Jane Rawson's Blog, page 12

Reading Australian women writing

In January, I signed up for the Australian Women Writers reading challenge. I figured I might as well go for gold, and selected ‘Miles Franklin’ level: I pledged to read 10 books by Australian women – any genre, published at any time – during 2014. I figured it would take me nine months or so to knock them off. But as of April 2, I am done. It was really easy, and I’m only half-way through the list of books I wanted to read.

Istvan/Flickr

So I’m kind of perplexed as to why your regular Australian reader (usually a woman, I believe) reads so few Australian women authors. There are plenty of books written by them. They write in all the genres, including ‘literature’ (whatever that is…).  Some of them are even really good.

Anyway, if you like a bit of structure to your reading, or a goal to aspire to, why not sign up. You can do it here.

And if you want to see what I read and what I thought of it, that’s here.

And if you want to read a totally nuts exchange of comments on whether we should bother trying to read more women writers, have a look at this.

Is it plagiarism if you don’t know?

For about 14 years I’ve been working on and off on a novella that became a novel and is now back to being a novella again. I was determined to wrap it up or chuck it out this year, and have been putting in some serious polishing work. Knowing I’d have to write a sales pitch for it if I was going to try get it published, I started reading some popular books in the sub-genre and just this morning came across, in a book by a HUGELY famous author, a scene that was almost exactly the same as a scene in my story. It was so weird. The originals of both mine and his stories were written around the same time, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even subliminally copy his (and unless he was hanging round my loungeroom secretly I know he didn’t copy mine), but there it was.

What do you do in that situation? I’ve just rewritten the scene so it’s a little less eerily similar. But did I need to?

Interview with Marisa Wikramanayake

I suspect actual famous people learn not to say stupid things in interviews. Not so me! I reveal many things, including my inability to write a short sentence, in this interview with ace blogger, journalist and author Marisa Wikramanayake.

World cloud for a novella I’m working on

Now I know who the main character is…

[Thanks to Wordle]

The competition: True Path by Graham Storrs

My last Aurealis Awards review is of this ripping time-travel tale. More conventionally science-fiction than the other finalists, and the only one with no Australian references. I have no idea who is going to win this thing…

Me and Tim Flannery

Having a chat about Australia’s extinction crisis at the Wheeler Centre

The competition: Rupetta by Nike Sulway

My third read of writers shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards, Nike Sulway’s Rupetta is a formidable novel, a thorough creation of a world and a philosophy. I was pretty impressed, as you can see from this review.

The competition: Lexicon by Max Barry

This is surely the favourite for the SF section of the Aurealis Awards. Lexicon made Time magazine’s list of the best ten books of 2013, NPR’s list of the same and the New York Times’ best summer reads. More than 3000 people have reviewed it on Goodreads. And it is an undeniably ripping read. My review is here.

The competition: Trucksong by Andrew MacRae

Fear is defeated by understanding, right? Right. So I’m reading the books of everyone else who was shortlisted in the science fiction category of the Aurealis Awards. So far it’s not making me any less scared. Review number one is of Andrew MacRae’s ‘Trucksong’: read it here.

Chapter One of ‘A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists’

Harry was Caddy’s settling down. She settled into him like a pillow on the couch, a blanket pulled over her, and footy on the TV, falling asleep by three-quarter time on a Friday night. He was knowing that everything would be OK; he was kissing goodbye for a little too long before heading out to work; he was waking up on Sunday morning with plans for each day-by-day, for the little things that build a wall around two people and keep them safe.

Every day Harry was the same and every day Caddy grinned to see him. She loved to feel his tummy under her fingertips while he stood at the sink washing dishes, her arms wrapped around him from behind. She bought him a hammock where he could drink beer and listen to the cricket on the radio. He wrote songs about her and let her sleep in.

Eventually, Caddy and Harry got a cat called Skerrick and got married. They knew marriage was silly, but somehow, after it had happened, Caddy woke up every day to a Harry a little more solid. Every day, Caddy was a little more sure. They moved to a house down by the dirty river, their neighbours a cluster of gigantic, carefully-lettered oil holding tanks, lit orange by the setting sun and looming into every horizon. Skerrick settled down too, started sleeping through the days and laying on fat.

Then one day when Caddy had ridden her bike into town, searching out something special for dinner, a hot north wind sprang up and the scrub along the dirty river caught fire. The tanks were well protected, a barrage of water cannons surrounding their perimeter. But on that day, as on many summer days, the city’s power supply was overwhelmed, the pumps failed and no water got to the cannons.

She felt the whole earth shake when the tanks went up. She thought it was a terrorist bomb down at the train station, though there’d been nothing like that since 2014. She pushed through the cram of people at the Docklands market and craned her neck down to the Cross, but everyone was looking the other way, to the south-west, towards her home. The whole sky burned and only the strong north wind stopped the black cloud engulfing them, even there. Five kilometres away.

She unchained her bike and started to ride. She knew Harry would need her, that he’d want to know she was alright. The trees were on fire along the edge of Footscray Road, and by the time she had reached within a kilometre of home there was nothing but black.

That was two years ago. Well, two years, three months and three days ago. Wait. Four days.

Want more? Try here.