Graham Clements

Writer

My Writing Week: Issue 19, Year 5

Posted May 11, 2012

Ten Aussie Books You Must Read Before You Die.

First Tuesday Bookclub is trying to find Australia’s ten favourite books by Aussie authors. They have created a list of 50 booksand you can vote for three of them. I was surprised to find I had read nine of them. The list is well and truly dominated by historical novels.

I voted for The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, Capricornia by Xavier Herbert, and The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes.

I wasn’t surprised at the lack of science fiction novels on the list, but it did get me looking for a list of the best Australian Science Fiction books. I could not find one. If you know of one, please let me know.

Australian Science Fiction I Have Read.

As far as I can remember, I have only read 39 books written by Australian science fiction authors. In the list below, I attempt to place the books from best to not so good. This is an update of a list I first posted in May 2008. Most of the books I have read since then have been recently published and appear near the top of the list, which means either Australian science fiction is much better now or my reading selections have improved.  

1) The Sea and Summer, George Turner, Grafton Books, 1989. Probably the best science-fiction novel I have read. It takes place in a Melbourne ravaged by global warming.
2) Genetic Soldier, George Turner, Avon Books, 1994. Aborigines fight off a second invasion – nearly as good as The Sea and Summer.
3) The Dark Between the Stars, Damien Broderick, Mandarin Australia, 1991. The best one author speculative fiction anthology I have read. Most of the stories are memorable.
4) Quarantine, Greg Egan, Legend Books, 1992. Once I got into the jargon it was a great read.
5) Red Queen, H.M. Brown, Penguin, 2009. Won that years Aurealis for best horror, but could easily be called science fiction.
6) Things we Didn’t See Coming, Steve Amsterdam, Sleepers Publishing, 2009. It is a series of excellent stories with the same character, set over 40 years. Won the Age Book of the year in 2009.
7) Machine Man, Max Barry, Scribe 2011. A funny and thought provoking satire.
8) Time Machines Repaired While U Wait, K. A Bedford, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2008. A complex and amusing story, where time machines are the new car, it is set in Perth.
9) Hydrogen Steel, K.A. Bedford, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2006. Hard science fiction at its best. An AI tries to stop humanity finding out what happened to Earth.
10) The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood, Harper Collins, 2011. A transgender drug courier attempts to save her bosses business.
11) Souls in the Great Machine, Sean McMullen, Tor, 1999. Fantasy/science-fiction. Set around the area I live. Why can't he get published in Australia? It's the first book in a series which I hope to eventually finish reading.
12) The Sea's Furtherest End, Damien Broderick, Aphelion Publications 1993. My favourite Broderick novel as God plays games with humanity.
13) Turing Evolved, David Kitson. A self-published ebook with a few typos, but a wonderful story about what it means to be human.
14) Timesplash, Graham Storrs, Lyric Press. Time-travelling thrill seekers attempt to cause massive destruction.
15) Echoes of Earth, Sean Williams and Shane Dix, Ace, 2002. I loved the technology involved in this story.
16) The Destiny Makers, George Turner, Avon Books, 1993. I know I enjoyed reading it but it's not the most memorable of Turner's books.
17) Incandescence, Greg Egan, Gollancz, 2008. A very difficult book to read. Great ideas though.
18) The Year of the Angry Rabbit, Russell Braddon, Wm Hienman, 1964. A very funny satire.
19) I have forgotten the author and title of this collection of four novellas. One was a chilling story about people with disabilities being forced into machines to fight wars.
20) Blue Silence, Michelle Marquardt, Bantam, 2002. A bit Babylon-fiveish.
21) Teranesia, Greg Egan, Eos, 2000. Not as grand in ideas as the other two books of Egan I have read.
22) The Zeitgeist Machine, Ed by Damien Broderick, Angus and Robertson, 1977. Peter Carey's story Conversations with Unicorns was a standout.
23) Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 1, Ed Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt, Mirror Dance Books, 2005, an especially memorable opening story Singing my Sister Down by Margo Lanagan.
24) Worlds Apart, Chuck McKenzie, Hybrid Publishers, 1999. I tend to avoid reading science fiction humour, but this was amusing.
25) Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4, Ed Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt, Mirror Dance Books, 2008. Includes a great story by Greg Egan.
26) The Deep Field, James Bradley, Hodder Headline Australia, 1999. It is set in the near future. I liked his speculations on the near future, not so much the story.
27) Parkland, Victor Kelleher,Viking,1994. Why were all the bad guys male?
28) Sapphire Road, Wynne Whiteford, Ace, 1986. Australia and India involved in a space race? I think that this was the first Science Fiction book by an Australian writer that I read.
29) The Judas Mandala, Damien Broderick, Mandarin Australia, 1990. I can remember being disappointed with this novel.
30) Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 3, Ed Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt, Mirror Dance Books, 2007. Too much fantasy.
31) And Disregards the Rest, Paul Voermans,Victor Gallancz, 1993. A nothing climax let the story down.
32) The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume 2, Ed by Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G Byrne, Voyager, 1998. I remember enjoying it, but none of the stories rushed out at me when I read the table of contents.
33) Matilda at the Speed of Light, Ed by Damien Broderick, Angus and Robertson, 1988. A disappointing collection of stories.
34) Zones, Damien Broderick and Rory Barnes, HarperCollins, 1997. Too preachy.
35) The Last Albatross, Ian Irvine, Simon and Shuster, 2000.I found the characters way too materialistic and a bit stupid. I did not care that much if they lived or died.
36) Pacific Book of Australian SF, Ed John Baxter, Angus and Roberston Ltd, 1968. Most of the stories were fantasy, saved by the multiple character and idea novella, There was a Crooked Man, by Jack Wodhams.
37) The Dreaming Dragons, Damien Broderick, Norstrilla Press, 1980. The last quarter of the book was one long info dump.
38) Time Future, Maxine McArthur, Bantam Books, 1999. I had worked out what was going on halfway through this novel. I found the main character too much of a martyr.
39) Salt, Gabrielle Lord, McPhee Gribble, 1990. All the male characters were morons.

Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 18, week 5.

Posted May 4, 2012
Hi all,

I have a cold which is trying to sap any remaining energy I have. My colds tend to hang around no matter what I do or how many antibiotics I take.  But I have continued to struggle along with my writing.

Divine Articles.

Today, Divine magazine finally posted my article on the health effects of global warming. They have had the article for a while and unfortunately the editor has been sick, so the site had not been putting up a new article every day, leading to a backlog. My article is not opinion, it is all taken straight from IPCC and Australian Climate Commission reports. It is written from the Australian viewpoint. The worst effected state would seem to be Queensland – heat, dengue fever, cyclones, viruses, floods etc.  

Yesterday I submitted a new article to Divine about the difficulties, and how some of them are overcome, people with disabilities have donating blood. I interviewed the Red Cross Blood Service’s media person and also went to the Bourke Street blood donor centre and talked to its manager. I am hoping this article does not take as long to get up on Divine.

Creating a New Website.

I created a website, basically an interactive story, for my Master of Creative Writing about seven years ago, and thought it was about time I updated it. Fortunately Bravenet which hosts my site has new website building software that creates a more professional looking site. I cut, pasted and then edited biographical information into it, and I have linked my Divine articles and interactive story to it. I now have to figure out how to get the newly created homepage under the old url.  Then I will unveil the website to the world.

I have been thinking about doing a website design course and becoming a website designer, but it would seem that the tools already available are so easy to use, and so cheap, that the demand for website designers is probably very low. At least that is the impression I get from my limited research.  Having said that, the other day I was looking at a business website in Wangaratta which had tiny white writing on a yellow background, it was impossible to read.  That business definitely needs a web designer.

Books.

I have been doing a pretty good job of keeping the book industry afloat in the past month. I bought two novels and an audio CD for a birthday present from the Book Depository, and then used up all but $2 of a $50 book voucher at a Collins Bookstore. I have made a few trips to Melbourne lately and I visited the speculative fiction bookshop Minotaur in Elizabeth Street and searched through its shelves for Australian authors. I could not find that many and ended up with two novels. 

And now Mother’s Day is just about upon us and I have bought my mother two books. One of them is The Sundowersby Jon Cleary, an Australian author, which I could not find in Australia or the Book Depository. I eventually found it on Amazon, who charged be about $16 postage to get it here by Mother’s Day. The Book Depository had sent me a 10% discount voucher so I was able to get her a Lee Child novel for $7.50 (including postage) also. So all up I’ve spent $130 and also used a $50 voucher. And four of the nine novels I bought were written by Aussies.

Things We Didn’t See Coming.

One of the novels I purchased was the excellent Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam.  It is a series of eight long stories, all in chronological order, and all about the same character. The stories start when he is a young child on New Year’s Eve 2000. The stories then extend into the future until he is fifty. Each story has an ending that I didn’t see coming, some were twists, but others were finally finding out what was going on in the story. It’s a short book, which I class it as literary science fiction. It won The Age book of the year award in 2009. I will eventually post a proper review of it.

Jack Logan, Astronaut.

I actually wrote a whole 800 words of my novel one day last week, instead of the scraps and bits I do on most days just to give me the feeling that I am a fiction writer.  I have now written 85,400 words and I am probably a little over halfway through its second section. I anticipate the third section will be about half the size of the first two sections so I still have about 40,000 words to go. That is unless some of the characters try to rip the story away from the main storyline. I must quickly kill most of them to ensure that doesn’t happen.

  

0 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 18, week 5.

Posted May 4, 2012
Hi all,

I have a cold which is trying to sap any remaining energy I have. My colds tend to hang around no matter what I do or how many antibiotics I take.  But I have continued to struggle along with my writing.

Divine Articles.

Today, Divine magazine finally posted my article on the health effects of global warming. They have had the article for a while and unfortunately the editor has been sick, so the site had not been putting up a new article every day, leading to a backlog. My article is not opinion, it is all taken straight from IPCC and Australian Climate Commission reports. It is written from the Australian viewpoint. The worst effected state would seem to be Queensland – heat, dengue fever, cyclones, viruses, floods etc.  

