Doug MacLeod's Blog, page 4

Do you want to see something really scary?

In the last post but one I referenced The Twilight Zone, surely one of the best American TV series ever made. 

The series was/is popular enough to warrant a movie version, where four different directors tried their hands at remaking four of the iconic episodes. It was a disappointment, with some good bits, most notably a new prologue where a hitchhiker is picked up by a driver who tries to scare him by driving recklessly and turning out the headlights from time to time. The hitchhiker begs the driver to be more careful, he is getting scared. Talk turns to the original Twilight Zone TV series. Both driver and hitchhiker try to scare each other with memories of the spookier episodes. At the end of the trip the hitchhiker takes  one parting shot. He asks the driver if he wants to see something really scary. The driver naturally says yes, and in an instant the hitchhiker turns into a hideous blue monster that lunges at the driver. I’m not sure if we saw blood or not. But I remember the reaction in the cinema at the time.

Something really scary

There was a momentary gasp then a delighted roar of laughter. Frankly, the movie doesn’t have much going for it, although the fourth story, directed by George Miller is a beauty. It’s based on an episode Nightmare at 20,000 feet where a nervous passenger on an international  flight can see a sort of imp creature, tearing up the aluminum wings and feeding them into one of the engines. The passenger (played by William Shatner) tries to alert the cabin crew, who of course see nothing when they look at the ‘imp’ sabotaging the plane. I think the story worked so well because a lot of people on flights have wondered what it would be like if they saw something appear on the wing. (You can see a still from it at the top of this post)  It’s truly a nightmare scenario, though it’s played for laughs. In the original Twilight Zone episode, the imp looks like a cross between a gorilla and one of the Zygons  from Doctor Who. 

One of the aforementioned Zygons, and my apologies if this constitutes a spoiler
It’s a  risible imp and somewhat detracts from any element of horror. In the film remake, the imp is a beauty. He’s spindly and blue., complete with a leering face and spindly clawed hands. The nervous passenger (played in the movie by John Lithgow) is thoroughly believable. Here again, when the imp appeared, there were  gasps then laughter from the audience. My good friend Kimpton knew I had seen the movie. She wanted to know if it was too scary for her daughter Tiffany (14) and friend (same age). I had no hesitation in recommending it, not thinking for a moment that the monsters might give nightmares to a young teen. And Kimpton took ages to forgive me. The girls had nightmares for weeks. I really didn’t think there was anything in the movie to give nightmares. After all, hadn’t we all laughed?Anyway, Kimpton never asks me for movie recommendations these days. Which is a shame because it means she will never see Iron Sky. And I’m genuinely sorry the girls were as upset as they turned out to be. I honestly thought the movie was funny, even if the dull stories (especially Kick the Can) seemed to go on forever.WE all find different things funny. And if the scares are ingenious and completely over the top, I tend to laugh. I’m not a ghoul and absolutely hate the current crop of torture porn movies. I would no more recommend one of them to a teen than I would recommend a movie about a deranged scientist who sews human bodies together in such a way that they resemble an underendowed centipede (and I thank my editor, Dmetri Kakmi, for drawing my attention to this movie). But I’ll be more careful when I recommend movies to kids in future. Because some of them don’t see movies in the way I do. And I should keep reminding myself that these things used to terrify me.

So, we meet again, Mr MacLeod

The gun-wielding Penguin is back with the extraordinary news that my book, The Shiny Guys has been shortlisted in the older readers category of the CBCA awards.
Here's the shortlist for the older readers category:
And here is the complete shortlist.
The armed Penguin congratulates you all.

No Foreknowledge Necessary

In order to overcome what I hope is only a temporary case of writer’s block, I went to the St Kilda library to get out some kick-ass Young Adult fiction, that might present me with the inspiration I so obviously need. The first book I chose was Billy Mack’s War.
I selected it because I’ve met James Roy and enjoyed speaking with him. I’ve also heard him talk to teens and he seems to have a good idea of what goes on inside the head of a teenage male. I would have borrowed anything by Scot Gardner too, for similar reasons, but there was nothing there. I didn’t consult the catalogue. I’m sure that the St Kilda Library has no shortage of Scot Gardner titles but that I arrived on a bad day. I probably wouldn’t have borrowed a Nick Earls, because I’ve read 48 Shades of Brown. In the back of the book there is a quote from Cleo magazine that if you read a Nick Earls book you will ‘never be unhappy again’. Perhaps they should stop using that quote, surely penned by a well-meaning friend of Nick’s? It’s certainly enticing but incredibly hard to live up to, and didn’t apply to me, though I certainly would never recommend crucifying a book then setting it aflame, which some angry YouTuber did, complete with visual directions. I wish they’d remove it. I see books burning and I hear jackboots.

I had limited time at the St Kilda Library. The next two books I grabbed were Quintana of Charyn by Merlina Marchetta, because everyone keeps telling me how wonderful she is, and The Sending by Isobelle Carmody, for the same reason. 





