Long Island

I have done some renovating and renamed my blog.  What I always hoped this blog would be is something positive, something where the usual daily complaints could take a back seat, a place where I could find the best of something, whether I enjoyed that thing or not.  I hope the new name conveys that vibe.

The photo-header was taken during an early morning walk on Long Island in the Whitsundays in Queensland.  We holidayed there several years ago, a much needed break from our hectic lives.  We had a blissful few days exploring the island, lazing by the pool between stints at the buffet, and basically doing as little as possible until we were advised to evacuate ahead of a tropical cyclone.  The next three days, thanks to bad advice, were a nightmare.

It’s hard for me to look back on that holiday and remember the great stuff, the positive, because by the time we got home I was more stressed than when we left.  I was so relieved when our plane touched down in Melbourne I nearly cried.  Yet if I choose to, I can remember many wonderful things: Wallabies feeding right outside our room at dusk, watching a sea turtle swim under the jetty, bats taking flight in the evening, singing karaoke with my daughter (oh, the joy of knowing you’ll never see those people again), an awesome massage, morning strolls along the beach and many more great memories.  As the daughter of an infernal, er, I mean, eternal optimist, I know that good can always be discovered hiding behind the bad.

My favourite memory of our holiday on Long Island:  Reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan outside our room as we waited for the kids to fall asleep each night.  Zombie novels and tropical islands might seem an odd mix, but have you ever heard a coconut fall off a tree in the dark beyond the porch light?

The Unconsecrated are never alone.  You are...

C1Blitz competition

I’m honoured to have won the Freshly Squeezed Reads’ Choice Award in the recent C1Blitz competition, for the first chapter of my YA manuscript Ghost Curse. 

This unique competition showcases first chapters from unpublished writers.  There are peer-voted, professional-voted and teen-voted categories alongside the FSR Choice category. As a condition of entry, each participant must give feedback on at least five other entries.  All in all I received 4 teen reviews, 2 professional reviews, 5 compulsory reviews from other entrants, and 2 voluntary reviews from other entrants.  That’s 13 different opinions on my first chapter!

After learning of my win, I wrote the following comment on http://www.freshlysqueezedreads.com/  “This is one of the best writing competitions I have entered for the quality and variety of valuable feedback given.” 

Some other writing competitions provide score sheets or detailed feedback, but this is usually only from one or two judges.  I entered one such competition years ago.  One judge gave me an almost perfect score – taking off one point for a minor punctuation error (that the other judge didn’t even notice).  The other judge gave me reasonable score, but far, far from perfect.  So which judge was correct?  The answer, of course, is that they were both right.  Reading is a highly subjective activity. 

Did I get conflicting comments on my C1Blitz entry?  Absolutely.  But several of the critiques contained similar comments, so I know with certainty what I need to work on the most.  If only one person in 13 criticised something, I will consider their advice, but give it lower priority.

Next year, Freshly Squeezed Reads will be doing a P1Blitz for first pages of a manuscript.  I highly recommend any aspiring YA writers to consider entering this competition.  It is a fabulous experience.

Best comment on my story from a teen reviewer:  It is extremely mysterious and it is agonising to have to wait for it to be published, because it needs to be NOW.

I concur – except I’m still editing and rewriting the second half of the ms.  Doh! 

Back to work.

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

Over the summer (appropriately), I reread this favourite from my teenage years.  I couldn’t remember a lot about Summer of My German Soldier, apart from the kiss and the hiding place over the garage.  I had a vague feeling it was set in America, but wondered how it could possibly be that a Jewish girl hides a German prisoner of war in the US.

It turns out my vague feeling was correct.  It is in fact set in Arkansas during World War II, in a small backwater where the only Jews in town own the local department store.  Patty Bergen is the unloved eldest child of the family.  When POWs from the nearby camp are brought to the store to purchase hats for their field work, Patty forms a bond with Anton Reiker, a half-English, half-German POW who interprets for the others.  Later in the story, Anton escapes and Patty hides him in an abandoned loft above the garage.

