Swapping thread for words?

So I have swapped the laptop for the sewing machine that I recently inherited. This weekend’s projects – an apron, napkins and a cushion cover. Don’t worry. It’s just a phase!

Mrs Underhilll Book Club meeting # 4

Some of us recently finished reading MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'm not going to instigate any discussion points right now although I really do need someone to explain to me why the brother's name was "chapter eleven". And I did enjoy looking up info about Tiresias who was the son of Everes and the nymph Chariclo; he was a blind prophet, the most famous soothsayer of ancient Greece. And I still have on my TO DO list the research topics of Edward Gibbon and the journals of Madame de Stael to keep me occupied. Suffice to say there are two things to be tackled right now:

1) Do any of the readers want to meet in the flesh for a wine and cheese discussion of MIDDLESEX? (Welcome to have it at my place.) Or shall we do it online?

2) Do we have a suggestion for the next book and some inspiring discussion notes to go along with it?

Email me here (or don't, some of you I am just keeping in the loop in case you are keen now and then to participate) or log on and comment on the blog: mrsunderhilldotcom.blogspot.com.

Remember to feel free to pass this on.

This is Thriller!

So a couple of people have asked me if the previous post, WRITING AT NIGHT, was based on true events. While I have imagined eyes outside the sunroom - no - this has never actually happened to me and I pray to God it never does. I don't think my heart would re-start. I'll take it as a compliment though that it was rooted enough in reality. In fact it was a little exercise set by a friend after attending the Cleary Horror Seminar. I left it to the last moment, of course, so it was rushed and hammy but, hey, it was fun.

Speaking of Cleary, I had a constructive four hours of cleaning my office on Friday (internet connection was down and this job had been on the TO DO list for about three months so the universe gave me no choice) and I discovered notes from that seminar including books and films to follow up.

If you're in the market for an old fashioned fright then look into The Penny Dreadfuls. Apparently, when tracing the history of suspense novels and stories, much is owed to these nineteenth century British publications which, according to good old Wikipedia, usually contained "lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing a penny".

As it goes the stories were mostly reprints or rewrites of Gothic thrillers such as The Monk or The Castle of Otranto, as well as new stories about famous criminals. Some of the most famous of these penny part stories were The String of Pearls: A Romance (which introduced Sweeney Todd), The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial, The Mysteries of Paris) and Varney the Vampire. I SO have to get my hands on that one. The library doesn't have it but good old Amazon does so come on down Mr Postman.

Also recommended by Mr Cleary was Polidori's The Vampyre. I can't get that at the library so I am purchasing a collection instead which sounds dead fascinating: Three Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, The Vampyre.

(On the vampire sideline for a second, I am slowly and steadily getting access (don't ask) to Season 2 of True Blood and, now that we have a new flash telly, the blood sucking, nipple biting, swamp stalking action is only going to be all the more gruesome and delicious. Already buff chests will fill the 40 inch screen and I'll have to have a flat lemonade and a cool bath afterwards.)

Then Cleary recommended looking at the story of Ed Gein (27 August 27 1906 – 26 July 1984) whose murderous ways inspired characters such as Norman Bates in 'Psycho', Jame Gumb from 'The Silence of the Lambs', and Leatherface from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Hmmm, I think I'll leave Mr Gein's story alone for now although it is interesting to see how screenwriters lift the stories from the daily news and transform them into screen nightmares.

The final Cleary recommendation, for those on a scary slope, was the script for the film, Don't Look Now. That movie was REALLY creepy. Don't think I could watch it again but apparently the author, Alan Scott, is a master so, while I haven't tracked down the document yet, I'll give it a red hot go (tips welcome!).

Writing at night

She’s tapping away at the keyboard in the light of a small desk lamp. An Arthur Conan Doyle book is on her right, something about a devil’s foot. She is typing, copying word-for-word. She does this when she cannot sleep. Somewhere, sometime, somebody told her to transcribe the works of great authors to help improve her work.

Her office is the sunroom. The wall beside her is all glass, with glass French doors opening on to the patio. It is dark, cold and wet outside. The moon is full.

We are outside, in the dark, and we are watching her. Our eyes crawl over her body, from the worn, grey slippers on her feet to her breasts hanging loosely beneath the oversized ‘Bada Bing!’ t-shirt she wears, a souvenir that came with her boxed set of The Sopranos.

Her typing slows down. She feels us. She looks out into the night.