I started on Quintana of Charyn. Somehow, when I gazed at the cover, I had missed the subtitle: Book Three of the Lumatere Chronicles. However it became very clear on closer inspection that I was reading a portion of a much larger work, and was ill-equipped to do so. The volume is over five hundred pages long. Presumably this means I have to read around one thousand words to finish the first two volumes and get a decent idea of what is going on. I figured that rather than read ten thousand words so I could pick up the thread, that time that would perhaps be better spent on learning to use my Dragon voice recognition software, so that I can speak my books as I compose them, and not have to rely upon my stroke-addled fingers. The idea of writing a novel by way of voice recognition software seems cumbersome, though I understand that Rod Serling wrote most of his Twilight Zone episodes that way (although his Dragon was a stenographer) and there were some really wonderful Twilight Zone tales. An Easter treat was watching DVD’s of the old fifties shows, and marvelling at how well they still hold up. Does anyone know of novelists who dictate their novels? Is that how Dan Brown did it? Anyway, I put down Book Three of the Lumatere Chronicles and picked up The Sending. Reader, I had made the same mistake. While it doesn’t leap off the cover, there is a line of copy alerting us to the fact that this is Book Sixin The Obernewtyn Chronicles. So, once again I had a little reading to do before I was ready for this book. Now, Book Three is overwhelming enough – but Book Six! The Sending is 750 pages long. Why do these fantasy writers feel the need to go for such massive Russian literature-style word counts? Assuming that the first five volumes of this Obernewtyn Chronicle are of similar length, I would be committing myself to reading a total of 3750 words before I could fully appreciate The Sending, knowing of all the elegant twists and turns the narrative had taken before Dragon, a creature of quite astonishing beauty, appears on a broken stone column on the night of a full moon (my precis of the first paragraph of The Sending). I put it aside.
Picking up James Roy’s novel was a more promising exercise. Unlike the two, no doubt splendid fantasy novels that I had put aside, this book didn’t have shadowy goth girls on the cover. It had a title that included no invented place names. And it certainly wasn’t Book Three of the Billy Mack Chronicles. It was a stand-alone. A decent looking book without a bloody map before the story starts.  I could read this one secure in the knowledge that I already knew everything there was to know about Billy Mack (that is, nothing) before entering the world of young adult fiction. It read well, but I had this niggling feeling that I wasn’t getting the full picture. The writer seemed to presume some amount of foreknowledge on my part. But this wasn’t a whacking great doorstep of a novel, involving dragons on stone columns on moonlit nights. It was a down-to-earth slice-of-life fiction, like Jasper Jones, which I had read recently and enjoyed.


This is when fate played a particularly cruel trick. I learned from examining the back cover blurb that what I was reading was a prequel to a well-regarded book called Captain Mack. I’m sure Captain Mack is a fine work, and that most people have heard of it. But I hadn’t. Perhaps more importantly, I hadn’t read it. And yet I felt I really had to for Billy Mack’s War to be fully enjoyed. So, the books I had borrowed to coax me to invent new stories for teens were a Part Three, a Part Six and a Prequel. And we authors point accusing fingers at Hollywood when they dare to bring out a sequel toShrek. (‘Typical of Hollywood to exploit a successful movie.’ ‘They’ll be doing a sequel to Blade Runner next.’)
Please understand that this is not a blog post that drips poison. It is more despair than poison, though perhaps I was a bit poisonous to Nick Earls (who’s actually good) to mention that horrible YouTube movie about his book 48 Shades of Brown though I certainly don’t advocate that books should be crucified and burned - despite what I might have recently muttered about Stephanie Meyer when I was on a panel at The Wheeler Centre, and it was filmed.

I’m the fool. First of all, I knew I was being filmed. And secondly, anyone who doesn’t take the time to read book covers carefully or realise that paperback cinderblocks about fictional places with names like Lumatere or Obernewtyn are unlikely to appeal deserves what he gets. It’s just, I was hoping to get some reading done today. In the end I blogged. Even last night’s Doctor Who: ‘The Rings of Akaten’ (silly place names again) was boring and forgot to tell a decent story, just because all the aliens looked so cool. What a rotten long weekend.
And this is not just a selfish whine because I couldn’t think of a sequel to my only book to cause any kind of modest commotion, The Life of a Teenage Body-snatcher. At least, I couldn’t write one. 

Oh, no. But one day I might speak one.

And for those who might still be interested, plenitude is, of course, alive. John's father is John Lamb, the real character from history, and Thomas's resurrectionist name is (perhaps ironically) Modesty.

