Please join Alan Brough at a celebration at the State Library on Friday 20 March, 4 - 5pm when he announces the the top five books, as voted by Victorian readers in the State Library of Victoria’s Summer Read program 2008-9, and voter’s prizes.

Experimedia
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street, Melbourne

RSVP by Wednesday 17 March 2009

Telephone                   8664 7555
email                          learning@slv.vic.gov.au
book online                summerreadawards.eventbrite.com

Wow - one of the Summer Read books, Addition, is has been featured in the Unshelved Book Club…

The full review is here.

Thanks Toni for your posts which will inspire many a romantic this summer because of course summer is hotter for booklovers!

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Toni will be appearing at:

•    Clayton Theatrette, Clayton Community Centre,
Cooke Street Clayton on Thursday 12 February 2009, 6.30 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone Clayton Library 9544 0668 or book online at http://summerread20.eventbrite.com

•    Frankston Library, 60 Playne Street, Frankston for Cake and Champagne on Valentines Day,  Saturday 14 February 2009, 2.00 – 4.00 pm
For more information phone 9784 1020 or book online at http://summerread23.eventbrite.com

•    Rosebud Library morning tea McDowell St, Rosebud on Valentines Day on Saturday 14 February 2009, 11.00 – 12.30 pm
For more information phone 5950 1230 or book online at http://summerread24.eventbrite.com

Vote for Addition or SMS ADDITION to 13 46 88

One of the great joys in having written Addition is that now people feel very safe in telling me their little secrets, the little odd behaviours that they need to do. The way they tell me is this: they come up to me with their hand cupped around their mouth like a child telling a secret, and they say ‘I’ve never told anyone this before, but…’

The most common by far are the peg ladies. This had never occurred to me until recently, but it’s very common I promise. Peg ladies are obsessed about matching the colours of their pegs, either two pinks or two blues but they never mix colours. In a variation, they match the colour of the peg with the colour of the clothing. I even met a lady once who has a normal four-sided hills hoist and keeps one side for her husband’s clothes, one side for her clothes and one side for each of the kids. Clothes are not allowed to intermingle.

By far the weirdest little habit I’ve heard is from a woman who seemed quite normal when I spoke to her. Then she told me that, when she drives somewhere, if she drives past a ‘bad thing’ like a hospital or an ambulance or a cemetery, she has to keep driving until she drives past another bad thing to switch it off. Now where on earth does that come from?

There’re also quite a number of people out there who are obsessed with having everything in even numbers. I’ve met them in libraries. If they’ve reached the head of the queue and realise they only have 5 books to borrow they’ll grab the closest book, anything at all, just to make up the six. Does this mean they’re obsessed? Says who? Are you obsessed just because you’re a forty-something bank manager who likes to dress up like Darth Vader on the odd occasion for conventions? Or you might have a teeny, tiny issue of not being able to make love to your boyfriend unless you’re looking at the poster of Elvis above the bed.  Neither of these things refer to me, I should say.

The essayist Rachel Robertson said it best in her Calibre-prize winning essay, Reaching One Thousand. Here, she’s speaking about her son, who, like Grace in Addition, is a compulsive counter:

“Psychologists have described his behaviour as ‘obsessional’, ‘compulsive’ and ‘ritualised’. I prefer to call him ‘passionate’.”

Obsessions might be subjective, but are also fascinating to write about, to research and to read. They’re a subset of the greatest fascination we will ever face, in life as well as in fiction: what goes on in other people’s heads.

Well, that’s it from me! Thanks for your patience and wonderful comments.

A few weeks ago I mentioned to a friend that Addition was the first creative thing I’ve ever done in my life. Before 2004 when I began writing it, I’d never painted or sewed or practised photography or even written a short story before. I had no hobbies or interests, other than yoga classes and reading. (Although I’ve always believed in creative reading, but that’s another topic.) Addition is my first ever act of creativity, I told her.

Not true, she said. You used to cook.

So I did.

Before 2004, I loved to cook.  I would make five course dinner parties starring elaborate curries (I’d roast the spices myself) and homemade samosas and naan. I made French desserts, ice-cream and casseroles I’d simmer for hours. I went to the markets every Saturday morning with a long list—all the week’s meals, planned ahead.  Mayonnaise from a jar? Never. I even studied cooking, taking Balinese cooking classes in Bali and Sri Lankan cooking classes in Sri Lanka. EVEN (wait for it) a glorious week in a converted monastery in Tuscany, studying traditional Tuscan cooking. (Of limited practicality, actually. It’s difficult to find wild boar, caul or freshly minced rabbit at Safeway.)

