Things I would do differently if I had my teenage years again

I like to think I've spent my teenage years reasonably well. I'll be twenty in ten months, which is just unfathomably old, so lucky I've got ten months to prepare myself for it (I also need a new name for this blog. This one, while based on a cool song, will no longer be age-appropriate).

I did an interview recently where I was asked if I regretted publishing my novel so young, which I hadn't really thought about before (which is surprising, because I think about everything, and with great intensity). I don't regret it - I love being a writer, I've had many brilliant experiences and learnt a lot and met wonderful people, and I don't think I was any more unready for publishing a novel at fifteen than I would be now. I'm not especially old yet, but I can imagine a 20-something novice writer Steph would find publication overwhelming, too. Almost all debut novelists would. I'm not big on regretting things because I haven't done especially many things worth regretting yet, but I am plagued by thoughts of 'how might things have worked out differently if I'd taken this opportunity/made a different decision?' I generally assume that there's not a Sliding-Doors reality going somewhere and I'm a millionaire there, because I think my current reality is pretty awesome already (and being a millionaire would stress me out).

If I had my time again, I would do it all the same, to quote Big Audio Dynamite. With some slight alterations. So, in the spirit of narcissistic blog posts everywhere, here are some things I would do differently if I had my teenage years again:

1. I would never behave like a ridiculous caricature of an obnoxious teenager (occasions which I like to think were pretty rare, but you'd probably have to ask my mum if you wanted the truth). If I started over I like to think I'd have more self-awareness.
2. I would not delude myself from the ages of thirteen to sixteen that external success directly relates to being a fulfilled and self-actualized human being.
3. I would not fixate quite so heavily on being smart, and proving that I was smart.
4. I would just let myself be a weirdo introvert. Everyone acts as if we are all supposed to be extroverted and outgoing as if that is the ideal human state, but really we do need some people to be quiet and reflective and listen. Introspection is not a bad thing, and I didn't need to feel bad for being so much in my own head, since being so much in my own head is what gives me the ability to write.
5. I would not spend so much time on the internet, oh my goodness. I have been so enamored with the internet for so long and in the last two years it's occurred to me that maybe the physical world is pretty awesome too, and I've been ignoring it a bit too much. I don't know, technology is a drug.
6. I would dress better. I picked some really terrible outfits for several years there. I continue to do so. If I'd been born any other species this wouldn't be a problem, and neither would my inability to work a keyboard properly. Unless I was a monkey that scientists were training to type and choose its own outfits. In which case I would be a very disappointing monkey.
7. I would not miss quite as many opportunities out of fear or anxiety or overwhelm. The whole 'you regret the things you didn't do, not the things you did do' does not seem entirely true to me - maybe when I am on my deathbed I'll stop regretting dumb things I said and problems I dealt with badly. But I do regret things I avoided doing. As much as regret is a useless emotion.
8. I would not have given up certain things. I could've been a prodigious musician by now, gosh! I would learn, learn, learn everything. I would read more non-fiction, perhaps, and take more classes, and learn to dance.
9. I would care less what people thought of me (by 'me' I mean 'me plus all of the words I write which I regard as an extension of me against my better judgement'). This includes reading reviews.
10. If I got to go back to being thirteen, having lived through my teenage years, knowing that I managed to avoid becoming an off-the-rails teen, am doing quite well with the writing-business, and that finishing high school was ultimately not all that difficult, I can tell you absolutely and definitively: I would stress less. But there being no unknown to fear would probably take the magic out of everything. Having never travelled back in time, I cannot tell you this for sure.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman

Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up. Min has written a letter explaining why. She's delivering it with a box that's full of the debris of their relationship: two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, Ed's protractor, some sugar they stole, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings and the rest of it. Each item is illustrated and accounted for; each memory played out until the heartbreaking end. Min will dump the box on Ed's porch - but it is Ed who is being dumped. This is the story of why they broke up.