Leave it alone

This post refers to a deleted post that was really much sharper than this one. But it’s Friday and I had to write something.
I got an email this week. It was from Sandy Cull, an art designer who did one of my book covers for Penguin. Normally, the art director who designs my covers is Karen Trump-Scott Here is the first cover that Karen did for the book:
You see, back in those days the book was called The Summer of Seth Parrot and not I'm Being Stalked by a Moonshadow. People I respect convinced me that The Summer of Seth Parrot was far too poetic a title, given that the book is, basically, a funny rom-com for boys. Though I did like this cover because Karen had somehow found a photo of two kids who look exactly like the kids in the book, and the fireworks were a nice touch, because there are literal fireworks in the book. However, the powers that be weren't crazy about the cover. They thought it looked old-fashioned and unfunny, and nobody liked the title. So, the first thing was to find a new title. I liked the sound of I'm Being Stalked by a Moonshadow, because I'm Being Followed by a Moonshadow is such a sweet song, and 'stalking' is such a nasty concept. The collision of opposites like sweetness and nastiness often gives you a funny outcome.) So the book had a new title, and a new designer in Sandy Cull. And this is the first new cover I was given:


It was very different from what I was expecting, but it grew on me. The title character, Seth, had uncontrollable red hair. The artist decided to go overboard with this, and I decided I liked it. So it was full steam ahead. Which is why i was so surprised when I was presented with this as a fait accompli:



Where on earth had that girl come from? She wasn't part of the equation. Why did the she have spider eyeashes when MIranda, the girl in the story, never wore makeup? Perhaps more importantly, given that Seth makes such a big deal about how beautiful Miranda's arms are, wouldn't it be a good idea to actually give her a pair of arms?
 The point is, I thought the cover art was so unexpectedly bad (in that I’d been given no real warning about what I might end up with, as it was nothing like the previous image of Seth with his tornado of red hair) and I didn’t seem to be getting very far with Penguin in my polite but doubtless annoying requests to have it changed to better suit the story, that I did something stupid. I changed the completed cover art myself, using Photoshop. I added some arms, I got rid of the spider eyelashes.  Now, there are a lot of artists in my life and I know how much they hate this. Indeed, I would hate it if a designer took one of my stories, re-edited it, then submitted it as an example of how it should be written. My good friend Jane Tanner recently had this experience with an author who is really too famous to name. He didn’t like the way some of Jane’s artwork for one of his titles was going so he used Photoshop to ‘fix’ it himself.
Jane was cut to the quick. I don’t blame her, because I know how hard she worked. Anyway, after I sent the email with Photoshop ‘improved cover art’ attachment to Sandy Cull, I realised that what I had done was probably unfair. I felt bad about disrespecting the artist, and decided to email Sandy to apologise for photoshopping the artist’s work. Sandy emailed back immediately stating that it is every art director’s nightmare when a writer gets hold of Photoshop and messes around with art in an effort to show what they would prefer. Sandy went on to say that she hoped I would find a self-help group in St Kilda for 46-year-old men with too much time on their hands. Now, this really was a spectacularly rude email for Sandy to send (even if only because it reminded me that I was 46), and I only rediscovered it long after I had received it, when I was going through piles of emails in a spring clean-up. It occurred to me that I should have responded to this email and not merely left it to fester on my hard drive.  As always, my timing was way out, and I decided to respond to the email in a blog post  – years later. I wrote to Sandy that it is every author’s nightmare when they are given a lackluster cover for a book on which they have likely spent years, and that the art designer can’t grasp why this would conceivably be important to said author.  (I am paraphrasing, out of necessity.)
The post was written so long ago that I was surprised to get an email from Sandy Cull recently. She titled it ‘very humbling’ and she apologised very sincerely for her behaviour. I felt so bad for Sandy that I hacked away at the original post on my blog so that the ‘nasty’ part where I alluded to Sandy’s lack of empathy was removed. The result was a very boring post, but, I consoled myself, it would make Sandy feel better. But it didn’t, and this is where I really must take off my hat to Sandy.  (And it isn’t a metaphorical hat, I’m actually wearing one. It’s St Kilda, I can wear what I like.) Sandy opined that bowdlerising the post made it boring . She was right, I just thought she would be pleased to see how I had ‘fixed things’. Of course, in deleting the potentially offensive bits of an email, I hadn’t fixed things at all. I had merely beeen untrue to myself. My original post, which was far better than this one, really, it was, represented an accurate summation of the frustration and impotence I felt at being given a book cover that I felt was no good – though people have since professed a liking for it. It was an emotionally honest post. In editing it, I made it dishonest, and Sandy had the guts to email me and say so. So, thanks to Sandy Cull. The lesson of all this, I think, is to stand for what you stand for, provided you’ve given it enough thought and consideration, and not to dilute your message in an effort ‘not to offend’. Our blogs should be written from the heart and left as written, unless you go back to do some necessary grammatical editing or spelling correction, such as turning ‘alright’ into ‘all right’. Our blog posts are our emotional and philosophical outpourings. And for whatever reason we write them (for posterity, out of protest, in an attempt to sharpen our writing skills or simply to be – gulp- understood and loved) they should be left alone.

