Category Archives: Sydney/Australia

Doobalackie

Apparently “doobalackie” is not a universal word for “thingamybob”—you know, that thing for which you do not have a name, that “doohickie”. I had no idea it was just us Australians who reach for doobalackies.

Is it just us? Any South Africans or New Zealanders or Jamaicans or English or Welsh or Irish or Scottish people care to weigh in? What do you call the thingie for which you do not at that moment have a name?

I learned the non-Americanness of doobalackie from the the livejournal devoted to Megan Whalen Turner’s fabulous Attolia trilogy which recently discussed my worship of said trilogy1 and wound up discussing a bunch of different Aussieisms.

The whole thing got me curious so I looked up “dooberlackie” in the Macquarie Dictionary and discovered it’s supposed to be spelled “dooverlackie” or “doovahlackie”. To be honest I’ve never seen it written down before, only heard it. That aside, spelling is not my strong point. Dunno if I’m gunna budge from dooberlackie, but. That’s how it sounds in me head. You should never mess with your own head.

It’s amazing how many words I thought were universal turn out to be Aussiesm or, at least, not much known in the US. Usians don’t do the whole brekkie, pressie, chrissie, journo, muso thing. They have no mates called Dazza or Shazza. They don’t squiz at stuff or chuck a right. They’re never lizard flat-out. They don’t know what bitumen is. And the way they pronounce “condom” is deeply strange.

How many of you English speakers have discovered that some of the words and expression you thought were global English turn out to be just from your part of the world? What words were they? Share!

In other news: it stopped snowing but it’s still too bloody cold. Also I am reading the second Buddha and I am in heaven. I heart Osamu Tezuka. Thanks, Anne!

Oh, crap, now it’s snowing again. Aaargh!!!

  1. Are there still any of you who haven’t read Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia trilogy (The Thief, Queen of Attolia and King of Attolia)? If not, why not? On your bikes! [↩]

The Tall One

John Hinde was one of my favourite film critics of all time. He was a wonderfully warm and funny man. He could give charmingly negative reviews to sucky films without a hint of rancour, reviews that made you want to see the crappy film just to see what he was talking about. I always wanted to meet him. When he died I cried.

Now he’s made me cry again by setting up an extraordinary literary prize in his wife’s memory. It’s the “Barbara Jefferis Award for the best Australian novel that empowers the status of females or depicts them in a positive light.” The award goes to an Australian writer, but isn’t restricted by setting or genre, only by the requirement that they postively depict women. (Were Patrick White still alive NO WAY would he win one of these babies.1) So if you’re an Aussie and you write a book set in Uzbekistan about a zombie unicorn apocalypse you’re still in with a shot. That’s in keeping with both the wide variety of films John Hinde loved and with the tremendous range of Barbara Jefferis’ novels.

Barbara Jefferis was brilliant. I read and adored her novel The Tall One when I was eleven or twelve. The book had a huge impact on me.

See, when I was young I was very tall. Much taller than anyone else my age. When I stopped growing at twelve I was 172.5cm (5ft8in). I got teased about it a lot. My aged Old World relatives offered to pay for operations to stop me growing so I’d still have a chance of getting a husband. No, I’m not making that up. My parents were laughing too hard to be horrified. “What are they going to do cut off your knees?”

Despite everything my parents said about the fabulousness of being tall and of being a girl, I was taking in the messages from my insane relatives and the kids at school. I slumped my shoulders and desperately wished to be a boy. Reading The Tall One helped clean that crap out of my mind. It’s about this 182cm (6ft) girl in medieval times in, I think, England (it’s a while since I read it so I’m hazy on the exact setting). Here was someone like me, or, at least, how I’d like to be: Tall and strong, standing up to people putting her down, owning her power, standing straight. And wry and funny too.

I was smitten and started being proud of my height. (After which I promptly stopped growing and ceased to be tall. Whatcha going to do?)

This award is a wonderful legacy from two exceptional and fascinating Australians, John Hinde and Barbara Jefferis. I hope it honours a series of wonderful novels and, even more, I hope it will do something towards bringing Jefferis’ work back into print. I’d love to see The Tall One readily available again.

  1. I am suppressing the urge to list all the prominent living Australian novelists who are even less chance than Mr White. I sit on my fingers. I hold my breath. Must. Not. Be. Bad. [↩]

Fourth Anniversary

Today is the fourth anniversary of my becoming a full-time freelance writer. That’s right, on 1 April 2003 I stopped getting a regular salary and set about trying to earn dosh with the words I write. What more appropriate day than April Fool’s day?

It was Scott who convinced me to do it.

For the previous eighteen months my regular salary as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Sydney had been the bulk of our income, but Scott’s earnings as a freelancer were on the rise. It would be more than enough, he asserted, to support both of us while I found my legs as a writer. There were several academic jobs I could have applied for, but Scott convinced me not to. It wasn’t hard, while I preferred being an academic to any other job I’d had, I liked writing way more. “It’s the only thing you’ve ever wanted to do,” he told me over and over again. “Now’s the time to do it.”

I thought he was mad.

I was right.

The next three years and a half years were filled with financial anxiety: loans were taken out, credit cards were juggled, and tonnes of panic was panicked. Two freelancers living together is not for the faint of heart. It’s not even a good idea for nerves of steel, lion-hearted types.

I received my first freelance money—the advance on signing for the Magic or Madness trilogy—in December of 2003, which was eight months after I’d gone freelance. It was my first professional sale. The offer came in September so by publishing standards I was paid very quickly. But it was an awfully long time to be bringing in no money. In the meantime Scott signed up for two separate three-book deals (the Uglies trilogy and the three Razorbill books—So Yesterday, Peeps, and The Last Days) to keep us from going under. Problem was those books were on top of the Midnighters trilogy he’d already sold.

Suddenly he was writing three books a year and experiencing the joys of shingles. All because I’d gone freelance prematurely.

Do I regret it? (The real question is: Does Scott regret it?)

No. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. In my first four years of freelancing I’ve written four books, edited another one, and published four: the Magic or Madness trilogy and Daughters of Earth. I sold my first novel only five months after going freelance. Not bad, eh?

Of course, I’d been trying to sell a novel since 1999, so it was four (almost five) years from first finished novel to first sold novel. And I’d been trying to sell short stories for much, much, much, much longer than that (way back into the eighties). I still haven’t had a pro sale for any of my short stories.1 And since I’ve pretty much stopped writing them, or sending them out, that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Although the trilogy hasn’t earned out (bloody joint accounting!) it’s close and with the foreign sales of the trilogy (thank you, Whitney Lee) I’m now earning enough to support myself.2

But if someone who’d never sold a novel asked me whether they should go freelance I would tell them no.

No matter how talented or promising you are, going freelance without a single professional sale is madness. Perhaps you have a partner or a parent or a patron who’s willing to support you—it’s still dangerous and scary to try to make a living at something you’ve not proved yourself at. And there’s no guarantee that your partner or parent or patron will continue to support you. They might one day get jack of the whole thing. You might never make a single sale. Lots of extraordinarily talented people have failed to make a living as writers.

I have no idea what the future will bring. I’ve seen too many writers with stalled careers after even the most brilliant of starts to be sanguine about my own. The young adult market is thriving right now and advances seem to be going up all the time, but who knows how long that will last?

Yet despite the financial insecurity, the never knowing if my next book will sell or not, and the destruction of Scott’s health, these have been the best four years of my life. All the books I’ve published are the very best that I could make them at the time. There’s no book out there with my name on it that I’m ashamed of.

Turns out that I love being a writer. It’s what I’ve always wanted, and now I have it, it’s better than I imagined. Fingers crossed that it lasts.

Happy anniversary to me! And thank you, Scott, for everything.

NOTE: I apologise for the complete absence of April First Foolery. Fortunately others in the blogosphere are more than making up for my seriousness.

  1. When I sold to Strange Horizons in 2001 it wasn’t classified as a pro market. [↩]
  2. Or to support the alternative me what doesn’t have expensive tastes and lives in Dubbo. [↩]

Norton nominee interviews

John Joseph Adams doesn’t quite have the full set (that would be Scott who’s not done his bit—he’s too busy writing Extras) but here are his interviews with the other Norton nominees:

I finally took a break from inhaling manga to inhale Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as we knew it. Wow. I’ll admit I’m fond of post-apocalypse books to start with, but this is a decidely superior example. I read it in one sitting. Could not put it down. Go forth and read! My only complaint: It’d be nice to read one post-apocylpse where New York City and Sydney were not wiped off the face of the earth. Is that too much to ask?

If I were a SFWA member my head would be exploding trying to figure out which book to vote for. They’re all so good (take it as read that I’m not talking about Magic or Madness). Devilish and Peeps are so funny, Touching Darkness so scary and Life as we knew it made me cry.

But I’m still leaning towards Megan Whalen Turner’s King of Attolia. That trilogy is breath-takingly fabulous. I’ve read the first two books, The Thief and Queen of Attolia, many times and King twice. They get better with every read. I hug them to my chest. I honestly can’t think of a better fantasy trilogy. I really hope it wins.

I am a foreignor

This morning at brunch we were subjected to dread awful music played too loudly.1 A whole CD’s worth.

“What is this crap?” I asked. “I’ve never heard it before. I hope never to hear it again.”

Scott looked at me like I was deranged. “You’ve never heard this before?”

I affirmed that I had not and was grateful that was the case. He continued to doubt me, asserting that the band had been huge in the eighties, and unless I grew up under a rock I could not have avoided hearing them.

“What band is it?” I asked. Scott looked blank and waved his hands around. “You know, one of those one-word bands from the eighties. Like Kansas or Toto or Berlin.”

