Celebrate the Small Things 22-8-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

Lots of things, actually.  I finished my job on Wednesday which was sad and weird.  I am so close to finishing the new book I can smell it.  Not sure the last half is any good, but it's something to work on.  And I only have one more film left to see in the film festival.  Well, two actually.  I got a ticket for an extra screening of one on Wednesday, but one left of the regular screenings.

What have I seen?

The Ballad of Wallis Island about a man who wins the lottery and pays his favorite band to come to the remote island where he lives to play a concert just for him.  This was a real feel-good film.  Funny and poignant and just a little twee, I enjoyed it very much.

One of the highlights this year for me is the film I was given a ticket to at the last minute, Peacock.  It's Austrian and quite absurd, about a man who works for a company that provides people to be companions for any situation.  Need a father for your kid's take Dad to work day?  Hire Mattias.  A partner for a pretentious outdoor concert?  Mattias.  A son for your 60th wedding anniversary celebrations?  Again, Mattias.  But when his wife tells him she doesn't know who he is anymore, things start spiraling out of control for Mattias.

Ellis Park is a documentary about Dirty Three /Bad Seeds musician Warren Ellis.  Since 2020 he's been supporting a nature reserve in Sumatra and in this film he goes there for the first time and meets the woman running the place, the local staff and all the rescued animals.  I enjoyed it very much.

The Mastermind is a film by master of slow cinema, Kelly Reichart.  It's a heist film, but a heist by an unlikely suspect and for reasons you don't fully understand until close to the end.  I didn't love it to be honest.  I found the main character weak and irritating - which was probably the point- but the ending was a nice twist.

Back in 1993 when I worked on the film festival, I saw a wonderful documentary about Leni Riefenstahl that led me to write at least one essay on her work and troubled reputation.  This week I saw a new doco about her which I thought would be more interesting than it actually was.  The 1993 docs benefitted from the fact she was still alive and could talk to the filmmakers.  This doco had only that footage and her many interviews, extensive archives and recordings to draw from.  She's definitely a complex character, but I'm not sure if she believed her own mythology about herself, or if she really was kept in the dark about much of what the Nazis were doing.  I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in between the two.

Twinless was another delightful film with a perfect balance between humor and pathos.  It's about a young man whose twin brother Rocky has recently been killed in an accident and who's struggling with the loss.  In a support group, he meets Dennis who claims to have also lost a twin brother.  A friendship develops between them,  but Dennis' presence at the group was predicated on false pretenses - he 's actually one of Rocky's one night stands and the reason Rocky was killed in the first place.

One more tonight, and then I'll be home in the evenings again, mostly.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: The Vegetarian

 

One of my colleagues gave me this to read, saying she thought it was interesting.  

I guess that's one word for it.

Books in translation are always interesting because you're not reading the book the way the author intended it to be read.  You're reading another writer's interpretation of that book.  And then you add in the specific cultural things that a native reader of that language would understand without any explanation and trying to put those things in context too.

This book is Korean and was the winner of the International Booker Prize about ten years ago.  So it's not new.  I tend to be slow to get to award winning books because when they're fresh off their award glory, they're in hot demand at the library so I tend to wait until things calm down.

It's a fairly slim book and I read the whole thing over the weekend.  It starts off being about a couple whose marriage has become stale.  They didn't have an enormous amount of passion for each other even at the start, but things have grown even more mundane now.  When a vivid dream terrifies wife Yeong-hye, she gives up eating meat.  A small act, you'd think, and a decision people make every day.  Yet here, this tiny act of rebellion against the staid life she's living, sets in motion a series of events that will end her marriage and tear the entire family apart.

Yeong-hye's sister is also in a fairly loveless marriage.  Her husband is an "artist" and spends long ours away from home, leaving her to care for their son and to support the family with her beauty-products store. When she catches her husband making "art" with her sister, the marriage collapses and Yeong-hye's mental state is deemed too fragile for anything other than a psychiatric hospital.

Yet even in the institution, Yeong-hye fights to keep this one, tiny piece of control over her own life and existence. 

Given the dramatic scenes and confrontations in this book, it was strangely emotionless.  I never felt I had any real handle on any of the characters except the artist husband.  And I think that was just because he was so single minded in his obsession with the "Mongolian mark" Yeong-hye had on her ass.  

Yeong-hye's motivations were far less transparent.  Clearly her refusal to eat meat anymore was a desperate act to try and gain control over her existence.  Korean society is clearly very regimented, and this was her way of breaking free in even a small way.  But the lengths she went to were so extreme, it seems possible that once she started controlling her world through food, she spiralled deep into anorexia nervosa.  The phrase was mentioned once or twice while in the institution, but it never seemed to be something the doctors take seriously.

