Over to you

Hello!

Firstly, thank you so much for all your condolences and kind comments on my previous post. I was really touched and grateful to receive each one. Thank you.

I want to know more about you. Who are you? Where do you come from? Tea or coffee? Cat person or no? Or whatever else you want to say. I would love to get to know you better.

Andrea x

Things I learned from my great-grandmother

Me and Gran-nan.

It is essential to watch every film starring Mario Lanza.

Fish 'n' chips is the food of the gods.

Dress with care and attention to detail.

Men think glasses are sexy.

Do the crossword regularly.

Buy good quality clothing and take good care of it.

When in doubt, hum a tune.

Garlic should be consumed daily.

Never neglect your hair style.

Potatoes go with everything.

There's nothing wrong with a glass of wine at the end of the day.

Musicals make everything brighter.

Wear red lipstick and red nail polish.

Everything and everyone is interesting.

You can make a home wherever you are.

Turn off The Sound of Music before you get to the Nazi scenes.

Eat and drink with relish and never feel guilty about it.

Go thrift-shopping - you will find treasure.

Wear your scarves with panache.

One strong, beautiful and determined woman can shape four generations - and probably many more to come.


*


Gran-nan died this afternoon. I am going to miss her so much.

Reviews! Beards*! So much is happening!

1. The lovely Jess Haigh reviewed The Cry of the Go-Away Bird for For Books' Sake. Her review is so thoughtful and detailed, and I can't tell you how thrilled I was to read it. Thank you, Jess!

2. Casey of Elegant Musings posted an interview with me on her blog today! I have read Casey's blog daily for over three years now, and she is one of the most inspiring, beautiful and talented women I know. I am really honoured to appear on her blog with my goofy grin and general ramblings.

3. I went to Dallas yesterday! My knowledge of Dallas is based entirely on my knowledge of J.R. and Bobby Ewing (that is, nonexistent). I was travelling with a designer friend who is starting her own business making gorgeous vintage-inspired dresses (more information when it is all launched and official), and we spent the day surrounded by patterns, prototypes and one very shy cat called Killer who hid under the sofa for most of our visit.


We had lunch at a TexMex restaurant where I was served the largest Taco Salad in the world. Bigger than my head.



I also saw The Grassy Knoll from which a possible second shooter possibly shot President Kennedy (but probably didn't). It is exactly what it sounds like - a sloping patch of grass at the side of the road. I don't know what I expected, really. And on the way back from Dallas we stopped at a restaurant owned by Willie Nelson. It was out in the country and filled with wonderful, impressively bearded characters in Stetsons, string ties and dungarees who tipped their hats and said "Howdy, Ma'am," when I passed. This makes me very happy. I love Texas.

* I don't have a beard (yet. My hair is getting pretty unmanageable, so a beard may be next).

Come to my readings!

There are a couple of events that you can come along to while I'm in the UK, if you would like - I would love to see you there!

LONDON


Click to embiggen!

6:30pm, Thursday 10 February
Earlsfield Library, 276 Magdalen Road, SW18 3NY

BATH

The event information is here!

8pm, Thursday 17 February
Topping & Company Booksellers
The Paragon, Bath, Somerset, BA1 5LS

I hope some of you can make it! (And does anyone reading this blog actually live in Bath? I'd love to know).

Other people's words

Sometimes I think that I am doing this (and by this I mean writing) wrong; that I am too messy and chaotic and emotional and confused to be a 'proper' writer. And then I read other writers' words, and I realise that we are all as messy, chaotic, emotional and confused as each other. Here are some words that made me feel less like a five-year-old with finger paints today.

"I am also afflicted with perfectionism. Sometimes I feel like Perfectionism should have its own entry in the DSM - it feels like a diagnosable psychological disorder to me! I get so very stuck sometimes. I become aware that a sentence or chapter is not rolling along as well as ever it possibly could, and that awareness sort of rears up and blocks out everything else. I become distressed and distracted by the imperfections to the extent I have to sort them out before I move forward with the story. This is one way to write a book, and I think it will always be a part of my process; it’s who I am, and one thing I’ve learned in my struggles so far is you have to work with the brain you have -- and not waste time wishing you had a better one! But that doesn’t mean you let your hang-ups defeat you." - Laini Taylor (from Not For Robots, an invaluable guide to writing and one I re-read regularly.)

