Vale Kerry Greenwood

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Journey well, Kerry Greenwood.
     Journey well, Kerry and thank you for all your inspiration and supportive words to me.
     One of the highlights of my writing career was being presented with my second Sisters in Crime stiletto shoe by Kerry. I was also fortunate to benefit from her generous sponsorship of the Domestic Malice Prize which I won in 2003 and 2004 for my two short stories: Tadpole and Hail Mary.
     I’m reposting my original blog post 1am in Melbourne in honour of her. She epitomised the best of boho Melbourne.
     Condolences to all who knew, loved and will always cherish Kerry. Especially to her long-term soulmate David Greagg and the Sisters in Crime who were very close to her.
A link also to the ABC online tribute to her.

Nosferatu, the Strigoi, and a Tree of Cockatoos

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I liked Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu a lot. I didn’t love it as much as I loved his first film, The Witch (2015), although I preferred it to The Lighthouse (2019).

I enjoyed its painterly feel, the costumes and its Grimm fairytale feel. It felt like a very dark enchanted version of The Pied Piper. But the frequent jump scares and close-ups didn’t work for me. I found The Witch to be genuinely unsettling and creepy and I’ve watched it several times, but Nosferatu just had too many gross scenes which detracted from its terror factor for me. I enjoyed the early scenes the most where Thomas Hutter approaches Orlok’s castle in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains, the slightly trippy scenes with the Romanis and I would have loved more of the monastery sequence.

However, Robert Eggers is one of the most interesting filmmakers around, and I relate to his influences of dark fairytales, mythology, the supernatural and folktales. I was inspired by the fact that he has long-wanted to remake Nosferatu, but other work got in the way and the project fell through a couple of times.

Eggers’ vision for this remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was simmering away for decades. I have it on DVD, and highly recommend it for its haunting aesthetic. His fascination for it goes back to high school when he co-directed a school production, and he wore out his VHS copy. When the timing was right and when the world was ready (as I also saw it as a Covid metaphor film) and the Gods aligned, his Nosferatu was finally made.

Eggers – known for his thorough research – studied Murnau’s Nosferatu and Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as Romanian folklore, Paracelsian metaphysics and the occult beliefs of Albin Grau (production designer and producer on the 1922 Nosferatu).

In this Vanity Fair interview (I’ll link below), he talks about the undead and how even as recently as 2000 in Southern Romania a strigoi (undead) attacked a girl at night. Following tradition, the village’s vampire hunter disinterred the body and removed the heart, and the attacks ceased.

Five thousand live rats were used in the film (lucky actors and extras). No rats were harmed, and all were trained. Rats in the foreground are the ‘hero extra rats’; the background rats were CGI.

I saw Nosferatu at Mount Vic Flicks in Mount Victoria which our family loves to frequent. As we entered the cinema, we were treated to the sight of a tree of cockatoos, a fairytale in its own right.      

Links:  The Dark Lord of Fine Details

A Village Still In Thrall to Dracula

CICADA DREAMING

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2024 – the Year of the Dragon was filled with endings for me. It was a grey silver coloured year where art, writing, trips to Hobart, concerts and books kept me afloat amongst the many challenges. Globally, it was painful to witness events. It was overwhelming and I had many challenges with family members as well. This year more than many others, I was forced into focusing and being grateful for the ‘small’ everyday miracles. A curious kookaburra, sunshine, a smile in the street from a stranger. Street libraries, the shape of clouds and waking up every day with a roof over my head. Unlike so many in the world.
     I read 76 books and I wrote two. I came close to finding my Champion Literary agent a couple of times but mainly received rejection letters comprising: love the idea and the writing is good BUT in this current climate…
     I had magickal times with new friends and finally saw Nick Cave in concert and also, did the Pennicott Wilderness Journeys tour in Hobart.
     Joanna Lumley was also fun to listen to at the Opera House and to see my daughter, Daisy flourish at Sydney University was a highlight.
     Mostly, I savoured my daily walks around Blackheath and the Spring this year was the most sublime I can recall. The Cicadas returned to the village after an absence of 7 years and their daily roaring song was sublime, uplifting and transformative!
     I’m not Buddhist but I like this blessing prayer so extending it to all who stumble across my page, and if you also found 2024 a challenge, a struggle and silver grey in colour, I see you. New Moon blessings to all. 🌑🗝️🌹🪶
‘May all dangers be averted and all disease be gone. May no obstacle come across your way. May you enjoy fulfilment and long life. For all whose in heart dwells respect, who follow the wisdom and compassion of the Way. May your life prosper in the four blessings of old age, beauty, happiness and strength.’ 🌹

