Kara Down Under

Book Review: Priceless by Tom Davis

2011-06-12T20:44:00.000+12:00

Summary

Photojournalist Stuart Daniels has found purpose in life. After suffering the fallout of a tragic assignment, Daniels rediscovered his faith while helping a young African orphan. Now his photo work carries a greater mission: To educate people about social injustice happening around the world.

Daniels next assignment carries him back overseas and into the heart of Russia. Once there, Daniels is persuaded by an old friend to help save two girls from a desperate situation. Soon he becomes a key player in a dangerous campaign to rescue helpless women trapped in the sex-slave trade. What Daniels encounters during his journey will shake his faith, test his courage, and even threaten his life. Yet as Daniels gets deeper and the stakes get higher, he will discover that hope can be found in the darkest of places.

Review

Priceless is the kind of book that will pick you up and by the time you get to put it down again your heart is in pieces. Sex trafficking. It's an ugly phrase and, for anyone familiar with the global statistics that accompany it, can sometimes seem like all efforts are just a drop in the ocean compared to the overwhelming size of its scale. While this book is set in Russia there is almost no nation of earth that doesn't have a sex trafficking problem.

It's easy to think that it's a problem for places like Russia, India, Thailand and Cambodia. But the more you find out the more you find that "safe" Western places like New Zealand, Australia and the United States are not immune.

Tom Davis does a magnificent job of putting creating faces and stories to go behind the mind-blowing numbers. Of reminding us that while the scale of the problem may seem insurmountable, sex trafficking is a story about individuals. That every girl rescued from being a victim of those who trade human beings as commodities, is one more person freed from a life of terror, slavery, abuse and hopelessness.

Buy this book. Read this book. Buy multiple copies and give it away. And then do something to add your drop to the ocean.

Yes I'm Still Here

2011-06-06T14:48:00.000+12:00

But life has been somewhat consumed growing the bump aka the Ricicle. On Wednesday he had his first trip up to the snow...

When A Life Is Wasted

2011-04-07T20:10:00.000+12:00

Clearing my Blackberry on the way into work. Head spinning with everything that needed to get done today. Wishing the traffic would move faster. That the rain would stop. That this week would be over and I could crawl into bed and snuggle up to my husband and not worry about what crisis might need to be handled tomorrow.

News items deleting. My insurance company might go bust from the Christchurch Earthquake. Do we stick it out with them or switch insurers now? We have no food in our house. I still haven't got my Dad a birthday present. Why does having a baby sound like a holiday right now?

Then I opened up the next email. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what I was reading. A friend had died. Not a close friend, but someone more than an acquaintance. The girl who I first met six years ago who was bubbly and talented and full of life, had let anorexia get a hold of her and it has now cost her everything.

I still can't process it. I'm angry. Angry at such a needless waste of life. Angry at those closest to her for not forcing her to get help before it got to this. Angry at her for steadfastly refusing to admit that she had a problem - right to the end. Angry at myself for avoiding her the last time I saw her at church because I didn't have the energy to try and hold a "normal" conversation with her, reinforcing her in her denial by being too awkward, too "it's not my place" to initiate the hard conversation. I knew that many people closer to her than I had tried, and failed to get her to see what she was doing to herself.

I walked away that day and decided it was enough, that the next time I saw her I would have that conversation. That continuing to pretend that she wasn't now dying, as opposed to just sick and needing help, when she looked like one of those photos that were taken of the people found in Auschwitz, was over.

I never saw her again. Will never see her again.

It's too late for Michelle. But I beg you, if you know anyone, if you ever know anyone who has let a diet turn dangerous, please do something, say something. No matter how awkward or inconvenient. If for no other reason, then you'll never have to be like Michelle's family, flatmates, friends and acquaintances who are all asking ourselves if maybe, combined, we'd all tried a little bit harder, she'd still be alive today.

Urban Myths: Writing A Book Is Like Having A Baby

2011-03-31T19:59:00.000+13:00

I have heard it said many, many, times, that writing a book is akin to having a baby. This proclamation is generally uttered with such great conviction that, in my naivety, I went along with the wisdom of those who have gone before me.

Creatively I could see the parallels. Writing a manuscript is very much a labour of love. There are the nights you lie awake, or wake up, trying to unravel a particularly obstinate scene or figure out a character who just won't do what its supposed to. Sending your manuscript or book out - be it to be judged in a contest or by the general paying public - and not getting five star rave reviews back does literally feel like someone has attacked your much loved and (you think) wonderful child. While unpublished, I can certainly imagine how holding your very first printed book after months or years of perseverance would be greeted with a awe similar to having your first born thrust into your arms after hours of labour.

Now, having crawled my way into the fourth month of pregnancy, I can only conclude that those who utter this advice sagely either (1) have enough years between now and the actual event that time has healed many many wounds, (2) you are one of those lucky women who glowed like Moses while you glided all the way from conception through to birth with great hair and flawless skin to boot or (3) your nation subscribes to a much more managed approach than the "suck it up and carry on" mantra of New Zealanders.

So here are my top five reasons for why writing a book is NOTHING like having a baby, bearing in mind that I'm assured the worst should now be behind me and that a year from now I'll probably be a fully fledged believer in the analogy again!

1) Projectile vomiting. No matter how horrible the scene, how badly written the chapter, or tedious the plot problem, not one of my manuscripts have ever had me running for the ladies' like Usain Bolt in the 100m Olympic finals.

2) The escape clause. Tired? Had enough? Been staring at the same page for three hours making minor meaningless changes? File, shut down, walk away, my friend. It's a beautiful thing. Morning sickness, in contrast, doesn't come with a ctrl-alt-delete option.

3) The "public property" assumption. Has a stranger ever walked up to you and stroked your laptop? A friend popped around and started patting down your manuscript? No? You'd probably find that odd, probably even kind of disturbing, right? And yet having a bump seems to make you a target for people who seem to be practicing their skills for a job with airport security.

4) No wine and cheese allowed. Fundamental components of any great productive post-midday writing session.

5) Ceding control. Writing a manuscript - you're in complete control (well with some exceptions if you're under contract). Heroine red hair or blonde? Hero pilot or engineer? Write today or spend it watching a Bachelor marathon? Laptop or desktop? Mac or PC? Get up at 4am to squeeze in a couple of hours or burn the midnight oil? Romance or sci-fi? First trimester? You get to control what clothes you're wearing as you bolt for the bathroom. Pretty much everything else is out of your hands.

Alright, I'm ready, convince me that there are more simularities that differences or else add some more reasons to make my argument even more convincing...

Dear Baby

2011-03-06T18:30:00.000+13:00

Dear Ricey,

I guess firstly I should apologise for the days of sobbing after I discovered your existence. You were, um, unexpected. Very. The only person who was probably more surprised than me was Mary. But I'm betting not by much.

I guess I should thank you for at least giving us a year before gracing us with your presence. Trust me, given that your Dad was a surprise honeymoon baby, I'm grateful you were a little more relaxed.

Your grandparents are, of course, thrilled about you. And all the newfound psychics on your Dad's side are now insisting that they "knew" over Christmas. Funny how they never mentioned this great insight to me as I was knocking back the liquor and chowing down on cold seafood and days old deli meats. Sorry about that. Though I am intrigued to see if you have any great aversion or love for pomegranates when you grace the world with your presence, since you spent a good part of your first couple of weeks sloshing around in various pomegranate infused cocktails.

While we're on the topic of food, let's talk about consistency. Truly, I can deal with it if you don't like something. Even if it breaks me heart to give it up. We both know that this time next year I'll be getting revenge by force feeding you that revolting sludge Wattie's call "baby food". But, I would really appreciate it if you could pick a team and stick with it. This whole craving plums one day and projectile vomiting them the next is really uncool. Almost as uncool as walking into a meeting and discovering I have remnants still splattered on my suit.

Nap time. Wow you really like these don't you? I can only hope that my Saturday and Sunday afternoon writing time, that has now become 3-4 hours of coma-like unconsciousness, is a good omen for how much you plan to sleep once you arrive.

And your Auntie Bec has already bought every gender neutral onesie in the Wellington region so would like me to request that you let her know somehow if you're a he or a she so she can branch out into either trucks or flowers. Your father has christened her the most excited out of everyone, and trust me, the competition is super stiff on that front.

Can't wait to meet you in September.

xox

It Wasn't Supposed To Be Christchurch

2011-02-27T19:47:00.000+13:00

As I sit here typing this 147 people have been confirmed dead and more than 200 are missing after Tuesday's earthquake. Hundreds of families who are bracing themselves for another night without their father, mother, brother, sister, niece or nephew.

Our beautiful second city is broken. Thousands who haven't lost their family members, no longer know if they have jobs or a home. Entire suburbs are cut off without power, sewerage and water and what was once a 15 minute drive, now takes two hours in an SUV to access.

And for those of us in Wellington, one of the many things that keeps cropping up in conversations is the bewildered, sometimes disbelieving "It wasn't supposed to be Christchurch."

It was supposed to be us. Our city is the one built on top of a fault line. In fact, we're the geniuses whose only arterial motorway is going to disappear into a gaping chasm when the earth roars because its built directly on top of said fault line. And built our national museum on reclaimed land which is going to fall into the ocean. We're the ones who after a couple of years no longer register anything below a 4.0. We're the ones who were resigned that if not us, then our children, or our grandchildren would one day be assaulted with the big one.

And then it wasn't us. Instead, we're the ones standing by helplessly glued to the news as the catalogue of devastation unravels by the hour. The miracle of 4 September, when the earth shook at 4am in the morning sparing countless lives, disappeared. In it's place images of people running and screaming, buildings toppling and the earth splitting brought everything to a stand still.

And then frantic chaos as people reached for phones. A nation of four million people. Everybody has either lived in Christchurch, or has family or friends down there. People who worked in the buildings that we were seeing had been destroyed. Or who lunched in the mall that was now buried in rubble. Or who lived in areas we were told had been flattened.

And then within hours rescue and emergency teams from Australia, USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Singapore on their way. We can never repay the men and women who currently have the harrowing job or sifting through the remains of our city looking for survivors and those who haven't made it.

Our beautiful grand English Christchurch is broken and its people will be hurting for a long time. But we have so much to be thankful for.

Christchurch Earthquake

2011-02-23T08:18:00.000+13:00

Christchurch was hit by another huge earthquake yesterday. At 6.3 it was less powerful than the one in September (7.1) but it was shallower and much closer to the city. Worse, where the last one was at 4am while people were asleep, this one was at lunchtime where the whole city was going about their daily business.

The death toll is at 65 and forecast to rise, hundreds are injured, trapped or just missing. The city itself has pretty much been levelled in many areas. We have rescue workers being flown in from all over the world.

Please pray for them as they look for people trapped and missing, for families as they are notified of the loss of loved ones and for strength and wisdom for all of our emergency services personnel as we try to come to terms with the magnitude of what has happened.