"It’s a bit like cleaning the house. You think, if I can clean up the living room then I’ll be happy. Then you clean up the living room and you think ‘Oh my God, doesn’t the kitchen look terrible now.’ So your next draft is to clean up the kitchen - and I suppose it’s when I can’t see any other rooms that need cleaning up, it’s ready." - Malcolm Knox

"... You’re doing all this stuff, you don’t know what you're doing, you don’t know how to do it, and suddenly you look at it and you see that there it is." - Ashley Hay

"I'm always drafting and redrafting as I go along. The first 'complete' draft is the one I'll send off. I write very disjointedly, very chaotically - and I'll have pieced together the whole from parts that have already gone through several drafts, and then excised other bits that don't fit." - Wendy James

And when the book is published I will feel like this:

"If I had my way I’d be sneaking around the bookshops with a pencil in hand, crossing out the sloppy bits, tightening things up." - Adrian Hyland

(The last three quotes are from this article).

P.S. I practised reading a section of the book aloud tonight - just to LOML - and I nearly threw up from nerves (not literally). It can only get better, right?

Cassie and me in The Telegraph (and a bloggy interview)

Click to embiggen!

Just popping in to say that a piece I wrote for The Telegraph is online today! Check it out here.




P.S. Sorry to be all self-promotion-y today, but one of my favourite bloggers (the lovely Jayne Ferst) has interviewed me over on A Novice Novelist! This is what happens when I say I won't be blogging for a few days, obviously. Thanks so much, Jayne!

The news at six(ish)

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the lack of activity - we're having some tough family times right now (again/still), with my great-grandmother very sick and other family members in hospital too. I'll be back soon.

Andrea x

Book Aid International

Book Aid International at work in Zimbabwe.

I hardly ever bought books in Zimbabwe - the runaway inflation meant that any 'luxury' items were usually out of reach (Mum and I bought one bow of Smarties a month and shared it over the course of a few days. It was our biggest treat). Instead, we make a weekly trip to the Mount Pleasant library every week, where yellowing index cards were stored in musty drawers and the books were all covered in brittle plastic with numbers on the spines. There were hardly ever any new books - the most recent had been printed in the sixties or seventies, and the bulk of the stock was from even earlier in the twentieth century. I devoured Georgette Heyer's regency novels as a teenager (still do), and the library had a lot of 1930s and '40s editions of her books, taped together and threatening to explode on contact. And this was in a pretty well-off neighbourhood in the capital city, back in the 1990s. Even our school books were decades old * (until I went to the International School) - and again, this was at private schools in the capital. In the rural areas and less well-funded schools, it was far more unlikely that children would have access to modern books in good condition - or any books at all.

Once, Zimbabwe led Africa in literacy rates. Since 1995, however, education and literacy (along with everything else) have declined dramatically. School fees and books are prohibitively expensive for many, and a large percentage of Zimbabwe's best teachers have left the country. Libraries have suffered too. Books are knowledge and freedom and adventure and opportunity and escape and friendship and doorways to other lives and ways of being. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have access to libraries and bookstores. Our house is filled with books. It is easy to take them for granted. Book Aid International never does, and they do an amazing job of providing books to sub-Saharan Africa; raising literacy levels, providing information and underpinning development.

A representative from the charity said:

"We really aren't a very big charity, but can achieve a lot with very little, so for £2 or $3 we can get one brand-new book from our warehouse in South London, to a library in rural sub-Saharan Africa. We don't have staff on the ground in Africa, but instead work in partnership with national library services or NGOs who annually fill out feedback forms with their users' needs. We then utilise our relationships within the UK publishing industry to provide books to meet those needs as best we can."

Go here to donate. I've got a few ideas for some fundraising bloggy events for Book Aid during the year - stay tuned!

* And at the Dominican Convent, any references to reproduction in our Biology textbook were blacked out heavily. Which just made us try all the harder to find out about it.

Elephants, novels and earthquakes

Possibly my favourite writing quote:

"Writing a book is like washing an elephant: no good place to begin or end and it's hard to keep track of what you've already covered." - Anon

I am incapable of finishing any sort of container. I don't know why. It drives LOML crazy. I just can't bring myself to empty any bottles of sauce, packets of pasta or jars of jam - I have to leave a little bit in the bottom. This means that I open the new milk bottle when there is still quite enough for my cereal in the bottom of the old one. It is a very annoying habit but when I force myself to finish a container I feel anxious and not-quite-right, as if the universe has subtly realigned itself at a funny angle. We have about five bottles of ranch dressing in the fridge, all but one of which have about an inch of dressing in the bottom.

