You know… Australians and Kiwis don’t actually go around thinking about themselves as living at the bottom of the world. The whole idea originated with the first mapmakers, who lived in the northern hemisphere and automatically thought of themselves as “right way up” and therefore “on top.”
Some Aussie mapmakers have decided to produce “corrected” maps…
Great Outback Story With A Difference!
I’m a big fan of Outback stories and reading “Adopted: Outback Baby” is like getting a double bonus.
"Adopted: Outback Baby”, is especially interesting because the hero and heroine are the 39-year old grandparents of the child they are trying to adopt. They are not married but were lovers twenty years before, but have not seen each other since. This theme is so unusual that the author was not sure the publisher would approve of it. I’m glad “Adopted: Outback Baby” was approved, because Barbara Hannay makes the story work while keeping everything very interesting every stop of the way.
I found the plot always interesting and believable. The character’s actions were honorable and there is something wonderful about getting a second chance at love when you were wrongfully denied your first chance. There was an injustice in “Adopted: Outback Baby” that feels so good to see rectified. This is a very good feeling book. The action takes place both in the Outback and at a beautiful seaside cottage. The beautiful locations are a real plus in this book.
The hero and heroine are perfect for each other and the HEA is doubled by the well executed Epilogue. I really appreciate an author who expands the envelop and takes chances. “Adopted: Outback Baby” really works.
Challenging Grandparent Hero and Heroine Theme – A Big Winner!
And then there was "The Princes in the Tower". I don't know who painted this, but oh, my it captured my girlish imagination. The young Princes, Edward and Richard, were supposed to have been locked away by their wicked uncle, Richard the third, and later murdered. I was horrified, of course, and I guess I was also in love with them. I mean, Will and Harry weren't around when I was a girl, but just imagine if something like this had happened to them...
Much later, I read Josephine Tey's fabulous book 'Daughter of Time' which gives a revisionist view, suggesting that Richard did not commit this crime. Riveting read. But that's no help to the boys, of course.
Lately, I’ve been painting…
No, nothing artistic, I’m afraid.
Now that the work at Tarzali is almost complete (emphasis on almost – electrician and plumber still have things to do!), we have a lot of bare surfaces that need to be protected with paint.
E was all for hiring a professional painter. He found an ad in the Millaa Millaa Times for a painter with a brilliant name like Heinrich Schicklgruber and he wanted to dine out on stories of Heinrich’s painting prowess. But I was hit by boring scruples and talked about saving…. after all I’m swanning off to San Francisco next month.
I had fuzzy but happy memories of our first home, which we bought here in Townsville just after the destruction of Cyclone Althea.
It was a dooer-upperer, if ever there was one, and we painted and wall-papered and laid tiles happily and inexpertly, thrilled with our first little nest.
This time, E did not join me in my enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I won and we’ve been painting – lovely rich full gloss cream on the French doors to my new office/guest bedroom, lots of clear Estapol on timber walls and door frames, and Sikkens on outside frames exposed to weather. And putty – oh, the “fun” we’ve had with putty – filling a thousand tiny nail holes. Did you know putty comes in all sorts of colours – including pine?
Eventually the dining room will have a rose tinted feature wall and the kitchen will be leafy green. Eventually…
We didn’t get anywhere near finished when we had to come home because I have to prepare my Emotion, Emotion, Emotion presentation for San Francisco…
I know… I could have written it up there, but somehow all those paint smells and the sight of bare walls awaiting my brush blocked my thought processes.
So now I’m back, writing and thinking… in the depths of emotion…
With her boyfriend, Matt -- barbecuing sausages.
And here's just one small glimpse of my mum's five acre garden.
Andrew doesn't like this shot, but I love it -- of my younger daughter and younger son in another part of my mum's garden. Who would know she's just been through ten years of drought?
Saw a crazy, creative and quite fabulous film French film about dreams and sleep last night. It was called The Science of Sleep and the characters had trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality, but there was also a sweet romance with plenty of tension about whether the boy would actually get the girl.
Came home to dream that I had fifteen minutes left before closing time in the shops and I had to buy about ten birthday presents. I spent the entire time trying to organize others into who would buy what, with all of them complaining and nothing being bought.
Not surprisingly, I have to drag myself out of my writing cave to go shopping today. Off to Brisbane tomorrow for – you guessed it – family birthday celebrations.
