Simone Sinna's Blog, page 56

What to Wear to a Cocktail Party at a Zoo

What to Wear−A Cocktail Party at the Zoo

It was to raise money for a good cause, and we got to hear the very charming and amusing Michael Palin speak about fish (as in one called Wanda), elephants and Brazil, the latter the topic of his latest book and BBC series. We also got to buy fluffy soft toys, and participate in the auction. Gabriel (Embedded & Exclusive) didn’t buy the most entertaining item- dinner (at a top restaurant) with two zoo keepers, both 30ish and 6ft 3in. And very cute…actually given there was a very impassioned talk about the pending extinction of the Tasmanian Devil by the Zoo’s CEO then I rather think it should have been Simone buying the night out…
It was hard not to look at these two hunks and think of Lincoln and Kael, the heroes in the third of the Were-Devils of Tasmania series… Mac and Mitch who are in Were-Devils’ Revenge out on December 3rdat Siren are more physical and very well built…these two were bright and cute and hunky with a definite sense of humour. Maybe I should have let Gabriel…oh well too late now. (check it out at www.simonesinna.com)
So back to the question- what to wear? I wasn’t given a dress code and hadn’t ever been to a cocktail party in the zoo grounds (surrounded initially by Meerkats, they are soooo cute). The weather in true Melbourne style was variable. Not a night for a strapless number unless you had layers and then, what’s the point? Then there’s always the possibility of being outrageous. Going as Jane for instance (of Tarzan fame).
The crew seemed to have outrageous under wraps. The band with the python around the bassoon and safari outfits (possibly the only good use of a Safari outfit) and Tarzan and Jane with sprayed on outfits (this is an exaggeration) at least didn’t use much paint or much to the imagination. The celebrity chefs at least looked like chefs and Michael Palin was neat casual.
We did have one dinner suit, half the men in open necks and half with ties. The women? Ranged from the frock from Target (ugh) to elegant and understated. No ball gowns- the zoo doesn’t really lend itself to that. Despite being Melbourne Cup week, no hats either.
Myself? Little black numbers (and black is Melbourne’s colour) come into their own on an occasion like this. A little white blouse underneath to pick the colour up, an elegant gold line in the tapering to the shin and some gold Victorian earrings (thanks to Katherine at Roys’Antiques in Clifton Hill) and the only other thing a girl needs is a glass of champagne…

International Book Sales - though not mine

Okay it’s now official. I’ve made mention of a general state of amazement, hinted at my husband’s runaway success but now the press release has happened I can relate the last two amazing weeks.
First of all this was his first novel, The Rosie Project, written in 7 weeks. Actually this is unfair, because he had been working on the screenplay for five years and had the plot and characters at the tip of his fingers. We had a lot of fun talking them over, getting the right words for the heroine from our younger (thus cooler) daughter, and Graeme can do his hero word-perfect. Of course, he wrote him into existence…but it is weird having his publisher(s) speak about the character as though Don Tillman is real and someone separate!
Next Graeme whips the manuscript into the Premier’s prize competition after I had told him I wasn’t sure it read like a real book…. It is after all, very different to anything I’ve ever read. I was biased and the real person who inspired the character was in my head. Who knew what anyone else would make of this oddball (given I like my heroes to be more traditional).
Then he wins the prize and several publishers are suddenly desperate for it. Not one rejection slip in the drawer. He has a publisher, a deal for more books and we head off overseas to do a 16 day Coast to Coast walk in England. We knew the book was going to go to the Frankfurt book fair (not something I had ever heard about, but in the trade this is where the book deals for overseas rights are done). But that wasn’t until October.
Except that the scouts were out to snap up things prior to the book fair. Next thing I know, Graeme is on Skype and the phone in the midst of a bidding frenzy! It was incredible, as Don the hero would say. This is what the publisher was saying: a ‘once in a lifetime experience’ which will make the follow up novel a challenge! I’m up to my knees in mud and being blown off a peak in the Lake District and he’s on the phone hearing that the German bid has been trumped by an even larger one.
Don is a socially challenged genetics professor who sets out to find a wife –scientifically. He’s funny, and the book is a laugh out loud love story with a romp around science as he tries to find out who Rosie, the most unsuitable applicant’s, biological father is. I have 140,000 words of a novel I never finished with a similar subplot that I abandoned because it wasn’t working- well believe me, it works here!
Graeme got fabulous love letters from publishers desperate to have THE ROSIE PROJECT. They loved Don, opened their correspondence with his traditional ‘Greetings!’ ….and threw money at it. More than a million dollars later, it will be translated into everything from Icelandic to Hebrew (eleven currently but there are apparently plenty more still coming). And he hasn’t sold a single copy yet!
What’s the coolest thing? All the airports we might see it in, in languages we don’t understand, the thought that people all over the world might laugh and love Don and be inspired by his quest, just as I was even when I wasn’t sure if it read like a real book or not. Envy? No, I feel part of it and am so happy for him. But then I’m still gobsmacked! For everyone who reads it next year when it comes out, because this is the ultimate feel-good novel. Enjoy!
Out on Australia February 2012 with Text Publishers:
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

This is a test

Okay I've been blogging for ages, just seems everyone uses Blogger rather than a webpage and I am technologically challenged so trying to see if I can somehow attach this to my website....ah why is life so difficult? Until I work it out - try me at http://www.simonesinna.com/ and either hit Blog on left or on right there is a blog heading with each day and what they are:
Mainc Mondays
Travel tuesday - The Grand Prix's by Stephanie Beauman (my character) and the Camino de Santiago
Wednesday' s-seven sins
Thursday book/film review
Friday Fashion (also by Stephanie Beauman)

Fashion Fridays-Stephanie Beauman’s Blog

27th April

Stockings

Okay just to clarify from the outset, when I say stockings I also mean pantyhose. But how erotic is it to title something Pantyhose? Makes me think of bank robbers rather than shadows of the bedroom where garter belts are slowly being unfastened. True, pantyhose have to be edged or ripped off rather than sexily undone and dropped, but as there are some fabulously sexy stockings of the pantyhose variety on the market, I prefer to put this group (those pictured for instance) together rather than with the more utilitarian ‘tights’ that one wears to keep warm if in a dress.

What is it about this type of stocking? Women in the 50’s and post-war saved up for a pair and repaired and re-repaired them, such a desirable thing that they were. They feel good, make no mistake. The feeling of silk even if it is cotton or nylon, the sheerness as they pull over flesh and help make the worst looking legs half respectable. The naughtiness of them. Well of mine- some with “garters” in the design, or tight look low down giving away to hints of flesh further up the leg. The designers are thinking sex, make no mistake.

In true 50’s style the price remains high, just to make as truly appreciate them- and die when they get a ladder as we put them on for the first time. How many dollars have been waste in moments like this? Like last night’s ones, sheer black with flames up the legs. Alas now also with ladders accompanying them. Too painful to think about.

As the Grand Prix circuit edges closer to Paris I guess I’ll just have to drop into Gallerie Layfayette to replace them…

20th April

The Wonder of Jewellery

I had to buy a present for my girlfriend last week (see Ball Gowns and Major Birthdays below) and what better way to find one that go and see another girlfriend who has a jewellery business? Of course I love the antique jewellery I have (see the earlier Faberge red drops!) from Katherine and Roy’s Antiques but modern jewellery can be quite fantastic and Gillian (gillianhillmandesign.com) has a great array of earrings, rings and necklaces, using gold and white gold, emeralds, rubies, pearls (some great Aussie ones) and a lot more unusual things.

For my friend I ended up with an onyx necklace with a beautiful black Tahitian pearl. But I couldn’t leave with out these earrings… One is from art clay which gets baked and then painted with gold, the other is gold and white gold and dangles daintily….

13th April

Ball Gowns and Birthdays

Tomorrow night is a friend’s birthday. A major birthday. Big enough that it requires an ‘occasion’. Not that it isn’t always nice to have someone making a fuss of you. My 29th? With Gabriel, champagne, dinner with white table clothes and silver service – but in the open air with the sunset behind Uluru also known as Ayer’s rock, an amazing monolith standing alone in the middle of the Australian desert. My 30th (see Exposé which was released as an ebook on April 10th www.bookstrand.com/simone-sinna ) was at Arzak restaurant in San Sebastián in Spain (amazing- the chef’s daughter had just got an award the day we went) with one of Hollywood’s heart throbs.

Other Major birthdays I’ve been to? Simone’s after one of her (nonerotic) books was turned into a full length screen play and filmed over six months and then shown at a proper cinema complete with limo, red carpet and photographers. And awards presented to the actors (and they weren’t all bad though Simone needs to stick to writing…) presented by the Actor’s guild. While the movie had a serious theme (the book had got to the last phase at Random house) the bloopers didn’t … and the out-takes did include some, well, M rated moments.

Simone’s husband was taken by helicopter to a rural getaway one year and another a surprise party in a three star French restaurant. One year they went to El Bulli when it was the best restaurant in the world and now sadly doesn’t exist.

Probably all topped by the party my girlfriend who is a fire dancer and acrobat got paid to entertain at. Located on an island for a 40th where about 500 guests were served constant top level champagne and sent home with Rolex watches.

Okay so tomorrow night it’s my girlfriends and it’s black tie and ball gowns. So what to wear? I’m usually overdressed compared to everyone else (okay so I like to dress up, practically live at Century 21 when in NY and my mother indulges me. What’s a girl to say?). I’d like to wear the dress I wore to the Grand Prix ball (in Exclusive, just accepted by Siren) but unfortunately I couldn’t afford it and had to give it back to Tiara.

Women just so don’t do ball gowns these days. And then as it’s someone else’s birthday, you have to be sure you aren’t going to upstage them. Bit like not wearing white to a weddings (though originally that is exactly what the bridesmaids did wear in order to distract evil spirits away from the bride). Being in Melbourne everyone is bound to wear black. It’s a Melbourne thing. No, not Goth, just traditional conservative. Me? I’d rather like some colour. Maybe this?

6th April Easter- Good Friday

On Play Boy Bunnies …and other fluff and feathers

Great. High Heffernan finds another way of exploiting women by selling us all night attire with bunnies on them. He must be having a real giggle. Trouble is they … well the bunny is rather cute. I was in a aerobics competition once wearing a bunny outfit and it was great for ease of movement. If my tail hadn’t fallen off I might have even won. Well maybe not. I have a feeling I was considered frivolous by one of the judges who had that “we’re serious about exercise” look.

So I don’t have a bunny costume anymore. Or a playboy towel, purse, key ring, underwear or night wear. Let’s face it. There are classier alternatives.

The teddy, basque, bodice with garters and stockings, negligee… the things your boyfriend or husband gives you when you really want a new iPhone or coffee machine. Particularly when they bought a size 6 and you’re a 16. (When my size 18 girlfriend was out on the town she gave me all her presents. They really don’t stretch that far).

...other fluff and feathers

So don’t wait for them to buy the sexy lingerie – surprise them and buy it for yourself. Take a girlfriend, it’s fun. Fluff, feathers and fancy dress for the bedroom. One girlfriend bought me this amazing see through blue flimsy negligee that makes me feel like I’m Marlene Dietrich. The men who have seen me in it weren’t carrying guns either…Cops and nurses are a bit passé but better than bunnies. At my half-sister’s recent 15th birthday all the girls were in variations of this theme. With legs that go on forever and looking years older. Wow, watch out men of the future from this lot!

 

3oth March

Pants Suits

Living away from home (New York) in a country where there is a female prime minister (Australia) has got me thinking about women in politics and what they wear.

Firstly it’s an issue. It is something that comes up. Julia Gillard is constantly being derided (she does her best but she does need guidance about how to minimise rather than maximise her ample hips) and made fun of in a recent TV series. Before her it was Joan Kirner (a previous State premier) and her polka dots and leader of the democrats red chiffon number of the front page of the woman’s weekly. Why? Because they really are bad dressers (jury is out on this)? Because Vogue hasn’t made it out here (no)? Because they’re female (yes)? I have to say I rather like the Governor General’s numbers (even if she does have a man’s name, Quentin, she is defintiely female and very colourful).

Aside from anything else, this country is culturally well, ocker. Lay back, deriding of most things, a bit cynical, a bit anti-establishment. They did after all come from the convicts. Women were Sheilas and in the outback they still are. But then we’ve got cowboys in the States…

So are we any better in the States? Not really- just different. I don’t think I have seen any US female politician in anything other than a pant’s suit. The male politician’s wives wear skirts and jackets on the campaign trail but the female politicians never show their legs. Neither do female academics. There is a almost unbreakable rule – women if they want power must show no sexuality. Not be men, but be devoid of anything that – good heavens, might distract the fellow male politicians or remind people they are women. It’s as if there is something terrifying about femininity. That the power of the mother and seductress might somehow be released in the halls of power.

UK didn’t do much better with Maggie. Whatever else you say about her, the fact that you got to see her in a dress made you think more Dame Edna Everage…

The Italians had a politician who went to the other extreme and campaigned topless. Probably don’t need to go there.

Why can’t we follow France’s model? No not with respect to the men (Dominique Strauss-Kahn is perhaps a great model for everything we don’t want male politicians to be). I’m thinking Christine Legarde. She’s obviously very capable, didn’t sleep her way into power but she’s clearly woman and hasn’t compromised this. Elegant, smart and yes you do get to see her legs.

23rd March

Russian Earrings

Now these are my type of earrings. They look simple but once probably had the signature of Fabergé. Enamel and they look as they look like new.

I found Roy’s Antiques in Clifton Hill (Melbourne)  and he’s a Russophile. Russian icons, silver – and these earrings. Or rather he had them until they came into my possession… Better still they came with a story, apparently the property of a Russian countess who escaped to the US, but not until after a childhood where she hung out with the royal family. The ones that didn’t make it out. Better still, Roy (the quintessential antique shop owner, slightly starchy, impeccably dressed and spoken and a fountain of knowledge) found a book the good Countess Olga Woronoff  had written and got me a copy- circa 1932. Essentially an early biography complete with photos. Not of the earrings sadly but a gorgeous photo of her at about ten with her father, and her family with the Russian royal children.

Wearing the earrings I can close my eyes and pretend just for a moment (a moment with no Bolsheviks around) I am a continent away in another time.

16th March

Grand Prix Couture

What does a girl wear to the Grand Prix?

Okay there are those among you who will reply nothing (…meaning don’t go). Not everyone gets excited by the first rev of the engine. It’s probably more of a mystery to women in particular. I’m inclined to think from my own experience that if you don’t get bitten early you never will. There has to be someone back in your formative (er sexually formative) history that you link with the sound. Then forever after when you hear the rev, it just goes straight to your groin. Well it does to mine.

It was my first crush. I was fourteen, he was sixteen. Okay the GP was the Monaco one and if you’re going to start somewhere this is kind of starting at the top, hard to improve from there. Particularly as the race was amazing. The main record was that only three cars finished!

Move forward sixteen years or so and here I am in Australia for the Melbourne GP (you can read more about this later in the year when Exclusive comes out). And the issue is – what to wear. Yesterday (Thursday) when they were doing the fly overs and Formula Ford and Porsche races it rained on and off all day, but was also hot and sticky. Not that I’m complaining too much as in New York it wasn’t getting over 16 C. But how to keep dry but stay elegant?

Not sure these grid girls have got it right but at least they are trying!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/grand-prix

Just hoping that the weather will be better for the weekend and I can show a bit of leg and get some sun! Otherwise, well jeans it is and the only question is which Tshirt I’m going to by. I do like the red Ferrari one but given the two Aussies (Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo are in Red Bull senior and junior (Torro Rosso) maybe I should support them. Maybe one of each of the teams and change them is I get wet…

 

9th March

A Little Bit of Fluff and Fun

Isn’t fluff and fun what fashion is meant to be about? It was International Women’s Day yesterday and it’s great all the wonderful things women have done but lets not lose the ability to do a Cyndy Lauper…

Sometimes girls just want to have fun

It has apparently been the hottest Australian summer in 11 years. The wettest too, given 75% of New South Wales is either under water or under threat of being so. Luckily for flimsy little numbers like this for those hot sultry evenings drinking cocktails on the terrace looking out over Sydney Harbour …Could have come from Tiara Mancini (The Hot House in Embedded…) but is a Gabrielle which is nice given the hot man in my life in Embedded is Gabriel…

As I’m moving back to New York (Exposé coming out next month) I guess I’ll only have to pack it away until June…

2nd March

Earrings

I gave this as a present to Simone…a bit over the top for me but very her.