Finishing novels, on the other hand, is a habit I have cultivated. I finish what I start compulsively, largely thanks to a series of articles I read online a few years ago - Finish Your Novel by Timothy Hallinan. Tim started this series and instilled this habit of finishing after his house burned down, destroying several incomplete manuscripts. Thank goodness he wrote all his advice down, so that other writers don't need such a dramatic wake-up call.

Anyway, I started thinking about this again today because Timothy Hallinan's The Queen of Patpong has been nominated for the 2011 Edgar Award for Best Novel! I am so thrilled - this is so well-deserved. Congratulations, Tim!

P.S. ANOTHER earthquake in Christchurch today. It seems never-ending. Take care, everyone in Christchurch! We're thinking of you.

Ramble, with extra beetles

I just found this photograph today for the first time in years. Isn't it funny how clearly you remember primary school (when ten minutes was an unimaginably long time and your favourite hobby was collecting beetles in an ice cream container)? I can still name every single person in this photograph, while people from high school and university have disappeared into the mists of time and Facebook. I can still remember being this bespectacled person (I'm on the bottom left). I haven't really changed all that much. And I can remember the sweet, wheaty smell of the newsprint paper inside that colouring book, and the damp squeak of my socks inside my shoes - it had been raining. Sometimes I think that I will never experience anything as vividly as I did when I was little, and that makes me sad. Still. It reminds me to pay attention to each moment and to try to create memories that are at least as strong as these (minus the beetles).

P.S. Allyson Whipple of Literary Austin interviewed me here - thank you, Allyson!

Once Upon a Life

Mum and me in Matopos when I was fifteen (the year before we left Zimbabwe).

Hi everyone!

A piece I wrote for the Observer about our final months in Zimbabwe is here, written for the Once Upon a Life series, in case you feel like taking a look.

Andrea x

P.S. Here's a scan of the actual article as it appeared. Click to embiggen!

Gran-nan

Me and Gran-nan in 2009.

This is my great-grandmother. She is one of my biggest inspirations and I love her with all my heart - we all do. She is an amazing lady, nearly 100 years old, with the strongest personality and sharpest brain of anyone I know. She is also endlessly stylish and elegant, with a wonderful sense of humour and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hollywood and old films. She was the first of our family to travel to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia).

We have just found out that she is very, very sick. I hope that we will still be able to see her when we get to the UK in a couple of weeks' time, but I know that she will always be with me - and all our family. There's no way someone this strong-willed and vibrant will ever just disappear.

Friday ramblings

"I realized a long time ago that I have absolutely NO control over my writing, how it goes any given day, or week, or in any given book. I can follow the same schedule, sit at the same computer, eat the same two chocolates, every single day, with wildly varying results. And that, my friends, makes me NUTS. It's why I spend so much of the rest of my day organizing drawers, separating my daughter's toys into neatly ordered bins, and obsessively updating my calendar. I need to feel like I'm doing something right, when such a big part of what I do and love is always the big question mark." - Sarah Dessen

YES.

When I read this I felt like my brain had taken a deep breath and was letting it out slowly. SUCH a relief. Perhaps it is the tension between the control freakish, perfectionist part and the chaotic, creative part that enables the writing to happen for many people. I am so glad to hear that I am not the only one who feels completely chaotic and out of control while writing and makes up for it by being compulsively organised and structured in every other area.

Today has been a strange day, largely because I spent the morning reading my own book in book form. I had read the uncorrected proof copy, but this was the first time I had read the finished product (and I managed to spill a drop of coffee on one of the pages. Typical. I suppose it wouldn't really be my book unless it had a coffee stain). It can be quite excruciating, reading your own work - it feels like hearing your suddenly unfamiliar and squeaky voice on someone else's answering machine, or watching a video of yourself performing. I was irrationally terrified that I would turn the page and see that the book ended with an alien invasion or robotic dinosaurs taking over the world. Or a typo. Equally terrifying. Anyway, I was reading it in order to find a passage that would be suitable for reading at events when I get to London, and I think I've found one. I've always been nervous about reading my own work, particularly in public, so I will have to practise a great deal to overcome shaking-voice-and-hands syndrome.

When I was fourteen (at one of my high schools - the Dominican Convent in Harare), my English teacher always made me read my stories out loud. I hated it. And her. Which wasn't really fair - she was a lovely woman. In my mind, however, she was a fanged, slavering ogre because she forced my bespectacled and pudding-bowl-haircutted self to stand quivering in front of a roomful of teenage girls. No one could ever understand a word I said because I spoke so quickly and quietly. I had a panic attack at the end of every session. And yet she made me do it every week. I am grateful, really, because it did make public speaking and sharing my work much easier (gradually), but it still makes me cringe when I remember it.

