16 reasons to believe I’m a Senior Citizen stuck in the body of a fifteen-year-old

1. I talk fondly of the good old days before Myspace, mobile phones and iPods, when kids were seen and not heard, in spite of the fact that I was not alive in the good old days

2. I’ve taken to talking about bowel movements at the dinner table.

3. I glare at groups of youths and grumble under my breath.

4. I don’t understand Myspace.

5. I repeat myself a lot.

6. I repeat myself a lot.

7. I SPEAK VERY LOUDLY.

8. For some time, I believed that ‘Teenagers’ by My Chemical Romance was sung by Shannon Noll. No, really, I did. Oh, come on, Gerard Way so sounds like Shannon Noll.

9. I regularly remark, “They just don’t make things like they used to.”

10. I don’t like Robert Pattinson. Though perhaps having an awareness of who Robert Pattinson negates me actually being a Senior Citizen.

11. I once had a mobile phone. But I never used it. I don’t know where it is now.
12. I would rather go to Bingo than binge drink at a party. Bingo, it’s like tap dancing, but not really.

13. I regularly use the phrase, “Kids today.”

14. I don’t have highlights, multiple piercings, tattoos, an iPhone, or plans to get any of these. I do, however, have a healthy respect for my elders.

15. I feel a very strong desire to get one of those trolleys that the elderly always have. I want to carry around bread to feed the ducks.

16. I always feel scandalised when they offer a Seniors discount somewhere, and I can’t have it. No one ever believes that I’m really a 70-year-old.

A Complete History of My Writing Failures

Hey, Teenager of the Year is now number 75 of Australia’s top writer blogs. I’ve climbed five places in the last month! (The way I say ‘climbed’ I can imagine crawling up a cliff face and slapping other bloggers out of the way, crying “Die, writer, die! Mwahaha!” Pure eeevil.)


The very first novel-length story I ever attempted was called The Merryhem’s First Adventure. It was written in third person, past tense. The main female protagonist was named Rose Merryhem. She had an older sister who was named after a Bratz doll and an older brother whose name evades me. They went to heaven on an escalator in their backyard, met this guy with white hair who turned out to be evil, met a fat woman called Tabitha at the beach, and the story eventually concluded when they all walked into the kitchen and passed out at the dramatic sight that was there.

The story ended at this point because I couldn’t figure out what could make them pass out, so I just gave up. I think it reached about 1000 words in length by the end of it.

I wrote The Merryhem’s First Adventure when I was seven. It has not resurfaced since. It’s a shame, because I think it would have been a cult classic, had it been made into a movie. It always seemed more like a script than a novel.

After that, I fell into a bit of a funk. I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to write a novel, make millions, and buy a pony and a very large house for my family.’ I was an awfully morose eight-year-old.

I can’t remember the years between eight and eleven. I think something very unpleasant must have happened for me to erase three years of my life. Perhaps this was when the alien abduction occurred.

When I was eleven I started writing Upper YA. I think it’s important to note here, that between eleven and thirteen I felt at least five years older than I looked. And then when I was fourteen I regressed to the maturity level of a five-year-old.

My first YA novel was called Darling. That was the main character’s name. She was sixteen. She lived in a trailer park. She had white trash friends with hyphenated first names like Chardonnay-Mercedes and Honey-Boo. Everyone in the story was based on a real person. There was very little plot. I spent several days working on the cover, though, one holidays.

I realised Darling was crap, and moved on.

At the end of Grade Six I wrote a story for my class in which everyone starred, and they were all ten years older and rich and glamorous, and someone in our class stopped global warming, and my best friend threw a party on a private jet, and another friend of mine was Prime Minister. My best friend at the time had worked on the ideas with me all year. Everyone said it was an incredibly good story when they got a copy at graduation. I got the ‘Creative Writing’ award at the end of the year, which was special in spite of the fact that they invented it for me. Perhaps that made it even more special.

In year seven I started a story called The Daytime Drama That Is My Life (or sometimes, My Life Is A Daytime Drama), that featured a trio of friends. The main character had parents who had had a lot of plastic surgery.

There was no plot to speak of, but it was very funny.

Then came a story called The People’s Republic of Steve (I worked more on novelty titles and pretty mock-up covers at this point than the actual stories). The main character’s name was Steve. His father had an affair with his French teacher. He had a nerdy friend called Scott. He played Monopoly.

Then came A Girl Called Fred.

It had everything. Eating disorders. Abusive parents. Gay parents. Romance. Death.