Did you know that Daniel Handler is Lemony Snicket? Daniel Handler who wrote The Basic Eight which is about teenagers but is not really a YA novel, but was filed in the YA section at my local library back in Victoria, and I started reading YA when I was about nine, so I read the Basic Eight when I probably shouldn't have? It's about murder, you guys. It really freaked me out. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 and three quarters or whatever it's called, that freaked me out, too. I was incensed! Incensed! By the amount of kissing. I would have been about ten but I was a would-be book-banner. I appreciated books with content warning labels at that age (I would perhaps like these labels now, too. I wish I hadn't read that Bret Easton Ellis novel, for one. Less Than Zero should feature a sticker that says 'unbearably stupid'). I wanted to read advanced words but not advanced subject matter, because I was an odd child (I am now an odd adult-child hybrid).

I won't judge Daniel Handler on The Basic Eight because if I read it today it would probably be a good novel. It has all the weirdness that I love now, like split personalities. Daniel Handler also plays the accordion for the Magnetic Fields, which is a band I sort of like, so good on him (tell me if this is incorrect, I'm sure I read it somewhere). I think he's friends with Neil Gaiman. There's all these famous authors that are just casually friends with other famous authors and they all just have a grand old time, I bet. I'm not casually friends with anyone famous, probably because I'm not famous myself, or casual, really.

This book, you guys, was great. The writing reminded me of Simmone Howell's, a bit, the use of adjectives especially ('beautiful amazing'), and also a little bit of David Levithan's writing though I can't tell you how. Though it's written in an entirely unique fashion, it was maybe a little too heavy on the American high school formulaic characters - edgy weirdo drama kids, skinny beautiful girlfriends of sports stars, dumb bogan sports stars - and it was maybe a little too I know what's going to happen next but of course, it's called Why We Broke Up so you know how it ends before it starts.

The pictures are gorgeous and perfect, and it's just a lovely book aesthetically. There should be more novels with drawings in them, don't you think? And I so love novels that are written as letters, a bit of second person is always a nice thing. I didn't exactly like Min (Min, I know what's going on. I know what's going on 150 pages before you do, figure it out already!), and I didn't exactly like Ed, but the writing more than made up for it. It wasn't especially plot-driven - I'm saying a lot of negative things about it, aren't I? But I actually really liked it, and I wish I could write like that. It just flowed well, like someone might really speak or write a letter, all a tumble of thought and emotion, but then also I wanted to remember exact phrases and copy them down every five seconds. So it's both easy to read and gorgeous written, genuine and raw and great. I overuse the word raw but it's a good word. How about something like 'vulnerable' instead? I suppose it's a contemp YA, but I don't know if it's technically a YA at all (The Basic Eight wasn't! Bad shelving, shelvers!). I can't think of another YA to compare it to, not exactly, and now this review is getting too long. It's sort of literary, I suppose, and the dialogue is uncomfortably believable. I read it all in one go, it's that sort of book, and I'm a restless reader lately so that's saying something.

The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee

When a teenage girl disappears, a small town is awash with rumours: everyone is talking about the dress she wore, a midnight-blue dress made from the remnants of other dresses, a dress of stories ...
 
For her whole life, Rose Lovell has moved from town to town with her alcoholic father. When they wash up in a coastal sugarcane town, Rose wonders if this time it will be different. 
 
At the local high school, Rose meets Pearl Kelly, who is popular, pretty and intent on tracking down her Russian father. When she convinces Rose to be part of the annual Harvest Parade, Rose must find a special dress for the occasion. She seeks the help of the eccentric Edie Baker, who knows all the town’s secrets and whose own family is a rich tapestry of stories. When Rose agrees to let Edie teach her to sew, she doesn’t realise that nothing will ever be the same again.
 
The Midnight Dress weaves an intriguing story of loss and longing to the very last page.

The Midnight Dress is not classified as a YA novel (it's a coming of age tale, really, and many literary fiction titles for a general adult audience focus on this adolescent angst without explicitly being YA), though it features teenaged protagonists. The Midnight Dress is beautifully written, slightly surreal, just exquisite. Though it didn't interest me based on the blurb, once I started reading I was entirely entranced. It's unique and lovely, but also very dark - I recommend it to older teenaged readers looking for a more literary novel as well as adult readers.

