All I want for Christmas is…

Fancy a Sylvia Plath doll for Christmas?

I’m one of those people who is easy (some would say dull) to buy for. Every year, when my family asks what I want, I usually say books, books, books, magazine subscriptions or notebooks to write in. God, how I love touching and feeling notebooks. And there’s a Moleskin now that links up to Evernote so you can scan in your notes. Wow! I know this is starting to sound like a sponsored post, but I can’t help it if I’m a bit passionate.

I’ve also just been mouth-watering over Allison Tait’s list of gifts for writers (Ernest Hemingway or Sylvia Plath doll, anyone?).

What I like most of all is getting book vouchers so I can wander through indie stores like Gleebooks (Sydney) or Stoneman’s (Castlemaine) or Readings (Carlton) and just browse and choose randomly, usually going purely on design (yup I like doing that).

In the past year, though, I’ve been more and more seduced by the Kindle. Covered in soft leather, I can read it lying on my side in bed (my favourite position). The idea that it holds instant access to not just worlds, but whole solar systems of material, still blows my mind. I need a book right now, and I have it. Great for lazy, procrastinating types. I also prefer it for books to do with work. The highlights and notes function is incredibly useful for reviewing and analytical work, and very quick to jump around and trigger memories and ideas – and I’ve never been comfortable with writing in pencil directly in books; I like the pages designed and clean.

Which leads me to my book-hamper competition in a roundabout way. Just a quick reminder! If you are a fan of any of the following Australian writers — Jon Bauer, Simmone Howell, Walter Mason, Jo Case, Dawn Barker, Jenn J McLeod, Jessie Cole, Annabel Smith, Wendy James or Angela Meyer (first edited collection!) — there’s a chance to win autographed copies of all ten books!

All you need to do is write a little review of my novel, just_a_girl! If you’ve read it, just hop to amazon.com.au and pen a few lines here.

If you haven’t … the book is also available to download for under 10 buckeroos at the same place or you could offer it to someone you love for Xmas (parent of a teenage girl, perhaps!).

All authors really love reviews of their work, and the Amazon.com.au site is pretty new so would love some commentary there. Just see it as a gift to me:-)

I’ve also decided to extend the date of the competition to 15 January. Gives you a bit more time to read just_a_girl in wind-down time…

Which leads me to pressie time. All the books in my Xmas hamper have been carefully selected and fawned upon over the past year. I’ve been thinking about who I might give them to in my inner circle (see below). I’ve linked to their Kindle editions if you’d like to buy them too. They won’t be signed, but, so you can still enter the competition.

• Jon Bauer‘s Rocks in the Belly  would go to my Mum. I’ve been raving about it since I first read it, and then he moved to Chewton and joined the writers’ group I’m in. I was a bit scared of him at first (read the book and you’ll get it). But, seriously, it’s a tense and brutal drama, and Mum would enjoy the edginess of it, and the strong characterisation.
• Simmone Howell‘s Girl Defective  would go to my mate, Klare. The seedy side of St Kilda. A record store on the verge of collapse. And a strong teen girl lead. She would love it. Simmone is also in my writers’ group and is one of the most dynamic authors I’ve come across in recent years. So witty and her characters have such unique voices.
• Walter Mason‘s Destination Cambodia would go to my friend Jane, who I met on an Intrepid trip to Cambodia. The journey was characterised by hilarity and pathos, and Walter’s book captures the intricacies of the place well. Jane is always on an adventure somewhere and has just returned from trekking in Nepal *jealous*.
• Jo Case‘s Boomer and Me would go to a fellow mum and friend I’ve made in Castlemaine, Karen. We have talked often about what it means to be a ‘good mum’ and what a relief it is to read a book by a mother, finally, who doesn’t pretend to be perfect and jolly hockeysticks and a domestic goddess. I mean, we can’t all be Nigella (although I’ve heard she has some ‘help’ anyway).
• Dawn Barker‘s Fractured would go to my mother-in-law. I think she would enjoy the fast pace, the cool structure and the piercing narrative that makes you question all your assumptions about motherhood…and it’s scary in places; she likes thrills.
• Jenn J McLeod‘s House for All Seasons would go to my Nanna. She is a big reader, likes drama and intertwining lives, along with strong female characters and a good dose of mystery. Whenever I visit Nanna, she has the week’s TV viewing circled into the wee hours of the morning, nearly all crime and suspense. I usually head off for my nanna nap at 9pm and leave her to be a night owl.
• Jessie Cole‘s Darkness on the Edge of Town would go to my boss, Julia. I’m cheating a bit here because she has already read and raved about it. So I know she likes it! When staff at the NSW Writers’ Centre were asked to pick their favourite reads for 2013, Jessie’s debut novel came out on top.
• Annabel Smith‘s Whisky Charlie Foxtrot would go to my sister in law. The book is cerebral, sensitive, pared back and unconventional (just like her). Annabel Smith is my great find of the year. As I’ve said often to anyone who will listen, she should be on the world stage, people! Soon she’ll be mentioned in the same para as Christos.
• Wendy James‘ The Mistake would go to my best friend, Jill. Like Fractured, it’s a thriller that manages to straddle the literary and popular worlds. It teases the reader with its ‘suburban noir’, a dark underbelly of the domestic.
• And finally, Angela Meyer‘s brilliant new edited collection, The Great Unknown, would go to my husband. With its short stories capturing the fantastical, macabre and absurd, he’d be able to dip in and out (while working on his laptop, checking his iPhone and looking at films on his iPad at the same time).

