Archives
It's raining and grey but warm. How about where you are?
Posted by Justine at 16:03, December 11th, 2008 under Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 14:35, December 6th, 2008 under Admin, Bloggery, Excuses, Food, Frippery, New York City/USA, Sydney/Australia |
Posted by Justine at 16:33, November 15th, 2008 under Frippery, New York City/USA, Praising |
Posted by Justine at 0:00, November 2nd, 2008 under Bloggery, Excuses, Frippery |
Some of the folks on the
not-driving thread seem to think that driving a car is an essential skill come the apocalypse. I think they are wrong. Even if the apocalypse isn't caused by a petrol-eating bacteria, the days of oil-fuled cars are numbered. And once civilization breaks down there will be no more drilling for the little oil that's left. Cars will only be useful to sleep in or to scavenge for spare parts to make something that's actually useful.
I reckon genuine survival skills include:
Being fit and strong
Knowing first aid and/or being a doctor
Knowing how to find food (i.e. knowing what's edible) and water in even the least promising circumstances
Being good at making and fixing stuff
I'm also unconvinced ...
Posted by Justine at 12:23, June 23rd, 2008 under Frippery |
I was just reading
Meg Cabot's blog. You know as you do when you have a deadline and you're worried that it may defeat you. Because Meg Cabot writes around four thousand books a year and never misses a deadline. So I figured reading her blog might make her productivity and non-lateness rub off on me, who has never written more than one book a year. Fingers crossed.
And what did I discover? Meg Cabot doesn't drive either! Doesn't have a license. I am not alone.
Well, actually I know that because
I live with someone who doesn't have a license and hasn't driven a car since 1988. But he knows how to drive. Whereas I do not. I ...
Posted by Justine at 0:28, June 21st, 2008 under Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 8:27, June 19th, 2008 under Bloggery, Frippery, Liar Book |
I had an argument with a friend recently, you know, cause I'm an argumentative kind of a gal, about whether he's an extrovert or not. He's an extremely social, bubbly, chatty guy. He denied that he is an extrovert on the grounds that he'd be just as happy to stay at home, that he likes being on his own and therefore is fairly introverted.
I called rubbish and said that he is, in fact, a lazy extrovert.
Just like me. I loves hanging out and chatting with the peoples. I also love being at home in my pjs, reading and hanging out and not going nowhere. Because I am lazy and when I'm home I just want to stay there. Getting ...
Posted by Justine at 0:18, June 4th, 2008 under Frippery |
I can't believe no one's voted against gypsy skirts either. Mis-matched flaps of coloured cotton (or worse synthethic) piled layer on top of layer in an unholy mess. What's to like, people?
Also the next person who writes to me defending their hideous taste in liking ballet flats/espadrilles/formal shorts/shrugs/other fashion atrocity will be hit with a bad fashion curse. That's right I will hex you so you never look good in clothes again. EVER.
Though, come to think of it, perhaps you're all writing to me to defend these fashion atrocities because you've already been hit with the bad fashion curse. Hmmm. I will have to think further on a better punishment . . .
And for those who seem unable to find ...
Posted by Justine at 13:52, May 13th, 2008 under Fashion, Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 12:05, May 12th, 2008 under Bloggery, Fashion, Frippery, Vainglory, Writing goals & milestones |
Maureen,
BUY THE DRESS!!!
xox
Justine
PS You should all go to
her blog and tell her to buy it. She looked divine. Even more divine than
her new website.
Posted by Justine at 5:17, March 28th, 2008 under Bloggery, Fashion, Frippery |
That's right
us judges have done decided and now you get to choose which is the bestest.
And if that isn't enough on Monday you get to choose between the winner of round one and the winner of round two for the utlimate uber-winner of Zombie Idol 2008.
Go, zombies!
Posted by Justine at 14:23, February 22nd, 2008 under Frippery, Zombies |
Posted by Justine at 0:54, February 14th, 2008 under Frippery, New York City/USA, Writing life |
So, the whole Maureen Johnson stick a zombie into a novel thing has just gotten heaps bigger. Like heaps. You need to
go over there to check out the extent of the bigness. I heard a rumour that there are more than a gazillion entries already! A bazillion gazillion trabillion! So many that's she's extended the competition.
And gotten some judges in. Stellar judges such as Meg Cabot, John Green, E. Lockhart, and, um, me.
I'm excited and delighted and slightly nervous. How long does it take to read a bazillion gazillion trabillion entries? Also---Oh. My. God.---I'm a judge with Meg Cabot. I think I'm going to faint.
To forestall the fainting fit here is my little take on the whole thing:
I ...
