Paws for Reflection - Big Ginger Meggs

 The 4 October marked the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the saint known particularly as the patron saint of animals. Many churches around the world hold St. Francis Day services and the parishioners bring their animals into the church for a blessing. 

Among the "blessed" animals who have shared our hearts and home was BIG GINGER MEGGS. He actually went by many names - Ginger Meggs, Big,  BGM (most common), Biggie Boy or in his latter days simply “the old cat”.

BGM and Winston - inseperable

Our old friend died in 1999.  I say “our” old friend because he was a friend to all four of us in four unique and different ways.  

BGM came to us at a difficult time of our lives. We had moved into an old house in on 'the other side of town' while we built a new home on the site of the little cottage we had demolished.  J was eighteen months old and his brother H, a fractious and difficult three year old.  We took with us to this house a strange old cat we had called Lizzie.  A plain name for a plain cat.  She had to be ugliest cat on earth, dirty white with odd tabby patches, her ears and nose scabby with skin cancer.  She had adopted us but refused to come inside the house. In fact if she was ever accidently caught inside she would literally climb walls to try and get out.  Lizzie was an outside cat and still definitely a stray but we felt we could not leave her at a potential building site so she moved with us and seemed quite content in the huge back of our temporary home - as long as we kept feeding her

BGM moves in on Lizzie's food bowl

Content that is until HE moved in.  I found a photo of him the other day, thin and mangy stretching out for Lizzie’s food bowl.  His coat was ginger and the texture of dried straw, he had a bite out of one ear.  He was fully grown and fully tom and nothing we could do could dissuade him from Lizzie’s food.  Water pistols, yelling, banging... all to no avail.  He would simply retreat a few paces and sit there calmly surveying us with the sure and certain knowledge that we would eventually cave in.

Of course we did.  Two bowls started to be put out and gradually over the next few months we watched a beautiful cat emerging literally like a chrysalis as his tatty coat began to improve.  First his head, then his shoulders. One warm summer night as I sat in the front room watching television, he appeared in the doorway of the room, hesitated only momentarily before he jumped on to the sofa a few feet away from me.  With his golden eyes firmly fixed upon me he crept down the sofa and laid his big, beautiful head on my lap, purring like a steam engine.  BGM had moved in.

We still refused to acknowledge that he was really ours, although I did the right thing by him and off he went to the vet, returning with his manhood missing and no doubt relieved that he no longer had to battle for the ladies attention.  There was one glorious summer day when J decided the cats needed sun protection and daubed fluorescent zinc cream liberally on both of them.  BGM had a fluorescent pink stripe for days and patches of bright green did nothing to improve Lizzie’s plain looks.

The time came to move and it was plain Lizzie was sick.  She could not walk without staggering.  The vet said her kidneys had failed and the decision was easy. Lizzie would not return to Aitken Street but BGM did.  After all by this stage we felt morally obliged to him.

He assumed his position in the new house as it he had been born to it but with one strange character quirk which it took a long time for us to come to terms with.  I cannot remember now how many times he went “walkabout” over the next few years.  Maybe two or three times a year some instinct would draw him back to the 'other side of our town'.  The first few times I went frantic until somebody from Victoria Street would ring and I would go and fetch him. Even without his collar and tag  he was so well known, he was traced back to me. 

After a while, the walkabouts began to take on a pattern.  He would disappear one evening and three or four days later I would get a phone call from Mrs. W., whose smart white house in Victoria street became his established haven.  Mrs. W. adored him and admitted that if wasn’t for her own cat she would adopt him herself.  She would put him in the Mercedes and drive him home and he would arrive smiling and unfazed by the fuss. Even today she still mentions him when we meet in the street.

Gradually the wandering ceased and although Mrs. W. would ask after him fondly he would not come and visit.  I often wondered what called to him from over there.  He did not come from Victoria Street and certainly not from Mrs. W.  What adventures did he go through to get there?  If you asked him he would just smile enigmatically.

