Imperfect solution

I got a lubbly bit of poetree 4u

The Canyons is the greatest story being told

A movie might save Lindsay Lohan from Hell – no not jail, reality TV.

THE crazy true story of the making of the neo-noir Hollywood film The Canyons for $250,000 will be turned into a film one day and it will make hundreds of millions of dollars one day.

If you have not caught up with the tragi-comedy, which would make Samuel Beckett jealous, get on-board straight away.

Lazarus Syndrome inspires comic short story

Return from the dead: read a fictional short story about a true-life medical condition

ANOTHER LAZARUS

Belinda Janz

DEAR Aunty Jo,

This last fortnight has been such an emotional rollercoaster ride that I have decided to write this letter as we can hardly believe it. Really, it’s too much to relay to the Captain of your ship.

As you know now, Mum passed away Monday two weeks ago while visiting her doctor.

Autistic boy teaches colorful magic

Enjoy this illsutrated short story from the anthology

Can you believe it...

BRILLIANT COLOURS

Kay Curran

THERE are many ways of experiencing colour! The artist and the poet express the colours around them in amazing ways. Some people see their feelings in colour from the golden joy of a parent when they hold their child for the first time to the red of frustration and tiredness as their special child grows up.

My grandson, who is 6-years-old, going on a hundred, was taught about the meaning of colour for him when he was only 3-years-old. His mother realised he was different, special, and a friend suggested he could be Asperger’s when she heard one of his meltdowns over the phone.

The meltdown comes with a blood curdling sound, very red and frustrated. Not just a tantrum that the average child will throw but different, signalling absolute anxiety, fear or terror of whatever makes his world almost unliveable at the time. It can be something as simple as a decision to walk down the steps that day.

We were fortunate enough to find a very good psychologist who worked wonders with him. However it caused all our families’ bank balances to turn red! You can believe that!

‘Doc’, as he called her, taught him that if he had red thoughts he would have red feelings and he had to learn to turn them into green thoughts and feelings. It was fascinating to see how this came about. One day, he came for his session, and, hardly able to pronounce the words, told Doc that he had white thoughts and feelings. ‘Mmmm, tell me about it,’ was her amazed reply. It was not something you heard at a psychologists’ conference or found in any research books.  He explained patiently that ‘angry, cranky and scared were very red feelings’ and he understood he had to make them green. ‘But,’ he said, ‘there is a different feeling altogether and it is white.’ Well the psychologists of Queensland have learnt something new and colourful.

At home with me one day he announced our dog Dove was very sad. I dismissed it by saying, ‘Oh go and give her a hug.’ Then I heard chattering coming from behind my chair, and there was my little man explaining gently to the dog, ‘Now Dove, your white feelings are coming from your white thoughts and you need to make them green.’ Can you believe it?

It has been, and I am sure will continue to be, a fascinating journey with this young man who has been on this earth a mere six years. Doc calls him her ‘little old Einstein!’ He has now been diagnosed with autism “officially” and like other special children we are given to nurture, he will make his own special mark on the world. We are blessed that he is classified as a “high functioning autistic”. He is able to talk and has a habit of doing so constantly. This can cause the listener to have feelings tingeing on the red! You can believe that!

When he started Prep School last year his grandfather asked him if he liked school, and he replied ‘Of course!’  His thinking was that if you go to school you like it – a green thought or rule he has set up?

He may be a book critic in the making.  Given a Prep book to read he said it was silly as they only changed one word in the whole book. The Year 1 book received a similar critique. The Year 2 book was considered ‘not bad’ but, when they took him back to advanced Year 1, he had comments coming from feelings bordering on the red. He said, ‘This book is rather silly; do you think I am a child?’ spoken politely but definitely.

As part of his therapy he gets to go horse riding each week and I am sure his horse Sugar, has been given the ‘white thoughts’ lecture in his own special gentle green way.

His twin sister has now been diagnosed with Asperger’s but, just to keep the teachers hopping, girls with Asperger’s present differently.  I pray every night for their teachers because their big brother who is 14 months older than the twins is also on the Asperger’s/autism spectrum.

I think the difficulties they have, and will continue to have, probably make them even more wonderful. Their proud grandparents spruik about them constantly. Don’t ever ask grandma and granddad about the kids or you could end up with tired ears and red thoughts. You can believe it!