I read the ten thousand words that make up A Girl Called Fred today, and all I can do is cringe and throw more pages into the fire.

I can’t believe I wrote that two years ago. It doesn’t really seem like I wrote it at all. It reads like a bad fan fiction. Though characters from A Girl Called Fred did resurface in my later stories – their names and ages changed, though.

At the beginning of 2008 I wrote a novel. It was called Gracie’s List, and you can read it on this blog and formulate your own opinion.

I’m still trying to figure out why it took me so long to realise that novels need plots, as opposed to funny strings of events.

This is the point at which I am visited by a divine being.

Okay, there was no divine being. I kind of wish there was, though. It would make for a more interesting blog post.

I decided in May of 2008 that I was going to change my name and dye my hair red. I invented Reason Mercury – the most fabulous, glamorous, dangerous girl ever.

Then I realised she wasn’t me at all, and other characters arrived and announced themselves, and several times they woke me up in the middle of the night and wouldn’t get out of my room until I started writing a story about them - which sounds weird, I know, but compared to a certain bestselling author’s creepy toy boy vampire fantasy it’s quite normal.

So I wrote that novel. And the title has since changed and it’s been rewritten. And I really like it, though I’m a terrible judge of my own work. I don’t think this novel belongs in the ‘failure’ category. I’m going to slot it in under ‘almost-success’.

Then, I invented more supremely awesome characters. I created a post-apocalyptic Melbourne. I created evil masterminds, and characters that couldn’t die. Emo Nightfire, super-powered psychopath. Sacha DeLovely, reanimated corpse.

Then I started giving non-Japanese characters Japanese names. I knew, at that point, that I had to stop.

It was called The Experimentals and it did not work out.

There were a couple after that which didn’t get past the idea and outline stage, before I started work on my current project. Which I’m still shrouding in secrecy, which is entirely unnecessary, since no one is really interested anyway.

Every story I failed – and believe me, there were a lot I didn’t mention – taught me a little bit more. The Experimentals taught me I should never, ever try to write urban fantasy EVER again. Darling taught me I shouldn’t write about characters five years older than me. My writing slowly got better the more I wrote. I realised that, as entertaining as funny titles and witty characters are, plot takes precedence.

Sometimes, I like to try and figure out how many words I’ve written in stories in my entire life. I think it’s somewhere up near 150,000 words. Which is only ten thousand words a year, but if you take into account that I couldn’t write for the first five of those years, it’s not bad at all.

Feel free to comment below with your Brief History of Writing Failures. And, perhaps, successes.

An interview with Laurine Croasdale

Laurine Croasdale lives in Sydney, Australia. She has published three fiction titles for University of Queensland Press (Trivia Man, Red Golf Balls, What Truly Counts), two books for Pan Macmillan (Surf School and Surf Sisters) and a range of non-fiction titles for the ABC and Simon & Schuster. She was also a script writer on the first season of Hi 5 and regularly reviews books on ABC radio. You can find out more about Laurine here and check out her website for more about her latest novels, Surf School and Surf Sisters.

Laurine was lovely enough to answer my interview questions (and be very honest and funny).

1. List the books you've written. Which one are you most proud of? Which was the hardest to write?
The Pocket Guide to Sydney
Parties!
The Play School Party Book
The ABC Favourite Fun Book I and II
The ABC Big Book of Board Games
Trevor in TV Land
Soccerina
Trivia Man
Red Golf Balls
What Truly Counts
Surf School
Surf Sisters
My first and last YA novels were the toughest. Trivia Man, my first one, was tough because I had no idea what I was doing and was also the moment when I had to try and realise my dream (or shut up about it for eva!) and the last book, Surf Sisters was hard because I’d never written a sequel before and discovered that it was a whole new bag of tricks.

I love all my books, they are good children who sit tidily on my shelf and smile at me on days when I am trying to work. Red Golf Balls is probably the closest story to things that happened in my life. It is about a brother and sister caught up in a bushfire. My parents have nearly lost their house twice in bushfires and my brother’s house was burnt down in a bushfire a few years ago. The people in the street where I grew up (and who all lived through the fire in Red Golf Balls) loved the fact that I wrote their stories and they keep a copy of my book in their ‘Street Archive’. I’m proud that they see themselves in those terrible days and feel my story did them justice.

