This is hungry work

That’s a line from a Hozier song (yes, the one everyone has been listening to).  Writing work feeds into itself, to some extent, but the material that nurtures it comes from everywhere.  Writing work is hungry work, always seeking out new morsels.

I’ve started printing out the lyrics to some of my current favourite songs, and tacking them up on the walls of my office (using the term ‘office’ here in its broadest sense), so I can see the way words work in different combinations and contexts.  Poems go up too – although I’ve always thought that lyrics qualify as contemporary poetry – and sentences or phrases from books, photos, scribbled scraps of overheard conversations, pics of artwork, postcards, pamphlets, notes, business cards, newspaper clippings, drawings (usually done by my kids), jokes, Post-its, and other ephemera like feathers, leaves, and on my desk, random stones and mementos, including two conkers from a tree in Hyde Park.

I like the bower bird approach.  I’m not a tidy person by nature – tidiness is something that has instead been drummed into me by over a decade of householding for a large family.  When you have four kids, you maintain organisation or you flounder in a sea of chaos.  So I am tidy, but if you look around my work space, you can see that tidiness is an imposed state of being.

I collect things – knick knacks, oddsy-sodsy things…memories, I guess.  Do they help me work?  I don’t know.  I think so.  They remind me that for all the structured thinking necessary for daily routine - the mental order I apply to keep to diary dates and planned events, the discipline and compartmentalisation required to sort out work and parenting and weekly grocery lists and everything else - the part of me that writes needs randomness, and flow, and a certain looseness.  The mind has to be allowed to roam and wander and free-range if it wants to create.  It’s something I’ve discovered, or rather I’m discovering as I go along, that way of keeping ‘loose’ in my mind during the course of the day.

Lately, amidst all the bustle of book launching, I’ve been feeding myself with music, and with some great books – I just read Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, and it was beautiful, full of poignant desperation and starlight.  It reminded me strongly of On the Beach by Nevil Shute, not just for its themes (which are similar to Shute’s, although not as grim) but for its evocation of human fallibility and longing and nostalgia.  I was gifted my copy of Station Eleven by Kirsty Eagar – a gorgeous gift, thank you! – and now I’m thinking deeply about a book I’d like to gift to her (we seem to have started our own little book club).  I’m going to be doing a longer post on workspace and working habits for Kirsty’s blog in a few weeks – when it goes up, I’ll let you all know.

First review: I was given a heads-up (thank you, Sera!) about the first review of Every Move, which I’m thrilled to say was glowingly positive, in Kid’s Book Review.  What a relief it was to find out that people are enjoying the book!  After all my nerves and anxiety, I’m starting to relax a little – it’s a great weight off my shoulders.  Thank you to everyone who has tweeted/texted/pinged me to say that you’re loving Every Move!  There’s nothing more satisfying than finding out that the work you’ve put in has been worth it.

Blog tour details: Ahh, okay, now this is still being finalised, but I can reveal some of the blog tour stops now.  More fine-tuning will be reported on soon, but here’s the schedule so far -

1 March: The Unfinished Bookshelf

2 March: Behind the Pages

3 March: Fictional Thoughts

4 March: Speculating on Specfic

5 March: Genie in a Book

6 March: YA Midnight Reads

7 March: Delicate Eternity

8 March: Novels on the Run

9 March: The Rest is Still Unwritten

10 March: The Loony Teen Writer

Please do drop in at the tour stops and say hi (or, y’know, read the articles and reviews) – I know most bloggers enjoy it when people leave a comment or two!  Some of the tour stops will involve giveaways as well, so if you’d like a chance to win a copy of the book, keep a lookout.  I’ll be doing a giveaway of the book here, as well, sometime in the next few weeks.

And you’re coming to the Every Move launch party, right?  I hope you are, if you live in Melbourne (or especially if you’re coming from afar), because me and Adele Walsh would love to see you – remember, it’s at Readings Carlton in Lygon St, on Monday 16 March from 6-8pm.  I’m trying to think up some nice food to give people who have gone to the trouble to come, because I don’t reckon corn chips and strawberries will cut it this year…should I go the kabana and cheese platter?  I know some folks who would like cake too (*cough* Allen and Unwin team *cough*), so I’m gonna aim for variety J

Anyway, I hope you’re having a good week, and if you have any catering suggestions, please leave a comment below!  Take care –

Xx Ellie

Desert Island Blog - I mean, Books

Hi again, welcome to the second last week of June.  Freaky, huh?  The year is almost halfway over.  We will be on school holidays in ten sleeps.  Sooner than that will be the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in this hemisphere.  The days seem to be rushing to a close lately, and we’re going through firewood at a rate of knots.  Here I am again in the early hours of the morning, writing while the world is dark outside.

I don’t exactly long for summer, at this point of the year, but I do miss sunnier days.  And I had to answer a question recently about my most significant books, the ones that have touched my life and work, which made me think of desert island books.  You know – books that you would take with you to a desert island (or smuggle in during a long stint in solitary confinement, or run back to save in a housefire).  Except my version of a desert island would have glorious white sand, and those nice Adirondack chairs, and maybe a cocktail bar somewhere close at hand…which I guess is not what the ‘desert island’ concept really includes, but hey, if it’s my island I can do what I want.  I saw a picture recently of a beach with its own lending library – now that is my kind of beach.