We asked one of the waitrons who told us it was Foreigner Journey. She also expressed amazement that i did not know the band.

“She’s Australian,” Scott pointed out.

“So you like Abba then,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

I admitted as how that was true. “But people who don’t like Abba don’t like sunshine or mangosteens or freedom.”

“I hate Abba,” she said.

“You hate Swedes then,” I replied. “Swedish people are all about Abba and sunshine and mangosteens and freedom.”

“Oh no, I love Swedes! My girlfriend is Swedish,” she said clearing away our plates. “She plays Abba all the time. Ack!”

“You’ve really never heard Journey or Foreigner or Toto or Kansas before?” Scott asked.

I shook my head.

“What a blessed life you Australians lead.”

So, my Aussie readers, is my lack of knowledge of those one-word American bands from the eighties an aberration? Am I the only Aussie who doesn’t know them?

I’ve never listened to commercial radio. Maybe while I was listening to Triple J and 2SER and the other ABC radio stations, those bands were on high rotation on 2SM or 2MMM or somewhere like that. But I did watch Countdown and don’t remember seeing those bands there either. And I just flipped around these charts and couldn’t see them listed anywhere. But I was pretty cursory about it.

Do you Aussies know these bands? Were they as popular back home as they were here in the US of A? Seriously, everyone in the restaurants was playing air guitar and mouthing the lyrics. It was terrifying!

Help me out!

  1. How loudly? It was audible. That was too loud. [↩]

National character

Shashi Tharoor has written a wry op ed piece for the New York Times on the World Cup and how Americans are oblivious to what is preoccupying a billion plus folks at the moment. It ends thus:

In any event, nothing about cricket seems suited to the American national character: its rich complexity, the infinite possibilities that could occur with each delivery of the ball, the dozen different ways of getting out, are all patterned for a society of endless forms and varieties, not of a homogenized McWorld. They are rather like Indian classical music, in which the basic laws are laid down but the performer then improvises gloriously, unshackled by anything so mundane as a written score.

Cricket is better suited to a country like India, where a majority of the population still consults astrologers and believes in the capricious influence of the planets — so they can well appreciate a sport in which, even more than in baseball, an ill-timed cloudburst, a badly prepared pitch, a lost toss of the coin at the start of a match or the sun in the eyes of a fielder can transform the outcome of a game. Even the possibility that five tense, hotly contested, occasionally meandering days of cricketing could still end in a draw seems derived from ancient Indian philosophy, which accepts profoundly that in life the journey is as important as the destination. Not exactly the American Dream.

Ha ha! That makes me giggle. Though to be honest I’m not convinced. Cricket’s popularity in India and elsewhere is an historical accident. If in the early days of cricket in America they’d had some home-grown cricketing heroes demolishing visiting English players and some ambitious entrepreneurs touring the game around the country and bringing in the dosh I reckon things woulda turned out differently.

Cricket’s also bloody popular back home. I’m pretty sure the majority of Australians don’t consult astrologers or believe in the capricious influence of planets (of pollies? yes, but planets? not so much). Or certainly we don’t do it any more than Americans do.

I’m always suspicious of sketches of “national character”. I’m not saying there aren’t difference between nations. I’m often amazed by the extraordinary confidence of the middle and upper classes in the US, especially the white folk. So many of them seem to have this sense of the inevitability of their own success (whether it’s happened yet or not). I’ve never met so many people who are just waiting for their first million, their first broadway show, big movie role, bestselling novel. No question in their mind that it will happen. Even if they’ve never acted or ever written anything longer than a limerick.

But I’ve also met enough Americans who are not like that, and Australians who are, to be wary of typing a whole people. People are complicated and large groups of them even more so and you can never discount regional and class and racial and gender differences.

I also wonder how much of that disturbing confidence is real and how much of it is people saying what they think they’re supposed to be saying.

Back home you’re emphatically not supposed to say stuff like that. If you do you’re a wanker who writes tickets on yourself. Being up yourself is one of the worst things anyone can say about you.

Here that attitude doesn’t seem nearly so wide spread. For instance American English has no home-grown synonyms (that I’ve heard) for “writing tickets” “being stuck up”, “getting above yourself”, “being up yourself”, or “being a wanker”. Mostly because they almost never accuse anyone of that kind of behaviour. Nor do they have the terms “tall poppies” or “cultural cringe”.

So while it might be true that on the whole Americans=confident and Australians=not confident. It could also be that we just know what we are and aren’t allowed to say out loud. If an Aussie says “I’m a genius!” odds are they’re being sarcastic. If a Usian says it not so much. But does the Aussie secretly think they are a genius while the Usian secretly fears they are not?

There are, of course, lots of exceptions to all of this. And things are changing in both countries. I even know Americans who adore cricket.

And, um, did I mention that I have a new book out, Magic’s Child? And, er, it’s not too foul. Really. Well, um, other people think it’s okay. Sorry. Don’t mind me. I’ll get out of your way now . . .

The sound of home

The whole accent thing has made me realise that I do listen out for accents—ones from home. Spending a lot of time o.s. has changed my relationship to Aussie accents. I’ve gone from thinking that they’re naff and boring to longing for them.

When I’m out and about and I hear an Aussie sometimes without even thinking about it I start to follow them. My heart beats faster, I get excited, my brain starts staccato bouncing the word home! home! home! home!

It gets me some very strange looks.

I never used to be that way. When I first travelled the last people in the world I wanted to run into were Aussies. Please! I wanted to meet foreignors. All those people out there who were from someplace different than me. I’m still a bit that way. For instance, I don’t know a single Aussie in NYC. After all, I spend half the year at home . . .

So, um, why do I get so excited every time I hear one of my people?

Dunno.

It’s even changed the music I listen to. Like right now I have Missy Higgins on high rotation. But I’m not sure I would love her music the way I do if she didn’t sing with such a distinctively Aussie accent, turning words like “know” and “go” into dipthongs.1 Yum!

In other news, did I mention that the official publication date of Magic’s Child in the US of A is this Friday?

  1. Actually I think they’re more like tripthongs: Knooohoooow. Stretch those vowels, people! Break them in half! [↩]

Accents

Enough of you have been asking me what accents I think are sexy that I figured I’d best respond. My answer:

None.

There is no accent in the world that’s intrinsically sexy.

When I was little I thought Southern USian accents were sexy. Then I met more people from down there, travelled to Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana and heard many decidely unsexy voiced Southerners. Turned out I just thought Elvis’ voice is sexy. Which it is. But his accent is neither here nor there. He’d’ve had a sexy voice no matter where he lived.

Same for Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Charlotte Rampling, John Clarke,1 Lauren Bacall and Grace Jones. It ain’t their accents—it’s their voices.

Being into accents is being into the other, having a yen for someone cause they’re not from round here. Nobody ever told me I had a sexy accent until I was many thousands of ks from home.

To sum up: voices sexy not accents.

And, um, Magic’s Child pubs on Friday.

  1. And a few more because I love Messers Clarke & Dawe so much. [↩]

A real life Reason Cansino

Reason Cansino, the protag of my Magic or Madness trilogy, is somewhat of a mathematical prodigy, but she pales in comparison to Terence Tao:

By age two, he had learned to read. At 9, he attended college math classes. At 20, he finished his Ph.D.

Now 31, he has grown from prodigy to one of the world’s top mathematicians.

. . .

“I always liked numbers,” he said.

A 2-year-old Terry Tao used toy blocks to show older children how to count. He was aquick with language and used the blocks to spell words like “dog” and “cat.”

. . .

At age 5, he was enrolled in a public school, and his parents, adminstrators and teachers set up an individualized program for him. He proceeded through each subject at his own pace, quickly accelerating through several grades in maths and science while remaining closer to his age group in other subjects. In English classes, for instance, he became flustered when he had to write essays.

“I never really got the hang of that,” he said. “These very vague, undefined questions. i always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do.”

Assigned to write a story about what was going on at home, Terry went from room to room and made detailed lists of the contents.

I love that last image of the boy writing lists, rather than a story. Though, of course, depending on how he ordered them, they could well wind up being one. Harper’s Index is jampacked with stories. Many of them deeply disturbing.

I can’t imagine Reason making lists in quite that way (though in the early chapters of Magic or Madness she is pretty methodical as she notes the contents of the rooms of her grandmother’s house) but I can totally see her using blocks to teach other kids to count. And if she were to survive the last book of the trilogy1 I see her going on to be a mathematician. Maybe she’d be working on primes just like Mr Tao. They do sing to her.

The Times article on Tao is a lovely portrait of someone who hasn’t been wrecked by being a prodigy. Nice to have a counter to all those stories of prodigies who crash and burn.

  1. Do not ask for I will not tell you. [↩]

Oh happy day!

I just found out that Penguin Australia has moved forward the publication of Magic’s Child. Instead of September, it’s going to be out in April. That’s right, only two months away instead of seven. Brilliant, eh?

It’s especially great since I go home in early May. This will be the first time I’ve been in Australia when one of my books just came out. Yay!

And they’ll be keeping the US cover:

How gorgeous is that? Very. It’s even more beautimous in three dimensions. I know this because Razorbill (my US publisher) just couriered across a copy of it. I’ve held Magic’s Child in my hands and caressed it. The colours are even richer, and the title has sweet, sweeet embossing. Woo hoo!

So there you have it. The US edition in hardcover will be out in March and the Australian in paperback in April. Followed by all three books in Thailand in October. Then all three come out in Germany in 2008 with two month gaps between each one.1 World domination is nearly mine!

  1. As soon as I have release dates on the other editions I’ll let you know. [↩]

Calling all Melbournites

A friend from the frozen north, Chris McLaren, is choofing off to Melbourne soon and will have a whole day to spare for sightseeing. What should he see? And will he be able to see anything given the bushfires?