That is an overview of the plot, but these scenes take up surprisingly few chapters.  There is so much more to this book.  Weaving through the plot are portraits of: a town steeped in prejudice; a family in which appearances (literal and figurative) are everything; and a character searching for her self-worth. 

I highly recommend this powerful story of friendship.  I loved it as a teenager and I love it still.

The Best Bit of Summer of My German Soldier: “The greater the value, the greater the pleasure in giving it.  The ring is yours, P.B.”  Then in the darkened silence, I heard him breathe deeply.  “Am I still your teacher?”  Without pausing for an answer he continued, “Then I want you to learn this, our last, lesson.  Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.” – Bette Greene

The Accidental Princess by Jen Storer

I’m busy writing and rewriting, not much time to stop and blog, but I had to mention this gem of a chapter heading I came across while reading Jen Storer's The Accidental Princess.

The Accidental Princess is a wonderful modern take on old fashioned story-telling for middle-grade readers.  Boys, don’t be put off by the title, there’s plenty of gory bits and slime.

Best bit of The Accidental Princess – Chapter Sixteen: Wherein there is dancing and other horrors.

The Theory of Everything

When the kids start back at school, I have a not-strictly-adhered-to tradition of going to the cinema on my own for a little me-time.

And so it was today, after a much-needed haircut, I went with my $11 online ticket to see The Theory of Everything.

The story is based on the book Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen written by Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane Wilde Hawking.  The two leads, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, are superb in this heartbreaking romance.  The story follows the couple’s meeting, romance, Hawking’s diagnosis with motor neurone disease, his subsequent physical decline, marriage, children, Hawking’s success as a brilliant theoretical physicist and the difficult decisions that Stephen avoided, but inevitably had to be made (ultimately by Jane).

I was moved to tears many times during the film and I was still quite emotional on the drive home.  I’m not sure why.  The film has a happy ending: Stephen, who was given two years to live from diagnosis, is now 72; both Jane and Stephen remarried but have remained good friends.  Perhaps it’s the fact that love couldn’t conquer all.  It didn’t matter though because, as Stephen says in the movie, ‘Where there is life, there is hope.’

The best bit of The Theory of Everything (spoiler alert): Stephen’s last computer generated words in the film when he and Jane are watching their children play in the grounds of Buckingham Palace: ‘Look what we made.’

Best Bits of 2014

These are my highlights of 2014.  They weren’t necessarily new this year; they were just new to me.

Best Book:  A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, Ill. by Jim Kay (see post earlier this year).

Best TV show: Outlander (Gorgeously shot on location in Scotland, it has everything I love in a story – history, time-slip, adventure, romance and the added bonus of Sam Heughen as Jamie Fraser.  Thank you Foxtel for switching channel numbers around in November so I could happily, inadvertently, stumble upon this.)

Best Movie: The Fault in Our Stars (This is one of those memorable movies that makes you laugh and cry at the same time.  Read what I thought of the book here.)

Best Song:  Unfortunately it was played to death on the radio, as good songs often are, but after complaining about a dearth of love songs, I have to pick Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran.

Best wishes to one and all for a great year in 2015.

Lyrical Lesson 2: Assonance with Pink Floyd

Assonance is the resemblance of sounds. 

Besides an awesome bass riff, brilliant guitar solo, and tongue-in-cheek rebellious lyrics, what makes Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall one of the most memorable rock songs of all time is its use of assonance.  You will notice in the example below that none of the words strictly rhyme (unlike the refrain: All in all you’re just another brick in the wall where ‘all’ and ‘wall’ are a perfect rhyme). 

Assonance is not the same as rhyming; rather it is the repetition of similar sounds within a sentence or piece of writing.  Pink Floyd use a long ‘e’ sound, a long ‘o’ sound and long ‘ah’ sound in repetition throughout the song as follows:

We don’t need no education (We need)

We don’t need no thought control (don’t no control)

No dark sarcasm in the classroom (dark sarcasm classroom [if you sang this line with an American accent, you’d find two lots of assonance with sarcasm and class])

Teachers, leave them kids alone (Teachers leave picks up the long ‘e’ sound and Alone picks up the long ‘o’ sound from the first two lines.

Assonance can be used to great effect in both poetry and prose.