2. What three words would you use to describe yourself? (Don’t use the words ‘nice’, ‘pretty’ or ‘good’ because your Grade Six teacher will read this and be very disappointed)
Loyal, funny, impatient


3. Complete this sentence: My teenage years were...
when I fried myself on the beach like a chip, fell in love with the ocean and a boy (one lasted the other didn’t), slept with four girls in a double bed at my friend’s house at the beach every weekend, and learnt to drive a car, drink really bad wine, sing too loudly at parties and dance around my handbag at the pub.

4. Have you always wanted to write for young people? Or did you set out to become a brain surgeon and wind up stumbling down this path? Was the road to publication rocky for you?
Being a brain surgeon was always the obvious path for me as I was good with a drill and saw and had a free twenty years to study. Unfortunately I lacked the attention span required and thought that being a struggling, poor writer would be so much more fun. And I was right. I think! There were always stories buzzing around inside of me like bees in a jar but it took me a long time to believe in myself enough to put something out there for publication. You can learn a lot of the technical skills for writing but self belief can be a struggle, as can the discipline.

5. Who were your biggest inspirations and idols growing up and today?
I have had some great writing teachers and read many, many pieces of writing that make me want to grab a pen and start my next book but for the long haul the people who inspire me most are my family, friends and the writing community. Kid’s lit writers in Australia are a really supportive bunch and they all inspire me the way they keep at it and even when things are tough for them they have a kind word for someone else or the generosity to praise someone else’s success.

6. Who are your favourite authors and what novels do you love best?
This question wants me to lie down with a wet towel over my forehead! I have MANY favourite novels and I often love them for different reasons, and sometimes it’s because they have one perfect sentence. But here are a few -
Wind in the Willows is a book I love. The language is beautiful it is made to be read aloud. I loved Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants because it was a fresh concept and the friendship aspect is often overlooked between girls.
Others who deserve a mention are: Dosteovsky, Katherine Mansfield, Henry James, Willa Catha, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Gary Paulson, Jessica Anderson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Alison McGhee, Sarah Dessen, Jennifer Johnston, Ann Patchett, Glen David Gold, Caroline B Cooney.
Oz writers: Cath Crowley, Margo Lanagan, Felicity Pulman, Simmone Howell, Margaret Wild, Emily Rodda, Scott Westerfeld, Anthony Eaton, Jacqueline McKenzie, Tara June Winch, Maureen McCarthy.

This is a pretty random selection and would change next week.



7. If you were in a novel (any one you’ve read), who would you be?
There are plenty of people I would like to be. Stories are always a good way to walk in someone else’s shoes. One story I read last year that really appealed to me is called Apache by Tanya Landman. I love the traditional life, art and culture of native north Americans and the Apache people were one of the most inspiring. Siki, the young woman in this story is strong, independent and courageous and I liked that about her. It would be great to step into her shoes during a bountiful summer in Apache country when peace reigned and I had already learnt to ride a horse…

8. Did you have an imaginary friend as a child? (Or today? Don’t worry; we won’t call the men in white coats on you)

No, no imaginary friends but it’s never too late!


9. Complete this sentence: My life outside of writing is...
busy, full of joy and learning new things.

10. If you were a superhero, what would be your name, power and costume?
Well absolutely NOTHING in lycra that’s for sure.
I think I would be a massive tree - that way I could move around the world offering shade, shelter and food where it’s needed and calling in the rain clouds for the desert regions. I also loved The Magic Faraway Tree’s slippery dip so I am thinking there would be one of those inside my trunk including the exploding sherbet biscuits I’m still trying to find the recipe for.

11. Xena Warrior Princess or Sabrina the Teenage Witch?
Let me see… would I like to be running through damp forests vac packed into a leather netball tunic having sword fights with ogres or live with a talking cat mixing the boundaries of the real and magic worlds? Hmmm, definitely the latter, although I am not sure about being a teenager again.


12. Have you read Twilight? Did you enjoy it? Do you secretly believe your own books are better? (I know you do, don’t try to lie…)
I tried to read Twilight but kept getting distracted by other books. Not sure if it is a story for me but all power to Stephanie Meyer for revamping the vampire and making pointy teeth sexy again.
As a writer you always want your books to be loved and read, nothing gives you more pleasure but I see that as Secret Reader/Writer Business not a competition between writers.