I so loved Edie's sad tales of her youth and great love, and Pearl's search for her Russian father. There really is a lot of sadness in this novel, but it's magical, too. While it works extraordinarily on a character level (every character raw and honest and sad), it's also well-constructed plot-wise. The foreshadowing and mystery are nuanced, the two alternating narratives at different points in time slowly converging, making it very difficult to stop reading until one discovers the truth. It's set in Cairns in the 1970s, and there is a lovely timeless quality to it, and the theme of loss of innocence is exaggerated by the fact that it's set in what's considered a more innocent time.

It reminded me of One Long Thread by Belinda Jeffrey, for a few reasons, namely the narrative being focused around the construction of a dress, and the influence of an elderly woman in the making of the dress (In One Long Thread it's Grandma Pearl, in The Midnight Dress it's Edie), and the magic inherent in the process. It's being published in the US this October, I believe, which is wonderful. It's a compelling and heartbreaking novel.

The Midnight Dress on the publisher's website

The various ironies of me being an author

1. My handwriting is terrible. I write in cursive, in tiny letters, and not especially quickly. I can understand my writing but I have to write very slowly if I want anyone else to be able to read it. I have never quite mastered writing in a straight line, so if I write you something on an unlined page it will probably be very wonky. Someone gave me a fountain pen last year, and it feels too special to write with considering my lopsided handwriting. It's been improving since I started handwriting letters.

2. I have trouble pronouncing quite a few words, because I always want to pronounce them as they are spelt. A lot of the more complex words I know I know from reading, and as a result I have no idea how they are pronounced. I have difficulty with 'Jane Eyre', 'macabre', 'revel', 'hyperbole' and 'anarchy' among others. I do not know whether other people who read a lot and don't use especially complex words when speaking have the same issue. They probably just look up the pronunciation on the internet. Hyperbole really should be pronounced as it's spelt though. Are words spelt specifically to trick people? Damn you, English language.

3. I can never figure out what to sign novels with. I'm supposed to be good with words. That's generally a writer's job description. It's a strange thing, writing a message for someone you don't know in your own book (what am I supposed to say? 'Thank you for buying this book and killing a tree. My ego is very grateful.'?). They don't teach any short courses on this, which they should. 'How To Sign Your Own Books, For Dummies' would be very helpful.

4. I don't type properly, despite learning from a typing program as a kid (the game made disapproving noises if you didn't type fast enough. It was a great motivator). I wonder whether anyone actually types properly, with all of the fingers used on all of the right keys, or if that's a lost skill of the late 90s/early 00s (no one thinks about recently lost skills. Everyone's always on about knitting and sewing and churning butter). I only type with four fingers, and I'm wildly inaccurate but fairly speedy. 'Stewardess' is the longest word you can type with just your left hand, technically, or something like that. Am I making that up? I swear I remember reading that in a fact book.

5. I am not a grammar nazi. I feel embarassed if I use the wrong 'your' or improperly place an apostrophe, but I really don't care whether other people do. It matters to me when I'm reading a book or the newspaper or something that should be well thought-out and free of errors, but if you use the wrong 'there' on Twitter or text-speak on Facebook, I will notice but I won't care. It's not really worth the effort of getting annoyed about. I don't think we're all descending into illiteracy or that we'll communicate only in acronyms and shrugs in the future (if this does happen, you can say 'I told you so' but you'll have to find me. I'll be living in a cave on a remote mountain, having taken a vow of silence). Someone sent me a text message with a hashtag in it recently. That, however, is entirely unacceptable.

In defense of the Gold Coast

About a year and a half ago I moved from the Dandenongs outside of Melbourne (where I had lived for approximately half of my life at that point; previously I had lived in Melbourne's bayside suburbs) to the Gold Coast, Queensland. This has to do with books in that my new novel is set on the Gold Coast (vaguely, with fictional areas, because it is a heightened reality), and features an armed robbery. Something which, if you are to believe the news, is apparently a constant occurrence on the Gold Coast. I think if you consult actual statistics, you'll find this is not the case.

