Murder Story
Hey kids, it’s story time!
This is, as I may have mentioned, a murder story. It’s not especially gory, but You Have Been Warned. It won the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic section of the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Award (only girls can enter) in (I think) 2006.
Mascara
I lined my eyes in black, thick and luxurious, contradicting my wrinkles. My mascara was Liquid Charcoal, heavy on my lids. I sat on the edge of my toilet seat with my eyes half lowered. If I didn’t move my eyes, the wet mascara wouldn’t hit my eyelids. It wouldn’t make little black lines there, spoiling my face. I tried not to let myself think of my to-do list waiting for me among dirty dishes on my bench. If I didn’t move, I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t ruin it all. There was one small, logical moment of loathing. What kind of fool wears mascara, when she knows the risk? But I didn’t. I didn’t cry.
My clothes were laid out on the couch, draped over mounds of unwashed underwear. I put them on in the order I’d written down two days before: Undies. Bra. Skirt and shoes and top. Why hadn’t I written down that I should dress first, and put on makeup later? Don’t think about it, I told myself. Just don’t. I stared at the ceiling and stretched my mouth into a smile. People aren’t designed to smile and cry at the same time. I hated fake smiles, even with no-one there to see. But smiling alone was good practice. I was doing well.
My hair was too difficult to set. I brushed it. No more than that. No hiding the grey today, no clips, no spray. The cat mewled for food. It had vomited again the night before. A little might have stuck onto my shirt sleeve. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know for certain. I didn’t want to know or care that the cat was sick. The fact of the matter was that I was a beast, a beast! not to look after her. But still I didn’t look. Good girl, I told myself. Maybe tomorrow I’ll buy some Irises for the front garden. They’ll look lovely by Mrs Peterson’s oak.
I grabbed my keys. I grabbed my thermos of tepid tea. My breath stunk. I hadn’t brushed my teeth. The cat would be all right. I’d come back. I’d look after her later. I would! I would! I blinked my heavy eyelashes lightly and rapidly, to make the tears dry out before pitch began to run from my eyes. No tears allowed. Not today.
I ran out the back door, frantic to escape the mourning cat. I ran without my handbag to my car. I reversed too fast and ran into Mrs Peterson’s oak. No no no, I said. No. It’s all right. Don’t cry. Mrs Peterson came out of her house. Mrs Rock-Head. She was small and grey and hard as nails, and I wished someone would hit her with a hammer.
“Stop. Stop!” she said.
I forgot what to do. Ignore Mrs Peterson, said my to-do list. It was engaved on my brain.
“Stop,” she said.
I stopped. She came to my window, and I gazed at her. Her small grey fingers tapped on the glass, tapped on the inside of my brain. She hadn’t the right. It was my brain. Mine not hers. Mine mine mine. I wound down the window and looked at her, focusing on her little grey nose hairs. They made me smile. I didn’t cry. I made a mental note to always look at noses. Noses: Look at them.
“Sheila, really!” said Mrs Rock-Head. She was grey through and through. I hated grey more than any other shade. More than any feeling. More than life. And her oak tree shouldn’t have been so close to my property.
“Shirley,” I said. I lifted my weak chin and glared through my Liquid Charcoal lashes. Mrs Rock-Head wasn’t wearing mascara. She wasn’t wearing anything except a faded floral print dress, sagging in unfortunate places. I won. Me. I did. Even the flowers on her dress were grey. I detested every thread. “My name,” I said, “is Shirley.”
“Well,” she said. “Shirley. Anne. Parsnip.” She told me off like I was her granddaughter. That naughty one.
I was older than Mrs Rock-Head. Pretty sure I was older. I was caught for a moment. Was it better to be older or younger? Either way, she had me wrong. “Parson.”
“Excuse me?”
“Parson. My name is Parson.” I told myself I was a worthwhile person. A good person. Someone who deserved to be remembered. Who deserved to have a name. Mrs Rock-Head was rude. That was not my fault. Not my fault at all.
