GenreCon Sydney 2012 - Part 2 - Fight Scenes

Picture this: GenreCon Sydney 2012, Saturday 3 November. The session is Writing Effective Fight Scenes. The speaker, Simon Higgins. His favourite weapon: the katana. Let me quote the GenreCon website: "A former police officer and homicide investigator, Simon came fifth in Iaido’s World Titles in Japan in 2008."

That in itself would have been good enough for me. But Simon's also a writer and a highly entertaining speaker. What I got out of the session would take pages and pages to report (I took pages and pages of notes, and actually wish I'd recorded the session, copyright laws be damned). So, here are a few memorable pointers:

• When you're in a fight, time slows down.
• Mention the above fact in your writing, but don't go overboard reporting every excruciating detail in slow motion.
• Like in a sex scene, Tag A Into Slot B gets boring pretty fast, unless you include emotions, senses, stakes. So:
• When writing, less is more.
• Do your research.
• Mr Spock was so wrong about the pressure point. Human Nature Interesting Fact 1: everybody in the audience wanted to know where the correct pressure point was. When I got back to my hotel, the 8-year old and the 44-year old both wanted to know where the correct pressure point was. Human Nature Interesting Fact 2: The 10-year old's female, and all she wanted to know was what Simon's fighting clothes looked like. :-)

Have a look at Simon's books and at the photos from the session (yes, I volunteered for the pressure point demonstration):

Simon Higgins and Yvonne Walus - this is one of the pressure points

Simon Higgins and Yvonne Walus - this is _not_ one of the pressure points ;-)

GenreCon Sydney 2012 - Part 1 - Adult Themes

GenreCon Sydney 2012 - where do I start? Chronologically, or with the highlights?

My writer's soul tells me to go with the highlights, the trouble is, everything was a highlight. From meeting new people and seeing new places, to learning about Windsor "Win" Horne Lockwood The Third's fighting secrets and having my website reviewed by a Smart Bitch (thank you, Sarah).

And so, chronologically it will have to be.

Picture this, Sydney, Australia. The day is Friday, 2 November 2012. Actually, it's night already. We've all had a few glasses of bubbly at the GenreCon cocktail party. The scene has been set for the inaugural panel of the conference: Adult Themes. Participants: Yvonne Walus aka Eve Summers, Martin Livings and Denise Rossetti. Expertly chaired by the gorgeous Rosie Courtney of Fangtastic Fiction, who reminded us to set our phones to vibrate, the panel tackled questions ranging from what's acceptable in modern fiction as a theme and what words are too offensive to put in print.

We touched on the responsibility of the author towards our readers. We drew fine lines between titillation and shock. We side-tracked onto a certain female-flavoured four-letter word that starts with a C.

Best of all, we laughed.

From your left: Denise Rossetti, Rosie Courtney, Yvonne Walus, Martin Livings.  

And afterwards I went home to this view:

View from my room at the Shangri-La hotel in Sydney. Magnificent!

 

Jetstar? No, thanks!

I'm getting everything ready for the GenreCon 2012 in Sydney this weekend...

... but ...

... what a disappointing experience with the Jetstar luggage upgrade! At the time of booking my tickets online, back in May, I didn't get the option of choosing how many bags to check in: it was either 1 bag per passenger, or none. Because I only wanted to check in 1 bag for 4 people, I thought I'd speak to Jetstar in person and arrange that. You know, being environmentally responsible for the number of kilograms we fly across the Tasman Pond, and all.
Well, with my flight only 3 days away, I finally did it. Downside? It's cost me more than 4 times what I would have paid at the time of booking. So I may as well have gone with the 1 bag per person option in the first place.

Guess who will not be using Jetstar _ever_ again? Yes, well done, Air New Zealand and Qantas, you have got yourselves 4 new customers... and you didn't have to do a thing!  

Keeping The House by Ellen Baker

KEEPING THE HOUSE came to me recommended by one of my very favourite authors, Joshilyn Jackson. It's a sprawling saga (elegantly sprawling, beautifully sprawling, sprawling with a purpose, you could say) of the family who lived in the beautiful big house on the hill in a little town. Legend has it there's a curse on the house and all who live in it, but even without that extra bait, it's an extraordinary novel.

Here are a few random things I love about the book:

• The beautiful yet readable language.
• The 1950s setting - oh, how I long to be a housewife with nothing better to do than record the yearly dinner menu (and read books, and write books, and mess around on Facebook, of course)!
• The plot that twists and turns in a way I couldn't predict.

Interesting enough, it wasn't about the characters. Normally, characters make or break fiction for me. In KEEPING THE HOUSE, I didn't really have a favourite character, one I liked above all others, one whose fortune I'd be happy to put ahead of another. There wasn't a single character I found totally heroic, totally admirable, totally lovable. And yet, I wished them all good luck as I raced through he book, turning and turning those pages.

A must read.

Murder @ Play

Here is my book, MURDER @ PLAY, a guest on Chris Redding's blog.

When Cultures Collide

Having lived on three continents, I pride myself on knowing plenty about the clash of different cultures. Which is probably why the book "Almost French" has struck such a chord with me. It's a first-person true-life account of an Australian girl who moved to Paris to be with her boyfriend.

This is not a love story. Apart from an initial statement that there was a spark between them, you don't get a spectator's view into her heart or her bedroom. What you do get is an account of how painful, frustrating, and ultimately wonderful it is to assimilate into a new culture. You get to tut-tut with her over the crazy Parisienne folk, cry with her when she longs for the open spaces of the Southern Hemisphere, and almost taste the black truffle shavings in her salad.

Don't be misguided by the old-fashioned cover: this book is fresh and fun!

History of the Housewife

I'm reading a fascinating book: INSIDE STORIES by Frances Walsh. It's a non-fiction account of the housewife's role in New Zealand from 1895 till 1975. (In 1975, it became fashionable not to be a housewife, or at least not to admit to being one.)

What struck me was how different women's magazines were back then: real articles about real issues (including World War 2), loads of advice from how to clean a water stain off a table to dating tips, and almost no celebrities! (When they did interview celebrities, they asked for household tips. Now that's putting Ms Jolie in her place!)

The book made me think about the lives our grandmothers led. The things they thought about before they closed their eyes at night. Their daily chores.

What modern invention reduced the workload of the housewife? I posed this question on my Facebook page, and the answers varied from plumbing to the pill.

For me personally, it's probably the supermarket. I struggle to find time to make bread at home - imagine having to kill and pluck your own chicken!