I had a very Fitzroy experience when I stayed with her in Melbourne; cocktails at The Everleigh on the corner of Gertrude and Napier (new, upstairs and very New York, felt quite homesick), tapas at Anáda, also on Gertrude (great tapas, sherry and great service from Kelly, Jamie (he’s the one with his hair in the bun) and David at the bar). Finished off the evening a few doors down at Enoteca being well looked after by Brigitte and Jamie with a wide choices of great reds by the glass.

Ears are even better than ceilings for some chandeliers...

Coffee next morning at the happening place De Clieu (corner George and Gertrude) and then wandered down to buy these earrings at Metal Couture  (www.metalcouture.com).

 

24th February

Hats

I adore hats. Living in Australia they take on a different meaning. Slip slop slap anti-skin cancer program seems to have led to (shudder) caps with handkerchiefs at the back. Very useful I’m sure but these are not the hats to which I refer! Nor do I include Fascinators, a favourite at last year’s Melbourne Cup, though they are not without attraction.

No, I mean hats. Like this one. A little dusty perhaps but true Victorian Gothic. Something to lose yourself in.  Something that makes a statement. Not great in the wind, but the Slip Slop Slap people would love it…

 

16th February

Thank God for Australian weather! Alright it is a little wet at times (well under water up North) but the glorious warmth of summer means you can bring all those gorgeous little numbers out. The ones that cost a fortune and you wonder why given the lack of material constituting them.

Actually this one was a bargain, by Gripp.

And it most certainly does. Grip…

This one was what I wore in Argentina at Gabriel’s house when I seduced Miguel in front of him…

9th February

Sometimes I like to be noticed. Okay maybe a lot of the time. What better way to do it than with clothes?

In ‘Embedded’ this dress when worn to the Melbourne Cup (What sort of city has a public holiday for a Horse Race?) is described as a Gaultier. This was a slight exaggeration. Well, actually not true. But I’m sure this dress would inspire JPG if he saw it though…

Miguel certainly appreciated it…

There is a fabulous fashion precinct in Melbourne- Gertrude and into Smith St Fitzroy. Bit grungy and definitely trendy, the stores with new designers hover around the fashion school just off Gertrude in George St. One is even down in Gore St opposite the Pub where ‘Offspring’ is filmed. Anyway, this dress came from one of the designers that was showing her stuff there (though has now moved). It’s wild!

3rd February

Designers. I met my fair share when I was working for Coco and I have to say that in general time is better spent with their clothing than them. There is something about the fashion industry that seems to combine unstable dynamite, metamphetamines and narcissism and then takes a whisk to it. No, actually egg beaters on full throttle. Not that shoppers are much better waiting for the doors to open on sale day.

Favorites? Lots and ever changing. Though I’m out of the fashion industry now, being in Australia has given me a chance to try a whole new country of designers. The weather generally being so good (well there has been a bit of rain admittedly), there’s lots of opportunities for pool and yacht parties…

Versace was one of my old favorites and this dress is the original – Gianni that is. It’s like wearing air…soft caresses occasionally reminding you not to panic, you aren’t naked. And he did like color- Donatella has certainly kept that going!

This one I picked up in Saks, Fifth Ave.

 

 

 

 

27th January

The dress you’re never going to forget.

Okay I really needed a proper photographer for this, but you get the idea. Every woman has one. Maybe it’s the wedding dress. The dress you met your partner in. The dress you first took off for your partner…

Mine is the first dress I bought from the first fashion show I ever went to. It was wild. In a circus tent, there were uncaged leopards (ok, on leases) and some very, very sexy models just in ‘out there’ clothes. I couldn’t resist this dress. It was also the dress that made me realize the power of sex appeal and how what you wear and how you feel makes it ooze out of you. This was a very successful dress on all fronts…

 

20th January

My strong suggestion is that if you’re female and under sixty (and even a few people over) – get a pair before you die! If you wait too long they might be the cause of your death. Okay they do mould to your feet like they were sprayed on, and yes you do feel like a million dollars and yes you could take on Sarah Jessica Parker. But let’s get real. Blanik was Chinese in a previous life and responsible for feet binding. This is not what our feet are meant to do! I’m getting (horror, horror) bunions. The bank account (well had my mother not helped out…) would have been cause for suicide and had I been older when I walked in the them after a snow storm last year in the Big Apple, I would surely have ended up in Bellevue. Possibly the morgue (and I’ve read about the Morgue in Linda Fairstein’s novel (or was it Patricia Cornwell?). Not somewhere to have a date).

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April 26th

She’s Never Coming Back by Hans Koppel

This is another book that has been gathered in the post-Steig Larsson/Lisbeth Salander sweep of Scandinavian authors “who can do no wrong and we can’t get enough of them”. Hans Koppel is Swedish and that is where the book is set but the setting really could be in any town anywhere and doesn’t bring with it any particular Swedish cultural moments or (as in both Larsson’s and Anne Holt’s 1222) times when the cold seeps through to your bones.

This doesn’t mean however that it doesn’t have merit for what it is – a crime novel with some psychological suspense. Given we know where the protagonist is being kept and there aren’t many reveals, it is surprisingly gripping and enjoyable. It isn’t however the “most terrifying crime novel I have ever read” as is quoted from Lyssnarklubben (whoever or whatever that is) on the front cover. I obviously read more, though I have to say serial killers stopped being scary in books after I watched Wolf Creek- now that is terrifying. As for keeping people in the cellar, you really can’t go past “The Collector” by John Fowles for terrifying. I was at a conference once where FBI profilers made the point that virtually every serial killer has a copy of the latter on their shelves…

The plot is essentially a kidnapping and being kept as a sex slave in retribution (for what we discover as things progress). That she is being held over the road from her husband, that he meets the kidnapper unknowingly, adds to the tension. That there were real issues between the woman kidnapped and her husband make it all the more real, as does the police response which is not exactly Prime Suspect and I think quite likely to be how it really would be.

As the husband (who had been unhappy) find happiness it becomes increasingly hard to think how the book is going to end, but the author probably picks a reasonable solution.

Overall? A much easier read than Larssen but not as complicated or as satisfying either. One for the holiday by the pool.

April 19th

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Everyone else is talking about so figured I would too. Where did this come from? Out of nowhere comes three books and a movie. The power of a well thought through marketing campaign I guess (I’m envious but realistic. Somehow erotica doesn’t quite lead itself to this, even if Sinnaman does have someone to make a short film of one of my short stories to help draw attention to his screenplays and my books)!

So Hunger Games. Catching Fire and Mockingjay the sequels are lined up on the iPad already purchased and read by my children.

It’s definitely young adult fiction. More adult concepts up front than Harry Potter (though arguably this series also had deeper and darker messages) it’s just as easy reading. I started reading that and another e-book about the same time (one I decided to test out from my Twitter authors) and it’s interesting that having got to chapter three I couldn’t put Hunger Games down, whereas the other I’m still only a third through.

The difference? Collins essentially follows every rule in the book on ‘how to’. No head hopping (there is so much head hopping in the other one it’s hard to identify with anyone and I keep forgetting who is who). It’s first person and we follow Katniss’s journey and feel for her throughout. It takes a bit, but not much of a leap to accept her world of the future, and the author is consistent.

Other rules? She’s a bit different, gutsy, but saves her sister. She then has a quest. There is a love interest, played lightly but well. There are enough twists and turns, however predictable, to keep our interest enough. In the end you have to read to work out how the author ensures (SPOILER COMING UP BUT IT’S NO SURPRSIE!) that both hero and heroine survive. At first you think it’s too easy but then there’s another twist.

So it might not win a Pulitzer but she’ll be laughing all the way to the bank and good on her. My hats off to Ms Collins and her publicity team. I’m off to read Catching Fire now…

April 12th

Lone Wolf by Jodie Piccoult

This is the latest from this very popular author – I’ve read them all. What’s the attraction? Well, she writes well, it’s an easy read but it’s also thought provoking . She does a lot of head hopping- this as in many (possibly all) of her books follows several characters in alternating chapters. This means that we really get inside her characters heads and understand as the book progresses their usually quite complex motives.

Piccoult tackles complex family dramas where there are emotional and moral quandaries and nothing is every as it seems. Most know her book that was made into a movie with Cameron Diaz (Her Sister’s Keeper) about a couple who engineer a second child to provide bone marrow for the older child who had leukaemia. As always the book is more complex (and with a different ending) to the film.

In Lone Wolf Piccoult tackles two children (one a minor, one older but estranged) and their decision to turn off the life support machine that is keeping their father alive. It is about grief, guilt, how no one is perfect and how one of the tasks of adolescence is to learn to accept your parents for what they are, imperfections and all. That in doing so you can also accept your own imperfections.

It also brings in a lot of information about wolves. It seems Piccoult did a lot of research and if her tribute is true, there really was a man that did what the father in this book did – lived with a wild wolf pack. Though some of the motives and thoughts she attributes to the wolves must be at least in part conjecture, I found it fascinating, and the parallels she draws between the wolf pack and the family a useful way to rethink about relationships.

The ending (and I mean beyond the epilogue to what I thought was an excerpt of her next book, but isn’t) maybe a little overdone, but I’m a soft touch and I have a son. I cried. If reading this book makes just one more person in the world be an organ donor, then she deserves every cent she makes from this book (well, she does anyway).

5th April

The Eight by Katherine Neville (www.katherineneville.com)

Along with Shantaram, reviewed previously, this is a book that spoke to me. Grabbed me and wound its magic around me, seeping into my soul. I have probably read it at least ten times and several sections more than that.

Is it literary genius? No. Is it well written and engrossing? Yes. Fast paced, can’t be put down? Yes. Is it perfect? No. The concept is so good though it had me wanting to rewrite and re-imagine parts of it, trying to think of ways of making the chess game metaphor stronger. And a great romp through history.

In brief – and it’s a longish book – the story is in two halves, woven together throughout. There is a current time section where the protagonist is a sassy 23 year old female computer whizz who from the first page I just totally became, entering into her world as though it was mine (I should add I am technologically challenged in real life). Reading about the author she has clearly borrowed a lot from her own life for this character. Including some of the less likely things the character does (like working in Algiers) which KN actually did.

The other section is historical, weaving just about everyone in history from Charlemange to Napoleon into the narrative. Farfetched? At times, but it’s too interesting to spend too much time agonising over. Part of the beauty of the book is it takes you to a different place and you really don’t want to leave.

I read years after first reading this book that Katherine Neville had written it in a tree-house on the Californian coast. She described the house – think mansion wrapped around a huge tree trunk and on a cliff with miles of ocean before you – and it made me think how important where you write can be. I know ‘Power of One’ author Bryce Courtney ties himself to a chair for hours in the evening to write, but me, put me in that tree-house and I think I could write a best seller too…

She has written, years later, a sequel, The Fire. Same voice but this time it’s the daughter of the original heroine. We get a glimpse of the mother and I longed somewhat nostalgically to see ore of her, but the pace picks up and you’re away again. Both books you need a week free with a glass of wine and a fire – or a view of the Californian coast ­– and it will be as if you’ve been to all the exotic places and times without having to pay for the airfare (or time travel).

29th March

Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Most people have heard of or seen the movie of this name directed by Ron Howard, starring Russell Crowe that got four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Screenplay.

Fewer will have bothered to read the book, which is a pity. It’s quite thick and dense which is daunting, but it’s beautifully written, engaging and real story even more fascinating than the Hollywood version. It was rightly nominated for a Pulitzer. To be fair to Howard’s interpretation I think it helped schizophrenia get on the map, be less stigmatised and reduce irrational fear. But a lot of the pain was glossed over and ignored, and it is this that makes John Nash’s biography richer and fuller and more real.

John Nash was a mathematician who got a Nobel prize using those maths skills but actually in economics. Don’t ask me what he did, it made no sense to me, but this in some ways is what helps us understand his illness better. He and his colleagues were all a bit odd (I’ve read some accounts of famous mathematicians who couldn’t get their own breakfast). But his genius, the solutions to complex problems, came as inexplicably to him as did the psychosis.

He was sadly very affected by his illness and his private life was a good deal messier and less savoury than Hollywood would have as think. Yet his wife still took him back to care for him when unmedicated he was picking out food from bins. And despite the severity of illness, ultimately he was able to use rational thinking to draw a distinction between what was real and what wasn’t.

I heard him speak at a conference reasonably recently, long after the movie and the prize. He may well be a genius still or he may be thought disordered as part of his illness because he was pretty tough to follow. But he survived and his story – the written one – is truly inspirational.

22nd March

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

I heard a rumour a couple of years ago that this was going to be made into a movie with Johnny Depp. Sadly there has been no more word. If it is ever made, I’ll be there on opening night and probably several subsequent ones.

Sometimes a book just grabs you and won’t let you go. I read this some years ago when it first came out but it still hasn’t let me go. Many books I read and instantly forget. This has left vivid images and feelings. It was largely responsible for me choosing India for my last birthday escape. Sinnaman I have to say didn’t feel the same (I don’t mean about India- the book). He felt that he saw through the facade of the author and what was reality based and what wasn’t. ME? The author, of whom one has to believe did put a lot of himself into the fictional hero, is undoubtedly a flawed human (well aren’t we all). He, like the character in his book is an ex-drug addict who has escaped from prison and is on the run in India and Afghanistan. A lot of the other things may well be based on things that happened to him or others. But it is meant to be fiction.

In short it’s a ripping great yarn. The pace is fast, the writing good for both character and place (the author was an English lit major before drugs sent him in a different direction) and the story and romance is sensational. It brings India alive, full of vibrancy and colour, it makes sense of how they live in poor communities and yet still smile. It makes you feel you’re there and then want to go when you get to the end. It’s a thick book and lots happens and the Afghanistan section is probably the weakest, but given the Western worlds tentative involvement in the country I think reading anything about it is helpful (though I’m not about to rush off there to visit). Take it on your next holiday. But don’t expect to do anything except sit by the pool with it.

15th March

Dream House

I have to confess I am a Daniel Craig fan. If there’s a film and he’s in it, I want to see it. I’m a sucker for his James Bond. Turn those eyes on me and I’m jelly. They inspired the character of Jeffrey in Exposé (who also reappears in Exclusive, relevant as it’s set on the Grand Prix circuit and today am off to Day One of the Australian GP- onyl celb races but as I’ve been writing about GP’s for the last few months, it’ll be good to be in th thvik of it).

Which was the problem -Daniel Craig that is, not the GP’s-with watching Dream House. It also stars Naomi Watts, who when my publisher asked me to describe the heroine Stephanie for the cover, I had said was a bit like Watts in looks (okay on the cover of Embedded they made her a tad more willowy). So here I am watching a movie with my heroine and hero but a story I hadn’t written.

As a side line I’d have been happy to. Have written it I mean. It’s a neat fast paced well filmed story and couldn’t fault the acting. I didn’t pick the twist (either actually) and as long as you don’t mind a little of the other world it makes sense and pulls everything together for a nice ending. So watch it over a pizza and a glass of wine for a wind down. Isn’t going to change the world but much less of a waste of time than many films I’ve seen.

Trouble for me I was watching Jeffrey kiss some other woman – Rachel Weisz (Naomi Watts doesn’t play the wife of Daniel Craig’s character) and it just wasn’t right! It got me wondering how it must be for their real wives and husbands. It’s not that they are always acting either. Take Angelina and Brad on the set of Mr. & Mrs Smith. Some partners perhaps wisely stay on set. Others maybe don’t watch and hope for the best (or do likewise…). As for me I just hope Stephanie doesn’t see it…

8th March

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

When I lived in New York for a while I was in Murray Hill- just around the corner from the apartment in Park St where Rand lived for many years. While there I read her biography, having read the Fountainhead in my early twenties. She was a strong willed woman originally from Russia, who adopted the US with passion and then through her books and talks and less so the movies of her books, strongly influenced American politics in ways that can still be seen today.

The Fountainhead is a book of big ideas, strong people and stronger philosophies. Like Rand, the hero, Howard Roark, an architect (played by Gary Cooper in the movie), is as unbending as the author, true to his dream of independence of mind and thought and all that this means. The heroine (played by Patricia Neal, who thought the film which did badly ruined her career, largely because of the ‘rape’ scene) I thought was similarly strong and admirable when I first read it. Now, after reading about Rand and realizing how flawed she was in her personal life, the Dominique character seems far too one dimensional and what I saw as strength may actually have been the inflexibility of a narcissistic ideologue.