Mrs Rock-Head opened her mouth, and it stayed open. She sat down heavily. I poked my head out of the window and looked at her. “What are you doing?” I said.
“Having another bleeding stroke,” she said. “You made me have a stroke.”
“I did not. You were rude.” My audacity went to my head. “Take some responsibility for yourself.”
Her little grey face scrunched, and then it unscrunched. “There we go then.” She rocked her fat grey self back and forward, meaning to get up. Meaning, her stroke was finished and her lecture was not. “You could have killed me.”
I had an idea. It was unusual, and difficult to do. My heart pounded in my throat at the thought of it. I hadn’t written down what I was going to do. Anything could happen.
I offered her the thermos. “Tea,” I said. “It’s tepid. Tepid tea. From yesterday.”
Mrs Rock-Head took the thermos of tepid tea. She screwed off the two lids. The first lid was a cup, metal on the outside, with thermal qualities. She ignored it and took a sip directly from the flask.
“Excuse me,” I said. “That was for my husband.”
“I’m not well,” she said, and tipped up the thermos, dripping drops down the sides of her mouth. She looked up at me with wrinkled eyes. Old, cold eyes.
“Give me the thermos,” I said. She passed it up to me. Empty. “Excuse me,” I said. “That tea was worth a great deal of money to me.”
“It tasted terrible,” she said.
“Give me the lids.” At least she was obedient in her actions. Almost polite. “How do you feel?” I said, taking the lids from her grey hands.
I waited a long time for her response. She didn’t say anything at all in the end. She started curling up, like a worm. Like a retching worm.
I smiled, all by accident. My practice smiles were paying off. I drove away quickly, with the last drops of Foxglove tea staining the passenger seat. Foxglove. Also known as Witches’ Gloves. Also known as Dead Man’s Bells. Little wonder it tasted terrible.
The smell mixed with the smell of vomit from my shirt sleeve, and morning breath from my mouth. I opened the window a crack. The radio played, “You are my sunshine” for me. I was afraid to sing. To get the words wrong. Embarrassed, even though no-one was there. I hummed. The witch was dead. Singing was appropriate. Humming would do nicely. Goodbye, Mrs Rock-Head. Goodbye. Tomorrow, I’d buy some Jonquils, and plant them near the letterbox. I was doing so well.
The carpark at the dementia home was empty except for the nurses’ cars. I unclicked my seatbelt and realised what I’d done. How could I have been so thoughtless? My Foxglove tea was gone. It took hours to make, and I didn’t know if I could trust myself to get it right a second time. I was always bad at cooking. It was hard to remember the timing. But I’d done it. I’d held it together. Then I’d wasted it on Mrs Rock-Head. I blinked.
One of the boy nurses brushed past my car on his way inside. He made me jump and drop my keys. I blinked more, remembering to blink as lightly as butterfly wings. I hadn’t cried. Hadn’t dropped a smeary tear, even though Mrs Rock-Head ruined my to-do list. I was doing so well. So well. My keys touched my bare big toe.
I put the lids back onto the thermos, taking my time, screwing them on properly. It was a beautiful little thing, sleek like a bullet, with a rounded head. I’d done a good thing, with Mrs Rock-Head. A brave thing. I smiled a second time, to think I’d never see her again. My to-do list was broken, broken. I was in trouble. But I didn’t cry.
I picked up my keys, congratulating myself for remembering not to lock them in the car. My body was dragging at me, exhausted from so much to do in one day. I couldn’t cook a meal, and I was trying to perform murder. My head was full, sloshing with the dregs of Foxglove tea. It was heavy with the fragrant smell of death.
I walked to the door of the dementia home and put in the code to get inside. The code wasn’t for people like me. It was for the people inside, who tried to escape sometimes. It was so they couldn’t wander off unsupervised in the sunshine. I myself walked unsupervised down the pastel hall. There was no-one left to supervise me. I walked to George’s room.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I said, standing in the doorway.
