The Fires, reading and what the BLEEP should I write

My mini holiday to relax in a cottage and take in the history of the Gold Fields has been postponed due to the horrendous heat of yesterday (46 degrees Celcius) in which half of regional Victoria has gone up in flames.

"Poor me", right? I don't get to have a holiday. It's okay, I'm not that shallow. I can't believe that last night while I was hanging at a friend's house, and while I was sleeping I was blissfully unaware that houses, hundreds of thousands of acres of bush land, and worse still - people - were burning.

I'm in Melbourne at the moment, the highway back to my home was closed off at one point, but I think it's open again now. My family are seriously thinking about making a fire plan now. We should have done it long ago. However, if you're not home when there is a fire (i.e our kitchen fire mid last year) there's really nothing you can do about it, nothing you can save.

I feel for the people of Boolarra and Yinnar who are now surrounded by more fire - even in Churchill, where my Uni is. Churchill was under threat earlier today and I don't know how it's going now. My thoughts are with everyone living and working down there.
I haven't been back in the area since November, and I can't imagine what I'm going to find. I have a meeting on campus on Thursday, so I better prepare myself for the devastation. I feel for the animals that couldn't get out. I know there are a lot of wallabies and rabbits in the area.
Fire would be a horrible, horrible way to go.

Okay, let's shake it off. Shake shake shake, get onto a nicer topic. And of course, that would be writing.

I'm doing my head in at the moment as new ideas are flooding me and I'm getting so confused as to which is the best one, which one I want to write first.

Do I write the one about the Aussie girl who through a serious of circumstances gets swept up into Hollywood and the tabloid feeding frenzy?

How about the one about the girl who's twin brother is a huge gamer, and when he dies she decides to infiltrate the gaming world and try and win the championship he was so close to winning?

Or the one about the twelve year old who's family move a lot, and she doesn't have any friends - except for a stray dog that she meets in her newest town, that teaches her and those around her a lot about friendship and love?

Oh! Or the year 12 student who's finding her friends growing up too quickly, driving, moving out, having sex, and she's determined to make the most of her last year of her youth - and she's certainly not going to fall in love!

What to do what to do...

Well what I've decided to do is block my ears and say: "Nar nar nar nar nar" and read.

I went to Borders today - always an expensive exercise - and have a bunch of new books to start reading. I'm reading about 5 at the same time at the moment which sort of proves where my head's at. It's all over the place.

Ah well. What I'm reading today are:



I know, aren't I naughty? Are you there God I believe is the YA most banned book ever, for its racy content. It was written in 1970, and I'm gonna say their definition of racy writing is a bit different to ours today. For instance, Gossip Girl is not banned.

And TTYL was banned for awhile there, too I believe. It's a part of writing for YA and younger that I hadn't thought about, censorship. It's something I tend to do to myself, which I shouldn't. But that's a topic for another day. When I've finished these, I look forward to sinking my claws into:



Sink my claws into. Get it? Get it? I know. I amaze even mySELF at my sheer Dad joke abilities. It's a gift, it really is. How gorgeous is that cat though?

My parents have a ginger cat. Well, technically he's mine, because his mum was mine and she had kittens, so he and his sister are mine. But they live with my parents. Anyway, he's ginger and has a bit of a lion's mane like that and thick furry trousers, as Georgia Nicolson would say. So we named him Booffie because that's what he is. We should have called him Sir Drool-a-lot, because that's what he does. The point I think I'm trying to get at is he looks a bit like that cat, Dewey.

Okay, that's all for now. Gonna get to my books!
Sairz