Rand was married and her long suffering husband appears to adored and supported her through a long standing affair with a much younger man, a psychiatrist, Nathaniel Brandon, who became prominent in his own right. They treated the psychiatrist’s wife appallingly and Rand seemed to believe in her own Barbara Cartland novel where as the heroine she would be adored and no one else’s needs matter.

The characters of The Fountainhead are a little like this too. Yet they are also compelling. The story is well crafted and written, a fabulous way to stimulate thought about what is truly important in life and what political, social and personal constructs are needed to support a vision – whether hers, which is ultimately flawed in many ways, or one that is more merciful yet allows all that people love about the US to flourish. It is a novel to stimulate discussion and thought, but not to be taken on without serious consideration of consequences.

Ist March

‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith

‘Because the Night’ was the first song I learnt in singing lessons. I had to later abandon the idea of singing it at my first jig. It was bad enough that I was singing at all with my boss in the audience. He was already ambivalent enough about me.

It’s the only song really that I like of Patti Smith’s, but that and the fact that the book was about her life in New York in the late sixties and seventies was enough for me to pick it up. My heroine, Stephanie, is a New Yorker. Though I will never be able to say this, having lived there, it is a city that has a hold on my heart. It is, for me, the centre of the world.

Patti Smith writes of course of a New York that is in some ways different to the one I knew, but I was surprised more by the similarities. She at the time was poor, and a would be artist then poet before a musician. But she lived in the Hotel Chelsea which was there around the corner from me (though not for much longer) when I lived there. More, the sense of anything being possible- which came true for her- is still the absolute essence of the city. It is the ‘can do’ and ‘will do’ that is one of the very attractive things about the USA.

Smith writes poetically and well. She keeps your interest though the only structure really is that of time. The core of her book is about her love affair with Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer with whom she remained close until he died of AIDS, even though for much of their relationship he was openly gay, and that in the last years she was no longer in New York, having married and had children. I wondered if she waited until her husband died to write it, though it seems she may well have had a wonderful and loving albeit different relationship with him.

Smith would have to be the opposite in me in almost every way. Androgenous where I love being female, womanly and feminine. Her look, her hair, is the antithesis of mine. She can sing despite no lessons and she didn’t pick up a guitar or musical instrument until the same age as me – 23- yet she can sing and play and I can only aspire to do so (and occasionally make people suffer through). I have a gay friend who I love dearly but gay men do nothing for me sexually. Yet I admire Smith enormously for her ability to see Mapplethorpe as he was as a person and an artist. She was able to see his sexuality as completely separate and it makes their relationship shine.

That said, any substance of the book tends to fall like sand through the fingers. More imagery and feelings, the essence of the relationship, but it leaves you feeling like you’ve read a poem, an ode, rather than a book.

23rd February

‘The Sex Diaries’ and ‘What Men Want in Bed’ by Bettina Arndt

Following on from last week- non fiction. But just as relevant to romance and erotica authors and I confess I have a particular interest because I’m meeting her for coffee tomorrow.

Bettina Arndt gets quite a bit of flack from the feminists and I can’t say that its obvious to me why. Unless they just hate men and can’t cope with the fact that she considers men are human (with all the positives and negatives) or they haven’t read the books. There has certainly been a lots of misinformation put out about them. A colleague insisted that her survey results were useless because she only looked at a ‘few’ couples. Media reports headlined her telling women to ‘just do it’ ie have sex, give in to their partners, go back to the days of lying back and thinking of England… (Mind you in my new erritc book Expose and the following finale, Exclusive, if that meant thinking of Jeffrey the British hero- think Daniel Craig- I could cope…)

Let’s dispense with the first bit of misinformation first. What she reports is not perfect science. They are volunteers so yes there will be bias. People would only respond if one or both of the couple were literate, thought sex was important and/or a problem. But there were 98 couples. A robust number by any account (and in my other life among other things I am a researcher), and an enormously rich amount of material- sex diaries of these couples over a whole year.

Every couple should read one of these books at least one. There is some repetiveness and both have some great core messages. If you’re male and over 40, read ‘what men want in bed’. Lot of really useful information.

Is she sympathetic to men? Yes. Overly so? I don’t personally think so. Getting onto the sensational media headlines, she most certainly doesn’t say women should quietly acquiesce to the sexual demands of their partner. What she does say, with lots of well reasoned and backed up argument is that where desire levels differ, it’s important to be solved. She includes where female desire is sometimeshigher than their male partners (and I have seen this too, though less commonly). Burying the problem leads to marriage breakups which more than not, no one (kids included) are better off from. At the very least sex is a significant loss from a relationship which will impact the lower desire partner as well through decreased intimacy. Arndt also makes the point that for many women who ‘just do it’ they end up enjoying it. Many women later in relationships have their desire interfered with by ‘life’ – but once they get into it they enjoy it as much as they always did.

We need more sensible balanced discussion like this about real life problems.

 

15th February

‘Guilty Pleasures’

A Documentary about Romance Genre by Julie Moggan (follow @SiobhanArgent)

Okay this isn’t fiction. But very relevant to romantic and erotic writers. It starts off with a quote something like – ‘Every four seconds someone, somewhere in the World is buying a Mills and Boon’ and then proceeds to take as around the world to look into the lives of readers and one author. And the life of one of men who adorn the covers of these books.

It’s funny, touching, sad, and interesting.

The cover man is hot. Seriously good body. Pity he opens his mouth, because then the whole power Alpha male fantasy goes out the window. He’s actually quite sweet (um not intellectual however) and this is part of the contrasts that Moggan shows so well.

Gil Sanderson (www.millsandboon.co.uk/authors/gillsanderson/) the author is an older British man who has written over 50 Mills and Boon. He and the dears who enjoy the writing workshop are as he says ‘not in their first flush of youth’. As opposed to who they write about…

The readers are the most fun though. A British couple that you laugh and cry with but honestly the spreading of rose petals on the table on Valentine’s Day was nice. Corny but nice. The poor Indian woman who lived her life through the books (and her narcissistic Porsche owner ex who is just an arse). And my favourites- the Japanese dance couple who’s story is beautifully developed.

Watch it!

9th February

Dead Poet’s Society.

I may as well continue yesterday’s theme. Teenagers. One of my favourite films is about teenagers and growing up. About inspiring teachers (I was lucky enough to have two, one in math which got me into university and the other in English Literature who inflamed an already present life-long love of reading and writing).

An absolute must for any teacher – straight after ‘To Sir with Love’. I’m not a huge Robin Williams fan, but in this he is stunning. It still brings tears to my eyes when I picture his students all defying authority to stand on their desks and farewell him.

It’s a sad movie, no doubt, and topical really given the concern in Western society about youth suicide. In this film while Williams is blamed, the film really says a lot about parenting and when our expectations get in the way of what our children themselves want and are capable of. We mostly (not the Chinese Tiger mother it seems) deride parents that push their children- yet Venus and Serena have done alright out of it (I think). I ended up with a career that has been fabulous because I did what my parents wanted initially and that opened to door to something I wanted. Now I have the opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted (writing) without the pressure and I wouldn’t change a thing.

In this movie the lack of perspective of adolescence shines through tragically. Perhaps over all this is the lesson we most need to give our children: things often are better in the morning.

Shouldn’t be missed – but don’t let your adolescents see it too young or without you!

2nd February

Erotic/Romance Genre

Thought I’d talk about romance and erotic fiction genre and would very much welcome your thoughts!

I read two or three Barbara Cartland books as a late teen and felt that was pretty much enough for a life time. Predictable, same story, change of name. I then went onto the entire Victoria Holt/Phillipa Carr (they are the same person), Catherine Gaskin and Mary Stewart collections. By the by, the ones that stand out years later are the Ivy Tree (Mary Stewart: I still get tingles), Summer of the Spanish Woman (Catherine Gaskin- OMG I can still seeing them riding the Irish coast line, her on the white mare, him on the black stallion) and I think it’s called the Lion Triumphant (Phillipa Carr)- the hero is so macho pirate … ahhhh. Anyway after that I studied English Literature so really never came back to this genre until my thirties with some Black Lace erotica, and always liked the ones with a difficult tense relationship between hero/heroine and a Darcy like hero.

So now I write romance suspense with erotica (capital E)– there’s sex in every chapter (like Black Lace novels which were British and fidelity was never an issue), a strong story (capital S for suspense) and the romance(little r) is strong but takes the whole book to get there (the foreplay tension for me is what is erotic).

But having now read quite a few of other Siren authors (see my reviews at Siren) I seem to be in the minority. The rules for the subgenres really tell the story. Infidelity is a real no-no, yet more than one guy is more the rule but they have to all end up together. Oh and then there’s the cowboys which I guess I understand sort of. I grew up with Westerns but progressed…

What I find really curious though – I have lived in the USA long enough to understand a key moral underpinning to society courtesy of the Puritans (though all of my British and Australian friends find it weirdly at odds with the TV programs eg Sex in the City and OC or films) to get the infidelity issue ­– is the character of the male heroes.

When Pride and Prejudice was shown with Colin Firth every woman I know wet their panties over his portrayal. But let’s face it Darcy was never going to put the bin out. But given one of the key characteristics of the classical male hero is being rich, who cares? The butler can do it! So every traditional hero is tall (okay Clark Gable was short but they made him look tall), dark (this can vary) and handsome (a bigger range available here from Tom Cruise big nose look to Robert Redford sweet), rich and brooding (Darcy, Heathcliff, heroes in all books I mentioned above).

So will someone explain the gentle giant to me??? As in Heather Rainiers Siren best seller Lydia’s Twin Temptation? Don’t get me wrong, the idea of two guys who have hot bodies and are hot for me – yes please! But if they are so busy falling over each other in being considerate I’d probably fall asleep while they were still trying to work out if yes meant yes.

I believe the cliché menage includes the cave-man, playboy and conductor (author and owner of some 3,500 menage books! (@MenageReviewer). My books tend to have the last two but none of these read to me as gentle giants. Are women really turned on by men that help them with the vacuuming? I know this is the type of person we might want to live with (ie those without butlers) but is it a turn on? Really???

 

 

26th January

Book this week: Murder on a Midsummer Night by Kerry Greenwood

It’s Australian day so for those down under, pull up a chair, a beer, and a good book! It’ll be a Gin & Tonic for me….

Seen as I did her other series last week, I thought I mention this one this week. Still in Melbourne Australia, in a heat wave, Ms Greenwood takes us back to 1929 where her heroine Phyrne Fisher is a wealthy single woman of 29 who indulges herself as an investigator.

It took a while for me to settle into this. Given the historical setting part of what I needed to adapt to was the times. I certainly felt I should have been reading it with a cocktail cigarette dripping out of a long black holder in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other. (I went to a murder mystery weekend once set in this era and carried around a long black holder with pretty colored cigarettes…I’ve never been a smoker but this could have changed things).

The heroine is a bit unbelievable for current times let alone then, but maybe money can buy anything and she’s certainly fun! The other thing I needed to get used to was the ‘ockerisms’. In truth I never did and probably a reason I won’t read any more of the series. The author clearly researched the slang and it’s all familiar to anyone who spent any of their childhood in Australia, but every time she uses it I cringed and thought about the British Prime Minister saying ‘streuth its a sheila’ or something like that (in jest) to the current (female) Australian prime minister. Australians really don’t talk like this!

Nice plot, plenty of action, good characters. Have definitely read worse – very distinctive and if you like her style, then the series is for you.

 

19th January

I read prolifically. I could start my own second hand book shop and probably keep myself fed for a year. I have started giving them away though to charity due to potential fire hazard. The first ones to go were the Ninja’s (Lustbader – great name but I really wasn’t going to read them again). I still have all the Enid Blyton’s that got me started. Mr Tavish retired from the local second hand book store/library and I was the only person (aged taking out Enid Blyton and the Bobbsey Twins so he gave me the entire collection. I remember sitting in the back seat of the station wagon surrounded by books thinking all my Christmases had come at once. Heaven! My kids were more into Harry Potter (so was I) though they did enjoy the Enchanted Wood and the Faraway Tree.

Book this week: Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood.

Author is from Melbourne Australia, and I saw her presenting at a writer’s festival there. Middle aged, plump and slightly flaky, she clearly enjoys what she writes about. I’m just starting her other series (Phyrne Fisher an upper class PI in the 1920’s) but in this book, Earthly Delights she introduces a new character of which there are now a number in the series.

The heroine is Corinna Chapman, an unlikely heroine: plump (I’m being generous) and a chef. Greenwood has a very distinct style and once I got into it, I found myself liking her slight quirkiness. Definitely not your average crime book though as with the current trend (Lynda La Plante, Elizabeth George etc) the main characters are flawed and all the more real and likable for it. The hero is a social worker, (but drop dead gorgeous in the traditional mould), the setting the soup kitchen and an apartment block with a cast of tenants that makes you not ever want to own rental property. The black leather whip carrying character on the cover is not Corrina, but rather Madame Dread or is it Monsieur Dead? And there is a witch – seems only natural as the author says she lives with a certified wizard.

The other hook for me is the setting. Most people who come to Australia see Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef and if their rich (and probably not American as the Americans have the Grand Canyon) they go to Ayer’s Rock. This book is set in modern day Melbourne where I’m currently living (and in my book Embedded there’s a scene at the Melbourne Cup, a race that famously (in Australia) ‘stops a Nation’). Definitely worth a visit. Don’t worry about Corrina’s bakery – some of the best collection of places to eat in the world with fresh ingredients and lots of variety to choose from.

Overall: light, readable, fun. Won’t make me think deeply or lose sleep but I have gone onto the Phyrne Fisher stories by the same author, also in Melbourne eighty years earlier.

 

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Wicked Wednesdays- Simone Sinna’s Seven Deadly Sins

Simone Sinna’s Blog on the Seven Deadly Sins (Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony)

FOR NEXT THREE WEEKS AM STICKING WITH LUST….SHORT STORY IN THREE PARTS

DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS OVER 18 YEARS. CONTENT MAY OFFEND.

Lust (Part 3 of 3):

Rachel grabbed her towel and wrapped it around herself and ran inside. Parker’s bathroom didn’t look like it had been cleaned in five years. Her mom just closed the doors. Shit. Brad came up behind her, cock not as hard but God still gloriously well, wide. It was hard not to stare. Brad grinned and hand went straight to the top of the cupboard. Sure enough, a packet of condoms.

Rachel dropped to her knees in relief and found herself face to face with the widest cock she’d ever seen. Well true, she hadn’t seen all that many. Parker when he’d been about ten so that didn’t count, and her ex Charlie. She licked the tip and felt a shiver of appreciation go through him. As his excitement increased it hardened again – and got bigger. Rachel’s eyes widened.

Brad pulled out a condom and started to try and ease it over his cock. Rachel tried to help but either she was more incompetent than she thought or … Brad groaned and she giggled. Catching sight on the packet she caught the size. Maybe her memory of Parker wasn’t so far off the mark. Shit. How come she had to be the one with a loser brother who also had an undersized weaner?

Rachel took him in her mouth. At least she had to be able to say she’d put some part of her around this stud. She put her hand around his cock and her thumb and index finger could only just touch. Wow. Wait until she told the girls about this. Samantha was just so like history. But she needed a photo. With her hand around for proof. Her mind went vaguely to her iPhone. On table next to the drinks bar.

“Living room,” she said, positioning him on the couch when she got him there, having grabbed the iPhone on the way past.

Brad was suitably intoxicated by Rachel’s nifty tongue work to not notice the iPhone click.

But they both heard the car door. Rachel froze. Her folks weren’t due home for hours. Then she heard him. Parker. Shit. He was meant to be staying in New Jersey until next week. “My brother” she reassured before grabbing Brad’s hand and fleeing down the corridor into her bedroom. She slammed it shut and turned the key in the lock.

“If you don’t bring me off soon I’m going to die,” she said in exasperation, throwing herself onto her back on the bed.

“Whatever her ladyship requests,” said Brad. He knelt by the bed and gently opened her legs, exposing her shaved lips and their inner folds. Rachel took a deep breath, taken back at her own wantonness. The heat of his lips and tongue opening her up soon caused any reservations to evaporate. His tongue seemed as oversized as his cock, hard and thrusting in way she had never imagined was possible. As he eased himself onto the bed, alongside her, she took his cock and worked on that. Their rhythm at first steady and caressing, then more firm and insistent until finally their excitement reached a crescendo, Rachel releasing first until Brad also allowed himself to give into his desire.