He didn’t move at all. I looked around for nurses, and there weren’t any. There was another man in the second bed, pulling his shirt up to lay his hands on his belly and smile at it. I liked him.
“George,” I said, and walked over to pull on my husband’s arm. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Hello sweetheart,” I said.
“Ung,” he said. His blue eyes looked at me with the same tolerant confusion as when I tried to explain the menstrual cycle half a century before. He didn’t quite believe I was all there. He never had.
“My name is Shirley,” I said. “Shirley. Anne. Parsnip.” I gasped at myself, and quickly blinked. I focused on the wrinkles on his head. A hairdresser visited the home and shaved him for me, so he wasn’t grey any more. No grey for my George. “I made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t cry. “My name is Parson. Not Parsnip. Sometimes I get my words a bit mixed. That’s all.” I was doing well. “My name is Parson. Parson. Parson. Your name. Your name is Parson too.”
“Ung,” he said, benevolent as ever. He didn’t believe me. That was his right. He was happy enough, and quite healthy, in a way. There were no tubes in his arms or in his nose.
“We’re married,” I said. “You and I. To each other. You see, I’ve remembered this time. To explain what’s happening to you. The nurses told me I should.”
“Ung,” he said.
“You used to look after me.” I blinked, but I found the words were enough to distract me from tears. “My own sweet George. I liked us, together. I liked our kids and our grandkids. Except for Joey, but that’s his mother’s fault.”
“Ung,” he said.
I stood up and walked to the doorway. No-one was pacing the pastel corridor. No-one was looking at me, asking, Why do you have that thermos? I closed the door, like I’d written on my to-do list that I would. George didn’t move. George never moved. He hadn’t moved for such a long time.
I had to stand beside his bed. There was never a chair. I always visited, and there was never a chair. “The cat threw up today,” I said, although I hadn’t meant to mention it. “I just left it on the floor, again.” My eyes were hot and shaky. “Are you –“ I stopped. I walked to the man with the belly and looked at his smile. I went calmly back to George. “Are you angry with me?”
“Ung,” he said, without rancour.
“I keep buying things,” I said. “I don’t need them, but I still buy them. Bulbs, mostly. Daffodils and Lilies. Even Tulips, which don’t match the garden at all. Most of them are stacked in the front hall nowadays. They’re beginning to smell.”
“Ung,” he said.
“I wish I could throw them away. But I’m too busy trying to stop myself buying more. I thought, Maybe if I fill the hall I’ll stop. But last month it was full. There were so many bulbs I had to go in the back door. Some of them are growing. Some are growing quite well.”
“Ung,” he said.
“And then I felt sick, to think of all the bulbs. Because I felt sick, I went to the nursery. While I was there I accidentally bought five hundred dollars worth of bulbs.”
“Ung,” he said.
“There’s not enough money,” I said. “For bulbs.”
“Ung,” he said.
“There’s only one way to get extra money at our age.”
“Ung,” he said.
“You’re my husband.”
“Ung.”
I put my thermos on the floor, and put my hands on his neck. He looked up at me, confused. I tried to smile, and couldn’t. It wasn’t how things were meant to be. This was not what I wrote on my to-do list. Not what I wrote, but close enough to manage. I was doing so well. George could still look after me. In a way.
I pushed down until his eyes began to water. He looked up at me, trying to believe what was happening. Trying to move his arms. He hadn’t moved his arms in eighteen months. They used to wrap around me, a long time ago. My arms and fingers ached with the effort of holding him. He frowned in concentration. He was trying so hard. Finally his fingers began to curl. They curled like Mrs Rock-Head had curled up, scrunched up, on the ground. “Uh,” he said, “hhh. . .”
I let go and looked down at my dead husband. George had always wanted to die in bed. He promised I’d be allowed to die first. So I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t blame him for breaking his word. Not eighteen months after he stopped talking. Not when I broke it for him.
