Paint-splattering pinball, Veronica Lando’s ‘The Whispering’, New York in the 1930s, and Indigenous crime fiction
The book giveaway is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
So much goodness this week – reviews, goings-on, random thoughts, and assorted sauciness.
On the home front, my novel is still taking shape… slowly. But surprisingly, not painfully slowly. I’m just relieved and chuffed to see forward momentum happening. And what I’m desperately churning out in time for my writers’ group deadline, I’m not hating. I’m kind of loving, in fact. It’s not perfect and I’ll need to go back and fill in some minor details like… er, how is this scene furthering the plot? But overall, there’s something salvageable in what’s coming out. I’m understanding the characters better. There are some fun scenes and some entertaining banter is happening between the characters. The main problem right now? If I only had a plot.
A mere trifle considering this is intended to be a crime novel. Reveals, red herrings, clues, hints of people’s true characters… They don’t create themselves.
Anyway, I’m getting there. I’m meeting a friend for lunch on Friday who will be able to help me fill in details about childrearing. My main character and her friend are parents and I’m not, so I need all the help I can get in this area. I’m working on smoothing out these early issues, so I’m confident I’ll be able to enrich the world I’m creating and move further into the story. It’s exciting. It’s fulfilling. It’s terrifying.
Stay tuned for future tales of ‘How I’m agonising over attempting to write a novel’.
News
1. Please forgive the pun, but this is the week’s most charming story: ‘Ineke Blakeman longed for a charm bracelet throughout her life. Sixty years later, a stranger made it happen’. That’s it, the ABC wins the internet this week. The story’s about the kindness of a stranger who heard Ineke’s story about her lifelong desire for a charm bracelet and enlisted the help of other kind people to make it happen. I was chatting with a friend a month or so back about this exact thing. Sure, we shouldn’t have a huge attachment to material goods but many of us would have a tale of ‘the one thing I wanted but never received’. And there’s some emotion behind it – the meaning behind not getting the item. I think it’s often important to nurture your inner child in this way and fulfill that childhood dream if you can. In this case, someone else did and brought two lives together. The two women met in person in March and have since become friends. This is gorgeous. More of this, please.
2. Proud to call myself a South Aussie right now – we’re the first state in the country to introduce an Indigenous voice to parliament. It’s a fab symbolic start, but let’s hope we follow it up with substance as well. Genuine listening. A sharing of ideas and power and prosperity. Because it’s not a zero-sum game – we can include others without losing anything ourselves. Studies show more that more diverse voices at the table makes for better decision-making. We can all benefit and feel closer to each other while doing it.
3. An intriguing way to sell fashion – celeb-fave brand Telfar has a sales model that involves weekly drops of new items and a pricing experiment where the pricetag changes depending on how many customers commit to buying an item. Whether it’s a gimmick to drum up publicity or a genuine attempt to understand their clientele and the popularity of their products, it’s worth the industry watching how this all plays out.
4. Well, this is a cheery little infographic (sarcasm font): a representation of data breaches in Australia. So many of us in this country have been caught up in at least one data breach in the last few years, including me. It was very much not appreciated. Apart from the hassle of potentially having to cancel and change over your details on a number of important documents, credit cards, etc, you worry about who’s got your contact details, medical records, and other pieces of private info and how they’re being used. Are your digital unmentionables laid out on the dark web to be used for nefarious schemes? Will it come back to bite you in years to come? Even though we simply hand over way too much info to strangers online these days and are way too blasé about this stuff, we’re still plenty worried. Or should be. Even as incomplete as this data is due to industry being allowed to self-report (snort), these big blobs of breaches are a huge concern.
Reviews
1. Despite my utter lack of talent for it, I’m partial to a game of pinball – colourful themed boards, flashing lights, balls disappearing and then popping up in hidden grottos… What’s not to like? Pinball’s also perfect, in theory, as a casual mobile game for sitting in the waiting room at the dentist or on a long-haul flight when you can’t concentrate on much else. There’s only one problem: I’ve tried a few mobile versions, and even the ones that get decent reviews are… not great. They tend to have clunky game mechanics and daggy, lacklustre graphics. Creators could really go to town with creating these fantastical themes for the games, but they really don’t seem to put in much effort. INKS is different. I’ve just discovered it over the weekend and I’ve been playing the hell out of it on my phone ever since. Here’s one of my screens:
It really is pinball for grown-ups. Think: a no-fuss interface; pleasantly minimalist xylophone music; and in lieu of spaceships, TV-shows, or rock bands for themes, there are various arrangements of paintballs on the walls which you hit to create bright works of art. Seriously cool and available on both iOS and Android platforms for a few bucks (I paid $4.89).