 

The photo, Rachel thought, was pretty awesome. You couldn’t tell who it was so it kind of was like the memento of a really great Summer (the garden shed, on the mower, the pool at midnight, the kids tree-house to name but a few) that only she and he would know about.

It was pretty poor compensation however when she discovered who Samantha’s new boyfriend was. Brad, who had just transferred into Law with them.

Lust (Part 2of 3- scroll down for part one)

“Kind of you to offer me a drink,” said Brad, making it very clear that he thought kindness had nothing to do with it. He’d already undressed her with his eyes. Rachel bristled. She was the one who was meant to be in charge.

“I get very … hot…working in the garden,’ Brad added suggestively.

“I didn’t think you knocked off until 6pm.” It was quarter to the hour.

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Did you have some extra work in mind?”

Rachel smiled and said “depends on how well you work to instruction.” She ran a finger down the center of his chest making a line in the sweat. The muscles of his torso tightened. Much more he was in danger of turning into a werewolf she thought, musing on Jacob from Twilight.

“Try me.”

She was certainly aiming on doing that.

She led him to the corner of the patio where they would be shielded from curious neighbors.

“Take off my top. Slowly.” The response she noticed from his groin was almost instantaneous. She closed her eyes and sensed as he walked around her, then felt his hands on her back as they untied first the knot around her neck and then that across her back. He let her bikini top fall to the floor.

“You can touch,” Rachel added trying to keep her voice steady as she anticipated his touch. Hands came from behind, one on each breast. She leaned back into him, not trusting herself to stand as his hands brushed her firm pert breasts, her nipples pebbling under their touch. Her butt against him, she could feel him hardening in response.

“You can touch me …any where you like,” Rachel added, gasping as Brad immediately let a hand slip under her bikini bottoms, a finger entering the wetness that had been pooling since she had first sighted him mowing. He bent his head, nibbling on her neck and pushing his tongue gently into her ear, his finger pushing a little harder as he did. Rachel moaned.

Brad turned her around, letting her lean against the side of the house as he bent down and pulled her bikini bottoms off. Hands went on either side of her thighs, as his tongue ran over the top of her clit, exposed thanks to the Brazilian job she’d done. It hardened, and Rachel moaned again.

Pulling off his own shorts Brad leaned against her, his cock hard and pressing against her sex, both grinding as their excitement increased.

“Should I wait for instructions?” Brad asked, nuzzling into her neck.

“Condom,” was all Rachel felt capable of saying.

“Shit.”

Rachel opened her eyes as she realized that there was no way those brief shorts were holding a packet of anything.

“Do you have a brother?”

Would a drop kick like Parker have condoms? Better than checking out her Dad’s cupboard. Shit.

Read Lust conclusion next Wednesday
Lust (Part 1 of 3):

Since the beginning of the term break she had seen him every day. It was always the same time: 6am, as soon as her alarm had gone off and she leapt to raise the blind. The first time he had been only a few feet away and the proximity has startled them both, to say nothing of Rachel’s embarrassment at her skimpy night attire. Brad had just grinned and kept clipping the hedge outside her window.

The next morning Rachel had been more cautious, though her attire was just as revealing, this time red. She was sure she looked hotter in it. From Brad’s appreciative look- he’d progressed to the garden bed- he agreed. There were weeks of holidays ahaead and her parents had told her the local Iowa City neighborhood had employed him to help him pay for College. So that meant the rolling green fenceless gardens would be keeping him busy all through until late August.

Perfect. Rachel would return to College in Boston having had her Mellors. She wasn’t after a boyfriend, just an experience out of Lady Chattlerley’s Lover to be able to dine out on. Brad sure as hell had the right body for it. Brawn triumphing brains. She presumed he’d be on a sport scholarship and the gardening money would be for living expenses. But brawn was just what she wanted. Hot uncluttered sex like she was on OC. Maybe she could surreptitiously get some photos. Not of her of course, well maybe just a silhouette. But as much as possible of him. The girl’s in her dorm would go nuts and Samantha would be last year’s story. This year she was going to be queen bee.

The trouble was, while 6am was great for the suggestive clothing it was the beginning of his working day and even if she was prepared to make out in the garden shed, it was hard to get into the mood without maybe a glass of wine or beer. Rachel had to work out how to get him at the 6pm slot. When her family wasn’t around.

On Wednesday her chance came. Her family were going to be out all evening and the weather was hot and sultry. Rachel stretched herself out on a towel on the balcony wearing the skimpiest bikini she owned (one her parents had never seen) and took a vodka cruiser from her Dad’s bar fridge. Brad was doing the lawn behind their house, wearing only shorts. God he was hot. Maybe only 5’9” he looked solid muscle, tanned and sleek with sweat. At first he didn’t notice her. Rachel watched the muscles in his arm ripple as the lawn mower was pushed into tight corners the ride-on couldn’t reach. When he bent over to pick up a rock his butt seemed impossibly tight. God she was horny.

Standing up Brad caught her eye and grinned. Rachel tired to drink as suggestively as she possibly could, licking her lips with their eyes still locked. It was now or never.

“Fancy joining me for a drink when you’re done?” she called, channeling her inner Eva Longoria.

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Be done in ten.”

He didn’t bother putting his shirt back on, just strode onto the decking like he owned it. So much for grateful kid from the wrong side of the tracks. She guessed that’s what a body like that did for you.

Up close he was even more gorgeous, sweat and sheer maleness oozing out of every pore. The way he was checking her out suggested the attraction was mutual.

Rachel felt a moment of panic. What did she do now?

Read next week to find out what Rachel does….

Wednesday 4th April

Parental Pride

If pride is a sin, surely pride in our children is more like being a good parent? Mmm. Seeing parents at football matches attacking other parents and running other kids down, maybe not. Maybe parental pride is the ugly parent? Really pride at yourself and wanting to live through your child.

It all starts off innocent enough. Hell it’s not like we aren’t battling against evolution to be anything other than besotted by our newborn (well until the first sleepless night). Research shows clearly – as the umbilical cord is cut, nature has a panic attack and needs to remind us that the baby isn’t like a baby animal. They can’t stand up, move much or feed themselves. They are like totally dependent. Useless. Should have stayed in-utero had there not been the small problem of getting them out as they grow (think Bella, pregnant if you’re a twilight fan).

So as the result of nature’s panic, the maternal system is flooded with oxytocins, the love hormone. For about fifty per cent of women there is an instant bond, for the others it’s more gradual. So I’m sitting in the bed and it’s three am. I haven’t slept. Nor has Sinnaman and from photos it looks like maybe he hadn’t for a week. I am glowing and feeling like I could go to the gym (not wanting to you understand, just capable). Five hours earlier before the pethidine went in I thought I was being dragged along a marathon blindfolded. Fifteen minutes earlier, in second stage labour (the time when you feel you are shitting a watermelon) I thought I was going to die.

Now I am glowing. Bless oxytocin. In the photo I am looking at my newborn son. I remember the moment as if it was yesterday. I thought he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was in love. Of course part of it was the wonder that I and Sinnaman had produced this little person, but it was pride with a capital P. I look at the photo now with bemusement. A long labour doesn’t do much for your headshape. It’s just possible that the oxytocins had made me a little biased. What the hell. Years later must still be there. My kids are great.

Wednesday 28th March

SLOTH

After returning from walking the Camino de Santiago last year I made some life decisions. The main one was to no longer walk fulltime as I had since my kids started school. Financially it was doable but it never-the-less made me a little nervous. I have some things in common with my character Stephanie – I do like my lifestyle, though after the walk I seemed to have recovered from my clothes addiction. I leave that to Stephanie.

So the idea was two days paid work, one day to do all the ‘stuff’ of the administrative sort that fills ones life. That would leave two days to write – Embedded came out five months later ­– and two days sloth. To chill, smell the roses, regenerate and regrow.

Move forward ten months. Yes I get paid two days a week. And the few extra that frequently sneak in (particularly when the bank balance is low). Admin day? Mmm just seems to be every day. Twitter, blogging, more emails, promotion OMG. As for shopping and cooking my children are in danger of having  staple diet of pizza. I got very excited when a new hamburger shop opened (I don’t do McDonalds). Writing? It’s become an obsession. It’s all I want to do.  Evenings, free days and of course weekends! Sloth? I don’t think so. It must be ingrained in me that it is a sin. Scottish upbringing or something.

Trouble is same thing has happened with my husband. Things just keeping filling the space! Issues of caring for his aging father (and the conflicts within the family around this), sister’s marriage breakup…the list goes on. There’s a saying about give a busy man a task if you want it done but what about this continuing spiral of increasing business despite real attempts to slow it down? I swear that if we really want to chill and write we have to move to the country and have NO internet, phone, iPad, television…or maybe just another long walk where none of these were available…

So sloth this week? Ha- unlikely with usual two paid days and then three days giving talks around NSW coast (also paid…). Weekend will be the final before sending to Siren (hopefully) reedit of Exclusive. So I’ll just dream of it…

Wednesday 21st March

GREED

Supposedly it’s all out parent’s fault. Another parental blame nightmare. In the 70’s we mothers caused schizophrenia (actually it seems to be marihuana and genes and something that sets off the demyelination of nerves in adolescence at a different rate to normal, with stressful homelife a part but not the cause). Now it’s diabetes. It’s what we did when we were pregnant. Only before we beat ourselves up too much we can look at our own mothers and their mothers. Seems to be at least a two generation thing.

So what we ate in pregnancy, somehow interacts with the oversupply of food and this pre-programs our children. And us of course. Not sure if this means McDonalds is blameless? I guess the feast famine theory ie that we are meant to have both and are only having feasts is at work too.

So figure this. Pregnant with my son I ate like a horse. On our honeymoon we had to scour France for French fries. Easy, right? Not where we were. Ended up in Monaco. I also wanted French onion soup, not so bad, but I basically craved rubbish. My son? Stick thin and doesn’t like sweet stuff at all. Would have a diet of red meat given a choice.

My daughter? Hardly put on any weight in her pregnancy, only felt like salads. Yes, you guessed it. Her preferred diet is dessert. For three courses. She’s actually pretty thin too but I stare at them and want to do blood sugar levels. I may as well blame myself before they do…

WRATH

Wednesday  14th March

This week should be gluttony- see Monday’s blog!

Not that there isn’t enough to get angry about. The last week has been consumed with social media induced anger at Kony. For those of you who missed it, the warlord in Uganda who uses children in his army. A worthy cause for anger. But then there was the anger at those using the social media tool and whether they were right to do so. Were they just lining their own coffers or worse still, paying the Ugandan army to find Kony even though they have also been guilty of atrocities.

Me, I rushed to the atlas (I’m old fashioned. Besides by the time I enlarge and minimise google maps I end up on a different continent). Why? Because my girlfriend’s daughter Carloyn is a volunteer in Africa at the moment, one of those sweet young passionate things who would most certainly be angry at Kony but is actually over there unpaid (food and accommodation covered by the UN who also paid her fare, delighted that someone finally applied) teaching English and working in an orphanage. But she’s in Ghanna. I breathe a sigh of relief. More borders between the two countries than even Kony is likely to negotiate. Unlikely to be mistaken for an SAS undercover operative either (todays paper saying we’re apparently allowing soldiers to be spies. Yeh, well if they’ve done it on a movie I guess its happened or soon will).

As I’m looking at the atlas I start reading about a myriad of countries I’ve either never heard of (Benin, where voodoo originated!) or others I mix up (Liberia is nowhere near Libya) and the ones which register but couldn’t even dream up the capital city for a trivial pursuit game (the list here is long…).

By this stage the anger has been sublimated into bewilderment at the chaos that is Africa, pride at the what Carolyn is doing (okay I’m not her mother but she’s a fabulous Aussie who isn’t as lethargic about the rest of humanity as most of us), and resigned that why ever the Kony video made headlines, I’d prefer to think that it was well motivated and I wish them luck. Could the army please also march Mugabe and maybe the Syrian president and a few others to justice too?

GLUTTONY

February 7th

In a time of an obesity epidemic, this is very topical. We were meant to be living as hunter gatherers. From an evolutionary point of view that is (and we haven’t progressed far from a genetic point of view even if the high rise towers, aeroplanes and whizz bang computers suggest otherwise). So we were meant to have good years and bad years. Now, in the West, even many of the poor, have plenty. Even more so the poor because fast food is cheap, ready available and unhealthy (see Supersize Me). And obesity is epidemic in lower class (anorexia rages in upper…).

Why doesn’t our brains yell out NOoooo!?

I gather the sugar in some foods fool us, I’ve read elsewhere that it’s what your mother and grandmother ate in pregnancy, and in some cultures such as Indigenous Australian where the famine went to feast very rapidly the pregnant body didn’t adapt well.

I guess I’m interested in how our early (psychological) environment affects our gluttonous instincts?

Friends adopted a six month old girl from Vietnam. She’d been in an orphanage from birth. They’d kept her physically healthy, more or less. But I doubt very much they sat her in a high chair and fed her individually. When I first saw her, a couple of months later, being fed in a high chair in my friend’s house she was clearly obsessed by food. Everything her (very petite) mother gave her she grabbed and ate quickly. She watched every bit of food that was being served. This was a child that by eight months was showing having learnt that food was scarce and she was going to make sure she survived. Interestingly, now in her teens, she is petite. So she grabbed and took – but it seems knew when to stop.

Food? For me I listen to my body. If I’m full I just won’t eat. But we’ve just finished a bottle of Beaujolais and are now onto a Cote du Rhone. Now I am feeling truly gluttonous…

ENVY

February 29th

Where do I begin?

I want to be 28 again. Permanently. It’s the age my heroine Stephanie started out at and I’m even having problems with her getting to 31 by the end of the series. It’s not that I feel any older (she starts to but then she nearly gets killed…).

And can I please have olive skin in the next life. I’m still suffering from the burns I got in Broome. I thought I was in the shade of the eaves (it was overcast) but the left hand side of my body now at the flaking stage with nasty red lumps is telling a different story. I haven’t done this since I was about 15. Must be another age regression attempt.

So I’m sitting in my car flaking and pretending I’m younger than I am. I like my car. It’s my baby. Really. I had just had a real one (baby) and went to buy a sensible family car, had a midlife crisis in the showroom and left with the Porsche (see photo on Blog on Homepage). Really.

So where is this going you ask? How can this possibly make me envious (no, I don’t want a Lamborghini or a Ferrari)? Well its 38 degrees Celsius (about a hundred and four Fahrenheit) – too hot and I’m too sunburnt to take the roof off. The black roof. And it obviously doesn’t get hot in Germany. The air-con has never worked. So yes, if you’ve ever been envious of people driving a Porsche this is your moment. Right now, before I die which feels eminent, I’m envious of anyone with even a dirt box with a working air-conditioner…

LUST

February 22nd

Now let’s face it- this topic shouldn’t exactly be a challenge for an Erotica writer. Right? Mmm…but small problem. What’s fiction and what’s real?

At a writing class once an author said his work was a third fiction, a third their own reality and a third someone else’s reality. Sounds pretty accurate to me, but in any fiction you have to give something emotional of yourself – or part of yourself- to every scene. So where does this put the erotica author?

Everyone is different obviously. I have had correspondence and tweets from several female heterosexual authors who write gay male erotica. I can only assume that they do this because there is more money in gay male literature (both partners testosterone driven and both buying books!) though there seems to be (my interpretation, but I do interpretations for a living in my other life) an element of safety in distancing oneself. Even if the acts are different to anything you’ve experienced you can always tap into your own emotions from your own experiences.

In my books the distancing is in fantasizing about the character, not the sex. How can you truly write well if you can’t or haven’t experienced it? You can always add on, sure. But the more experience the more depth, the more richness. Why I’m sure my English Literature teacher in VCE despaired of me. ‘You have talent, but something is missing!’ When she found out I was two years younger than everyone else in the class she had sighed, now understanding the issue. I had bristled. But now, years later I realize she was right. The difference in emotional maturity between a sixteen and an eighteen year old – at least from very protected backgrounds- was immense. How much more difference to a twenty eight years old who and loved and lost when trying to decipher Cleopatra’s response to Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony? Or writing about being raped (not something that has ever happened to me, but must be surely easier for me to write after years of life experience and hearing many women’s stories, than it would have been as a cocky know it all sixteen year old).

My editor is quite sure the best sex scenes are when I (the author) am really hot for the character (I can just about forget they’re fictional…. when I saw Daniel Craig kiss his ‘wife’ in DreamHouse I was quite disturbed as I have just written my heroine (temporarily me!) off as living happily ever after with a character who looks a lot like Daniel Craig…) but then my web designer liked the casual sex way better (who’s to say I didn’t base this on reality too….) so there is a matter of taste too.