Ooh er … I like The Hunger Games

I was almost determined not to like it. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins is a phenomenon: a Young Adult bestseller. And for me those words conjure up images of effete teen vampires, anodyne heroines and shirtless muscleboys who can't act. Given that Stephenie Meyer herself had said such wonderful things about The Hunger Games, surely it must be on a par with the ghastly Twilight books?
But I liked the book from the start because I could identify so fully with the idea at the core of The Hunger Games, that society will devolve so completely that one day we will actually be watching teenage kids fighting to the death on a reality TV show.
I used to work for Granada Australia, a subsidiary of the huge Granada TV production company in the UK, which wanted a nice, little production arm in Australia to service some of its massively successful ‘format’ shows. When I left, they were making a program that is shot in Australia, but which – to my knowledge - hasn’t made it to Australian terrestrial TV yet. The show is called, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. It’s pretty much like Big Brother, only the ‘house’ is an encampment in a  hostile-looking jungle somewhere in Queensland, and the various contestants have to tough it out in a series of elimination rounds (‘challenges’) where they are forced to do things that your average punter would rather not. Most of the challenges I’ve seen have involved eating disgusting food or taking on a physical challenge that is just quirky or potentially dangerous enough to entice an undemanding and indulgent viewer. The ‘celebrity’ aspect of the show's title is a bit of a misnomer. The last clip I saw was someone challenging Colin Baker (only Whovians would know him from his thankfully brief tenure as one of the Time Lord’s incarnations) and I don’t think he quite counts as a celebrity, but I think the term covers any person whose name might have appeared in the newspaper a few times and who isn’t averse to being belittled on television in the hope of giving their ailing careers a bit of a shot in the arm. Anyway, the Colin Baker bit that I saw made me recall why we all stopped watching Doctor Who when he took over the title role. I didn’t know the celebrity who had challenged him, but he would have been known to UK viewers, perhaps as the man with the dictionary on Countdown or the one with the deep voice who says ’Mind the Gap’ when you travel on the tube. Suffice it to say, his celebrity probably wasn’t stellar. But, through a series of name changes and takeovers, I was now working for a company that was well known for its ‘reality TV’ formats. I’d enjoyed all the shows I’d worked on before the English acquisition of Artist Services, which is the company I used to work for, the one that made all those daggy Australian sketch shows like Fast Forward and Full Frontal. But it seemed fairly likely to me that I would end up working on one of these reality shows. And I really couldn’t do it. I’d watched Big Brother from time to time, not least because handsome Alex, one of my fellow workers, ended up on series two. I also kind of knew Johnny from series one, but then, it seems that everyone kind of knew Johnny from series one. (Big Brother was not a Granada production.) It was a crappy, mean-spirited show that gave young viewers the idea that they didn’t actually have to learn anything, achieve anything or have a particular skill to be famous. Hell, they could just be ‘normal’ like the Big Brother roommates and that was enough to guarantee stardom and public adulation. (Which of course it wasn’t.) Even after Four Corners did a particularly harsh critique on how manipulative the show is, the Four Corners forum after the show was flooded with requests from people about how they might be able to get on Big Brother. These people had just seen a documentary about how Big Brother was nothing but self-abasement for the contestants, and that the show could be edited in any number of ways to yield an infinite number of storylines. (Before I get too hot and bothered about this I should add that David Attenborough nature documentaries, which I happen to like, use exactly the same editing tricks to kid you into believing you are watching a story. The brave mother penguin who rescued a drowning baby penguin then reared it as her own, bravely fending off penguin bullies, probably didn’t exist. She was probably six different penguins edited together in such a way that we couldn’t help saying, Ahhhh!’ It helps, of course, that humans are very bad at telling Penguins apart.) The people who’d seen Four Corners give an absolute caning to Big Brother nevertheless wanted to be on it, so that they too could abase themselves.
Peter Andre, no stranger to the recent batch of 'celebrity' reality shows.
The Hunger Games’ author says she was inspired to write the book after watching one of the reality shows. Of course she was! I would have done it too, if I’d had the skill. Besides the Big Brother shows, there were countless other global ‘reality’ shows which I got to preview, so that we could edit together their worst excesses and make something called Unreel TV, a questionable clips show whose only saving grace was having Tim Ferguson as compere. He struck just the right level of enthusiasm and disgust for clips of shows such as the one where contestants had enemas and there was a prize for whoever could squirt out their colonic water the farthest. (Seriously, it was on a Swedish show.)
So, I’m a big fan of The Hunger Games, because I appreciate the desperation and despair that caused Suzanne Collins to write it. I like the movie as well. Though one thing that the movie didn’t seem to get is that Collins has a very dark sense of humour. There are so many wry parts of the book that never quite made it to screen. (Though Stanley tucci and toby Jones as the commentators were suitably grotesque.) I like the main character Katniss’s fear that her stylist might make her appear completely nude on global television. The implication is that this had already happened in a previous season. Apparently, one year there was a ‘nude Hunger Games’. There are regular references to Hunger Games of the past that have gone horribly wrong, such as the one in a desert where all contestants merely had a slow death by starvation. That one hadn’t rated so well. The nudism thing amused me, because it was one of the more prurient aspects of Big Brother. If there was a jock in the house, the viewer could be fairly confident that said jock would be parading his nudity before long. ‘But that’s not fair!’ screech the producers. ‘We warn them that there are camera everywhere, even in the shower room, and the contestants have the option of showering in their underwear.’ – which of course no sane person ever does. And where exactly do you change out of yur wet underpants if there are cameras all over the place? There was a sauna in one series, though the girls didn't use it much. I used to wonder why the guys who used it would look directly out at the TV viewers and not at each other while they were chatting, flexing their muscles and readjusting their towels so that they were a little more low-rise and titillating. Were they really doing a sort of testosterone-fuelled strip-tease for the viewer? It occurred to me then that the entire sauna wall opposite them and unseen by us would have been a one-way mirror behind which the cameras were filming. So of course the two jocks were looking at it constantly, flexing and preening appropriately at their reflections. They were doing it for themselves.
The Hunger Games made me laugh and kept me reading. I’m glad that such an inventive book did so well. (And yes, I know about Season Seven and Man Bites Dog, two cult movies that cover very similar ground to the Collins novel. But so what? Collins does a great job of keeping the reader intrigued, while I had no trouble whatever in turning off the relentless and revolting Man Bites Dog.)
The Hunger Games makes almost every comment about the media’s plummeting depths that prompted me to leave the industry for a bit. It was clever and fresh in a way that Twilightabsolutely wasn’t. It’s interesting to read the reviews for the movie on IMDB. People are very polarised. Many critics would have liked less of the morbid violence, many others would have liked more. I think the movie got it about right. Bot movie and book stand as clever bits of dystopian fiction, and give us all plenty to think and talk about.  