A CHRISTIE FOR CHRISTMAS – THE MOVING FINGER

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The sweet limbo time between Christmas and New Year is always perfect for re-reading old favourites from loved authors. My Christie for Christmas pick was The Moving Finger. A Miss Marple mystery (although she doesn’t make an appearance until Chapter Ten). But it’s a fun read about siblings Jerry and Joanna Burton who move to sleepy Lymstock for Jerry to convalesce after he’s injured in a plane crash. Expecting peace and the usual small town dramas the siblings are met with a poison pen letter-writer and the inevitable grisly murder. 

Agatha considered The Moving Finger to be one of her best novels and there’s much to admire in this pacy read which showcases a lot of Agatha tropes: a fun bright young couple in Jerry and Joanna, a village witch in Mrs Cleat, a seemingly sweet old-fashioned spinster in Miss Emily Barton, a rather dour maid you wouldn’t want to mess with in Partridge, an eccentric young girl in Megan Hunter, an earnest village doctor in Dr Owen Griffith and his devoted sister, Aimee. The Reverend Caleb Dane Calthrop and his wife, the formidable Maud Dane Calthrop. Megan’s stepfather, the dry repressed Mr Symmington and his stunning children’s governess, Elsie Holland and several other fascinating characters that Agatha captures so beautifully.

There’s even a romance or two which I’m sure Agatha enjoyed creating. Megan Hunter is a character I’ve found irritating in previous reads although this time around she’s grown on me.

I also love the fictional Lymstock: a village where visitors bring calling cards, the main street boasts two rival butchers, two pubs, a straggling draper’s shop and a beautiful old church dating back to the 1400s. It’s fun watching Joanna and Jerry, bright young Londoners react to this quintessentially English village.

The title was derived from a poem Agatha admired, of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: not all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. 

My only complaint is I wish there was more Miss Marple. It really could have been a stand-alone sans Marple and been a rollicking read but having her enter in Chapter Ten is a bit frustrating.

 

 The Moving Finger was published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943. I highly recommend it for a cosy Christmas Christie read.

‘One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year round,’ said Miss Marple placidly.

Then, seeming to feel it was expected of her, she laid down her crochet, and delivered a gentle old-maidish dissertation on murder. 

“The great thing is in these cases to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple. This one was. Quite sane and straightforward – and quite understandable – in an unpleasant way, of course.”  – Miss Marple: The Moving Finger    

Image by llya Milstein

In the Eternity

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‘Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.’ AC
Happy Spirit birthday to Agatha Christie born on this day 15 September 1890. I’m forever grateful for her books and her creation of Miss Marple. 🦋 A couple of favourite photographs of Agatha by Lord Snowdon taken in June 1976. I think he’s captured her beautifully.

 

Also, a couple of photos taken in 2017 when I was overjoyed to visit Greenway, Agatha’s holiday home in Devon. I had the most spectacular day there and still feel such joy that I stood in the same spot in the library as the Queen of Crime.

  A link to a post from Collecting Christie about the Snowdon photo shoot with Dame Agatha Christie.

https://www.collectingchristie.com/post/snowdon

A SPELL OF STONE – IMBOLC BLESSINGS

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At Bridget’s Well
By Doireann Ní Ghríofa
When rain fell on a path of stone,
one by one, we appeared alone.
Each of us wore a different face,
but we were all the same –
drawn by ache to lift green latches,
drawn by want to walk the dark
passage. Past paper stares, we knelt
and wept, we who fed the well in rivulets,
whose plunged wrists trembled
with vessels of blue violets.
We each spoke a spell of stone
and in her gloom heard prayers turn poems.
Ask her, Bríd, what will be
come of us?
Listen. Liquid, the syllables;
the echo, luminous.

And belated birthday and Spirit birthday wishes to Kate Bush and Emily Bronte who share the same birthdate (30th July) and are forever connected through Wuthering Heights.