Posted by Justine at 0:00, February 12th, 2008 under Frippery, Young Adult literature, Zombies |
Posted by Justine at 0:00, February 5th, 2008 under Frippery, Reading |
Thanks to, Mr Moles, for
suggesting that what I really wanted to know was which supernatural creature are we most sick of. You're a genius, Moles!
I will make no attempt to guide your voting since I failed so abysmally to get
ghouls over the top in the last poll. Though I will say that I'm sick to death of vampire love stories. Not vampires, just them as an object of desire. They're dead, people. Their flesh is cold. If vampires were realistically portrayed they'd be forever flicking maggots off themselves. Ewwww!
For those not quick of eye---the poll is in the sidebar to your right.
Posted by Justine at 15:35, February 2nd, 2008 under Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 10:01, February 2nd, 2008 under Frippery, How To Ditch Your Fairy, Research, Words & Language, Young Adult literature |
I'm hurting and upset on behalf of ghouls everywhere. Surely someone can find it in their heart to vote for them?
Yes, in the poll on your right.
Posted by Justine at 11:20, January 30th, 2008 under Frippery |
Me and Scott did not have a proper wedding on account of eloping but I'd like to think that if we had done the full-blown thing we'd've got our shit together to pull off the now traditional surprise wedding dance a la:
or
But I suspect not. I'd settle for attending a wedding where the couple pulled off something like it. How very fabulous.
I never get tired of these vids. I love youtube.
Posted by Justine at 10:58, January 27th, 2008 under Frippery, Viewing |
Posted by Justine at 11:55, January 26th, 2008 under Frippery, New York City/USA, Praising |
Because we're on a juvenilia panel at
ConFusion, Scott is in the next room making strange noises. Some of it is laughter, most of it is groans. He's reading through stuff he wrote when he was a teenager.
Because all my juvenilia is back in Sydney, my wonderful mother transcribed some of the earliest stuff to send me. Bless you, Jan. I just read through it.
Oh, dear.
Sad to say, but there is not an inkling of genius in either of our earliest writings. Wow. We must have worked pretty hard in the intervening years learning how to, you know, construct a sentence or two that don't completely suck.
I might put some of it up on our sites to ...
Posted by Justine at 8:46, January 17th, 2008 under Bloggery, Cons & Other Gatherings, Frippery, Travelling |
Posted by Justine at 0:00, January 15th, 2008 under Frippery, How To Ditch Your Fairy, Ideas, Writing life |
Posted by Justine at 10:59, January 8th, 2008 under Bloggery, Excuses, Frippery, Writing life |
On New Year's Eve, thanks to regular reader, Marrije, I was surrounded by palm trees. Okay, just the one palm tree. A palm tree that required a certain amount of assemblage:
before it was fully grown:
How can it be cold when there's a palm tree in the house?
Thanks, Marrije!
Posted by Justine at 0:14, January 5th, 2008 under Frippery, New York City/USA |
This is couch:
Is noice couch.
Posted by Justine at 0:10, November 17th, 2007 under Frippery |
My desk is not so small as you all think. It has two levels. Two! Look closely at this photo:
See the stuff below? It's not on the floor it's the second level of the desk.
I'm now curious about your working spaces. If you feel so inclined take a photo and link to it in the comments.
Posted by Justine at 9:44, November 9th, 2007 under Frippery, How To Ditch Your Fairy, Writing goals & milestones |
Over at
Maureen Johnson's blog she's busy answering punters' questions in a vastly entertaining way. ((The trick to entertaining answers, apparently, is to make stuff up. Why didin't I think of that?)) Yay, Maureen!
If you haven't already go over and ask her a quessie. Make it curly though. The most difficult question you can think of. Then make it more difficult than that even. Frankly, I don't think she's being stretched enough. We all need to really put her through her paces.
I wish Maureen would tell me how to write six things at once without my head exploding.
Posted by Justine at 15:54, October 26th, 2007 under Bloggery, Frippery |
I am a jacket monkey which totally works for me as those are two of my favourite things. I love beautiful jackets and I love monkeys. What could be better than putting them together? (If I weren't pressed for time there would a picture of a monkey wearing a jacket here. You'll just have to imagine it.)
Today me and Nicola from
Nicola's books in Ann Arbor opened many many copies of Extras to the signing page for Scott to scribble all over. We were his jacket monkeys. I want a Jacket Monkey t-shirt. I've already earned it. So many copies! So many jackets! So many pages!
In other news I am regretting that I learned on an earlier trip never ...
Posted by Justine at 1:20, September 29th, 2007 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Fashion, Frippery |
The worst book ever written is so very bad that there are warnings on Amazon to not even glance at the cover in case it infects you with its badness. Those warnings are true!
Holly Black LOVES this unspeakably bad book. So much so that she has many copies of it. So much so that she made us all read chapters out loud on the DragonTrain, which made us all laugh so hard we wept. I threw up I was laughing so hard.
