Monthly Archives: February 2010

Stupid People

Just a quick note I thought was amusing...

Most authors have a pretty clear spoiler policy on their blog/website/forum.

It's common sense, really. Don't spoil the book for other people.

Simple right?

Apparently not.

I was on Twitter before, and was on an author's page, and saw she had written several (okay, more like heaps!) times tweets to random people saying something along the lines of "Don't spoil it!"

I decided to click on one, and was taken to this person's page, where this person had posted about six tweets to the author, saying things like "I don't understand, you're the author, I only want to know why XYZ happened!" "You know the ending, I don't understand" "If there's a problem you should direct message me" etc.

And it went on. ...

Juggling Time – A Guest Post by Paul Collins

Paul Collins is a one-man publishing force.

With over sixty novels to his name, he has also won a handful of awards and is the driving force behind Ford Street Publishing.

Really, people, we could all stand to learn a lot from him!

It’s hard to imagine now that back in the 70s I published books from my bookshop in St Kilda. The shop was open seven days a week and the publishing was somehow integrated into work-time. These days I’m publishing full time, and there’s not a moment to spare. I’d certainly dread trying to do it while running a shop!

There are many reasons for this time-well. The Internet, while making life a lot easier in terms of research and publicity, is all time-consuming. The Internet has opened up so many avenues for publicity ...

Just A Minute In…

So at the moment I am going to steal from the lovely Sarah Hannah Fisher from Death Wears Diamond Jewellery's newest post outline...

Listening… Little Birdy, Lily Allen & Rob Dougan
Reading… Kill The Possum by James Moloney
Watching… Revolutionary Road (recently bought it, love it!), SVU and Sex And The City (yay for babysitting house last night having Foxtel!)
Buying… Hopefully a new dress for my birthday!
Wanting… My birthday night out next weekend to be fab!
Trying… To be good, not really happening
Loving… (... So I've sat on this question for a while now, and can't think of anything. Sad, right? Let's just say... My friends! Mwah you know who you are! Vlad, Bevan, Amy, Mel, Beck and everyone I haven't listed!)
Planning… My birthday gathering next weekend!
Writing… My novel:)
Inspired by… Listening to conversations ...

Busyyyy

Evening all!

Today has been a very tired day.

For some reason, I've been living in a constant yawn lately, and this was amplified in this morning's class where I was almost falling asleep.

Which I guess was better than sleeping in and skipping it, which I have to admit I was very tempted to do, but alas I dragged myself out of bed.

A very good friend of mine and I managed to amuse ourselves by throwing pens at each other. Epic!

Then we, along with another friend, went to a shopping centre for lunch. It was all very nice and pleasant:)

This afternoon I tutored, and have since come home, cooked dinner, and have spent a leisurely few hours reading blogs, answering emails and watching TV.

I've also been in an ...

What’s In Your Bag?

From Simmone and Andrew, here is the contents of my handbag:

Firstly, my bag. It is from Dangerfield, and I love it. It's big and black! Two of the best qualities in a bag, I believe.

And before you say anything, I have no idea why the photo is flipped - it wasn't when I uploaded it!


Charlie and Lola Coin Purse w/ bracelets coming out of it: I use it to carry my jewelry.
Black sequined peteralexander ballet flats, with bag: Epic on those long nights wearing heels!
Business cards: Self exspanotory!
Kikki.k. notebook and diary: I'd be lost without these! Both were presents - the notebook from my sister for Christmas, and the diary from one of my tutoring girls for Christmas. Both know how obsessed with Kikki.k. I am!
Random pens from ...

Class-mantics + New Book Chat!

Hola everyone!

Interesting, great day - lots to talk about!

Firstly, in Young Adult (Side note: Am I the only person in the world that calls 'young adult' 'YA'? I keep referring to it as YA at school and NO-ONE has ANY idea what I'm talking about! It's oh-so common here in blogging world, and in the lit world, but seriously kiddies from my school... YA= Young Adult!!!) class today, we had to bring in a YA book we've read in the past week.

I, of course, forgot completely that we had to bring it in, but obviously I've read a million and one YA books in this past week so I decided to talk about F2M - for more details, see this post I did reviewing it.

I'm going to assume everyone has read the ...

Lovely Writing Quotes and Busy, Busy, Busy!

Evening y'all, today was a fabulous day for me, as I hope it was for!

My day was very productive, so much so, in fact, I can hardly believe it!

I was up insanely early (especially seeing as I didn't have work or class) and ran a bunch of errands.

I went to the bank, to work to drop off some forms, called the council, called a retail shop about some shoes for my sisters birthday, and then dashed over there to pick them up, called RACV, called the library.

And that was just the morning!

Then in the afternoon I had my girl in grade four to tutor, and we made the most awesome clock you've ever seen - one of those paper dooveys with a push pin in the middle so you can ...

Lack of Blogging/Justine Rocks

Evening!

Many of you have been complaining that my posts have left much to be imagined lately, and I will be the first to say yes, yes they have.

Been crap that is.

I can put this down to a few reasons:

1) We are over our Internet, and thus back to dail-up speed. It took my browser no less than fifteen minutes to open this tab ALONE and then log into Blogger, open my blog, click on new post, etc. So yes. It's a long and painful process to open my emails, let alone a high graphic site like Blogger (is that even a word? High graphic? Or, more to the point, the right word? What I'm trying to say is loading all three billion of the blogs I follow takes timeeeee and makes it ...

Re-structure, Britney and Keeping Secure

Wow, the weirdest thing just happened.

Trying to log into my Blogger account, it told me that "Blogger has detected some unusual activity" and therefore my account has been cancelled.

WHAT!

I attempted to log in again, and again, and each time it told me the same thing until it finally let me log in, but I had to change my password to make my account more secure.

I wonder who tried to log in as me! :S

This whole process wasn't helped by the fact that we're already over our download limit at my house, which means the whole "log in again, and again, and again" was about an hour process.

For those who have to suffer dial-up speed all the time, I feel for you.

Meanwhile, I've been doing some major ...

Tattoos + Missing Novels

So I got an email from my editor this evening asking if I wanted to review this: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

My first question was, who the hell is free mid-morning, mid-week?! Come on, publicity people!

Second question was, they're making a movie of that?!

Apparently.

Out in Australia 25 March, it is:

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate.

The award-winning and best-selling Millennium trilogy has fast become ...