Ten Things I Love About This Summer

2011-02-03T18:05:00.000+13:00

1) My basil plant is out of control! I say this as someone who has emaciated every single plan she has previously ever owned.

I am so proud of my lush green basil that I take it with me in a little zip-lock bag whenever Josh and I go out for pizza, which I then whip out when my margherita pizza shows up with it's inferior basil. Yes, I know, he must love me a lot.

2) Plum juice running down my fingers

3) Our house has a deck which gets the best sun. And our boarder moved out last weekend so no more awkward moments of being busted sunbathing in my bra.

4) Actually wanting to go outside. This is not the case for 9-10 months of the year in Wellington.

5) Weddings. Especially the ones when it has taken the two people involved FOREVER to find each other and everyone has been waiting for this day for about 15 years!

6) Avocados. Guacamole. On toast. In salads. In burritos. Eating them straight out of the skin with some salt. I'm convinced that avocados were what God hung on the tree of life.

7) The pre-Christmas rush of lots of books, books, brilliant new books.

8) Holidays.

9) Finishing work at 3pm pretty much the entire month of January.

10) Fish and chips, especially golden hot crispy chips wrapped in fresh white bread dripping with butter and tomato sauce.

So what are your favourite things about summer? Or whatever season you're in!

The Final Chapter

2011-01-27T17:45:00.000+13:00

I've never really believed that the final chapter can make or break a book. Well with the exception being it being either truly horrific, or a thriller or a mystery that ends up creating even more questions than it answers, as with one of David Baldacci's latest books.

However, that doesn't mean it's not important. Because it is. Very. While the first chapter is meant to draw you in, and all the subsequent ones keep the reader engaged enough to keep turning the pages, it's the final one that leaves them closing the book with a sigh of satisfaction or a vague sense of discontent.

Unfortunately, for the last four years, my final chapter has been the latter. It's not that I hated it. And it wasn't that I could put my finger on what was exactly wrong with it. It just wasn't... right. For some reason it didn't feel worthy of my heroine.

After everything she'd been through, it was like I left her hanging with this slightly soppy, introspective, anti-climactic exit. I could almost see her standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at me and saying "Seriously, after everything, this is where you leave me?"

The problem with not knowing what is wrong, is it's really hard to make it right. And so I tinkered with the scene and I edited it and I rewrote it and four years later, and who knows how many rewrites, it still stunk.

And then the other night I woke up and realized. IT WAS ALL WRONG. All of it. The scene didn't need rewriting, or editing, or a better use of the five senses. The entire scene needed to be scrapped and replaced with something completely different.

And I had an inkling of what that new scene should be. So I scribbled something down but, while I knew it was heading in the right direction, it still wasn't it.

On Tuesday night I was jolted from my sleep again. And this time I had it. The new scene was right, but the choice she made was wrong. She had to make the different decision.

The opening line showed up on my notebook page. Then the closing line. Then a completely new character who linked it all together.

Today, I finally sat down and weaved it all together. And as I tapped out the final line, I could see her leaning back in her chair, pumping her arms and saying "FINALLY!"

Holiday Time

2010-12-24T11:48:00.000+13:00

Right now Josh and I are sitting in Auckland Airport waiting for our flight to Sydney to board. We're there for ten days and then back in New Zealand in a (hopefully) sunny location before diving into 2011.

So often the magnitude of a year is determined by the number of "significant" events that it contained. Mine has head a few - got married, bought a house, changed jobs. All good things. All FREAKING scary things! I am now attached to another human being for LIFE, attached to a bank for 20 YEARS and switched to a job with NO job security.

And I found myself meandering around the writing wilderness, wondering if one (semi) decent story was all I have in me.

After what anyone would probably call a dream first writers' conference, in which both an agent and an editor requested proposals, I guess that maybe I'd thought I was getting somewhere. One superfast rejection and one no reply later it was back to before square one. No longer did I have a clean shiny new manuscript to send in, but rather one that has been roundly rejected and nowhere left to be sent.

And no Plan B.

So this Christmas, along with all of the usual things, I'm saying a big prayer for some inspiration because I really don't want to be one of those wannabe writers who gives up because her first attempt at a manuscript didn't find its way to fame and glory (or even an editor who kind of liked it a little).

The Frivolity of Fiction?

2010-12-05T18:35:00.002+13:00

Over the last few weeks my reading has held some pretty weighty topics - the war in Afghanistan, human trafficking, persecution in China and cancer. Every single book was brilliant in its own way. All made me look at the world differently and all left me confronted with a very real question. Is my writing too frivolous to be worthy?

The truth is that I don't write about wars, or terminal illness, or oppressive regimes, or slavery. Should I ever be published, I have no expectation that my book is going to change someone's life, let alone contribute to educating the reader as to various injustices in the world. My greatest wish is that someone gets to kick back for a few hours, enjoy the story and decides that it was $15.99 well spent.

I just write about ordinary people. They aren't freedom fighters, or missionaries, or dying. They have jobs and a roof over their heads and their worries are things like; Am I going to get fired? Is my heart going to get broken again? How did I get here?

Even the most avid of readers only buys a few books a year in the grand scheme of all that is out there. Do I really want to even try and compete with people who are writing books about things that matter?

And here I am conflicted. You see I like those books too. In a world that is hurting and broken sometimes, in my selfishness, I just want to curl up on the couch and read about a girl and a guy, and in the grand scheme of things their lives aren't hard, or complicated and if they'd just darn well tell each other how they really feel the story would be over by page 50, but they take the hard road and so it takes 300.

Because that is me. While there are people doing amazing things and changing the world, I have a job, and a mortgage, and I love my husband, and we sponsor children with World Vision, and we do groceries on Saturday mornings, and we buy fair trade when we can, and we spend more on takeaways in a night than some people earn in a week and then we recycle the containers.

And quite frankly I would be embarrassed if any of my writing ever found its way into the hands of someone in a war-torn, poverty stricken nation because the things that my characters spend 25 pages angsting over would be a luxury for them to even have to worry about.

Thoughts?

There Are No Words - RIP Pike River Miners

2010-11-25T20:21:00.000+13:00

Last Friday at 5pm I was sitting in some colleagues' office, sipping a glass of wine and thinking about weekend plans. Then a phone rang. Someone calling to ask whether we'd heard anything about a mine explosion.

Over the next 15 minutes more phone calls came in, then web reports, the news getting grimmer with every second. Explosion confirmed. Men missing. The numbers ranged. Police, ambulance and rescuers racing to the scene on the West Coast of the South Island.

During the next few hours more details came out. Two men had made it out, 29 hadn't. Mine rescue workers started planning as family and friends waited.

A day passed, then two. The volitility of the gasses in the mine meant rescuers couldn't go in without risking a secondary explosion. All of New Zealand stayed attached to their TVs, phones and mobile devices. Hoping, praying for a miracle. That the gasses will subside, that the rescuers will be able to get in, that the men will be found alive.

Day Three. Day Four. Progress on getting robots and boring holes into the mine are excruciatingly slow. The terrain is rugged. People are working 24/7. A new path is cut through a national park to get a new drill in. Offers of help pour in from all over the world.

Their faces become etched in our minds. The groom-to-be in three weeks, the father-to-be in a few months, the 17 year old who wasn't supposed to start work on Monday but begged his Boss to let him start on Friday.

The small town of 10,000 is swamped by media. Distraught families have to run a gauntlet of cameras and journalists to get to their briefings. Some stoop to the obscene to get a story - posing as crisis management workers, leaving microphones on after an interview in a hope to get more sensitive information.

As hope becomes to fade people pray, beg, for a miracle. Anger, questions, frustration at why mounting a rescue effort is taking so long.

Day Six. A secondary explosion. Bigger than the first. Not possible for anyone to have survived the experts say.

This time last week the 29 fathers husbands, brothers and sons were home. With family and friends. This morning their families woke up to the reality that they are never coming home again. Now we pray that the mine will be gracious enough to allow rescuers to go in and recover their bodies.

There are no words.

Lost in the Words

2010-11-06T13:37:00.000+13:00

I admit it. I can no longer see the wood for the trees. Or the manuscript for the words if you like.

I am on what feels like the hundredth revision and re-edit of a manuscript. It probably isn't the hundredth, but it's definitely up there. I finished the first (admittedly badly written) draft three years ago and I'm pretty sure there is no longer a paragraph remaining from the original. Maybe a sentence here and there, but that's about it.

And for the most part that's a good thing. It's shed a (much needed to lose) 40,000 words, the characters are more relatable, the dialogue snappier, the tension upped, the writing (hopefully) improved ten fold and, for the most part, I've remained true to my voice. The only thing I've really hated having to do is change the location from New Zealand to the USA, but that had to be done to give it even a remote chance of ever being read by anyone other than my sister and other long suffering crash test guinea pigs.

Pretty much in everything I've done I've known that the manuscript was the better for it. Yes, even losing that brilliant witty scene because it functioned like the comedy act at half-time that didn't actually do anything to move the show forward.

But now? I honestly don't know. I've had my head in this thing for so long that I can no longer tell if the changes I'm making are making the writing better, if they're just change for change sake, or if (gulp) they're changes they're making it weaker.

So if you're a fellow writer - any hints on how I can tell? And if you're a reader - what is it that tells you when a writer has lost their way and is now trying too hard?

Two Hours, Twenty Minutes Of My Life That I Want Back

2010-10-22T11:10:00.000+13:00

While I loved the book, I have to admit that I didn't go into the movie with high expectations knowing that it would take a masterful director to do it justice. But even my mediocre expectations were dashed. Disjointed, self-indulgent, self-conscious, cliched, contrived, and at times completely nonsensical if you hadn't read the book. Oh and a terrible casting choice of Julia Roberts as Liz. I obviously wasn't the only person who thought so as we had people walk out half way through.

If you are a die hard Julia fan and absolutely MUST see it, wait until it's out on DVD. If you can avoid it, do so at all costs.

Anyone else seen it?

Letting Go

2010-10-14T21:02:00.000+13:00

My little sister emailed me the other day pointing out that I hadn't blogged since 1 September. Which is true yes, but since you my darling can ask me anything that you want, any time that you want, I'm really not sure why you would read this unless you're just checking to make sure that I'm not telling stories about you (and I promised I wouldn't after a certain bridesmaid's dress incident!)

When I started this blog it was to chronicle the wannabe-writer journey. Which I very much still am. But honestly? There's only so many times that I can write about the submission/rejection cycle!

And the truth is I'm kind of stuck at the moment. I've had my manuscript out on submission to an editor now for almost a year (it will be next month). And during that time I've plugged away rewriting it just in case she happens to like it enough to want to see the whole thing.

