A new addition to the family

On Saturday we were blessed with a new Billington. His name is Henry and he's adorable. He's a PUPPY! By Puppy I mean small dog of 2 years old. He's not a PUPPY puppy.

We've had a pretty tragic year this year, with my parent's 2 dogs both passing away within the last couple of months. My dog Tessa lives with them now, and she was getting very quiet and sad and not playing anymore. We gave her time to grieve, but for such a boisterous dog, she was slowing down and not herself.

So she has a new friend now.

We took her with us when we went to The Save A Dog Scheme in Tooronga, which is an animal shelter where they foster out animals to people's homes, so that the animals don't have to spend forever in a cage at the pound. That's how I got Tess, actually. I was going to be her foster mum but then I fell in love and adopted her. Save A Dog Scheme don't give dogs expiration dates, either. They don't put animals down after a month just because their time is up. They do some fantastic work.

Anyway, we took Tess with us so that she could meet any prospective new family member first and give us the seal of approval or say "No WAY is THAT coming into my home". It was so great to see her playing and they got along from the get go. We tested what he was like with cats and he's more afraid of them than aggressive but mostly ignored them completely. So he passed! And that's how Henry joined our family.

And Tess and Henry play ALL the time, so much so that my parents bed is an out of bounds area for Henry, because Tessa needs to get away from him SOMEHOW. So she jumps up there, panting, rests and then dives down into the fray again.

It's funny. She's a blue heeler, and he's a corgi (we think jack russel) x heeler, so he has her face but itty bitty legs so he runs underneath her tummy. She's body slammed him a couple of times in their games.

Not much is known about Henry. He was a stray so we don't know where he's been or what he's been doing for the past 2 years of his life. He's toilet trained though, and he's a smart cookie, he knew his name and was coming when called within a couple of hours of having him. So yeah, WELCOME HENRY!

I was told today that for someone leaving the country in eleven days, for six WHOLE months, I'm really not acting stressed out enough.

I have lots to do but I'm cool as a cucumber. The days have been going by so fast on me that I actually hadn't realised it was coming up so soon. But now that I realise I think I'm reaching appropriate stress levels.

Must make a To Do Before Leave list.

And must do a practice pack of my suitcase. Well, my sister's baby pink well worn suitcase that I'll be taking with me. I'm starting to think there really isn't enough room for all the stuff I want to take with me. But we'll see.

I have to say, the thing I'm MOST psyched about is the SCBWI conference in LA. I. Can. Not. Wait. It's going to be amazeful and spectaperb. Being around so many other writers, agents and editors and people who just...get it. You know? They get it!

Yay yay yay!

I'm in edit mode for TWO books now. I have my wonderful agent's notes and am doing lots of pondering and thunking for a couple of new scenes, but mostly it's a case of Americanising some of my language.

Like my students are not in year eleven. They're juniors. And HELLO - you don't walk on foot paths over there, it's a sidewalk. I better not have any singlets visable either cos Tank tops are WAY cooler.

I feel a bit sad about getting rid of the word "mate" though. Mate sort of, it has a different meaning than the word friend. Friend is blah. Mate is more...friendly. To me, anyway.

Doesn't matter, fingers crossed and touching the nearest wood, I'll be getting published in Australia too so can keep my aussie language for the aussie edition!

That's all for now.

Enjoy the beauty of today! It's pretty out, doesn' t even feel like winter, but I feel I might just get blown over if I went outside at all. Eep.

SAirz

What I'm reading and doing

Taking the blissful moment of internet usage on MY amazingly awesome (in comparison to family's shockingly awful) computer, whilst at a friend's place with wireless internet, to do another blog entry.Wow. That was one of the most roundabout sentences ever, huh? If you kept up, good work! Cos I'm sure it took some squinty eyed head scratching and rereading.

Yes. Carrying on.

As I've been in a slight holiday mode I've been reading

up a storm. Well okay so I've read 2 books from cover to cover but have been scrounging books and getting excited at the PROSPECT of reading several others.

I read:

Which is a great great book. It sorta makes you a bit worried cos really, it's a book for teenagers about a futuristic world in which every district

(essentially states...sort of) has to choose a boy and a girl out of a lottery, to play in the biggest reality show of all time - a battle to death until there's on

ly one teen left standing.

I would have thought the censors would have had a field day with this one, but to my knowledge they haven't. Let's face it, it happens on the big screen, why not in fiction? I guess fiction, since you're reading it in your head, and it's a solitary pursuit, it

's more personal, you know? Plus the whole first person narrative thing definitely makes it more personal.

