Craig Cliff's Blog, page 22

Avian cheer / Bucky O'Hare / A cache of silvereyes

Avian cheer
I was in a bit of a grump on Saturday so I lit out for the territory Karori sanctuary to take photos of birds. I managed to catch decent shots of two birds that are notoriously hard to photograph due to their constant flitting about.
Popokatea / Whitehead Riroriro / Grey WarblerEven though that's the best photo I've probably ever taken of a warbler, it doesn't do the tiny bird justice. It's a wee gem in the flesh, despite its muted colours. A marvel made more precious because it is so oftenheard  but rarely seen.

As for the popokatea, there were about a dozen in the bushes around me at one point, behaving much as a [insert appropriate collective noun] of silvereyes might.

It was almost as if the birds wanted to cheer me up.

A female juvenile male hihi, which tend to be much shyer than the males, landed on a branch less than a metre away from me and stuck around for a good long moment.

Female Junvenile male Hihi / StitchbirdAnd as I was walking back to the entrance, sufficiently cheered, the shags were splashing about in the lake, possibly to rise off the salt after a day on the coast.

Karuhiruhi / Pied shagNB: NZbirds has an extensive list of collective nouns for birds but nothing for the Silvereye.

Does anyone remember Bucky O'Hare?
Sometimes the phrase 'righteous indignation' pops into my head. It's a nice sesquipedalian phrase. And when this phrase rattles through the deserted chambers of my mind, I don't think of justified outrage, I think of a spaceship in an anthropomorphic cartoon from the 1990's. I'd forgotten everything about the show except the name of the ship and that it featured a rabbit (or hare). 
But who needs memory when you've got the internet?
The show was called 'Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Menace'. Here's the intro courtesy of YouTube.

The theme tune features the lyrics:
"If your Righteous Indignation has suffered a hitAnd your photon accelerator is broken a bitAnd you're losing your mind and you're havin' a fitGet the funky fresh rabbit who can take care of it!"
Gold. Pure, nineties Gold.

Possible collective nouns for silvereyes
A cache of silvereyesA flirt of silvereyes (suggested by Claire Browning)A flit of silvereyesA galore of silvereyesA gust of silvereyes (it is thought that the NZ population was established when a migrating flock in Australia was caught in a storm and blown here c.1856)A lode of silvereyesA lustre of silvereyesA mint of silvereyesA party of strangers (the Maori name, Tauhou, means 'stranger')A profit of silvereyesA purse of silvereyesA scratch of silvereyesA suite of silvereyesA treasure of silvereyesA treasury of silvereyesA trove of silvereyesA vault of silvereyesA vein of silvereyesA wealth of silvereyes

New Office / Cruise Night / Remarkable Keep / Shrapnel

This is where it all happens, IV

So we bought a house, which means a new writing space for me.

[For a peek at previous writing possies since I started blogging, see here (Edinburgh I), here (Edinburgh II, aka the time I considered writing in the toilet) and here (Wellington). You can also see my old Wellington writing space video-styles on this episode of TVNZ7's The Good Word (toward the end of part two).]

As with out old flat, my office doubles as the guest room, and we had two sets of visitors for the first two weeks in the new house, so I set up camp in our bedroom.



But now I'm in my office and starting to make it my own.



Perhaps I should have subtitled this section: This is as clean as it will ever be.



Right now (late afternoon) the sun is starting to pour into the window. I've heard bellbird, tui, silvereye, grey warblers, starling and seagulls (the dump is the next ridge over, though there is a sea view if you stand on the roof of our garage) in recent days. I heard a morepork the other night while taking the recycling out. It's pretty sweet.

Song o' the day


[This is a pretty sweet live version from 2009. The studio version appears on JKS's 2012 album Provincial and is also on Youtube.]

What I've been reading
Same as last time I posted about my reading, it's all been novel research or short story judging. The only fiction for fun comes in the form of audiobooks.

Recently I finished Jennifer Egan's 2006 novel, The Keep. As when I read A Visit From The Goon Squad last year, I had initial qualms about voice and the showier aspects of the narrative structure... but ultimately its charms won me over. Will The Keep make it on my end of year top ten list like Goon Squad did in 2011? I hope not, coz if it doesn't make the list that means I get to read eight or nine great books over the next eight months... but if it makes it on, it'll be hard to be bummed.

