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I'm Australian - sorry 'bout that

27/6/2014

About as close to Croc Dundee as I can get...

It may be devastating to learn, but I’m an Australian. And before you start imagining leggy, long-haired, blonde beauties on the beach – no, that’s not me. I haven’t worn a bikini for a while, and although my hair is long, it is dark brown.

Let me address some beliefs that people have about Australians:
- I did have a pet kangaroo as a child.
- I haven’t ridden a horse to school, but I have ridden a horse to go visiting to neighbours.
- I do own an Akubra (the Australian version of a cowboy hat).
- I haven’t been bitten by a snake, but I have killed some in the past (although technically illegal to do so).
- I love fishing, but hate beer.
- I can kick a football more than 50 metres.
- I can’t throw a boomerang.
- I’ve never, ever placed a shrimp on the barbie (because I don’t eat seafood. Don’t judge.)
- No, I personally do not know any Australian movie stars.
- And yes, I know that sometimes my language is indecipherable to other “English speaking” countries.

Me fishing... Barred Creek, Broome

When I sat down to write Loving Jay, I wrote it based in Australia. I don’t have the confidence to pretend I know enough about another country to base my story there. I know of several Australian authors who successfully do, and I am in complete awe of their ability. For me, it has to be Australian or else I have no idea what I’m talking about.

All of my stories (so far) are based in my home state of Western Australia, and I hope that my readers don’t mind the taste of my home that comes through in my writing. It does, however, cause my editors a few bald spots. A lot of the time I don’t realise I am using an Australianism, and many times there is no compromise if I wish to keep the authentic Aussie flavour to my book.

A prime example: thongs.

What did you just think of when you read that word? If you thought of a scrap of material that frequently finds itself wedged between two butt cheeks, then you were wrong. That is a g-string. Australians wear their thongs on their feet. Some countries call these flip flops, or sandals, or jandals – whatever. They are an extremely popular form of footwear and they are thongs to me. But I cannot use them in a story, because it doesn’t translate correctly.

Neither does Milo, flat white, footy, Ford-vs-Holden, chooks, smoko, caravan, a shout or budgie-smugglers.

So if anyone is lost, sorry ‘bout that. It makes perfect sense to me.

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The good stuff among the weeds

23/6/2014

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In my opinion there are two types of vegetable gardeners. There are the ones who devotedly hang out at their local gardening centre, and at the beginning of spring, they truck in $200 worth of good soil and manure. They set it up in their backyard and then spend another $100 on the fertiliser and sprays they will need. Then they run to their local gardening centre and buy up all the spring seedlings and plant up their plots with lavish greens.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying this is wrong, I’m just jealous. These gardeners have a lot of fun (which is the point!) and end up with huge returns. You see them bring out their bloated zucchinis to brag over and point out the box of tomatoes they are giving away because they have too many.

Me? I’m the other type of gardener – the one who spends zero dollars. Instead I spend a good twelve months making just the right mix of compost and I add to it the offerings of my worm farms as fertiliser. My vegetables are planted from seeds that I saved from the previous harvest, and I rely more on companion planting, natural predators and picking off the damn bugs to save my crops. My returns are modest and I often need to cut around that hole made by that slater bug before I can eat my produce.

Today on Unproductive Monday, I was out checking on the latest doings in my garden and I noticed something exciting. Plants!

Here, growing in the cracks of the paving, along with some weeds is a cos lettuce seedling. And in the other picture, nestled up to a weed is a thriving rocket plant.

Both are very productive plants and both have taken root in odd places after last year’s seeds were allowed to take. Like most veggie gardeners who fall into second category above, I don’t see that allowing my plants to “go to seed” as a bad thing. I allowed my lettuce and rocket to flower and seed six months ago and look at what I now have! I managed to find three new rocket plants, and three lettuce. I transplanted them to a more conductive area (ie away from hubby’s whipper-snipper) and hopefully they will feed my family in a couple of week’s time. If not, then they’ll feed the canaries and chooks.

