clean - crisp (yes, the thread count is important, those thick delicious sheets in excellent hotels can be bought for your own home, do it. those see-through softies you're still using aren't going to do much for your own happiness, or your sex life.

True, happiness is not what you buy, but what you do to make yourself happy. But n this case, what you buy can make you a happier person, because you're treating yourself and doing the equivalent of not saving the nice soaps of your guest next year...

I really think you will sleep better (unless you are an insomniac, in which case, you'll lie there starting at the ceiling in excellent sheets) and you'll feel better and you'll be nice to people because you're feeling good and you get the drift. - Hell, I should have just bought Oscar the Grouch some decent 1000 thread count sheets.

Another odd thing. I just realised the three lots of people I'm thinking about who do save all their nice, special, fancy, pretty things for guests - don't actually have many guests at all. Possibly the pressure is to great, for all of them. What a damn waste of space - in the house, - and of fun and nice smells and looking great. Makes me mad!

Listening to:'You Look Nice Today' podcasts
Eating: More apple pie. it's excellent.
Thinking about: What to wear to fancy dinner tonight.
Watching: The honey-eater (bird) outside dive-bombing my freaky looking Gravilea bush flowers - and thus I am missing my Charlie, (also a honey eater for those in he know) who used to sleep on the frame of my glasses while I was wearing them
Wearing: Flats, blue cardigan, fishnets, skirt with muddy dog prints on it.
Reading: 'A Complete Encyclopedia of Chickens' which contains the sentence: 'Apart from a fifth toe, the Faverolles has the color salmon as its special feature.'

I think my special feature is thinking about stuff too much. but then, that's what made me become a writer, it all got too busy in there and writing it all down gave my brain room to think again.

eyebrow disaster

2008-06-23T09:41:00.006+09:30

Bonjour.
This is a picture of me and my dear pal, Jo, at the Apothecary in Hindley Street. Truly an excellent Adelaide spot to go for virtually anything. They do a great afternoon tea. And vodka tonic. it has nothing to do with this blog, really, she just sent it to me last week and I figured it deserved a spot. Actually, I can justify it by saying I set a scene in my latest book, THE LADY SPLASH there, so it's sort of earned it's place in this blog, and in my heart. Wonderful cosy Parisian style spot (although having never been to Paris this is merely a guess).
So I over-waxed my eyebrows (again) and somehow my leftie is now two thin rows of white hairs. I guess I could pretend I have a scar - all bad guys with a heart of gold have an eyebrow scar. Only I'm not a guy, although I can be bad, but not in a cool way, and the heart of gold thing just got to heavy to lug around.

Hence - grumpiness.

I'm been thinking about my last little rant about bad breath, friendship, people who tell you the truth. I try to tell the truth, but I realised the other day I tell lies ALL THE TIME. Yes, not just in my work life - writing fiction a while bunch of lies, obviously - but just to explain things, make things go smoother, make life simpler, or just easier for those around me. I've been editing my life since an early age so i wouldn't get into quite so much trouble when I was 12 but it's sort of stuck. But I have a couple of people who tell me the truth, sometimes quite painfully.

Mu mum is a good one for that. she's excellent at hurting my feelings and me, hers, but also she's taught me a hell of a lot of things I needed to know. Table manners for one thing. A lot of people I see have crap table manners. I'm not talking knowing your fish fork, but just not scraping your cutlery together like fingernails on a chalk board. Not licking your knife. Not shovelling your food in, This might sound like a weird conversation coming from someone who prefers to eat sandwiches and/or ice-cream for most meals, usually over the sink to save mess/washing up.

But I do go to a lot of fancy dinners and things, both for work and pleasure, and I notice this shit. I'm nosy and it drives me mad that I can't ask people really impertinient questions as to why parents didn't teach kids not to lick the knife. I'm still learning my manners of course. I am pretty bad at things, but I'm keen to learn. I just learned recently the whole 'leave your serviette on the chair' thing when you go to the loo. didn't know that one. Or that ladies should face the restaurant.

There's a lot to be said for politeness, but if you are so polite you won't tell your kids, or friends, when they're doing something that might really make them look foolish in front of others, when then I think you're doing them a disservice.
So some people, familes, friends, don't tell someone when they have bad breath, or bad table manners, or a big witchy poo hair growing out of their chin, or say the word superfluous as if it was like Superman, not one running on word that emphasises the 'fluous' buit. I used to say it like Superman and my pal Gavin told me off, and I've not forgotten it. He's excellent for that sort of thing because he's great with words and conversation in general. you should go to his bookshop - that he runs with his wife Jo, called Matilda's in Stirling, Adelaide Hills. Go now.

But I know that there's been a lot of crap press since Shakespeare wrote about shooting the messenger, but there are ways of telling people things in a nice way, making it not so much a joke, but including your own mistakes in there too, so that it's clear you don't think you're superior to them for knowing how to pronounce nonchalent' (i used to think it was NotCHAlent'. My pal from school, Louise, taught me that one...)

So the humiliations never end, but it's SO much better to have those moments with people you know and trust, than with a stranger, work colleague, potential hot date, your boss, etc.

Be a good friend, sister, mother, colleague, and tell someone, sweetly, subtely, kindly, with a little anecdote of when you last embarrassed yourself, if they turn up to work with loo paper stuck to their shoes/or trousers., or have curry breath, or just mispronounced the company name, or just didn't know lifting your bowl of soup to your mouth to get the last bit out is just a bit crap.

Be a good friends, and hopefully they'll help you out the next time. And I swear, if I have a bleeding zit on my chin , or my scarf got caught in my undies, please do tell me (don't shout it across the room, just just whisper it with a smile). I really will love you for it eventually (after the instinctive knee-jerk humilation reaction).

kb Gloomy monday but feeling cheery.
Listening to: Classic FM - I played it one day when feeling blue and my birds love it so much they sing all day to it. I turn it off - they stop. It's kind of weird and annoying, but nice if i want to learn more about the violin - which I don't.

However, I really love the interviews with Margaret Throsby (there was an excellent interview with her daughter in the weekend paper) where you get to choose the music. Last week Shaun Tan was on, and I was so jealous. he's a genius but I'd love to be able to choose the music one day.
Thinking about: How crap it is that people still think it's okay to litter.
Eating: Left over apple pie
Watching: 21 Jump Street on DVD
Wearing: jumper and socks. My wooly warms are still in storage - and until my bookcase get put in, they'll stay there. I kind of dread unpacking forty boxes of books, but at least I'll have my books back, and something warm to wear on my white white legs.
Reading: The weekend papers (i.e interstate ones...) Especially The Sunday Age - truly wonderful. I still find it extraordinary that people still read the Sunday Mail here in Adelaide. There;s just nothing in it, except some local model in scanties pretending to be a news story.

Hey, there's a p.s here. I was driving home the other night and the guy in the car next to me had a stocking over his head. Was that a Chaser style prank or a dude on his way to a burglary? I followed him for a while but I was busting for the loo and never got close enough to take down his licence plates. What would you have done?

Kirsty's Inappropriate Top Tip # 1

2008-06-20T09:38:00.005+09:30

Things that bug me:

1) People with not all that much going on use emotional blackmail: people without anything much at all in their lives seem to spend much of their time making other people feel bad form not spending enough time with them. Maybe they have shit relationships, unhappy work, whatever, but please don't make your friends pay the price, or you'll have even less going on because they're going to dump you too one day. Trust me.

I KNOW this shit backwards because I have been this person many many times in my life. But I've also been o the other side. I'm there now, so I'm feeling annoyed. When I'm lonely or bored or friendless (happens more and more often since I've started talking about rubbish like this), then I'll feel guilty and sad about spilling the beans, but at the moment I'm noticing friends have had kids and are working more and loving life more and are busy with family, friends, houses, money, activities, etc and are spending time in two hourly pockets.

I REALLY like this. It's efficient friend time, you see, kiss, chat, laugh, share, gossip, piss off. You can chat again tomorrow, or next week, or email, it's not superficial time, it's good friendship time where you don't need to start from the very begining because you guys all know eachother. It's great! It's also very priviliged because not all that many people get to have long term friendships, but that's also the point. you're going to lose them if you tug on them too hard.

I've noticed this more because since buyign a house, I have people over. I used to go see people out at places, but my new dog is far too excited by other dogs, and the world, to be let out there too often, so I've started 'entertaining'. Okay so I'm not cooking anything, but there's a new rules going on. I can't just get up and leave my own house when I'm twitchy and need to go write, work, see someone else, snooze, have a shag. It's... well it's almost rude, I guess. the onus is now on someone else to call it quits and it's freaking me out a little.

Okay, so I know a FEW people, some of them friends, some of them family, who don't have much going on, and they NEVER know when to leave. You can stop serving, pack up around them, run a bath, turn down the lights, they're still asking for another drink/coffee, chat. They follow you into bed, and they don't even want to have the sex. It's just they don't have anywhere much else to go.

I know I'm a mean old sulk to say this, but I am too rude to put up with it, so please don't make me push you out the door and lock it behind you.

2) People who should know better who have bad breath. There's really no excuse these days. If you don't have someone who is close enough, or honest enough, to tell you every word you utter peels another layer of skin from their face, then you should just ask a stranger. Be bold.

3) It's way too cold in the mornings right now. Rug up. Scarves are sexy (unless they're ugly ones)

Birds, words and turds

2008-01-28T10:41:00.000+10:30

More fury, less love
I hate cliche's. Not just phrases overused in fiction (anyone unfortunate enough to have been edited by me will know this already - it's tired language and you lose your reader - and the spark of the narrative, as soon as you stop searching for great new words and phrases, and start regurgitating old crap).
But even more than cliche's are phrases that have either 1) lost their meaning through overuse or 2) make you want to strike the speaker just because they uttered it.
I have been recording the phrases I hate the most, including things grabbed from the media, used, and spat out again (usually months/years after they stopped being funny/relevant). I have tried to make a list of them, but I started a bad habit of writng things down on perfume sample cards and torn off jokes from my desk diary and now I am in a snow storm of paper, with notes like 'Renew membership' (to what? The ASA, The Croissant Society, who?) and 'Daniel Radcliffe is a kissable tiny man' (When did this start? Isn't he twelve?). So I have a bunch of them, but these are the ones I remember so far.

'24/7' - i.e. 'I'm working/wanking/practising twentyfourseven...'
'At the end of the day...'
'Talk to the hand'
'As you do'
'Don't even go there'
'It's all good'
'Thinking outside the box/square' - said by people who believe they're much more interesting than they are.
'Hot/cold enough for you?'

More love, less fury
To even up the fury of the post, I'll soften the vibe with a picture of the six handicapped finches I've been caring for. I bought them all for $1 because no one wants handicapped birds for breeding and as Barney was stuck on the bottom of the litlte cage they were in, he was covered in bird poo. The first couple days I had them I washed him every day and held him in the (often lifesaving) heater in the bathroom upstairs and he now looks great)
They all have bits missing/broken but they're remarkably resilient birds. Barney has two broken wings, so has the toughest time, because he pitches forward into things - the floor, the water bowl, the seed dish - and has nearly drowned a couple times. Also gets stuck upside down on his back like a turtle, and without wings, can't right himself.
I've obviously put heaps of stuff in their big cage (the all lovee flying about - except Barney of course) but he hates being left, so I've figured out a couple ways for them to be able to fly about but for him to stay high up - birds love being as high up as possible - and not left out.
I noticed when I didn't do this the birds didn't fly much and instead stuck around Barney protectively, which I thought was a bit unfair - although lovely, so I have made a big flying area and some ladders padded with grippable material so he can hop slowly up. I hold him and go through the ascent a couple times a day and he's getting into it. I think he just gets frustrated if he relaxes on a thin bit, because he topples over.
Birds have hollow bones easily broken, so I've tried to pad as much as possible, but also don't want him to suffocate in it, so I think everything has a certain compromise. He is slowly getting the idea of climbing/hopping up the ladders himself, but I dash into their room (Stuart's study) all the time to check on them, and sit doing work near them when I can). The flightless budgies are in my office, but I couldn't bring the finches in because 1) the cage is big and 2) they are noisy at various times of the day and kind of distracting.
I tried three different cages we already had before buying this excellent one on wheels and lots of upper story doors because the bars on the others were to wide and they squeezed through, and also access was through one big door which also enabled them to escape. I spent a lot of the first couple weeks running around the house with my butterfly net, Houdini and Zeke love flying around so on days I'm home I sometimes just let them out to do this. They fly back in when they get hungry.
How to tell who's who
Barney - larger, broken wings, missing toe
Huxtable - pale, mutated beak, one leg
The Dude - pale with one foot
Zeke - Zebra finch with half a leg only
Polly - pure white, missing foot, sits with Barney a lot
Houdini - escapes the most - has one crazy feather sticking out his back. One leg

My promo video for the Cassidy Series.

2007-11-29T18:34:00.000+10:30

Determination, willpower...and loving what you do

2007-09-08T11:31:00.001+09:30

The key ingredients for publishing success

This article was first published in the South Australian Writers' Centre newsletter in 2001 and was written in response to writers complaining (as they do regularly) about publishing success statisticss One of the issues discussed is why the publishing industry has to be selective about what they publish (and why I agree).

I know how crap it is getting rejected, I have a pile of rejection letters and still receive them, as well as long, comprehensive and frigheningly rigorous (and accurate), reports on my novels for publication by both my publishers.

I wrote a couple of novel manuscripts before I had figured out exactly what I wanted to write (and what I was okay at writing) and if any of those manuscripts say the sharp sting of daylight I'd be sobbing myself clean with humiliation (not a rare expereince in this industry but still, good to reduce the numbers if I can).

I see over a hundred manuscripts a year through Driftwood and the various mentoring and editing jobs I do, not including the work I see through TAFE and ARTS SA and only a couple would be at a stage where the work can be developed into a publishable manuscript in a short time. Most manuscripts I see require lengthy rewriting based on reports designed to direct the author's eye and to assist them to be as objective as possible about their own work (and how it stands up against other, similar books in the marketplace). Many are in need of a great deal more work than this, (The ones who want it badly enough generally succeed).

It never gets easier, but it's always a great job.

Love what you do and you'll find it a whole hell of a lot easier to be good at it...

So...

Obviously there are no rules to getting published, or writing a best-seller, but I have found one of the greatest ways of improving my work, and understanding the industry I have chosen, is to research. Just as it would with any other industry, your work will always improve by exposure to the people who know the industry best and the work that succeeds within it (NB This means you can read a lot, one of the best perks of the job). The SAWC have a huge amount of material and activities, the content of which really changed the course of my career.

Only about 5% of the membership attend the fantastic seminars held every year featuring top agents, authors and editors. Anyone who wants to see their work in print should take the opportunity to listen to discussions about the publishing industry as often as possible. It was a revelation to me to hear sales reps talk about books as products and realise that agents read through hundreds of manuscripts a year, looking for a best-seller.

Every magazine like Australian Bookseller and Publisher and Good Reading helps you understand what is competing against your work. Every visit to the bookshop should involve finding the exact spot where your book should be on the shelves, and then finding out what else is there, and then reading those books. Who is publishing them? When were the authors signed? Who represents those authors? How long are the books and how many characters do they involve? Find out whatever is relevant to you and use it.

It is a very competitive industry, as much so for the editors as the authors. Editors want to publish your work as much as you do, as long as they are confident it will be an great read for at least a couple of thousand others – hopefully tens of thousands. At the Adelaide Writers' Week in 2000, Gary Fisketjon, at Knopf, said, 'Sales reps and editors and authors and publishers all want the same thing - good books that sell'.

But it seems he's wrong. They don't have to be good; they have to be great. Editors want an author they can keep publishing and I think it's easier to do that by making sure you know what they want. It is often not your first or even second manuscript that will be published, and during this process you will hopefully be finding out why they are not selling and what you can do to change it. There are many ways to do this. As agent and publisher, Derek Johns, said, 'I think you'll find this (producing a publishable manuscript) is much more of a process than a war.'

When a member of the panel audience at Writers Week said, 'In an ideal world all books would be published,' Johns replied that that it sounded like his idea of hell. This only emphasised the distance that exists between emerging writers and the industry, but it's up to each writer to close it for him or herself.

Knowledge breeds confidence and I really recommend this sort of research to anyone unsure of where to go next with their work. Sit down for a day in the SAWC, as I did, and read all the interstate Writers' Centre newsletters, and all the writing related magazines and journals. Getting a feel for what is going on around Australia helped me understand what was out there and what I could do to improve my writing. It really did work.

Jane Palfreyman, from Random House, once said that, 'trying to predict the next big thing is hard and there is no point in copying the successes of other books. Always try to do something for the first time. The punt is not on the book, but on whether the book will reach the appropriate market.' Cate Paterson, from PanMacMillan, agreed, telling me that 'if we knew what was going to make a Harry Potter we’d just bottle it…There is a huge degree of luck involved in publishing, some indefinable thing'.

I think sometimes you can make your own luck, and the best ingredients are probably determination, and willpower. Oh, and you have to love it more than almost anything else. I really believe it's the difficult things in life that are worth doing, and it seems to me that the more I understood the industry, the less difficult it appeared.

Listening to:A freakish bird song/ambient CD that has my parrots in thrall (listening to the soundtrack ot The Talented Mr. Ripley on my headphones)
Eating: Porridge. I'm both lazy and undernourished...
Thinking about: All the mother ducks trying to get their ducklings across Adelaide roads. Please drive slowly or help them out by getting out to guide traffic (it's not so much embarrassing as really cool)
Watching: The local news like it's porn. Chas got arrested again... Oh, and Chris Lilley on 'Summer Heights High'. We are very lucky to have him on our TVs (Wednesdays is the only night there's anything good on and of course, everything's on that one damn night...)
Wearing: A huge vintage fake diamond bracelet that I F#%?*g can't get off without smashing and therfore I've been going to the Post Office and pub like I think I'm Ivana Trump.
Reading: 'Guide to a Well-Behaved Parrot' by Mattie Sue Athan ( I'm starting to think, however, that Ms. Athan is a little too big for her britches because when I picked it up yesterday to read I noticed the cover and first couple pages have been half eaten off by one of my parrots)

Dogs!

2007-08-24T09:25:00.000+09:30

I am sad today because my parent's dog, Jem, has been diagnosed with T-cell Lymphoma. She is such a good dog. I feel like everyone is sick these days. Here she is at the million paws walk with my excellent niece, Sophie. I still miss Charlie every day...

However... I can't wait to live in a place with a garden. When I drop stuff of at the animal welfare league (dog food and blankets) I always have to drop and run, in case I catch sight of a dog. I wanted to volunteer there, but pretty much everyone I knew said it would be a dreadful decision as I would not be able to return any of therm. Here are some pics of dogs I have found - one chocolate puppy at my friend, Nick Linke's, party. The dude who brought this dog was very popular especialy with the laydees.
This great dog I found on the road across from my place. She was goign crazy, locked out of an apartment. I eventually sat with her so long she climbed on my lap and I took her home when I realised no one was coming home. I took her to the river where she had a swim and ate the dog treats i bought and chased the ducks and then I took her up to my mum's place in stirling to give her a bath (the Torrens is a bit stinky) and I ended up having to buy her a collar and leash because I couldn't carry her everywhere - it felt like I was trying to be Paris Hilton - and I made loads of friends too. Everyone loved this dog. I draw the conclusion that if you're lonely or not getting laid, having a dog would be a step in the right direction. And brillaint for a good sendse of well bring. Goto the Animal Welfare League, there are loads of great animals there who need homes urgently.
Anyway, I put my pillow down to read and she jumped right onto it, so I figured she was a pretty spoiled dog. When I finally returned the dog when I saw the owner arrive home, he said she was sixteen. She is a great, very lively and funny dog. She sat on my alp the whole time in the car. I felt sad leaving her.
I think it's the main reason I put Hellhound in my books, she's such a great dog I wish she was real.