But it's a great book. Looking forward to the sequel in September, and I've heard some buzz that there's going to be a movie coming too!

Ooh, speaking of awesome books being turned into movies, my all time hero author John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began series is being turned into a movie! If I've I have this right, Tomorrow When the War Began will be a movie and

the rest of the books are being turned into a TV series whi

ch is uber exciting.

I always wanted to be the one to write that movie, or tv show, but never did. But I'm glad it's happening. REALLY looking forward to it.

Also looking forward to HBO's Band of Brothers - The Pacific, the original was so fantastic, this one should be as well.

Right, books I was reading. I also just finished:

Which I really enjoyed. I wasn't that into the last one, Plu

m Spooky and it made me sad cos I thought, I've been reading these books since 1998, I didn't enjoy it, does that mean...am I over it? Do I just not care anymore? But no. Not the case. It was good fun. Lula is a star. :)

I just bought today:

Which I'm looking forward to getting stuck into when I finish writing this blog tonight. Curling up in bed with a good book. Sigh. I love the Cabster and I really do aspire to have her career one day. Okay so not HER career cos I'm pretty sure she still wants it, but one of my own just like it. Ya dig?

When it comes to my own writing, I'm knee deep in note cards at the mo.

And what I mean by that is I am writing down every scene of MJs story, what is already in the book and what I reckon SHOULD be in the book, onto note cards. I'm getting a little carried away with the details on each card but that's a minor note. I've never tried this technique when it comes to editing before, and by jove I think I like it. (By jove? That's the saying, right? Or am I looking like a tool right now?)

Tomorrow when I get home I'm going to stick 'em all up on my wardrobe doors and scowl at them and move some around and scowl some more until the book looks right. Then I'll move words, delete words and add NEW words to the book in the computer. And hey presto! At least that's the theory.

I should soon be receiving edit notes from MY AGENT on my other book. As soon as I sign the contract. Which is going to be very soon.

I booked my trip to Italy yesterday. Squee!! And I'm pretty much decided on Scotland and Ireland. It's all big and exciting and real. I'm definitely going to need to work a bit while away though. Back to video shops it is for me!

In the morning I'm picking up our friends' doggie, Mahli (is that how you spell it?) because she's getting a bit lonely at her home with all the kids flown the coop and mum and dad at work all day, and my doggie Tessa is getting lonely for some doggie company since both CB AND Tinka died within the last couple of months, so we're going to dog sit for awhile. Yay!

That's all for now. Reading time! Sleeping time might actually merge into reading time...

Sarah

The ups and downs of lately.

Well.

I didn't think I had anything too interesting to write of late because it has mostly been filled with the torture of writing a 2500 essay for my Authorship and Writing class. It's worth 50% of my mark, and since everyone in the class agrees that it is the most hideous question of all questions ever, it's been really really hard to write. Which is why I'm here and not writing my essay. Because I don't understand my essay. And if I don't understand it, then I doubt my lecturer will understand it.
So now I'm here.

There have actually been some ups and downs of late, nothing too dramatic, or I'm just riding a perpetual wave of "meh, whatever" like calm. Aside from the constant moaning and complaining about my essay.

Received my passport. Yay!
Crappy photo - of course. Boo!

Went shopping with my sister and bought a new phone that is made of awesome and does NOT turn off mid-phone call just cos it feels like it. Yay!

Also bought lots of snazzy new clothes so that I don't feel quite so much like the country bogan that I'm ever so slowly turning into. Yay!

Spent lots and lots of money. The Rudd Stimulus package money that I erm...haven't received yet. Boo! (Or - you're a tool, Sarah!)

Had my feature article on Uni students and financial woes published in Lots Wife Magazine in Melbourne AND The Star Newspaper in Gippsland. Yay!

Did I get paid for either of them? No. Boo!

Have been officially accepted into Leeds University for next semester. Yay!

Have been going around checking out flight details for my little sojourn across the USA with Eleanor, and then over to Europe. We're talking $3800! Boo!

Student Visa for the UK is $290! Boo!

Tourist Visa for USA is free! Yay!

Application Visa for USA is $180. Boo!

Have been writing "The In With Santa" in Script Frenzy which I started writing 2 years ago, but never finished. I'm pleased with how it's going. Yay!

Have stopped writing "The In With Santa" until I get these stupid assignments finished. Two due on Monday, one due on Friday. Boo!

Bought tickets to see Mark Watson and Danny Bhoy at the Comedy Festival next week. Tres excited. Yay!

Will have to miss some classes and Badminton to go to them...meh. I can live with that.