And she's not just any editor. She's one (of two) of my dream editors. She's funny and real and no holds barred and witty and acquires great books. And the truth is that I don't think my writing is good enough for her (yet) but I'm really hoping that one day, with something else, it might be.

I fear that she has actually rejected me months ago but her gracious let down has gotten lost in a virtual black hole somewhere. But at the same time I had been warned that she takes a long time to get back to people, so part of me also wanders if maybe this is pretty standard for her and my thinking long meant six months was being a tad optimistic.

I should be working on something new to submit. Because when she either rejects me, or I get up enough courage to contact her and find out that she already has and it never reached me, that's a year gone with nothing new to submit. Because the truth is that she's it for this story, if she doesn't like it, well it's already been rejected by every other agent I want to query, and I can't see any other publisher being a good match for it.

But it's like I just can't let this baby go until this final nail is officially in its coffin.

Which makes me wonder if I'm even meant to be a writer at all. Surely a real writer would have so many great and new ideas zipping around their brains but they couldn't help but have started something new by now, rather than refusing to stop doing CPR on something that is obvious to everyone else isn't going to make it.

The even more ridiculous thing is that the story that I should be working on I already know is good, it's finaled in pretty much every writing contest I've entered it in and have earned some rave reviews. Even I, usually my own worst critic, know it has something special about it when I read the opening chapters.

So why can't I just let the first one go?

I Dare You To Watch This And Not Cry

2010-09-01T13:58:00.002+12:00

It's That Time...

2010-08-16T21:59:00.000+12:00

When Josh and I first started dating I, every early on, made the proclamation that, one day, I was going to be unburdened of my Air NZ special status and that, having tasted life on the "other side", flying life after that was going to be very unpleasant for both of us. At least until it all seemed like a nice faraway dream.

Well my friends, that time will shortly come. My job no longer requires the frequent hugging of airport tarmacs that it once did, and so, at the end of September Air New Zealand will cease to forget my name, and I will be returned to the world of the traveling masses. Queues, hard plastic chairs, paying for food and seat 76K all await me.

I am not taking it well.

In fact, I hate to admit it, that while people with any kind of compassion at all are praying for the end to wars, starvation, floods and any of a million other plights currently facing humanity, I have caught myself uttering prayers that come 30 September Air NZ suffer some kind of technical glitch and renews my specialness.

I have even worked out exactly what my shortfall was and calculated and how many flights it would take to make it up, and checked to see how much it would cost to do on the spare weekends between now and then. To those of you in the US this sounds completely insane. But here in NZ where security actually let you keep you clothes on, I figured that Josh could drop me off one Saturday morning, and if I managed my timings right I could squeeze in three Wellington-Auckland return trips in a day. Drop back on Sunday after church for a couple of Wellington-Christchurch trips and we'd be good to go.

For the record it would have cost over a grand which even I, in all my princess panic, have accepted is completely insane. Imagine that conversation... Honey, why is there $1200 on our Visa for Air NZ?... oh no reason really, um would you mind dropping me off at the airport 6am Saturday?.. Where are you going?... Nowhere, well to Auckland, but not really, I'll just be walking the path from the gate to the lounge and back a few times.

I know, I know. Returning to seat 72K is going to be really good for me.

Being the Underdog

2010-06-21T19:26:00.001+12:00

If you're even vaguely interested in sport, and maybe even if you're not, it probably won't have escaped your notice that the Football World Cup is currently in full swing in South Africa.

If you live in New Zealand, well you would have to live under the cliched metaphorical rock to have missed it. Every newspaper, TV screen and website is plastered with the exploits of our glorious All Whites.

Why? Because last night our plucky team of amateurs, part timers and all round good guys took on Italy, the team of the smooth, well seasoned and ludicrously paid and drew 1-1.

For those of you in the US I think the comparison would be if a team from Down Under, publicly derided by the media as everything from the "filler inners" to the "no hopers" took on the Red Sox and came out the victors.

It's completely unfathomable.

I've been struggling with my writing lately. To be honest that's probably an understatement. I haven't opened my manuscript in weeks. I've been suffering from my own personal case of "underdogitis" - the one that has slowly been convincing me that, in the midst of a crazy life, continuing to slog away at this writing "thing" tens of thousands of kilometres away from the people who "matter" in publishing makes me a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal.

And then the All Whites show up. The part timers and amateurs. The guys who have slogged it out for five years when no one was watching and very few people even knew they existed, let alone cared. The guys who got up at 5am, when they could have been in bed, and trained anyway.

And, after all that, when they qualified for the World Cup, when you thought they would have finally gotten some respect, they are paraded across the world stage as the team that made up the numbers, the filler inners and the no hopers. In the overpaid star powered world of professional football, there were underdogs, and then there were the All Whites.

And so, on Friday night, during some crazy hour of the morning, this previous non-football fan, along with hundreds of thousands of other NZers, will be hauling herself out of bed to cheer on the team who are showing the world what it means to earn the dream. And who give you hope that maybe yours isn't so impossible either.

When Friends Owe You

2010-06-03T10:05:00.000+12:00

Blogger world, I need some advice.

Here's the situation. As you know, Josh and I got married in January and we hired one of my friends as our photographer.

Going into it I was careful, having heard many many stories about the awkward, and sometimes downright nasty, situations that can occur when the lines of friendship and professions blur. But, at the end of the day, she does gorgeous photos and she was the one I wanted. Even if she wasn't my friend, I still would have wanted her to be my photographer because her work is so amazing.

I was extra careful to stress that I wasn't asking her a favour as a friend, but wanting to hire her services as a professional. As far as I know we paid full rates, along with extra for her to do a photo album for us.

The day was amazing and, as I knew, her photos were incredible and we got a disc of hundreds of photos in March. So far so good.

Here's the problem. Six months after our wedding, and four months after approving the proof, we still don't have our photo album. The style of our album is very particular (magazine format) and the printer that she's using only does a print run once a month.

In April she told me that she'd missed the print deadline for March, but that the printers had it for April. So I was expecting it sometime in April, maybe early May. But still nothing.

I wouldn't be too worried (though probably a little frustrated) if it wasn't for one other minor detail. She lives in a different city to us and I've been trying to get in touch for a month to find out where things are at and she isn't returning my texts, call or emails.

We have a lot of mutual friends and I've checked in on them and, as far as anyone is aware, there isn't any kind of life crises going on that would explain her non-contact.

What should I do? On one hand I value our friendship and am worried I've somehow offended her without knowing and this isn't about the album but something else. On the other hand, she isn't doing this for love, Josh and I have paid her a not insignificant amount of money to do our album (to try and avoid exactly this kind of situation!), and I can't help but feel that even if she's upset at me for something unrelated, as a professional who's been paid to provide a service, she should do that.

Thoughts?

Connecting The Dots

2010-05-28T13:23:00.000+12:00

You probably think I'm being metaphorical, don't you?

But nope, I truly mean this...

For the record this is neither my body (thank you Google images) but it's a pretty decent representation of what I have been inflicted with over the last couple of weeks. Except I have more. And no, it's not leprosy. All my extremities are intact.

It's the weirdest thing. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a weird blotch on my neck. Then that weekend I noticed a few more on my back. And then a couple of mornings later I woke up and low and behold. I am the polka dotted woman!

Now, generally, I hate going to the doctor. I'd far rather be a Google hyperchondriac and hope Josh uses my life insurance money wisely. I have absolutely nothing against my doctor, but I do have a lot against what it costs me to spend five minutes in her presence.

But this spotty, blotchy polka dotted body got me skipping the virtual diagnosis and in her office fast.

The costly answer that my doctor delivered in 30 seconds flat? It's a medical mystery.

It's something called pityriasis rosea. It randomly occurs in young adults. They don't know how you get it. It's not contagious. You generally feel fine (apart from being itchy). And there's nothing they can do about it. You just have to suck it up and deal with having a body that you could have a long game of connect-the-dots on for 2-6 weeks.

I have to admit to feeling a tad ripped off because, in other news, I gave my four weeks notice a couple of weeks ago, I have 69 sick days accumulated and, despite my leper like appearance, I didn't have an excuse to use a single one!

Reason #1134 Why I Love My Husband

2010-05-23T21:05:00.000+12:00

Josh hates walking. His motto in life is "why walk if you can drive?"

But this weekend we were in Marlborough and I decided I wanted to go to the local farmers' market. And I didn't want to just go, I wanted to walk. Call it penance for the three course meal that I ate on Friday night.

I google it. I get directions. I have a map. I have water. And my darling husband. It is freezing cold but I am committed to this expedition. So we walk, and walk and walk and walk and walk. We finally get to where my map says we should be but no one told the Farmer's Market this and it's not there. Instead we are in the middle of suburbia surrounded by houses.

After a few minutes of confusion Josh works out where we should be. I have no idea where my google direction input went wrong but it did. It requires more walking. Which he does without one word of complaint.

We get to our location. The correct one this time. We are there, again the farmers' market is not. Instead there a hoards of kids playing soccer. Not a chicken or a potato to be seen.

And so we turned around and walked and walked and walked back. And eventually I worked out what had gone so wrong.

Taking the Friday off had completely skewed what day I thought it was..

I had marched my poor husband all over the district for a Farmers' Market that was on a Sunday. Except it was only Saturday.

The Things You Find When You're Moving

2010-05-03T15:44:00.000+12:00

We have moved.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate moving. Passionately. This results in a situation whereby we reach the night before said move, nothing is packed, and I spent 12 hours mentally packing, another eight hysterically cleaning, and then the next two years trying to find stuff again.

This move's rediscovery was salad servers from my grandmother that, I swear disappeared from the kitchen bench one day. I have no idea how it ended up in a box in our basement. Oh and a full frontal naked shot of a guy I went to university with which I gleefully flashed at Josh with no warning.

Hmmm that sounds dodgy and I suspect that trying to explain will make it just sound even worse but I'll give it a shot.

At my hall of residence in university there were the positions of female and male "house streakers". The requirement was that each one had to streak at least once during the year.

All previous years the streakers had done what was expected - but generally sometime late at night, in front of as few people as allowed (which I think was five) and generally with closely spaced bushes to preserve as much dignity as humanly possible.

That all changed my first year when the make streaker was very um enthusiastic about getting his gears off. We'll have him M. Day, night, in front of the masses or the few you never knew when he who shall remain unmentioned was going to pop up sans clothing.

On this particular night he was singing in a band and started doing a Robbie Williams song, the trauma has wiped what it was from my mind, but its the one with the music video where Mr Williams strips down to his skeleton.

So M starts getting his gears off. Now despite his repeated forays in flasherdom, no one thought this would be another of those nights. We were in a dining hall, all the doors were shut, there were multiple obstacles between him and well there were guests. Him shaking his wild thing about that night was about as comprehendable as any of us doing so at dinner party hosted by our parents where the guest list included our high school principal.