Yesterday I submitted a new article to Divine about the difficulties, and how some of them are overcome, people with disabilities have donating blood. I interviewed the Red Cross Blood Service’s media person and also went to the Bourke Street blood donor centre and talked to its manager. I am hoping this article does not take as long to get up on Divine.

Creating a New Website.

I created a website, basically an interactive story, for my Master of Creative Writing about seven years ago, and thought it was about time I updated it. Fortunately Bravenet which hosts my site has new website building software that creates a more professional looking site. I cut, pasted and then edited biographical information into it, and I have linked my Divine articles and interactive story to it. I now have to figure out how to get the newly created homepage under the old url.  Then I will unveil the website to the world.

I have been thinking about doing a website design course and becoming a website designer, but it would seem that the tools already available are so easy to use, and so cheap, that the demand for website designers is probably very low. At least that is the impression I get from my limited research.  Having said that, the other day I was looking at a business website in Wangaratta which had tiny white writing on a yellow background, it was impossible to read.  That business definitely needs a web designer.

Books.

I have been doing a pretty good job of keeping the book industry afloat in the past month. I bought two novels and an audio CD for a birthday present from the Book Depository, and then used up all but $2 of a $50 book voucher at a Collins Bookstore. I have made a few trips to Melbourne lately and I visited the speculative fiction bookshop Minotaur in Elizabeth Street and searched through its shelves for Australian authors. I could not find that many and ended up with two novels. 

And now Mother’s Day is just about upon us and I have bought my mother two books. One of them is The Sundowersby Jon Cleary, an Australian author, which I could not find in Australia or the Book Depository. I eventually found it on Amazon, who charged be about $16 postage to get it here by Mother’s Day. The Book Depository had sent me a 10% discount voucher so I was able to get her a Lee Child novel for $7.50 (including postage) also. So all up I’ve spent $130 and also used a $50 voucher. And four of the nine novels I bought were written by Aussies.

Things We Didn’t See Coming.

One of the novels I purchased was the excellent Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam.  It is a series of eight long stories, all in chronological order, and all about the same character. The stories start when he is a young child on New Year’s Eve 2000. The stories then extend into the future until he is fifty. Each story has an ending that I didn’t see coming, some were twists, but others were finally finding out what was going on in the story. It’s a short book, which I class it as literary science fiction. It won The Age book of the year award in 2009. I will eventually post a proper review of it.

Jack Logan, Astronaut.

I actually wrote a whole 800 words of my novel one day last week, instead of the scraps and bits I do on most days just to give me the feeling that I am a fiction writer.  I have now written 85,400 words and I am probably a little over halfway through its second section. I anticipate the third section will be about half the size of the first two sections so I still have about 40,000 words to go. That is unless some of the characters try to rip the story away from the main storyline. I must quickly kill most of them to ensure that doesn’t happen.
0 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 17, Year 5.

Posted April 29, 2012

Bryce Courtenay's Embellished Life.

Yesterday I read a large article in the Age Good Weekend magazine from March 17 titled The World According to Bryce Courtenay.  It details many questionable claims Bryce has made about his life. For example, recently I heard that Courtenay invented the mascot Louie the Fly for Morten, not so according to the article, Louie the Fly was around in 1957before Courtenay started in the advertising industry. 

Courtenay, according to the article, claims to have taught English to black South Africans servants in a hall that was burnt down by police. But according to the church that owned the hall it was never burnt down.  Probably Courtenay’s most amazing claim is that while he was running the Boston Marathon he struck up a conversation with another runner who said he too was a writer. When Courtenay asked the writer his name, he told him it was Stephen King.  Stephen King’s executive assistant says King has never run the Boston marathon. 

Bryce Courtenay’s sister says that The Power of One, “wasn’t at all what our childhood had been”.  I read The Power of One years ago, and I thought it was based on fact.  The article also details many more instances where Courtenay seems to have fudged or embellished the truth about his life.

Which brings me to the question:  does it matter if Bryce Courtenay’s seems to have invented a more interesting background for himself? After all most of his novels are fiction. It shouldn’t matter, but it does to me, especially if I am reading a novel, such as The Power of One, and believe the writer is writing from experience and has based the world they have created on fact.

My Embellished Life.

Reading about Courtenay’s embellishments had me thinking how I could embellish my life to make it more marketable to publishers and readers.  I write science fiction, so the first thing I should do is award myself a science degree, but not just any science degree, let’s make it a multi-disciplinary PHD in cutting edge science like nanotechnology or genetics.

Readers seem to enjoy reading writers who have really struggled to make it. So I will tell the world my mother died in childbirth, which my father always blamed on me. He became a drunk after her death and I was left to pretty much raise myself. My drunken father drifted from one job to another, reluctantly dragging me along.  At one stage working as a cleaner at the Parkes’ radio telescope.  

