Byrskiblog

Hello again

I don't have much news, having been very busy with work at Curtin University, and struggling with my latest novel.  Sometimes writing seems to flow in just the way one wants, at other times it just doesn't seem to work.  I've been stuck in one of those times but fortunately I think I may now have broken through.  Things seem to be falling into place and I'm making progress again.  I hope this means that the book will be finished in time for release next year.

At the end of the university semester I spent a few days in Albany, which is such a wonderful environment for creativity, and for leisure. It is one of my favourite places and I always come home feeling relaxed, refreshed and energetic.  Apart from the spectacular scenery, which you can see from this photograph taken between Albany and nearby Middleton Beach, the air from the Southern Ocean always seem so fresh and envigorating. 

Middleton is my favourite beach in the area for both walking and swimming, and is at its best, I think,early in the morning or at sunset.  I wrote a little about Albany in Belly Dancing for Beginners.

The end of semester has given me a little time to catch up on reading and my favourite book for a very long time is Joan London's The Good Parents.  Joan is a West Australian writer and parts of this book are set in Perth in the sixties and in the wheat belt.  I really loved The Good Parents, it's a story that is truly enthralling in its portrayal of the lives of the characters.  I also very much enjoyed Sorry by Gail Jones, a story of friendship, loyalty and sacrifice which is deeply moving. 

Right now, because I'm going to Paris in September, I'm about to start The Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne. One reviewer describes it as 'like taking an exciting trip in a French balloon', so I'm really looking forward to this. I lived in Paris for a year when I was nineteen and have only been back for two very short visits since then, so I am very excited about seeing the city again.

Thanks so much to everyone who's written to me recenty.  I'm so glad you are enjoying Trip of a Lifetime and the other books, and I very much enjoy hearing from you.  I try to get back to everyone as soon as I can, so if I haven't got back to you yet I promise a message will be coming soon.  And I'll try to make sure that I don't leave it so long before I update this blog again. 

Buying Books

Hello

This week I received the first copies of the German edition of Gang of Four which was released last month.  I love the cover and the new title which (I think) translates to The Best Time of Your Life. 

It's taken me some time to recover from the long tour with the Big Book Club last month but I finally feel that I am getting back to normal again now and Trip of a Lifetime is still selling very well.  Thanks to all the people who have emailed since we met at the different locations on the tour.  I promise I will get back to everyone within the next couple of weeks. 

This week I was in Mandurah, speaking at the library and it was great to see so many people there and to chat to everyone after the talk.  On Wednesday 28 May at 10am I'll be speaking at the Vincent Library as part of WA Library week, so if you live in or near Perth and feel like coming along it will be great to see you.  Please do call in advance to book a place so that the library staff know how many people to expect - 08 9273 6090.

I've had a number of emails recently from readers in England, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand wondering where they can buy my books, so here's some information that I hope will help. 

In New Zealand you should be able to find all the books in any good bookshop as they are distributed throughout New Zealand.  If the bookshop doesn't have the book you want in stock they can certainly order it for you and it should arrive within a few days.  You can also buy them from any of the online booksellers below.

Wherever you are Gang of Four is available through www.amazon.co.uk.

Food, Sex & Money,  Belly Dancing for Beginners and Trip of a Lifetime are only distributed in Australia at present but wherever you live in Australia or around the world you can buy them from any of the following online booksellers (which also stock Gang of Four):  www.dymocks.com.au  www.seekbooks.com.au www.collinsbooks.com.au

I do hope this helps,

Best wishes, Liz

Hitting the charts

Hello  -  I've just got home after almost four weeks on a promotion tour with Trip of  Lifetime which was released in March.  I'm delighted to be able to tell you that in the week ending 7 March the book made it to No. 9 in the list of top ten bestsellers.  A first for me and very exciting.  As well as the publicity visit to Sydney and Melbourne I was also lucky enough to visit Brisbane and Adelaide as well as regional areas in Queensland, South Australia and here in WA, thanks to The Big Book Club.  The picture here was taken at the library in Port Pirie in South Australia.

