Five Days Left

The official release date for Solace & Grief is Monday, 1 March – a mere five days away. Are you excited? Because I am!

To tide you over in the interim, here is a roundup of recent reviews, interviews and mentions the book has had, all of which make me a very cheery Foz indeed. Thus:

– Steph Bowe has written a very happy-making review, in which she says, “This is a vampire novel, and I think it’ll appeal to paranormal romance fans, but also to people who don’t like the whole vampire trend. It’s just different enough to make it refreshing but also appeal to the people who already love books like these.”

– I have been interviewed by the lovely Tynga of Tynga’s Reviews.

– Donna of Fantasy Dreamer’s Ramblings has not only reviewed the book and interviewed me, but is offering one lucky comentator the chance to win a signed copy. She says: “Solace & Grief is a good setup novel for the start of what I see to be an excited and different take on the world of vampires, shifters and the magical… [it] has darker elements than what’s normally seen in YA urban fantasy, that older teens and many adults would enjoy reading.”

– There is now an online version of my original interview with Bookseller + Publisher Magazine, available here.

– The amazing Scott Westerfeld has spruiked the book in advance of the upcoming Sydney launch, which he will be hosting at Kinokuniya on 7 March. Squee!

And, for those of you who are interested, here are some photos from the Melbourne launch, which took place this past Saturday at Carlton Library:

1. My publisher, Paul Collins, kicking things off.

2. The crowd.

3. Me, reading the prologue aloud.

4. Kirstyn McDermott being awesome (but looking away from the camera!)

6. Me, expostulating.

And yes – that is a Beware of the Leopard t-shirt in honour of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, given to me by a cool and froody friend. Thanks, Smott!

UPDATE: I’ve also been interviewed by the wonderful Liv Hambrett of Trespass Magazine, for whom I also write a weekly column. Check it out!

Launch & Birthday Rundown

Yesterday kicked off with a trip to the hairdresser’s. My last cut was at least six months ago, with the result that my hair was starting to look like the business end of a witch’s broom. So there was shaping and trimming and layering, and also the addition of a purple streak, which I’ve been wanting for a while, but always forget to ask about, because while I enjoy having someone else massage and shampoo my head, being in any sort of fashionable establishment tends to fluster me into an unnatrual state of awkward, mumbling pseudo-silence. I’ve never had a streak before; I thought it would take maybe ten minutes of salon time, half an hour tops. Instead, it was an extra hour and change. Totally worth it – the purple looks awesome – but seeing as I hadn’t mentioned this part of the plan to anyone else, there was some degree of speculation as to why I was taking to long just to get my hair cut, with the main theories being that I’d either died in the chair, or was getting a perm. (Which of these seems the worse fate, I’ll leave up to you.)

The launch started at 2, but we showed up at Carlton Library an hour early, “we” being myself, Toby and his parents, who (massive thanks!) helped out with the catering. Our alotted section of the library housed the YA and picture book sections. We plonked our stuff down on one of the tables to wait, then said a temporary goodbye as Toby’s parents went to get a pre-launch drink down the road. Toby found a children’s book on 70s rock music to read. I sat and tried to be calm.

After about five minutes of this, a small boy came running in, his father and younger sister following behind. The boy was called Harry, we soon overheard. He was bright, inquisitive and very, very confident – enough so that he made talking to Toby and I his first order of buisness. We had three main conversations. They went like this:

Conversation the First

Harry: Is this the old library?

Me: I don’t know. I’ve never been here before today.

Harry: Yes, you have.

Me: Have I? When?

Harry: Two days ago.

Me: Oh, OK. Well, maybe I was here, but I just don’t remember it.

Harry: Yes, you do. Do you mind if I run around in here?

Me: You probably shouldn’t. I don’t think the librarians would like it.

Harry: Alright. [pauses, walks away, thinks, comes back] Do you know where the old library is?

Me: I don’t know.

Harry: Yes, you do.

Me: Well, maybe it’s here, but we just can’t see it.

Harry: Yes. I think the real library must be hiding in the books.

Me: Actually, that’s probably very true.

Harry: Or it could be behind that broom closet door. Or under your chair. You’ll have to jump up, though, so I can look.

(I obliged, of course, and he inspected. But if he found anything important, he kept it to himself.)

Conversation the Second

Harry: I’ve just turned four, you know.

Me: Really? That’s great. It’s my birthday tomorrow, too.

Harry: How old will you be?

Me: Twenty-four.

Harry: No, you’re not.

Me: No? How old do you think I’ll be?

Harry: I think you’re turning twenty-eight hundred thousand million years old. And then you’ll die.

Me: I look good for my age, then.

Harry: [eyeing me critically] You’re really old.

Conversation the Third

Harry: I really like Star Wars legos.

Toby: Oh? I like Star Wars legos too. They’re pretty cool. Do you have droids?