I think writing is like that sometimes. I was recently having a conversation with Robyn, an aspiring author, about writing even when you don’t feel like it. Some days I just don’t “feel in the mood” for writing. But I’ve found that even if I force myself to write, in the end it comes out good. Even when you are not writing brilliantly, you are still writing something that is salvageable. Write it, leave it and then come back to it. You may find that you delete most of it, but often, it really wasn’t as bad as you thought. Sometimes, you may’ve even had a moment of genius in there. It can always be edited and changed, but if you have nothing but a blank page, you have nothing.

My mother has a saying: How can you expect to grow flowers if you can’t even grow weeds?

I think we should all take that to heart, and maybe expand on it a bit more. We should be proud of the flowers (or vegetables) we grow, but don’t think that the weeds are unimportant. If you can’t grow weeds, you can’t grow flowers. If you don’t write anything, because you don’t “feel” like it, how are you meant to write that story inside you? Just sit down and write. You may find something useful growing among those weeds.

And who knows? It could be awesome.

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Stereotypical roles

20/6/2014

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I wish to tell you all a little story. It’s a true story, and not as interesting as a gay romance novel, but it’s only short, so keep reading.

Once upon a time there were assigned gender roles in the world. When attending school, the girls were segregated to learn housekeeping duties, while the boys were given more masculine pursuits to learn. But there started to be an outcry at this practice, and soon things began changing in the world.

This little story is about a girl who attended high school in the 1990’s. When she started high school, the school had a policy of making all students – both male and female – attend six set courses in their first year: cooking, sewing, metalwork, woodwork, art and computers. All students, so that both boys and girls could have a try of their opposite gender role activities. She actually enjoyed the manual arts, was rather bored in the home economics courses, and adored the chance to do art (which her mother always said was frivolous and a waste of time).

She was a studious student and excelled in mathematics and sciences. Being the early 90’s, she was blasted by the message that girls these days could be anything they wanted. She was handed stickers with slogans like “Hand a girl a spanner” and encouraged to be her best.

When it came the chance to choose her upper school courses which would lead her into a career, the teachers waited with bated breath to see what she would choose. Did she want to be a lawyer? A doctor? A geologist? With her skills in maths and physical sciences, she was greatly encouraged to choose an engineering pathway since there was a great lack of female engineers in the world. She sat down with her career guidance counsellor and told them she wanted work in childcare. The counsellor gasped in horror and instead had her fill out forms to go to university and study science. The girl sat with her mother and said she loved singing and acting, could she please sign up for those courses? Her mother signed her into a foreign language class.

Finally the girl grabbed her courage together and confessed her deepest wish to her oldest sister. The girl didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer. She wanted to be a mummy. She wanted to stay home with her babies and cook biscuits and raise a yard full of kids. Her sister turned away.

It seemed that the girl really could be anything she wanted, as long as it wasn’t what people called “a gender role.” In fact the girl was forced to deny what her biological/hormonal/god-given right to choose was, just so that she wasn’t a “stereotypical” woman.

The end of the story? Well, it’s simple. When the girl got old enough to make her own choice, she dropped her science classes at university, went out and got a job, then bought a house to raise her yard full of kids in. And she is very happy she did so.

Why am I telling you this? It’s because “gender roles” and “stereotypes” exist for a reason. The reason is that sometimes a lot of people follow this role. I’m not saying that all people do. But just because it's stereotypical, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

My debut release (Loving Jay) is a book that is about Jay, a femme twinkish guy who wears makeup, likes pink and says “Oh my Gawd!” too many times in a day. My other MC, Liam, is a laid back guy who is more masculine and often takes on a protector role over Jay. Stereotypical? Maybe. Wrong? Definitely not.

A couple of readers of the book were upset with this. One saying he was “so tired of stereo typing” (sic) and others disliking the obvious “gender roles” I placed my characters into. True, all very true. But if all books ignored these stereotypes, then we wouldn’t have a true representation of the real world then, would we?

I love to read novels about characters that don’t fit the mould, but I can’t ignore the fact that in real life, some people (i.e. gay men) do take on these typical roles. All gay men are not pumped and waxed. All gay men are not masculine. All gay men are not stereotypical “romantic” heroes like swashbuckling pirates.