Anyway, the books. Here’s what I came up with.  It’s a weird list:

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Wanderground by Sally M Gearhart

Carrie by Stephen King

The Outsiders by Susie Hinton

You notice a few things straight away (apart from the fact that they almost all have ‘The’ in the title).  They are all older books – ie, of a certain era.  I read most of them for the first time as a teenager, so the era is primarily 60s-80s, which makes sense given I’m a child of that era.  They are almost all ‘genre’ books – no matter that some, like King, have entered the canon purely on the basis of career longevity (consistent popularity being the mere icing on the cake), and some authors, like Wyndham, have always had a certain cache.  Of the six books, three are science fiction (or speculative fiction, I guess you’d say), one is crime, one is horror, and one is YA.  Two of the books are overtly feminist.

Shakespeare is the only ‘classic’ text, and his inclusion is pretty much a no-brainer.

Only one YA book, huh?  But I read all of them as a teenager (except for Atwood and Gearhart, who I read in my early twenties), during an era when YA was an almost completely unheard-of term.  In my teens, if you wanted to read, you read adult books (which is how I came to read Jaws by Peter Benchley – lurid sex scenes and all – at twelve).  There were fewer restrictions (or ‘guidelines’, if you like) on what was acceptable for a teenage audience then, because the audience for every book – until Susie Hinton came along – was assumed to be adult.  If you couldn’t handle the language, you searched for something easier.  Apart from Hinton, the only people bridging that gap were authors like Roald Dahl, who wrote across age ranges.  If you didn’t like it, you could slink off home and read Charlotte’s Web for the fortieth time.

It’s weirdly embarrassing to list your favourite books.  I guess you always think that people will judge you, or your work, on the basis of it.  It’s always tempting to include a few ‘grand literature’ titles – oh yes, Of Mice and Men had a profound impact on me, or Certainly, I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov simply oodles – but that would be lying.  Of Mice and Men is an awesome book, but it never kept me up at night.  All of the books on this list have kept me up at night, whether it was through wonder, or terror, or some poignant tone that moved me deep, or just the fact that I loved the writing so much I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

If you would like to list your desert island books and tell me about them, I’d feel honoured.

And now to news and events, ahem.  Yes, we had a Melbourne launch for Every Word!  It was lovely, and thank you all over again to the people who came on the night.  Readings Carlton were wonderful, Angela Savage did an amazing job as the host, and cracked me up by challenging me to read out one of the pashing scenes in Every Word in front of the audience, an idea which I found mind-boggling and blushingly declined.

I also received some incredible reviews this week.  The Tales Compendium, YA Midnight Reads, The Rest is Still Unwritten and Novels on the Run all posted gorgeous reviews of Every Word.  What had me most excited though was that Amie Kaufman, the Aussie co-author of These Broken Stars, wrote a glowing review of Every Breath and posted it on Pub Crawl.  I was pretty blown away by that, because I loved These Broken Stars, and it’s always so nice to get a pat on the back from another author, someone whose work you enjoy and admire.  So I’m still kinda floaty about that :)

So I mentioned events, right?  We are having another party!  The local launch of Every Word, the Castlemaine Big Bash, is happening in the Castlemaine Library at 6pm this Friday 20 June.  The library is having me in early for a reading and Q&A event at 5pm, and the launch will dovetail straight into that event, so come for both sessions or one, but please do come!  If you’re in town, it’d be wonderful to see you.

I also mentioned I’d be in Sydney soon – well, after a bit of organising by the lovely Lara Wallace, Allen & Unwin publicist and all-round awesome chick, it’s been decided that I will be dropping in at a number of bookstores on the Friday I arrive, so I can sign stock.  I won’t be staying in any one place for long, but the last stop on the bookstore-hop will be Kinokuniya.  So I will be at Kinokuniya Sydney from 4.30pm on Friday 27 June, ready to sign books or just have a chat.  If you’re in Sydney and you’d like to drop by and say hello, I would love to see you :)

Before that, I will also be appearing at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, for their Next Big Thing gig on Monday 23 June at 6.15pm - you can go book here, it should be a lot of fun.  Today I'm visiting Castlemaine Secondary College (in about half an hour!) and Wendouree Library on Wed 25 June - contact that library for more details.

Until then, have a great week!  Maybe see you at the Big Bash on Friday, if not, catch you round town sometime.

xx Ellie

Rachel and Mycroft go gangbusters…a post-Christmas post

I know!  I said I would post before Christmas!  And that didn’t happen!

Apologies in advance for Excessive Exclamation Mark Usage, but I’m very excited. I’ve had this secret for weeks, you see, and I haven’t been able to tell.  But now the ink is nearly dry on the paperwork, and my agent Catherine Drayton has given me permission to spill the beans.

So I’m extremely happy to let you all know that Every Breath will be published in Canada and North America by Tundra, an imprint of Random House Canada, in Fall 2014.