Harry: I think so. I have lots of different ones.

Toby: Do you have the Millenium Falcon?

Harry: I’m not sure. I don’t know what that is.

Toby: It’s a ship. Does yours fly?

Harry: No, it doesn’t fly. You have to pretend that it does.

All of which was, I thought, a rather wonderful start to the day.

So: we set things up, both sets of parents arrived – as did the amazing Ford Street team – and I started to feel this strange sort of disconnect between the words coming out of my mouth and the rest of my body, which intensified as more and more people appeared. It was great to see everyone, though when Paul finally called a start to the proceedings, I’ll admit to having been just a weensy bit terrified. In a good way.

The fantastic Kirstyn McDermott gave me a warm and lovely welcome. I bumbled into the spotlight, grinned a lot and hopefully wasn’t too incoherent as I tried to explain about my brain being on a different planet, and what Harry had said about the real library being in the books, and how great it was to be there with Solace & Grief and my friends and my family, in a sort of garbled rush that hopefully made more sense to the audience that it did to me as I was saying it. And then it was time for the prologue; I calmed down a bit, and although I spoke too fast at times, as soon as I started to read aloud, I felt confident. My voice changed in my own ears. Everyone writes in a cadence unique to them, and as I narrated, every pause and emphasis felt natural, right. And then it was done, and nobody seemed to mind that I took a bit more than five minutes, and we drank champagne, and I signed books like a Real Author, and posed for photos, and tried not to be ambushed by the Leopard of Falling Over At Inappropriate Moments. Which I wasn’t. Which was good.

The pub followed; we went to the Kent, which was conveniently situated over the road, and had merry drinks with friends – although I am ashamed to say that, in my baffled, joy-oblivious state, I failed to notice that four SuperNovarians were sitting at a different table to everyone else, and so ended up not speaking to them until they came over to say they were heading off, about two hours later. Which I felt guilty about, and which makes me a Bad Foz, but hopefully in an understandable way. (Sorry, guys!)

Eventually, there were just four of us left: Toby and I, plus two philosopher friends, with whom we grabbed an Italian meal. Afterwards, we all trooped back to their place and watched The Lady Vanishes, which was just as much fun as ever, while eating fruit salad and ice cream; we weren’t able to pick up any more wine on the way over, but Borders was still open, and as I’d been given a birthday voucher by some other friends at the pub, I made used it to grab a copy of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. And then we came home, and that was the Day of the Melbourne Launch. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who gave encouragement, support and helped it to be so great. Which is all of you.

Today – Sunday – was my 24th birthday. My parents, who are visiting from Sydney, shouted us all to a civilised midmorning brunch at a local cafe/restaraunt – I had eggs benedict with salmon on the side, and it was delicious. While other people did other things, mum and I wandered around the city – where I finally found a pair of shorts to call my own, and which, amusingly enough, cost lest than the four pairs of socks my mother bought at David Jones – and then met up with Toby to watch Shutter Island at the Melbourne Central cinemas. It wasn’t a great film: the acting was solid on behalf of DiCaprio and Williams, there were some amazing shots, and the music was beautifully atmospheric, but over all, it left the three of us feeling a bit hollow. Not to be all spoilery, but when you start a Hollywood film with the premise of an outsider investigating the goings-on at an asylum, the ending is almost guaranteed to go one of two ways, and while the whole set-up served to reinforce this fact, I think we’d been all hoping that a Scorsese film would employ some shaper, more deviously satisfying climax than the “oh, of course” fizzle on offer. Still, it wasn’t a complete waste of time – my mother rediscovered the Choc Top.

Finally, the day finished up with drinks and nibbles left over from the launch at my sister-in-law’s place – just the family, which was a nice wrap to the weekend. 2010 is well underway, and though there’s much more still to come, I’ll face it with the successful launch of Solace & Grief and my belt, and the confidence which comes from being another year older.

Countdown

The launch is in five days. I’m counting down.

There are moments now, frogskin-shiny and sharp as the spines of a picket fence, when I look up from whatever it is I’m doing and realise, This is real. This is not some borrowed life, the dream I dreamed with my tired face droolside down on a history desk, my lap full of edited pages instead of homework, ready to pop like a soapbubble with the prod of a pen or a question about Trotsky. Here I am. I made this happen – with help, and time, and work, and luck; with much more than a thousand thousand thimblespoons of luck. The book I see on the bedside table is mine, glossy and blue-black-shelled as a Christmas beetle. It is nearly my birthday. Soon, I will be twenty-four, and this book – Solace & Grief – will still have my name on the cover. That much, I have earned.