WHAT ABOUT YOU? WHAT BOOKS WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE THIS CHRISTMAS?

just_a_girl Christmas competition: win a book-hamper

I thought I’d get in the Christmas spirit and hold a little competition …

So … I have a prize pack on offer of 10 BOOKS from some of the fabulous writers who’ve shared their stories on Wild Colonial Girl over the past year. The winning Christmas book-hamper features SIGNED copies of:

• Simmone Howell – Girl Defective
• Walter Mason – Destination Cambodia
• Jon Bauer – Rocks in the Belly
• Jenn J McLeod – House for all Seasons
• Jessie Cole – Darkness On the Edge of Town
• Annabel Smith – Whisky, Charlie, Foxtrot
• Dawn Barker – Fractured
• Angela Meyer (editor) – The Great Unknown collection
• Jo Case – Boomer and Me
• Wendy James – The Mistake

TO WIN?

My novel, just_a_girl, has just been listed as an e-book at Amazon.com.au and it’s looking a wee bit lonely.

Simply write a review (2 words, 2 sentences, 2 paras, a thesis – I don’t mind) and put it on Amazon here by 31 December (gives you a bit of time to do some holiday reading).

I’ll be choosing the winner (most unique response) on 1 January, and will announce it on the blog early in the New Year when I’ve recovered from staying up to 9pm to watch the fireworks (it’s never the same after you have kids).

I’ll also feature some of the reviews I love on Wild Colonial Girl next year.

THE BOOK-HAMPER: here’s a spotlight on the books you might win

Simmone Howell, Girl Defective

“It was just Dad and me and Gully living in the flat above the shop in Blessington Street, St Kilda. We, the Martin family, were like inverse superheroes, marked by our defects. Dad was addicted to beer and bootlegs. Gully had ‘social difficulties’ that manifested in his wearing a pig-snout mask 24/7. I was surface clean but underneath a weird hormonal stew was simmering. My defects weren’t the kind you could see just from looking. Later I would decide they were symptoms of Nancy.”

This is the story of a wild girl and a ghost girl; a boy who knew nothing and a boy who thought he knew everything. And it’s about life and death and grief and romance.

All the good stuff.

From the award-winning author of Notes from the Teenage Underground, and Everything Beautiful.

Walter Mason, Destination Cambodia

The ancient and mysterious ruins of Cambodia have long captured the imagination of visitors, more so now than ever before. In Destination Cambodia, Walter Mason charts an affectionate, intimate and deeply personal look at a Kingdom that has drawn him back again and again since his youth.

Whether he’s watching young monks recite the Buddha’s life stories, visiting shamans and fortune tellers, or discovering the darker alleys of Phnom Penh with a romantic novelist and a world-weary street hustler, Walter takes the reader straight to the heart of this famously unknowable country. As heat, dust and weariness take their toll, he remains alive to the charms, and even seductions, of a place that was once a byword for misery and human suffering.

Destination Cambodia takes us on a joyful and constantly fascinating literary journey in which Cambodia is vibrant and its people excited about the future while never denying their haunted past.

Jon Bauer, Rocks in the Belly

How far can you push a child?

Rocks in the Belly follows a precocious eight-year-old boy and the volatile adult he becomes. During childhood his mother fosters boys despite the jealous turmoil it arouses in her son. Jealousy that reaches unmanageable proportions when she fosters Robert, and triggers an event that profoundly changes everyone. Especially Robert.

At twenty-eight the son returns to face his mother. He hasn’t forgiven her for what happened. But now she’s the dependent one and he the dominant.