She sees the shape of the huge potted palm on the patio. She sees her own reflection in the glass. Then she sees the person outside. He stands still, just staring in at her, his hands tucked casually into his jacket pockets. Their eyes meet.

Her fright is so great she stops breathing. No sounds come from her. Her hands grip the keyboard and a string of letters spew along the computer screen. He moves a little closer to the window, peers in and grins. “Boo!” he says in a low voice. Then he turns and walks towards the gate, just steps away. She is looking at him but glancing to the right as well. The French door is the least secure in the house. A child could force it in. Where is the phone?

She moves her chair back slightly, slowly. He places a hand on the gate, opens it and walks out. He leaves it swinging open behind him.

To exit the house that way one must walk down the drive way. To do this one must pass the rear window of the sunroom, the one crowded with a wild rose bush. She hears his steps at that window now and turns. He’s looking in again. “Boo!” he says and laughs. He raps hard on the window and she jumps and screams. She is up and running through the house, searching for the phone.

Triple 0, she dials as she moves back to the dining room, beside the sunroom. She wants to know where he is now. Has he gone back into the yard, back to the patio and that flimsy French door?

He is moving past the dining room windows, his steps pass on to the lounge room and then stop. She stands in the hallway where she can see the front door and the lounge room windows. On the other end of the phone the emergency operator answers. “He’s here, he’s here,” she cries into the phone. “Send someone now. There is someone here.”

The man leans in again, to the lounge room window this time, and raps once more. And then he is running away.

(Not for publication beyond this blog site)

Who's afraid of a new laptop?

Holey Moley but I am slack. This is an ongoing theme. Another deadline has been and gone, another 40th has been attended (this time in Bangalow, NSW, near the glorious but oh-so-rainy Byron Bay) and a new financial year diary has been started. Oh how I love the end of the financial year ... such a good excuse to buy new stationery. Of course, the thing I need more in life is excuses to faff around with filing, new pens and stationery!

I also have my new – dribble dribble – HP laptop which is shiny and fabulous but which has not been hooked up yet. It’s been almost six years since the old Toshiba I’m banging on now first entered my life. The arrival of the new ‘portal to the virtual world’ is quite a watershed. The Toshiba was my big purchase to launch my life as a freelancer and a self employed gal. It got dropped on the floor and damaged in the first weeks while it lived with me for three months in a granny flat in Byron Bay and it has done some rounds since then but, in recent times, it has been anchored to the desk in my sun room and it has churned out the work that I realised today has culminated in a whopping 288 or so invoices. There is probably more but I did not have my handmade invoice system quite refined. So … what will a new laptop bring? Bloody digital TV viewing for a start! And what does that say about the development of my bumbling career? That I am more interested in watching telly than working perhaps?

So … Edward Albee was on the 7.30 Report the other night. I confess I did not even realise he was still alive. Came across as a very civilised (81-year-old) man. Hard beginnings - adopted by a family who seemed to have no understanding of him and for whom he felt little affection. You don't hear people admit to that often ... everyone these days is too busy talking about being grateful and bla bla. He did acknowledge that they'd provided him with a fine education and the worth of that could not be measured. My folks - whom I did feel a great bond to and who did not adopt me but had me forced upon them by the good Lord himself (or the bloke down below depending on who you talk to) - also directed their funds into my schooling rather than buying a home and other grand investments and I have always, always, felt that that was money well spent and put me on a path of abundance they could never have imagined.

Apparently Albee is in Australia to conduct script development workshops. Man how do you find out about such things and which lucky sons of bitches get to go? I confess I've only read Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Such a pleb I am!

Albee was particularly erudite on the topic of race relations in the USA. He once wrote The Death of Bessie Smith, based on a night in Memphis in the 30s when a celebrated blues singers bled to death after a car accident because a white hospital refused to treat her. I've just done my favourite thing and placed an order on Amazon for the play so stay tuned. I haven't read a play since The Little Foxes. Should be fun.

Should I mention the passing of Michael J? Everyone else is ... I'll just say that on Friday night Mrs Peters and I cut the rug to a bit of Jackson 5 in the loungeroom and I did do a memorial moon walk in the office last week, just to show my respect you understand. (And, of course, Farrah died and we all know the impact the hairy one had on me recently.)

Back to bookish topics, have you heard about BookCrossing where people leave perfectly good books lying around in public spaces to be read, shared and passed on anonymously to anyone, anywhere? I heard about it on The Book Show, of course.