Is there any miracle greater and more terrifying than to be given what you want, or a shot at it? I don’t know. Right now, my eyes are a cloud of sleeplessness. My fingers move and the words come scratching out, each stab downwards like the jut of a wormhungry birdbeak; and I remember older nights where my heart felt so squeezed in around itself, so solid and dense as to hang in the chest-space like a black hole, nights when it never seemed like this could happen. Part of me has been waiting for the rug to be whipped out from under my boots. But it hasn’t twitched. I’m still here. Still moving forwards.

One day, I will look back. One day. Many days. I will look back, and remember this.

Egads!

So, I just realised: the book launch is in two weeks.

Two weeks, people!

And, in just twenty-three days, Solace & Grief will be available on shelves.

I am yet to adequately process this information.

Squealing may follow.

All Bank And No Sense Makes Foz Go Something Something

OK, so, Twitter – I love it to death, but you know what’s  not cool? Tweeting sarcastically about a problem I’m having with my bank, and then recieving a reply tweet from my bank’s Twitter account asking me to DM my details so they can try and sort it out, after I’ve already spent twenty minutes on the phone doing just that.

Here’s what happened: for reasons which, I suspect, have to do with the fact that Toby and I went overseas and then had the temerity to come back when we said we would without informing Westpac a second time, our credit cards were cancelled last week due to “suspected credit card fraud”. Because our old address details had changed, Westpac was forced to contact Toby via email and ask him to ring them. He did, providing our new address in the process. Westpac noted it down, and his new cards arrived two days ago.

Mine, however, did not.

So, this morning, I tried to find the number for my local branch to call and sort this out. Irritatingly, no such number exists – instead, I had to go through a 1300 number, wait for the right option, then sit through a session of unbearably cheerful muzak until Hugo came on the line. I explained my dilemma. Hugo looked up my details and informed me that my new cards had been sent to our old address. I asked how this could be, given that Toby’s had arrived just fine. Hugo explained that whoever had fielded Toby’s call would have only had Toby’s details on screen, and not mine, and therefore only changed the address for him. My new cards, he said, had been sent to our old address. He started justifying this by saying we had different customer numbers, at which point, I cut him off.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t matter. Neither of us knows our customer numbers, and we don’t have to provide them when calling. I didn’t now, and he didn’t then. When my husband rang you, it was about the cancellation of two sets of cards: his, and mine. The person on the other end knew that. It would seem, then, like a fairly obvious intuitive leap for them to have asked if we, a married couple, were both living at the new address, rather than only changing one set of details.’

Hugo blustered. ‘Look, like I said, only his details would’ve come up – ‘

‘But you’re looking at both sets right now! And even so, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t tell Toby that mine would also have to be changed, or request that I call separately, or even mention that both sets of cards weren’t getting sent to the same place. If he had done, I would have called, and I would have my credit cards by now.’

Hugo apologised and asked whether or not I had any way of going back to my old address to collect the cards. Seeing as it’s only a few streets away from where we’re staying, that isn’t too big an ask, but still: I told him that, in all probability, the new residents had thrown out any letters not for them, as this is what normal people tend to do.

At which point, Hugo started saying that he’d have to cancel both sets of cards all over again, because if the people at our old address had opened up the letters with my cards in them, they would need only sign the back for the cards to work, and that, seeing as how the original concern in cancelling had been fraud, he would just –

‘No,’ I said, trying not to shout. ‘This whole mess is your fault. Not yours, personally, but the fault of your organisation. If you cancel those cards, again, I will be very angry.’

Hugo agreed to have the cards resent to my new address.

So, that’s sorted. But somewhere during this process, I tweeted:

fozmeadows: Urge to stab Westpac in the face…rising…

– which left me, internally, grumbling to myself about the fact that I couldn’t just call my branch, and that banks are so distanced from real life that every time they implement a new technology designed to help communications, they inevitably end up using it as a barrier between their employees and we, the people.

‘I just bet,’ I thought to myself, ‘I just bet they have a Twitter account, because they think it makes them seem Hip To The Young People, whereas in actual fact, it only goes to show how out of touch they are.’

And, lo – not two seconds later, I check my @ replies, and find the following message from – yes – the Westpac Twitter account:

westpac: @fozmeadows Sorry to hear it, please DM some contact details and let’s see what we can do to get you sorted ..Ean

Since then, the dialouge has expanded:

fozmeadows: @westpac Oh good gods, you actually are on Twitter. Very hip, but it doesn’t make up for having to call a 1300 number instead of my branch.

westpac: @fozmeadows Thanks, please DM contact details and the specific branch and we’ll get the Bank Manager to call you ..Ean

fozmeadows: @westpac OK, you’re not even a person on the other end, are you? This is totally an automated response using a person’s name. Not. Cool.

westpac: @fozmeadows No, definitely a person, my name is Ean van Vuuren, I head up online sorry my previous messages gave that impression…

fozmeadows: @westpac Look, Ean. I won’t hold it against you. But rather than tweeting, maybe you guys could look into not making basic admin errors.