Decide for yourself…are the best sex scenes a sign of good writing, personal experience, or both?

PRIDE

I have a box that arrived with the first copies of ‘Embedded’ sitting in my office, and colored print outs of the front page stuck to the furniture. Around the rest of the walls are framed photos of Movie Stars including several scenes from ‘Gone With the Wind’.  I am I guess an incurable romantic, but it is amazing that now one of these pictures belongs to me. Well courtesy of Jinger Heaston and Siren.

It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time, something that the book cover of my non fiction book just didn’t achieve (somehow severe drak red and a long title most poeople couldn’t pronounce was a little astere). A little tiny piece of a fantasy. So am I proud? You bet.

But I did just a flick through it and found another error. Shit.

Pride Cometh Before the Fall…

SLOTH

February 8th

It’s half past eleven in the morning. I watered the garden. I’ve been to gym. Okay, it nearly killed me but I did get there and I’m sure it was good for me. Actually, not that sure. Sinnaman ran a marathon once and had acute rhabdomyalysis and renal failure as a result, so exercise is not always good! Anyway I was only on a low impact machine (my knees may never be the same after walking over 1500 miles in France and Spain last year on the Camino St Jacques) and rolled around on the mat for a while.

Then I did emptied the dishwasher, did my emails, advised Sinnaman (via text, he’s in the Netherlands) about a film edit (my lay person’s opinion, I know nothing about film editing and Sinnaman would suggest little more about book editing…) and am writing a blog. Not too bad for a morning.

So Sloth?

My teenagers. Where are they? I know its holidays, but the sky is blue, it’s over 80 degrees and beaches and pools are surely calling? No it would seem. I think they have more cat genes than human ones. The cat too thinks nighttimes are for being awake and daylight for lounging around. I don’t think my teenagers notice the sun. Or maybe the Australian ‘slip, slop, slap’ campaign to eradicate skin cancer has back fired and we’ll have to start infusions of vitamin D. And any other vitamin that might energize them. To do something. Anything.

GREED

February 1st

I want it and I want it now!!! The catch cry of the Western world at the moment. Well youth anyway, but from the baby boomers down it has been a case of having plenty leading to wanting plenty more. Happiness studies show that it isn’t how much we have that makes us happy – rather that we have a bit more than the person next door. Generation Y and Z are in for a rude shock with predications of them being the first generations (well in recent time) to be likely to be less well off than their parents. Still as long as they’re plugged into something technological they probably won’t notice…

My parents started out life living with my grandparents and when they did move it was with second hand furniture and boxes for bed side tables. Even those on welfare have plasma TV’s these days.

Unless of course we move to India (3% of the population have access to reliable power) or somewhere else in the third world. We don’t tend to spend enough time reflecting on this- greed usually wins out.

I love clothes. But after walking 87 days of the Camino/Compestela St Jacques (2038km) carrying everything on my back (6kg) I have come to the realization that I actually don’t need more clothes, shoes, accessories, jewellery. For three months I didn’t miss any of my wardrobe. Returning was like getting a whole new wardrobe any way as most of it I had been apart from for over a year whilst working overseas. Maybe it’ll start to feel old again sometime but for the moment, a pilgrimage is just what is called for in the fight against greed.

 

WRATH

25th January

I don’t get angry often. Truly. It’s just not a pretty sight when I do. My children are still traumatised by the one time they recall I directed my ire at them. They were picking on a troubled kid at school with prank calls (spurred on by a friend and in reality all pretty harmless). I just don’t like injustice. I feel it my duty to care for and protect even though it’s often not the best course of action.

Like when I took on a couple of druggies who were yelling obscenities at some old drunk guy. They were ten years younger, one of them male and he alone weighed twice what I did. And no I don’t have karate skills nor do I run well (particularly in heels and is there any other sort of shoe?). Which left Sinnaman (also considerably lighter than the brute druggie) to protect me. We escaped unscathed but he wasn’t impressed.

So I just take on people on the phone. Well to be fair, before I yelled and seethed I apologised in advance and asked the very nice AMEX person not to take it personally. By the time I slammed the receiver and cut up the card into tiny little pieces I was feeling much better. Who I really wanted to yell at was the company in the US who use a prestigious university name and suck people in (okay I’m annoyed at myself, I was an idiot, can probably put pride and envy in here somewhere too) and then keep doing it every year. The first year I paid legitimately and never got anything. The second year I rang and yelled at them (as I’d never authorised ongoing payment) and cancelled it and AMEX returned my money. The third year it was sadly paid as I was living overseas and my son didn’t know to query it. This is the fourth year, and to make matters worse they charged me, I queried it (politely) with AMEX who agreed it was not legitimate and gave it back – and then in the same week sent me a statement with them charging me again!!! I now have master cards only.

So: don’t take on druggies bigger than you are, don’t yell at people on the phone if it really isn’t their fault and let your kids make prank calls. But only if you’re perfect, otherwise join the rest of us who get sucked in and need to give our kids something to complain about. The people at the end of the phone? Ask me and I’ll give you the details of the con scheme and yell all you like!!!

 

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Travel Tuesdays – Now will contain Stephanie’s Grand Prix Jaunts and Simone’s Camino de Santiago walk

Tuesday 24th April

Stephanie’s GP Jaunt: Bahrain- Fourth GP of the Season

There is something surreal about trekking across a desert- you know, a real one with miles of sand and only an occasional palm tree- to sit in a pristine modern grand stand watching a car race. Particularly when next to you are three Arab men, in white robes and the head gear looking as though they escaped a Lawrence of Arabia set, texting on their iPhones.

But that’s where I was Sunday, working on a documentary with Jeffrey Carroway (I worked with him on a feature film along the Camino de Santiago last year which you can read about in Exposé now available at www.bookstrand.com/simone-sinna ). For a while we weren’t sure it would go ahead with the civil unrest here (not however obvious) and we nearly weren’t even allowed into the country as my press visa wasn’t specifically marked “sports”. They were probably worrying that I’d do a political story. I could have shown them my standard article in Coco (Manolo Blahniks and their effect on feet was about as serious as it got). Fortunately the Grand Prix machinery jumped into gear and one word from Mr E and we were through.

If anyone ever wanted to get a feel of how varied the world can be, this is a tour I’d recommend. From Aussie bonhomie in Melbourne, to Malaysian storms and satay, then to Shanghai efficiency, each location brings its own individual something. Here it threatened to be politics but I think the lasting impression will be sand. Lots of it.

For the drivers and the teams of course it’s the track and weather differences that are critical. Shanghai killed the tires and from the start the Bahrain one looked like it might do the same. After a dusting of rain the day warmed up and most drivers started on soft tires. But with debris flying there was a mix before too long.

Vettel, wonder boy of the last seasons finally got pole position for the first time this year, and apart from a few laps where Raikkonen challenged him, he never looked in doubt. So for the second time this year the person on pole won, Rosberg having done the same in Shanghai. The interest was mostly elsewhere. The other Red Bull driver, Webber, was his usual steady self starting three and finishing fourth, but their junior Daniel Ricciardo in Toro Rosso looked like he might be about to make the big time, starting in 6th. But his inexperience quickly showed and he rapidly dropped back.

The opposite was true of the old hands Schumacher and Hamilton who despite bad starting positions (Schumacher right at the back as a combination of mistakes and penalties) and extraordinarily slow pit stops (9 and 12 seconds for Hamilton) they kept coming back. Both getting points though not as many as they would have liked (Hamilton in 8th and Schumacher in 10th). Alonso, winner in KL came 7th, the Shanghai winner Rosberg 5th and the Aussie champion sadly didn’t finish, his car being called in.

Other sad stories? Poor Maldonado who finally finished a GP last round again didn’t manage it.

For the next GP in Barcelona? Any bodies guess. More than ever this season is wide open and expect the unexpected is becoming the mantra! As for me? I’m packing up, having a bit of a break back in New York (going via London to check up on a story which you’ll be able to read about in Exclusive which will be out as eBook in July, covering all the GP’s) and looking forward to sherry and tapas!

Tuesday 17th April

Stephanie’s GP Jaunt- Shanghai

So this year I got to have my birthday in Shanghai. Kind of with the same person as last year, though last year in San Sebastián we were at different tables at Arzak. This year I’m working with Jeffrey Carroway on a documentary about GP’s so it was a pre-GP work dinner. But he did organise a cake… and well Gabriel looked after me afterwards…(Exclusive where you can read all about it will be available in July as an e-book and December in print).

So Shanghai. It so very …Chinese. But not ancient Wall of China way or modern glitz and billboard Hong Kong way. Clean clear lines of skyscrapers and efficiency, the face that China has us thinking will take over the world. With a touch of smog though I gather not as bad as it could be and not as bad as Beijing. We did (or rather Jeffrey did) find a small touch of old China in an amazing restaurant down an alley way with extraordinary Chinese food. Take out will never seem the same again.

So the GP. This is the third for the year so just getting the hang of them. The usual amazing infrastructure – this guys just move in and suddenly there are buildings, cars assembled and people everywhere. Mr E down in the midst could easily be lost (we are not talking about a tall man here) but there are enough short Chinese that he looks quite at home!

The Shanghai track is in keeping with the rest of the city all modern lines and efficiency. It seems a harder track to me – and judging by the bits of tire that were flying everywhere, certainly a lot harder on them than the two previous tracks. Webber was in on lap seven for a change which seemed amazingly early!

Rosberg started in pole (a bit of a turn around – the GP’s this year look like they will be full of surprises!) with the oldest driver, Schumacher in second (the latter sadly didn’t last long, dropping out after a tire change resulted in a loose wheel – he was I have to say, extraordinarily gracious, not a common feature here where testosterone generally does most of the talking, and thinking is well behind. Advantage of maturity perhaps). Hamilton who should have been second was bumped to 7th as a penalty for an unscheduled gear box change and poor Jean-Eric Vergne (you’ll find in Exclusive I have a soft spot for the French) started in pit lane. Vettel is clearly struggling this season- starting in 11th.

Rosberg from Mercedes Petronas wins Shanghai GP

The race was riveting. Largely because nothing seems certain. Okay. Rosberg started on pole and finished first but that’s the first time that has happened this season, and it was his first win ever- and he’s been around a few years, son of a former champion. But behind him, anything could have happened and mostly did. The whole tire issue seemed to dominate and from nowhere Vettel got up to second but because his tires started to go in the last laps, was passed and finished fifth. Not that this is all bad- with Webber fourth Red Bull is still in contention for the constructors championship, though with Button and Hamilton second and third, Mercedes and more particularly McLaren, are doing well.

My favourite moment ignored? Maldonado came in 8th. He was in contentions for points (given up to place 10) in both previous GP’s but in the last lap previously both times his car died. Nice he made it this time!

Tuesday 10th April

Simone’s Camino de Santiago- Gros Bois

It is February 17th. We get out our tiny flip camera that is to accompany us and take a video. There is a moisture in the air and it’s cold so I have my thin woollen jumper, fleece and gortex jacket on. The later I refer to as my bit of plastic to the bemusement of my husband who paid over $300 for it. We have a thermos of coffee and I’m going to have to learn to take it black as Sinnaman is allergic to milk. We say farewell to our house, unsure when we will return and go in search of a scallop shell.

the camino scallop shell

We will get to know these scallop shells well. They are our guide and more than the frequent crosses we will see along the route, we soon feel these are looking after us. St James smiling down.

As soon as we are out of town we are onto a track going upwards. There is a lot of that ahead too but I don’t think too much about the contour map of this trip. One day at a time. Today which would have been huge had we started from Cluny, we are going to Gros Bois. We actually delayed starting the trip because we wanted to stay at this one slightly faded Chateau and they had been hosting a film crew and couldn’t manage to put us up. Stephanie and her film crew in Exposé needless to say, also stay here! (Where the film crew play a drinking game that ends up with an encounter in the shower with Carlo. Carlo incidentally must be the man on the cover as the scene from the cover happens with him, but in the book he has dark hair and wears it in a ponytail!).

The track is wet and used by cows so we dodge puddles and wet cow turds. The hills aren’t too long or hard but it doesn’t mean I don’t need the odd rest! When we go through a village with the bar open, we are also grateful for the chair and for me, milk to put in the coffee.

The biggest surprise is the weather. It warms up and I am soon stripping off layers. In the end a T-shirt is enough. M. Sootie’s words about it being too early go through our minds. So far, so good. Ok, it is only the first day.

It is mid afternoon when we come to the last part of the day’s walk. Straight uphill through forest to where the Chateau is carved into the hillside. When we arrive we will have covered 19km. I am exhausted. My feet hurt.

Arriving though I feel immediately better. Our host greets us and shows us to our room. Suddenly the day looks much better. There is a bathtub. I lower myself into hot soapy suds and sigh. Easy.

Before dinner I wash socks and underwear – both Sinnaman’s and mine – and put them on the oil heater (the one that says in French not to cover it). They will be dry by morning. Sinnaman has already booked the next two night’s accommodation, he now books the third. This will become our routine. Always three nights ahead, giving us some ability to pace and only a few to call and cancel should something happen (there are long lists of ‘somethings’ of which blisters seem to be number one, but so far the new light boots that hadn’t been broken in, are doing fine, or rather our feet are in them, though they are pleased to be in runners for the evening).

It’s hard work trying to concentrate on our host’s French but he is pleasant and cooks well. And pours as plenty of wine. Yep, this is my way of walking.

Exposé follows the Camino on this route and is out April 10th as an e-book! www.bookstrand.com/simone-sinna

Tuesday 3rd April

Simone’s Camino de Santiago- Cluny

It’s February 16th, 2011. I am in a part of France with which I am familiar, and a couple of cafe owners at least recognise me well enough for a friendly smile as they wave me to a table. Today, in Cluny, 25km north of Macon (or an hour fifteen drive North of Lyon, 2hr drive west of Geneva, 4hr drive south and east of Paris) I am in an unfamiliar cafe looking for an unfamiliar man. The meeting has been arranged in French that was too fast for me to follow (I don’t speak French as well as my heroine Stephanie) between the Tramayes tourist office and Monsieur Sootie. No that’s not his name but my French spelling is pretty bad too. M. Sootie is the local expert on the Camino de Santiago. I am here with my husband, Sinnaman, to get our passports. No, this isn’t some illegal clandestine thing where we are trying to hide our identities or change nationalities or sneak into Basque territory (though we are actually going to do this, just openly). We are after the Camino passport, which will be stamped by each of the hostel/ B&B/Hotel owners along the route so at the end we can get our credential in Santiago.

Abbey in Cluny

M.Sootie finds us. We stand out. Even Sinnaman’s competent French gives him away with his Aussie/NZ accent. M.Sootie is enthusiastic and expansive in his talk – in French – of the Camino. We soon come to understand that this is a religion and he has it bad. He has done the whole walk from Cluny to Santiago (about 1600 km) three times and done the return once. We think he’s slightly mad but listen politely. We are only going to Le Puy, 300 km away but don’t have the heart to tell him. Then maybe we might go on to St Jean-pied-de-port on the Spanish border. But no promises. The most I have ever walked is eight days in Peru where my bags were carried and five days around the ring of Kerry in Ireland, about one hundred km after we cheated one day (we had our teenagers with us. That’s our excuse anyway).

M.Sootie has lots of advice. Buy lots of anti-blister preparations. “You will get blisters!” “Take safety pins to pin wet clothes to our pack as we walk.” He looks at our walking shoes, well worn in survivors of the two previous walks, and shakes his head. Too heavy! Do we know how many times we are going to life out knees (my knees immediately twinge remembering the steps in Peru) and therefore have to life these boots?

We dutifully buy blister packs and safety pins and rush to Macon to get shoes. I look at the light gortex boots that look like runners. Really? They are on sale so I purchase them unconvinced.

The walk starts from Cluny, and is one of the many feeder routes through France, less frequented than the popular Camino Frances. Cluny is a gorgeous old cobblestoned town with the ruins of walls and the old abbey where the power of the Catholic church resided in the 10th century. Now it also hosts the French national horse stud (my heroine Stephanie checks out the stables with a hot Spanish film location manager in Exposé which comes out April 10th on siren…). I recommend the steak frites and the salade au rose (or something like that- it has the best fired goats cheese and tons of bacon) at the corner cafe.