Excellent days ahead

2007-08-09T13:57:00.000+09:30

Hi, Just a quick, and very sincere thank you to everyone who rang and wrote to me about Charlie's death. I really appreciated it. Turns out I have some wonderful friends, fans and family.

I've been having a great time researching for 'The Tequila Bikini' my next book in the Cassidy Blair series (overdue...). I've been feeling a lot better (I get hit, fairly rapidly, with a nice selection of migraines, panic attacks and depression, on a semi regular basis, so it's a real pisser, but so far, things are okay, and after feeling like death, anything else feels like heaven), so I'm smiling a lot these days.

Writing is great fun, when I get time to do it. I have so many manuscripts coming in and out for Driftwood, we are flat out. Stuart, my partner, is home for two weeks holiday and has, like the hero of my heart, done my tax for two (also overdue) years and is currently redesigning my brochure for Driftwood. I used to try to do everything myself but when things fall apart, my priorities are always writing, and working with my writers for Driftwood, TAFE and mentoring, so boring things like tax and filing, etc, fall to the far wayside, as they have for nearly two years.

I am happy now, however, despite getting thoroughly drenched the other night scoping out a couple spots for the tenth chapter of 'The Tequila Bikini'. If anyone sees me out in the dark with my binoculars, camera and hardcase torch, I'm researching, not about to mug anyone. If I could work out a way to record things in my notepad without the paper getting wet, I'd have it made.

However, in the background of this writing are my other dear birds, Lucy is snoozing on my leg by holding onto my stockings. I have two new little budgies, called runners, - birds who never get the wings, or ability to fly) and yesterday finaly got them a decent house, made them platforms and ladders worthy of Robinson Crusoe so they can get around (they are smaller than two fingers held together and their wings are the size of thick butterfly wings (I'll include photos soon) but of course, much thicker.

They are alternately shy and keen, and they seem to love each other, they preen each other's feathers and kiss and sleep together. I called the white/blue one Jinks and the green blue on Harper (boy). So I finally have another female bird in the house (still unsure about Spencer, her/his adoration of Jones could be love, or just plain admiration, or... love. They are all very gorgeous, Lucy has taken to having a shower with one of us in the morning, fluttering her long eye lash feathers under the water. In fact they all love baths and showers. They'd be very clean birds if they just dropped the habit of destroying things in the small breaks between preening.

Anyway, I've gotta get back to this scene, and these manuscripts, but I wanted to check in with my excellent friends (most of whom are too shy to email on this blog but email me directly, which is a habit I share, and admire).

So, wish me luck with this writing, I am getting down chapters each day because it's all in my head and I'm going crazy not writing it down), and am taking loads of vitamins because I seem to be addicted to porridge.

I'm having afternoon adventures too, driving around, listening to podcasts from the ABC and stopping at thirift stores along the way. My wardrobe has increased, I'd forgotten how much I love second hand clothes. I got some great kneehigh red boots yesterday and a blue vintage coat with white fluffy cuffs. - Heaven. It's thearpy for sitting on my arse all morning getting work done and writing.

Am also scoping out areas to live, as I'm currently looking at buying a house but haven't found anything perfect yet (seventies style with big windows, sunken lounge, avairy attached to the house and an office tucked high in the trees with no phone - oh and a secretary/butler dude).

Listening to: The Shawshank Redemption soundtrack - current favourite writing CD and the Magnolia soundtrack if the birds start to sing along too much...
Eating: um... porridge and ice cream. Being an adult is a lot like being a kid
Thinking about: How far I can see in binoculars in the rain at night.
Watching: My birds. And The Chaser. Chas rocks my world
Wearing: Clothes born from yesterday (including excellent silver earrings)
Reading: A couple old Jennifer Crusie books when I need to disappear and The SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman

Charlie

2007-07-13T11:09:00.000+09:30

Just a quick email to say goodbye to my little honeyeater, Charlie. From previous posts people know I brought him up from a tiny bird and even though he lost feathers on his head in the last six months he was still as terrific as ever, and then WEdnesday night I was rewiring a standard lamp and went upstairs to check my emails and charlie cam sort of flopping onto my hand (he often sits on the lamp near my computer with the Cassidy dol a fan sent me - or on the shower rack (see pic) , and he couldn't stand up.

He threw up a few times so i didn't know if he'd eaten something weird but he very rarely ate anything I didn't hand to him directly (even if he dropped it he'd expect me to pick it up again - he seemed to thinkI was his mother and seemed never to reach bird adolescence - certainly he was always a joy, which was very different from my adolescence) ) and so I figured he was just sick inside and so I lay down with him for a while.

I tried to put him on a heat pad to keep warm but he kept flopping back to me to we sat together for ages (i know this sounds totally corney but it's what happened) I knew he was dying, he was just so tired and soft and floppy and I told him lots of stories about stuff we'd done (I know, I know, I'm a sook, and I realise he doesn't understand, but it stopped me from crying and he's always liked me burbling on to him in the past - well, he never flew away in exasperation anyway) and then Stuart came home from band practice and we made up a bed on the floor (I love floor sleeping) and we tried to stay up with him because he seemed so weak and a bit confused but eventually I'm sorry to say we fell asleep and in the morning he had died.

He didn't look like Charlie anymore. He seemed grey rather than brown, and all the well, fluff and vavoom had left him, he also seemed a bit flat (it's alright, I didn't roll on him in the night) and his eyes were tiny from having sunken back into his head) (birds have very large eyes compared to their head size and his were a bit Rodney Dangerfield because he'd lost all his head feathers, so this totally transformed his face and, I think I'm glad of that) and we buried him in the pot of flowers that were his favourite.

Then I sobbed for two days and now when I go out I have to wear humungous glasses because my eyes are red and awful looking. I've been scrubbing the whole house (much to Stu's joy) and moving stuff around trying to get rid of little Charlie things because they just make me burst into tears again. So I just keep a picture of him (and now spend my days working and writing my book and spoiling my cockatiels - and finding all the little spots Charlie seemed to have decided to sneak into to do a little poo).

I don't mean to write one of those 'Dear Diary' type of posts because that wasn't the point of having a blog but today I just had to. Sorry to all the non-bird people.

I miss you, Charlie (Jan 05 - July 07)

My birds

2007-07-01T23:16:00.000+09:30

Ah, for those of you who know me, or of me, my time is divided between work, animals, family and friends. And the animalspart seems to have taken over more than I'd planned. I've always been a campaigner for animal rights and while other kids where fighting for peace in the middle east, and donating to cancer, I have always given my (what little of it there is) cash to Animal. Liberation, RSPCA, etc. And I've been rescuing birds for a while now. There are lots of posts about this stuff, but I just wanted to post this one, because Charlie is still not growing his feathers back. He first went bald, and then his wings thinned out. He seems happy, eating a lot, riding around on my shoulder (more now than usual) sitting on or under lamps (more so again now, to keep warm) and still is able to find my favourite things to sleep on, and then lick and poop on. I don't mind but it's remarkbable how savvy he is about things that are important to me. He loves electrical things, but there are a lot of them in this house but he loves my lap top and phone the most. And recently he's taken a real shine to this Cassidy doll a fan sent to me.
Obviously she a bit too Barbie doll to be Cass for real, but I like her style. Clearly, so does my little Charlie. I've also post a picture of how he looked as a baby and one as a fully fledged honey eater and now. I take him to the bird vet almost every week and give him medicine twice a day (we hate that bit) but so far, nothing has schanged (except under those sweet feathers is now a tiny white pot belly from all the flowers I pick at my mum's place in the hills for him - that cheeky thing. Just because his face and legs are so scrawny I figured he was all Mary Kate and Ashley, but instead, he's hiding a ssecret little bit of Uncle Buck...
As I work late at night most nights, I try to take a disco nap in the afternoon and I have to put my white eye muff on to stop him cleanign each eye lash to perfection. So now he moves in, slowly (I've watched him through my slitty sneaky eye until he's under my nose (it's not that big,but big enough for a honey eater, she says nervously...) and then fluffs up and goes to sleep in the warmth of my snoring face. He tucks his head so far into the back of his wings I don't know which end is head or tail. I think my face gets the head bit.
If you ever see a honeyeater around your area (there are loads of the black and yellow New Hollands around right now) you'll know them by their 'crack crack' sort of sing song, then you're lucky, they're a delight, curious, cheerful and good hearted.

Wet Ink magazine - Interview - and Kirsty admits to crush on Chas from the Chaser

2007-07-01T11:37:00.000+09:30

Wet Ink interview - www.wetink.com.au

You’re in a position that many writers would love to be in—on your second three-book deal with one of the world’s leading publishers. You started out studying visual arts and journalism. What drew you to fiction writing, and crime fiction in particular? Have your studies added to your writing in any way?

I still have to remind myself how lucky I am. The photo above, of me at the incredible gorgeous Coorong in South Australia, is the 'white' to my 'black', which is me going out 'researching' the urban aspects of my books - as seen in the other pictures. The writing for my novels is usually done in the white place. Or that could just be my mind post 'research' in the black. Frankly, I'm pretty happy being in either spot.

I have always loved writing and reading and have rarely been happier than when I have a good book. Discovering new writers is wonderful. I think one of the reasons I wanted to write a series was because I’ve always loved reading them, from Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven to Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. I think any creative field needs a lot of discipline, love and commitment to succeed, so when I found my style and voice after years of writing, I found I spent a lot more time writing because I enjoyed it so much more. When I was studying, I couldn’t find a creative writing course, so journalism was the closest, and also promised to allow me to write professionally. The problem was, I hated current affairs and pushing myself into people’s lives. I discovered that it’s the people who don’t put themselves in the spotlight who I’m interested in. After I graduated from journalism, I studied the TAFE Advanced Diploma in Professional Writing. I already had the contract to write Hitching: Tales from the byways and superhighways with Wakefield Press, which made me feel a little more confident. I learned so much in that TAFE course but I do believe the very best training to be a writer is to read and read and read, and write as much as you can too. It’s the trial and error, the ‘bum glue’ that helps you uncover your story eventually. And if you write what you love, you’ll have a much easier time of it.

When you start each novel, do you work out every detail of the plot, or do you have a few scenes in mind and just go from there? How does the process unfold for you?

I come up with titles and a back page blurb I love before I start writing. It’s a strange way to work but it gives me guidance and goals to accomplish, although sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to get there. If the scenes and situations I want to have happen in the book are there as a blurb, they exist as inspiration as well as a guide. Then, with my stack of notes and notebooks beside me, I review where I want to go and let my imagination go a little crazy.
I love painting my characters into a corner and trying to work out how to get them out. Making things tricky, throwing curveballs at them, ensures there are no dull scenes, and if I can think of the worst thing to happen at a certain point, I try to do it (cruel I know) and then see how they cope.

Many say that the first novel is the hardest, but I imagine that writing a series has its own challenges, particularly in keeping it fresh. What are the main challenges you face when writing your next Cassidy Blair book and how do you overcome them?

I think in the first few books anyone writes, they write all the many things they’ve been thinking, dreaming, wondering about and the scenes that have played out in their minds, the people they create. Then, as the series goes on, you mine a different place of information. I have found it both harder and easier writing a series. I love meeting my favourite characters again and giving them new adventures but also delivering new aspects that have arisen from writing. This can be a trap for young players, however. There is the old cliché that the first book anyone writes is mostly autobiography and the second is about someone who is a writer, because the person writing is writing purely under the rule that you should ‘write what you know’. I think sometimes this is a useful plan, as it helps you deliver something that is convincing but it can also be hopelessly boring and pedestrian, so I mix up aspects of what I have known and experienced with things I’d like to know, and people I know with people who live purely in my imagination. My office is crammed with boxes of material I’ve collected—photos, stories, images, poems, other books, music, and all the things that inspire me to write. But I know where a book is heading and who the people are, I can write anywhere. Some of the best bits of my books have come from being in a hotel room, eating sandwiches and reading, mostly at interstate writers' festivals (see attached pic of me and Tara Moss and Jane Clifton at the Melbourne Writers Festival) not having anything else to distract me from writing. It can also go the other way and be very unstimulating, so you have to get to know yourself well, learn how to overcome your bad habits and work out ways to generate the good ones. Music is one for me. The other is re-reading what I’ve already written, getting back into that world.

Cassidy Blair is typical of a lot of modern-day heroines, in that she is a type of anti-heroine—she has bad social skills, a fierce independent streak, a fiery temper and she embarrasses herself on a regular basis—and yet she still manages to catch the bad guys and get the cute boy. What is it about characters like Cassidy that you think appeals to readers?

I’m always attracted to the flaws in people and intrigued by the sad, worried and nervous. I follow people, I eavesdrop and I try to work out what’s behind. Because a lot of people, including me, hide stuff, try to muck along with the rest of the world but really don’t feel like they fit in. Sometimes it feels natural, sometimes it’s so hard to pull off I stay home a few days, just regathering myself. This personal emotional minefield is what interests me in other people—how they hide it, if they do, if they genuinely don’t have vulnerabilities or fears, if they spend their lives covering them. To me, Cassidy is someone with some level of self-denial but she can also accept a lot of flaws in herself, and her friends love her despite and because of them. There is a very high level of understanding and compassion amongst them, even though they come from very different walks of life and have very different lives when not together. They don’t show this in a touchy feely way, they help each other when they can and there is a lot of courage and indignation if one of their own is in trouble. It’s a loosely created gang that has formed around Cassidy and they all have a sort of role to play. I used to think Cassidy’s role was simply to get into trouble but I’ve found she has developed great skills to get herself, and others, out of trouble. She doesn’t rely on her friends to save her, but it’s nice if they can help. This can also be great for action, humour and relationship development, as well as character development. While I don’t do this consciously, I find that characters reveal themselves through conflict, so as soon as things get dull, I have to mess things up a bit.

You’ve stated that you and Cassidy share a love of parrots, expensive lingerie, ‘bad’ music and Diet Pepsi. How much of yourself is in Cassidy, and how much to you draw on people you know (consciously or unconsciously) when you’re writing?

These books are a fun way to use some aspects of my life, but not many of them. I don’t live all that exciting a life; I love my birds (I now have three) and some of their behaviour does influence the relationship between Cassidy and Jock, but I love animals anyway and I know there is no room for being too sentimental in stories, well, not for me, anyway. So I use these vulnerabilities of the animals, of Cassidy’s love for them, as ways to express love, care and family in the books without doing it in a sooky or traditional family way. I wanted to explore the options available to people now; how many people have family who are really friends, have animals instead of kids, all out of choice. How interesting life can be if you just sit back and accept yourself. I know that sounds like some lame fridge magnet, but I spent a lot of years in a quandary between conforming and being myself (definitely two different things). In writing, I can be myself through these characters, and through writing them, I’m a lot more comfortable with being myself in real life too. The great response I got for these books was a surprise—that they responded to these characters and lifestyle—but also that they loved them enough to want more and to contact me. It made me realise that there are a lot of people who feel life is a little weird and that they don’t fit in and that it’s nice to read about people who are not fitting in all that well either, but who are doing pretty well and enjoying themselves anyway, having relationships and lives that suit them. I actually think there’s more of me in Neil, and some of my wish fulfilment in Cassidy. I let Cassidy do the things I can’t, she’s braver, cooler, more independent and more relaxed than I am. She’s a lot of fun to write and I hope that translates into being fun to read. But I temper the fun with things that are important to be, the way people deal with trouble in their lives, their relationships, money, work, fear, danger, friendship, all sorts of things that impact on me and the people around me. So I try to write books that entertain, are endearing and feature characters the reader enjoys discovering and who allow them to explore something about themselves, and also to connect with the reader about things in life. I think there certainly are aspects of these books that I like to write because I don’t see them being discussed in mainstream media, and when I was younger I felt quite alone, and reading gave me comfort. I hope that by exploring some of these issues I can bring something to other people. I think reading encourages empathy and compassion and there can never be too much of that in the world.

Your books are very funny. I’ve read reviews that describe them as ‘laugh out loud’ funny. Is this something you have to work on or does it come naturally?

Sometimes I study humour but humour on stage, in a sitcom, on the page, in the pub, are all very different. Some of my friends are very funny and I steal from them, but sometimes the characters stimulate the humour. If it doesn’t come naturally to the scene, then it’s just stand up. A lot of manuscripts come through Driftwood where there’s been an ‘insert joke here’ bit and the joke doesn’t back up the character or situation and isn’t consistent with how that character really feels. Humour can be a great way to reveal character and it can also really get in the way. Surprise is the best humour; writers like Sue Grafton manage to slip a tidy little joke in here and there and it’s wonderful, it relieves tension, endears the characters,and does a lot very simply. But then very little in writing, especially good writing, is simple. It can be wonderful fun, and better than pretty much anything else in my life, but there is always an aspect of difficulty and hard work, whether that’s getting up and going to work in front of the computer, or doing edits, or working through the night on overdue chapters. I’ve done all of this but it all pales in comparison to the times when it’s so great you feel high as a kite. When things are working, characters are being consistent, alive, funny, clever, and pushing my own boundaries too. Then it’s a profession I’m very proud to be involved in and is a lot more exciting than, say, seeing your book in the shops or on a poster (but I can’t underestimate the joys of those, either). Basically there’s just a lot of good stuff if you are determined to write and love it more than anything, because you really have to love it in order to put those hours into research, editing, drafting and daydreaming. The latter, of course, being the most fun.

What part of the writing process do you most enjoy? And what part do you struggle with the most? Has it gotten easier the more you write?

I love writing scenes, conversations, developing character and thinking about what’s going to happen next. I hate editing, which is why I often just do a complete rewrite. I just can’t like going over and over things. You can improve your work through redrafting, but intensive fiddling with words and sentences, redrawing and shifting about of scenes etc can just as often kill the spark that made it great. Having said that, of course, one of my favourite computer keys is the delete button. I write what I love and then cut back a lot of it. I edit as I go, which keeps my confidence up, because what I’ve written is good, and also keeps me up to the mark in tone and direction. If I edit as I go, I rarely drift off into flabby unnecessary tangents (another of my bad habits). Redrafting and editing is a very fine line to tread. I know my worst habits are playing around with characters too much (ie, having fun with them) and not getting on with the over-arcing plot. Plot can be tricky but it usually works itself out. There are times when it hasn’t, of course, and those are times I’ve found writing to be hard. When it’s all working out, the characters, the scenes and the over-arcing plot just seem to play out on the page.

You often get feedback from your readers, which must give you an amazing insight into how your characters are perceived. Does this ever colour your writing, though, and how do balance staying true to what you want to write and what the market is asking for?

Feedback is great, it’s useful, and it lets me see what’s going on on the other side of the fence. I’ve had some really happy days, meeting excited fans, seeing my books all tatty and read in libraries with a list of fifteen people waiting to read them. It sometimes helps me see what’s working, because readers who’ve taken the time to write to me are people who’ve given my books serious thought on some level. I ask readers to send me feedback so I do enjoy hearing what they have to say; otherwise it’s just me and my laptop (and the damn cockatiel sitting on my head).

You’ve talked about how much support you receive during the editing process and are helping to dispel the myth that publishers don’t put a lot of effort into editing or nurturing writers. What do you gain from the editing process?