I recommended the Croft Institute because it has test tubes in it and they make me happy.

He would welcome any advice, recommendations and warnings about the fair city of Melbourne from actual Melbournites.

RW8: Killing the dogs

Ariel

would like to hear more about your early childhood experiences in the Australian bush.

Katerate seconded this request.

My parents are anthropologists. And so a chunk of my childhood was spent on aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory of Australia.

It’s the part of my childhood I remember most vividly and it gave Reason some of her background. The opening of Magic Lessons is a direct rip of my own memories:

Sarafina held up the cards with one hand, waving flies away and patting one of the dogs with the other. They were good dogs and knew enough not to try stealing any of the women’s meat. At least not while the women were looking. Besides, they were allowed to snatch up the discarded guts.

There were dogs everywhere. Running in packs. We kids would play with them and sometimes it felt like they were keeping an eye on us. You know, like lots of Lassies saving lots of Jimmys from falling down wells. Except without actual wells.

Someone decided there were too many dogs. I don’t know who. Someone from the government, maybe. Like the health department or something. Anyway they decided the dogs had to be culled. They rounded most of the dogs up and shot them.

I didn’t see any of it. I hid in the caravan. But I heard the shots and the yelps. I’m sure I must’ve been upset, but I don’t remember that. This is not a traumatic memory.

What I remember is my sister going out and looking at the dead dogs. Not in a morbid way. She must’ve been like three or something. She was just curious. I remember feeling really ashamed that I was too scared to look at them. My three-year-old sister was braver than me.

The dogs were buried and soon the survivors were running around like nothing had happened. And so, I guess, were we.

Not everything bad that happens in your childhood is a trauma, sometimes it’s just part of the soup you’re floating in.

RW6: Sydney and New York

Orangedragonfly wants to know

When you are in sydney, what do you miss most about new york?

and (of course) when you are in new york, what do you miss most about sydney?

My answer is much the same for both questions: above everything else I miss my family and my friends. My parents live in Sydney so when I’m there I don’t miss them, but I do miss my sister who lives in Los Angeles. So I miss her and my parents when I’m in New York.

I mentioned in an earlier post that no matter where I am I’m always missing someone. That’s pretty much a definition of what it is to be human. Even the most stay-at-home types have friends and family who have moved away. And people we love die. We’re always missing them as well.

I’ve yet to get truly homesick for New York City, the way I do for Sydney. When I’m not in the big apple it’s pretty much out of sight, out of mind (except my friends, natch!). But sometimes my homesickness for Sydney is a physical ache. I long for the smell of it. Truly, Sydney is one of the best smelling cities I’ve ever known. I miss the light and the big skies. I miss the easiness of it. It’s where I’ve spent the majority of my life. I know how Sydney works; I’m not sure I’ll ever really know NYC so intimately.

Which is not to say that NYC isn’t wonderful. It is in many many ways. Almost four years back I wrote a Sydney/New York City comparison. Most of it is still holds true. There are many, many things that NYC does a lot better than Sydney. But Sydney is my heart, NYC isn’t.

RW5: aaargh, finishing stuff, and Jones and Mahy

Request Week is now over and the comments are closed, but I’ll continue working through the rest of the requests. Cause I’m honorable that way.

Marrije wants to know about

the pluses and minuses of living in several places (i.e. nyc and sydney) and how you do that logistically.

I hope you understand, Marrije, that a question like that is a license for me to whinge. You have been warned.

My answer in short: Aaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhh!!!!!!!

We’ve been saying for a while that we live half the year in Sydney and half in NYC. But it’s not true. It never has been.

We haven’t lived anywhere for six months straight since we lived in Sydney for almost two years way back in the olden days. The last time we were three months anywhere was San Miguel de Allende. In 2006 I spent time in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, San Francisco, Bologna, Madison, New York City, Kyoto, LA, Seattle, Lexington, London and Bangkok.

I have no idea how we do it logistically. Every time I think about it my head explodes. I long to live somewhere for a year without packing and unpacking my bags at least once a month. (I’d prefer that somewhere to be Sydney.)

Pluses: Lots of different friends in lots of different places. Seriously, the list of cities I could happily live in just grows and grows. Seeing more of the world is wonderful. (The whole airplane/airport thing I could live without.) There are still so many more cities I’d love to see: I’ve never been to Istanbul or Paris or Rio de Janeiro or Dublin or Capetown or Amsterdam or Tokyo or Moscow or Kinshasa.

Minuses: Too much jetlag and travel (seriously I think we lose at least two months every year to travel and dealing with jetlag. Not good.), getting sick A LOT, being desperately homesick for at least one month of the year (I know, I’m a big baby), never knowing where my favourite coat is, the book(s) I need are always in the other city, doing my taxes is a nightmare, feeling like I’m missing all the important moments in my family and friends’ lives, missing my family and friends (doesn’t matter where I am, I’m always missing someone), whingeing about it all way too much.

A lurker asks:

what if (hypothetically of course) one is an adolescent writer, who writes sporadically – poems, first pages, occasionally a whole short story! – but never finishes? should i (or one . . . or . . . never mind) push myself to finish a novel if i hope to be a writer someday, even if the process starts to feel stressful and rushed? and any tips to how to reach the end? or should i take my time and enjoy the ride? i’ve never been able to stick with a story more than a couple months MAX on my own. i’ve tried several times to write a nano-novel or similar timed bits but always give it up as more hopeless than usual. i love starting to write novels—just never finish them. thoughts?

Scott has written about this one in detail. Read him! There’s gold in that there advice.

Like he said the only way to learn how to finish a story is to, you know, finish a story. Circular but true. Personally, I don’t reckon writing’s much fun until I have a complete draft to mess around with. You’re denying yourself the best part!

That said I didn’t feel that way when I was a beginning writer. I wrote more fragments than finished stories and novels, and I almost never wrote more than one draft. Finishing and redrafting were skills I learned (to love) later.

My biggest advice to beginning writers is to have fun, enjoy yourself! I have more to say on the subject of beginning writers getting overly obsessed with the publishing rather than the writing part here. Which is not what a lurker was asking about, but is a tiny bit a propos.

Orangedragonfly asks:

if you could sit down and have lunch with any person who ever lived, who would you choose and why? (this is a standard question for me. i ask everyone. i love to hear the responses.)

Diana Wynne Jones and Margaret Mahy. Because they are the two geniuses of my field. I would love to sit down and talk writing with them. Or anything else really. They are goddesses.

Drought

Most of Australia is in drought right now. Has been for years. Some say this is a thousand-year drought that Australia may never come out of. That this continent will get hotter and drier until agriculture becomes impossible. Until recently a visitor to Sydney would never have never known it.

But that’s changing. Since we go back here in December, I’ve noticed how much more seriously everyone in Sydney is taking it. The conversation often turns to the level of water in the dams that supply Sydney (at the moment they’re at about 35%—not good), when the water restrictions are going to be raised to level 4, and what we can do to be gooder than we are about saving water.

The last has led to all sorts of potlatching conversations. One of us will boast of having reduced shower time to less than two minutes by only having the water on for the intial wetting and then for rinsing. Someone else will top that by having a bucket in the shower to collect grey water for the garden.

I worry about this last one. I am a clumsy person and I suspect me and the bucket would come a cropper. Astonishingly, my proposal that we all shower just once a week was not met with enthusiasm. Where is everyone’s backbone? Do they not want our country to survive the drought?

Scott’s father grew up on a farm in Texas. He starts to get twitchy when it hasn’t rained for a couple of days. Nothing makes him happier than the sound of rain. This despite not having worked on a farm for half a century.

The longer the drought goes on the more city people like myself feel the same way. When it doesn’t rain for weeks and weeks and weeks on end, it becomes more and more unnerving. In some parts of the country there are small kids who have never seen rain. Can you imagine that?

I have not heard a single person whinge about the water restrictions. The most common response is to wonder why they weren’t brought in sooner and why they aren’t stricter. People want to do their bit. Like during World War 2 when people (for the most part) cheerfully made all sorts of personal sacrifices—wedding dresses given away to be made into parachutes. If there’s something—anything—we can do to make sure this country, this world, has a future then we’ll do it.

Happiness is . . .

This post is dedicated to
my beloved father, John Bern,
because the novel I dedicated to him
has not found a publisher yet
and because
I think it will make him gag

Happiness is . . .

  • Finishing the first draft of a novel that was tonnes of fun to write, which means the rewrites are going to be even more fun.

  • Celebrating said finish by going out to see fabulous theatre (Keating at the Belvoir) with my parents, sister and husband.

  • Continuing the celebration with a wonderful meal at Tabou (best mussels ever!), drinking loads of champagne, and filling Scott in on all the stuff he missed in Keating: Gareth Evans, Eddie Mabo, Native Title and why Alexander Downer was in drag with fishnet stockings.

  • Coming home to discover that Bertelsmann Verlag has bought the German rights to Magic’s Child and will be publishing the whole trilogy in 2008 with two month gaps between each title. No annnoying waiting for the German readers.

  • Trying to decide whether to have a bit of a holiday in Ireland or Spain. Such a dilemma!

What all is making you lot happy? We happy peoples love company!

Goodbye Warne, McGrath and Langer

The last day of this year’s Ashes series didn’t even amount to two hours of play, but it sure did sum up the series. Australia bowled well; England crumbled. Didn’t run except when Andrew Symonds was holding the ball ready to run them out. Then Langer and Hayden got the handful of runs necessary for the 5-0 sweep. It took five overs longer than I thought it would on account of Harmison finally decided to bowl some scorchers. But then it was done.

