Sneaky Kiwis

We might be living in Texas, but little spots of New Zealand are dotted throughout our apartment waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting guest. Here are just a few ...





P.S. Speaking of sneaky Kiwis ...

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, and it is also the first Monday in a couple of weeks in which neither LOML nor I have been hunched over the toilet or comatose in bed. Hooray for not being ill and for life getting back to normal! We took a picnic out to our favourite place, Lake Travis, to lounge and read and bask in the sun. Some previous picnicker had carved a happy face into one of the cacti - it seemed to sum up our day pretty well.









I hope you all had a lovely weekend!

A writerly Friday

The beautiful Rachael King.

My dear friend, mentor and role model (she's also a vintage lover and a mean swing-dancer!), Rachael King, wrote a lovely post about me here that has just made my week - which was especially lovely because so much of my week has been spent sick in bed! I met Rachael when I was doing my MFA at the University of Canterbury in 2008 and she was the Writer in Residence, a very grand title that made me quake at the knees when I stood outside her door waiting to meet her. I needn't have worried, though, because Rachael is warm and funny and very kind, and listened to my babbling very patiently. It was Rachael who referred me to the wonderful agent that we share, Vivien Green of Sheil Land Associates, and it was Rachael who answered all my newbie questions, gave me wise advice and guided me through the editing and publishing processes. I am so grateful to have met her.

Rachael has two novels currently available: The Sound of Butterflies and Magpie Hall, both of which are just gorgeous. If I had to choose a favourite, it would be Magpie Hall, purely because I love the tiger-skinning scene and the tattooing scenes!


I don't know if you have come across Sarah Laing's wonderful blog, Let Me Be Frank yet, but as well as being a very talented writer she draws hilarious cartoons charting the shark-infested waters of writing and publication. I particularly liked this recent one:

Image copyright Sarah Laing.

Click here to read the rest of this story - and all the others! I just love her cartoons, and I know that you will too.

Moustaches and monsters and owls, oh my!

Thank you so much for all your get-well wishes, everyone! I so appreciate them. Today I have been able to sit up a bit and eat some solid food - definite progress. It seems ridiculous that these tiny and common viruses can have such an enormous impact, and I'm pretty frustrated with my inability to do anything, but I am following Mink's excellent example and spending most of my time asleep. Again, sorry if you are waiting for a response to a comment or email - I will get to them as soon as I can.

*

Before the Fateful Virus Took Hold on Sunday, I had a very Austin day - a morning spent with friends at the Renegade Craft Fair, and lunch at the Trailer Park Eatery! Renegade travels around the country providing a showcase for handmade goods and original artwork (and the people who create them). There was so much that it was rather overwhelming at first, but once we took the time to explore we found all sorts of treasures.



I loved these monster hoods! I wish they came in Mink-sizes. Although Sandhya made a very convincing lion.

LOML with a moustache. I know moustache motifs are trendy at the moment, and I do love them, but surely they have reached critical mass by now? Almost every booth had a preponderance of moustaches!


Fun at the fair!


The beautiful Anslee of savannahred, standing outside her booth.
It wouldn't be Austin without an Airstream!

Me and Sandhya.

Awaiting my Torchy's taco, and starting to feel the effects of the virus. Thank goodness it waited until I had got home! That would have been embarrassing.

The Torchy's Tacos sofa.


Murals at the Trailer Park Eatery.

Right, crawling back to bed now.

Sick and sad

Thank you so much for your comments, everyone! I'm afraid I am behind on replying to comments and emails because I have gastroenteritis (hooray) and am capable of doing nothing except sleeping and being sick. It is rather unpleasant. Please bear with me in my absence and I'll see you soon!

A little Friday inspiration

"I like joy; I want to be joyous; I want to have fun on the set; I want to wear beautiful clothes and look pretty. I want to smile and I want to make people laugh. And that's all I want. I like it. I like being happy. I want to make others happy." - Doris Day


Doris Day is one of my personal heroines. Quite apart from her often-underrated comedic talents, her infectious cheerfulness shines in all her films. Everyone has moments of gloom and doom, but I always find it refreshing to see artists who reject the often-bandied-about 'tortured' label and instead bring a generous and joyous spirit to what they do.

I love how genuinely happy and upbeat she seems - and how approachable. Just looking at her photographs - and watching her films - makes me smile.

And I hope it makes you smile, too. Happy Friday!

Milestone

I have passed the 50,000-word mark on the new book! Mink and I are celebrating.

The proper height of tea-tables

I found the 1955 edition of Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage in a thrift store on Monday, and I have been having great fun reading through all the different chapters. Sometimes I wish I lived in the age of balls and dance cards and 'at-home' days. Actually, if I'm honest, I wish that most of the time. And then I remind myself that a lot of social and personal restrictions went along with the niceties, and that it wasn't all romance! She describes good manners as 'our contribution to the beauty of living,' which is a rather lovely way to put it, and, although there are many chapters dealing with such delights as the correct height for a tea table* and how one should pour the coffee, she takes care to emphasise that a positive attitude, sincerity and a generosity of spirit inspire the best manners of all.

"How many times has one heard someone say, 'No one is coming in. That old dress will do!' Old clothes! No manners! And what is the result? One wife more wonders why her husband neglects her! Curious how the habit of careless manners and the habit of old clothes go together. And how many women really lovely and good - especially good - commit aesthetic suicide by letting themselves slide down to where they feel natural in an old house coat, not only physically but mentally."

*By the way, a tea-table should be five to six inches above the knees of the hostess when she is seated and should usually be about 26 inches high, 27 to 36 inches long and 24 to 26 inches wide, in case you were wondering.

The inherent evil of pine nuts

Gaze upon the tiny blank faces of evil.

I have something rather random to talk about today, but it is driving me crazy and I can't stop myself from posting about it. PINE-MOUTH. Have you heard of it? No, me neither. At least, I hadn't heard of it until a couple of days ago, when I ate a salad containing pine nuts and pretty much lost my sense of taste. I had (have) a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth that wiped out everything else, making most food and drink distinctly unpleasant. After a bit of Googling, I uncovered dozens and dozens of sites devoted to this bitter mouth-taste caused by eating pine nuts. Not everyone gets it, but for those who do it can last for one to four weeks. FOUR WEEKS. I will go mad(der).

This is a recent phenomenon - apparently the FDA has only started to track cases in the last couple of years. One theory is that pine-nuts from China contain inedible nuts alongside the edible ones ... but some people feel no effects at all. And I have eaten pesto containing pine nuts frequently with no ill-effects. It is a mystery, and a very annoying one. I hope I fall into the one-week category and not the up-to-four-weeks category.

Curse you, pine nuts! Curse you and your delicious nutty flavours!

Jenga and plotting

LOML and I played Jenga yesterday evening. And not just any Jenga - Texas Jenga! According to the box, the word 'Texas' is apparently a registered trademark. How on earth does that work?


Anyway, playing Jenga reminded me of making revisions to the structure and plot of a novel. You extricate the elements that don't work, all the while hoping madly that your actions don't collapse your carefully-constructed plot completely.



Sometimes it works.

And sometimes it doesn't.





But you keep going.