My worst habit is not to focus on plot, but on characters, dialogue, dynamics, etc. I am best at helping writers who have the opposite problem—great plots but weak characterisation etc—so I mark where they need to build character or create a ‘hotspot’—something that defines the characters involved in the scene or exchange, and also the dynamics and relationship between them. My editors have always worked with me in building plot. The first book somehow escaped this problem, I was lucky not to have to work on that much except for a rigorous copy edit. Now my focus is so much on characters that I have had to reel myself back in and realign my focus in this next title The tequila bikini, because I can be having a ball with my characters and forgetting one of the fundamental aspects of writing, that each scene should advance the plot. So you never stop learning, and my amazing editors at Hachette have pointed me in the right direction to make sure I keep focusing on this. Editing and having a great publisher has made me a better writer, but I still read a lot of ‘How to’ books and am constantly looking at how I can improve my writing, because sometimes you can get lazy, and sometimes you can just lose the plot (ha…) and sometimes you can just get caught up in what the characters are doing and not why they’re doing it.

In the notes for THE MILLIONAIRE FLOATyou thank John Birmingham for his ‘wise words about reviewers’. Are you able to share them with us, and how have they helped you?

JB’s been a pal for a long time and he called me after I got my first nasty review. He just talked to me about how reviews don’t really effect sales, that he never reads them anymore, and that he was putting that particular reviewer on his list of people to have cruelly mutilated in one of his airport novels, so I cheered right up. He was kind enough to let me be a character in one of his books, and even though I died, it was with some grace and remorse.

With so much focus on literary writing in Australia (and the so-called death of it), genre-based authors are often called on to justify themselves, as if writing popular fiction isn’t a serious occupation. What do you say to such critics and where do you see crime/chick-lit fiction sitting in Australia?

My friends who are ‘literary fiction’ writers say the same to me, that literary fiction is dead, they can’t get on the shelves, they wish they wrote commercial/popular fiction, whereas I wish I won prizes or got to sit on the shelves of some of my favourite bookstores, but my pink covers and blatant references to undies and drugs seems to keep me in a certain part of the shop. I read very widely, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about in writing, we’re not competing. I’m very lucky to write genre fiction because I get to go to very supportive, professional and fun conferences and festivals that deal with the genres I love, such as crime fiction and romance. The Romance Writers of Australia and the Sisters in Crime have been a terrific support and a great source of professional help, information, resources and old-fashioned enthusiasm. If you write, say, chick lit, then the other chick lit writers are pals, their books sit alongside yours, and readers usually read both. I love meeting up with other writers and talking to critics. There are a lot of great reviewers out there, especially for national newspapers, who are really supportive of love writing and we’re very lucky to have them.

Can you ever see an end to the Cassidy series? What would you love to see Cassidy do that she hasn’t yet? And what do you think you’d like to write in the future?

I would be very sad if there were no more Cassidy books. Their popularity is growing but there’s a lot more to the publishing industry than die-hard fans. There has to be really impressive sales and that can take time to build. I’m currently working on plans for another series, and also a series of books for young adults. I keep writing blurbs and making plans for these books and then realise I am getting too distracted by new characters and am behind schedule on the ones I’m actually contracted to write, so I’ve had to put a lot of ideas on the backburner.

Who are the writers that you most admire and how have they inspired you?

I really loved the work of Anne Tyler and Sue Grafton. I have written to both these amazing women and they have replied with enormous grace and kindness. I have rarely been so excited as when I got these letters (Anne Tyler’s was handwritten on Baltimore-style notepaper and it just made her amazing books even more real to me). I’ve not really been keen to hear or meet writers I admire, because it’s the books that I meet them through, that intimate moment between writer and reader. But I wrote to these authors because they had such an impact on my life, not just on my writing.

Kirsty’s top five mistakes many new writers make

1) Not reading everything in your genre to see not just what you love, but also what you hate, and why for both.
2) Thinking agents and editors are against you, when really they love books, the writing and publishing industry, and genres as much as you do. Thinking they don’t buy your work out of stupidity or elitism. Editors, agents, publishers are DESPERATE for good books, and writers just need to write them to get published. There are no secrets, and if you know someone in the industry, it won’t get you published but it might get you read sooner. It’s not the author on the shelf, it’s the book. If you write a great manuscript, something that engages the reader and is new and wonderful, any good editor or agent will spot it and snap it up. It’s got nothing to do with who you are when you’re starting out.
3) Writing and rewriting the same book, rather than moving onto something new, where you can apply what you’ve learned from that manuscript on a fresh story, not just a fresh draft of the old story.
4) Not taking yourself professionally enough—not researching your genre, seeing who else writes like you and working out how they have done it so successfully. This means learning from those who are masters in their craft.
5) Reading, writing, reading and writing. I meet a lot of people who want to write who don’t like reading, and so their idea of writing is putting something out there that they think should be read, but they don’t understand the process of reading. They don’t love books, they just love their own book and what they have to say in it. It’s arrogant and doesn’t show any understanding for why the publishing industry exists; it’s for the pleasure of readers, not writers. It’s great if you’re written a book, but then you have to work out if that book is something anyone other than your mum would want to read.
6)Doing too much research, not enough writing it all down"

Thank you to " Syke Harrison who interviewed me for the March edition of Wet Ink MAGAZINE - www.wetink.com.au.
It's a highly regarded (not because I'm in it, in fact they might have lost a few readers) Australian literary magazine and I was pleased to be featured within its pages. You can learn a lot about writing - your own and others - through reading such excellent journals. Take a peek at the website to see why.

* See accompanying pictures. top and bottom of post. Truly these have been interesting times... Being a writer is fruitful. The sixteen notebooks I have beside me prove it. Now, to start writing...

Listening to: ABC podcasts, The Virgin Suicides soundtrack and Morphine 'Cure for Pain'
Eating: Um, not a lot. I had some demonic food poisoning. Friday I might have had some ice cream... sort of.
Thinking about: Chas from the Chaser. He has a great smile. No one smiles in this post 911 John Howard funeral world. There should be a billboard. 'Blokes! Smile! You might get laid". I bet it's working for that freshly baked treat, Chas.
Watching: Um... Chas? And the other blokes. They're good too, I guess...
Wearing: My 'Free Chas' T-shirt. No, actually not a whole bunch, but I am home, sick and I can promise you this is not a sexy thing. See above.
Reading: 'A Life Apart' by Chas. No, actually, I'm drowning, quite pleasantly, in five different weekend papers. I love them (except for the crappy local papers and sunday editions of anything except the Age - Oh why can't South Australia have a paper not written for kids under twelve. They already have the Angelina Ballerine colouring books after all - rants 'Furious of Norwood'), except for that bit about the Spice Girls reforming which nearly seared the contacts from my eyes. Why does that nasty little bit, Posh Space, look like the (still dead) Paula Yates stuffed with Goofballs?

How I didn't learn to be ambidextrous NB: this is a bit yuck

2007-05-14T09:48:00.000+09:30

I have learned two new hobbies 1) Bird watching - not just the four dudes at home) and 2) making tiny collages (as per picture that I made for Stuart's mum for Mothers' Day). I love doing them and while this one is all soft and pink and theme-based, others are more about nature and various things that occur to me as I go through some of these wonderful old books and trace and draw leaves and flowers for them, I find having a non-writing/reading hobby helps my deeply annoying and time-consuming anxiety/depression that comes and goes in my life (and has gone a lot more recently as I manage my life a lot better and learn to relax and find joy in small things - like writing to you, and collecting leaves - I know, but I can't help it, they're so beautiful - and playing with my small birds and caring for them and hoping to be able to rescue more animals when I finally buy a house).
So, things are pretty good right now. and my mum was accepted into the stem cell research program (sounds like she's going to be an astronaut for NASA) but it also means months of hard times too. She's very brave. Possibly the worst bit is that she has to share a four bed ward for five weeks in hopstial. As the family of a wonderfully kind and assertive father, we 're often able to wangle a decent room in hospital, so this is a bit of a downer. We'll figure out some ways to improve things, I hope. As she's like me in terms of loving reading and listening to the radio, she at least will be able to occupy herself in this difficult situation. Anyway, I'll neatly segue from one bastard medical condition to another...

How I didn't learn to be ambidextrous

Earlier this year I had two fingernails removed, they got smashed in a garage door and two got infected after not being cared for properly (or at all, and it seems I don't trim my fingernails properly). So this was the gross result... That gross red stuff is called 'proud flesh ' - yeah, I was REALLY proud of it... urgh. I think this is a great title for a crime novel 'Proud Flesh', only it suggests a tougher, grittier type of book than the ones I write. I hope someone else has better luck with this style and uses the phrase well.
And I couldn't do stuff for a couple days until I managed to get an emergency appointment with the very kind and generous Dr Sach, who flinched when he saw them (I know! I was ashamed) and that day he said he'd have to remove the nail plates. I was okay until I realised he meant fingerNAILS... Then I sort of fainted/threw up at the same time and went back to sit in the waiting room and stare into space for a few hours. Under local anaesethic he took them off and I, in turn, took a couple weeks off work, with huge bandaged hands as per picture. Once the excrutiating pain subsided I started feeling kind of good about having an enforced break from work. And then I had to change the dressings (and I fainted twice and ended up doing it while lying down so I didn't have so far to fall). But now they're perfect, and I realise how not being able to use my writing hand cramped my lifestyle. I learned a lot of sign language for the next book (tricky with only eight fingers) by using some great sites on the net as well as some really terrific docos about the cruel abuse and treatment of deaf people during WWII by the Nazi Party (I learned a lot of horrible words but it was incredible to watch a documentatry that had subtitles, a deaf sign language dude in the corner of the screen, and the voice over. Every TV show should do this, it sems obvious. You'd learn more languages and the world would be a much better place for people with sight and hearing difficulties. I'm slightly ashamed to realise how great it would be to do this for other people and yet, we just don't. Stupid.
People really suck sometimes. However, i HAVE loved seeing more and more use of signs that use braille.
Oh, and another, dopey but fun things was that I found the time to watche the first few seasons of Buffy again. Always a good thing.

Listening to: Splashes of Classic FM, I like the idiosyncratic option of not choreograpphing my music as I usually do, and mostly, it's great stuff.
Eating: Icecream. Stuart discovered Baskin Robbins. Oh dear...
Thinking about: The Tequila Bikini, I have a great plan for the next chapter and I'm very excited
Watching: Lost, Extras, The final season of Angel (so sad...) and my little honeyeater Charlie as he's still not growing feathers on his head
Wearing: Victoria Secret nighties. I bought a bunch a few weeks ago and find them so comfortable I wear them around the house because theyre 1) Modest 2) Warm, yet cool - magical I think 3) Could be mistaken for mini dress if the cops come around to arrest me for stealing flowers for the birds each day - they'll never get me for indecent exposure these days.
Reading: Anything by Helen Forrester. I read her when I was young and am trying to get some copies, but all avalable on order only, I found two in an opp shop which started this obssession. She's an excellent writer, and in my humble opinion did a better job then Frank McCourt dealing with extreme poverty and how people deal with life under difficult circumstances.

and the lady in black...wore white

2007-05-02T09:52:00.000+09:30

With the marriage of one of my friends (and ex-boyfriends) coming up, my thoughts have turned delightfully to all things romantic. (friends have noticed they get more hugs and kisses, and the birds have more pink glitter bits on their heads from my smooches - poor things).

I realised I hadn't ever posted anything about getting married. Here is a pick of my wedding shoes - After first painting these (once gold satin shoes from the oppshop that I usually wore with my racy nurse's uniform for dress up parties... ) blue, things went sideways pretty quickly. . White dress, blue shoes. I thought it would look cool. It didn't.

So... I decided the day before to paint them white. This didn't work out all that well. On the day they sort of... flaked off all over my carpet as I was getting ready. Fortunately Nick, my best man, turned up with some French Champagne, which gave me the blind confidence to try some McGyver style improvement. I painted the spots with White Out and tied big white bows on them to detract the eye, distract anyone from the flarge white flakes (no grass growing up here, folks...) (It was the shoe equivilent of wearing big earrings to distract people from the fact I haven't brushed my hair.) Anyway, here's a picture of my shoe, and a shot of my best man, Nick and my bridesmaid, Jo, having a drink and a relaxing chat before getting moving, pretending we weren't all watching my shoes flake through the white, then blue and expose some (surprise!) gold...) .

I am forever grateful to these two wonderful people for helping me through this amazing but slightly scary day. I snatched an anxiety attack about five days before the wedding and when the day arrived I was feeling kind of out there with worry and discomfort.

I knew I wanted to marry Stuart more than anything, I couldn't WAIT to go on our honeymoon (to New York to see the Christo exhibition in Central Park) but all the formalities and the sense of not doing anything right, made me feel anxious and a little unhappy some days. But on the day, I was happy indeed. Eventually things worked out beautifully (although my dad was unwell on the day and Jemima, our Border Collie, ate too many amazing snacks and was sick for weeks afterwards - I called every day from New York to check on her, I love that dog) and it was a great day.

Well, nothing will ever make me forget the feeling of almost blue/white joy I felt standing with Stuart (who I'd had a crush on for ages before we actually dated) and saying precious words to each other in front of a hundred of our dear friends and family (and dog) and getting married.

I think that I am the luckiest girl in the world, not just to have Stuart, but to have my birds, my friends, my family and such a hopeful, beautiful life. I live in a great city and I love the fact that if I need to have a nap, I can. Things are simple when you're me, I guess.

My friend Anna's gorgeous young son, Tom, asked me why I put pink streaks in my hair and I said it was for the same reason I sometimes have ice cream for breakfast and weetbix for dinner, Why not? Of course, that attitude has got me in to some big pots of trouble too but it's made for some great moments in my life. This all feeds into my writing which is another reason I know I'm lucky - I get to do my favourite thing for a living.

So today's blog is dedicated to love. Love of friends, family, work, life, animals, storm clouds, flowers, waves, music, everything. I'm very grateful to have it all.

The wonderful photos here were taken by the incredible photographer, Claudio Raschella (http://www.claudioraschella.com/) except the one in New York which was taken by Stu.

2007-04-20T16:22:00.000+09:30

As the world turned, Kirsty decided a change of pace would enliven her working day, so she's cleaned up a recipe requested by someone using an interview with her for thier book, and got hungry typing it up, so decided to post the recipe for the enjoyment of others, and so startle her friends. She rarely cooks, but when she does... she likes to make a great big mess.

Sadly, my baby, the bird I brought up from a tiny fledgling, Charlie is still bald of feathers on his head. I give him medicine every morning but while it eases the itchiness, no feathers have emerged. I feel really really sad about it and don't know what to do, but as long as he's happy and healthy, I guess it'll be okay. I just don't want him to get a chill. And he was such a handsome bird... And he's always so dear, so keen and interested and hop popping around poking about, and whenver I sit, he sits with me, either on my hand while I'm typing (not perfect) or on my shoulder or hand while reading. If I ever nap he settles down with me and it is SO restful. For someone prone to anxiety I have found that having free flying, hilarious, chirpy birds around one of the very best sources of joy and relaxation I have ever expereinced. On the days they spot a bird high in teh sky, or decide to have a scream-off, this opinion does not apply, but those bad times are few and usually easily solved with some soft treatment and a short blast of some of their favourite music.

Kirsty and Mark’s Vegie Burgers

My friend Mark created this while recipe sharing a housewith me being vegetarians and not having much cash. I've since made a few changes and claimed it as my own, mostly because I get asked for a recipe sometimes and this is really the only one I could claim to have a hand in, everything is is by the book (i.e. add 1 cup hot water to noodles/pasta/jelly/custard), stir and enjoy!) It is a fun, yummy meal that lasts for a while in the frdige so you can have it often if you get into it. I don't know if it freezes but then I've never given it a chance.

Burgers
I can corn or I cup fresh cooked corn off the cob
2 carrots – grated small
3 zucchini’s, grated and the liquid squeezed out.
1 large tin canned tomatoes
2 eggs
1 big can of chick peas (or leave a cup full of fresh chick peas soaking overnight in water)
Beans or lentils, no more than a cup each
Breadcrumbs
Flour
4 onions (grated)
1 clove garlic, mashed
Two teaspoons of each spice – cumin, turmeric, garam masala, etc
Small amount of mustard seeds

The rest
Use bread or soft rolls, whatever you prefer, and any of the following to taste:
Beerenberg tomato sauce
Fresh lettuce
Sliced tomato
A fried egg
etc

Mix everything together, except for the eggs, flour, breadcrumbs. These are to be added until the consistency is right (i.e soft, almost sloppy, not solid. It should initially stick to the spatula when you throw a handful into the frying pan and flatten it. Cook slowly until one side is light brown and turn, keep turning and flattening. Bits will fall off, especially chick peas, but the constancy is such that you can squish it back on again. The middle is often still soft, but don’t let that worry you, as long as it’s cooked, it’s yummy and fine, it’s not meant to hold together, as too much flour or breadcrumbs takes away the slightly spicy taste. Just cook until ready (I like them sort of burnt...) then serve on a roll with your favourite burger ingredients.
These are sort of messy to eat. I’m sure someone can come up with a way to reduce that, but I love it. I also like lots of sauce. It’s a great, messy super tasty meal that I have found that kids really like, even when they think being vegetarian is totally lame... Not that I have any kids but I borrow them sometimes for just such experiments.

Listening to: The Shawshank Redemption Soundtrack.
Eating: cucumbers. I have a strange unexplained craving for them recently. I think it's the crunchiness.
Thinking about: My niece Sophie and wishing we were still performing our excellent synchronised swining in Rymill Park like yesterday. it's really a very pretty spot as the sun goes down.
Watching: The Buffy Musical - and the sun glowing orange/pink on the warehouse apartment across the road. it's very pretty. (Lord I've gone all nature lovin'...
Wearing: A millet stick in my hair and the last remains of a few orange flowers. Spencer and Lucy haven't left my shoulders today. They're suspiciously like the good angel and the devil, giving me conflicting advice. Somehow it all seems to have the same theme: 'Knock off early, kiddo!'
Reading: The SAS Survival Guide for 'The Tequila Bikini' research

Interview with the excellent Brionie

2007-04-02T18:41:00.000+09:30

Hi, My sincere apologies for the huge delay posting this year. So much for new year's resolutions...

I had a strange but wonderful new year so far. Just recently I got a copy of the latest 'Wet Ink' magazine, a great journal for new writing, (made slightly more exctiing - for me anyway - with an interview with me in it). It's a cool mag, mostly because the other writers in this magazine are wonderful and I was flattered to be included. 'Wet Ink' is avalable from good bookstores (I picked up mine from the beautiful Mary Martins on Rundle Street but they also kindly subscribed me for a year, something I recommend to anyone interested in reading new writing, but also wanting to become a writer. It's a really gorgeous magazine. Check out their website at www.wetink.com.au.

Each new day and year seems pretty amazing for me, someone who seems to stumble into danger with alarming speed - I had two (reasonably essential fingernails) removed on my left hand (they got smashed up on Chrstimas Eve trying to get the Mini Cooper out of a hotel carpark and when pulling the garage door back down - we could break into - and out of- the garage because the doors were exactly the same as the ones in my apartment - I smashed the tip of each finger and in a freak out of pain I ran out into the road, nearly got hit by a car, was saved by another car of very kind teenage boys who helped me back to the footpath - and then spent a while soaking my hands in the ocean.

I had what a friend kindly described as 'penis fingers' for a couple weeks before two dodgy ones grew disgustingly foul 'proud flesh' out the side of the nails and half covering the nail itself. This stuff was so gross that in the end I couldn't even move the fingers because the air waving past the lumpy red growth made me want to faint while screaming.

I have no idea why I'm looking so snooty in this photo. My apologies (also note the bird poo on my back. I have a mirror by my front door for just such moments but clearly I wasn't oprepared for a photo or I'd also have done something about my eyebrows.

I'm lucky my dad is a doctor and he got me an emergency appointment with plastic surgeon (and glass artist), Randal Sach who squeezed the operation in during his lunch hour. He was wonderful although I admit I didn't quite grasp what 'removing two nail plates' actually meant for a couple minutes and then sort of fell sideways and nearly smashed his excellent glass sculptures. So much for being as brave as Cassidy...