So, innocently, I raise my camera and an unexpected rip precedes my click, and 150 of us discover that his pants were held together by velcro and he was flying solo beneath those. And, two weeks later, I find myself in possession of a photo of a very naked, very full frontal M.

It's at this point that I hear you ask "Well that sounds all very possible, though implausible, but why, nine years later do you still have said photo." Honestly? The best I can remember of my 18 year old logic was that it might come in handy one day of he was ever to become a politician, or some other public figure, where having a sans clothing photo of him might be a useful aid to funding my retirement and so stashed it in an old folder that also contains random essays, the odd reference and my academic transcript where it gets rediscovered every four years or so and I laugh at it and return it to it's clearfile page for another four years.

No doubt this is going to come back and bite me one day when a non-existent child discovers it and I have to explain why Mummy has a photo of a naked stranger but for now we'll just wait and see if M ever has a penchant for entering politics!

Growing Up Moments

2010-04-14T10:13:00.000+12:00

I've been having a lot of "wow I'm a grown up" moments this week.

Obviously I've been a "grown-up" for awhile now. A bonafide working, tax paying, credit card owning, allowed to have a wine with dinner in public, adult.

There are the big milestones in life that everyone knows put you one step futher down the road of life. Graduating high school. Finishing your degree. Getting your first "real" job. Getting married. Buying a house. All of those things I've successfully ticked off my list. And they were all big moments but, strangely enough, it's been other smaller things that have made me stop and go "Whaoh. I'm a real live adult."

Things like...

(1) Having car insurance in my own name
(2) Spending four figures on a new mattress
(3) Making an airline status where they actually go out of their way to be nice to you

And finally this week
(4) Life insurance

Yes people, I have life insurance. If, in the next week, or month, or year I get hit by a bus, or have an anuerysm, or get killed by a falling sheet of glass, or a flying wombat, Josh will be getting enough money to mean that he won't have to worry about the mortgage for a decade or so. And vice versa.

That's quite a disconcerting thought. If I die (or get diagnosed with a terminal illness), a corporate writes a big fat cheque.

The thing that is even weirder is that somewhere people called actuaries are sitting in offices with their spreadsheets and logarithms and my premium is based on their calculations of the odds that someone of my age, weight, height, gender, smoking and drinking status and health history is going to die before age 70.

Now that, has got to be a depressing occupation.

So tell me, what has been a moment in your life where you've gone, wow, I'm an adult?

Ssshhhh don't tell Josh...

2010-04-01T15:48:00.000+13:00

So it's always been one of Josh's dreams to go to Bora Bora (an island just off Tahiti) but we couldn't afford it for our honeymoon (and never will be able to unless some very rich relative that we don't know about dies and leaves us squillions of dollars!)

Anyway, long story short, I stumbled across a Bride of the Year contest and the main prize is 7 nights on Bora Bora so I entered us (and no Josh doesn't know). I found out today that we're one of the April finalists. But now what we need is for people to vote for us!! (this is just the first round - each month the person with the most votes become that months "finalist" and then there's one final big vote off next December where all the month's winners go up against each other).

So, if you feel so inclined, this link should take you right to our page but if not then just got to http://brideoftheyear.bridetobe.com.au/vote.php and click on my picture :) All you have to do is enter in the code and hit "vote" - you can do it as many times as you like between now and 30 April.

But remember, if you know him, don't tell Josh!!

Google Baby - Controversial Topic of the Week

2010-03-24T11:28:00.000+13:00

Last week Josh and I went to a film called Google Baby. Seven days later I still can't get it out of my head - which says a lot when usually I struggle to even recall the names of movies I've recently been to.

The film starts with a gay couple in Israel who have had a child with the help of a surrogate in the USA - costing them a grand total of $140k USD. One of the guys works in IT and has the slightly disturbing thought of "Hey, if we can save money outsourcing technology to India, why can't we do the same with pregnancy?"

Um, no reason why not apparently. And so we follow his journey into setting up a global reproduction business. From egg donors in the US, to laboratories where the embryos are created, to being frozen and flown across to surrogacy clinics in India, where there are litereally house fulls of Indian woman who spend nine months on their backs acting as incubators for Western babies.

On the surface of it it's a disturbing introduction into a whole new world of commoditisation and further exploitation of the wealth gap between the West and the third world. Want to have a baby but it's too expensive in your own country? Don't worry - there's a poor Indian woman a mere continent away who will be your human incubator for a fraction of the price.

Regardless of your ethical standpoint going into the film, you can't help but feel conflicted when you leave. One one hand the whole commoditisation of pregnancy just feels intrinsically wrong. We're not talking about a t-shirt or IT, we're talking about creating baby factories in the third world so that wealthy Westerners can fulfil their dreams of being parents at a discount price, and the reality is that the Indian women carry it for nine months and are torn at having to give it up, even though it has no biological relation to them.

But on the other hand, when you see the difference that this money makes in the lives of the surrogate Indian women and their family, enabling them to escape the poverty cycle and do things like buy a house and educate their children, you also see the good that it can bring.

The really scary part came at the end when one of the Indian doctors took things a step further and proposing to jointly impregnate two surrogates with two embryos each - thus increasing the odds of a pregnancy but also taking the chance of three or four babies resulting. The Israeli man who started it all is on the phone with one of the "parents" who flippantly says "oh well if that happens we'll just do a selective abortion and reduce them down" and you suddenly see him thinking "What on earth have I created?"

Which basically is what you leave thinking. This isn't some future facing movie about the possibilities - it's a documentary about what is happening right now. Thoughts?

Writing Cold Feet

2010-03-17T15:01:00.000+13:00

As I sit here typing this I have an application form open in another window. One to join Romance Writers of New Zealand.

To be honest it's been opened a few times over the last few months. And then closed as I chickened out of doing anything with it.

I didn't even know RWNZ even existed until late last year. I'd meandered my way happily along wannabe writer land, at first completely ignorant and completing pretty much every unpublished writers faux pax that there is. Then, once enlightened as to the existence of actual groups of real people who meet to discuss and critique each other's writing I stayed happily ensconced in my fairyland, believing that the one bonus of living all the way down here in little old New Zealand was that I could legitimately get away with not subjecting myself to such hideous torture.

Then I got an email, out of the blue, from the President of RWNZ. I had been fortunate enough to have Abby as one of my judges in a contest last year. She'd written lots of wonderful things an made lots of great suggestions and her score helped me to final. Then, upon seeing that my same manuscript had finaled in another contest she got in touch and, among other things, suggested that I join RWNZ. Which I virutally enthused sounded like a great idea, and promptly did jack about it.

I should have been flattered that she was pursuing me to join (and I was). But the last few months have lined up some brilliant excuses to not. Josh moving to New Zealand. Moving house. Christmas. Getting married. Being on honeymoon. Waiting for the editor from ACFW to reject me so I could move on (hasn't happened yet). Buying a house. Many many things that helped me stay comfortably in denial and avoid dealing with why I really haven't filled in the form.

The first reason, because I have some kind of existential crisis at the idea of labelling myself a "romance writer". The idea scares the bejeebies out of me. It conjures up an image of a cover with a buffed up semi-clothed lothario carrying a petticoated heaving bossomed damsel with a castle in the background with rapturous scenes inside that would probably inspire Hugh Hefner. Um yeah, each to their own, but that's what I think of when I hear the word "romance writer" and I don't write that.

Actually, even if you took the romance out of it, I'd still be uncomfortable. The idea of calling myself a "writer" when the only thing I've ever had published was my last organization's annual report seems a tad pretentious as well.

But my little labelling crisis is probably only about 10% of the reason for my lily liveredness. The other 90% is people.

The idea of sitting in a room full of other writers and having to bare my pathetic literary attempts in public terrify me. Entering contests is one thing. You pay your money, the judge doesn't know who you are, you don't know who they are, and then you get your results emailed back which you can absorb in leisure and alone.

It's a nice little anonymous(ish) process that allows you to received feedback on your work whilst giving you the privacy to sob your heart out over a tub of Kapiti Triple Chocolate Ice Cream as some well meaning, but brutal, soul tells you that your writing is so bad it caused them to temporarily lose the will to live. Or run around the house screaming with glee when someone unrelated to you gives you a score that catapults you into "finalist" territory.

But the idea of sitting in a room and reading out something that I wrote and then having people, right there, right in front of you, in the same room, pull it apart? Virtual critique I can take, but real people strugglign to maintain a neutral expression as I read out a particularly vacuous piece of prose? It's only vaguely more attractive than the idea of having someone take a blow torch to my fingertips.

So people, we all know what I should do if I really truly want to get any better at this writing thing, but I'm going to need a bit of virtual encouragement/butt kicking from blogger land to force me to gird my loins, suck it up and actually do it. So please - the comments section is all yours.

On a completely separate note - what is the longest anyone out there has ever waited to hear back from an editor about a submission? I'm going on four months now and am beginning to wonder if (a) she never got it in the first place or (b) I'm hanging out for a rejection that she has already sent but I never received (and yes, I realised that I'm being pessimistic, but we all know that rejection emails and good news calls!)

Just One (Hypothetical) Question Today

2010-03-11T16:06:00.000+13:00

You're a newly married couple. Oh and you did long distance up until last November so have actually only been living in the same country for an entire five months.

You're also in the process of buying your first home which, all going well, you'll be moving into at the end of April. You have a friend who is in a bit of a financial pickle which could be alliviated by them moving into one of your new spare rooms for a period of 6-9 months (not for a free ride - they'd contribute to power/food etc).

Would you even consider it? If so under what circumstances?

An Interview With Sarah Sundin

2010-03-08T02:54:00.020+13:00

Today it's my pleasure to welcome the lovely Sarah Sundin to DownUnder Musings. I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah when I was in the US last year, so it's super exciting to be able to have her here today to chat about her debut novel, A Distant Melody, that was just released last week.

So Sarah, everyone seems to have a different story about how they came to hold abook with their own name on the cover in their hands. How did you start writing?
I grew up surrounded by books and read everything I could, but I rarely considered a writing career. Instead, I studied chemistry at UCLA, then received my doctorate in pharmacy from UC San Francisco. After graduation, I chose to work one day a week as a hospital pharmacist so I could stay home with our three children. On January 6, 2000, when our youngest was a toddler, I had a dream with such intriguing characters that I felt compelled to write their story. That first novel will never be published, nor should it, but it served a purpose. Since I felt God had called me to write, I needed to take it seriously. So I set out to learn the craft of writing from books, a critique group, and writers’ conferences.

Where did you get the ideas from for "A Distant Melody"?
It came out of a “what if” question in a contemporary novel I wrote (very badly). What if a man and woman met at an event, truly clicked, and parted before exchanging contact info? Wouldn’t it be romantic if he went through great effort to track her down? Obviously it wouldn’t work in a contemporary setting—he’d “Google” her—but it made a sweet premise for a historical. My husband and I watched a History Channel special on the US Eighth Air Force based in England which flew over Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, and I had my link. My great-uncle was a B-17 bomber pilot with the Eighth, so I had access to family stories plus his personal letters. My research fascinated me so much, the story expanded to become a trilogy, with each book focusing on one of three brothers.