There was also another truly beautiful film called Conversations with my Gardener, which I loved -- about a renewed friendship between two men who were friends in primary school and haven't met since. One is a Parisian artist , the other a rural railway worker. When the artist's marriage is on the rocks, he goes back to the place in the country where he grew up and hires his old friend as his gardener. One character is sophisticated and worldly and open to new ideas; the other is simple, rustic and un-malleable as rock. Each, in his own way, helps the other. So simple, but so powerful. These foreign films are wonderfully refreshing.
BTW, who saw Jane Austen's Emma on ABC TV last Sunday night? I thought Mark Strong as Mr. Knightley was just fabulous. That dignified bearing. Those eyes!!!!
This is my writing quote for the day (week? month?), which I found somewhere, and keep above my desk… but I’m afraid I can no longer remember where it came from, so I apologise for the lack of an attribution...
So you want brilliant dialogue?
Make sure it’s the only dialogue your character can possibly say given who he or she is, where he or she is and to whom he or she is saying it. Then make sure you have all your ducks in a row – every event leading up to the dialogue should be believable and every event after the dialogue should be at least partly the result of the dialogue. Finally, make sure we care about the character, so that we’ve got a vested interest in what he or she is saying, and in the results of what he or she says.
Can't a picture truly tell a thousand words? Actually, in this case I'm hoping for several thousand words. And yes, the story is set back in time.
Yes, there will be a bigger dining table. It's in the garage, ready and waiting.
I often think about those farewells… those poor mothers back in England, Scotland or Ireland, who knew they would almost certainly never see their children again. What was their story?
My ancestors were all ‘lower class' -- farm labourers, blacksmiths, railways workers, or ‘in –service’. Very few could read or write, and I was the first person from either side of my family to go to university.
But somewhere, among those ancestors, there must have been someone who loved stories as much as I do. Where did the creative spark come from?
The clues possibly lie in their gardens. My mother will be 82 next month and she still lives on five acres in the Brisbane Valley and spends her days working tirelessly in her garden, which is quite, quite beautiful. Here she is on her 80th birthday, held in her favourite place -- her own garden.
I remember my grandmother’s garden in Sydney – the high hedge at the back full of cicadas in summer, the huge blue heads of hydrangea under her bedroom window in the front, the little brick path that lured me around the side of her house, the sunny rockery by the back door. Playing in her garden is one of my favourite childhood memories.
And mum tells me about my great-grandmother’s garden. This woman, Matilda Potter, had eleven children and apparently her back yard had the merest strip of grass down the middle and the rest was filled with plants -- veggies growing on one side and flowers on the other, and then there were stables and a pigeon coop beyond that.
For these women, gardening was their escape from the slog of housework and it was also a creative outlet.
Have any of you read In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker (of The Colour Purple fame)?
She asked a similar question. Who among the black mothers of her ancestors, passed on the creative spark which has so enriched her life? She pondered on the beauty her poor, uneducated mother created out of the plot of soil in their tiny garden and so her search began.
I love this quote from her:
And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see -- or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
Today, I’m thinking about my mum and everything she's done for me, but also all those mothers who came before us. At least one of you was a dreamer… and for that I give thanks.
Do you have a comfort read, a book you return to if you’re feeling a little rundown or under the weather and you feel the need to retreat into a comforting past? I remember my editor telling me that she’d recently curled up with the Narnia Chronicles for comfort. I know, in the past, I’ve dipped back into the Anne books.
Today, I found myself reaching for Mary Norton’s “The Borrowers”, a gorgeous children’s book about tiny people – Pod, Homily and Arietty Clock, who live beneath the floorboards in an English country house. They’re responsible for all those things that go missing that we’re all familiar with – disappearing hairpins, needles, keys, thimbles, coins, matchboxes… these things become their furniture.
The book is just delightful. I remember how much my daughters loved it when they were young and when I’d finished, I searched google to find out more about Mary Norton and discovered a book of short stories for adults… so I couldn’t resist ordering it. I love having things to look forward to coming in the post.
Surprises are nice too. This week I received copies of Claiming the Cattleman’s Heart in Lithuanian. That’s a first in this country for me, as far as I know. My books have now been translated into 25 languages. That’s such a nice thought.
What are your comfort reads?