So, Yes, I'm left-handed, and being unable to type or write all day made me see how cranky I get when I can't translate ideas, images, conversations and characters elsewhere - onto paper. Also, my two fingers felt GROSS, just as you would expect them to feel without nails on them and they both bled so much I had to change these bandages, well, a LOT. And it HURT.

I have worked and written something every day since I left uni and, well, I couldn't quite adjustt to not being able to do so. My brain ran over with ideas abnd I quickly learned to type with two fingers, and found it easier than writing by hand, so even the shopping list was typed and bullet pointed... (Funny how staying at home for two weeks makes one very specific about things, such as sandwiches - "tomatoes - cherry ONLY" etc)

The good thing about this stumpy two weeks was that I got to watch a whole bunch of cool documentaries and then re-watch the first few seasons of 'Buffy', and 'Angel' So I was actually pretty happy despite the incredible grossness and pain - before the painkillers ran out and I was left with seven fingers and two flesh stumps - gross. These weeks provoked deep admiration for anyone with a handicap (I had to ask the girl at the local deli to do up my bra, etc...) and I knew I had it easy compared to a lot of people.

My pal (we met through my mailing list and book) Brionie, conducted the folloiwung interview with me for her English assignment. She asked good questions and I was painfully honest. Fingers crossed she gets a A++ but in the meantime, I thought it might be useful to readers not in her class.

In other news, I presented the year twelve students who received full marks in English with their certificates at Government House and then I nicked off with this huge novelty size biography they'd done for me in that sat in the background while I shook hands with loads of students and all their parents as each parent went from proud of their kids to being pissed off with their digital cameras.

A couple weeks ago I rescued a new, wonderful bird called Spencer, who is beautiful (see pictures) but has a typical 'caged bird' sadness which is feather plucking. He was miserable. Since I brought 'him' back from the pet store (we'll not know if he's a boy or a girl because of his stunning colouring - girl's are usually defined by the ladder effect of their lower feathers, but white feathers eliminates this opportunity) Lucy has fallen madly in love with him, and finally (thankfully) left Jones alone to complete his chores in peace (stroll the house, warn me of any 'danger' outside, check all the drains, and snooze) things are very peaceful again.

The only negative to this new love affair in the house is that if I walk off unwittingly with either of them on my shoulder there is sudden and deafening protest. Oh, and Lucy has decided the sideboard housing the TV is her love nest and sits in there all fluffed up and cooing to Spencer who jkust stares at her like she's nuts. Dr Anderson at out vet said that just because Lucy's all in love doesn't mean Spencer is a boy bird, they could be in a saucy alternative relationship, so it's going to be fun to watch. Also I spritz Spencer each day to get him preening again, as he is missing a lot of feathers. So far he seems pretty good, but it's a condition that's very hard to treat, and from what i read, the best medicine is happiness, so we're doing our best.

Interview for those interested in my writing now and my writing history and inspiration. Vote now and help Brionie get an A.

1. How long have you been writing for?

KB: I used to write poems on family holidays. Terrible rhyming poems about what we were doing (‘We’re driving on the Hay Plain, My sister is kicking me again,’ - stuff like that. Clearly, I held a lot of promise… (Joke). I wrote my first book in grade five (‘S.O.J – Son of Jaws’) and I wrote my first novel, (‘PINK’) when I was about sixteen. I never thought I could do it as a career though.

2. What influenced you to become a writer?

KB: Reading. I love reading and regularly reread a lot of favourite books. I am a pretty nosey person and am very interested in people – ordinary people, and what they do and think. So writing sort of sprang from there. Trying to turn that fairly unformed concept into a commercial novel of interest to others was a hard slog, however.

3. Before novels, did you write for a magazine?

KB: Yes, I did an internship (work experience within a Degree – I was studying Journalism at the Magill campus in South Australia) at a street magazine called OTS (On the Street) and did a lot of freelance (emphasis on ‘free’) work for various other start-up magazine and street mags.

I got a few short-lived gigs on various magazines but never liked it. I wanted to write about people who weren’t in the public eye, so journalism wasn’t really my gig, but you can only try. Doing everything you can think of within the realm of the source of your interest really helps narrow down the scope. A LOT. There was pretty much only one thing I really loved to do and that was sit at home and make up stories. I knew it was virtually impossible to make a living this way so for a few years I explored work I could do while also writing, but I found the other work just took over, and kind of made me depressed. The kind of work you can do when you’re only skill is in an area you don’t like, is pretty miserable. So it didn’t help me feel inspired to write and I dropped most of it, went on the dole for six months, did a small business course through them, and just started taking my writing more seriously on the whole. I also started liking it even more because I found what I wanted to write – comic screwball crime novels.

On the road to this point, I did a lot of other writing-related stuff in order to build up a decent CV. I worked a lot of jobs (both in writing and publishing, and in pubs, cafes and other totally dodgy work I won’t go into here for fear of freaking out my lovely readers) where the only thing I got out of it, besides a small wage (usually enough to buy a pint of beer) was the knowledge that this was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life so I’d have to keep trying other stuff.

I’m essentially kind of lazy and impatient, so if something doesn’t really excite me, I tend to stay under the covers and just distract myself from life that is rapidly going down the toilet by rereading books. I soon realised that if I was going to make any kind of living at anything it would have to be something that made me excited, happy, proud, or I’d just never get around to it (and I'd get hideous bed sores).

I’d lived on very little money for quite a while and knew I preferred that to work some shit job I hated just to have a place to sleep that wasn’t the home base for the local earwig community wasn’t worth it.

As a side-bar, I seriously hate those little buggers. I’m an animal and nature lover - see: nerdy tree hugger)and I take spiders and cockroaches and bees (even though I’m allergic to them) outside to safety, but If I see an earwig I stomp on the little buggers with my boots. They’re just…creepy. Far too sneaky looking to belong to the impressive world of bugs. I think it’s those mean little pincers they drag around behind them. However, I digress…

4. What do you love about your job?

KB: Being able to live several lives at once, and to have the one I’m writing be something under my control, because the other (the real life) certainly isn’t. I love being able to claim movies and books and travel as a tax deduction for research, I love meeting other writers and readers of my books, and I love being able to listen to music and the radio all day and work with one or more of my birds (two cockatiels, one honeyeater) on my shoulder. (Charlie, my honeyeater, is currently in love with my laptop, but luckily he’s so tiny and light he can hop all over the keyboard and never press a key and change anything when I’m not looking). I love being able to tell stories that matter to me, about things and people I enjoy spending time with, even if I have made them up…

There’s a whole hell of a lot to love about this job, not the least being working in my sweats in the middle of the night and being able to sleep in afterwards (I write better at night, I’m a huge fan of night-time and the strange stuff that goes on when people think no one is looking). Being nosy helps a lot in this business –my parrot, Jones, is the eyes and ears of my street, so he’ll call out too me if anything juicy is going on – and with a brothel across the road, a pub on the corner and a motor shop full of amazing hot roads and young mechanics just a few doors down, it’s a rare day when something good doesn’t happens. Jones is my sleuthing sidekick.

5. Is it hard to come up with ideas for your books?

KB: Not for the first few novels (THE VODKA DIALOGUE, THE HAPPINESS PUNCH, THE MILLIONAIRE FLOAT), I had ideas squirming out all over the place. For the last one (THE LADY SPLASH) I was more structured and able to plot better, it was less an accumulation of ideas from 30 years of life, and more organised in terms of what I wanted to say and have happen. With that said, my editor at Hachette worked with me for a while doing some strenuous structural editing because I’m still a character-based writer rather than someone who plans out plot within each chapter and novel to the end. Sometimes I have no idea how the characters will get out of things until they do.

The next books are crammed full of things I’ve been researching in the past year. It’s been fun. So the answer is no. I never have problem finding characters, they just sort of ‘appear’ and scenes play out in my mind and I write them down. Here's me in my nurse's uniform. I spent so much time at strip clubs, sex shops and stuff that I decided some training was in order. I admit I don't have a great bedside manner but I can do a great hospital corner.

On that topic, I have so many people trying to give me ideas for my books and people who spend any amount of time with me will usually say ‘I bet you could put that in a book’ but I can’t, it’s usually actually kind of a dull thing they remark on and I never know what to say. They might be talking about some incident in their family, some fairly tepid exchange, and I think, ‘Have you actually ever READ my books?’ because , well, the Cassidy and Phoebe novels pretty much thrive on saucy, outrageous adventure stuff…, and I love pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in my books. Also it just irks me that people seem to think writers needs ideas. What we really need is a couple extra versions of ourselves to write all the ideas and stories down. Now that’s what I need. Wow, that’s a great idea. I should totally get one of those. Kirsty # 2. She could do the dishes and stuff too.

My testy but honest answer to anyone who wants to share their great story idea with me (often for a ‘small fee’) is, “Write the story yourself. I triple dog dare you to do it. And then send it to Driftwood (a service I run for writers where industry professionals and published authors in a variety of genres give writers feedback on their manuscripts) for assessment so we can make it the best manuscript ever before you submit it to a literary agent.” It curious that a lot of people think writing a book just comes naturally and that once they have the time they’ll sit down and write a best-seller.

6. What influenced you to write ‘chick lit’?

KB: Ha! Good question. I kind of hated the genre at first, but there are so many prejudices and assumptions about genres like this (science fiction, crime, romance, etc) which have certain expectations. Readers have expectations and it’s up to the reader to meet those, but also break them if they can. I get a lot of manuscripts coming through Driftwood and so many people say, “It’s got romance in it, and it deals with women and their careers and troubles when they hit thirty but it’s way smarter than chick lit”, or “it’s set in the future and no one speaks English but it’s not science fiction, it’s too literary for that.” That’s really naive and annoying.

Many specific genres such as these have a huge range of styles and voices within them and also cater to a lot of different people, but there are some brilliant, very literary, smart and funny books in these genres and chick lit is not all dumb stuff about shoes and hairstyles. Most of the best ones are about a lot of issues in a woman’s life. Within this genre I’ve read about death and eating disorders and suicide and career issues and everything else that occurs in life.

It’s not enough to be funny and talk about ‘current’ fashions - the story and voice and characters have to be there or the book won’t sell. I work at trying to do that in my own books but I don’t think you ever really can see your own writing objectively. That’s where feedback from people (such as people who’ve subscribed to my mailing list) comes in very handy.

Reviews in magazines and newspapers are interesting, but they don’t sell books and they are not often a good indication of how the book is doing in the marketplace. Too often I’ve seen someone review a book of mine by saying how they hate romance, or that this isn’t their kind of book, so I’ve got to wonder why on earth they were asked to review it. I always give manuscripts to assessors in Driftwood to people who would choose to read that genre (travel, fantasy, Young Adult fiction, etc) otherwise the feedback doesn’t hold any weight.

I have a lot of respect for the chick lit tag now but at the time I wrote THE VODKA DIALOGUE I’d not read anything in this genre except for Jennifer Crusie, and Melissa Bank and mostly I liked Marian Keye’s books because despite the often drippy central character I realised her growth and maturity was the crux of the novel. At first these characters irritated me but now I see what she’s trying to do (and succeeding). In Jennifer Crusie’s books the blokes were very Alpha Male types and there were lots of dogs and creativity and crime in it. And often the ‘good’ guys (and girls) are on the ‘wrong’ side of the law which I really love.

Nothing says fun to me more than criminals as a central character. I love it in books and movies and every now and then in life. But that’s a secret. Anyway, I did a lot of research after I got the idea for the Cassidy books and found a lot of people trash the genre (but the sales are extraordinary, as are those for the much maligned Romance genre as well), and while there were loads of books I hated (mostly the ones involving shopping, shoes and high end clothing labels) there was also a bunch I liked. So I like chick lit now and I’m proud to be put in this genre but I’m also put into the romance genre, the humour genre, and the crime genre, so I can walk into a bookstore and have no idea where I might find my books. And believe me, I do look.

7. What is coming next for Phoebe Banks?

KB: Ah, travel, scary dudes, dopey dudes, love troubles, a couple of hair changes (which I’ve been experimenting with on my own hair, and having a great time), on the road adventures and some really dangerous shootouts. I have a thing for tension in enclosed places so when I was in Mildura researching her trip there I had a poke around a couple of great hotels and while there were some glamorous ones, I really loved the long, flat, kind of daggy Flag-style motels, so the book central action scenes are played out in a couple of motel rooms (the type with the hatch for the staff to slide your breakfast tray in and those tiny little bars of soap, and the triangle fold on the loo paper and ‘sanitary seal’ on the loo that tries to impress the discerning hotel guest with this kind of FBI crime scene tape business but the ‘sanitary seal’ could just as easy have been re-used dozens of times and just plonked on a loo that’s just been wiped over with a bit of spit and an old tissue). I’ve worked in a lot of crappy jobs and I see where the short cuts are made and it’s not pretty… You might notice I love weird details like this.

I travelled a lot with my family when I was a kid and so a lot of these Flag style motels have heaps of good and bad memories for me, so when I’m writing I can visualise a lot of details, which is handy.

9. What can we expect for Cassidy Blair to come up against?

KB: Ah, so many things. The following is a sneak peek into the book I’m currently writing. The blurb below will probably change somewhat before it goes to print (usually write these and my editor tweaks them – it’s one of the parts of writing I really love. Once I’ve got the ‘back of the book blurb’ style right, I’m good to go with the actual novel…)

There are a couple of guys in her life, one making trouble, the other, making a hell of a lot more trouble, but it‘s more of the nice kind. And now Cassidy’s seriously conflicted. She loves Sam, right? So why does this new guy keep striding about in her dreams without, well, his strides on…

Cassidy has to work out where her head is really at, and what she wants from the future beyond a triple scoop of meringue ice cream and a full-time ladies maid.

THE TEQUILA BIKINI
Cocktail Recipe

Chocolate liqueur
Chambord liqueur
Tequila
Coffee
Sugar
Quarters of lemon
Two shot glasses and two small plates

Half fill one shot with Chambord, and then carefully fill with the chocolate liqueur so that it layers. Fill the other glass with tequila. Sprinkle sugar onto one plate and coffee onto the other and press the lemon slices onto the plates in turn, so one side is covered in coffee, the other in sugar. Take the shot of tequila, then press the lemon straight into your mouth and remove, and then sip the soothing chocolate/jam dessert shot

The Tequila Bikini
Blurb

Someone is out to prove that the crappy bumper sticker 'Bad Girl' is really a tautology.

Cassidy's no good brother moves back to Adelaide and within days it's up to Cassidy to keep him from making a hopeless bid for one of her friends, and getting into a disastrous business deal in the process. A business run by her good friend, Mike.

So when Cassidy starts nosing around in everyone else’s business, she starts to smell something very funky indeed. Is her brother in more serious trouble, or is she playing into his rather clammy hands?

And so, on one sunny Adelaide day when she should be sharing some rather surprising information with the local police, and/or having another of the donuts that have already caused her to bust out of her once perfect pencil skirt, she finds herself standing on a building ledge ten stories up and she’s having a little trouble admiring the view.

In THE TEQUILA BIKINI, Cassidy discovers that her gene pool needs serious chlorination if she's ever going to convince Sam's parents she's a damn fine catch. The problem is, this time around, Sam has some pretty incredible competition. But after Cassidy’s latest adventure, does he still want to be in the game?

11. If you were a random object what would you be?

KB: Ahhh. I think either the pane of glass in a jumbo jet, the inside one, so I get to watch the fascinating activities of hundreds of strangers jammed in together for a very long period of time, but also get to be up high in the sky, flying and seeing the earth OR, a dollar coin. I’d have to pray someone didn’t chuck me in a vault where I’d die of boredom or madness (often the same thing) but rather I’d hope that I’d get to travel around and, well, eavesdrop on people.

I guess I’m just insufferably nosey, huh?

Thanks! Kiss someone you love today! Yes, right now! Go on, they'll love it.

Listening to: 'Twinlights' by The Cocteau Twins. It instantly calms me down.
Eating: Easter Eggs. I love the Red Tulip Elegant Rabbit and the Zoo Train. I've been trying to find the Dragon (which opens its mouth when you pull the carboard tag) but I think they've stopped making it. I have been eating ONLY easter eggs in the misguided impression that I will get less chubby this way...
Thinking about: The ocean. I have a DEEP yearning to go on holiday and read and write and listen to the waves and... just sit. I think I've been working nights for too long now.
Watching: Angel Season Five. Hating Cordelia's short hair.
Wearing: Blue Victoria Secret baby doll nightie under wrap dress. (Looking into all the great ranges of underwear as research for the Cassidy Blair was bloody inspired!
Reading: 'Going Wrong' by Ruth Rendell

Relaxing holidays

2006-12-28T22:43:00.000+10:30

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. My Christmas tree is going a bit brown but otherwise, I'm still feeling Christmassy. I love the holidays.

I have recently scanned some more pics, so I have included two here. The first one is me at school (excellent hair) holding up the first book I ever read. Who could have predicted the trouble this event would cause for me later in life...

The second is a very thoughtful shot of me in London when I was seven.

I have no idea why I'm looking so worried... Possibly because my future held many dissatisfied years of study until I worked out what I really loved doing (no, it wasn't just about stalking Johnny Depp when he was in 21 Jump Street), cutting off all my hair to give to my bald Grandad, dating a bunch of dorks, a couple decent guys, one or two sweethearts, ten years of poverty struggling to be a freelance writer, living in a house with four excellent women (and five cats) breaking my arms (once on the dance floor at Le Rox, once while riding a bike through the parklands and banging into a goth (she was invisible in her black get up until she turned her death white face to me but by then it was far, far too late for both of us), breaking down (in my dad's Merc, with the death knell of a snapped timing chain) outside a petrol station a hundred kilometres from Adelaide after driving seven thousand kilometres around Australia while researching my first book (see pic - note dirty blonde natural hair colour, penchant for mini-skirts and - at the time - hugely hilarious ironic billboard) with my dear pal Dave Sag.

Or possibly it was because i'm wearing my school sandals on a social occassion...

For fans of the Cassidy Blair series, and other books of mine, the winner of the recent competition was Brionie Hansford of Mannum, SA. She won three of my books. There were several runners up who also won a book, mostly because it's the season for giving.

On this exciting topic, I recently won two prizes myself. The first one was an brown Elizabeth Hurley beach kaftan (weirdly comfortable and, despite the fact that I don't go to the beach or wear brown - ever - I wore it all day because I have no clean clothes). The kaftan is very drifty wafty seventies. I felt pretty smug about winning something that was worth eighty quid, (which is about a million dollars Australian) and also (not all that alluringly) see-through. Fortunately I noticed the latter issue before going to the shops.

I also won a Trill/Harmony bird feeder. I was very excited to win anything as I love entering competitions. I used to create competitions at school, get prizes, and have people drawing and writing and colouring in, and each week they'd win a prize. I was such a dork...

But still, I enter competitions all the time, especially the 25 words or less ones, as they are a real pain and i am determined to figure out how to master it. I'm sure I could spend my time more wisely...

Congratulations to Brionie, thanks to everyone who entered, and I hope you have a safe and beautiful holiday.
I was asked my new year resolutions by the Adelaide Advertiser recently too, and I gave up three of them, but there are many many more. Once I got started, I had no idea there was such room for improvement. It was a bit startling.
One resolution I didn't mention will be to write more often on this blog, and to create more (hopefully helpful) articles about writing, publishing, editing and my own books.

Here's a shot of one of the window displays on my first interstate author tour.

p.s I know this sounds kind of daggy but loads of good things are, actually daggy and so I'm going to ask anyway. Please put out water and/or food for the native wildlife if you have the time. There are so many awful stories of koalas and birds drowning in pools, and dying of thirst/hunger. My friend Robin tells me that you can't put out plastic bowls or tubs, only ones made from ceramic as animals don't like the taste of plastic in the water.