Which character in the book is your favourite and why?
I adore Walt and Allie, my hero and heroine, but my favorite has to be Cressie Watts. I didn’t plan for her—she just showed up. Allie, a wealthy, educated, well-mannered young woman, goes out for a walk after a horrendous day and enters a rundown church. She needs to get away from her parents’ superficial congregation, so I thought she might talk to the pastor. Instead, Allie and I both find—to my surprise—this feisty older woman who ropes Allie into helping her air out the pew cushions. She’s Allie’s opposite in every way—exactly the mentor Allie needs at this point. I adore her brusque ways, her deep faith, and her humor. And there’s a funny story regarding her name too.

"A Distant Melody" is your debut novel. How did your path to finally landing that elusive publishing contract happen?
I first submitted this novel at Mount Hermon Christian Writers’ Conference in 2003. I received good feedback from published authors, editors, and agents—and began accumulating a stack of “good” rejection letters. They liked my writing, my story, and my characters—however, historicals weren’t selling. They wanted chick lit. This continued through 2007. I often felt discouraged, but the Lord made it obvious in many ways that He wanted me to finish the trilogy so I kept plugging away. Then at Mount Hermon in March 2008, I heard, “We don’t want chick lit. We need historicals.” And there I was with my trilogy close to complete. I submitted to Vicki Crumpton at Revell, and in September I was offered a three-book contract.

You are stranded on a desert island for two weeks. You can take five people with you there. Who are they and why? :)
Besides the characters in my head? A writer is never alone. Seriously, the first four are easy—my husband and three children. The fifth person? Probably one of my daughter’s best friends so she wouldn’t fight so much with her little brother.

Was there ever a point where you felt like giving up on this book? What got you through it?
I never wanted to give up on the book, because I loved the story so much. However, in 2005 all doors to publication seemed closed and padlocked, and I wondered whether I had heard God correctly. Was I truly meant to write? Was I wasting my time when I could be doing something more productive?

That year I went for a morning walk at Mount Hermon under the redwoods and stopped to admire a little white flower. I praised God for the flower and felt touched—had He made that flower just so I would praise Him? Then I looked around me. Hundreds of redwoods covered the hills, and thousands more out of my vision, all surrounded by white blossoms. How many of those flowers would ever cause someone to stop and praise God? Were they created in vain? Did the Lord waste His time creating them? Of course not. God is a creative Being, and He made us in His creative image. In His mercy, the Lord showed me that even if my writing was never seen by another human being and never caused anyone to praise Him, I did the write thing obeying His call to write. I was not wasting my time.

Thanks so much for dropping by today Sarah and all the best with A Distant Melody. If you want to know more about Sarah and her writing you can find her at http://www.sarahsundin.com/

I Realise I've Been Really Quiet This Week But...

2010-03-05T15:58:00.001+13:00

We're having a baby!!

Actually we're not. But I knew that would be what a few of you would be thinking when you saw my title ;)

Well we are, in a way, but not in the way you're thinking (thank goodness) - we're buying a house.

If you go to http://www.tommys.co.nz/ and search on Wellington/Ngaio/3 bedrooms/400-450k the townhouse with the pciture below, all going well, be 12% ours (and 88% BNZ's) in three weeks!

It's all been incredibly fast. It came on the market last Thursday, we looked at it twice over the weekend, put an offer in on Tuesday night and they accepted on Wednesday afternoon. The rest of the week has just been a blur of trying to line up lawyers and valuers and builders, meeting with the bank and getting council reports and all sorts of mad things that you have to do as due diligence to make sure you're not about to laden yourself with 20 years of debt for a lemon. Oh and slowly coming to grips with the fact that once we do this, we're going to be really really broke for a really really long time!

This is the second story. If you look to the left you can see our garage, and just next to it the front door.

Our pretty kitchen (to the left of the end window is where the stairs come up from the ground floor)

Mmmmm afternoon sun. Will be lots of drinks here next summer!

A view from the deck of the living area. At the left end of the kitchen there is a door - this leads to a bathroom and the master bedroom. (And yes the curtains are kind of blah but we're all just going to have to live with them for awhile!)

One of the downstairs guest rooms. Plenty of room for visitors from the USA to come and stay hint hint Lindsey, Jaime, Anne, May (and you can even have your own bathroom!)...

The Power of Social Media

2010-02-26T16:22:00.000+13:00

Everyone meet Andrew. Yup that guy standing between Josh and I, looking like death slightly warmed up? His name in Andrew and he has a great reason for looking like that.

About six hours before this photo was taken he was in a different country, in hospital, recovering from surgery.

A couple of days before our wedding we'd gotten an email from him. In a nutshell it said "Sorry guys, don't think I'm going to make it. About to be rushed in surgery because of a strangulated hernia."

Um that's okay. Well it's not. It sounds horribly painful. But we forgive you. Someone dies and the funeral is the same time as our wedding? We can get past that. Ditto being rushed into emergency surgery.

And then, I'm all married and blissful and dancing down the aisle and I see ANDREW. Being type A anally retentive organizer my first thought is "Oh my gosh. I rearranged the seating plan and he's not on it anymore!!!!" Followed quickly by "Hold on. He's supposed to be in HOSPITAL!!!"

And here is what happened the previous day after his emergency surgery.

Andrew is lying in his hospital, totally bummed about missing our wedding. Due to being unconscious he'd missed his flight and so rings the airline to see if there's anyway he can get on another flight and make our wedding.

Very helpfully the airline inform him that his fare is not transferrable, regardless of reason, and so if he wants to get on another flight he has to buy a whole new ticket.

Not being flush with that kind of cash Andrew whips out his trusty laptop and, from his hospital room, sets up a twitter account and blog entitled something like "Get Andrew to NZ For Josh's Wedding" where he explains his predicament. He sends it to all his friends and asks them to pass it around hoping that somehow it will get to someone who will be able to help him.

Within two hours he's had 30,000 hits and the thing has gone semi-viral.

Within half a day it's somehow been picked up by A Current Affair and is on their website and they're ringing wanting to interview him.

A researcher from A Current Affair rings the airline and tells them that unless they want a whole lot of bad PR then they need to get Andrew on a plane and to our wedding.

By that night Andrew had tickets on new flights. I have absolutely no idea how he managed to get himself out of hospital, let alone allowed to fly, but it happened.

He got on a plane the next morning, flew Sydney-Auckland-Wellington and arrived at the church as Josh and I were saying our vows. The guy was sick as could be, was in terrible pain and could barely stand, plus his trusty laptop saved our behinds at the reception with the music when the responsible person forgot theirs.

I have no idea how he did it. While he was busy twittering away to the hordes, I would have been busy lying in my hospital bed composing a very bitter letter of complaint to the airline and not going anywhere!

More Wedding Photos - Photoshoot

2010-02-19T13:42:00.001+13:00

Professional Wedding Photos - The Beach

2010-02-17T11:24:00.000+13:00

Well our professional photos are here and we are soooo excited because Ruth did such an amazing job with them. Will be showing you a selection over the next few days :)

Moving Fast

2010-02-12T14:39:00.000+13:00

I realise that I've been a slack blogger this week. However I'm sure you'll forgive me when you realise that it's because:

1) Josh has been jumping through the job hoops and, as of yesterday, had an offer on the table which we'll make a decision on in the next few days.

2) I, despite not actually being looking, was rung on Wednesday and made a job offer as well. I have to decide by next Friday. And I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to choose.

3) We're in scary bank discussions about taking onboard a hideous amount of debit in order to acquire our own small patch of earth with a hovel on top (about all we'll be able to afford if we want to be within 20 minutes of the city)

4) This is turn lead to an intense discussion about paying a mortgage on one income / delaying a family / my ovaries starting to shrivel / how once we have children we're never eating in a nice restaurant ever again because (a) we'll be broke and (b) our children will be the type who will projectile hurl food at walls.

So blogger friends, we're going to our first open home on Sunday to check out this wee place http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=271055300 and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Can anyone tell me what you're supposed to be looking out for/questions you should be asking when you're at something like this?

So What Has Changed?

2010-02-09T16:50:00.000+13:00

By far, and away, the #1 question I've had since I've gotten back is some variation on so how is married life/what has changed/how are you adjusting? etc etc

First of all I would like to say that married life is GREAT! I love it. And yes, granted I am probably still in blissed out honeymoon land but man it is cool. No one has to go home at night.

But for those of you who remain intrigued. Here are the top six things that have surprised me so far.

1) Admin conversations. Pretty much gone is sitting on the couch talking about our hopes/dreams/possible life in the future, in is; "What should we have for dinner when Chris and Mary come over?" "It's rubbish day tomorrow, can you take it out tonight?" "Can you chuck the towels on the line before you go?" "Have you seen the power bill?" and "Do you need the car Thursday night or can I use it?"

2) Insomnia. Used to be frustrating by myself. Now it's REALLY frustrating when Josh is snoring away blissfully beside me, happily ensconsed in deep REM land.

3) Couple land. We were introduced to this phenomena when we got married but now it's hit warp speed. We have couples over for dinner, they have us over for dinner. Married couples we previously knew well enough to say a passing hi to but not much more are suddenly wanting to hve us over for Sunday lunch. It's very weird. Nice. But weird.

4) The B question. Started at the wedding reception. Apparently people give up after about six months when it becomes obvious a honeymoon baby is not on its way.

5) Dinner. Pre married life dinner was usually a passing meal of toast or eggs or something microwaveable in under three minutes as I transitted from work through my apartment and back out again. Now dinner is a full on meal. And man my husband can cook. Which I love, my clothes? Not so much.

6) The Budget. Yes we have one. It's on a spreadsheet and everything. And, with only being on one income at the moment, we're actually having to stick to it meaning the introduction of the words "That's not in the budget" into my vocabulary. Which is actually really good. We have a much better idea of where our money is going and we're a heck of a less likely to be lazy and grab takeout on Friday night when we know it'll mean we can't afford to go out with friends on the weekend :)

Seriously. Today, I actually had to suck it up to get my pants done up. I haven't had to do that in a long time.

Leading to most important mantra at the moment. I DO NOT NEED TO EAT AS MUCH AS JOSH!

So what about you guys? What was the biggest adjustment you had to make / what surprised you when you married / moved in with someone?

The Beauty of Language

2010-02-03T03:26:00.002+13:00

At my wedding my Dad said in his speech that wherever I went, books went to. He told stories of my love of books dating from before I could walk, and bet Josh that I had a stack of books sitting by my bed to take on my honeymoon.

He was wrong.

There were so many they were stacked beside my bed and on the floor.