Am I Interesting enough?

My toy cybermen about to eliminate my lunch.

I notice I’ve been more or less avoiding the subject of writing when posting on this blog. I always feel guilty spending time writing on the blog when I don’t have a current writing project to which I can devote myself. And f course, I’m self-employed, so there should always be projects to which I can devote myself.
That situation hasn’t changed. Yesterday I walked into the big converted warehouse, now called home by my publisher with an identity crisis, Random House Penguin Pearson. I dropped in my latest manuscript, with a covering letter to head-of-publishing-for-young-adults, Laura Harris. The letter explained that I’m unsure about the manuscript, even though Laura has already read an earlier draft and claims to be a fan. When I started this blog I was virtually unknown as a writer of YA books, though I had good TV creds. Since then, my last two books (The Life of a Teenage Body-snatcher and The Shiny Guys) have appeared on a few shortlists and books in my backlist are getting some attention, which is very gratifying. People are writing nice things on Goodreads about I’m Being Stalked by a Moonshadow, The Clockwork Forest and Siggy and Amber. So, yes, I’ve started self-googling, and I haven’t found anything too toxic so far. People are more likely to be insulting and damning about my TV work. For my book work I’ve been called Gaimanesque once or twice, which is a sweet compliment. I saw Neil Gaiman when he last appeared at The Atheneum Theatre in January, 2013. It was more like a rock concert than a ‘reading’. Though he did read very well. It was an excerpt from his latest book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Neil is the god of geek chic and I felt out of place, there in the Atheneum five rows from the front, dressed in my St Kilda black and not wearing a Doctor Who teeshirt, which seems the latest must-have fashion statement in geekdom. I haven't even read Sandman, for Christ'ssake.


Me in my St Kilda black, probably not looking all that out of place at a Gaiman event.
I actually did once own a Doctor Who teeshirt, way back when Tom Baker was the timelord and the show was remarkably good. I’m not sure if I ever wore it. And I must have something of the geek about me because my friend Robert went to great effort when last in London to get me some toy cybermen from the famous science fiction shop, Forbidden Planet , where the first signings of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy took place. The next cybermen story in Doctor Who is to be written by Neil Gaiman. The fans hold out high hopes. Gaiman spoiled us rotten with his story The Doctor’s Wife, which is treated as reverently as the fantastic Blink episode that Steven Moffat wrote, where we were all terrified by weeping stone angels that could ‘get you’  merely by looking at you, if you blinked.

