toast for tea

Who Nicked the Dog? has been given the flick. Sounds like a title for a quirky, fluffy sort of story without a lot of depth. Which this book is not . The plot, subplots, themes and characters in this story need a more substantial title to sit on the front cover. See – I should pay more attention to my nearly-fourteen-year-old-daughter editor. The new proposed title is Lucky or Not . It works on a number of levels: Was Mum lucky, after all, to win the competition, when she ends up in hospital, instead of riding camels around Mongolia? Is Brody’s new dog really Mr Ironclad’s Lucky? Will Ish and Molly get to the farm in time to save Lucky from Uncle Vinny’s schizophrenic rampage? The big question is whether Lucky or Not is enough of a hook. The questionnaires are coming back with very positive responses from my group of ‘readers’. So far, people have told me they can’t put it down. Yippee! That the ending works. Yippee! That there is enough depth. Yippee! That they like the characters; ...

I push past rows of tee shirts emblazoned with “The Bitch is Back” and “I’m too pretty for homework”. The music is so loud you can’t hear yourself say, ‘the music’s loud in here, isn’t it?’ My thirteen year old is looking impatient. She’s standing at the back of the shop with one hand on her hip and a dark look on her face, and I still have to get past three racks of leggings, a table of see-through cardigans – surely they don’t wear these for warmth – and a row of skirts decorated with skulls and daggers. I dodge underneath a rack of singlets just like the ones my mother made me wear in winter, except these are fluoro coloured – mine were Omo white. And I’d worn mine under my clothes to keep me warm, not like the shop assistant, who’s made a feature of hers, wearing about five at once. A girl with incredibly shiny hair and a spotty face pushes politely between me and a row of jeans. Their legs are so narrow, you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze your arms into them. The noise of...

Haven’t posted for a few weeks – sorry! I’ve been flat out with my novel. The first draft is finished – hooray – and I’ve nearly finished revising and tightening it ready to send off for a formal assessment. Then there’ll be more revising and tightening and rewriting – not too much rewriting, I hope! – before pitching it to a publisher. That’s when I’ll ask you all to start crossing your fingers and toes and anything else you can think of! In the meantime, here are a few snippets to give you a taste — When Ish goes looking for a lost dog, he ends up searching for his father’s love, and finds more than he expected along the way. A story about a boy, a ghost, adventure and acceptance. The sky looks like my sister’s doona cover – black, dotted with stars and a misty moon in the middle. The tops of the gum trees, bending in the breeze, are casting scary shadows on the tombstones around me. It’s as if I’m watching giant grey ghosts creeping out of their graves, one by one. * Two sets of fo...