Companions came and went.  Our beloved Winston, left with us as a dirty abused kitten by the late “Mrs. S. the cat lady” and we had a duo of gingers.  Good natured and obliging Winston was much adored by J who would tuck him under one arm and climb the stairs to bed with the limp Winston’s feet banging on the stairs as he went.  Sadly Winston, 'the stupid', who would frequently get himself locked in the neighbor’s garage met his end when a car hit him.  Not a mark on his beautiful golden body. Mercifully the boys were away which made it easier but I wept for him and his loss was keenly felt by us all.

Winston was replaced by Sarah, a small bundle of tortoishell indignation who firmly decided from very early on that I was her person and although procured to replace Winston in the boys’  hearts was not up to the job.  BGM became the number one cat with J and endured H with a patience not displayed by Sarah.  From the photos of two cats together, I know it was part of his huge heart to let his fellow felines share his wonderful good fortune.  Never in the ten years he lived with us did I ever hear him utter a cross word to human or feline.

He was diagnosed early with Feline Aids, the legacy of his tomming past but on the whole his health was good.  It was only in his last years that the upper respiratory infections which plagued us began.  “Cat snot from one end of the house to the other”, I would complain.  He would look up at me.  “Sorry”.

A boy and his cat

His one allotted task in life was putting J to bed.  J would set him at the bottom of the stairs and he would potter up to J’s  bed, lying in the boy’s arms until James was asleep when he would more often than not come back downstairs and join us for the evening before eventually taking his repose at the end of our bed.  He knew his place and was never a nuisance at night, unlike Sarah who liked to snuggle up close.

I don’t know how old he was but of all the cats I have ever known, BGM had a serene wisdom as if he looked into your soul and understood what he found there.  It is the sort of unnerving goodness I have found in only two people, both of them priests.  Perhaps he was a priest of the feline world?  Certainly he ministered to us in our pain and unhappiness and shared joyfully in our happy times.

Without any explanation he began to fade.  The vets shook their heads and said they could not find a cause.  Maybe it was the Aids? We figured as long as he was not in pain and was still eating then we would go on loving him and maybe, just maybe God in his wisdom would take him peacefully in his sleep.  It was not to be that simple, perhaps God wanted to give us the chance to say goodbye properly.  In his last days he became incontinent and such was his immense dignity that I found him sleeping in his litter box.  On the Saturday morning he looked up at me and his eyes said “It’s time”.  It was a family decision, a chance for those final farewells before D and I took him to the vet.  He was calm and peaceful, as if he quite understood what was to happen and welcomed the release.  I sat in the waiting room, tears running down my face as I stroked his beautiful golden, head, marked with the “M” between the eyes. 

So he rests beneath our birch tree and still if I feel troubled I find myself standing in that peaceful place as if he can still give the comfort he shared so generously when he was alive.  

Heart of the High Country

I count myself fortunate. In my life I have seen the soaring mountains of New Zealand, the Canadian Rockies and the Austrian Alps but when it comes to mountains my heart belongs to the Australian High Country.

The Australian High Country

It always comes as something of a shock to visitors from overseas to learn that Australia (a land most people think of as one large desert) has a mountain range of sufficient height for regular snow in the winter. The "High Country" is that part of the Great Dividing Range that runs from southern New South Wales to southern Victoria. Ski-fields punctuate the higher peaks and while our runs are not long and punctuated by hazards such as snow gums, it attracts the snow fiends.

Last weekend, D and I took a break in one of our favourite corners of the State, a little gold mining town tucked into the mountains, called (somewhat ironically) Walhalla. Far from being the home of the Gods,  at its heyday it must have been more like hell. Walhalla lies in a narrow valley with steep slopes on either side. It is so steep that the cemetery boasts vertical graves and the locals literally had to take the top off a nearby hill to construct a cricket pitch.

Walhalla

Gold...the lure of gold induced our tough forebears to risk their necks and ankles in the pursuit of the elusive metal as they pushed deeper and deeper into the bush. By the late 1890s Walhalla boasted a population of nearly 30,000 people clinging to its vertiginous slopes like mussels to a sea wall. The hills for thirty miles around had been stripped bare of trees, arsenic from the processing poured into the creek and the continual thump of the stampers would have echoed around the hills. D and I to shake our heads in wonderment at how ow these massive bits of iron machinery were brought into these valleys.