Jenn J McLeod, House for All Seasons

Bequeathed a century-old house, four estranged friends return to their home town, Calingarry Crossing, where each must stay for a season to fulfil the wishes of their beloved benefactor, Gypsy. Here they finally face the consequences of the tragic accident that occurred twenty years ago and changed their lives forever.

Sara, a breast cancer survivor afraid to fall in love;

Poppy, an ambitious journo craving her father’s approval;

Amber, a spoilt socialite looking for some purpose to life.

Jessie Cole, Darkness On the Edge of Town

My dad, he collects broken things … Where other people see junk he sees potential … My dad collects broken people too …

Vincent is nearly forty years old, with little to show for his life except his precious sixteen-year-old daughter, Gemma: sensitive, insightful and wise beyond her years.

When a stranger crashes her car outside Vincent and Gemma′s bush home, their lives take a dramatic turn. In an effort to help the stranded woman, father and daughter are drawn into a world of unexpected and life-changing consequences.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN is a haunting tale that beguiles the reader with its deceptively simple prose, its gripping and unrelenting tensions, and its disturbing yet tender observations.

Annabel Smith, Whisky, Charlie, Foxtrot

Whisky and Charlie are identical twins. But everything about them is poles apart. It’s got so bad that Charlie can’t even bear to talk to his brother anymore – until a freak accident steals Whisky from his family, and Charlie has to face the fact he may never speak to his brother again.

‘It is rare to encounter fiction that will appeal to adults and Young Adults alike that so intelligently explores the downright messiness of family relationships through adult characters; rarer still to find an author who writes of traumatic injury and the looming shadow of death with such verve and sensitivity.’ Australian Book Review

‘… by far the enduring sense of this novel is of having been in the hands of a storyteller with more than just a good story, one with something to say about how to live, and the energy and pluck to say it.’ The Australian

Dawn Barker, Fractured

An unforgettable novel that brings to life a new mother’s worst fears.

Tony is worried. His wife, Anna, isn’t coping with their newborn. Anna had wanted a child so badly and, when Jack was born, they were both so happy. They’d come home from the hospital a family. Was it really only six weeks ago?

But Anna hasn’t been herself since. One moment she’s crying, the next she seems almost too positive. It must be normal with a baby, Tony thought; she’s just adjusting. He had been busy at work. It would sort itself out. But now Anna and Jack are missing. And Tony realises that something is really wrong…

What happens to this family will break your heart and leave you breathless.

Angela Meyer (editor), The Great Unknown

The imaginative stories in The Great Unknown take inspiration from vintage American TV programs such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits—and their contemporaries and successors—paying tribute to the cultural influence these shows have had on lives ‘down under’.

Episodes of these programs were often metaphors for equality, justice, the nuclear threat and other issues, while being memorably spooky and fun. Editor Angela Meyer wanted to see what themes might seep into the writing of contemporary Australian writers working with the spooky, the strange, the eerie, the fantastic, the speculative, the macabre and the absurd.

Jo Case, Boomer and Me: a memoir of motherhood, and Asperger’s

Leo is having trouble fitting in. Whether it’s pulling his pants down in the schoolyard or compulsively saluting Mazdas because the company sponsors his football team, Leo can never seem to say or do the right thing. And Jo is struggling to help him find his place as she juggles work and the ordinary demands of motherhood. But her beloved only child has been reading novels since he started school, amazes strangers with his encyclopaedic knowledge of sport statistics, and displays a wit sharp beyond his years – could he be gifted? In fact, it turns out Leo has Asperger’s Syndrome.

This is the bittersweet, blackly funny story of a boy and his very twenty-first-century family, and why being different isn’t a disability – it just takes a bit of getting used to.

Wendy James, The Mistake

The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past …

Jodie Garrow is a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks when she falls pregnant. Scared, alone and desperate to make something of her life, she makes the decision to adopt out her baby – and tells nobody.

Twenty-five years on, Jodie has built a whole new life and a whole new family. But when a chance meeting brings the illegal adoption to the notice of the authorities, Jodie becomes embroiled in a nationwide police investigation for the missing child, and the centre of a media witch hunt.

Writing Mothers: Annabel Smith

Author Annabel Smith

Novelist Annabel Smith is a writer who kind of slipped by me. I’m not sure how this happened (but she has blogged extensively on it).

I read her first novel A New Map of the Universe earlier this year as if I was in a fever. The language is at times extraordinary. The opening scene where the lovers trace maps of stars on each other’s bodies is *sigh* so erotic, in the best shape of the word, that I felt like I might dissolve. It’s a book about abandonment (something that, as a writer, I identify with strongly), and about mothers who disappear (slowly, slowly). It’s a daring and transcendent debut, packed with emotion and punch.

