Miss Manners Says: DON’T SHAKE HANDS DURING A PANDEMIC!

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COVID 19 (coronavirus) is a big deal. It’s highly contagious and people over 70 and those who have chronic illnesses are particularly at risk.

People like me. I have a chronic illness. I guarantee you there are folks around you who seem perfectly well, who also have chronic illnesses. We are many. And we are vulnerable to COVID 19, to viruses and bacteria. That’s why we won’t shake your hand, or accept your kisses or hugs. We want to live.

We should all be washing our hands for at least twenty seconds. THOROUGHLY. That means back of hand, between fingers, wrists. Dry your hands thoroughly.

Wash your hands before and after going to the toilet, before and after touching food, before and after going outside, before and after being in any public space. If you can’t wash your hands, use a hand sanitiser, remembering that washing your hands is better.

Don’t touch your face! But if you do: WASH YOUR HANDS!

And really, really, really DON’T TOUCH MY FACE! Or anyone else’s that you’re not intimate with.

This should be everyone’s practise all the time. If we all did this flu deaths would plummet. But during a pandemic!? DON’T TOUCH ANYONE! WASH YOUR HANDS!

Come on, people, we can do this!

On Packages and Space-Time Anomalies

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I’ve been having a surreal experience with Australia Post. They claimed to have delivered a package from the UK to me last Friday. There was no package. There was no card in my mailbox saying to pick it up at the post office. Yet there it was on the tracking info: delivered.

The nice man at the post office, when he couldn’t find my parcel, helped me put in a missing parcel claim. When he looked up the tracking number at his end it said my parcel had an incomplete address: it was missing the flat (apartment) number.

Hmmmm, I thought, but the UK tracking has the flat number. Why would it disappear from the package on its journey from the Royal Mail in London to Australia Post in Sydney?

On the way home, a charming man from Australia Post rang to assure me that they were on it, and that most packages were found. I imagined a crack team of Australia Post sleuths on the case. I was vastly reassured.

I woke to an email from Australia Post letting me know that the package had been returned to sender. I wrote to the sender in London warning them my package might be on its way back. They were all, “But how? There’s no return address on the package.” This was somewhat perturbing.

An hour later I got an email from Australia Post saying my package was either in my mailbox or at the post office. I checked. It was in neither place. I was beginning to feel like Australia Post was gaslighting me.

Then an hour later, I got a generic email from Australia Post assuring me they were on the case and would find my package. I was not reassured. I was starting to lose faith in Australia Post’s sleuths.

I decided to phone them, to find out if the parcel had a) been returned to sender despite there being no return address, b) been delivered to a Justine Larbalestier in a parallel universe, or c) was in a happy liminal space about to be tracked down by the valiant sleuths at Australia Post.

After thirty minutes negotiating the endless, confusing phone tree, I got through to the delightful Tracy, who looked at all the info from my claim no. and spluttered “ZOMG! This is ridiculous. It says it’s been delivered TWICE! There’s nothing here about it being returned to sender. Where on earth did that come from? It says there’s no flat number. THE FLAT NUMBER IS RIGHT HERE! It can’t be all these things at the same time! And there’s an update saying it’s on a truck on its way to you now. How could that be if it was delivered last Friday and this morning? Ridiculous! I will sort this for you! I will make this happen!” she said, typing furiously.

I admit that I was half way in love with Tracy at this point. I hung up and did various chores before receiving yet another Australia Post email claiming my parcel had been delivered for a third time. I confess that, despite the fabulous Tracy, I doubted this claim. My buzzer hadn’t rung and there’d been so many false alarms. I trudged down to the lobby, with little hope. But lo and behold, my parcel–with my full address–including the flat number–was there in my mailbox.

Hilariously, the vintage eighties silk shirt inside was made in W. Germany: a non-existent country. Maybe that non-existence disturbed the space-time continuum and created intermingled timelines in which all parcels were in all states of delivery?

Thank you, Australia Post, and especially Tracy, for tackling this space-time anomaly and making my parcel reappear. I’m most grateful and the shirt from the non-existent country is gorgeous.

Monday’s Post on Friday. What are Days Anyway? Climate Change is Fact.

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This post was supposed to go up Monday after that night’s Q & A. Non-Australians you can click on that link to see what the TV show is or you can accept my brief description: the ABC’s Q & A is a TV panel discussion show, which is usually profoundly enraging, because they insist on having politicians on, who mostly obfuscate, lie, and completely avoid answering questions.

Monday night’s Q & A was the first show of the year, and the topic was Australia’s bushfire crisis, because that is always the topic here because, you know, apocalypse. You can listen to it here.

And here is my rant. Enjoy! I know I have several fans who live for me to rant. Well, here you both go:

Last Monday’s Q & A was excellent. Mostly. But it enraged me and I wrote the rant below and then was so exhausted by my rage and by writing that I neglected to press the publish button before passing out. Having a chronic illness has taught me that things I didn’t used to think of as exhausting now are. Though why I didn’t realise that writing or being furious were exhausting is a total mystery.

Except for the host, Hamish Macdonald, running with that axiom of bad journalism that all views must be respected, even when they’re wrong.

Macdonald chided the jovial US climate change scientist, Michael Mann, for saying that federal NSW Liberal1 senator James Molan’s brain had fallen out of his head, when Molan refused to admit that the science of climate change is settled and that we know that the accelerating catastrophic climate events of the last few decades were caused by humans. Up to and including our bushfire crisis.

James Molan said he was keeping an open mind on the causes of climate change, to a chorus of groans from the studio audience. He also literally said that he was ignoring the evidence. To groans and derisive laughter and that sound people make that basically means “no shit.” The studio audience and everyone else on the planet know that keeping an open mind on climate change is like keeping an open mind on gravity or water being wet. So the expert made the comment about his brain falling out.

At which point Hamish Macdonald said that our terrible, climate-change-disaster-obfuscating government had been elected by millions of Australians, who were in agreement with this government’s views, did that mean the climate change expert was saying everyone who had voted for them’s brains had fallen out?

Frankly, Hamish, I think that’s a more generous explanation than that those voters cared more about getting bigger tax breaks than preventing the apocalypse. But here we are.

Climate change, Hamish, is real and caused by us humans. We know this. You know this! There’s decades of evidence. Every reputable scientist says so. Anyone who denies these facts, including James Molan and the rest of the governing coalition, is functioning as if they have neither knowledge, nor memory, nor literacy, nor the capacity to process facts.

Believing climate change is either not real, or not caused by humans, is equivalent to believing the earth is flat or that Elvis is alive and misgoverning the USA from inside a Donald Trump suit.

Must we humour the people who believe that Elvis is Trump too, Hamish? You know, on account of that is as completely wrong as denying that we humans have irreversibly buggered up this beautiful planet of ours. Why do we have to resist mocking the people with completely wrong views about the causes of our climate crisis? Those views are contributing to how incredibly fast we are making our planet uninhabitable.

Actually the sweet climate scientist, Michael Mann, was more optimistic than me: he thinks we can save this planet.

My pessimism comes from media types like Hamish Macdonald spending more time chiding experts for being “mean” to lying politicians in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby than on challenging our political leaders for being wrong.

Fact checking, Hamish, that’s your job, not being a politeness monitor. And, honestly, under the circumstances saying Molan’s brain had fallen out was much politer than calling him a corrupt, lying tool of the fossil fuel industry.

The truth is frequently very impolite.

And now I’m exhausted again.

  1. in Australia the Liberal party is a conservative party []

Tweets I Would Tweet If I Were Still on Twitter

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I may not be on Twitter at the moment, but I still sometimes think in tweets. What can I say? I was on Twitter for ten years. It warps your brain. So here are some tweets that I’d’ve tweeted if I were still there. In no particular order . . .

The Conversation says those wombat are not heroes rescuing other critters from the fires, they’re just tolerating unwanted guests. Excuse me? Tolerating unwanted guests in your home is top-notch heroism.

What I miss most about Twitter is the conversations with folks all over the world; what I miss least is being shouted at by folks/bots all over the world.

This is bloody marvellous news. The WNBA players are getting better revenue sharing, pay, maternity leave etc. Yay! And yet . . . I love the @WNBA but they deserve first class. No, they deserve flying chariots drawn by magic horses.1 But this is a fabulous first step.

This is my favourite bananas bushfire season conspiracy theory. Some are claiming the fires were set deliberately to create a corridor for fast trains. I admit I snort laughed. I would love me some fast trains all over Australia, though. Think of the carbon emissions that wouldn’t happen! Trains over planes. ALWAYS.

And here we have a faux tweet that you have to click through for because I don’t have the energy to figure out how to do an image + comment faux tweet in the middle of a blog post. My spoons are too low today for any complicated stuff. Or, let’s get real, pretty basic stuff . . .

I miss fashion twitter . . . Though fashion and vintage instagram are way better. I’m learning so much on there.

Ooooh! Look at The New Yorker appreciating one of the best living writers! Go, Nora! Seriously, if you haven’t read any N. K. Jemisin yet, get on that!

Please. Even if arson was the immediate cause of most of the fires–it wasn’t–that doesn’t contradict the fact that the conditions for this season’s catastrophic fires were created by climate change. It’s not complicated. Also: you’re lying. Most fires this season were started by lightning.

Could someone please fix the tag on Rashid’s jersey? Thank you! Adelaide @StrikersBBL #BBL09

I miss cricket Twitter . . .

Just when you think this Morrison govt can’t get more ridiculous they decide the most urgent matter in Australia today is not our apocalyptic bushfire season, but enforcing a dress code for citizenship ceremonies. At my citizenship ceremony I dressed up–a McQueen jacket over a silk dress with cowboy boots–as did everyone else that day. Citizenship ceremonies are a huge deal, you ignorant twats. People dress up for them!

Mostly, people dress up for them. I remember a friend telling me years ago that a couple of tipsy Englishmen turned up for their citizenship ceremony in stubbies, singlets and thongs with cork hats because they thought it would be hilarious. Their hilarity was not shared by anyone else present and they were asked to leave. To be clear: because drunk, not because of what they were wearing.

It’s wet and falling out of the sky. I’m confused. What is?

Something amazing that has come out of these bushfires: First Nations aquatic technologies further revealed.

I mean, sure, except for the part where the Greens have never objected to hazard burning. Also did you read where multiple fireys said the hazard burns weren’t that effective this year? The monster fires just blew past them.

The upside to being a spoonie: feeling zero guilt for lying in bed reading all day, then getting up to inhale a whole season of whatever I want!

This made me cry. The wollemi pines are awe inspiring.

I love my @ABCaustralia. (Except for Counterpoint.) This bushfire season, they’ve been saving lives.

You’re welcome, world! Carbon emissions go up because of Australia’s bushfires.

I know I’ve only been off Twitter for two months but already I’m getting more writing done and feeling less anxious. No, I have no immediate plans to return to Twitter. But I do see this as a break, not a permanent exit. I don’t think I could have handled the fire hose of Twitter this bushfire season.

The benefits of not being on Twitter right now definitely balances out no longer being in contact with so many fabulous folks. Hey, I’m still alive! You can text me! Or DM on instagram! Or email me! Or leave comments here!

The Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities is still going. First Nations Australians are getting a much smaller slice of the donations to the mainstream charities. They need our support.

  1. Lower emissions that way. []

Quotidian Climate Catastrophe

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Screen shot from RFS’s fires near me visualisation. Blue means the fire is contained. No yellow or red is good. No fires at all would be better.

My sister is texting to find out how we make the niece scrambled eggs. I ask Scott how and text his response. Outside the sky is grey and the AQI is at 155. Unhealthy. We’ll be doing our walk in the evening when the smoky air is supposed to clear. Though we were supposed to wake up to clear air. The AQI projections are sometimes wrong.

The niece rejects the eggs. My sister didn’t have butter and used olive oil instead.

Butter is better, I text her. Our father chimes into the group family chat to agree: Butter is absolutely essential for eggs!

Tomatoes, lime, sorrel, sage and marjoram from our garden.

Coincidentally I made me and Scott scrambled eggs this morning with ingredients I picked from our small garden on the deck wearing my P2 mask and the eggs, cheese and butter I bought from farmers at the Eveleigh Street markets. Last Saturday was the first one of 2020. Lots of the regular vendors were missing.

Overnight a firey died in Victoria. The good news is that most of the fires are under control. The temperature dropped here in NSW. There’s even been some isolated rain. No where near enough. The bad news is that under control doesn’t mean put out. There are still hundreds of fires and it’s due to get hot again in a few days. It’s possible more firies will die. The vast majority of them volunteers.

How many weeks are we now into the worst bushfire season Australia has ever seen? I’ve lost count.

The fires started in September in Queensland and New South Wales, but it didn’t seem worse than usual then. Except that it was September. Though the year before the fires started in August. The fire season starting in spring seems more normal than in the middle of winter. Fires burning in ever state, though? That’s new.

Me wearing a P2 mask on our deck.

Living in an ongoing climate change catastrophe is starting to seem normal. We wake up, check the Fires Near Me app and then the AQI and the government health warning to see if we can go outside without masks. Hey, NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment,1 could you please make an AQI app for us citizens of this fine state? Though we don’t really need the apps, turns out if you can smell smoke, the purifier needs to be on, and so does your P2 mask if you venture outside. Next we check the bushfire coverage online and on TV and radio.

Then I text the folks I know most directly affected to find out how they are doing. Have you been able to go outside down there in Canberra? Have you got an air purifier yet down there in Melbourne? Have you managed to convince your asthmatic teen daughter to wear a mask?

A friend is in Kangaroo Valley. So far she’s been lucky. But she’s not taking chances, she and her partner are down there doing everything they can to make their holiday home more fire proof and removing anything they can’t bear to lose. She rents it out to folks over the school holidays and weekends during the rest of the year. She cancelled some of this summer bookings and had folks irate at her even after she pointed out how close the fires are. She and her partner plan to retire there.

Checking the AQI has become routine. As it is for many around the world. In Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Urumqi (China), Noida (India) New Dehli, and Belgrade (Serbia). The majority of the cities in this hour’s worst AQI cities are in China and India, but then there’s three South Korean cities sneaking in, oh and Canberra, right here in Australia. It’s spent quite a lot of time at no. 1 on this list. Sydney held that honour on 19 November.

On the scale of the horrible things that are happening here in Australia this season, we’re doing fine. Being confined to home and having to run an air purifier and wear P2 masks does not compare with being burnt out and losing friends and neighbours, being in the middle of those utterly destroyed landscapes. But it’s not about the bad air, it’s not even about the fires, it’s about climate change. What we humans have wrought upon ourselves and what we now must reckon with.

Because we are all living in a climate change catastrophe. The smoke from here effects NZ. The emissions from here helps raise temperatures and sea levels and drown our many island neighbours, who we then don’t give nearly enough aid to. Living (dying) in a climate catastrophe is normal.

Until this bushfire season, I was one of the insulated ones, knowing climate change was real, but not being affected by it in a big way. I’d seen bushfire skies. Smoke had come into the city a few times, but this? Nancy Cushing, an air pollution historian, writing for The Conversation says,

The New South Wales government’s Air Quality Index data has shown that since late October, days when the index was higher than 100 – signalling exposure is unhealthy – have outnumbered clear days in Sydney, Newcastle and the Illawarra.

If you’d’ve asked me, I would have told you that most days we’re fine here in Sydney. A few really bad days, but on the whole, fine. In my defence, my part of Sydney hasn’t copped the brunt of it as often as they have in the west and south of the city. But it’s also me minimising what we’re going through.

We know this isn’t normal. We talk about it daily, but we also can’t quite believe it’s happening, still happening. It’s January. This unbreathable air started in November.

James Bradley, writing in The Guardian, points out that we’re not alone:

Overseas the story is the same. In the middle of last year, fires spread through the Arctic, igniting not just grassland but boreal peatlands dried out by unusually high temperatures in the region. In Brazil fires destroyed nearly 10,000 sq km of rainforest, prompting warnings from scientists that the Amazon is now close to a tipping point, beyond which its collapse will be unstoppable. In March Cyclone Idai left more than 1,300 people dead in Madagascar, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Indeed one report by British charity Christian Aid suggests the changing climate amplified the effects of no less than 15 major disasters in 2019, while in July last year the UN warned climate change is now causing an average of one disaster a week.

I’m ashamed to say that despite all the apocalypses around the world, it took this bushfire season, here in Australia, for me to truly take in that the blasted future climate change hellscape is already here. It’s impacted my entire life without me fully realising. This despite my friends around the world, who’ve been affected by other climate change disasters: fires in California and Brasil, floods in Queensland, extreme cold weather events in the USA.

I kept on living my life, planning for a future that somehow would be not that much different from what my life now: writing novels, getting on planes to promote them, getting on planes to visit family and friends. At a minimum, every year for more than twenty years now, I have flown back and forth between Sydney and New York City once a year.

That’s a lot of carbon emissions.

I would even say to people with a straight face that I had a pretty low carbon footprint, flying aside. I mean I pay offsets! Surely that makes it okay? A few flights a year can’t be as bad as someone who drives a car every day, can it? Turns out the answer to that question is complicated.2

I recycle! I walk or take public transport everywhere. Only riding in taxis in emergencies. I rarely put the AC on and always have it at a reasonable temperature so it doesn’t have to work too hard. In NYC there’s no turning on the heat because the building does that in a super efficient low carbon way. Lately I’ve been even more virtuous: only buying vintage or circular economy clothing, reducing the plastic in my life. I’ve even given up liquid soap!

All while flying at least once a year. It is to laugh.

The aviation industry is one of the biggest carbon emitters. On 11 September 2001, only military planes flew in the USA for several days. All other aviation was grounded. Scientists were able to use that data to see the effects of aviation on mainland USA. When the planes weren’t flying, high and low temperatures narrowed across the USA. On top of carbon emissions’ long-term damage, there are immediate effects of aircraft contrails that we only barely understand.

Those of us living with a climate catastrophe, think about it every day. On the family group chat today we’ve been trading photos of how smoky it is outside and my dad just texted that he and mum have now donated to the Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities.

We’ve all been hearing the reports that a lot of the relief money and goods are bypassing Indigenous people and this one that an Elder was actively turned away from an evacuation centre by a racist. First Nations communities around the world have been living with climate catastrophe brought on by invaders for generations.

If we–and by we I mean all of us folks who know climate change is real, who have lived through unbreathable polluted air, terrifying floods, rains, fires, cyclones, hurricanes, muds slides, unbreathable air etc.–downed tools and became full-time climate activists, clogging the streets all around the world outside our houses of parliament, our seats of government, demanding real change, demanding we clean up polluting industries, switch to renewable energy, phase out fossil fuels and earth-destroying agricultural practices, clean up our waters, ground all unnecessary air travel, pour money into better, cleaner train networks, bring back international sea travel–if we did that in our millions, we would see real change. It would happen.

Hell, our prime minister, Scott Morrison has started to say that he and his government might possibly maybe change their carbon emissions targets. Presumably from the current magical numbers–where Australia doesn’t have to do anything and carbon emissions keep climbing–to real targets. I’m not holding my breath though. But he’s definitely frightened that if he doesn’t do something he’ll lose the next election. Or be deposed as PM as soon as parliament returns. Whether by those in his party who want more done on climate change or the extremists who want nothing done. His first poll numbers came out. They weren’t good. Unfortunately, it looks like the government is merely changing its strategy. They’re still going to do next to nothing to curb emissions, but they’ll no longer deny climate change is real while doing it. Yay?

We international community of the millions, who know that climate change is real, won’t quit our current jobs in huge numbers to make this the central cause of the rest of our lives. We should, but we won’t. I’m deeply grateful to do those of you who already have or about to. We need you climate change activists!

I won’t because I have a chronic illness. In my last essay I said I’d go to the climate protest here on Friday. I didn’t make it.3 Fortunately, thirty thousand others made it.

I wouldn’t even if I was healthy. I’m not an organiser. I’m not, in all honesty, any kind of doer. I watch and I research and I write. I can bear witness. I can document it. I can donate money. I can go to protests. I can watch in awe and support the people who do give up everything to save our planet.

As she often points out, Greta Thunberg isn’t the only young activist in the world. Ridhima Pandey is one of many activists in India. Elizabeth Wanjiru Wathuti, Oladosu Adenike and Vanessa Nakate are activists from Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, respectively. All under thirty.

There isn’t a country in the world that doesn’t have climate activists doggedly fighting the most important fight of humanity’s existence day after day. There are activists who have been doing so since before most of us were born. The knowledge that industrialisation is making humans sick and changing the planet for the worse has been with us for decades.

But most people dealing with the peripheral effects of climate catastrophes, the bad air, dodgy water, the intermittent electricity etc. continue to live their everyday lives. They wear masks, boil water, only go outside when necessary. We humans are really good at adapting.

But we all have snapping points. The protests last Friday were full of folks who’ve never been to a protest before. For whom this bushfire season has been too much. Now they’re doing something: making their voices heard. There were folks there who lost everything in the fires. Everyone was angry.4

It’s hard to convey to people, who haven’t lived through an ongoing catastrophe, what it’s like.

I’ve had several texted conversations with friends overseas that kind of go like this:

Them: Are you okay? The coverage is terrifying! Is Sydney burning down?

Me: The fires are far. I’m fine. My family and friends are fine. We just have to deal with smoky air.

Them: Will you be evacuating?

Me: Lol. No. Does NYC or LA evacuate when the smog’s bad?

Them: How are you otherwise? Other than all this stuff?

Me:

I tend to put my phone down when that happens. I mean how do I answer that question? “How are you doing other than your entire country burning and the air being unbreathable for millions for months on end?”

But what I want to text them is:

NOTHING! THERE IS NOTHING GOING ON BUT FIRE AND SMOKE AND WATCHING ENTIRE SPECIES HURTLE TOWARDS EXTINCTION AND ETERNAL CLIMATE CATASTROPHE. WE’RE WATCHING THE WORLD END! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?

But of course that’s not entirely true. This bushfire season dominates everything. It’s at the top of the news cycle here. We all talk about it. We donate. We volunteer. We wear masks. Use air purifiers. But we’re also living our lives.

Sometimes I’m watching the cricket, and being amazed by Glenn Maxwell, and reminding myself to get tickets for the women’s T20 World Cup in February, and eating ice cream, and not thinking about the bushfires at all, but then the commentators will mention what the latest bid for Shane Warne’s baggy green cap is, proceeds going to the Australian Red Cross, and there it is back again: this bushfire season.

We’re all in mourning for our country, some stage of it: shock, denial, rage . . .

This climate catastrophe, which is just one of too many. This country that I love, with obscenely high per capita carbon emissions, which is, right now, part of the problem, not the solution. And I read yet another article by a climate scientist looking for hope and finding tears and despair. Then I read Ross Garnaut’s book on how Australia could turn it all around and become a renewable energy superpower and I’m filled with hope again.

One of my friends has two daughters, who are becoming engineers, so they can work on climate change solutions. There are folks in the fashion industry inventing new textiles that have zero carbon footprint. I heard on a podcast that folks are working on future solar powered passenger planes. It’s theoretical now but in the future. Drones are being trained to plant trees on a massive scale. There’s a lot of people working on truly amazing solutions and ways to get the world to zero carbon emissions.5

There’s a lot to be hopeful about.

But the coverage of our fires and unbreathable air is off the front pages in the USA and UK. I’m not complaining. We got more attention and for longer than any other ongoing climate catastrophe because of koalas and kangaroos. Though I can’t help noting how many news organisations are giving way more coverage to the latest British royal family brouhaha than they ever did to our fires.

I get it. Royal soap opera is a lot more fun than glaring signs of the end of humanity. The bushfires are slipping from the focus of our news organisations too. The urgency to fix this will fade, here and in the many other countries who are also doing nothing to slow down climate change. Climate catastrophes are becoming normal, everyday, quotidian.

This is our world now. We have to fix it, but I very much fear we won’t.

  1. No conflicts of interests there, eh? []
  2. But basically if you drive a hybrid or an electric car, and you have passengers, then your carbon footprint is way smaller than even an occasional flyer. As for flying, long flights are actually better than lots of small flights, but they’re all terrible. []
  3. That was a bad day. Food became vomit. Migraine screamed. Muscles and joints decided to take a day off from functioning. []
  4. Well, except my seven-year-old niece. When I asked her about the protest the next day she said it was terrible. Too loud and too many people and she was tired and hungry and just wanted to go home. []
  5. You would not believe how many different ways I spell “emissions”. Is it actually even a word? []

Australia is on Fire

Note: I’m not on Twitter. If you wish to discuss any of these blog posts with me, leave a comment on my blog. I will respond.