Went home to celebrate my birthday early with my family, we went to Dutchie's Stone Grill Restaurant on Phillip Island. I'd never been there before. You cook your food in front of you, on - surprisingly - a stone grill. Was fun and different. Yay!

My sister is paying for half of my passport and my parents are paying for one of my visas for my birthday. Yay!

My doggie Tessa gave me a birthday card, showing that even though she tries to fake me out sometimes, she really loves me. Yay! (The card was written in my mum's handwriting, so I guess mum helped her).

Decided to go out and buy dinner tonight in congratulations for writing...erm...200 words of my assignment. Yay!

As I was rounding the roundabout, a single mum with no car insurance ran into my car and put a big ol' dent in my door. Not exactly Boo, but aw... I feel bad for her. NO CAR INSURANCE.

Tomorrow is my BIRTHDAY! I'm turning 25! Yay!

I will be spending it writing and stressing about assignments. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

That's all.

Love Sairz

Answers at last

Well it's been a little while since I blogged and I gotta tell ya - it's cos I've been busy. But I say that every blog. I now go to Rock n roll dance lessons Mondays, Badminton Tuesdays (hilarious with 3-4 people per team, so you get hit with the shuttle cock a lot. Especially from a person who will remain nameless. "OMG, Sorry, sorry!" he starts the night with, but by the end it becomes: "I can't help it, it's SO funny." Hmm. And then I go to gym Thursdays and Fridays and I haven't found the time to do my mental health walkies in the evening! Except for the time I was wide awake at 2am and thought I should go but then decided against it. I was trying to make myself more tired, not more awake.

Uni is back - can't remember if it was or not in my last blog...anyhoo I'm read-read-reading but not the fun stuff. I'm trying to keep up with the 50 - 100 pages each class sets me for the week, let alone any FUN reading. Or writing.
And at the moment, this is my second week of placement in a grade prep-one class. I'm having lots of fun, really like the kids but they really can be exhausting.
It's especially interesting for me to do reading group with them every morning, and see what they think of the stories. If they can read them. They ARE grade prep and one we're talking about here.
The library got a shipment of new books today and I spent my lunchtime in there poring over them, looking at the publishers and reading the blurbs. Clearly I'm very excited about kids books and what's new in the market. What people are writing about, what kids are reading about and what publishers are buying.
I was interested to find that one of the grade six girls's favourite book at the moment is about a cane toad who's family is being wiped out by floods and people, and he stacks up his dead relatives in the corner of his room. It's by Morris Gleitzman, and though it sounds kinda disturbing, she says it's funny. It'd have to be, wouldn't it? :)

I received some good news and some disappointing news - after a lot of work and a long wait, Allen & Unwin have decided not to publish my book, Life was cool until you got popular. I was spared the moment of receiving the manuscript back in the mail, because I was at Uni and haven't seen it yet, but next time I go back to my parents place it'll be there waiting for me. It's disappointing cos I really thought this was it, this was the beginning, and I KNOW it's a good book, but clearly it wasn't meant to be. Not as a Girlfriend Fiction title. I can sort of see that it doesn't fit neatly into the Girlfriend Fiction mould, they're mostly serious books and mine's a little more out there. But she had lovely things to say about it and more constructive criticism for me should I choose to take it on.
I waited a day and sent it to another publisher and today I've sent it to an Agent as well. I feel I'm getting a bit better at criticism. :)

Continuing on with bad news, one of my dogs passed away. Horrible day. He's been sick for awhile and my parents decided it was time to have him put down cos he wasn't doing too well. So that morning my father met me halfway between our homes and I got to say goodbye and tell him what a good boy he was. And not twenty minutes later, on their way back home he slipped away. It makes me sad thinking about it again, but it's so much better for him to have gone that way, don't you think? And he was an old fellah, he'd had a good life.

Okay. Deep, calming breath.

Good news however, is that I'm being published, though not fiction. I have the movie review and another piece being published in Lots Wife, and a newspaper article in a local paper as well.
Plus, I found out something interesting about the Writers Digest contest I entered last year. I came 88th, which I was thinking, you know, that's average. But then I discovered I came 88th out of 17,000. Not something to be sneezed at, anymore, eh?

Since I can't concentrate on a long piece of work at the moment, as soon as I get some writing time I hope to start some chapter books and juniuor fiction. I have a gazillion ideas, as well as ideas for creative non fiction for kids on topics such as space and australian history. As a writer, I'm definitely learning that you can't pigeon hole yourself. You have to branch out and that's what I'm starting to do.
That's about it from me. Must go and cook and prepare for placement tomorrow.

Ciao,

Sairz