I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed this book.  It was interesting, for sure, but I was never really invested enough in any of the characters to truly enjoy it.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

Weekly goals 18-8-25

 I only got a little bit of writing done over the weekend, but I expected that since I had a bunch of films to go to.  I have a couple of days off this week, after I finish my job on Wednesday, so I'm planning for one of those days to be a writing day.

So, what films did I see?

Pavements, a documentary about the band Pavement.  I was a big fan of this band in the '90s and I even still have a drumstick the drummer gave me at a party after a gig here in Wellington.  The doco was really innovative, setting up the premise that Pavement were this huge act back in the day and their 2022 reunion tour is the biggest thing ever.  And that alongside that, a jukebox musical using their songs is being performed, a Bohemian Rhapsody style bio-pic is being made and a museum exhibition of band-related ephemera is being launched.  Other than the tour, none of these things are strictly real - the filmmaker put up the exhibition himself and produced the musical, presumably for the documentary.

Plainclothes is a film I enjoyed very much.  About a young cop working on the vice squad trying to catch guys in public bathrooms exposing themselves.  He is becoming more and more certain he's gay, but can't reconcile those feelings with his work or bring himself to tell his family.  The film splits its time between a family New Year party and the clandestine relationship this young cop has with an older man.

Crocodile Tears is an Indonesian film that is not a horror, although it definitely shares some tropes with the Indonesian horror movies I've seen.  Set in a run-down crocodile park, this film has one of the most twisted mother-son relationships I've come across.  And the highest number of crocodiles I've come across in a single film!

And that was my weekend film viewing.  Six more to go...

My main goal this week is to get everything done at work I need to do before I finish on Wednesday.  And then to get all my life admin out of the way before starting my new job next week.  It all seems to have happened very quickly.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 15-8-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

And I only have another three days in my current job.  That feels very, very weird, I tell you!  It's been so busy, I don't think it's really sunk in.  I have a couple of days off at the end of next week to try and re-set my head to get ready for the new role, but I've already managed to book a lot of stuff for those days.

Reviews for Standing too Close are beginning to trickle in.  They're good.  Not raves, but everyone seems to have enjoyed the story and its heartbreaking nature.  I think heartbreaking is my brand...  I never let my kids get away without breaking a few hearts along the way.

The film festival started and I've seen two films so far. 

 It Was Just an Accident which won the Palme d'or at Cannes this year was a surprisingly funny film.  Very twisty too.  It really kept you guessing all the way through at the same time as showing some of the absurdities of living in modern Iran.  The characters were all very real too, acting inexactly the contrary way people do in times of stress.  I enjoyed it very much.

Mirrors No.3 is a German film about a young girl who is kind of adopted into a stranger's family after her boyfriend is killed in a car crash she miraculously escapes unharmed.  The family is trying to recover from a tragedy of its own, and the role Laura takes in their lives becomes increasingly disturbing as more details of what they've been going through come to light. I didn't love this one, but it definitely had some interesting moments in it.

I have another nine films to see over the next eight days, so I'll keep you posted.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved: I Will Call It Georgie's Blues

I Will Call It Georgie's Blues is a story about a family in crisis.  Mr. Sloane is a Baptist minister in a small town and has very fixed ideas about the image he and his family need to maintain.  But while outwardly the Sloane family might look picture perfect, behind closed doors each member of the family has their own problems, all stemming from Mr. Sloane's subtle tyranny.

Oldest daughter Aileen rebels by failing school and running around with the most inappropriate boyfriend she can find, flaunting her father's rules openly.  Neal escapes his problems through music, keeping his passion and talent for jazz a secret from everyone.  And youngest child, Georgie, creates a vivid fantasy world to explain why he feels so alone, even while surrounded by the people who are supposed to care most for him.

Told from Neal's point of view, the book covers a period of weeks in which Georgie's fantasy world overwhelms him and the family's secrets explode in a way that forces them all to reassess the way they behave to each other, and what they present to the world.

I really like this book because while it deals with an abusive father, he's not violent and the wounds he inflicts on his family are psychological, not physical.  The characters and their reactions to him feel very real and the portrayal of small-town life where everyone is under scrutiny all the time also rings true.

Definitely recommended.

But don't just take my word for it.  Here's the blurb:

Reverend Mr. Sloan is a time bomb waiting to go off. Behind his kindly public persona is an intolerant, demanding parent who terrorizes his children. Neal escapes his father in the world of music, but his frail brother Georgie is headed for a breakdown that almost no one will realize.

Weekly goals 11-8-25

 I didn't get as much writing done over the weekend as I had hoped to.  I did a little on Saturday, but I've basically been sick all weekend means I've done very little of the stuff I intended to do.  On the plus side, I did read a couple of books.  It's been a long time since I've sat down and read a whole book in a day.