Still. She won't be at my readings. But if I see a diminutive woman with a beehive hairdo and cats-eye glasses at the back of the room, I'm running.

Wool-gathering

Also puttering,
pottering
meandering
lollygagging
dilly-dallying
shilly-shallying
day-dreaming
dawdling
hemming and hawing
to-ing and fro-ing
moseying
musing
mooning
noodling
brooding
puzzling
mulling
ruminating
dabbling
tinkering
idling
trifling
see-sawing
pipe-dreaming
stargazing

That is what I am doing this week.

It is an essential part of the writing process, but it must look pretty strange from outside. The tangible evidence of wool-gathering is buying and reading books on unusual subjects; collecting odds and ends that hold no meaning to anyone but yourself; napping; staring into space; having bizarre and vivid dreams; letting sentences trail off into vague nothings; forgetting some things and being unusually awake to others; wandering (mentally and physically).

I have learned that this mood, while sometimes frustrating, is necessary. It is a sign that one of the many seeds that gleefully burrow their way into your brain on a daily basis has started to sprout and turn into something altogether more interesting. It is an incubation process. I'm interested to see what exactly is going to emerge.

Field trip!

Today was another rainy day - well, not quite rain exactly, but weather of that type that we called guti in Zimbabwe, a fine lacing of rain suspended in the air and ingratiating itself down the back of your neck, making you damp rather than wet. To assuage the cabin fever I felt after a week in bed with the 'flu, I made a thrifting trip downtown.

I so wanted to buy this vintage dress, just for the label, but unfortunately Andrea's Choice isn't polyester. I mean, this one is, but mine isn't. I've got a bit lost in my own sentence there.


Vintage! But I was very restrained. I came away with only one '50s dress.

Austin folks have been recommending Kerbey Lane to me ever since we moved here, and I went there today for lunch. It was great, predictably.




I love all the murals and wall art scattered throughout Austin ... they really sum up the spirit of the city.

This is a resolution I can wholeheartedly support.

P.S. My agent sent this through to me today - exciting!

Board games

We spent this rainy afternoon sitting in a cafe with friends playing Trivial Pursuit and drinking coffee, which is the best way to spend a rainy afternoon that I can think of. Bouldin Creek Cafe, an Austin fixture, has moved down the road to a new and spacious location - I must admit, I miss the shabby old one a bit, but it's nice to have the extra space! And they don't mind you ordering two drinks and sitting there over a game for three hours, which is downright wonderful of them.

Anyway, it made me think of all the hours I've spent over the years playing various board games. I think they bring out a person's true character - or, at least, certain sides of a person's true character. Some people practice quiet brilliance, where they lie low for the majority of the game and then surge up from behind to win; some people sulk and are sore losers; some people are surprisingly magnanimous; some people dance around singing "Nyah nyah nyah," songs when they win (I'm looking at you, Ally). I am not competitive. At all. In fact, I am anti-competitive. I like to beat my own goals and personal records, not compete against anyone else - I fall apart when placed in head-to-head competition against another individual. If I win, I feel horribly guilty and unworthy, and if I lose I feel horribly miserable and unworthy. I can't win. Or lose. (Har har). My favourite games are those that you can play collaboratively or in teams - or those where all the other players are light-hearted and not taking the game too seriously, which doesn't often happen. Usually I seem to be playing with a bunch of whooping, shrieking savages, who see me, inexplicably, as an oversensitive, over-apologising board-game-wimp. For some unknown reason. Yes, all right.

Monopoly is the ultimate test of character, I think. Everyone has his own version of the rules and defends them to the death. (One of my house rules states that all tax money goes in the centre and you get it when you land on Free Parking - does anyone else do this?). The mildest people become frighteningly cutthroat. The most unlikely people show a flair for subterfuge and money-laundering worthy of the Godfather. Understandably, you have to be in the right frame of mind to play Monopoly. LOML and I don't play often, as he is a ruthless Donald-Trump-type player and makes me cry. And when I'm winning I keep apologising for it and it drives him nuts. We weren't much good at chess together, either, partly because he's really good at it and partly because I become way too emotionally invested in the pieces and give them names and get sad when they are taken. I was on the chess team at school, but not for long - I tended to protect my knights more than my queens because I liked the little horse figurines. I don't think I have the right brain for chess.

