Psychopaths, Swifties on the war path, and people-pleasing can F-off
Plus, a Q&A with a gothic fiction author pal : )
This morning, I booked a little four-day pre-Christmas staycation at a glorious, French-themed hotel. We looked at a Queensland holiday but weren’t game to fly interstate with all the delays, cancellations, and lost luggage mishaps still happening. I made sure our hotel had a pool, though. I’m determined to spend most of my time by constantly wearing a swimsuit, cocktail in hand. That’s the life, man!
We also bought this year’s advent calendar. We ended up going with one of my Raves and Faves picks from last week – Exit the Game’s Hunt for the Golden Book. Can’t wait to crack it open!
I’m feeling burnt out after a fortnight or so of intense, day-and-night-and-weekends work. Things have calmed down somewhat, but now I’m desperately trying to catch up on all the things I’d neglected while I was insanely busy. Getting there, and proud that I finished a new short story last week, one I’d had rattling around in my brain for a month or so, inspired by a dream. Surprisingly, it emerged on the page closely resembling what I’d imagined in my head. Usually, the story either twists in a strange new direction as you write it up or it ends up being a pale imitation of what you’d envisaged. Hopefully my feedback group who are currently reading it don’t think it belongs in the bin. It’s a different animal from what I’ve shown them before.
I’m feeling better having fun and sun on the horizon in the next month, at least. How are you grooving yourself into the holiday vibe?
News
1. As someone who had her own anxiety-inducing ticket experience recently attempting to book K-pop tickets in a pre-sale, I can appreciate how browned off T-Swift fans are right now in the US. I wasn’t dealing with Ticketmaster, but apparently the tickets I was vying for and missed out on were oversold – only 30% were supposed to be allocated to the pre-sale, but instead they released the entire lot. Luckily, new concert dates opened up, so it kinda ended up being no harm, no foul. Those agonising moments waiting in the queue, scrambling for tickets, then being randomly logged out by the system and watching my 10 minutes tick down while I tried to get back into my account, though. Ugh. This Taylor Swift ticketing disaster sounds many circles of hell worse. It’ll be intriguing to see whether there are any repercussions for Ticketmaster. Let’s not hold our breath.
2. How joy-filled does this young fella look, doing dance, playing football, and loving life? A boy in my primary school was cleaning up the dance comps until he copped so much teasing over participating in supposed ‘girlish’ pursuits that he quit. He was a confident, smart, popular, good-looking kid too. If even he caved to the pressure, can you imagine the damage to the self-esteem of other kids who weren’t quite so mainstream and well-adjusted? Anyway, my point is: I hope this kid in 2022 no longer has to put up with as much of that kind of toxic masculinity crap. He’s healthy and happy and that’s what matters.
Reviews
1. Ooft, yup, right here, that’s me. A sweet little article/comic hybrid in the Post reminding people pleasers that if don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything, and in fact, if you’re going to feel resentful afterwards, that’s a sure sign you should be saying ‘no’ instead. Putting yourself first every now and then isn’t selfish, it’s self-care.
2. I’ve absolutely ripped through Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian in the last week. The premise is intriguing, if far-fetched: a university is offering free tuition to a small group of psychopaths in exchange for their participation in a series of experiments run by the psychology department. When a string of murders happens on campus, a handful of the study participants band together to track down the killer, but who can be trusted? Honestly, I wish I’d saved reading this for when I’m officially on holidays, because this would be such a worthy poolside read for those of us more into thrillers than romance novels (not that there’s anything wrong with a good love story!). Although we’re talking psychopaths here, the action is very PG – no real gore or disturbing images. I wouldn’t say I found the ending 100% satisfying, but it was good enough and the rest was so entertaining that I’m more than willing to forgive a slightly blah conclusion. Four stars.
3. Time to introduce you to my concealer of choice – IT Cosmetics’ Bye Bye Under Eye. I scored a sample of this a while back and dug it so much I bought a tube. My shade is 13.0 Light Natural. Great coverage without being too thick and cakey, easily blendable, non-drying, and realistic skin colours, at least on me. Dark under-eye circles aren’t really a problem for me, but I tested the sample out and it didn’t nestle into wrinkles and accentuate them like other concealers would. This stuff is golden!
Q&A
with Gothic horror author R A Wodecki (Part 1)
Meet one of my bestest pals, Rosalie! We bumped into each other at multiple Writers SA workshops several years back, recognised that we shared some common interests (books where chicks do adventurous, terrifying things) and decided to become friends.
As I mentioned in last week’s Becks and the City, Rosalie is now a bona fide indie author. Her first novel is available on Amazon now. Apart from being one of the kindest, coolest human beings to walk the earth, she’s also uber quirky – she’s worked in a morgue, and enjoys sword-fighting, storms, science, and taking photos of moths. Perfect for a gothic horror author, no?
We sat in a cafe to chat about her road to writerdom. This is part 1 because it’s going to take at least one more newsletter to contain our exuberant ranting.
If you’d like to read more words about her and from her, Rosalie can be found on her website, plus as theloveofwords on Twitter, Mastodon and Cohost.
Beck: What did you grow up reading and loving as a kid?