I pulled at his pajamas, straightening the blue and white lines. Blue and white pajamas, with pearl buttons. I hated those pajamas. Why had I brought them to the home at all? Surely I knew he’d wear them. It didn’t make any sense.
I picked up my thermos. I found my keys on the floor. Perhaps I dropped them when I was strangling George. We used to say that if things got tough, he’d fake his death and we’d move to Tahiti. I never mentioned that I preferred Australia. I walked away, quickly, and put the code into the outside door so it would open for me. I walked to the car. While I walked I held a picture of the belly man in my head. A happy picture. A happy man. He remembered all he needed to remember. He was completely satisfied.
I blinked, too hard, and felt my lashes knock against my cheeks. I shook my head. No. No. No. Don’t cry now, Shirley Anne Parson. I was doing so well. The sky was dirty and grey, the colour I detest. But there was no rain. I slid into my car, and put my thermos in my lap. I dropped my keys. I picked them up, quick sticks, before they made me want to scream. Before they made me claw my Liquid Charcoal eyes from my head and brain myself on the new black and red striped steering wheel cover.
I didn’t let myself think about how stupid I was. I didn’t let myself think about the bulbs. My fingers curled and scrunched around the dimpled black and red plastic of the new steering wheel cover. I drove straight home, and saw the morgue van in my driveway, loading up Mrs Peterson. They were in a hurry. Hurrying to get her loaded before the rain started. There was vomit on the Peterson’s lawn.
Mr Peterson stood under the oak tree. He was wearing his pajamas, in the middle of the day. He was stooped with age and with the heavy sky. He was hosing his wife’s vomit toward the drain. There were no police. Police don’t come to such occasions. There were only the morgue staff, two strangers. The strangers made me nervous. Strangers always did. They made me want to cry. I blinked. Held my breath. Smiled. I was doing so well.
Mr Peterson signed the clipboard for the morgue van driver. I knew what it would say. He had to sign that yes, his wife was dead, and no, she wasn’t wearing any jewellery, except her wedding ring. The van drove out. I drove in.
My car shuddered as I pulled the keys out too quickly. I didn’t cry. I thought, Why do old men love pajamas, and old women love flowers? My eyes cooled enough that I could take a breath. I went to my front door, forgetting I couldn’t get in that way. Even the screen door was latched. I hurried around the back, blinking fast, and discovered I’d forgotten to shut the back door. The cat was out. Good. I didn’t want to trip over it. Poor sick thing.
I waded through the newest load of bulbs, and into the bathroom. I stepped in more cat vomit on the way, but I didn’t let it stop me. I looked in the mirror. There were my eyes, plain grey eyes, outlined almost perfectly in black. I nodded at myself, with a smile that looked forced. But I kept smiling, because I’d earned it. I’d done what I wrote down to do. All of it. I breathed. My problems were over. I watched without judgment as the tears broke through my mascara lines to rain liquid charcoal down my cheeks.
Three-Ingredient Thursday: The Dark Dinosaur
You can argue the case that this has only two ingredients. I would.
NB: The zombie cat is not an ingredient. She is cunningly hidden on a chair underneath a glass table.
Method: Break orange intense Lindt into squares. Make sandwich with a dinosaur (or several snakes). Eat before CJ comes home and find a suspicious depletion of the chocolate I bought for him.
I’m particularly proud of the way the snakes glisten ominously in this photo.
Now I always knew this would taste good. It wasn’t a difficult thought process to walk through. But to be honest, I thought it was a little bit of a waste of fine chocolate and natural brand confectionary, since the consumption speed is vastly different and (I thought) non-complimentary. However.
The Lindt chocolate is thin enough and dark enough that it more or less dissolves in the mouth, but fills the senses with dark chocolate goodness (the orange intense flavour removes the usual bitterness of dark chocolate, FYI). The dinosaur takes more time to chew, but that is fine because the flavour of the chocolate remains in the mouth. Thus, the symbiotic relationship makes this dish awesome.
