Best books - top 3 of the year

"As a woman commits adultery on her living room sofa, the Arsenal-Chelsea football match on the television in front of her suddenly explodes into a ball of flames... Her husband and son are amongst those killed in this horrific terrorist attack, which changes both her and London forever."
Incendiary by Chris Cleave completes my trio of top books for 2009.
As a man writing from a woman's voice he doesn't always get it right (we don't even understand ourselves half the time so how can we expect a bloke to?) but the narrator's voice is what swept me through this book in one sitting. It's not a long book - perfect for a cold and rainy day with a glass of red.
Eerily Incendiary, which reads as a letter to Osama Bin Laden about the impact a terrorist attack had on innocent people, was published on 7 July 2005...the day of the London bombings.
How would I describe it? A satirical look at an indulgent society; loaded with black humour as well as tenderness; bleak with a mother's suffering through guilt, devastation, loss; relentless action and an eloquent portrayal of simple lives.
Guys don't let the female perspective put you off, there's plenty of testosterone in the mix, trust me. If he read books, my brother T would say 'it's bloody good!'
So there it is - my three best books of the year: 
The Lives of Beryl Markham, The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Incendiary. 
They're all pretty different but that's what I love about them. What are your top picks?

Best books - a French delicacy

My Top Three books of the year are in no particular order but today's choice is a French story that crept up on me and quietly captured my imagination, then held me hostage right through to the unexpected and macabre but hilarious ending.
It's The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. 
Set in a très ooh la la apartment block in Paris, the story is told through the eyes of the humble concierge who witnesses all the comings and goings of the elite residents, while concealing from them a fascinating intellect and a surprising private self.
It's a great character study as well as a quirky story, told as only the French can - with an exterior seriousness but an underlying, kooky humour that cracked me up. 
I love the 12-year-old kid who forges a bond with the concierge, she reminds me of Hank's daughter in the TV series Californication with her premature darkness, insight and deadpan honesty.
This book made me laugh out loud.
For that, for the original voices of its characters, and for its unpredictable plot, it was always going straight to my Top Three.

Best books countdown - an aviatrix and a seductress

Christmas rain is fantastic for two reasons. 
Because our great, thirsty land desperately needs it. And it's the perfect excuse for enjoying a post-Christmas cook-up repose with a new book straight out of Santa's sack.
With only three (!!) days left of 2009, I've come up with my three best books of the year... 
Today's choice is a brilliant biography which I've loved for years but it gets a mention because I re-read it this year and it was no less gripping. Sign of a true classic I say.
The book is The Lives of Beryl Markham, by Errol Trzebinski and the front cover tags her as 'Out of Africa's hidden seductress'. (Try a secondhand bookstore - it was first published in 1993.)
Beryl Markham grew up in Kenya and throughout her tough, primitive, glamorous and often amoral life she stirred the feathers of the colonial elite in East Africa, courting fame and admiration across the globe. As well as a fair dose of scandal.
In 1936 Beryl was the first woman to fly solo west across the Atlantic. 
She was also a champion horse breeder and, on earning her wings, ran the first airmail runs across Africa in the days when pilots still repaired their own aircraft on the fly and the plains of the Serengeti were blanketed by magnificent herds of wildlife roaming free from the scourge of poaching and land-grabbing.
This is the story of someone who took life by the horns and rode it to the edge of the earth, constantly challenging herself and those she influenced to seek out new horizons both internally and externally.
In a captivating twist, one of the great loves of her life was safari hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, famously portrayed by Robert Redford in the film Out Of Africa. It appears Karen Blixen was not Denys' only mistress...
If you like a great bio and are looking for something un-put-downable - this is it!

Merry merry ho ho ho!

Yay it's Christmas - a time of storytelling and magic and all things delicious! 
I don't think Christmas Day features in my story... but if it did at least one of the characters would get right into wrapping and gluing and sticking and making sparkly cards in a big puddle of crazy, happy mess. 
And there'd probably be another character who didn't have a clue that each ribbon and bow had been tied with extra special attention and care - ruthlessly ripping through layers of bubbles and fluff in their haste to recover the bounty. 
But what the ho, as long as someone's thinking of you, all's fair in love and gifting right?! 
No matter what you do or who you spend it with, I bet everyone will have a Christmas story to tell that together would cover every genre...comedy, family, adventure, drama, mystery, romance, tragedy, psycho thriller... What will yours be?
Happy happy :) x