I will always remember him coming home really late one night. I expected he had been drinking, as usual, so when he opened my bedroom door  I pretended to be asleep. He came over to the bed, and muttered something about “they’re  coming,” and then kissed me on the forehead. He had never done that before and it freaked me out.  For a moment I thought I was going to be part of a murder suicide.  But he then went back out of the room and closed the door.

I went to the door to listen for the rattle of the cutlery drawer as he searched for a butcher’s knife.  But then the phone rang, and he rushed outside. I heard the car start up and the tyres screech as he sped off.  I thought he might have forgotten to turn off the security alarm at the radio telescope again. But when his bed was unslept in the next morning, and he wasn’t crashed out of the couch, I thought he might have had an accident. He had. The police said he was drunk, but when I thought about it later, his breath had not smelt of beer or mints.

I was then raised by an Aunty, a catholic missionary, who lived in the jungles in New Guinea. I filled my days exploring and hunting with the local tribe and my nights reading and writing by candlelight. I wrote my first novel when I was ten, it was a three-hundred-thousand word epic about the destruction of an alien homeland by mining companies in search of obtainium.  I sent it off to publishers, including one in the US, but never heard back from them.  Years later the movie Avatar seemed really similar.

On my sixteenth birthday, Indonesian troops came into our village. They accused the tribe of hiding rebels.  At the time I was out in the jungle taking part in an initiation ceremony.  When I returned the soldiers had burnt the village to the ground. There were bodies everywhere. My Aunty’s body was eventually found in the burnt out church. The police came and were suspicious of my white skin. I told them I was  Australian and they put me back on a boat to Australia. Upon arrival, the government authorities didn’t believe I was Australian, so they kept in a detention centre at Villawood until I turned eighteen, when they threw me out onto the streets.

With nowhere to go, and no money, I had little choice but to turn to crime. I lived on the streets, shoplifting, stealing from cars, picking people’s pockets, breaking and entering.  One night I was picked up by this blond haired guy who said he was a social worker. He took me back to this rundown looking terrace house, but inside it was full of all this technical equipment, including a computer, one of the first in Australia. He tried to come on to me, and I ran. The next night I came back with a mate and we ransacked his house.  We took everything we could carry, including the computer.

I taught myself to use the computer, and became a computer whiz. I got into hacking into police databases and intelligence agencies, like ASIO, to see if I could find any information about what really happened to my father and who he thought was coming. My work was noticed by other hackers and a few of us got together and co-founded  Annoymous, which I recently quit after  my girlfriend Caitlin became pregnant. I then used my computer skills to create apps like Doggie Alert. It causes your mobile to bark and remind you to take your dog for a walk. I donate half the proceeds from the app to the RSPCA.

Caitlin literally fell into my arms. I was at a Jimmy Barnes concert, up front near the stage. At the end of the concert one of his back-up singers got her stilettos caught up in a microphone cable and fell off stage. I caught her. She thought I was cute. I thought she was too. So we went out. Had a few drinks, found out we were both into base jumping and we have been together ever since.  

A lot of my ideas for writing come from when I am walking our two golden retrievers, Barnsey and Mossey, in the local forest near Byron Bay.  I have no doubt that I will become a mega selling author whose books change the world for the better. That may sound arrogant, but it is not, I have proof. Recently I converted a police box into a time machine, I call it a Tardis, and it took me into the future.  I discovered that I had written a 666 volume novel called “One Second in the Life of a Single Celled Organism”. The volumes had sold billions of copies and won numerous Booker prizes and even the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The philosophy of the books which included things like eating baked beans and inhaling with only the mouth was followed with religious fever by many.  Singleism, as it became known, eventually supplanted Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Zuckerbergism and Hinduism, even Scientology.  I am eventually elected unanimously the leader of the Earth and the Universe. And yes, aliens did eventually arrive and were repelled by me in…

3 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 17, Year 5.

Posted April 29, 2012

Bryce Courtenay's Embellished Life.

Yesterday I read a large article in the Age Good Weekend magazine from March 17 titled The World According to Bryce Courtenay.  It details many questionable claims Bryce has made about his life. For example, recently I heard that Courtenay invented the mascot Louie the Fly for Morten, not so according to the article, Louie the Fly was around in 1957before Courtenay started in the advertising industry. 

Courtenay, according to the article, claims to have taught English to black South Africans servants in a hall that was burnt down by police. But according to the church that owned the hall it was never burnt down.  Probably Courtenay’s most amazing claim is that while he was running the Boston Marathon he struck up a conversation with another runner who said he too was a writer. When Courtenay asked the writer his name, he told him it was Stephen King.  Stephen King’s executive assistant says King has never run the Boston marathon. 

Bryce Courtenay’s sister says that The Power of One, “wasn’t at all what our childhood had been”.  I read The Power of One years ago, and I thought it was based on fact.  The article also details many more instances where Courtenay seems to have fudged or embellished the truth about his life.

Which brings me to the question:  does it matter if Bryce Courtenay’s seems to have invented a more interesting background for himself? After all most of his novels are fiction. It shouldn’t matter, but it does to me, especially if I am reading a novel, such as The Power of One, and believe the writer is writing from experience and has based the world they have created on fact.

