Black and White – with Lots of Colour

The first time my name was in print I was shy to the point of embarrassment. The second time I was published I was paid 900 pounds sterling but thought I had better keep my name off that piece – it was some analysis on China and given where I was working at the time some might have taken a dim view of that. I can still scarcely believe it was for only 600 words! Since then my name has been on a lot of things but aligning name in print with cash for the trouble remains elusive. But hey, that is not what writing is about is it (is it?) Well, certainly not this effort by the Fast Twitch Writers Group which landed in my mail box (the one in the garden wall, not my laptop) this evening. This is a brilliant labour of love with some really good writing in it (no, not mine) by some local folk with a real gift for writing. Writing is like sex – the fun lies in the creating. I can’t promise being taken to pleasurable heights, real or imagined. But I can promise some creativity here which is impressive. If you want a copy try here…If not, that is okay too. You can admire the cover instead – daughter Miriam trying to look awake over the Saturday morning papers but really still tucked up in bed!

A Tear in the Eye – Good on you Pericles!

When I was fifteen I sat in a darkened theatre at Melbourne University and waited with bated breath to see what impact, if any, I had made on the production. Weeks and weeks of toil in the woodwork shop (difficult when I was not taking a woodwork class) was about to appear as part of the stage props. The trouble was, the last time I had seen this particular prop the cardboard feathers of the regal eagle of the Duke’s crest were still wet and the three parts did not quite align as I had envisaged them (they never do, do they). Read more

Smithy Flies Again…

… in vaulting stories and in our imagination as author (and former Australian Rugby rep) Peter FitzSimons regales us with anecdotes about Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, from the volume he is launching about the life and times of this Australian (and global) aviation legend.  The lunchtime crowd were mainly, well I think mainly retirees, who normally would be hiding in the newspaper section of the library. Ah, to be fair there were a large number of aviation buffs who were hanging off every word – most of them still 12 years old in their imagination. Heck, I think I was one of them. Though I groaned when one “old boy” shuffled up to Peter’s researcher and asked if she had used “this book” and thrust a blue cloth bound hardback under her nose. Looked like an early edition of Biggles I thought as I fled the crush of retirees angling for the orange juice and working themselves into line to get a volume signed.  (There never is a good sheep dog around when you need one).

In the Hands of Providence

There is something very mystical about the Gettysburg battlefield which is hard to explain. There is a very powerful sense of uniformed men still there, lingering over the heartache, savagery, the mundane and the heroic. That is, provided you do not arrive there on a day when thousands of boy scouts are running all over the place. Read more

Along Came the Muse…

…and sat down beside her. And Capucine took every advantage of that and put the rest of us to shame with a rollicking story which is full of imagination and characters, has a beginning, middle and end, good versus bad and a whole lot of nuances, subtle and otherwise. But above all it is just a story full of pure joy. Have a look at the video over on the right hand side to hear and see her tell the story and try not to be distracted by a 4 year olds cuteness. It will be a tonic in your day. (And if a writer may just spur you to greater things!)

The Book Thief

When I read that the author’s father swore at him for making him cry when he read this book I did not feel quite so bad about my own reaction to it. The unusual narrator had me guessing at the very beginning (I picked this volume up on the way through the airport without having heard anything about it) but very quickly the narrator, “haunted by humans”, makes a lot of sense. The book thief is a young girl living in Nazi Germany. In poverty stricken circumstances and in society’s moral vacuum but in which her foster parents provide a compass. So too the books she steals along the way – which save her. Literally and spiritually. And maybe a bit of me in the reading too.

Shantaram – Buying Your Own Christmas Present Can be a Gift

I must have been asleep to have missed this one. A novel published in 2003 that is 350,000 words off the pen of first time novelist Gregory David Roberts. I found it while shopping for Christmas gifts for others. I often buy books at random, if only to expand my reading horizons. Read more

Nodding to Satanic Verses

I find myself reading Salman Rushdie wanting to nod my head in that way peculiar to those from South Asia. A gentle nodding and bobbing and swinging all in the one motion, through all three axes Read more

Norman Mailer and Bad Sex

I do like this piece of news. It tickles my irony bone. So to speak. On my shelves I have a select handful of books on writing ( I know, I need more). Perhaps the most useful in terms of unleashing my pen has been Stephen King’s On Writing, a surprisingly well written piece on writing. Bet he worked hard on that title. It’s one of those volumes that is read in a sitting but every couple of pages you are being struck by the “bleeding obvious”. Read more