Pecked by Ducks

The $2,000 skewer

2012-01-28T13:44:00.000+11:00

Remember the story of the $327 hair-washing hose? Ha! That was nothing. Just a trifle. I now have a much better “outrageous sums of money my children have cost me” story.

See that 8-inch piece of bamboo? Not the most glamorous piece of bamboo you’ve ever seen – a bit bent and hairy, perhaps – but without doubt the most expensive sliver of wood ever.

This is the skewer that, covered in yummy chicken, Baby Duck dropped on the floor on Sunday.

“Pick it up!” his sisters yelled, but Baby Duck, not being a man of lightning reflexes – or possibly any reflexes at all – sat and watched as the dog pounced. I rushed back in from the kitchen, barely ten feet away, but too late.

I’m still gobsmacked that she managed to down the whole thing so quickly. How do you swallow a whole 8-inch skewer loaded with chicken that fast? I kept staring at the floor, expecting to see pieces of wood – I mean, really? Who eats the wood? – but there was nothing.

So the worrying commenced. Monday morning she threw up, but she seemed so normal otherwise I crossed my fingers and hoped it was unrelated. When she did the same thing Tuesday morning I had to give up on the coincidence theory and take her to the vet. The vet checked her out but could find no other symptoms so it was back home to the worrying and watching.

Finally on Friday morning we had a different dog. Instead of bounding out of her bedroom (the laundry), eager to hoe into breakfast, she limped out and looked at Drama Duck as if to say “do I really have to eat that?” She had a couple of mouthfuls to be polite but that was it. She could hardly manage the stairs either and was obviously in pain, so it was straight into the car and back to the vet.

They operated and found the skewer had gone through her stomach wall and was heading for her liver. Fortunately there were no signs of peritonitis, which was my big worry, so they removed the skewer and sewed her back up. I’ll spare you the close-up of her scar – it’s quite gruesome.

But she’s back home now, looking sore and sorry, poor baby. The Carnivore’s feeling rather pained too.

“We could have let this one die and bought two dogs for that kind of money,” he grumbled. Can’t let anyone suspect he’s actually fond of the stupid animal.

I was so pleased the vet kept the skewer for me. Is that weird? I was busting to take a photo and share it with you. I guess I’ll just throw it out now, though it’s tempting to hang it round Baby Duck’s neck, like the albatross in "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", to remind him to be a little faster next time he drops something on the floor.

Or I could just dock his pocket money for the next 40 years or so.

Turnip brain

2012-01-22T22:21:00.000+11:00

Proving yet again that she is a cross between a particularly stupid golden retriever and a turnip, Two Planks has outdone herself. Today she devoured a chicken skewer that Baby Duck had dropped on the floor – wooden skewer and all. I am now anxiously watching her for signs of imminent death from pierced intestines.

I’m trying to reassure myself. She’s eaten all kinds of weird stuff in the past, from half-bricks to chunks of wood to thorny plants, with no ill effects. And hopefully she did actually crunch that sucker up instead of swallowing the damn thing whole. But still.

I may only be a blue belt in taekwondo, but I’m a black belt in worry. Fingers crossed this is another case of me imagining dire scenarios that never come to pass.

Does anyone else have a pet with a death wish?

Stupid dog.

When is a ripple not a ripple?

2012-01-11T20:17:00.000+11:00

Answer: When it’s a straight line. Something wrong with this pattern, I think. The crochet gods of the internet have never let me down before, but I really don’t think it was me. I tried a couple of times with the same result, so then I started counting the steps in the pattern, and I couldn’t make the maths come out right. There always seemed to be a couple of stitches left over, so the parts of the pattern never lined up properly.

This is what it was supposed to look like:

I tried a different set of instructions, from a magazine, and hey presto! new blanket for Little Brown Bear. All pretty and ripply, like it was supposed to be. Little Brown Bear is also sporting a new scarf in this photo – I was in the mood for crochet.

Santa brought me this lovely book for Christmas, so next I tried some of the easier flowers.

My newfound rippling skills came in handy here, as I can now increase and decrease. Crochet is gradually becoming less mysterious. Although I have to say: what the beep is with the whole UK/US divide? Whose brilliant idea was it to use the same stitch names on both sides of the Atlantic, but have them refer to different stitches?? They can go stick their crochet hook where the sun don’t shine, as far as I’m concerned. As if learning crochet isn’t challenging enough without having to begin every crochet endeavour with a sleuthing exercise. Where does this blogger live? Where was this pattern/magazine published? Because your single crochets, double crochets and every other flipping stitch are going to mean something completely different, depending on whether they’re using UK or US terminology. And then you’ve got to keep it all straight in your head. Single crochet = double crochet. Double crochet = treble crochet. And double trebles are … Aaargh!

+Deep breath+

I’m gradually building up a collection of flowers. When I have enough I’ll sew them all to a cushion. [Yay, says the Carnivore. More cushions.]

Anyway, back to ripples. I’ve been watching Lucy over at Attic 24 making her gorgeous ripple blanket, and I’ve got a serious case of ripple envy. And not just ripple envy, but wool envy too. I can’t find glorious soft wool like that at the local crafty places. Plenty of acrylics in bright colours, and I’ve certainly collected a lot of those, but they feel rough and scratchy. Nor do they drape nicely. They’re stiff to the touch.

If only I had a local wool shop like Lucy’s, I thought.

Ha! If only I had a working brain. There is a specialty wool shop, not five minutes’ drive away. I’ve just never been to it, since I haven’t been into wool before, so I’d forgotten all about it. When I finally recalled its existence the other day it felt like Christmas had come all over again.

Today I finally got there, Christmas money in hand, and just look what I got:

My in-laws always give me money for Christmas. Have I mentioned before what marvellous, charming, considerate people my parents-in-law are? Good-looking too.

Ahem. But I digress. So I rocked up to the shop today and had a delightful time, drinking in the colours, stroking and squeezing all the lovely skeins and balls of wool, cotton, bamboo and silk. Some of them were so soft and smooth they were almost slimy. Slimy in a good way, if you can imagine that.

Drama Duck enjoyed helping me pick colours. I wish I could have bought one in every colour, but alas, this beautiful stuff is merino wool from Italy, and it ain’t cheap. So I had to behave and limit myself to this glorious selection.

Sigh. Isn’t it beautiful? Can’t wait to see how it feels to work with. I just want to keep stroking it. Could make progress on the actual blanket rather slow! Wish me luck.

On the first day of Christmas ...

2011-12-25T22:13:00.000+11:00

… my true love gave to me: a whole heap of lovely presents. I was very spoiled. Hope you were too, and that your Christmas was happy, however you spent the day.

Merry Christmas!

Ninjabread men!

2011-12-24T21:52:00.000+11:00

Remember last year when some of the black belts at taekwondo gave out ninjabread men at our last class?

I thought they’d modified regular gingerbread men shapes, but then I found these at the shops:

The packaging is a treat in itself. Some quotes:

“These stealthy warriors are set to sneak into your kitchen and stage a cookie coup!”

“your hands move like a whisper, cutting dark shapes into pre-rolled dough”

“quietly cream together the shortening” etc, “add the molasses and blend into the night”

“moving like the wind, preheat the oven”

Someone at the cookie cutter company has a great sense of humour! We couldn’t wait to make our very own ninjas. I can’t show you a photo because we ate them too fast.

Our real-life ninjas all moved up a grade at the end of the year. Baby Duck missed a lot of classes due to his hospital adventure, and spent most of the year as a yellow belt.

But he finally earned his green tips. Not to mention a $30 grading incentive payment from us, which was rather more interesting to him.

I also missed a grading due to Baby Duck’s hospital adventure, so Demon Duck pulled ahead of me, which makes her soooo happy. She loves being better than me at something! It’s quite handy for me too, as she can help me with my forms. She’s now a high blue belt, and I’m a blue belt.

I remember when we started, how pro the blue belts seemed. Now I am one, I feel a bit of a fraud. I still feel like a raw beginner. My kicks are still crap and my balance is all wobbly. I’m dreading the next form I have to learn as there’s two parts where you have to stand on one leg. At the next grading I’ll be the one falling over and looking like a complete dork for sure. Can’t wait.

Maybe I should ask Santa to bring me a new sense of balance?

Time-travelling Wednesday WIP

2011-12-15T22:24:00.000+11:00

Well, yes, it is Thursday, now that you mention it. I’m busy, but I am keeping up with what day it is, just barely. In the blog that lives in my head there are sparkling posts flying from my fingers all the time. There are regular features on my sewing projects, updates on novels in progress, dozens of witty and amusing stories of life with the ducklings.

And of course Wednesday WIP posts happen on Wednesdays. Sadly, the blog that lives in my head bears little resemblance to the one that makes it on to the page here, so I’m just going to pretend it’s still Wednesday. Otherwise it’ll be next Wednesday, and we all know next Wednesday will be stuffed full of oh-God-it’s-almost-Christmas madness, so nothing will get posted, and then the one after will be all thank-God-Christmas-is-over lazy. Before we know it it’ll be Next Year and then where will we be? Wednesday WIP-less, that’s where.

Soooo. Welcome to Wednesday. Again. Who wouldn’t like to stuff an extra day into their week at this time of year? If only it were that easy!

Here’s an experiment in a free style of applique that gets the quilting done at the same time:

This is the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in a long time. I usually agonise over choices to the nth degree: fabric choices, colour choices, position, everything. This was just “here’s a bucket of scraps – cut out some flowers and whack them on a background”. They weren’t even my scraps, so they weren’t the kind of thing I usually work with. This was an exercise set by the wonderful Kathy at Material Obsession at our last class. It was so freeing to play with fabric like this.

I had such a ball I came home and kept going. I finished the quilting the same day. Here’s a picture from the back, where you can see the quilting better.

It’s pretty rough, but that was part of the joy. The roughness just adds to the charm – you can’t go wrong. Who doesn’t love a project like that??

The last step to turn it from a WIP into a finished project is to make it into a cushion. Maybe when we make it over the hump of Christmas to the lazy thank-God-it’s-all-over days.

Until then it’s back to the Christmas shopping and the end of year whirl. How are your preparations going? Better than mine, I hope!

Parenting: so much easier when you're awake

2011-12-01T10:21:00.000+11:00

I was woken recently at one o’clock in the morning by Demon Duck’s voice calling out:

“MUM! Can you come here please!”

I lurched out of bed and stood in the dark, disoriented.

“Where are you?”

“In my bed!”

So I staggered to the lounge room (which is where the girls are sleeping these days) and flicked on the light. What was wrong? Had she fallen out of bed? No, she was lying on her back, one arm flung over her face to shield her eyes from the sudden light, but otherwise seemed fine.

I knelt on the bed next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” She groaned. “Bright lights!”

Typical kid, I thought as I went back to bed. Probably calling out in her sleep.

I noticed that the Carnivore wasn’t in our bed any more. Hey, I’m sharp at one o’clock in the morning. I assumed he’d been disturbed too and taken the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

He was a long time coming back, though. When he finally got into bed, I realised from the glow through the doorway he’d left a light on somewhere.

“Why’d you leave the light on?”

He looked at me, perplexed. And maybe a little exasperated. “Baby Duck had a nightmare. Didn’t you hear him calling out?”

Whoops. Poor Demon Duck. No wonder she had no idea why her mad mother was looming over her yelling “what’s wrong?” in the middle of the night.

I try hard to be a good mother, I really do. I’m just better at it when I’m awake!

No no Nano

2011-11-23T11:11:00.000+11:00

Stop the presses – it’s November and I’m not doing Nano. I’ve done NaNoWriMo for the last four Novembers in a row, so not to be pounding out 1700+ words a day in a panicked scramble feels weird. Like December without Christmas.

I have all this time on my hands. Ha! I wish. Those pesky renovations. There’s always another wall to scrub or a ceiling to paint. That was one reason I decided not to participate this year. Another was that those last four manuscripts haven’t got any further. As with quilting projects, I’m great at starting new novels. Not so hot on the revising and finishing thing. Character flaw, I’m looking at you.

NaNoWriMo, in case you don’t know, is a group madness that overcomes tens of thousands of people all over the world every November. They agree to write a 50,000 word novel in a mere 30 days. There are no prizes; nobody sees your novel, or checks your wordcount. It’s purely a motivational thing. There are forums where you can chat with other like-minded novelists, finding answers or inspiration. How far can a horse travel in a day? Someone will know. What’s a good name for an alien artefact? There’ll be lots of suggestions.

There are also local groups which hold writing get-togethers if you’d like to meet writers in your area. Parties too, when it’s all over! You can become online “buddies” with others and send encouraging mail, or just chat. Your wordcount and your buddies’ will be displayed in your own little corner of the Nano website, which is a feature I really like. Watching those wordcounts creep up is very motivating. I hate getting left behind! (Who, me? Competitive??) Updating your wordcount at the end of every day and seeing the little bar edge along is very satisfying.

The girls are both doing the young writers’ version. It’s basically the same thing, but on a separate minors-only website where they get to choose their own wordcount goal. Obviously most kids go for something a leeetle smaller than 50,000. Drama Duck’s goal this year is 8,500 words, and she’s already reached it. Demon Duck is shooting for 3,500.

So at least there is some nanoing going on here, just not by me. I miss the excitement and the buzz of doing it alongside so many others, but reason had to prevail. As a kind of non-Nano consolation, I’m trying to outline a novel this month instead. I’ll still have to write it later, but outlining doesn’t take as much time as writing, and can be done while painting or cleaning, so it’s a more viable option this month. It doesn’t come as naturally to me as just making stuff up on the fly, but I figure it’s worth trying at least once. Doesn’t mean I’m permanently converting to the dark side!

It’s hard, though. Not as hard as writing coherent scenes while desperately improvising the plot, but answering the “what happens next?” question for a whole book-sized plot even in outline is brain-straining stuff. The “big idea” that makes you want to write the thing in the first place has to be broken down into hundreds of smaller ideas that all link together in a meaningful and apparently inevitable progression.

People are always asking authors the dreaded “where do you get your ideas from?” question. I think they assume the whole book falls into your head fully formed, so when they ask “where do you get your ideas from?” what they really mean is “how do I get the complete plot of a bestseller to fall into my head so I can simply transcribe it on to paper and wait for the money to roll in?”

Get the idea and the book writes itself. If only it were that simple! That bit about 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration should be in giant flashing letters. Only the people who sit down and actually try to turn their idea into a book realise that getting the initial idea is the easy part.

Everything else requires effort. And, pants it or plan it, it’s still work!

The most valuable thing in the world

2011-11-14T21:27:00.000+11:00

I have a desk calendar that gives a quote per day. [Note to self: This year, don’t be such a tightwad. Buy yourself a calendar before the January sales so you have a decent selection to choose from.] Are they inspirational sayings? inscrutableness? philosophical platitudes? Not sure what you’d call them. Some of them state the obvious, while others make meaningful comments on the human condition. Today’s Zen saying was not one of the latter.

It asked the question, “what is the most valuable thing in the world?” Time, you might think? Good health? Love? Family?

Ah, no, grasshopper. You are too predictable.

“A student asked his teacher, ‘What is the most valuable thing in the world?’ ‘The head of a dead cat,’ the teacher replied. ‘Why?’ the student asked. ‘Because no one can name its price,’ was the teacher’s reply.”

Isn’t that awesome?? Once I stopped laughing I spent a happy five minutes dreaming up all sorts of other gross and gruesome things whose price could not be named.

It also brought to mind the book 101 Uses for a Dead Cat by Simon Bond.

Remember that? It was all the rage 20 or 30 years ago (ooh, now I’m showing my age). Cartoons of cats being used as toilet brushes, footstools, so many silly things. Can’t remember them now but I was highly amused at the time. I know I bought a few copies for my cat-loving friends.

I’m sure the Carnivore had a copy. Despite not having a vicious bone in his body, he likes to cultivate a reputation as a cat-hater. For many years he had a bumper sticker on his car that read: “Missing your cat? Check under my tyres”.

Come to think of it, a sense of humour – while not the most valuable thing in the world – is a pretty handy thing to have. Especially if you live in this house!

Tales from the building site, Part Deux

2011-11-04T14:51:00.001+11:00

Does this face look stressed?

No? I assure you it is.

As proof I offer this classic Far Side cartoon (Gary Larson is not only a comic genius, he must be a dog owner as well):

Poor Two Planks is not enjoying the whole building experience. She can see and hear all these men who would surely love to pat her and be slurped upon, but she just can’t get to them. Some bastard has put up the old baby gate at the top of the stairs so she can’t run downstairs and tromple gaily through the mud and concrete to get to the builders.

Then there’s the problem of all the loud and often worrisome noises coming from outside. Brick saws (ye gods, what a racket!), nail guns, bobcats, trucks, tiny baby bulldozers and motorised wheelbarrows, men shouting – it never stops. How’s a dog meant to protect her people from all these monsters?

And the final indignity: since she can’t be trusted not to gallop off into the sunset whenever she sees an open door or gate, she has to go outside for toilet breaks on a leash. Bad enough not being allowed free rein in your own backyard, but the worst part is that every time the leash is produced she thinks she’s going for a walk. Talk about ripped off!

This is where we’re up to now. Still on track to finish before Christmas, fingers crossed. Just hope we don’t get any more rain. No rain dances, please!

Finding the floor: Out of the Dark by David Weber

2011-10-15T21:52:00.000+11:00

Finding the floor … my ongoing project to tackle the teetering tower of terror, otherwise known as the to-be-read pile. Up this time is Out of the Dark by David Weber.

This one was actually a loving wifely purchase for my beloved. He loves David Weber. Lots of battles, aliens, guns galore. But the blurb on the back sounded interesting so I snitched it off the pile and read it before him.

And then I had to wait for him to read it so I could fully express my outrage at the BIG FAT CHEATING CHEAT of an ending.

Ahem. Anyway, as I was saying, the blurb sounded interesting. Earth has been conquered by aliens, and a few pockets of survivors are putting up what resistance they can. Many of these we only get to know briefly before the aliens stomp them out of existence. Resistance is indeed futile, if glorious, in most cases. Sergeant Steve and a small band of soldiers are trying to organise survivors in the Balkans. Back home in the US, former marine Dave and his brother-in-law Rob, who must surely be the most insanely well-prepared-for-the-apocalyse guys in the history of the universe, are building a network of resistance across the southern states.

So far so bleak for the human race. The aliens are extremely advanced, though they almost call off the whole invasion on arrival when they realise how advanced humanity’s technology is. Their last intel was from the Battle of Agincourt, and things have changed just a little since then! They aren’t allowed to take over worlds as advanced as Earth, but fortunately for the story the alien leaders are crooked enough to ignore the galactic rules and so the battle begins.

The only saving grace for the humans is that since the aliens are used to fighting savages with spears, their armour isn’t built to withstand modern weaponry. And boy, what a lot of modern weaponry there is. Weber frequently stops the action for long – as in two pages long – descriptions of weapons. Every new gun, tank, whatever, gets described in exhaustive and loving detail. It’s like weapons porn for gun enthusiasts.

No problem there – I just skimmed through these bits and got back to the story, which was highly involving. Certainly a page-turner! The action built and built, the stakes got higher and higher, and I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how the hell the humans were going to avoid total annihilation, and then …

and then …

Well, I don’t like to give spoilers. The back of the edition I read certainly didn’t give anything away, but let me quote you from the blurb on the hardcover, which I found online:

“[things] look bleak. The aliens have definitely underestimated human tenacity–but no amount of heroism can endlessly hold off overwhelming force.

Then, emerging from the mountains and forests of Eastern Europe, new allies present themselves to the ragtag human resistance. Predators, creatures of the night, human in form but inhumanly strong. Long Enemies of humanity… until now. Because now is the time to defend Earth.”

You can probably guess from that, right? (And what sort of blurb gives away a Major Major Plot Point like that??) When the first vague kind of off-hand reference to something paranormal came up I ignored it. Nope, not going to happen. You’re imagining things. This is not that kind of book. This was late in the story, and it had been straightforward, real-world, shoot-em-up stuff all the way. No way was it suddenly going to jump the shark and veer completely off the road into the paranormal underbrush.

Except it did.

I still can’t decide whether it was a brilliant move or a terrible deus ex machina. But it certainly felt like cheating at the time. I thought I was reading science fiction, and all of a sudden I wasn’t. Your mileage may vary, of course. The Carnivore had no problem with it, though he was surprised at the change of direction. He thinks I’m too critical.

Perhaps I am, but a lot of the problem has to do with expectations. You don’t expect paranormal elements to suddenly crop up near the end of a straight science fiction story. It feels like cheating to fix a “real-world” problem by whipping out a magic wand. If there’d been clues earlier on that such things were possible it wouldn’t have felt as if it were coming out of left field so much. Maybe that’s why the hardcover had that spoilery blurb, to try to overcome that feeling. But it would have been better to address the problem in the story rather than on the back of the book.

Eight-year-old humour

2011-10-11T11:12:00.000+11:00

Baby Duck barely eats enough to keep a … well, a baby duck – alive. He’s always had a small appetite and been a slooooow eater. As a result he’s painfully thin. This didn’t used to bother me much. The girls are skinny too. So was I as a child, and so was the Carnivore, so I figure you can’t do much about genetics. We eventually filled out to normal-sized people, and I’m sure the ducklings will too in time.

However, it became a problem when he got so sick back in June and lost so much weight. If you or I lose 4 kilos it’s no big deal. Hell, it’s cause for celebration! But if you only weigh 22 kg to start with, it’s a serious problem. At one stage in hospital he was so thin his backbone reminded me of one of those dinosaurs with spines down their back, his vertebrae stuck out so far. Not a good look.

So we’re now making a concerted effort to fatten him up. Lots of milk, yoghurt, pasta, extra cream, nuts.

Last night we had takeaway pizza for dinner. A year ago he would only have had one slice of pizza before declaring himself too full to eat any more. Then he progressed to eating two slices, which I thought was a big improvement. Last night, for the first time ever, he ate three slices.

Baby Duck: Are you proud of me, Mum, for eating three slices?
Me: I certainly am! This is a new world record!
Baby Duck: I’m still hungry. Can I have another piece of garlic bread?
Me: You’re still hungry?? What have you done with my real son?
Baby Duck: I ATE HIM!!

Sunday sketchbook

2011-10-09T22:17:00.001+11:00

Recently I discovered the beautiful blog of Alisa Burke. Her artwork is so loose and free, full of colour and happiness. All inspired, I dug out my art journal and messed up a few more pages, like this one:

It was such a pleasure to retreat into making art, however badly, in the middle of all the mess and stress of building. Yet another thing I’d like to make more time for … at this rate I’ll need to live to at least 150!

Tales from the building site, Part the First

2011-09-30T18:53:00.001+10:00

This is what my house looks like at the moment. The Carnivore and I are sleeping in the kitchen; the girls have set up their bedroom in the lounge room. Everything is Chaos, Confusion and Covered in Crap.

You know when you’re on a beach holiday, how you sit on the edge of your bed every night and brush the sand off your feet? It’s like that, only with dirt instead of sand. In spite of frenzied sweepings and moppings, there’s so much dirt and clay outside I just can’t keep it out.

It will all be worth it in the end, of course. We’ll have a new office for the Carnivore, freeing up a bedroom so the girls don’t have to share. There’ll be lots more storage and a big attic room up top. Can’t wait. In the meantime we’re crammed into one end of the house falling all over each other.

Last Saturday night the Carnivore and I came home from a night out to be greeted by the babysitter telling us the girls were in our bed, as their room was leaking. Sure enough, water was running down the walls in there. The builders had taken off part of the roof and clearly done a less-than-optimum job with the tarpaulins. More problematic, they’d also removed the outer bricks, leaving the inner walls (and their power points) exposed to the weather. And man, did we have Weather that night! It bucketed down.

Not surprisingly, the power went off about three o’clock in the morning, and we didn’t get it back on till after lunch on Sunday, after the builders had clambered around on the roof in the pouring rain to make it all watertight again.

When they came back on Monday they removed those power points. Seems to me it might have been smarter to do that before they removed the brick walls, but hey, it’s all part of the adventure, right? What’s a building project without a few horror stories to tell later?

Fingers crossed that that’s as bad as it gets! At least the ceiling didn’t collapse on the bed, as happened to a friend of mine when she was doing extensions.

How about you? Survived some building works and lived to tell the tale? Tell me your horror stories to make me feel better!

Learning colour bravery

2011-09-28T21:06:00.001+10:00

I have a pretty good eye for colour, but I still have plenty to learn. I was inspired to make a rainbow strip quilt after seeing a beautifully bright one at The Sewing Attic blog. Go have a look at it. I’ll wait.

Isn’t it beautiful? Such rich, glowing colours. I got stuck into my fabric stash (and, it has to be admitted, into the local quilting shop, to fill in the gaps in my colour collection – any excuse to go fabric shopping!). I started with orange, and carefully chose orange fabrics that all went well together, put them together …

… and then sat back and thought, man, that’s bland. All blendy and matchy, not at all the vibrant riot of colour I recalled from Catherine’s blog. So I went back and had another look. A better one this time – and realised what an assortment of different shades and patterns she’d used to get that wonderful effect. She didn’t just have one shade of orange, but mustard-orange, gold-orange, brown-orange, red-orange, all mixed up together, plus different scale patterns, and it was that mixture that brought the quilt alive.

So I got a bit braver with my turquoise blocks. Some darks, some lights, some different shades of turquoise. Big prints and small scale prints. Even – gasp! – turquoise fabrics with other colours in them, like hot pink.

Still not quite there, but much better! I love the way the different colours pop out at you.

The quilt is nearly finished now, just have to put on a border. I never did get quite as brave as Catherine, but it was a great learning experience. Not to mention a lot of fun, playing with all those lovely fabrics!