So now that I write for a living, what’s for dinner?

Um…Spaghetti? Sausages and mash? Take away?

Now that I’m exercising my creativity all day long, I couldn’t care less about cooking. I’ve always had a one-track mind—maximum intensity in a limited field. I’d never before considered cooking as an act of creativity, but perhaps it is; it’s as if my creative energy is now going in another direction and I just don’t have the room for it any more.

I don’t like this conclusion. I prefer the idea that we are all creative people, because we are all marvellous individual creations who experience life afresh every day. I prefer to think that our capacity for creativity is unlimited, that the more we create, the more energy and vitality our imagination will develop.

Pablo Picasso said: Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

True, but I think this is part of a wider problem we all face: how can I live my life creatively, so that each day is something a little different, a little special? So that, on my death bed, I can look back and say:  It isn’t perfect, but I made this life with my own hands. I created it. It is my painting, my sculpture, my book.

I am a card-carrying member of Hopeless Romantics, Inc. Always have been, for as long as I can remember. I have been hopelessly in love with, in vaguely chronological order:  Donny Osmond, James Reyne, Simon Le Bon, Han Solo (NOT Harrison Ford), Colin Firth (der)…well, the list goes on. I almost failed out of uni in my first year because I was utterly unable to concentrate on anything other than the sound of my own breathing if sitting next to a boy. Even now, well into my forties, I  blush a sensational red if a handsome man kisses me on the cheek, even in the most brotherly fashion. (I blame my many years of girls-only convent education. Those nuns have a lot to answer for.) So it was only natural that anything I write should include a love story.

Many of my favourite novels are love stories. Fiona Capp’s Musk & Byrne (also on the summer reading list) is a recent favourite, and two of my all-time beloved books are A.S. Byatt’s Possession, and the incomparable Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda. I also adore Pride and Prejudice, Much ado about nothing and Dorothy Sayer’s marvellous Gaudy night. So, with so many wonderful romance novels, why do books about love get such a bad wrap? Often in interviews I’m asked if Addition is ‘chick lit’, as if I’m expected to defend my writing against that kind of label. But as far as I can understand, ‘chick lit’ isn’t about the subject matter—it means ‘written for and marketed to young women’ (according to Wikipedia). I don’t think Addition meets either of those criteria. But if I reply: no, Addition isn’t chick lit, I feel like I’m criticising books that are, or worse, that I’m looking down my nose at young women readers. I’m caught in a Seinfeld sketch: I’m not a chick lit writer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But the label chick lit does imply that exclusivity, and I’ve had many kind comments about Addition from people of all ages and all walks of life: from the elderly retired male engineer who was delighted the world hadn’t forgotten about Nikola Tesla, to the female sufferer of obsessive compulsive disorder in her fifties who was so excited that someone understood.

My mother always said I’d get over being in love with love, but I haven’t yet. As Brother Arvide says in Guys and Dolls: Why would anyone wanna get over the thing you hope for from the minute you’re born and remember till the day you die? It seems such a short time ago that crime novels were simplistic whodunits. Now we have writers like Peter Temple and Shane Maloney who craft superbly written, intelligent and revealing stories about people, but the stories are based around a crime. Love stories can be just as terrific: think smart, sassy 1940s films starring Cary Grant or Katherine Hepburn, with sensational dialogue and important things to say.

Over the last 12 months I’ve learnt an enormous amount about the international publishing industry. Wow. It’s a weird kind of business, actually. And nothing has taught me more than seeing the different approaches international publishers have taken when publishing Addition.

For instance, here in Australia the jacket looks like this:

It’s clearly a romance: rose-red jacket, snuggling toothbrushes. A lovely quote from the very generous Sigrid Thornton on the front, reminding us that Addition is, in fact, a love story.

In the UK, it looks like this:

They clearly need a few laughs in the UK at the moment, because there Addition is a comedy. Happy yellow colour, flippant lemon tart on the front. And, in case you missed it, it says ‘A comedy that counts’ right on the front.

In the US, when it’s published in February it will be in hardback:

Here it’s all about the emotional impact, and the writing. The fact that it’s a hardback is a bit weird to me; everywhere else it’s a paperback. My wonderful US editor had quite a lot of impact in the finished book and was constantly asking me to increase the emotional effect on the reader. She felt that the writing was too subtle and in a number of places I think she was right. The finished book is definitely better thanks to her input.