My Embellished Life.

Reading about Courtenay’s embellishments had me thinking how I could embellish my life to make it more marketable to publishers and readers.  I write science fiction, so the first thing I should do is award myself a science degree, but not just any science degree, let’s make it a multi-disciplinary PHD in cutting edge science like nanotechnology or genetics.

Readers seem to enjoy reading writers who have really struggled to make it. So I will tell the world my mother died in childbirth, which my father always blamed on me. He became a drunk after her death and I was left to pretty much raise myself. My drunken father drifted from one job to another, reluctantly dragging me along.  At one stage working as a cleaner at the Parkes’ radio telescope.  

I will always remember him coming home really late one night. I expected he had been drinking, as usual, so when he opened my bedroom door  I pretended to be asleep. He came over to the bed, and muttered something about “they’re  coming,” and then kissed me on the forehead. He had never done that before and it freaked me out.  For a moment I thought I was going to be part of a murder suicide.  But he then went back out of the room and closed the door.

I went to the door to listen for the rattle of the cutlery drawer as he searched for a butcher’s knife.  But then the phone rang, and he rushed outside. I heard the car start up and the tyres screech as he sped off.  I thought he might have forgotten to turn off the security alarm at the radio telescope again. But when his bed was unslept in the next morning, and he wasn’t crashed out of the couch, I thought he might have had an accident. He had. The police said he was drunk, but when I thought about it later, his breath had not smelt of beer or mints.

I was then raised by an Aunty, a catholic missionary, who lived in the jungles in New Guinea. I filled my days exploring and hunting with the local tribe and my nights reading and writing by candlelight. I wrote my first novel when I was ten, it was a three-hundred-thousand word epic about the destruction of an alien homeland by mining companies in search of obtainium.  I sent it off to publishers, including one in the US, but never heard back from them.  Years later the movie Avatar seemed really similar.

On my sixteenth birthday, Indonesian troops came into our village. They accused the tribe of hiding rebels.  At the time I was out in the jungle taking part in an initiation ceremony.  When I returned the soldiers had burnt the village to the ground. There were bodies everywhere. My Aunty’s body was eventually found in the burnt out church. The police came and were suspicious of my white skin. I told them I was  Australian and they put me back on a boat to Australia. Upon arrival, the government authorities didn’t believe I was Australian, so they kept in a detention centre at Villawood until I turned eighteen, when they threw me out onto the streets.

With nowhere to go, and no money, I had little choice but to turn to crime. I lived on the streets, shoplifting, stealing from cars, picking people’s pockets, breaking and entering.  One night I was picked up by this blond haired guy who said he was a social worker. He took me back to this rundown looking terrace house, but inside it was full of all this technical equipment, including a computer, one of the first in Australia. He tried to come on to me, and I ran. The next night I came back with a mate and we ransacked his house.  We took everything we could carry, including the computer.

I taught myself to use the computer, and became a computer whiz. I got into hacking into police databases and intelligence agencies, like ASIO, to see if I could find any information about what really happened to my father and who he thought was coming. My work was noticed by other hackers and a few of us got together and co-founded  Annoymous, which I recently quit after  my girlfriend Caitlin became pregnant. I then used my computer skills to create apps like Doggie Alert. It causes your mobile to bark and remind you to take your dog for a walk. I donate half the proceeds from the app to the RSPCA.

Caitlin literally fell into my arms. I was at a Jimmy Barnes concert, up front near the stage. At the end of the concert one of his back-up singers got her stilettos caught up in a microphone cable and fell off stage. I caught her. She thought I was cute. I thought she was too. So we went out. Had a few drinks, found out we were both into base jumping and we have been together ever since.  

A lot of my ideas for writing come from when I am walking our two golden retrievers, Barnsey and Mossey, in the local forest near Byron Bay.  I have no doubt that I will become a mega selling author whose books change the world for the better. That may sound arrogant, but it is not, I have proof. Recently I converted a police box into a time machine, I call it a Tardis, and it took me into the future.  I discovered that I had written a 666 volume novel called “One Second in the Life of a Single Celled Organism”. The volumes had sold billions of copies and won numerous Booker prizes and even the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The philosophy of the books which included things like eating baked beans and inhaling with only the mouth was followed with religious fever by many.  Singleism, as it became known, eventually supplanted Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Zuckerbergism and Hinduism, even Scientology.  I am eventually elected unanimously the leader of the Earth and the Universe. And yes, aliens did eventually arrive and were repelled by me in…

3 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 17, Year 5.

Posted April 29, 2012

Bryce Courtenay's Embellished Life.

Yesterday I read a large article in the Age Good Weekend magazine from March 17 titled The World According to Bryce Courtenay.  It details many questionable claims Bryce has made about his life. For example, recently I heard that Courtenay invented the mascot Louie the Fly for Morten, not so according to the article, Louie the Fly was around in 1957before Courtenay started in the advertising industry. 