The latest is that when his mother told him the hug he gave her was ‘a real hug’ she was asked, ‘What are the elements of a real hug, Mummy?’ The next day when he was giving granddad his new real big hug I noticed he was also patting him on the back.  I leaned over and quietly asked, ‘Is the patting part of a real hug?’ In his own special way he grinned and answered, ‘Of course!’

He had said a year or so before that he had ‘blue’ thoughts for ‘special circumstances’ and I gather the ‘real hugs’ come under that colour. 

However they are very ‘normal’ children and drive their mum and dad often to ‘red thoughts’ each day.  But at night, when they are asleep you cannot stop smiling at them with loving golden thoughts. Many thanks to God for lending them to us in all their brilliant colours of red, green, white and the occasional blue.

Give the Word, the greatest gift of all

TOMORROW, February 14, is International Book Giving Day and there you thought it was St Val’s Day.

Book Giving Day is dedicated to putting new and used books into the hands of as many of the world’s children as possible.

A comprehensive run-down on it, so I do have to re-invent the wheel, or the bookmark is HERE 

I am all for Book Giving Day but we need to expand the age criteria of the beneficiaries. I want out kids to read more but one of the best ways to achieve that is for adults to lead by example. If a child sees an adult they admire engaged in the pursuit of reading, they will be inspired to follow the leader.

So let’s all volunteer to give one book away tomorrow to either a child or an adult. You over-achievers out there are allowed to give more than one book because you are going to do it anyway.

I am giving a inscribed copy of my novel Iraqi Icicle to a colleague who finishes up a six-week contract on Friday. In the topsy-turvy world of modern journalism, six weeks of paid work is better than nothing. But it does not provide much security for a single mum.

She might enjoy my comic neo-noir thriller and will doubtless appreciate the gift.

Romance authors and their readers must already be inspired. Inscribe you book gift and it doubles as a greeting card. Insert a red rose in the middle pages; put a box of chocolates underneath and you have the best Val’s Day pressie ever.

Please make a comment if you are on board with the plan and share what you have in mind.

Now for a little mood music, a wee love song.

The Life of D: a bleak novel

Possible cover for my work-in-progress The Life of D

I wish I could write a life-affirming novel like The Life of Pi. It is just not my voice.

I would like Barack Obama writing to me as he did to Pi author Yann Martel. The president could take quill to paper to write about my novel Iraqi Icicle. He could write something like ‘…an elegant proof of the existence of Good and Evil and bloody good read, mate.’ But presidents really like to endorse life-affirming books not a sardonic neo-noir wild ride like Iraqi Icicle.

Why is that goody-two-shoes constant Pi getting all the attention, anyway, with people making songs, books and movies about it. I believe I am safe ground in presuming Marten’s  title has some reference to that circular thingy pi.

Pi is a very pushy number always putting itself first, as in 2πr and πd. The speed of light is happily last in mc^2. In my novel the life of D, the eponymous D struggles against the evil warlord Pi. Chapters 5-107 will metaphorically reference the injustice of the circumference of a circle not being universally accepted as dπ.

If it were not for us writers, these important issues would pass by un-noticed.

It is like Sammy Beckett wrote in Waiting for Godot

‘How is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there-or therabouts-and only one speaks of a thief being saved.’

Exactly, what is going on here? Is someone trying to pull the wool over our eyes? And to what purpose?

Or what about Alfred Doolittle’s rant in Pygmalion?

‘I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. …

 I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more.’

You can’t argue with that splendid logic, but it took George Bernard Shaw to right it up for us all to see.

Barack Obama need not encourage these life-affirming novelists. Martel conceded writing The Life of Pi was its own rewards – the hefty royalty checks probably helped too. Let’s support us writers, shining our sardonic flashlights on the noir crawl spaces of life.

'A good clear eye on the dirty ways of the world' 

Help me make it through the write

THE Richard Stephenson debut novel, the dystopian Collapse,  is going gang busters.

Richard has kindly accepted an offer to present one of his blog posts of my choosing…

…We know it takes two to tango and three to trio but surely a competent author can produce a decent novel by themselves. ‘

Let’s read what Richard has to say on the topic.

Independent Author" - An Oxymoron

That phrase for me is the textbook definition of an oxymoron, like "Act Naturally" or "Jumbo Shrimp".

READ the rest of Richard’s guest post:

Start reading groovy

Do you want this man rampaging through your house?

ARE readers actually reading books these days? It is a fair question.