QED.
In other news, I helped prevent a high-speed crash today.
Canberra basically has one 100-kilometer zone: The Tuggeranong Parkway. I was driving there this afternoon, between heavy bouts of rain and mist, and observed a car attempting to change lanes. They clearly hadn’t head-checked their blind spot, because there was a truck exactly beside them in the right hand lane. The truck immediately noticed the Honda Jazz moving toward them and swerved away, but they couldn’t go far because of the concrete boundary in the centre of the Parkway
The Honda Jazz driver was clearly still oblivious to the truck – there was no sudden swerve back into their lane. So I beeped my horn. Most of us have a guilty conscience, and immediately assume a beeping horn is someone telling us we’re being stupid. It worked. The Jazz immediately did that classic over-compensatory swerve back into their own space, and then corrected themself.
All of which happened in moments, on a wet road with low visibility, at a hundred kilometres an hour.
That’s right: I’m a freaking hero.
Also, if they had collided, I’d have probably rear-ended both of them and died horribly.
To celebrate three lives saved, here’s a flickr.com picture of a rainforest.
#178: Kick your life goal in the eye
Sometimes, having a grand life dream just sucks.
Here are two simple stats I wish I’d known fifteen years ago:
1. Only 1 in 10,000 books gets published via the slushpile (ie, by just sending it to “sir/madam” at a publisher who seems to fit).
2. Authors who are doing pretty darn well – ie they’re published, and selling well enough to continue selling one or two books each year (and to have the time to write them) – generally earn around $10,000 per year. Many of them write full-time. That’s about $5/hour – not counting expenses.
And maybe I’d have benefited from some other stats about the rate of mental illness and/or divorce for writers.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I’d still write. If I spend more than a couple of days without writing, I miss it badly. And I was lucky enough to know from an early age that writing doesn’t make you rich (okay, there are perhaps ten fabulously rich writers IN THE WORLD, and another hundred earning a respectable amount. You’re more likely to win lotto than be one of them. There are a LOT of writers in the world, and not enough readers to go around – I recently heard 87% of Americans want to write a book some day, and only 50% have actually read a book in the last twelve months).
I’ve mentioned before than Ian Irvine says it takes 10,000 hours to get good at writing. I also mentioned that I was halfway – I’ve been writing to a self-imposed quota since 2006.
Lately I’ve been taking (another) hard look at my writing “career”, and realised it could easily be five more years until I’m accepted for book publication. I wrote myself a five-year plan (with “actually get published” at the very end) to try and teach myself to accept that this is how it’s going to be.
Fail.
Ever since realising statistic # 1, life has looked a lot darker. I temporarily lifted my mood by signing up for two more conferences (a rational thing to do after finding out how important contacts are, however scary and expensive the experience), but why would I go to so much effort when nothing’s going to happen for so many more long and soul-crushing years?
So I made a new plan. A better one. One in which I manipulate mathematics for personal gain.
I re-counted my writing hours. Here’s the breakdown:
School English classes (uni is part of school): 2000 hours.
School projects (practising written expression): 650 hours.
Quota hours: 5000 (by end of this year)
Stories written in my own time: 100 hours (primary school)
160 hours (high school)
200 hours (Year 11 and 12 – I wrote over 50,000 words in just two manuscripts, and entered a LOT of short story competitions in order to take advantage of being able to enter youth competitions).
Gap year: 400 hours (I hand-wrote a 200,000 word book)
2001 (first year of uni): 210 (among other things, I typed and edited that hand-written book. And wrote another 50,000 word book.)
2002: 130 hours (I wrote most of my first fantasy novel)
2003: 50 hours
Two National Novel Writing Months (I don’t remember which years): 200 hours
2004: 700 hours (I became obsessed with finishing the fantasy trilogy, and at the end of that year I sat down and estimated how much time I’d spent writing)
2005: 200 (I did fifty hours editing for the National Novel Editing Month, and wrote another 50,000 word book, plus short stories).