I'm about 2/7ths of the way through Jon McGregor's 2002 novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (the audiobook is seven CDs, hence the odd fraction). It's a bit harder to get into that The Keep, down to the style of the book (very heavy on the minutae, light on the plot) which can be difficult to follow while riding the bus home after a long day at work. Also, the one female narrator makes it hard to differentiate the first and third person sections... So I'm tossing up whether to ditch the audiobook and pick up the physical book. It happens.


What (else) I've been listening to

Low Times Podcast #9 - Interview with Dave Wyndorf


Highlight: Dave Wyndorf describes playing a concert (back in his days with Shrapnel) at Norman Mailer’s house, with Woody Allen and Kurt Vonnegut in the audience... 

Unzip the monkey and mountain top: 'Servicio de alta mar'

I have been translated. Just one short story (which happens to be the most recent story I published), but it's still one of those Writer's Milestones.

If you speak Spanish, or fancy your Traveller's Spanish, you can read 'Servicio de alta mar' at HermanoCerdo.com.

Many thanks to Canberra-based Jorge Salavert who translated the story. He's already blogged about his translation here.

The original version was published as 'Offshore Service' in Griffith Review 34 late last year. Good news: you can read this English version online, too.

And while I'm at it, here's the interview I did with the Griffith Review about this particular story.

I would not, however, recommend you rely on Google Translate to assess the quality of Jorge's translation. But if you're after a laugh or two...

Heck, I'll save you the Compare and Contrast exercise. Here are my favourite machine mistranslations:

I had the feeling of spending my midlife dark. 

They wore helmets aside, or climbed theslaughterhouses of the pants to the knees. 

She was looking out the window, entranced bythe sea, the only way that a novice may be pregnant. 

I still had an uneasy conscienceabout leaving aboard the June Tong III , in particular because it was a ship of nine wineries, amastodon. 

"Raisins?" (A mistranslationof "¿Las pasas?" which was "Hang out?" in the original) 

He had prepared a completerepertoire on my "pigeon" about how New Zealanders put their noseswhere they should stick his cock. 

"Help me, pussy" (Original: "Fuckinghelp me") 

... the room where I always imagined Yanna,waiting for the next crew will unzip the monkey and mountain top.

I've been frustrated lately by how long THE NOVEL is taking me. I want so dearly to be productive, if not prolific (part of my middle class white dude guilt, I suspect; if it's a part-time job, why aren't you f-ing working? etc). Taking time out to write 'Offshore Service' and another story called 'The Cuddies' (to be published in the UK later this year) are contributing factors. But days like today remind me why I write anything: to tell stories, to be published, to reach new readers.

Okay, back to THE NOVEL.

Radio / Hopeless Eclectics / The Problem with the Novel

Radio What's New?

It looks like my story 'Another Language' will be broadcast on Radio NZ National at 3.05am on Tuesday 10 April. You can listen online here if you're up at that time of day...

I presume this is the version recorded after the story won the novice category of the 2007 Katherine Mansfield short story competition. The dude who reads the story does a great job, if I remember correctly.

I have no idea where the five year old contract I signed with Radio NZ for this story is, but won't hold my breath for any money to flow my way for this early morning revival. I only know about the broadcast because it was mentioned in the weekly email the NZ Society of Authors sends out. I wonder how many other times it has been broadcast?

[Aside: The timing is interesting, coming after I posted about an English class in Germany having to read 'Another Language' in an exam situation last week…]


Playlist for the hopeless eclectics

'Year of the Cat' - Al Stewart
'Sink Ships' - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals*
'Barricade' - Stars
'My Rights Versus Yours' - The New Pornographers*
'Mirror People' - Monster Magnet versus Adrian Young
'Land of a thousand dances' - Wilson Pickett
'Hold on, I'm Comin'' - Sam and Dave
'Atari Baby' - Sigue Sigue Sputnik
'Splendid Isolation' - Warren Zevon*
'Marooned' - David Gilmore*

*Kinda have some connection to the section of THE NOVEL I am currently working on.


The enemy called time (or American Idol)

The chief problem with the novel as a literary form is one of timeliness. You spend so long writing and revising (and then it takes so long for it to wend its way from manuscript to published book) that you will inevitably be trumped and/or stymied by the real world in some way.