I took the opportunity over the last few weeks to read a lot of books I never would have ordinarily picked up. Sure there were a couple of chicklitty beach reads, but the majority were books that I chose from the Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2009 list. I wanted to see what it was that it took for a book to rise above all the others and make this list.

The answer, across all the genres and all the lengths and all the different POVs and styles was a no-brainer. The beauty of their language. These authors had an ability to twist words and create pictures in ways that had you mesmerised. In ways that made you read paragraphs, and then reread them again and again, because the mastery of their craft was something that demanded adoration.

In fact, in one particular book the beauty of the language was so overwhelming that I was three quarters of the way through and compeltely riveted before I realised very little was actually happening. One character was stuck in the back of Nebraska, another was on a long car journey and another was in an abandoned cabin, and pretty much everything was either backstory, or flashbacks or the characters thoughts on the situation they were in and/or the relationships that surrounded their situation.

In fact I could probably list in about eight bullet points, all of the key plot points, and you'd pretty much get a good overview of the story. But it would do absolutely no justice to the immensity of the talent it took to craft it.

It was kind of like being a varsity level runner and thinking that you weren't bad, not great, but okay in the grand scheme of things, and then suddenly watching the Olympics for the very first time.

And they were all like that, book after book after book. Sure maybe some themes I didn't really like, or some were darker than I would chose to read, and some styles resonated with me more than others, but every single one of them made me gape in wonder at their mastery of language.

If I could craft one paragraph the way these authors could I would be thrilled, and somehow they managed to do it for page after page for hundreds of pages.

So tell me. What is one book that you read last year knocked you sideways with the magic of its words?

A Few Things You Need To Know

2010-02-01T16:04:00.002+13:00

According to darling husband, I witheld some of my major quirks until I was safely in the confines of marriage. An accusation that I vehemenently deny but, in the interests of full disclosure, I am going to share with you some of my adorable attributes that were apparently news to him.

1) I randomly burst into song. While I had done this prior to us getting married, the new addition was that sometimes these aren't actual known songs, but entirely made up by Kara ones, usually consisting of between one and three words sung repritively.

2) I hate nuts in chocolate unless it's Peanut M&Ms or Snickers bars (which I love)

3) I'm a total Nana. Yes even while on holiday. 10.30pm and it's all over. This includes New Years's, where I fell asleep in front of about 20 people (of whom I knew about 8) at 11pm.

4) Paying for a meal is serious business. When visiting a new place, if I find a great restaurant I am perfectly happy to eat there multiple times, than try somewhere else and risk having a bad meal.

5) I am the worst person in the world to share a bed with. I'm a shameless sheet stealer, and a wriggler and a heat seeker. Which ends up, at about 3am, with my husband hanging onto the edge of the bed without any bedding.

What about you? Any quirks that you'd like to fess up? Or any that you didn't even know you had until you got married?

More Wedding Photos Than You Ever Wanted To See

2010-01-25T02:16:00.002+13:00

http://www.karajoshua.blogspot.com/

If you manage to wade through all of these, it will feel like you were actually there!

Wedding Day Fun

2010-01-23T06:40:00.001+13:00

After all of the dramas leading up to our wedding, I lost count of the number of people the night before who promised that this would surely mean the big day would be drama free. However, turns out the fun was just beginning!

For a start - it's (supposedly) the middle of summer. The Wednesday? Gorgeous. The Friday? Incredible. Our wedding day? Can anyone say gale force winds with a dash of icy cold thrown in?

We arrive at the reception. I'm wondering around chatting to people when I suddenly get the feeling that something is missing. After a few seconds of pondering I realise what it is... the string quartet who we paid $600 to play during the drinks and canapes while we had our photographs? Never showed up.

We're sitting at our table eating dinner when I notice the lights on the left hand chandelier above flickering and then going out. Then I watch (and apparently scream but I don't remember that) as the entire 25kg (about 50lb) thing collapses off the ceiling and falls straight for the head of one of Josh's cousins who is holding his three year old son.

I'll talk about that one in detail in another post because it's an absolute miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured.

Finally, we make it to the end of the reception. The food is amazing, the speeches are brilliant, the dancing burns up the dance floor and Josh and I leave just before midnight. And there is only one really big thing left that can go wrong...

We're back at our place, Josh is busy extracting about 40 bobby pins out of my head when my cell phone rings. It's Josh's Mum. The bus that we've arranged to take the Australians back to their hotel? Yup, you guessed it, never showed up.

So, in a fitting reflection of their first night in Wellington, it's 1am and there are 50 Australians shivering on the side of the road in gale force winds with no way to get back to their hotels. After trying to get hold of the bus company (and getting another "you have reached us out of office hours" message) I manage to arrange a whole stack of cabs to go and pick them up, along with my lifesaver of a sister-in-law who deserves a bridesmaid of the year award.

BUT, the upside of all this, is that we're quite possibly the only couple of wedding history who are getting almost as much in refunds after their wedding, as having to pay out without some massive "ruining the wedding" disaster (e.g. every guest being food poisoned). And, despite all of these, we still had the most amazing day ever!

No one was killed or hurt by the chandelier (of course there could be no refund that could possibly compensate if someone had been), no one actually missed the string quartet, the bus incident, while traumatic at the time, has now turned into one of those "remember the night when" stories back in Sydney and as for the wind? While we're going to have some amazing photos because of it!

A Series of Unfortunate Events - Pre Wedding

2010-01-20T07:18:00.000+13:00

When we're asked to describe our wedding the sentence that immediately comes to mind is the best day of our lives, beset with the most incredible series of unfortunate events during, and all around, it. I'll give you a rundown of them all below and when I get back from Rarotonga chat about the big ones in more detail :)

Event #1
Josh's family and friends fly in at midnight on the Tuesday. They've booked two shuttles to take them to their hotels and are greeted by two guys who put Grumpy Old Men to shame who ditch them on the side of the road at the wrong place, take their money and run.

Event #2
After locating them, we proceed to where they are meant to be staying, which we find locked up tighter than a drum. Despite both Leonie and I telling them that they're coming in on the late flight, their reception apparently shuts at 9pm and the only way into the hotel is via access card.

We ring the 0800 number posted on the doors, only to get a "you have reached us out of office hours" message. It's freezing cold, and I'm freaking out, because what are you supposed to do with 20 people at almost 2am when they're locked out of their hotel?

We find a couple of other numbers on their booking and, after spending 15 minutes wending my way through digital voicemail mazedom, finally get the on call duty manager, who (very helpfully) informs me that reception closed at 9pm. Turns out they had rung Leonie while she was on the plane and left a message on her phone with the code to get into the lock boxes with the access cards, really helpful when she couldn't access her voicemail in New Zealand.

Event #3
The afternoon before our wedding, while trying on his suit, Josh somehow manages to smear grease over his pale pink tie. Most drycleaners are still closed, and the one he found that was open refused to do it before the next morning.

Event #4
Our rental car (which we only had for 12 hours) is rear-ended by an old lady with no insurance as Josh is on the way to our wedding rehearsal. Thank God, we had paid an extra $30 to have our excess reduced to $300, instead of the $3,000 is usually is (regardless of fault).

Event #5
We receive word that five of our guests are no longer coming. Which may not sound like much, but it meant me racing into work to rearrange the seating plan (which had taken two months and about 14 versions to get it working!), trying to find five more guests to replace them (since we can't change the numbers at such late notice) and my mother spends our wedding rehearsal up at our reception venue pasting over the existing seating plan with the new arrangements.

(After all of that, one of them, who was actually in hospital is Sydney, ends up making it - but that's a whole different story on the power of social media).

More Wedding Photos - At The Church

2010-01-17T12:58:00.004+13:00

Sorry I don't have any of me walking in as my poor brother (who was also a driver) was busy sprinting down the side of the church to get to his seat!

My gorgeous bridesmaids from left to right: Josh's sister Beth, my friend Kristen, my sister-in-law Bec and my sister Melody.

The handsome groomsmen: Victor, Beau, Ryan and Sam, with my friend Trudy reading in the background.

The vows

An appropriate church kiss (no horribly long pash here!!)

Our Mum's (mine on the left, Josh's on the right) praying for us

Wohoooo - we made it!

Instead of going with the traditional recession, we created a new Assyrian tradition involving Josh's family dancing us out of the church - it was very very fun! Especially all the bewildered faces on my side of the church who had no idea what was going on :)

Wedding Photos - Before The Service

2010-01-15T12:51:00.000+13:00

So it's going to be a few weeks before we get the professional photos back - but I thought I'd share some of my brother's shots with you in the meantime.

We're in Sydney for the next couple of days so hopefully I'll have time to upload quite a few more before we head to Rarotonga on Monday and don't have access to the internet again for another week or so :)

Oh and tell you some stories because man I have about five weddings' worth!!

At the hairdressers for hair and makeup. I was super excited but it's really hard to look it when you're not allowed to move your face!

My sister-in-law Bec is ready to party (don't let the demure pose fool you!)

I look all very calm but inside I'm jumping up and down and screaming MY DRESS FITS!!

A Funny Story In the Middle Of All the Pre-Wedding Chaos

2010-01-07T13:40:00.004+13:00

I've scheduled this post for the exact time that I should be walking down the aisle. I'll be smiling, so hopefully you will be too after you've read this :)

So yesterday I'm dropping some stuff of at the venue with the bridal party, my family, Josh's Mum and our photographers are there too.

I'm standing there, chatting away to the event manager, my Mum and one of the photographers, when I feel something sliding down my front. I finish my sentence and then look down. My (strapless) top is pooled around my waist and I'm standing in the middle of this hall, in front of 10 or so people, in my bra.

So in honour of my wedding day, share an embarrassing moment too!

The Final Twenty Four

2010-01-06T21:19:00.000+13:00

So here we are, the night before my wedding.

I've just left our pre-wedding dinner which, like all thing's Josh's family is associated with has turned into a fully fledged celebration, sweeping up family, friends and strangers alike in its power.

I tried to warn the bar/restaurant about what life was like when the Isaacs come to town but how exactly do you describe something akin to the friendly hurricane? One that overwhlems you, not with wind, but with hugs, kisses, dancing, yelling and unbridled enthusiasm.

And there I was, in the middle of it all, but yet missing all of it. It's a crazy thing to have 100 of your closest family and friends gathered to start celebrating with you, to be surrounded by people who love you and are excited for you and yet be divorced from it all. Standing there and watching all of these people, seeing your two families who were two hours ago strangers chatting away like they've been friends forever, and not feel anything.

That was why I really had to leave. Because it ached seeing all these people having a great time, knowing that it was all because they are so excited about tomorrow, and yet be completely immune to the overwhelming aura of joy pervading every nook and cranny of the restaurant. Especially when complete strangers, people who don't know from Adam and just happen to be there having dinner, are congratulating you and joining in the party.