Woot!

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Rachel and Mycroft are going travelling! I’m thrilled for them, and very proud. They’ll have a new family, and a new bunch of readers to love them. Yes, it makes me all teary just thinking about it! (my babies! *sniff*)

People from Canada have been in touch with me, and it’s all very exciting. Tundra is also the home of one of the sweetest books of all time, in my opinion – Anne of Green Gables, by LM Montgomery.

So it feels like kismet!

Anne, meet Rachel and James.

Rachel and James, meet Anne. (James, put that cigarette out and stop slouching.)

So that is my biggest and most delicious news of late. I’m sorry I didn’t get to put up a final 2013 post – after the interview with Barry Lyga, things got very busy. We went camping over Christmas (camping – we love camping. But some people take camping very seriously. There was a guy near our campsite who raked outside his tent. I kid you not. IT’S A NATIONAL PARK, FRIEND. If you’re bringing the rake, you may as well bring the leaf blower) and we had a lovely time with new friends (hi, Liz and Paul!)

Then two days after we arrived back home, Melbourne sweated through its most severe heatwave in a couple of hundred years – five days over 41 degrees Celsius (that’s ** Fahrenheit, for those of you from other climes). After a few scares with grassfires nearby – as in, down the road from our house – we decided that the bravest course was pragmatic cowardice and escaped to Melbourne with our dog, cockatiel and budgies.

We just returned on Saturday night, and that was when I heard from Catherine that I could tell you all the awesome news about the Canadian/US deal. Now we’re settling back into our last weeks of summer holidays - cleaning the house, washing mounds of laundry, watering all the dead plants… Alas, the garden was decimated in the heat, but our chooks were well-provided for and are still clucking around with their new babies, completely oblivious.

But here’s an abbreviated round-up of all the stuff I wanted to post before Christmas – a post-Christmas post, if you will. For instance, I wanted to tell you about my fave books of 2013. Here they are!

The Curseworker series – Holly Black

The third and final book, Black Heart, was only released here last year, so I reread everything.  Magic and the mob, with a distinct Grifters feel.  Taut, sensual, hypnotic, not to mention smart and political.

The Madness Underneath (Shades of London #2) – Maureen Johnson

A supernatural mystery series of the highest calibre.  Johnson never does the expected thing, and her writing of dialogue and character interaction is so succinct and tight it does my head in.  The ending of this book nearly killed me.

Clockwork Princess – Cassandra Clare

Pretty much a case study in how to end a series, second only to Harry Potter.  I totally blubbered my way through the finale.

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

The Perks of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky

I put off reading both these books, intimidated by the subject matter and the reputation of the authors – I should never have waited.

The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion

Outright entertaining and sweet-hearted.  No schmaltz, just fantastic characters and gorgeous writing.  And Graeme is a lovely guy!

Dark Horse – Honey Brown

A new discovery for me – she has four books out, this is her newest. Adult psychological thrillers and crime, this woman is the queen, for my money. Edgy, sensual, suspenseful – and Australian. Big tick.

Life in Outer Space – Melissa Keil

Geek love. 80’s movies. Boy-nerds and girl-nerds and swoon. World of Warcraft. What, you need more? (Just quietly, I liked this more than Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell)

Hate List - Jennifer Brown

An older release, and it knocked my socks off.  Uncompromising, shocking, poignant. The ending left me in tears.

The Keepers – Lian Tanner

Middle-grade fantasy adventure AWESOME. Beautiful writing and nuanced characters – my younger boys and I fell in love with these books.

I also wanted to tell you which books I’m most looking forward to reading in 2014 – here they are!

The Boy in the Smoke –Maureen Johnson

(I'm super keen for this)

The Naturals – Jennifer Lyn Barnes

Game – Barry Lyga

The Last Shot – Michael Adams

The Murder Complex – Lindsay Cummings

Dr Sleep – Stephen King

Dead Silent – Sharon Jones

Anything new by Peter Temple

Through The Cracks - Honey Brown

The One - Kiera Cass

Cinnamon Girl - Melissa Keil

Winger - Andrew Smith

Lair of Dreams - Libba Bray

Razorhurst - Justine Larbalestier

The Coldest Girl in Cold Town - Holly Black

‘And here’s what I read over my summer holidays, just for the heck of it!:

Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell

Looking for Alaska – John Green

Paper Towns – John Green

The Left Hand of God – Paul Hoffman

The Good Daughter – Honey Brown

After the Darkness – Honey Brown

Fall for Anything – Courtney Summers

You Don’t Even Know – Sue Lawson

The Waking Dark – Robin Wasserman

White Dog – Peter Temple

Secret - Brigid Kemmerer

That’s it, I’m all book-listed out. Finally, before I go, a quick Every Word update:

Every Word is being copyedited and polished up, and will be going to the printers in March. It will be released in June. I’ll let you know more details as they come to light, but that’s all I can give you right now, except I’m seriously buzzed about showing you this book. I like it a lot. I think you will too.

Fingers crossed.

Xx Ellie