Young Kate Bush with her brother John Carder Bush

Kate’s hand written lyrics to Wuthering Heights

 

 

 

 

BONEHEAD

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In a tumultuous year for me personally and for the world, it was a diamond dark treat to have a new Mo Hayder book – BONEHEAD – published posthumously.

I’ve loved all of Mo’s standalone novels just as I adore her broody, brilliant Jack Caffery series – and BONEHEAD didn’t disappoint. It has some classic Mo tropes. There’s a speculative edge with its urban ghost story of the female Bonehead. Twists that lead the book into unexpected dark alleyways. Nuanced characters who stay with you long after you reach the final page. An ending that feels like an icy finger tracing your spine. A wonderful sense of place and atmosphere with the English village Eastonbirt.

Some graphic scenes that some readers might feel need trigger warnings but Mo’s fans know her books will enter dark places. Believe me, it’s worth the journey into the shadows. BONEHEAD feels wonderfully gothic in places as well as being a police procedural. The writing is excellent. Mo packs so much into a few sentences. A foreword by Karin Slaughter expresses eloquently how Mo was respected by so many writers around the world, and her influence on women writing crime.

Without giving away spoilers, BONEHEAD centres around an urban legend that has frightened teenagers in Eastonbirt for years. The Bonehead, rumoured to be a local gypsy prostitute in the last century, was lured to her death by one of her johns and thrown into a ravine. Her face was eaten by rodents but her body mummified; the john returns frequently to have sex with the corpse. Stay with me. Her spirit haunts the area, luring locals to their death.

A coach bringing teenagers home from a school reunion crashes. Seven are killed and three permanently disabled. One teenager, Alex Mullins, believes she saw the Bonehead standing over her at the time of the crash. Alex becomes a police officer in London but returns to Eastonbirt a couple of years later, unable to let go of what she saw. She tries to track down her surviving school friends to solve the mystery.

I loved every word of BONEHEAD. I was up way past midnight finishing it in an emotional mess. OK, I did skip the dog scene parts as I just can’t go there… I tried to eke it out knowing it’s the final Mo Hayder – unless another shows up in the attic, or if the remaining drafts of her speculative novels (written as Theo Clare) are released.

I’ve written about Clare’s death before and how it affected me HERE. Mo will always be for me the kindest, fascinating, courageous, talented and beautiful-inside-and-out soul. We lost her too young at 59, but her razor-sharp intelligent, extraordinary stories remain. BONEHEAD is a worthy addition to her already impressive legacy. I just wish there was more.

Mo Hayder aka Clare Dunkel born 02 January, 1962 died 27 July, 2021

 

THE BRIDE MARRIED TO AMAZEMENT

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Happy Spirit birthday Clare aka Mo Hayder. Shine brightly, beauty. I hope you’re writing up a storm✨Never ✨forgotten.🌹

‘When it’s over, I want to say all my life
‘I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
(When Death Comes)’

 

 

A BLUE YEAR FAREWELL

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2023 was a year the colour of blue for me. The muted silver blue of a Tasmanian sky and sea. I loved being home in July, inhaling Hobart’s salty air, walking familiar streets, knowing I’m close to Antarctica. After years of mountain life it was a week of blue bliss.

It was also a big transitional year for my daughter who started at Sydney University. I wrote (nearly every day). Read (over 62 books). Reading was once again my haven, comfort, my joy this year. If you’re interested in the books I’ve posted them on my Goodreads, Instagram and Author Facebook Page.

I didn’t achieve my personal target of reading more classics but that’s something to aim for in 2024. So grateful for authors, bookstores, libraries including street libraries.

As the world continues to seem more fragmented and volatile I found stability and grace through books.

I continued to write and I am now querying agents. I completed the Curtis Brown Creative Course in Writing a Psychological Thriller with Erin Kelly which I loved and would recommend.

I facilitated Moon Circles for my Mystic Rose Clinic, continued building my Reiki business and did evening care for an elderly lady in the village. We finally staged David’s Ghost Hunting play in January. It wasn’t the best year of my life (hard not to be overwhelmed with the fragmented state of the world) but it was still a year filled with blue. There was much to be grateful for. And I am.

 May 2024 bring you unexpected blessings.