And for years I will have fun telling folks that I was there to see Langer, McGrath and Warne say goodbye to cricket. The way I’ve already been able to skite about being there to watch Steve Waugh get his in-your-eyes-selectors century off the last ball of the third day back in 2003.

Five-nil. Only the second time in the history of the more than century-old contest. Oops.

I don’t see England recovering any time soon. But it would be nice if they did. I’ve said it many times before but we need at least five strong test sides: Australia, England, India, South Africa, and the West Indies. And I would love for it to be eight with New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. But right now not one of them is even close to being able to beat Australia.

Maybe the next ten years will show improvements all over. That would be lovely. I’m hopeful that enough Australian talent has been poached to help build up sides all over the world. Yep, that’s right cricket is now our Imperial export. In your eye, Douglas Jardine.

Maybe the next Warne will be from Kenya or Zimbabwe and they’ll have support from the rest of the team and from their bureaucrats and they’ll reshape the face of cricket, not just in their country, but throughout the world. Why not, eh?

(Just as long as Australia stays strong!)

Stygian gloom

Today I will share with you one of the many reasons I love cricket. This is more for me than for you, because I am currently very cranky with cricket—specifically with the Australian and English cricket teams—and I need to remind myself of the love.

Australia because they got out way too early: Warne? Gilchrist? I’m looking at you! Where were your centuries?

And England because they crumbled and lost five wickets. Yet a-bloody-gain.

I would like to remind you both that I have tickets for tomorrow’s play and right now I’m not seeing it go past lunch. A pox on both your houses.

I am also pretty dirty on the weather. What? You can rain all night? But barely disturb the cricket? Curse you!

But here’s my latest reason for loving cricket:

Stygian gloom has its own entry in Leigh & Woodhouse’s Cricket Glossary:

Stygian gloom: “The middle half of this game, and the end, was played out in gloom so Stygian Dickie Bird would have been reaching for the smelling-salts and a handy flashlight.” A topos for reporting on bad light at Headingley and in Hades.

Last Day of 2006

It’s been another good year for me professionally and I will now skite about it: My second and third books, Magic Lessons and Daughters of Earth, were both published to some very nice reviews and reader responses. The whole Magic or Madness trilogy sold to Editora Record in Brazil, Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons sold to Mondadori in Italy, while Magic Lessons and Magic’s Chld sold to Amarin in Thailand. And then there was the recent sale of the trilogy to the Science Fiction Book Club for a 3-in-1. Not to mention Magic Lessons being on the shortlist for the Aurealis.

It was a great year for Scott who hit the New York Times bestseller list not once, not twice, but three times! Woo hoo! Twice for Specials and once for Pretties. Also my friends Yvette Christianse’s (Unconfessed), Kate Crawford (Adult Themes), Ellen Kushner (Privilege of the Sword), Julie Phillips (James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon) and Delia Sherman (Changeling) all published wonderful books that were well-received. If you haven’t already read them—do so immediately!

Other dear friends also published fabby books, but these are the ones that I saw through gestation. In the same way I’m very excited to see how Holly Black’s Ironside and Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones fare next year. Do yourself a favour and get hold of copies as soon as you can!

Next year I have three English-language publications on the horizon:

  • Magic Lessons will appear in paperback in February.
  • The final book of the trilogy, Magic’s Child, will be out in hardcover in March.
  • Also in March—the SFBC’s 3-in-1 edition of the trilogy.

As you can imagine I’m dead excited to find out what my readers think of the complete trilogy. Do not hold back! (Unless what you have to say might harm a writer’s delicate sensibilities. Always remember: praise is good!)

This year has also been a great one for me blog. Readers way more than doubled this year, which is just lovely. I’m particularly excited to have picked up so many more readers here in Australia. Especially the ones I don’t know and am not related to. (Not that there’s anything wrong with my friends and relatives, mind. Well, not that much wrong.) Thank you so much everyone for hanging out and commenting. Your comments are more than half the fun. Without you there wouldn’t be much point. Much appreciated.

Last year on this day I set out my goals for 2006:

I’m aiming to write two books (both of which I’ve already started) in 2006 and sell one (two would be nice, but I don’t want to jinx myself). I also plan to spend the majority of the year in Sydney, cause now that I’m home I just want to stay. And I really, really, really want to get tickets for the Sydney Ashes test. Ideally for every day of play.

How did that work out?

I finished one book: Magic’s Child, but it wasn’t one of the books I was talking about above. So I didn’t finish either of the books I aimed to. Though I got awfully close to finishing the first draft of the great Australian feminist monkey knife-fighting mangosteen cricket fairy young adult novel. (So close I can smell it! Oh the frustration!)

This year I have the same goal: to finish two novels. My odds are much better given that I’m mere days away from finishing the fairy book . . . And I’ve made good starts on six other novels. Dunno which one I’ll write next. What fun not to know!

I didn’t sell any books on account of not finishing any to give to my agent for said selling. I won’t be declaring my intent on sales again because it’s pointless. I have some control over how many books I write; but none over how many I sell.

The big change this year was my decision not to sell any books until I’ve finished them. (Another explanations for no sales this year.) It’s also why I’m finishing this year without any dread deadlines over me. Much less stressful!

I spent only five months in Sydney and even though that’s more time than I spent anywhere else I still did not see nearly as much of my family and friends here as I’d like. Sigh.

There was way too much travelling this year. And while I loved all the places I visited—Bologna and Kyoto especially—I haven’t stayed anywhere for more than three months since 2003. I’m sick of it. I’d love to travel less, but already 07 is shaping up to be very travelly. Come June though and I believe we’ll be applying the breaks. Aside from it being exhausting and conducive to the contracting of viruses, travelling that much in aeroplanes and staying in hotels is terrible for the environment and no amount of offsets makes up for that.

I did get tickets to the Sydney test. Fourth day. Can’t wait. And we Aussies reclaimed the ashes what should always be ours. Bliss. Now I have to figure out how to get coverage of the world cup while we’re in the US of A. We may even cough up for satellite coverage. Would be fabulous to get over to the West Indies, but see above on wanting to travel less.

To sum up: Life is good. I hope yours is too.

I have a very good feeling about 2007, not just for me, but for the wider world.

Happy new year!

4-0 and England weeps

What is wrong with England?

  • shite fielding: Look at Australia in the field and then look at England. The Poms with a few exceptions (Collingwood, Panesar, Pietersen) have no intensity. They don’t run down every single ball, turning fours into threes, twos into ones, and saving singles. They look lethargic and bored.

  • shite captaincy: Flintoff looks lost. He’s not leading by example given his poor batting displays and erratic bowling and he’s not leading on the paddock. His field placings have been all over the place. He elects to bat when the wicket is iffy. He doesn’t seem to know whether he’s playing test cricket or Sunday arvo mah jong. And way to not show any confidence in your new bowlers Panesar and Mahmoud. Give ’em three overs here, then pull ’em off, and never let ’em get their rhythm going.

  • shite field placings: What’s with the defensiveness? What’s with giving Monty fields that allow the batsmen to score at will? What’s with no consistent plan of attack?

  • shite batting: You’ve got eleven blokes with bats. Surely you can get two or three of them not to throw their wickets away? And do none of you know how to shepherd the tail?

  • shite selections: Monty Panesar a very promising spin bowler. Chris Read is a million times the keeper that Geraint Jones is and Sajid Mahmoud’s got promise and all. Why were they kept out of the side by way less promising and performing players?

  • shite protection of your top secret bowling plans: I mean, honestly! Did you really have to make the farce farcier?

Your boat is listing, England, fix it. World cricket needs you. And I need you to get your shit together so there’ll be a fourth day in Sydney. I’ve got tickets! C’mon, people!

Meanwhile Australia is doing just fine. Every single player has more than proved their worth during this series. Andrew Symonds has finally shown what he can do at test level, Brett Lee has got his groove back, Stuart Clark is fabulous and Warne has proven once again what a gobsmackingly incredible cricketer he is. Oh, how I will miss him!

Did anyone else get a tad teary as he walked off the MCG with McGrath?

Summer in Australia

I just came across a lovely piece by Mark Lawrence about the outsiderness of living through Australian summers while knowing very little about cricket:

What [being a migrant] means is that I have very little understanding of the finer points of cricket, and don’t play it at all well. I can’t tell the difference between ‘long leg’ and ‘short leg’, and I have absolutely no idea where ‘mid-on’ is. After over a decade living in Australia, I do have an idea of how the game is played, but only a middling understanding of how it is scored or how a test proceeds. Strategy? Not a scratch. So much so that during the recent Ashes test in Adelaide, I had trouble keeping up with what was going on, while my colleagues could assess exactly how the day’s play had progressed and what the scores meant in an instant. I was left going, ‘What happened? What happened?’.

Of course, as he points out, there are lots of Australians who don’t give a damn about cricket, actively hate it even. Sadly many of them are friends of mine. At dinner last night as I was trying to talk with another cricket-loving friend about Shane Warne’s retirement, the rest of the table stuck their fingers in their ears and starting humming. It is to sigh.

But, yes, during an Australian summer cricket is everywhere. It’s the main headline on the sports page and quite often the front page too. You see it played on television (free-to-air and cable), on the various cricket grounds around the country, in parks, on beaches and in backyards. It’s played at all levels: from muck around family games where the stumps are an esky, through school competitions, grade and state levels, all the way up to international test series.

For me, even more than cicadas, the voices of Alan McGilvray, James Maxwell, Geoff Lawson and the rest of the ABC’s radio commentary team past and present has long been the sound of summer. Cricket discussions with my family, my (non-insane) friends, cab drivers, wait staff, people in queues for the bus are as much a part of summer as mangoes and passionfruit.

What will our side be without Shane Warne? Is Langer going to retire too? What about Hayden and Gilchrist? Is this the end of Australian cricket supremacy? How long before Murali takes Warne’s world record?