Neil Gaiman not blinking and also looking very St Kilda.
I like being favourably compared with Gaiman. He’s hugely successful, he writes the sort of books I’d like to write, and he makes it all seem like such tremendous fun. And his hair is like mine: not awfullly good. I’d be lying if I said that I find writing fun. It’s a love/hate relationship. If I’m writing well and on a roll, then I obviously love writing. If I’m bothered by writer’s block, which Gaiman never is, then I hate my chosen career and wish I’d stayed at university a bit longer. (Though I think I would have been unhappier as a lawyer than a sporadic writer.) I should qualify my support for Gaiman. I was very happy with Neverwhere,Stardust and The Graveyard Book but I really didn’t like the big one that I’m supposed to like – American Gods. I just didn’t think it was interesting enough. I did like the story at the end, about the car on the ice and the terrible secret in its trunk - but I had to read six hundred pages to get to this part. That’s a hell of a long prologue. I ended up disliking the book because everyone had been so complimentary and convinced I would like it. How dare it bore me! And boring someone is about the worst thing youi can do as an author. My recent self-googling has revealed a criticism that quite a few people make about my books. Apparently I don’t plot well, with the result that I can get a bit boring, even if I’m funny. (People seem generally to agree on that, which comes as some relief. If you don’t get any laughs out if The Life of a Teenage Body-snatcher then there is really no reason to read it. The prose is only just okay and the historical stuff is not new or revealing. The support characters are generally clowns, there to provide the comic relief you may require after wading through a cold stew of human heads.)
TV producer Tony Cavanaugh once had the good taste to plan a drama series built around Shaun Micallef as an amateur sleuth. I like Shaun and it was a pleasure to workshop some story ideas with Shaun, Tony and also, for some reason, Craig McLachlan. I’m not sure if Craig was to be involved but he was his usual larrikin self, and provided a nice foil for Shaun’s more cerebral sense of humour. I was contracted to write the pilot episode, which was to be a telemovie. It was to be called The Crime Show, a deliberately prosaic title that Shaun perversely liked for that very reason. It was pleasant writing for Tony. He took me to nice restaurants and showed me his boat and his amazing house on the river in Noosa. In an effort to get my head around the whole crime genre, I read as much crime fiction as I could, and started developing a real respect for the writer Robert Crais, who plotted his books so well that I forgave him for overusing certain words, such as ‘perp’. Though when I learned about this piece of police jargon, I also gave the word a bit of a hammering in my telemovie script. I tried to include all the stuff we had talked about in the writing workshops, but still the script seemed less than the requisite two hours running time. So I added big physical comedy moments for Shaun’s character and also for his offsider, who would be played, I was told, by Rebecca Gibney.
The script took me a few weeks to finish. I was pretty happy with it. We had a reading with Shaun, who made the lines funny. Shaun has very definite ideas about what is funny and what isn’t, and he's usually right. I trust Shaun’s judgment thoroughly. I was once the creative producer of a sketch comedy series called Full Frontal. We used to show all our material – recorded and live – to a studio audience on Friday night.  Often I didn’t have a full live night. THere would be some time to fill, or the show might run short. On Thursday afternoon I would ring Shaun and ask him, basically, ‘What have you got? I’ll do it.’ I mention this because Shaun has been telling a story lately about how I apparently rejected all thirty of the sketches that he submitted to me on his first week as a Full Frontal writer. And he’s been saying that the first series of his fantastic ABC show consisted mainly of sketches that I’d rejected from Full Frontal. I also produced the ABC series and I know for a fact that this is untrue. But I was the gatekeeper on Full Frontaland I had a terrible reputation for sending sketches back to writers if I thought they needed more work or weren’t funny enough. I don’t recall much about those thirty sketches that I had apparently rejected on submission from Shaun, but I do recall a few of them were about the movie Greystoke, which was old then. I just couldn’t see the Full Frontalaudience getting excited about a parody of a movie that had come out five years ago, and that they quite likely didn’t see because it was arthouse and Adam Sandler wasn’t in it. Anyway, the fact that Shaun laughed at a few of the lines in my script was encouraging.  Coincidentally, a TV series where Shaun plays an amateur sleuth is being masde for Channel Ten this year. Pure coicidence. I was at some of the writers meetings for it. But I found that trying to write crime fiction when you’ve had a stroke is about as sensible as bungy-jumpoing when your retinas are slightly detached.  I bowed out as gracefully as possible (NOT VERY, WHEN YOU'VE HAD A STROKE) and I hope no one was too pissed off. I think it will be a good show.
Meanwhile, my TV movie script for The Crime Show was handed around to various readers for their thoughts. The only feedback I was really interested in was from Mike Bullen, the English writer who penned the funny and arresting TV drama series Cold Feet. Mike Bullen was pretty damning about my work. He said that the story simply wasn’t interesting enough. There were some good hero scenes and plenty of jokey dialogue – but that simply wasn’t enough to keep a viewer committed. And Mike was right, of course. The script I’d written was formulaic, based on other people’s stories and books I had read. It wasn’t gripping like Breaking Bad, a show with clever plotting that kept me rivetted for four series. Breaking Bad was always interesting.
But I had to concede, The Crime Show really wasn’t the most interesting two hours of telly ever penned. It didn’t go ahead, which might have been a blessing, or we might have fixed up the ‘lack of interest’ problem as we produced the show, but that hardly ever happens.
Which brings me all the way back to the manuscript I submitted to Penguin this week. We’ll call it Bondi Tigers. There’s no fantasy in it, no clockwork forests that eat people, or grave-robbers. It’s my usual boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back plot. And I confess I’m worried that someone might notice I’ve written this book twice already. It’s basically the plot of I’m Being Stalked by a Moonshadow and also Siggy and Amber. You just hope that the comedy will be enough to keep the reader beguiled – and there really are an awful lot of jokes. That’s a criticism that I’m sure will be levelled at the book, that it’s far too flippant. I’d argue that one of the themes of the book is how comedy both unites and divides us. It’s the only subject about which I feel I can write with any authority. But is that interesting enough? With The Shiny Guys I got tired of making gags and decided to take the world seriously for once. I was surprised that people warmed to it as much as they did. Maybe it was interesting? I did a fair bit of research to write it, even having a psychiatric nurse show me the ECT machine in his ward and how it worked. I wasn’t going to use the Ken Kesey ‘Cuckoo’s nest’ rendition of the ECT machine sequence, because I knew that was heavily biased and basically wrong. Besides, it also belonged to someone else.
Robert McKee is something of a legend in filmwriting circles. He wrote a book called Story, which is a sort of bible for scriptwriters. Many consult it when they are stuck with a story that isn’tr working. McKee is so famous he even appears as a character in Charles Kaufmann’s quirky movie Adaptation. McKee writes that one should never start writing a script until the research has been done and an interesting story has been envisaged.
So far, most of the research I have done for my novels has been a sort of strip-mining operation, where I recycle parts of my own teen life and turn them into novels. But is this interesting enough? There are at least two ourtrageous scenes in Bondi Tigers which occurred in my own life. One of them involves an explosion. Reader, I’m not asbsolutely sure I’m going to get away with it this time. I’ll keep you posted, and just hope that the good people at Penguin Random House Pearson Insert Name don’t read my blog.