Here's the organisation's spiel should you be interested:
BookCrossing is earth-friendly and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure.Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

Cool huh?

Time travelling

I am so bad. I mean, how long was the last time I wrote here - about 800 years ago? So much has happened. So much does happen doesn't it? Unless you're locked up in an iron lung somewhere.

I mean almost a month has gone past since I bleated and blogged. I know I only do this for myself but surely I could be a more faithful and dedicated correspondent to me, my one and only reader.

Everyone says you have to keep blog posts brief. I make it a habit to listen to everyone and believe all that they say. So, in a snapshot, recent writerly connected activities include:

• The writing of my final folio piece for my RMIT 'Introduction To Fiction Writing' short course (we also presented it in front of an RMIT big wig and now I must decide if I will enrol in Professional Writing and Editing next year and actually try and pen a novel).
• A small piece by moi in Epicure, The Age, about the Henry Jones Hotel
• The writing of a press release and the various hawking of it to get coverage for The Rehe Family Benefit we recently held. See Patsy Fox - aka illustrator Angie Rehe's - artistic presentation of moi above. Her pencil flatters and lies but it's nice to be immortalised like this. Angie I have blatantly stolen this from your site!
• Interview after interview for the September issue of Get Creative magazine (find out about Biddy Bags here for instance)
• The writing of a media release for Circa, The Prince
  

AND

• The finishing (finally) of Middlesex for the Mrs Underhill Book Club - so heads up book club members ... let's pull our arses into line to get some discussions happening. I need a vote on whether we stick to online only or gather for an 'on wine and on cheese' format. Get it? Genius hey?
  

As usual I am behind on everything and the emails and so forth are piling up. My attendance at the Cleary Horror Seminar has led to a group challenge to write a thriller horror piece - I have nightmares regularly so this should be a shoo in* - and the RMIT class has turned into a fortnightly Tuesday night writing class at The Victorian Writers Centre.

Life is kind and good to me, so much so that I feel forced to head up to Byron Bay the minute I close my computer from this deadline and flop there for my bestie's 40th. Spoiled? Me? So?

*PS: Shoo in = was originally a racetrack term, and was (and still is) applied to a horse expected to easily win a race, and, by extension, to any contestant expected to win an easy victory (Find out more at www.word-detective.com)

Stuff this white girl is liking

The lad who has written STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE is in town. I just caught the end of the interview with him on Jon Faine and I can't believe this blog of his, ironically listing all the crap we whities are in to, has gotten to book stage. The hysterical thing is that Stuff White People Like and Jon Faine are BOTH, I am aware (!) stuff white people like. Ha ha!

Are you aware of this website and book? The book's subtitle is 'A Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions' meaning, of course, that people who think of themselves as unique actually share shed loads of identical tastes and wants. I'm not sure of the point of it all, wagging a finger at self indulgent wankers mostly, but I always laugh when I read it because ''self indulgent wanker' is the t-shirt I am currently having printed for myself. One glance at the list - attending writer's workshops, liking David Sedaris, going to Africa to feel really guilty - are all on my personal CV.

Anyway, on to other topics ... this week is deadline for our folio pieces for my (what white people like) RMIT writing class. I have (almost) decided to do a piece on a workplace for special needs people. If I like it I might post it here.

Over the weekend I caught up with the first three episodes of PUSHING DAISIES. While I don't think I'd become obsessed by it I do think it's worth a look, paricularly for its gloriously colourful art direction. It's all bold colours and 50s silhouette dresses. The lights are brighter, the smiles whiter and the buildings are crazier than in real life. The main character, The Pie Maker, has a pie shop called the Pie Hole. It is round and the roof is in the shape of a pie. Love it! The local morgue is red and white - very pretty - and the female lead, Chuck, played by Anna Friel, has one of the most beautiful smiling faces I have ever seen. You just instantly fall in love with her. She's like the 2008/9 answer to Simon the Likeable from Get Smart.

It also has the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth in it who is a big stage and musical star in the USA and originated the role of Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, which earned her a Tony Award nomination.

Saying all of that I think it has now been cancelled in the USA, explaining why it has not been on free to air here but is in the video shop. Also picked up at Blockbuster on the weekend was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I am still in my (production designer) Ken Adams obsession mode. See this film for the design of the escape pod if nothing else. This is the Bond film that Ken got his Oscar nomination for.