Tall And True for Writers, Readers & Publishers

Agatha Christie's "Blue Year"

When Writing NSW asked if I would like to review On the Blue Train by Kristel Thornell, a novel about the eleven days in 1926 when Agatha Christie disappeared, I thought it would be an interesting assignment and a chance to learn more about this famous author and to perhaps finally read one of her books.

First Sentences on Instagram

A little while back I published a Writing Tips article on Tall And True titled, Writing First Sentences (March 2018). The piece was in part inspired by a series I have been posting to Instagram of photos of books tagged as #bookcovers and #firstsentences.

Albums That Changed Your Life

A friend nominated me for a recent Facebook challenge, "Albums that changed your life". It also appears as the "Ten album challenge", the "Pictorial music challenge", the "Seven all time favourite albums" or as the "what-the-heck, I'm just posting my favourites LPs!"

Three Visits to Dahab

Dahab sits on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, 80 km northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh on the bottom tip, 148 km south of Israel and Jordan, and across the Gulf of Aqaba from Saudi Arabia, whose desert hills are visible from the beachfront on sunrise and sunset.

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Fiction

A Mona Lisa Smile

A faded photo of my dad from the 1970s inspired this microfiction. He had a faraway look in his eyes and a Mona Lisa smile on his much younger face. As art lovers have done for centuries with Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, I wondered what was on my dad's mind when the photo was taken?

We Need to Talk

To celebrate the introduction of 280-character Tweets by Twitter, Meanjin Quarterly ran a microfiction competition. The rules were simple: tweet a 280-character story and include the hashtag #meanjin280! The top ten stories to be published on the Meanjin Blog and the authors paid $1 a word.

"Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies." ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

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Her

It's a warm, sunny day and I'm strolling along Brighton Promenade during my lunch break. The seagulls are circling and squawking and the sun's shimmering on the flat blue-green English Channel.

Classroom Conservation

My class had a lesson on "conservation" at school the other day. Miss said that this was where people reused old things or used new things more carefully. She said conservation was important to stop the world from getting more dirty and to help make it healthy again.

A Moving Statue

"And now the piece de resistance," the old Colonel announced, leading his guest into a sunlit garden. "What do you think?" he enquired, waving his walking stick at the garden's centrepiece. Two life-size marble figures stood face to face, their hands caressing each other, their lips fused in a kiss.

Nonfiction

Three Visits to Dahab

An Editor's Magic Touch

It's little wonder many writers thank their editors in forewords, dedications and acknowledgements. As I've found writing book reviews for Writing NSW, editors have a magic touch when it comes to reviewing a writer's work and suggestings edits.

"When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters." ~ Marya Hornbacher

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A Perth Boy's Perspective on the Vietnam War

As a kid growing up in Perth, W.A., in the 1960s and ’70s, I didn’t learn about the Vietnam War from classroom history lessons. Vietnam and the broader Indochina War were on our radio and TV news every morning and evening and in the front page headlines of our daily newspapers.

Blank page, sharp pencil, first sentences

Writing First Sentences

To help overcome writer's block and start writing the first sentences of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway is said to have reminded himself: “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

Queens Park Dog Walkers

One day in 2001, I saw Amy the yellow lab in Queens Park with her owner, “The bloke with a beard”. He told me that ‘John had died’ and ‘Amy was missing him’. It took a few moments before I realised he was talking about a fellow dog walker, “The old bloke who walked Amy the lab for his neighbour”.

Reviews

Agatha Christie's "Blue Year"

Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills

Jennifer Mills sets Dyschronia in the run-down coastal town of Clapstone. Sam is twenty-five years old. The town views Sam as an oracle and depends upon her visions for their survival. And yet a great catastrophe has occurred: the sea has disappeared, seemingly taking with it Clapstone’s last hope.

"When you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life." ~ Lev Grossman

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Ex Machina Movie

Over the summer holidays, I caught an ABC Science Show podcast, The Year in Tech. Science reporter, Ariel Bogle, discussed with her editor, Jonathan Webb, tech stories that had caught her eye in 2017. She opened with an audio clip from the Ex Machina movie that instantly spiked my interest.

Dog On It by Spencer Quinn

Dog On It is the first book in Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mystery series. It’s a detective novel, featuring Bernie Little, “a slightly down-at-heel private investigator” and Chet, his “partially K-9 trained” dog. Chet is also the narrator of the story.

Loopholes by Susan McCreery

Loopholes by Thirroul based author, Susan McCreery, is a collection of microfiction, or very short stories. Wiktionary.org defines the genre as, “Fiction that has a significantly shorter than average length.” Synonyms include drabble, flash fiction, flashfic, short-short story, sudden fiction and even twitterature.