Today Walhalla boasts a permanent population of about twenty people and has the dubious honour of being the last town in Victoria to be connected to the electrical grid (less than 20 years ago). When we first visited this area, the road into it was no more than a narrow dirt track. Today it boasts asphalt, bed and breakfasts and a steady stream of tourists. How it escaped the fury of the 2009 bushfires still causes the locals to wonder. It came close, ringing the valley on 3 sides.  Black Saturday took Marysville but not Walhalla. If it had come, there would be no escape from this valley.

Ruins at "Maiden Town"

The little valley is filled with ghosts. Although long since reclaimed by the bush, the countryside is treacherous, littered with hidden mine openings. High above the town and stretching miles into the forbidding hills beyond are the ruins of little settlements, ghost towns which once boasted pubs and shops, families and schools and the many citizens of different lands intent on eking a living from this inhospitable countryside.  Up here the wind doesn't sigh through the trees, it roars and howls.

We did not deliberately choose the weekend of the Australian Rules Grand Final but the happy circumstance meant that Walhalla was quiet. It was also bitterly cold and very wet. Tucked up in our comfortable room in the Star Hotel, D read and I wrote. In the evening we ventured out into the cold, wet darkness on a ghost tour (more on that for a later blog).

For the return trip we decided to go north through "the High Country". This track takes you out past Thompson Dam (nearly dry during the height of the drought) and through the worst of the country devestated by Black Saturday. Few hardy souls go this way even in the best of weather and the rugged track was bearing witness to the storms of the last few months with wash aways and fallen trees making the going tough. The map declares the road "unsuitable for caravans". It would have been unsuitable for anything less than our Landrover!

We pause to look down at the Thompson Dam, ringed by its blue hills and now nearly filled. The air smells of damp gum leaves, cold and fresh.

Thompson Dam

As we drive further north, the snow begins, great wet flakes falling on the windscreen. The scars of the great fires are still very much in evidence. Along the ridge lines, the skeletal sentinels of the great gums fringe the horizon, mute witness to the fire storm. Closer to the road, the limbs of the fire ravished trees bend under the weight of the frosting of pristine snow and in the deep gullies, tree ferns wear their mantle of snow like a lady's petticoat, sweeping into a deep curtsey before the fickleness of nature. We are the first car to break the crusting of snow on the road and everywhere around us is silence.

My heart belongs to the High Country. Where does your heart lie?

TEARS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

My husband, who prefers to keep his cyber identity private so I shall call "D",  and I met in the Army Reserve (Officer Training...he lent me a pencil for my navigation exercise...etc. etc.). We both served in the Australian Army for just on twenty years each before a move to Singapore put an end to both our careers. One thing all those years instilled in us was a mutual interest in military history.

D’s grandfather fought with the Australian Army in World War One. He had been in the second wave at Gallipoli and the family had always assumed he had sustained his wound there.  Until D started researching his grandfather’s history, no one knew he had served in France. He would talk about Gallipoli but never the Western Front and it was on the Western Front, in the bitter fighting on the Somme he had been wounded in the left arm.

My own grandfather (on my mother's side) was a medic in the British Army and served, as far as we know, for most of the war in the Middle East. He joined up after his eldest brother had been killed near Basrah in modern Iraq. Many people may think the medics had a cushy job but quite often they put their own lives on the line to rescue the wounded and transport them back to the casualty clearing stations. Mercifully he survived unscathed but his experience may explain why he never settled to normal life in Yorkshire and accepted a posting in the civil service in Kenya (Colonial East Africa), taking his new bride with him,  a young lass who had never even been to London.

In 2005, D and I finally achieved a long held ambition to visit the Battlefields of World War One. We began in Ypres in Belgium, that beautiful medieval cloth town so comprehensively destroyed in the war.  Together we walked the city walls finding little war cemeteries along the way and joined the solemn crowds at the Menin Gate for the service of commemoration which is held every night.