I make no apologies for Jay and Liam. They are fun. They are happy to be together. They are happy with the “role” the other one takes. They are in love.

Did I make Jay “the girl” in the relationship? Is he less? No. It’s true that he wears makeup and it’s true he’s physically weaker than Liam, but he is in no way the lesser of the two. Jay is very happy to be Jay, and Liam is very happy with this too. Truthfully I didn’t even think when I wrote these characters. That’s just how they are.

If I am stereotyping, then so be it. How dare I write something that imitates real life? Just like how dare that girl think that she could be as feminine as to want to produce children?

Cheers,
Renae

PS – That girl? She did what she wanted. She had the children she longed for. Then she sat down and wrote a novel about two gay men who fell in love.

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Unproductive Monday

16/6/2014

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I’m a list maker. I always have been. Shopping lists, to-do lists, birthday lists. I have spreadsheets keeping track of my money, of the rain that falls, and most recently, of my word count in my WIPs. I made myself a goal to write an average of 1200 words per day for the days I am not editing.

Each month I fail.

I’m not upset by this – it’s a goal I'm working toward. The key word in my goal is the word average. Some days are better than others for writing. For me, Mondays and Tuesdays are the only block of time I get uninterrupted when both kids are at school. You would think that those days are the best for writing – but no. On those days I seem to run around and do all the other things I need to do for my Real Life. Mondays I seem to spend getting the house back into order from the weekend.

Going by my word count, Mondays are unproductive. But I must remind myself that life is about balance. On Mondays, I don’t score high on the word count, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything. So today I’m giving you a glimpse into other things in my life that continue to be productive, even if my word count is not.

Another hobby of mine is my backyard vegetable garden. So on this unproductive Monday, here are some of my other more productive projects:

My chooks

For those who don’t know, “chooks” are the Australian term for chickens or hens. I have three who we named Polly, Lucy and Sparkles (yes, my 4yo named her). So despite the fact that I didn’t write that scene I need to, my chooks still laid me two eggs, ate some bugs and made me some fertiliser.

My citrus trees

I have four citrus trees – a meyer lemon, a navel orange, a blood-red orange and an imperial mandarin. I am flush with vitamin C at the moment. So much so, I am throwing them away since I cannot find enough people to give them away to. Today I pulled four oranges, two lemons and seven mandarins off the tree.

So, yes – I have been productive. My garden is thriving despite it being winter and I must remember that life is not only about the written word. Next Monday I will show you more.

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Cover Reveal - The Blinding Light

13/6/2014

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I’m very excited to introduce you to my next novel: The Blinding Light.

Blurb: Jake Manning’s smart mouth frequently gets him into trouble. Because of it, he can’t hold a job. Combined with some bad luck, it's prevented him from keeping steady employment. A huge debt looms over him, and alone he shoulders the care of his alcoholic mother and three younger sisters. When a housekeeping position opens, Jake’s so desperate he leaps at the opportunity. On landing, he finds his new boss, Patrick Stanford, a fussy, arrogant, rude… and blind man.

Born without sight, Patrick is used to being accommodated, but he’s met his match with Jake, who doesn’t take any of his crap and threatens to swap all the braille labels on his groceries and run off with his guide dog unless he behaves.

Jake gets a kick out of Patrick. Things are looking up: the girls are starting their own lives and his mum’s sobriety might stick this time. He’s sacrificed everything for his family; maybe it’s time for him to live his life and start a relationship with Patrick. When his mother needs him, guilt makes his choice between family and Patrick difficult, and Jake must realize he’s not alone anymore.

So, are you excited too?

It’s taken a long time to get Jake and Patrick’s story to you. It seems ages ago that I sat down in front of a blank page and began piecing together their lives. Jake is such a sunny (although snarky) character – nothing gets him down. He’s been cleaning up after his mother and raising his sisters his entire life. A housekeeping job should be a cinch – right?

Patrick is a man hiding behind his blindness – until he meets a man who doesn’t give a shit that he’s blind and tells him to lift his game. There are so many places in this story that my jaw dropped and I told Jake that he can’t say things like that! You can’t threaten to force feed a man just because he doesn’t want to eat! You can’t go around hiding a blind man’s sex toys from him! And it’s really rude to call your employer “Patti-cake.”