Courtenay, according to the article, claims to have taught English to black South Africans servants in a hall that was burnt down by police. But according to the church that owned the hall it was never burnt down.  Probably Courtenay’s most amazing claim is that while he was running the Boston Marathon he struck up a conversation with another runner who said he too was a writer. When Courtenay asked the writer his name, he told him it was Stephen King.  Stephen King’s executive assistant says King has never run the Boston marathon. 

Bryce Courtenay’s sister says that The Power of One, “wasn’t at all what our childhood had been”.  I read The Power of One years ago, and I thought it was based on fact.  The article also details many more instances where Courtenay seems to have fudged or embellished the truth about his life.

Which brings me to the question:  does it matter if Bryce Courtenay’s seems to have invented a more interesting background for himself? After all most of his novels are fiction. It shouldn’t matter, but it does to me, especially if I am reading a novel, such as The Power of One, and believe the writer is writing from experience and has based the world they have created on fact.

My Embellished Life.

Reading about Courtenay’s embellishments had me thinking how I could embellish my life to make it more marketable to publishers and readers.  I write science fiction, so the first thing I should do is award myself a science degree, but not just any science degree, let’s make it a multi-disciplinary PHD in cutting edge science like nanotechnology or genetics.

Readers seem to enjoy reading writers who have really struggled to make it. So I will tell the world my mother died in childbirth, which my father always blamed on me. He became a drunk after her death and I was left to pretty much raise myself. My drunken father drifted from one job to another, reluctantly dragging me along.  At one stage working as a cleaner at the Parkes’ radio telescope.  

I will always remember him coming home really late one night. I expected he had been drinking, as usual, so when he opened my bedroom door  I pretended to be asleep. He came over to the bed, and muttered something about “they’re  coming,” and then kissed me on the forehead. He had never done that before and it freaked me out.  For a moment I thought I was going to be part of a murder suicide.  But he then went back out of the room and closed the door.

I went to the door to listen for the rattle of the cutlery drawer as he searched for a butcher’s knife.  But then the phone rang, and he rushed outside. I heard the car start up and the tyres screech as he sped off.  I thought he might have forgotten to turn off the security alarm at the radio telescope again. But when his bed was unslept in the next morning, and he wasn’t crashed out of the couch, I thought he might have had an accident. He had. The police said he was drunk, but when I thought about it later, his breath had not smelt of beer or mints.

I was then raised by an Aunty, a catholic missionary, who lived in the jungles in New Guinea. I filled my days exploring and hunting with the local tribe and my nights reading and writing by candlelight. I wrote my first novel when I was ten, it was a three-hundred-thousand word epic about the destruction of an alien homeland by mining companies in search of obtainium.  I sent it off to publishers, including one in the US, but never heard back from them.  Years later the movie Avatar seemed really similar.

On my sixteenth birthday, Indonesian troops came into our village. They accused the tribe of hiding rebels.  At the time I was out in the jungle taking part in an initiation ceremony.  When I returned the soldiers had burnt the village to the ground. There were bodies everywhere. My Aunty’s body was eventually found in the burnt out church. The police came and were suspicious of my white skin. I told them I was  Australian and they put me back on a boat to Australia. Upon arrival, the government authorities didn’t believe I was Australian, so they kept in a detention centre at Villawood until I turned eighteen, when they threw me out onto the streets.

With nowhere to go, and no money, I had little choice but to turn to crime. I lived on the streets, shoplifting, stealing from cars, picking people’s pockets, breaking and entering.  One night I was picked up by this blond haired guy who said he was a social worker. He took me back to this rundown looking terrace house, but inside it was full of all this technical equipment, including a computer, one of the first in Australia. He tried to come on to me, and I ran. The next night I came back with a mate and we ransacked his house.  We took everything we could carry, including the computer.

I taught myself to use the computer, and became a computer whiz. I got into hacking into police databases and intelligence agencies, like ASIO, to see if I could find any information about what really happened to my father and who he thought was coming. My work was noticed by other hackers and a few of us got together and co-founded  Annoymous, which I recently quit after  my girlfriend Caitlin became pregnant. I then used my computer skills to create apps like Doggie Alert. It causes your mobile to bark and remind you to take your dog for a walk. I donate half the proceeds from the app to the RSPCA.

Caitlin literally fell into my arms. I was at a Jimmy Barnes concert, up front near the stage. At the end of the concert one of his back-up singers got her stilettos caught up in a microphone cable and fell off stage. I caught her. She thought I was cute. I thought she was too. So we went out. Had a few drinks, found out we were both into base jumping and we have been together ever since.  

A lot of my ideas for writing come from when I am walking our two golden retrievers, Barnsey and Mossey, in the local forest near Byron Bay.  I have no doubt that I will become a mega selling author whose books change the world for the better. That may sound arrogant, but it is not, I have proof. Recently I converted a police box into a time machine, I call it a Tardis, and it took me into the future.  I discovered that I had written a 666 volume novel called “One Second in the Life of a Single Celled Organism”. The volumes had sold billions of copies and won numerous Booker prizes and even the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The philosophy of the books which included things like eating baked beans and inhaling with only the mouth was followed with religious fever by many.  Singleism, as it became known, eventually supplanted Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Zuckerbergism and Hinduism, even Scientology.  I am eventually elected unanimously the leader of the Earth and the Universe. And yes, aliens did eventually arrive and were repelled by me in…

3 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 16, Year 5.