The evening commemoration at the Menin Gate

We  hired a car and with a map in hand we drove out into the Ypres Salient. The flat Belgian countryside bears little resemblance to the nightmare pictures we had seen in the Museum in Ypres but among the green fields, there are countless cemeteries, with the white crosses in orderly lines looking,  as I described it in Gather the Bones, like a “harvest of death”.

The Allied Cemetery - Passchandaele (Polygon Wood)

From Belgium we drove down to France and Amiens. It is hard to imagine the horror that 1914-1918 visited on the soft green fields of the Picardy countryside.  The little villages have been rebuilt and farmers tend the fields just as they always did but the grand war memorials and scattered cemeteries once again bear the testament of those who died here. 

It was one of many tiny little villages on the road to Amiens that brought together both D's grandfather and my search for a missing relative - Pozieres.

It was here, at the battle for  Pozieres, that D’s grandfather had been shot in the arm, an injury which would trouble him for the whole of his life and it was here in the British cemetery that I fulfilled a promise made to my father ... to find the grave of his own father’s cousin, Captain Richard Conway Lowe MC. The War Graves Commission makes it an easy task to locate the one tombstone among the many and I had little trouble in finding it in the British Cemetery.

What I hadn’t been prepared for was the wave of emotion that surged through me as I stood looking down at the simple white grave stone.  All I knew about Richard Conway Lowe had been gleaned from a few family photographs of a rather solemn little boy with fair hair and glasses. Family history recounts he had been a good student at Winchester and Oxford and had been destined to go into the Church. I also knew he was 6’ 7”. He came from a respectable middle class family in Edgbaston near Birmingham and on the outbreak of war, he joined one of the local Warwickshire volunteer regiments.

I didn’t know he was only 22 years old when he died. He was the same age as my eldest son. As I laid the little poppy I had bought with me, I touched the gravestone and thought how many, many years it had been since anyone grieved at this graveside. The entire family line had effectively died out with this boy. I sat on the grass beside his headstone and the tears welled up. 

Laying a poppy on Richard's grave

Since returning from that trip to France, the wonder of the internet enabled me to trace the citation for his military cross. I wish my father were still alive to share it with.  It reads:

Military Cross for Officers

"Second Lieutenant Richard Conway Lowe., 1st/6th Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Territorial Force.

For conspicuous gallantry on 4th November, 1915, in France.

When directing a working party in front of the parapet, the Germans opened fire and wounded a man of the covering party. Second Lieutenant Lowe and a Serjeant rushed to his aid, and although the Serjeant was grazed by a bullet and Second Lieutenant Lowe shot in the thigh, the bullet being subsequently found in the wound, they carried the wounded man across the open and through the wire into a place of safety.

Second Lieutenant Lowe had previously been wounded, and had been brought to notice for excellent work at the front." (London Gazette Issue 29371 16 November 1916)

He received his medal personally at Buckingham Palace in January 1916 while home recovering from his wound. 

He was killed in action on August 18, 1916. The Germans had been in occupation of Pozieres since 1914 and in July 1916 the allies commenced one of the bloodiest battles on the Western Front...the recapture of Pozieres and to secure the high ground behind it. When I looked to see what action had taken place on that day,  "British advance from Pozieres to Somme; ground gained towards Ginchy and Guillemont."  Just another day on the Western Front.

The main street of Pozieres after the action of 1916

After his death his mother, Marie Lowe, worked tirelessly in organising women volunteers for the provision of laundry services to the hospitals in Birmingham coping with the needs of the wounded. By Dec 1917 over 4000 articles a week passed through the hands of the 70 VAD volunteers and 8 paid laundresses. The family history relates that his father, Conway, "never really recovered from the death of his elder son". He fell out with his business partners and "These two blows left Conway a broken man, and Marie had to become the decision maker and mainstay of the family."

The little boy who died a hero...

These few days spent in the company of the dead from a bloody war provided part of the inspiration for my new book, GATHER THE BONES. 