An example: I recently learnt that my protagonist shares his uncommon first name with a bad-haircut-sporting, Christian-music-enthusiast on the latest season of American Idol. The sort of contestant that, if he's not eliminated in the next week or two, will turn his first name into a by-word for teen entitlement and bad musical taste for the next two years. Anyone reading a book next year with a main character with the same first name will instantly think of this contemporary flash in the pan and wonder if I stole his name.

My options:

1) Change my character's name (thereby kowtowing to the evil that is American Idol and its insidious cultural reach)

2) Stand firm and:
      a) hope all is forgotten by the time my book comes out
      b) front foot it and claim I am using the contestant's name and come up with something pithy and apropos to say about it (and delete this blog post)
      c) claim complete ignorance (and delete this blog post)

Hmm. Let's go with 2a) for now…

weekly diary for a happy day (Keyword Analysis 2012)

weekly diary for a happy day
how does a pigeon find its way homefive specialthings about the rata treepeople eating during wwiibest small cottage front view in worldtim upperton the night we ate the babyrichie mccawhow can you tell the differencebetween two treesmysterious doorsa man melting by craig cliff free ebook bubmle bee fuck marblemiddle aged men selfiestai quan do bury craig cliftThe Story of Our Fries. (End of Story)sydneynostalgia dragsPenrith NSW whoresThe thrill of sex on public in perthmale fluid blogspotbottom of mtcookyak crashfeildingleather executive chair wellingtonMY harvardwhat does veruca look likehow to get grubs out of lawns in thekapiti coast nzsaddlebackbirdbabel bitshamlet secrets smashing pumpkins proto-emoveruca salt full bodyfamous painting of naked lady lying onthe sofaman in the mirror tv1high school girls flashsmiley manvisual puns rainbowLet the good vibes runblackmail visual punsglass towerradarcontrol room operator smileyRadar ASTERIXowenmarshall boringall blacksjohn key literary award"marcuslush"cinquainsummaryhow to melttextflowers thatgrow on wellington south coastgustave dorewallpaperpeja stojakovic jerseycoraclesketchnz albatrosshistoricalfiction agency 2012над травойодна голова видна*კაპი რაგბი**the bestthing that came out of nz is...sonny billwilliams sydney toilet photogangsterpigeons animaniacs hot selfiessheep claysculpturetender jawipad 3resolutionmannequin slave tradedid Patty Berglund love Walterthe waiting room short storya windy mess new plymouthtraffic bridge fremantle dolphinsinclude a member of audiencefat big cloygratis blows airwhite capped albatrossarcades desk messydavid lee roths parent's housestatues in Waimatewould you like fries with that craig cliff

_____________Notes:
These are all search terms people typed into Google that led them to ThisFluid Thrill over the last three months. The title, too. The individual searches are unedited, but I've been selectiveabout which terms to include in this list and in which order.
The images are the top image results when you Google "tai quan do bury craig clift" (Obama is the #1 result). I can't endorse the website these images come from (seems the top two are from a douchey Republican blog).
* 'A head above the grass is visible' in Serbian** 'Kapi Rugby' in Georgian (?) 
And no, I've never written in Serbian or Georgian on this blog. Go figure.

Not Quite Leipzig: 'Another Language' goes to Germany


NZ authors Allan Duff, Jenny Pattrick, Damien Wilkins and Kyle Mewburn get their foosball on at the Leipzig Book Fair
(via NZ at Frankfurt's Facebook page)  Last week, while better known NZ writers than I were playing foosball in Leipzig, I had my own brush with Germany.

How it came about

An English class in Germany has been studying short stories.

Their teacher stumbled across a video of me being interviewed at the 2011 Sydney Writers Festival on YouTube.

She tracked down my email address and asked if it was okay if I was the subject of a 100 minute examination that her students would sit.

I said, okay.

I've now received a copy of the test…

The first part was a listening comprehension test based on my interview. There were a mix of multi-choice and fill-in-the-blanksy questions:

For example:

Complete the text: (5)

According to Cliff, there are _________________________ through there, each of the stories is sort of ________________ to the ____________________ one and sort of forms a bit of _____________. [...] There is a little bit of ________________________, a little bit of ________________. It's a little bit of a _______________________________.

(Makes me sound like Lou Bega but oh well).

