ortendaysthatshookmybooty
Yippy yippy ya ya yeh
I'm gonna smoke sixty cones today
Siren Boyd's birthday takes a turn for the worse when she is summoned to the home of her uncle, Big George Hay. George wants to hold a huge barbecue that will be the envy of his underworld rivals and he's decided that Siren is the woman to organise it. Handfuls of money make it an offer she can't refuse.
Televised warfare, inner city swelter, Maori wrestlers, a female Elvis, lesbian kickboxers. and the return of Siren's old flame Ike combine to turn up the heat. And when the flames get too high, Siren's there to douse them...with kero.
au.s.agentsaid
'...this is hip and sharp, and Siren is a sassy and utterly original character. Unfortunately...it pains me especially to be calling this, in effect, "too Australian"'.'
I'd heard stories of second novel syndrome - where you had ten years to write your first book, and only a year for the next, and let me say, it's true. But it's much, much worse than that when you have had a glowing response for your first book, publishers wanting a repeat of it, people telling you how great you are and NO FUCKING IDEA of how the business operates. The publishing business, or the novel-writing business.
Nature Strip, as I've already said, was written in a period of intense mourning, and I can't remember ANYTHING about plotting or character development. When it came time to work on Big Man's Barbie, I knew I wanted something light and funny, and I had the character of Siren - this incredibly angry cyclone chick - but when it came to plotting, I was lost.
I wrote one draft. The publishers loved it, BUT...
I wrote another draft. Brand new, right from the start. The publishers loved this one too, BUT...
I wrote another. Brand new, right from the start, again. I was getting more of an idea, but the publishers only LIKED it this time. I was getting frustrated.
I wrote one more draft. It was full of frustration, but a hundred great one-liners. The publishers waited three months before telling me they did NOT LIKE this draft at all. I don't know if it's that they didn't like it, or they waited three months to tell me that, but, for the first and not the last time, the AUTHOR hit the ROOF.
I had an agent at the time, and she helped me embark on the quest of exiting my contract. All sorts of nastiness ensued, and many times through the
On the agent's advice, I went with Random House Australia, who promised the world in publicity, but when the book finally came out in late 1996, they gave me a truly memorable book launch, complete with belly dancer, but absolutely no coverage. The book was expected to sell itself, and naturally, it didn't. Nowhere near the blockbuster everyone expected, it made reasonable sales, snapped up by the Nature Strip "cult" readership, but was percieved by all concerned as FAILURE.
It's far from that. Now, I'm my own harshest critic, but even I think it's very, very funny. It depicts Newtown in the early 90s faithfully, and it has so many "in" jokes and references that it's practically a black hole. The PROBLEM is, for all its sharp humour, the PLOT is a MADHOUSE. When I was writing it, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, and the result is a funny, stylish compendium of one-liners. Read on that level, it's fine. But as a story, there's no real meat.
By the time Big Man's Barbie was even typeset, I'd learnt my lesson. An old one, but I've employed it ever since - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.
Click to read about the book I'm proudest of - Glue