Colour choices in quilting are not as simple as in most other artistic pursuits. Apart from the colour of the fabric you have to consider the scale of the print and also its “style”. Country doesn’t go with Japanese which doesn’t go with modern – even though all three may be the same colour.

Unless of course you’re one of those brave souls who combine everything willy nilly and manage to make it look good, like the inspirational Kathy from Material Obsession. I don’t think I’ll ever be that brave, but it’s fun trying!

Random (mis)firings of a tired brain

2011-09-14T21:59:00.000+10:00

Wow. I’m more tired than I thought. I typed that heading and my brain immediately emptied. Like sticking a pin in a balloon. Pop! No more thoughts. Completely goneski. If only I could bottle that and sell it at yoga classes.

So, yes, tired. Not enough sleep – bad. Lots of exercise – good, but tiring. Too much stress, also tiring. However, there have been some wins this week. I have a story on hold at ASIM. I’ve made it this far before and still not got published, but still it’s nice. Have also submitted another story elsewhere – two stories on submission at once! Nothing to get excited about for most people but a first for me.

Baby Duck has been endearing himself lately.

“I love you, Mum.”

“I love you too, darling.”

“I’m going to Really Miss You when you’re dead.”

Ain’t that sweet? Or, as he spelled it in an email to me yesterday: “sweat”? The editor in me couldn’t help pointing out his spelling had rather changed his intent. Fortunately he found that funny.

Not much going on here except building works. Some frenzied decluttering, to stay ahead of the builders. I’m finding all sorts of amazing things. Tonight I found a couple of sheets of paper charting Drama Duck’s language development.

Ah, the joys of the firstborn child! You think you’re so busy, but you have no idea. Fancy having the time and energy to monitor the vocabulary your toddler is acquiring. Needless to say, no such chart exists for the other two.

I have no memory of it now – just as well I wrote it down. Her first full sentence was so typical – giving orders at 18 months. “No, no, puppy, don’t touch!” We also looked at baby clothes (I kept a bag for each of them of my favourite outfits) and we all squealed over how tiny their first pairs of shoes were. Alarmingly, the hat Baby Duck wore at six months fits Demon Duck’s head now. That kid sure has a big head. Must be all the brains.

Wasn’t he cute?

Moving on from memory lane, and seeing as its Wednesday, time for a Wednesday WIP report. Nothing doing on the writing front, but I’ve made a little progress with quilting.

This is one I’m working on, playing with contrast and trying to loosen up a little. The wonky stars and stripes were great fun. Drawing the trees gave me a lot of trouble. I kept making them too realistic, when I wanted something more stylised and free, something that said “tree” without getting bogged down in detail. This is the paper pattern for the first one. They won’t be white in the end but they do look rather nice like this. Maybe I should have made them white! You can be the judge when I get it finished.

It’s fun designing your own quilt. I haven’t done it for ages, but I’ve been going to a wonderful monthly workshop at Material Obsession, which always leaves me inspired and wanting to try new things. Even – gasp! – hand quilting, which I did once and decided was far too slow for me. But Kathy, the teacher, is so full of energy and enthusiasm she could talk you into anything, so that’s another project that is inching along. I must say, I find hand work very soothing when I make the time for it. It’s just that there’s always so many other things clamouring for attention!

Still, that’s not such a bad problem to have. At least it’s never boring.

Secret men's business

2011-08-24T21:21:00.002+10:00

On Saturday night Drama Duck, Demon Duck and I were all out at parties and dinners, leaving the menfolk home alone. Before I left I asked Baby Duck what they were going to do while we were gone. He didn’t know.

“It’s a boys’ night!” I said. “You should drink beer and fart a lot.”

“But I don’t like beer.”

Always so pragmatic, that boy! Note he didn’t object to the farting part. In fact his sisters entered the conversation with enthusiasm at that point and it devolved into an attempt to see who could burp the alphabet best. (Demon Duck, as it turns out. Why am I not surprised?)

But the idea had taken hold, and before I left the Carnivore had been sent off to procure takeaway for dinner, and they settled down to watch a trashy comic book movie together. Sheer bliss – even without the beer.

There was some confusion about whether or not the party Demon Duck was at was a sleepover. So they went to pick her up armed with sleeping bag and pyjamas in case she was supposed to be staying.

“I really hope her party is a sleepover,” he told his dad. “Then we can continue our men’s night.”

So cute! I reckon he’ll be trying to shove us all out the door next weekend so he can do it all again.

Coverlicious

2011-08-22T18:36:00.001+10:00

You can’t judge a book by its cover, right? Well, yes … and no.

Sure, some great books have lousy covers, and some pretty ordinary books have very attractive covers, so the quality of the cover doesn’t necessarily match what’s inside. In that sense, judging a book by its cover can lead you astray.

But in another sense, of course you can judge a book by its cover. That’s what they’re for.

Publishers spend a lot of time and money on covers. They’re a selling tool, meant to entice you into picking up the book and purchasing it. And potential buyers like to know what they’re getting.

Ever looked at the spines of the books in the science fiction and fantasy section? You can tell which ones are the science fiction books at a glance, because they nearly all have black spines, whereas the fantasy ones are more likely to have coloured artwork extending into the spine.

In the same way, if a book’s title is in flowing script above artwork of a hot bare-chested man, hot woman in a flowing dress, or a hot bare-chested man embracing a hot woman in a flowing dress, it’s a romance. Readers know what “their” kind of book looks like, and they search for more of the same.

There are trends within genres too, of course. Not so long ago, most fantasy covers featured a dragon – even if there was no dragon in the story. Twilight spawned a whole host of copycat covers after the success of its black-cover-with-single-dramatic-image style.

Different countries have different preferences in covers. What will sell a book in the UK won’t entice US buyers at all. Australian customers don’t go for European covers and vice versa.

Which means that one book may have many different covers. Different covers for release in different countries. Different covers between the hardback and paperback versions. Different again for later reprints or when rebadging a series.

What makes a cover enticing to potential readers? If publishers could pin that down every book would be a bestseller. They may know the genre conventions, they can look at past successes and try to reproduce that “winning formula”, but in the end it’s a lottery. Just because lots of YA covers have photos of girls from the neck down doesn’t mean that whacking a headless girl on yours will sell the book.

In the end, what attracts a reader to a particular cover is subjective. People’s reactions to covers are as varied as their reactions to the stories inside. Consider Exhibit A, the cover of Liar by Justine Larbalestier:

Leaving aside the whole controversial "whitewashing" aspect (a storm of protest over the white girl on the original cover -- the protagonist is supposed to be black -- forced the publisher to come up with this cover instead), I wouldn’t cross the room to pick up this book. And that’s the effect a cover needs to have. Note, I’m not suggesting this is a bad cover, just demonstrating how subjective perceptions are.

This version of Liar’s cover, however, I find intriguing. I love the way the letters change, graphically illustrating the point of the book, that words can’t be trusted. This is such a clever cover when you’ve read the book, as it’s not just about lies but physical changes from one thing to another, and these letters are morphing from one form into something else. What that something might be isn’t clear, yet their red colour suggests blood, which leads you to assume it’s something sinister or dangerous. I’d definitely walk across the bookshop to check this out.

Then there’s Backseat Saints.

This cover hits the themes of the novel, but for me the visual appeal is so-so.

This one thrills me so much I actually squeaked with excitement when I found it in the bookshop. Same great book inside each one, but wow! this cover blows me away. The glorious saturated contrast of that vibrant red and green is the first thing that hits me, and then there’s the image. OMG just look at that hair!! WHY DID SHE CUT IT OFF??? I couldn’t wait to read the book to find out. Talk about a cover that did its job.

And sometimes an author gets lucky. I’ve seen two versions of Jennifer Hubbard’s The Secret Year, and both of them have that “pick me! pick me!” quality to them.

This one’s very striking with all that black and the partial faces. Combined with the title, you just know these two are hiding things, and you want to read the book to find out.

Then there’s this one. I am so drawn in by that girl’s melancholy gaze it takes me a while to notice she’s in bed with a naked guy. She looks so troubled I wonder if it’s because she’s hiding secrets from him or vice versa. Once again I feel compelled to read the book and find out.

So what’s an author to do? How can you make sure your cover’s going to attract the greatest number of readers possible? It’s a good question but I don’t think there are any good answers. Readers’ taste in covers are just as subjective as their taste in stories. In any case most authors won’t get much of a say in the design of their cover.

The ironic part is I would have read these three books even if they came covered in brown paper. I was choosing on the author’s name and familiarity with their writing through their blogs. And the reality is that the one factor that most helps to sell a book is name recognition.

So maybe a good cover helps, maybe it doesn’t. All an author can really do is write the best book they can ... and then cross their fingers.

Resistance is futile

2011-08-15T21:39:00.000+10:00

You know how the bad guys in corny movies always say that, usually in a fake German accent? Giff up now, Doktor Jones. Resistance iss futile.

Well, I’ve discovered (or rediscovered) it’s actually much worse than that. Resistance is stressful. Every time you consider doing something you think is going to be hard or unpleasant, and then put it back in the too-hard basket instead, you add to the size of the problem.

“One of the most stressful factors in most of our lives [is] procrastination. Avoiding a subject does not get rid of the stress associated with it. It increases it. The result is that bad time managers are always living with a considerable amount of generalised anxiety.”

Hello, and welcome to my life! I feel as if Mark Forster has been watching me.

I’ve raved before about his book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play. I reread it again last week, and have been putting some of his strategies to good use. As before, I found using a timer to split my time between different tasks helped to relieve stress by making me feel I was making progress on a number of fronts at once.

The other thing that really helped was his technique of assessing your feelings towards the work you have to do. Resistance is not just futile or stressful, it can also be useful! Which is the task you feel most resistance to doing? Make a start on that one.

It’s amazing how good this makes you feel. It’s like a weight being lifted off your shoulders when you finally do something you’ve been dreading. I tackled a few things that have been hanging over my head this last week, and felt so thrilled to be done with them. The stupid part is how not-scary the things I’ve been scared of actually turned out to be when I knuckled down and did them.

So this morning I again asked myself the question: What am I resisting most right now? And the answer came back: Finishing the first draft of Verity. I’ve had only one last scene to write for the last two weeks, and kept finding other things that “needed” doing more urgently.

So I did it.

Yes, folks – nearly two years after I started it, the first draft of Verity Bloom and the Sea of Stars is finally finished. Imagine what a proud mother I am.

Sure, it’s probably crap. But it’s finished crap. Thank you, Mr Foster.

Finding the Floor: Chasing Odysseus by SD Gentill

2011-07-31T22:40:00.000+10:00

Remember Finding the Floor, my project to read my way through my terrible tottering tower of a to-be-read pile? I’ve been working on it, just a little slow to report on my efforts.

One of the first books to make its way out of the pile was Chasing Odysseus by SD Gentill. The author is a friend of one of my oldest and dearest friends, so I was keen to read it. It’s exciting when someone you kinda sorta almost know actually gets published – Look Ma! Real people can make it in the publishing world! I had a sneak peek at the first few chapters when Sulari had it posted on Authonomy, and thought the premise was a good one.

Basically, it’s the story of Odysseus’ famous journey home from the Trojan War, but told from the perspective of four siblings who are chasing him. They are herders who kept the Trojans supplied through the ten-year siege, but are now fighting to clear their tribe’s name after the fall of Troy. The surviving Trojans assume the herders betrayed them, so now it’s up to Hero and her three brothers to find Odysseus, the real villain behind the fall of Troy, and force him to claim responsibility for his act.

And so we have a wonderful demonstration of the difference that point of view can make. Seeing Odysseus’ well-known adventures through the eyes of Hero and her brothers puts an entirely new slant on them. Needless to say, Odysseus doesn’t come off as quite the hero Homer makes him out to be!

Each chapter starts with a quote from The Odyssey. It’s great fun to see these familiar episodes transformed by the “real story” of Hero and her brothers. I particularly enjoyed the part on Circe’s island. In the Homeric version Odysseus is saved by divine intervention. In fact it’s the quick thinking of Machaon, one of Hero’s brothers, that frees them all from the enchantress’s clutches, in a way that makes Odysseus look a complete fool.

The only divine intervention we see in the novel is by Pan, god of the Herdsmen, who provides a magical boat for the siblings. None of the main Greek pantheon make an appearance, though I hope that may be coming in the next books, since Hero spends such a lot of time praying to them. Her excessive devotion to prayer annoys her brothers, and I grew a little tired of it myself, so I hope it will prove to have a purpose later on.

What the next books in the trilogy will cover I’m not sure, since the story is satisfyingly complete in this book. But that’s a good thing. Too often lately I’ve been reading merrily through a book, only to have that sinking feeling hit me: Oh noes! There aren’t enough pages left to wrap this up – another case of storius interruptus!!

I know some authors and publishers think it’s the kiss of death to put “Book 1 in the Such-and-such Trilogy” on the front cover. What if people don’t like Book 1 so they avoid Book 2? What if they see Book 2 on the shelf but they haven’t read Book 1 and it’s not there so they don’t buy Book 2? What if – gasp! – they won’t buy any of them till the trilogy’s complete because they can’t stand waiting a year between books?

While I can see the validity of these concerns, as a reader I hate realising when I’m almost finished a book that there must be others to come. Not that it makes any practical difference; it’s more an attitude thing. If I know going in the story won’t be finished at the end of the book, I’m prepared. If I assume it’s a standalone and it’s not I feel ripped off.

Ahem. I’ll just hop off my soapbox now. Back to Chasing Odysseus … None of that applies in this case, since the cover announces it’s the first in the Hero Trilogy. Plus – Bonus Points!! – the story arc is actually complete in this book. Complete story + promise of more goodness to come = happiness all round.

One thing I did wonder was: why three brothers? One was the sensible eldest brother, one was the wild and reckless brother, and one was the … well, just the other brother. He didn’t seem to have a lot to do, and what he did could have been combined into the character of one of the others. Perhaps he has a bigger role in the later books. I did sometimes forget which was which, since they were all rather alike. Still, that’s a small quibble; the kind of thing the writer side of my brain thinks about even as the reader side is getting swept along by the story.

Chasing Odysseus is great fun for someone familiar with the events of The Odyssey. For someone who isn’t it would be a good introduction to the world of the ancient Greek legends. Sulari writes well and keeps the story moving along. I just hope she also writes quickly – I want to know what happens next!

You know you're a parent when ...

2011-07-13T16:44:00.000+10:00

Baby Duck is home, hallelujah! It’s so good to have him back to his usual cheeky self. His wound is still a little tender and his appetite’s not great, but otherwise he’s back to normal.

He actually came home a week ago, but it’s taken this long to get ourselves back to some kind of normality. We did a great deal of sleeping and not much else for the first few days. It’s surprising how exhausting just sitting around in hospital is – I suppose it’s the stress. They kept him in for a full two weeks. I guess they wanted to be sure he really was fixed this time before sending him home again!

So here we are, reunited at last. “I love my family,” he said to me once in hospital. “I wouldn’t swap them for anything … except maybe [Demon Duck].” Obviously he was feeling well enough to crack jokes by that stage.

But we are enjoying being home together. It’s school holidays and very cold, so we’re spending a lot of time cuddled up together chatting or watching DVDs. Nice to have some down time before Real Life with all its activities and deadlines sweeps us away again.

But of course, this is Real Life too – the best part, in fact! The jokes and cuddles and tickles, the little things like reading books together, or having a chat while you shoot hoops in the backyard, these are the small moments that make me happy.

Like the one at four o’clock in the morning on my birthday, when Baby Duck rolled over in his hospital bed.

“Mum?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming instantly awake. Did he need pain relief? A trip to the toilet? Was he going to be sick?

He gave me a beatific smile. “Happy birthday!” Then he shut his eyes and went straight back to sleep.

I lay awake, thinking Big Thoughts about life and change and happiness. Particularly about parenthood, and how it affects all three.

So here’s the fruit of my musings for your edification:

You know you’re a parent when … your idea of a great night isn’t dinner and a show but eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

You know you’re a parent when … the movie release you’re most looking forward to this year is Kung Fu Panda 2.

You know you’re a parent when … your favourite birthday present is the poo your son finally does a week after his bowel operation.

You know you’re a parent when … you gleefully text your relatives about said poo.

Yes, we’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy. Parenthood is a whole 'nother country – the natives are friendly but a little strange.

Nice place to live, though.

The saga continues

2011-06-30T09:45:00.002+10:00

Just dropping in to say I haven’t run away to join the circus, in case you’re wondering why things are so quiet around here. Baby Duck is back in hospital. His “recovery” was plagued by setbacks, till he was clearly in such pain another trip to emergency was necessary. He was operated on last Friday for a bowel obstruction and is now finally starting to come good again. He even had some ice cream and jelly yesterday, his first food in over a week. The poor thing was down to 18kg on the weekend – he looks like a stick figure – but is slowly putting weight back on due to intravenous nutrition.

And in the midst of all this drama and pain, you know what he keeps worrying about? That he’ll be in hospital for my birthday.

That child is just so gorgeous I could eat him up.

Baby Duck and the very bad horrible no-good appendix

2011-06-16T15:40:00.000+10:00

One Sunday morning about 4 o’clock, a little boy woke up and chundered all over the floor. Oh goody, thought his parents, a vomiting bug! But on Monday night it occurred to his mother that, for a vomiting bug, there was very little vomiting going on, and rather a lot of complaining about stomach pain.

“Where does it hurt?” the boy’s mother asked.

“Right here,” he said, pointing at his belly button.

Uh oh, thought his mother who, in a weird coincidence, had just been discussing this very symptom with a friend whose son had appendicitis. So on Tuesday morning she made a doctor’s appointment.

“My son has been vomiting and complaining of stomach pain,” she said, “and I just want to check it isn’t his appendix.”

Ha! Famous last words, as they say in the classics. The doctor sent the boy straight to the emergency department, where they waited. And waited. And waited, as one does in emergency departments everywhere. About one o’clock in the morning the boy was admitted to hospital, and by 9:30 the operation was underway.

Poor Baby Duck! The surgeon made a last-minute decision to x-ray, given the odd location of the pain, and discovered a twisted bowel as well. So he ended up with more than one cut. The tip of his appendix was gangrenous, he had an abcess and adhesions, whatever they are. I don’t know – they tell you things and you nod and look like you’re functioning normally, but the words just go whooshing past without sticking properly when you’re worrying about your precious baby. I heard “infection” and “almost perforated” – or was it “perforated”? – “long hospital stay” and not a lot else really.

Thursday we started getting him to take little sips of water, which all came back with added green yuck on Thursday night. “Bowel obstruction” was mentioned and I spent the night panicking. Fortunately things started to improve slowly after that, and Tuesday morning he came home after a week in hospital.

For a little while, anyway. Tuesday night he was vomiting again, so it was back for another day in emergency yesterday. What fun! Now, touch wood, he’s home for good, and feeling much better.

“Are you going to write about me being in hospital on your blog?” he asked.

I think he wants me to tell you how brave he’s been. I couldn’t exactly put my hand on my heart and swear to that one, but I guess it depends on whose definition of bravery you’re using. By eight-year-old standards he did pretty well. I can tell you he was very well-behaved. All the nurses commented on his lovely manners, and how easy he was to deal with.

It’s so good to have him home again. It was a hard week for all of us – very disruptive for the girls, and the Carnivore and I are both short on sleep. One of us was with him 24 hours a day. Nothing got done beyond the most basic necessities. It must be so hard for families who have someone in hospital for a long time.

We were lucky too, that we have an excellent children’s hospital only half an hour from home. It’s times like these I’m grateful we live in Sydney, rather than out in the country somewhere. Country life seems idyllic until you consider the whole airlift-to-hospital-in-a-strange-city aspect.

So, not a great week. Ironically, I was on a roll with Verity on the Tuesday morning, busy congratulating myself that I only had two scenes to write to finish the first draft. I’ll do some more when we get back from the doctor’s, I promised myself. Needless to say, I haven’t written a word since.

Life with kids is often unpredictable like that. At least it’s never dull.

Playing tourist at home

2011-05-23T19:17:00.002+10:00

We had a weekend in the city recently. Check out the view from our apartment:

Admittedly the weather could have been better, but we couldn’t complain about the location! In the heart of The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney, we were surrounded by picturesque old sandstone buildings, quaint twisting alleys full of tiny galleries, gorgeous harbour views at every turn … So of course the kids wanted to go see the lego at the Sydney Aquarium.

And the lego was quite impressive, if lego is your thing. Moby Dick here had nearly 400,000 pieces of lego. The aquarium is always fun, if a little pricey. I love the seahorses

and the ugly dugongs. How drunk would a sailor have to be to mistake one of these babies for a beautiful mermaid??

Of course, I would have preferred less aquarium and more galleries – but that’s life with kids in tow. They were pretty patient and put up with a few galleries and a lovely Sunday morning stroll through The Rocks markets. Bribery with ice cream always helps!

We also spent a lovely hour or so browsing a couple of big bookshops. Dinner on Saturday night was at the Summit, a revolving restaurant on top of one of the city’s taller buildings. The views were great, despite the rain, and the kids had a great time stickybeaking at everything. The food wasn’t half bad either.

Even breakfast is an adventure when you’re staying at a swish place. All sorts of yoghurts and juices presented in tiny glasses made a tempting display.

Throw in a bit of time swimming in the hotel pool, and you have a pretty satisfying weekend all round. Sometimes it’s fun to play tourist in your own city.

Now if I could just convince the kids there’s more to Sydney than the aquarium …

Finding the floor: Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

2011-05-17T16:46:00.000+10:00

Finding the floor … or tackling the teetering tower of terror, otherwise known as the to-be-read pile. First it was a shelf, then two, then a neat pile stacked against the wall. Now there are tottering piles thirty books high. There must be hundreds of books there, cluttering up my floor and my life.

Hi, my name is Marina and I have a book-buying addiction. I can hear the authors among you yelling hoo-RAH! Bring on the book-buying addicts! And as addictions go it’s fairly innocuous, I admit. But it will take me years to get through that many books. Some have been there years already – some so long I’ve lost all desire to read them, which is crazy. I couldn’t even tell you what was on the bottom of some of those piles. Yes, I love books, but this is getting ridiculous. Time to tackle that monster!

Hence my new project – finding the floor in that scary corner of the room. Whittling down that overblown pile by reading one a week and reporting my progress here. Accountability is such a good motivator!

And to kick off the project, a book that spent barely any time on the pile, Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris. (That’s part of the problem – always reading the latest acquisitions and never getting to the older stuff – but I reserve the right to read in any order that takes my fancy.)

Dead in the Family is the tenth in the Sookie Stackhouse series about a telepathic waitress in small-town America and her continuing adventures with vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures. I’ve mentioned before on the blog how much fun this series is, and I dived into this one with every expectation of my usual huge enjoyment.

Let’s just say that Dead and Gone remains my favourite of the series. This one was very slow to start. Almost half the book passed in small incidents and recapping previous events. Halfway through I was wondering “when is the Big Thing going to happen? Where is the main storyline?” Sookie seemed to be spending a lot of time thinking, sunbaking, going to work, having lunch with friends and family – all the things that make up her regular life – but without any underlying storyline driving the plot along. Something did eventually happen, but it wasn’t really big enough to hang a whole book off. So instead of one main plot and several subplots, it felt like there were just a lot of subplots.

All this sounds as if I didn’t enjoy it, which is not the case. It still had a lot of elements I love about the Sookie novels, particularly Sookie’s pragmatism and the juxtaposition of her nice Southern gal manners against the monstrous misbehaviour of almost everyone around her. That’s the undead for you. No social skills. There’s humour in the way she stands up to the monsters and scolds them into better behaviour, but a serious side too. She forces them to remember their long-lost humanity.

Harris has Sookie in an uncharacteristically sombre mood for most of the book, which affects the overall tone. Bad things happen in most of the books, but usually Sookie retains her innate optimism. This time she’s still recovering from the terrible events of the previous book, and it seems to have changed her character. I guess it’s a good thing for the protagonist of a long-running series to change as the series progresses, otherwise the series can stagnate. But now there’s a manic feeling to her bubbliness, and she’s changed to the point of trying to organise the death of a vampire who’s causing trouble for her boyfriend. A rather different Sookie to the sunny character of the first books. It will be interesting to see how far Harris takes her.

So yes, I’m still looking forward to the next one, even though this one felt more like the characters getting their breath back from the last one than a whole new story. I think there’s still plenty of places Harris could take this series – I just wouldn’t recommend starting with this one.

Wednesday WIP for really truly

2011-05-11T22:22:00.000+10:00

Hooray! I finally have some progress to report on the writing front. Not just a quilting WIP but a really truly one. Yes folks, it took months of procrastination and a prolonged sojourn in the Depths of Self-loathing, but I finally got my butt back into the chair and started working on Verity again.

It’s been so long I had to read through it first because I’d forgotten what the story was about. Oh, yes – now I remember! Pirate ships powered by sails made of human skin, krakens and star spiders, and a bitter war between merfolk and selkies in a magical universe beyond our own called the Sea of Stars. Well, that’s not really what it’s about. That’s just the bits that make it fun. It’s about a girl’s search for her lost sister, and the family secret that could destroy them both.

Hey, say that last sentence in a movie trailer voice – sounds corny, doesn’t it! Okay, so my summary needs work. So does the story, unfortunately. Still, one job at a time. I have to finish writing the first draft first, so I can pin down exactly what happens in the story, before I can fix it all up.

You might think that, with only a couple of chapters left to write, I’d have a pretty good idea already of how it all ends. Well, and so I do, but stories have a way of surprising you – at least they surprise me sometimes! Only yesterday another tempting glimmer of an idea peeked up at me from a perfectly innocuous sentence I’d just written. And I still haven’t decided whether or not to kill off a major character in the climax. I don’t want to, because I really like him, and yet … it would be so cool for the story.