Ein weiteres Beispiel:

Fill in the missing words: (3)

Cliff:
"I don't ___________________ that process at all and I don't think any of that was _________________ ________________. I learned a lot. […] I wrote my first book when I was an_______________________ and naïve 21-year old, it's a terrible combination. I was hopefully _______________________ ________________________ from that experience."

Oh, the things I could have/should have said.

After the test the students told their teacher "the Kiwi accent is damn hard to understand." It probably didn't help that I was rambling!

For the second half of the exam students were given my story, 'Another Language', to read (they hadn't seen it before), then had to answer questions about it. Such as: "In which way is Another Language a typical short story? Identify at least 2 typical elements of the genre and explain their function in the text."*

Hard out, eh?

I didn't get a trip to Germany, and foosball was not involved, but I still thought this was kinda cool.


----

*  According to the Erwartungshorizont, which I think means Answer Key (though Google Translate tells me it's 'Expecting the Horizon'), some typical features include the limited number of characters, limited background info, limited span of time**, no precise setting, abrupt beginning with no exposition, a climax/crisis/turning point and an ending that is abrupt and open.

** As a limited writer, no wonder I feel at home in short fiction.

Short poems / Liars & Snowmen / Odes of March / Intentions Book

Short poems

Back in January I declared 2012 the year of the short poem (on this blog at least). Since them I've only posted three short poems. Not good enough.

Here's a short poem I wrote in 2006 which I was reminded of with the recent death of the Tongan King.

Inheritance
For Prince Tu'ipelehake & Princess Kaimana

When the Tongan prince and bride
Were driven through the Tongan streets
I learnt the word cortege

Recent reading

I've finally got my head above water with respect to my judging responsibilities for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. That means I'm back to reading paper books again when I'm stationary. A couple shipwreck-type books to knock off this week before I read something from my bookshelf… Michael Faber perhaps? Or Halldor Laxness? Or maybe I should finally get around to reading Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children?
In the realm of audiobooks, I finished Maile Meloy's Liars and Saints some time ago. I remember hearing her talk at the Melbourne Writers Festival last year about how she came to write this book, her first novel, after having some success with short stories. She approached the novel as if it were another collection of short stories, although all focussed on the same set of characters… The result is certainly a novel rather than a story collection (or even a novel-in-stories, a term and a distinction I loathe), but some of the short story's necessary reticence (necessary because due to space constraints, you can't say everything that might be important) remains in each chapter. The result is a novel that covers a lot of territory without ever feeling capacious.
Now I'm listening to Jo Nesbo's The Snowman for my annual toe-dip into Crime Fiction. I feel a "Things you must/must not include in a crime novel" post coming on…

Another wee one

Distraction

On television the wannabe models receive advice:
Don't let them think you're thinking.

Out and about

I'm off to the Odes of March tonight at Meow. According to the poster it'll be "Bold poetry and brazen fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the International Institute of Modern Letters", featuring Eleanor Catton, Steven Toussaint, David Fleming, Lee Posnor and Therese Lloyd. Should be fun.
The other event on my all too empty dance card is the launch of Gigi Fenster's novel 'The Intentions Book' (great title - it's about tramping amongst other things) at Unity Books in Wellington 6pm next Thursday. I think it's an open invite, since it's all over Unity's website. Come along!

And one more poem

A joke about real estate

The tender process.

To Do List

Via Dailyserving.com Write a novel in which all of the characters' names sound vaguely like soups (Tom Young, Angus Pacio, Clem Crowther, Minny Strong, Cullen Skink…)
"Do" a photographic essay called 'Kingston: the grubby jewel at the end of the #7 line' (Aside: what's the appropriate verb for photo essays??).
In conversation, describe someone's hair as 'tonsured'.
Exercise.
Invent some way of indicating which cubicle in the men's room was used most recently… so you can avoid it. (This is less related to personal hygiene than it is that awkward moment when you enter the men's room, find a colleague washing his hands and have a 1 in 3 chance of choosing the same cubicle he has just vacated -- because you know that to him it will seem as if you chose his cubicle when in fact you tried in vain to avoid it). (Perhaps a display on each door showing 1 [most recently used] to 3 [least recently used] or a timer "minutes since use"? Or perhaps a pressure sensitive floor that turns red when stepped on, then goes orange, then green after a period of time?)
Conduct an experiment to see if fingernail growth is affected by the amount of typing done in a given week.
Stop clenching my teeth. Jeez.Find jicama seeds (or seedlings, even better) to plant in my garden.
Wait for jicama-planting season.
Become impervious to physical pain like those dudes in the kung fu movies I watched when I was a kid.
On the bus: ask the person next to me what the fastest fish is (without Googling it beforehand).
Keep a secret.