The walk goes right through the village Tramayes 20 km away where our house is, the lamp posts in town revealing the fact with the small posted blue and yellow scallop shells pointing us in the direction to walk. When we first saw them, having thought about the Camino in Spain but then decided not to because of it being too busy, we knew we’d do the French section. Just not sure how much of it. Now we are all equipped to go. Tomorrow we will start, from our house just like the original pilgrims. I have 6 kg in my pack- essentially one change of clothes for the evening, underwear and two pairs of socks, as well as a very light red number for going out in. As it is winter, I will be wearing it with the black jumper and long sleeve shirt and leggings I have as the night change attire. Sinnman has 10kg, including a very light computer and – a pair of my high heel shoes. I can’t wear a dress with runners and he wants to spoil me…

It’s cold but not snowing, but we will be wearing the warm weather gear, though my trousers are very light and I won’t put on the plastic pants unless it’s raining as they remind me of learning to ski as a kid and are not an example of sartorial elegance. All laid out, we look at it and wonder what is in store.

READ MORE about this amazing pilgrim’s route in Exposé, out as ebook on April 10th

Tuesday 27th

STEPHANIE’S GP JAUNT
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It’s big 1 ½ million in the inner city, 7 ½ in the outer. It’s modern. As a New Yorker I should feel right at home, particularly as KL is home to the world’s largest twin towers, the Petronas Towers. Fortunately they do look different to the NY ones, though close enough to make my first response unease and a quick check of the skies. Anyone who was in NY for 7/11 probably has the same response, though these are more Chrysler building than our lost towers.

But you know immediately it’s not NY. The heat for one thing. A humid wet heat that’s more constant, and with tropical rain.

Then the people, a mixture of ethnicities. With the food, strongly Asian, spices and satays.

In the midst of all of this over the last weekend was the KL Grand Prix on the Sepang circuit, straight from Melbourne with hardly a moment to breathe for the teams. Pack up, move and reassemble cars and buildings (Red Bull for instance has an ‘energy tent’ for their drivers and 47 crew). All while the machinery is reviewing what happened the previous week, what the computer feedback is telling them about performance of engines and tires, and deciding how to manage things better.

Remember I mentioned rain? A monsoon one caused the GP to be abandoned and another year blew cars off the track. So in this year’s GP when rain had already hit on practice day and then started on the race, there was some trepidation to say the least. There was a little surprise in pole positions- Schumacher sneaking in between the McLaren’s and Red Bull drivers – but nothing like the chaos the rain caused.

No fatalities so I can admit to being more than interested in what would happen and just how the rain would spice things up. They’d already been made more interesting by the Lotus hospitality tent burning down over night. Pure accident we were assured, not that their entertainment, food and wine was winning the unspoken competition that even rages at this level between teams.

Teams coming in and out of the pits changing tires was the first observation. The distant lightning and thunder sent their team managers into huddles over computers and the pit crew to mop up the pit track.

Then Schumacher does a 360 and that was the end of him being a serious contender though he did end up in 10th so gets one championship point for his effort.

The safety car comes out because of the rain and then finally the red flag. No racing for a while, not wanting to put anyone at an increased risk. By the time of the restart it was still the McLaren domination of Hamilton and Button but Perez had sneaked into third and Weber next dominating Vettel. How anyone could see anything was a mystery given the level of spray but I think GP drivers think they can walk on water anyway…

The excitement continued thanks largely to the rain. A clash between Button and HRT sent him into the pits and the car was never the same with the winner of the Aussie GP coming in 20th. The pit lane was chaos with a dubious release for Vettel whose tires later fall apart meaning he comes in 11th. Suddenly everything is up in the air.

The final tussle was totally unpredictable from before the race- Alonso who led most of the last half and won for Ferrari and Perez who was on his butt all the way but seemed to get put off an overly cautious team instruction, went wide and was lucky to keep his second. The consolation prize should go to poor Maldonado. His car felt apart in the last lap of the Aussie GP and sure enough this time it started smoking and goodbye to 10th place.

Nothing is ever certain in this race but one more blow up for poor Maldonado and that may become a race ‘watch for’. As for the Italians? They are probably still celebrating.

Later in the year you’ll be able to read all about Stephanie’s Grand Prix adventures in Exclusive

Tuesday 20th March

Stephanie’s en route to the GP in Malaysia so hands over to Simone’s Adventure Holiday in Germany

There was a conference in Munich and someone offered to pay for me to go. What could I say? It’s a tough choice…

Actually it was tougher than it looked at first glance. Firstly I did actually have to attend the conference, if for no other reason other than I was reporting back on the content to my employers who were financing the conference leave. This raised two problems. Research shows that attention span wanes after 15 min but most people can hang in for 40 min. Me? Five max. Then I’m thinking about the articles I’m writing, my blog, next book, character arcs, plot holes…you get the general drift. That said I have sat mesmerised for a whole conference where no slides or audiovisuals were used (and it wasn’t a hot male presenter) but that’s the exception. The second problem compounding the first is the conference is way more heavily biological and technical than my area of expertise. Just reading the title of the lectures I’m lost.

So I get to day three and I look wrecked. This hasn’t been helped by the German wine (my colleagues are enjoying the beer which I gather is what one should do in Germany but I don’t do beer) which is well…not French. And the food which would be great if it was the heart of winter but it’s not. There is only so much meat and cabbage I need.

yes they're my feet

I finally can bear it no longer. I sneak out and find a tour group (I really am desperate) and jump on their bus. Anything I think to escape the methylphenylalanines or whatever it is that links some sort of genetic structure to the other. Actually methylphenlalanines in chocolate.

The bus I find is going south. All day. I resign myself to finding someone who went to today’s conference and taking notes.

on the romantic way in Germany

Suddenly Germany becomes magic. I had always wanted to see Ludwig’s castle and suddenly there it is, between my feet. I am running off a cliff and there’s a man chasing me (what more can a woman ask for?). Though as he turns the para-glider in circles I think I’m going to be sick. But the magic of sailing through the air over a centuries old magic castle reorientates me. Yes, this is my type of vacation.

 

Tuesday 13th March

Scotland

I was lucky enough to get a chance last year to go to Scotland. My grandmother used to tell me about where she had been born and her heritage of tartans, shortbread and haggis was evident on every wall of her house. But I had never had the chance to go.

I should hasten to add that my grandmother didn’t acknowledge the reason her family left. From the photos of the grim lot left behind, it was damn cold, so I made sure I went in September not December.

Okay I don't think the family lived here, but I suspect they should have and they'd have looked warmer and less grim

I soon found the house my ancestors came from and reassessed about the cold. My grandmother hadn’t mentioned that they were right in the centre of the some of the world’s finest distilleries. I reassessed the photo too. Maybe they weren’t grim, just being kept away from the local too long.

I stopped by Culloden. Was it a film with Mel Gibson in that I’d seen the English and Scottish fight over this bit of godforsaken land? Even in September it was bitter and I personally would have stayed in having a scotch and let the English have it.

Should have had another Scotch and let the English freeze there...

But beyond this little parcel of land the countryside was beautiful. Green and lush coming up from Glasgow, the hills gave way to more rugged rocky heather covered terrain in the north. Deep still grey waters of Lochness (no monster in sight but some of the best mussels I’ve ever eaten) and windy roads over and around mountains. The highlight? Okay it was the railway, travelling the train through this gorgeous country and right over the bridge seen in Harry Potter movies.

Train trip to Hogwarts... west Scotland

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 6th March

Queen Charlotte Track, South Island, New Zealand

Okay I was hooked in by the penguins at Banks Peninsula (see last Tuesday’s blog) and I forgot I wasn’t really a walking type person… so I allowed myself to be talked into the Queen Charlotte track. Great views, walking between B & B’s, with excellent food and wine at each stop. Who wouldn’t be convinced?

It's worth the walk - Queen CharlotteNo it's not a Kiwi

I forgot to look at how far we were walking. And at the gradients. Day one after an exhilarating boat ride, started up. Straight up. Ninety degrees. Okay I’m told this is impossible but believe me this is how it felt – it was hot after all. When we arrived at the hotel I couldn’t move.

It was five days over all. Every day the views were to be honest breathtaking. Like Switzerland in summer. Mountains, pine forests … but with the New Zealand wild life and wine. And they did take my pack by boat…After a glass of wine the feet started to feel a lot better. Actually right now, glass in hand looking at these photos, the views maybe even worth going back for.

No it's not a Kiwi

picturesque in every direction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 28 th February

New Zealand: Banks Peninsula Walk, South Island

Okay, I thought I was mad too. I don’t do walks. Manolos can’t manage more than about five hundred yards. Max. What was I thinking???

Banks Peninsula Walk

I didn’t have to carry much, and this was true. Accommodation was provided and you could buy food their too. So I agreed. I’d never been too New Zealand and everyone had told me it was beautiful. And I bought some walking boots.

It was only one night I was told. It would be good for me. What no one told me was that most people do it over four days, three nights. We were doing it at double pace and distance.

Showering Banks Peninsula style

Even though its summer, it drizzled as we started. Bit like Europe- very green and green for a reason it seems. But it was hard not to be caught up in the beauty. Mostly along the coast, across farmlands and through woods, I enjoyed it despite my certainty I wouldn’t. Lunch was at stopover for the night for most of the walkers. I looked at them enviously as they took out the boats to go at swim with the dolphins. We kept walking…

Okay I was wrecked by the time we got there. I clearly need to spend more time at the gym.

But I forgot every ache as we came into what had to be the most gorgeous set of cottages set in green lawns and cottage gardens, across a quaint bridge and winding stream.

It looked more English than England! It only got better. Our cottage had a pot belly stove over which we cooked a warming stew, and our beds were high up ladders in the loft. But before bed – the most fabulous bath (even better with two of us…) under the stars, fire heating it below, bamboo fence around us. Tomorrow it’ll be the shower in the shed around the tree (pictured). But the piece de resistance was what was in the box at the door of our cottage. Nesting yellow eyed penguins, apparently endangered. Every step of the walk was worth it – even the long way home the next day.

Nesting endangered Yellow Eyed Penguin

 

Tuesday 21st February

Broome, West Australia– Stephanie has kindly allowed Simone to blog this one!

The people are friendly, the skies blue (well for the first two days. At night there have been downpours, it is after all the wet season and today got drowned in one only five minutes from appartment) and the weather HOT! The humidity is such that sitting at the bus stop for ten minutes I think I lost a litre of fluid. I had to be at the bus stop because there aren’t many taxis and unlike all the other tourists I don’t have a hire car. This was because I didn’t think I needed to go anywhere. However I arrived at the Pearle, Cable Beach, booked into a beautiful suite with our own pool, kitchen, BBQ area only to find the cafe closes at midday (and the bus stops at 7pm). So while there’s a beautifully located place on Cable beach that is walking distance, the culinary level is such that we need to eat in once at least. So into Broome to get some fresh seafood.

Mmm Broome. I gave a talk here a few days ago and one of the guys has just moved here and said his wife was finding it hard. I kind of get that. Three days by the pool writing and reading a book? Great. But my whole life? The town is well, small. A ghost town at 10 am but then I found you couldn’t buy alcohol until after midday so maybe it livens up then. There was one nice clothes shop (but nothing in my size) and I did find a pair of comfortable black sandals which I had scoured Melbourne for unsuccessfully (if you don’t want stilettos-these are fter all intended for mundane work-and don’t like platforms there seems to be no options).

Being here in February doesn’t help. Yes the hotel is cheap but there’s a reason. Still it does mean I saved myself $700 which I would have probably forked out for the one day flight and boat ride to Horizontal falls. I was told by someone at the talk it was worth every cent. Oh well. Maybe I’ll make it back again (though seems unlikely given how far away it is from everything and hence very expensive to get here!).

There is a lovely long beach and a picturesque sunset under a night sky laden with stars. That’ll be enough.

Tuesday 14th February

Great Ocean Road – Victoria Australia

The Japanese tourists come straight here from the airport. One of those bucket list destinations. Fortunately we missed the tourists.  But I see why they come.

But how romantic for Valentine’s Day (and wonderfully isolated…) is a place called Shipwreck Bay? A gorgeous getaway at Moonlight Heads… Cape Otway Lighthouse. And cute Aussie creatures – no this isn’t a hedgehog it’s an Echidna.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 7th February

Home – New York

I do wish I spent more time here! I now have an apartment in the West Village (you’ll hear about it in Exposé, out as E-book in April). I loved Sydney, don’t get me wrong, but New York is always going to be home. How many times can you go to the same park and find something new? Infinitesimal in Central Park. If it’s not the change of season it’s a fun dance act or a little trail you hadn’t noticed before. It’s a city of can do and will do, where people can make things happen- some amazing festivals and always the people you want to see and hear are here in person! And OMG the Giants won the Super bowl!!!

It’s impossible to run out of great places to eat and drink: 

Favorite places to eat and drink :

Jimmy’s bar has great views (possibly better than this one )

Stone Rose bar (overlooking Central Park see below in the Fall)

Great hamburgers behind the curtain at Park Meridan

Arturo’s for pizza

Gotham Bar & Grill ( I meet my mother there- it’s the only place South of 42nd she’ll come to- see Exclusive, the final in the Stephanie Beauman series when it comes out)

Sushi Samba – fabulous combination of Mexican, Peruvian and Japanese

Campbell Apartments, a hidden cocktail bar in Grand Central

Other favorites:

Central Park any time of year

Winter Solstice performance in Harlem church

Nutcracker at Christmas

Broadway any day

MoMa

Museum of Metropolitan Art

Tuesday  31st January

Lima, Peru

The weather looks a bit bleak here but on any day it’s a great location. Lima didn’t do much for me – people very poor and where we were staying there were lots of barbed wire over the top of fences around homes, but dinning here at La Rosa Nautica was fun. The cerviche was heaven. It is easy to make too…just need great quality sea food and some lemon juice and chilli.

Read about it in Embedded when I’m there with Gabriel. www.bookstrand.com/simone-sinna or on Amazon. It just came out in paperback!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday January 24th

Sydney, Australia

This time last year ago I was in a snow storm in NY.

Being in the Southern hemisphere has its compensations. Sydney skies seem to have more blue more of the time than anywhere else I’ve lived. NY in summer does but sometimes the haze rising off the pavements invades your consciousness and detracts, here it’s stark and in your face.

I am having oysters at the oyster bar on the right of this Quay, looking out at the Bridge. If you’ve never been, make sure it is on your bucket list. I’ve been lots of places and this harbor is the best. Okay San Francisco has magic, Stockholm has charm, Rio has Jesus. Prague and Venice are gorgeous but they’re on rivers. Sydney is just quite simply more dazzling than any of them. Sparking water, everything from tiny sail boats to ferries and ocean liners, hills, inlets and of course the bridge and the opera house. Where else would you have oysters?

Oysters are one of those mysteries of life. You don’t really eat them, just let them slither down your throat, pretending they don’t look like something left over after a year seven dissection (biology was not my strong suit), paying vast amounts for the privilege. And somehow in the process you can help but think about sex, or at the very least know the hot man sitting with you certainly is.

I’m trying to convince myself I should walk it – the Bridge that is, up and over I mean. There’s a tourist company that outfits you (mmm just as long as no one takes a photo. Still a man in overalls …) and attaches you to something so you can’t fall. Think I’ll have another glass of excellent New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and keep thinking on it.

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Travel Tuesdays – Now will contain Stephanie's Grand Prix Jaunts and Simone's Camino de Santiago walk

Tuesday 27th

STEPHANIE'S GP JAUNT
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It's big 1 ½ million in the inner city, 7 ½ in the outer. It's modern. As a New Yorker I should feel right at home, particularly as KL is home to the world's largest twin towers, the Petronas Towers. Fortunately they do look different to the NY ones, though close enough to make my first response unease and a quick check of the skies. Anyone who was in NY for 7/11 probably has the same response, though these are more Chrysler building than our lost towers.

But you know immediately it's not NY. The heat for one thing. A humid wet heat that's more constant, and with tropical rain.

Then the people, a mixture of ethnicities. With the food, strongly Asian, spices and satays.

In the midst of all of this over the last weekend was the KL Grand Prix on the Sepang circuit, straight from Melbourne with hardly a moment to breathe for the teams. Pack up, move and reassemble cars and buildings (Red Bull for instance has an 'energy tent' for their drivers and 47 crew). All while the machinery is reviewing what happened the previous week, what the computer feedback is telling them about performance of engines and tires, and deciding how to manage things better.