The following is a short extract, drawing on my own experience...
"...Helen stared out of the foggy car window as the countryside changed from pleasant fields and hamlets to an unrecognizable landscape of ruined villages, barely passable roads, devastated forests of tree stumps and a bleak landscape of churned fields. If she could have imagined the end of the world this is what it would have been like.

Many of the villages through which they passed had been completely destroyed leaving nothing more than piles of rubble where there had once been a bustling little town with bakers, butchers, churches and homes. Some new buildings had begun to rise from the ruins, but the deeper they drove into the Ypres Salient, the more dismal the landscape became. What had once been fields were now nothing more than wild earthworks from a painting of hell, dotted with small cemeteries of rows of white crosses, like a grim harvest of death..."

For more about the First World War and the inspiration for Gather the Bones, see my post on "A Michelin Guide to a Story Idea" first published on Historical Hearts.

Collaging A Story for "Organic Writers"

I first heard of "collaging" a story some years ago when a workshop at a Romance Writers of Australia Conference was held on the subject. Unfortunately I didn't attend it but I did see the participants, clutching their "collages" and flushed with excitement as they left the room.

"Collaging"? I recall, with something of a shudder, art classes at school where you had to stick bits and pieces cut from magazines on to paper and make some kind of artistic masterpiece. I am a Capricorn and a Lawyer, I don't do "artistic masterpieces" - I do well ordered, neat and logical masterpieces. I really didn't think collaging was for me.

Jenny Crusie is an exponent of Collaging  but like me was slow to realise its potential, particularly in the pre-writing phase. For Jenny's journey to collaging read her blog post.

I blogged recently on "visualising a story" (The Mind's Eye) and until I started writing GATHER THE BONES, I'd never been one for visual stimuli but there is definitely something about the hand/eye/brain connection, which is why some people still prefer to write their stories in long hand. As I can no longer read my own writing that is probably not a great option these days.

That is until I discovered Springpad. There are so many great options for writers now (I haven't even begun to expound on my adoration for Scrivener).  With Springpad I discovered not only a great way to store my online resource but I could actually convert that on to a virtual "cork board" and I created a "virtual collage".

Springpad collage for GATHER THE BONES

It's not much to look at but I did explain about the whole Capricorn/lawyer thing... And amazingly, even though I was well into the story by then, it really helped with some of the finer plot detailing. I found pictures of 1920s tennis parties and WW1 hospitals in old churches. What you won't see there are "pictures" of my hero and heroine. I still like to live with them in my imagination. (BTW you can store all your online research in your Scrivener file but the Springpad "board" is fantastic)

As for sticking actual pictures from magazines on to pieces of paper, I was still sceptical until I got to try it myself  on a Writers Retreat with my own writing group, the wonderful Saturday Ladies Bridge Club (yes there is a good reason for the name and no, it has nothing to do with cards).


I looked at my blank piece of paper and the piles of magazines and my mind went blank as the Capricorn/lawyer/pantser combo muscled its way to the front of my consciousness. What was I even going to collage about and then it struck me. I had a new story tugging at my sleeve so I picked up the scissors and glue and began to leaf through the magazines. OK my story is a regency and there was nothing regency about any of the magazines but amazingly words and images began to leap out at me.

The SLBC collaging madly

At the end of the session I sat back and looked at my piece of paper. It was no artistic masterpiece but, by jiminy, it looked like the bones of a story.  And here it is. Hopefully it won't mean anything to anybody except me!

I have it pinned up in my office and while I haven't progressed very far with the story itself, it is a wonderful "aide memoire".

I am a "pantser" (although I prefer the term "organic writer") and I was surprised at how going through the collaging exercise really helped me with the setting/characters and basic plot. It's certainly not the whole story but as a kick start to the creative process it has been invaluable and I would highly recommend it as a precursor to writing. All you need is a sheet of paper, some old magazines, some felt pens, glue and scissors. Lock the "editor" away and allow the "girls in the basement" out and you should have a fun AND productive couple of hours.

Ms. Stuart has left her card...