Some rules for historical fiction

Things you can't put in an historical novel

Out-of-office replies
White people with dreadlocks
The Tragically Hip
Characters that make Star Wars references
Post-it notes
Arts funding bodies
Escalators
More than one fat person

Things you shouldn't put in an historical novel (or any novel for that matter)

Any description of a piece of clothing that runs to more than twenty-five wordsA lighthouse
Reference to physiognomy
A romance between an upper class woman and a lower class man
A romance between an upper class man and a lower class woman
The construction, 'like so many…' (as in: 'all of those politicians that you carry around in your pocket, like so many nickels and dimes')'Milady'
A character that turns out to be a famous historical figure at the end of the book

Things that should be in every historical novel
A coracle
(entirely too well-made for the purposes
of my kind of historical fiction)Someone with an eyepatchAn elaborately carved walking stickCruelty to childrenMore than one dark-skinned characterA disgusting mealA simile involving wolvesThe construction of a coracleBirds

My Writers and Readers Week 2012

The NZ Festival's Writers and Readers Week isn't done yet. There're still some session on tomorrow (Wednesday) and I'm heading off to the "Writer's Dnner" (whatever that may be) tonight.

In the time I have spare between now and the dinner I thought I'd record some of my memories and impressions from my first festival as a performer in front of a home audience.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was moving house over the weekend, which meant I was frequently exhausted. I plan to mine the house-hunting/moving thing for a Dom Post column (or four) in the future, so I won't say much more about that. Suffice to say it's been a busy few days.
My first act was as an audience member (albeit on a comped ticket), listening to Tim Flannery's bitsy opening address at the Town Hall. Flannery is clearly a smart guy and I'm glad he's out there fighting the good fight against climate change and all that, but I felt uncomfortable several times during his address. I think it has something to do with the cavalier way he discussed New Zealand history, particularly the arrival of Polynesians and the extinction of the moa. New Zealanders would have spent three times as long to say what he said, pussyfooting around the cultural and historical uncertainties, but as an Australian he just ploughed through. Not that I advocate pussyfooting, but sensitivity can be a virtue, as can acknowledging something is beyond your ken.

Afterwards, it was up to the council chambers for the opening party. The usual speeches from politicos and festivalites punctuated the relaxed and cheerful night of mingling. I caught up with Kim Scott, who I hadn't been able to chat with in Perth, and we relived memories of Sydney and the Commonwealth Writers Prize junket. I've since observed this with other writers who've met at other festivals: once you've been on a panel together you're as good as best buds when it comes to these sorts of events where (for the non-locals at least) you're lucky to know two people.

I also got to chat with some of NZ's crime writing fraternity, including Vanda Symon, Paul Cleave and Craig Sisterson. You can read Craig's account of his festival on his blog. When I heard that these guys had been playing Frisbee in the sun and had missed the opening address I was jealous. In the hopes of one day being invited to play Frisbee I told them of my secret desire to one day write a crime novel and was roundly encouraged (damn them… why can't they be more snooty and exclusive like the writers of "literary fiction").

My session at the Embassy in Wellington was on Saturday afternoon: 'Emerging Writers' with Eleanor Catton and Hamish Clayton, chaired by Harry Ricketts. I'd appeared in a session with Hamish in Auckland in May (my first ever festival sesh; it seems so long ago) and with Ellie in Melbourne in September, so there was an element of familiarity. (I also had Harry Ricketts as a lecturer for a few English papers at university, but I don't remember ever talking to him back then, just him talking to me and the 250 other students in the lecture).
 Our Embassy Session on Saturday
Photo courtesy of NZ Festival's facebook page (C) Robert Catto I thought the session went well. There was a bit of a microphone malfunction for Hamish initially, and Harry referred to my book as A Melting Man more than once (I thought the first time might have been an aberration and let the chance to correct him sail by). I read part five of 'Orbital Resonance', which is all about house-hunting, as it felt rather appropriate given events in my real life. I got a few chuckles as I read, which is always encouraging.