Will he tweet back? I’ll have to wait and see. But in the interim, it just makes me angry. I mean, why can I Twitter directly with an admin in Sydney, but not call my Goddam branch? Why are they supposedly interested enough in people to talk online, but not to make the basic assumption that a husband and wife will be living at the same address and change two sets of details in the first place?

Conclusion: Banks, man. They be all crazy ‘n shit. Damn authors of GFC be trippin’ for reals, yo. Word.

Storage Power

Firstly: my maiden guest blog is now live, courtesy of Katie over at Sophistikatied Reviews! You can read it here.

Secondly: I am currently obsessed with rummaging through our self-storage space.

As keen readers of this blog may have had occasion to note, Toby and I have been overseas for the past five months. Before that, we gave up our lease and stayed with his parents before flying out; now that we’re back, they’ve been kind enough to put us up again, while I’ve been dayjobhunting and the two of us have been looking for a place. This means that, barring a few outfits, a handful of books and some DVDs, everything we own is boxed, stacked and stored on the fourth floor of a neaby self-storage facility. Ironically, a lot of what’s there will be sold or thrown out once we’re in a position to reclaim it, but until that day comes, there it sits: a small mound of un-or-mislabelled boxes, bags of random crap, dodgy furniture and reams of household utensils, all serving to obscure the location of anything I might actually want.

We moved everything ourselves, so it’s not like we can blame this poor stacking on anyone else. Toby did most of the arranging, but seeing as how he’d also had to lift our fridge, a daybed, four bookshelves and two lounges virtually on his own after the Great Unmentionable Incident Wherein A Certain Husband Who Shall Remain Nameless Dropped The Fridge On His Wife’s Forearms And Hand, Thereby Bruising Her For Weeks And Rendering Her Even Less Able To Cart Heavy Things Around Than She Already Was, Although Why We Never Roped Some Stronger Friends In To Help From The Outset Is Beyond Me, I’m inclined to forgive him.

The point being, the room is disorganised, virtually impenetrable, and full of boxes whose contents cannot be ascertained by any lesser action than opening them. All the bags with our clothes are in the back lefthand corner, unable to be moved because (a) they can’t be reached and (b) even if they could, they’re the only thing stopping the lounges from falling over. All the tiny boxes with useful things in them, like my PlayStation and the X-Box controllers, are in the back righthand corner, hidden behind about 45 larger, decidedly heavier boxes containing a combined half-century’s-worth of books. The DVDs are interspersed with the books, and the only readily accessible things are, for reasons I cannot fathom, utterly useless, like – for instance – Toby’s Cylon bubble-bath container and my stuffed toy turkey. In order to achieve anything at all, I have to move three bags (two light, one heavy), a box of philosophy books, the TV (fortunately a flatscreen) and the case of my ancient desktop computer out into the hallway, stand on top of our ancient, surprisingly sturdy gas-heater, boost myself between the fridge and the edge of the bedframe to climb onto the upturned edge of one of the lounges, and spend five minutes surveying my weird, incessessable domain, like a cat who’s found her way to the top of the tallest cupboard. Only then may I begin the task of figuring out which boxes to move where in order to progress my excavations.

If you’re thinking that this all sounds extremely inconvenient and difficult, you aren’t wrong. It’s a cramped, dusty, sweaty environment, and though, after three lengthy visits, I’ve only managed to retrieve a smattering of DVDs, four books and our edition of Trivial Persuit, I cannot for the life of me keep away.

I don’t know what it is. Ever since Toby gave me the key, it’s been exuding a siren-song. Or, wait. I do know what it is: I want my goddam PlayStation 2. For about a week now, I’ve been dreaming of landscapes from Final Fantasy VII and XII, and every time I go there, it’s with the secret hope of striking the jackpot. Not, of course, that I can remember which box the actual games are in, and as I’ve discovered today, while the X-Box 360 and all its cords were in one place, the controllers most certainly are in another. Frustrating, to say the least. But on another level, it’s more than that. The feeling I get when moving the boxes around is almost identical to the way I used to feel when, as a kid or teenager, I’d take it upon myself to rearrange my room. I’ve never had much in the way of upper body strength, but that was part of the fun: with only me to lift the bed, mattress, books, shelves and furniture, I had to find a way of juggling, shoving things around until I could edge them all into their new locations. It was still physically tiring, but also an odd source of intellectual satisfaction. Here was something I’d done, despite the obvious difficulties, and with a visible result to show from it!

When she was younger, my grandmother used to get a similar kick out of rearrangement: my mother and uncle would come home from school and find that the whole house had been moved around. Right now, trying to clear a path through our storage room falls into a similar category of endeavour. Gods help me, it is actually fun.

Which worries me, on a number of levels. But not enough to stop me from going back. After all, that PlayStation has to be somewhere.