I read her second novel pretty much immediately, intrigued by her ability to manipulate me as a reader (in a good way) and pluck at my tender bits and vulnerabilities.  Whisky, Charlie, Foxtrot is also assured but completely different in tone, a signal to me that Smith is quite an exceptional writer in the Australian cultural landscape. With this book, I think she deserves to be considered on the international stage (many Australian writers other than Peter Carey should be there). Beautifully structured, pared back in style, it’s a contemporary novel about technique as much as plot, about how words are shaped. As a family negotiates feelings around a brother (or son) in a coma (you can throw away all the cliches too), Smith negotiates how memories are formed and relationships battered by seemingly small misunderstandings — miscommunications and withdrawals — that grow into obstacles almost too big to crawl over.

I’ve got to know Annabel (virtually) in the past year. Her debut novel was published by UWA Publishing, like my own. And since just_a_girl was published she has been quick to review it and give feedback, helping me over initial hurdles. She invited me to contribute to her Which Writer For a Day collective blog (with other WA writers) and to think about my favourite book for her ‘Friday Faves’ series. She taught me the importance of writerly communities, and helping each other out online in innovative ways. I was also fascinated by her latest project, The Ark, a digital narrative that pushes the boundaries of fiction — I look forward to seeing it in final form.

Here I speak to Annabel about motherhood, writing, and writing mother characters in her fiction.

When you were pregnant, what were your expectations regarding having a baby and writing? Were you planning to write after the baby was born?

I prepared for pregnancy as I prepare for most things — by reading about it. What I read led me to believe that my baby would usually have 3 naps a day, adding up to 3 or 4 hours in total. Based on this information, I expected I might be able to spend perhaps an hour a day writing.

What was it like in reality? Did you get any writing done in the first year after your baby was born?

My son was colicky and difficult to settle. He had an abnormally short sleep cycle (only 25 minutes as opposed to the average 45 minutes), and never napped for more than 1 cycle. The time it took to settle him was often longer than the duration of his nap and was horribly stressful. I felt that getting him to sleep was one of my primary functions as a mother and I was failing horribly at it. Often by the time he fell asleep I was completely strung out, and there were a million things to do around the home, so writing didn’t get a look in. I didn’t write a word for the first six months after he was born and I felt incredibly frustrated and resentful about this. Eventually, we worked out a routine where my husband would look after him for half a day each weekend and I would spend a few hours at the library working on my book.

Did you find it difficult to sit down and write? Or was it the opposite? Were you more creative, as you had less time, and had to be super disciplined?

I was amazingly productive. My writing time was so precious, I didn’t waste a minute. I would sit down at the desk and barely look up for three hours.

Did you find the experience of motherhood starting to seep into your characters? Into the way you portray people?

I was writing Whisky Charlie Foxtrot then. After my son was born I wrote a scene in which my protagonist Charlie goes to see his mother, and talks to her about his feeling that his brother was her favourite child. She reveals that it was in fact the opposite, and shares her guilt about this feeling. Parental guilt is something you can’t imagine if you haven’t had children. I’d heard people speak about the feeling that they were constantly doing something wrong, or letting their children down in some way and I’d think, just let it go, stop beating yourself up about it. Then I became a parent and I experienced it for myself and I understood how it gets hold of you. So I wouldn’t have thought of writing that scene unless I had experienced that.

Did having a child mean you had to go back and rewrite or change characterisation (of mothers or other characters) in any ways?

Not that I remember, although having a baby also affected my memory really badly so it’s hard to be sure!

In your novels, mothers are often seen as difficult to reach or disappearing slowly out of grasp. Is this a common thread in your work?

It isn’t always easy to see the threads in your own work because often they seem to be driven by unconscious impulses. My first two novels both focus on the idea of communication in families — things that need to be said and aren’t, things that shouldn’t be said but are. All sorts of the relationships are fractured, not just those between mothers and children. But when I think about it more carefully, in my third novel The Ark (to be published in 2014) I have a character called Ava, who has a nervous breakdown, and worries about the impact of this on her 8-year-old daughter. And my current work-in-progress centres on a cult built around a woman known as ‘la madre’ which means ‘mother’ in Spanish. So perhaps it is an idea I feel a need to keep exploring in different forms, but it is not deliberate.

Mothering can involve managing many conflicting emotions. To what extent do these emotions transform or play a part in your writing?

What a great question. But also a difficult one to answer. I have certainly had many conflicting emotions as a mother and perhaps more extremes of emotion too. I had post-natal depression so some of the lowest times of my life have been since the birth of my son. The silver lining of this, for me, is having more compassion for others, especially people suffering with mental illnesses. I think if a writer has compassion for their characters, the reader is more likely to as well, even the difficult characters. So I hope that my experience with depression has helped me to write characters with more depth, and characters who readers might be able to feel sympathy for, even if they are behaving in ways that are hard to understand.

