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Cover reveals (and messing with my publisher)

2015

After a brief hiatus (in whichever bizarro world fifteen months can be considered ‘brief’), I’m back. It’s been an incredible year-and-a-bit. I won the Gold Inky (thanks to everyone who voted), and it’s taken me so long to post about it, they’ve gone and given the award to someone else (Gabrielle Tozer. She is excellent. Her novel The Intern is also excellent.).

2014 was an incredible year, and 2015 matched it. I toured a lot, mostly alone, but for three short days, with international author Sara Farizan. I got to wrestle Marama Whyte over an ARC of Illuminae. I lost, but it’s out now and I bought one so I’ll deal. I also took Mum to a really terrible Robbie Williams cabaret show, which was a life low-light, but a Twitter highlight:

Most importantly though, I’ve been writing a book. It’s called The Sidekicks, and it’ll be out in early 2016.

Now, whenever an author’s new book is announced, you can know a title and read a blurb, but you don’t really get a sense of what it will be like until you see the cover. For that reason, the cover announcement is kind of a big deal. The lovely folks at Penguin Teen Australia had a strategy and everything. They were going to announce the cover after their regular #PTAChats (guided discussions about YA).

I saw an opportunity for mischief.

Armed with Photoshop and all of my Instagram selfies, I whipped up a fake book cover:

There was a longer-than-intended dramatic pause between my threat and the upload though. I was on a train, using my phone’s internet…

Where there’s mischief, karma soon follows. I give you my submission for Most Awkward Life Experience 2015:

The actual cover features 100% less shirtless Will.

Pretty awesome, don’t you think? I’ll share more soon 🙂

EDIT: Okay, so I may have purposefully omitted their revenge prank:

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Bamboozled: Why I’m Quitting Tropfest

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[This article now appears at ABC’s The Drum]

Ugh, Tropfest.

I go to Tropfest each year expecting to be disappointed. There always tends to be two or three films I like, and a lot more with too much ‘typically Australian’ humour for me to stomach (lots of bodily functions and fluids). The latter kind always do better in judging than the former, but I leave knowing I’ll come back next year.

Two films into Tropfest 22, I knew I didn’t want to come back next year.

I didn’t even want to stay for the rest of this year’s.

Now, I understand comedy is subjective, and I’m certain that others would consider a lot of the comedy I appreciate offensive (If It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia were fuel, I could live off it), but Matt Hardie’s Bamboozled was… soul-crushing. Capping off a weekend that saw the nation’s first legal same-sex marriages, it was an unintentionally poignant reminder that we have a long way to go when it comes to treating the LGBTQI community as ‘equal’, rather than ‘other’.

In Bamboozled, Pete bumps into his ex at a bus stop. The twist? His ex has had a sex change (a really tasteful use of the year’s theme, ‘change’) and is now a man. They catch up over a few (hundred) drinks, rehashing the two years they spent together. Their connection is clear. The next morning, Pete wakes up next to his ex (a man) and he clearly regrets his decision. Yes, their shared history and obvious chemistry is null and void because, ‘Ew, gross, I slept with a boy.’ Cue audience laughter. Then, he finds out its an ‘elaborate hoax’, and instead of sleeping with a Helen-turned-Harry, he’s just slept with a Harry. And he’s shamed for it. Cue more audience laughter.

“We got you, man! We got you!” Harry howls.

As if things can’t get any worse, in comes Helen, his real ex. “How do you like that, Pete?” she asks. “And now, you slept with a guy!”

“You totally banged me, man. You totally banged me!” Harry continues. He adds a, “He loved it!” as he high-fives his co-conspirators.

So, yeah: Ugh, Tropfest.

Some are defending the film, saying it’s just a joke. And that’s exactly the problem, there’s nothing particularly funny about being intimate with someone of the same gender. That, in and of itself, is not humorous. And neither is shaming them for it. That’s othering anyone who doesn’t identify as heterosexual, pointing at them and laughing (literally, in this case).

If selecting the film as one of 16 finalists wasn’t — wait for it — bamboozling enough, it went on to win. In the short term, it’s disheartening. In the longer term, it may have a positive effect. It may have inspired someone who was sitting in Centennial Park who wasn’t laughing to pick up their camera and tell a story we didn’t see on the big screen tonight.

But until then, it just feels shitty.

UPDATE: Director Matt Hardie has defended the film as a parody of the media in an interview with ABC.

“The punchline really is a comment on media and how the world may have homophobia, but the lead character, and what I was saying, he was completely willing to go with either gender, he was in love with the person,” he says.

Right, okay. I don’t know what media he’s commenting on. Yes, reality programmes like 2003’s There’s Something About Miriam were vile and exploitative, but they were also in 2003. Since then, we’ve seen positive, sensitive portrayals of the LGBTQI on the small screen thanks to reality TV. I’m no fan of Big Brother, but there’s no denying it’s done some good in this regard.

Let’s be honest here, if Hardie’s character Pete really was “completely willing to go with either gender”, his first words when waking up next to an affectionate man wouldn’t have been, “What the F?” In fact, the whole scene wouldn’t have been framed like every other morning-after-drunken-regret scene committed to film.

Hardie says the punchline is two-fold. It’s a commentary on a media (that may or may not actually exist), and “how the world may have homophobia”. I’m assuming he means Helen’s gleeful, “How do you like that, Pete? … You slept with a guy!” This is perhaps the most problematic part of his explanation. The world having homophobia isn’t a punchline. Having people shame a man they duped into having sex with another man isn’t a punchline. Playing it for laughs isn’t showing how the world may have homophobia, it’s showing the world how to be homophobic.

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The First Third: Out Now

The First ThirdHi everyone,

The First Third is out now. It started out as a kernel of an idea: what if my grandmother gave me her bucket list to complete? And from that, out grew this novel about what it means to be a grandson, a son and yourself.

It’s a more personal novel than I expected to write… It’s not about me, but there’s a lot of me in there.

And it’s definitely a lot of fun.

It’s available in paperback at your local bookstore and online, and digitally for your mobile devices: Android and iOS.

The first chapter is available online, click here to read it.

We could have been anywhere. Like sitting at a table in my grandmother’s garden, between the olive tree and the tomato patch – Mum, Yiayia, my brothers and I. Our fingers were greasy and our mouths were full. We were in our own little ethnic bubble.

You could practically hear the metallic twangs of the bouzouki.

There was too much food. There was always too much food. Mum and I were grazing, picking from the platter of haloumi cheese resting on my grandmother’s thigh; my younger brother was balancing his carbs, protein and fat, as if one family meal was the difference between being super-fit and morbidly obese; and my older brother was sampling like someone who’d lived out of home long enough to miss having six different types of meat in one sitting.

A dull beep cut through it all. The bouzouki trills ended abruptly. The bubble popped and the rest of the world roared into focus – the bed, the complicated medical equipment. And the other bed across the hospital room, the old man lying on it and the family exchanging worried, heartfelt looks.

The old man’s heart-rate monitor beeped again. And again.

‘Ma, stop moving,’ Mum said. ‘You’ll knock over the salad.’

We had lunch laid out on my grandmother’s hospital bed. She was still in it. It was lunch-meets-Jenga, one wrong move and it all fell down.

We’d pulled our chairs in close and started eating like it wasn’t ridiculous.

‘Um, guys?’ I found disguising observations as questions helped me walk the fine line between knowing it all and being a know-it-all. ‘Don’t you think we’re perpetuating some danger­ous stereotypes here?’

Click here to read the full excerpt.