The book is THAT bad.
Remember I was rambling recently about how you
can't include all details when you write? This book attempts to do that. It takes a kajillion chapters for the protag to cross a steet. All ...
Posted by Justine at 0:03, September 6th, 2007 under Frippery, Reading |
And Theo Black is some peace keeper person from Farscape. He tried to get me to teach him an Australian accent. But, ya know, you're either born with one or you're not.
As usual Scott Westerfeld took the photo.
Posted by Justine at 1:16, September 1st, 2007 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Fashion, Frippery |
I just had a fight over which is the kiss and which is the hug: the x or the o.
I say the x is the kiss on account of it's representative of a scrunched up mouth. The o is a hug cause it's arms in a circle which (unless you're hugging yourself) is classic hugging action.
I will not share my friend's strange delusion of what they mean because, really, too weird!
Then I asked Scott and he agreed with my friend. And even google says the friend is right.
Madness reigns! Or maybe it's another one of those Oz versus US of A things? she asked hopefully.
Whatever. I have decided to ignore them all. For me the x is the kiss and ...
Posted by Justine at 14:28, August 11th, 2007 under Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 14:05, July 22nd, 2007 under Frippery, Praising, Reading, State of the World, Young Adult literature |
The contest is open until the end of this month (
rules are here). The response has been amazing. I mean, we were hoping for at least half a dozen responses, there's been more than fifty.
If you don't want to spend all day being
Posted by Justine at 9:08, July 20th, 2007 under Bloggery, Frippery, Young Adult literature |
Holly Black is
making me giggle (via
Gwenda). Now all I can think about is vampire elves and zombie unicorns and werewolf-griffins and pirate-orcs and . . . and which of all of those would win in battle and what they'd look like and what they'd eat. Would vampire elves still not like steel and not tell lies? And what would a novel with all these creatures in it be like?
Oh, hush, Justine. You have stories to write! Novels to unbuggerize! Admin to adminerate! Stop procrastinating.
Posted by Justine at 12:23, July 18th, 2007 under Bloggery, Frippery, Unicorns, Zombies |
Over at
insideadog Scott has had an attack of the
lolcats and defaced several fine Australian young adult book covers. I am deeply horrified. Has he no sense of the sacred?
If you feel the urge to vandalise some other book covers (they don't have to be Australian or young adult) post the links to your efforts in the
comments thread over there. The best ones will receive a lovely
Extras T-shirt. The contest is open until the end of the month and we'll announce the winners in early August.
Posted by Justine at 0:02, July 18th, 2007 under Bloggery, Frippery, Scott's books, Sydney/Australia |
On Saturday I ran into wondrous super-librarian Carlie Webber at Book Expo America (BEA). She was wearing the best T-shirt of all time. Check it out:
And how about the back:
I laughed and laughed.
For those who do not know what a
Mary Sue is or have not read any of the
Harry Potter books---where have you been?
Update: The T-shirt of greatness was created by Amy
Tenbrink of
Narrate Conferences.
Posted by Justine at 10:38, June 4th, 2007 under Frippery, New York City/USA, Praising, Viewing, Young Adult literature |
Posted by Justine at 4:53, June 1st, 2007 under Frippery, New York City/USA, Praising, Travelling, Vainglory, Young Adult literature |
Because that's how much it's costing me to be online.
I may need to do hotel-hatred management classes fairly soon.
In short:
Adelaide still gorgeous, still full of churches.
The wedding was awesome. I'm a sucker for weddings at the best of times. But this was more excellent than most. The bride's speech rocked.
Despite the insane hotel gouging not allowing me to function in the 21st century, I'm more relaxed and happy than I've been in ages. Amazing how wonderful not working (and possibly not going online) and getting to hang out with my friends without feeling guilty is. More please!
Melbourne next. Where there will be much work and fun at Reading Matters. I'd link but that would lose me my second and third ...
Posted by Justine at 18:13, May 20th, 2007 under Bloggery, Cons & Other Gatherings, Excuses, Frippery, Praising, Sydney/Australia, Whingeing |
Posted by Justine at 2:22, May 14th, 2007 under Frippery, Reading, Vainglory, Young Adult literature |
Courtesy of
Marrije, I now know what happens to Reason after the Magic or Madness trilogy:
She's now working advertising coffee in the Netherlands!
See the eerie resemblance?
It's a huge relief to me to know that at least one of my characters is not going to starve just because I've stopped writing about them. Phew!
Posted by Justine at 9:40, April 9th, 2007 under Frippery, Magic or Madness trilogy |
I was hanging out with a fabulous group of young adult writers t'other night and we got into a silly debate about the following question:
If you could only choose one which would you choose:
the publishing house with a wonderful editor who brings out the best in you, or
the house with fabulous publicity, marketing and sales departments?