Remember I mentioned rain? A monsoon one caused the GP to be abandoned and another year blew cars off the track. So in this year's GP when rain had already hit on practice day and then started on the race, there was some trepidation to say the least. There was a little surprise in pole positions- Schumacher sneaking in between the McLaren's and Red Bull drivers – but nothing like the chaos the rain caused.

No fatalities so I can admit to being more than interested in what would happen and just how the rain would spice things up. They'd already been made more interesting by the Lotus hospitality tent burning down over night. Pure accident we were assured, not that their entertainment, food and wine was winning the unspoken competition that even rages at this level between teams.

Teams coming in and out of the pits changing tires was the first observation. The distant lightning and thunder sent their team managers into huddles over computers and the pit crew to mop up the pit track.

Then Schumacher does a 360 and that was the end of him being a serious contender though he did end up in 10th so gets one championship point for his effort.

The safety car comes out because of the rain and then finally the red flag. No racing for a while, not wanting to put anyone at an increased risk. By the time of the restart it was still the McLaren domination of Hamilton and Button but Perez had sneaked into third and Weber next dominating Vettel. How anyone could see anything was a mystery given the level of spray but I think GP drivers think they can walk on water anyway…

The excitement continued thanks largely to the rain. A clash between Button and HRT sent him into the pits and the car was never the same with the winner of the Aussie GP coming in 20th. The pit lane was chaos with a dubious release for Vettel whose tires later fall apart meaning he comes in 11th. Suddenly everything is up in the air.

The final tussle was totally unpredictable from before the race- Alonso who led most of the last half and won for Ferrari and Perez who was on his butt all the way but seemed to get put off an overly cautious team instruction, went wide and was lucky to keep his second. The consolation prize should go to poor Maldonado. His car felt apart in the last lap of the Aussie GP and sure enough this time it started smoking and goodbye to 10th place.

Nothing is ever certain in this race but one more blow up for poor Maldonado and that may become a race 'watch for'. As for the Italians? They are probably still celebrating.

Later in the year you'll be able to read all about Stephanie's Grand Prix adventures in Exclusive

Tuesday 20th March

Stephanie's en route to the GP in Malaysia so hands over to Simone's Adventure Holiday in Germany

There was a conference in Munich and someone offered to pay for me to go. What could I say? It's a tough choice…

Actually it was tougher than it looked at first glance. Firstly I did actually have to attend the conference, if for no other reason other than I was reporting back on the content to my employers who were financing the conference leave. This raised two problems. Research shows that attention span wanes after 15 min but most people can hang in for 40 min. Me? Five max. Then I'm thinking about the articles I'm writing, my blog, next book, character arcs, plot holes…you get the general drift. That said I have sat mesmerised for a whole conference where no slides or audiovisuals were used (and it wasn't a hot male presenter) but that's the exception. The second problem compounding the first is the conference is way more heavily biological and technical than my area of expertise. Just reading the title of the lectures I'm lost.

So I get to day three and I look wrecked. This hasn't been helped by the German wine (my colleagues are enjoying the beer which I gather is what one should do in Germany but I don't do beer) which is well…not French. And the food which would be great if it was the heart of winter but it's not. There is only so much meat and cabbage I need.

yes they're my feet

I finally can bear it no longer. I sneak out and find a tour group (I really am desperate) and jump on their bus. Anything I think to escape the methylphenylalanines or whatever it is that links some sort of genetic structure to the other. Actually methylphenlalanines in chocolate.

The bus I find is going south. All day. I resign myself to finding someone who went to today's conference and taking notes.

on the romantic way in Germany

Suddenly Germany becomes magic. I had always wanted to see Ludwig's castle and suddenly there it is, between my feet. I am running off a cliff and there's a man chasing me (what more can a woman ask for?). Though as he turns the para-glider in circles I think I'm going to be sick. But the magic of sailing through the air over a centuries old magic castle reorientates me. Yes, this is my type of vacation.

 

Tuesday 13th March

Scotland

I was lucky enough to get a chance last year to go to Scotland. My grandmother used to tell me about where she had been born and her heritage of tartans, shortbread and haggis was evident on every wall of her house. But I had never had the chance to go.

I should hasten to add that my grandmother didn't acknowledge the reason her family left. From the photos of the grim lot left behind, it was damn cold, so I made sure I went in September not December.

Okay I don't think the family lived here, but I suspect they should have and they'd have looked warmer and less grim

I soon found the house my ancestors came from and reassessed about the cold. My grandmother hadn't mentioned that they were right in the centre of the some of the world's finest distilleries. I reassessed the photo too. Maybe they weren't grim, just being kept away from the local too long.

I stopped by Culloden. Was it a film with Mel Gibson in that I'd seen the English and Scottish fight over this bit of godforsaken land? Even in September it was bitter and I personally would have stayed in having a scotch and let the English have it.

Should have had another Scotch and let the English freeze there...

But beyond this little parcel of land the countryside was beautiful. Green and lush coming up from Glasgow, the hills gave way to more rugged rocky heather covered terrain in the north. Deep still grey waters of Lochness (no monster in sight but some of the best mussels I've ever eaten) and windy roads over and around mountains. The highlight? Okay it was the railway, travelling the train through this gorgeous country and right over the bridge seen in Harry Potter movies.

Train trip to Hogwarts... west Scotland

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 6th March

Queen Charlotte Track, South Island, New Zealand

Okay I was hooked in by the penguins at Banks Peninsula (see last Tuesday's blog) and I forgot I wasn't really a walking type person… so I allowed myself to be talked into the Queen Charlotte track. Great views, walking between B & B's, with excellent food and wine at each stop. Who wouldn't be convinced?

It's worth the walk - Queen CharlotteNo it's not a Kiwi

I forgot to look at how far we were walking. And at the gradients. Day one after an exhilarating boat ride, started up. Straight up. Ninety degrees. Okay I'm told this is impossible but believe me this is how it felt – it was hot after all. When we arrived at the hotel I couldn't move.

It was five days over all. Every day the views were to be honest breathtaking. Like Switzerland in summer. Mountains, pine forests … but with the New Zealand wild life and wine. And they did take my pack by boat…After a glass of wine the feet started to feel a lot better. Actually right now, glass in hand looking at these photos, the views maybe even worth going back for.

No it's not a Kiwi

picturesque in every direction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 28 th February

New Zealand: Banks Peninsula Walk, South Island

Okay, I thought I was mad too. I don't do walks. Manolos can't manage more than about five hundred yards. Max. What was I thinking???

Banks Peninsula Walk

I didn't have to carry much, and this was true. Accommodation was provided and you could buy food their too. So I agreed. I'd never been too New Zealand and everyone had told me it was beautiful. And I bought some walking boots.

It was only one night I was told. It would be good for me. What no one told me was that most people do it over four days, three nights. We were doing it at double pace and distance.

Showering Banks Peninsula style

Even though its summer, it drizzled as we started. Bit like Europe- very green and green for a reason it seems. But it was hard not to be caught up in the beauty. Mostly along the coast, across farmlands and through woods, I enjoyed it despite my certainty I wouldn't. Lunch was at stopover for the night for most of the walkers. I looked at them enviously as they took out the boats to go at swim with the dolphins. We kept walking…

Okay I was wrecked by the time we got there. I clearly need to spend more time at the gym.

But I forgot every ache as we came into what had to be the most gorgeous set of cottages set in green lawns and cottage gardens, across a quaint bridge and winding stream.

It looked more English than England! It only got better. Our cottage had a pot belly stove over which we cooked a warming stew, and our beds were high up ladders in the loft. But before bed – the most fabulous bath (even better with two of us…) under the stars, fire heating it below, bamboo fence around us. Tomorrow it'll be the shower in the shed around the tree (pictured). But the piece de resistance was what was in the box at the door of our cottage. Nesting yellow eyed penguins, apparently endangered. Every step of the walk was worth it – even the long way home the next day.

Nesting endangered Yellow Eyed Penguin

 

Tuesday 21st February

Broome, West Australia– Stephanie has kindly allowed Simone to blog this one!

The people are friendly, the skies blue (well for the first two days. At night there have been downpours, it is after all the wet season and today got drowned in one only five minutes from appartment) and the weather HOT! The humidity is such that sitting at the bus stop for ten minutes I think I lost a litre of fluid. I had to be at the bus stop because there aren't many taxis and unlike all the other tourists I don't have a hire car. This was because I didn't think I needed to go anywhere. However I arrived at the Pearle, Cable Beach, booked into a beautiful suite with our own pool, kitchen, BBQ area only to find the cafe closes at midday (and the bus stops at 7pm). So while there's a beautifully located place on Cable beach that is walking distance, the culinary level is such that we need to eat in once at least. So into Broome to get some fresh seafood.

Mmm Broome. I gave a talk here a few days ago and one of the guys has just moved here and said his wife was finding it hard. I kind of get that. Three days by the pool writing and reading a book? Great. But my whole life? The town is well, small. A ghost town at 10 am but then I found you couldn't buy alcohol until after midday so maybe it livens up then. There was one nice clothes shop (but nothing in my size) and I did find a pair of comfortable black sandals which I had scoured Melbourne for unsuccessfully (if you don't want stilettos-these are fter all intended for mundane work-and don't like platforms there seems to be no options).

Being here in February doesn't help. Yes the hotel is cheap but there's a reason. Still it does mean I saved myself $700 which I would have probably forked out for the one day flight and boat ride to Horizontal falls. I was told by someone at the talk it was worth every cent. Oh well. Maybe I'll make it back again (though seems unlikely given how far away it is from everything and hence very expensive to get here!).

There is a lovely long beach and a picturesque sunset under a night sky laden with stars. That'll be enough.

Tuesday 14th February

Great Ocean Road – Victoria Australia

The Japanese tourists come straight here from the airport. One of those bucket list destinations. Fortunately we missed the tourists.  But I see why they come.

But how romantic for Valentine's Day (and wonderfully isolated…) is a place called Shipwreck Bay? A gorgeous getaway at Moonlight Heads… Cape Otway Lighthouse. And cute Aussie creatures – no this isn't a hedgehog it's an Echidna.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 7th February

Home – New York

I do wish I spent more time here! I now have an apartment in the West Village (you'll hear about it in Exposé, out as E-book in April). I loved Sydney, don't get me wrong, but New York is always going to be home. How many times can you go to the same park and find something new? Infinitesimal in Central Park. If it's not the change of season it's a fun dance act or a little trail you hadn't noticed before. It's a city of can do and will do, where people can make things happen- some amazing festivals and always the people you want to see and hear are here in person! And OMG the Giants won the Super bowl!!!

It's impossible to run out of great places to eat and drink: 

Favorite places to eat and drink :

Jimmy's bar has great views (possibly better than this one )

Stone Rose bar (overlooking Central Park see below in the Fall)

Great hamburgers behind the curtain at Park Meridan

Arturo's for pizza

Gotham Bar & Grill ( I meet my mother there- it's the only place South of 42nd she'll come to- see Exclusive, the final in the Stephanie Beauman series when it comes out)

Sushi Samba – fabulous combination of Mexican, Peruvian and Japanese

Campbell Apartments, a hidden cocktail bar in Grand Central

Other favorites:

Central Park any time of year

Winter Solstice performance in Harlem church

Nutcracker at Christmas

Broadway any day

MoMa

Museum of Metropolitan Art

Tuesday  31st January

Lima, Peru

The weather looks a bit bleak here but on any day it's a great location. Lima didn't do much for me – people very poor and where we were staying there were lots of barbed wire over the top of fences around homes, but dinning here at La Rosa Nautica was fun. The cerviche was heaven. It is easy to make too…just need great quality sea food and some lemon juice and chilli.

Read about it in Embedded when I'm there with Gabriel. www.bookstrand.com/simone-sinna or on Amazon. It just came out in paperback!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday January 24th

Sydney, Australia

This time last year ago I was in a snow storm in NY.

Being in the Southern hemisphere has its compensations. Sydney skies seem to have more blue more of the time than anywhere else I've lived. NY in summer does but sometimes the haze rising off the pavements invades your consciousness and detracts, here it's stark and in your face.

I am having oysters at the oyster bar on the right of this Quay, looking out at the Bridge. If you've never been, make sure it is on your bucket list. I've been lots of places and this harbor is the best. Okay San Francisco has magic, Stockholm has charm, Rio has Jesus. Prague and Venice are gorgeous but they're on rivers. Sydney is just quite simply more dazzling than any of them. Sparking water, everything from tiny sail boats to ferries and ocean liners, hills, inlets and of course the bridge and the opera house. Where else would you have oysters?

Oysters are one of those mysteries of life. You don't really eat them, just let them slither down your throat, pretending they don't look like something left over after a year seven dissection (biology was not my strong suit), paying vast amounts for the privilege. And somehow in the process you can help but think about sex, or at the very least know the hot man sitting with you certainly is.

I'm trying to convince myself I should walk it – the Bridge that is, up and over I mean. There's a tourist company that outfits you (mmm just as long as no one takes a photo. Still a man in overalls …) and attaches you to something so you can't fall. Think I'll have another glass of excellent New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and keep thinking on it.

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Manic Moody Mondays

 

Simone Sinna's Blog

March 12th

Gourmet Weekends

It's been a long weekend in Melbourne, and not that we needed this excuse, but we headed away to friends for break. This is something we do about every six months. Three couples that take it in turns to host a weekend away; all of us having in common a love of food and wine. The weekend that is our turn, we go all out. Over the years, we've had pheasant, crayfish, duck, rabbit …and all the usuals!

This weekend we headed to Leongatha. For those who don't know, this is about a hundred and thirty km (eighty miles) west of Melbourne. Not far from the ocean, the farm property our friends own is in the heart of picturesque green hills, steep slopes, dairy cows, and the occasional deer. No sound of cars, lawn mowers or screaming children. Just the odd kookaburra laugh and the bray of Celeste, our friend's donkey.

By the time we arrived at half past seven ­– after nearly three hours of peak hour traffic that had been monotonous for the first eighty km –  we were in need to the glass of Chateauneuf du pape our hosts had opened and breathing for us. It heralded the vertical tasting we proceeded to indulge in for the remainder of the evening. Starting with 2007 we finished with 1985. Liquid heaven, last week's gluttony in action.

Sue of course had cooked up a storm to have with it. Home potted prawns (shrimp) with toast, then herbed lamb done in their outside oven as we watched the sun come down, with home grown baby potatoes, sugar snap peas and snow-peas and mint. Finishing off with dark chocolate with prune and nuts- home baked of course.

Today started with granola made with oats, nuts and local honey, toasted to a crisp; stewed plums off their trees and yoghurt. Chris had the smoker up and running shortly after, preparing the trout for lunch (had with a very cold Giaconda and a Mersault). Time then for a walk, sleep and then another round!

Beef Wellington

Dinner started with jamón, figs and buffalo mozarello, followed by a stunning beef wellington (pictured) with spinach and roast potatoes and the piece de resistance, the rose water cheesecake. This was accompanied by Gruaud Larose from 2000 to 1962.

Brunch before we left? Baked eggs, jamon and tomatoes with fresh herbs in individual ramikins and french toast with hot strawberry jam….heaven!

Okay back to reality now. Where's the toasted sandwich maker?

March 5th

Why Your Girlfriends Are Invaluable

Last weekend we had a girl's weekend. Partners where they existed were left behind to deal with the leaking shower, hot water service not working, and the brewing family crisis. A long drive, a beach house with a stunning view and lots of wine and six koalas spotted. What more can one ask? Girlfriends we decided long before the end of the second bottle, were invaluable. Here's why.

They do the dishes when you've cooked for them. They usually bring dessert too. (Okay it's true we couldn't get the BBQ started)
They help you put your pictures on the wall. No I mean help, not offer advice from behind the computer. Okay so they are a bit crooked…
They don't yell at you when you turn the map upside down to read it
Encourage you to do things you wouldn't normally do (we finally convinced Tara to hit the internet dating site)
Let you cry on their shoulder without them trying to get into your pants (if one wants this from a guy then you aren't really wanting to focus on the crying)
They never cease to surprise (hide in cupboards rather than face the ex – this woman is terrifying so I'm glad I haven't met her husband, naked calendars, nudist beaches, picking up men you'd NEVER have imagined they would have fancied…)
Sometimes they have cute husbands…

Seriously … as I get older I value of the sisterhood more and more. I guess as we're going to live longer than our men we'll need each other in the nursing home…

 

February 27th

Embedded Book Launch Postmortem
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"no books left but bookmarks going cheap"

Who was it that said if something can go wrong it will? Murphy? Thursday before the book launch it looked as if this was where we were heading. Not that it was all bad- just that Rendezvous, having advertised 'Embedded' in their newsletter two weeks earlier had virtually sold out prior to the launch (sales are good!!!) and their second delivery hadn't arrived. Or at least it has arrived somewhere else.