Each month The Big Book Club selects a new book and organises events in libraries at which people can meet the author.  It was a terrific thrill for me to hear that Trip of a Lifetime was the March selection.  The tour gave me the chance to meet readers in places that I would not otherwise be able to visit.  I want to say a big thank you to the staff in all the libraries who hosted events for me, and to the many people who came along to listen, talk and find out more about my books.  I had a wonderful time and learned so much from what you told me about the elements that you enjoy, and the sort of characters you'd like to read about.

These belly dancers gave a wonderful performance for us at the Library in Miles (Qld), and it was a great surprise to arrive at the Clifton Library to be greeted by a group from from the Red Hat Society, complete with gorgeous purple dresses and red hats.  As you can see the only dowdy one in the picture is me!   

A special thank you too to The Big Book Club for making this possible.  If you haven't already visited the  BBC website do make time to take a look  www.thebigbookclub.com.au , and keep an eye open for the April author events with Toni Jordan whose new book Addition is one of my most recent favourites.  I urge you to take the opportunity to meet Toni and hear her talk about her book if she is appearing at a library in your area.

It's hard to get back to normal after the last few weeks on the road, but I have spent too long away from my writing, so I'm off now to get down to work on the next book.

All good wishes

Liz

Trip of a Lifetime

Hello again

I'm delighted to be able to show you the cover of my new novel Trip of a Lifetime which will be in the bookshops from March 1. 

This is a book about secrets and feelings, the ones week keep hidden from the people we love in order to protect them and to protect ourselves.  We learn to live with them without realising that they can scar the surface of our relationships like crazing on fine china. Sometimes a crisis can turn them into deep fractures.  The people in Trip of a Lifetime have kept their secrets and hidden their feelings for a very long time.  When a sudden dramatic event drops into the calm pool of their lives the ripples spread in surprising directions.  I do hope you'll enjoy it.

I'm also delighted that The Australian Women's Weekly has chosen Trip of a Lifetime as The Great Read for March, and The Big Book Club www.thebigbookclub.com.au has picked it as Book of the Month.  Over the next few weeks I'll be visiting lots of places around Australia, and hope I'll have the chance to meet as  many people as possible.  The list below shows the dates and locations so I hope you can find one that's convenient.  More may be added in the next couple of weeks so do check the blog again.  I hope you can make it and look forward to meeting you.   Until then, all good wishes, Liz.

Download BigBookClub.doc

When I'm sixty-four

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to be part of a conversation on 'growing old disgracefully', with Geoff Hutchison on ABC Radio.  Was it 'old', 'disgraceful' or both that prompted Geoff's producer think of me?   One talkback caller who said he was in his early eighties was about to set off on a bike ride of several hundred kilometres and was looking for a companion.  When Geoff commented that the companion would need to be pretty fit the man said, 'Oh no -  she just needs to be able to ride a bike for five or six hours at a time!'   I won't be volunteering for that gig.

But the point of this is that I do think getting older has a lot going for it if you are open to different ideas and possibilities. Every phase of life has pluses and minuses but for me getting older has more of the former.  The conversation about growing old took place a couple of days before my sixty-fourth birthday last weekend, and Geoff played 'When I'm sixty four' for me.  It prompts me to show you this lovely photograph taken with a couple of my own 'gang' (of more than four) on my birthday.  The two gorgeous women in black are Mary (left)and Boris.  We spent a wonderful morning together with other friends. As you'll know from my books I value the friendship of women. For centuries women's friendship was discounted, trivialised, mistrusted and misinterpreted and I'm thankful that today we can celebrate our friendships and the very special contribution they make to our lives.

I've listed below where I'll be during the Perth Writers Festival, so if you're around on 22nd - 25th February do drop by and say hello.  And commencing the second week of March I'll be on the road to promote my new novel, Trip of a Lifetime, which will be on sale from 1 March.

I'll be in Alice Springs, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and a number of city and regional locations in WA.  A little nearer the time I'll post a list of times and dates when I hope you may be able to come along.  Meanwhile here are the Perth Festival events:

Perth Writers Festival -  University of Western Australia  22-25 February

Friday 22 February   

9.30-10.30 - Festival Tent -  'Love and Desire'

I'll be chairing a panel on writing about intimacy and desire with Toni Jordan, Victoria Hammond and Douglas Kennedy. ( A free event - no need to book).