The Netherlands has a different view:

This is quite serious. Lots of numbers on the front, no romance or comedy at all. In fact, a serious newspaper interviewed me about Addition being “an ode to life, to attentiveness”.

Finally, here is the Serbian one:

As might be expected, they’ve focused on the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who features prominently in Addition. I love the ruler along the side, and the girl in the skivvy, of course. (Not enough skivvies on book jackets these days, in my view.) As to the bird? Your guess is as good as mine.

So, with all these different views of the one book, what’s right? What kind of book is Addition, really? Honestly, each and every one of these labels astonished me at the time. I just didn’t label Addition at all when I was writing it. I just knew I had a certain story to tell and that I had a certain writing style. I hope that happens with my next book too. My plan is to just concentrate on each word on each page and let the marketing people tell me what it is when it’s finished.

Before I wrote my first novel, Addition, I worked for 19 years in normal jobs. You all know what that’s like: there’s a starting time and a (looser) finishing time. There are forms to fill out for leave, collections for going-aways and sometimes cake for morning tea. There are colleagues who become friends. I didn’t always like it, but there was a routine that provided a structure to my day, and more broadly, to my life.

Now there’s…well, it’s just me really. And my laptop. And my next deadline for the new novel is the end of September next year.

If you think this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you might be right. So here are a few things I’ve learnt about working by myself.

1.  Work out when you’re at your best. I’m rubbish in the mornings, always have been. (When I was a teenager, my granny would keep a wet washer in the freezer, to drape over my feet when I slept in so I wouldn’t be late for school.) So I spend mornings answering emails and doing chores. The emails might be from publishers, publicists, librarians, reading groups or writers’ organisations. I do a little writing too: talks and lectures, things like that. I also try to read some new fiction and catch up with the news and blogs. I lot of this can be grouped loosely under the heading of ‘procrastination’, so I get it out of the way before midday. On the domestic front, I’ll often start preparing dinner too, because by 6 or 7 pm, I know I won’t want to stop writing.

2.  Human contact is essential if you don’t want to go loopy. Most of the year I spend one day a week lecturing in novel writing in the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT. I love this. I have wonderfully committed students with exciting work, and I’m forced out of my pyjamas at least once a week. I also try to have lunch or coffee with a friend once a week. And, although I’ve never blogged before this, it seems a great way to connect with people who love books.

3.  Get an assistant. Here is my assistant:

Myron the wonderwhippet has a varied job description. He lets me know if someone comes to the door. He walks me to the kitchen and the bathroom. He runs around in circles when the phone rings. And he lets me know IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS when I’ve been sitting at the computer for too long and it’s time to go for a walk. AND, in perhaps his most important role, when we do go for a walk and I’m caught muttering lines of dialogue under my breath like a crazy person, people in passing cars assume I’m talking to him. Genius.

Toni Jordan is next Summer Read author blogging from 6 – 10 December.

Toni Jordan has a BSc in physiology and qualifications in marketing and professional writing. She has worked as a sales assistant, molecular biologist, quality control chemist and marketing manager. Toni’s published work includes numerous magazine articles, a short story and a chapter in a medical textbook. She lives in Melbourne.

Her book Addition is one of the books on the Summer Read shortlist.

Addition tells the story of Grace Lisa Vandenburg, for whom numbers hold the world together. And so she counts. Everything. Seamus Joseph O’Reilly thinks she might be better off without the counting. She might be able to hold down a job, for example. Grace’s problem is that Seamus doesn’t count. Her other problem is…he does.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Toni will be appearing at:

• Clayton Theatrette, Clayton Community Centre,
Cooke Street Clayton on Thursday 12 February 2009, 6.30 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone Clayton Library 9544 0668 or book online at http://summerread20.eventbrite.com

• Rosebud Library, McDowell St, Rosebud for morning tea on Valentines Day on Saturday 14 February 2009, 11.00 – 12.30 pm
For more information phone 5950 1230 or book online at http://summerread24.eventbrite.com

• Frankston Library, 60 Playne Street, Frankston for Cake and Champagne on Valentines Day, Saturday 14 February 2009, 2.00 – 4.00 pm
For more information phone 9784 1020 or book online at http://summerread23.eventbrite.com

What Toni says about summer reading

“Over summer I attack my teetering to-be-read pile, but also patch those embarrassing gaps in my reading history. This year will be Dickens (The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol) and Eleanor Dark (A Timeless Land and Return to Coolami).”