Posted April 18, 2012

Hi all,

I watch the American quiz show Jeopardy on cable and currently they have a Teen Tournament. I am always amazed at the teenagers’ knowledge of literature in these tournaments, and wonder if  they read a lot of the books that appear in the questions as part of the curriculum in American high schools.

I then start thinking about the books that were part of my high school curriculum way back in the seventies. The first book I can remember having to read at high school was The Great Gatsby. If ever a book failed to resonate with a reader, this was one.  The only thing I got from it was a loathing of novels about poor little rich people.
 
I think somewhere about the same time I read Go Ask Alice, which was about a drug addict who died, I think. As I was not planning to become a drug addict, spending too much time playing golf, it said nothing to me.   

Then I read Macbeth, I remember enjoying the violence in the film they took us to watch, but the book failed to excite my imagination. 

In year ten, a couple of decent books finally turned up. First was Lord of the Flies. Its story really resonated as I was sure if my classmates and I were trapped on a desert island, we would quickly turn against each other in a similar way to what happened in the book. I was sure I would have wound up in Piggy’s group, but I was relieved that I didn’t wear glasses.

Next we read 1984.Now this was a book that changed my life. Someone else had finally noticed that people were sheep. I already knew that Big Brother, in the form of peer group pressure, had a pretty good grip on the people around me.

But then the books deteriorate badly.  I think in year 11 I had to suffer The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony. I remember being disgusted by the homosexual elements of the novel. I was still a very naïve country lad at the time, the type who went to university and saw that the cinema there had free “Gay” films on. I went expecting to see a comedy.

I had to write an essay about Watcher and I chose a topic which asked whether it was all just crude sensationalism.  I agreed it was. My teacher did not, and gave me an “F”. Thinking the rat was in the cage and I might fail English, I rewrote the essay saying what I thought Big Brother wanted to hear and received a C-, which was a pass in those days.

But then, to my absolute horror, in year 12 we wound up with two very similar novels to Watcher. One was A Difficult Young Man, another poor little rich boy story.  The other was A Kind of Loving, to which my sole response was:  why does the girl eat so many oranges?

So it would seem that most of the Victorian 1970’s English curriculum novels were wasted on me.  I often wonder if that is the case with other people.  If only I had access to information on the web back then, then I could have just co-opted Big Brother’s opinion on them.

Did you struggle to find relevance or empathise with the themes of most of the novels in in your high school curriculum? Did one novel in particular, back then, resonate with you and have you thinking, I always thought that?
10 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 16, Year 5.

Posted April 18, 2012

Hi all,

I watch the American quiz show Jeopardy on cable and currently they have a Teen Tournament. I am always amazed at the teenagers’ knowledge of literature in these tournaments, and wonder if  they read a lot of the books that appear in the questions as part of the curriculum in American high schools.

I then start thinking about the books that were part of my high school curriculum way back in the seventies. The first book I can remember having to read at high school was The Great Gatsby. If ever a book failed to resonate with a reader, this was one.  The only thing I got from it was a loathing of novels about poor little rich people.
 
I think somewhere about the same time I read Go Ask Alice, which was about a drug addict who died, I think. As I was not planning to become a drug addict, spending too much time playing golf, it said nothing to me.   

Then I read Macbeth, I remember enjoying the violence in the film they took us to watch, but the book failed to excite my imagination. 

In year ten, a couple of decent books finally turned up. First was Lord of the Flies. Its story really resonated as I was sure if my classmates and I were trapped on a desert island, we would quickly turn against each other in a similar way to what happened in the book. I was sure I would have wound up in Piggy’s group, but I was relieved that I didn’t wear glasses.

Next we read 1984.Now this was a book that changed my life. Someone else had finally noticed that people were sheep. I already knew that Big Brother, in the form of peer group pressure, had a pretty good grip on the people around me.

But then the books deteriorate badly.  I think in year 11 I had to suffer The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony. I remember being disgusted by the homosexual elements of the novel. I was still a very naïve country lad at the time, the type who went to university and saw that the cinema there had free “Gay” films on. I went expecting to see a comedy.

I had to write an essay about Watcher and I chose a topic which asked whether it was all just crude sensationalism.  I agreed it was. My teacher did not, and gave me an “F”. Thinking the rat was in the cage and I might fail English, I rewrote the essay saying what I thought Big Brother wanted to hear and received a C-, which was a pass in those days.

But then, to my absolute horror, in year 12 we wound up with two very similar novels to Watcher. One was A Difficult Young Man, another poor little rich boy story.  The other was A Kind of Loving, to which my sole response was:  why does the girl eat so many oranges?

So it would seem that most of the Victorian 1970’s English curriculum novels were wasted on me.  I often wonder if that is the case with other people.  If only I had access to information on the web back then, then I could have just co-opted Big Brother’s opinion on them.