This screenshot comes from the WA government’s My Fire Watch site. The BBC notes some problems with it. It is, however, a good rough guide to the extent of the fires. For scale Australia is roughly the same size as the USA (minus Hawaii and Alaska).

The front pages of newspapers worldwide are showing the catastrophic fires burning in Australia. I’ve been getting texts and emails and pings from friends overseas, wondering if I’m okay.1

I’m okay. So’s Scott.

Where we live in Sydney is a long way from the fires.2 The air here is worse than it’s ever been, but it’s not as bad as it was at it’s worst in Canberra.3 No one I know has died or lost their home. (Though friends with asthma and other respiratory diseases are having a pretty rough time.)

We’re keeping plenty of clean water on our deck for the parched birdlife to drink and bathe in. At night we’ve been getting exhausted flying foxes resting in our tiny gum trees. It feels good to do something other than just donating money to this GoFundMe for First Nations communities affected by the fire as well as wildlife rescue and the Rural Fire Service.4

I’m not okay.

Nothing scares me more than bushfires.

When I was a kid, we drove from Sydney to Newcastle through a bushfire. We must have been the last ones to get through before they closed the old Pacific Highway. I don’t remember any cars behind us or in front.

I was riding shotgun. My little sister had her head buried in Mum’s lap in the backseat. The smoke built up gradually, slowly hiding the trees. Then out of nowhere flames leapt the road, the smoke became so thick we could barely see. I remember the white lines in the middle of the road and orange coloured smoke.

My dad drove on the white line in the middle of the road, leaning forward, clutching the steering wheel. We passed only one car, on the side of the road, its wheels burning. I couldn’t see if anyone was inside. None of us spoke.

When we finally got through, what felt like hours later, I burst into tears, my sister cheered, my mum laughed and Dad swore. As we drove away cars passed us heading into the fire. I kept screaming at them between sobs to turn around.

I’ve never forgotten. For weeks I had nightmares of running on a never ending road through fire, of people and cars burning, of the whole world burning. Now my nightmares are on our screens daily. Across the entire country. Every state. Every territory.

It’s estimated that half a billion wildlife have been killed.That’s just for my state of New South Wales. It’s likely that some endangered species may now be extinct.

Half a billion.

I keep staring at that number and not comprehending. But I can imagine individual creatures burning. Kangaroos and koalas in flames. I’ve seen the photos. I’ve driven through those flames.

Millions of hectares have burned. People are dead. Homes reduced to ashes. On a terrifying number of days we haven’t been able to go outside without a P2 mask. On the days that are only supposed to be tough for folks who are particularly sensitive, our eyes sting, our noses run, our skin itches.5 It’s draining, sapping away the few spoons I have. Now imagine what it’s like for the elderly, for babies with their tiny new lungs, for those with respiratory illnesses.

Fires have burned out of control in every state. The worst in my home state of NSW, Victoria and South Australia. (The devastation of Kangaroo island is hard to comprehend.) Our fire season started in September. The year before, the fires started in August, but weren’t anywhere near as bad as this bushfire season.

Me on our deck this morning wearing a P2 mask. Normally you can see the city skyline clearly. But not on this over 200 AQI day.

We can’t breathe. Here in Sydney we’ve had our AQI (air quality index) up into the 200s, the unhealthy range, which means you shouldn’t go outside without a mask. Melbourne’s been in the unhealthy range for the last few days. A good AQI is from 0 to 50. In Canberra and surrounding areas, it reached beyond the index, into the thousands, giving Canberra the crown of most polluted city in the world multiple times. A few weeks ago, Sydney had that honour. Yay?

Before this summer I’d never heard of the AQI. Usually Australian cities have some of the cleanest urban air in the world. Not no more. Now I consult an air quality app to decide whether it’s safe to go outside and whether I need to turn the air purifier on.

I’d never owned an air purifier either. I’d never seen orange brown bushfire skies for more than two days in a row. I’d never had to stay indoors because the air was so bad you can’t go outside without a P2 mask. Sydney beaches had never been covered in ash. Apocalypse now . . .

I’ve seen multiple reports, here and overseas, characterise this as “one of” the worst bushfire seasons on record.

No.

It’s the worst.

There’s never been a fire season this catastrophic, this widespread, that’s lasted this long. There are fires in Victoria that are predicted to not burn out for another eight weeks. That means they’ll still be burning in March. September to March is half the year, and there’s no guarantee the fires will stop burning then. Welcome, to the all-year-round bushfire season.

Yes, Australia is the driest country on earth. There are bush fires in summer. Totally normal. The one I drove through as a kid was a dead standard ordinary one. The kind that happen every summer. Not that much damage, relatively easily brought under control. What is happening this summer is off the charts.

We used to be able to predict when fires would happen and prepare for them. Now they’re unpredictable, can happen any time of year, anywhere– even rainforests–and are bigger and travel faster and happen everywhere. Everything is worse.

How did we get here?

A long-running drought + deforestation + high winds + hottest weather on record = BOOM! You can read a more detailed explanation from the Climate Council.

To make matters worse, we have a climate change denying government, who came into power on the back of many horrible election promises, including getting rid of the previous government, the Labor Party’s, carbon tax, which had already started to reduce emissions.

When the conservative party, the Liberal/National Party coalition (LNP), won office they did as promised and scrapped the tax. Our emissions climbed. Per capita we’re the world’s biggest polluters.

When asked about their climate change denialism, they claim that everything is fine: “We’re meeting and beating our Kyoto targets,” the Prime Minister keeps repeating over and over and over. He might as well be saying, “War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!”

Spoiler: They’re not meeting the Kyoto targets. They are doing basically nothing to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.

Before this bushfire season, they were working to introduce legislation that would criminalise anyone who protested their inaction on climate change. Oh, and to increase coal mining.

No, I’m not kidding. Our current Prime minister, Scott Morrison,6 once brought a lump of coal to parliament to show that coal is our friend. Nothing to be frightened of.

I can’t speak for all Australians but I, for one, am DEFINITELY SCARED OF THIS GOVERNMENT’S COAL OBSESSION AND TERRIFIED OF A FUTURE OF UNBREATHABLE AIR, HARDLY ANY FLORA AND FAUNA, ALL-YEAR ROUND BUSHFIRES AND CONTINUED DENIALS FROM OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THAT ANY OF THIS IS HAPPENING.

Morrison claims his government was fully prepared for this apocalyptic summer. Um, tell that to the organisation of retired fire fighter chiefs who tried to get a meeting with the PM to present their plan on how to prepare for the coming bushfire season. You know, this fire season, which many experts predicted would be our worst ever, and is, in fact, our worst ever. He refused to see them. No one in government would meet with them. Because they believe climate change isn’t real and experts are just meanies. Or something.

Guess what? Those fire chiefs were right. How about that? The experts were correct about their area of expertise. Makes you think, doesn’t it?7

I don’t know about you, but I would like governments to make their policy decisions with the guidance of the people who’ve spent their lives studying those particular areas, and not some tool down the pub, who has a feeling because they met this bloke once, who reckoned all these bushfires were being faked, and did you know that Elvis is alive and well and living in Coober Pedy?

Fortunately most Australians know that climate change is real. While our federal government has been obstructionist on fighting climate change, civilians have the highest residential uptake of solar energy in the world. Twenty-one per cent of homes in Australia have solar and that percentage is increasing rapidly.

It makes sense. We are a sunburnt country. We don’t want for lack of sun. Well, except for recently, when the sun’s been almost blotted out by the smoke and turned an eerie orange black, and yes, the UV rays are reduced, which, yay, less skin cancer, but, boo, you kind of need the sun for things to grow and stay alive and for solar energy to work . . .

The smoke from our fires is so immense it’s been blotting out the sun in South America. They’re thousands of kilometres away . . . After leaving Australia, the smoke hit New Zealand first. Sorry, NZ. Here we are once again being the unfortunate neighbour you wish you could avoid. Watch how many Australians will want to move over there to escape this apocalypse. I say send us back home. Just like we did to some of yours.

It’s apocalypse now, but our federal government is more concerned with deporting people it deems undesirable, locking up asylum seekers and denying them adequate health care, and getting rid of gender neutral bathrooms than it is in dealing with these fires. Since the scale of this national disaster became apparent, Prime Minister Morrison has repeatedly shown himself to be more interested in PR and finding someone else to blame than in leadership.

Most of the time I can’t believe this summer is real. I can’t process it. Half a billion animals. Millions of hectares gone.

I don’t know how Australia will recover.

The amount of carbon dioxide released by the burning forests undoes any limited progress made by our spectacular uptake of solar. It also makes “meeting and beating” the Kyoto targets–which we weren’t even close to doing–impossible.

We’ve lost huge swathes of our wildlife and national parks–my favourite walk in the Blue Mountains was burnt out. And if this white Australian of not that many generations is feeling this loss how are the First Nations people feeling?

We’re looking at billions of dollars of property destroyed and much of the agriculture in NSW and Victoria has been gutted.8 We won’t know the full extent of the damage until all the fires are out. We don’t know when all the fires will be out.

Then there’s the long-term health effects. Lungs have been damaged throughout the most populous parts of Australia. Our biggest cities–Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra–have all had extended days of unhealthy air with more to come. Such as today. *points at photo of me in P2 mask above*

And what about our mental health? We’ve only just begun to process. Or have we? Can you process in the middle of a catastrophe? This one isn’t even over yet. We’re probably not yet half way through this horror season . . . There are still hundreds of fires burning. In NSW they’re currently under control but high temperatures and winds are predicted for the weekend. Click here for the Rural Fire Services Fires Near Me map. You can also download it as a map.

People are rallying all over the country with donations pouring in. Folks are offering up their homes to those who’ve lost theirs. It’s heartwarming but it shouldn’t be necessary. It shouldn’t have happened like this. If our government had listened and taken climate change seriously . . .

How do we make sure we never live through a bushfire season like this again?

Do we redirect our armed forces to fire fighting and reforestation? But how can forests grow when there’s no water? Rain isn’t predicted in any meaningful amounts for months and then it’ll likely be floods washing more of the top soil away.

Even if this government was to do a complete turn around and introduce every single one of the Climate Council’s measures–SPOILER: they won’t–having government and industry switch to solar and wind, phasing out coal mining and coal power stations etc. etc., it’s already too late. It won’t bring back the forests, it won’t bring back the wildlife. It won’t shorten the bushfire season or bring back the rain.

The time to do all of that was decades ago. Each successive government, Labor and the LNP, but let’s get real, especially the LNP, have failed us by not doing enough. We have failed us by not fighting harder and louder, because we didn’t believe in climate change, or we did believe, but couldn’t comprehend how soon these experts warnings would come to pass. Most of us humans are terrible at imagining the future.

Tim Flanagan says Australia is committing suicide. He’s right. This apocalypse we’ve created, this armageddon, is slower than those usually imagined by us story tellers. As Omar Sakr puts it, this “apocalypse, having begun long since, might last for the entirety of our lifetimes; we could live through this slow worsening, the poisoning of sky, water, land, and mind as the world heats up, resources become more scarce, and violent conflict spreads.”

Australia’s future is bleak. The land won’t die, not completely, but most of what’s living on it, us humans and quokkas and fingerlime bushes, and all the many other creatures and flora and landscapes that make me love this country, are looking doomed right now.

So, yeah, I’m not okay, and neither is Australia. Neither is the world.

But I’m not giving into despair. We might not be able to save our country, but I can hope we can mitigate some of the damage, learn from this catastrophic bushfire season, so we’re better prepared for the next one. Perhaps we can delay the very worst of this armageddon.

It helps me to do little things to minimise my carbon footprint. I’m reducing my consumption of single-use plastics, using less water,9 only buying clothes that are vintage and/or made from recycled and sustainable textiles,10 planting trees, taking public transport not taxis,11 trying to fly less,12 donating to the organisations that are fighting for a cleaner, better world, here and overseas.

And protesting.

I’ll be at the protest this Friday, 13 January. They’re happening all over the country. In Sydney it starts at 5:30PM at Sydney Town Hall.

I hope to see those of you in Sydney there. Let’s be loud and fight our federal government’s negligence, malfeasance, and incompetence together.

  1. Which I really appreciate. Thank you for caring! No, I’m not returning to my other home of NYC early. []
  2. Well, except there was a grass fire on Bunnerong Road, which is 11k from here. It’s out now. []
  3. Thinking of you, all my lovely Canberra people. []
  4. You can also bid on Shane Warne’s baggy green. Lol. All proceeds go to the Australian Red Cross. There’s fundraising wherever you go. At the Sydney Uni Flames games and at the Operation Ouch show at the Opera House we took the niece to buckets went round. []
  5. Fun facts I have learnt about smoke-filled unhealthy air: it triggers migraines and makes my dermatitis and rosacea worse. Also nauseating. []
  6. It’s Australia, we run through PMs pretty quickly, so that could change by the time I post this. Or it would if parliament was sitting. []
  7. I wish it did because then all the climate change denialists would disappear. I take some hope from op eds by folks who were all in with this government until this catastrophe made them realise that mitigating climate change is more important than tax breaks. But honestly what took them so long? []
  8. Such as the wine industry: smoke taints grapes. Smoke tainted grapes can’t be made into wine. []
  9. We’re on level 2 water restrictions in NSW because of the drought. I’m trying to do better than that. It’s really hard. []
  10. I know, I know, it’s not much of a sacrifice given how much I love vintage clothes. I bought some pieces from Audrey Scarlett because all proceeds are going to WIRES and Victoria’s fireys. []
  11. I know a lot of this isn’t possible for many people. Do what you can. []
  12. But I’m not ready to do what Yael Stone is doing. She’s right. It is unethical to live in both Australia and the USA but I just can’t. Not yet. []

Why I Left Twitter, or, the Last Day of 2019

Note: I’m not on Twitter. If you wish to discuss any of these blog posts with me, leave a comment on my blog. I will respond.

This has been a horrible year for me.1 Or, rather, it’s been a horrible two years–more than two years.

In June 2017, I woke up feeling weird. It was the beginnings of this chronic, incurable, non-fatal illness that now holds huge sway over my life.

Over the next few months, more symptoms manifested, the worst of which was losing my executive function. I couldn’t make decisions. Do you know what activity requires lots of decisions?

Writing novels.

I couldn’t do my job.

I’ve never had writer’s block. Ever.

Not being able to write, not being able to decide what to wear, or whether to leave the house, or pretty much anything, was a nightmare. I became depressed.

When I became ill, I’d written two thirds of a novel from the pov of a psychopath. It was already doing my head in writing the thoughts of a character who considered other humans to be pawns, not people.

After I got sick it was worse.

I’d be stuck reading the one scene, passage or sentence over and over, hating what I was reading, trying to find a way forward, failing, switching to a different scene, passage, sentence, clause, failing again, feeling worse and worse.

Every day I’d doggedly try to do my job. The words I’d already written, led me to choices I was no longer capable of making. Bleak choices. I’d stare, read and reread, and type nothing.

My depression deepened.

I broke out of it when we learned how to manage my illness. As my executive function slowly returned, I tentatively wrote again. Instead of plunging back into the novel, I went back to basics.

I turned to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. Le Guin is stern. I needed her strong, unrelenting, unforgiving voice to guide me.2 I did the writing exercises she laid out exactly as she told me to.

Every day I sat, read a chapter, tried the exercise. It was brutal. But gradually my fluency returned. The exercises started turned into stories.3

My agent, Jill Grinberg, who’s been amazingly supportive throughout, read the stories, said encouraging things, suggested one of them would work as a novel. So I did what she said. Being told what to do helped a lot.4

That exercise turned into a novel. Not a very good one. But definitely a novel-shaped text, with characters and exposition, a beginning, middle and end.

I’m currently rewriting that mess. It’s slow going–slower than I’ve ever written–but I’m writing.

I’ve learnt (yet again) that I’m happiest when I write. If I’m not writing, I’m not wholly me. I’ve learnt to work around my illness.

I’m not going to name it or talk about the many other symptoms. I don’t want to talk about it.

That’s not true.

Since June 2017, there have been many times when it’s all I can talk about. I’ve told random people on trams, trains and planes about it. Blurted out my symptoms to startled wait staff, acquaintances and strangers at weddings, parties, conferences and fundraisers.

I discovered that many of my friends and acquaintances have chronic diseases. Is anyone truly able bodied?

My friend with Hashimoto’s doesn’t really think about it that much–except when the price of meds goes up. God Bless the USA.5 Another friend doesn’t think about her illness except when she winds up in hospital.

I had no idea.

Why didn’t they tell me? Why have I stopped telling people?

So many reasons! Because:

Lots of able-bodied people don’t get it, we’re sick of talking about it, we don’t want your pity or revulsion, we’re sick of well-meaning people recommending treatments we’ve already tried or are pure quackery. No, being immunised did not cause this.6

Also we’re past the crisis stage, when we’re desperately trying to figure out what’s going on, and it’s all we think about.

We’re in the management phase. We know what meds to take, what diet/exercise/therapies work.

My family and friends know what’s going on. I love that they check in with me and support me and mostly treat me the way they always did. That’s enough.7

I no longer enjoy talking about my chronic illness.8 I talk about it far less. Though I have one friend with similar symptoms. We check in with each other regularly. She gets it and never says, “Hope you get well soon! I’m glad you’re getting better!”

What part of “chronic” and “incurable” do people not understand!?

I know, I know, our language around illness is rubbish. Folks mean well. Before I joined the ranks of the spoonies I said ridiculous stuff like that too.

I’m so sorry.

More than two years into this chronic, incurable, though not fatal, illness, I’m still learning how to cope with so few spoons. I still think like an able-bodied person, but I’m not. I’m a spoonie.

That’s why I left Twitter.

Things that were easy are now hard. Much of my resilience is gone.

I love Twitter. The conversations I’ve had on there with people all over the world have taught me so much and made me laugh and changed me.9

But after my illness, I started to hate Twitter. I lost my ability to brush off unjust criticism, to think through just criticism, or to tell the difference between the two. Even benign comments in my mentions upset me.

Twitter was wiping out all my spoons. I couldn’t tweet and write. Some days I couldn’t tweet and get out of bed.

So in November I walked away. I don’t know when I’ll return or if I’ll return. I’ve been doing better without it, though I miss the conversations around cricket and basketball and fashion and books and politics and TV. I miss my Twitter community.

I’ve been writing more, and getting out more, and learning about the new vintage clothes world on Instagram via my private account there.

Who knows? Maybe as I become better adjusted to so few spoons, I’ll return to Twitter. Or maybe I’ll start blogging regularly-ish in 2020?

I used to blog every day.

I used to write a recap of my year every 31 December and point forward to what I was publishing in the coming year.

I couldn’t do that in 2018. I published nothing and sold nothing. I couldn’t decide whether to get out of bed or not. I certainly couldn’t decide what to blog.

As it happens, I did publish this year. A bleak short story called “Elegy” for Emily X R Pan and Nova Ren Suma‘s YA anthology, Foreshadow. It’s an incredible anthology with many fabulous stories.

I will have a new story published next year. It’s called “When I was White” and will be in Adi Alsaid‘s YA anthology on immigration, Come On In published by Inkyard Press in October 2020.10

I wrote this year and I’ll write in 2020.

I have no idea when there’ll be a new novel from me. But given that I’m months from finishing this rewrite, it would be published in 2024 at the earliest, and there’s no guarantee it will find a publisher.11

All of which is huge progress from where I was a year ago, but It’s terrible compared to where I was ten years ago.

Things don’t always get better, but if we’re lucky, and have support from those who love us,12 we have a shot at learning to manage.

  1. And the world. I write this in Sydney, on a day when the entire South coast of NSW is on fire. Lives and homes and national parks and agriculture are going up in flames. Smoke from the bushfires is so thick here in the city there’s a Poor Air Quality Forecast from the NSW government and we’re being advised to stay indoors. It’s been like that off and on for weeks.

    Currently our AQI of 124 is worse than Beijing’s. All we talk about here is the drought, air masks, purifiers, and what we can personally do to ameliorate climate change and force our governments to do likewise. There are worse fires in the Amazon. There are environmental disasters everywhere. []

  2. It was also a way of mourning her death. She is a foundational writer for me. []
  3. Stories Le Guin would have considered woeful, but no matter. []
  4. Hilariously. I’ve always hated being told what to do. []
  5. Do not get me started on the US healthcare system. []
  6. I’m not interested in answering questions or hearing miracle cures unless they’re thoroughly peer reviewed and even then odds are I’ve already heard about it. Yes, I’ve tried acupuncture. I consider Chinese medicine to be peer reviewed and as (in)fallible as Western medicine. For me acupuncture works great at bringing swelling down and various other things. It hasn’t worked on this illness. But then neither has western medicine. Both have helped manage the symptoms. []
  7. My seven-year-old niece’s concern breaks my heart. []
  8. Yes, in the beginning, when we had no idea what was going on, and my symptoms were weird, and weren’t disrupting my work or play, it was kind of fun to talk about, and shock folks with photos of the weirdness. []
  9. I found the people who think cricket is as funny as I do. []
  10. All you editors, who over the years have asked me for short stories, and I said I don’t write them? Turns out I write short stories now. Hit me up! []
  11. Fortunately, I’m working on other novels. So who knows? Maybe in 2030 there’ll be four from me at once. []
  12. Scott and my family have been incredible. I love them so much. []

Street Harassment: 2003 Viewed with 2018 Eyes

Fifteen years ago I wrote this and then never posted it because I never finished it.

I post it here now because, frankly, I’m a bit freaked out by how blasé I am about harassment. Why now it only happens a few times a week. That’s awful, fifteen-years-ago Justine!

I hated being harassed then and I hate being harassed now, yes, even though it’s even less frequent now.1 And I REALLY hated being harassed when I was a teen and felt completely powerless in the face of the constant barrage.

What I say about Sydney being the worst is hooey. Street harassment happens everywhere. I was right that I thought Sydney the worst because I spent my teens/twenties there.

But I left out the other reason I was harassed far less in my thirties: because I was with my husband pretty much everywhere I went. The only times I’ve been harassed since I married was when alone. I left it out because I didn’t realise that’s what was going on until much later.

I was single or dating women during my twenties. Funnily enough being with your female partner doesn’t stop harassment the way being with your male one does. I wonder why . . .2

The headphones thing still works. Back then I listened to music, now it’s podcasts. They still form an excellent shield. But, damn, WHY DO WE NEED A SHIELD?! Fix theyself, world of shitty men.

For the first time in my life, I’m feeling something akin to optimism about sexual harassment. The #MeToo movement makes me weakly hopeful that some day, not soon, but maybe in a few hundred years, this horrible harassment will finally end. Sadly, I fear the planet will be uninhabitable for humans sooner.

What? That’s way more optimistic than I was fifteen years ago.

In the meantime, let’s keep talking and raging and fighting harassment. Men have to stop.

Sexual Harassment on the Street (2003)

This is always a difficult one to talk about. There’s still this weird idea that if you mention guys calling out to you in the street, you’re somehow boasting about it. “Hey, I am so damn hot, that this paralytically drunk guy with no teeth lurched across the street, vomited in front of me, and said: ‘Show us your tits, love.’ Boy, was I thrilled. Someone out there finds little old me attractive. My day, no, my life, is now complete.”

So let’s just skip that crap, eh? You know and I know that most of the time men you’ve never met before in your life feeling free to comment on your appearance (negatively or positively: I’ve had several blokes in Sydney feel moved to tell me how ugly I am) is a pain in the arse. You’ve just lost your favourite jacket, your job, your best friend, and some charming bloke thinks it’s his duty to say, “Give us a smile, darls.” Now there’s a killing offence. And even when they don’t say anything there’s that horrible prickling feeling along your skin that you are being looked at, and at any moment someone may be moved to demand you show off your mammaries or perform sexual favours for them.