Fortunately I had my own supply (the ones I lovingly stroke and sigh over as I walk past) so I threw these into the car, Rendezvous promised to do free deliveries of any ordered, Sinnaman is ready to take coffee orders and we are set to go.

Okay, then we find the road is blocked off. And there is a city event on in a street usually quiet on a Saturday morning so parking is tricky. I managed to con the Hotel car park to let me in- I think they were dubious about the red fish net stockings and high heels even though it wasn't that end of town. But will everyone else give up in despair?

Fortunately no. The morning passes quickly with a steady flow of familiar faces, some more so than others. WE SELL OUT- again. I get to sign books and write messages and feel…well I am actually a writer.

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sold!

Thanks everyone for the support and enjoy reading!

Rendezvous have more on order!

www.rendezvousbooks.com

 

 

 

 

Februrary 20th

This is a weird Monday. Returning from Broome and it's going to take all day with time changes, starting before nine am and finishing after nine pm. That's two planes and a tour of Perth airport. Lots of time to read, write and think of all the things that aren't getting done. Then another week of squeezing work into two days to then rush off to Canberra and Liverpool. More well paid work just no beaches this time. But what a week!

The week finishes off with a Book Launch – my first ever – for Embedded. I have to say I'm a little nervous. Good twitter buddy @deliciouslybad with whom I share an evil sense of lust will be there…. but er…so is my mother. True, she did laugh when I finally got the nerve up to tell her. But she hasn't actually read it. Nor do I want her to. My children may well be there also- but at least they have voluntarily insisted on looking no further than the cover (and have promised to divert their grandmother's attention).

I have some colleagues from work coming though they blushed when they told me, and others who I sent invitations cross to the other side of the corridor when they see me. I guess I won't be seeing them. One from school though has it in her diary- more frustrated authors also dreaming of writing.

Then there are the girlfriends. Thank God for girlfriends. Two I went through fourth, fifth and sixth grade with, another have known for over twenty years, a fourth at least fifteen. One is bringing her eighty year old mother (hence shaming me into telling mine…). Sinnaman's screen writing group may be represented (babies in tow), some of his ex-colleagues. None of these people have probably ever read erotics before! And may never again…The price of friendship…

Then the boyfriends. Or ex's. One will be there in spirit at least, but tricky to do in person from the UK. Ex-husband? Ah no, I think not. Probably just as well. He'd have an apoplexy … Mind you if I'd written Erotica while still married to him he would have had far worse than an attack of the shakes…

So anyone in Melbourne come along to see the fun! Brunch at Rendezvous Bookshop, 118 Lonsdale St Melbourne, 10.30am 25th Feb.

 

February 13th Singing in a Rock'n'Roll Band

Maybe it just as well the weekend is only two days. It curtains my overinflated ideas of my capacity to do everything to a narrow time slot. Actually it's not the weekends that are the problem, it's that I have a glass of wine or two and then the opportunities seem to escalate. Like the last weekend. Invitation to a friend's soiree. Harmless sounding enough, right?

Trouble is I have this deep seated…well maybe not that deep…desire to sing in a rock'n'roll band. Doesn't everyone? I did it a few memorable times. Sang 'It's Raining Men' in a black short plastic dress while four men in rain coats danced behind me. It would have been a totally cool experience had the acoustics not stunk (for those who aren't professional singers, believe me, you need to be able to hear yourself to keep in tune…). It was probably the most terrifying moment of my life,  knowing I just had to sing anyway and my singing teacher was not going to rescue me (she was hiding under the table). The piano player was very kind. Maybe too kind because he invited me to last Saturday night's soiree…

Yes, you guessed. One glass was all it took (mmm I think there might have been a lot of vodka in it). And it's been a while since the singing lessons. Ugh. Well the acoustics were better. Outdoors. With a bit of luck everyone else had drunk a lot more and the rest didn't hear me. Did I really sing a Doris Day song? It's lucky I wasn't lynched…

Okay so now for Monday. It's is going to be a totally mad day because I'm squashing all the normal paid work for the week into two days (today and tomorrow) so I can do some extra work….There is a bright side. It pays well, and though there be a small case of jetlag (three hour difference between Melbourne and Perth) they are also send me to Broome where I've never been. This is going to take four hours flying to Perth and then a few to Broome (for those who don't know, half way up the west coast of Australia) so I've convinced Sinnaman (who is recovering from jetlag having just arrived back from the Netherlands) to join me for the three days afterwards to sit with me on pristine miles of beach. While having a cocktail. Or two. Watch out for pictures in future Tuesday travel logs- I'm sure I can convince Stephanie to do a quick trip there…

So I just have to survive two days. Not so hard…

February 6th – Single Motherhood

How do single mother's do it? Maybe they don't. The forced adoption stories and stolen generation will be replaced in the next generation with the revealed secret that they are all screaming inside (or maybe not so silently): 'Take. Them. Back. Now.'

Sinnaman is overseas for a week. I have two paid jobs to juggle, two days of voluntary work (whatever possessed me?), two children and a cat. Oh and the plumbers I'll be seeing all week because the sewerage exploded (and despite what they charge they don't clean up afterwards) and they are now digging up my beautiful cultivated garden. Well, organised chaos the last gardener who looked dubbed it. And that was before the plumbers arrived. Now just chaos I guess. Smelly chaos.

It's okay. We can do it all. Have it all (does that include the cute plumber?).

Starting when they are babies. Yep, no problems impressing the mother-in-law thought my friend. Just wish she hadn't turned up at 2pm when I hadn't got out of the nightie, baby had just thrown up, breasts were leaking and infected Caesarian scar oozing.

Okay maybe we get it all after the baby phase?

Right after we've worked a sixty hour week, paid the extra for being late picking them up from Childcare (all the time I should imagine if you're single), explained to your children that no, 'work' is not the name of the person you are having an affair with even if you're wondering that if you did would your boss let you leave earlier.

Okay teenage years, right? As soon as I've mastered how to revive someone after they have chugged a litre of vodka. Either that or get them off my property so their parents won't sue me. And surviving the 120 hours of driving practice.

Actually I'll keep the children. I'm trying to convince one to become a plumber. Please someone take the shit out of my backyard instead. It's getting hot…..

 

January 30th Perosnality Issues

Okay this week is going to be even madder than usual and it all starts today. Why does Monday dawn and I feel that it's all too daunting, that there'll never be enough time and why am I doing this to myself? It's rarely as bad in reality. A bit of organisation goes a long way.

Ever done a Myer's Brigg test? Because this may explain a lot to you if 1). You have no idea what I'm talking about (you're a 'J') and 2). If you can so identify (you're a 'P').

Let's just take an example.

I have a friend who was very bemused by my supermarket  shopping style. My mission is to get in and out as fast as possible. This is a problem because I try to only do it monthly which means there is so much stuff I can't carry it all and thus need someone with me. Someone is usually a child or the Sinnaman, neither of which is conducive to either fast or cheap shopping. But regardless the pressure is on – I am in there cracking the whip, racing down aisles and throwing things in as fast as I can. Because I've forgotten the list which I didn't write (daughter is a J) unless she is with me I end up doubling up and missing stuff (I am a P in case you hadn't worked this out).

My friend is a J. General's are J's which is a really good thing. A disorganised army is a scary thought (think of Beluscosi and the Italians versus Caesar). When my friend shops he always starts at the opposite end to the green groceries. I had never thought of this. He suggested I try when he watched me unloading squashed cherries…So P's can learn, I have adopted this. But he also stacks the trolley and puts things in sections (meat together etc). Forget it. I can always do that at the check out if I have to. Which is unlikely. It can all happen at the fridge and cupboard putting away level.

Imagine what it's like for two P's together? Chaos? Actually I just find my inner 'J' when needed. The kids are always at school on time…

Two 'J's together? Mmm could be same holiday place every year. Orderly that way.

Now for the fun bit – a J with a P. It's funny to watch, you just don't want to get caught up in the melee. Like another male friend (J) with wife and three daughters (all P) booked for a three day trip to other side of the country. Missed the plane (well there was a lot of clothes to pack). Because it was only three days they couldn't wait until next day, only available flights were Business Class…another $3000 later I suspect my poor J friend didn't relax for months after.

Okay so I'm focused now. Some learnt J behaviour and the week will be fine…

 

 

January 23rd Just Bloody Mondays

Mondays always start badly because I haven't slept well the night before. No matter that now I'm not working a nine to fiver, five days a week, that Monday is actually a day which can hold hidden delights instead of a weekend build up of emails and messages. There is something about saying goodbye to the weekend that immediately puts me on edge. The mind that contentedly switched off as my head hit the pillow on Saturday night, suddenly now has an urgent need to remind itself everything that has to get done, who has to be spoken to, emailed, called, tweeted or texted. And at the moment I have that extra dread of how many direct messages will I have telling me my account might have been hacked.

I am seriously over this current twitter virus which arrived in my direct message service to tell me someone was saying 'terrible things'. After an initial thought of 'how awful' it was obviously spam and I ignored it. A few days later I have half a dozen people direct messaging me telling me I've sent it to them (which of course I hadn't, or rather not deliberately – my apologies to anyone who got it from me). People start blocking and unfollowing me. This does not make me happy. I check for viruses, change my password (twice) and swear a lot at hackers and people who think this is funny. This one is still out there…

Last night was hot too which didn't help. And I had to stay up for the tennis open. Not normally much of a tennis fan but Tomic at 19 is doing Australia proud, and besides he needed all the support he could get against Roger Fedderer (In 'Embedded' Stephanie has an interesting encounter with a tennis star in the Singapore Qantas lounge…).

I've tried yoga and relaxation tapes. They obviously work for some people, like my French teacher who unlike the French living in France, floats around in a Kaftan mumbling unintelligibly (several years of French and living there haven't helped me progress much on the deciphering) and shaking her head about meat. But she does so very serenely. Blissfully even. Perhaps she doesn't even need to sleep.

Sleeping tablets work of course, but I now only use when sober and on long distance flights after my husband convinced me that I had wandered into our guests bedroom in a negligee after one (admittedly with a healthy dose of wine, never a good idea with medication, let alone stilnox). I'm pretty sure this didn't actually happen, but the female of the couple did look at me askew for a while. It was probably the collection of erotic literature though – this was before I 'came' out.

Hot Chocolate makes me think at least I'm doing something purposeful towards the task but with every new idea that pops into my increasingly weary brain necessitates another Hot Chocolate. One night can have my entire day's calorie content covered, meaning the day isn't only not going to start well but continue in this vein.

Then of course there's my cat Pirate who likes to seize the opportunity of my restlessness to encourage play, patting or trips outside. He has a cat door on the ground floor, but on the third flight where my bedroom is, it's the balcony he's after. If I ignore these night diversions then he is happy to entertain me with sitting as close to me as possible and loudly purring, or better still, washing himself and with gay abandon including any bit of me that gets in the way.

Sleep. Well at least tonight I'll be so tired I'll fall into bed in a heap and be ready to repeat the cycle next week.

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Fashion Fridays-Stephanie Beauman's Blog

9th March

A Little Bit of Fluff and Fun

Isn't fluff and fun what fashion is meant to be about? It was International Women's Day yesterday and it's great all the wonderful things women have done but lets not lose the ability to do a Cyndy Lauper…

Sometimes girls just want to have fun

It has apparently been the hottest Australian summer in 11 years. The wettest too, given 75% of New South Wales is either under water or under threat of being so. Luckily for flimsy little numbers like this for those hot sultry evenings drinking cocktails on the terrace looking out over Sydney Harbour …Could have come from Tiara Mancini (The Hot House in Embedded…) but is a Gabrielle which is nice given the hot man in my life in Embedded is Gabriel…

As I'm moving back to New York (Exposé coming out next month) I guess I'll only have to pack it away until June…

2nd March

Earrings

I gave this as a present to Simone…a bit over the top for me but very her.

I had a very Fitzroy experience when I stayed with her in Melbourne; cocktails at The Everleigh on the corner of Gertrude and Napier (new, upstairs and very New York, felt quite homesick), tapas at Anáda, also on Gertrude (great tapas, sherry and great service from Kelly, Jamie (he's the one with his hair in the bun) and David at the bar). Finished off the evening a few doors down at Enoteca being well looked after by Brigitte and Jamie with a wide choices of great reds by the glass.

Ears are even better than ceilings for some chandeliers...

Coffee next morning at the happening place De Clieu (corner George and Gertrude) and then wandered down to buy these earrings at Metal Couture  (www.metalcouture.com).

 

24th February

Hats

I adore hats. Living in Australia they take on a different meaning. Slip slop slap anti-skin cancer program seems to have led to (shudder) caps with handkerchiefs at the back. Very useful I'm sure but these are not the hats to which I refer! Nor do I include Fascinators, a favourite at last year's Melbourne Cup, though they are not without attraction.

No, I mean hats. Like this one. A little dusty perhaps but true Victorian Gothic. Something to lose yourself in.  Something that makes a statement. Not great in the wind, but the Slip Slop Slap people would love it…

 

16th February

Thank God for Australian weather! Alright it is a little wet at times (well under water up North) but the glorious warmth of summer means you can bring all those gorgeous little numbers out. The ones that cost a fortune and you wonder why given the lack of material constituting them.

Actually this one was a bargain, by Gripp.

And it most certainly does. Grip…

This one was what I wore in Argentina at Gabriel's house when I seduced Miguel in front of him…

9th February

Sometimes I like to be noticed. Okay maybe a lot of the time. What better way to do it than with clothes?

In 'Embedded' this dress when worn to the Melbourne Cup (What sort of city has a public holiday for a Horse Race?) is described as a Gaultier. This was a slight exaggeration. Well, actually not true. But I'm sure this dress would inspire JPG if he saw it though…

Miguel certainly appreciated it…

There is a fabulous fashion precinct in Melbourne- Gertrude and into Smith St Fitzroy. Bit grungy and definitely trendy, the stores with new designers hover around the fashion school just off Gertrude in George St. One is even down in Gore St opposite the Pub where 'Offspring' is filmed. Anyway, this dress came from one of the designers that was showing her stuff there (though has now moved). It's wild!

3rd February

Designers. I met my fair share when I was working for Coco and I have to say that in general time is better spent with their clothing than them. There is something about the fashion industry that seems to combine unstable dynamite, metamphetamines and narcissism and then takes a whisk to it. No, actually egg beaters on full throttle. Not that shoppers are much better waiting for the doors to open on sale day.

Favorites? Lots and ever changing. Though I'm out of the fashion industry now, being in Australia has given me a chance to try a whole new country of designers. The weather generally being so good (well there has been a bit of rain admittedly), there's lots of opportunities for pool and yacht parties…

Versace was one of my old favorites and this dress is the original – Gianni that is. It's like wearing air…soft caresses occasionally reminding you not to panic, you aren't naked. And he did like color- Donatella has certainly kept that going!

This one I picked up in Saks, Fifth Ave.

 

 

 

 

27th January

The dress you're never going to forget.

Okay I really needed a proper photographer for this, but you get the idea. Every woman has one. Maybe it's the wedding dress. The dress you met your partner in. The dress you first took off for your partner…

Mine is the first dress I bought from the first fashion show I ever went to. It was wild. In a circus tent, there were uncaged leopards (ok, on leases) and some very, very sexy models just in 'out there' clothes. I couldn't resist this dress. It was also the dress that made me realize the power of sex appeal and how what you wear and how you feel makes it ooze out of you. This was a very successful dress on all fronts…

 

20th January

My strong suggestion is that if you're female and under sixty (and even a few people over) – get a pair before you die! If you wait too long they might be the cause of your death. Okay they do mould to your feet like they were sprayed on, and yes you do feel like a million dollars and yes you could take on Sarah Jessica Parker. But let's get real. Blanik was Chinese in a previous life and responsible for feet binding. This is not what our feet are meant to do! I'm getting (horror, horror) bunions. The bank account (well had my mother not helped out…) would have been cause for suicide and had I been older when I walked in the them after a snow storm last year in the Big Apple, I would surely have ended up in Bellevue. Possibly the morgue (and I've read about the Morgue in Linda Fairstein's novel (or was it Patricia Cornwell?). Not somewhere to have a date).

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