A surprising number of authors plumped for publicity because they have a brilliant group of first readers who can critique their books so that even without a great editor they'd still be getting a kind of editing.
There were lots of attempts to cheat, like, "Can I have a pretty good editor and pretty good publicity?"
No! This is a hypothetical. You have to pick one!
A few ...
Posted by Justine at 7:43, March 21st, 2007 under Frippery, Publishing business |
Posted by Justine at 0:01, February 23rd, 2007 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Frippery, Reading, Unicorns, Viewing, Zombies |
Scott just sent me this because we both love cricket and monkeys. ((He
found it here, but I'd love to know the original source.)) It is the personification of our love. It makes me so happy!
Though I gotta say that's a pretty suspicious looking bowling action. And why is the umpire lying on the ground? Because the monkey is totally using body line? Check it: the monkey's aiming at their heads! Or perhaps because the monkey has used six different balls? That's gotta be worse than ball tampering, right? Bad cheating monkey!
Posted by Justine at 16:52, February 11th, 2007 under Cricket, Frippery |
Pt wants to know how to cope with jetlag. I have but two pearls of wisdom:
1) Be very very rich and fly first class. On those rare occasions I've been upgraded to business class I've recovered from jetlag many days earlier than when I fly cattle class. I can only imagine how much faster the whole thing would be in first class. Or in your own private jet. Or if you could teleport. I would not say no to a door between Sydney and New York either . . .
2) Don't fly anywhere. You get no jetlag and the environment will thank you.
Little Willow asks what my favourite fruits are and gets extra points for being an American and ...
Posted by Justine at 0:06, January 25th, 2007 under Bloggery, Cons & Other Gatherings, Food, Frippery, Mangosteens, Ranting, Travelling, Writing life |
I cannot explain why this make me so very very very happy. It just does.
Australian fast bowler, Brett Lee, in a duet with Indian legend
Asha Bhosle. Why don't more cricketers sing?
The song is currently no. 4 on the charts in India. Wonder if they'll release it here?
Posted by Justine at 14:49, January 21st, 2007 under Cricket, Frippery, Listening |
I misspoke. Turns out that it's more than possible for my name to be bigger than the title.
You can see the proper cover of Magic's Child in the sidebar to your right. And, honestly, my name is so small you can barely even read it. How humiliating!
Now, this, this is much better:
Isn't that a vast improvement? I likes it! I likes it a lot!
Well, okay, yes, my photoshopping leaves much to be desired. But work with me! You can see where I'm going with it, right?
You may add my name to the list of writers who dream that one day their name will be bigger than the title: "Look, Ma! That's me! My name's in lights!"
One day, one ...
Posted by Justine at 1:17, January 16th, 2007 under Frippery, Writing life |
There's been
much debate about what authors owe their readers out there in bloggyland. I think the whole thing is really rather simple:
When I've got my writing hat on then it's very clear that authors owe their readers absolutely nothing. Do you hear me readers? I owe you nothing!
I can write about what I want, when I want, and how I want. If I want to set fire to your favourite character's hair, push them off a cliff, and then jump on them, I can and I will, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. So nyer!
When I've got my reading hat on, then it's very very clear that authors owe me exactly the book ...
Posted by Justine at 0:03, January 15th, 2007 under Bloggery, Frippery, Praising, Ranting, Reading, Whingeing, Zombies |
There's a bunch of kids playing loudly next door and one of them just yelled out, "I am the ruler of the universe!" I'm thinking that's not a bad resolution, but a tricky one to follow through on. The kid next door did not succeed, because now all the kids are yelling that they are the ruler of the universe. Scott included.
I like the idea of resolutions. I like the idea of trying to better or test yourself in some small concrete way. And I especially like the idea of lots of folks all over the place all resolving to do stuff at the same time. But like most everyone else I'm usually crap at sticking to them.
I was ...
Posted by Justine at 13:40, December 30th, 2006 under Excuses, Food, Frippery |
Posted by Justine at 7:37, November 17th, 2006 under Frippery, Writing process |
A while back I wrote a
wee little etiquette thingie for authors on how to talk to booksellers. It has recently been suggested by a remainder ((A "remainder" is the official term for a group of authors.)) of authors that the non-authors of the world also need such a guide. So without further ado here is how to talk to an author:
Never tell us that you don't read or like books. Or that you only read non-fiction or John Grisham. Unless we write non-fiction or are John Grisham we don't want to know.
Never tell us you haven't read our books even if you genuinely intend to. Such information will only cause us pain as we try to figure out ...
Posted by Justine at 15:11, October 17th, 2006 under Frippery, Praising, Writing life |