(They didn’t listen to me. My characters never listen to me. Rather like my children).

I’d like to say thanks to Bree Archer for giving me such a great cover, and of course all the people at Dreamspinner Press.

I post a link (hopefully next week) when the book hits Dreamspinner's Coming Soon pages.

Now I just have to wait for the release… 31 days and counting…

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My favourite quotes from Loving Jay

6/6/2014

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So it was many long moons ago that I first sat down and wrote those words that started it all:

I was going to miss my train.

Yes, for those who haven’t read Loving Jay, those are the first words of Chapter One. They kick-start the story of Liam and Jay and were written on a blank page back in April 2013. That’s how long ago I started that story, and wow – what a journey I have been on since then!

It took me ten weeks to write Loving Jay and every single word has come from the depths of my brain. Sometimes I would blink and then stare at the screen in bemusement, thinking, “Did I really just write that?” Other times it was squirreled away in my head for weeks while I found just the perfect spot to drop that dialogue into.

So now I wish to share with you my favourite quotes and moments of Loving Jay.

For those who don’t know, the story starts with our MC, Liam in denial about being gay. There’s only one problem with that – he has the biggest crush on this beautiful guy he sees on the train each morning:

And missing the first train of the morning also meant I didn’t get to see Jay. But I wasn’t going to think about that. Because I am not gay. I don’t notice other guys; I don’t drool over them; I don’t look forward to seeing their handsome face each morning; I don’t dream about them every night; and I definitely don’t get a hard-on thinking about one particular face. Nope! Not gay here at all.

Much.

Oh, poor Liam. He is in the midst of a major crush:

On that day he’d sat down next to a white-haired lady and they’d spoken in soft tones and laughed the whole way home. I felt like tripping the old dear as she got off the train.

Any man who contemplates tripping a granny because she talked with his crush is a little bit more than in love… Liam is just my hero.

But I want to tell you a secret. I secretly love Jay more. But he doesn’t always make the right fashion choices:

“Ah, Jay?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re friends now, yeah?”

“Umm… I guess?”

“So, in the tone of friendship, I’m going to ask you a really hard question. Okay? I just don’t want you to get too upset.”

“Ahh….” Jay was holding his breath and looked terrified—rabbit- in-the-headlights terrified. He was wide-eyed and tense. But I just had to ask. Friends helped friends, didn’t they? Before he could conceive too many terrible scenarios, I ploughed on.

“You’re not going to wear those pants all day, are you?” It took a second to sink in, but I watched avidly as he deflated, slumping dejectedly in his seat, and nervously picked at the material on his thigh. Watching Jay’s overreaction to every situation he found himself in was more entertaining than prime-time TV. He didn’t disappointment me.

“Oh my Gawd! Are they that awful? I knew I just shouldn’t wear them. I was debating for ages this morning whether to wear them or dump them. They just cost me the earth, you know? But I didn’t want to toss them without wearing them at least once. I don’t know what made me buy them! A moment’s insanity maybe? I knew Tara—she’s the receptionist at the radio, you know—would tell me the truth. Oh my Gawd! I’m so embarrassed! Tell me straight, are they so bad? Like barf-in-my-bag bad?”

I looked at him solemnly. “Dude, even when M.C. Hammer had the bad taste to wear those pants he at least didn’t wear them in red tartan.”

It took me a while to think up the most atrociously bad pair of pants I could imagine. I hope it worked.

Then, when Jay is in the hospital, Liam gets a look at his pajamas:

My eyes ran down his body, taking in the flannel pajamas he was wearing and it momentarily distracted me from my task. I cocked my eyebrow in query at him. “Smurfs?”

He smoothed the material down self-consciously. “Little blue men with squeaky voices. What’s not to love? And of course most of them had to be gay. There was only ever one Smurfette after all.”

I ignored him, figuring we could discuss the queerness of Smurfs another day.

I remember writing this scene and sitting trying to figure out what sort of PJs would a drama queen wear? My five year old son had a great pair of PJs covered in Smurfs – so I chucked them on Jay.

