Chalk and Talk at The Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Tonight I had the pleasure of going to Chalk and Talk, YA author Penny Tangey and Christina Adams' Melbourne International Comedy Festival show.

Put your mobile phone on silent, bring a packed lunch, and join Christina Adams and Penny Tangey as they talk about teaching and education.

It's got lesson plans, it's got UREJs (Useless Recycled Educational Jargon) and it's got more teaching clichés than you can poke a chalk stick at.

It really had everything a good school lesson should have, including a slide-show, loud-speaker announcements, stickers, (fake) people climbing out windows and a talk about Phar Lap.

I loved their witty observations, the layout, the acting, and, above all, the truthfulness of it.

At one point, Penny is a new teacher paired with Christina and Penny's talking about lesson plans and Christina's all, "I usually make it up while I'm doing the roll, ...

Marketing, Growing Up and being more Professional

I've been thinking about marketing a lot lately (although let's be honest, I love marketing, so when am I not thinking about it!).

Specifically, I joined Hootsuite and OMG is that site amazing. I am in love with it. And I can't believe no-one told me about it earlier!

It simplifies all your social media into one handy program - you can do everything you can do in each different social media, but it's saving you time as you can manage all your accounts at once.

Plus, you can schedule messages to be posted whenever you want - which is a huge help, and something I'd been wanting.

Hootsuite also offer Hootsuite University, which is educating you in social media.

I'm really interested to learn how to maximise social media marketing, and use it more effectively, and I think I'm going to sign up.

I'm working on ...

Fifty Shades of Grey

Oh, in this crazy world of publishing, what is going to happen next!

If you haven't heard, Fifty Shades of Grey is the NEXT BIG THING, with seven-figure book deals (jealous!) and a movie deal to boot.

When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind - until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.

The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her too - but ...

Children’s Book Festival

I deemed it appropriate to wear my Very Hungry Caterpillar jumper to a children's book festival, and so I did!

Much like last year, the festival managed to bring together fantastic children's authors and illustrators, entertainment, petting zoo, face painting, talks, launches and much more!

I did pretty much the same as last year and wandered around the various venues, taking it all in.

Huge crowds wherever you went; people clutching books and dodging each other as they went to stand in the book signing line.

Some happy snaps:

Petting zoo:

Publishers tents (Hardie Grant):

Drawing on the road:

Authors and illustrators in The Wheeler Centre:

Hazel Edwards in Experimedia:

Today was also the first day ...

On Book Launches – “Are book launches the new gallery openings?”

There's a really interesting article by Chris Flynn about the ever-increasing number of book launches happening around Australia, on Meanjin.

"It has now reached the stage where in any given calendar week people can attend several book launches or events," Flynn begins, and I have to agree.

"Whilst it is easy to believe book launches are thriving if you live in and around central Melbourne, where many small to medium sized publishing houses are based, a lot of the larger houses are more cautious with regards to the benefits of launches, perhaps understandably so given the financial burden of travel and organisation costs. In many cases it may simply not be worth the publisher’s or author’s time and publicity resources would be better employed elsewhere," Flynn says. He goes onto quote several publicists from large houses who say they rarely hold launches.

At first ...

Queen of the Night Launch

Last night was Leanne Hall's Queen of the Night launch, and, as always, it was packed. The support and camaraderie of the YA Melbourne book scene is unlike anything else.

It was so fantastic - also as always! - catching up with everyone. Many I'd seen a few weeks ago at Gab Williams' launch, but quite a few I hadn't seen since last year.

Readings Lygon Street was packed (need I say 'as always' again!!) and the first person I saw was Leanne, who looked lovely in a maxi dress. It actually felt really awesome to catch up with her first as you usually rarely get to speak to the author whose books is being launched due to the sheer amount of people there!

Here's my poor-quality iPhone photo of Cath Crowley launching Queen of the Night:

Cath spoke so beautifully, speaking so highly of ...

Guest Post: Adam Wallace on Writing What You Love

In what I think is a perfect way to start a new week, here is a little reminder about writing what you love by Adam Wallace:

I don’t like write what you know. I know that a lot of people say it. I know that a lot of “experts” say write what you know is the only way to go.

But there’s so much more to it than that.

Why? Well, for me, a lot of what I know is either boring as all hell or not anything I want to write about. I spent my whole year twelve writing about things I knew, and I hated every minute of it because I had to:

a) write in a style I knew very well but that was not me at all, and
b) I started realising I knew about a lot of boring stuff!

It ...

Tavi Gevinson

If you don't know Tavi Gevinson, you should get onto her fast.

She's fashion's next big thing, this tiny 15 year old American. She's front row at Fashion Week, giving lectures and editing this fabulous online journal called Rookie.

It's down to earth articles for teenage girls on every topic imaginable.

This morning I saw a link to an interview Tavi did with Tribune reporter Wendy Donahue (I'd embed it but I can't figure out how!) talking about her magazine and teenagers, and it's just so interesting listening to her talk.

Below is another interview I found, a talk that Tavi gave at a conference. She's talking about generation Y, and although it's obviously focused on fashion, it's an interesting take on this - my - generation, how to market to us and everything in between.

Even though I'm not into fashion at all - obviously! ...

Four Bite-Sized Reviews

...And so welcomes the return of mini reviews for 2012!

After starting them last year in an excercise of brevity (and, let's be honest, to help me out time-wise!) I've decided to bring them back! Hooray!

You can refer to them for tiny bite-sized morsels of good reading:)

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

Who doesn't love a good Johnson? Not many people, I would imagine. And so last year brought the first in Johnson's Shades of London series, The Name of the Star. I have to admit I didn't realise this was a paranormal book when I first picked it up, however credit to Johnson that for about the first half of the book, it read like any other contemporary: girl (Rory) moves over-seas, is at a new school, must fit in, etc. In fact, that was almost enough ...

Monthly Archives: March 2012