7 People Who Would Have Been A Better Edward Cullen Than Robert Pattinson

I don’t like Edward Cullen. And while I don’t know Robert Pattinson (he may be a lovely boy who helps elderly people cross the street, for all I know), I think I can safely say that he isn’t what millions of teenage girls make him out to be. Here are six people (and a cardboard cut-out of Dracula) that could have played Edward Cullen instead:

1. The guy who played Angel in Buffy, and who plays Booth in Bones now. Because everyone knows that’s who Stephenie Meyer based Edward on. Sexy, troubled vampire? Hello. It’s like a bad fan fiction. (Never mind his age. They made Brad Pitt look like a teenager in Benjamin Button.*)


2. Mos Def.


3. A cardboard cut-out of Dracula. It would have had more personality too. They just carry it around and have someone stand behind it and speak. Maybe Angus Sampson could be the voice?


4. Elijah Wood. Who cares that he’s almost thirty and very short? Frodo is awesome. Go The Hobbit!


5. My primary school P.E. teacher. He was on his P plates, and almost ran a kid over at school once. Everyone knew he was a vampire. Not a sparkly or melty kind though, because we did a lot of volleyball on the basketball court and he neither sparkled or melted. I think he had really high SPF sunscreen or something.

6. I, Steph Bowe. No one would have noticed I was a girl if I had Edward Cullen’s name attached to me. Naturally, the kissing scene would have been awkward.


7. Your mum

*I’m not entirely sure who ‘they’ are.

Guest Post: Four Novels That You Probably Won’t Be Reading Any Time Soon by Penni Russon

Penni Russon, infinitely wonderful author of the Undine trilogy and the very first interviewee here on Hey, Teenager of the Year, has written a very exclusive guest post for us about her unfinished novels... (after you've read this, be sure to check out her blog)

Four Novels That You Probably Won’t Be Reading Any Time Soon

I begin a lot more novels than I’ve finished, and I thought blogging about them secretly here, in a GUEST POST, I could either lay them to rest once and for all, or get myself all excited about them again. Without any further ado, here are the novels that are languishing on my hard drive:

1. Lili (working title)
And now they were driving away from the ocean, their backs to it, into the dry flatlands where the grass was dying and dirty white sheep were flyblown and mite bitten.
I began this novel after Undine, before I knew I was going to write the sequels Breathe and Drift. After a book, the writing that you do is kind of a holiday romance, it could turn into something serious but for now, it’s just a bit of fun while you get over the last Serious Relationship. This novel has a first chapter and a vague outline, in which Lili, whose parents have disappeared at sea, moves to Melbourne with her Uncle Golly, who is unexpectedly offered a job. The mysterious employers have arranged a house in a suburb called Bloommarket, a suburb in the inner west no one seems to have heard of. They stop to ask for directions a few times – any oldies they ask are baffled, but there is always a teenager around who is able to direct them. They arrive in Bloommarket and the house is a small, sweet cottage, Lili’s ‘dream’ house. At school everyone thinks Lili is fascinating and everyone wants to be her friend, except for a moody, self-possessed teen boy who I believe I was going to call Sebastian (think David Bowie in Labyrinth, but younger and more Twilighty – remember this novel well predates Twilight!). Lili has a run in with a small young runaway who behaves very strangely, and after this Lili begins to realise that she can’t leave Bloommarket. The internal magic in the novel was probably going to be drawn from Fairy lore, in particular the notion that if you eat anything you’re stuck there forever.

2. Stonefruit
I started writing this about the same time as Lili, another holiday romance, in between Undine and Breathe. I lost speed with it, because, despite the obvious artifice in the story, I wanted to make this quite autobiographical (not so much in terms of family, but in terms of the neighbourhood folk who populated my childhood, and the territory that I inhabited) and I wasn’t sure I was ready to write all that material – I figured I only had one real shot with it and when I used it I wanted it to be good. It was actually signed with A&U but I think we’ve switched it for something else.
The tree down at the Gracey’s place exploded with apricots that year, a cacophony of them, each one more disappointing than the last. Insipid, flabby, overfilled with thin, colourless juice that almost tasted of nothing.
That was the year Mrs Gracey fed her son Rough on Rats and apparently it was rough on Kevvy too, cause he died before the last apricots had withered on the tree.
Midge lives in the bush at the edge of an Australian city, and though she collects tadpoles and plays by the creek, she also rides her bike in the new subdivision where brick houses take hold on the bush – the city is closing in. Midge isn’t sure of her place in the world. She isn’t a good girl, but she isn’t a bad girl either. Her mother and sister watch the world’s richest game show in separate rooms, while her taciturn father waters the lawn until dark. She is only sure of herself when she’s playing with Kevvy and Bubs, or collecting insects in the garden.