Both your books challenge the idea that motherhood and nurturing come naturally. Your characters struggle with grief and detachment. Do you think these are feelings many women negotiate but feel uncomfortable talking about?

Undoubtedly. I think there’s a terribly repressive culture which perpetuates the myth that all women are natural mothers and that motherhood is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to us, and this culture makes it difficult for women to express their true feelings about motherhood which are often ambivalent and complex. I think this culture is changing, which is great to see, but it still has a long way to go.

Annabel Smith’s novel Whisky, Charlie, Foxtrot has been nominated for the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award, to be announced at the Wheeler Centre tomorrow night. Good luck, Annabel, and I’ll keep you posted.

THIS POST IS PART OF THE WRITING MOTHERS SERIES: You can also read interviews with Anna Funder, Debra Adelaide, Susan Johnson, Kirsten Tranter, and many other wonderful writers…

WHAT ABOUT YOU? ARE YOU A WRITING MOTHER – OR IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING MOTHER CHARACTERS? HOW DO YOU HANDLE IT?

Which writer (living or dead) would you like to be for a day?

Leonard Cohen in Greece

Western Australia seems to be the hotspot for writers at the moment. I have just finished reading Annabel Smith’s wonderful first two novels (A New Map of the Universe; Whisky Charlie Foxtrot) and Amanda Curtin has recently released Elemental (we share the same publisher in UWAP). Annabel and Amanda are part of a collective of writers — alongside Sara Foster, Emma Chapman, Natasha Lester and Dawn Barker — who, once a month, have a writerly debate via their blogs, answering a question about the writing life.

This month, I’m thrilled to be a guest blogger in their Writers Ask Writers series, with the curly question: Which writer (living or dead) would you like to be for a day?

My writing process is like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I’m stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it’s delicious and it’s horrible and I’m in it and it’s not very graceful and it’s very awkward and it’s very painful and yet there’s something inevitable about it

It’s 1966.
I live on the Greek island, Hydra.
I am surrounded by beauty, simplicity.
I have learnt to play flamenco guitar.
I have taken lots of drugs.
I have had women falling at my feet.
I sing in a monotone.
I live in a haze.
I’m the king of deadpan.
I write about Canada and the Church and the wiping out of Cultures.
I Write Pages of Words Beginning With Capital Letters.
I write about cocks until my fingers bleed.
I write about women and desire.
I can get into character anywhere.
Darling, I was born in a suit.

It’s 1994.
I’m meditating.
I want to retreat and I’ve surrendered.
I’ll stay here for years.
I have taken lots of drugs.
I can be anywhere I want, man.
I’ll project back and forth in time.
Phil Spector threatens me with a crossbow
‘Hallelujah’ becomes the song of a generation but not mine.
I don’t know whether I know.
That four lines from my song ‘Anthem’.
Are four of the most beautiful in the English language.

It’s 2008.
I’m on a hill in the Hunter Valley.
I’m performing in a vineyard but I’m not drinking.
I’ve taken lots of drugs.
But I can see clearly tonight.
The stars are bright looking out.
But there’s someone about to start grieving.
I can see her in the audience.
She is lying down with her head gentle on the grass.
She is thinking about death and souls.
She is remembering how many words she knows.
So she sings them out loud with me.
To her baby who is at his first gig.
Who refuses to close his eyes.
Even as she dances with him all night in her arms.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen has written songs, poetry and novels. Beautiful Losers is a hell of a ride. I think his voice is better now with its gravel edge. When I was a kid, a family member was obsessed with him (you know who you are) and, every chance she got at the dinner table, would affect this weird nasally voice and embark on dreadful lamentations. I always rolled my eyes; it’s so embarrassing when adults think their music is cool.

And then, damn it, Leonard Cohen did get cool.

Let’s check out who my cohorts wanted to be for a day:

• Amanda Curtin becomes fearless with Katharine Susannah Prichard.
• Sara Foster meets Harry Potter for the first time, as JK Rowling
• Annabel Smith is turned on by Truman Capote.
• Emma Chapman flies through some luminaries looking for the right fit.
• Natasha Lester is seduced by the perfect sentences of Joan Didion
• Dawn Barker dreams of a phantasm of a man with Mary Shelley

AND WHAT ABOUT YOU? IF YOU COULD TAKE THE CHALLENGE OF BEING A WRITER FOR A DAY, WHO WOULD YOU PICK?