I hope that 2007 will bring more care and compassion for the animals and people around us and far away.

Listening to: The Adam and Joe podcasts on XFM London
Eating: My favourite sweetchili tofu stir fry with yogurt
Thinking about: The next chapter in The Tequila Bikini
Watching: The third series of LOST
Wearing: Bandaids from having a bloodtest - I have some freaky flu virus
Reading: My favourite Yen and Frankie magazines from last year that I wanted to catch up on

Jones has a girlfriend (but I think she just wants to be friends)

2006-12-04T18:52:00.000+10:30

Anyone not interested in birds, just skip this bit. I had to get it out of my system but I promise not to go on about my birds much more on this blog.

We have a new bird called Lucy. She's a 10 week old cockatiel. She all smudgy looking because most female birds aren't as glorious as the males (see Lyrebirds for example). But she is sharp as a tack and cute as a box of puppies. She has learned all of the songs I taught Jones and is mega-mixing them in her own unique style.
She destroys most plants and fights with Charlie over the flowers, so that keeps him on his toes. She sits VERY close to my neck, which feels really nice and soft, and she is VERY clingy. - i.e. climbs up the towel rack and sacrifices dignity and cool by revealing her very meagre flying ability by sucker-jumping onto the side of the bath and thus up my hair and and into 'prime position' by sitting on my head while I have a bath.
Any bird worth his or her salt knows that to get higher than the other birds means they are for that brief time superior and more beautiful and clever than their fellows. This lengthy and dramatic behaviour infuriates Jones - who used to think the bathroom was his spot for gentle preening and admiration of his increasingly regal plumage in the many chrome fictures.
Now, however, he storms off, muttering to himself, but Charlie persists with sitting on my book while taking the length of bathing time to pluck up the courage to dive into my bath and clean himself. All in all, the relaxation level is low but the entertainment is off the scale.
There is a photo here of Charlie fluffed up to almost three times his size to get maximum water coverage before diving into the water bowl. he does pretty much the same thing from the top of my book only he jumps about like he's at Wet'n Wild and hasn't paid the fee and is nervous he'll get busted any moment. I have a shot second later of him all frail, dripping and almost black with water, but it's too funny/vulnerable to put on my blog, mostly because he looks nude and a completely different bird, tiny and frail and well, not the proud man he is. Speaking of which, much the same thing happens to Jones when he gets that wet. He looks like an old vain dude with a really shameful comb-over, his triumphant cockatiel crest dripping over his face.
Jones loves being spritzed with a water sprayer or wandering into the shower but rarely gets into the water bowl himself. I figure he thinks it's beneath him. Most days outside the window there are a couple pigeons sitting in the bird feeder like huge grey stones, cooling off before sunning themselves on the pavers. I've never seen the sparrows do this.
That's it for now, apologies to any non-bird lovers. - and for mentioning my undies in the previous post. I have no class at all.
Listening to: The Virgin Suicides - music from the motion picture - there's something about Heart's Magic Man that puts extra sauce on my burger every time.
Eating: Leftovers from a Christmas party on Sunday. Smiths Original chips taste amazing at 6.30 am.
Thinking about: Teaching the birds some new songs. 'She'll be coming'round the mountain' is getting really old
Watching: Will & Grace - Season Five
Wearing: A skirt I pulled out of the bottom of my wardrobe that makes me look like I think I'm Courtney Love. Even worse than actually looking like Courtney Love.
Reading: 'Marley & Me - life and love with the world's worst dog' by John Grogan - It's good, but needs a lot of editing. Still, I wish I had a dog - even one that ate clothes. Hell, it could eat this skirt for starters...

How I became a writer (and got published along the way)

2006-11-28T15:16:00.000+10:30

It struck me recently what an odd life I lead at the moment. Every day I basically make stuff up for a living. I am currently writing two series, one, the Cassidy Blair series published through Hachette Livre (THE VODKA DIALOGUE, THE HAPPINESS PUNCH, THE MILLIONAIRE FLOAT, THE LADY SPLASH) and the Phoebe Banks series published through Wakefield Press (LADY LUCK),but I was first published in non-fiction (HITCHING; TALES FROM THE BYWAYS AND SUPERHIGHWAYS, MAD LOVE). I've written many articles and columns for magazines and e-zines but ultimately, loved fiction and tried to figure out how to get my stories read by the people i was hoping to connect with - people who might understand the lives I'm writing about and connect with their stories and adventures.

A few years ago I decided my central character needed to learn self-defence so I made sure her trainer was a big burly bouncer-type guy named Mince. Their dialogue together was really fun to write because despite the fact that they were such different people, they kind of respected each other, even though she gets knocked out a bit, and isn’t all that great at fighting.

But writing fiction is really a whole hell of a lot more than just making stuff up. I’m also writing to entertain myself and I have to keep that objective in mind the whole time. It sounds entirely selfish, and I guess it is, but it’s also the central objective to my writing and if I don’t entertain myself, then I’ve failed to do my job. If I’m bored, or confused, or unconvinced by the story, then the story just won’t work for the reader, either. If I don’t like the story, I can’t expect other readers to either. That’s the thing, you tend to just be better at what you enjoy, and enjoy what you’re good at.

I believe very strongly that if you don’t entertain the reader, then they won’t keep reading and whatever you want to get across is lost as well. I guess the message I wanted to tell in my search for Cassidy's friend/protector/self defence instructor, is not to get in a fistfight with a guy whose nickname has anything to do with hamburger meat.

I have been writing for a long time, more than ten years, but it’s only in the past few years that I feel that I’ve found the voice and style I want to work in. I started writing in this style when I couldn’t find the sort of book I wanted to read and I’d already read the ones I loved a few times. I decided to write one that might satisfy me, and therefore came up with all the elements of story and characters and setting that I enjoyed.

So I work for myself in three capacities. I write, both creatively and professionally, and I also run an assessment and editing service for other writers (Driftwood Manuscripts). I have around fifty people contracted to me who are specialists in different writing genres, such as children’s books, science fiction, romance, autobiographies, etc, and I send them the manuscripts my clients have finished. These assessors are all experts in the various fields and so they read the manuscripts that the client is hoping to get published and then they write reports evaluating them.

I used the service myself on my first novel, LADY LUCK, long before I ran the company, when it was an odd little book called 'Squint' with five central viewpoint character interacting in what I'd call a grunge-style thriller, low on thrills, however. I soon changed that, though. Getting feedback on the manuscript was incredibly useful and ultimately led to me rewriting the entire manuscript from scratch because I have always found writing far easier than editing. I ended up with only one viewpoint character (Phoebe) and I just tried to make it more light-hearted in order to keep my own interest in the work. It is a principle I still use and I loved it enought o wake up at 5am every day to work on it.

I run this service, write novels and also do what I call professional writing, which involves different things like writing and creating boards games (For example, I wrote the board games for the television shows, Big Brother and Popstars), other times I might be working on reviews, articles, running writing and publishing workshops or taking lectures.

And now, especially with two deadlines looming, I tend to live a little through my fictional characters. I send them out on adventures or out for a drink, and I give them nice clothes, good friends, exciting lives, excellent relationships, dreadful confrontations, courage, ambition, humour, quick thinking; all the things I love, and at times wicsh I had, or was doing myself.

I’ve also been doing it in various forms for most of my life. The world never seemed to fit the way I thought it should, but in my imagination, I changed all that.

My parents used to take my sister and I on wonderful long driving holidays around Australia. I remember one of my best memories was waking up with my face squished against the glass in the back seat and seeing my dad walking back from the petrol station with ice-creams.

I’m still a big fan of ice-cream, driving holidays, my family and sleeping, but also of the daydreams I’d have while they were driving.

I’d spend hours dreaming up these stories where my boyfriend always looked suspiciously like someone from my favourite band at the time, and I looked like Olivia Newton John in Xanadu. Mostly I was also a superhero with a few, subtle super powers that I used for good deeds, but the specific details of these scenarios were endlessly varied.

I’d have adventures like in the Trixie Beldon books or the Secret Seven series and I’d always solve crime with my wits and good humour, and my super powers, and then I’d be wise and worldly and inherently cool, all the things that I’m not. It really was excellent and it seems very little has changed.

I was lucky with the Cassidy Blair series, starting with THE VODKA DIALOGUE, because I loved writing these stories, but also it seemed other people liked reading them, and I now have a great mailing list of readers who’ve sent me letters and emails telling me what they like about the books. I love this, because it also helps me see what is (and isn’t) working. But as well as a chunk of good luck, I also worked very hard and did a fair bit of research to back up my ideas to make sure I got it right. I came up with a concept of some books that I wanted to read and therefore could write, and I felt really strongly that there was a market for fun, light-hearted, adventure stories with a strong element of crime and romance. Ultimately, I wanted to share what i loved about life, and the world, with others, so I wanted to make sure it was as entertaining as possible. With this goal in mind, I actually found my own style, a type of book i loved to write, so it worked out well. I would never recommend someone write for the sole goal of getting published, this goal can destroy the joy of the words and the scenes and characters within it, but to keep in mind the audience can make sure you write to your best abilities, to make sure the story you want to write is one that others want to read. This mix worked for me.

I had some of the central characters in my head for a long time; I was convinced by them, and I knew what they wanted and needed, which are, in fiction as in life, not always the same thing.

I had my first novel, a comedy romance crime book called LADY LUCK, bought by Wakefield Press in 2001 and will be finishing the sequel to that, called BOSSY BOOTS, soon. I love working with Wakefield because they do terrific covers, promotion and editing and have a really good philosophy of publishing local product as well as promoting this interstate and overseas.

I am also a strong advocate for the development of local creative artists and industry, and while I set my books in Adelaide and live and work here, I travel interstate a fair bit, because many people I work with are there. So the success of LADY LUCK gave me some confidence that there might be a market for more books in this genre. Around this time last year I took the three-book concept to my agent, Jenny Darling, who I’m relieved to say, liked it as well.

So I kept writing and then suddenly I only had a month or two until the Frankfurt Bookfair and I had to send the manuscript off to the five editors before they got on the plane, so I was editing all night, not sleeping, getting up at five in the morning and drinking a lot of coffee and diet Pepsi.

I was in the process of trying to find somewhere to live, and was staying at my parents’ place. They were incredibly patient with me stumbling around at night while working, wearing some strange combination of clothes, because Stirling is a very, very cold place in August. And I sent it off the night before those editors were all flying out of the country, it was a very close call and I don’t recommend that sort of editing process to anyone.

And then Jenny rang to say that the publishing director at Hodder (now Hachette Livre) liked the book and the concept for the series. It was like a dream. While I was talking to Jenny, however, I had to find a piece of paper and pen and write down everything she was said because there was also a good chance I had been working too hard and too late at night and was just hallucinating. Then the amazing people at Hodder flew me to Sydney, laughed at all my lame jokes, send me a box of books and e-mailed me a variety of cover ideas to feed my depleted ego.

So my advice to other writers hoping to get published is to find what you want to read, develop stories and characters that you feel emotionally involved with, and write a book like that. When you’ve written something you love, do some more research into the genre, what the expectations are.

Making stuff up for a living is really nice and I highly recommend it. I hope other writers out there might share their stories and find inspiration and information on this blog site. When I was younger I never thought I could be a creative writer myself, I didn’t know it was a career choice but I'm very glad it is. I know I‘m lucky and I hope my experiences encourage other writers as well.

Listening to: The Orb ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’
Eating: Cheese and toast
Thinking about: Running through a sprinkler - it’s hot in Adelaide today
Watching: My bird Jones with his head tucked into his feathers, sleeping peacefully next to my computer
Wearing: Surprisingly comfortable undies
Reading: Patricia Cornwell’s ‘Cause of Death’

Resources for writers

2006-11-22T10:22:00.000+10:30

Seeing as no picture really suits this post, except for a snap of my toppling bookcase, which would be not just boring but worrying, I figured a pic of me with the former Australian Publishing Director, Lisa Highton, launching my book in Sydney would do. It was a great night but I was so nervous that afterwards I had to run away to a pub and have three very big pints of Coopers ale in quick succession. My parents even flew over from Adelaide for it and the bookstore served my Vodka Dialogue cocktail (albeit in shot glasses so no one passed out). Hodder (Hachette Livre) are an amazing publisher and I was very lucky to be on the receiving end of such enthusiasm and encouragement for my books.

Resources at your Fingertips
Good books about writing that can inspire and teach you. While reading in your genre is the best education, I think, reading books about writing can sometimes help you will issues and bad habits you didn't know you had...

There are hundreds of books available to you that deal with every conceivable aspect of writing. Some of these titles will inspire, excite and drive you to write with the thrill of anticipation, others just don’t click. I recommend them, either of your own choice or from this list and to focus on books dealing in your genre, or with issues you know to be a problem in your own work (mastering dialogue, making the setting convincing, etc) .

As writers, we never stop learning and this includes traditional learning (TAFE, University, etc), magazines, literary journals, and internet resources.

The more you read about good writers, the more you can about the life of a writer and if it is for you. The books below include such details as the books they treasure, the author’s first sale, the research they do, the way they order their day, their approach to publicity, etc.

There are some great books that can stimulate your mind, unstop your writers’ block and get you thinking about your characters, setting and plot with fresh eyes.

I’ve been lucky to find books by authors I admire and love (Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth George) and to discover writers whose advice has stayed with me throughout my career. I re-read a couple of the following books every year – for the sheer joy of it - and there is always something new to learn from them (Lawrence K Block, Stephen King). I order many of these over the internet as your local library or bookstore generally doesn’t stock a wide range of these books.

And remember, as with any advice, go to someone whose work you admire or who is successful in their field.

And most importantly, have fun with it. Researching an industry you want to be involved in should be exciting. There is much reading to do, and as becoming a writer is going to be a career for you, reading novels and non-fiction books about writing, is part of that necessary research. There are no short cuts to getting published, but you can make it a LOT easier to get your work read and to improve your manuscript. It’s up to you to get the information you nee. This workshop and these books are a great step towards this goal. Remember, you’re the best salesperson for your work because it’s YOUR manuscript you need to sell.

Enjoy!

Resource Books for Writers

Writing
• Writing From Start To Finish: A Six Step Guide by Kate Grenville
• The Writing Book: A Workbook for fiction Writers by Kate Grenville
• Not Now Jack – I’m Writing a Novel by Carmel Bird
• Write to the Heart: Wit and Wisdom of Women Writers Edited by Amber Coverdale Sumerall
• Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block (with a new introduction by Sue Grafton)
• The Writers’ Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
• The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing by Norman Mailer
• Dear Writer by Carmel Bird
• Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with Remarkable Writers by Ramona Koval
• The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing by Ben Yagoda
• Spider, Spin Me A Web: A Handbook for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block
• The Writer’s Guide: A Companion to Writing For Pleasure or Publication by Irina Dunn
• On Writing: A Memoir of a Craft by Stephen King
• Writers on Writing: Top Australia and International Authors Talk About Their Work Edited by James Roberts, Barry Mitchell and Roger Zubrinich
• The Faith of the Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates
• Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print- A step-by-step guide from idea through outline to the final sale by Lawrence Block

Humour
• Viva La Repartee by Dr. Marty Grothe (inspiration of good wit)
• How to Write Funny: Add Humour To Every Kind of Writing edited by John B. Kachuba

Crime Writing
• G is for Grafton: The World of Kinsey Millhone by Natalie Hevener Kasufman & Carol McGinnis Kay
• You Can Write a Mystery by Gillian Roberts
• A Suitable Job for A Woman: inside the World of Women Private Eyes by Val McDermid
• The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World’s Most Baffling Crimes by Colin Evans
• The Crime Writers’ Handbook: 65 ways to Kill your victim – in print by Douglas Wynn
• Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life by Elizabeth George

Romance Writing
• Writing Romance Fiction: How to Make a Success of Your Creative Work by Marina Oliver
• Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit
• The Art of Romance Writing by Valerie Parv

Thriller and Popular Fiction Writing
• Bodies of Evidence: The Fascinating World of Forensic Science and How it Helped Solve More than 100 True Crimes by Brian Innes
• Writing the Thriller: How to Craft Page-turning Suspense with instruction from best-selling authors by T. MacDonald Skillman
• Chapter One: Everything You Want to Know About Starting Your Novel by Jennifer Bacia
• Conflict, Action & Suspense by William Noble
• Writing Mysteries: A Handbook by the Mystery Writers of America edited by Sue Grafton
• Just the Facts, Ma’am: A Writer’s guide to Investigators and Investigation Techniques by Greg Fallis
• Creating Popular Fiction: How to Write Novels that Sell by Jennifer Bacia

Getting Published Resources
• The Australian Writers Marketplace Guide: Every Contact You Will Ever Need To Succeed In the Writing Business by the Queensland Writers Centre – a new updated copy is published each year
• Write to Publish: Writing Feature Articles for Magazines, Newspapers and corporate and Community Publications by Vin Maskell & Gina Perry
• Between the Lines: A Legal Guide for Writers and Illustrators by Lynne Spender
• Writing as a Business by Ken Methold
• Public Speaking: Just for the Fun of it! By Peter Middleton
• How to Write Attention Grabbing Query & Cover Letters by John Wood
• The Handbook for South Australian Writers by the SA Writers’ Centre

Editing
• Editing Made Easy: Secrets of the Professionals: A Basic Guide for Editing and Writing Students and Anyone Who Wants to Write Plain English by Bruce Kaplan
• The Simple Subs Book: A Manual for Sub-editors (and would be subeditors) on Newspapers, Trade Papers and House Journals by Leslie Sellers
• Fowler’s Modern English Usuage Edited by R. W. Burchfield
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
• The Little Book of Style complied by Shirley Purchase

Dialogue
• Writing Dialogue: How to Create Memorable Voices and Fictional Conversations that Crackle with Wit, Tension and Nuance by Tom Chiarella

Script-writing
• Making a Good Script Great: A Guide for Writing and Rewriting by Hollywood Script Consultant Linda Seger
• Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood by William Goldman
• Writing Radio Drama by Keith Richards
• Getting your Script Through the Hollywood Maze: An Insider’s Guide by Linda Stuart
• Radio Drama: Theory and Practice by Tim Crook
• Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
• Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy Television by Joe Nazzaro
• The Lavender Bus: How a Hit Movie was Made and sold (Priscilla Queen of the Desert) by Al Clark

Listening to: Camille
Wearing: unflattering top while waiting for clothes to dry (and wash themselves)
Reading: The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery
Eating: Stu's brilliant avocado and tomato salad omlette
Thinking about: Doing my filing
Watching: Death of a Salesman

Sophie, my brilliant and beautiful niece

2006-11-17T13:22:00.000+10:30

Here are a few photos of my beautiful and very smart and funny niece, Sophie. She is so much fun to talk to and play with. We love feeding the ducks together and one of the photos is of her with the gorgeous Alice in Wonderland statue in Adelaide's Rhymill Park, where there are row boats and a cool seventies deli.
Sophie is very smart, I know everyone says that about their family but she's already reading really well. She's a great swimmer and tennis player and she has her own ideas about what she wears and does. She's her own little person and that is great. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to think I sing as well as I clearly do, so I'm banned from singing around her. In fact I have to ask her permission otherwise I'm off to the clink, apparently.
I think my mum would agree with this. She once said she'd pay me fifty dollars not to sing or hum on a drive from Adelaide to Strathalbyn and I fluffed it in about ten minutes, I was a bit bummed out - more about the fact that people don't seem to appreciate my musical abilities than the fact that I missed out on some serious scratch.
Still, I'm keen to sing some carols this year with my friend Cath, as long as they play Good King Wenceslas which is my favourite carol. I am a real christmas gooberhead, as you might have noticed. I am also very happy about having a new little niece called Eva, who's only a few months old and I'll post a photo when I get a good one.
I'm still thrashing my way through writing two books, even though the sun is shining and the birds sinigng (Inside and outside the house), so time is really getting away from me at the moment.