While I was visiting the stinking corpse lily ...

We were burgled over Christmas. They got was my computer, an old iMac. Of all the things in the house this was the most valuable to me. I’d backed up most of the important documents, such as a couple of manuscripts for novels (both in first or second draft – a long way off my daring to submit to publishers). Friends helped me out, producing some soft copies of my work that I had sent them for one reason or another. There were a few photos I would have preferred not to lose. The burglary was committed so quickly, while we were away looking at the giant stinking corpse lily (see above, and she really doesn't smell that bad)at the Botanical Gardens. I was sure the burglar must have been close by, so I started roaming the backstreets of St Kilda, looking for suspicious people. The trouble is, everyone in St Kilda looks suspicious, so I decided to narrow it down to suspicious people carrying or stashing my computer. As I walked through likely thief haunts (I didn’t even discount the children’s adventure playground) I had my hand wrapped around a roll of twenties. All I wanted to do was buy the computer back from the thief. The stuff on the hard drive was priceless to me, but absolutely worthless to anyone else.
It seems the most miserable act of theft is stealing someone’s computer. When the extremely funny comic author David Sedaris was in Melbourne last year, he spoke about a writer’s feeling of despair after having a computer stolen, finishing his speech with a casual, ‘I would never steal anyone’s computer,’ as if he would be prepared to commit other acts of theft but not that one.

 The brilliant David Sedaris, who would apparently never steal a computer.
We’re still a bit crim-shy. Every time we return from shopping or visiting giant stinking Sumatran flowers or whatever, we park the car in the driveway and look at that place; the supposedly impenetrable door where the thief/ves managed to get in. It’s not a nice feeling and I figure we’ll probably have it for some time to come. What amazes me is how quickly I ran into the house when I realised we had been burgled, not bothering to worry about if the burglar might still be there, or how he could possibly be intimidated by a tall skinny guy with a speech impediment and a limp, the legacy of the great stroke of 2011. What would I defend myself with? A logie? (They left that, so they obviously have some taste.)
Yesterday morning we did the rounds of all the pawnbrokers on a list provided by St Kilda police. They’re very careful about this list. It is not intended to be incriminating. No one is implying that cash Converters is little more than a fence for stolen goods. Actually, I take that back. I am implying that half the stuff at Cash Converters seems nicked. I had a chat with a staffer at the Chapel Street store, who told me what precautions were in place so that they would neverfence stolen goods. None of these precautions seemed terribly reassuring. The staffer pointed to all the security cameras, which I suspect were more about stopping shoplifters from nicking the stuff from their shelves, than identifying dodgy sellers. Apparently, the sellers always have to provide photo ID, and we all know how difficult that is. When I was a student at the Victorian College of Arts, and our student cards were issued, my friend Chrissy Best managed to organise a student card for her dog as well. She also got an extra one for herself wearing clown makeup, just in case she happened to be a clown when she was required to produce photo identification. I have it on good authority that the student security I.D. process is now a little tighter at VCA, now part of the Univerity of Melbourne, which is why I now get the Melbourne University magazine. They can keep sending it, it makes me feel smarter.
Pawnbroking is a strange business. The big Cash Converters shops look like supermarkets, only with less stuff you’d even consider buying. Then there are the smaller places, like the pawn shop behind the big car rental place across from the National Theatre in St Kilda. Large-scale car renting and pawn broking seems a strange mix. The place was deserted when I dropped in on Sunday morning and found myself in an office that really looked like the ABC set decoration department had gone a little overboard in their efforts at authenticity. There was stuff everywhere, including many sets of things, such as albums of swapcards, and Elvis figurines – stuff that might have been of huge value to some people, but surely worthless in the modern marketplace. I mean no disrespect to the ABC’s art department, but I always thought that Diver Dan’s shed on Seachange had just a bit too much stuff in it. (There was a very good reason for this. The shed wasn’t actually a set. It was an old storage bay at the back of the ABC building on Horne Street. This was a particularly ingenious idea, and I take my hat off to the art department, for coming up with such a cheap and accessible set.)
Perhaps there's a huge market for Elvis figurines and I'm wrong to turn up my nose at them?
We were insured so I’m now working on a new computer that I don’t particularly like, which is why it has taken me so long to post. Burgling must be a tough job nowadays. Tellies are the size of fridges and dirt cheap at JB Hifi, which is probably a little more reputable than Cash Converters. Electrical goods are dirt cheap, thanks to the globalisation that enables us to exploit countries like China and South Korea. Perhaps this lack of your average houserholder's stash of readily transportable and desirable items, has led to a poorer sort of burglar. There was an ad on afternoon TV recently. It was for a pawnbroker specialising in gold. The ad's presenter looked at us earnestly and said: 'Short of cash? There may be valuable items in your home that you can sell to us. Gold jewellery or ornaments can be very valuable and you'll probably be quite happy with the price we'll offer. I think when it's got to the stage that people need to be told that gold is actually a valuable commodity ('You'd be surprised!') then there is something seriously wrong with society. And can you really picture a person in great financial need being surrounded by gold objects? 'If only I'd known.'