Anyway, my little wordcount widget is gradually creeping along again towards The End, which makes me feel like a real person again. A Contributing Member of Society. Bizarre, I know. Society is certainly not hanging on my deathless prose. Though I do know one little duckling who will be delighted to find out at last what happens (even though she will probably rend me limb from limb if I do wipe out this character).

Still, We Novelists cannot pander to the desires of our adoring fans, but must remain true to the prompting of our Muses. A Novelist is not a democracy, to be swayed by the opinions of others, but an almighty God in a universe of our own creation!

And right now this God’s finger is hovering over the Smite button. Hovering, I tell you! Which way will the dice fall? Only time will tell …

Fancy a magic carpet ride?

2011-05-04T22:44:00.001+10:00

Because if you do, I know where you can find one. Yes, I’m still here. Haven’t won the lottery and escaped to the Bahamas after all. I’ve just been horrendously busy with a combination of school holidays and costume making for a production of Aladdin the ducklings were starring in.

Talk about typecasting! Beautiful Drama Duck played the beautiful but melodramatic princess. Demon Duck lived up to her demonic name by making a splendidly evil bad guy. And crazy little Baby Duck played the evil sidekick – a wisecracking parrot. Not a bad match for a little guy with a big sense of humour who never stops talking.

The show was last Saturday night, and I spent several weeks sewing in the lead-up. Yes, I volunteered, and I’d do it again, so I shouldn’t complain, but wow, that was a lot of work. I made about 20 costumes, and let me tell you, I am so not a clothes maker. Straight lines I can do. Give me a quilt any day. But mention sleeves or fastenings or waistbands and I want to run screaming in the other direction. I guess it was a learning experience! Thankfully there was another lady – a very experienced, much more competent lady! – who made all the really hard costumes and did tricky stuff like working out sizes and fabrics. I just did what she told me, and I must say they certainly looked very professional on the night.

So the costumes were a slog (though I am such an expert at elastic waist pants now!). But I really enjoyed making the magic carpet. Look at that perfect border fabric I had in my stash. Doesn’t it just scream Persian opulence? I don’t even remember buying it, but I had just enough, with barely six inches left over. It was obviously meant to be! Oh, and while you’re looking, please admire the tassels, made by Drama Duck. She could see I was under pressure so she wanted to help out, bless her.

What about turbans? If you need those, I’m your woman. I made ten, and they looked awesome on stage, if I do say so myself. They were kind of fun too.

And the ducklings, of course, were wonderful, and had the best time. Their excitement made it all worthwhile, cliched though that sounds. I’m still very glad it’s over, though! Now I can get back to sewing my quilts. Not to mention getting to bed before one o’clock in the morning.

“You seem happy today,” the Carnivore said yesterday, in a tone of mild surprise. Guess I have been a little stressed and grouchy lately.

“That’s because I’m sewing and it’s something I actually want to make,” I said.

What a lovely time I had, cutting gorgeous fabrics and sewing them back together into even more gorgeous arrangements. I’ll show you what I’m working on soon – but in the meantime:

Sorry …

I can’t resist …

Just look at that date!

May the fourth be with you!!

Happy Star Wars day everyone!

It's impossible

2011-04-09T15:14:00.000+10:00

Question of the year comes from Baby Duck, who clearly has been learning about the evolutionary advantages of primates’ clever tool-using hands. We were driving along and out of the blue he pipes up:

“Mum, what are impossible thumbs?”

WIP Wednesday

2011-04-06T22:07:00.000+10:00

We’ve been dining in a cave for the last month because of what I laughingly describe as my “design wall” – a sheet pinned over the curtain rail in the dining room. Since I do all my sewing at the dining table, this is the perfect place for it. Except for when we wish to use the dining room for its intended purpose, of course. Then it’s a really crap place for it, since it blocks the light and the view.

However, its very craptasticness has a motivational aspect. I’m so sick of staring at the damn thing every time I eat a meal that I’ve been working on it at what passes for light speed for me. Only five more rows to sew together and the top will be finished.

There are some great fabrics in there, and the design is a quick and easy “disappearing nine-patch”. Can’t wait for it to disappear off my curtain rail. When it’s finished it will take up residence over the back of one of my lounges to protect it from the sunlight.

I wish I could report some writing progress, but my mojo has ridden off into the sunset without me. I’ll make an effort to track that varmint down when we stagger into school holidays next week. This term has been a challenging one, so I’m looking forward to a break and the chance to regroup.

The ducklings are also keen for the holidays to arrive, though no doubt the cries of “I’m bored” won’t take long to appear. Part of the excitement is knowing Easter with its bucketloads of chocolate is just around the corner. I’m still in negotiations with the Easter bunny about that. With my changed attitude to sugar it seems wrong to purposely load my children up with so much of the stuff – almost as bad as offering them cigarettes. Not that I mean to deprive them completely, but I need to find a compromise that will make us all happy. Cue hollow laughter.

Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Beam me up, Scottie

2011-03-18T21:02:00.000+11:00

Sorry if I got any trekkies out there all excited – this post has nothing to do with Star Trek. Just can’t resist a pun, even if the connection is pretty tenuous.

But I bring you – rather belatedly – February’s finished quilting project. Ta da! One cute scottie dog:

I saw a picture of one of these on a quilting blog somewhere (can’t remember which one, sorry), so I went hunting for a pattern. Found this one and whipped it up in a day or two. (Stop laughing! Two days is lightning fast for me.) If I was being strict about such things, it wouldn’t even qualify as finishing a UFO, since it jumped straight to the top of the queue, over all the genuine UFOs that have been languishing in the cupboard. But a finish is a finish, so I’m happy. And it’s just so cute! How could I resist?

I made it in reds to suit Demon Duck’s to-be-renovated room (if the long-awaited extension ever starts). She was very particular, and requested a proper collar with a dog tag. I was just going to tie a ribbon around its neck, but no, that would have been too easy.

I considered making a dog tag out of shrink plastic but got lazy. So I took her to the shops and let her choose a real dog tag and had it engraved. I should have gone with the shrink plastic – the tag cost way more than the dog! I nearly fell over when the guy handed me the engraved tag and said “that’ll be $15 thanks”. Ouch! That’ll teach me to take the easy way out.

The S stands for Scottarina, in case you’re wondering. Demon Duck has never been big on creative names for her stuffed toys. Her very first favourite was a blue rabbit called Bunny. Then Bunny was cast aside in favour of a purple koala called … wait for it … Koala. Finally Koala was superseded in her affections by a little brown bear called – yes, you guessed it – Little Brown Bear. “Scottarina” is positively inventive by comparison.

But none of them had a name tag worth more than they were ...

Italian cooking: now with random green stuff

2011-03-15T21:19:00.000+11:00

I had a craving for bruschetta – but do you think I could find a recipe? Heaven knows why I didn’t think to consult the Almighty Internet. Google is a girl’s best friend! But after ratting through several cookbooks I came up empty-handed. Maybe bruschetta’s too easy for cookbooks to bother with?

Anyway, I figured I could work it out. Bread, tomato, a little balsamic vinegar, and that yummy green stuff. Convinced the thing I needed was oregano I went to my local greengrocer to buy some.

My local greengrocer doesn’t label his herbs. It would be entirely possible for someone to come home with a bunch of mint only to discover it was actually basil. This may or may not have happened to me …

So I had a good sniff and came up with the one that smelled like bruschetta. Brought it home and made something that tasted just like the real thing (if you ignore the fact that it was slightly soggy in the middle – but my tummy didn’t care). It looked a treat too.

Only then I did find a recipe and discovered that the thing that smells like it belongs in bruschetta is actually basil, not oregano. I have a vague memory now that oregano has smaller leaves. As you’ve probably guessed by now I’d be the first one out the door in any cooking contest. It’s probably a good thing my greengrocer doesn’t label his herbs, or I’d have bought the wrong thing.

Hmmm. What do you think, internet?

Is my random green stuff really basil?

Colour my world

2011-03-10T17:28:00.001+11:00

Feeling a little blue today. (No offence, blue, I think you’re a lovely colour.) The world seems kind of grey and miserable. (I know, I know, grey – you must get sick of being equated with misery. And you don’t even get to be a colour. You’re just a shade.) So I’m adding a shot of colour for your viewing pleasure.

Ta da! The Mighty Internet has taught me to crochet. One stitch, anyway. I’ve been having fun throwing colours together, the brighter and more clashing the better. I love the way they make each other glow, all jumbled together like this. Maybe one day these will be a blanket, like this beautiful one at Attic24 that inspired me. Or knowing me, I’ll run out of puff and they’ll end up just cushion-cover size. They’ll still make me smile, though.

Another thing that’s making me smile lately is this pretty cyclamen sitting on my kitchen windowsill.

The flowers are so delicate but, frankly, a little weird, like butterflies balancing on top of poles.

I love the way they gradually stretch and unfurl. Nature comes up with some doozies, that’s for sure.

If you need more colour in your day, go check out Loretta Grayson’s blog. Wall-to-wall gorgeousness! I used to read her blog regularly a few years ago, when I was into scrapbooking. She always did the most amazing scrapbook pages, so artistic. Now, it appears, she too has the crochet bug. Or maybe she always did, I just didn’t know about it. But when I rediscovered her blog today it felt as if crochet had taken over the world. Go, hookers! I mean, um, hooky-type crochet people. You ain’t seen colour till you see what Rett does with it!

Do you have a favourite colour? It’s so hard to pick just one – it’s like choosing between your children! They’re all beautiful in different ways. Most days I say green out of habit, but really, I love them all.

Except maybe red. Sorry red, you’re just too … in your face. Although I have been using quite a lot of it lately in quilting, as you’ll see when I get around to posting a photo of February’s finished quilting project. So I’m learning to embrace red’s brash charms.

What’s colouring your world lately?

Finished!

2011-02-25T21:33:00.000+11:00

Feeling mildly accomplished tonight – have just finished a short story and submitted it to an anthology. At this point I can’t tell if it’s good or bad, but that’s not the point. It’s finished! And what’s my word for the year? Yay, me! Another project done.

This one’s been in the works a long time. Every time I drove home from visiting Mum last year I passed under a bridge called the Skye Winter Bridge. I looked it up just now; it’s named after a poor little toddler killed in a police chase.

In my head it turned into the Winter Sky Bridge and I started thinking about a magical bridge that appeared in the sky at a certain time of year – a transient, unstable bridge that was the centre of a whole world’s creation myth. A bridge that the people of the world believe leads to heaven, but in fact goes somewhere else entirely, and a boy who has to climb it in search of his lost brother.

Stories get started in the strangest ways, don’t they? I love hearing writers discuss the evolution of their stories. Such big, amazing things can grow from the tiniest seeds of inspiration. A word, a phrase, a line of poetry or an image in a magazine can spark a whole book. It’s like magic. Creating something where nothing existed before.

And speaking of books – now I’ve finally stopped procrastinating and finished this story, I can get back to Verity. Which also deals with a search for a lost sibling, come to think of it. Seems to be a recurring theme of mine lately. Should my brothers and sister be worried?

I only have a couple of chapters to go to finish the first draft. Then Drama Duck can stop harrassing me to find out what happens. Poor kid, she’s been very patient. But she’ll have to wait till next week. February’s nearly over, and I still have to meet my goal of finishing a quilting UFO this month – guess it’ll be a busy weekend!

What about you? Have you finished a project lately, or accomplished a goal?

Mad dodo skillz

2011-02-18T10:34:00.001+11:00

Well, the holidays are well and truly over, and we’ve gone back to all our usual activities, including taekwondo. At the end of last year, the girls and I moved up to high yellow belts. One of the black belts made taekwondo gingerbread men for everyone in celebration. Ninjabread men? She went to a lot of trouble. They had white taekwondo uniforms on and everyone got the appropriate coloured belt for their grade. So cute!

Sadly, Baby Duck is still languishing among the white belts, two grades behind us.

Baby Duck has a lovely nature, very caring and sensitive. Sure, he can be loud at times, and is certainly not above whacking his sisters when the provocation is great, but on the whole he’s a gentle, laid-back little dude. He just doesn’t get taekwondo.

At our school the sparring is non-contact, ie you’re supposed to stop short of actually punching or kicking anyone. Of course sometimes a foot or hand will connect accidentally (particularly among the younger practitioners!), and when it happens to Baby Duck he’s outraged.

“He kicked me!” he announces to the world in horrified tones.

You’d think he’d realise, from all those ninja cartoons he watches, that that’s the whole point of martial arts.

Most of the time, however, he’s quite safe since he allows a good ten-foot margin between him and his opponent at all times. I was trying to spar against him at our last lesson, and every time I kicked he fell back ten feet, then retreated another five feet before delivering his return kick. I tried to persuade him that he’s never going to defeat an opponent by standing on the opposite side of the hall, but I don’t know whether he bought my arguments.

Of course I’m happy that he’s such a sweet kid, and I don’t want to change him, but, you know, just a little more aggression would be helpful. He thinks the best part of taekwondo is chatting to his friends when they’re supposed to be learning their forms, hence the form is still pretty wobbly. Watching him go through his form is like watching a marionette. He’s all floppy and gangly. At this rate he could be a white belt forever, which wouldn’t go down well.

I instituted an incentive scheme, thinking to appeal to his greed. $30 for every grading! The girls have earned 60 bucks apiece already, which brings on tears when they get paid and he gets nothing, but doesn’t translate into motivation. Maybe I just have to wait for him to grow up a little more.

It’s ironic, though – the whole reason we started taekwondo was to find him a sport he’d enjoy. Yet he really couldn’t care less, and it’s Demon Duck and I who are keen. Demon Duck has a phenomenal memory. Show her a form once and she’s got it. She’s a good little sparrer too. I’ll have to work hard to keep up with her. Don’t want her beating me to black belt – although that’s a distant goal at the moment. I’d settle for just being able to do a side kick without losing my balance!

Hooked!

2011-01-20T10:39:00.000+11:00

I was very tempted to call this post “The Happy Hooker”, but decided to err on the side of caution, lest I attract all sorts of unwanted traffic to the blog. Of course I’m not talking about anything unsavoury, merely that I have a new hobby (as if I needed another one of those!).

Here is my first effort in progress:

For a long time I’ve been thinking I’d like to learn to crochet one day. Well, I decided the day had come, and asked the Internet very nicely to teach me. And you know that Internet, always so obliging! I found a great, easy to follow video on Youtube and off I went.

And then the Internet went all evil temptress-y on me and led me to some truly mouthwatering sites, like Sarah London and Attic24. Oh my goodness, the riot of colour! I want a ball of wool in that colour! And that one! Ooh, and those too! And the combinations and patterns are so divine. I can feel a new addiction coming on.

At least, unlike my sugar addiction, this one’s not bad for me.

Favourite books of 2010

2011-01-14T21:11:00.000+11:00

I read 75 books last year, including non-fiction, fantasy, sf, young adult, paranormal and the odd general fiction or thriller. The bulk of them were young adult or paranormal, which are two genres I didn’t read only a couple of years ago. I guess I got tired of my usual diet of epic fantasy, and went looking for something new.

Nevertheless, one of my favourites last year was the biggest, fattest, most epic-y epic fantasy I’ve read in years, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

If epic fantasy is your thing, don’t be put off by the stupendous size of this book. So what if you give yourself tennis elbow just holding it up? It’s worth it, I promise you.

Sanderson’s worldbuilding is fascinating. He has the same wonderful knack as Glenda Larke for creating a truly unique ecosystem. His world is ravaged by huge regular storms, which has shaped the way people live and all the creatures that exist. There are also tantalising hints of world history, and you get the sense this is a real world, with all the complexity that entails.

His main character is Kaladin, currently a slave, formerly a talented warrior, who is embroiled in an ongoing war in a very dangerous role. He is part of a crew that carries a bridge for the regular soldiers to cross the chasms that snake through the unusual battlegrounds where the war is taking place. Bridgemen drop like flies all around him, and his struggles to keep his crew alive and find a better life for them make compelling reading. So compelling that I did my usual thing of skipping all over the book. I got so caught up in Kaladin’s chapters that I skipped the ones dealing with the other characters and read Kaladin’s through to the end first, then came back and read the whole thing again in proper sequence.

Not that the stories of the other main characters aren’t interesting – far from it! It’s just that Kaladin was the best-drawn character in a book full of great characters. A win-win situation, really. The only downside is I have since discovered this is the first book in a projected series of ten, which means I’ll be waiting a long time for the end of the story, á la Robert Jordan and George RR Martin. Let’s hope Sanderson is a faster writer than either of those guys. At least Book 1 did have a very satisfying conclusion, while leaving some of the larger series questions open.

The other real stand-out of the year for me was Liar by Justine Larbalestier, a Young Adult which I’ve already reviewed here. A truly mindblowing book.

I read lots of other fun YA too, including some of the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan and the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. Skulduggery is a detective, and the books are fast-paced, full of magic and mayhem. The really fun part is that Skulduggery is dead – he’s a skeleton, and a wisecracking one at that.

Derek Landy visited Australia in 2010, promoting the (I think) fifth book in the series, and we went to see him at our local children’s bookshop. He was very entertaining, much like his books. Demon Duck asked him where he got the idea for a skeleton detective.

“Out of my incredible brain!” he said.

I found some new authors on my visit to Aussiecon in September, and one of them was Tansy Rayner Roberts.

Her Power and Majesty is the first in the Creature Court trilogy, and I’m eagerly awaiting the second instalment, due out in April, I think. This book starts with a bang – naked guy falls from the sky, off his face on drugs, observed by our country bumpkin heroine, who’s just arrived in the big city to take up an apprenticeship as a seamstress. When it turned out she was the only one who could see him because of her hitherto-unsuspected magic, I thought I knew where this book was going. But no – instead of becoming her mentor, he takes her magic with her blessing.

And that was just the first surprise this book had in store. Later ones were much more jarring, so much so I had to reread pages several times to be sure what I thought had just happened really had. Roberts isn’t afraid to inflict suffering on her characters, and there are some pretty dark and dangerous ones in this book. Also lust, betrayal, a strong heroine and a very strange and as-yet unexplained adversary. I was so eager for more that when the book ended I had to read the whole glossary, something I never usually even look at, just so I could stay in the rich world of Aufleur a little longer.

Another world I like to visit is that of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. It’s southern USA, only changed by the discovery that vampires are real. They “came out of the coffin” when Japan invented a synthetic blood they could live off, and the revelation has had profound political and cultural effects on society. It’s also made Sookie’s life a lot more complicated than it used to be. She’s a telepath, so not only are the vampires after her body, they’re after her mind as well.

Dead to the World is my favourite of the series so far. I could tell you the telepathic barmaid is a great character with a distinctive voice (true), and each book in the series adds new and interesting complications to the overall story (also true), but why do I really love this series?

Hot romance! Gorgeous vampire lovers!

I know, I’m shallow.

And this book is my favourite because it’s the one where Eric, the powerful (and hot – did I mention the hot vampire lovers?) regional overlord, who’s been lusting after Sookie for three books now, loses his memory. Instead of being a menacing (but hot!) figure, he has a complete personality change and becomes endearingly dependent on Sookie, who finds him running down the road near her house in the middle of the night. It’s romantic. The hot sex doesn’t hurt either. Ahem.

Okaaay. Moving right along.

Sex as oppression this time. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff was a very interesting exploration of what it means to be a wife in a polygamous marriage. The novel actually tells the stories of two nineteenth wives – a woman in a present-day Mormon sect accused of murdering her husband, and the based-on-historical-fact story of Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife of one of the founders of the Mormon church, and her struggle to end polygamy.

The modern story is narrated by a teenage boy. His mother is the nineteenth wife, accused of murdering his father, neither of whom he has seen since he was thrown out of the sect at 14 and left to fend for himself. This part of the story follows his efforts to prove his mother’s innocence, no easy task given the sect’s attitude to outsiders.

Woven together the two stories present a damning indictment of the practice of polygamy. It was fascinating to read but also depressing to consider how much misery is caused by men using religion as an excuse for not keeping their libidos under control.

On the non-fiction front my favourites were two books I’ve already discussed on the blog.

Get Everything Done by Mark Forster is a great tool for procrastinators, as discussed here. Even works for procrastinators’ children. Drama Duck finds the oven timer trick very helpful for getting homework done.

The other one is The Sweet Poison Quit Plan by David Gillespie, which I discussed here.

You know how people talk about “books that changed my life”? Well, this one really did! If someone had told me at the beginning of 2010 that I would give up peppermint chocolate that year I would have laughed.

Me? Give up peppermint chocolate?? Inconceivable!

Yet I not only did, I don’t even miss it. In the process I also gave up headaches every morning and about four kilos. Not a bad deal, I say!

I wish I could make everyone in the world read this book (David Gillespie probably wouldn’t mind that either!). The facts it presents are quite scary, and make a compelling argument against eating sugar. Anyone whose New Year’s resolutions revolve around healthier eating or losing weight could do worse than have a look at it.

There were lots of other good books on the reading list, but those were the stand-outs. I have plenty of happy reading to look forward to this year as well, since the To Be Read pile has hardly shrunk. Books just seem to find their way into the house, and I’m always looking for new things to read. Does anyone have any recommendations for me of something they’ve enjoyed?

So far so good

2011-01-08T19:44:00.001+11:00

Two finishes for the year so far – and the year’s only a week old. Admittedly, they were both things that needed all of ten minutes’ work, so it’s not as if I’ve been slaving away. Still, it’s nice to have that sense of completion. Even nicer to know Baby Duck will stop nagging me to finish his monkey. That boy sure is persistent.

So here he is, complete with beanie. I even made the pompom. The beanie is made from the only part of the pair of socks that doesn’t get used in making the monkey. Now I wish I’d thought of it when I made the first one. It’s so cute!

I call him Chunky Monkey, since he’s a little heftier than his brother, as you can see here. I got a bit carried away with the stuffing.

My other finish is this lap rug made of polar fleece. The colours are rather violent together, but it’s so soft and cuddly. It will be lovely to snuggle under when winter comes. The original plan was to cross stitch over all the seams, but it took me so long to go around the edges I decided I’d better not or it wouldn’t be finished till 2021!

I didn’t back it with anything, which means the knots show on the back of the stitching, though I was as neat as possible. That bugs me a little, but I like the weight and softness of it without a backing, so for the moment I’m putting up with it. Maybe one day I’ll put a backing on it.

Though then it wouldn’t technically be finished …

And the word for the year is ...

2011-01-04T14:58:00.000+11:00

Finish.

Need to do more of that this year! The house is bulging with unfinished projects. UFO (UnFinished Object) sightings in every room. I don’t know how the poor Carnivore stands it. He’s so neat and ordered himself, and I’m so … not. Unfinished books, unfinished quilts, remnants of crazes past, my stuff is everywhere. No room is safe, not even his study, poor man. He really does love me.

He never complains, but it must bug him. It bugs me and it’s my stuff! And now it’s the new year, ’tis the season for decluttering. New beginnings and all that. So I’m determined to finish more things this year.

Last year – it feels so weird to say last year, can’t believe it’s 2011 already! – last year I finished very little. A grand total of one short story on the writing front, which is currently out on submission. Huge effort, I know. Did some revision work and of course started a new novel for Nano, but now it goes on the pile with the other unfinished first drafts. So not exactly a stellar year writing-wise.

In quilting the picture’s not much better. I only finished one actual quilt.

True, it’s a lovely one, just kind of lonely! I almost completed another, but had to admit defeat when it was about 95% done and my sewing machine started playing up. It was for a friend’s new baby, so at the last minute I threw together a blanket of polar fleece squares for him instead:

Hopefully soon I’ll find the time and patience to figure out what went wrong and get his real quilt done.

I made a table runner:

and a couple of stuffed toys:

A pouch for my sister’s Kindle:

some aprons:

and a bag that still needs some finishing touches but hey, I’m calling it done (getting desperate here!):

But boy, if I showed you pictures of all the things I started this year, my computer would explode. I went into a bit of a frenzy towards the end of the year. As Mum’s life got sadder and greyer I bought brighter and brighter fabrics. Playing with their beautiful colours cheered me up for a while. The credit card is still reeling and the cupboards are groaning, but it helped me, and I’ll have some gorgeous things to show you when they’re finished.

Which brings me back to that word again. Finish. Hmmm. I’ve always had trouble with that one! So I’m not going to be silly and promise not to start anything new until I’ve finished all the old projects. I know myself too well for that! Instead I think I’ll try to finish one sewing project a month, and get at least two of my three unfinished first drafts done before Nano rolls round again. I keep seeing these opportunities for unpublished manuscripts, and I don’t have one that’s polished enough to send anywhere. That has to change.

So, another busy year ahead. How about you? What are your plans and goals?

The house is full of flowers

2010-12-26T12:21:00.000+11:00

The house is full of flowers because Mum is gone.

She wore the new shirt I gave her for Christmas but she never got to see how pretty she looked in it.

Red roses and rosaries; a white-haired priest with an Irish accent.

A man in a frock coat walked down the road in front of the hearse while the summer sun beat down.

Black dresses and sunburn. Hot little boys with sweaty heads.

Her children following the hearse, just the four of us alone together. My brother drove and swore; my sister couldn’t remember what day it was. We laughed and cried in that contrary way people do, battered by grief.

Contrary like her. Artist and mother; creator of books and babies, the heart of our family. Both stubborn and passionate; unsentimental and loving. Champion worrier to the end.

On Monday night my sister told her everything was in order and she could stop worrying. Tuesday morning she was gone.

Even 87 years was not enough.

The house is full of flowers and I will miss her all the rest of my life.

Nano carrots

2010-11-30T21:55:00.000+11:00

“What the hell’s she talking about?” I hear you say. “That’s just a photo of a pile of books.”

Work with me here, people. You’ve heard the expression about the carrot being a better motivator than the stick. Well, I explained this one to the two eldest ducklings this month, along with a practical demonstration.