Food: Potnoodles
Listening to: The Adam and Joe radio show podcasts from the UK. I love those guys
Watching: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Wearing: A dress my dad thought was my nightie when he popped over this afternoon
Reading: 'Postmortem' by Patricia Cornwell (third read)
Can't wait to: See my friend Anna Jackson when she moves back to Adelaide from Canberra this year.

Win Free Books by Kirsty Brooks

2006-11-01T13:15:00.000+10:30

Hello spunky readers.

I am having a small competition and the prize is three of my books. If you enter, you get to choose the titles. The first email to me (mail@kirstybrooks.com) with the most correct answers to the questions below wins. You should enter through my personal email address and not the comments button below. By the way, I uploaded this cover image of my second Cassidy Blair book and for some reason the oragen went blue. I liked it so much I kept it. So be aware, this is not how the book actually looks... I call it 'Cassidy at Night #23' (because art always has a number). She probably shouldn't be liquored up and wandering out in the Adelaide parklands at night wearing just a skimpy trench, but then, she's not someone who's all that great with rules, or personal safety...

Rules: If more than one entry has answered the most questions with correct answers, the one sent to me the earliest wins. This could be two, or three answers or four, depending on how it goes. You might not be able to answer all of them, but give it a try because you can still win. Who knows, there might only be one entrant and you'll blitz it. I’ll post the books to you anywhere in the world, so please send me your postal address and the three Kirsty Brooks books that you would like.

1) ('Lady Luck') Where is Chinese Burn girl moving to start up her new sushi business after Cassidy ruins her business
2) ('The Happiness Punch') When Angie breaks into Cassidy’s apartment, what sort of shorts does Neil find in the bag she steals mistakenly thinking they’re Sam’s?
3) ('Mad Love') What does Aimee do to her hair that inspires her date to say ‘You should have told me. I would have brought a paper bag.’
4) ('The Lady Splash') When Neil quizzes Cassidy from a copy of Harpers &Queen, what does Cassidy say is her tip for life?

Good luck

If you're interested in joining my mailing list, where I'll be having more competitions and news of appearances and books in the future, just go to my website and click on the 'Join Mailing List' button.

Thanks!

The Jaguar and my excellent dad

2006-10-31T14:53:00.000+10:30

Here are some pictures of my dad and his friends and their cars.
Dad and a friend restored his Jag over a year or two.
It's been something he's wanted to do for ages - his dad was a good mechanic and he knows so much about cars (he fixed mine last night when some dope crunched my front fender) and I'm so proud of him for doing something he's always wanted to do. I love old cars but Stuart is car mad so he gets up unnaturally early to go on drives with Dad sometimes and talks about it for days afterwards. He (quite rightly) says my dad is very cool. The car is amazing. When you travel in it, it's like being a rock star because people stop and stare. The bonnet is huge and the interior is gorgeous. Even the cigarette lighter says 'Cigar'. It's from a very stylish time. Dad drives around with his pals on the weekend and has a great time. These photos were taken by Stuart, who takes photos of everything... Stuart has a MINI Cooper (see picture below). He loves this car. He used to have an old Triumph and still looks at them wistfully on the road, but I know he loves his new car because he washes it so often... In this final photo, I'm sinning against car enthusiasts around the globe, by sitting on the bonnet. I had no idea this was such a heinous crime until I did it, and got horrified looks from both Stuart and my dad, so I had to get a photo taken to prove I was once such a dare-devil. I'm not even allowed to put my feet up on the dash of the Mini Cooper when I'm in the suicide seat but it's worth it because it's such a gorgeous car.
Some people might know that I gave Cassidy Blair a silver MINI Cooper in 'The Millionaire Float', so it was fun research and, for once, easy... I could actually practice some scenes from the book (such as being tied up in the back seat) to see how they'd play out.

Anyway, enough about cars. Drive carefully and as my mum would say 'There are madmen on the roads'

KB storms Moscow

2006-10-26T15:50:00.000+09:30

Hello, just a quick post to let you know my dear friend and incredible writer, Eva Sallis, found my book in Moscow recently. Here is the picture she very kindly took. (this is not Eva, by the way. I think it's some lovely person in the Moscow bookshop). It made my day. Thank goodness for friends with more exciting lives than mine...

kbx

Bookcrossing - Books in the city

2006-10-25T22:54:00.000+09:30

The following is a small article I wrote (mostly for my own enjoyment) about the excellent work of Bookcrossing.com. It's very cool (the website, not the article, which if anything, is slightly manically enthusiastic). I’ve finally found the perfect hobby.

As a fan of lists, feeling different (in this case, a grand literary benefactor), hiding things, and the use of stickers in general, the website www.BookCrossing.com is as close to being a secret agent or member of the Secret Seven as a thirty-four year old girl can get without using the phrase ‘intel’ or hunting down smugglers in her spare time.

Back in the day, I had two great hobbies: reading (The Famous Five, Trixie Belden) and writing (wistful rhyming poems) and doing both in the library, where everyone knows only the cool kids hang.

My sad little hobbies kept me absorbed and delighted to the point of social non-existence throughout school and most of uni, until I discovered boys who used beer as hair gel and put me ‘on the door’ to see bands so loud I can still hear a distant drum solo.

After the beer hair boys came and went – six to eight years with good behaviour, known as The Years of Love Gone Wrong – I turned my hobby into my career. Reading still lurks about, only it’s now called research.

Since then I’ve been fishing around for a replacement hobby so I wouldn’t fall back on bad habits and start believing in Satan just because I saw him on stage with a bass guitar.

Then mere seconds before I called the WEA for a place on the scrapbooking workshop I found BookCrossing.com – some might say just in time. It’s a website set up with the aim of turning the whole world into a library.

Clearly this is something anyone with any sense would want to be involved in. And since joining, I’ve discovered about 1,700 very sensible, and some might say lovely, people in Adelaide have done just that.

As part of my research for the books I write, I’ve been alarmed by the various dodgy communities that have grown via the internet. People have embraced everything from dressing up like furry animals to a shared fascination with the texture of balloons or the TV show FarScape.

I gleefully wrote about them from my lofty heights of mirth until I too joined their merry band.

To get involved you simply order (or download and print yourself) stickers to identity it as a BookCrossing book, give each book a number pulled from the site once you’ve keyed in the details, and then ‘release’ it for someone to find. Then hopefully that person will log on with the identifying number, and so on, creating a travel diary for that book.

I admit I didn’t find the website by searching for ways to make the world a better place. I actually just Googled myself like a dork. Instead of finding my own website and the fact that my first novel is now selling second hand on eBay, I found that some of the books I’d written had already been ‘released’ around the world.

Initially I got myself into quite the to-do thinking some German lady had dumped my searing tale of lap-dancing and misadventure. But then I realised that the books you ‘release’ are ones you’d like to share with others because you liked them. Or felt guilty for having them in the ‘to read’ pile for too long.

There was even a bunch of book reviews: some good, some ice cold. But happily, one of the skills of being a writer, even before you’ve written your first poem of dysfunction, is to learn patience, merciless determination, and how to deal with rejection and bad feedback.

The fact that these skills also became very useful in The Years of Love Gone Wrong was just a happy coincidence.

The other bonus is that now I’m also part of a gang. We don’t fight on the streets or set fire to cars but we do read a lot and that can be a bit scary, especially if, like me, you turn down the corners of a friend’s favourite copy of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.

I walked about town weighed down with books which was good for two reasons: I got to exercise the equivalent of an Olsen twin from each leg and I’ve discovered parts of Adelaide I never knew about.

I dropped off books at hole 7 of the North Adelaide golf course (a tremendous view of the city and opportunity to plot the abduction of a golf buggy from those golf wags), the bus stop outside the op shop on Magill Road (where I spotted a set of great files for my office), the bench by the River Torrens in Walkerville (where the handrails were so warped by the recent water overflow and rubbish that I was forced to do a superhero hurdle to the path).

I left books in a phone booths in Walkerville, outside the Perryman’s Bakery in North Adelaide (unbeatable pies and pasties), on benches dotted between Richard’s Park and Sir Edmund Smith Walk in Norwood and on the path leading down to the little scultpures on the River Torrens (see pic).

Along the way I found a tiny playground tucked between side streets, helped a woman with her baby stroller, tripped over and grazed both knees (what am I, six?) and discovered that wearing sneakers with normal clothes makes me look like Melanie Griffiths in Working Girl.

I’ve since ‘released’ 26 books and more than two million books have been released worldwide and BookCrossing has even been added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a new word.

But if you’re the type to worry (another of those basic ‘must haves’ for any writer) that this ‘world as a library’ just reeks of world domination and that before you can say Orbital Mind-Control Laser, it’ll be illegal to talk over a whisper in a public place or take a book into the bathroom, just think about how nice it would be if there were helpful and smart librarian-types, like Katharine Hepburn’s character in Desk Set, wandering the world,

So check your suspicions – and large bags - at the door and help turn the world into a library.

For me, the choice was easy and not just because I can see the appeal of a well placed librarian-style ‘Shhh!’ thanks to living in an apartment squashed between a rowdy football pub and a building site, where daily conversation is peppered with the sort of words I wouldn’t even use in a fight to the death.

It’s just a nice idea and there should be more of those.

Speculative Fiction in Australia - 2001 article

2006-10-13T12:52:00.000+09:30

This is an article I wrote back in 2001 regarding SF (Science fiction and Fantasy – Speculative fiction) for the Australian Bookseller and Publisher – the best Australian publishing industry trade magazine around.

Science fiction is not dead: it just smells funny. The opinion of some booksellers and publishers in Australia is that sales of speculative fiction to mainstream readers has not always been strong, but that fantasy is appealing to an ever-broadening marketplace, increasingly represented by women readers. Science fiction (SF), on the other hand, is successfully maintaining and even expanding its readership, primarily through media spin-offs and military fiction series.

Epic fantasy by Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Raymond E. Feist, Australian author Sara Douglass and others is popular because of old fashioned quests, lashings of romance, and historical drama, even if that history is entirely fictional. And as Jonathan Strahan, contributing editor for US-based magazine Locus, notes, the quality of these books is only improving. 'The traditional view of post-Tolkien epic fantasy is that it sells well, but that the books are lousy. That’s beginning to change. Books like Mary Gentle's Ash, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Guy Gavriel Kay's Lord of Emperors, and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series are heralding the appearance of well-written, intelligent "fat fantasy" that is applauded by critics and loved by readers ,' he says.

Strahan goes on to say that, 'While it’s true that cookie cutter fantasy written to fill shopping centre rack space is mostly about escapism, the best fantasy is not. It’s about the lessons a moral person needs to learn to exist in a civilised world'. Escapism is strong drawcard, and, as says PanMacmillan Fiction Publisher Cate Paterson notes, this is a common goal among readers, no matter the genre. 'I think everybody, regardless of age, likes a quest story or someone overcoming the odds. One of the purposes of fiction is escape, to surrender reality, and the reasons people are attracted to fiction are the same, regardless of age.'

'One interesting thing about best selling authors like Robert Jordan is that the books sell extremely well for the first few weeks and then drop right off,' says Dymocks National and International Sales Manager Jeff Higgins. 'What that says to me is that people go in and buy the new Jordan or Raymond E. Feist and then that's it. Those people are kept informed by the Internet and magazines and they just get the books when they come in. I don't see that happen with any other category.'

Paterson suggests that this actually make it easier to sell to genre audiences. 'The appeal of the genre to publishers is that they are interconnected. You do get a real community of fans. (Speculative fiction) is a very connected genre and you can target a lot of people. There is no magazine that general readers will buy, but there is one for genre fiction readers, especially science fiction, fantasy and romance.'

Kaye Wright, Marketing Manager at HarperCollins Australia, publisher of the Voyager science fiction and fantasy imprint, believes that fantasy is a growing market because of its essential avoidance of a technological world, whereas SF celebrates that world. 'I read somewhere that the essential SF question nowadays is no longer "What if?" but "What now?"' Fantasy author and agent with Curtis Brown, Garth Nix agrees: 'Now we are really living in a science fictional world and it's of less interest to us. Fantasy offers a haven from all that.'

If this is really the case, then the marketing decisions that have led to the success of such technologically driven, best-selling escapist titles by authors such as Michael Crichton and Matthew Reilly could be employed to raise the profile of speculative fiction in the mainstream. This has, however, proven to be difficult. 'If we knew what was going to make a Harry Potter we'd just bottle it,' laughs Paterson. Best-sellers are phenomena whose outrageous popularity causes them to outsell other similar titles. They cannot be explained and are therefore, impossible to emulate, but that hasn't stopped people trying. 'I don't know if it's conscious that writers are trying to emulate Harry Potter’, Paterson continues, 'but I do see agents and writers saying, "following the success of Harry Potter, you may see similar things in my manuscript." There is a huge degree of luck involved in publishing, some indefinable thing.'

And while booksellers missed out on profits due to heavy discounting of the Potter books by chain stores, it has helped boost sales of some good quality fiction that has languished on shelves. 'Young adult has a market and people are starting to realise it,' says Galaxy bookstore's Stephanie Tall. 'In America, when everyone was waiting for the next Harry Potter, some booksellers got together to make "While you're waiting for Harry Potter Survival Guide" lists and on it were authors like Philip Pullman and the Narnia series. The sales for those titles skyrocketed and that's got to be good. It got people reading and talking about books.'

Higgins agrees. 'Peer pressure can force people into buying a book and reading it. All age groups were buying Harry Potter and among those were some reluctant reading kids.' But did marketing have much to do with it, or was it, as Stephanie Smith from HarperCollins Australia suggests, a classic case of word of mouth? 'I don't think they put much behind (the first book),' she says. 'But word really just spread. Sometimes there's a bit of magic and certain things just hit a cord with people.'

Combating a prevailing negative attitude toward speculative fiction will possibly require publishers to either accept its limited market, change the way they promote the genre, or increasingly remove genre tags from individual titles. A new title from Pan Macmillan, The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton, is one Paterson hopes will become a successful 'cross-over' novel. Book One in the Bitterbynde Trilogy, The Ill-Made Mute is unusual for the absence of any reference on its cover to fantasy; and like Juliet Marillier’s recent Daughter of the Forest, is clearly aimed at a romance market as well.

One problem with getting mainstream readers to read science fiction is that publishers are reluctant to label current bestsellers as science fiction, probably because they fear harming sales. 'No one's going to tell you that Jurassic Park is an SF novel, but it is,' says Strahan. 'Crichton can write science fiction, sell millions of books, but no one wants to say it's SF because it's right off the radar in terms of sales.'

Depending on what store you go to, sales of literary SF, military SF and media spin-offs appear quite different. 'I try to push everything', says the owner and manager of Slow Glass bookstore in Melbourne, Justin Ackroyd, 'but I do better with the literary side of SF like Ian Banks and Ken McLeod sales wise than the general stuff because we have a reputation for stocking the literary material. I maintain that by keeping things like the complete Philip K. Dick on the shelves.'

'There are science fiction authors who continue to sell strongly,' says Nix. 'Space operas have gone through a resurgence and that is international.' And writers of epic-scale science fiction adventures like Peter Hamilton or Stephen Baxter do sell well. But Jez Newton, the Sydney Dymocks store speculative fiction specialist, believes that military SF sales figures are not indicative of the SF market as a whole. 'It all sells consistently because there is such a huge range,' he says. 'There are about a hundred (SF) books coming out every year but I have no best sellers at all compared to what else is in the shop. Nothing here gets up there, and I sell at least a thousand different titles a week.'

Strahan says the number of SF books published each year is much larger. 'Science fiction is probably selling better than it ever has before.' he says. 'Writers like David Weber or Lois McMaster Bujold have large dedicated audiences, as do Baxter, Hamilton, Scott Card and others. The perception that it doesn’t sell as well as epic fantasy is accurate, but it doesn’t recognise that it’s improving.'

'Unlike general fiction writers, who we promote as Australians, I'm not that sure that any science fiction or fantasy authors who are Australian ever get promoted as Australians,' says Higgins. 'Perhaps it's a hang-up of the media, which can't see that fantasy is more mainstream than it's ever been.' Of Nix, Higgins says: 'He's making more money in the States than he'd ever make here.'

Australian SF author Sean Williams is in a similar situation. With co-writer Shane Dix, he has recently been contracted by Del Rey to write three Star Wars novels, and has faced more mainstream media attention for these than any of his other books. The recognition factor of a known brand outscores on every level.

The mainstream also appears to be more comfortable with SF on the big screen, especially when it involves popular stars, than on the page. SF movies do very well at the box office, even though they are often thirty years behind what is appearing in the publishing world. 'Star Wars, says Newton, 'is nothing more than a pseudo fantasy wrapped up in a science fictional cover and was regarded by most people in literary science fiction as sending SF back twenty years.' Curiously, fantasy-based movies are notoriously poorly received. 'Any fantasy movie you care to mention has not done well.' says Nix. 'I think that might change with The Lord of the Rings, though.' Newton agrees. 'The Lord of the Rings will do better than any movie any time.'

Media spin-offs, such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars, are often regarded with derision from within the SF field, despite their relatively strong sales. The success of these books indicates that SF readers are no different to mainstream audiences. They are looking for something familiar, an area of interest, yet perceptions of speculative fiction continue to be distorted: while the mainstream audience will happily go to a SF movie, the books are a different story.

Some publishers of SF are hoping to change that perception by employing editors and sales staff with familiarity in the field, but outside specialty bookstores, on the other hand, this is rare. 'You really need to read it to be able to sell it,' says Tall, and Strahan agrees. 'Science fiction is a specialty field, and I think publishers in this country have found it difficult to bring themselves up to speed on what makes SF or fantasy work and how it should be published. '

'Fantasy just sells a lot better,' says Smith at HarperCollins. 'It's hard sometimes to get science fiction off the ground. I'll read everything that comes in for the science fiction range and definitely read with a hopeful eye.'

Cover design is one area perhaps deserving reassessment. 'The biggest problem with Sean Williams' first books was that the covers were so dark that they disappeared into the background' says Ackroyd. 'Inheritance by Simon Brown has done okay but in the past he suffered from dark covers too. I liked those covers but the public isn't going to notice them when they scan the shelves. With fantasy the publishers seem to think "Oh yes, that's nice and bright, we'll chose that."'

'Experience shows that if you package a book well, it sells well, says Strahan. 'The Potter books and the Philip Pullman books in the US are handsome, well-made illustrated hardcovers, and they sell. Younger readers are particularly responsive to a magical package. And a bad package can kill a book. One recent award-winning SF title did well in hardcover, but struggled in paperback except in one store. The publisher looked into what had happened. The bookstore owner has wrapped all of his copies in brown paper and written the name of the book on it. Sales went up markedly.'

Other publishers, instead of looking for new ways to market speculative fiction, are increasingly looking to broaden the genre markets. 'Booksellers like categorising things,' Nix says. 'James Bradley is essentially a SF writer, but because he writes literary SF he and his publishers would prefer him to be (marketed) as literary fiction than science fiction. It's an Australian thing. I think there's a bit of a cringe about genre writing.'

Categorising books makes things easier for booksellers, but can limit choices for readers, and ultimately effect sales. 'The upside of genre classification is people in bookshops are directed to the sections where they know they will find something to suit their particular taste' says Paterson. 'The down side is that if a reader merely wants a good read and buys on impulse, they probably won't be looking through the genre shelves. One way round this is to place all the best new fiction, regardless of genre, on the new release shelves before they get relegated to their natural resting place in bookshops.'