We were actually lucky. The burglars didn’t do any damage to the fortress in which we live. THere was a burglarey around the corner where the thieves thought it might be a good idea to start a fire. They starte it in the bedroom of one of the teen kids. This seems to me to make the crime more despiccable. When you're a teen, stuff matters. I don't know if the burglars were trying to make some point, or they were just complete bastards.

I’ll never look at a giant stinking corpse lily again without a sense of being robbed.


  

The Night After Christmas

As usual I have a festive rhyme for you. If no one is offended then I haven't done my job. And thanks as ever to Graeme Base for writing the more rhythmical bits.
 
'Twas the night after ChristmasAnd sleepiness fell.They'd finished the turkey,The pudding as well

They'd opened their crackers,The riddles they'd told(And none of them lessThan a century old).
They'd worn paper hats For a moment or twoTill even Gran found itA lame thing to do.
The presents were opened,The mess cleared away,Now everyone slumbered,Recalling the day . . .

Paul got a video gameHe thought neat,(The one where you murder Each person you meet.)

But Mum said, 'It's awful!'I won't let you play.'I don't care if DadHasbeen playing all day.'

 And David got DVD movies,AlthoughHe'd downloaded all of themAges ago.
Old Gran gave out booksAnd a chemistry set.(All going on eBayNext week, you can bet.)

And then there was CourtneyWho cried, the poor soul -
For Santa had brought herThe wrong kind of doll.
'I wanted a dollyThat wets when it's pressedBit this one won't weeAnd I'm deeply distressed.'
'But this doll is lovely,'Said Mummy to daughter.'I think they've stopped makingThose dolls that pass water.'
And Courtney kept squeezingBut nothing came out.The doll wouldn't pee.It was airtight. No doubt.
She squeezed and squeezed harder,With all of her might
Till dolly exploded -A terrible sight!
The head popped right offLooking spooky and scary.And bounced off the Christmas tree,Killing a fairy.


It rocketed roundAnd finally fell
Right into the fireplace(It burned rather well).

The plastic was melted,The room filled with smokeMum said, 'Let's sing carols!'And tried not to choke
But Courtney kept cryingAnd cursing the elfThat brought the wrong dolly,She soon wet herself.

Her two darling brothers,Young David and Paul,Were laughing like madAt the thrill of it all.
But Courtney was lividAnd growled at the pair,'I hope that next ChristmasYou're killed by a bear!'
Her mother suggestedShe might want to goAnd put on new undies.But Courtney said, 'No!'
She glared at her dolly's head,Melted to goo,
And into the fireplaceHer panties she threw!


And what happened nextMade the family flee - A cloud of burnt plasticAnd panties and pee.
And two hours laterThe household returnedTo witness where dollyAnd undies were burned.
The boys looked at Mother.'We don't understand.'Is this part of Christmas?Is this what God planned?'
'I'm sure that it isn't,'Their mother intoned.'Now let's tidy up!'She looked round and groaned.
The soot and the cinders,The stains and the wet -The night after Christmas Was not over yet.
'Next Christmas,' she said,'We'll avoid all this stuff-The presents ... the pudding ...The turkey... Enough!
'From now on, each dollarGoes straight to the poor,We'll give it to charity -They need it more.'


'Hooray!' they all cried.Not a soul disagreed.A household unitedIn good over greed.
And so the day finished,With goodwill and cheer…And who knows? They might evenDo it next year.
But just for the moment,The presents seemed niceAnd thoughts of the poorDisappeared in a trice.
And Courtney was just asAmazed as can beTo find in her bedA doll that could pee.






f

It worked!But unfortunately, Dad couldn't make it. ...

 It worked!

But unfortunately, Dad couldn't make it. He'd have got on well with Margaret.

Tonight's The Night

 It worked!