Well! Wouldya look at that. Turns out I’ve ALREADY done 10,000 hours of writing – or at least, I will have by the end of this year. So I’m probably pretty good by now.
And we’re back to the manic-depressive state of, “Are they gonna call me today? How about tomorrow? Any second now. . .”
Which is horrible and unhealthy, but better than despair.
TA DAAAAA!!!
Play along at home: Spend just one hour pursuing a dream (however big or small). If you’d like to be a writer*, write something!
Personally, I’m going to go and check my email. Perhaps that six-book deal is sitting there waiting**.
Coming sorta soon: The Dark Dinosaur (tomorrow)
Experiment on your pet *maniacal giggle*
Clothing Attack
In the meantime, here’s your Flickr.com photo for today:
*you poor sad schmuck
**It wasn’t. But maybe NOW!!!
Excuse me, your black hole is showing
Today I wrote (again) to publisher B. Here’s what I wrote, for better or worse (you may observe that names have been changed):
Hi Bobette,
Another three months have passed, so it’s time for another email checking “Stormhunter” and “The Monster Apprentice” haven’t fallen into a slushpile void.
I enjoyed listening to and meeting [Bobette’s boss] at the “Reaching the World” con on July 3 in Sydney.
Since I’ll be attending the “CYA Later Alligator” con in September, I decided to pitch “The Monster Apprentice” to one of the publishers there. I’ve let her know about you guys, of course.
That gave me an excuse to edit the book (always exciting, since my writing ability has improved since I sent it).
Other than improving the synopsis and fixing minor flaws, I gave Dance a twin sister. The sister died some years ago, when Dance’s dad was angry with her and the empathic heest monsters rose up through the ice in concern. The ice melted and the girl drowned. She and Dance are identical twins – except for Dance’s lazy eye.
This piece of background gives Dance a phobia to overcome as well as a reason for her rebelliousness (because she thinks she can never match up to her sister – something everyone with a sibling can relate to). It also motivates her dad’s pacifism, and makes the danger of the monsters clear from the start. The shame of failing her Aging ceremony is much more painful, too.
Dance faces her own nightmares when she first approaches the heest. She and her dad finally understand one another after they face the pirates together at the end.
I don’t expect you to re-read “The Monster Apprentice” from the beginning all over again (although do let me know if a better synopsis is useful), but here’s the first two hundred words so you can see what I’m talking about if you want to.
Felicity
CHAPTER ONE
I awoke from a dead sleep – for once, a sleep without nightmares. My bedroom was pitch black and silent, but my heart was racing. Then the sound came again – a man shouting at the top of his voice. He pounded at my front door.
“Elder!” The man’s voice was sharp with terror. “Elder! Wake up!”
The night air was hot and still. My sheets lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. At the open window my curtains hung in unmoving black lines. No wind slid through to ease the stifling heat. My mane of black hair felt heavy around my head. I didn’t dare move.
Dad would check on me before he went to answer the yelling. Ever since my sister died, he was that type of dad. Whenever he felt worried about something I was told to go to my room – to sleep, if it was night time. No matter how many nightmares I had.
He was forever telling me to be careful – but I was definitely not going to miss out on the fun this time. So I remained curled on my side as if I hadn’t heard a thing. If he didn’t tell me to go back to sleep, sneaking out wasn’t disobeying him. Not exactly.
#97: Cancel Fu
These days, everyone is running around, stressed over this and that and “I said I’d get right on to such-and-such”. We hold on so tightly to our plans. So, when we let something go, it’s a wonderful feeling.
That is my awesomeness for today – not doing anything awesome today (whoaa, what a paradox). Personally, I’m going back to bed.
What are you going to not do today?
And here’s a true story (published in a “Short and Twisted” anthology a few years ago). It happened to Ben.
Naked Man in the Bushes
There’s not much to do in Canberra.