Iris Blue Iris

Iris, blue iris,

Like the sky of profound wish

- Eternal spring bliss

        Peter S Quinn


I'm thinking about the grandmother of one of my characters and the role she played in his life. This little haiku makes me smile and think of mine...
Part of the fun of writing is drawing from others to create the people and personalities that populate your story.
Speaking at a Literary Feast bookclub meeting recently, the author Charlotte Wood said that whenever a new book or piece of her writing is published, she has to remind her family - as they frantically scan through the pages trying to identify themselves - that it's not always about herself and her relatives. It's fiction!
I like the idea that the people who colour our lives may all figure as a piece of the writer's patchwork - but exactly who, where, when, why and how much they feature... that's the writer's little secret ;-)

Secrets to sleuthing - part 2

Thanks to a great mate, let's call her my friend Flicka, I found an answer to my question from a previous post, 'how do I sleuth (ie. conduct research) without being cast as a voyeur?'
Preparing to venture over the Bridge on a research mission to check out the fictional boyhood home of my male lead character, she volunteered to come along as a decoy. 
Genius!
What is it about the power of company that gives one a sense of permission and liberty to do something, which, to do alone might make one feel slightly weird (even though it's not, of course). Maybe it's just comfort in knowing there'll always be a witness, one who can also double as your bail-poster if need be?
So off we went to the inner West to explore his stomping ground and I'm happy to report a most successful adventure. 
Street: ideal.
House: perfect, and yes Hills Hoist confirmed.
Park: I could almost taste the icy cold Sunny Boys and feel the zinc cream on my nose imagining the neighbourhood kids playing cricket in the hot blanket of summer, then tearing home on their BMXs in the half light of dusk.
Foreshore: suitably mangrove-y and home to an aquatic menagerie of curious creatures just waiting to be picked at by grubby, inquisitive fingers.
The mind is now full of inspiration from which to grow my character. And as back up, the camera is stocked with photos (featuring said decoy) from our little expedition as visual reference.
There's something about being in the surrounds of your character that helps to tap into their presence and find their voice. Would this be the writer's equivalent of method acting I wonder?
So for this stage of research, Mission Accomplished. And, thanks to my friend Flicka, accomplished without interrogation. Phew.

Art therapy...

I had a breakthrough earlier this week - drawing my story instead of trying to write it.

The story that has been in my head for so long - years - for some reason just wasn't gelling. I couldn't make it sit right or make any headway every time I sat down to tackle it.
So I followed the advice of my wise old friend in Africa, put the pen down for a few days and let it mull away in my unconscious mind.
And then it came to me, my story. It's quite different, but not entirely, from my original direction - so goodbye perplexion and hello excitement!
The ideas came as imagery rather than exact words, so to capture my muddle of thoughts before they evaporated, I got out the textas and mapped out my characters through pictures.
And it's coming together, albeit in bits and pieces. I'm figuring out how the characters are connected and the way they interact through mapping their personalities in pictures. When I get stuck on structure or credibility, I go back to the pictures and it starts making sense again. It starts to flow.
See mum and dad - maybe all that mess I made as a kid with pens and paints and oil pastels will be worth it after all!

Surprise post...!

Is there anything more exciting than getting a big fat parcel in the mail? 

OK maybe a few things, but I was so happy to see what the postman delivered this morning! A big bag of books I ordered weeks ago finally found its way from a bookshelf somewhere in the States, via slow boat to Oz, to my doorstep. 

Now I can't give away what's inside because you never know... Christmas bells are ringing and perhaps one of these precious gems is destined to turn up under your tree...

Tell me - if you could wish for any books, which ones would you love to unwrap this Christmas?

Crooks with a crock or crusaders with a cause?

The media buzz about climate change and the Copenhagen conference evaporating into thin air got me thinking about this term that's bandied about so relentlessly and has wangled its way into our vernacular. 

'Climate change' - What does it mean? 

Depends how you look at it really.

If you flip the letters around a little you get:

'Chemical Agent' (conspiracy theorists will be delighted)

or

'Technical Game' (...possibly)

and

'Chalice Magnet' (driving everyone to drink?)

As well as my two favourites: 

'Cheating Camel' and 'A Camel Etching' 

(both of which, it appears, would be as useful as said conference).

With so much conjecture about what on earth climate change is or means, none of these options could be dismissed as ridiculous.

PS. I'm not that clever. Impress your friends.

One man's Bad Sex...

