She's Baaaaaaaaaaack!!!

This may or may not be good news to anyone who happens to stumble across the A's of A in their wanderings around blogland ... which is funnily enough how A herself became reunited with her late and not lamented Annals.  Fate moves in mysterious ways (as does A's digestive tract at times) and today I stumbled across a draft of an old post on the Annals which I didn't even recognise as my own humble efforts.  In Googling the article (which with due modesty I must confess I found erudite and well-written - to hell with modesty) I discovered it was written by no less than moi, in the guise of Annabelle.  In making this momentous discovery the full splendour of my old blog was revealed to me and I thought I should perhaps do the world a favour and resurrect it. 

Whether the world agrees or not, it will be good practice for the writing mind and fingers of Annabelle, who since her last victorious post two years ago about having a short story published, has had zilch, zero, nuffink and sweet fanny adams published.  This has been largely through her own dismal failure to actually complete any work to publishable standard, despite hours of toil.  We can in all fairness though heap some of the blame on her place of employment, in fact we can dump a whole slag heap of blame on that esteemed establishment which has been extracting blood in return for a paltry pittance and soaking up the little intellectual glimmer that still remains after all this time. 

However that is all to change in the near future, as the usual work/life balance of 5 days drudgery and 2 days off will in my case be reversed.  In expectation of filling this gaping hole of "unpaid time" with productive writing, I am flexing my fingers by inflicting my ramblings on you - poor hapless reader.  Or in the event there are no readers, it will be an interesting exercise in navel gazing, talking to myself, self-absorption and various other ill advised solitary activities.

I hope you stay with me, as I update you on my journeyings and my final leap towards the goal of attaining my Masters in Creative Writing - they are holding the cap and gown in readiness I am assured, but their hands are getting bloody tired, so I must shake a leg.  And indeed must hasten before Old Mother Time slings any more bows and arrows of ageing at me and renders me incapable of doddering up to shake the hand of the hander out of hard won academic glory.  There will be updates on this, as well as life in all its panoramic unpredictability and hopefully a few laughs along the way.

A Literary Lunch

A few weeks ago I attended the Salisbury Writers' Festival at which one of the speakers was Olive Senior, a Jamaican born woman, former journalist and historian, and now successful publisher of fiction and poetry http://core.ecu.edu/engl/deenas/caribbean/senior.htm.

She was a fascinating and inspirational speaker and during the break, my friend Nina (who had accompanied me to the festival) and I introduced ourselves to her. Nina followed this up with a longer chat later in the day during which they arranged to meet for lunch as Olive (who now lives in Canada) was to be in Australia for several weeks.

Nina is one of those delightfully gregarious and charming people who have a knack for making friends wherever they go, and such was the case on this occasion. They had lunch, one thing led to another and Nina subsequently attended another function at which Olive was speaking and where she met yet another author, Ranjit Ratnaike. Ranjit is a Sri Lankan, retired Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide and now published author of his first science fiction novel,

"Saradasi: The Prophecy" http://www.booktopia.com.au/prod9780980491487.html.

The upshot of this was that Nina and her husband Peter hosted a lunch one Sunday afternoon for Olive, Ranjit and his wife, another friend, George, and I. As the photos above show, it was a great success and a veritable literary feast of delicious Malaysian food, fine wine and sparkling conversation. Many topics were discussed, including of course books, reading and, the trials of trying to write and get published, at which Olive is an expert and Ranjit has had recent success. If Ranjit's penchant for the science fiction genre ever palls, he could probably successfully take up humour as he had us all in stitches with his hilarious anecdotes.

Not that I'm any closer to publishing my first novel, but this was a delightful diversion and a fascinating look into the private world of that exalted breed (for us struggling wannabees) of the published author! Thanks to Nina (who will one day be one of that breed too I'm sure) for this memorable afternoon!