3. Seed/Bluebird/Rosie
I started off wanting to write a book about a Ramona Quimby like girl, and then it morphed into wanting to write a Nina Bawden-ish tale with long lost grandparents and cousins, and then it became something else again as I identified the need to make it more contemporary and put more kids in it. And then I abandoned it. And then I tried to rewrite it as a Chomp and to simplify the story I gave the Mum cancer. And then Penguin said it was too profound and sad to be a Chomp, which was a fair call. And then I sent it to Allen & Unwin and they said ‘we love it but it needs more layers’. Which was also very true. And then I thought, hey, I know, guerilla gardening. But by then I was more interested in the adults than in the children. So I abandoned it again. And then my sister’s best childhood friend wrote to me and said ‘there needs to be more books about mothers with cancer and how their children cope’ and I sent her Bluebird. And she loved it. So one day, for her, I will finish it, but that feels like a big responsibility.

4. The Haunted Lunchbox
Milly opened the parcel. It was a tin lunchbox with a plastic handle. The colours were brighter than any Milly had ever seen. The flowers were vividly red. A yellow bee wound its way around them.
‘It’s not very practical,’ Mum said. ‘And we just bought you a new lunchbox. Perhaps this would be a good one for storing toys or pencils in instead.’
Milly stared at the bee. ‘The bee wants me to take this one to school,’ Milly said. ‘It’s a lonely bee.’

I wrote this odd, creepy story because of my young friend Alice who was then a prep and was struggling to find a book simple enough to read herself but that satisfied her love of dark themes, and also because Alice’s mum was struggling with the daily grind of what to put in Alice’s lunchbox. I kind of half-heartedly showed it around, but never did anything with it. Eva at A&U suggested I either complicate it (it was only about 5000 words) and make it much darker, or I turn it into a picture book. It is sitting in my hard drive, and one day I hope I do come back to it, and that someone draws some wickedly moody Edward Gorey meets Japanese Anime pictures for it.

Penni Russon was born in Tasmania in 1974. Her latest novel is The Indigo Girls, part of an exciting new series published by Allen & Unwin in conjunction with Girlfriend Magazine.

Penni is the author of the Undine trilogy – Undine, Breathe and Drift. All three are published by Random House in Australia, while Undine and Breathe have been published by Greenwillow in the US.

Penni has two novels in the works with Allen & Unwin. She is also the author of Josie and the Michael Steet Kids, published by Penguin as part of their popular Aussie Chomp series.

Penni has taught Creative Writing at Melbourne University, conducts workshops at schools and is becoming a popular public speaker for young people and adults. She has been invited to participate in the Melbourne Writer’s Festival in September 2008.

Penni also maintains a sometimes daily blog, called Eglantine’s Cake.

Shalott by Felicity Pulman

Shalott tells the story of Callie, her twin sister El, their friend Meg, and two boys from their school – Stephen and Lev – who accidentally go back in time to Camelot, through Callie and El’s father’s virtual reality program. Callie – an artistic girl who seeks her father’s recognition for her abilities – wants to save Camelot by making Lancelot fall in love with the Lady of Shalott instead of Queen Guinevere, preventing a chain of events which would lead to the destruction of Camelot – then El and Meg interfere, and an accident sends them back through time, where they are caught up in the court of King Arthur and the magic of Morgan Le Fay.

This novel is a YA medieval fantasy, with elements of romance and adventure, and though that isn’t a genre I would usually read, I greatly enjoyed this novel. Undeniably, the author has researched the setting and myth of Camelot, and the detail within Shalott makes for a believable novel, even in a fantasy setting. The characters all had depth and I felt for their dilemma – would they ever be able to return home to Australia and the present day? (Or, in the end, would they even want to?)

Shalott is the first novel in a series of four, following the adventures of the five teenagers and their adventures in Camelot. This is a novel definitely worth reading for fans of fantasy and medieval novels, but one which I think a lot of teenagers would enjoy. An enchanting novel.

The Evolution of Cicada Summer: A guest post by author Kate Constable

Steph said that she'd be interested to know a little more about why Cicada Summer was such a hard book to write. This is how it came into being:


The very first incarnation of Cicada Summer was begun at the start of 2006. It was called The Summer of Charlotte To Be, and it was the story of a seventeen year old girl who meets a visitation of herself from twenty years in the future. Future Charlotte gives her all kinds of well-meaning advice, from how to cut her hair, to which course to take at uni, but it all goes horribly wrong one day when Future Charlotte appears, no longer confident and successful, but miserable and bitter. Something 17 year old Charlotte has done, or failed to do, that day has changed her whole future. Can she figure out what went wrong and save herself?