Standing too Close released and it looks like it's doing pretty well.  Weirdly, Amazon has it listed under a whole bunch of really weird tags - Fantasy, Sci Fi, Royalty?  I've asked my publisher to look into it because those are clearly not right.  But I guess I can be happy that it's sitting at #35 in any category?

The film festival starts on Thursday, so I won't be getting much writing done for the next couple of weeks.  Guess it's good - gives my CPs time to catch up.  

Going to be stupid busy at work the next week or so too because I only have another week and a half before I finish up there.  And we go on sale with Jazz Festival in that time.  I also have a LOT of funding applications to get in, and I need to train up the woman who is replacing me.   Plus, this week is new release week at the gym and I'm teaching five classes.

So, a very busy, busy time!

My goal is to just get through it all.  What do you want to achieve this week?

Standing too Close releases today

 

Standing Too Close: Available Now!

Yes, Standing too Close is now available at all ebook retailers!  So get yourself a copy today!  Print will be available in about a month.  I'll keep the blog updated with details as I have them...

AVAILABLE NOW

~Editor's Pick~

Seventeen-year-old Blue Lannigan believes in exactly one thing: his two younger brothers deserve more than the crappy apartment and abusive, drunken mother they’re stuck with. And when he comes home to find one brother bruised and bleeding (again), the other cowering in terror (again) and their mother drunk off her ass, blaming all three of them for her tanked singing career (again), Blue decides waiting until he’s 18 to leave is no longer an option.

Deciding to hole up in an empty house at the lake until Blue can figure out what to do next, things get more complicated when the owner of the house arrives unexpectedly. Especially when Blue realizes the unconscious woman they’ve tied up on the couch isn’t a stranger after all, but someone who could give him just what he’s looking for.

After avoiding reality and playing house, a scene at the grocery store lands him in handcuffs and his brothers with a social worker. Add to that losing his job and being stuck in a group home he hates, and Blue’s sole purpose becomes finding his brothers and getting them out of whatever hellhole they’re in. Blue’s hopes unravel, and betrayal rips his heart in two as he tries to reconcile the role he plays in his brothers’ lives while trying to figure out his own.

REVIEWS:

"I truly have no idea where to start with this review. My heart is just well and truly broken after reading this book....Standing Too Close is a book I couldn’t put down. I was spiralling page after page after page. It was a hard hitter, that’s for sure - Occult Library Co

"I wholeheartedly recommend this book to readers aged 17 and above who are in search of a contemporary novel that not only entertains but also sheds light on the myriad struggles faced by children and families navigating the turbulent waters of addiction and familial strife. "Standing Too Close" is not just a story; it is a mirror reflecting the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity." - Mikayla's Bookish Creatives

"Standing Too Close is a heartfelt book that highlights the importance of community and letting others help you when things get overwhelming for you to handle on your own. This book highlights Blue’s strength on his own as he navigates caring for his brothers, while also showcasing how much Blue was able to accomplish when others stepped in to help him." - Unconventional Quirky Bibliophile

EXCERPT: 

Mom’s dancing when I get back to the living room. She clutches the bottle of bourbon in one fist as she sways to the music. When the verse begins, she raises the bottle to her mouth like a microphone and starts singing into it.

I stand in the doorway for a second, watching.

From the speakers, my mother’s voice blazes out, the strong pure alto I remember from sitting proudly at the side of stage after stage. The voice that won her awards and accolades, got her offers of movie roles and sold-out stadiums.

What comes from my mother’s mouth now is ragged and raw. She can still hit the notes, but there’s no purity now. Her voice is a hoarse, ruined parody of what’s playing through the speakers. Like the way she still dresses the same way she did; dresses which flowed around her narrow frame now cling snugly to her drink-bloated stomach, strain across her hips.

She spins around and takes a swig from her “microphone”, staggering backward as she does. Her heel catches the edge of the rug and she falls, crashing onto the coffee table on her ass. It cracks under her and dumps her to the ground amid a cascade of old magazines.

I wince.

“Ooopsy daisy!” Mom catches sight of me in the doorway and drags herself up, leaning heavily on the ruined furniture. “Mommy’s clumsy today.”

“Mommy’s drunk,” I say. “As usual.”

“I’m not drunk, baby boy.” Mom sways on her feet and looks blearily around for her bottle. She finds it under the magazines, empty now, the remaining bourbon soaking into the filthy carpet.

“No?" I watch her shaking the bottle over her mouth, trying to get any last liquor out. “Looks that way to me.”

“You worry too much. I’m fine, Bluebell. I’m celebratin’”

Celebrating? What the hell does she have to celebrate? Kicking the shit out of Sage? Terrifying Wiley so much he barely speaks? “Don’t call me Bluebell.”

“Oh, I forgot. My baby boy is too big for pet names.”