I walked home from Belconnen Interchange on a Wednesday night. It was ten o’clock, so there were no more buses. Drunk men were everywhere, and they all seemed to be stalking their ex-wives. They talked to contacts on mobiles. ‘Yes, she’s going toward Ginninderra Drive now. See if you can head her off.’
My concern rose significantly when I noticed an adult male crouching in bushes by the roadside. He was nude.
I kept my eyes forward and debated whether or not I should call someone. Unable to remember the number for the naked stalker hotline, I walked by on the other side of the road. A second naked man burst from a tree immediately in front of me and sprinted to the traffic island splitting Belconnen Way.
‘Marco!’ he yelled.
‘Polo!’ came the reply.
THE END
And here’s today’s Flickr.com picture:
S#67: Make someone’s day
Yet another friend had a birthday on the weekend, and a bunch of us went out to dinner. I managed to manipulate events to get almost all of them to come back to my house bearing ice cream, chocolate, and assorted candy. We made our own fantastic creations with (among other things) mint chocolate sprinkles, maltesers, honey nougat chocolate, mini M&Ms, flake bars, and so on. It amused me how pathetically grateful the birthday boy was, considering I’d been scheming for hours for some way to make dinner segue into a house party.
People eating:
(If you look closely, you can see: Someone dangling from an anchor; a camel; one extra set of hands; two clocks; just one person who actually noticed the camera.)
And this is what I ate (you can tell I’m a little stressed about two upcoming writing conferences – the ice cream is the healthy part):
Coming soon: Some stuff, probably. Not really sure what, to be perfectly honest. More flickr.com pictures, in any case:
Incidentally, if you’re wondering what the “S” stands for in the title, it’s Steff Metal – http://steffmetal.com/101-ways-to-cheer-yourself-up/
#177: The Piper
A scottish-born friend of ours celebrated his 50th today, so his friends were all summoned to celebrate – as Scottishly as we knew how.*
One five-year old took a look at him and said, “Hey look! He’s wearing the same dress I am!”
Awesome.
Due to a tug-of-war gone horribly right, I also finally saw what a Scotsman wears under his kilt.**
I was also pleased to observe an elderly lady who’d obviously been as stumped for Scottish-ish gear as I was. She’d found a tartan pencil case and wore it proudly on her head. Another lovely old lady brought out a set of electric bagpipes and the sunny Canberra day suddenly sounded like rain-swept plains on an isolated headland.
And then, during afternoon tea. . . the piéce de resistance. We heard the drone and pipes approaching from outside, and paused with half-eaten shortbread en route to our mouths. There’s no mystery when you hear the skirl of pipes – no wondering, “Is that what I think it is?” Short of the yowling of angry cats, there’s no sound like it.
And in came the piper, in full regalia (including a beard that he assured his many groupies was once red). At the doorway we all gasped in wonder and delight. As he entered the room the sheer unmistakeable power of bagpipe volume FILLED THE ROOM.
One forgets how loud pipes can be.
Not sure how.
All up, a freaking brilliant afternoon.
And, as usual, here’s a nice bit of forest to feast your eyes on (thanks to Flickr.com):
*ie, not very.
**shorts.
S#31: Join the Library
Mmm. . . booooooooks. . .
Flushed with the success of the “Reaching the World” YA writers’ conference in Sydney on July 3 (and wide-eyed with the new data that only 1 in 10,ooo books gets published via the “look up publishers and send the book to The Editor” method), I’ve decided to go to two more conferences. . . starting this month.
First, the Melbourne Writers’ Festival (plus I get to help launch the 30th issue of Going Down Swinging, since I’m in it – as Felicity Bloomfield, since the story is horror). This is a ten-day con of epic proportions – Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman will be there (no use to my career, much as I admire them) plus many publishers and writers.