Since GATHER THE BONES launched last week, I have been out and about on the blog circuit. While not officially a Blog Tour,  I have donned my best hat and gloves and with my new, embossed calling cards in my reticule I have paid calls at the following blogs.  So rather than post something new here, come and visit me at the following addresses:

• Cathryn Hein - Friday Feast:  Talking about growing up in colonial East Africa, why I don't speak Swahili and the food of my childhood. My favourite Prawn Curry recipe is included!
• Totes Bags 'n' Blogs: Back to my favourite topic of ghosts and ghost stories.
• Seduced by History Blog for Hearts through History:  How my passion for the English Civil War  came about.
• Keziah Hill "Life Bites":  An interview - lots of interesting questions.

Later this week I will be taking tea with Nicole Hurley-Moore. 

Thank you to all  my lovely hostesses :-)

Meet Ms. Stuart...

I think I can say GATHER THE BONES has been thoroughly well launched.

I really was at a loss as to how to send off an ebook but the Facebook party turned out to be a huge success. In preparing for it, I threw together a couple of videos and thought I would share them on my blog page. They are a little rough and the wandering eyes are caused by trying to read from a computer screen behind my Mac notebook which I was using to record the video.

So excusing a rather untidy office and an even scruffier author...

The first is the "Welcome" video in which I talk about how I came to write GATHER THE BONES.

The second is a reading from the story:

TO READ AN EXCERPT (the Prologue and first chapter) click HERE.

LAUNCH EVENT FOR GATHER THE BONES

Join me today over at my Facebook author page for my virtual launch party. There will be a copy of GATHER THE BONES to give away, along with other goodies. 

I am also visiting the Australian Romance Readers today where I am giving away a copy of the book.

Keep watching this blog and over the next few weeks there will be another opportunity to win a copy of GATHER THE BONES and other prizes as I visit other blogs. Details will be posted either here or on my Facebook author page.

I'm looking forward to making some new friends.

Alison

War leaves no one untouched 

The horrors of the Great War are not the only ghosts that haunt Helen Morrow and her late husband's  reclusive cousin, Paul. Unquiet spirits from another time and another conflict touch them. 

A coded diary gives them clues to the mysterious disappearance of Paul's great-grandmother in 1812, and the desperate voice of a young woman reaches out to them from the pages. Together Helen and Paul must search for answers, not only for the old mystery, but also the circumstances surrounding the death of Helen's husband at Passchandaele in 1917. 

As the mysteries entwine, their relationship is bound by the search for truth, in the present and the past. 

Release Day - GATHER THE BONES

No new mother likes to be told their baby has funny ears or Aunt Georgina's nose and for an author, release day can be both exciting and frightening. You are sending your baby out for public scrutiny. Inevitably there will be those readers who don't connect with your writing and a writer has to learn to take the bad reviews with the good. We should be experts at rejection but we're not. We love our baby - even if it does have a huge nose and ears like Dumbo...

So after a long, long break, my baby is now out in the big, wide world.  Be gentle...

I am thrilled that award winning writer, Anna Campbell not only read the book but agreed to provide the cover quote. Thank you, Anna!

"GATHER THE BONES is breathtakingly romantic. This moving and dramatic love story will haunt you long after you turn the last page. Anna Campbell, author of SEVEN NIGHTS IN A ROGUE’S BED"

For the time being it is only available as an ebook and can be found at AMAZON KINDLE, BARNES & NOBLE,  Lyrical Press and other reputable on line stores. With ebooks, the reviews and feedback at these sites is so important so please leave a review or rating. 

It is also up on Goodreads. 

Tomorrow is party day...I shall be hosting an online Launch Party at my Author Facebook page . There will be readings, giveaways and other fun...so watch this space.

In the meantime here is the Book Trailer for GATHER THE BONES (Or Gather the Bones - the movie)

The horrors of the Great War are not the only ghosts that haunt Helen Morrow and her late husband's reclusive cousin, Paul. 

Unquiet spirits from another time and another conflict touch them.

A coded diary gives them clues to the mysterious disappearance of Paul's great-grandmother in 1812, and the desperate voice of a young woman reaches  out to them from the pages. Together Helen and Paul must search for answers, not only for the old mystery, but also the circumstances surrounding the death of Helen's husband at Passchandaele in 1917.