Lawrence worries that his cricket ignorance will affect his son’s progress in the game:

To an extent, my concern is whether my son will lack the necessary cricket skills, as I don’t want him to miss out on learning the game and being included in the matches that will invariably spring up at school, or at the beach or park with friends and family as the summer progresses.

But I recognise there is more to it: some of these concerns stem from my anxieties about what it means to be a migrant in Australia and, by extension, being an outsider. It is also an anxiety about whether I can truly prepare my son to be at home in Australian culture – to not be an outsider through no choice or fault of his own.

My father is the son of migrants from a non-cricket playing country (Poland/Ukraine) who knew nothing about the game and cared less. But he grew up loving and playing cricket and passed that love onto me and my sister. (As did my fourth or fifth generation Australian mother.) I grew up listening to, watching, talking about and (very) occasionally playing cricket in the backyard.

In my teens, inspired by the Bodyline mini-series, I started to read about the history of cricket. The first book I read was a very poorly written biography of Donald Bradman. The first book I enjoyed was Sid Barnes’ autobiography, which confirmed my admiration of Bradman the batsman and dislike for Bradman the man. I also discovered Keith Miller and fell in love.

The history of cricket is the history of English colonialism; they brought cricket with them wherever they went. In some place it died out: For my birthday this year Scott bought me two gorgeous American prints from the 1870s. One of them shows international cricket being played in New England. The other shows a game of baseball looking remarkably like a game of cricket.

In some places it did not: A quarter of the world’s population lives in cricket-playing nations. Just read C. L. R. James’ Beyond a Boundary on cricket in the West Indies and Ramachandra Guha’s Corner of a Foreign Field on cricket in India and Pakistan. They are not only extraordinary books on cricket, they are amongst the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read, bringing the complexity of the game and its history alive. They are about race, class, caste, gender, nationhood, politics and colonialism, because it’s impossible to write a good book about cricket without touching on those issues.

The books of Gideon Haigh are also remarkable and have taught me a great deal about the history of cricket in my own country. And thus a great deal about Australia. You don’t have to like, or give a rat’s arse about cricket to be Australian. But knowing a little of the game’s history teaches you a little more about Australia’s. For example, our first team to tour England was Aboriginal, and yet the official Australian team has had almost no representatives of Aboriginal ancestory.

I didn’t start loving cricket because of its happy history of illuminating colonial relationships, but reading its history has made an already rich and complicated sport irresistably fascinating to me. There are few sports with as long and rich a history. And I can’t help but want to share that fascination with other people, Australian or not.

I hope that Mark Lawrence is curious enough to read some of those books. It is truly not necessary to know the difference between “long leg” and “short leg” to enjoy them (or cricket for that matter). Though if he does want to know there’s a rather helpful *cough* *cough* guide right here.

Adulthood (Updated)

What is an adult?

I mean I’m way over 13 or 18 or 21 or any of the other arbitrary points at which you magically become one. But I know that by certain standards I’m not an adult.

I have no children. I don’t own a house or a flat or any other kind of property. Nor do I own a car. And I’ve never been through any initiation-to-adulthood ceremonies. Or killed any enemies of my tribe.

I have had sex and been drunk though. I’m married. I also have a job. Or at least am self-employed. So I’ve got some claims to adulthood other than my chronological age. But for some that’s not enough.

Those people for whom you have to leap a bunch of arbitrary hurdles in order to be a “real” adult have been around since the very dawn of time.1 They reckon the childless, property-less youngies are layabouts what don’t hold up the previous generation’s standards and know bugger all about responsibility and blah blah blah.

Generations have been bagging the generation that came after them since forever. There’s a famous quote from Thucydides or Herodutus or someone bagging the young uns, but I’m not in the mood to go hunt it down. It sounds exactly like Bill O’Reilly insisting that America is about to be destroyed because of all those young uns and their devil video games.

Utter, uttter, utter rubbish. Chariot racing didn’t destroy the fabric of society and neither has the charleston, television, or the humble ipod.

My dear friend, the multi-talented Kate Crawford, has recently published a book on this very topic. Adult Themes in which she examines how this debate evolved and how very stupid it is. Why aren’t the folks under forty getting married, having babies and buying houses as quickly and as often as their parents did? Because houses are way more expensive, as is raising a kid. Der.

Adult Themes is awesome. Funny, smart and wicked to the point. You should all read it.

Update: and if you wish to buy it go here. As far as I know the book has only been published in Australia so far.

In the meantime. Those of you who are adults—do you feel like one? What is it that makes you feel like a grown up? Or do you feel like an imposter?

And for those you aren’t adults yet—whatcha reckon you’ll need to do to become one?

Update: Sherwood Smith has now written very eloquently and movingly on this subject.

  1. Or, you know, that time when humans were evolved enough to start bitching at one another. [↩]

Ashes to Ashes

And so it begins in sunny Brisbane three hours ahead of sunny Bangkok. I’ll make no predictions of the 5-0 variety (though wouldn’t that be nice?) but I will say that you’re barking mad if you think England has a chance in hell of keeping the Ashes.

Flintoff consoles Lee

Yes, I know I said that last time too. And frankly if it hadn’t been for some shocking lapses by the captain we woulda won that and all.

Here’s to the next few weeks of battle. May it be as awesome as four two years fifteen months ago, except with the proper ending this time.

Oh, and check out the English Ashes cricket blog (via Alison). Fabulous!

La la la . . .

I’ve added a new thingie to the side bar: By Popular Demand is a quick and easy link to my most popular posts. If there any other posts you think should be there let me know.

I mainly did this to help keep the Good News Only thread alive. In dribs and drabs people are still adding news. I encourage you alll to keep doing so. Whenever I’m feeling a wee bit down I reread it and it cheers me instantly. So, yeah, I’m trying to keep it alive for purely selfish reasons.

Have you all read Sara Gran’s muy amusing piece on what utter utter hell it is to be a writer in the horrifically writer-infested Brooklyn? If not do so immediately. It is to giggle. (For a login go to bugmenot.com.)

I’m so relieved my NYC time is spent in Manhattan. I wonder what the most writer-infested part of Sydney is? I hope it’s not Newtown, Chippendale or Surry Hills. But I have grave fears . . . Feel free to reassure me that it’s Ashfield, Balmain, Paddington, Chatswood or any other place I’ve no intention of living in. (No offence intended. Well, only a little bit. The teeniest of little bits. Honest.)

Happy?

Okay, I shouldn’t be writing this I have way too much work, but I’ve been getting quite a few emails this morning asking if I’m happy about Australia’s 3-1 defeat of Japan in their first match of the World Cup. Dunno if “happy” is the word. Let’s just say there has been much dancing and chanting of Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi! all over the flat.

One more time: AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE! OI! OI! OI!

And now I go work.

Names & titles

Over at Miss Snark’s some folks get all snooty when agents address them by first name. I find their crankiness weird and am wondering if it’s a generational thing or because (as another commenter says) I’m Australian and we’re less uptight more relaxed than USians.

Personally, I’m more squicked when people insist on using a title with my name. My name is Justine Larbalestier, it’s not Ms Justine Larbalestier, certainly not Miss or Mrs Justine Larbalestier and you’re risking life and limb if you ever use Mrs Scott Westerfeld, though FYI Scott adores being called Mr Justine Larbalestier.

If you must use a title the correct one’s actually Dr, which I’m not wild about either, but at least I earned that one after almost four years of blood, sweat and tears (oh, yes, tears, lots and lots and lots of tears).

But how to negotiate this web of correct name/title useage? Even though I think it’s fusty and weird to want to be addressed by a title I also don’t want to offend anyone (not unintentionally anyways). So what are you supposed to do when some folks will spit the dummy if you don’t use a title, and others if you do?!

Here’s my cunning solution: echo how they sign off. If they sign off Dr Massively Stuckup, then you respond thus:

    Dear Dr Massively Stuckup

And sign off how you would prefer to be addressed:

    Cheers,

    Notuptightatall

Simple, eh?

But what to do if you’re the one writing the first letter? If you have a mutual acquaintance ask them. Otherwise play it safe. In the US of A I would use title plus full name (unless I can’t figure out whether they’re a sheila or a bloke or whether they have a phd or not in which case I’d use full name). In Australia I use full name sans title. Then I wait for the reply and adjust my salutation accordingly.

Aren’t you lucky to have me here to solve all etiquette problems?

Oz cover of ML

Penguin Australia decided to go with their own cover for Magic Lessons because they found the USian cover a bit too dark. At first I was miffed by this because I love love love that cover (plus they’d used one of my photos on it). Then they showed me what they’d come up with:

All miffage vanished. Isn’t it beautiful? Plus the St Stephen’s cemetery photo is by Scott.

The USian cover was designed by Marc J. Cohen and the Australian one by Cathy Larsen.

Here they are side by side:

Whatcha reckon?

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Something not to do while you’re exhausted and have a head cold:

Atttempt to buy tickets for the 06/07 Ashes series.

The article does not exaggarate. I logged on just before 9AM (Sydney time) when the tickets were to go on sale. The server was busy and busy and busy and busy and busy and busy and aaargghh!!

It took me half an hour to get through to actually buying the tickets. At which point all the tickets I was interested in for days 2 & 3 were gone. I then went to buy tickets for the fourth day but just as I selected them a pop up box announced that my session had timed out.

Cue screaming and swearing.

I logged back in again. The cricket board’s server was busy and busy and busy. Finally it wasn’t I got through to the ticket sales part. Then the ticket seller’s server rejected my password despite the fact it was the exact same password I used to get in for my first session. How do I know? Because my browser bloody remembered it, didn’t it?