If there's one thing that makes a wannabee writer feel better about one's fledgling authoring efforts, it's knowing that even the proud and published can have a bad day.
Having collected two major literary awards in France for his novel The Kindly Ones, American/French writer Jonathan Littell has just bagged a third: The Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2009.
Not surprisingly, the British journal's annual award is one of the most highly anticipated yet least desirable gongs going around.
Originally written in French and having reportedly sold over a million copies, at last count The Kindly Ones had been translated into 17 languages. But Littell can't blame the translators for this doozy.
The judging panel declared: 
"It is in part a work of genius. However, a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as 'I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg' clinched the award for The Kindly Ones. We hope he takes it in good humour."
Others shortlisted for the win include our own Nick Cave for The Death of Bunny Monroe (which, at the very, very least, is a somewhat backhanded plug for pilates) and travel fiction writer Paul Theroux for A Dead Hand, which is exactly what he deserves for this Muppets-do-the-Karma-Sutra vomit.
We the ever-hopefuls secretly love this kind of reassurance. It sets the bar at a far more graspable height (low?) to know that writing so cringe-worthy can still prove to be a publishing 'success'.
But even so, for all the times I've read something and thought to myself 'I wish I'd written that', this is one time I'm thrilled that I didn't. 

Who wants to play magnetic poetry?!...

This is for my friend Crabbs who celebrated a big birthday in Africa this weekend. 

It's inspired by recent reminiscence over a weekend gone bush with the gang in northern KwaZulu Natal years ago. Specifically, a night of magnetic poetry around the campfire (it took some convincing I might add) that produced some surprisingly impressive works.

Luckily (!) our efforts were recorded for posterity and are treasured in the Rubyfire vault... 

Magnetic poetry doesn't just have to be a drinking game. 

Think of it as throwing an aerosol into the bonfire of your imagination and fanning the flames of your creativity. Whooshka!

The rules go like this:

1. Pick a handful of words out of the magnetic word bag.

2. Create a poem out of them.

3. Don't worry if it doesn't make sense. That's what poetic license is for.

In defence of our Sobhengu anthology - which, should it ever see the light of day, might be displayed in the 'bawdy and purile with flashes of self-proclaimed brilliance' section of the poetry aisle - it's more difficult than you think. So today's effort is certainly no Pulitzer Prize contender...but at least it's clean.

The undiscovered road...

Took time out from writing today to refresh the brain...spent some time in a little indie bookshop by the beach and brought home two finds. 
The Songlines is a famous and hotly disputed text by Bruce Chatwin, recommended to me by a very wise old friend in Africa. 
"The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following age-old boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past..."
I'm told it's an absolute essential, and I believe it. Though I suspect I may need a couple of reads to grasp it properly.

The second one is Nikki Gemmell's new book, Why You Are Australian, a letter to her children, being raised in London, to instill in them the wonders of growing up across the sea in our wide, free land and what it means to be Australian right now.
Flicking through the hardback volume, a quote by Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri caught my eye and snagged my unconscious mind... I didn't have a pen to write it down on the spot so I had to buy the book.
In the context of writing, tapping into the imagination and accessing the story within, it seems like good advice:
'Learn to free yourself from all things
That have moulded you
And which limit your secret and
undiscovered road.'
I like the idea of an undiscovered road in each of us. Where do you think yours might lead...?

A milkshake, French Fries and a meatball walk into a bar...

Season 4, Episode 5: Frylock makes a new dog called 'Handbanana' for Meat Wad using Make Your Own Dog 1.0. 
Season 4, Episode 4: After winning a contest, Carl fears getting his penis cut off and taken by a group of dicks, so Frylock turns him into a woman.
Season 2, Episode 16: Shake uncovers a delicious, demoniacally possessed submarine sandwich in his front yard. A voice tells him if he eats the whole thing he will be killed.


People who can look at the monumentally ordinary and out of it dream up imaginary worlds that fascinate and delight others, are amazing.
Case in point. Right now I'm watching a cartoon series about a milkshake, a packet of French Fries and a meatball who live in a ghetto. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is, like junk food, addictive. 
Master Shake, Frylock and Meat Wad are detectives whose nemesis is the evil Dr Weird and whose escapades see them pitted against characters like a giant rabbit robot with a spray gun full of hair-growth hormone perfume, brain-burning leprechauns with a penchant for rainbows, and a piece of mould that comes to life in a greasy kitchen (and turns out to be a really nice guy). 
With episode descriptors like 'a Pink Man sets out to destroy the moon but can't find anyone to help him', its surreal morbid humour and total lack of continuity between each 12-minute story (at times even within storylines) is completely bizarre. The show has a cult following in America and I can see why. It's ridiculously funny! 
But as a result I'm having a crisis of confidence in my own imagination...
How do people come up with this stuff? 
Will my story be even remotely interesting? 
Why does it feel incredibly difficult to write with an original voice?
Argh - this writing gig is so hard!