If you're not Australian, to give you a brief overview: Melbourne is widely considered to be the most European city in Australia. I have never been to Europe so I cannot tell you if this is true. It's sophisticated and literary and everyone wears a lot of black. It's in Victoria and it's cold and gusty and rainy and sunny sometimes all in one day. Vampires would live there. Or maybe in Tasmania, I don't know.

The Gold Coast could probably be described as a 'regional centre'. It is just south of Brisbane (the state's capital city), in Queensland, which is a massive state that gets very hot at the top. People go to the Gold Coast to  surf and celebrate finishing school and visit theme parks with their families. The weather's mild and consistent, there are lots of very lovely valleys and rainforests and beaches, it's clean and safe and there are lots of nice elderly people. It has much less history than Melbourne, and much less impressive buildings.*

When I tell people that I lived near Melbourne growing up, and I moved to the Gold Coast in 2011, they usually ask: "Why on earth would you do that?"**

To be honest, folks, it's a bit offensive to tell people they've moved to a rubbish place. I love the Gold Coast. Which is not to say that I didn't love Melbourne, and the town outside of Melbourne where I lived, but I don't long for it and it's dreamy architecture. People are always telling me about Melbourne's wonderful culture, and about how Queensland is devoid of it. Yes, there are bogans in Queensland. There are bogans everywhere. There's a tiny little bogan in my heart and she knows all the lyrics to Khe Sanh. But you can't compare a city to a regional area if you're talking about culture. Brisbane has plenty of it. I don't think Melbourne is inherently superior to the Gold Coast. There can be no comparison.

Are people imagining that I'm living in a high-rise in Surfers Paradise and going out clubbing every night? That my life is year-round Schoolies?*** Living on the Gold Coast and holidaying on the Gold Coast are two very different things. The majority of the Gold Coast is suburban. You can lead a nice, quiet life in a holiday destination. There are lots of families who live here permanently, really.

There is this very weird widespread idea (I hear it from Brisbanites all the time) that the Gold Coast is very, very dangerous. People legitimately think that the town is overrun with bikies and armed robbers and organised crime. If you look at QLD police statistics, you'll find the crime is actually significantly down in the last ten years. The Gold Coast is not the crime capital of Australia. It's sensationally referred to as such because the media likes to freak elderly people out and make us all fearful in order to sell newspapers. (The very irritating thing is that multiple news sites seem to contradict each other on crime rates. So there are news sources that will tell you it's very dangerous here, but they do seem to be sensationalised. I doubt there is an actual 'impending bikie war'.)

I think the fear of crime on the Gold Coast is furthered by the fact that we have a news program just for the Gold Coast, that seems to report every single bit of crime that occurs (in Melbourne, I imagine a lot of it doesn't make the news). Also, mysteriously, they never seem to leave Cavill Ave, Surfers Paradise, which is of course going to have more crime than other areas. If Channel Nine news is to be believed, that's the centre of the Gold Coast universe. I hate to think people are scared to visit or move to the Gold Coast because of ridiculous headlines. I feel just as safe here as I did in my semi-regional town outside Melbourne.

As for setting my novel on the (semi-fictional) Gold Coast, and making it feature an armed robbery - it's a nice contrast, isn't it? Sunny place, shady people? There are plenty of novels set in Melbourne. It's an easy place to romanticise, all the pretty buildings and dark weather and cool people. There are plenty of novels and TV shows and films about baddies in Melbourne. I think the GC is deserving of some love.

*They run ghost tours on the Gold Coast now, which I find very funny. You would think the Gold Coast was too young for spooky old ghosts. No one would set a paranormal romance novel here. (That can be my next novel. Vampires living on the GC.)

**Sometimes people ask me bizarre questions like 'do you miss the literary scene in Melbourne?' I do know a lot of lovely people, including writers, in Melbourne. I am not really big on 'scenes' though. (There are communities of writers on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, too, obviously.)

***The whole concept of Schoolies baffles me - like, you've been well-behaved and worked hard throughout your schooling, so now you get to be an absolute idiot for a week as a reward? Like, good behaviour somehow earns you the right to be bad? Am I the only one to whom this seems illogical?