I roll my eyes but ignore it. There are more important things to deal with. “It’s bedtime,” I say, tugging the bottle away from her and setting it on the broken table. “You’ve had enough.”

“Darlin’,” she snarls, leaping away from me. “I haven’t even started yet.”

She reaches into the stereo cabinet and pulls out another bottle, this one smaller and slimmer. She unscrews the cap and takes a healthy belt. “Damn. That’s the stuff. Here.” She holds the bottle out to me. “Have a drink, baby. You know I don’t like to drink alone.”

I take the bottle, but don’t take a sip. For someone who doesn’t like drinking by herself, she spends a lot of time doing it. Like, every day. All day. Since giving up singing, drinking has been her career.

Who am I kidding? She never gave up singing. People just didn’t want to listen to her anymore.

Celebrate the Small Things 8-8-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I've been stupidly busy with work and book stuff for the release of Standing too Close, so haven't done any work on the new book this week.  Hoping to get to it this weekend.  I know next weekend is going to be kind of toast because the film festival starts on Thursday and I have a lot of films to go to.  Lucky I'm not on a deadline!

My role at work has been filled, so I'm actually getting a chance to do a hand-over which is good.  I was a little concerned about not having that because there are so many small, fiddly parts to my job that people who aren't in there wouldn't know about.  So having a couple of weeks to go through things with Sally before I leave is very useful.

Nothing much else to say, this week.  I'm just hoping for a solid release of Standing too Close and some more nice reviews.  Have you bought your pre-sale copy yet?  You can..  Go on.  I'll wait.

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - August 2025

 It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for the Insecure writers Support Group.

The awesome co-hosts for the August 6 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Natalie Aguirre, Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen, and Olga Godim.

This month's question is intriguing:

What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?

This question had me really scratching my head.  There are any number of things I feel are not right or unethical about the way the publishing industry works, but which one do I think is the MOST unethical?

I mean, there are whole swathes of so-called publishers out there who charge exorbitant fees for things self-publishers can do themselves far more easily and cheaply, and often with better results.  I'd consider that unethical.

There are also a lot of scammers out there, impersonating agents and publishers and film executives to prey on authors.  It's hard enough being an author and dealing with endless rejections and the crises of self confidence that come with them, without adding in impersonators out to grab cash for junk services.  Not to mention the false hope they give authors who might, even for a fleeting second, believe that someone is finally, actually taking notice of their work.

Then there's traditional publishing contracts that pay the author on the net profit for their books, not the gross profit.  This means all costs are taken out of the royalties before anything gets paid to the author.  And the author rarely, if ever, gets a breakdown of what those costs are, so they may receive nothing if the publisher decides to assign monetary value to things like social media posts as marketing expenses.

A new one is the use of AI in publishing.  I think it's unethical for anyone to use AI and then claim the work as their own.  It's not.  The words the AI spits back at you are not yours; they're other people's words that have been tossed around and regurgitated in a different order.  And if you use AI generated art in your cover design, you're taking legitimate work away from real artists in favour of a machine mashing together the work of multiple artists to create something that's likely not even half as good as something a human can do. 

In a way, AI use is actually plagiarism.  And that's definitely up there in the top five unethical publishing practices.  Stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own, is not, in any way, okay.

I also feel like asking anyone to work without getting paid for it is unethical.  It's one of those things that happens all the time in all arts careers.  You get asked to do your creative work for "the experience" or to get your foot in the door.  I feel like that's unethical.  It also devalues the work and work in the the arts is already valued far too little.  For something that can give joy, explain complex ideas and issues in ways that can make them more easily understood, something that can bring people together and create community, the arts are not given enough credit.

Time to jump down off my soapbox... I get quite passionate about this, as you can probably tell.

What do you consider to be the most unethical publishing practices?

Weekly Goals 4-8-25

 I didn't get any writing done over the weekend, at least, not on my book.  I had too many other things I had to do - mainly gym stuff.  So this week, I need to get some writing done.  I'm pretty close to finishing the first draft of this book.  And it's only been a few months too.  Not bad for a not-NaNo draft.

Standing too Close is out at the end of the week, so I need to keep the publicity going.  I have a blog tour booked and the last time I did a tour with this company (for My Murder Year) I got a lot of reviews through it too, so fingers crossed it's the same this time.  I've also started following a content calendar for August so I have something to post every day, even if it isn't necessarily about Standing too Close.  Finding things to talk about every day on social media is always tough for me.

I'm going to be super busy at work for the next couple of weeks because I have a lot to finish for them before I leave.  And with only having a couple of days between the two, I'm not going to get the break I would have liked to have had.  

Plus, the Film Festival starts next week and I have films booked every night for 10 days and I'm doing an extra shift at the gym for two months while one of the other instructors is away.  Ack!

What are your goals for this week?