Secret ingredients...

Short and contemplative today.

Vladimir Nabokov, famous for writing Lolita, believed the three attributes essential in a writer are:

- storyteller

- teacher

- enchanter...

Is there anything he's missed?

Bookcases to kill for...

If 'bibliophilia' is a love of books - what is a love of bookshelves? 

How fantastic are these modern interpretations of the humble bookcase! 

This delicious reading chair from Fishbol Design Atelier is crying out to be sitting in my lounge - love love love! OK it needs a cushion and it does come with various options in felt.

Imagine a Kartell bookworm curling and unfurling along your hallway....sigh

And I love the organised chaos of this Cyrill Drummerson design.

Check out this metal coffee table Nar Bookcase by Omer Unal. 

At first glance I wasn't sure whether I could subject my beloved volumes to the wire bisection of its suspension storage design...but on reflection it's ingenious! The hanging arrangement doubles as a bookmark and, as an added bonus, protects the books from dust.

And I couldn't leave out this little gem...Flying Vee. The stark and simple L and V shaped metal shelves let the booklover design the space according to their own whim - brilliant!

These two are for my friend G who giggled at, but appreciated, the thought that went into colour coding my bookcase ;)

I'm starting a thread on other peoples' bookshelves - what does yours look like? I'd love to make a photo montage - please send in a pic!

The outlaw was a lady...

'Born to be called a lady
Born to die like a tramp
Born to charm society
Born to the outlaw's camp.'


In the (slightly dusty) wake of a cowboys and indians shindig, I've been reading up on the biggest, baddest outlaws in the Old West. And they make for some cracking stories.
Today's inspiration comes from Belle Starr, a 19th century crack shot from Missouri with a strong sense of style. Belle rode side saddle dressed in a tight black jacket, velvet skirt, high-topped boots, a man's Stetson complete with ostrich plume, twin holstered pistols and a cartridge belt across her hip.
Now Belle (Myra Maybelle Shirley) was a well-bred lass, educated at a high fallutin' ladies academy where she excelled in reading, spelling, grammar, arithmetic and deportment, and loved to play piano.
Growing up with Jesse James and the Younger brothers as childhood friends, the infamous outlaws would later hideout in the impressionable young Belle's family home.
It wasn't long before Belle got hitched to one of their posse, Jim Reed, and two years later along came bouncing bub, Rosie Lee (Pearl) amid speculation that the real daddy was gangster Cole Younger.
Belle packed a lot into her short, audacious life.
After Jim, on the run for murder and a stagecoach robbery, was shot and killed, she was rumoured to have married another Younger brother, Bruce. That union lasted three weeks, when she married Sam Starr, a Cherokee Indian from an outlaw family. They settled in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Belle immersed herself in outlawry, organising and fencing for rustlers, horse thieves and bootleggers and harbouring them from the law. If she didn't have enough coin in the kitty to buy off the lawmen when caught, Belle would seduce them into turning the other cheek.
Finally unable to elude the police any longer, Belle and Sam were found guilty of horse theft and incarcerated for six months. She was a model prisoner, but on her release was unrepentant and immediately returned to her villainous ways. 
"I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw", she told a Dallas newspaper reporter.
Legend has it Belle spent much of her time in saloons, drinking and gambling at dice, roulette and cards. She'd ride her horse through town shooting off her pistols, and she took many lovers, including Jim July (a relative of her husband Sam), Blue Duck, Jack Spaniard and Jim French. 
Belle's life came to a violent end just days before her 41st birthday when she was ambushed and fatally shot on her way home from a shopping trip.
There was a healthy list of suspects:
- Edward Watson, with whom she'd been feuding over tennancy of her land;
- her lover, Jim July, with whom she'd recently quarreled;
- her son, Ed, with whom she had a strained relationship and had recently beaten for mistreating her horse;
- and her daughter, Pearl, whose prospective husband Belle had frightened off to marry another.
No one was ever convicted. 
Belle, the 'Bandit Queen', was buried at Youngers Bend, a sleepy spot by the Canadian River where she often lived. Pearl later erected a headstone there, engraved with a horse, a bell and a star, purchased with her earnings from a brothel.
The gravestone reads:
'Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret
Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that filled it sparkles yet."

Take a load off...