I hate to say this about my beloved home city but the harassment there is world class. I and my friends have heard more choice misogynist nastinessess in the glowing Emerald City than we’ve ever heard anywhere else in the world. Gross, scary things. Now it could be that that’s because we couldn’t understand what was being yelled in Tel Aviv or Bangkok, or because we lived in Sydney during the peak period of a girl’s life for copping this crap. It’s possible. Let’s just say that none of us, despite being told that one day we would miss the catcalls and invitations to suck a total stranger’s bed flute, are experiencing said sadness as we get older and hear less of those oh-so-flattering invitations.

Why now I’m blessed to be harassed only a handful of times a week. I know many won’t believe me but it’s SUCH a relief.

In the parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan and I and my friends live the harassment is much less nasty than Sydney. Like I said this could be because me and my peer group are longer in the tooth than we once were. Maybe the seventeen year olds are copping it every bit as bad as me and my mates did at that age. I hope not. Or maybe we’re more sure of ourselves and less intimidated. I hope so.

That said, there’s a lot more of it. A woman on her own walking down those beautiful New York City footpaths is hit with dazzling smiles, lots of hellos, how’re you doings (yeah, yeah, I know, that’s just friendly, but seriously, people, it’s almost never friendly), and hears a lot of the kinds of noises people make to attract the attention of their cat.

If she responds in any way, the guy will elaborate further with comments on her hair, skin and clothing. (Including the dreaded, “Show us a smile, sweetheart”.) Or possibly a suggestion that they make some form of love together.

New Yorkers altogether seem more inclined to talk to people they don’t know. Women in NYC often comment on the clothing of strangers. Always positively, sometimes a little too positively. One woman on the subway, after telling me that she loved my coat, offered to buy it from me. “Er, no”, said I. “Thanks though, quite happy with coat”. I have even been so bold as to tell the occasional resplendent stranger in this fine and well-dressed city how fab their coat/dress/hair/tattoo is though I always keep walking to make it clear it’s a strings-free compliment.

I’ve got nothing against compliments, me. Just, you know, as long as a fella doesn’t think it entitles them to anything. But randomly yelling at a stranger on the street is not a compliment. Why is that so hard do understand?

I wish they just wouldn’t. I know. That will never happen. In the meantime: headphones are my solution of choice. I lose myself in music when walking so I don’t even notice or hear the harassment.

  1. I’ve only been street harassed once this year. []
  2. Spoiler: I don’t wonder why. []

Religion in My Sister Rosa

One of the characters in My Sister Rosa, Sojourner Ida Davis, is a deeply religious progressive Christian. This has elicited a range of responses from readers: from horror from the non-religious: Ewwww! Why is there religion in this book? To horror from conservative Christians, some of whom have expressed grave doubts that Christians like Sojourner exist. To thanks from progressive Christians who tell me they rarely see themselves represented in YA.

Why did I write Sojourner?

I’m an Australian atheist. In the US context it’s probably more accurate to call myself non-religious since my atheism has never been a big part of my identity. I grew up in secular communities where religion was rarely discussed. It just wasn’t a thing. Pretty much everyone I knew was also an atheist. I was curious about religion but knew little about it. My father’s an atheist Jew. So I learned a bit about Judaism from his family. Particularly my grandmother. I picked up bits and pieces about Christianity. But not much. For the first year of my BA I did Religious Studies because I felt so ignorant.

When I moved to NYC one of the biggest differences was how much more religious my NYC friends are compared to my Sydney friends. I hadn’t really met progressive Christians and religious Jews before. (My Jewish family are very conservative. I knew progressive secular Jews.) I thought being religious meant being conservative. I was wrong.

I wrote Sojourner because I have met many New Yorkers like her and because I don’t think it’s accurate to write books set in the US with no religion. Not only are there few religious people in YA, there are even fewer progressive religious characters. They’re mostly extremely conservative. But the political and social beliefs of religious people in the real world are as varied as those of non-religious people. I wanted to reflect that.

The church in the novel is based on a real church in my neighbourhood of NYC. The only thing that’s changed since I wrote Rosa is there’s now security checking everyone before they’re allowed in. Yes, because of Charleston.

Several of my religious US friends do not swear. I come from a very sweary people and I find the few non-swearers I’ve met fascinating. It became clear to me early in writing Sojourner that she too would not swear and she most definitely would not blaspheme. It was one of the hardest linguistic decisions I’ve made in a book. Swear words kept slipping into her dialogue. Apparently, swears words are invisible to me. Eeek! I did searches on every new draft to weed out my slips. I thought, with the help of my editors, copyeditors and proofreaders, that I had succeeded!

Nope.

Recently a reviewer on GoodReads pointed out that Sojourner does blaspheme.1 On one page she uses both hell and damn.2 I missed it; my editors in Australia and the US missed it; copyeditors missed it; proofreaders missed it. My response was to, of course, swear. LOUDLY. That little slip of mine undermines Sojourner’s character.

This really bad error is now being changed in all editions for the next reprint. That includes the audio book—they’re bringing the actor back in to re-record those two lines–thank you, Blackstone audio!—as well as the foreign editions.

  1. I’d link to the review but I can’t find it. Thank you, Katy Jane! []
  2. If you’re curious it’s page 114 in the Australian edition and page 88 in the US edition. []

Guest Post: Ambelin Kwaymullina: Thoughts on Being an Ally of Indigenous Writers

ambelin-bgToday Ambelin Kwaymullina, who is an Aboriginal writer and illustrator from the Palyku people, has generously allowed me to publish this essay.

I’ve been an admirer of Ambelin Kwaymullina’s work for some time. Not just her wonderful dystopian trilogy about a far future Australia, The Tribe series, but her thoughtful essays. She has become one of the most important Australian voices speaking out about diversity and Own Voices.

This essay is particularly important now that so much of the world is shifting to right-wing, racist governance. The work of people like Kwaymullina show us ways to fight back and make our voices heard.

Thank you, Ambelin Kwaymullina.

Thoughts on Being an Ally of Indigenous Writers (and other marginalised writers) in the Kids Lit Space

I’m increasingly being asked about how to be an ally of Indigenous writers—so here’s a few thoughts on some of what it takes.

1. Be able to articulate and interrogate your position—especially your privilege.

We all have a location in this world. Indigenous peoples are accustomed to identifying our position—our homeland, our people—and recognising the boundaries that position places upon us. For example, it is a rule common to all Aboriginal nations of Australia that no one can speak for someone else’s homeland (Country), and there are many other boundaries on who can tell what stories in Indigenous cultures.

The privileging of Whiteness means that ‘White’ has not historically been viewed as one location amongst many but rather as a kind of default normal; the universal lens through which which all other experiences of the world are to be interpreted and judged. Male privilege, and heteronormativity and ableism, work in the same way. And being an ally of others requires being able to articulate and interrogate the position that you hold and the privilege that it gives you.

All non-Indigenous peoples are to some degree privileged in relation to Indigenous peoples, because all who came here post-colonisation benefited from the dispossession of those who were here before. This means that non-Indigenous peoples writing about Indigenous peoples are doing so from the fraught position of holding a privilege that emerged from—and is in some ways sustained by—the marginalisation of the peoples they write about.

For White writers, this colonial privilege is reinforced by White privilege, and there are numerous useful online resources surrounding White privilege, including the work of Dr Robin DiAngelo. I suggest anyone seeking to be an ally familiarises themselves with her work on White fragility and the White rules of engagement. I also suggest reflecting on these two posts from Justine Larbalestier. And for the ongoing interrogation of Whiteness and children’s literature, tune in to the US blog Reading While White—good starting points are these posts from Elisa Gall, Nina Lindsay, Angie ​Manfredi, Ernie Cox, Megan Schliesman, Allie Jane Bruce, Sam Bloom and K T Horning.

While these resources relate to White privilege, they can also have a broader relevance. For example, as an Aboriginal writer, I’ve found it useful to reflect on the White rules of engagement both to understand the reactions I encounter from some White colleagues and also to prompt consideration of how I should engage with marginalised groups to which I do not belong. I’m not suggesting that different forms of marginalisation equate; merely that its been helpful to me to consider the invasive patterns of behaviour DiAngelo identifies so as to ensure that I do not replicate similar patterns in different contexts.

Interrogating position and privilege also leads to the question of what stories can (or should) be told, and by whom? And in this respect, it is not a numbers game. I’ve had the view put to me before that there aren’t a sufficient number of Indigenous people to write ‘enough’ books and therefore White writers must step in to fill the story-space.

My response to this is that a lack of diversity in kids lit is not a ‘diversity problem’. It is a privilege problem, in that it is caused by structures, behaviours and attitudes that consistently privilege one set of voices over another. This means that it cannot be solved by yet more privileged voices writing about the experiences of the marginalised.

If writers of privilege do not proceed with considerable caution, they will become not liberators, but an occupying force whose presence in the field prevents Indigenous stories from being told and heard. This is why I have said that one boundary I believe non-Indigenous writers should observe is not to tell Indigenous stories from first person or deep third. I accept the same boundary in relation to writing of experiences of marginalisation not my own.

Beyond this, its extraordinarily difficult to write of other peoples, even when observing respectful boundaries. It requires time, research, reflection, and advice—and this is not solely an author responsibility. It’s publishers as well. I know of instances when White authors have been horrified to find that they have unwittingly included harmful stereotypes about Indigenous peoples in a novel. These things can be more difficult to spot than you might think. I’ve said before that words written about marginalised peoples have a weight and a cost, but if you don’t come from that group, then the weight is not one that you carry and the cost is not one that you pay. And that means it can sometimes be hard to see when you are contributing to harm. Authors rely on editors to guide us and challenge us and question us—but how many editors truly have the expertise to either spot a representation issue, or to realise when they need to seek specialist advice from someone who does have the expertise? I’m not saying authors shouldn’t take responsibility, but publishers have a responsibility too. And there are some amazing people in Australian publishing who are proactive in informing themselves about the issues and who continually strive to improve their practice. But we need a lot more people to do this if the industry is going to achieve sustained change.

2. Ask yourself why

Why do you wish to support others? It can be easy (for anyone) to fall prey to the perils of saviourism; the seductive allure of being the person who ‘helps’. But in many ways the goal of any good ally (or advocate) should be not to make yourself more useful, but less—the idea is to be so good at ally-ship/advocacy that you become redundant. I look forward to the day when I no longer need to speak out on diversity in children’s literature because the industry has reached the point when all voices are heard equally and all voices have an equal opportunity to be heard.

I believe supporting others requires a rights-based, strength-based approach. Rights-based, in that I recognise that the denial of anyone’s rights, and the diminishment of anyone’s humanity, diminishes and denies my own. No one should therefore be grateful to me for any support I offer; their fate and mine are intertwined. Strengths-based, in that I am not ‘fixing’ the deficit of others but challenging the barriers—including the lived impact of those barriers—that prevent others from being able to actualise their strength and realise their potential. And let me be clear here: I am not suggesting I have a ‘right’ to tell someone else’s stories. I am saying that the exclusion of marginalised voices harms me whether or not it is the exclusion of a group to which I belong, and the way to address that harm is to challenge the barriers that prevent the strength of those voices from being heard.

3. Identify (and if necessary change) your personal narrative

Most of us would like to think of ourselves as good people. But when it comes to dealing ethically and equitably with others, having a view of ourselves as a ‘good person’ can be counter-productive. For example, as a straight, cis gendered woman who wishes to support LGBTI writers, having a personal narrative of ‘I am a good person and therefore I cannot be homophobic’ is both inaccurate and unhelpful.

We are all capable of absorbing harmful attitudes and enacting harmful behaviours; ‘good’ means being aware enough to identify the attitudes/behaviours either on our own or through having them pointed out by others. And if someone does point out we’ve caused harm, the appropriate reaction is not to be angry with that other person but to make a genuine apology and to be grateful for the insight being offered into someone else’s world.

4. Inform yourself

Anyone truly interested in supporting others should take the time to find out something about about the peoples they wish to support—and with Indigenous peoples, everyone can start with some of the quality resources available free and online. These include, in relation to Indigenous cultures and histories, the exhibitions and other information available at the AIATSIS website; the resources on Indigenous civil rights and land rights at the National Museum of Australia; the Bringing Them Home report and associated resources; and the Share Our Pride module on the Reconciliation Australia website.

People can also inform themselves about common stereotypes by reading publications such as the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Face the Facts and Reconciliation Australia’s Beyond the Myths. They can familiarise themselves with the many ethical protocols that apply to dealing with Indigenous peoples including the Australia Council for the Arts protocols and the AIATSIS Ethical Research and Ethical Publishing protocols, as well as with the overarching rights-based framework of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

People can learn appropriate terminology by accessing one of the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander terminology guides produced by Australian universities and government departments (google Indigenous terminology guide, and you’ll find a heap).

All this is only a starting point beyond this, and especially for anyone with a love of books, I think one of the best ways to engage with the diverse cultures, histories and experiences of Indigenous Australia is to read our stories. And for kids lit, the publisher with the biggest list of Australian Indigenous stories is Indigenous publisher Magabala Books.

5. Use your power

If I had a dollar for every time someone in literature has told me they’d like to do more for diverse writers if only they had the power, I would even now be using my many dollars to establish an Own Voices prize in Australian kids lit (‘Own Voices’ is shorthand for books written by marginalised writers about their own marginalisation). I understand that resources are few—but the level of our individual power (and therefore our individual responsibility) can only ever be measured by reference to those who have less choices than we do, not those who have more.

Judged by that standard, the vast majority of people associated with Australian literature are immensely powerful. Besides which, in the age of the internet, everyone is able to realise their individual power in ways that weren’t possible before the arrival of the worldwide web. Anyone can tweet, share, review and otherwise promote books written by Indigenous writers. Anyone can draw on online resources—such as those provided by the Racism. It Stops with Me campaign—to train themselves to be aware of discrimination at individual and systemic levels, and to say something if they see something (provided it is safe to do so).

Everyone can read and engage with the nuanced and multi-faceted conversation coming out of the US on diversity in kids lit (and anyone with an interest in Indigenous issues in this regard should be following American Indians in Children’s Literature). Everyone can raise up their voice, whether through the net or otherwise, to demand that marginalised voices be heard.

And in so doing, we can all be part of something larger and greater than ourselves.

Launching Wai Chim’s Freedom Swimmer

Tomorrow, Friday 16th of September I have the great honour of launching Wai Chim’s first YA novel, Freedom Swimmer, and it’s a corker. The book was inspired by Wai’s father’s escape from Mao’s China by swimming to Hong Kong.

Wai tells a story of privation and love and friendship. The central relationship between Ming and Li, one of the city boys sent to his village to learn to be proper communists, is deeply moving. The book is warm and funny and sad. It’s also educational: The Cultural Revolution in China is a period of history I know little about. I learned a great deal because this book sent me down a trail of reading more because Freedom Swimmer is so fascinating. Youse all need to read it.

Launch details:

Friday 16 September
6pm for 6.30pm
Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road
Glebe, Sydney, Australia
RSVP here

Hope to see you there. This book is so worth it. And Wai Chim is a delight.

Lili Wilkinson’s The Boundless Sublime

This Tuesday, 9 August 2016, at 6 PM I have the great pleasure of launching Lili Wilkinson’s amazing new novel, The Boundless Sublime at Kinokuniya in Sydney.

The Boundless Sublime is a chilling thriller that deals with death, grief, brainwashing, cults, psychopaths, guilt, empathy, resilience and survival. Ruby Jane Galbraith’s brother has died under tragic circumstances that she thinks are her fault. Her grief and pain are so overwhelming she can barely function. It’s in this vulnerable state that she finds herself becoming involved with an, at first, loving community who turn out to be terrifying.

Too many of us are convinced that we are too smart to ever be conned or recruited for a cult but it turns out being smart offers no protection. All of us can be recruited when we’re vulnerable and no one is more vulnerable than someone grieving.

Join me and Lili as she talks about her brilliant book and all the research that went into it. She’ll teach you how to avoid being caught up in a cult!

My Sister Rosa in Shops Today in Australia and New Zealand!

MySisterRosa_RCcvr.inddToday’s the day you can buy My Sister Rosa in Australia and New Zealand! Woo hoo! A new book by me! Out today! *dances*

I hope you enjoy this charming tale of seventeen-year-old Australian Che Taylor’s adventures in New York City looking after his precocious psychopathic sister, Rosa Klein.1 Already critics are calling it, “Heartwarming and touching.” Would you believe they called it “Adorable”? Okay, fine, no one is calling it heartwarming, touching or adorable. More like “Creepy” and “soul-destroying.” But, remember, it’s a fine line between heartwarming and soul-destroying.2

You can read the first chapter here and about what inspired the book here.

This is also release day for Kirsty Eagar’s fabulous Summer Skin, which is a sexy contemporary take on Romeo and Juliet set amongst Queensland university students. It’s funny and hot and wonderful. You are in for such a treat with this book.

We will be celebrating their release next week:

Thursday, 4 February 2016 at 6:00pm for a 6:30pm
Kirsty Eagar and me will discuss our books
and talk of Sex and Psychopaths
And answer all your questions for we love Q&A!
Kinokuniya
Level 2, The Galleries,
500 George St,
Sydney, NSW

Hope to see you there, Sydney!

Fear not, lovely Melbourne peeps, we will be there doing our double launch with extra bonus Ellie Marney introducing us a week later on the tenth. And while we’re having our Sydney launch, if you’re in Melbourne, you can go to Leanne Hall’s launch for Iris and the Tiger. I’ve heard nothing but good things. Can’t wait to read it!

  1. She has their mum’s last name, Rosa has their father’s. Just like me and my sister. Except with no psychopathy. []
  2. Not really. []

My First Publication

This poem was first published when I was nine. First in the Newcastle Morning Herald and then later in the feminist magazine, Refractory Girl.1

I can fly.
They say I can’t.
They don’t exist.

I can fly.
They won’t believe me.
They aren’t real.

They can’t understand me
They won’t understand me
They don’t understand me

They say I’m mad
no-one can fly.

I can fly
They’re dead.

The day after it published in the local newspaper some of the kids at school demanded that I fly for them. They recited the poem back at me and laughed in my face. I spent the day wishing I’d never written it but also basking in my teachers’ praise.

The next day the other kids had forgotten about it but the teachers were still praising me. Yup, I was still buzzing about being an actual published poet. I enjoyed and was weirded out by the publication and attention thing. Praise = good! Kids laughing at me = oogie!

It was an early lesson in the gap between writing and publication. The writing part is private and often wonderful. Publication and public responses to the writing is a whole other thing. I’ve been doing my best to keep that in mind ever since.

  1. My mother, Jan Larbalestier was part of the Refractory Girl collective. Yup, nepotism got my poem republished. For the record, I didn’t know anyone at the Herald. []

I Love Teens

No, not in that way. Stop snickering.

Not all of them, obviously. Like adults, some are lovely, some are complete shitheads, and some are a bit meh. But unlike the majority of adults, teens mostly don’t temper their enthusiasms, they haven’t had their enthusiasms squashed down for them yet. Yes, some have a wall of fuck-you, but when you break through that wall of fuck you, it stays broken.

On my first book tour, for How To Ditch Your Fairy, I was sent around the USA to talk to mostly years 6, 7 and 8. In the US they segregate those years into what they call middle schools. Middle schools are notoriously hellish. All my YA/middle grade writer friends, who were veterans of many tours, were deeply sympathetic and told me horror stories of being pelted with rotten fruit and being asked probing literary questions such as, “Why are your clothes so shit?”1

Thanks, you bastard writer friends, for filling my heart with terror.

On that first tour I visited gazillions of middle schools. They were all fabulous. Not a single projectile was thrown and my western boots were beloved. So was my accent. I highly recommend touring the US if you have a non US English-as-a-native-language accent and cool boots.

A quick aside: what I was meant to be doing was flogging my books, which was pointless as most teens do not show up at school with the money to buy books. (The only exception is the insanely rich private schools with stables and croquet courts where each kids has an expense account and three hundred copies of my book sold in a day. STABLES, people!) What I actually did was not talk about my book much at all.2

My favourite visit of the entire tour was at a public school (without a hint of a stable) in the Midwest.3 I was abandoned in the library by my publicist and the librarian in front of three classes of mostly 13 and 14 year olds. There were at least 60 teens and me. Every writer in this situation develops an if-all-else-fails move. Mine is vomit stories. This is the story I told them. Their response was to ask me to tell more vomit stories. Much fun was had.

When we got to Q&A they wanted to know everything there is to know about Australians, a people with whom they clearly had a lot in common. So I may or may not have told them that wombats fly and echolocate and aerate the earth, which, is, in fact, why they’re called “wombats” because they’re a cross between a worm and a bat. The questions and answers went on in that mode. We all laughed our arses off.

You’ll be pleased to hear they DID NOT BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD. One actually said, “You are the best liar ever.”

I conceded that, yes, bullshit is an art and that I have studied with the very best.

They all cheered.

Sadly, I praised the fine art of bullshitting just as the librarian and publicist walked back in. They were unswayed by the approval of my audience.

Cue lecture on not swearing in front of students. To which I did not respond by pointing out that in my culture shit does not count as swearing. Mainly because I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure I hadn’t said any of the words that count as swearing for all cultures ever. Their main concern, of course, was not the students, it was the parents. The librarian really didn’t want to deal with all the complaints they were sure they were going to get because of my praise of bullshit.

No teen has ever told me not to swear or complained about the shits and fucks and arseholes in my books.4 Nor have they ever complained about the sex. Or violence. They have, however, complained that my books start too slow, that no teen would ever be allowed the freedom that the teens in my books have, and that I don’t write fast enough, what am I? The laziest writer in the world?

Teens also, you’ll be stunned to hear, do not complain about the so-called fact that teens don’t read.

My hairdresser does. He has apparently read every single one of the gazillion panicked articles about the the current generation’s total lack of literacy. Seriously every time I go in he will say, once we’ve gotten past all the neighbourhood gossip, “I hear kids aren’t reading much these days.”

And I will say for the gazillionth time, “Actually, teens today read more than any previous generation of teens. They are readaholics. They are a huge part of why the genre I write, YA, is such a huge seller with double digit growth every year for well over a decade.”

“My kids only read comic books.”

“That’s reading! Reading graphic novels and manga requires a level of literacy with images and language that many adult readers struggle with. Furthermore, not only are teens reading more than ever before. They are also writing more. They write novels! Did you write a novel when you were thirteen? I didn’t. Teens today are a literacy advocate’s wet dream. Also, my lovely hairdresser, you need to stop reading the [redacted name of tabloid newspaper].”

This is why I love teens. They don’t get their information from [redacted name of tabloid newspaper]. Most of them are a lot better at spotting bullshit than your average adult and they’re way less prone to repeating the warmed over moral panics of the last hundred years. The sheer breadth of their reading is astonishing. They read novels, and comic books—sometimes backwards—and airplane manuals and games reviews and they write songs and poetry and stories and novels and think about words and language and invent slang in ways that most adults have long since ceased to do.

Can you imagine a better audience?

  1. That last question was actually asked on a tour of the UK, not the US. In the questioner’s defence the writer in question really does wear shit clothes. Most writers are poor, yo. []
  2. I wonder why I was only ever sent out on one other tour? It is very puzzling. []
  3. I think it was an M state. But it could have been a vowel state. My memory is now hazy. []
  4. For the record none of those words appear in How To Ditch Your Fairy the book I was promoting. []

Last Day of 2014

The year is practically over so here I am again with my annual recap of the year that was as well as a squiz at what’s gunna happen in 2015.1

Books Out in 2014

This was my first year with a new solo novel since 2009. Five years in between solo novels!2 I was nervous but it seems to have gone quite well.

Razorhurst was published in July by Allen and Unwin in Australia and New Zealand. The reviews have been blush-making. Including being named a book of the week by the Sydney Morning Herald, of the month from Readings Books and making Readings’ top ten YA books of the year and top 50 books by Australian women in 2014 lists, as well being the Australian Independent Bookseller’s No. 1 Children’s Pick for July. Although Razorhurst isn’t out in the US until March it’s already received starred reviews from the School Library Journal as well as Kirkus.

Then, best of all, earlier this month I learned that Razorhurst has made the shortlist of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (Young Adult), which is one of the biggest YA prizes in Australia.3

So, yeah, I’m more than happy with how Razorhurst has been received. Pinching myself, in fact.