I didn't actually get very far with this. The problem was, it was the kind of story that needed to be plotted out to the last detail if it was going to work, and by the time I'd plotted it all out, I was bored with the story and felt as if I'd already written it. There was nothing left to discover, no reason to keep writing. So I abandoned it. Though I still reckon it's a pretty solid idea for a book! I'd love to read it; I just don't want to do the work of writing the damn thing.


(I'd forgotten until today that most of the secondary characters, Charlotte's school friends Iris and Bec and Georgia, reappeared in Always Mackenzie. Nothing wasted!)


But I was still keen to write something with a time-travel theme of some kind. The next version was called Charlotte's House. In this story Charlotte became much younger, a primary school kid, exiled to the country while her mother's ill, who discovers a big old ruined house, and meets the various ghosts (or are they?) who live there. This soon became Hannah's Ghosts, and the background was crowded with the whacky relatives she stays with. In this version, it's Hannah who adores the house on first sight, and her father who feels dubious about its prospects. (In Cicada Summer, their attitudes were reversed.)


I was surprised to see that Hannah and her dad had just returned from PNG, which will be the setting for my next book. That was something that vanished from the final version, too.


Hannah meets several "ghosts" -- an old woman, a middle-aged painter, a young girl, a teenager -- one of whom warns her of danger to her depressed father, and Hannah is just in time to save him. There are several extra sub-plots, involving nasty cousins, nice Muslim neighbours, racist graffiti, a grandmother who's a green activist, painting, ribbons and a wrecked car. At some point Hannah stopped speaking and became mute.


In the course of the next year, Hannah's Ghosts went through five false starts and five full drafts before I took it to my editor. I realised I was trying to cram in far too much stuff for a little book. Every time I sat down to write it, I decided it was about something different, and all these story threads and themes were tangled together in a big messy jumble. Hope, despair, the future, the past, racism, art, secrets, time-travel, family, swimming, gardens, growing up, terrorism, environmentalism, and no real story structure to hold it all together. This was the point where I said, "It's a mess, isn't it," and my editor said, "Yes."


Was it a mystery story (who are the ghosts?) Or a drama about a dysfunctional family? Or a story where Hannah discovers herself? Or a story about the struggle between hope and despair? Was it about inside/outside, water/dryness, speech/silence, past/future, action/passivity? And where was Hannah's mother? I couldn't decide if she'd run away or died, and whether this had happened recently or long ago.


After that meeting with my editors, I came up with a list of elements that we all thought were worth keeping -- Hannah's silence and her passion for art, the ghosts, the nice neighbours, Mo's reclusiveness, Dad's depression, the house -- but without trying to shove all of them into the foreground of the story. My publisher also suggested that at the end, there should be "a big surprise!" which is one of the annoying, so-called helpful type of remarks that editors make sometimes!


I went right back to the beginning and planned the whole thing out again. I cut out the nasty cousins, the aunt and uncle's cafe, the graffiti on the statue, most of the ghosts, the attack on the car, the suicide attempt, the retaliatory banner Hannah and Sammy painted together. I changed Hannah's name to Eloise, and Sammy's name to Tommy.


This time it only took two more drafts before I was ready to show it to my editors again, and it was substantially finished in June 2007.


These were the possible new titles I'd come up with (with help from Penni Russon):
The Summerhouse Girl
The Time Before
The Girl Before
The Summerhouse Before
Eloise Shifts
When Eloise Swam
When Eloise Swims
The Other Summerhouse
Past The Summerhouse
Before The Summerhouse
After The Summerhouse


Penni and I liked The Summerhouse Girl, but Allen and Unwin preferred Cicada Summer, which I must say has grown on me. I'm very, very happy with the book. Even though I cut out or de-emphasised a lot of the initial story elements, I like to think that their ghosts (if you will) still haunt the book, giving it a depth and texture that it might not otherwise have achieved. The garden and the drought are still there in the background, the country town is sketched rather than explored, Dad is more manic than depressed, but Eloise's painting, her relationship with Anna, and her gradual re-emergence into the world are still at the heart of the story.


It was a lot of work for a little book, but I hope it was worth it.

As well as Cicada Summer, Kate is the author of The Singer of all Songs, The Tenth Power, The Waterless Sea, Winter of Grace and The Taste of Lightning and Always Mackenzie (which I reviewed here).

You can find out more about her here. She also has a great section of advice for young writers on her website. She also has a wonderful blog that is a lot more interesting and intelligent and writerly than this one.

Thank you, Kate!