Regarding sub genres, Nix explains the enormous hybrid fantasy titles available on the shelves. 'If you had a genre category map that covered everything from pulp fantasy to literary magic realism, you could have pulp fantasy on the X-axis and literary magic realism fantasy on the Y-axis and plot everything from there, but you can argue that SF is just a subset of fantasy. In fact all fiction is fantasy by definition.'

'Within science fiction, the sub genres consist of everything from cyberpunk and military SF to alternate history and feminist utopian fiction,' says Williams. 'SF is a great mixer; you can add it to anything. There is romance SF, thriller SF, crime SF; I've even read western SF. It's almost impossible to name all the varieties.'

And these hybrids are having an increasing effect on the way these books are being marketed. 'Here Be Dragons,' Nix says, 'an historical romance by Sharon Kay Penman, had a cover that looked like a fantasy novel. Fantasy fans would pick it up, see that it was an historical novel and put it back. Fans of historical romance wouldn't even pick it up because it didn't look like something they would read.'

Wright sees attempts to bend genre classification abroad as well as at home. '(Hugo Award-winning SF author) Greg Bear is being pushed into the mainstream in the UK now and I think that is interesting. We had a book by West Australian author Tess Williams which was a crossover novel and we were trying to get that broader audience, which wasn't hard to do.'

The mainstream market often buys speculative fiction when it's marketed to them as non-genre and we're still seeing this with authors such as Tom Clancy, Terry Pratchett and Douglass Adams. It's also worked with more challenging science fiction by the likes of Mary Doria Russell, William Gibson and Doris Lessing. Some of the success publishers and booksellers may find more success with science fiction titles if that cross-over market can be found, or the quality of the marketing and packaging improved. 'Speculative fiction encompasses everything from magic realism to Michael Crichton,' says Williams, 'and the need for that sort of story, whatever it's called, is not going away in a hurry.'

Writing crime fiction - a couple of ideas and some advice

2006-10-03T16:27:00.000+09:30

Writing Crime Fiction

This post looks at the writing of crime fiction, which is based on various panels and workshops I've been involved in. I also talk about writing romance fiction at writing and reading festivals. While my novels are described as crime.comedy.romance, chick lit, screwball comedies, light crime, or popular fiction, they have elements or romance, crime and chick lit in them, so I hope you'll forgive the fact thtat my advice comes from many years writing light crime, rather than the hard crime work of such excellent wrtiers as Patricia Cornwall or Kathy Reichs. I don't have the stomach to write such work and I can't seem to avoid being a little sarcastic and light-hearted about both crime and romance, which is ironic really, seeing as both of those things can really be pretty dangerous.... Possibly it's a defensive move, but I enjoy writing "screwball crime comedy capers" and enjoyment means I write better, and more, so as long as I have readers, i'll keep doing it. For anyone interested in writing hard crime, i hope this this article is also of use...

Crime fiction is very popular with publishers and readers. If you love reading crime fiction, you’d probably enjoy writing your own. Read your favourite writers, and work out how they ‘did it’. Plot it backwards and see where and when and how the clues, issues and instincts of the main character have come into play. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was not to write what you know, but to write what you love. If you love writing a certain genre then inevitably you should end up spending more time writing, the quality of the work is sure to improve and the likelihood of others reading it (i.e. getting published) is higher.

In crime fiction you certainly want to write and read, a page-turner but also something that is convincing. Loving the situation, genre and at least a few of the characters will enable both you and your reader to engage with the story and the manuscript will be more successful. Many crime readers have favourite authors and with the name branding that is so common in this genre, new, prolific authors in this genre are always being sought. In crime fiction there might be a certain basic couple of requests (death, action, suspense, drama, twists and turns, good conquering evil, etc) but you can also apply your own ideas, characters and style within that structure. And that’s really where the fun starts.

As a genre, it deals with the psychology of characters, and exploring the human condition intrigues both reader and writer. The reasons why people act in certain ways, how they can be so cruel or brave or capable in a crisis can be fascinating. Our notions of safety and danger, both personal and social, can be studied in stories about police procedure or private eye investigations. There is an element of wish fulfilment in writing crime fiction also. It's worthwhile to think about what you like to read yourself. Writing in like vein, and then rewriting and editing makes the process more enjoyable.

Many sub-genres exist, such as:

• amateur sleuthing
• semi-professional/ professional private eye
• an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances
• stumbling across a body
• police procedural
• hard-boiled gumshoe
• humour.

Points to note in writing a good crime novel:

Pace and action

Most of the pace and action arises from someone getting killed or threatened with death, or the central character having to solve a case related to one or the other. By reading a good crime novel and solving its structure, you can learn to plot- backwards. Map out exactly what happened and see how the author has created intrigue.

Protagonist

Readers need to be able to identify with your protagonist and thus with the perils and successes s/he experiences; so s/he must have intelligence, certain skills, honed intuition. An unsympathetic leading character is a challenge for both reader and writer. Strong characters give substance to the plot, which itself only works if you care about what happens next. Keep your main character active and involved. Being always central, s/he creates the excitement, so things stay thrilling and enticing, consistently moving and driving the plot.

Conflict

There must be conflict, both internal and external.

Internal (within characters): What do they want? What are their goals and motivations? What makes you want to read about them and want them to succeed-or not, as in the case of the perpetrator of the crime or the enemy?

External: What drives the plot to make it so exciting? Obstacles in the way of both perpetrator and hero/ine have to be legitimate, believable and logical. Effective conflict puts your likeable characters in seemingly impossible situations and forces them to find a solution to such problems as saving themselves or the world or someone else, or solving the crime, or finding they are in a race against time. Ask yourself what is at stake: a reputation, people's lives, the world, those close to the main character, or the protagonist him/herself.

Motivation

Motivation, like conflict, needs to be established early in the story. How do you get your readers on the edge of their seats? You must put them inside the heads of your characters and yearning for resolution of conflict/s. You-the writer-must know what they-the characters-want, but also what you want them to get. To this end, introduce the central and supporting characters early and ensure you determine their relationships with each other.

Setting

The setting must be established as soon as possible. Rather than tell your readers the house was ugly - describe it, using as many senses as you can. It is important to create the background to the story so the reader can picture it. Use the principle that less is better than more; don't overload the reader with superfluous detail.

Characters

You have to write as though you believe in your characters so the reader feels the same way. They have to change along the way; their development is important. What is their psychological profile, their makeup, background and view of the world? Do they ring true? What sort of relationships do they have with those around them? Are they in genuine conflict with someone as motivated as they are? At the end, a character will have made some discovery about her/ himself, thus adding to the reader's satisfaction and enjoyment. The change could be professional in nature, or psychological, or romantic. Allow an intimate understanding of at least one character, then focus on his/her personal development - always slightly larger than life in fiction.

Suspense

Suspense needs to be created and maintained throughout, for it feeds on character development. Without knowing- and thus caring- about the characters, it is very difficult to create suspense with conviction.

A victim

A victim needs to be more than just a body; make him/her a human being. When you know what this person and her/his family have lost, you will have a much more powerful motivation for the central character. Allow your reader to empathise with the victim. Death, violence and injury must be shown effectively, even if TV and the movies have numbed us to them. The writer must therefore work harder to make them seem real for the reader.

Bad guys

Are your bad guys as real as your good guys? There is always some aspect of reality about the best villains. If you can recognise the humanity in them and can see what they were or could be (e.g. Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth Vader), then you can see what has been lost, why they are evil, what changed them. Think of a real crime that stuck in your mind. Often it is a study of why and how people do illegal, immoral or otherwise evil deeds. No-one knows what s/he is capable of under certain conditions. Films like ‘A Simple Plan’ or ‘Alive’ exemplify this.

Point of view

Point of view needs to be established, as well as understanding the demands of it.

Who sees and/or knows what is essential to the plot? It is necessary to get it right to ensure the investigation happens as it should, along with any red herrings.

Plot

A plot only works if you care about what happens next. A great plot, however, can seem empty without strong characters to give it substance. Write what you enjoy and what enhances your own development, but keep in mind your limitations. Research can be fun to find out what you are not sure about. Your subplot should link to the main plot, involve secondary characters and, to a lesser extent, main characters. It should interweave with the central plot.

Back-story

Establish back-story so that it has an effect on the present story. Allow coincidences, but only when they advance the plot, not when they solve the crime completely or make the central character appear merely lucky rather than clever. Any back-story introduced separately needs to have been a powerful event in the main character's life to affect him/her in the present; it must be believable and have impact. It may well involve a villain or other secondary characters. Establish early such things as one character knowing something, such as a security code, where the villain lives, how to pick a lock etc. During dialogue and action scenes, readers are paying peak attention and absorbing information. Use that opportunity to distribute important data that will be needed later, for instance, perpetrator's background, villain's phobia, victim's psychological profile etc.

Dialogue

Dialogue reveals characters, situations and nuances- both in the characters themselves and the plot. The reader can get a lot of information from conversations. Study dialogue. Its usage always discloses much about motivations of characters, their secret feelings towards other characters, their backgrounds and verbal habits. Effective dialogue is a very powerful way to show character instead of merely telling the reader. Speech patterns, once established, will enable the reader to distinguish one character from another without the use of too much attribution.

The ending

Though the ending may have been anticipated by the readers, make sure there is always something they didn't see coming, such as romance, action, betrayal etc. Leave the reader satisfied. The ending has to be consistent with the rest of the book, but also surprising, credible and unique. A complex, thrilling plot that suddenly ties up neatly in the final ten minutes can seem unreal. Some things can be left unresolved, but tie up all the central threads.

General hints:

It's your interpretation of the story that is the attraction. Make the story and the characters exciting for yourself and for the reader through your vision, your unique interpretation of the world.

Try to keep the action moving, the intrigue alive and the characters active, so that the reader keeps on reading. There must be places (built on the inherent suspense and excitement) where the reader can take a break and catch his/her breath between the action sequences to see the personal side of the characters.

Throw in a curveball whenever things get slow. I tend to know when to do this because, as a writer, I’m feeling things are too cosy. There’s a market for cosy novels but very little room or patience for this in crime fiction . What would make things really difficult for the protagonist? How will s/he get out of the present situation? Challenge both yourself and the reader. Admiration for a central character builds the connection between reader and author.

Be very wary of trying to promote an idea or a philosophy. Don't preach to your readers; instead, just plunge them right in, and let the story and the characters reveal themselves rather than telling the reader outright.

Romantic interests and friendships are important as human elements bring characters to life. Unresolved sexual tension (as in 'X-Files', 'Moonlighting') help to maintain reader interest.

Writing tips:

# 1. Try to end each writing session at a juicy point. If you stop and abandon it when you are stuck, or at the end of a chapter, it's much harder to return and take up where you left off. This helps you to look forward to your writing.

#2. Have a note pad nearby, both when writing and editing. Note down places where you have to go back to re-emphasise a clue or a character nuance, but keep going. Read the story as the reader might.

#3. Observe industry guidelines; find out what an editor or agent wants from you. An average manuscript is 300 to 400 double-spaced A4 pages (or around 80,000 words). Many are longer, but rarely shorter.

#4. Keep your story to yourself until you have written it.

#5. Enjoy writing it, set yourself goals and reward yourself. Remember, if you are not being entertained by your story, your readers probably won't be either.

Kirsty Brooks is the author of five crime/comedy/romance novels. She is the director of Driftwood Manuscripts, an assessment service for writers. This article appears in slightly different format in the South Australian Writers' Handbook

Manuscript assessment for writers - interview

2006-09-29T14:06:00.000+09:30

This is an interview I have done regarding manuscript assessment. It hopefully answers some questions for anyone interested in the process. I wrote it for a Creative writing student studying the growth of this industry. I seem to be focussing on my work and writing a little at the moment but that's possibly because i'm writing a book and , well, writing gets a bit obssessive and sometimes it's tricky creating something new when you've just written a couple thousands words of new stuff (that does or does not make sense...)

I hope this is useful to emerging writers or antyone who is looking into getting some objective feedback on their own writing.

How many unsolicited manuscripts do you receive from authors each year?

KB: 80 -100

Can you remember any major differences in numbers with years ago?

Kb: Driftwood has been operating for about ten years now. I have raised the fees, increased the assessor base and included specialists in areas of commercial and popular fiction which weren’t as well represented before, which is to be expected, as the previous director, Eva Sallis, is a highly respected and award-winning literary writer and she knew more literary fiction writers, whereas I write popular fiction and love it, and I love genre –writing, especially crime, thrillers, etc. My ex-partner is a very successful SF writer, so my contacts, interest and expertise were more in the commercial fiction market, and I seemed to attract writers in these genres too. Now we have a really well-balanced list of experienced assessors in almost every genre and field, so I can call on one of them to assess pretty much anything that comes our way, and they have, in turn taught me a lot about genres I don’t work in, such as children’s fiction and literary fiction. I’m constantly amazed by their experience and one of my favourite parts of the job is going over the reports. You can never stop learning and at times I think I learn as much from these reports as the client will. I’m very lucky to have several arms to my writing and editing work, and my mentoring and editing feed into my own work, my writing feeds into my assessment work, etc. I think this is of huge benefit to our writers as well, as I get to help them with their careers by guiding them away from some of the mistakes I made early on, and possibly still do make), while sharing my experiences and those of our assessors.

Kb: We stopped advertising some years ago (I used to put ads in various writers centre newsletters – and I notice many assessment agencies still do this) but frankly we have only increased our client base since that decision. It was, I’m sure a coincidence, but it also coincided with my career taking off a little more, and I think writers are more comfortable dealing with an assessment agency run by someone who earns their money from writing, and who can offer assessors who specialise in various genres and who works in the field as an industry professional with contact with literary agents and editors on a regular basis. I feel very strongly that if you write in a specialist genre such as crime, romance, fantasy, etc, you need more than just a ‘general assessor in fiction’. You need it to be read by someone who reads and writes professionally in this genre, so that’s why much of my effort goes into getting the best writers I can to write our reports. In the latest Australian Writers’ Marketplace Guide (the ‘bible’ for any writer, I believe) there was an incredible leap in the number of Australian assessment agencies. Many are very good and offer different services, many are run by people I believe are not qualified to offer industry inspired reports that are written with the heart of the genre, the love of reading and writing, and the important empathy and understanding that comes from working with other writers who know your field, genre and the career you aspire to. I would always advise writers to check the credentials of an assessment agency and make sure a publisher or agent respects and/or recommends them.

Kb: I also attend many literary festivals as a guest, and in this capacity, I think it quietly but effectively advertises the professionalism of the manuscript assessment agency, as we are very involved in the industry and get many direct recommendations from literary agents and publishers who know me and know that I operate the agency to help writers develop their work to publishable standard, and not to flatter them, as it seems some agencies do – which only gives them false hope, and undermines all the work they have put into their work, as they send the work off before it is ready, or anywhere near a publishable stage, and a publisher/editor or agent won’t accept a manuscript a second time for submission, unless they’re requested it. We try very hard to do the right thing by the writers we deal with, and by consequence, this helps agents and editors, who receive work of a higher quality.

Why do you think this is the case?

KB: I think assessment has become a more integral aspect of the publishing industry, and provides robust, critical and direct feedback that agents and editors can no longer give. There is little room for manuscript development within commercial fiction houses and literary agencies, so the work falls to us. We provide an objective opinion, with our hand firmly in the perspective of the publishing industry, so although our advice can be very tough sometimes, we are direct, and provide examples and praise, and work towards making sure the author does their story and their work, justice it deserves.

Can you describe any changes to the following: (how and why)

a) Presentation/submission/expectations/delivery of manuscripts

KB: I get less writers sending me manuscript wrapped in ribbon, or fully printed and bound like a book already, or with hand drawn covers done by their son, etc, as it’s more well known and pressed upon writers more and more, how the presentation of the ms should be, to make the reading process easier for the editor, publisher or agent who eventually, hopefully, gets to look at it.

b) Reading/reports/appraisal of manuscripts

KB:, I think there are an amazing amount of new agencies popping up, and frankly, very few of them are run by people I have heard of, or who seem appropriately qualified in the field. I think it would be good to have an accreditation, as literary agencies now have, to ensure those operating in their field are qualified to comment on another person’s work. All to often I have people coming to me, insisting they are qualified to assess writing, when really it would be peer assessment, they have been published, they haven’t an agent, or any dealings with the industry and their experience is purely academic. This is not enough experience to give feedback on a person’s work, and I truly believe writers need to be cautious in any case about the feedback they receive, from any assessment agency. We are not a publisher, so our advice is objective, but not directed towards a goal for publication in a certain way, which differs from the reports and editing I receive from my publisher (Hodder Headline Australia – now Hachette Livre Australia), which is directed entirely towards forming the book a certain way, directly for publication.

c) Acceptance/rejection of manuscripts

KB: I’m always stunned how many writers send work in to an agent in first draft stage, having done no research in their field on presentation or what that agent might require, and many who proudly boast that they don’t read in their genre in order not to ‘corrupt’ their vision or style. It’s very peculiar. I then often have conversations with writers and have to explain to them the way the industry operates, something they could discover for themselves from reading any of the terrific books, journals, magazines or by just talking to some one who does this for free at a writers centre. And, so many writers don’t belong to writers’ centres or the ASA (Australia Society of Authors). I think we need all the help and support and access to resources as possible, and I encourage writers to do a great deal of research to both boost their confidence, and to enable them to have an intelligent, informed conversation with an agent or editor if the run into one at a festival (which they should always attend). Hearing other writers speak about their lives and approaches to writing is invaluable.

From your perspective as an (agent/publisher/manuscript appraisal person) do you feel that the above changes have had a positive or negative impact on the book industry? Explain why.

KB: I think editors and agents are glad of some one helping writers present to them work of a higher quality, but it’s a very slow and sometimes indistinct change sometimes. We help writers all the time, but many get discouraged, many realise how difficult it can be to be a professional writer, how dedicated you must be, how much work you must pt into it, and the assessment process can only emphasise this, and thus perhaps many writers drop off, or stop writing for a while, but the ones who are determined to succeed, they take the feedback willingly, they love it. They can also take the criticisms as a challenge and get stuck into it. They’re the writers I know will succeed, as that’s the way I always worked.

Kb: You fall down but you pick yourself up again. In this field, your success is never guaranteed, but your love of it should be, you should love reading and writing and if you love something, no doubt you’ll be happy to do it a great deal, and to sacrifice many other things for it. So the improvement in the step between ‘final’ draft from a writer’s perspective and the work they finally submit for publication, would be greatly improved by the injection of a professional opinion, advice and examples, directions to head, suggestions to change and praise for where the work really is outstanding, so then, hopefully they will continue to write. And if that MS they submitted for assessment doesn’t get published, what they learned from that process improves the next ms, which might.

Submitting your writing to literary agents and editors - The distant sound of gunfire

2006-09-26T12:43:00.000+09:30

I hope the following is useful to potential writers. I'd like to be able to post various different articles I've written, as well as personal opinions and thoughts and updates on my writing and what I'm working on.

I recently received some great reviews in Australian newspapers for my latest novel, THE LADY SPLASH and have included an example here. Reading the papers is one of my favourite things to do on a Saturday but in the months after publication each year (I write a book each year at the moment but I might be stretching that out a little for the next title - THE TEQUILA BIKINI which gives me more time to develop the books but also help look after my mum right now who is quite sick, and so my writing hasn't been as regular as usual).

I get nervous reading the books section because when I turn a page in the arts section of the paper and see an image of my latest book cover and article or review, my heart squeezes in fear. I've had a couple great reviews, some vague ones and one nasty personal attack, so I'm always expecting the worst, which is one of the crapper aspects of my personality. I'm working on building up some optimism but in the meantime, I think I can go back to reading my papers again without fear...