Books Out in 2015 and 2016

I will have three books out in 2015. Two novels and a short story in a wonderful new anthology.

resized_9781743319789_224_297_FitSquareIn India this month my story, “Little Red Suit,” was published in Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean edited by Kirsty Murray, Payal Dhar and Anita Roy, but I’m going to pretend that’s 2015, as it will be published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen and Unwin in February. Isn’t that cover divine?

The anthology is an Indian-Australian collaboration with half the contributors from each country. Some of them worked in collaboration with each other to produce comics as well as short stories. I was partnered with Anita Roy and we critiqued each other’s stories. Hers is a corker. I can’t wait to see the finished book.

“Little Red Suit,” is a post-apocalyptic retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Fairy tales were the first stories I ever told so it was lovely to return to the form. As I’ve mentioned, once or twice, I am not a natural short story writer. They are much more of a challenge for me than writing novels. So much so that I kind of want to turn this story into a novel. (Almost all of my short stories are secretly novels.) I hope you enjoy it.

RazorhurstUSIn March Soho Teen will publish the US edition of Razorhurst. I am very excited and will be over there in the US doing events in California and New York and Texas and possibly some other states. I will keep you posted. Yes, the Soho Teen edition will be available in Canada too.

Then in November I’ll have a brand new novel out with Allen and Unwin.

Let’s pause for a moment to digest that: in November there will be a brand new Justine Larbalestier novel, only a year later than my last one.

I know, brand new novels two years in a row! I’ve become a writing machine!

The new novel hasn’t been formally announced yet so I can’t tell you much about it other than it’s realism set in New York City, told from the point of view of a seventeen-year old Australian boy named Che.

The new novel will be published in the USA by Soho Press in March 2016.

What I wrote in 2014

I spent this year writing and rewriting the new novel. As well as rewrites, copyedits and etc. of Razorhurst. My novels, they go through many drafts.

And, me being me, I started a brand new novel out of nowhere, inspired by . . . you know what, it’s still a tiny whisper of a novel. I’ll wait until there’s a bit more before I start talking about it in public.

Then just a week or so ago I got the idea for yet another novel. So who knows which of those I’ll wind up finishing this year.

I continued blogging and managed to blog roughly once a week for most of the year. The most fun I had blogging this year was doing the Bestselling Women’s Fiction Book Club with Kate Elliott. I was very bummed when deadlines and travel forced us to call it quits. Here’s hoping we can get it started again some time in 2015.

I plan to blog even more next year. Er, tomorrow. Blogging, I love you no matter out of fashion you are. *hugs blogging*

Writing Plans for 2015

Well, obviously, there’ll be more rewrites and copyedits and etc for the new novel.

Then I plan to finish one of the novels that came out of nowhere. After that, well, who knows? Will I finally get back to the New York Depression-era novel(s)? The snow-boarding werewolves? The fairy godmother middle grade? Or one of the many other novels I’ve been working on for ages? Or something else that comes out of nowhere? Given that my last three novels came out of nowhere that would be the safest bet.

All of this writing is possible because I’m still managing my RSI as I described here. I’m continuing to be able to write as much as six hours a day. The few times I’ve written longer than that I have paid for it. It’s good to know my limits.

Travel in 2014

I was in the US briefly in June and then again in Sept-Nov, accompanying Scott on his Afterworlds tour. It felt like we went everywhere. Both coasts! Or all three if you count Texas as the third coast. Also Canada. It went fabulously well. Scott’s fans turned out in great numbers and many book sold and I met heaps of wonderful librarians and booksellers and readers and writers and some of them had already read Razorhurst thanks to my wonderful publicist at Soho Press, Meredith Barnes. It will be fun to go out on the road again in March.

Reading and Watching in 2014

My favourite new writers are Brandy Colbert and Courtney Summers, who both write realist contemporary YA, which I’ve gotta be honest is not my thing. That’s why I read a tonne of it this year: to learn and to grow. Both Colbert and Summers are dark and uncompromising almost bleak writers. Their books made me weep buckets. But there’s heart and hope in their novels too. I’m really looking forward to more from both of them. Courtney’s next book, All the Rage, will be out in early 2015.

I also read heaps of non-fiction this year. A Chosen Exile by Allyson Hobbs is a wonderful history of passing in the USA, which centres those who chose not to pass as much as those who did, and looks closely at the reason for deciding either way and how they changed over time. African-American family life is at the centre of this excellent history.

One of my fave new TV shows is Faking It because it’s silly and funny and kind of reminds me of my high school days at an alternative school though, you know, more scripted. I also love Cara Fi created and written by a dear friend, Sarah Dollard, who is a mighty talent. It’s set in Wales and is sweet and funny and feminist and touching and you should all watch it.

2014 was awful but there’s always hope

Although 2014 was a wonderful year for me professionally it was an awful year in both of my home countries, Australia and the USA, and in way too many other parts of the world. I would love to say that I’m full of hope for change in the future. I try to be. The movement that has grown out of the protests in Ferguson is inspiring and should fill us all with optimism. But then it happens all over again.

In Australia we have a government actively undoing what little progress had been made on climate change and stripping money from all the important institutions such as the ABC, CSIRO and SBS. This is the most anti-science, anti-culture and, well, anti-people government we’ve ever had. The already disgraceful policy on asylum seekers has gotten even worse and Aboriginal Australians continue to die in custody.

Argh. Make it stop!

May you have a wonderful 2015 full of whatever you love best and may the world become less unjust. Speaking out and creating art that truly reflects the world we live in goes part of the way to doing that. At least that’s what I hope.

  1. Yes, here in Sydney it is the 31st of December. I’m sorry that you live in the past. []
  2. Yes, I had a co-edited anthology and a co-written novel in those five years but you would be amazed by how many people do not count collaborations as being a real novel by an author. I don’t get it either. []
  3. If you’re from the US think Printz or National Book Award only plus money. That’s right in Australia if you win a literary award they give you money. Bizarre, I know. []

Who is My Audience?

On Twitter ages ago N. K. Jemisin asked “*do* white writers want only white readers?”

The immediate, obvious answer for me is: No, I don’t want only white readers. And I’m really glad I don’t have only white readers.

But I’ve not been able to stop thinking about that question. And the shadow question which is “do white writers only write for white readers” regardless of what kind of audience they might want?

In order to respond I need to break it down:

Whiteness

I’m white. That fact has shaped everything about me. I know the moment when I first realised I was white. I was three or four and had just returned from living on an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory. My parents were anthropologists. I was on a bus with my mum in inner-city Sydney when I pointed to a man of possibly Indian heritage and said loudly, “Mummy, look it’s a black man.” My mother was embarrassed, apologised to the man, who was very gracious, and later tried to talk to me about race and racism in terms a littlie could understand.

What happened in that moment was me realising that some people were black and some people were white and that it made a difference to the lives they lived. I’d just spent many months living in the Northern Territory as the only white kid. The fact that I wasn’t black had not been made an issue.1 We played and fought and did all the things that kids do despite my difference. So much so that tiny me had not noticed there was a difference. Despite seeing many instances of that difference being a great deal I wasn’t able to make sense of it till I was living somewhere that was majority white, majority people with my skin colour, and then the penny dropped.

Many white Australians never have a moment of realising that they’re white. That makes sense. Whiteness is everywhere. White Australians see themselves everywhere. Our media is overwhelmingly white, our books are overwhelmingly white. In Australia whiteness is not other; it just is. Whiteness doesn’t have to be explained because it is assumed.

Because whiteness just is, like many other white people, I don’t identify as white. For me whiteness is the box I have to tick off when I fill out certain forms. While it shapes every single day of my life it doesn’t feel like it does. Because what whiteness gives me is largely positive, not negative. My whiteness is not borne home on me every single day. I don’t need to identify as white because, yes, whiteness is a privilege.

When I see a white person talking about “their people” and they mean “white people” I assume they are white supremacists. Anyone talking about saving the white race from extinction is not my people.

For many different reasons I do not think of white people as my people. As a white writer I do not write for white people.

I admit that I have used the phrase “my people.” I’ve used it jokingly to refer to other Australians. Particularly when homesick. Or when someone Australian has done something awesome like Jessica Mauboy singing at Eurovision at which point I will yell: “I love my people!” Or an Australian has done something embarrassing on the world stage: “Oh, my people, why do you fill me with such shame?”

I’ve used “my people” to refer to other passionate readers, to YA writers, to fans of women’s basketball, to Australian cricket fans who like to mock the Australian men’s cricket team and care about women’s cricket, to people who hate chocolate and coffee as much as I do etc.

All of that comes from a place of privilege. I can’t think of a single time in my life when I have been referred to as “you people.” I’ve gotten “you women” or “you feminists” or “you commies”2 or “you wankers” but never “you people.”

White people are rarely asked to speak for their entire race. N. K. Jemisin’s question about white writers writing for white readers is not something that gets asked very often. Meanwhile writers of colour are asked questions like that all the time. They are always assumed to have a people that they’re writing for.

Audience

When I sold my first novel3 I was not thinking about who would read those books. I wasn’t thinking about it when I wrote those books either.4 Frankly I was still over-the-moon ecstatic that they’d sold, that there were going to be novels out there that I wrote! I didn’t get as far as imagining who would read them.

I’ve written stories ever since I was able to write and before then I would tell them to whoever would listen. My first audience was my sister. And, yes, I tailored some of those stories to suit her tastes, adding lots of poo jokes. But, come on, I like(d) poo jokes too. It’s more that I got lucky that my sister liked what I liked.

All my novels are books that, if I hadn’t written them, I would want to read them. I write for myself. I am my main audience.

However.

That all changed when I was published, when my stories found distribution beyond my sister, my parents, friends, teachers.

When I, at last, had an audience and that audience was responding to my novels is when I started thinking about that audience.

When members of my audience started writing to me and I met members of my audience is when I really started thinking about who my audience was and how they would respond to what I had written.

That’s how I know my audience isn’t all white. It’s how I know my audience isn’t all teens. How I know they’re not all women. Not all straight. Not all middle class.

As my books started to be translated I found myself with an audience that isn’t all English speaking.

Discovering how diverse my audience was changed the way I wrote which I have discussed here.

Addressing a White Audience

There is one place where I am addressing a mostly white audience. And that’s on this blog and on Twitter when I’m trying to explain these kinds of complex issues of race to people who haven’t thought much about them before. White people tend to be the people who think the least about race because it affects them the least. So sometimes that’s who I’m consciously addressing.

Writing to an Audience

But white people who are ignorant about racism are never the audience I’m consciously addressing when I write my novels.

Even now when I have a better idea of who my audience is I don’t consciously write for them. When I’m writing the first draft of a novel all I’m thinking about is the characters and the story and getting it to work. If I start thinking about what other people will think of it I come to a grinding halt. So I have learned not to do that.

It is only in rewriting that I start thinking about how other people will respond to my words. That’s because when I rewrite I’m literally responding to other people’s thoughts on what I’ve written: comments from my first readers, from my agent, and editors.

My first readers are not always the same people. If I’m writing a book that touches on people/places/genres I have not written before I’ll send the novel to some folks who are knowledgeable about those in the hope that they will call me on my missteps.

Any remaining missteps are entirely my lookout. There are always remaining missteps. I then do what I can to avoid making the same mistakes in the next books I write. And so it goes.

I hope this goes a little of the way towards answering N. K. Jemisin’s question. At least from this one white writer. Thank you for asking it, Nora.

  1. When we returned when I was 8-9 my whiteness made a huge difference. []
  2. Many USians think anyone to the left of Genghis Khan is a communist. []
  3. First three, actually. The Magic or Madness trilogy was sold on proposal as a three-book deal way back in 2003. []
  4. Well not the first two, which were written before the first one was published. []

Razorhurst Book Launch This Thursday + Liar in Brasil

This Thursday at 6:30PM in the glorious city of Sydney the wonderful Melina Marchetta will be launching my new book, Razorhurst.

Razorhurst Kinokuniya Invite June 2014

Here’s hoping you can attend. I have SO MUCH to say about this book. It was some of the most fun research I’ve ever done. Razors! Women mobsters! Walking every street of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Kings Cross! Wearing 30s clothes! Studying enforcers!1

In other also super exciting news Liar is now available in Brasil under the title Confesso Que Menti. Here’s what it looks like:

confesso-que-menti-justine-larbalestier-ligia-braslauskas-livro-600

Hope my fans in Brasil like it even though it’s very different to my other books that have been published there.

One last thing: I know I have not blogged for several weeks thus, breaking my promise to blog at least once a week, but I was travelling and it was not possible. There will be much more bloggage from here on out. In the meantime you can always find me blathering away on Twitter.

  1. From a very safe distance in a way that they wouldn’t notice with a mask on. []

Razorhurst Book Launches in Sydney and Melbourne

My latest book, Razorhurst, is almost a reality. In just a few short weeks it will be available for purchase in both Australia and New Zealand. There will be rejoicing at, not one, but two launches. The first is in sunny Sydney:

Razorhurst Kinokuniya Invite June 2014

For cutting and pasting purposes:
Thursday 26 June at 6:30PM
Launched by the fabulous Melina Marchetta
Kinokuniya
Level 2, The Galleries,
500 George St,
Sydney, NSW

I’m very excited to be launching my first solely-set-in-Sydney book in my hometown of Sydney.

The second launch will be in lovely Melbourne which I ardently hope will be super cold because we’re getting no winter at all up here in Sydney and I want to wear my gorgeous (yet currently useless) winter clothes:

Razorhurst Invite Melbourne 2

In non-jpg form:
Tuesday 8 July at 6:30PM
Melbourne launch of Razorhurst
By wonderful Emily Gale
Readings
309 Lygon St,
Carlton, Victoria

Hope to see you all there!

On Maps and the Knowability of Cities

I’m sitting here staring at the map for my new novel, Razorhurst, which comes out in Australia and New Zealand in July. The map is a thing of beauty. I’m a little teary looking at it. I’ve never had a map in one of my books before. Let alone such a gorgeous one:

Map designed by Hannah Janzen

Map designed by Hannah Janzen

As you can see the map does not cover a large swathe of territory. Razorhurst is a Sydney novel but that map is not all of Sydney, it’s not even all of Surry Hills, the suburb (neighbourhood) where Razorhurst is mostly set.

It’s a tiny, tiny part of Sydney, which got me thinking. I say I know Sydney better than any other city in the world and that’s true. But I hardly know Sydney at all. The Sydney I know is a handful of suburbs (neighbourhoods). I rarely go any further west than Marrickville, further north than the city, further east than Paddington, further south than Alexandria. I’m the total opposite of this bloke valiantly striving to walk every street in the city. My New York City is similarly constrained.

Worse, even in those parts of the city I claim to know well, there are so many lives going on that I know nothing about. This is brought home to me most vividly at my gym. My gym is known for being a crim gym, also as a weightlifter’s and body builder’s gym, and as a gay gym. I don’t fit into any of those categories. I’m not an enforcer for any shady business men, while I’ve lifted weights I’ve never done it in competition, I’m so very much not a bodybuilder,1 and I’m not a gay man.2

I’m fascinated by those first two groups because they live in worlds I never intersect with except at the gym. Their Sydney is not my Sydney.3 I’ve never been anyone’s enforcer. Never been involved in any kind of robbery. Never sold drugs. Never done whatever else it is that those guys do that I don’t know anything about because I am so not part of that world.

I do know a bit more about bodybuilding because the bodybuilders sometimes talk about it.4 What I’ve overhead is mostly about what they can’t eat in the lead up to competitions and them fretting about their body fat percentage. I’ve also overheard loads of stuff I can’t make sense of because I don’t know enough of the specialised language of their world.

Bodybuilder 1: I just need to get down to 4%.
Me: 0_o
Bodybuilder 2: You’ll get there! Stay away from tuna. Fattiest fish ever.
Me: (not out loud) If you’re only 4% body fat how do you not die?! Tuna’s too fatty? Um, okay.
Bodybuilder 1: I miss salt way more than fat.
Bodybuilder 2: I miss salty fat. Food with flavour.
Me: 0_o
Bodybuilder 3 (under her breath): Weak. So weak.
Me: 0_o

Hmmm, I digress.5 My point is that there is so much going on mere metres from where we live that we know nothing about. People who live their lives in the shadowy illegal economy. People who work the night shift, going to sleep just as I’m getting up to write. Engineers! Actuaries! Vampires!6

There are as many different Sydneys as there are Sydneysiders. Hell, there’s more than that because visitors experience a whole other Sydney. I have been known to say that I am unfond of London and also of LA. My London is always rainy and the people are really rude. My LA consists of me being stuck in a car feeling like I’m going to throw up. I’ve only been to both cities a handful of time and know them hardly at all. My London and LA are awful. But I have many friends who adore both places. Who can’t understand why I don’t like London/LA. When I describe my LA/London they just stare at me. It doesn’t resemble their city at all.

The map above is of my imagined Surry Hills of the 1930s. It’s a map of my Razorhurst, a place that never existed except within the fevered imagination of the tabloid Truth.7 We all know novels are imaginary. But I often think that the places we live are also imaginary. My Sydney isn’t like anyone else’s. Neither is my New York City. They exist almost entirely in my mind. In how I interpret (and interact with) the place I live in. Maybe cities are secretly novels. Or vice versa.

Either way I love cities and novels and wish I could know and understand them so much better than I do.

TL;DR: Look at the map for Razorhurst! How gorgeous is it? Very. Cities are vast and complicated and unknowable.

  1. What? I like the way my skin is not orange. []
  2. I’m not the only one at my gym who doesn’t fit those categories. My gym contains multitudes. []
  3. Though I will admit in writing Razorhurst I borrowed from some of the things I noticed about the blokes in the gym rumoured to be crims. I spent a lot of time watching how they walk and talk. I was discreet about it. They are very large, scary men. []
  4. Sadly I have never overheard any of the (rumoured) crims discussing their business. And if I did wouldn’t I have to report it to the police? And wouldn’t they then hunt me down for being a stool pigeon. (Am I the only one who imagines a stool pigeon is one that poos a lot?) I don’t want to die. []
  5. Yes, those who’ve been reading me for awhile are aware I always digress. What of it? Digressions are fun. Like footnotes and being more than 4% body fat. I overheard one of the bodybuilders just before a competition complaining that his feet hurt because they weren’t padded enough. THE HORROR. []
  6. Possibly. []
  7. I quote from Truth a bit here. []

In which I speak of Razorhurst in front of a Camera

As I may have mentioned once or twice I have a new book, Razorhurst, set on the seedy streets of Sydney in 1932 and packed with deliciously dangerous dames and brutal, bloodthirsty blokes.1 It’ll be published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen and Unwin in July and in the USA by Soho Teen in March 2015.2

The good people at Allen & Unwin made this vid in which I answer some questions about the book:

Very happy to answer any other questions you might have about it. Yes, it will be available as an ebook. No, I don’t use product to get my hair to do that.

  1. The alliteration is in homage to Truth Sydney’s fabulously over the top tabloid of the period. []
  2. Which may I point out is less than a year away! []

Dear Person Yelling at Me

Dear Person Yelling Questions at Me from their Car while I am on My Bike Waiting for the Lights to Change,

My face is redder than red because I’ve just left a very intense hour of boxing training where my beloved trainer took me at my word that I wished to work very hard.1 The jacket I’m wearing is not, in fact, making me hot. It is a fine example of modern engineering with multiple vents letting in all the cool air while still keeping Australia’s vicious sun off my delicate, pasty skin. Also, and this may shock you, Yelly Driver Person, when one cycles at speed it can get quite cold what with the cool breeze. Furthermore, the jacket’s bright yellow colour allows cars to see me and thus they can avoid inadvertently clipping me, though sadly, it seems to have attracted your yelling attentions. Sadly, every plus has a minus.2

But why, Yelly Person in Your Car, are you screaming these questions at me? Why must you know if “I’m overheating in my giant coat”? Why would I assume, perched as I am on my bike, waiting for the lights to change that these inane questions are being shouted at me by a total stranger? And once I realise they are, in fact, being shouted at me why on Earth would you presume I would answer you? What business is it of yours what my body temperature is or what I choose to wear when cycling or anything at all really?

Don’t get me wrong, out on my bike, I do communicate with drivers in their cars. We nod at each other. Sometimes we smile. When a driver kindly lets me cross when they don’t have to I say, “thank you” or “ta” and they say “no worries.” Why just the other day a truck driver next to me as we waited for the lights to change asked me to do them the favour of adjusting the side mirror. I did so. Thumbs up were exchanged and the nice truck driver allowed me to go first when the lights changed. It was a beautiful thing. Cyclist and driver helping one another and not a single, shouted inane question. You see, Yelly Driver Person, it can be done.

But not today. You are all incivility and I, once I realise your inanities are addressed to me, am all ignoring you. Had I realised earlier I would have had the pleasure of delivering this speech in person and then seen you watch slack jawed as the wings unfurled from my yellow cycling jacket, yes, the one that so offended you, and I took off into the evening skies keeping pace with the flying foxes and directed them to relieve themselves on your car.

Instead please to enjoy this letter.

Yours sincerely,

Cycling Girl of Extremely Well Regulated Temperature.

  1. Will I ever learn? []
  2. Except for the pluses that have no minuses. I’ll get back to you with a list. []

Getting Away

One of the things I need most as a writer is a routine. For me that’s not as much about what time of day I write, that varies, but about where I write. When I sit at my ergonomically gorgeous desk and writing set up I write because it is the place of writing.

Unlike many other writers I don’t have a specific moment that signals writing will commence. I don’t drink coffee so that’s not how I start my day. Some days I write for a bit before breakfast. Some days not till after brekkie, going to the gym, and doing various chores. I do have a broad time for writing: daylight. I almost never write at night. When the sun is down I take a break from writing. That’s when I get to socialise and to absorb other people’s narratives via conversation, TV, books etc.

I have found, however, that I can’t write every single day. I need at least one day off a week. And I can’t go months and months and months without a holiday from writing.

Getting away from my ergonomic set up and the various novels I’m writing turns out to be as important to me as my writing routine. Time off helps my brain. Who’d have thunk it? Um, other than pretty much everyone ever.

I spent the last few days in the Blue Mountains. Me and Scott finally managed to walk all the way to the Ruined Castle. We saw loads of gorgeous wildlife, especially lyrebirds. There was no one on the path but us. Oh and this freaking HUGE goanna (lace monitor). I swear it was getting on for 2 metres from end of tail to tongue:

Photo taken by me from the rock I leapt on to get out of its way.

Photo taken by me from the rock I jumped on to get out of its way.

This particular lace monitor was in quite a hurry. Given that they have mouths full of bacteria (they eat carrion) and they’re possibly venomous getting out of its way is imperative. It seemed completely oblivious of me and Scott. Which, was a very good thing.

Watching it motor past us was amazing. All the while the bellbirds sang. Right then I wasn’t thinking about anything but that goanna.

Which is why getting away is so important. Clears your mind. Helps your muscles unknot.1 Lets you realise that finishing your novel is not, in fact, a matter of life and death.

At the same time two days into the little mini-holiday I realised what the novel I’m writing is missing. The answer popped into my brain as I tromped along the forest floor past tree ferns and gum trees breathing in the clean, clean air, listening to those unmistakeable Blue Mountain sounds2:

megalongvalley

And it was good. Really good.

TL:DR: Writing routine good; getting away from writing routine also good.

  1. After their relieved that the goanna has gone away. []
  2. Did I mention the bellbirds? I love them []

Melbourne Writers Festival and Brisbane Writers Festival

Next week I will be at the Melbourne Writers Festival. I have one event left which is not yet sold out:

Wednesday, 28 Aug 2013, 11.15 am
STRONG WOMEN
Me and Kelly Gardiner
Details here. Price: $7.
Melbourne Writers Festival

We have had excellent email exchanges with our moderator Jordi Kerr, which makes me believe it is going to be a most splendid panel. We will certainly argue with the very idea of a strong woman. Because that’s what strong women do.

Then the following week I will be at the Brisbane Writers Festival where there are still available tickets and a few of my events are free. I’m really excited about BWF. They have a brand new director, Kate Eltham, who comes out of science fiction and thus knows how to do panels right. This is the most diverse and interesting set of panels I’ve ever had at a writers festival. I cannot wait.