It's been a hard day, for both of us. While everyone else has been resting up and kicking back in anticipation, we've been dealing with a whole lot of things all conspiring together to go wrong. From the small (Josh managing to get a big greasy smear across his tie meaning he needs to find a new one tomorrow morning), to the big (a lady driving up the back of our rental car), to the frustrating (ringing my hairdresser to confirm the start time to discover they only had a booking for two, instead of six of us) to the "that's it, we're going to Vegas" (the sound guy at the church deciding to chuck a massive tanty when he realised Josh knew far more about sound than he did), to the AAARRRGGGGHHHH (five people pulling out and having to completely redo the seating plan for the 18th time, after it's all been printed and is at the venue), to the "Are you kidding me?" (picking up our programmes to discover their service didn't include actualy stapling them together), we're completely exhausted.

All I could think, as I stood watching all these people having the time of their lives was "Dear God, please let me get my joy back by tomorrow, because otherwise I'm going to miss what is supposed to be one of the best days of my life."

But it's okay, well not the $300 excess we have to pay on the car for something that wasn't Josh's fault, but the rest of it, because tomorrow, even if my hair is rushed, and the programmes aren't stapled and the sound guy sulks, I'm marrying the most amazing guy in the world. And that's all that really matters.

Three Days and Counting

2010-01-04T10:52:00.000+13:00

I'm getting married in three days.

My dress is still too small.

The dressmaker of two of my bridesmaids' dresses, for some as yet unknown reason, decided to interpret my instructions for "knee length" hems as "mid thigh" and I have two bridesmaids with dresses that are (a) verging on inappropriate for church length and (b) going to spend the entire day trying not to flash anyone within a 1km radius at every gust of wind.

The woman doing our make-up sent me a cryptic text this morning saying "We need to talk. Call me" but her phone is going straight to voicemail.

Every night I dream that my dress splits in the middle of the wedding ceremony.

And yesterday we returned to Wellington to find it raining and a severe weather warning issued for high winds.

I know that the unselfish part of me should be asking you to pray for good weather for the day, but I'd rather you go for my dress (a) being able to be zipped up and (b) it not splitting during any part of the day first!

Today

2009-12-30T20:09:00.005+13:00

I'm blogging over at Christian Fictions Writers about how Josh and I met :)

The Dress Cont...

2009-12-24T06:12:00.003+13:00

On Monday Bec and I went shopping for the hardiest, sturdiest piece of spandex that we could lay our hands on. It was the only thing that lay between me and wedding dress disasterville.

Whoah. Those things are merciless. And getting into them is something akin to trying to squeeze yourself into a sausage casing.

Our relationship also reached new heights. Now I love my sister-in-law, but I can't say I ever imagined being naked with her in a dressing room, or having her with her arms around my jiggling waist while I jumped, in an attempt to get it up to my armpits.

Finally, after about an hour of squishing my fat into all sorts of places I never imagined it could go, we settled on a horrific beige number that started at my knees and ended up at my chest and gave me a butt from a cabbage patch doll.

Last night was the big reveal. Kristen and Bec showed up to do battle. After a mere few minutes of pulling and tugging we managed to get the zip up. Goal #1 achieved. And while I didn't quite look like the stuffed sausage that was last time, it would be fair to say that there still stands a couple of kg between now and being able to breathe, eat, drink or move with any ease on my wedding day.

So Kristen took bad cop. Running every day from now to then, lettuce and water for the next two weeks, Bec slap her hand if she goes anywhere near real food. Bec went for the more optimistic "Oh well, it is the evening, and everyone knows you're skinnier in the morning. So as long as you don't gain any weight over Christmas, we should be okay..."

So blogger world, have a fabulous Christmas, and think of me and my sister-in-law slapping my hand every time I divert from the salad bowl when you're having that second helping of cheesecake :)

Enough Already! A Confession

2009-12-21T17:16:00.003+13:00

I had been pulled aside by previous brides and warned about it but I had never thought it would happen to me. I had put in down to people who had a combination of long engagements and/or bridezilla like tendencies.

But now I'm ready to confess. Over the last week it's hit me with a vengeance.

I hate our wedding.

Don't get me wrong. I love my fiance. Love that I'm marrying him. Completely ready to spend the rest of my life with him. But our wedding? Completely, totally, utterly, over it.

Last night Josh and I went out for dinner, ostensibly to have a break from the big W. All we ended up doing was paying someone else to cook a meal for us while we fought about the final nit picky details.

The songs. The order of the service. Our parents meeting. There was sulking, pouting, tears and tense silence. And that was just me. Yes, I'm 27 years old and I can still pout with the best three year old out there. Especially when it comes to things that four months ago I said I didn't care about, but actually, guess what? That only meant I didn't care about them if you picked the same things that I would have, but since you haven't, I really care!

The longest, and most intense conversation was about our parents meeting (which they haven't before). Josh's family doesn't fly in until early the morning before our wedding (as in 1am) so we just have the day before to sort something out.

I was thinking a nice casual coffee. Somewhere nice and central where everyone can just show up, have a drink and meet, before we get on with the 101 other things we have to do that day. Deep meaningful conversation is what the rehearsal dinner is for, or so I thought.

Josh decided he wants to host a breakfast at our house. An affair that quickly reached 20+ people. We talked about it for about half an hour, both of us getting more and more frustrated with each other as the other person makes absolutely no sense to us.

Then I was walking to work this morning and I had a revelation.

We think about things completely differently.

COMPLETELY.

It's not like I wasn't aware of it previously, but I suddenly realised the full extent of it.

It looks something like this:

Josh: Josh in an apron standing over a bbq frying bacon and eggs. People arrive, people talk, people go.

Kara: Josh's family flies in at 1am which means they aren't going to get to bed before 2am? How on earth are we going to get them at our house by 9am? And they generally don't run to time anyway, and we have a tight schedule already on Wednesday to get everything done, and they don't have rental cars so how are we going to get them all to and from our house? And we have to be at Erskine at 10am to drop everything off, and if they're running late then I'll (and my Mum and sisters) pretty much be leaving before we even start eating which will look really rude, and we don't even have that many plates and that's 20 peoples' worth of food that I have to buy and clean up after, and who's going to clean up if I have to leave before people are finished? and from Erskine we have to go to the florist and from the florist we have to go to the suit fitting which is going to take like two hours because none of the groomsmen are from NZ and from the suit fitting we have to go to the rehearsal and from rehearsal we have to go to the dinner. And if they haven't cleaned up properly and I'm going to get home from my rehearsal dinner and spend the night before my wedding cleaning my house because the landlord is coming to stay and paint the lounge while we're on our honeymoon!

Hence our big issues last night: Josh - why is she freaking out, this is not a big deal? Kara - AAAARGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yes blogger world I have run out of wedding grace. I do not want to have another conversation about seating plans, songs, orders of service, shoes, dresses that don't fit, seating plans, seating plans, runsheets or the logistics of our wedding. Ever again.

I. Just. Want. To. Get. Married.

Can anyone else relate?

In Three Weeks...

2009-12-17T10:15:00.000+13:00

In three weeks, right now, I will be sitting in a hairdresser while someone teases the life out of my fine hair so that it somehow holds the same shape for the next twleve hours.

This time in three weeks and one hour someone else will be putting more makeup on my face than I would usually wear in a month.

This time in three weeks and two hours my bridesmaids will be lacing me into a corset so tight that most of my internal organs will be wrapping themselves around my spine.

In three weeks and three hours I will be getting ready to leave for the church and quite possibly knocking back a glass of bubbles while trying to remember how to breathe.

In three weeks and four hours I will be standing in front of 150+ people pledging my life to Josh for as long as we both shall live.

Three weeks and eight hours will be total insanity as Josh's family introduces Assyrian dancing to my somewhat co-ordinately challenged family.

Three weeks and ten hours my brother and sister are going to bring the house down with the best speech of the night.

Twelve hours the kids will be conked out under tables as Josh and I have our first dance.

And in three weeks and 14 hours I will get to go home with my amazing incredible adorable husband (and never have to do another seating plan for as long as I live!) :)

For All You Tyra Banks / America's Next Top Model Fans Out There

2009-12-15T11:51:00.004+13:00

Check out one of the perks of my job... (still tbc though if I'm actually going to get to go)

The Week of Wedding Disasters

2009-12-11T16:05:00.000+13:00

Welcome to the week of apocolyptic wedding disasters. I knew it had to be coming.

Instead of telling you the whole sad sorry story, I'll go with one.

My wedding dress.

I bought my wedding dress in Sydney but had to bring it back to Wellington to be altered. At the recommendation of the store back in Sydney I took it to the one place I didn't want to, Brides on Thorndon.

Anyone who's ever lived in Wellington will know what I'm talking about. The ladies (and I use that term loosely) have a hard earned and well deserved reputation for being sobbish, rude, arrogant, unhelpful, patronising and generally turning on of the most fun shopping trips of your life into a real downer. Unfortunately, they also have the best range of dresses and tailors to make alterations.

I tried everywhere I could think of to find someone to alter my dress, but alas, everyone else in the city who would handle the complexity was long since booked and so I was forced in November to avail myself of their services.

I was on even worse footing than the average punter to begin with since I hadn't even bought my dress from them so they had no reason to be civil. But I bit my tongue while I was measured and pinched and eyes rolled as I tried to explain what I wanted and generally made to feel like a big nuisance. I figured that to get my dress down well I could just suck it up.

Then I Tuesday I show up for my next fitting.

We (I'd made Bec and Kristen come with me because I didn't want to face them alone again) showed up on time. Unfortunately, the tailoress wasn't quite so keen. Snooty Boss woman informed us she wasn't here but would be back "sometime". No apology, no "would you like to reschedule?", no "I'll give her a call and see how far away she is". Just the stare of evil.

Why don't you just try on your dress? Came next. My dress was thrown into a dressing room and we were left to it. No offer of help or assistance.

With Bec and Kristen both in there with me, seven minutes and large amounts of puffing, pinching, tugging, pulling, straining, sucking and a few impolite words later, we came to the same conclusion. My previously too big dress had been taken down about two sizes instead of the one it needed.

The full length mirror revealed my previously gorgeous dress now looked like a sausage casing about to split. Dancing, eating, sitting, deep breathing all no longer an option for my wedding day.

I'm standing in the middle of the salon. All three staff have mysteriously disappeared. Oh wait. Someone is doing some ironing in the backroom, the other two are standing contemptuously about three metres away looking at me like I'm the spawn of the Bride of Frankenstein.

One deigns to yell "You've got it on crooked!" Well honey you try squeezing your body into a size 6 wedding dress when you are not and see how straight you manage to get it on!

Then the tailoress waltzes in with someone else and they all get into a huddle whispering and the words "crooked" "oh well didn't even buy it from us" "bit tight" and the the insinuation that I must have been busy

between the last fitting and now make their way to my ears. I think that Bec is about to hit someone.