They both signed up for the Young Writers’ version of Nano again this year. In order to avoid a repeat of last year, where Demon Duck stopped writing after a week and I had to take 1500 words of dictation from her on the last day to get her over the finish line, I bought her a book she’s been begging for.

“This is your Nano carrot,” I said. “You don’t get to read it till you finish Nano.”

Hers is the Young Samurai novel, and she finished her 3,000 words before school this morning.

Drama Duck had no trouble finishing last year – she was done a week before the deadline. That suggested to me that her wordcount goal was too easy for her, and I wanted to encourage her to tackle a bigger project. Out came Nano carrot number two, the new Rick Riordan novel.

“If you make your goal 8,000 words instead of 5,000, you can have this book when you finish.”

And hey presto! She marched up the stairs last night, having finished her wordcount, and swiped the prize off the pile in triumph.

The third one, of course, is for me: Jackie French’s new novel Oracle. I read a good review of it in the papers a couple of weeks ago, and I’m looking forward to it. Adventures in ancient Greece are always fun.

And yes, I get to read my Nano carrot too. I put in a big effort yesterday, because I knew today would be crazy, wrote nearly 4,000 words and just scraped across the finish line. Thank goodness. It was a real struggle this year.

Just to add to the challenge, our computer guy arrived in the middle of the day yesterday and took over my computer for a couple of hours. Aaargh! What’s a girl to do when she’s thrown off her computer?

Why, go and sew something to relieve her feelings, of course.

I’m so in love with this bird fabric, this is the third thing I’ve made with it, and I’m not done yet. The whole of that particular range is so delicious I could eat it. (If, you know, I had one of those weird disorders where people eat stuff they’re not supposed to, like coal or chalk. I would eat only the most bright and beautiful of fabrics.)

Isn’t it gorgeous? I think this will be a pillow for my bed. Yum yum. Someone pass me a knife and fork.

Dear Blog

2010-11-27T21:53:00.000+11:00

Dear Blog,

I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you in a while. Don’t give me that sad puppy dog face – I still love you, honest. You’re great. It’s not you, it’s me.

Me and that Nano guy. I’ve been seeing a lot of him this month. Between him and end-of-year madness and the Carnivore travelling a lot, things have been rather busy around here.

I know you think I take you for granted, only seeing you when I feel like it. Not like that Nano guy. My God! He’s so demanding. It doesn’t matter what you do for him one day, he expects you to show up again the very next day and do it all again. And the next day, and the one after that … I tell you, I’m exhausted. I’ve come that close to breaking it off with him – not once, but several times. This year his demands seem so much harder than previous years. I really thought I couldn’t stick it out for the whole month.

So here we are, with only three days left in November. I know you feel neglected, but hey! Get in line! What haven’t I neglected this month? You’re no Robinson Crusoe.

Just. Can’t. Wait. For November to be OVER. I’m at just over 45,000 words tonight, so I’m pretty sure of getting my 50,000 words in. But AAARRGH!! I still don’t have a handle on this book I’m writing. Still blundering around in the dark. How can I be this far through the story and not really be able to say what it’s about? If I manage to get a coherent plotline out of this mess it’ll be a bloody miracle.

So, anyway, dear blog, I promise I’ll be back soon to lavish love and affection on you. We both just have to hang on for three more days and life will be back to normal. Kind of. Well, there is Christmas around the corner, you know, which on top of everything else involves every person I’ve ever met suddenly deciding they have to catch up with me before then as if they all think the world is going to end on December 25th.

So, yeah. Maybe “promise” is too strong a word, but you know I could never leave you. In the words of the immortal Arnie: “I’ll be back.”

Love,
Me

And they're racing!

2010-11-02T19:41:00.000+11:00

No, not the Melbourne Cup, which ran today. I’m so uninterested in horse racing I forgot all about it till it was over. Still don’t know who won. Probably some horse.

No, I’m talking about the really important race that runs every November: NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Though really they should be considering changing it to IntNoWriMo, since it is an international event these days, with people all over the world taking part.

I was very tempted not to join in this year, through fatigue and general lack of ideas. But Drama Duck and Demon Duck were both keen to give the kids’ version a go again, and of course they wanted me to play too. Still I seesawed back and forth. The night before it started I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to do it. My idea was so weeny and had such gaping holes in it where there should be things like plot and character.

Yet there I was yesterday, typing like a demon. And I achieved a personal best – 4039 words in one day. I can still hardly believe it. If you’d asked me that morning if I thought I’d ever be able to write so many words in one day, let alone that day, with only my skeletal idea to prop me up, my answer would have been a resounding no.

Now it’s day 2, and I’m still going strong. Just waiting for the wheels to fall off. A story arc would be nice, maybe some character motivations – even a title. I’ll just have to put my trust in the process and hope that these things will come in time. So far they always have, but it’s damn scary when you’re on this side of the process, waiting for the magic to happen.

Just don’t ask me what it’s about, okay? I have Absolutely. No. Bloody. Idea.

Isn’t Nano fun??

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

2010-10-17T17:41:00.000+11:00

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fish.

The astounding Liar by Justine Larbalestier reminds me of this old joke. Not because the book doesn’t make sense, but because it constantly jolts your reality, forcing you to adapt to a new idea of what the story is about. Just when you get comfortable – bam! – it does it again. And again. And again. By the time you get to the end of the book you’re reeling from the constant body blows as the story keeps shifting.

Liar is a hard book to talk about, because it’s such a mind-blowing ride you don’t want to give anything away and spoil the experience for others. It’s narrated by Micah, a girl who admits she lies all the time, but is promising to tell us, the readers, the real truth. Larbalestier takes the concept of an unreliable narrator to such extremes it leaves you wondering how she managed to keep track of her slippery, twisting story. It does your head in just trying to keep up when you’re reading it – imagine holding it all in your head long enough to write it!

Every time you think you know what’s going on, Micah begins a new section by admitting that half of what she just told you isn’t true. Now she’s going to tell you what really happened. Only when you get to the next section it’s “well, actually, I know I said that was the truth, but, no, really – this is what happened”.

And you just keep on falling for it. Well, I did, anyway. And that’s what makes this book so clever. All fiction is lies, isn’t it, by definition. Fiction is made-up stories. When we read fiction, we agree to go along with whatever version of reality the author is presenting. It’s part of the deal – you tell me a good story, and I’ll accept for the moment that talking caterpillars exist, that other planets are populated by alien species, whatever it takes.

So we come to fiction happy to swallow the biggest fattest porkies an author can come up with, in the name of entertainment. We expect to be lied to. But the unwritten rule is that the author must present the lies as truth and we’ll accept it as such for the duration of the book.

So when a book like this comes along, where the narrator keeps pulling the rug out from under us, it really throws us. Maybe I’m a slow learner, but it took at least ten of these episodes before I got it through my head that this narrator really meant it when she said she was a liar. Every time she said “actually, what I just told you was crap, but now I’m telling you the truth” I believed her, because I’m so conditioned to the way fiction works. I was almost at the end before it dawned on me that maybe I would never find out “the truth”. I kept turning pages, unable to stop, desperate to “find out what happened”, because that’s what books are normally about – finding out what happened.

Only with this book you have to figure it out for yourself. And there’s not just one possible answer. Pivotal moments in the plot may or may not have happened. Whole characters may or may not really exist. Days later I’m still thinking about it. Talk about “choose your own adventure”! But how do you weigh the “evidence” when it’s all unreliable? Maybe none of it was true??

Awesome, awesome book. It’s just been nominated for a Children’s Book Council Award, and I hope it wins. I don't know what else has been nominated, though I’m sure they’re all good books, but this is something very special. A book like this doesn’t come along very often.

Now I just wish I knew someone who’d read it so we could discuss it! It makes you want to compare notes with everyone, and see what they thought happened. I may have to force it on the Carnivore, though I suspect his accountant’s soul will not deal well with the lack of certainty.

Also, there are no car chases.

Your war correspondent checks in

2010-10-07T22:37:00.000+11:00

Greetings from the battlefront! The war against sugar continues. It’s been two months now, so I thought it was time for an update.

First and most obvious change: my frequent, regular headaches have lessened dramatically. Yes, I still have sinus problems, but obviously not nearly as badly as I’d assumed. Turns out those headaches were mainly sugar withdrawal symptoms.

Second, my skin looks better than it ever has since those distant days pre-puberty.

Third, I’ve lost a small amount of weight – maybe 1.5 kg. Hard to tell precisely with my erratic bathroom scales (pick a number! any number! you don’t like that one? just get off and get back on again!), but my clothes are definitely looser. Seems a pretty pathetic amount compared to how much I lost in two months on Weight Watchers, until I remember how hard Weight Watchers was. Sure, it taught you useful, sensible things about portion sizes and balanced nutrition but ye gods! I was always hungry. I remember obsessively totting up my points at night after dinner, desperately trying to figure out what, if anything, I could afford to eat before I chewed my own arm off. That and the fact that once I stopped noting and counting every single thing I put in my mouth the weight started creeping back on.

I am also pleased to report that the desperate chocolate cravings did finally abate, some time around week 6 or 7. Yesterday I even had a piece of the formerly beloved peppermint chocolate, and you know what? It was too sweet.

The world as we knew it has come to an end -- the sugar-free Chocolate Bar of Doom is actually starting to taste rather good …

The Ugly Quiltling

2010-09-28T21:40:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time there lived an ugly quiltling. The poor little quiltling didn’t look anything like the other quilts in the family, who all laughed at it and said how ugly it was. Even its own mother didn’t love it.

The poor little quiltling would sit by the lake and watch the beautiful quilts go by, and dream of growing up to be a beautiful swan quilt.

Sadly, this never came to pass.

See? Ugly!

I’ve joined the free motion quilt-along on Christina’s blog A Few Scraps. I’ve done some free motion quilting before – mainly stippling, though I branched out into (wonky) flowers and butterflies in my last quilt.

Definitely need more practice! I thought it would be a fun way to improve, so I finally put together the ugly quiltling the other night to be my practice piece. The idea was to put together a quilt top that you wouldn’t get too attached to, so you wouldn’t worry about “ruining it” as you learned. “If at any time you think to yourself ‘My god, this is one ugly quilt’ then you have succeeded,” Christina said.

So the poor ugly quiltling will never be beautiful, but it will certainly be very useful. Heaven knows what I’ll do with it when it’s finished – no one in the family likes it either! Maybe for the dog? My tastes in fabric have certainly changed a lot since I bought those. I think they’re from my “trying to like country style because everyone else does” phase. I’m looking forward to getting started on the actual quilting part.

Back in my normal colour palette of bright and vibrant, I’ve just made a pretty handbag out of the same gorgeous bird fabric I used for Demon Duck’s apron.

I saw it on Terry’s Treasures blog, and she kindly linked to the pattern, which turned out to be very easy, though I thought it would be bigger than it turned out. Maybe I’ll make a bigger one another time. I have so many quilting irons in the fire at the moment! Not unusual for me, of course, queen of the unfinished projects.

At least I’m making progress again on Verity. Hopefully another 5,000 words or so will see me typing “The End”.

Aussiecon

2010-09-20T23:08:00.001+10:00

As you get older it gets harder and harder to do things for the first time. I love learning new things, but trying new things? Scary! Of course, there’s always a million things you’ve never done, but by the time you’ve got some history behind you, the list of things you’re likely to ever attempt shrinks.

I can assure you, for instance, that there is no way I am EVER going to jump out of a perfectly good plane and trust my life to a concoction of silk and rope that will hopefully deploy at just the right moment to save me from being splattered across the face of the earth. Nor will I ever go scuba diving, or learn to speak Japanese (not to pick on Japanese, which I’m sure is a perfectly good language – just can’t see it ever making it on to my list of 100 Things to Do Before You Cark It). And I’ll probably never tailor a three-piece suit, or drive a semi-trailer, or get into a fist fight or a million other things, large and small.

But lately “firsts” seem to be popping up all over the place. I played my first ever game of netball, after watching the girls from the sidelines for the last three years. First ever game of any team sport, in fact. And it was awesome. Who knew sport could be so much fun?

This week I’m going for my first ever taekwondo grading. I’ll be a yellow belt! Huge, I know – it’s only one rank above absolute beginner, but I’m still excited.

And at the beginning of the month, I went to my first ever sf convention – the World Science Fiction Convention. It’s usually held somewhere in the US, but this year it was in Melbourne, so I dragged the whole family along for a long weekend. The long-suffering Carnivore carted the younger two around to all the Melbourne attractions through bucketing rain and arctic gales, while Drama Duck and I skipped around the convention centre in airconditioned comfort, having so much fun it should have been illegal.

One of our first panels on the Saturday was on pitching your novel, where I was pleased to discover I knew everything the panellists were advising. The big excitement at this session, though, was meeting up with bloggy friend Jaye Patrick. Jaye and I have “known” each other ever since I did Nano for the first time in 2007, and it was great to finally meet in real life. She put me on the spot though. One of the first things she said to me was “how is Verity going?” and of course I had to admit Verity has been sadly neglected.

After lunch Drama Duck and I lined up for half an hour to make sure of a spot at Glenda Larke’s kaffeeklatsch the following day – a chance to sit around a table drinking coffee and chatting with an author for an hour about whatever you like, limited to only eight people. We were the first two people to sign up and very excited at the opportunity.

Glenda is lovely, with a great sense of humour. We attended several of her panels over the three days we were there, and she was very entertaining as well as insightful. The kaffeeklatsch was great. Drama Duck even worked up the courage to ask her a question and now has a serious case of hero worship going on. She demanded a Glenda Larke book to read after meeting her. The only one I had with me was the second book of the Watergivers trilogy and she got stuck into it straight away. Every time she came up for air she’d say “this is a really good book, Mum!”. She’d finished it before we got back to Sydney.

Other highlights included meeting George RR Martin – he’s such a Big Name in the fantasy world it’s like meeting God – and some other writers whose blogs (and work) I follow. John Scalzi is just as funny in person as on his Whatever blog. Peter V Brett made a big impression in the panel on promoting yourself and your work. He’s an introvert, like many writers, and finds self-promotion difficult. He pointed out that an introvert is not a person who can’t manage social interactions, but someone who is drained by the effort, whereas an extrovert is energised by social interaction.

I also discovered some new writers to try, like Catherynne M Valente, scarily intelligent and fiercely feminist on all the panels we saw her on. She had a rant about Shrek 4 at one stage which was very amusing but also thought-provoking. Her beef was that Shrek makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin to change the past so he doesn’t rescue Fiona from the tower. In this new world Fiona rescues herself, and is brave, resourceful, a leader and freedom fighter – but the world is absolute crap. The message being that women must never dare to take action but must wait to be rescued by some man. Strong independent women destroy the world. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like that movie!

Russell Kirkpatrick and David Cornish gave me a new appreciation for maps in fantasy novels. I’ve always been pretty anti-map. I gave up looking at the things once I realised they were like having spoilers. Oh, there’s a huge city on the map up there? Must be important then. And there’s only one pass through the inhospitable mountains? Guess we know which way the characters are going then. But their maps are works of art, and there was much discussion of the things you could map apart from geographical features. Interesting stuff.

In fact, there was so much interesting stuff on offer it was hard to choose where to go. Every hour there were at least three panels I wanted to attend. Unable to split myself, I had to miss some that sounded awesome, but most of the ones I attended were good. Probably my favourite of the whole weekend was “Anatomy for Writers, Fighters and Tavern Brawlers”. Run by Sean McMullen, a martial arts expert as well as an author, it was not only educational but extremely funny. His poor assistant got drawn all over to show his muscles, stabbed with an umbrella masquerading as a sword and manhandled in various painful-looking ways as Russell demonstrated disarming and attacking opponents. Russell also snapped a thick board with his bare hand, which Drama Duck and I were hugely and geekily impressed with, seeing as how we’re budding martial artists ourselves. I’ve never seen anyone do that in real life.

All in all, it was a great experience, and very inspiring. I’ve started working on Verity again, after procrastinating as long as humanly possible. Yes, there have certainly been some unusual and stressful times lately, but basically I was just scared to get back on the horse after so long. Now that I have, my enthusiasm for the story is back.

In one of those serendipitous coincidences, I also found this post today by John Scalzi about making time to write: in essence, it’s really not that hard. “Do you want to write or don’t you?” he asks. “If your answer is ‘yes, but,’ then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say ‘no.’ ”

In other words, “Butt, this is Chair; Chair, meet Butt”. Time to get those two old friends reacquainted.

My secret weapon against chocolate cravings

2010-09-12T22:32:00.000+10:00

Are you ready? I’m about to reveal my secret weapon against chocolate cravings. Please note, this is not for the fainthearted. Are you sure you want to know? I’m telling you, this is scary stuff.

Okay then. Here it is. When I have desperate chocolate cravings, I know it’s time to bring out the big guns. Nothing stops those cravings like this baby …

Dark chocolate!!

I promise you, one mouthful of this will turn you off chocolate for life (or in my case, at least for the rest of the day).

I hear rumours that some people actually like dark chocolate, and all I can say is: diversity is a good thing and the world is full of wonders and isn’t it lovely that we’re all different but – Good God! What is wrong with you?? This stuff tastes indescribably bad. It is an affront to the very name of chocolate.

Not that I’m picking on this particular chocolate bar. I’m sure it’s no more vile than any other dark chocolate. I knew when I bought it it was a long shot, but I was hoping my love for all things peppermint might overcome my dislike of dark chocolate. No such luck, alas. This abomination has been living in my fridge for over two weeks. In chocolate bar years that’s a lifetime, since the lifespan of most chocolate that enters this house can be measured in moments.

So why am I eating it if it tastes so bad? It’s all part of my fiendish plan to defeat the Demon Sugar. I’m finding chocolate the hardest thing to give up, so I’m trying to recondition my automatic response to it. Like Pavlov’s dog – you know, every time he served the dog dinner he rang a bell, till eventually the dog would salivate at the sound of the bell even if there was no dinner with it?

This should work the same way. If every time I crave chocolate I have this disgusting travesty of a chocolate bar, eventually I should skip straight to the part where I want to wash my mouth out just at the thought of eating chocolate. Right? Right??

Sigh.

I promise to stop obsessing about food soon. Next post I’ll tell you all about my adventures in the arctic wasteland otherwise known as Melbourne at the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention.

Thud!

2010-08-30T22:48:00.000+10:00

That sound you heard was me falling off the sugar wagon.

What can I say? It was a kids’ party. There were cupcakes and honey joys (yum!). I had to cook the damn things, see them, smell them. Just. Could. Not. Resist.

Yes, Demon Duck’s so-called “sleepover” party was a sleepless night of sugar-fuelled madness. And that was just me. You should have seen the kids. A raging success, in other words, though we paid for it for days afterwards with grumpy, exhausted children. She had a ball, which is the main thing, I guess. The things we go through for our children.

I decided the guests would cook their own pizzas for dinner. So in a fit of madness I went out and bought some gorgeous bright fabrics.

You can’t cook pizza without a pretty apron, can you? Oh, right, you can. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, which has been my defence for a lot of stupidly time-consuming endeavours over the years. I have to admit I was kinda over aprons by the time I finished all nine of them.

And then the night before the party we went shopping for lolly bags and couldn’t find anything suitable. No problem! I’ll make those too. Just hang on a moment while I duck into this handy phone booth and change into my Supermum outfit. Oh, yeah, and I made a red-and-white checked tablecloth too, to give the dining room more of a “pizza parlour” feel.

Actually the lolly bags weren’t that time-consuming. And they did look cute. It would just be nice if I occasionally had these brainwaves some time other than the eleventh hour.

Here they are with the aprons. Just pretend you don’t see my ironing board in the corner of that photo, okay?

So anyway, about that sugar. A couple of those honey joys committed suicide right in my mouth. And a cupcake. And maybe a Mint Slice. And two or mumble mumble five little homemade ginger biscuits. So the day after the party I got Brave and Ruthless and gave away the remaining party food. Didn’t want any more suicides on my conscience.

The funny thing is, I used to eat biscuits every day and crave cake all the time. But apart from this one party aberration I haven’t missed those at all since I started my war on sugar. It’s chocolate I miss the most. Chocolate is the hardest to go without, and the thing I still crave (and occasionally give in to those cravings).

It’s been almost a month now. On the plus side, I’ve cut my sugar intake drastically. The most obvious reward for that is fewer headaches. On the down side, I still haven’t managed to kick the chocolate habit and therefore am still experiencing cravings. I know I need to grow a set and go cold turkey already. I’m just prolonging the agony, sneaking myself bits of chocolate now and then. How hard can it be to face a future without chocolate?

Whimper …

Whose crappy idea was it anyway to make all the bad stuff taste so good, and so much of the good stuff taste bad? I mean, really – brussel sprouts? Lamb’s fry? What kid ever wants to eat those? How much easier would it be if things had been better designed?

You wouldn’t catch little Johnny sneaking his food under the table to the dog if it was yummy healthy Smarties on his plate instead of peas. No, those plates would be licked clean. Dinner time would no longer be a war zone.

“Eat up your lovely chocolate, darling, or you’ll never grow up to be a big strong boy.”

Ah, yes. If I ruled the world, things would be much more efficient.

The love has gone

2010-08-13T11:15:00.001+10:00

My love affair with sugar is fading. We used to be so close, but now we hardly see each other …

But before I give you the latest report from the war zone, I have to show you the invitations I made for Demon Duck’s upcoming slumber party.

Aren’t they cute? When you lift the quilt the invitation is revealed hiding underneath. I was very proud of myself for dreaming this up – and then it occurred to me how very little actual sleeping takes place at a so-called slumber party. Lots of giggling and talking, watching DVDs and consuming junk food, but not much sleeping. So maybe a bed wasn’t such a good idea after all!

I did a little sewing the other night. One of my sister’s sons gave her a Kindle for her birthday recently (I shall have to give Baby Duck hints that this is the level of awesome required for presents from one’s grown-up sons!). She was carrying it around in a satin bag. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that she needed a padded bag to protect it. Actually that was probably the second thing, after “Oh my God, you’ve got a Kindle!”

So I had a go at making one. My first attempt ended up too small, and will be reincarnated as a handbag for Demon Duck. For my second attempt I found a pattern here and, armed with proper measurements, it turned out much better.

Here it is with a book inside it (since my son hasn’t received the memo yet about buying his mother a Kindle).

As for the War on Sugar, or The Sad Story of a Love Gone Wrong, there’s not a lot to report. I’m past the major headache stage and the cravings are lessening. I weakened and had one square of peppermint chocolate with my cup of tea the last two nights. One lousy square! How the mighty have fallen. I claim extenuating circumstances. I won’t bore you with the details, but life is fairly stressful at the moment.

Apart from that, no sugar apart from what’s in a couple of pieces of fruit a day. Not even in tea, which is another sad story of lost love. I’ve been having Equal, a sugar substitute, in my tea. It gives the tea a slightly different flavour, but it’s still tea and it’s still sweet – and yet … Nope. I’m just not feeling it. Turns out that my great love of tea was actually a great love of the sugar in it. Without sugar tea is just a pleasant hot drink that I can take or leave.

Jay Lake had a link on his blog to a report on the evils of sugar, specifically its fructose half. A new study has found that pancreatic cancer cells use fructose to divide and proliferate. The researchers fed cancer cells both fructose and glucose, but the cells used the two types of sugar differently, showing the sugar industry’s claims that all sugars are the same to be wrong. In the US, where they have a huge amount of high fructose corn syrup in their diet, this has big implications. “US consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.”

Now the research team is hoping to develop a drug to stop cancer cells using fructose to grow. I guess that’s what researchers do, but it seems to me to be coming at the problem from the wrong end. Instead of trying to fix the damage fructose causes, wouldn’t it be better to prevent the damage in the first place by removing fructose from the diet?

I realise that’s not an easy thing to do. Trust me, I know! Governments would have to take on the big companies like Coca-Cola and educate people on the dangers. It would require a huge shift in people’s attitude to sugar. But we only have to look at the government regulation of the tobacco industry and the way the public perception of smoking has changed over the years to know it can be done.

Meanwhile, my personal struggle against the Demon Sugar continues. Someone hide those biscuits and pass the damn nuts.

Kicking the sugar habit

2010-08-07T19:02:00.001+10:00

It has occurred to me more and more lately that I am addicted to chocolates and sweet foods. I used to have a more responsible attitude. I’d only eat my beloved peppermint chocolate two or three times a week, for instance. Then it crept up to every night. Then the amount started to increase. Lately I’ve felt that I could happily down the whole block in a sitting, though I haven’t quite sunk that low yet. But the potential was alarming. I could end up one of those sad cases where they have to bring in a crane and knock a hole in the wall because they can’t get the body out through the door.

So I decided to give up peppermint chocolate, at least for a little while. Two days later, my well-meaning family, unacquainted with my new resolve, gave me ten blocks of the stuff for my birthday. Sigh.

Then we watched the DVD Supersize Me, in which Morgan Spurlock nearly eats himself into an early grave by eating nothing but MacDonalds for a month. I’d seen it back when it first came out, but wanted to show it to the girls. There is a moment at the end when a very sick-looking, much larger Spurlock is sitting with a dietician. On the table between them are pots and pots of sugar, representing the enormous amount he has ingested over the month.

With that image in my head I walked into a bookshop the next day and a book jumped out at me: The Sweet Poison Quit Plan, by David Gillespie.

“Sugar makes you fat,” it begins. “It is converted directly to fat by your liver and it destroys your appetite control so that you want to eat more of everything.”

Gillespie also says it is the cause of many chronic diseases such as heart disease and obesity, and of course diabetes. It is as addictive as nicotine, and in just about everything we eat. Not only that, but it caused the Global Financial Crisis. Okay, I might have made that part up. But there is a lot of food for thought in his book, if you’ll forgive the pun. If you’re interested, his blog discusses much of it.