12.15 for 12.30pm  Frasers Restaurant, Kings Park - Lunch and Conversation with Stephanie Dowrick    

I'll be talking with Stephanie about her books, Choosing Happiness, Intimacy and Solitude and her latest - The Almost-Perfect Marriage, and there will be heaps of time for your questions. (You need to book for this one which includes a two-course lunch and wine -  cost $70, book through BOCS or the Perth Festival Website.)

Saturday 23rd February

9.30-10.30am - Dolphin Theatre -  How Far is Too Far?

How far should a writer go in using other people's lives in their writing?  With Colin Falconer and Craig Sherborne I'll be probing the moral and ethical boundaries writers must negotiate in the pursuit of a good story. (Free event)

12.30 - 1.30pm Festival Tent  -  Taken From Life

Writers find inspiration in life experiences, memories, family histories and many other real life events. Louise Doughty, Kate Llewellyn, Glyn Parry and Tracy Ryan will, I hope, reveal their sources. (Free event.)

Hope to see you there.

Happy New Year

Hello again and many apologies for the long delay in wishing you a happy and peaceful new year.

We had an outrageously hot Christmas and New Year period here in Perth and I must admit to finding it hard to acclimatise after six months in England.  But now it's back to work both at Curtin University where we are currently enrolling and re-enrolling students for new academic year, and back to work on writing.

My latest novel Trip of Lifetime will be available in a few weeks and I'm looking forward to a trip to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to promote it when it's released in March.

And the Perth Writers Festival is fast approaching so I'm working my way through a pile of books that I need to read before chairing some panels at the Festival.  I discovered a real treasure in The Year We Seized the Day by Elizabeth Best and Colin Bowles.  It's the story of their pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostella, an 800 kilometre trek that they undertook on a spur of the moment decision and with minimal preparation.  The stories of their shared but also invidivual and very personal journeys are told with passion, warmth and humour.  Best and Bowles don't hold back from describing the physical, emotional and spiritual demands of this gruelling experience but it's a moving, informative and often outright hilarious account that kept me turning the pages far into the night.

And I've just started The Woman in the Fifth   by US writer Douglas Kennedy.  I've been a fan of Kennedy's novels since I read The Pursuit of Happiness in 2002, and I've waited impatiently for each new release and never been disappointed.  Kennedy writes exceptionally effectively in first person female, something I really admire and something that really jars with women readers if a man doesn't get it right.  This new novel has a male narrative voice but it's equally engrossing.

Don't forget to have a look at the Festival website  www.perthfestival.com.au and click Writers Festival.  And if you are in Western Australia do pay us a visit at the new venue on the campus on the University of Western Australia.

I'll be back with more news soon.

Liz

Merry Christmas

Father Christmas was looking a little overheated in Fremantle this afternoon  -  it was 36C and his face was the same colour as his suit.  And it looks like there there's no relief in sight here in Western Australia with forecasts of 38 or 39C for Christmas and Boxing Day. But wherever you are - perspiring in Perth or freezing in England or elsewhere I just want to take the opportunity to wish you a very merry Christmas and a  peaceful and happy New Year.

I'll be back early in the New Year with news of the Perth Writers Festival and later with the release of my next novel Trip of  Lifetime.  Until then have a great time over the holiday and don't work too hard.

All good wishes

Liz

Home again

Here I am, back in Western Australia, and as you can see from this picture taken from my balcony the jacarandas are still in bloom in Applecross.  It's great to see friends and colleagues and I'm looking forward to seeing my sons and their partners who will all be back here in Perth before Christmas.

Meanwhile, having recovered from jetlag, there's lots to do in terms of sorting out the research material I gathered in England and meeting some writing deadlines.  So it's nose to the grindstone, here at my desk in the study, which is really the second bedroom. 

And it's good to come home to a new government that promises a fairer, gentler Australia.  Let's hope it delivers with some policy initiatives in social justice, education and health.  Signing up to Kyoto is a great start and now we need that long overdue apology to Aboriginal Australians.  And then there's the Republic ...