My Schedule:

A SPORTING NATION
VENUE: The Edge, State Library of Queensland
DATE: Friday 6th
TIME: Fri 3:30–4:30PM
TICKETS $12-$16
Don Watson
Justine Larbalestier
Hugh Lunn
From the long slow burn of a test match to the glories of a ‘specky’, Watson, Larbalestier and Lunn discuss their sporting passions and why sport inspires the best, and sometimes the worst, writing and language.

I’m so excited about this panel. The only other time I’ve been on a panel about sport was because I suggested it myself. This time it was their idea and they put me on the panel with two of the most famous sports obsessives in Australia and our email exchanges with moderator Lee McGowan have been most excellent. It is going to be fabulous.

THE GENRE GHETTO
VENUE: The Edge, State Library of Queensland
DATE Friday 6th
TIME Fri 6:30–8PM
Matt Fraction
Sarah Wendell
Justine Larbalestier
Ben McKenzie
Stuart MacBride
Tickets $20-$25
Funny, personal and heartfelt stories about being genre nerds and being proud. Live storytelling from Fraction, Wendell, Larbalestier, McKenzie and MacBride.

I’m very curious about this one. I certainly have more than my fair share of stories about being dissed in often very amusing ways for being a writer of young adult literature. I was never much of a nerd as a kid, however. Indeed back then we would have said “dag” and it didn’t mean the same thing and I wasn’t one.1

FESTIVAL CLUB
VENUE: Maiwar Green, State Library of Queensland
DATE Friday 6th
TIME Fri 8–11PM
Scott Westerfeld
Justine Larbalestier
Stuart MacBride
Benjamin Law
Simon Reynolds
Krysi Egan
Kevin Kwan
No ticket required. That’s right THIS ONE IS FREE
‘Juvenilia’ (stories we wrote as teenagers) set featuring Kevin Kwan, Clementine Ford, Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Kimberley Freeman (Kim Wilkins), Stuart MacBride and Benjamin Law reading work they scribbled in their youth. A special ‘Juvenilia’ mixed tape set by Simon Reynolds will wrap up the night.

Okay, so I have no idea how this one is going to work. But I’m imagining a cool jazz band from the 1960s in skinny pants and black turtle necks clicking their fingers cooly in the background as we read you the excruciatingly bad shit we wrote as teens. The audience will be torn in two between their intense desire to laugh and their equally intense desire to be all cool in the face of the awesome jazz. May the laughter win.

THE RISE AND RISE OF YA
VENUE: Queensland Terrace, State Library of Queensland
DATE Saturday 7th
TIME Sat 10–11AM
Justine Larbalestier
Steph Bowe
Melissa Keil
Carley Commens
TICKETS $12-$16
Young Adult (YA) fiction is the fastest growing category of publishing and 55% of YA is purchased by adult readers. YA stars Justine Larbalestier, Steph Bowe and Melissa Keil explain why we love it, read it and write it.

There’s so much to say about this. I have so many opinions! Can’t wait to hear what the others have to say too. Despite living here I am still much less clear on YA in Australia than I am on the genre in the USA.

See you in Melbourne and/or Brisbane!

  1. I will delete any comments offering evidence to the contrary. []

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Movie Premiere

tmipremier

Next Thursday the City of Bones movie opens here in Sydney. Scott and me will be hosting a first-night screening here in Sydney, courtesy of the wonderful Kinokuniya Bookshop.1 Cassie herself will introduce the film via a special, exclusive to Kino, recording of joyousness. Because that’s how special this night will be.

If you live in Sydney, and how lucky are you to live in the best city in the world,2 and you enjoy watching movies on the first night with people who are very very excited to be seeing this movie on account of having read the books several million times, then JOIN US.

Also, there’s a costume contest. I plan to dress as I imagine Isabelle Lightwood would if she had my taste in clothing. Sadly I will not be eligible to win the prize. I shall coax Scott into dressing as Magnus Bane. I predict, however, that Scott will be there dressed as Scott Westerfeld.

Here’s the event page on FaceBook for those of you who, unlike me, are on FaceBook. And here are the details for the non-FB types like myself:

WHEN: Thursday, 22nd August at 6:30pm

WHERE: Event Cinemas, George Street, Sydney

DRESS: Prizes for best costume

COST: $18.50

Tickets are on sale now and are strictly limited. Purchases can be made at Kinokuniya (at the cashier counter) or over the phone: 02 9262-7996.

Be there or be extremely sad you missed a wonderful event.

P.S. For those of you in Melbourne and Brisbane we will be there very soon at your fine writing festivals. Click here for my Melbourne events and here for my Brisbane events.

  1. My favourite Sydney bookshop—aside from all the other fabulous ones—if you live here and have never checked them out time to do so! []
  2. Other than all the other really good ones. []

Me and Libba Bray and Barry Goldblatt at Sydney Writers’ Festival

Look what’s happening this Sunday, 26 May at 10AM1

Sydney Writers Festival
Pier 2/3 Club Stage
Walsh Bay, Sydney, NSW
This event is free and no bookings required.
FUN AND GAMES WITH LIBBA BRAY AND JUSTINE LARBALESTIER
Moderated by fancy NYC literary agent Barry Goldblatt (also known as Mr Libba Bray).

I imagine this will involve juggling and poker. Even though I always lose to Libba. She’s a total card shark. I bet me and Barry can get Libba to pop out her fake eye. I love it when she does that. We’ll also tell the very weird story of mine and Libba’s second meeting. And talk about that wild, wild weekend in Austin.

SO MANY THINGS FOR US TO TALK ABOUT.

I hope you can join us. Be sure to ask Libba embarrassing questions. She loves that.

  1. 10 am? Excuse me? How can I be expected to be witty at TEN ON A SUNDAY MORNING? I should still be asleep! Or possibly contemplating a decadent brunch. It’s inhuman having a panel this early. []

Where I Will Be in 2013

After Scott put up this post about his appearances for the rest of this year, I realised I should do likewise because most of those places he is, I will be also. An eerie coincidence, I know.

Most of the events are in Australia. Sorry, rest of the world, who may have some interest in saying hello. We’ll always have Twitter.

Conflux
Canberra, ACT
April 26-28

I’ll be interviewing the brilliant and wonderful Nalo Hopkinson on Saturday, 27 April (i.e. two days away) at 2:30PM, Forrest Room 1 & 2 at the Rydges Capital Hill. (Do come say hi. Unless I’m, like, on stage or in the ladies room or something.) Conference site.

INTERNET DEAD ZONE
3-13 May

I am turning off the internet for this whole week. No twitter, no nothing. It’s going to be AWESOME. The mental hygiene, I needs it. Oh, okay, I’m just turning it off for me, yours will still chug along. (Probably.)

Sunday, 26 May
Sydney Writers Festival
Pier 2/3 Club Stage
FUN AND GAMES WITH LIBBA BRAY AND JUSTINE LARBALESTIER
I imagine this will involve juggling and poker. I bet we can get Libba to pop out her fake eye. I love it when she does that.
Walsh Bay, Sydney, NSW
This is free and no bookings required.

Alpha Teen Workshop
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
13-16 July
I’ll be teaching at this week-long writing seminar for teenagers. Admissions for the workshop are closed, but there will be a bookstore appearance in Pittsburgh. I’ll post details when I know them.
href=”http://alpha.spellcaster.org”>the Alpha site
.

Melbourne Writer’s Festival
August 22-30

I’ll be attending and saying wise stuff with other wise people. Details not set yet, but you can always check back here or on the festival site.

Brisbane Writers Festival
September 4-8

There will be more wisdoms here in sunny Brisvegas. Again as soon as I know what I’ll be doing I will share with you. Festival site

There may be other events in which case I will let you know here on the blog. You can also check my appearances page which I am most scrupulous about keeping up to date.

I really hope I’ll get to see/meet some of you this year.

Ten Years of Writing YA Novels For A Living

It is now TEN WHOLE YEARS since I became a freelance writer.

I know, right? How did that happen? Ten years!

And one more time because truly my disbelief is high:

I HAVE BEEN A FULL-TIME, FREELANCE WRITER FOR TEN WHOLE YEARS.

I know it’s also April Fool’s day but I truly did begin this novel-writing career of mine on the 1st of April. What better day to do something so very foolish? Back in 2003, having sold only one short story, I took the plunge. The first year did not go AT ALL well, but since then it’s mostly worked out.

Here is my traditional anniversary post writing and publishing stats:

    Books sold: 9: One non-fiction tome, two anthologies (one co-edited with Holly Black), six young adult novels (one co-written with Sarah Rees Brennan)
    Books published: 9
    Countries books have been sold in: 15 (Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and USA.)
    Countries said books have been written in: 6 (Argentina, Australia, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand and USA.)
    Published words of fiction: 450,000 (Roughly.)1
    Unpublished words of fiction that aren’t terrible: 530,000
    Unpublished words of fiction that are so bad to call them bad would be insulting bad: 1,900,045 (Guestimate.)
    Books written but not sold: 2 (One I hope will be some day. The other NEVER.)
    Books started but not finished: 32 (Guestimate.)
    Books about to be finished: 1
    Books started that are likely to be finished: 4
    Ideas collected: 4,979,934 (Precise measurement. I have an ideaometer.)

For six years I published a new book every single year. In 2006 I even had two books out, Magic Lessons and Daughters of Earth. Not lately.

I’ve slowed down. A lot. There will be no new novel from me this year. And probably not next year.2

Years and years of loads and loads of typing pretty much every single day takes a physical toll.3 I suspect most writers wind up slowing down. Either through injury or just because they’re getting older. Or because they’re so rich they don’t have to write anymore. Ha ha! Just kidding.

I’m not only a slower writer I’m also a writer with a different attitude to writing, to publishing and the whole business of it. I look back on ten-years-ago me and well, I cannot believe how giddy I was. How naive.

Actually I can totally believe it. I totally remember it. I still have many of those feelings including the sporadic disbelief that I’m a working author. It still fills my heart with joy that I can make a living by making stuff up and writing it down. I mean, seriously, how amazing is that?

But so much has changed since then.

My Career, It Has Not Been How I Thought It Would Be

For starters, I am now a cranky old pro.4 *waves walking stick at the young ‘un writers* I wrote this piece eight years ago about how I had no place in the room at a discussion for mid-career writers because back then I had only one published novel and didn’t know anything about the struggles of writers further along with their careers.

I do now.

Wow, have I come a long way. I have had books remaindered. That’s right someone could gleefully recite Clive James’ brilliant poem, “The book of my enemy has been remaindered”, about me.

My first three books, the Magic or Madness trilogy, are out of print in Australia. Only the first volume is available as a paper book in the USA. (You can get all three electronically in the USA but nowhere else in the English-speaking world.)

Obviously, I knew ten years ago that not all books stayed in print forever. But somehow I couldn’t quite imagine my own books going out of print. The truism that every book is out of print at some stage hadn’t sunk in.

It has now.

Though at the same time the ebook explosion means that fewer books are going out of print because they don’t require warehouses the way printed books (mostly) do. Unfortunately, this non-going-out-of-print of ebooks raises a whole bunch of other issues. Such as protracted arguments over precisely when an ebook can be deemed out of print.

I’d also assumed I would have the one editor and one publisher in my main markets of Australia and the USA for my entire career. That I would be with the publishers of my trilogy, Penguin Australia and Penguin USA forever.

Um, no.

I am now published by Allen & Unwin in Australia. They’ve published my last four books. All with the one fabulous editor/publisher, Jodie Webster,5 and I have high hopes it will stay that way because I love working with her.

In the USA there’s been no such constancy. I have been published by Bloomsbury (Liar and HTDYF) and Simon & Schuster (ZvU) and Harper Collins (Team Human). I’ve worked with several different editors. Only one of those editors is still with the same publishing house. The others have moved to a different house or left the industry altogether. Constant flux, thy name art publishing. I have no idea which US house will publish my next book or who my editor will be. I have only fond wishes.6

Every one of these editors has taught me a great deal about writing. Yes, even when I disagreed with their comments, they forced me to think through why I disagreed and how I could strengthen my book to address their concerns. Being well-edited is a joyous experience.7

Back then I assumed that foreign language publishers having bought one of your books would, naturally, buy all of them. Ha ha ha! Books of mine have tanked all over the world leading, unsurprisingly, to no further sales. My first novel, Magic or Madness, remains my most translated book and thus also the book that has tanked in the most markets around the world.

It also means that some of my books have different publishers in the one country. I’ve had more than one publisher in France, Italy, Japan, Spain and Taiwan.

Australia and the USA are the only countries to have published all my novels. And that is why I am a citizen of both those fine nations. *hugs them to my chest*

The USA is the only place in the world where my non-fiction is published. And, interestingly, those two tomes remain in print. Bless you, Wesleyan University Press. I hope that answers those darling few who ask me if I’m ever going to write a follow up to Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. My desire to continue eating and have a roof over my head preclude any such future scholarly efforts. Sorry.8

The constant professional relationship in most writers lives is with their agent. Jill Grinberg has been my agent since early 2005. She is the best. I honestly don’t know how I would’ve gotten through some moments of the last eight years without her. Thank you, Jill.

YA Publishing Has Changed

Back in 2003 almost no one was talking about ebooks, self-publishing was not seen as a viable or attractive option by most novelists, and very few, even within publishing, had heard of YA or Teen Fiction as it is also frequently called.9

Money

Back then I didn’t know a single soul who’d gotten a six-figure advance. The idea that you could get one for a YA novel was ludicrous. I remember the buzz and disbelief around Stephenie Meyer’s huge advance for Twilight.10 Many were saying back then that Little, Brown had overspent. It is to laugh.

There’s more money in YA publishing now than there was back in 2003. Back then only one YA author, J. K. Rowling, was on the list of richest authors in the world. On the 2012 list there were four: Suzanne Collins, J. K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Rick Riordan.

They are still outliers. It’s just that YA now has more of them than ever before.

I received $13,500 per book from Penugin USA for my first three novels. At the time I thought that was an amazing advance. And it was. Most of the people I knew then were getting less. I know first-time YA novelists who are still only getting between $10,000 and $15,000 advances. And I know many YA novelists with many books under their belt who have never been within coo-ee of a six-figure advance.

So, yes, there is more money around now. But it is unevenly spread. The difference is that back in 2003 aspiring to be a millionaire YA novelist was like aspiring to be a millionaire garbage collector. Did they even exist? Now, it’s like aspiring to be a millionaire rockstar. Still very unlikely but, hey, at least they’re a real thing.

YA Has Changed

I caught myself fairly recently launching into my standard speil about the freedom of YA: how you can write any genre but as long as it has a teen protag it’s YA . . . when I stopped.

That’s not true anymore. The Balkanisation of YA has kind of taken over. You walk into Barnes & Noble in the USA and there’s Paranormal Romance,11 then there’s the Fantasy & Adventure section, and then there’s the rest of YA. It’s not just the big chains either. Over the years I have seen many smaller chains and independents move towards separate sections within YA. Usually it’s Fantasy & Science Fiction separated out from the rest of YA, which gets called a range of different things. But I’ve also seen separate Christian YA, YA Crime and YA Romance.12

(Of course, the rapid increase of people who purchase their books (ebook and print) online makes the physical weight of these categories less of a problem. It is one of the beauties of online book shopping. If you buy one book by an author you are usually hit with exhortations to buy other books by the same author. I appreciate that as a reader and as an author.)

For those of us who write a variety of different genres it’s alarming. We worry that each of our books are winding up in different sections from the other. So if a person loved one of our books and wanted to read another they can’t find it. Or that they’re all in the one section, which is misleading for the books that don’t belong there. It is a sadness. But apparently many customers find it useful.

New writers wanting to break into YA are being advised they should stick to just one of the many subgenres of YA. That doing so is the best way to have a sustainable career. No one was giving that advice when I started out. Back then advice like that would have made no sense.

I hope it’s terrible advice. But I worry that it’s good advice.

Many in my industry argue that the huge success of the big books by the likes of Collins, Rowling, Meyers and Riordan, (a positive thing which is why YA publishing keeps growing every year), coupled with the rise of ebooks, and the general THE SKY IS FALLING freak out by big publishers because of the emergence of Amazon as a publishing threat and the increasing viability for big authors of self-publishing is leading to many more “safe” books being purchased and less books that are innovative and don’t have an obvious audience.

I heard someone recently opine that the big mainstream publishers are only buying two kinds of YA books (and I suspect this might be true of most genres):

  • commercial high-concept books they think will be bestsellers
  • gorgeously written books they think will win prizes

Best of all, of course, is the book that does both.

Of course, neither of those things can be predicted. So the publisher is taking a punt as publishers have always done. They just seem increasingly reluctant to take a punt on the majority of books because they fear that most books are unlikely to do either.

This means that it’s harder than ever to get published by mainstream presses. Fortunately there are far more options now than there used to be. The mainstream houses are no longer the only show in town.

Decline of Non-Virtual Book Shops

There are also, of course, far fewer physical book shops in both Australia and the USA than when I started my career. Almost every one of my favourite second-hand bookshops are gone. However, so far most of my favourite independents are still with us. Abbeys, Better Read than Dead and Gleebooks are still alive and well in Sydney. Pulp Fiction in Brisbane. Readings in Melbourne.

But several big chains have collapsed in both countries. Angus and Robertson is gone, which had such a long and storied history in Australia. As is Borders in the USA.

I fear there will be more bookshop closures in our future. Ebooks are becoming more and more popular as are online retailers of physical books.

I admit that I’m part of the problem. While I am buying more books than ever, most of them are ebooks. I only buy physical books when that’s the only edition available, when it’s a research book, and when I loved a book so much I want a physical copy as well. Who knows if I’ll be able to read all these ebooks five, ten years from now when the formats and devices for reading them have changed?

I do think bookshops are going to survive for many more years but I can’t help looking around and seeing how few music stores are left. The ones that have survived often specialise in vinyl records and cater to collectors.

It Was Ever Thus

I sound depressed about my industry and my genre, don’t I?

I’m not. Publishing has always been in flux, or crisis if you want to put it more strongly. There have been countless booms and busts. There have been paperback booms. The horror boom of the 1980s. In the 1990s the CD-Rom was going to doom publishing. Spoiler: It didn’t.

I’ve done a lot of research on the 1930s and, wow, was publishing convulsing then. What with the depression and the complete absence of money and like that. Lots of people in the industry lost their jobs. As they also did in the 1980s up to the present with the takeover of publishers by big media conglomerates and with the merging of the big publishers.

There have been hysterical claims that the advent of radio and television and the internet would kill reading as we know it. Um, no.

In fact, in the USA and Australia and elsewhere, more teenagers are reading than ever. And every year YA grows with more books, more sales, and more readers. It’s the adults we should be worried about.13

Right now publishing is more exciting than it ever has been. We authors have alternatives in a way we never had before. Electronic publishing really has changed everything. We don’t have to stick with the mainstream publishers. We can rescue our out of print backlists with an ease that a decade ago was unimaginable. We can publish those strange unclassifiable projects of ours that publishers so often baulk at.

Every year new and amazing books are being published in my genre. Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince published this year truly is unlike anything else out there. It’s a daring, ambitious, beautiful, addictively readable book and it’s published by a mainstream press, Scholastic, who also publish the Harry Potter books. If you want a one-book snapshop of where my genre is at right now that’s the book I’d recommend.

Writing

But for me the writing is the thing. I love writing stories even more now than I did ten years ago. I’m better at it and happier doing it now than then. Though perversely I find it much harder. It takes more work to get my novels to a standard I’m happy with than it did. I think that’s mainly because my standards are higher and because with every new book I give myself harder challenges. Can’t get bored now, can I?

All the sturm and drung of publishing expanding, shrinking, freaking out, is just noise that on many levels has zero to do with what I write. Or to put it another way the more time I spend paying attention to YA publishing trends—Crap! Should I be writing a book about a kid with cancer?!—the less able I am to write. When I write I am much much happier than when I am angsting about what I should be writing.

Back in 2003 I knew a lot less about publishing but I was also a lot more nervous about it. I was hearing the tales of publishing’s demise for the very first time. Foolishly I believed them! I was hearing that the Harry Potter fad was over and YA was doomed, that nobody wanted [insert particular subgenre that I happened to be writing at the time here] anymore.

At the beginning of my career I was terrified I would never sell anything. That fear was so paralysing that for the first year of freelancery I barely wrote a word and I blew my first ever writing gig.

And even after I sold the trilogy there were so many fears. What if these books are my last? What if I don’t earn out? What if everyone hates my book? What if publishing collapses around my ears?

Now I’ve had books that haven’t earned out, books that have been remaindered, books that haven’t won awards or even been shortlisted, books that have received few reviews,14 books with scathing reviews.15 I have had calendar years without a new novel by me. I have missed deadlines with my publishers.

All those things I had been afraid of? They have all happened and I’m still standing and I still have a career.

None of that matters. It really is just noise. What matters is that I write the best books I possibly can. And if injury means that I can’t deliver that book when I said I would then so be it. My health is more important.

My writing is more important.

I have in the past rushed to get books in on time and they were not as, um, good16 as they could have been. Luckily I had editors who demanded extensive rewrites. That’s why I have never had a book I’m ashamed of in print. But I could have and back then I believed that wasn’t as big a deal as not having a book out every year.

I was wrong.

Now I believe that is the worst possible thing that could happen to my career.17 To have in print a book with my name on it that I am not proud of. A book that is not as good as it could have been.

Now, I don’t care about the market.18 I don’t care about supposed saleability. I no longer sell my books until they are finished, which is much kinder to me. Racing to meet a deadline when you have shooting pain running up your arms is less than optimal. Selling my books only when finished is also better for the publisher who wants to know when to realistically schedule the book. I am, of course, extremely lucky to be able to wait to sell my books.

I write what I want to write. I have a backlist, I have a reputation, I am known for writing a wide variety of books. So when I turn in an historical set in the 1890s from the point of view of the first telephone in use in the quaint town of Shuberesterville no one’s going to bat an eyelid.19

If they don’t want it, well, brand new world of ebook self-publishing, here I come! I know just which freelance editors and copyeditors and proof readers and cover designers I’m going to hire to work on it.

To be clear: I’d much rather stay with mainstream publishing. Wow, is self publishing hard work. I have so much admiration for those self-publishers, like Courtney Milan, who do it so amazingly well.

Community

Being a writer can be a very lonely business. Just you and your computer and an ocean of doubt. I’ve been exceptionally lucky to have never been alone with my writing. My mother, father and sister have always been supportive and proud of my writing. Without Jan, John and Niki as early readers and a cheering squad, well, I don’t like to think about it. They are the best.

One of the great pleasures of the last ten years has been discovering the YA community both here in Australia but also in the USA. I have met and become friends with some of the most amazing teens, librarians, booksellers, bloggers, parents, agents and others in this fabulous community like the publicists and marketers and sales reps and folks from the art department, and of course editors and publishers. They’ve all made me feel welcome and at home and they all care about YA even more passionately than I do. Protip: You want to talk to a real expert on YA? Don’t talk to the writers, talk to the specialist YA librarians.

The relationships that have been a huge source of strength for me in this strange career are those with other writers of whom20 there are far too many to name.21 Honestly, without other writers to gossip and giggle with, to ask for advice from and, lately, give advice to, this would be a lonely, miserable profession.

Our conversations and arguments have led to the creation of whole new novels and Zombie versus Unicorn anthologies. You are all amazing. I love youse. Even when you’re totally wrong about certain best-selling novels or the importance of the word “effulgent”.

My best writer friend is Scott Westerfeld. It was he who suggested I go freelance ten years ago even though we were stone cold broke back then. Even though I’d only sold one short story. Even though I was really scared. Mad man! It’s he who looks smug now at what a great suggestion it was. Thank you, Scott. For everything.

Here’s to another ten years of writing novels for a living. Here’s to YA continuing to grow and be successful! Wish me and my genre luck!