Ding ding ding! This was ringing some bells with me. Most days I wake up with a headache, which often disappears mid-morning. Hey, that would be just after I’ve had my glass of sugar (ie orange juice) for breakfast, followed by my sugar-laden morning tea. Coincidence? And you know when I have a headache and the Carnivore suggests I take a tablet, and I say “oh, I’ll just have a cup of tea, that’ll fix it”? Maybe that’s not the caffeine after all.

Okay, I’m a sugar addict. I finish the book on Monday afternoon and resolve to give up sugar forthwith. No tea and chocolate before bed.

The result?

Day 1: I have a filthy headache all day. As in, toothed, spacefaring worms from the planet Mongo are devouring my brain kind of headache. I take this as a challenge and resolve not to be bested by the demon sugar. Feel abnormally tired driving home in the early afternoon, so much so that I worry about falling asleep at the wheel. Damn the evil sugar and its energy highs and lows! Sing along to the radio and focus on how good I will feel when I conquer this addiction. Cut my beloved breakfast orange juice back to half a (large) glass.

Day 2: Headache has subsided to a dull ache. Amazingly, I feel no cravings for sweet food. I attribute this to my new gung-ho attitude to the demon sugar and feel mildly smug all day. Cut sugar in my tea back to half a teaspoon. Tastes so bad am forced to drink herb tea instead. Notice for the first time how very sweet orange juice is, and contemplate cutting my breakast ration back further.

Day 3: Still no cravings for sweet foods. For the queen of peppermint chocolate, this is most unexpected, but very welcome. Snack virtuously on nuts and natural yoghurt. (“What’s that?” the Carnivore asks. “Natural yoghurt.” “Does it taste nice?” “Disgusting. No sugar.”)

Day 4: Cut breakfast orange juice down to half a small glass, and drink a large glass of water with it. OJ is now tasting almost unpleasantly sweet. Perhaps I’m only drinking it out of habit now. Have also purchased some dextrose (“good” but not very sweet, sugar) to try in my tea.

Perhaps as a result of cutting my OJ back so far from normal levels, I experience some cravings today. Manage to tough it out, but then, at dinnertime, a heavy blow. The Carnivore points out that the bottle of diet soft drink I’ve been drinking with dinner the last few days is, in fact, the real deal, overflowing with sugar. Feel despondent. Tip evil, lying soft drink down the sink. And then the traitorous Carnivore flourishes the packet of Mint Slices (a peppermint chocolate biscuit – only my Most Favourite Biscuit in the Whole World) he has bought. Feel betrayed. And slightly homicidal.

Day 5 (Today): Cravings are worsening. Spend much time staring at the pantry shelves, hoping some healthful sugar-free chocolate will magically materialise. Wonder how diabetics cope. Search the internet for “diabetic chocolate”. Avert eyes from Mint Slices in fridge. Encourage confused but eager children to eat all the sugary treats in the house. Wonder how long I can keep this up.

Consider lynching David Gillespie.

Time flies when you're ... hmmm

2010-07-16T21:51:00.000+10:00

Having fun? I wouldn’t exactly say that. Not that fun is not being had. There’s fun by the bucketload around here lately – writing workshops, netball clinics, basketball clinics, shopping, trips to the park and the movies. It’s just that it’s the ducklings who are having it, and me who is doing taxi duty and continuously digging into my ever-lightening wallet to pay for it.

Yes, you guessed it – it’s school holidays again, which is why I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. Too busy with the aforementioned fun.

I have a love/hate relationship with the school holidays. By the time the term drags to a close I am longing for the holidays with a passion usually reserved for peppermint chocolate. No more getting up early! No more rushing to after-school activities! Lots of time spent lazing around with my darling ducklings!

Then, by the time the new term rolls around, I’m so pleased the holidays are nearly over. I can’t wait for the kids to go back to school. Not because I’m sick of their company – just because I can’t get anything done while they’re home. My revision is languishing, my sewing is abandoned. I’m desperate to take off my maid/taxi driver/entertainment officer hat and get back to work. Every time I walk into a bookshop I get cranky seeing all those people who are published when I’m making no progress.

Cranky at myself, mainly. I know perfectly well I should be able to work when the kids are around, despite the extra interruptions. I’m just not focused enough – I get into holiday mode too.

So I guess it’s a win/win for me. I love the holidays and I love term-time too. Next week the kids will be back at school, and I’ll be able to get stuck into revision. All I have to do is remember where I left that attention span …

Seeing what's there

2010-06-30T20:42:00.001+10:00

I finished my mystery WIP from last week. It did look very like a skirt in the photo I showed you then, but in fact it is a table runner.

Only I think I need a bigger table! It was meant to live on my sideboard, but it turned out way too big. Even on the table it takes up a lot of space but it’s very pretty. Here’s another photo which gives you a better idea of the colours. They’re so gorgeous.

I had a few random wedge-shaped scraps left after I cut out the table runner, and those beautiful fabrics were calling to me. “Don’t throw us out!” they said. “We could make a really pretty little art quilt.”

I’ve never made an art quilt before, but I’ve been wanting to try for a while, so last night I had a lovely play, sewing random scraps to other random scraps with joyful abandon. I ended up with this: my newest WIP.

Yes, that’s a real leaf sitting on top of this little quilt. That’s why it’s still a work in progress. I have to applique a fabric leaf on there instead, then quilt and bind it. But I got that leaf off the maple in our front yard to help me draw it right.

(Actually the Carnivore got it for me, bless his little cotton socks, at about 10 o’clock last night, when it was probably all of two degrees outside. That’s true love for you.)

Only when he handed it to me, I was shocked at how long and skinny the points of the leaf were. It was nothing like the picture of a maple leaf I had in my head.

And then I realised I’ve lived here for 17 years, and walked past that maple tree day after day – and never known what its leaves really looked like. My mental classification system has just gone “yep, maple, I know what they look like”, without actually seeing what was in front of me.

I suppose classifying is a self-defence mechanism of the brain. If we couldn’t make assumptions based on previous experience, our brains would have to examine and evaluate every single thing we saw and did, every time. We’d be overwhelmed by detail, unable to function. Maybe it’s even a survival skill – “ooh, I remember how sick I felt last time I ate the shiny purple berries, better not do that again”.

But if you’re a writer or an artist, sometimes you have to take the brain off automatic mode. You have to see those details you normally gloss over before you can describe them or represent them visually. You have to listen to what people really say when they’re frightened/ecstatic/overwhelmed, so your characters don’t sound like animated cardboard. (Believe me, I know cardboard – there’s an awful lot of it in Man Bites Dog. The interminable revision grinds on.)

So I’m going to practise being a soaky soaky little sponge, and really see the things I look at. I’ll try to give people my full attention, instead of half listening and half formulating my response while they’re talking. (Unless it’s Baby Duck rabbiting about monsters or X-Men or aliens. I reserve the right to tune out baby babble.) Who knows? I might Become a Better Person. Or more likely I’ll forget – but it would be an interesting exercise, don’t you think?

And speaking of forgetting, I almost forgot to wish my blog a happy birthday. Two years old today, and if not exactly “going strong”, at least still going!

Crimes against the English language

2010-06-23T09:57:00.000+10:00

Driving into the city last week I passed a building which housed a kitchen renovation company. Biggest range!! said one sign. DIY or we instal! said another. Then there was the sign, in really big lettering, which they clearly felt was their greatest selling point.

I could picture the brainstorming that must have gone on for the creation of that slogan.

“How about we make it easy?” says the first advertising guy.

“Nah,” says the other one, “too simple.”

“Well, what about we make it simple then?”

“Hmmm. I’m not feeling it. We need something, I dunno, that combines ‘simple’ and ‘easy’.”

Deep thought for a moment.

“I know!” cries the first guy. “We simply make it easy!!”

“Better. It’s just … it’s just …”

“We just make it easy?”

“I’ve got it! We just simply make it easy!!”

Talk about diluting your message. “We make it easy” isn’t the most original slogan but at least it has punch. “We just simply make it easy” – not so much. My editor’s soul was itching to rip the useless weasel words right out of there. Lucky I didn’t have a red pen with me, or who knows what might have happened.

It was a day for noticing signs. Further along the road was a branch of a shop that has me shaking my head every time I see it. I can’t decide whether the people who named it have no imagination or they’re deliberately making a very gross pun to make their shop memorable. Maybe there’s just something wrong with my imagination, and other people don’t start thinking about the wrong kind of stools the minute they see a perfectly innocent sign.

What do you think? Would you call your shop The Stool Shop? Even if you were selling stools?

Then there’s Baby Duck. He’s making great progress with his reading this year, but his spelling is still in that adorable phonetic stage little kids go through. His seems more extreme than I remember the girls’ being, though. Often I have to ask him to translate for me.

For instance, he wrote and illustrated a new story this week. The title was “A Gient Giniypig”. Easy enough with the picture of a King Kong-sized guinea pig standing on top of a building fighting off planes. But I needed help with the writing on the bottom of the front cover:

“oftld and ilstchidt dy [Baby Duck]”

Even with his name there I couldn’t pick it. Apparently it says “authored and illustrated by [Baby Duck]”. Silly me.

At Easter he gave me a present he’d made at school. There was a tag attached with my name written on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a misspelling of “Marina” before. You spell it just like it sounds, and most people are familiar with it anyway from boat parking lots.

This is so cute I think I’ll laminate it and keep it forever as a bookmark. Every time I look at it it makes me smile.

Now I shall take off my editor hat and show you what I’m working on sewing-wise at the moment. Hey, it’s Wednesday, and I’ve always wanted to do a “Work-in-Progress Wednesday” post, but selections of my deathless prose from the interminable Man Bites Dog revision just don’t seem interesting enough.

Can you guess what it’s going to be?

How about now?

No? Hopefully next week I can show you the finished thing. I promised my quilting group I’d have it finished by our next meeting, so that will give me some motivation to get on with it. I’m also working on another sock monkey. I got a bit carried away with the stuffing, though, so he’s turning out to be a very chunky monkey. Baby Duck insists I give this one googly eyes, so he could also be a rather scary-looking monkey.

Or as Baby Duck would say, “a scerey looking muker”.

Monkeying around

2010-06-10T20:56:00.001+10:00

Some people – often people of the male persuasion – suggest that quilters are all mad. They take some perfectly good bits of fabric, cut them into little tiny pieces, and sew them back together again.

So how’s this for a really crazy idea: let’s vandalise a perfectly good pair of socks.

Aren’t they pretty? So warm and snuggly-looking too. I was almost moved to spare them. My toes would have liked to get better acquainted. But no. They had a higher purpose to fulfil.

I hacked into them with my trusty scissors. Four hours, a pile of toy filling, and many pricked fingers later, I had this:

How cute is he?? Apparently sock monkeys are a childhood fixture in America, but I’d never heard of them till I came across some sweet little ones on Kellie Wulfsohn’s blog. Then I found this great tutorial on how to make them so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Can you guess what my problem is now?

That’s right. I have three children. And only one sock monkey. Thinking of all those dreadful pinprick injuries I had sustained in the making of Monkey One, I suggested to Drama Duck that she might be too old for a sock monkey toy.

Apparently not.

The sacrifices we mothers have to make for our children! Stay tuned for Monkeys Two and Three to join the tribe. Herd? Troop? What is the collective noun for monkeys? In this case, perhaps a cuddle of monkeys. Or a cuteness. In fact, he’s so cute I might need one for myself.

Look out, socks! I have scissors and I'm not afraid to use them ...

One letter makes SUCH a difference

2010-06-07T10:35:00.000+10:00

The phantom whiteboard defacer has struck again at our house. You may remember me telling you last year about Drama Duck removing some of the letters from the menu I write up on the whiteboard in the kitchen every week. In that case, “beef skewers” for dinner became “bee sewers”.

This whiteboard also serves as my shopping list. Whenever I realise I’m out of something, I write it on the whiteboard, then transfer the list to a piece of paper when I’m ready to go to the shops. This morning I was hastily scribbling items from the whiteboard on to a piece of paper just before we rushed out the door to school.

Chicken stock cubes: check. Dishwashing liquid: check. Stain remover: check.

Hang on – what’s that next item???

I’d written “chicken noodles”, but some unknown person – which, on enquiry, proved to be the same person who perpetrated the bee sewers – some wicked person had changed the “n” of “noodles” to a “d”. Don’t think they sell those at Coles!

Definitely her father’s genes.

Notes from the white room

2010-05-26T21:52:00.000+10:00

I received a very useful rejection for a short story recently, which pointed out that my tale suffered from “white room syndrome”, ie the action could be taking place anywhere – or nowhere – due to the lack of detail of the setting. As often happens, once I became aware of it, I started seeing it everywhere – in stories I was critiquing for others, in the book I’m revising, even in published novels. (If you’ve ever read The Partner by John Grisham, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a fast-paced thriller with very little description of any kind.)

By coincidence, I was working on the lesson that covers settings in the course I’m doing, How to Revise Your Novel by Holly Lisle, when I got this rejection. For each setting, I had to fill in a page which included, among other things, listing what elements of the setting I had described in the scene. Before this exercise I would have said my settings were well described. My main characters, after all, are artists, so visuals are important to them. They notice details of colour and lighting. Or do they? Hmmm. Hope their favourite colour is white.

Yep, page after page came up empty. A “table”, not described, would be the only object mentioned in a scene set in a dining room, for instance. Yet in my head I had seen the tablecloth, the cutlery, the subdued lighting, everything. But none of it had made it into the story. I could draw you the floor plan of whole houses in this novel, but no one could ever guess it from what I’ve written. Not that I’d want to bore readers with floor plans, of course! I don’t even look at maps in fantasy novels. But I need to find a happy medium between the “nothing to see here” style of a John Grisham and the “five pages to describe the butcher’s shop window” of AS Byatt. (I love AS Byatt. But she has the skill to get away with it. I don’t.)

It’s interesting, though, isn’t it, how much work readers will do to flesh out a writer’s creation. I built pictures in my head while reading The Partner, despite the lack of description. Grisham said “courtroom” and my mind supplied the wood panelling, the rows of hard bench seats, the gowns and wigs, courtesy of all those Hollywood courtrooms I’ve seen. In fact the reason I read the Grisham book was that I’d heard he deliberately wrote very sparsely. He started off writing down the bones of his story, thinking to flesh it out later with descriptions and details. Eventually he decided to leave all that out, since people normally skipped over it anyway. I think he put it as “leaving out the boring bits”.

While I certainly wouldn’t condemn all description as “boring bits”, I know what he means. No one wants the story held up for big lumps of setting or long descriptions of what people are wearing or eating. I like descriptions in small, easily digested amounts – little “telling details” that individualise a character or place.

Probably it depends, too, on genre. Small details can play large roles in crime fiction. Descriptions of exotic alien places and customs are half the fun in fantasy and science fiction. I don’t read much romance, but I imagine loving descriptions of the hero and heroine’s charms could be a feature there.

What do you reckon? How much is too much, or not enough? And do you think the magical Goldilocks amount varies by genre?

And the Housewife of the Year Award goes to ...

2010-05-15T17:43:00.000+10:00

… someone else. Look, I freely admit I’m not the world’s greatest housewife. Life’s too short to spend your time picking up all the kids’ toys and belongings scattered through the house, when as soon as they come home from school they’re only going to re-scatter them. And there are so many other things to squeeze into every day. Some of them are necessities like washing, shopping, cooking. Others are more fun, like dropping into the local patchwork shop to buy cotton and coming home with a few extra things.

You can see I’ve been replenishing my stock of hot pink fabric after Drama Duck decimated it for her owl.

I needed the cotton because I ran out two-thirds of the way through quilting butterflies all over that quilt that’s been hanging over the railing in my foyer so long. I’m practising my free-motion quilting and the butterflies are gradually improving. It will be so nice to be able to pack that quilt away!

But about that Housewife of the Year award. I changed the sheets on Baby Duck’s bed, so for a change the bed was made when he came home from school. He stopped dead in the doorway of his room and turned a look of surprise on me.

“Mum! Are we having visitors today??”

Ouch!

He’s come out with some pearlers lately. Another one was when I was driving him home from school on Friday and we were discussing the movie Monsters Inc. He couldn’t remember the name of one of the monsters so I supplied it.

“That’s really good that you remembered, Mum,” he said in tones of great admiration. “Usually old people forget everything.”

And he wonders why I laugh at him so often.

Owl babies

2010-05-05T21:50:00.001+10:00

Do you know the picture book Owl Babies, by Martin Waddell? So cute! Three little owl babies, Sarah, Percy and baby Bill, wake up alone and wonder where their Owl Mother is. Sarah and Percy discuss the problem but all Bill can say, on nearly every page, is “I want my mommy!”

Now we have our own owl babies. I saw the cutest toy owl on the front cover of a quilting magazine recently. Once I’d dragged the ducklings all around the patchwork shop in search of the perfect fabric for its wings, Demon Duck was quick to announce that she was going to make an owl too. Then of course Drama Duck had to get in on the act as well. So our house was a hive of industry over the recent long weekend.

This is Drama Duck’s owl. She’d have to be Sarah, wouldn’t she? Very girly! I wonder if you can guess what Drama Duck’s favourite colour is?

Demon Duck’s owl is Bill. He’s very striking, isn’t he? I love how appropriate the moon and star fabric of his wings is for a nocturnal creature.

Which leaves Percy for me. He’s red and blue to match our lounge room, where he’s perched on my red velvet chair, looking very comfortable.

I feel the urge to sew lately, to surround myself with bright coloured fabrics. I’ve been reading lots of quilting blogs and drooling over the gorgeous creations. Have a look at all the beautiful things on Quiltsalott, for instance. Or what about this divine quilt? Baby Duck would love it. Unfortunately his mother is so slow it’d probably be finished by the time he was 38. Maybe if I start now it’ll be ready for the grandkids!

So you may see some more quilts here in the future. I’ve had an almost-completed one hanging over the railing in my foyer so long it’s starting to bug even me. The problem is that I like doing the patchwork, seeing the design come together – but I hate quilting the damn thing and finishing it off. Hence a cupboard bulging with UFOs (UnFinished Objects). Bad Marina, no biscuit! Must. Do. Better.

But at least I have three finished owl babies to admire!

It's all relative

2010-04-28T20:12:00.002+10:00

The girls had a cross country carnival today. Demon Duck came 22nd in her age group, an improvement from 36th last year, so she was pleased. Drama Duck came 12th in her event. We were pleased at the obvious improvement in her fitness – she ran for most of the three kilometres. But 12th isn’t quite as good as it sounds, since there were only 15 competing in her age group.

It reminds me of one of Baby Duck’s earliest sporting achievements. He came home from preschool one day full of joy.

“We did races today,” he said, “and I came second!”

“That’s great, darling! How many were in the race?”

“Two.”

Attack of the tae kwon dodos

2010-04-22T22:22:00.000+10:00

I’ve been running around the house all week yelling “tae kwon dodo!!” and pulling ridiculous martial arts poses.

“You’re so embarrassing, Mum,” Drama Duck says. The other two just ignore me.

The scene in Ice Age where the dodos do taekwondo is one of my favourite parts. I love it when one executes a flying kick off a cliff and the others peer mournfully over the edge and say “That was our last female”. But my taekwondodoism this week has had an ulterior motive: trying to get the ducklings revved up about starting taekwondo.

They had their first lesson on Tuesday night. Halfway through Baby Duck burst into hysterical sobs and watched the rest of the lesson from the safety of my lap. Not sure why, but apparently the yelling was scary and it was hard and boring. Most things are, according to him. The only thing that isn’t boring is watching TV.

Undeterred, I decided to try the Thursday night class instead. Same taekwondo school, but a different location and a few younger students. To make it more appealing, I said I’d do the class too so I could help him.

Thus I have just had my first taekwondo lesson. The combination of me and martial arts is such an unlikely one, anyone who knows me will now be rolling around the floor laughing. But I made quite a good taekwondodo. I’m going to be sore tomorrow, but I had fun.

The teacher was a lovely man who I now feel very sorry for, as not one but two ducklings burst into tears before the end of the class. Baby Duck again for his own inscrutable reasons, and Demon Duck who lost it when asked to do something she didn’t know how to do and spent the rest of the class sobbing in the toilets. I’m sure the poor man thought it was his fault, but it was just her painful perfectionism coming out. He was a gentle and patient teacher, and seemed quite stunned that he’d managed to make two of them cry. I told him to go for the hat trick next week.

On the way home Demon Duck asked when we would be getting our uniforms.

“Maybe when we get through a lesson without anyone crying.”

Baby Duck discovers April Fools' Day

2010-04-06T20:07:00.000+10:00

Plastic cockroach: 50c
Packet of Weetbix: $6

Look of unholy glee on your small son’s face when you discover his first April Fools’ prank: Priceless

Amnesia as a genre

2010-03-23T13:04:00.000+11:00

Hands up if you know anyone who has ever suffered full-on amnesia. I’m not talking the “I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman” kind so favoured by politicians, but the kind where someone has an accident and wakes up missing the last several years of their life.

Don’t know anyone? How about celebrities then? Have you ever read about this happening to a well-known person? You’d think it would be in all the papers, wouldn’t you. No?

Me neither. So why does it happen so very often in fiction? It could practically be a sub-genre all on its own.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love a good amnesia story. It’s like the ultimate mystery, where the puzzle the detective has to solve is their own life. I never get tired of it.

I read a couple last year, which made me think about how often I’d seen it used. There was The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson, a slightly science-fictional Young Adult contribution to the genre. A teenage girl comes out of a long coma with no memory of her life at all. She has to watch family videos to relearn her history. But why doesn’t her grandmother seem to like her? Why are her family hiding her away from the world? There’s an awesome moment when you find out what’s really going on.

About the same time I also read What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, a more typical entrant in the genre. There usually seems to be some crucial emotional entanglement the heroine (and yes, the amnesiacs are always women) has forgotten. In this one Alice has forgotten the last ten years of her life, so she thinks she’s happily married and expecting her first child. In fact she has three children and she and her husband are separated.

Or there’s Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella, where the heroine thinks she’s happily married because she’s forgotten the existence of her lover. Or Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult. Who wouldn’t want to wake up with no memory only to find they’re married to Hollywood’s most gorgeous star? Until you start to remember what he’s really like …

It was also a popular plot device in the Mills and Boons I read as a teenager. A particular favourite, whose name I’ve now forgotten, involved a woman who lost her memory in the same car accident that killed her husband. Later on she discovered, in very dramatic circumstances, that the child she’d thought was her husband’s was actually the hero’s. She’d forgotten that her marriage was unhappy and she’d been about to leave the husband for the hero.

So why do you think it’s such a popular theme in fiction, when it never seems to happen at all in real life? Is it a kind of wish fulfilment? A chance to see what life would be like if you could start fresh with a clean slate? Are there a whole bunch of women out there wondering if they would still have married their husbands if they met them as the people they are now? (and just in case you’re wondering, dear, my answer to that would be yes).

Anyone got any other good amnesia books to recommend?

Get Everything Done by Mark Forster

2010-03-09T11:08:00.000+11:00

I’m feeling evangelical today, so let me tell you about my experiences with two very different books in the self-help organising/time management genre.

I read Getting Things Done by David Allen at the end of 2008 and found it full of great organisational ideas. I particularly liked the one about getting all your mental to-dos out of your head and into some centralised list so you don’t forget anything. This frees your mind from the stress of trying to remember all these bits and pieces, and allows you to focus on whatever your real tasks are.

Good idea, I thought. Must try that. If using a paper-based system rather than a computer program, he advised getting a diary big enough to fit weekly lists. So last year I had a lovely big diary with lots of room for writing lists and notes as well as my appointments. I’m a stationery geek and a listophile (if that isn’t a word, it should be!), so it should have been a great system for me, right?

Sadly, no. The beautiful diary, which I really did love – so many extra features! – was too big to fit comfortably in my handbag, so most of the time I left it at home. Can you say Diary Fail? I never had it with me when I needed to check or add appointments. So this year I’m back to my usual small, un-beautiful diary.

The other big problems with the system, for me, were:

(a) I’m a procrastinator; and
(b) I’m a procrastinator.

I’m sure there are people for whom the system works beautifully, and I’m not knocking it, per se. I’m just saying I’m not one of them. I loved making the lists, but as the year marched on I grew more and more depressed about how few items I was crossing off. Nor was this a new experience for me. See (a) and (b) above.

What I needed was not a system for planning and organising what I needed to do. Being a listophile, I’m quite good at that part already. What I needed was a way to make myself do the things on the list.

Enter Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play by Mark Forster. Who could resist a title like that?? I read this one towards the end of last year, and have since reread it, highlighter in hand (which felt vandalistic and shocked my children, but there were so many passages that seemed to be written just for me it was like a religious conversion. Praise the Lord, I have Seen the Light!).

Written by a procrastinator, for procrastinators, it points out what I had already discovered from my list-and-diary fail of 2009. Organisation systems, priorities, schedules, etc, are great for people who have no problem getting stuck into action, but they don’t really help people whose main problem is with the actual starting.

So instead of these, it offers strategies to help you actually do the things on your list. One that is working really well for me helps with that perennial problem of having so many things to do that you don’t know where to start and instead do something else, so none of them get done and they’re still hanging over your head. (I used to think I was the only idiot who sabotaged myself like that, but after reading this book I realise I’m not alone here!)

I pick three or four main tasks and set the oven timer for 15 minutes. Until the timer goes off I work as hard as I can on the first task. At the end of the 15 minutes I stop immediately, reset the timer and start work on the second task. I go on this way, rotating through all the tasks. It sounds daft, and I do feel a bit stupid setting and resetting the timer, but it really does work.

It’s the power of the deadline. I can do an enormous amount of work if I have a deadline. Make a quilt for someone’s birthday next week? No problem. Write 50,000 words in 30 days? Sure thing. Yet without a deadline I flounder around and fill up the days with busyness that doesn’t achieve anything.