As the mysteries entwine, their relationship is bound by the search for truth, in the present and the past.

Time with my tribe...RWAus12

At her breakfast talk on Sunday, Eloisa James, Romance Writers of Australia Conference key note speaker gave a talk on  the "Ten Things I know Now".  While it was not specifically one of the "Ten things", she spoke about the importance of friends and of finding your tribe .

What do we mean by "Tribe":
The Oxford dictionary definition is "..a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.."

It is our most basic human instinct, the need to gather in groups with a shared interest...which began with the instinct of survival. A group of hominids gathered together for food and protection. You can still see groups of hominids at your football match on a weekend - they are called Collingwood supporters (sorry, Australian Rules Football joke!).

Collingwood supporters on their way to the game...

Throughout our life we find ourselves drawn to different tribes. At school it was probably the "nerdy group" or the "cool group". Whichever group you belonged to (hands up here for the "nerdy" group), there was a shared collective interest and yes, inevitably, someone within that group would assume, generally by unspoken common agreement, a leadership role.

I lived in Singapore, as an Aussie expat in 2000-03. During that time I became acutely aware of the importance of my tribe. I was an Australian and the tribe would gather at the Australian High Commission to celebrate as a tribe (the opening of the Sydney Olympics and the Melbourne Cup celebrations).  Then came to September 2001 and more personally for the Australians, the Bali Bombings of Oct 2002. It was this latter event that drew us back to the High Commission to mourn as a tribe (and those exact words were used by the High Commissioner in his address). We all knew someone who had been affected by that terrible event. The school choir sang "We are Australian" and I still cannot hear that song without tears. I have never been so acutely conscious of the need for the tribe to gather together.



The stereotype of the lonely writer in a cold garret with the single guttering candle is a myth, at least as far as I am concerned. I wrote my first book in isolation and in 1997 I attended my first Romance Writers of Australia conference. I can still remember every workshop I attended, every writer I met...even asking the renowned Valerie Parv if she was a writer when I met her in the lift (I have come a LONG way!). Like Eloisa James at her first conference I met people at that conference who I have grown up with as a writer. Bronwyn Jamieson and I were the finalists in the Emma Darcy Award that year.  We both swore we would be published within the year...hmmm...it took us both a little longer than a year but we made it eventually and once again shared our traditional post conference Margeritas and reflected on our writing careers.

The "Historical" tribe at RWAus 12

Within the tribe there are sub tribes:  The friends I made during my time as President of RWA, the Conference Committees, the Historical writers (who meet for their traditional lunch on the Saturday), the published authors group - they are all my tribes.

The ANZA Writers group at the launch of Pink Gins 2003

In Singapore I found a wonderful tribe of writers - the ANZA Writers Group, a shared experience that resulted in the publication of two successful anthologies of short stories. It is only in the last eighteen months that I have found a new Writers Group.  Over the last twelve months we have met together regularly over numerous cups of coffee, shared our writing,  our disappointments and celebrated our successes.

And then there is social media which has opened up the whole world. I have writer friends on Facebook and Twitter from all corners of the world.  As a result my recent foray to RWA National in Anaheim felt like a coming home because I could instantly slot into my tribal groups - Hearts through History and the Beaumonde.

Meeting my new tribe...the Beaumonde...Anaheim 2012. Note the tribal uniform.

Fiona Lowe, winner of this year's  RITA commented that after the RITA awards ceremony she felt quite confident leaving RITA with the Australians gathered in Anaheim because they were her people. I'm not sure if she said "my tribe" but we were her tribe. Those Australians present at the Anaheim conference brought the roof down when her name was announced. She was one of US and we were fit to burst with pride. I have never been sporting but I am sure for those Australians (or whatever country) competing at the recent Olympics, the feeling must have been the same.

Far from being an isolating profession, my writing life is rich and full (maybe a little too full!) of social interaction. I call Facebook my "cyber water cooler" (or if I am continuing the tribal metaphor)...our campfire...where the members of the tribe gather and share not only their lives but where the good places are for our sustenance as writers - blogs, publishers, editors, agents. The twenty first century tribal lair.