  1. Or one of Cassandra Clare’s books. Just kidding. Two of Cassie’s. []
  2. I have, however, been writing a lot. I’ve almost finished the Sydney novel. It’s only a few drafts away from being ready to go out to publishers. And I have several other novels on the boil. Including the 1930s NYC novel of which I have more than 100,000 words. Sadly I also seem to be no more than a third of the way into that story. Le sigh. []
  3. Obviously the typing dates back much longer than a mere ten years. []
  4. I have many novelist friends who are laughing right now. Because they have been doing this for twenty years or more and consider me to still be a baby neophyte. []
  5. Those job titles work differently in Australia. []
  6. And in my experience the editors last way longer than the publicists and people in marketing. []
  7. Even when you want to kill them. “But, but, but, I meant the ending not to make any sense. Fixing it will be hard!” *swears a lot* *stomps* *fixes ending* []
  8. Not really. Writing Battle of the Sexes was a TOTAL NIGHTMARE. But I’m genuinely happy that the book has been useful to so many. It was my PhD thesis written for an audience of, like, three. []
  9. Within publishing houses almost everyone calls it YA. But I’ve noticed that many booksellers call it Teen Fiction. []
  10. Twilight was published the same year as my first novel, 2005. []
  11. I’d never heard the word “paranormal” when I started out. []
  12. There are, of course, even more YA categories for books at online book shops. I’ve seen Substance Abuse, Peer Pressure, Dark Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic etc. etc. But somehow online they seem less restrictive than they do in a bricks and mortar book shop. []
  13. Just kidding. A huge number of adults read YA. []
  14. In the trade publications, that is. The blessing of the internet is that these days somewhere, somehow your books are going to be reviewed by bloggers or on Barnes & Noble/Amazon/Goodreads etc. (Though, um, aren’t Amazon and GoodReads the same thing now?) A book receiving not a single review is a rarity these days. []
  15. That would be all of them. Every single one of my books has had at least a handful of this-book-sucks reviews. Turns out this is true for all books ever. []
  16. She said euphemistically. []
  17. Worst thing I have control over, obviously. No one can stop a falling piano. []
  18. Which isn’t to say that I’m not fascinated by it. My name is Justine Larbalestier and I am a publishing geek. I’m very curious to see if the big swing against paranormal and fantasy I’m hearing so many people predict really does happen. I’m a bit skeptical. []
  19. Okay, they might blink. []
  20. That’s for all my grammar nazi friends who freak out at the thought that the mighty “whom” will not be with us for that much longer. []
  21. Though I’d like to point out to said grammar nazi friends that the contortions needed to use “whom” made for a way ugly sentence. I’m just saying . . . []

Me at the Adelaide Writers Festival

In early March I will be at the Adelaide Writers Week. Which is the oldest and most prestigey1 writers festival in all of Australia.

I’ve never been before. Indeed, I’ve never done any events in Adelaide unless you count going to a friend’s wedding.2

Here are my events:

GIRL POWER: ISOBELLE CARMODY, JUSTINE LARBALESTIER, VIKKI WAKEFIELD
ADELAIDE WRITERS’ WEEK – SUNDAY, MARCH 3 2013
USA/Australia
West Stage, 2.30pm

The readership for YA fiction continues to grow and grow. Yet for young women today questions of identity, sexuality and friendship remain as problematic as ever. This session asks – how do women write for girls? Join Isobelle Carmody, author of the Obernewtyn Chronicles, Justine Larbalestier, author of Liar, and Vikki Wakefield, author of Friday Brown for a spirited conversation about women and words.

Isobelle is one of Australia’s most popular YA fantasy writers. Her fans span generations and all clutch her books to their chests like they are precious babies. She’s wonderful and funny and genuinely does not think like anyone else I have ever met. I did a panel with her at last year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival and it truly was awesome. Mostly because of Isobelle. So if you’re in Adelaide you want to see this.

I’m looking forward to meeting Vikki Wakefield. I’ve heard good things about her debut novel All I Ever Wanted. Yes, it’s true, not all Australian YA authors know each other. But we’ll fix that after a few more festival appearances.

My other event is:

SEXUAL POLITICS: JUSTINE LARBALESTIER, BRYONY LAVERY, CHIKA UNIGWE
ADELAIDE WRITERS’ WEEK – MONDAY, MARCH 4 2013
Australia/USA/Nigeria/Belgium
West Stage, 3.45pm

As the debate about what it means to be a feminist is ongoing, this session brings together three writers, all of whom identify as feminists. Justine Larbalestier is a YA and fantasy writer, playwright Bryony Lavery is the author of iconic works including Thursday, and Chika Unigwe is the author of the novel On Black Sister’s Street, about a group of African women in the sex trade.

This panel marks the first time I’ve ever been on a panel with writers for grown ups (i.e. whose audience is presumed to be primarily adults, as opposed to mine which is presumed to be mostly teens) at a literary festival. I think it’s wonderful that there’s a festival in the world that is actively breaking down boundaries between genres and writers and readers. Honestly, I was so surprised when I saw this I thought they’d made a mistake. Then I looked at the whole programme. And, lo, it’s full of such inter-genre cross over panels. Way to go, AWW, way to go!

I like that they list all the panellists’ nationalities. I was excited when I saw there was a USian on both my panels. But a little bewildered when I looked the other panellists up and discovered none of them were from the USA. I’d been looking forward to asking where they were from, and if they knew NYC or any of the other cities I know, we could compare notes. Which is when I realised that I am the USian on those panels.

Oops.

In my defense I’ve only been a US citizen for a year. It’s easy to forget.

TL;DR:3 I will be in Adelaide in early March. Come to my panels!

  1. Yes, that’s a real word. Shut up! []
  2. Which, no, I don’t. It was a lot of fun, but. I love weddings! So much love! So many wonderful speeches about love! So many opportunities for it to all go horribly wrong! Especially at doomed weddings between those Who Should Not Marry. Someday I’m going to write a Doomed Wedding book. Though to be clear: the Adelaide wedding was not doomed. Um, I think I’m digressing. []
  3. For the old people that stands for: Too long, Didn’t Read. You’re welcome. []

Training can be Better than Competing

When I was a littlie I hated PE1 with every fibre of my being. I hated the way the PE teachers yelled at us and made us do things we mostly didn’t want to do. I hated being made to compete against the other kids in my class. In PE I would almost always come last the second anything was turned into a race or a competition. I would make no effort because competing stressed me out. I would get out of PE as much as I could. I would conveniently have my period or a note from home explaining why I couldn’t take part.

I was also made to feel from a very early age that I was not good at sport. The kids who showed talent were immediately fallen upon with glee: “A future Aussie Olympic medalist! Let us get them to the Australian Institute of Sport, stat!”2 Those of us who did not show instant aptitude for throwing, kicking, catching or thwacking balls, for running or jumping, or lifting heavy things, or moving through the water quickly, learned that there was little point in us trying because we were crap.

It wasn’t until I left high school that I discovered I, in fact, love many different sports.3 And that while I would never have been professional or Olympic level at anything I was not, in fact, crap. I have decent hand eye co-ordination and I am quite good at picking up physical instruction.

I started with fencing, then there was rowing (briefly), climbing, swimming, tennis, and most recently, boxing, and through all of it weight training and working out in gyms. I discovered that I really enjoy learning how to do physical things and that I particularly enjoy learning technique. I love that I can progress from rubbish to competent with practice.

Dear Readers, I love practising, I love training. My first day on the speed ball I was total rubbish. Have you seen Girlfight?4 They do an excellent learning-the-speed ball montage. Like Michelle at first I could not get it to do anything I wanted it to do. The speed ball annoyed and frustrated me. I wanted to kill the speed ball. STUPID SPEED BALL. But then, lo and behold, with a little bit of practice I got better. I got so I could do it really, really fast in an I AM A FEARSOME WARRIOR kind of way. At which point my trainer taught me a different technique and I was back to square one—maybe square two—and had to learn all over again. Every time I get decent at a particular way of thwacking the speed ball she teaches me a different way and I go back to being arhythmic and rubbish. LOVE IT!

I became fit. I discovered that being fit not only feels physically fantastic but helps my mental health as well. I am a much happier person when I’m exercising regularly. It’s also the only time that I can turn my brain off. When I’m intensely focussed on learning and perfecting (ha!) a new technique that’s all I’m thinking about. I’m not angsting about fixing my book or anything else I’m. Just. Boxing. It’s AWESOME.

I really hope that PE is taught differently these days. That kids are not made to feel like failures if they cannot instantly throw a ball accurately or run fast. That they are no longer taught that competing and winning are the be all and all. That the emphasis is now on being fit and enjoying various different sports and physical activities and not just one competing and winning.

I hope that PE teachers around the world have finally abandoned the idea that only the naturally gifted will excel at sport.

Here’s why: There’s a town in the UK where they keep producing Olympic level badminton players.5 This happened because a top badminton coach lived there and taught at the local school and opened a badminton centre that was available to interested locals 24/7. Those keen kids played there A LOT. The town developed a badminton culture and lo and behold many badminton champions. Few of whom, if tested in childhood, would have demonstrated any particular aptitude for badminton.

Talent helps, obviously. Usain Bolt would not be where he is today were he not a naturally fast runner. But he would also not be where he is today if he was too lazy to practise and train, which he has done relentlessly since he was knee high to a grasshopper. There is no world class athlete in the world today who hasn’t spent the vast majority of their life training until they puked.6

We spend way too much time obsessing about talent and not nearly enough time about hard work, practice, and training. Talent is nothing without hard work.

And, yes, all of this applies to writing too. It applies to pretty much everything. I have known many talented writers who have never gotten around to finishing a book. And many less talented writers with successful careers.7

  1. Physical Education. []
  2. I may possibly be exaggerating. A little bit. []
  3. Doing them, I mean. I learned at a very early age that I loved watching other people doing them. []
  4. If not, why not? Oh, how I adore Michelle Rodriguez. It’s a truly wonderful film. Go see it! []
  5. I think it was badminton. Google is failing me right now. There’s a whole book about this. []
  6. I may be exaggerating about the puking thing. []
  7. I totally concede that “talent” is a much more nebulous thing when it comes to the arts. []

On Humility

I know a tiny handful of people who have not the tiniest speck of humility or modesty and—this is the important part—are not obnoxious. They are good people.

What they have is a sense of their own worth and talents that is directly proportional to those talents and worth. They do not sell themselves short, nor do they overestimate their abilities. They have the self confidence and belief to neither indulge in false modesty nor to be crippled by doubt. They know they would not be where they are if those talents had not been nurtured by others or if they had not worked hard.

It is remarkably refreshing and I envy them.

Humility and modesty are possibly the most annoying virtues. Too often the truly modest are neurotic, self-doubters who don’t know their own worth and I want to shake them. YES, YOU ARE TALENTED AND AMAZING! STOP SAYING YOU’RE NOT!

Undervaluing yourself is not a virtue. At its worst self doubt keeps people from doing what they are talented at. I can’t tell you how many brilliant writers I’ve known over the years who’ve never finished a novel because of their lack of self belief, because they are humble, and do not recognise their own talent. That’s a loss to every one of us who would love to read their work. A huge loss.

At the other end of the scale is false modesty: those who live by the humble brag.1 Those who’ve been told they mustn’t talk of their achievements nor blow their own horn, they must be humble and modest but they’re not so they try to disguise their longing to boast by saying, “Oh, this little thing.” “Oh, I don’t know why they wanted me to be the support act for Prince.” Blah blah blah.

Don’t know about you but I’d much rather they were all: “Look at my new dress! I made it! Isn’t it the best thing ever? I love it to death!” Or “OMG! I’m the support act for Prince! This is something I’ve worked towards my ENTIRE LIFE. And now it’s happening! I am so happy! YAY!”

You achieved something amazing. You get to tell people. You get to be excited. You get to jump up and down. Only mean-spirited poo brains would begrudge you your joy. Who cares what they think?

So those confident—but not obnoxious—folk I mentioned at the beginning of this post? All but one are USians. All white. Mostly from loving, supportive families. Mostly male. Mostly not working class. The one non-USian is from a wealthy Australian family. It is amazing how much confidence growing up loved and without the slightest bit of want can give you. Growing up with money does not, of course, guarantee that you’ll be confident. The love part is essential. Sometimes I think the worst start in life anyone can suffer is growing up unloved.

Growing up in Australia I learned that talking positively about your own achievements was one of the worst sins ever.2 “Don’t write tickets on yourself,” should be our national motto. Getting too big for your bootstraps is a national crime and leads to all sorts of contortions as far too many people fall over themselves to seem less smart, talented, and interesting than they are. Not a pretty sight. On the other hand it does lead to some gorgeously self-deprecating wit.

Meanwhile in my other country of citizenship they’re mostly being taught to boast their arses off. Truly, I do enjoy US confidence. It’s so refreshing compared to Australia. But, oh my, when that confidence is married to ignorance and stupidity and blind self belief? Things get very ugly indeed.

These are, of course, caricatures that are mightily affected by intersections of race, class, gender etc and how loving the families we grew up in were. Both countries have folks hiding their lights under bushels.3 They both have less talented folks under the sad delusion that they are The Most Talented People in the Entire Universe.

What we need is a mix of the two cultures so we wind up with the happy medium I started this post with. Nations of people who know their own value and feel neither the urge to constantly boast about it: I AM NUMBER ONE AT EVERYTHING EVER! Or to pretend that their ability to whip up a divine, multilayered, delicate-as-air, intricately decorated cake out of almost nothing is no big thing.

So I’ll end this post telling you something I’m proud of: I’m proud of the book I’m almost finished rewriting. It feels like a big step forward and that makes me happy and proud.4

  1. Though quite a few of the tweets labelled “humble brags” aren’t. Many with big breasts do not find them so wonderful as the world imagines they do. I’ve known way too many big breasted women who’ve longed for smaller breasts. Not to mention several who’ve had breast reductions because the back and shoulder pain was unendurable. []
  2. Especially if you’re female or working class or not white—but the rule applies to everyone. []
  3. If I wasn’t out of keystrokes for the day I would so finally look that expression up. Where on earth does it come from? Lights? Bushels? So weird. []
  4. And this is me suppressing the urge to undercut that boast, er, I mean factual statement with a self-deprecating comment to indictate that I’m not really up myself and you shouldn’t hate me. Aargh. *sitting on my hands now* []

What to Study to Become a Writer

Lucy Says:

Hi Justine! Firstly, thank you for all your posts about writing novels and the basics; I’m a young writer and your blog has really helped someone so inexperienced!

I’m in high school in Sydney and if you grew up around here I assume you completed the HSC? Or an equivalent, if it’s more recent than I think. I was just wondering what subjects you chose. English is obviously essential for any student who wants to be a writer, but did you find any other subjects particularly helpful? Thanks!

Thanks for your kind words. So glad I’ve helped.

I would definitely advise doing some kind of tertiary study, be it at university, or some kind of trade school. Getting qualifications so you can get a decent paid job is a really good idea. Because the vast majority of published writers do not earn enough to make a living. So those who want to be writers need to figure out what is the best job to enable them to write on the side.

I am on the record as not being a huge fan of studying creative writing. Do read that post and especially make sure you read the comments because plenty disagreed with me including Garth Nix.

Back in the day, I decided that being an academic was the best way to support myself while I wrote. And that’s what I did until I became a freelance writer in 2003. I went to university got two degrees: BA (Hons) and a PhD. In the course of doing so I had many other jobs: I worked retail, I was a receptionist, cleaner, admin assistant, researcher, IT help and probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten. I had a scholarship to do my PhD and also taught at the university part-time. I then got my first real full-time job as a postdoctoral researcher.

While all of that was going on I was doing my own writing on the side.

That’s one of the many cools things about being a writer. It is the most transportable of talents. It can fit in with any other job you can name. It can be done anywhere and anytime.

I know other writers for whom technical writing is the main job. I know writers who are also lawyers. One who works in a museum. One who’s an ambo. And many who are teachers and librarians and journalists.1 And even more who work in the publishing industry. Mainly as editors.

I know writers who look at having to have a job other than writing as a burden and a penance and it drives them nuts. But I also know plenty who find that their day job feeds into their writing and who say that without it what would they write about?

It’s a good point: the more experiences you have the more you see of the world and how it works, the better equipped you are to write about it.

I do not know a single full-time pro writer who has not at some point in their life had a different job. We have all worked at something other than writing novels.

As a writer you can do any job you want.2 I would strongly advise not planning your course of study at high school or university around writing. As it really is one of the very hardest jobs to make a living at. While at the same time being, unlike, say, acting, one of the easiest to keep doing while holding down another job.

Deciding what to study for your last years in high school should be shaped by a few things:

Do you want to go to university? What do you want to study there?

If you want get a degree in something with a high entrance score3 then you need to pick the courses that are required for that degree and you need to pick subjects you’re good at and likely to do well in. Maiximise your chances of doing as well as you can so you have your choice of universities and courses.

Don’t forget about the sciences. There’s a huge demand for scientists, not just in this country, but all around the world. And every science is brimming with cool ideas. Perfect for a writer.

If you don’t have a bent for scholarly study or are good with your hands then consider a trade. There are loads of tradies who make more money than your average university-degreed person. Skilled plumbers and electricians and carpenters etc. are always in demand. Plus how many novels are there from the plumber’s point of view? Or the sparky’s? The world needs more of those novels and NO MORE novels from the point of view of middle-aged male university professors. I’m just saying . . .

Other than writing what are your passions?

I have a friend who has always loved the sea. She was a trained scuba diving instructor while still in her teens and now has a PhD in marine biology and a career she loves. Yes, she writes too.

It could be you have a skill, like scuba diving, that could lead you to a career perfect for you.

My sister has always been visually gifted, good at photography. She went on to study art and wound up in the visual effects industry. She has worked on blockbuster films like those in the Matrix and Harry Potter series all around the world.

Many people will tell you that studying art is useless. It wasn’t for my sister.

If you do go to university why not pick subjects you think are cool? That fit into your passions. Who knows where it will lead you? I know plenty of people who are now doing jobs that didn’t exist when they were in high school.

But maybe writing is all you can do and all you want to do. Fine, then. Do what Garth Nix says.

But whatever you decide remember that no one path is irrevocable. You an always change your mind. Most people these days wind up with more than one career during their lifetime.

Good luck, Lucy!

P.S. I did, in fact, do my HSC here in Sydney. A. Very. Long. Time. Ago.

  1. Though that last one seems to be a dying job. Or if not dying a transitioning one. []
  2. Within reason. Could be you live somewhere with high unemployment. []
  3. I’m keeping this generic so it applies to people outside NSW where the HSC does not exist. []

Expats

I have been called an expat because I have lived in New York City on and off since 1999. The off time was spent living here in Sydney. I live in two countries and I am not an expat.

When someone in Australia calls me that they’re usually saying I don’t have the authority to comment on what’s happening here because I’ve been away too long. People like Germaine Greer1 and Clive James are called expats. Often with a sneer.

I am not an expat.

I am not an expat in the sense that Australians use it: “Someone who has abandoned Australia and has no clue about it anymore.”

I have never lived outside Australia for more than a year.

I am not an expat in the sense that many others use it either.

I have no Australian friends in NYC. I do not go to Australia clubs to hang out with the other Australians. I don’t eat at Australian restaurants. To me that is expat behaviour. To go to another country and try to live there as much as you can like you were still back home.

Now, part of my not seeking out other Australians in NYC is because I also live in Sydney and there are quite a few Australians here. When we’re in Sydney we’re with our Sydney friends, most of whom are Australian. In NYC we’re with our New Yorker friends, none of whom are originally Australian.

I admit I’m puzzled by people who want to live in another country but once there only hang out with people from their own country. Why not stay home?

Yet, that is what my grandparents did.

But they were refugees. They ran from the Nazis and landed in Australia.2 They did learn English, but it took a long time, and they were never comfortable speaking it.3 All their friends were East European refugees like them. They weren’t wild about Australian food. Sometimes I got the feeling they weren’t too impressed by Australians either.

But, you know what, they lost almost their entire families, almost everyone they’d ever known or loved. They were forced to leave their home. Refugees get a pass.

And their children and their children’s children are very much Australians.

Refugees can’t be expats. To be an expat you have to have chosen to leave your home country; not be fleeing certain persecution.

Those who move to another country to live, who engage with that country, rather than perch on top of it, are migrants, not expats.

I’m a migrant, not an expat. Some of us migrants go back home. A lot. Some of us live in more than one country.

Ever since I started living in two different countries I’ve met more and more people who do the same. I’ve met even more people who would love to do that but simply can’t afford it.4 The old path of migration meaning you left your country forever and ever amen is not the only path.

I have a friend in NYC, originally from Guatemala, who goes back there for a few months every year. I’ve met many Mexican-Americans who go back and forth between Mexico and the US. And Indonesian-Australians who go back and forth between Indonesia and Australia. The closer your country is to the other country you live in the easier it is. Not that I’m jealous . . .

I know loads of mixed national couples like me and Scott who alternate what country they live in. Even couples with kids who do that. Though they tend to do years-long chunks in each country. The Belgian/Australian couple I met recently have just spent five years here and now are moving there with their two children where the kids will be attending a trilingual school.

In conclusion: do not call me an expat! Or something . . .

  1. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Germaine Greer is so hated here. Mostly by men. I love her. She’s hilarious and has been amazingly important to feminism. Yes, she can be wrong. Yes, I disagree with her as often as I agree. So? She’s a possum stirrer. Always has been. It’s a noble pursuit. Though it sure does seem to be more admired in men than women. []
  2. They would have preferred Argentina but the Australian visas came through first. []
  3. Mind you they had six other languages to use. []
  4. Living in two different countries is expensive. We’re very privileged that we can do it. []

A Feel Good Joyful Funny Film: The Sapphires

Me and Scott took the day off last week to go to the movies. I cannot remember the last time we did that. Sat down in an actual cinema with actual other people and watched a movie. It was a great audience. We mocked the Australian-Mining-Will-Save-the-Environment ad together. Then we laughed and cried and cheered our way through The Sapphires.

The Sapphires restored my faith in movies. I was on the verge of sticking to TV and never bothering with movies again. The Sapphires pulled me back from that brink. I walked out of that cinema elated and happy and almost a week later the feeing hasn’t worn off yet.

For those not in Australia, The Sapphires is a new movie about an Aboriginal girl group who performed for the US troops in Vietnam in the late 60s. It is now screening in Australia and France and will be released in NZ in October and UK in November. It will also be screening in the USA but I haven’t been able to find out when yet.

If you get a chance to see it DO SO.

The Sapphires is a biopic in that it is based on the lives of a real Aboriginal girl group who performed in Vietnam in the 1960s. But unlike so many biopics, such as Ray, there’s no boring bit after they get famous and take to drugs/alcohol and then are redeemed because The Sapphires don’t become famous. It’s not that movie.

It’s also astonishingly gorgeous. The cinematography by Warwick Thornton, the director of the also visually stunning Samson and Delilah, makes everything and everyone glow. When I discovered the budget was less than a million dollars, which for those of you who don’t know is a microscopic budget for a feature-length film, I almost fell over.

Deborah Mailman is, as usual, the standout. She’s been my favourite Australian actor ever since Radiance in 1998. I would even go see her in a Woody Allen movie1 that is how great my love for her is. Wherever Mailman is on screen that’s where you’re looking. And no matter who she’s playing I find myself on her side. She could play Jack the Ripper and I’d still be on her side.

The Sapphires is a movie where you see the effects of systemic racism AND you get joy and hope and MUSIC. The movie was upbeat and heartbreaking and funny and left me full of optimism for the entire world. Things do get better! Amazing things can be achieved even in the face of racism and sexism.

The movie manages to convey how the civil rights movement in the USA was important to Aboriginal people in Australia deftly and economically. (I had just been reading about Marcus Garvey’s influence on indigenous politics here in the 1930s, which was an excellent reminder that Australia’s civil rights movement goes back much earlier than most people realise.) It covers a great deal of the terrain of racial politics in Australia in the 1960s without ever losing sight of its genre.

This appears to be a problem for many of the reviewers in Australian newspapers. The reviews are all weirdly tepid in their praise. They refer to The Sapphires as a “feel good” movie and a “crowd pleaser” as if that were a bug not a feature. Um, what? It’s like they went in expecting Samson and Delilah—a great film don’t get me wrong—and are mildly annoyed that this one didn’t rip their heart out and stomp on it. The thinking seems to go: I walked out of The Sapphires wanting to burst into song. It must be lightweight fluff.

The Sapphires is a movie that aims to make you laugh, fill you with joy, jerk some tears from you and to maybe make you think, if you’re white Australian like me, about how deep seated racism is in this country. It succeeds in all of those goals. How does that make it “merely” entertaining? Gah!