Girl Defective by Simmone Howell

We, the Martin family, were like inverse superheroes, marked by our defects. Dad was addicted to beer and bootlegs. Gully had "social difficulties" that manifested in his wearing a pig snout mask 24-7. I was surface clean but underneath a weird hormonal stew was simmering...

It's summer in St Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder friend. Her brother – Super Agent Gully – is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the tragi-hot new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls, creepy old guys and accidents waiting to happen. If the world truly is going to hell in a hand-basket then at least the soundtrack is kicking. Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real and dark at the edges.
 
This is so very unlike anything else I have read lately. It's set in the present day but it's quite timeless, very nostalgic - the Martin family own and run a record shop (which they live in a flat above), so how could it not be a novel about nostalgia? There is something sort of innocent about Nancy, even in all her wildness, like she is a girl from another time - hence Sky's romanticised idea of her friend.

Not quite as much sleuthing as the title suggests. There is a mystery, and the younger brother is a spy hobbyist - which I too was very keen on as a ten-year-old, I wonder whether every child wants to be a spy at some point - but of course this is not a straight mystery. Things aren't really strictly solved, because it would be unrealistic if they were. 

I've been waiting since 2008 for another Simmone Howell novel and the wait was well worth it (fifteen-year-old Steph, of course, would expect a novel a year, because fifteen-year-old Steph is a rabid fan with no concept of how long is takes to write a novel, really. Nineteen-year-old Steph doesn't mind waiting four years for another marvellous book. Enough third-person, though.)

The characters are all beautiful and raw and lovely, especially the teenagers (even with all their darkness). The dialogue is brilliant, and the writing gorgeous (you know when you're reading and you can never really find a place to stop? You just keep moving forward because it is so well-written?). It's set in St Kilda so it's familiar and very realistic but enchanting and unreal at once (some of the night scenes like the one at Luna Park especially), reminding me somewhat of Leanne Hall's This is Shyness only more cemented in our reality.

It's really very splendid, and if you like contemporary Australian YA (it's a bit on the literary side) it's a really-really-should-read (I'm trying to avoid saying must-read because that phrase is severely overused). It is always lovely when a much-anticipated book lives up to your expectations.

P.S. It's going to be published in the US! I do not know when yet, but you should read it as soon as you can.

Girl Defective on Goodreads.
Girl Defective on the publisher's website.
The author's blog.

A most exciting All This Could End Twitter giveaway!

The very fabulous Text Publishing are giving away a $150 Dangerfield voucher (plus a copy of the novel!) to celebrate the release of All This Could End!

All you have to do is tweet to them (@textpublishing) - 'what's the worst thing your mum has ever made you do?'

I get to judge the entries! How very exciting. So humour is appreciated. (And I'm sure if you don't have a mum in your life a mother-figure is just fine.)

The competition ends at 5pm AEST today (March 14th), so you have to get in quick. (And it's open to just Australian and New Zealand residents.)

If you want to listen to me talk about All This Could End...

Here is a recording of my interview on ABC Coast FM!

Plus a podcast and transcript of an interview with the Sydney Writers Centre (which you can also download from iTunes).

There was also an article in the Gold Coast Bulletin you can read online here. (You might have also seen me in the Courier Mail on publication day. I was on page 13. I hope that's lucky.)

Some reviews of All This Could End from Deborah Abela (!!! whose Max Remy series I loved as a kid), Books+Publishing, Vegan YA Nerds (complete with adorable picture of cat posing with my novel!), Alpha Reader, Maree's Musings and inkcrush.

I'll be posting updates on appearances and interviews and the like more frequently to my Facebook page, and adding print snippets and reviews to the All This Could End page on this blog (once I manage to wrangle the scanner and convert PDFs to jpegs) so you can have a look at both of those places if you're interested.

P.S. Thank you to everyone for all of their support and lovely words about the new novel so far! You are wonderful. Releasing a second novel is actually no less terrifying than releasing a first novel. I'm working on a blog post about that.