Giving yourself the best chance possible to get published

When W. H. Allen & Co. rejected Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal in 1970 citing ‘No reader interest’, he could have received it like a blow to the head, but he kept writing. Perhaps he felt compelled to contribute to the creative world or maybe he just set about furiously to prove them wrong.

But many writers don’t get the opportunity to get angry about anything other than a blank compliments slip, which can be quite a let down. As the director of Driftwood Manuscripts, I’ve discovered at least one of the reasons this rejection occurs. All too often the manuscript was not passed over because the agent had been lazy or arrogant or drunk, it’s because they never read it in the first place.

Any form of rejection sucks, but I found that dealing with rejection from a publisher by downing a few dozen shots of vodka is rather like trying to distract the Hounds of Hell with a few bone shaped treats. So while I can get used to good-looking strangers dismissing me with a glance and cashiers waving off my offers of exact change, publishers offering no explanation for this cruel clip around the ears was something I tried to address.

And no, agents don’t reject you without explanation because they’re crap. They want to publish your brilliant erotic space opera thriller that will open up their favourite editor’s fledgling fiction line to an untapped audience and require its own paper mill.

The truth is, they may well have not read the critical first sentence because they didn’t take your writing seriously. Agents are just not going to wade through the novelty paper, attention-grabbing glitter and 10 point Lydian MT font hoping for a gem.

I know this because agents and editors tell me about it and also because I see it a lot myself. Driftwood clients are asked to submit their work to us in the same way they would to a publisher (only without their surname in the header) in order for us to give them a robust assessment on the entire submission, but it’s really surprising how many manuscripts I receive tied up in ribbons (romance), strings and rope (sailing theme), spiral bound, glued like a book, illustrated by the client’s niece, with coloured fonts, (inexplicably popular) ClipArt, held together by plastic folders (which, when piled on top of one another, slip all over the desk and then get lost behind the shredder) and even quotes (‘Kirsty’s characters made me want to weep and laugh at the same time’ - Dave from Foxtel).

When these festive packages arrive and the agent is very quiet at her desk, she can hear the distant sound of gunfire. This is the actual sound of a writer shooting themselves in the foot.

As Caro Clarke, author of the article ‘I am your Editor: Submitting your Novel’ in the Romance Writers of Australia newsletter, Heart Talk, states: ‘This is what the professional side of being a writer is all about: making a no-gimmick, no-hassle submission that gets me to the point of reading. Don’t blow your only chance. Why give me an excuse to say goodbye?’

Meet the agent’s basic needs, but then tailor it to the individual agent or publisher you have targeted. But most importantly, be professional, concise and give them exactly what they ask for. Along with the basic information that every writer should know, there are many resources that offer a lot of very useful advice.

I recently spoke to a writer who felt she was ready to submit her work. When I suggested perhaps mentioning an author or two who had been successful in the same genre (and published by that company) in the marketing section of the submission, she asked me who I would suggest. I gave her a few names before realising she actually didn’t know herself. I don’t read in this genre, but I’d seen these blokes in the recent weekend paper while enjoying a chocolate croissant, so I felt I knew my stuff.

Now she’d probably been hunched over her computer laying down some fine dialogue that Saturday instead of developing late onset diabetes, but she should have known who she was competing against on the bookshelves. These final bits of information are available to all writers and much of it is incredibly important in getting that dialogue read.

So this is exactly how I cocked up when I first submitted my work. I remained unpublished for so long I got depressed, drunk, surly, and finally, indignant enough to do something about it. So I started trying to find out what agents wanted from me, and when I thought I had it right, I checked again. Then I shook out all the glitter and changed the font. Do yourself, and your manuscript, justice, and get it right the first time. You just don’t get a second chance.

This post first appeared as an article in the SA Writers' Centre newsletter.

Writing fiction - Planning your story or writing by the seat of your pants: individual writing styles

2006-09-22T15:00:00.000+09:30

I won't be using this blog to give out anything but my personal thoughts on writing. But here is the first post for writers, to explain a little about what is so often, I find, unexplainable. Writing is part mystery, part determination, part inspiration and part joy. All of those parts make up a typical day with my laptop, a deadline and an image, or conversation, or scene in my head that miraculously, fairly often works its way into my story. If I don't write them down, I forget, so I work from a fifties hardcase samsonite make up case that holds all my notebooks and my laptop. These notebooks hold all my thoughts and recored and made up conversations. It also holds notes I've made, although the latest one I wrote said 'The Sultan's Elephant', and I have no idea what that means. If anyone can help, i would appreciate it.

For me, one of the best feelings in the world is when writing works. That sensation of escaping into a fictional world is a precious, powerful feeling, more real when I write than when I read because I can push the characters around a little. Sometimes I can direct my story, give characters lines, jokes, but sometimes they write their own. It’s a fairly common experience but one which is difficult to describe or explain.

I once had a Driftwood client who believed she was channelling the true-to-life stories of ghosts who visited her and that she was basically writing their words for them, but for many writers, that’s just sort of how it feels to write sometimes. We realise that when you get swept up in the story is the time it really is working. That’s when your reader is hopefully swept up too, transported by your words.

Sue Grafton said in an interview with the web-site, Writers Write that ‘I try not to create so much as discover. One of my theories about these books (the best-selling alphabet series) is that they already exist…I consider my job is to figure out what I already said, and just write it down again.’

Maybe it sounds like mumbo jumbo, but Stephen King says something similar in On Writing, stating that ‘Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.’

It’s an interesting theory, and a good approach for me, not because I think I’m a conduit for stories but because I’m essentially lazy. I lark around the house for a long while before I eventually sit at my desk with a reluctant sigh. Writing is like beer, it doesn’t look so good, but it tastes great when you’ve actually got it in your hand. I forget how good it tastes until I’m there at my desk, drunk on the story.

Which is why I have to sit down at my desk, with the blinds and windows open, my writing music on and force myself to start re-reading what I wrote yesterday instead of checking my e-mails, listening to the radio, anything that feels easier than writing but still resembles work.

If I wait to get a good idea before sitting at my desk, I can be waiting a long time. Usually my better ideas come when I’m within the story. While I’ve often had good ideas when I’m letting my subconscious settle (in the shower, bath, half asleep, while driving), the real gold is excavated at my desk, and I have to go to work everyday to dig it up.

One of my characters came out as bisexual a few weeks back and I’m still struggling to deal with the aftermath. It wasn’t ideal, but once the scene led up to the revelation, there was no option. I tried several different scenes, but eventually I gave in to this one. I was a little pissed off, because it changed the dynamics I’d set up, but now it’s working and I’m feeling a little disconcerted.

I was recently told that it was surprising that some of the promotional material for my series with HodderHeadline didn’t have my name on it, but instead promoted the characters, the story, the drinks at the club my characters frequent. I didn’t mind, because the focus should be on the story, the characters and world they inhabit.

The excavation theory of this fictional world is a favourite of mine because it’s one that makes it easier for me to sit down and write. The pressure is less. They say write with your heart, edit with your head, and for many that’s true. But for many others, remaining unpublished is also true. No writing theories work for everyone.

I admit that often it doesn’t work, that I spend months frustrated, unhappy, doubting everything and ready to give it all away. Self-doubt and problems with the latest book happen for every writer, no matter how many books they’ve written.

Keeping a book diary, or asking your friends, partner or family will probably remind you that you also doubted yourself in the last book and the one before that, so that you’ll find a way to dig up that story just like you have before. You might just need different tools, a new perspective, or a cold beer.

This first appeared in the SAWriters' Centre newsletter.

My advice on caring for a baby Honeyeater

2006-09-08T11:59:00.000+09:30

The following is a detailed and slightly obsessive edit on some advice I’ve given recently to people raising a honey eater from a baby fledgling. It won’t be of interest to anyone who doesn’t have/like birds so I apologise for that but as I found very little information on the internet about raising this tiny bird, I thought I’d post this blog to help anyone else in the situation I was in.

It is a time consuming process but well worth it as he is such a great little bird now who skims my bath every night and then sits on the tap and cleans himself with the water he’s collected. He’s a beautiful and funny guy. Having two birds helps a lot with writing the character of Jock, the parrot in the Cassidy Blair books that I write for Hachette Livre Australia..

I have a 4-year-old cockatiel called Jones at home with me (I am writer so I spend a lot of time alone) and he’s great company, so when some friends (the gorgeous Robin and the spunky Greg) found a honeyeater and brought him over in a shoebox. He was so tiny I assumed he would die that night but I looked up some scant information on the internet, learned they were lactose intolerant (although since then both Charlie and Jones sneak breakfast from me and have suffered no problems so far).

So I bought some baby food and mixed that up and fed with an eyedropper before getting some advice from Dr. Hough’s excellent assistant, Lynette, and buying the Wombaroo honeyeater mix and also the insect mix, which I stirred with warm water twice a day 3:1 ratio, feeding him whenever he cried (every half hour or so). After a while the feeding became second nature but in the beginning I made the mistake of feeding him too much at once and he ended up getting a skin infection from the sweet mixture because it would ooze out his mouth which made his lose a lot of feathers.

This happened twice although obviously I changed my super-sizing. Dr. Hough was a bit unsure how to treat him as he’s so small and apparently no one has honeyeaters as pets, or tries to, so he tried several things including tiny doses of anti-inflammatory and I washed him twice a day (which he hated) with this special mixture (I’ve forgotten the name) that cleaned his skin and reduced the ph balance, I think… anyway, eventually his feathers returned – but it was important for him to have some tiny amounts of skin treatments because it was painful to grow feathers through raw thickened skin. Eventually his advice worked and I highly recommend finding a great vet like Dr Hough if you find a sick bird or any wildlife, as he specialises in this area (there are kangaroos and various saved wild life behind the clinic). Last time I was there it was like a vet in a cartoon, there was a guy with a seagull, a girl with a tree frog and me with my honey eater. I guess they get the odd golden retriever, etc, but I’ve never seen them.

One of the main problems with Charlie’s lack of feathers was that he would get very cold. Luckily we have lots of lamps around and he’s now appropriated two of them, so I put in high wattage globes and even now he sleeps there during the day. The other problem was that he loves bathing, so when he was wet he was basically skin and scraggly feathers. You could see his breastbone clearly through his skin. We tried a variety of things but the best was (uneconomically) leaving the heater lights on in the bathroom, which made a warm, safe spot for him to retreat, which he did often.

Keeping him warm was very important of course but I wanted to give him the freedom to escape if it got too hot, so while lots of people recommended the globe and covered container for these early months I found an open cage in a safe and warm spot, with a cover over the cage so he felt protected but not in the dark, worked best. He also loved being carried in my palm in a soft towel or flannel cloth but practical reasons this became impossible after the first few days when I realise he might actually live so I made up a sling out of a very soft and strong woollen scarf that rested near my heart, but I am lucky to have a marvellow light/heater that warns the bathroom very well and very quickly, so he spent a lot of time there. In fact, If I come home at night and he doesn't come when I call, guaranteed he'll be sitting in the shower behind the shampoo bottle, impossible to see unless you know where to look. I think he grew a real affection for the place he grew well in. He seemed content to sleep there in my sling while I was working for most of the day and I guess the added bonus of heartbeat and body warmth were beneficial (in between feedings – thank goodness they don’t eat at night or this story might not have been quite such a happy one).

Obviously I didn’t take him outside at all during this time and even nowadays he’s more comfortable inside than out in a cage, but that could be because of the local birds taking an interest in him. He was just so tiny for those first few months I feared he would die each day and the lack of information about caring for such a bird is frustratingly thin, so I just kept up with various ideas until something seemed to work. He’s just such a darling bird to have around and his singing is terrific, so I’m very lucky to have made it this far with him.

Charlie quickly grew a much longer tail and wing feathers and we saw that it was likely he was a white plumed honeyeater as he developed white flames of feathers on each side of his head. Anyway, this is indulgent, sorry. I guess what I’m trying to say was that it was touch and go for a long time and I made it up, with some wise advice from Dr. Hough at times, until I even felt confident he would be strong enough to make it through and I finally bought him a bigger cagé (although both birds have the run of the house, so far neither of shown any interest in leaving but possibly they’re not yet grouchy teenagers looking for something more lively).

The things that I learned with Charlie were that like Jones, he loved company, and I was lucky because, being home a lot and spending a lot of time at my computer or on the ground near him, editing, I could keep an eye on him and he felt safe. Now he’s a VERY clingy bird and really doesn’t like being away from people. This doesn’t bother me at all but he loves sitting on our clothes in the wardrobe and this can be annoying sometimes if fresh clothes already have the tiny markings of a long stay by Charlie.

Luckily I have found that a good bristle brush is the easiest way to remove bird droppings from clothes when they’ve dried. He hitchhikes round on our shoulders and in the evenings huddles up under my chin or inside my shirt (you have to be careful) and fluffs up into a tiny pompom and tucks his head away and goes to sleep. He is very trusting and sweet. If I take a nap he sleeps as close as possible, by my mouth where it’s warm, I guess, or poised on my finger. I have no idea how he has any rest doing this but whenever I wake up he’s there. I think he might be spoiled by us somewhat.

I bought a bunch of bird song CD’s because I was feeling bad that he might lose his song, but these just seemed to freak out both birds and they are much happier singing (very loudly) along to lyrical melody type songs like those of The Carpenters, Doris Day, Janet Seidel and so forth. For some reason Jones has a particular appreciation for the seventies and dances with unusual vim and vigour whenever I play the Bee Gees or anything else like that. I guess if I had better taste in music both birds would as well…

The other things are flowers, which I steal from neighbourhood gardens as the plants I’ve bought to attract birds to our yard haven’t matured yet. These he eats completely, especially the following types: Gold Chimes, Grevillea, Kangaroo Paws, Hebe Wiri Joy, Cape Honeysuckle, and one other native I couldn’t identify that has bright orange horn like flowers that come in bunches from a low growing bush and he loves these possibly the most, as the nectar is very sweet.

He also loves cooked rice, soft cooked vegetables like potato and pumpkin, picking the juice out of corn kernels, some sweet baby foods in jars, small pieces of bread, and all types of juice, although I don’t give him much in case it’s just too sweet. Luckily there are a lot of small organic ones available now. I stopped feeding him his favourite juice blackcurrant and apple because, well, the tiny problem of his droppings became a major one when they are bright purple and staining… He’s very partial to peaches, mango, gold kiwi fruit, raisons and chopped dried fruit (tiny pieces) and apples. I’m still trying to break him of the habit of being fed. Obviously he no longer needs the syringe but he doesn’t seem to notice food is there unless I mention it to him and then shove it right up to him or put some on my finger. Sometimes he won't even look unless I wipe the end of his beak with the mixture and then he's all crazy for it. I also get whole heads of corn and slice down each row with a sharp knife so the juice is more accessible and he can drain these guys within days. Dr Anderson, who works with Dr Hough in Mitcham, says that’s because he’s bonded with me and treats me like his mother, so I need to show him what to eat (and what not to eat)

Another thing he does, which is rather gruesome, I have a wooden bird feeder outside and when I move it in the mornings and if it’s wet, there are a few worms there, as well as in the soil, and I occasionally catch them for Charlie. He bangs them against the ground until they’re unconscious and eats them; in fact, he can stuff a lot of food in his mouth, half grapes, raisons, etc. I thought about the worms purely because he once stole some 2-minute noodles from my lunch (being a writer is such a nutritious profession…) and he did the same banging with the noodles.

Pretty much everything I’ve done, aside from the discovery of Wombaroo products and the medical help, has been from trial and error, which is really why I’m writing this rambling and slightly embarrassing post.

I should add that so far Jones and Charlie get along perfectly well. They’re not best friends and they love pulling each other’s feathers at times, but mostly they’re happy to sit side by side, making me feel like Sir Francis of Assisi, on my shoulder or head. Charlie is especially fond of sleeping on the corner of my spectacles. Both birds have a habit of bursting into song whenever the phone rings or a good TV show is on (kind of rare…), but that’s about the only negative I can think of, aside from getting used to cleaning up after them if you let them fly free in your house.

Clearly I’m indulging these animals, but they are very giving, loving, friendly and hilarious companions. Charlie comes whenever I call him and loves tangling himself up in my hair and playing there, which is fun until you try to get him out. Both birds put themselves to bed when they’re had enough. I do make sure I keep them somewhere that’s not draughty and also wrap them in flannel sheets or blankets (with air holes) because I’ve had friends whose birds have died of the cold this winter and after all the time and thought put into keeping these gorgeous birds alive, I’d feel devastated, and very foolish, for neglecting them in this small and obvious way.

I hope this information helps anyone with birds, especially baby birds and fledglings. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Yours, Kirsty

So who is this Kirsty Brooks?

2006-09-02T14:10:00.000+09:30

Hello. I’m a writer and author in South Australia. The weather is good and I’m here with my two birds hanging out in my study. I try not to work on the weekends but right now I’m working to deadline, so in typical fashion I’m distracted by setting up this blog.

I am the author of four titles (so far) in the Cassidy Blair series, called The Vodka Dialogue, The Happiness Punch, The Millionaire Float and The Lady Splash, and two non-fiction books called Hitching: Tales from the byways and superhighways and Mad Love. Lady Luck is the first in the Phoebe Banks series and I’m currently rewriting the original manuscript for the sequel, called Bossy Boots. I’m enjoying researching this because all my novels are set in my hometown of Adelaide and for this one I went to stay in the gorgeous town of Mildura, on the Murray River.

My latest novel, The Lady Splash, was published in July. And I’ve been really lucky to get a great new cover design for this (it’s very pink) and some nice reviews. Sometimes it’s a bit nerve-wracking having a book out there in the public eye and it’s really interesting to get feedback from people who aren’t my family/friends and who aren’t being plied with vodka cocktails.

I recently received the Russian version of The Vodka Dialogue which was really really wonderful, even though I couldn’t read it. The best bit was the kitschy gorgeous cover, the fact that it’s hardcover (hardly any books are published in hardcover these days) and in Russia my genre is ‘Glamour’. My dear friend and fellow writer, Eva Sallis, read some of it to me and it sounded great, but that’s just because she’s so clever and can speak a couple of languages. She has more birds than I do, and her magpie sleeps in the bathroom.

When I finally save up enough for a house deposit (this is tricky) I can’t wait to have some more animals in my life, firstly a dog who can get along with my birds: Jones (my cockatiel, who is a wonderful curmudgeon but has been a great companion – writers spend a lot of time alone) and Charlie, the honeyeater I raised from a fledgling when friends found him fallen from the tree, who is very attached to me know.

Both birds hitchhike around on my shoulders and come when they’re called. As you can tell, I love animals. So my priority is to get my dog from the dog’s home at the Animal Welfare League shelter. My family has rescued quite a few dogs from there and they’ve all been amazing.

I am the director of Driftwood Manuscripts, have a Journalism Degree, and an Advanced Diploma in Professional Writing at TAFE – where I also teach. I have some great students and really enjoy talking to other people who love reading and writing as much as I do. Reading is great escapism but it also lets you experience life in someone else’s shoes, something I love, and that I have found useful in learning compassion and so forth.

One of the best things about being a writer is going to writers’ festivals, not just because you get to stay in great hotels like The Windsor in Melbourne, but because you get to hang out with other writers. As I’ve said, it can be a lonely profession so it’s nice to be able to talk to other people who do the same thing that I do. A couple of years ago I was awarded the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship (I bought my first washing machine with some of the prize money and she’s called Babs).

I am currently writing the next Cassidy Blair novel, The Tequila Bikini, and reading the latest Elizabeth George novel. I’m listening to a band called Gauche from Sydney and looking forward to taking a week off work in November to do some lazy reading/walking/sleeping/bird watching.

Thanks for reading this slightly rambling introduction. In Adelaide it’s the beginning of spring and the blossoms and daffodils and jasmine are out and it’s the most beautiful time of the year.

All the best

kb