Rosalie: I got really lucky, actually. My mum was into books, so I'd read anything she gave me. I had a librarian in school – I can still remember, the first day they let me go in the library I was like, ‘Ooooh, all the books’. And this woman, I can't remember her above her knees, but she said ‘Okay, so you have a library card that's for kids, but you can read any book in this whole building’. And she meant anything. Anything anywhere. She didn't send me to the kids’ section, she sent me to the books. So, I read everything as a kid but what stuck is genre books, and particularly science fiction, fantasy, gothic, and horror, but not explicit horror. I've got a really particular taste, I like for people to be scared rather than really unsafe.
Maybe not unsafe, but there's stuff I don't feel comfortable with and I don't like the usual victims. That's probably more it.
Growing up, there are photos of me as a kid, with my dad looking over my shoulder quite confused because he wasn't really a book person. But I'm reading a book and it's bent backwards, and it looks like I've dropped it in the bath four times and my hands don't really look big enough to hold it, but I was totally, totally in love.
Beck: What would be your ultimate favourite books or authors?
Rosalie: Oh, well, it's a bit hard to not say her this week, but Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein is probably my favourite ever book.
It's just such a complete novel and it's so phenomenal of its time, and now it holds up so well and it's terrifying. The story of the monster, it's actually his story, it's not Dr. Frankenstein's story and he's suffering in the hands of others.
That's what I mean when I'm interested in humanity. It's that thing of, yep, you can walk through the world but you can’t ignore someone else's pain. And that felt like why that story is so good.
I always wanted to be Terry Pratchett. Miss him so much that it hurts and he's just got this thing – it’s again, back to the humanitarian thing, back to the viewing of people as people and that kick-ass comedy. Just not haha-funny, just really gets people and that's what makes it humorous.
Oh, Pat Cadigan, ‘dirty’ Pat Cadigan, master science fiction author. She was awesome. I remember reading her stuff really young. Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffery, Tricia Sullivan, not a lot of people know her, but she's like cyber punk, science fiction.
That's who I want to grow up to be. But I couldn't write like her. And she's so good at surrealism too, so you can enter her world and have no idea what's about to happen. But it's still a coherent story. So magnificent. I'm forgetting someone really – I can feel it. Isaac Asimov!
Shirley Jackson as well. Her novels are so slender that they have every single word being considered so carefully and I don't know, if you could go back in time and meet someone it would probably be her and she'd probably be quite bored by me and dismissive and I'd love it.
Beck: Tell us about how you've come to be a writer, your pathway.
Rosalie: It started as a kid and I've always written words and they can't not be written. I've been to courses where authors have said some people have a sensation of a log jam effect and if you're not writing it's filling up and it's making your writing stultify because you are full of ideas. And that's what it feels like to me.
I had a bit of a rough childhood, not being mean to my family because I love them, but we didn't have a lot of everything. So, I never really thought I could be a writer. I just was one. And then, I don't know, I started going to courses, to work out, ‘I wonder if I could be okay at writing?’ Then the internet came along and writing communities popped up. One that's now gone but was very formative for me was Scrine, which was stories one sentence at a time. It was so good. And it was run by a dude who just wanted to support other writers.
At the same time, I was becoming a professional writer online, editing websites. I had the professional career growing and so, there's that little girl inside me going, ‘What if you wrote things? What if you didn't pretend that it was just for you and actually stood up and said, “I can write”?’ and see how my voice breaks when I say that because it's hard to believe? But then you go to these courses and it's full of people like that.
We've been inside and creating stories inside and maybe writing them up or maybe not, but we are just waiting to be allowed to do it. Up until this, I've written novellas too, but I've mostly written more short things. Then there was a day at Writers SA, which probably was the SA Writers Centre then – I think this guy’s first name is Dave. I'd submitted a short story to him for review, it's part of a course and it was a ghost story. And he said, ‘You know what? This is good, but you could write a whole story. You could write a full-fledged, hardcore, go right at it ghost story – a book.’
My mind was saying, ‘Do you know what you just did to my whole universe? You blew it into little particles.’ Because I think about Asimov and Pratchett or Ursula Le Guin, goddesses. Goddesses of the whole universe, never mind literature deities, but to my gods, they are so amazing. But he said that and I thought, ‘You know what? I could.’
Giveaway
A tiny pause between giveaways until next week… but in the meantime, last week’s winner of Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley is Melanie Whittle. I’ve emailed you, Melanie! Yay!
Playlist of the Week
Floaty tunes I’d crack out for aerial hammock class:
1. the lakes – bonus track - Taylor Swift
2. Angels Like You - Miley Cyrus
3. Crashing - ILLENIUM, Bahari
4. Astronaut In The Ocean - Masked Wolf
5. Moody - Savannah Sgro
6. You Right X Luxurious - Scizor
7. Save Your Tears - The Weeknd, Ariana Grande
8. Rewrite The Stars - James Arthur, Anne-Marie
9. WAY - Carlie Hanson
10. Finally // beautiful stranger - Halsey
11. July - Noah Cyrus
12. Electric Love - BORNS
13. Head Above Water - Avril Lavigne
14. Hello Again - Eat More Cake
15. This Is Me - Keala Settle