Cue more screaming and swearing.

Then it rejected it again and again. Fourth time lucky and I was in and able to—at last—buy the tickets I wanted. Time taken: over an hour.

So, yes, I will be at the Sydney test on the fourth day. If there is no fourth day, or if it is all over before lunch, I swear to you that I will kill the entire English cricket team or whoever else I hold responsible for said early finish.

That is all except to say that as of 12 noon Sydney time the first four days of the Sydney test were completely sold out.

Out of here (again)

In less than twenty-four hours we’ll be on a plane to NYC. And while I think NYC is a bloody excellent city, and I have many wonderful friends there I can’t wait to see, I’m sad about it. For the last few years I haven’t been anywhere for more than three months straight. And that place was San Miguel de Allende, not Sydney. And while San Miguel is also completely ace I’m dying to spend an uninterrupted LONG stretch of time in my hometown.

Scott says I always get like this just before we leave anywhere (San Miguel, Dunedin, Buenos Aires, NYC). He says I always say that I want to stay. Maybe. But I feel it even worse when it’s Sydney cause there’s no where I love as much in the world. For some photographic reasons why pop over to Scott’s blog (he’ll also explain my silence of the past few days, which I can’t go into without frothing at the mouth).

Right now the thought of being anywhere but Sydney is just too much. Even though we have a year of travel to many wonderful (or at least interesting) places ahead of us: Madison, NYC, New Orleans, Seattle, London and Bangkok (and I’m sure I’m missing some). So to soothe my aching heart I’ll share my new favouritest Sydney places.

Two Good Eggs: A cafe in Surry Hills that makes some of the best omelettes I’ve ever had. I’m particularly besotted with the corn, leek, basil & ricotta. Divine. Their other food is also amazing (especially the porridge with rhubarb) and Scott loves the coffee. Service is friendly and fun and they don’t stress if you sit there for hours reading the paper.

Forbes & Burton: It opened just about the same time we moved into Surry Hills and the food was amazing from the word go. The breakfasts (the salmon on potato cakes might make Mr Atkins cry, but it makes me very very happy) and lunches are fab, but it’s dinner that sends me into ecstasy. Every single dish is near perfect. I especially loved the tomato consomme with vegetables and goat’s cheese raviolo (that’s right just the one). The clear liquid was the very essence of summer.

The Hollywood Hotel: The best pub in Surry Hills, if not the world. I did have a plan to get to every pub in Surry Hills, but after our first beer at the Hollywood we never left. The place is gorgeous curvy art deco, they have James Squire on tap, the publican, Doris Goddard, used to be an actor (there are fab photos of her with Bob Hope on the walls), and the staff are all smart, witty and pour perfect beers. Sometimes they even have salt & vinegar chips. Tis the perfect place to hide from the dazzling sun. I can’t believe I don’t get to hang out there again till November! Where’s the justice?

If you’re ever in Sydney check ’em out. Say hi from me!

Now I resume packing. How come no matter how many times I pack and unpack I never get spectacularly good at it? Same with jetlag. Grrr.

Flying foxes at dusk

I’m sitting at my desk watching the flying foxes make their nightly voyage out from the Botanical Gardens. Hundreds of bat silhouettes against the darker-by-the-second sky.

Have I mentioned how much I love this flat? How sad I am that we’re leaving?

Well, bugger that! I refuse to give into melancholy. Here’s the view I’ll be enjoying soon:


© good friend, brand-new father, and all round artistic genius Robin Cave

That view’s not so bad as all that, is it? Even if there are no flying foxes, or rainbow lorikeets, or ibis, or cockatoos . . .

Off to the mountains

This year has been full on for me and Scott thus far. Oodles of work travel (Brisbane, San Francisco, New York City, Bologna, Brisbane), lots of new sales—Brazil (me), Denmark (Scott), Sweden (Scott)—and I just heard news that MorM and ML have sold in yet another market. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about it soon. We’re both on the shortlists for some pretty awesome awards—the Ethel Turner (me), the MLA’s Thumps Up (me, Scott), and the Locus Awards (Scott)—and Scott’s book Specials came out this week and has been ranked very high1 up on Amazon. The best any book of his has ever managed. And something else gobsmackingly amazing has happened to Scott that we’re hoping we’ll be able to tell you about next week. We’re dead happy!

So to celebrate we’re leaving our laptops behind and going on a mini holiday to the glorious Blue Mountains where we will go on long walks, play billiards on a real billiards table, eat scrumptious food, and drink divine wine and not check Specials‘ ranking on Amazon even once. Bliss!

Catch you in a few days.

PS Yes, I am massively behind with email. Sorry! I plan to catch up when I get back.

  1. As high as 232 overall and no. 5 on the bestselling teen books list. No. 2 if you just look at the teen sf/fantasy list. Does any of that mean anything you ask? Prolly not a huge amount given that Amazon’s only 10% of the US book market. But those numbers make us happy and give us the illusion that Specials is selling in vast numbers everywhere! [↩]

The fabulous Lili Wilkinson now blogs

Lili Wilkinson is one of the funniest people I know. Whenever I receive mail from her I make sure I’m not eating or drinking anything. You know, just in case. (This laptop’s already on its last legs . . . ) So I’m stoked that she’s finally started blogging. Yay!

Among many other talents, Lili’s one of the masterminds behind the insideadog website and has just published her very first book: Joan of Arc: The story of Jehanne Darc.

Go make her welcome to the blogsphere!

New YA website

Inside a dog is a brand new website promoting young adult literature. It launched today and has Nick Earls as its first writer-in-residence.

On top of the writer-in-residence blog, there are reviews, recommended booklists—I love the categories: such as pink books, bring the funny, things that go bump. Some of the recommended books are faves of mine, like Cecil Castellucci’s The Queen of Cool, Scott’s Peeps and Michael Wagner’s Dog Wars. There are lots of other goodies, including a contest to win an ipod.

Go check it out!

Scott and me signing

This Thursday Scott and me will be at Galaxy Books signing our latest books. For me that’s Magic Lessons (US import) and the paperback of Magic or Madness. For Scott it’ll be the Oz edition of Peeps, plus the UK Uglies and I’m sure all the rest of his extensive oeuvre. I really hope those of you what are in the vicinity of Sydney’s CBD can make it.

Details as follows:

Thursday, 27 April, 6PM
Signing at Galaxy Bookshop
Justine Larbalestier & Scott Westerfeld
143 York Street
Sydney, New South Wales

Stay tuned to Scott’s blog cause it looks like there might be news of unsurpassed bigness in the next few days.

Meanwhile I continue to write many many many hours every day whipping M! M! M! O! O! O! into shape so that it’s fit for my editor’s eyes come Friday. I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in ages. Yay! I’ve been buoyed by sight of the new Oz cover for Magic Lessons—gorgeous. As well as the early versions of the US M! M! M! O! O! O!—very, very promising. When I’m allowed to share I will.

Newtown is, indeed, twelve kinds of awesome

Came across this completely randomly *cough* *cough*. (I mean would I waste time with the likes of google, blogpulse, technorati, ljseek, icerocket or feedster? Please!) It gave me twelve kinds of pleasure.

First up someone getting into the Magic or Madness trilogy enough to want to figure out their Sydney setting—Newtown—and look at maps and photos. How cool is that? And then linking me to the Whitlams, who are an ace Sydney band. Even cooler. (Though I don’t know them and I very much doubt whether they know me. So no cahoots at all.) The Newtown photos Purple Primate links to are fabulous. If I wasn’t already home I’d be so homesick. And they’re making me regret having shifted from Newtown to Surry Hills. What was I thinking?

Here are some of my faves:

    The cemetery as taken from the park that Tom piggybacks Reason across in the first book. The trees are in the cemetery. By the way that’s not an evil tower: it’s the spire of St Stephen’s Church.Here’s another view of the Moreton Bay fig tree on the front cover of Magic Lessons. It’s taken from the street so you can see the wrought iron gate and fencing.

    When we lived on Chelmsford St we used to walk through this tunnel all the time. Sadly, “Piss Tunnel” is a pretty accurate name. It’s very eerie and every time I walk through I’m not entirely sure what I’ll find on the other side.

I couldn’t find any photos that gave a sense of how narrow the streets are or of what Esmeralda’s house looks like. Maybe I’ll have to take ’em myself.

The other pleasure of this post was the speculation in the comments about who would wind up with Tom, Reason and Jay-Tee. That’s right they were shipping my book! Colour me very happy. But I’m not saying a word about what happens, except that one of those comments might possibly be right. Or not. I’ll never tell!

My Conjure Schedule

Heh hem. Tis a bit late given that the con has already started, but here’s where you can find me at Conjure in Brissie:

    Sat 1 pm: Once More With Feeling (Joss Whedon panel)
    Chair: Ron Serduik. Justine Larbalestier, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Nicky StricklandSun 4 pm: The 16-year-old Writing Drill Sergeant
    Chair: Jenny Blackford. Ian Irvine, Anita Bell, Simon Higgins, Justine Larbalestier

    Mon 1 pm: Those were the young years: Juvenilia Readings
    Chair: Rob Hoge. Kim Wilkins, Sean Williams, Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld

I’m most looking forward to the last panel. I have stuff going back to when I was eleven, but unbeknownst to me my lovely mother has a whole folder of my writings going back to when I was seven or so. She dropped it over last night. And oh my Elvis—it’s hilarious! Seriously, Scott and me was reading it out loud to each other and weeping we laughed so hard.

His juvenilia doesn’t go back so far, but fortunately is also excellent for the making of laughter. Especially the bits that are cleverly coded so his mum couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. I bet Sean and Kim will also have some splutterers. What larks we’ll have!