2. Full points to Skinfix Barrier+ foaming oil cleanser for making my face feel clean and refreshed after I applied it and washed it off, but it smelled faintly gross… an umami medicinal scent. I don’t really think cleansers have to do a whole lot of heavy lifting, skincare-wise – they’re basically a soap, right? One that just has to not make you break out or dry your skin too much. It’s a pretty simple task. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that it smell pleasant while it’s doing this. This stuff isn’t cheap either ($58.00 for 177ml). I received this as a sample and I won’t be buying it. The brand’s other offerings might be brilliant, I don’t know, but this cleanser ain’t it.
3. An intriguing discussion here in The Guardian about the concept of longevity. Thinking about how to prolong our lives and feel better as we age makes me a tad twitchy. There’s lots to gain by talking about it, but we also tend to slide into the space where we equate being slim, looking young, and being spritely when we’re older as some sort of sign of virtue. Often, it’s a combination of genetics, artful use of visual sleights of hand (Insta filters, Botox, and make-up, I’m looking at you), and having the disposable dollars to invest in yourself. But I wholeheartedly agree that we need to move into the ‘Medicine 3.0’ phase of emphasising prevention. When searching for experts for an article a while back I came across a GP practice interstate that focused on preventative medicine. Genuinely, not just using it as some sort of catch-phrase to lure new clientele because it sounded good. Imagine if our health system was so well-funded and resourced that we could move beyond putting out metaphorical fires and into stopping fires from happening. We need to make this dream a reality.
4. Wow, could Veronica Lando leave some writing talent for the rest of us, please? I stayed up ’til midnight last night finishing her debut crime novel The Whispering and I can see why the manuscript won the Banjo Prize in 2021. It’s a crime novel set in Far North Queensland, out since mid-2022. The oppressive feel of the rainforest and its dangers are ever-present throughout the story, which involves a journalist going back to his hometown to investigate the disappearance of a man in the wilderness. The setting details and descriptions of what the main character, Callum, is smelling, tasting, feeling, etc really makes you feel as though you’re there with him, which is an aspect of storytelling I deeply value when I’m reading a book. The supporting characters are spot-on as well – totally believable. There are two timelines going on here – thirty years ago and now, which are expertly woven together by Lando – along with various plot twists I didn’t see coming. As much as I idolise Jane Harper and can’t get enough of her Aussie noir novels, I think Lando might have topped her with this story, especially considering it’s her debut. She has another book, The Drowning Girls, due out in July this year. I’m now eagerly awaiting it.
5. Want to feel like you’re back in 1930s New York? Thanks to peeps like NASS on YouTube, you can. I’m so grateful to people who do this type of remastering work and give us that just-stepped-out-of-a-time-machine experience. NASS has also done 1910s Paris and a bunch of other cities in various vintage eras. Fascinating stuff.
6. My Mecca Beauty Loop Level 2 box arrived this week containing two Frank Body (a vegan brand, which is cool) products – glycolic body scrub and ‘Perky’ sculpting body hydrator. I used them in the bath after shaving my legs. I have to say, I’m not totally convinced by the scrub – it smells faintly like Listerine and the glycolic acid in it increases your risk of sunburn. As someone with fair skin, I’m super-careful to avoid sun damage, so this sort of think makes me nervous. Feels like it gives with one hand and takes with the other. Allegedly, it’s great for those pink lumps and body blemishes, but that’s not usually a big problem with my skin. The ‘Perky’ hydrator, on the other hand, left me impressed. It comes out as a thick cream and spreads easily over the skin. If you’re expecting it to smell like coffee (one of the ingredients), you’ll be sorely disappointed -- it has more of a coconut/cocoa butter fragrance with a chemical undertone, but it sure does the business on the hydration front. My legs are the smoothest they’ve been in yonks after using both these products.
7. An Indigenous crime novel? Sounds like Aldi’s slogan: ‘Good. Different.’ I’m keen to read Julie Janson’s Madukka the River Serpent based on this review in The Conversation. Aside from the fact it sounds like a unique, cracking read, I reckon it could carry lessons for me trying to write my novel – about weaving in several threads of crime happening at once, and how to treat a story about characters who are fobbed off and disbelieved. To take a commercial tack, it sounds like the market is wide open to explore more Indigenous crime fiction, harnessing how popular outback noir is at the moment. I’m here for it.
Giveaway
You’re going to love this one, I promise! This week the giveaway is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Pop your name and email address in here to enter.
Playlist of the Week
Warning: may suck you into the K-pop vortex if you’re not already swirling in it:
1. Fantastic Baby – BIGBANG
2. One Day – MONSTA X
3. Gashina – SUNMI
4. Shine – PENTAGON
5. A Song Written Easily – ONEUS
6. BBoom BBoom - MOMOLAND
7. Tomorrow – Tablo, TAEYANG
8. STAR - Jessi
9. LOVE SCENARIO – iKON
10. i’M THE TREND – (G)I-DLE
11. HIP – MAMAMOO
12. Open Mind – WONHO
13. I Don’t Know You Anymore – Eric Nam
14. Picasso & Fernande Olivier - HyunA
15. Dang Dang Dang – Supreme Team