Thinking about the pet dog of one of my characters this morning led me to take a dip into Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. 
I read his tale about camels to kickstart my imagination. 
How did the camel get his hump? Then, how did the whale get his throat? And what was the sing-song of old man kangaroo? Kipling's answers are fantastical accounts that never lose their magic.
The next book I picked up was the Literary Pocket Companion. It covers every kind of fact about literature you'd ever care to know, plus many more. I like to flip it open to a random page and start reading. 
The page I opened to today happened to tell an enlightening tale about the 400 camels of Abdul Kassem Ismael of Persia.
"This tenth century scholarly Grand Vizier never left home without his personal library of 117,000 books, and to ensure any of his librarians could locate any book almost immediately, his camels were taught to walk in alphabetical order.
"It all sheds new light on Rudyard Kipling's description of how the camel got his hump - because he spent his days saying 'humph'."
I have never thought much about camels. But I have a new respect for them, knowing how hard Mr Ismael's camels humphed and puffed, lugging his beloved library back and forth across the desert. 
Amazon is flogging its new, super-duper 'wireless reading device' (with 360,000 books to download in a matter of seconds) across the globe this Christmas. 
They should have called it the Camel, not the Kindle.

Story magic...

A little piece of Emily Dickinson today - a poem for lovers of books and stories and words... :) With a picture of a dancing bear...just because.

He ate and

drank the

precious Words - 

His Spirit grew

robust -

He knew no more

that he was poor;

Nor that his

frame was

Dust - 

He danced 

along the dingy

Days

And this bequest

of Wings

Was but a Book - 

What Liberty

A loosened Spirit

  brings 

Sleuthing or stalking..?

Today's question: where is the line between conducting pure research and invading the privacy of complete strangers? 
While some may call it research, others (those living innocently at the end of the sleuth's trail) may call the police. Would they accept my poetic licence as proof of literary integrity?
I am inventing a childhood for my male lead character. Simply, he grew up in Sydney's inner West. I google mapped the suburb looking for a street with two criteria: 

• must be within 15 minutes walking distance of the water (for boyhood mucking about in boats), and 
• must be near or bordering a park. 

Found the perfect street and, serendipitously, it has the same name as my maternal grandfather. 
The beauty (scariness?!) of google maps is streetview. I zeroed in on number 29, situated at the cul de sac end and backing onto a park, hoping against hope the house hadn't morphed into a McMansion with no trace of lives once lived there. 
Happily, it's a single story red brick bungalow with a long concrete driveway up the side and, although I couldn't see around the back, I am certain there once proudly stood a Hills Hoist complete with plastic peg bucket in the centre of the grassy yard.
So now I need to go and see it for myself. 
I need to follow his fictitious footsteps to the patch of harbour where he kept his battered wooden dinghy in the bushes above the shoreline. And I need to imprint his home into my imagination so I can grow him up with credibility.
Have camera, have notebook, have comfy thongs and a curious mind. I'm ready to rock 'n roll. 
But what's acceptable? How do I do this without being cast as a weirdo voyeur...?
If you were the occupant of said house, and you, peering through the white venetians, saw me slide up in my car, snap away and take notes, what would you do??

Catch me if you can...

This may look like any old wardrobe to you, but it's a 50 x 150cm piece of local apartheid cultural history in South Africa.

This is my friend Taryn's wardrobe and it has a wonderful story.

Recently restoring her beautiful home in the affluent and leafy suburb of Greenside, Johannesburg, she discovered the bricks and mortar hold many a secret, including this one... Deep within the quiet darkness where her husband Andy's denims now hang, this wardrobe frequently gave shelter to Oliver Tambo and various of his ANC comrades, hiding their tracks from authorities.

O.R. Tambo, along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, was a founding member of the ANC Youth League in 1943. He became Deputy President of the ANC in 1958 and a year later was banned by the government from political activity for five years.

During this time he'd meet his comrades in secret at Taryn's house, which was regularly visited by the cops trying to sniff him out. In response, the ANC sent Tambo to London to rally support for the anti-apartheid cause from his safehouse abroad. Like many others, there he stayed virtually in exile until returning to his homeland and the promise of freedom in 1990.

Did you notice the window? Strange to put a cupboard in front of a window you may think. Not really, when one needs to beat a hasty escape from a handy hideout into the dark night.

When you stand in front of it and touch the windowsill, you can almost smell the sweat of fear and feel the adrenalin of thumping hearts, crammed into the closet while police inquisition the hosts downstairs.

To have been a fly on the wall during those meetings, among that furious and driven brotherhood of men, would be a storyteller's dream. I love the mystery and history of this hiding spot... but the hellishness of having to take cover, among the trousers and shirt tails of others, in real fear for one's life gives me goosebumps.