‘Love’ for Enid Blyton inspires – People – News – Inner West Courier.
Inspiration
A stylish thank you.
Elizabeth Taylor is one of the patron saints of my garden writing shed. For everyone who has been so wonderful to my book the last few weeks I wish I could thank you with as much style and beauty as this stylish beauty. xx
Aussie Book Review: Poet’s Cottage by Josephine Pennicott
Early reviews so far have all been wonderful for Poet’s Cottage. I’m so thrilled to see other readers enjoying my characters and my Tasmanian mystery! This weekend I’m definitely going to create a review section on my Blog! Thank you to Aussie Book Review for this review. I’m so chuffed to read the following :
Poet’s Cottage is a ghostly mystery which spans three generations and covers themes of mental illness, infidelity, childhood abuse and the dramas of a small town in the 1930’s.
In the author’s note, Josephine says she set out to create an English-style mystery but with an Australian setting and I think she captured this perfectly. When I read this, I felt as captivated as I did when I read Sara Foster’s ghostly mystery Beneath the Shadows- which I also loved.
Highly recommended!
A House with a Tale to Tell
One day I will organise myself to do a proper media section for my Blog. But at the moment I’m still doing publicity for Poet’s Cottage and finishing off the first draft of my Currawong book. For now, here is a peek at the article that appeared on my in Sydney’s Sunday Herald. If you press on this link HERE, you can read it. Thank you to my writing friend, Richard Harland who owns a scanner and knows what to do with it. xx
A House with a Tale to Tell Josephine Pennicott in Herald
A long playing record for the weekend.
Another busy week doing publicity for Poet’s Cottage and still trying to finish the first draft of the Currawong book.
This has to be my favourite graffiti in Newtown yet. My friend snapped this photo for me today and no – I didn’t do it.
I’ve so enjoyed meeting journalists like Blanche Clark (Herald Sun, Melbourne) and Steve Meacham (Herald, Sydney). One of the biggest surprises of the publicity part of writing was the pleasure of meeting people whose names I’ve seen in print for years. Not that I met Blanche in person – but I know what my tired brain is trying to say. I am still being woken nightly by my daughter who has developed a terror of her school-hat at night.
For my Tasmanian readers, the Sunday Tasmanian will be running a piece on Poet’s Cottage and the Tasmanian influences behind it this Sunday.
Tonight I am off to see the ever beautiful Jane Birkin sing. I’ve always been partial to this duet, Je Taime… Mon Non Plus she did with Serge Gainsbourg and have thought I would like it played at my funeral just for a change of pace. My god they both look so beautiful in this video. I read that it was rumoured by the media that Serge had sex with Jane (and his previous girlfriend Brigitte Bardot) when he recorded it. He apparently quipped to Birkin, ‘Thank goodness I didn’t or it would have been a long playing record.’
Enjoy your weekend. May it be filled with amorous creativity, passion, beauty, and adventures. xx
A Different Light
I’m not the world’s biggest Marilyn Monroe fan but for some reason I seem to own five rather large coffee-table MM books which I can never bring myself to cull because I love looking at her jewellery, gowns and make-up. I caught the movie My Week With Marilyn with Art School Annie last week and thought Michelle Williams did a very good job portraying such an iconic figure.
I admire Marilyn because she came from a humble background (like moi) but was always trying to improve herself. Unlike the stars today who often brag about being dumb, Marilyn desperately wanted to be taken seriously. She sought out the company of intellectuals and writers. I feel so dispirited at times with the ‘skank’ culture of today.
I love Marilyn for her book collection of over 400 books and because books were such a refuge and joy to her.
I admire her strength, her insecurity, her tenacity and her love of animals as well. There’s a blog HERE that covers Marilyn’s love of books better than I have time to do.
This weekend displayed to me how much can change in a year. Last year my daughter’s party was about tulle, tiaras and pink princesses. This year we had Goth-painted nails, monsters, black balloons, ghouls and creepy Monster High dolls.
I have a busy week of doing interviews for Poet’s Cottage and trying to nail the first draft of Currawong Manor. Here is a link to another early review HERE which I loved for Poet’s Cottage. It still seems so surreal that people are actually reading the book I spent so many years upon. I shall have to organise myself to add a review section to my tatty, scatty website.
After the party. Daisy and I walk home in Sydney light.
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Enjoy your week and happy reading. xx
Italian Family
Italian Family starring the sublime Moncia Bellucci – an add doesn’t come better than this one. I love adds and paintings that tell a story.
http://youtu.be/1fLSZs6IrQI
The Truth the Dead Know
Monday with Sexton – Witch of Words
The Truth the Dead Know
Gone, I say and walk from the church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped.
They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