In three days, my trusty oven timer and I cleaned out the pantry, a horrendous job I’d been putting off for six months, just by alternating that job with working on my revision of Man Bites Dog, making a quilt and a couple of other big tasks. Knowing that time is literally ticking away motivates me to focus on the task, so I get much more done in these short bursts than if I just allowed myself to work on it till it was finished. Plus I don’t get bored. This trick also helps with that panicky feeling of being overwhelmed by all the other jobs that are still hanging over your head, by allowing you to make progress on several things at once.

And this is just one of the helpful strategies in the book. If you’re a procrastinator like me – and I think there are a lot of us out there! – this is a truly useful book.

I’d tell you more but the oven timer is ringing …

Genetics: a practical demonstration

2010-02-25T14:13:00.002+11:00

The other day I was on the phone and my eye fell on no less than six pairs of shoes on the floor, all huddled together having a little shoe party. They all belonged to the girls, who only have one pair of feet each, so it must have taken some time to assemble this little pile.

Bloody kids, I thought. Why can’t they ever put their shoes away?

Today I was in the same room, took an unwary step back and tripped over a shoe.

Bloody kids! I thought again, full of righteous anger. But then I had to laugh.

I looked down and realised the shoe was mine.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s demonstration of the awesome power of genetics.

A tale of four chickens

2010-02-09T21:53:00.001+11:00

No, this is not the continuing story of my little black dream chicken. I’m talking real chickens here, three of them, who came home as little balls of peeping yellow fluff a few months ago to live with my neighbour’s family.

My neighbour procured a Taj Mahal of a henhouse for the new chickens and installed them in the backyard.

“But what about the dog?” we said.

They have a German Shepherd, a lovely friendly dog, but still.

“She will eat the chickens,” we said.

“No, no,” said our neighbour, with quite astonishing optimism. “When we go on holidays we’re sending her to a boarding kennel where they will train her to love the chickens.”

We were sure she would love the chickens. With sauce. But our neighbour was convinced all would be well. This in spite of the fact that their dog has been known to devour slow-moving possums.

So they went on their family holiday, and we had the task of looking after the chickens while they were gone. The ducklings enjoyed the job, and I was very thankful that no chickens died on our watch. They were all present and correct when the neighbours returned.

But soon after the parents went overseas on their own, leaving the children in charge of the chickens. And the dog, who was now home from her peace-and-love-to-all-chickens brainwashing.

Not two days later, we were out in the yard when a little voice called over the fence, “Have you seen any chickens in your yard? The chickens have disappeared.”

“Honey, if they were in our yard our dog would have ripped them to pieces. Are you sure your dog didn’t eat them?”

“No, there’s no sign of them. They’re just gone.”

Much speculation followed at our house as to what might have happened to the three missing chickens. Had a fox got them? (But surely the German Shepherd would have chased off a fox.) Had they slipped through the fence and gone for a walk? Had they left for a chicken holiday of their own? And what would the boys’ mother say when she came home and discovered her chickens were missing??

Sad little notices appeared on telegraph poles round about, asking if anyone had seen three chickens, but no one came forward. When the parents returned from their holiday we heard that their dog had, in fact, done the deed. She’d dug a hole under the side of the coop big enough for the birds to get out – and then merely waited till they did to chow down. The evidence was discovered underneath the house.

Wait a minute, you say. Didn’t you say this was a tale of four chickens?

Hang on, I’m getting to that.

Meanwhile, I’d been telling the ducklings about the movie Jurassic Park. I even acted out my favourite part, where the T-rex comes through the fence when they’re in the stalled jeeps:

“And they’re in the cars and it’s pouring with rain, and the goat disappears and there’s this HUGE dinosaur. And the kids are in the car on their own and they’re all omigod!! and turn off the torch! And she’s all aargh!! and waving it around and he’s all turn it off! turn it off! And the dinosaur’s attacking and the guy gets out of the other car and waves to attract its attention and then the dinosaur sees him and he’s all oh sh*t”

Meanwhile I’m waving my imaginary torch and pulling scared faces and pretending to be a stalking dinosaur. The ducklings found it highly amusing.

“We want to watch it! It sounds really funny!”

“No, no! It’s not funny. It’s really scary!! It’s dark, and raining, and there’s scary music. And even though I’d read the book and I knew what was going to happen I was still scared!”

But they wouldn’t believe me. So I let them watch it.

And they thought it was funny.

“You’re scared of everything, Mum,” said Demon Duck. “You’re such a chicken you’re going to grow feathers.”

“Hey!” said Baby Duck. “Then we can give you to the next-door neighbours to replace their chickens!”

Moments of brilliance

2010-02-03T21:49:00.000+11:00

I’ve just begun revising my first novel, Man Bites Dog, and I’m reminded of that famous comment about Wagner’s works: “Moments of brilliance, quarter-hours of great boredom”.

Well, “boredom” is a bit strong, but you get the idea. I haven’t looked at it in over a year, so it’s like reading a story by someone else. I can’t remember what’s going to happen next as I read. I come across some parts that are good but of course, being a first draft, there are many more parts that are less than stellar. (Even one part that made me yell “No, no, no!” and cross it out with much violence, hoping no one will ever find out I wrote something so cringeworthy.)

The happy moments give me hope I can wrestle a good book out of this mess. I’m doing Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course and I’m only halfway through the first of many steps, but I’m trudging on, putting my faith in Holly to guide me and my subconscious to pull some idea rabbits out of the hat. Gotta love those plot bunnies.

Bunnies … chickens … It’s a real farmyard inside my subconscious lately. Still haven’t figured out what happened to my little black chicken, dammit. I kept hoping I might dream of him again, but I’ve been away on a beach holiday, doing lots of tiring outdoorsy stuff, and sleeping the dreamless sleep of a very tired dead thing.

When I figure out how to drive my new camera properly I’ll post a photo of the view from the house we stayed in. It will make you all swoon with envy, it was so beautiful. But then I shall make you feel better by telling you about the mountain we had to climb to get back to our house from the beach, and the 5,083 steps inside the house itself, and how I borked my knee something severe just before we left, so that my holiday was just one big throbbing knee pain … and your envy will dissolve like a double Berocca in a glass of water.

“My goodness, but Marina deserved that view,” you will say.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last little while: revising, limping, computer-less. And now I’m home, and the ducklings have gone back to school, oh frabjous day!! and life can resume what passes for normal around here. At least, it would be normal if it weren’t for the physiotherapist doing things to my leg that I’m sure contravene the Geneva Convention. We don’t want to make a habit of that, oh no.

And they all lived hap ... aargh!

2010-01-23T10:14:00.000+11:00

Don’t you just hate it when you’re in the middle of an interesting dream and someone wakes you up? And then you never get to find out what happens???

This morning I was blissfully asleep, dreaming I was browsing in a bookshop. I found this gorgeous picture book about a little black chicken. He was drawn very simply, just a little egg-shaped blob with stumpy wings and two dots for eyes, but really cute.

Every day all the chickens gathered in a clearing in the woods to see Mr Fox’s magic show. Every day Mr Fox made one of the chickens magically disappear, which the other chickens thought was cool, but our little black hero was getting suspicious. So he decided to run Mr Fox out of town.

His plan was to scare Mr Fox away, so he gathered up all the plastic bottles and styrofoam hamburger boxes the chickens left littering the clearing after the show every day. He turned all this litter into styrofoam chickens and arranged them in the trees of the clearing. There was a great illustration of all these ghostly white styrofoam chickens perched in the trees at night, hundreds of them staring accusingly out of the dark.

The little black chicken climbed into the trees too and began a ghostly squawking, pretending to be the voice of all the dead chickens, so when Mr Fox came out to see what was going on he’d be terrified, thinking the ghosts of all his victims were after him.

Unfortunately Mr Fox wasn’t taken in. Even though it was night time, the moon was out and it was easy to spot one black chicken among all the white ones. It was as Mr Fox stared hungrily up at him that our hero realised he was now stuck in this tree with no escape and maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

And then …

“Brring brring, brring brring.”

No, I am not attempting to render the sound of a phone ringing. Those are the actual words that were spoken into my sleeping ear.

Torn from my little black chicken story, I opened my eyes to find Demon Duck kneeling on my bed, her mouth next to my ear.

“Brring brring,” she said. “I’m your alarm clock. It’s 7:26. Time to get up!”

Aaaargh!! Now I'm left with a whole bunch of unanswered questions. Does the little black chicken make it?? Does Mr Fox get his comeuppance??

And why on earth am I dreaming about styrofoam chickens???

Health by stealth

2010-01-18T22:02:00.000+11:00

If I had been so deluded as to make a New Year’s resolution to get fit and lose weight – I only say if, mind you, since I certainly wasn’t – if I had been so foolishly optimistic about my own intestinal fortitude, then I might have been busy exercising and setting targets and denying myself peppermint chocolate. And really, what’s life without peppermint chocolate?

Since I am not so deluded, I have instead been sneaking up on myself. Yes, it’s my new plan – better health by stealth. I think I should trademark that – Health by Stealth™! The new path to a better you! No more weighing yourself, or feeling guilty and miserable when you eat that slice of cake, or miss a day of exercise because it’s too hot/too cold/the planets are in the wrong alignment. Never go near a gym! Perfect for people who don’t like exercise!

What is this wonderful plan? I hear you cry. And why are you not already flogging it on late-night TV?

It's fiendishly simple. Pretend to everyone, but especially to yourself, that you are not trying to get fit or lose any weight. You see? Am I not cunning?? No pressure. No angst. If I happen to go for a few more walks than normal, well, so what? I like walking. The fact that it may have some effect on my health and/or weight is neither here nor there. If I keep myself so busy I don’t have time to stop and snack, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to lose weight. I just have lots of things to do. And if I’m making sure to eat enough fruit and yoghurt, well, I’m just trying to look after myself. The fact that it makes me too full to fit in the chocolate is just a side effect.

And no, I’m not going to weigh myself. I’ll know if any of these things I’m sort of accidentally doing behind my own back are having any effect when my clothes start to feel loose.

But how does this work if you don’t like exercise? I hear you cry.

I’m glad you asked that question! I don’t like exercise that’s boring and repetitive. Especially if it hurts as well. So gyms just don’t work for me. All that squatting and pumping and feeling the burn. I like walking because there are always nice gardens to admire and people to say hello to, or you can just zone out and think about writing. I like dancing too, though that’s a little harder to organise. I need fun things I can do at home. Hula hooping is a good one, because it works up a sweat plus it keeps me interested as I try to learn new tricks. Check out some of the amazing things people can do with hoops here.

I’ve never been a runner because I’m just not fit enough. I can barely jog for a minute before my chest explodes and I have to stop. But running has the same advantages that walking does, of being outside, nice things to look at, etc, and I do like a challenge, sooo …

I found this cool site, Couch to 5k. That’s me: couch potato extraordinaire. It claims that even slobs like me who can’t run can work their way up to a 5km run using this program.

Now obviously I can’t commit to that, because then I’d have a fitness goal, and angst and disappointment and self-loathing blah blah blah. So if anybody asks – especially me! – I’m certainly not doing this. But I might just happen to do a little running while I’m out walking, and if it happens to follow the same pattern as the program mentioned on Couch to 5k, well, gosh! What a coincidence.

And if I was trying to lose weight, I’d probably like some encouragement, some feeling of community. I could go and read a site like Five Full Plates, where five very funny ladies are documenting their weight-loss challenge. But since I’m not, I just read it for the laughs.

And speaking of laughs:

see more dog and puppy pictures

Favourite books of 2009

2010-01-11T22:13:00.000+11:00

I read 54 new books in 2009. New to me, that is, not necessarily new in 2009, though many of them were. Quite a few old favourites got reread too.

I enjoyed most of them – the ones I don’t enjoy tend not to get finished – but here are a few of my particular favourites in case you’re looking for something new to read.

I took the plunge into a new field this year and started reading paranormals. The Carnivore did too, and he’s actually read more of them than I have, so it’s not true that these kind of books only interest women. One series we both enjoyed was Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series, which starts with Kitty and the Midnight Hour. Kitty is a late-night DJ whose talkback show centres on the supernatural, a topic she’s well qualified to discuss, since she’s a werewolf. Each book in the series is a stand-alone adventure in Kitty’s complicated life but they also show interesting developments in characters and themes over the series. Lots of fun to read.

I read a lot of Young Adult this year. This stuff is not just for kids! I’ve read so many great YA books this year I couldn’t pick a favourite.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, for instance, has the most awesome first line:

“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.”

How could you resist reading on after that? The premise is fascinating too. Todd lives in a world where men are afflicted by “the Noise” – they broadcast their thoughts constantly and uncontrollably, so there’s no peace or privacy anywhere. There are also no women, since they were all killed off by the germ that caused the Noise. At least, that’s what Todd has been brought up to believe. But just shy of the birthday that marks him officially as a man, he discovers everything he’s been told is a lie – and then the killing starts.

A warning though – it has a shameless cliffhanger ending, so you might want to wait till you get your hands on the next books in the trilogy if that bothers you.

World Shaker by Richard Harland is a YA with a completely different feel, though it too deals with a young man’s discovery that his whole world is a lie. Col’s privileged life aboard the massive rolling city World Shaker is very British and proper. Think cups of tea and cravats. Col’s grandfather is the Supreme Commander of the juggernaut, and Col takes his place at the top of the food chain for granted until the night an escaped Filthy bursts into his room. She begs him to hide her from those who would torture her and change her into one of the zombie-like Menials.

Col is both fascinated and repelled; he has never in his sheltered life seen a Filthy or the frightening Below where they work. He hides her in spite of his certainty that Upper Decks people would never stoop to torture, but of course he’s wrong, and his entanglement with the Filthy girl opens his eyes to the truth of his privileged world and the rottenness at its core.

The worldbuilding is phenomenal, with the marvellous World Shaker itself, the Victorian culture, even the way they speak and think very convincing.

Another culture I love to visit in fantasy novels is the Asian-inspired one, and Alison Goodman’s The Two Pearls of Wisdom is a fine example (also published in other countries as Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye or just plain Eon). I’ve actually read this one twice this year, having just reread it this week, and it’s well worth a second visit.

Eon is struggling to complete the harsh training necessary to become a Dragoneye, one of the lords who communicate with the powerful spirit dragons that protect the realm. Struggling because he’s a cripple, but also because he is actually a she – a secret that would prove fatal if anyone should discover the imposture. But when the Mirror Dragon returns after an absence of 500 years and chooses Eon as its Dragoneye, Eon is suddenly thrust into the centre of a desperate struggle for the emperor’s throne, and the secret of her gender is no longer the most dangerous secret she has to hide.

Vivid characters in this one and interesting themes of loyalty, honour and identity and how gender impacts on them.

And for more on themes of identity, how about an amnesia book or two? I’ve read quite a few books where the main character has total amnesia and is trying to rediscover the truth about themselves – it seems to happen in fiction a lot more than it does in real life, thank goodness. It’s a storyline that never gets old for me. It’s like the ultimate detective story.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson is a YA science fiction take on the theme. The mystery at the core of Jenna’s identity caught me completely by surprise and was very cool.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a mainstream adult novel asking the same question: who am I really? When Alice wakes up in hospital after an accident at the gym she’s forgotten the last ten years of her life. As far as she’s concerned, she’s happily married to the love of her life and expecting her first child. It’s a bit of a shock, therefore, to find she has three children and is in the process of divorcing her husband. What went wrong? And what aren’t people telling her about the best friend she doesn’t remember?

This is Liane Moriarty’s third book and I’ve enjoyed them all. They’re layered with good characters and subplots. They may only deal with the small dramas of a woman’s life, but they do it in a big way, addressing universal themes of love and loss.

Liane is a Sydney girl, too, and her books are set in Australia, which is a nice touch for us Aussies, when so many books we read are set in America. I used to work at the same company Liane did, though our paths never really crossed. It gives me a special interest in her career – but, trust me, her books are worth your time no matter where you live.

A couple of other books I loved last year that also weren’t fantasy (see, I do occasionally branch out!), were gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson and, for sheer good fun, Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer.

I’ve read three of Joshilyn Jackson’s books and loved them all. They’re all set in the deep South of the US, full of marvellously colourful characters living in dysfunctional families. Her writing is beautiful, insightful and witty. Incidentally, she also writes just about the funniest blog on the internet, Faster than Kudzu.

In gods, Arlene hasn’t been home to Alabama in ten years. She promised God she’d never go back – just as long as he kept his side of the deal and made sure no one ever found the corpse of the guy she killed. Now someone’s looking for him, which forces her to go back and face the past, her African American boyfriend in tow. And that’s not going to go down well with the family.

Agnes and the Hitman is fun from start to finish, the literary equivalent of eating a whole box of chocolates at once, only without the feeling-sick-and-guilty-afterwards part. Agnes, a feisty chef, is catering the wedding from hell in her own dilapidated Southern mansion. If that’s not bad enough, men keep appearing in her kitchen trying to kill her. Luckily one of these strangers turns out to be Shane. He’s a hitman too, but he’s on her side, sent to protect her by a shady uncle. Mayhem and romance ensues.

Glenda Larke’s The Last Stormlord I already told you about here, but it remains my favourite adult fantasy of the year. Amazing worldbuilding – a real treat for fantasy lovers.

The Margarets by Sheri S Tepper made my brain hurt, but in a good way. I had to work hard for this one. It’s complex but immensely rewarding science fiction. At various parts of her life, different aspects of Margaret’s personality split off and disperse throughout the galaxy, taking on different names and living different lives. One is a queen, one a healer, one a slave. One is even a man. Their stories intertwine throughout the book until the finale, when all the different Margarets must come together again to save mankind.

Putting it so baldly doesn’t do the story justice at all. It’s richly imagined and detailed, and each of the seven stories would make a good book just on its own. Deep and surprising.

I didn’t read much science fiction, but another of my favourites was sf too – Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. I’ve only read her military sf before, so this one was a surprise. It is a deeply moving exploration of the questions: Is autism a disease that should be cured? And if you were offered the possibility of a “cure”, should you take it, knowing that, though you might be “normal” afterwards, you might lose the very things that made you “you”?

Lou, a man with high-functioning autism, faces these questions and tells his story in his own voice. You feel as if you’re really inside his head, seeing the world with all its frustrations and difficulties the way he sees it. And yet you can also see that the life he has is a good one, and the often astonishing capabilities autism brings him are not things to be thrown away lightly.

It’s an amazing insight into the mind and life of an autistic person. I can’t help thinking that this book could have been a bestseller like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, another book with an autistic narrator, if it hadn’t been marketed as sf. The only science fiction component of it is that a cure is available for autism. Everything else is perfectly mainstream. Yet other books with more sf in them, like The Time Traveller’s Wife, get marketed as mainstream and make a killing. The Speed of Dark deserves a much wider audience than it has. Hell, it deserves to win literary awards. Even if you never read sf, you should read this book. It will blow you away.

Dinnertime jackpot

2010-01-09T20:57:00.000+11:00

One look at Baby Duck’s stick-thin body will tell you he’s not a big eater. Sparrows have bigger appetites. A common scenario at our place involves everyone sitting around for half an hour after we’ve finished eating, watching him endlessly chew his food.

So if he is ever not the last person to finish a meal it’s a cause for celebration. And if I’ve really hit the dinnertime jackpot it’ll be because I’ve managed to find a recipe the whole family enjoys and will eat without complaining or negotiating which disgusting bits they can leave.

The dinnertime jackpot is a moving target. You might think that by now I would have a good repertoire of meals that all the ducklings will eat and enjoy without involving any trips to MacDonalds. Ah, Grasshopper, your innocence of the ways of children is amusing.

Just because they like something this week doesn’t mean they will still like it next week. Demon Duck’s list of fruit she will eat is rapidly narrowing till soon she’ll be living on air. We’re always saying to her “Since when have you not liked mandarines/peaches/watermelon etc? You used to love it.”

So I’m crossing my fingers that tonight’s universal approbation for curried chicken salad continues for at least a few more weeks. Baby Duck finished before I did and proudly displayed a very clean plate.

“You must have liked it,” I said.

“I didn’t like it,” he said. “I loved it!”

Then he came over to give me a somewhat greasy kiss from all that yummy barbecued chicken and added, “Just like I love you for making such a good dinner.”

Yep – that’s the jackpot all right.

Dances With Blue Wolves

2009-12-31T15:03:00.001+11:00

I went to see Avatar.

The short review: Wow. Just wow.

The longer review:

I’ve heard a lot of comments on the “predictability” of the movie. Often this is mentioned in a sad way, along the lines of “but he could have done so much more if the story wasn’t so predictable”. Sometimes it’s harsher, as in “pretty to look at, but such a hokey plot”.

But I’m thinking that “predictable” isn’t such a bad thing.

I’m thinking, for instance, every time I pick up a fantasy novel I know, in a larger sense, what’s going to happen. The protag will face many dangers and adventures but in the end good will triumph over evil, more or less, depending on the level of sophistication of the particular book. People who read crime novels know the crime will be solved and the criminal brought to justice by the end. In every romance novel the hero and heroine will overcome their differences and find love by the end.

I like knowing there’s a feelgood ending coming. Predictability in this sense is a good thing. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’re reading a romance and three-quarters of the way through the book the heroine kills the hero and goes off to become a nun to atone for the crime instead. (Not that I ever have read such a book, but you know what I mean. People have expectations they bring to the reading experience.)

Movies are no different. Nobody goes to see a romantic comedy expecting exploding cars and a high body count. Nobody thinks the characters in an animated movie are going to sit around drinking beer and moaning about property prices.

Occasionally there’ll be a “cheater” movie like The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects which produces a twist ending that changes everything you thought you knew about the movie you just saw. Such movies are a delight but extremely rare. And I don’t think anyone was expecting such a stunt from Avatar.

If you saw the trailer you knew exactly what to expect. Big bad business wants to pillage and destroy natural beauty and resources, native greenies (blueys?) resist, led by soldier-with-a-conscience who changes sides. Soldier goes native, romance ensues. Plus there are all the characters and elements you’d expect – the power-mad warmonger, the “voice of reason” scientist, the ruthless businessman, the battles, the explosions, the “let’s humiliate the new guy” scenes as the hero tries to learn the native ways …

I suppose that’s the “predictability” people mean. Same old characters in the same old situations we’ve seen so many times before. It really is a lot like Dances With Wolves in many ways, though more upbeat. I can see why some are asking why it always has to be the white guy who has to become a better native than the natives themselves and save everybody. Why can’t the natives save themselves for a change?

I wonder if this is why they made the hero a paraplegic, to head off these accusations of white privilege. Yes he’s a white male, but he’s in a wheelchair, so he’s also a member of a minority.

So … predictable on a larger scale: yes, but that’s not a bad thing. Predictable on the smaller scale of the plot line: yes as well. Which may or may not be a problem, depending on your expectations. Me, I like a surprise as much as the next person, but I wasn’t going to see this movie for the storyline.

I was there for the magic, and I got that in spades.

People who know about such things have talked about the groundbreaking effects, the historical cinematic significance of this movie. What that means is that when the hero took a corner at dizzying speed through the treetops I felt the world tilt. Everything seemed so real I’m still thinking about it and feeling disappointed that it doesn’t really exist somewhere. There was no sense that you were watching actors dressed up in funny outfits, the way there is when you watch Star Wars. There was no feeling that the exotic beasts didn’t quite come together. I could never quite believe in the wargs from The Lord of the Rings movies, for instance, much as I loved those movies. They were a little jerky, somehow not quite “real” enough for me. Not so with the denizens of Pandora’s forests.

The thing that this movie pulled off better than any I’ve ever seen, and the reason I enjoyed it so much, was that elusive “sense of wonder”. Watching it is like being a child in fairyland, enveloped in a magical dream. Admittedly things in fairyland don’t eat you quite as much as things do on Pandora, but wow. Just wow. And so I’m back to the short version of my review.

It was such a visual treat. It’s an unashamedly pretty movie. The Lord of the Rings movies were beautiful, but in a grown-up grey and grungy way. Avatar can do majestic too, but in glorious colour, full of ultraviolet delights and gorgeous plants and creatures. Even the blue people are beautiful. And that Hollywood tape! Man, I wish I knew how the female lead kept her necklet arrangement plastered so cunningly to her breasts through every death-defying leap and battle scene.

So I was dazzled and delighted, but didn’t entirely lose my objective senses. Some minor plot holes annoyed me, though not enough to stop me loving the movie. Naming the McGuffin* “unobtainium” seriously irked me – come on, guys, if you can’t take yourselves seriously, no one else will – but again, not enough to stop me loving it. Having a McGuffin in the first place, ditto.

It had flaws, but none of them were that bad. And what it got right was so amazing that I’d go see it again tomorrow. In 3D. On the biggest screen possible.

There’s a scene late in the movie where we see the paraplegic hero in shorts for the first time. His legs are wasted, as you’d expect. I spent quite some time wondering how they’d managed to make the actor’s legs look like that. Were they someone else’s legs superimposed on his body? Eventually it occurred to me how stupid I was being. I’d never questioned the entire alien world or the 12-foot tall blue people, and here I was wondering how they could make a healthy guy’s legs look wasted.

It’s that real. You’re really in this incredible, beautiful place. You can’t believe it’s just a movie. And even though it was a long one, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to stay immersed in this amazing world.

And that’s what every creator wants – to give their readers or viewers that total immersion in their creation. For others to believe, for a couple of hours, that what they have imagined is real, that big business doesn’t always win, that the guy will get his girl and that blue people have the best Hollywood tape in the business.

*McGuffin: some object that doesn’t do anything plot-wise other than motivate the characters

'Twas the night before Christmas

2009-12-24T22:57:00.000+11:00

… and all through the house, not a creature was sleeping. Except Baby Duck, who’s worn out from the elevated levels of anticipation. The other two ducklings are lying in bed talking and giggling, despite repeated warnings that Santa Will Not Come until they’re asleep.