Second, the CYA Later, Alligator! conference in Brisbane. CYA stands for Children and Young Adult writers. I’ll be pitching one of my books directly to a lady from Publisher J. I’m in a fabulous mood right now because I figured out a way to make it much better at around 2am this morning. CJ agreed that my idea was brilliant.*
There are literally hundreds of writers and publishers, and I’ll be listening to or connecting with about fifty. Thus I’m in the process of scouring the internet for the most relevant books and [this is the bit where I get to the point] borrowing terrifyingly high piles of novels from the library.
So far, I have fifteen books to read – and I’m barely started. The last two cons I went to (in July, and the Sydney Freecon last November) introduced me to exactly one faint-with-exhilaration-because-they’re-so-good author each – Pamela Freeman, and Sandy Fussell.
Later this month, I’ll report back and tell you who is the pick of the bunch this time. So far I’ve read one book, and it was hideously bad (something which I won’t mention to the author when I go to her book launch).
Play along at home: borrow Pamela Freeman’s adult trilogy (the first is “Blood Ties”) and/or Sandy Fussell’s “Samurai Kids” books from your local library. (I’ve decided that Sandy Fussell’s series sets the standard for children’s books worldwide, and have read the first book three times so far, studying how she puts it together and wins readers over. The second and third are also exquisite, but I’m saving the rest for later.)
You’re welcome.
In other news, I went to a new doctor yesterday (one closer to where I live). To cut a long story short, I had food poisoning in Indonesia in January, and I still haven’t 100% recovered. I’ve been wondering if I’ve developed some of the food intolerances (including fructose malapsorption – ie allergic to several fruits) that are just, like, so hot right now. She reckoned I have – temporarily (which answers my question AND means I can eat whatever, comfy in the thought that I’ll continue to improve over the next few years). Among other things, she said I should go lactose and gluten-free for at least three months – just in case they’re the triggers. In less crazy news, she said I should take inner health plus. So I went and bought some (despite the fact it costs almost a dollar per pill – yikes). Inner health plus is a probiotic – each pill contains literally millions of tiny little guys to help me digest stuff. Hopefully all those microorganisms will do their thing so well that at the NEXT writing conference, no-one will ask me when I’m expecting.
The human body is SO GROSS. Don’t you love it?
I’m also finding, lately, that I often forget it’s Winter. I just walk around, reasonably comfortable, enjoying the sunshine and living life. It seems mad, but apparently “Love your Fear” actually worked. Thank you Steff Metal for the suggestion!
And here’s today’s pretty pretty Flickr.com pics (two for the price of one, you lucky sods):
*Or at least, he mumbled something that sounded like, “Brilliant.”
Problem solved – with horrible death
I had one of those days yesterday when I couldn’t look at the book I’m working on. Some would call it writers’ block. I’m lucky, because there was a simple reason: I didn’t want to make the dad bad. It messed up a lot of things (particularly since the whole island is so small they’d all notice Dance’s injuries and be culpable), and (since no-one’s ever physically abused me or anyone I love) didn’t resonate at all.
At 2am this morning, though, I found the solution. Dance is a twin – an identical twin, and her sister is dead. Naturally, being dead, Dance’s sister is perfect in every way, and gives Dance a foil she can never live up to.
I often think of my own sister as a little like who I would have been if I wasn’t so messed up – exaggerate that feeling (by making the sister the same age, and dead), and I have something I can use to drive Dance to feel and do everything she does in the book – AND resolve that feeling in the end, as her dad stands by her side against the pirates.
Voila! When in doubt, kill someone.
#176: Eat cookie dough
Mmm
Louise’s Lardylicious Choc Chip Cookies:
Mix:
3/4ths c white sugar
3/4ths c brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 c oil
1 cup butter (softened or melted)
1 tsp vanilla esence
Mix and add to above:
3 c flour
3 c cornflakes
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
Cook at 175 degrees celsius for about 12 minutes (or not).
Due to technical problems, there’s no photo today. Sorry! Go search for “rainforest” on Flickr.com if you want to see something pretty.