You can read an… interesting account of the session on the Scoop book's website. There has been a bit of talk on Twitter about this piece today (most of it negative) and it's interesting to note that Scoop also has a sanitised version online.

Some gems from the unsanitised version:

When talking about contemporary New Zealand writers 'emerging' tends to mean "emerging from the vagina of Bill Manhire's creative writing course soft, wet, and perfectly formed, but still umbilically attached via VUP"...

I didn't hear what the conversation was about, as Catton had a beautiful, gentle timbre that I was instantly lost in and it left me forgetting to actually listen to her…

She was also incredibly well-kept – all three writers were, as a matter of fact. They looked like they'd stepped out of a photo shoot backstage. Their hair was tidy, their complexions flawless, their clothes fit them well. They epitomised beautiful youth…

Cliff had a dry humour that the audience warmed to instantly. Casually referring to masturbation in your opening statement is a great way to break the ice with an audience of 200 odd strangers, it seems.

After the session, the three of us were all visited by several audience members at the signing table and signed a number of books. Those that I spoke to seemed to have enjoyed the session. Some had even read my book, but I was most chuffed when two separate people said they enjoy my columns in the paper (I'm constantly wracked with fear that my columns suck / I'm about to be sacked and guilt that I'm squandering a golden opportunity to talk about important things etc etc, but that's a self-indulgence for another blog post).

To the kind person who said, 'I even read your blog!', all I can say is you must be crazier than I am.
 The signing table
Photo courtesy of NZ Festival's facebook page (C) Robert Catto On Saturday night I went along to the VUP party, which doubled as the launch of Harry Ricketts' poetry collection 'Then Just' (strike that, reverse it). Good food and nibbles, good poetry, good company, good times.

Sunday I managed to get along to Alan Hollinghurst's session with Finlay MacDonald, who surely must be one of the best chairs/interviewers for these sorts of events in the country: personable, funny, well-prepared, unafraid to probe. Part of me hopes to one day sit down one-on-one with him in front of an audience, but part of me dreads the things he'll trawl up from the internet (!) and the admissions he'll coax out of me.
Then it was on to the "Industry Drinks" put on by Creative NZ, which were held at the Library Bar (the venue for my book launch back in July 2010). I got to speak to several international authors, but the highlight (if that's the word) was talking to some of the Creative NZ people. I worked two days a week in the CNZ accounting office for almost two years while I was a student at Vic. This was eight or nine years ago now, but a surprising number of CNZ staff from that time are still around and were there on Sunday. None remembered me.
 
'But I'd come around every month and drop off the photocopy of your phone bill so you could identify your personal calls and refund the money?' I said, plaintively.
 
Nada.

(I wanted to be a writer back then. I even did the short fiction workshop up at Vic while working there. And the thing about playing with a datestamp to make impossible dates that features in my story 'Oh! So Careless' comes from working at CNZ.)

So was finally being published, appearing at the festival and getting invited to a CNZ boozer as rewarding as I thought it might be back in 2003?

Not really. Nine years is a long time and they seem like nice people.

I did manage to corral a newer CNZ staff member who coordinates a lot of the writer's residency applications and deploy (in the most cynical, self-serving fashion) a few juicy sound-bites about the need for more literary connection with Australia and the South Pacific…

The sell-out crowd for Jo Nesbo's session
Photo courtesy of NZ Festival's facebook page (C) Robert CattoOn Monday, Hamish, Ellie and I were driven to Masterton for a repeat of our 'Emerging Writers' session, though this time we were chaired by David Hedley (owner of the best independent book store in town and a man with more rock'n'roll connections than a mere mortal can fathom – "Every time I see Eric Clapton these days I just think, 'You are so straight! What happened to you, man!" etc etc).

Again, the session went well (aside from a few audience members complaining about the sound system – it didn't help only have two mics for four people, and a few coughing fits from the audience). I read the second half of 'Manawatu', which seemed to play alright (I suspect it would have done better if it was called 'Wairarapa', but thems the breaks).

Click here for an account of our Masterton session on the Booksellers NZ blog.

I saw a couple of sessions when I got back to Wellington and then today (Tuesday) I had to go back to work at the Ministry. Bugger eh?

Oh well, I'm off to eat and drink on someone else's dime again tonight. If only it was Writers and Readers Week every week!