Did you struggle to find relevance or empathise with the themes of most of the novels in in your high school curriculum? Did one novel in particular, back then, resonate with you and have you thinking, I always thought that?
9 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 16, Year 5.

Posted April 18, 2012

Hi all,

I watch the American quiz show Jeopardy on cable and currently they have a Teen Tournament. I am always amazed at the teenagers’ knowledge of literature in these tournaments, and wonder if  they read a lot of the books that appear in the questions as part of the curriculum in American high schools.

I then start thinking about the books that were part of my high school curriculum way back in the seventies. The first book I can remember having to read at high school was The Great Gatsby. If ever a book failed to resonate with a reader, this was one.  The only thing I got from it was a loathing of novels about poor little rich people.
 
I think somewhere about the same time I read Go Ask Alice, which was about a drug addict who died, I think. As I was not planning to become a drug addict, spending too much time playing golf, it said nothing to me.   

Then I read Macbeth, I remember enjoying the violence in the film they took us to watch, but the book failed to excite my imagination. 

In year ten, a couple of decent books finally turned up. First was Lord of the Flies. Its story really resonated as I was sure if my classmates and I were trapped on a desert island, we would quickly turn against each other in a similar way to what happened in the book. I was sure I would have wound up in Piggy’s group, but I was relieved that I didn’t wear glasses.

Next we read 1984.Now this was a book that changed my life. Someone else had finally noticed that people were sheep. I already knew that Big Brother, in the form of peer group pressure, had a pretty good grip on the people around me.

But then the books deteriorate badly.  I think in year 11 I had to suffer The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony. I remember being disgusted by the homosexual elements of the novel. I was still a very naïve country lad at the time, the type who went to university and saw that the cinema there had free “Gay” films on. I went expecting to see a comedy.

I had to write an essay about Watcher and I chose a topic which asked whether it was all just crude sensationalism.  I agreed it was. My teacher did not, and gave me an “F”. Thinking the rat was in the cage and I might fail English, I rewrote the essay saying what I thought Big Brother wanted to hear and received a C-, which was a pass in those days.

But then, to my absolute horror, in year 12 we wound up with two very similar novels to Watcher. One was A Difficult Young Man, another poor little rich boy story.  The other was A Kind of Loving, to which my sole response was:  why does the girl eat so many oranges?

So it would seem that most of the Victorian 1970’s English curriculum novels were wasted on me.  I often wonder if that is the case with other people.  If only I had access to information on the web back then, then I could have just co-opted Big Brother’s opinion on them.

Did you struggle to find relevance or empathise with the themes of most of the novels in in your high school curriculum? Did one novel in particular, back then, resonate with you and have you thinking, I always thought that?
10 comments
Posted in General

My Writing Week: Issue 15 Year 5

Posted April 14, 2012

Laptops and Sore Fingers.

I recently had little choice but to buy a laptop computer due to the lack of quality desktops on sale in Wangaratta. One of the reasons I have been wary of laptops is that I had heard that their users were more prone to carpal-tunnel syndrome.  For the past two weeks both my little fingers have been very sore and prone to pins and needles at night. The only thing I am doing differently in my life lately is using a laptop.  

So I have re-positioning the laptop on my desk and raised my seat height.  I hope this does the job because the right-hand pinky can become very painful. There is less pain now, but I have been using the laptop less. I may end up getting a wireless keyboard.   

It would seem that I have manifested a self-fulfilling prophecy with laptops and carpal tunnel syndrome.  Now if I could only convince myself that the world is desperate for science fiction written by me…

Ideas Walking into my Head.

I had been having trouble coming up with new ideas for articles for Divine magazine.  Although I can pretty much write on any subject, the articles have to be relevant to people with a disability. I had come up with one idea about how organisations define a disability, but was having trouble figuring the approach to take.  

Last Sunday, while going on my usual Sunday walk, the article’s angle suddenly came to me.  Just as well I always carry a notebook around with me. I then noticed that I was walking past a particular organisation and another idea sprang into mind. Yay for walks and the ideas that spring into a mind not taking in a constant stream of information.

Book Reviewing Cop-outs.

I heard an interesting debate on book reviewing the other day on ABC radio. The debaters said that the Australian literature scene was so small that reviewers were afraid to give negative reviews that might offend someone they could run into at the next writing event.

Well, the Australian science fiction community seems to be very small. George Turner, who won a Miles Franklin Award way back in the 1950’s and then went on to write award winning science fiction, thought criticism of science fiction writing in Australia was woefully inadequate. This is/was probably due to science fiction writers not wanting to offend their friends. 

Anyway, the debaters then surprised me by saying that they were not against the personal reviews of bloggers, especially because there seemed to be very little genuine criticism in newspaper and other traditional review sources. So maybe my personal type book reviews on this blog aren’t that bad. 

I have recently bought a half a dozen books as a result of good reviews in The AGE. Of those, the ones I have read have been good. I am yet to find a compelling blog reviewer with similar tastes to mine, so blog reviewers have had little effect on my book buying.
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