It’s now 10:30 and looking like being a looooong night. A little while ago I even threatened to stop Santa on the doorstep and tell him to take all the presents away unless they go to sleep Right Now Dammit.

“Yes, Mummy,” they say through their lying little teeth, then start giggling again before I’ve even made it all the way back down the corridor.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas again already. It feels like only a few months since we did this all last time. Where did that year go?

We went to church tonight, to avoid the rush in the morning. Ha! Us and 57 billion other people. Still, it was a children’s mass and very sweet, with a real live baby – a very fresh one, judging by the size of it – playing the part of the baby Jesus. So cute, though I don’t think I could have done it if it were mine. I’d be busy picturing the 10-year-old Mary dropping my precious bundle.

However, no babies were harmed in the making of the pageant, so it all worked out. The Carnivore sang with his usual gusto and inaccuracy. In Hark the Herald Angels he sang “late in time behold Him come / offspring of the Virgin’s wum”.

“What?” he said when I gave him a funny look. “Womb doesn’t rhyme with come. I always want to sing thumb – or something even worse …”

Is it a sin to laugh in church?

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. And if you have children, I hope you get some sleep and that the sun is actually up when your little ones bound in full of excitement. Though I know it’s a pretty faint hope. Kids will get excited about Christmas, even if it only feels like three months since the last one to the rest of us!

Baby Duck and the Honking Big Trophy

2009-12-18T22:41:00.000+11:00

Thank goodness the school holidays have started. Last week I watched about 400 children individually receive certificates at a series of interminable end-of-year assemblies. When the kids were younger I used to think Hell was being forced to watch Wiggles videos for all eternity, but now I know better. Hell is listening to 400+ scrambling attempts by the teachers to dream up something unique and congratulatory to say, and watching 400+ little people shaking hands with their teacher, when the only little people you care to watch are your own. And really, I’d give up seeing them get their certificates in a heartbeat if it meant I didn’t have to sit through the other 397.

Oh for the good ole days when only the kids who actually achieved something got a prize. Now no one must be left out. All well and good for the little ones, I suppose, but honestly, kids aren’t stupid. By the time they get to primary school they’re awake to the whole “if everyone’s special then no one is” thing.

Yes, I know I sound grumpy. Sorry! But I challenge you to sit through the hours of assemblies I have lately and not feel a trifle tetchy. Because the ducklings are all at different stages they received their certificates at three separate, though pretty much identical, assemblies. I heard all the speeches three times. Though it could have been worse – I felt sorry for the principal, who had to look happy and interested the whole time.

By the time I got to Baby Duck’s assembly, which was last, I was so over the whole thing I was like Scrooge sitting up going “bah, humbug!” at the cute little kindergarteners and their off-key singing. Fortunately Baby Duck made up for the lack of maternal excitement by skipping across the stage when he won an extra award as well as his certificate. He held his big blue trophy up above his head to show the world, beside himself with glee.

But oh! the irony! This is the boy who asked me every morning if it was the weekend yet. The boy who suggested nearly every day that it might be better to stay home in case he gave his classmates his (fictional) cough/sore throat/runny nose. (And then gave me looks that managed to be tragic and filthy at the same time when I told him he had to go anyway.) The boy who said school was boring because they made him work.

What was the trophy for? “Most creative attempts to get out of attending school”? “Best dramatic performance in the dying swan category”? No – “Outstanding Effort”.

He’s so proud of himself. It’s like none of that resistance and tears ever happened. He’s decided he’d quite like to win it again next year. I’ll have to remind him of that next time he sits on his bed in his pyjamas for half an hour when he’s supposed to be getting dressed for school. Can’t win any trophies if you don’t go.

Maybe they should give out awards at those assemblies to the parents instead. That would make things more interesting. “Most Patient Homework Supervisor”. “Most Creative School Lunches”. “Most Persistent in Dealing with Reluctant School-goers”.

I’d be a shoo-in for that last one.

Bunfight at the SF corral

2009-12-12T22:50:00.001+11:00

There’s been much discussion on the internet over the past couple of weeks about pay rates for short stories. John Scalzi, author and respected member of the sff community, pointed out in this post that people who are serious about building a career as a writer shouldn’t virtually “give away” their work to low-paying or “for the love” markets unless they are getting some other advantage from the deal.

Some of the semi-pro magazines have experienced editors who can bring out the best in a story, for instance. Some of them get a lot of critical notice, leading to awards or inclusion in best-of anthologies. Some just cater to a particular niche that might fit a story that wouldn’t find a home elsewhere. All of these could be good reasons to forgo the big dollars – though with five cents a word counted as a professional pay rate, no one’s going to make their fortune on selling short stories.

Some leapt to hot defence of their beloved non-pro magazines, seeing slights where none were intended. The resulting debate has been enlightening.

Yes, I can see how people are happy to submit anywhere, just to get into print. I’ve done it myself, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It’s a great feeling to be able to say “I’ve been published”, even if it’s in a magazine that only the other contributors have heard of, like my ZineWest publication.

And yes, it may be good to experience the whole submission/working with the editors thing. It’s fun and it can be instructive, depending on the editor. And at least your work gets some readers rather than languishing in your drawer, though obviously not the wider exposure a big-name mag can bring.

But if you’re trying to build a career, people like Ann Leckie and Patrick Neilsen Hayden – people who ought to know – are saying not only are these minor credits not helping, they may actually be harming your efforts.

Obviously not all publication credits are created equal. Editors may be inclined to take a closer look if I can say I’ve been published in Asimov’s, whereas telling them I’ve been published in ZineWest means nothing. So much I knew. What I didn’t realise was that listing a string of unknown credits may actually put the editor off. Patrick Nielsen Hayden says in comments “speaking as a sometime short fiction editor, I find I’m much more encouraged by ‘Here’s a story, hope you like it’ than ‘Here’s a story, here are 25 mediocre small-press publications I’ve managed to eke out sales to over the last eight years thus making it highly unlikely that I am an undiscovered genius, hope you like the story.’ ”

Making it as a writer isn’t like climbing the ladder of promotion. You don’t get points for “serving your apprenticeship” in the smaller mags and working your way up. This from Ann Leckie: “I’m just telling you, if you’re submitting somewhere only because you think it’s necessary to have some credit, any credit! on a cover letter, that any credit at all that you can scrape up will make an editor pay more attention to your story, you’re absolutely dead wrong … Don't worry about credits. Just write better.”

Which leads to the point somebody raised (sorry, I can’t remember who, I’ve read a lot of comments all over the place) that getting published in the easier markets may lead to complacency. “Hey, they think I’m good enough to publish, so I’ll send more stuff to them”, rather than striving to improve enough to make it at the big end of town. Again, not a problem if your goal is the fun of seeing your work in print, but if you want to be published by the pros you have to learn to write at pro level.

So the take-home message is: if you want a writing career, submit to the pros first, and move on to the semi-pros if you get rejected by the pros (unless you have some particular reason for aiming at the semi-pros, as discussed earlier). Aim high and keep working to improve your writing. I’d heard this advice before, from Jay Lake, but I have to admit I haven’t been following it. I guess I hadn’t thought it through properly. I’ve just been sending things out rather randomly, without formulating a proper plan of attack.

That needs to change, and I’ve found some recommendations of good markets through all this discussion, as well as discovering the amazing website http://www.duotrope.com/. I’m ashamed to say I’d heard of it before but never got around to looking at it. It’s a fabulous tool for a writer looking for places to submit.

Time to get serious!

Reader/writer schizophrenia

2009-12-08T17:09:00.001+11:00

Some months ago I read a review of the movie Disgrace, based on the book by JM Coetzee. The reviewer praised John Malcovich’s performance, saying “his Lurie is such a proudly unrepentant predator”.

No doubt it was a fine performance. It was probably even a thought-provoking and interesting movie. But I didn’t go to see it. “Proudly unrepentant predators” are not my idea of a good time, and I go to the movies to be entertained, pure and simple.

Call me shallow, but I love me some happily ever after. I’m like this as a reader too. Occasionally I’ll try something challenging, but most of the time I like to lose myself in fantasy worlds where good conquers evil and all my favourite characters end up in a happy place. I blame my youthful obsession with fairy tales. If Once upon a time doesn’t lead to and they all lived happily ever after, I am not a happy camper.

But when I put on my writer’s hat that all changes. It’s such fun to kill, maim, destroy and generally blight your characters’ hopes. Not so much in novel-length works, because that would be too much depression, but in short stories I do dreadful things to my characters and love every minute. And then my poor writers’ group reads my stories and goes “well, that was a bit of a downer” – and I’m surprised. I’ve had such fun writing it that I haven’t even realised that it’s a miserable story that leaves the reader wallowing in depression.

The first time I did this one of my writers’ group said, “it was well written but I don’t like depressing stories. If it was a novel I would have been really annoyed to get all invested in the character only to have it end like that”. And the little light bulb in my head went off and I thought, hey, me too! So how come I wrote it? Obviously my writer self is looking for different things than is my reader self.

So now I understand better where all those authors who write depressing books come from. Why things never seem to end happily in “literary” novels. It’s fun to write like that – to explore sadness and realistic consequences and the kind of things you generally don’t find in fantasy novels. (Of course I’m generalising here, and there are fantasy novels that don’t follow the common pattern, but on the whole I think happily ever afters are one of the conventions of the fantasy genre, just as in the romance genre.) I could never see it before I started writing myself – why would people want to write something that leaves the reader miserable? Now I know.

It seems a bit perverse though, doesn’t it? To write something that I wouldn’t want to read if somebody else had written it. Not that I do it all the time, but often enough that I’ve started to notice it. Does anybody else find their writing preferences are different to their reading ones?

Or am I the only weirdo?

Nano round-up

2009-12-03T22:13:00.000+11:00

You may have wondered about the long silence here. No, I haven’t fallen into a hole. I have merely become incapable of stringing words together after my mammoth efforts in November.

I reached 50,000 words with three days to spare, which is a new record for me. Even better, I didn’t stop immediately, but managed to add another 3,000 words to the total, fulfilling my promise to myself not to miss a day of writing in the whole month. This despite Real Life throwing all manner of obstacles in my way towards the end.

The Carnivore needed me to edit the accounting training course he’s just written, which is painfully convoluted stuff for a non-accountant. Moreover I am now convinced that all accountants are complete whackjobs.

Drama Duck needed me to help her write her campaign speech for the elections for school captain next year, and design a poster for her as well. She finished Nano comfortably on the 22nd of November.

Demon Duck needed me to help her finish her Nano novel. She’d written 1500 words on her own but had given up. When she got home from school on the 30th of November I forced her to sit at the computer with me. She dictated and I typed and we got another 1500 words done, which was enough for her (revised) goal and finished the story off too. She kept saying how much fun it was to write this way – maybe I need a secretary too!

End result: I didn’t complete the first draft. One day I would love to finish the whole story in November, but this year it wasn’t to be. I have a broad outline of what needs to happen and I’m pretty close – less than 10,000 words probably. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t get there, but hey, that’s life. We have three happy, still more-or-less sane novelists in our house. We braved Nano and lived to tell the tale.

The worst thing about Nano being over is I now have no excuse to avoid The Christmas Conversation with my mother. She likes to start The Christmas Conversation about mid-October. Me, I’d rather chew my own arm off than spend two months fretting about what I’m going to get everyone for Christmas. Doing Nano gives me a convenient excuse to stick my fingers in my ears and go “la, la, la, not listening” every time she tries to have The Conversation.

Now, alas, my shield has been ripped away and the sound of the telephone strikes fear into my heart. But I must be brave.

And I really must start my Christmas shopping!

Should I be worried?

2009-11-23T21:22:00.001+11:00

I think I’m in love with my kitchen appliances. Dearest Microwave, I never truly appreciated you till now.

I thought I loved you in the baby days, when you heated those bottles of milk so quickly, before the baby’s screams completely melted my brain. And the hours you saved me in sterilising the bottles! I adored you so!

But it is only now I realise your true beauty.

The other day I was making hot milk. But, with my mind deep in the throes of Nano, I mistakenly put the milk on for two minutes instead of one. I opened the door and the terrible stink of boiled milk assaulted my nostrils. And then I saw it …

Milk goobies!!

Eeeww. I haven’t thought about them in so many years because you don’t get them with microwaves. Back in the old days Mum used to boil the tripe out of the milk on the stove top to make hot chocolate. Although we didn’t even call it that, this was so long ago. We called it kai (not sure how you spell it). The milk got so overheated it formed a skin.

Can I just say again? EEEEWWW.

You’d take a sip and this hideous thing would cling to your lips and slime your mouth, like a slug sneaking into your hot chocolate. Oh, the horror! Just thinking about it makes me want to run around shrieking “ick! ick! ick! Get it off me!”

God, I love my microwave.

And then I find myself talking to my oven.

In my defence I have to say, it started it. It has a beautiful high-tech light-up display, my beloved new oven. It tells you the setting and temperature in spiffy glowing red letters. When the griller is on, instead of the temperature, it says LO or HI.

Small digression: I love having a griller again after years without one. The old oven died by degrees. First the light failed, then the griller would only work sometimes if you bashed the instrument panel just right, then it stopped working altogether and couldn’t be fixed because it was too old to get parts, so we did without a griller for years. Then the timer became temperamental and often jammed about five minutes before the end, so you only knew your cake or whatever was overcooked when a lovely smell of burning wafted through the house. When we still didn’t replace the oven, it finally decided to force our hand by having the element in the top oven catch on fire.

Aaanyway, it’s lovely to have a griller again. I was standing there admiring it … no, really just watching my pizza so it didn’t burn, and I looked at the display panel and the griller said HI. So I said “hi!” back.

Then I thought, hmmm, should I be worried that I’m talking to my kitchen appliances?

Maybe I only have to worry when they start talking back.

Three wells make a river

2009-11-19T21:58:00.000+11:00

My grandmother used to say this all the time. Like clockwork, whenever anyone said “well, well, well”, she’d pipe up: “Three wells make a river!”

I introduced Baby Duck to this expression recently and he’s quite taken with it. But I’ve found something better than three wells: how about seven bongs?

No, not those sort of bongs.

Drama Duck has perfected the fine art of wordcount padding. I’m such a proud mother. So young! So gifted!

Her Nano novel is set in a high school. Every time the bell rings she writes “BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!”

And it rings A LOT. I tell you, the child’s a genius.

Not that she needs the padding. Tonight she’s up to 4648 words out of 5000, and the story’s just getting started. Demon Duck’s on about 1600 words (out of 3500) and starting to wonder if she can change her goal to something smaller. She’s discovered that making up stories is harder than it looks. And also that middles suck.

I thought I wasn’t going to write a word today. Me and my new mate Phil are doing great as far as speed of transcribing goes. The problem is thinking of the damn words in the first place. I was completely dry this morning. Couldn’t think of a single place to take my story, and thrashed around most of the day trying all my usual tricks to jumpstart my creativity. I barely managed the minimum wordcount by introducing a new monster to attack the heroine’s party. When in doubt, bring on the monsters! Now the best friend’s been poisoned by a star spider and they’re stranded in the middle of the Sea of Stars with no ride home. How am I going to get them out of that?

That’s tomorrow’s problem. And, yeah, middles suck.

Delight, despair, delight, despair: lather, rinse, repeat

2009-11-16T22:33:00.000+11:00

Or: when it’s good, it’s very very good, and when it’s bad it’s the most torturous way to spend your time ever invented. That’s Nano for you. A real rollercoaster ride.

Things I have learned on this year’s Nanoing adventure:

-- I use the word “stuff” waaaaay too often, even for a novel featuring a pair of thirteen-year-olds. And “that”. My God, if I had a dollar for every “that” in this manuscript, I would be writing this post from a beach in the Bahamas. Or possibly the deck of my new yacht.

-- If Nano isn’t challenging enough, new levels of difficulty can be created by inserting a character into your work who only speaks in rhyme. All I can say is, thank God for online rhyming dictionaries. Sometimes my brain is just too overwhelmed to come up with a decent rhyme.

-- It’s a lot of fun to read each completed chapter to an appreciative eleven-year-old audience. She’s following the story with great interest, and I enjoy listening to her speculate on what’s going to happen next. (By the way, said eleven-year-old has passed 3500 words out of her 5000. Demon Duck is languishing on about 1000 out of 4000.)

-- I’m beginning to suspect I don’t have a good enough imagination to be a fantasy writer. This in spite of apparent evidence to the contrary: I have space-going whales, a tree as big as a planet and flesh-eating pirates whose ship is made of organic balloons. Sounds like a good imagination, doesn’t it?

The trouble is, I find those parts difficult to write, and it seems to me they come out kind of flat. Whereas the “real world” sections have voice and personality and I zip through them with (comparative) ease.

The writers among you are now probably chanting “that’s what revision’s for!” and sure, I know this stuff is fixable (ten points if you spotted that “stuff” – I swear that word is following me around). But surely a fantasy writer shouldn’t have so much trouble with the “making ~~stuf~~ things up” part?

But still, in spite of these quibbles, things are going well (touch wood). Wordcount today is up to 29,528 words, which means I’m a little ahead of schedule for the month. Story-wise I think I’m about halfway through, though it’s hard to tell when you’re writing by the seat of your pants. My attitude to outlining is a little like my attitude to dieting. I can see it’s a good idea, but I never quite get around to doing it.

But probably the biggest news is my new technological best friend – a Philips Voice Tracer, purchased for me at great expense by the Carnivore, bless his little cotton socks. In the old days this would have been called a dictaphone; I’m not sure what the proper terminology is these days.

Regardless of its name, it’s made a big difference. I’m a very slow writer. It can take me five or six hours (or even more with bouts of procrastinating thrown in) to write the required number of words every day. I’m not sure why, but even trying as hard as I can I can’t write much more than 500 words in an hour.

Desperate for a way to reduce the hours I spend slogging away at the computer, I decided to try speaking the story and typing it later. I tried this once before, years ago, and found it unsatisfactory – I was too selfconscious. But, longing for some free time and a bedtime before midnight, I decided to give it another go. We only bought it on Saturday, so the jury’s still out on it as a long-term strategy, but so far I’m very pleased.

Last night, for instance, I couldn’t start writing till 9:30 – kind of late if it’s going to take five hours to get the wordcount. But with my new mate Phil’s help I knocked out 2000 words in two hours. True, the prose is a little uninspiring – a lot more “she went here, he said this” than when I’m typing directly, but that can be fixed, and if it gets the story out quicker I’m all for it.

Because after you’ve found out what the story is, you get the fun of revising it till it gleams. Maybe with Phil’s help I can finish the whole story, not just the first 50,000 words, by the end of November. That would really be something to celebrate. I could face Christmas with a clear conscience.

Aaarrgh! The dreaded C word! Just don’t ask me if I’ve started my shopping yet …

The travelling drought-breakers, Part 2

2009-11-10T19:04:00.000+11:00

Bendigo welcomed us with open arms.

“We haven’t had rain like this in three years. Stay longer!” they begged.

“No, no, Bendigo,” we chided. “You mustn’t be selfish. We only have one day to spend here. We are on a tight schedule and must take our rain-making circus to Ballarat post-haste. You wouldn’t want to deny Ballarat its rain, would you?”

Bendigo conceded, rather sulkily, that we had a point, so we threw ourselves into enjoying the day. And what a full day it was!

We spent a couple of (dry) hours underground, enjoying a fine tour of the Central Deborah Gold Mine. I highly recommend it if you are ever in Bendigo. Four of us enjoyed it immensely and learned lots of interesting and amazing facts. The fifth member of our party spent most of his time sobbing. When will we ever learn about dark places?

We all had to wear miners’ hats with lamps on the front. Very cool, except they were powered by an extremely heavy battery you had to strap around your waist. I tried to pick Baby Duck up to comfort him at one point and found it almost impossible to get him off the ground. So the poor old Carnivore had to lump his extremely heavy, extremely miserable son around instead.

When we resurfaced we panned for gold (no luck) and climbed the poppet head (the big tower thing above the shaft with all the winches and pulleys and stuff – yeah, I’m good at this technical talk). Not sure why we did that, actually, since all of us are afraid of heights, and there were predictable results.

Then it was off on the historic Talking Tram for a tour of Bendigo’s wide streets full of lovely old buildings, trees and gardens. It’s a really pretty city. Probably even more so when it’s not raining.

After lunch we visited the Discovery Museum, where there was a very interesting presentation at the planetarium. We were the only people there, so Demon Duck enjoyed showing off her knowledge (they’ve just been studying the planets at school). In brief gaps between the rain we saw the Chinese Gardens and temple and visited the Dragon Museum, which houses both the longest and the oldest Chinese dragons in Australia.

Then it was on to Ballarat. We stayed at the lodge attached to Sovereign Hill. Our accommodation had a queen-sized bed in the main room, with a double bunk on each side, plus two more double bunks in a separate bedroom. Very handy for all those families with eight children, I’m sure, but it seemed a bit of overkill on the beds to me! Plus they took up so much space there was nowhere really to put the small breakfast table (which only seated four – were the eight children supposed to eat in shifts?). When you wanted to use it you had to pull it out from the wall and block access to the bathroom. Very strange.

Sovereign Hill is a fascinating place. It’s a historically accurate gold-rush town, complete with goldfields, a mine and a river to pan for gold in. The main street has all the businesses such a town would have had, all working, plus schools, churches, soldiers’ quarters and government houses. There’s a working foundry, a wheelwright, clothes and sweet shops. People in costume are everywhere, going about their daily business.

More on that in another post. It was shut by the time we arrived, but they have an outdoor sound and light show there at night, which retells the story of the Eureka Stockade (an uprising by miners protesting the burden of miners’ licences, which ended in a brief battle with government soldiers in which several people were killed). We decided to brave the weather and got away with it. It didn’t rain, but we nearly froze our buns off. Man, it was cold! I had my warmest clothes on, plus a blanket from our room wrapped around me, and I was still cold.

Thankfully this time the dark was somehow not scary, and Baby Duck enjoyed the show, though all the ducklings were pretty pooped by the time we got back to our abundance of beds.

Holiday statistics for our second day in Victoria:

Rainfall: drought-breaking.

Other waterworks: one child reduced to sobbing wreck, others scared witless by extreme height.

Accommodation and food: average.

Are we having fun yet? yes, but we’re f-f-f-freezing.

The universe conspires

2009-11-05T19:46:00.000+11:00

Whenever I start a new book I find the universe starts throwing all sorts of useful things my way. Sceptics would suggest that it’s just that I’m more receptive to noticing related things when my mind is working on a subject, but I prefer to believe in the beauty of serendipity.

For instance: remember there was a lighthouse in my story? Guess what we visited on our holiday. There’s nothing like a location visit to get you in the mood. Then last Saturday there was a feature article about a very similar lighthouse with a gorgeous photo, so that got torn out and pasted into my novel notebook.

In my story the characters travel to other worlds on the sea of stars through a magical gate. I knew it was all dependent on tides and moon phases, so I had a great time researching those. I discovered tide clocks – too cool! Who knew such things existed? I know, probably everyone else but me.

Then I found a photo of a really beautiful tide clock and a few more pieces of story clicked into place.

I decided to use Fingal Bay, which I know well, as a basis for my imaginary setting. In looking up information about the lighthouse there I discovered that the present day sandspit used to be a permanent part of the headland till a big storm destroyed it.

Click click click. More ideas.

A photo of an actor in the paper – perfect for my villain.

In the travel section, a photo of a Japanese torii gate standing alone in the middle of the sea – wow. Gates, sea, lighthouses everywhere I turn.

On Tuesday I attended an author visit at the local children’s bookshop. The author was Martin Chatterton, who was very entertaining. No gates or lighthouses, but a very useful piece of advice – when he’s thinking about what he will write he likes to imagine scenes he’d like to see in a movie.

I don’t know why that struck me so much; it’s not a new thought. Lots of authors, including me, say that writing is like watching their characters act out a movie in their heads. I think it was more the “imagining what he’d like” angle, as if he were encouraging me to dream up the most colourful fantastical thing I could – and then stick it in my novel.

Which is what fantasy authors are supposed to do, I suppose, but I’d never thought of it quite like that. Maybe I get too bogged down in plot and motivation and mechanical-type things, and forget the whole “sense of wonder” part.

Whatever. My mind is open to all and any delights the universe wishes to throw my way. Bring it on, universe. I’ve written 10,000 words and I’m ready. At this stage of the game anything can happen.

And probably will.

3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Nano!

2009-11-01T23:03:00.000+11:00

And they’re off and writing! I achieved a respectable 2401 for the first day of Nano. Drama Duck managed a whopping 1010 (she’s only committed to writing 5000) and Demon Duck also did well with 300 (for a target of 3500).

Elsewhere in the household, the Carnivore did some actual paying work and cooked a lovely baked dinner, bless his little cotton socks. Baby Duck mooched around complaining he was bored. To which my reply was “well, go and be bored somewhere else – I’m writing!”.

He also explained to his father this morning how chocolate milk is made. His theory is that you take a bowl of Coco Pops and add milk. You then end up with chocolate milk plus a by-product of Rice Bubbles. Thinking all the time, that boy.

I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve written so far. You can read the first scene over on my page at Nano (under "Novel Info"), if you’re interested. I read the first chapter to Drama Duck tonight and she was eager to hear more – a good sign, I hope.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. I have a big day ahead, with plots to thicken and cryptic utterances to … um … utter. Wish me luck!

Easy as falling off a log

2009-10-29T21:56:00.000+11:00

I was prowling the secondhand book stall at a local fete on Sunday. I was very strong and didn’t buy anything, but I couldn’t very well go past without even looking, could I?