Okay, I admit it! So I love Liam as well. His sense of humour is very dry:

“I’m just trying to think who I would call if I needed to be bailed out. Which person could I tell I had been arrested for public indecency along with a gay man who had no pants on?”

“So, did you decide who you would call?”

“My brother, Dale. He owes me.”

“Yeah? What did you do for him?”

“I dated his wife.”

Liam’s thoughts on meeting Jay’s sister for the first time:

And besides, if she yelled at me too much, I could just pick her up and push her through the cat door.

I wish I could do that to lots of people.

Liam and Jay are perfect for each other (obviously!) They have a lot of fun and laughter. And of course, sex, so I need to put in a saucy scene:

“Liam, darling. If you take this lovely big cock of yours and in your terms ‘erection, insert, and thrust,’ believe me, I will be screaming so loud that I won’t know if I feel like a girl, a guy, or a bloody blue-ringed octopus. I do know, however, that I will feel absolutely, fucking great. Your neighbors will know that I feel great. I’m pretty sure that I will feel so great that they will call the cops to report a murder taking place and you will need your brothers to bail you for public disturbance.”

I chuckled. “Have you seen my neighbors? I think it would have to be gunfire and a missile to make them give a shit about anything other than their own lives.”

Jay smiled coyly and ground against me. “If you provide the missile, I guarantee I will provide the gunfire.”

I groaned at his sick joke. “Oh, shit, that was bad, man.”

Who said sex couldn’t be immature and fun?

The fun doesn’t just come from my MCs. I wish all workmates could be like Chan:

I shrugged. “As I said, I accidentally outed myself this weekend. I may as well go the whole shebang and tell everyone else now.”

Chan grinned evilly at me. “Does this mean you’ll start wearing pink shirts and calling everyone ‘Darling’?”

I flipped a finger at him. “You are so judgmental. I’m going to dob you in to your brother.”

A look of alarm crossed his face. “Fuck no! My brother may be as queer as a three-dollar note, but he can bench press his own weight. But forget about me—I want to know how you managed to accidentally out yourself. How does one do that?”

I ducked my head in chagrin. “I unintentionally called my boyfriend ‘babe’ in front of my parents.”

Oh. Dear. <snort>

However, I did managed to get a couple of digs into the opposition over football:

“The fruitloop would be John, here. He is the only stupid one in the family who would dare go for a team like Port Adelaide. All the rest of my family goes for a good, old-fashioned Western Australian football team. But John had to be different and pick Port Adelaide.”

“Hey!” John was used to the good-natured ribbing he got from me for his choice of interstate team. “Watch your mouth. I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing that stupid purple color of your team.”

And for the record, I love wearing purple as I scream for my team.

We do get serious in the book. But not much. This is Liam thinking about his relationship with his homophobic father:

I’d disappointed him in life, too. He was disappointed that I chose Accounting at university, not Engineering like him. But he still loved me and had forgiven me. I’d disappointed him over and over again by not being able to have enough courage to drive a car. And he’d forgiven me.

I’d deliberately chosen to go for another football team, rather than his beloved Eagles, and he’d…. Well, okay. Maybe he’d never forgiven me on that one but there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and backing a different football team was just going too far.

But deciding to be gay, even when I didn’t really have a choice in the matter? That was way before that line.

I tried not to give away any spoilers in this post, but just in case you were wondering: YES! OF COURSE MY GUYS GET TOGETHER IN THE END! So I’m not revealing anything by giving you my favourite paragraph of all time. This paragraph is just warm, gooey caramel syrup on vanilla ice-cream. It’s delicious and melts me:

He’d smiled at me with devotion and I had responded with a look of complete adoration. And the photographer had snapped the picture, capturing that instant—two men gazing at each other, utterly in love. Jay loving me, and me… loving Jay.

So what’s your favourite quote?

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I'm Australian - sorry 'bout that

The good stuff among the weeds

Stereotypical roles

Unproductive Monday

Cover Reveal - The Blinding Light

My favourite quotes from Loving Jay

Renae Kaye

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