I will never understand the attitude that says serious = deep, funny = shallow. It is a widespread view. Take a look at all the award-winning books and films. Very few of them are funny. Or could be described as light. What’s up with that?

I have a list of books and movies I turn to when I’m down. What they have in common is that they are excellently well-made and they make me feel good. It’s a lot harder to write one of those books or make one of those movies than you’d think.

The Sapphires has just joined that list.

  1. I cannnot stand Woody Allen movies []

School/Author Visits/the Glories of Q & A/Fake Blind Bank Robbers

Yesterday I did my first school visits in Sydney.1 I went to Willoughby Girls High and Ravenswood Girls School on the North Shore.2 I was dreading it as I always am when I have to speak in front of people I don’t know. Why can’t I stay home and write?! Waaah! I hate public speaking! I hate school visits! Etc.

But then, as always, I got to Willoughby Girls High and everyone was lovely, especially the school librarian, and my talk on how Team Human went from idea to finished book didn’t seem to put anyone to sleep. Not even the teachers.3 I didn’t faint or vomit or drop my water or show the wrong images and best of all the question and answer portion of proceedings went exceedingly well.

I love Q & A.4 That’s the part where I get to hear what other people are thinking. I know what I think. I spend all day listening to my thoughts. I rarely get to hear what schools girls on the North Shore are thinking and interested in. Willoughby Girls High Years 8 and 9 did not disappoint asking many smart questions.5 I think we were all disappointed when the bell went that we couldn’t keep on asking and answering questions for a few more hours. Though that might be because their next class was maths.6

In fact, yesterday’s talk was inspired by questions I’d been asked at previous such talks. People outside publishing are always bewildered by how long it takes for a book to go from sold to a publisher to being in the bookshops. I’m frequently asked how long it takes me to write a book, and how I made my books’ covers. So I took them through the whole process. And I even brought some cover elves along to demonstrate how a cover is made. They went over a treat.

Afterwards me and the librarians and some of the teachers were talking about how we’d never had author visits back when we were in school and how lucky these kids were. Back in the day we hadn’t even been aware that people who wrote books were alive. Much less someone you could meet and ask question of.

Then on the way home I remembered that I had in fact had an author come to my school. I was stunned I’d forgotten about it because it was totally scarifying. In a good way. When I was in Year 10 at the Australian International Independent School7 there were two boys in our class who were on the verge of getting into serious trouble. They were at the minor breaking of the law stage. But they had started to steal cars and go for joy rides. Our teacher decided to scare them straight by getting the author of the book that the movie Hoodwink was based on to come in and talk about life as a prisoner.8

This guy was the leanest, hardest looking bloke I’d ever seen. He walked into that room and we all went quiet and we were a noisy lot. He told his story. That he’d been a bank robber, that he’d gotten caught and been sent to prison. Loads of time. He said being sent inside was not an occupational hazard but an occupational certainty. He didn’t know any bank robbers who weren’t done eventually. He’d gotten early release by pretending to go blind and fooling everyone including eye specialists. He had a bit of a grin on his face describing it. It’s an amazing story and we were amazed.

He talked in great detail about how awful it is in gaol. How it breaks you and hardens you. He spared us no details. He talked about how the young blokes were always raped. You could feel the air go out of the room when he said that. When we got to the Q and A part he went out of his way to deglamorise every aspect of his outlaw life. What living in hiding is like. How you make almost no money from being a bank robber. And even when you do get a big haul and get away with it you get busted as soon as you spend it. Etc.

I raised my hand to ask what it was like in women’s prisons. Surely that wasn’t as bad as the men’s? No, he said, it’s much, much worse and went into detail about just how awful it was.

I don’t know about the two boys at risk but that author visit certainly scared me into total law abidingness.

In conclusion: Don’t rob banks! Read books! Author/school visits are educational and fun and sometimes scary! Ask questions!

Did any of you have an author visit that has had a big impact on you?

  1. Actually, they were my first visits as an author to any school in Australia. That’s because for the duration of my writing career I have mostly been in Australia during the summer when schools are not in session. []
  2. Or as we inner city types think of it Here Be Dragons. []
  3. True fact. I have seen teachers nod off during these things. Yes, while I was talking. []
  4. So much that every Monday I find myself watching the ABC’s Q and A and yelling at the television set and swearing that I will never watch that damn show again. And yet there I am the following Monday yelling at the tellie. []
  5. Unfortunately, I got the timing wrong at Ravenswood and there was no time for Q and A. 🙁 My bad. []
  6. Seriously, high school students everywhere, maths will be really useful later on and if you’re like me and paid no attention whatsoever and are a maths moron you will be lost at tax time and understanding stuff like royalties and other number related things that are important to you and oh, how you will regret your decision that maths was stupid lo those many years ago. /lecture []
  7. A hippy school at North Ryde that was all about internationalism and peace studies. It was excellent. But full of kids who’d been chucked out of other schools or were gently asked to leave. *cough* []
  8. I have done some limited googling and failed to find the name of the book or the author that the film was based on. If you know please to tell me! []

What Are You Watching?

Yesterday I listed some of my favourite recent US TV shows. It got me wondering what your favourite shows are and why? Because I’m just about to finish the first season of Legend of Korra and will have to find something else to watch that’s every bit as wonderful.

I only noticed that I watch completely different kinds of TV in Australia than I do in the US. Here in Australia I watch lots of non-fiction: Australian Story, Four Corners, pretty much all the cooking shows, lots of sport, Rockwiz. Stuff like that. My US shows as listed yesterday are mostly fiction, genius shows like The Wire and Deadwood.

So what are you watching wherever in the world you are? Yes, anime counts. Please to tell me!

On People Reading in Public

So yesterday I came across this tumblr, Underground New York Public Library. And, fellow readers, it is marvellous! Glory in the gazillions of photos of people reading books on the subway. Complete with the names of the books. It is a truly glorious portrait of New York City. Of what I love about that city.

I am sure if you read this blog you are like me: when you are on public transport you cannot stop yourself from trying to figure out what people are reading.

I have been known to accidentally on purpose drop things so I can bend down to pick them up and thus read the title of the book that’s being held too low for me to read otherwise. Yes, I am one of those dreadful people who reads over people’s shoulders on public transport. I’m just curious is all. Not creepy. Honest!

I love to know what people are reading. Then along comes this tumblr to satisfy my curiosity. And, wow, what a wide range of books. Almost every genre under the sun. Though not that many romances. I figure those are mostly on ereaders. It’s a shame that means they don’t represent in the vast numbers they are being read.

Don’t get me wrong I love being able to read books electronically.1 But it does make it that much harder to figure out what people are reading. And has massively increased my already obnoxious habit of reading over people’s shoulders.

On the other hand it means I will never again have some arsehole being all judgey because I dare to read in public a romance or YA or some other genre certain people like to sneer at. Yes, I have had people say rude stuff to me because I was reading a book they did not deem to be good. Get over yourself, judgey poo heads! I bet you read Henry Miller or Charles Bukowski. I am sorry you are so insecure in your masculinity you have to read misogynist dross like that to make you feel better. Um, *cough* judging people for what they read is wrong.2

I was particularly filled with joy by this picture of two men reading books by women. See? There are men who are brave enough to do that! In public!

There are photos of people reading books by friends of mine.

There are people reading of every age and race and in Polish, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish along with loads and loads of English.

People reading books that I love with all my heart.

I especially love this photo of two little boys with mohawks reading two very popular middle grade titles.

This tumblr made my heart almost explode with joy. And, um, lose several hours pouring over every photos and reading every comment. What? I’m on a break between first and second draft of novel. So it’s not even procrastination.

Happy reading, everyone! What’s the best book you’re read recently? And why did you love it?

Mine’s Sumner Locke Elliott’s Careful He Might Hear You which I adored because it has sharply written dialogue and so evocatively brings 1930s Sydney to life. Also it is heartbreaking. Everyone should read it if only for a masterclass in how to write great dialogue.

  1. In my case I read them on my phone and don’t have an ereader, but, you know, same thing. []
  2. Do not get me started on those who read Ayn Rand in a non-campy way. []

Surry Hills

Some of you wanted me to write about my home country. But it’s a big ask to cover the entire country in one blog post so I’m narrowing my focus to my immediate surrounds: Surry Hills:

View of Surry Hills

Surry Hills is an inner-city suburb (or neighbourhood as USians would say) of Sydney, Australia where I live. Or as some call it Slurry Hills. Or the Hills as it used to be called. Or Razorhurst as it was called by the Sydney Truth1 back in the 1920s when it, Darlinghurst, Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross and Paddington were all called Razorhurst on account of the razor wars that took place on their slummy back streets.2 Back then the area was dirt poor and full of drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling, and illegal alcohol.

Surry Hills street art

These days there’s still prostitution but then brothels are legal in Sydney and almost every suburb has one or two. Also drugs. There’s a legal needle exchange a short walk from where I live. There are no legal casinos in Surry Hills, but there are plenty of pokies (slot machines), as there are in virtually every pub in the entire country. And it’s legal to serve alcohol until fairly late at night. There are even 24 hour licenses. Thus eliminating the need for sly grog shops. Why there is even an absinthe bar near by.3

Surry Hills is full of gorgeous overgrown lanes, wonderful street art, it has Australia’s oldest home Cleveland House, as well as some of the newest, coolest warehouse conversions.

Cleveland House from 1823

Surry Hills is not dirt poor anymore. It’s home to some of the most expensive real estate in the inner city, some of the city’s best restaurants, bars and cafes. There are loads of fancy furniture stores. Within a short walk there are not one, but two, places to buy Apple computers. It is high end, chi-chi, and full of hipsters. Though, fortunately, most of the male hipsters have not taken to the crazy unibomber beard look that so many of their US counterparts have adopted.4

Surry Hills: where teddy bears go to die

Fortunately, it’s not all hipsters.5 There are still plenty of people living here from before it became uber-trendy. There are still homeless shelters, needle exchanges, housing commission homes. To which, phew. Surry Hills remains economically diverse. Though less so every year.

Surry Hills also remains beautiful.

The backs of some working fashion warehouse on one of my favourite Surry Hills lanes

Despite its long-term reputation as dangerous and slummy and full of crime, which Surry Hills has had from around 1900 until, um, now, it’s really a pretty safe area. The main employer throughout those decades was the rag trade. Which is still here. Lots of working rag trade warehouses and lots of places to buy good fabric if you’re a clothes-making kind of person. There’s even a place that will dye your old clothes to give them a new lease of life. I’ve been using them since, um, the olden days.

I love this place. I love the light, the tree-lined streets, the decrepit falling-apart warehouses, the great food, the people, the art, the everything.

  1. An awesomely trashy rabble-rousing newspaper from back in the day. One of its editors was obsessed with alliteration and wrote that Lord Dudley was given to “libidinous lecheries and lascivious lapses.” What is not to love? So sad The Truth no longer exists. []
  2. The gang wars were fought with razors because handguns were banned which meant if you were busted with one you were instantly in the lockup. But if you were busted with a razor who could claim you were about to shave. []
  3. To which: VOMIT. Have you ever tried absinthe? It’s horrible. []
  4. Look, goatees are fine. But could you leave looking Amish to the Amish? Thank you. []
  5. Not that there’s anything wrong with . . . Eh. Whatever. Hipsters are the devil. We all know that. []

Team Human as an Ebook in Australia

I’ve already had a few people ask me why Team Human is not available via iTunes. My ANZ publisher, Allen & Unwin, does not yet have any books available for sale via iTunes but they’re working on it.

In the meantime my publisher says that Team Human is available for Apple devices via the Kindle app and the Kobo app.

Or you can purchase Team Human through Booki.sh where you can buy the ebook AND support your local independent bookshop at the same time! Readers whose local indie is Gleebooks (Sydney), Readings (Melbourne), Fullers (Hobart), Mary Ryan (North NSW/Qld), Avid Reader (Brisbane), or The Turning Page (Blue Mountains) can buy Team Human via the links provided.

I hope that helps.

Australian Slang

This post was requested by @WanderinDreamr. My apologies for its crapness.

So, it turns out I really don’t have a lot to say about Australian slang. Or rather I don’t have anything to say that wouldn’t bore you. I did start writing this post and it rapidly turned into an old person cranky rant about how US slang is overtaking Australian slang. For example:

Why do Oz teenagers not know that “rooting for your team” is not something Aussies do because typically it’s not an activity that helps other people. I mean not unless they’re taking part, which, well, let’s not go there. Aussies “barrack” for their team. Except that I keep hearing Aussies under twenty-five using “root” in the US meaning of the word. AND IT FILLS MY HEART WITH DESPAIR. Why take on the language of the Yankee infidels? Why abandon your own rich and glorious venacular?! What is wrong with you?!

Which was only going to end with me waving my cane around and screaming at kids to get off my non-existent lawn. Not to mention fill me with shame because tedious adults were ranting about the exact same thing when I was a kid. And according to older friends of mine, not to mention my parents, they where hearing rants about insidious US English taking over the Australian vernacular from the 1940s onwards.

I so do not want to be that person. *shudder* I rejoice in the vibrant living, changing thing that is language.

Not to mention that some of our words are spreading out beyond our shores. “Bogan” for instance is now in the OED:

An unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, esp. regarded as being of low social status

And apparently not only has “bogan” spread from Victoria to the rest of the country but it’s made the leap over the Tasman to New Zealand. Hey, Kiwis, are there old cranky people waving their canes and yelling at you lot not to start using Aussie slang? Or do they just rant against US slang too?

Though I would argue with that definition of “bogan.” While there’s definitely a class component to it. I don’t think it neatly fits with whether the person labelled thus is poor or not. I.e. of “low social status”. There are many people who would get called “bogan” who are very well off indeed. Though I guess the modification of “cashed up” takes care of that.

What are your favourite examples of Australian slang? Living or dead examples. I admit to loving “smoodge,” “drongo,” “as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike,” “zambuck,” “daggy,” “date,” and “bosker”. Some of which are so obsolete you probably won’t be able to google them and others of which I say on a daily basis. And, no, not giving you definitions. Research! It’s good for you.

In conclusion: GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Monsters I Have Loved

Since a few of you expressed mild interest in the speech I gave at Sirens in October last year I thought I would share it with you. The theme was monsters and my speech involved me showing many monstrous images. Yes, that’s my disclaimer, I wrote this to be spoken to a real life audience with funny pictures and the funny may not work so well without the kind and appreciative live audience. Or something. *cough*

Here it is:

Monsters I Have Loved

Ideas = Brain Monkeys According to Maureen Johnson

Like every other writer ever I get asked “where do you get your ideas” a lot. Today I thought instead of answering that question in the Q & A at the end, I’d show you.

Here’s how I got the idea for the speech I’m about to give, which is very similar to how I get ideas for the novels I write.

Excellently recursive, yes?

I knew I had to write a speech for Sirens more than a year ago. For many, many many months I didn’t think about it at all because, you know, other deadlines, basketball games to watch, old movies to pillage for info about the early 1930s, issues of Vampires & Rosario to read. But in the deepest darkest recesses of my brain those monkeys were juggling the nouns associated with this year’s Sirens: feminism, YA, monsters.

Then one day in July, or possibly August, I was walking around New York City with my headphones on listening to music. That’s unusual for me. Usually I walk around listening to podcasts from Australia when I wander about the city. But on this particular day I’d run out. So I was listening to one of my favourite playlists. And for some reason I started writing this speech in my head. When I got to my office I immediately wrote everything down. It flowed out of me like magic.

Nah, not really.

When I got to the office I gossiped with the doorman on the way in, and answered a phone call from my agent on the stairs on the way up (how fancy am I?), and then gossiped with the receptionist. By the time I took off my walking-around-the-city-listening-to-podcasts-and-sometimes-music headphones and donned my-talking-to-the-voice-recognition-software headset I’d forgotten everything I’d thought of on the walk over except this:

Feminism + Young Adult Literature + Monsters = Elvis

Am I right?

I can tell long-term readers of my blog—both of you—knew where I was going with that.

No?1

Hmmm, looks like I may have to explain myself a bit more.

Me and Elvis

My parents are anthropologists/sociologists. (I always understood the difference to be that anthropologists studied people with a different skin colour to them and sociologists study those with the same skin colour. That may perhaps be a tad unfair.) When I was little my family lived for a time on two different Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory: Ngukurr in Arnhem Land and Djemberra (now called Jilkminggan) not far from the predominately white town of Mataranka. It is the part of my childhood I remember most vividly. For many reasons.

The red dot up top is Jilkminggan. The purple dot is Sydney. For scale: Australia is roughly the same size as mainland USA.

I remember the hard red earth, the heat making everything in the distance shimmer, towering termite nests, brolgas, eating food that had been hunted or found that day: kangaroo, emu, goanna, crayfish, turtle eggs, wild honey, fruits and tubers I don’t remember the names of and have never seen or (more sadly) eaten since.

I remember being allowed to run wild with a pack of kids (and dogs) of assorted ages and skin colours (though none so pale as me), swimming in the Roper River, playing games like red rover for hours. I remember learning that I was white and what that could mean, and that the Aboriginal kinship system my family had been adopted into meant that I could have many more mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousines and grandparents than the bare handful I’d been born with. I became fluent in a whole other language, of which only two words remain: “baba” meaning brother or sister, and “gammon” meaning bullshit (sort of).

Yes, um, that is a smaller me. I am being extremely helpful getting the fire hot enough for them to brand cattle. EXTREMELY helpful! Thanks for the photo, Dad.

(I’m making it sound more romantic than it was. I’m forgetting the flies—more flies than I’ve ever seen before in my life. So many you soon stop waving them away because there’s no point. Many of those kids had cataracts. And, yeah, we kids ran together and the dogs were always underfoot, but they were so underfoot that when the numbers got too big—authorities—mostly white—would come in and shoot them.)

I was a city child. I knew nothing about the outback. I was alien to those kids and those kids were alien to me. Until, after a few weeks, we weren’t.

That year changed me completely. Especially my thinking about race. I want to be clear, however, that I’m not saying those experiences made me magically understand what it is to be “The Other.” (And, ugh, to that term, by the way.) To my horror, when I’ve told these stories of my childhood in the Territory too many people have understood me to be saying “I lived with people who weren’t white so I know what it is to be oppressed.”

A thousand times NO!2

What I learned was that I was white. I had not thought about the colour of my skin or what it signified. I had not been aware of whiteness or what it meant.

What I learned was that race and racism exist. Which was something I’d had the privilege of not learning earlier because I was white growing up in a predominantly white country in predominantly white bits of that country. Spending time in a predominately black part of Australia made me aware of my whiteness before the majority of my white peers back in urban southern Australia did.3

It was also the year I discovered Elvis Presley.

My first Elvis memory is of the juke box in one of the pubs in the white town of Mataranka. There were only two pubs which in Australia means that it was a very, very small town. The jukebox had records by Slim Dusty and Elvis Presley and no-one else. When Slim Dusty played it caused the child-me physical pain. As far as I was concerned it was noise, not music. But when Elvis played, well, that was heaven. The best music, the best voice I’d ever heard. For years I couldn’t stand Slim Dusty, but I’ve always loved Elvis.

I was not alone in this judgement, by the way, cause almost all the kids—and a fair number of the adults—of Jilkmingan liked Elvis too. Added bonus: my dad couldn’t stand him.

My second memory is of watching a 1968 Elvis movie, Stay Away Joe, on the outdoor basketball court at Ngukurr. The screen was hung over the hoop. We all crowded onto the court, restless (the last few movies had been total busts) and excited (there was always the hope this one wouldn’t suck), sitting in each others’ laps or on our haunches on the gravel. We’d pull each others’ hair, poke each other with fingers, elbows, feet and knees, throw handfuls of gravel at each other. The adults would laugh at us, or tell us to shut up or both.

From http://www.outbushpitchas.com

This time the rowdiness only lasted through the opening credits. We settled down quick because we loved it. Stay Away Joe is set on a Native American reservation. Elvis plays an Indian. Everyone on the basketball court recognised what they were seeing up on screen.

Like the movie reservation, Ngukurr was full of crap cars, there were dogs everywhere, houses fell apart, and there was high unemployment. There was also a tonne of singing and dancing.4

Some of us kids really thought Elvis was Native American.5 I’m sure my parents disabused me of that notion pretty quickly, but for a long time I wasn’t quite sure who or what Elvis was. When I returned to southern Australia none of my school friends liked Elvis (if they’d heard of him). They thought I was weird. I associated Elvis with indigenous Australia, with the Territory, with stockmen & rodeos & outdoor crappy movie projectors.

The way I discovered Elvis made him seem racially fluid.

I have always thought that one day I would write a novel about that Elvis.

Appropriation

I also thought Elvis wrote all his songs and that he was the first person to sing them. Frankly, until I was ten or so I’m pretty sure I thought Elvis invented rock’n’roll, if not all music.

Then someone played the original recording of Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton for me.

Turned out the song had been written for her by Leiber & Stoller and she recorded it in 1952. Her original version was number one on the billboard R&B charts for six weeks in 1953. There followed multiple cover versions, mostly by white bands. Elvis discovered the song, not through Thornton’s version, but through a white band, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys’s live version that he heard in Vegas. Freddie Bell and the Bellboys? (I for one cannot think of a sexier or more dangerous name for a group, can you? Don’t answer that.)

They changed the lyrics because they were considered too dirty for a white audience. “Snoopin’ round my door” was replaced with “cryin’ all the time,” and “You can wag your tail, but I ain’t gonna feed you no more” was replaced by “You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine.”

Elvis’s recorded the Bellboy’s lyrics. The original lyricist, Jerry Leiber, was appalled, pointing out that the new lyrics made “no sense.” Which they really don’t. In Elvis’ version I had no idea what the hound dog wanted or why it was a problem. Was the hound dog crying cause it couldn’t catch rabbits? Then why was Elvis so unsympathetic?

Here’s Elvis’ version for comparison:

I’ve never liked Elvis’ version as much since.

Listening to Big Mama Thornton’s version exploded the song for me. It didn’t mean what I thought it meant. It was bigger and sexier and BETTER.

Elvis was not an orginator. He was a borrower. He was a remaker of existing things. He didn’t write songs. Those lyric changes to “Hound Dog” weren’t even his changes—that was Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. At the time I decided that meant he was no good. He could wag his tail but I was done.6

Then not too much later I read Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Tanith Lee’s Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer. Their retellings of the fairy tales I grew up with changed those stories utterly: made them bigger, sexier, better. Elvis had made “Hound Dog” worse. Was that the difference?

Had Elvis appropriated Big Mama Thornton’s Houng Dog?

Was it appropriation because Elvis was white and Mama Thornton black? Because his version went to no. 1 on all three Billboard charts of the time: pop, c&w, and r&b. Whereas her version was limited to the R&B chart only? Because to this day his version is more famous than hers as he is more famous than she is?

Elvis’s success was monstrous. Both in scale—it’s more than thirty years since he died—and he’s still one of the most famous people in the world. I have bonded with people over Elvis in Indonesia, Argentina, Turkey & Hawaii. He’s everywhere.

But there’s also an argument that his career is a testament to the monstrous power of racism. He was the first white kid to do what dozens—if not more—black performers had done before him. (Especially Little Richard.) His success was dependent on an appropriation of black music, black style, black dancing, black attitude. He become famous for bringing black music to a white audience. But if Elvis had actually been black then I would not be talking about him right now.

I have often thought of writing a novel about that black Elvis. The black female Elvis. It would probably turn out that she was Big Mama Thornton.

Given my track record as a white writer who has written multiple novels with non-white protags, appropriation is, naturally, something I think about a lot.

Originality

My initial reaction to discovering that Elvis, not only didn’t write his own songs, but that sometimes the original versions were better than his, was horror. I had, like, many of you, I’m sure, grown up with the notion that originality is the thing.

Before the 1960s a popular singer was not looked at askance if they did not write their own songs. They were singers! Why would they write their own songs? Then came the sixties and the singer-song writer revolution and suddenly if all you could do was sing then you better join a band with someone who could write songs for you or you were screwed. And song writers WHO COULD NOT SING AT ALL started singing. Yes, Bob Dylan, you are one of the worst. True fact: Dylan songs are way better when sung by Elvis.7

In English classes through high school & university the highest praise given to a writer was originality. I remember asking a lecturer why there were no women writers on his post-modernism course.

