Working Alone

Writing is a solitary life …well your head is full of people but your real life can be a bit lacking in conversation as you lock yourself up in the office each day pounding out words.  Email, Twitter and Facebook are  not a real enough connection to sustain me…I need to TALK, to get the back and forth of conversation happening, the thrust and parry where people can SEE my face and work out if I am making a joke or if I am deadly serious. The sublte body-languages that do NOT translate well into email.

Writing is also a risk to your back and neck and wrists because we sit too long at a time…’I'll just type this thought…’ and another 20 minutes goes by. Not to mention the office’s close proxmatey to the biscuit (cookie) barrel.

So I am working on making sure I exercise and that I have an adult conversation during the week and usually I combine the two. “Walk and talk” along the river is something I look forward to. It gets me out of the office, out into the freshair and I come back energised.  But that isn’t quite enough to keep me fit and as I can so very easily talk myself out of exercise I have decided that as I walk DS2 to the bus stop each morning and there is a Gym right there, I might give it a whirl.

I’ve never been a gym person. I walk, ride my bike and swim but I am giving this gym thing a try. 30 minutes they say plus travelling time (10min walk total) plus shower time…although there is no one in the office to complain if I work smelly    So on Wednesday I have my first training session and as I am not the most co-ordinated person in the world, please send positive thought messages that I don’t strain or break something on the first day.

Reality versus Fantasy…it’s a no brainer!

Over the last two weekends I read opinion pieces in THE AGE about how Romantic comedies are a threat to relationships and how the movie  ’He’s Just Not That Into You’  should be approached with caution because it is a threat to women’s selfesteem , and it risks rolling the clock back to the 1950s. I rolled my eyes at yet another exampe of the Sisterhood  getting paternal again.  I have two jobs. One is working closely with teenage girls,  the other is writing fiction. One job is one hundred percent grounded in reality- grimey reality at times, where the despair lingers long after the workday is finished. The other has an edge of reality but always a guaranteed happy ending where people find the power within themselves to solve their own problems. That is the key to a good romance…they solve their own problems from what they learn from life.

Life is gritty and unrelenting. Take the ten days Victoria has just had. Light relief if required now and then to ease the burden. Romantic comedies and novels provide that relief and women know this. They are MORE than capable of discerning reality from fiction.  They know that relationships take hard work, require compromise on both sides, that some weeks are a parched desert and other times the relationship sings.

So they interviewed 100 students straight after watching the film SERENDIPTIY and found people ticked they believed in predestined love and fate. I see two big flaws with that study. 1 they interviewd students, most of whom would be under 23 with limited life and relationship experience. 2 Interviewing anyone straight after the high of a ‘feel good’ movie is going to skew the findings. Interview them three days later and see what happens.

Can commentators look beyond the superfical for the real reason relationships struggle. It isn’t because of romantic fiction or comedies setting up unrealistic expectations. A lot of it has to do with loss of communal society, the ‘I’ factor taking over from the ‘us’, increasing family breakdown, poverty and associated lack of role models for kids to see the ebb and flow of a marriage.  Soceital changes. Tough situations without an easy fix but not caused by Romcoms or romantic fiction.

I’ve been married for 27 years…(yes I WAS a child bride). Fiction and movies have been there for me when life pins me against the wall. They give me a breathing space, they give me a way to laugh, and they return me to my family, my job, my reality with strength to keep giving. 

With that in mind, donations of  books to fire-ravaged communities will be dearly welcomed by women holding their families together as they rebuild their lives. For more information go to http://www.romanceaustralia.com/

Happy Valentine’s Day

A pall of heavy smoke is hanging over where I live today, blown from the bushfire areas and I think many Victorians are not overtly celebrating Valentine’s Day when so many people have lost so much. But plenty of Random Acts of Romance are taking place. One man drove over 500km to deliver 40 bunches of wildflowers  to a town that was razed in the fires so people could have some ‘colour’ today.  Isn’t that brilliant?

Couples are looking at each other and hugging, giving thanks they are still together when so many have lost loved ones.

A kiss on the cheek, a touch on the shoulder and a ‘thanks for doing that’ are all random acts of romance and I hope that today you are both a recipitent and a giver of RAR.

And my publisher sent me some longstemmed roses..how gorgeous was that?

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

My State’s Worst Day in History

In 1983, I was a student nurse working in the Burns Unit of the Alfred Hospital when the Ash Wednesday Fires swept through, damaging so much property and taking many lives. Caring for those burns victims, some who had lost their families, was one of the most traumatic things I have ever had to do in my professional life and it has stayed with me for 26 years.  

It was hoped that in Australia we would never see such loss of life from bushfires again. We had learned so much from that. Communities had diaster plans, residents in the country had fire plans and on Friday in anticipation of the heat, state parks were actually closed which is unheard of. So we all thought, things are in place, the weather is awful but although the earth may scorch, people will be OK.

But the wind changed. Towns I drove through four days ago no longer exist, burned to the ground. 700+ homes have been lost and the death toll continues to rise, currently 98.

My heart is bleeding for the trauma these people are experiencing  – the loss of loved ones, the loss of  beloved pets, the loss of everything they own and the loss of their town. Parts of Victoria look like the pictures of Vietnam after napalm.

The brave and dedicated CFA members are exhausted, the hospitals are just coping and the Red Cross and Salvation Army are quietly doing what they do best – practical support and counselling.  But where do you draw strength from where everything you’ve ever known has vanished and the same thing has happened to everyone in your town?

Financial donations are being welcomed at the RED CROSS but can I also encourage you if you’re able, please donate Blood this week.

The true spirit of country Australia will rise to overcome this. Towns will be rebuilt as they have been in the past but the devastation of  of this horrendous day will  never  be forgotten.

Blogging At the Prairie Chicks!

Today I’m corssing the world, dropping 30 degrees in temperature and blogging at The Prairie Chicks.

I’d love to see you there!

February Means…

There are advanced copies of The Doctor Claims His Bride available at Mills and Boon UK. So if you want to get a copy 6 weeks before it hits the shelf in the UK, head over to HERE.  Set in far north tropical Australia, it just  might just make you feel a lot warmer than the cold winter you’re currently experiencing.

This book is an Island story, set on a fictional island off the north coast of Australia where Remote Area Nurses are the backbone of health care in the region. To see pictures of what inspired the book head to my website.  Here are some teasers