There are some games that we enjoy equally, however - among them, Carcassonne and Settlers, the best board games on the planet (we also play Warhammer, which is a little more embarrassing. And yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school). whole weekends get swallowed up by these two. Do you play board games? Which ones? (And did you ever name your chess pieces?)

Goodbye, 2010!

I am feeling so much better today - such a relief! I've even managed to get dressed, which is a victory at the moment, believe me. And have moved from a horizontal position to a semi-vertical one. All good advances.

I have a bloggy tradition of posting a round-up of the year's major events at the end of the year. This one is a little late and perhaps a little cold-medication-y, but here it is ... 2010 as was. Thank you so much for your comments, support and friendship over the past year. Here goes!

1) I edited The Cry of the Go-Away Bird ready for publication - and took my first official author photos!

Crick in the neck after this one.

2) A momentous occasion in a vintage-lover's life - my sister-in-law's mother kindly gave me her entire wardrobe from the '60s onwards, as she was cleaning out all her closets. I can't tell you how exciting this was.
3) I went back to a publishing company at which I used to work (as assistant editor) and did some freelance work for them. I really, really enjoyed it. It was great to see everyone again, and it was fun to be back in an office-commuting-buying-lots-of-takeaway-coffee environment after a couple of years of working from home.
4) I had my remaining wisdom teeth removed and experienced the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. But now I have no wisdom teeth, which is a definite bonus (hate those evil little buggers).
5) I walked (in an ungainly manner) in a vintage fashion show to raise money for Endometriosis New Zealand.

Awkward smirk.

6) I turned 25.
7) I got my full New Zealand driver's licence! Hooray, hurrah. Although now I need to get my Texan licence.
8) I revised my second book three times. Yep. But I'm relatively happy with where it is now.
9) I visited Austin, Texas for the first time, on a reconnaissance trip to get to know the city and to find an apartment. I loved it.
10) I also visited San Francisco for the first time - and I loved it too!
11) One of my very best friends, Hannah, got married, and I was lucky enough to be a bridesmaid.


12) I saw my book's cover for the very first time!


13) I had my first breakfast tacos. Seriously, this deserves a mention.
14) I visited Auckland for the first time which, after eight years in New Zealand, seems a little odd.
15) This is a fairly obvious one, but - LOML and I moved from New Zealand to Texas! Originally we thought it was to be for just a year or two, but now it looks like a semi-permanent move. Yay!
16) As a side-effect of this, we packed up all our belongings (including the famed Mink) and shipped them to the other side of the world, where we unpacked them again in our new apartment.
17) My mum visited us in Texas and helped hugely with unpacking and the settling-in process.
18) I received the first Advance Reading Copies of my book - and then the book itself!


19) I made some wonderful new Austin friends.
20) Publicity for the book began, and I got my very first review.
21) We had our first Christmas in Texas!
22) And we visited New York for New Year's.

We made some new friends.

Happy New Year, everyone!

New York: Day Four

We didn't have much time to wander around on our last day, because we had to catch our flight (and also, erm, because I over-indulged a bit the night before and slept in till almost noon. Oops). We hadn't had a chance to see much of Times Square on New Year's Eve, so we walked back there to have a look. We spent most of our time in the huge Toys 'R' Us, because we are both big kids and love toys and games, and had a burger in Planet Hollywood because, well, it's Times Square.




Barbie! Barbie, Barbie, Barbie. I was so excited.

New York: Day Three

Still sick. Still in pyjamas.

*

On New Year's Day, LOML and I went back to Central Park to see the zoo and go ice-skating. The zoo was just fantastic, particularly the amazing Tropic Zone (which was nice and warm, too), but the rink was far too crowded with far too long a queue for us to go skating. Oh well! It started raining shortly after that, anyway, so we consoled ourselves with hot dogs from a street vendor, which has always seemed like an essential New York experience to me. We finished the day with a visit to FAO Schwarz and a walk down 5th Avenue, followed by a few slices of pizza.


Birds in the Tropic Zone at Central Park Zoo.

Look at the wee mongooses! They were so cute. A mongoose lived at the bottom of our garden in Zimbabwe, by the compost heap, and helped to keep the snakes away from our chicken coop. I love them. Can you see the little one poking its head out from under the biggest one's tail?

Sea lions! We watched one of them climb down from the rock for about twenty minutes. He was not really designed for climbing.

A crane in the snow.

LOML relaxing with a hot chocolate in the snowy zoo cafe.


Skating in Central Park.



NOM NOM.