Unembargoed News

I am now free to tell you the news of which I have not been able to speak:

Magic or Madness is on the shortlist for the 2006 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. Specifically for the Ethel Turner Award.

This is huge! I’m being recognised in my home state! I’m up for an award named after the author of one of my fave childhood books: Seven Little Australians!1


Ethel Turner (bit of a spunk, eh?)

Here’s the full shortlist:

    Taghred Chandab & Nadia Jamal The Glory Garage Allen & Unwin
    Bill Condon No Worries University of Queensland Press (excellent book—made me cry!)
    Ursula Dubosarsky Theodora’s Gift Penguin Australia (which I hear is the red hot favourite)
    Justine Larbalestier Magic or Madness Penguin Australia
    James Moloney Lost Property Penguin Australia
    Nicole Plüss Hope Bay Penguin Australia

I’m really looking forward to reading all the other books on the shortlist. And it was a pleasure to get to chat to some of the other nominees at the official announcements today at Gleebooks. (Gleebooks has been one of my favouritest bookshops since I was kneehigh to a grasshopper.) I am giddy.

Now I must get back to work, but tonight I am so drinking champagne. Everyone always says it’s an honour to be shortlisted and they’re dead right. I’m still pinching myself!

  1. Even though the ending made me so ropeable that every time I finished it I’d have to throw the book across the room again. [↩]

Off to the Aurealis Awards

Yup off to BrisVegas for Australian science fiction’s night of nights. Both Scott and me are up for an award—the same one. Wish us luck! (I hope Scott wins. If I win I’ll have to come up with a speech. Blerk!)

I’m not taking my computer with me. You’ll all have to suffer twenty-four hours without me. But keep the quessies coming! Will answer on my return.

Ideas, like butterflies, are free

I was out doing errands t’other day (including a visit to the Tax Office to get my German contracts stamped—thank you, Niki). At one of my stops the fact of my being a writer came up and the bloke behind the counter said, “Really? You know, I have this great idea. If I give it to you, and you write the book, you can keep half the profits.”

My mouth opened. My mouth closed. See, I’ve heard other writers talk about non-writers making that offer, but I’ve never actually had it made to me so I didn’t have an answered prepared. I stammered something about being grateful for the offer, but that I have a tonne of ideas of my own, thanks all the same.

Ideas are no big deal. I have a gazillion ideas every day. Oodles of the little buggers. But without labour an idea is nothing. Unless I sit down and type for several months and turn a bunch of ideas into a book, those ideas are worthless. Their only value is in what’s done with them. Lots of people have ideas for books; not that many write them.

Scott and me were talking about the inflated value many people give ideas. And Scott wondered if that was partly behind the ever-growing insane obsession with copyright (like the Canadian Red Cross trying to copyright the Red Cross symbol). And the notion so many people have that ideas can be stolen. That rewriting an earlier story is somehow plagiarism (that’s right, Shakespeare was a plaigarist, and James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and just about any other writer you care to name).

Some are unable to make a distinction between riffing on something and stealing. If someone were to write a book about a girl who a finds a door that leads from Sydney and New York City and has adventures. I would not be bothered. Not unless the characters bore an uncanny resemblance to Magic or Madness and large chunks of the book were word-for-word the same as mine. Plagiarising means to take some one else’s work and pass it off as your own. Taking credit for someone else’s labour is wrong; riffing on someone else’s ideas is what writers/comedians/artists/musicians etc. etc. do. That’s their job.

Which leads me to Cory Doctorow’s fabulous post on BoingBoing about the publishing industries ludicrous efforts to stop Google’s fabulous Book Search which would make said riffing so much easier. What he said.

All Around the World . . .

Looks like 2006 is going to be the year of jetlag travelling for me and Mr Westerfeld. I just updated our appearances pages and it was quite a shock. Brisbane! Bologna! New Orleans! Barely two weeks goes by without us chooffing off somewhere and that’s with only the rock-solid confirmed events listed.

Not that I’m complaining, it’s fantabuloso being asked to do so many different events. And I’ve never been to New Orleans before. How fascinating is that going to be? Very.

In other news: I continue to be very very glad that I am in Sydney, not New York City.


Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

And Australia thrashes Sri Lanka in the second final. Andrew Symonds gets his first ODI century in Australia and put a lock on his status as biggest Australian yob hero since Boonie. Well, except for Shane Warne, and, oh, never mind. We loves you, Symonds!

Here’s hoping the third final will be a lot closer and not merely a matter of who wins the toss and elects to bat. Oh, how I miss the test cricket . . .

The ODI series gets interesting

How about that Dilshan, eh? I love me some runout action.


Getty Images

And how fabbie is it that the ODI finals are turning into an actual contest? I’m so very relieved that the explosive Sri Lankans made it rather than the dour South Africans. Plus Bandara is the dead spit of Theo Black. It’s eerie. (Though the resemblance isn’t as clear from photos. If onlly I could get the Blacks to come to Sydney and see Bandara on the tellie. I swear he even moves like Theo.)


Swiped from here

Also, what Peter Roebuck said about Murali.

Oh, and how about that Tuffers? He funny. Ponting? Not so much. You should really worry, Mr Ponting, when our humourless prime minister is on your side on the question of whether something is funny or not.

So, who else has signed up to be part of the Australian Cricket Family? Me, I was there in a flash. There’s little I won’t do to get tickets to the Ashes and jeer noisily at the bloody Poms. Bless ’em!

No More Change, Please.

I went to drop off my dry cleaning at the really excellent dry cleaner on Pitt St that has been there since before I was born, long before, and it was closed, windows boarded up, with a little notice telling you to pick up your clothes at the shop next door. Not long after I went into town to buy a button—just one little button—I went to Lincraft which had a really crappy range and then I remembered Home yardage. Good old Home Yardage what’s been in the city since the dawn of time. Home Yardage had no buttons. They had no nothing hardly because Saturday is their last day of trading. And just round the corner Gowings is about to close, too. Nooooo!!!

I don’t mind restaurants closing. That is their nature. One of the fun things to do whenever I come home is check out which of my fave places to eat survived my five or so months away. Of late a surprising number have and yay for them.

But Home Yardage? Gowings? The good dry cleaners? Next I’ll be finding my favourite pubs are closing and pubs never close.

Anyways, I don’t like it. No more change, please.

That is all.

Hating Cities

I will never understand all the Melbournites who despise Sydney, some of them folks who’ve never even been here. Seriously, I’ve met Melbournites who sneer with disdain at the mere thought of stepping foot in Sydney. The horror they say!

Me, I’m from Sydney. I love it, but I also have a whole lot of time for Melbourne. Melbourne has better licensing laws and thus better bars than Sydney, a better art and live music scene, and (mostly) better clothes shopping. Melbourne has trams. And what is not to love about trams? But Melbourne has little of Sydney’s breath-taking physical beauty, doesn’t have her beaches, or national parks, or fairies, er, I mean ferries, actually I mean both. It doesn’t have the wonderful bike path all the way from Newtown to the beach. Melbourne is, well, kind of dreary looking and its winter is unendurable. Nor does it have many of my favourite restaurants in the world the way Sydney does but, hey, the food is plenty fine in Melbourne too. And, please, do not give me the sacred MCG thing. There’s only one truly beautiful test-hosting cricket oval in Australia and it’s in Adelaide. And anyways my heart belongs to the SCG.

But who am I kidding? I was born here. I’ve spent the majority of my life here. I am completely biased about Sydney.

I’m not asking Melbournites to start loving Sydney. I’m just asking them to be a little reasonable about their over-the-top hatred. There are other cities out there that are actually worth hating (like, you know, um, another Oz city that I will not name because I have friends who live there what will be offended). Sydney ain’t one of them. And while I’m at it, Adelaiders, quit hating Melbourne, okay? You’re just being silly and why hate them when their MCG is ugly and your Adelaide Oval beautimous? You should pity them.

For me to work up a real forth of city hating, it has to be either a) a city I spent a miserable few years of my childhood in, or b) a city where you can’t get around if you don’t drive. Where the public transport and pedestrian access sucks. For this reason I perfectly understand why so many folks in the US of A loathe Los Angeles. Without a car in L.A. you are totally buggered. You have to beg rides from all your friends and are reduced to the status of a helpless child. But you know what? That’s true of almost every city in the USA, which is one of the reason I love NYC and San Francisco so much, they’re perfectly navigable by public transport and in Manhattan you can go wherever you want by shank’s pony. Plus, you know, there are so many places in both cities you’d want to go.

I used to hate London, because every time I’d visited the food was vile and expensive, it was gray, cold and raining (even in “summer”), and the people were obnoxious and rude. On my most recent trip the food was still expensive but it was excellent, the weather was endurable, and I only had one rude encounter, so now London’s in my good books. It certainly passes with flying colours the good public transport and pedestrian getaroundability rule. (Thanks to Niki, Lauren and Andrew for showing me the non-sucky London.)

Cities are who you know. The people who take you in and show you their town. I’ve had wonderful times in Dallas and Austin, Texas neither of them pedestrian friendly. I adore Toronto and it sure ain’t pretty. I’ve enjoyed Brisbane, Rome, Madrid, Bangkok, Jakarta, Dunedin, San Miguel de Allende, Davis and Lisbon—all of them because the people there were amazing and went out of their way to show their town to me. I imagine that even L.A. with the right people in the right light could be kind of okay. And now that my sister‘s moved there I guess I’m going to find out.

Or maybe not. There’s still that bloody car thing.

Magic Lessons in Australia

I just found out that Penguin Australia has made an offer for Magic Lessons! They’re planning to publish it in September exactly a year after Magic or Madness was released here. I’m thrilled! Penguin Au doesn’t buy many foreign books (yes, even though an Aussie wrote them, the MorM books are “foreign” because they’re being sold through Penguin USA), so it’s really exciting that they’ve now bought two of mine, and two of Scott‘s (So Yesterday and Peeps). Yay! It means a lot to me to be published in my own country.