I'm looking forward to the Perth International Arts Festival and particularly to the Writers Festival at the end of February.  Do have a look at special events -  you can find them on the Festival website:  www.perthfestival.com.au/perthwritersfestival/ .  The line-up for 2008 includes Naomi Wolf, Colin Thubron, Stephanie Dowrick and those wonderful boys from The Chaser.  The details of the main program will be available soon.  I'll let you know where to find it early in the New Year.

Meanwhile I hope you are not all wearing yourselves out in the run up to Christmas.  For me this is the year of letting other people do all the work.  I actually managed that last year too  -  one gets a little wiser and more manipulative with age!

Time to Go

My last days in England and although I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in Australia I'm feeling very sad about leaving here.  It's been wonderful to meet old friends and family here, and to make new friends in the most surprising ways.  I hope I'll be back here again very soon.

Last week I paid my first ever visit to the British Libary to see an exhibition of 20th century graphic art.  It was quite fascinating to see the developments in graphic art from the cities of Europe during the last century.  While we were there my friend bought me a CD of the Library's archives of poets reading their own work.  It's amazing to hear the voices of W.B.Yeats, John Masefield, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and others -  some of them reading in very dramatic and declamatory tones.

And here's the new St Pancras station, beautiful, romantic and now almost complete.

  This bronze sculpture of a couple meeting is now a focal point of the station and will probably be the symbol of many meetings and partings in future novels.  Mine among them.

Next time I post on the blog I'll be back in Australia, so it's time to say thank you to all the people I've met in the course of my research and to friends and family for great times and wonderful memories.  I hope to be back again before too long. 

Sentimental Journey

My time in England seems to have flown past and in a couple of weeks I'll be heading back to Australia. This has been a memorable and also a challenging time in terms of the research I've been doing here, and in the very personal experience of returning to the country, and the town which was home for the first 37 years of my life.  I've been staying close to East Grinstead, a West Sussex town that has, in my lifetime, changed a lot but is also surprisingly very much the same.  The pictures I've posted here are of Felcourt Manor where, at the age of 17, I got my first job in the typing pool and later became a secretary.  In those days Felcourt was owned by the Rentokil Group.  It's now been turned into very luxurious apartments and I was lucky enough to get an invitation to the launch and open day last week.  As you can see it was a really glorious office setting.  Thanks to Simon Kerr, the Tourism Officer for East Grinstead for this lovely memento photograph he took of me in front of the door through which I walked into work as a teenager all those years ago.

I spent years here knowing very little about the town and only learned this year that the Greenwich Prime Meridian runs through East Grinstead and is marked by a meridian stone located in the grounds of the local council offices at East Court.  It means that you can shake hands or even exchange a kiss while one of you is in the western hemisphere and the other in the east.  Here are Simon and Susie Kerr doing just that - they'll probably kill me when they see this. The town has some of the finest hall houses in Britain and a long run of timber framed buildings which are truly stunning. In 1690 the famous Christmas Carol Good King Wenceslas was written here in Sackville College - built by Robert Sackville, Earl of Dorset, for the poor of the town in 1609.

The town has other literary connections which include Vita Sackville West, and in nearby Hartfield A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh.  Here's a picture of the famous Pooh Corner in Hartfield on the edge ofAshdown Forest.  East Grinstead is also the home of the famous steam trains of the Bluebell Railway which take visitors on a delightful trip through the local countryside.

And if you enjoy celebrity gossip there are raunchy tales of Rita Hayworth and Ali Khan staying here in the forties at Saint Hill Manor, later owned by the Maharajah of Jaipur and now the international headquarters of the Scientology movement. Tom Cruise owns a house here too.  There are all sorts of other interesting stories and places in and around East Grinstead, so if you are visiting Sussex don't miss East Grinsead.  Call in to see Simon in the library in West Street and he will provide you with more information and activities than you could imagine, or have a look at the town website www.eastgrinstead.gov.uk.

When I woke this morning the garden was white with frost and the pond frozen solid, despite the glorious Autumn sunshine that ice still hasn't thawed.  Meanwhile back home in Perth it's apparently 39C and warming up for Christmas, this will take some getting used to, I have really enjoyed England's quirky and unreliable climate over the last few months.