But there is nothing, NOTHING, in this world like that annual gathering, our tribal corroboree. It is punctuated with shrieks of delight as we meet up, alcohol flows freely, we dance, we party and we celebrate our successes. At the end of each Annual Awards Dinner, Anne Gracie conducts the "stand up", where one by one each great and small achievement is publicly acknowledged.

Thank you to all my writing tribes, great and small. I couldn't be a writer without you.

The video below is a tribute to the memory of those Bali Bombings and the time the Australian expats in Singapore clung together as a tribe mourning the loss of their own. I defy you to watch it without a tear...

IN DEFENCE (ONCE AGAIN) OF ROMANCE WRITING

After being on the highest of highs following the American conference, I hit the ground with a thump this week after a thoughtless comment on one of my lists, from a male, I shall call Mr. X,  (no names, no pack drill) that derided both women and romance writers in the single strike of the keyboard (I do miss the swipe of a pen...!). 

You know something?  I am not ashamed to call myself a Romance Writer. I am out and proud. 

I like being around other romance writers. It is my tribe. It is a place where people write happy stories and they tend to be happy people. 


When I wrote my first book I didn't even know I had written "a romance". I had simply written a story -- the sort of story I liked to read with plenty of action, a dashing hero, a strong heroine and, most importantly a happy ever after ending. I didn't know that books had "labels" and if you didn't fit neatly under that label you were condemned to a marginal land where you could never be published. 

What was worse I didn't realise that by adopting one of the labels ("Romance") I would be condemned to a world of the perpetual lip curl.

A friend read my manuscript (written on our primitive computer using good old Word Perfect 5.1), declared it readable and suggested I joined the Romance Writers of Australia because they had contests for stories such as mine. I entered it and that year came second, went to my first conference, learned who Norah Roberts was and a romance writer was born...Only there was a problem, saying I was a romance writer out loud was almost as hard as I imagine it would be saying I was a born again Christian. People looked at me in a strange way (and I learned the lip curl) and I found myself making mumbled excuses and trying to explain my work as "really more historical than romance". 

The facts are there on the Romance Writers of America website for anyone who wishes to read them. If you like statistics...here they are. In short Romance Fiction accounts for $1.36 billion in sales each year - the largest share of the consumer-book market. More than a quarter of all books sold are romance and are read by approximately 75 million people each year. The nearest genre fiction (Mystery) doesn't even come close. If you want an indication of the popularity of romance fiction, here is a photo from the Literacy Signing put on by Romance Writers of America just a few weeks ago... Have I missed the point, but why is writing romance a bad thing...?

Many, many writers  make a good living from writing romance. How many other writers can claim that? 

And you know something -- scratch any book genre, literary or other and I bet you find a relationship at its heart. It may not have a HEA but I'm betting there are two characters in that story who are attracted to each other. Romance is about the fundamental of human needs, relationships. It is about love. It is about overcoming obstacles. Even Mr. X's books have love at their heart (I know because I looked him up). So why did he feel he had  to dismiss a group of women writers just because he considered them "romance writers" and therefore somehow unworthy?

Not your preconception of a romance writer?

In my stint as President of Romance Writers of Australia I came across this attitude often -- mostly from the press. Some cub reporter would be sent to interview me, no doubt imaging Barbara Cartland or worse, a housewife in curlers and slippers (they are UGG boots NOT slippers!). In a bored voice, she (or he) would ask..."And what do you do for your real job"? (Yes...they did say "real" job). When I answered "I'm a lawyer", you could almost hear their eyes widening and their back straightening as their preconceptions of romance writers flew out of the window.

Dear old Babs...she didn't really do us romance writers a lot of favours, but by jingo she sold a lot of books!

So what did I do about Mr. X?  No point entering into a debate with people with those sort of preconceptions. All you can do is politely point out their mistakes of fact and walk away. They will continue to believe what they want to believe or they may think "Perhaps I was wrong?"