First novel? Second novel?

There’s a lovely little article by Malcom Knox1 that appeared in last Thursday’s Sydney Morning Herald (I discovered it by way of the lovely Maud Newton). In it he discusses second-novel syndrome (SNS). The inability to write a second novel that can set in after your first novel’s been a success.

Of course, as Knox points out,

true SNS can only exist where the first novel has been hugely successful. All writers know that if you haven’t had a big bestseller, it’s harder to get published next time, no matter what you write; and if you have had a big bestseller, you will be published, no matter what you write.

And there’s the tricky matter of whether a first novel is truly a first novel:

Many novelists’ first published work is actually the third, fourth, seventh or 10th novel they have written. Another Australian author, Venero Armanno, estimated he had written a million words in unpublished novels before his “first book”.

The second published novel is often one that was started and even finished before the first. What the critic praises as the brilliant first book, long in gestation, inspired and innocent, may well be novel No. 8 by that writer; and the condemned second book, “pumped out too quickly”, “too conscious of an audience”, “a disappointing follow-up”, is in fact novel No. 4 that took several years longer. Unless you know the novelist’s working method intimately, you can’t make assumptions.

My first published novel, Magic or Madness, was my third written novel. My fourth, Magic Lessons, which will be my second published novel, was finished before Magic or Madness came out. So whatever (moderate) success MorM has had in no way affected the writing of its sequel. Got that? No, me neither.

Many of the published novelists I know had written more than one novel before they sold one. They kept on writing until the publishing gods at long last smiled. And then they were in the excellent position of having inventory (don’t you love that word? they’re not trunk novels, they’re inventory). Too many unpublished writers obsess about getting their first novel accepted and are so wounded by the failure of their beloved that they forget to write a second or a third one.

In the end Knox decides that if you’re suffering from second-novel syndrome you’re dead lucky—it means you’re a success. And if you’re not suffering from second-novel syndrome than it also means you’re dead lucky cause you’re not suffering from over-inflated expectations—you can work in peace. (It could also mean you’re not a novelist—in which case how smart are you? Very!) It’s all good.

  1. I first came across Knox’s writing when he was cricket correspondent for the SMH. He was excellent, not just smart about the game, but smart about its history, people and politics. (I miss him!) Recently, I read his second novel, A Private Man. Okay, when I say I read it, I’m kind of lying. it was more skimming than reading. One of my many failing is that I’m completely unable to concentrate on the non-cricket bits of a book if I know there’s going to be cricket in it. I wound up skipping all the non-cricket chapters. I can report that the cricket bits were really, really excellent. [↩]

Bookshops and the Signing thing

Wow, thanks to everyone for sharing all their writers’ humiliations. Apparently I’m not alone!

This post is for the bookseller who wrote to tell me that if I went to her bookshop I could sign whatever books I wanted.

On the same day I had my less than stellar experience at a chain I also visited Galaxy, Kinokuniya, Gleebooks and Better Read than Dead. All of them had many copies of Scott’s books and all told me that Uglies in particular is flying off the shelves. And they all had the Oz version of Magic or Madness and were very keen on me signing them. At Galaxy I didn’t even have to ask. Bless Galaxy. They rolled out the books, handed me a pen, and told me how well MorM‘d been doing for them. There was also mention of the possibility of Scott and me doing events for all of these shops. Way to make you feel wanted. Lovely!

I also figured out that I’ve been shopping at Galaxy for at least fourteen years! Oh my Elvis! That’s longer than some of my readers have been alive! And I’ve been a regular customer at Gleebooks for even longer . . . They’re two of my fave bookshops in all the world and have been incredibly good to me as both customer and now as author.

I have to admit though, that the whole signing thing is weird. I always feel like a loon asking people in bookshops if they want me to scribble on their books. It seems such an odd thing to do: “Deface your stock, Ma’am?” Though, of course, I’m very happy to have books by my favourite writers defaced, and treasure my two signed Dorothy Dunnett’s (Caprice and Rondo and Gemini).

Other than that initial awkwardness—“Hi, I’m Justine Larbalestier and, er, you seem to have some of my books. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind if I, um, signed them for you”—other than that I really like going into bookshops and chatting with the staff. For one thing, they’re mostly really into books. Surprising that, eh? And once I’ve gotten the self-promotery thing over and done with (quick as poss) I can ask about their favourite YAs and rave about mine (I talked up Haitani’s A Rabbit’s Eyes big time at Kinokuniya). Alliyx at Kinokuniya is a huge Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black fan so it was quite a treat to goss about their books. Interesting how much easier it is to push someone else’s work than it is your own.

I’d never been to Kinokuniya before. It’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve seen that much manga in one place. And the design and architecture section is huge! So’s the young adult section. In fact the whole bookstore is vast and full of bubbly helpful staff and way too many books that I lust after. And, yeah, they had my book, too. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being thrilled by seeing my book in shops? I hope not.

So, yes, Ms Bookseller-who-wrote-me, my chain bookshop experience was an anomaly.

Writer Humiliations (updated)

Because of late I’ve been all—look how well my book has been doing! award nominations! foreign sales! good reviews! la la la!—I thought I’d write about the less fabby side of being a writer. You know, so you don’t all think my life is nothing but caviar and champagne and flying foxes at dusk. Time to talk about writer humiliations!

There was a book out a while ago, Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame. Part of me wants to read it; the other part cringes at the very idea of its existence: way too close to the bone! The vast majority of working writers never get anywhere near the level of J. K. Rowling or Dan Brown fame. Every writer I know—no matter how well known in their field—can tell stories of doing signings or readings for an audience of no one but the bookshop staff. We’ve all had conversations like the following.

Typical conversation at a party:

    “So you’re a novelist, huh? That’s cool. Will I have heard of you?”

    “Well, so far I only have one novel out—”

    “Dan Brown has only one novel.”

    “Ah, doesn’t Dan Brown have—”

    “So, have I heard of you?”

    “Well, what kind of novels do you read?”

    “Oh, I don’t read novels.”

    “Then, no, you won’t have heard of me.”

Conversation with casual friend while checking out some stuff online:

    “So, your book’s published in America? That is so cool.””Thanks. I’m really excited about it.”

    “Hey!” says the casual friend, rapidly typing in a new URL. “I can look up the review in the New York Times!”

    “No need, there hasn’t been a review in the New York Times.”

    Casual friend continues looking me up in the Times.

    “Not many books get reviewed in the Times,” I say.

    Casual friend looks at me with incomprehension, presses the find button, and stares at the “no hits” result. “I thought you said your book was published in America?”

    “It is,” I say, rapidly typing, pointing to the Amazon listing.

    “But no review in the New York Times?”

Conversation with the clerk in charge of kid’s books at a Sydney branch of a chain bookstore which has twelve copies of Magic or Madness prominently displayed face out:

    “Hi, I’m Justine Larbalestier the author of Magic or Madness.”Clerk stares at me blankly.

    “Uh, I was told you were in charge of kid’s books?”

    “That’s right. Do we have your book?”

    “Er, yes, quite a few of them. Just over there.” I point.

    “Huh. I haven’t read that one. Are you a local author?”

    “Yup that’s right. Sydney born and bred. I’ve been away for a bit, so I was just stopping into bookshops to see how it’s going.”

    “Oh, I don’t think we’ve sold any of that one. I can check it for you if you like.”

    Heart sinks. “No, no, never mind.”

    “So, what’s it about?”

    I blurt out an over-detailed and incoherent version of the plot.

    “Huh? That sounds complicated. What age group is it aimed at?”

    “Twelve years old and up. But the book’s not really that complicated, it’s just about a door in a house in Sydney that opens onto a street in New York City.”

    “Your book is about a door? That’s unusual.”

    “Um, yeah, I guess.” I leave before I can do any more damage. “Thanks so much for your time.”

If anyone else has some writerly humiliations to share, I’d love to hear ’em. And yes, by all means choose the cloak of anonymity.

Update: Tobias Buckell shares one of his here. For the record, I’m not L. Ron Hubbard either.

And now Diana Peterfreund has joined in (but she doesn’t mention whether she’s L. Ron Hubbard or not).

Last Day of 2005

Woo hoo! Another year gone! A fridge full of champagne and yummy food! Who could ask for anything more? (Well, it would be nice if we didn’t both have books due 3 Jan . . . )

I see that many in blogland (and elsewhere) are summing up their year, taking stock, making resolutions for 2006 and etc. I’ve already skited enough about my achievements this year. It’s been a bloody brilliant year personally. I just want it all to keep on keeping on.

I’m aiming to write two books (both of which I’ve already started) in 2006 and sell one (two would be nice, but I don’t want to jinx myself). I also plan to spend the majority of the year in Sydney, cause now that I’m home I just want to stay. And I really, really, really want to get tickets for the Sydney Ashes test. Ideally for every day of play. If anyone has a cunning method of getting said tickets, or is a member of the SCG—I’m am so up for offering you huge bribes! Whatever you want you got it!

Best book I read this year: Walter Mosley’s The Man in My Basement. I just made my parents read it too and they were also blown away. It’s the most powerful, moving examination of evil, of race and gender, and what it is to be human I’ve ever read. But rest assured this ain’t just philosophy and ethics; it’s a scary arse story that’s completely unputtdownable.

Books I’m most looking forward to: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamquake the sequel to Dreamhunter, and frankly it just can’t get into my hands soon enough!

Hope you lot have a fabby new year, too. And achieve everything you want to achieve. I’m going to get started on the champers now. Happy new year!