He gave me a disdainful look and asked, “Who would you suggest?”

“Angela Carter.”

“Angela Carter?” he sneered. “Light weight! Completely unoriginal!”

He then spent the rest of the course carefully delineating the antecedents of all the boy writers we’d been assigned. Astonishingly none of them had stepped fully formed from a clam shell either. No originality anywhere! But somehow magically their penises protected them from lightweightness. Maybe penises are really heavy or something?

It’s a moment that’s stayed with me. Not just because of his why-are-you-wasting-my-time dismissal but because of the way everyone else in the room looked at me. There was much rolling of eyes. But two of the women in the room smiled. We became friends.

At the time I thought about writing a novel in which a white middle-aged male lecturer writes a novel about seducing all his female students to ease his mid-life crisis, which every publishing house in the entire universe passes on, so that he ends his days in a padded cell with only Angela Carter to read. But the thought of staying in his point of view long enough to write a whole novel was too depressing so I wrote a 13th century Cambodian epic instead.8

And my point? Right, as you all know: all art comes from somewhere. Nothing is truly original. If it was we’d have no way of making sense of it.

Octavia Butler and Angela Carter and Tanith Lee are three of the biggest influences on my writing. I see traces of them in every novel I have written.

But so is Elvis and my childhood experience on Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory and a million and one other things. People who know me, and sometimes strangers, point to other influences I hadn’t even thought about. I find that scarily often they’re correct. My writing is the sum total of everything that has ever happened to me, everything I have ever seen, or read, or tasted, or heard, or felt, or smelled.9 That’s how writing works.

I am no more original than Elvis.

Can Feminists Love Elvis?

But how can a feminist love Elvis? How can someone who believes in social justice and racial equality love Elvis?

He starred in a movie sympathetic to the confederate lets-keep-slaves cause, Love Me Tender, there’s a tonne of Elvis memoribilia out there which juxtaposes his name and/or face and the confederate flag. Good ole boy Southerners often adore Elvis. Every single one of his movies is jaw droppingly sexist. In Elvis movies all a woman wants is a man. All a man want is a good woman, lots of bad women, and to be a racing car driver. Correction: a singing, dancing racing car driver.

How can we love any number of cultural figures and artefacts that are sexist, racist, homophobic etc? Can I remain untainted by my Elvis love? (Or by my love of Georgette Heyer’s anti-semitic, classist, sexist regency romances?)

In loving something that’s monstruous do we become monstrous? Which gives me another idea for a novel. What if a girl falls in love with someone who she’s always been taught to believe was a monster? And vice versa. Hmmm. I have a nagging feeling that’s been done.

No! Yes! Um, maybe.

Yes, your typical, sparkly jumpsuit wearing, monstruous-sideburned US male.

Here’s one of Elvis’s more egregiously sexist recordings, US Male, and not coincidentally one of his sillier songs. Written and first recorded by Jerry Reed, who plays guitar on the track. It is a dreadful and very wrong song. And pretty much impossible to take seriously. I do not for a second believe that it was written with a straight face.

I adore it.

SO MUCH.

US Male owns woman if she’s wearing his ring. If another man is interested in said woman US Male will do him in. Woman has no agency in any of this, the song isn’t addressed to her, it’s for the perceived rival. So far so cave man-esque10.

Yet it’s so over the top. So absurd. The terrible puns! “Male” as in a bloke plus “mail” as in letters. “Don’t tamper with the property of the U.S. Male” and “I catch you ’round my woman, champ, I’m gonna leave your head ’bout the shape of a stamp,” “Through the rain and the heat and the sleet and the snow the U.S. Male is on his toes.” And the half-spoken, half-sung tough guy-ese delivery! It makes me laugh. It’s so freaking camp.

I start to imagine the U.S. Male’s woman sitting there chewing gum and rolling her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You done? No, the waiter was not looking at my rack. Gonna give the poor guy a tip already? A big one. Bigger. Okay. Now, sing me a song.” I suspect eventually she would set him on fire though that would probably qualify as tampering with the US male.

You all make up stories that go with songs, right?

That’s how I feel about a lot of Georgette Heyer’s work not uncoincidentally. Makes me laugh it’s so freaking camp. And also witty and well written. (Pity about the anti-semitism.)

Heyer’s regencies have had a ridiculously big influence on YA today. You would not believe how many YA writers are also huge Georgette Heyer fans. It’s scary. Come to think of it most of her heroines are teenage girls . . . So they’re practically YA in the first place.

I have been meaning to write my own Heyereseque YA for ages. One in which the rake-ish hero is actually the villian and has syphillis from all that raking around.

But, Heyer kind of already did that with Cotillion in which the hero is a barely-in-the-closet gentleman, who is not in the petticoat line, but adores picking out excellent gowns for the heroine. (The villain is the bloke who in many of Heyer’s other books was the hero. His syphllis is clearly implied.) They get married. I imagine them having an awesome future of many shopping trips to Paris and fabulous dinner parties with assorted lovers and friends.

So now my Heyeresque YA is going to take place below stairs because I’m sick to death of the equivalence between the aristocracy and worthiness. I want a democratic regency romance! Where people earn what they get from hard work and not because of who their family is! Workers’ revolution! Solidarity forever!11

Recursively Speaking

As I mentioned way back at the beginning of this speech the germ of it came to me while I listened to music while walking to my office. That day it was my 1960s Elvis playlist with super campy songs like US Male and the scary stalker song Slowly But Surely, those songs set this whole chain of thoughts—and this speech—in motion.

And led me to wondering how I have come to adore such monstruously misogynist songs. I mean apart from them being AWESOME. I guess I manage to set aside the monstruous parts and revel in the campy deliciousness. But it’s not just that: I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can critique the bad, take the good, and add whatever I want. That is a pretty accurate description of my novel writing process. And of my reading (in the broadest sense) process.

My fond hope is that every time I do that—every time we do that—the power of those monsters is eroded.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the worst monsters: the monsters of misogyny, of bigotry . . .

Most especially the monsters in my brain and under my bed because they are where I get my ideas.

Thank you!

  1. At the Sirens conference everyone in the audience looked at me like I was a crazy person and insisted that no one on the planet thinks that Feminism + Young Adult Literature + Monsters = Elvis. I remain unconvinced. Plus I am on this planet, am I not? Don’t answer that. []
  2. I was going to have NO appear a thousand times but I think I can trust you all to imagine it. []
  3. Check out these accounts of discovering you are black or white (though mostly black). They’re from Baratunde Thurston’s tumblr for his book How to be Black which you should all read because it’s smart and insightful and funny as. The book and the tumblr. []
  4. I recently re-watched Stay Away Joe and it turns out to be jaw-droppingly bad and not just because it is sexist and racist. There is, in fact, nothing good about that movie at all. []
  5. I was little! See photo above. []
  6. For about a week to be totally honest. []
  7. Dissenting comments will be deleted. []
  8. As you do. []
  9. Yes, including the farts. []
  10. By the way there’s increasing evidence that cave humanity was not as cavemanish as we think but I digress []
  11. Courtney Milan has written several historical novellas along these lines. They are delicious. []

Zombies Versus Unicorns debate in Sydney

The Zombies Versus Unicorns debates have spread around the world! This Thursday, March 31, at 6PM we will be having one at Kinokuniya Bookstore here in Sydney, Australia.

zombies

Join us at Kinokuniya as Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld (Team Zombie) face off Margo Lanagan and Garth Nix (Team Unicorn) to determine who reigns supreme, the zombie or the unicorn? This is an event not to be missed!

Edited by Holly Black (Team Unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (Team Zombie), Zombies Vs Unicorns is a unique short story feud that pits horned beasts against the shuffling undead.

Contributors to this unique collection include bestselling teen and YA authors Garth Nix, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson and Margo Lanagan.

Zombies Vs Unicorns challenges you to pick a team, and stick to it. But be warned, these are stellar story-tellers, and they can be very convincing . . .

The event is free to attend, but please register your interest at the Information Counter or on 9262-7996.

Thursday, 31March, 2011
6PM
Kinokuniya Bookstore

Level 2 The Galeries Victoria
500 George Street
Sydney 2000 NSW
T: (02)9262-7996
F: (02)9283-1055

map

A Moment of Vainglory

You’re going to have to excuse this post (and the crappy photo) but I can’t help myself. A package just arrived from my wonderful Australian publisher, Allen & Unwin. It made me scream. In a good way.

This is what was in it:

That’s the official Children’s Book Council of Australia short-listed book sticker and it’s on Liar! And it’s not a joke or an accident!

*Faints*

Um, I may have mentioned that the CBCA awards have always been a huge deal for me. Ever since I was a tiny person. This really is a dream come true.

And on that cliched note1 I am off to attempt to write my next book. I may have to hide the stickered Liar. I keep fondling it . . . *cough*

Me. Writing. Now.

  1. Hey, they’re cliches for a reason. []

Guest Post: Margo Lanagan on Not Writing

Due to boring circumstances beyond my control, I will not be online much for awhile. Fortunately I’ve been able to line up a number of stellar guests to fill in for me. Most are writers, but I also thought it would be fun to get some publishing types to explain what it is they do, teach you some more about the industry, and answer your questions, as well as one or two bloggers.

Margo Lanagan is probably the award winningest Australian YA writer of all time. She deserves every single one. When I’m asked who I think the best living YA writer is, which is a really dreadful question given how many wonderful ones there are and how I know so many of them, I say Margo Lanagan. I am in awe of her writing and never tire of her voice. Even when she says wrong things. If you haven’t read any of Margo’s work you need to fix that.

– – –
Margo Lanagan has written for children, young adults and adults—she’s best known for her YA fantasy writing. She’s put out 3 collections of short stories (White Time, Black Juice and Red Spikes, with Yellowcake to come out next), and her novel Tender Morsels was a Printz Honor Book and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Margo lives in Sydney all year round, except when her glamorous writing life affords her the opportunity to travel. She has silver hair, brown eyes, a GSOH, and no pets.

Step AWAY from the page

Where did I hear, the other day, that some well-known, well-published writer had decided to give writing away? She’d done so, she said, because she was ‘sick of the sound of her own voice’. And I knew exactly what she was talking about, because there are times when I stop writing, temporarily, for the same reason. (Note: this is not the same thing as writer’s block.)

Tiring of your own voice can happen when, because you’re so darn regular and dutiful in your writing habits, your writing rate overtakes your generation-of-ideas rate. Lots of writers are very fierce about the notion of applying your bum to a chair on a regular basis, and they’re not entirely wrong. There is a time for regular bum-application—when you’re partway through a draft or a revision of a novel, you have to work steadily. You need to keep the entire novel and all its offshoots uploaded to your mind for a sustained period, if you want the story to have integrity at the end.

But there’s also a time for running around outside, or partying-and-then-sleeping-in, or having a glut of reading for several weeks, or just moping off to the day-job and back. There are times, and they’re more frequent than a lot of people like to admit, when it’s a bad idea to sit down, set your jaw and force yourself once again to your story. You learn to judge, after many years of trying to be so determined, of forcing yourself to this uncomfortable duty, when to press yourself into the story’s service, and when to just disengage, banish the thing to your subconscious mind, and leave its problems alone to work themselves out.

But this isn’t about problem-solving. This is about feeling as if you’ve got nothing new to say. You sit down with what you thought was a good idea, and you start out on it, or you’re halfway through, and you find yourself reaching for the same similes or images, the same kinds of phrasing, the same plot turns as you always do. And it’s not reassuring, it’s not interesting, it’s not good. Everything is stale and worn-feeling; nothing makes you sit up and care about what you’re doing. Curses, another wet young protagonist who thinks too much? Can’t you create any other POV character? Can you not stop using the words ‘dark’ or ‘great’ before every damned thing you describe? Does everything you write have to be so sad, or so ambiguous, so qualified by cynical asides? What is wrong with you?

You begin on something else, some idea you’ve been hoarding and really looking forward to. Perhaps if you treat yourself, give yourself free rein, you’ll find new energy; before you know it you’ll be galloping off over the hills, gasping in fresh air and tossing your mane with the sheer joy of creation. And you bang away at it for a while, but then . . . you find yourself just nibbling weeds in the corner of some chewed-flat field again, berating yourself, bored to sobs.

I did this once just after I finished one of the drafts of Tender Morsels. I went off to a 5-day workshop of intensive writing. It was a fine workshop, full of stimulating tasks, full of fellow workshoppers doing wonderful things. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, all over the shop. None of it was useful; none of it came to anything. Not a single story was born of 5 days of solid writing. At the end of it I flipped through the dutiful words, page after page of them, and I knew there was nothing there. Even now I don’t like to look in that notebook; the deadness, the effortfulness of the sentences, the absence of direction, is too dispiriting.

Sometimes you’re just drained; sometimes you’re just used up. Sometimes you’re not the kind of person who can get useful material from writing every day—I’m certainly not, not month in, month out. Sometimes you have to lie fallow for a while, remove yourself far enough from your own words, your own style, that you can come at them afresh later. Sometimes there’s a good story waiting, but your subconscious hasn’t worked out how you’ll approach it yet. Leave it alone; let it grow, unforced, un-angsted-over.

I wonder if she will give it up completely, that writer, whoever she was? Maybe she just needs to move beyond her current self a bit, get out of the shadow of what she’s already written, break out a different part of herself into her writing somehow—use a pseudonym? Try something funny? Have a crack at the lyric poem? Who knows? Maybe her public declaration is just her way of pushing herself far enough away from her past to feel free to move on?

Or maybe she really is done, for good. Maybe she’s said everything that seems to need saying. Maybe no stories are presenting themselves to her any more, and there’s plenty else in her life to fill her days and keep her sane. I can’t imagine what it would be like to run out of story, and it sounds like an awful thing to happen. But perhaps it isn’t; perhaps it feels quite natural; perhaps life is none the poorer for not including writing. Now, there’s a new thought.

What do YOU do when you get sick of the sound of yourself? Have you ever given up writing entirely—for a spell, or forever, or just one particular genre or form? Can you imagine retiring from writing (because I can’t, and I’d be fascinated to know what it’s like)—and if you can, what do you think would fill the gap?

Sydney Garden is Fine + What Herbs to Grow in NYC?

I have been very pleased that so many of you are concerned that our Sydney garden will suffer in our absence. Thanks for writing and let me know! Nice to know I am not alone in loving that garden. Oh, how I misses it . . .

To reassure you: the garden has an automatic irrigation system. On top of that my parents and my sister are keeping a close eye on it and handwatering any of the plants that seem in need. They’re also killing any caterpillars or other evil beasties they come across. Do I not have the best family ever?

Here is the last photo I took of my beloved garden:


Look at the gorgeous new leaves on the gum tree. So pretty. And the grevillea. Gorgeous!

I think I shall go to the famers’ market and buy some herbs that can survive on a window sill. So far the only one I’ve had success with has been marjoram. Anyone else successfully grown other herbs on the window sill in teeny tiny pots in a very polluted city? Please to advise me!

Guest Post: Jaclyn Moriarty on Blogging & Leaves Blowing Backwards

Due to boring circumstances beyond my control, I will not be online much for awhile. Fortunately I’ve been able to line up a number of stellar guests to fill in for me. Most are writers, but I also thought it would be fun to get some publishing types to explain what it is they do, teach you some more about the industry, and answer your questions, as well as one or two bloggers.

Jaclyn Moriarty is a wonderful Sydney writer who used to be a lawyer and is responsible for some of my favourite Aussie novels of the last few years, especially The Betrayal of Bindy McKenzie and Dreaming of Amelia. But, trust me, all her books are amazing. Be careful though they seem to have different titles in every territory they’re published in. I also love her blog. It’s as gorgeously written and thoughtful as this post. Though her notion that blogging ever day as anything to do with precision is kind of hilarious. It has a lot more to do with a different word beginning with p: procrastination.

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Jaclyn Moriarty is the author of Feeling Sorry for Celia and The Year of Secret Assignments. She grew up in Sydney, lived in the the US, the UK and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again. Her latest book, Dreaming of Amelia, will be published in North America as The Ghosts of Ashbury High in June.

Jaclyn says:

Every time I drive on Shellcove Road I have this thought: Blogging is leaves blowing backwards.

I don’t want to think that. I’ve got other things to think. But it’s there, every time, along with an image of a man in a coat, leaning forward, hunched into a storm, leaves blowing back into his face.

Then I turn the corner and a voice in the backseat says, ‘Where did Santa Claus go?’

He means the giant inflateable Santa Claus that was standing on the front porch of a house on Shellcove Road last December. They took him down in January.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Charlie asks, every time we pass that house.

‘The north pole,’ I explain.

Sometimes I add something educational: ‘They’ve got snow there, you know, in the north pole. And polar bears. And elves.’

Then I glance in the rear view mirror, to see if he’s impressed, and that’s when he says, with weary resignation, ‘I’m not in the mirror. I’m here. See? Look around. I’m sitting back here.’

I have a blog, but I don’t do it properly. Months go by, years even, without me writing. Then suddenly I write a lot. Other people—I’m thinking of Justine, for example—other people blog properly.

Also, when I do blog, I mostly just write about my kid. How cute he is, three years old, sitting in the backseat, telling me he’s not in the rear view mirror, and it must drive people mad. (There’s the issue of his privacy, too. I once wrote a thesis on the Privacy Rights of the Child.)

The other day I subscribed to the Herald, so I could start collecting other things to talk about on my blog. And I’m thinking I should get a dog. The dog can shred the Herald, and I can take photographs and post them—cute, apologetic dog, paper in pieces at its feet. I never wrote a thesis on the Privacy Rights of the Dog.

But I haven’t got the Herald or the dog yet, so there’s the kid. Last week, I took him for a haircut. Charlie in the big black cape, little face in the mirror, blonde curls. The hairdresser asked me what his starsign was.

‘Virgo,’ I said.

‘Huh.’ She raised her eyebrows, looking thoughtful.

‘What does that mean?’ I said. ‘Him being a Virgo?’

‘I haven’t got a clue,’ she said. ‘I was just making conversation.’

She snipped for a while and we were all quiet. Then she added, ‘He could be a Leo. I’m half-Leo.’

‘But he’s not a Leo,’ I said, and we were quiet again.

So, you see, there’s episodes like that. The little episodes.

And there’s the questions he asks. They make you think. Questions like:

‘What’s the fridge doing?’ and, ‘Mummy, what does this word mean? Are you ready? Here’s the word: why.’

Also, he collapses time and identity: ‘Last night, when I was a baby’, or: ‘Next week, when I grow up, and I’m you.’

I have child-safety gates around the house that I don’t use any more. I leave them open. But Charlie uses them. Wherever he goes in the house, he turns around and carefully shuts the gate behind him. Then he’s stuck. He shuts the gate, turns around, and is instantly outraged: ‘Let me out! The gate is closed! Somebody rescue me!’ In other ways, he seems very bright.

Partly, I write about Charlie because that’s my days—me and the kid. There’s also writing books of course, but what is there to say about that except, here I am, you know, writing? And I never take my book to get its haircut. But I think that the real reason I write about my child so much is this: before he was born, there was a single image in my mind of what it would be like to be a mother. In this image, it is night time, maybe a fireplace, and somebody small in pyjamas is coming down a flight of steps. I look up at the child in pyjamas on the staircase, then I look across at the child’s father. It crosses back and forth between us for a moment: the sweetness of the child.

As it turns out, I’m on my own with my child. And one thing I now know is this—that the small and remarkable fact of a child is something that has to be shared. That’s what the image was saying, I think. So my typing fingers are always spilling with words about my child that have not been shared.

People sometimes talk about the moment when you first get glasses, and you realise you’re supposed to see the leaves. All along you thought that trees were a green blur, but no, there they are, separate leaves. (A doctor on Grey’s Anatomy spoke very movingly about this experience in an episode last season.) Anyway, it happened to me when I was nineteen years old, and angry with professors for writing in such tiny, blurred print on the board up the front. They needed to get crisper chalk, I thought.

The optometrist who checked my eyes said, ‘Do you drive?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘You’re driving home today?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘You mind if I call my wife and tell her to stay off the roads?’

The next week, when I picked up my glasses, I saw the leaves on the trees, and the road signs painted neatly, and the professors using crisp white lines.

The reason I don’t blog every day is because I am slow. New Yorkers find me indescribably so. I’ve always been slow at figuring things out—school, university, driving, conversations, the fact that I am practically blind—it’s not quick, snapped fingers for me, it’s a slow awareness rising. I figure things out in the end. Afterwards, I look back and think: aaaah. And I remember what was said and who said what, and I think: ‘Now I get it.’ In the end, I am actually so confident that I’m judgmental.

But until I’ve figured things out, I’m lost. Life for me is leaves blowing backwards. If I try to blog about it, I’m just snatching from the air. I have to wait until I’m clear of the leaves. Then I can look back and see what pattern they’ve been making, and their colours, and the fineness of their outlines.

Other people are not lost at all. The precision of people who can blog all the time. It startles me, that clarity of leaves.

On New Zealand Not Being the Same as Australia (updated)

Right now I am at Auckland airport and it is nothing like Sydney airport. For starters there are All-Blacks jerseys everywhere and people are laughing at my accent and not Scott’s. It’s Bizarro-world!

Now a serious question for my USian readers. Do you guys have any theories as to why so many of the USian blog reviewers of Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead are under the impression that her extremely New Zealand book is set in Australia? Many NZ cities are named, such as Christchurch, where it is largely set. The South & North Islands are frequently mentioned as are many other very very very Kiwi things and people. No mention is made of Australia.

What gives? Are you taught at school that NZ and Australia are one and the same place? I am also wondering if this happens to all New Zealander writers when their books are published in the USA. Are USians the only ones who can’t tell the difference between our fine nations? Or do the French and Armenians and Chileans labour under the same delusion?

I am confused. Your explanations are most welcome.

Thanks!

Update: To re-iterate because apparently I was not clear: my question isn’t about ignorance per se, it’s very specifically about the way this one book is being read as Australian, even though it’s very clear that it’s set in New Zealand. Yes, including using the words “New Zealand” in the text. That’s not mere ignorance, but a really interesting and consistent misreading of the text. That’s what’s been puzzling me. Are there people who think that New Zealand is part of Australia?

I don’t think that USians are any more ignorant than any other peoples in the world. Nor do I expect everyone in the world to know all about Australia or New Zealand or any other country for that matter.

Our Garden How I Loves It

For those of you who’ve been asking1 here’s more photos of the garden.

First up here’s one of our lovely Eucalyptus ficifolia or flowering gum. They’re incredibly common here in Sydney. I swear almost every street in Surry Hills is lined with ficifolia. I miss them like crazy when I’m in NYC. Hence the need to have some on the deck:

Isn’t that adorable? Baby ficifolia reminds me of a puppy dog whose feet are way bigger than the rest of it. Only it’s the leaves that are outsized compared to the currently spindly trunk and branches. I do wonder how those branches manage to support the weight of the jumbo leaves. (Why, yes, that is a stake holding it upright.)

Did you notice the native violets (Viola hederacaea) underneath? Eventually those lovely violets will go cascading over the sides of the pots. It will be so gorgeous!

Here’s a close up on some NEW GROWTH. (Um, yes, I am kind of obsessed with the garden. I am aware that plants tend to grow.)

But still that’s actual new growth that happened while it was on our deck. Can you see why it fills my heart with such joy? I swear every morning when I go out to check that they’ve survived the night (*cough* *cough*) I find a new tiny spurt. *sigh of happiness*

Though I also tend to find that some evil beastie has been doing some munching! Grrr.

If I find the culprit I destroys it. How dare it eat our garden?! The outrage! Okay, yes, I know that it’s all part of the beautiful cycle of life and blah blah blah but they can go eat someone else’s baby ficifolia.

Here’s my favourite grass tree or Xanthorrhoea johnsonii. Tis a double-decker:

I wasn’t sure about having grass trees. They’re so amazing in the wild that I wasn’t convinced they’d look okay confined to a wee pot. But they look incredible. I spend hours on the deck just watching the wind move through their fronds. I think I am in love with our grass trees.

Lastly here is the new view from our bedroom:

That’s Syzygium luehmannii or as it’s more commonly known lilli pilli. There’s now a wall of it guarding our bedroom and giving us good dreams. Bless you, lilli pilli.

  1. And for me to gaze at longingly when I’m far from here. []