So I’m cruising along checking spines and the two ladies cruising the other side of the table start discussing Matthew Reilly.

“You read any of his?” asks one, gesturing at Ice Station.

“Yeah, I read that one set in North America.”

“I’ve read a few, but they’re pretty bad.”

The second lady laughs. “I’d like to be that bad, if I could have his money.”

I’m not sure if people outside of Australia are familiar with Matthew Reilly but he’s a young guy who self-published his first book, sold enough to get noticed and has gone from strength to strength. He’s not “literary” but he sells like hot cakes, and good luck to him.

The first lady didn’t seem to understand the point her friend was making.

“Well, it’s easy, isn’t it?” she said dismissively. “Anyone could write them. I could write a better book myself. It’s just a matter of finding the time.”

Wow, I thought. My first real-life experience of what so many authors have talked about – this popular perception that writing is so easy anyone can do it. As long as you’ve got the time to “waste” on it, anyone can sit down at their computer and knock out a bestseller.

I’m still gobsmacked thinking about it. How can people take so much hard work for granted? Just because reading a book is easy doesn’t mean writing one is.

The travelling drought-breakers, Part 1

2009-10-26T14:27:00.001+11:00

Hi, Sydney, I’m home! I brought you a little souvenir from my holiday – bucketloads of rain. No, really, I insist.

Apparently there was so much rain in some parts of Sydney last night that shopkeepers were sweeping it out of their shops this morning.

Yes, the drought-breaking duck family has arrived. No, no, don’t thank me. I’m happy to provide this public service. They were begging us to stay in Bendigo. They had the best rain for three years while we were there.

But I should start at the beginning.

Did I mention the heavenly firehose that dumped on our car all the way to our friends’ farm? Yes? Think of it like those bottomless cups of coffee you can get, where every time your cup looks like it might just be thinking about being empty, the waitress comes and fills it up again. We had our own personal stormcloud, just like that. Continually topped up and stuck to us like glue.

Whenever there was the tiniest break in the weather the kids would venture out. Go around the corner to herd cows? The heavens would open. Squelch through the boggy paddocks just 100 metres to look at the creek? Downpour plus hail. And so cold it’s a wonder nobody lost their extremities to frostbite.

But there were friends and games and good conversations. Not to mention puppies:

Demon Duck spent most of her time sitting out on the verandah in the freezing cold loving on those puppies. When we left she cried for the first half-hour because she missed them so.

And then we were across the border into Victoria, first stop Glenrowan, the place where Ned Kelly, a famous bushranger, was finally caught after being besieged at the local inn. Glenrowan is a small place, and it seems to me that the only reason it still exists is to service the tourist industry. There’s a ginormous statue of Ned Kelly in the main street and a rather peculiar “show” that recreates the showdown at the inn. You move through a succession of rooms peopled with somewhat creepy dummies, some of which move a little, while the events are narrated.

What an interesting experience for the children! we think. Bringing history alive! So we fork over an exorbitant sum of money and lead the ducklings into the first room.

Fortunately we are the only ones enjoying this educational experience at the time, since as soon as the lights go out Baby Duck starts to howl. Darkness + ominous music = total meltdown. I know the next room is well-lit, and I’m still smarting from the tourist-gouging admission price, so I refuse to give in to his pleas to leave.

The next room is better – a bar scene, where Ned and the rest of the gang are discussing their woes and planning the next move. There are even cute dogs, and pretend mice “running” along the bar. He is reasonably calm by the time we move outside for the shootout.

Unfortunately – this is starting to sound like a game of Fortunately/Unfortunately, isn’t it? – unfortunately we are then ushered into a tin shed and “shot” at. It’s dark and the sound of gunfire is loud, the smell of gunsmoke strong. Cue more sobs.

Then it’s on to a dark room containing an open coffin with Ned’s body in it. By this time I am wanting to shake the man who sold us the tickets for not warning us that the show might not be suitable for small people. I’ve seen it before, but that was seventeen years ago and my recollections are very hazy.

We finally make it out, but not before the body in the coffin has moved and another body has dropped down through a trapdoor in the roof as Ned is hanged. “Such is life,” were Ned’s famous last words, but I doubt Baby Duck will take anything educational away from this experience. As a public service, I give you the warning the man should have given us: overpriced but educational for older kids, too scary for more sensitive little souls.

We troop off through the rain and check out the museum, then pile back into the car and shake the mud of Glenrowan from our feet, en route to Bendigo, where we find a very comfortable family room at a motel and eat a yummy Chinese dinner.

Holiday statistics for our first day in Victoria:

Rainfall: epic – did anybody bring an ark?
Other waterworks: two out of three children reduced to sobbing wrecks.
Accommodation and food: good.
Are we having fun yet: the day is redeemed by a stop at a marvellous adventure playground on the way to Bendigo.

The long and winding road

2009-10-21T21:36:00.001+11:00

… still hasn’t led back home, though we’re starting the trek back to Sydney tomorrow. We’re in Melbourne now. Great place, but we’re freezing our butts off.

We’ve seen some interesting places, and I’ll do detailed posts with photos when I get back. In the meantime, here’s some fascinating things I’ve learned:

-- Captain Cook (who claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain in 1770) was married for 16 years, but only spent a total of four of them at home with his wife. Makes the Carnivore’s business travel look good! He was also 6 foot 3 (the good captain, that is, not the Carnivore, who is the runt of his litter). He must have been a giant in those days.

-- Ballarat must have looked like a wasteland during the gold rush of the 1850s, with poppet heads everywhere and every tree cut down to line the tunnels and shafts of the mines. “At great labour and expense a forest was taken underground” said one historian. There’s a phrase to spark a story! “The Underground Forest” would make a great fantasy title too.

-- The most amazing fact? The ducklings can actually live without TV for a whole week. Who would have thought???

Boat trip

2009-10-14T12:02:00.001+11:00

The animals went in two by two, hurrah! hurrah! Sing along, everyone! The animals went in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo …

Our road trip is turning into a boating holiday. Yesterday the heavens opened and bucketloads of water fell on us. No, not bucketloads. Truckloads. Especially when it was my turn to drive. And I just looove driving in the rain. The equivalent of Sydney Harbour dumped on our car. It rained so hard we could hardly see and other cars were pulling off the road all around.

But at last the flood washed us up on our friends’ farm, safe and sound, if a trifle waterlogged. And they have puppies! All is right with the world. We are sitting inside watching the rain fall, while the ducklings play with their friends and we drink lots of cups of tea and veg out.

I checked the internet before we left for ideas for games we could play in the car. Oh frabjous internet! We had Car Bingo and Who Am I? and a very amusing game called Virtual Hide and Seek.

“We’re going to play virtual hide and seek,” I said.

Drama Duck touched my shoulder. “Found you!”

It was fun. You have to “hide” somewhere in your house, and the others “find” you by asking questions with yes/no answers. Your hiding place doesn’t have to be somewhere you could actually fit, so you can hide in the cutlery drawer or the toilet or inside your brother’s money box.

Another game that went on for a long time was Fortunately/Unfortunately, where everyone takes turns to say a sentence starting alternately with “fortunately” and “unfortunately”.

“Unfortunately Mum fell down a giant hole and there was a cannibal at the bottom.”

“Fortunately he wasn’t hungry at the time.”

“Unfortunately Demon Duck fell in too and there was an axe murderer after her.”

“Fortunately he’d forgotten to bring his axe.”

During the course of the game most of us got turned into zombies, several people died and got brought back to life, I had my brain replaced by a sock – but “fortunately the sock was full of amazing circuitry so I became the smartest person in the world” – volcanoes erupted and there were several earthquakes. In short, a good time was had by all.

Also we listened to Roald Dahl read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Enormous Crocodile, so the hours passed quite quickly.

Tomorrow we’ll hit the road again, heading into the wilds of Victoria. We’ll decide in the morning whether to take the car or a canoe.

Not on the same day

2009-10-11T22:15:00.001+11:00

“I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. But you can’t have it all at once and you can’t have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day.” -- Barbara Sher

I would love to be able to tell you that I found this quote through my reading because I’m just such an intellectual, but in fact it was one of many wise sayings on my desk calendar this year. It really resonated with me. It’s practically an anthem for modern womanhood. Can we have a career? And children? And still find time for meaningful intimate relationships and keep fit and be fulfilled as a person all while keeping the house spotless and eating nothing but healthy home-cooked meals?

I was thinking about it again the other day. I did end up taking my courage in both hands and dragging my offspring into the wilds of seedy Kings Cross, Sydney’s red light district, to see the Linde Ivimey exhibition. It was a four-hour round trip, of which 15 minutes were spent in the actual gallery looking at the exhibition. The rest was train travel (hugely exciting!), walking (not so popular) and waiting for trains (involved trains so still good – even potential trains are apparently exciting). Not the ideal ratio of travel to exhibition-viewing from an adult’s point of view, but just about perfect as far as the ducklings were concerned. Maybe a little long on the exhibition viewing. Luckily the boredom of the 15 minutes was alleviated by the existence of a large fishpond in the centre of the gallery and – the real clincher – a ten-week-old puppy lurking in the gallery office, which they sniffed out within seconds of stepping through the door.

I was describing the experience later to a dear (childless) friend who often visits art shows and does other adult-type cultural things which are only a distant memory for me. She asked if I ever went to the Archibald show any more, which we used to do together sometimes BC (Before Children) and I thought of the Barbara Sher quote. You can have what you want in one form or another. I can still go to art shows – just not the way I used to. No more taking my time contemplating each piece, but it’s surprising how much you can cover in 15 minutes, even with small people demanding you admire the bug-eyed goldfish and trying to sneak off into the restricted areas of the gallery.

But it felt so good just to go. Look at me! I’m a real person, doing real-person things! And it certainly doesn’t hurt to expose the ducklings to elements of culture that aren’t tailored for kids now and then. Though the response was unanimous: the sculptures were "weird". But the puppy was cute.

Oh, and the train ride was fun, too. Did I mention how very exciting train travel is? You can sit upstairs! And you can sit downstairs! Then upstairs again! All while talking at the top of your piping six-year-old voice for the edification of the entire carriage.

So maybe I can’t have everything I want, just the way I want it. But the fun part comes in discovering new ways to enjoy things. “No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day.” But any day that includes some art, a puppy and three happy children is a good day in my book.

Floating round the net

2009-10-06T21:46:00.000+11:00

School holidays here. Brain is broken.

Can’t come up with a coherent post, so here’s a few things that have caught my attention recently:

Natalie Hatch with a great intro to hula hooping. Have fun! Lose weight! Embarrass yourself in public! (Oh, wait, that was just me, hula hooping in the park today …)

Carrie Ryan with a thoughtful post on book banning (thanks to writerjenn for the link). My favourite quote: “if the only way you can keep people believing what you want them to is to deny them access to other points of view, then not only do you not trust those people but you certainly don't trust the strength of your own message".

Amazing art from Linde Ivimey. On show in Sydney at the moment – hoping to get there to see it in real life. I first read about these sculptures made of bones just before I started Man Bites Dog. I was so intrigued I had my heroine creating similar sculptures. Looking at them makes me want to get back to work on that novel.

My Best Kite. Cool website with easy-to-follow instructions on how to make a range of kites out of stuff you probably have lying around at home. Very handy for school projects and amusing kids in the holidays!

Peadar O’Guilin, sff author. Stumbled across this blog last week. He has links to some short stories and sample chapters of his novel The Inferior in his sidebar. Enjoyed the stories very much and was so intrigued by the sample chapters I’ve ordered the book and can’t wait for it to arrive so I can continue reading!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Bad decisions make good stories

2009-09-30T20:04:00.000+10:00

Agent Rachelle Gardner had a good post recently on the importance of proactive protagonists. A good protagonist doesn’t just wander along, reacting to events, they make the events of the story happen. They take action, make decisions.

They can make mistakes, but what they cannot do is sit passively waiting for the story to happen to them.

This ties in with another well-known truth of writing – that in fact, mistakes are where the story happens. If everything goes smoothly, it’s not much of a story. But if every time the protagonist tries to solve their initial problem, they just dig themselves deeper into a hole, the story gets interesting.

Bad decisions make good stories.

It amazes me how I can know all this in theory, yet in practice, I not only make all these writing mistakes I’ve read about, but I don’t even see that I’ve made them.

I’m 90,000 words into Dragonheart, and not till my heroine hurls an accusation at her long-lost love do I look at what I’ve just typed and go hang on … She’s right! She did devote the whole first part of the story to doing X to try to be reunited with him. So how come as soon as she met up with some other characters who wanted to do the exact opposite of X she meekly fell in with their plans? How the hell does that work?

There’s a gaping hole in her motivation you could drive a truck through and I didn’t even realise. She was just floating along, letting other characters drive the action. And look what a cool conflict I missed! She wants X, her allies want the exact opposite – sparks should be flying. She should be up to her armpits in alligators, as everything she does makes the situation worse, not cheerfully letting these other characters run her life for her.

Sometimes I can’t see the wood for the trees. I get so tangled up in the intricacies of the subplots I forget about the big things.

I guess that’s why they invented revision.

I'm not eating THAT!

2009-09-28T20:14:00.000+10:00

“What’s for dinner, Mama?” asks Baby Duck.

“Peanut veal,” I say.

He gives me a doubtful look. “I don’t think I like peanut beetles.”

Dave Allen lives!

2009-09-26T20:05:00.001+10:00

Does anyone remember Dave Allen? He was a marvellous Irish comedian whose Friday night show was staple viewing in our house when I was growing up. He loved to poke fun at religious rituals and many of his skits and routines have passed into family lore.

A favourite was the one where the bishop took off his tall, pointy hat – to reveal a tall, pointy head underneath.

Dave Allen has been dead since 2005, but his memory well and truly lives on.

Today I was sitting next to my sister in church. My sister who is a grandmother. Supposedly mature. Dave Allen was the furthest thing from my mind as I watched a sweet crowd of little children receiving the bishop’s blessing. And then …

The bishop took off his tall, pointy hat. Dear Reader, it pains me to tell you, but my sister, who is a good Catholic and absolutely old enough to know better – my sister sniggered.

I didn’t even have to look at her. I knew at once the picture in her head, and I was undone. My shoulders shook so hard from holding it in that Drama Duck demanded to know what I was laughing at.

So much for setting a good example. At least Dave Allen would be proud.

The soul of an accountant

2009-09-20T21:16:00.000+10:00

I was amusing myself trying to write haiku yesterday. There’s a local haiku competition coming up and I thought, why not? I’ll give it a whirl.

I remember writing haiku at school when I was about Drama Duck’s age. Back then, of course, it was all about the physical structure: the three lines of five syllables, then seven, then five again. I doubt my teacher even mentioned the finer points of nature/seasonal imagery or the way a haiku captures the essence of a moment, gives an unexpected insight. If she did, I certainly wasn't listening!

I found a gorgeous definition of haiku, itself a haiku, on the haikuoz website, by a bloke from Perth called Andrew Lansdown:

"Haiku are pebbles
poets lob into the pond
of our emotions."

So I was sitting there, scribbling away, counting syllables on my fingers, when Demon Duck asked me what I was doing.

“Writing haiku,” I said.

“Oh, we’ve done that at school,” she says, with all the lofty confidence of a nine-year-old. “I’ve written 16.”

Then she looked over what I’d written, counted the syllables and said, “That’s good, Mum, you’ve got it right.”

Next up was Mr I-don’t-have-a-poetic-bone-in-my-body, aka the Carnivore.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing haiku.”

“What’s that?”

Maybe that nine-year-old confidence wasn’t misplaced after all. At least she knows more than her father about haiku.

After I’d explained haiku, including how they’re usually about nature, he said:

“But you could write them about anything, right? Important things, like tax?”

Later in the evening he came to tell me he’d written one, grinning from ear to ear. I present it here for your edification.

“Transfer pricing,
Thin capitalisation,
Tax office pressure.”

He is such an accountant.

Memory is a funny beast

2009-09-17T22:58:00.001+10:00

Memory is a funny thing. If you want a phone number, the date of a friend’s wedding anniversary, the details of a long-ago conversation, I’m your woman. The Carnivore, on the other hand, like many men, can’t remember his own children’s birthdays. Some days he’s not even too sure how old they are.

You’d think, being an accountant, he’d have a bit of an edge in remembering such number-related things, but no. His memory appears to be jammed full of the plot of every novel and B-grade movie he’s ever read/seen. He can even recite dialogue from some of them.

Whereas I, the more word-focused person, can reread novels without remembering anything of the plot. Sometimes I can recall one scene, or a character I liked, maybe a hazy recollection of the initial set-up, but the ending comes as a complete surprise.

It’s a little alarming to realise how fast my brain empties, but quite handy too. I never run out of new stories to read!

I was reading today and a new application of this anti-skill occurred to me. My eyes filled with tears at a moving bit, and the writer part of my brain stopped to analyse the effect. I wondered if the author felt moved when she wrote it. Maybe she was deliberately trying to engender this effect. If so, how would she know if she’d succeeded? Since she knew what she was aiming for, since she’d constructed the sadness, she couldn’t very well come at it as a new reader would, and experience the sadness.

Then I realised, due to the black hole in my memory where plots go to die, I can have my writerly cake and eat it too. (Which has always struck me as an odd expression. “You want to have your cake and eat it too!” people say, as if that’s a bad thing. But what else are you going to do with cake? Who are these weirdos who just want to look at their cake?)

I only have to leave anything I write a few months and I forget so much of it it’s like reading something somebody else wrote. Very handy for assessing what effect the story might have on a reader, though a little awkward if I ever do get published and people want to discuss my novels with me. “So Marina, why did you have So-and-so do X in your story?” “Er … remind me who So-and-so is again?”

Yesterday I reread a short story I finished back in June. That’s only three months ago. Couldn’t wait to get to the end to see what happened.

How could I forget so quickly?

At least I still liked it. Old Whatsername writes a pretty mean story when they let her out of the padded room.

Recurring themes

2009-09-10T22:26:00.000+10:00

Like many great writers, Baby Duck has a favourite theme he returns to over and over again. His backlist would be the envy of many a writer, and all except one of his works – the classic Chickens in Space – features monsters. But even Chickens in Space is generously supplied with aliens, which is nearly the same thing.

He spends hours sometimes, drawing page after page, then he brings them to me to staple together and he dictates the text to me. If I’m really lucky I get to palm this job off on to Drama Duck, though then I worry that he’ll show it to someone and they’ll think I made all those spelling mistakes, so usually I do it. It can take an awfully long time sometimes, but its kinda fun too. His monsters are endlessly inventive, though the story usually follows a well-worn track, featuring a portal that opens into our world to let the monsters in, followed by lots of fights and explosions. Not too dissimilar to your average box-office smash, in other words.

The latest effort features a new twist – meta-text. After a dozen pages of the usual monster mayhem, I find something puzzling.

“Why is this monster being attacked by a giant pencil?” I ask.

The look he gives me says he’s wondering how someone can be that stupid and still tie their own shoelaces.

“He’s not being attacked by a giant pencil, Mum. That’s just showing people how to draw him.”

It’s so hard to get good mothers these days.

I find recurring themes in my own work too. Some are conscious. I’m fascinated by transformations, for instance. One of my favourite fairytales is Beauty and the Beast. The Little Mermaid is another. I love a good makeover story, like Cinderella, or Grease. Shapeshifters and werewolves are great. (As long as they’re not too scary. I still have nasty memories of some werewolf movies I saw about 25 years ago, back when werewolves were still beasts and not just extra-hairy toyboys, a la the current paranormal craze.)

Some recurring motifs seem to sneak in there without me realising. I was thinking about my next Nano novel the other day and a lighthouse appeared in it. That’s funny, I wrote that other story about a lighthouse … Why do lighthouses keep popping up? Which led to some sniggering about phallic symbols from the more juvenile aspects of my personality, but no enlightenment. As far as I’m aware, lighthouses mean nothing to me, so why do I keep wanting to write about them? The mind is a very weird place.

What are the themes and motifs that you keep returning to? Or what themes are you drawn to in the work of others? Weird enquiring minds want to know.

Ad fail

2009-09-05T22:07:00.000+10:00

Dear advertising agency,

You know that radio ad you produced where the smart alec voice-over lady begins, “You wouldn’t read the end of a book first, so why make a decision without seeing our beautiful range blah blah blah”?

That ad doesn’t have the effect you think it does.

Every time I hear Smartypants Lady say “You wouldn’t read the end of a book first” in that ho ho ho, we’re all adults here way, I want to shout at the radio, “HA!! Shows how much you know, lady!”. I’m too busy arguing with her to take in the rest of the sentence, or even notice what the ad is for. And I don’t think that’s what “talkback radio” is supposed to mean.

What kind of a boring universe do you come from, ad people? I thought you were meant to be creative types. Do you really think nobody ever peeks? Have you never been so caught up in a character’s dramas that you are simply compelled to flip ahead to make sure he or she makes it to the end of the book alive?

Those numbers at the bottom of each page? Some of us take those as a suggested reading order only. And those of us with freakishly tiny attention spans develop evil habits of turning big chunks of pages at a time, reading a bit, then skipping another big chunk in our efforts to get to the end and find out what happens. Later, when our curiosity is not so urgent, we go back and read the bits we skipped. Or not.

Of course, people who do that tend to end up with tottering piles of books around the house that never seem to get finished, as discussed in my post about the bookmark that had been there so long it changed colour. Which is a whole ’nother problem. Certainly not something I would recommend. Ahem.

Nevertheless, your insistence that reasonable people would never contemplate reading out of order makes me want to rush out and commit reckless acts of non-sequential reading just to spite you. I know, I’m mature like that. But come on, I can’t be the only person who gets so caught up in a book they can’t resist leaping ahead. Maybe you’re just reading the wrong kind of books.

And you know what else? I’ve even heard there are people who read the last page before they buy the book. Just to make sure there’s a Happily Ever After before they waste their money and emotional investment. Shocking, isn’t it? Can you believe that?

Oh, right. I guess not.

But you might want to rethink that ad. It sure ain’t working for this little black duck. And who knows how many other people are driving around Sydney yelling at their radios?

Yours sincerely,
Crazy Lady Who Yells At Radios

This is going to get ugly

2009-09-03T22:18:00.003+10:00

This year’s Nano just got a whole lot harder. Demon Duck announced tonight that she is going to do Nano too. Holy shrieking tantrums, Batman.

Demon Duck is – how shall I put this? – not the most placid of persons. I can see it now. November will be full of daily crying jags, fights and bitter complaints that everyone else is hogging the computer.

And that’s just me.

Wait until she gets started. The you-know-what will not just be hitting the fan, but knocking the fan right through the wall, destroying everything in its path before coming to rest, a twisted wreck, a mile down the road. The world is not ready for the terrifying collision of NaNoWriMo and Demon Duck’s, shall we say, underdeveloped strategies for coping with stress. Sorry about that, world. But what can I do? Her big sister has been planning excitedly for weeks.

I could refuse, on the grounds that I won’t get any writing done if she is storming down the hallway every five minutes to throw herself on her bed and sob. Unfortunately, the fact that it is true won’t win me any points in the Being a Good Parent Stakes. Instead, I will have to grit my teeth and Encourage the Budding Novelist.

Just one more thing they never tell you in antenatal classes. But don’t get me started on that.

So. My feelings about Nano are something of a mixture. There’s the usual oh I can’t wait, all tangled up with its old friend what the hell are you thinking??? There’s the twins this year I’ll be more prepared and I still have plenty of time, but now they are shadowed by their gloomy cousin Good Lord, now I’m support crew for not one, but two junior Nanoers and his sidekick this is all going to End Badly.

The sensible thing would be to do a lot of preparation. Plan and outline to the nth degree, know exactly where my story’s going before November arrives. There are people in my writing group who write like that. They even use spreadsheets to order their scenes.

I’ve been thinking about the eternal plotters vs pantsers debate as I write Dragonheart. I started with a one-page outline in very general terms that covered the initial situation, the main conflict, half-a-dozen characters and “it ends like this and they all live happily ever after”. I did more planning than I’d ever done before, considering character motivations and some worldbuilding details. The first few scenes were clear in my mind. So not a complete pantser.

Once I got stuck into the frantic terror of Nano I wished most desperately that I’d planned in more detail. Worldbuilding’s all very well, but what would the characters actually do? My brain was bursting with the effort of dreaming it all up on the fly. I resolved to be more organised and never put myself through this again. How much easier it would be if I had a scene outline for every scene, not just the first few, and all I had to do was flesh it out. Plotting was definitely the way to go.

Or was it? I’ve talked about muse bombs before: those little gifts from the subconscious. They start off as little details, mere window-dressing on a scene, but on reflection they morph into something huge and wonderful in the story. The closer I get to the end of Dragonheart, the more I can see how enormously these features have influenced the shape of my story.

They didn’t exist in the outline. Lots of things didn’t, of course; it was very basic. More importantly, they didn’t exist in my brain at the outset either, and I don’t think any amount of planning would have unearthed them. They grew out of the story as it unfolded, when I arrived at that place in the telling.

Another one appeared the other day. 83,000 words in, you’d think I’d know everything about my world. But a perfectly innocent sentence came out of a character’s mouth and I looked at what I’d just typed and went “Oh my God – how did I not see that before?”. My whole magic system got turned on its ear.

I know the plotters say that an outline isn’t set in stone. You can change it as you go along. But if you’re going to end up changing 90%, what’s the point of going to the effort of nutting it out beforehand? Dragonheart would be a very different story without the ideas that joined the party along the way, so I don’t think major plotting is the best way for me. Even though it might stop me feeling that my brain is going to explode out my ears.

That’s not to say that I won’t do any planning for Nano. I’m thinking that a happy medium might be to plan the first quarter of the book fairly tightly to get me off to a good start.

After that anything goes. And probably will.

Now I just have to find me a flame-retardant suit for when Demon Duck gets started.