That is the last I see of the tailoress. She disappears, never bothering to ask if I'm happy with any of the alternations or even whether I'm enjoying having my spleen wrapped around my spine.

Then we find that Bec's veil isn't quite right with my dress so I'm going to need to buy one. Well, even that was too much bother. Pouty saleswoman were plainly not feeling the need to make any money because after Miss Pouty #2 stomped around muttering and threw one at Bec, we decided we'd just help outselves.

By the end of 50 minutes we'd all had enough. I wasn't happy but since the compression of my internal organs was plainly my own fault for eating too many pies in the last couple of weeks, rather than Stacey making an error and taking it in too much, it was obvious that we weren't going to be getting any joy from them. All I wanted to do was just give them the money and take my dress and go so that I never ever had to come anywhere near the horrible place again.

Anyway upshot is that my dress can't really taken out without risking ruining it so in the next four weeks I either need to lose a rib or about eight pounds, give or take a kidney because I hear you only need one of those to live.

This blog is brought to you by the letters B and T and all the lettuce I'll be living it up on for Christmas.

Honeymoon Reading

2009-12-09T12:36:00.001+13:00

In less than a month I am going to be blissed out somewhere (hopefully bathed in sunshine) on my honeymoon. Three weeks! I can't remember the last time that I had three weeks or uninterrupted nothing stretching out in front of me (save the occasional change of location), all my holidays are always built around a mass of activities all jumpled on top of one another, and if I'm in charge, generally a day by day itinerary in Excel to boot.

So of course, with all good holidays, the plan is to take a stack of books almost as tall as I am to indulge in by the pool, in the hammock and on the plane.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson
True Blue - David Baldacci
The Spire - Richard North Patterson
Even - Andrew Grant
The Sweet By and By - Rachel Hauck & Sara Evans
White Picket Fences - Susan Meissner
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford

And the first of that series by Stephanie Meyer which for the life of me I can't remember at this very instance, but I should because it's plastered over practically every billboard in town. I'm also determined to start that massive big series by Diana Gabaldon.

However, I need at least ten more and I'm woefully lacking in non-fiction. I'll read pretty much anything except fantasy/sci-fi. So please, help me out, what were your favourite books in 2009? Name, title and short synopsis would be awesome - and if I pick one of yours, then you can have your pick of one of my favourite books of 2009 that I'll list pre-Christmas :)

My Crazy Fiance

2009-12-07T12:58:00.002+13:00

So on Tuesday night Josh and I crammed in two pre-wedding sessions into one so went quite late (I'll do a whole separate blog on pre-marraige counselling later!).

This week Josh is staying with our friends Bryce and Liv and by the time he had dropped me home and gotten back to Bryce and Liv's it was almost 11.30pm.

Unexpectedly, Bryce and Liv have had a new front door put in during the day (it had been meant to happen months ago and apparently the builder randomly decided Tuesday was a good day to do it). Liv had left it open, Bryce had locked it forgetting Josh was staying and Josh doesn't have a key. He texts Bryce, no response. He tries banging on their bedroom windows, no response (they've both being sick and so were out to it).

So, instead of ringing Bryce, or coming back to my place with it's nice warm spare bedroom, the silly monkey decides he'll just SLEEP IN THE CAR. In 3 degrees and 100km hour winds on the top of a hill! After an hour, during which the car is being rocked by the wind and he is curled up in a foetal position in the backseat shivering, he works out this probably wasn't the best plan. Still being too stubborn to admit this, he doesn't think "this is insane. I'm going to wake Bryce up/go home" instead he gets mad at me for taking the tarp out of the boot so he couldn't use it as a blanket and does nothing, but freezes for the next six hours.

Liv wakes up at 5.30, realises Josh isn't there and goes "Oh my gosh, I bet Bryce locked the front door and Josh couldn't get in" woke up Bryce who found Josh's text on his phone, and went looking and finds Josh in the car almost hypothermic who managed to explain between chattering teeth that he "didn't want to disturb anyone."

I get back from a set of meetings to find four text messages from poor Liv apologising backward and forward for locking my poor baby out in the cold, but I'm mad at my martyr of a fiance who had about ten people he could have called, a key to my place which has a spare room and instead chose to do his best to freeze to death!

All the girls I talk to go "What?! That's crazy!" while all the guys shrug their shoulders and go "Yup, I probably would have done the same thing." I am madly crazily in love with this guy but this is one of those situations where I just go "huh?" Can anyone explain this man reasoning to me? Or share another Mars/Venus story?

When A Yes Really Means "Possibly But Only If I Feel Like It And Nothing Better Comes Up"

2009-12-04T14:58:00.009+13:00

I've possibly ranted about this before. In fact, given that it's one of my pet peeves I'd say the odds are good, so a few of you probably know what I'm about to say.

Let me set the scene. I'm a pretty busy person. I have a job, a fiance and a wedding to plan. In between working late nights, pre-marriage sessions and wedding prep I also have various church commitments, like to see my friends and family and occasionally blow the dust off my laptop to write a word or four.

Between now and Christmas I have three free evenings left. Which was fine, I was happy with all of the commitments. I have a bit of a rule which is basically, if I've said I'll be at something, then I will be. If a better option comes up later, then I'm not going to trade you in and I'm not going to leave you hanging for weeks so I can keep my options open. The only exception is if something work related comes up that I just can't excape. Working for the PM there is always that possibility, but I think it's happened maybe once.

If something really big somes up that clashes (like a really important church meeting or the work Christmas party) then I might see if there's anyway that I can reschedule to manage both. But always far in advance, I'm not going to drop it on you at the last minute. Honestly? I just think that's really rude.

Which brings me to today. Weeks ago, a few friends and I arranged to catch up for dinner tonight. We're all busy people and don't get to see each other that often so we it was scheduled a long time in advance to make sure everyone could make it. Everyone said they could, we locked it in the diaries and nothing more was heard until today.

Then early afternoon the emails start. Sorry, actually have something else I need to be at. Sorry, already had a few big nights this week and don't really feel like going out again tonight. Sorry, spent too much money this week so can't really afford it.

This is the point where I pretty much lose all sense of charity. For me it's in the same category as constantly being late - it shows a total lack of respect for the other person's time. I turned down being somewhere else tonight for you but obviously I'm the only one who actually gives a monkey's for keeping a commitment to being where I say I'm going to be, when I say I'm going to do so and the rest of you's yes is more of a "tentative but I'll let you know on the day if I feel like it".

Then, THEN, the thing that really causes me to lose it, is that if I try and communicate this, it's my problem for being Type A and anally retentive and I just need to chill out and then they get snitty and well, we all know girls well enough to know it's all down hill from there. The thing is I don't have a problem if people can't make something or if things come up and they need to reschedule, I'm just asking for a bit of consideration and giving me enough notice so that I can try and redo my plans. It's too late now to accept the other invitation that I turned down, Josh has made plans with the guys that I'm hardly going to ask him to cancel because my friends have bailed and so now instead of a dinner that I've been looking forward to for ages, my Friday night is suddenly an empty chasm.

Of course like any other anally retentive bride I could log-on to marthastewartweddings.com and start doing my table seating plan, or finally finish unpacking the last of our boxes, or a squillion other boring domestic/wedding related tasks but I was really looking forward to having some FUN!

I guess the biggest thing is that while these people matter to me, it feels like I don't matter nearly as much to them. So for all of you relaxed go-with-the-flow, plans aren't confirmed until you're actually sitting at the table, you just need to chill out people, that's what you're telling us structured, busy people who have put a priority on getting to spend time with you when you bail on something that has been on the cards for ages with four hours notice.

Maybe I'm completely overreacting and partially delusional but so far I can't come up with any other interpretation that is any better. Anyone else got any thoughts? I'd especially love to hear the viewpoint of people like my friends (who are genuinely great people) who really don't get what the problem is.

Friday Night Lights cont

2009-12-03T07:48:00.000+13:00

For those of you still waiting for what the big surprise was - I've now updated Monday's post with the photos :)

Letting Go...

2009-12-01T15:59:00.001+13:00

Yesterday I got rejected by the agent that I met in Colorado. The timing wasn't great. I'd sent my submission from my work email as Gmail had been having a mare that day and refusing to attach anything. So it's 9am in the morning and I'm sitting in a management team meeting and suddenly the Crackberry does its little dance and up flashes his email. I glance down and ka bang. Smacked right across the back of the head in front of six other people, without any of them even realising it.

There's nothing quite like having your heart churning with disappointment but the luxury of only about two seconds to snap out of it and get your head back into the meeting that you're actually being paid to attend.

It was a very nice rejection email advising me to "see this not as discouragement, but as a challenge" and then mooted something that has been at the back of my mind for the last few months. Maybe it's time to move on. Maybe it's time to stop flogging the (dearly loved) dead horse that is my first manuscript and start afresh with something new. Maybe its time is still to come, but after two years and rejections aplenty it's time to move on like it never will. I don't want to be one of those writers who, a decade from now, has never written anything else because gosh darnit I'm going to sell my first manuscript if it kills me and every agent and editor is mysteriously felled by a sudden case of food poisoning when I'm at their table at a conference.

It's a scary thing, putting three years of your life in a box and onto a shelf. Three years of drafting, then rewriting, then editing, then critiquing. Three years of sweat, tears and probably a few pounds added onto each thigh from chocolate consumption. Three years of creating and building and nurturing your characters. Of taking the critiques and the criticism on the chin and working and reworking and reworking, hoping that one day it will be good enough. Of having some people believe in it fiercely while others tear it to shreds. Of slowly realising that everyone is right - publication takes more than a great book. It takes a great book to meet the right agent/editor at the right time. And I'm not even claiming mine is anything close to that.

Thinking back to my days as a triathlete, it's pretty much exactly like putting in all the hard work, all the training, all the hard yeards, the early mornins, the long sessions in sleet and snow when everyone else is tucked up in bed, starting a race but, for whatever reason, never making it to the finishing line. Sure there might be other races. Sure maybe one day I'll be good enough to win one. But I really thought it might be this one!

And not only is that one going on the shelf, but two others as well. It's really hard to gather up much enthusiasm to write the sequels to a book that is probably never going to see the light of day. I'm pretty sure I'll come back to the third one, it's done really well in contests and I still really love the idea but I just need a break from the same cast for awhile. I adore them, but I need to take a break so I can come back and write it like the previous two never existed.

It would be easy to look back and think "well that was a total waste of my time" but it wasn't. I've learnt so much - about writing, about publishing, about doing something that I never thought I could - writing an entire manuscript. Not to mention the incredible people that I've met and connections that I've made.

And there's also something exciting and liberating right here. A blank page. New characters, new places, new situations, new twists and turns and voices and endings. No more rewriting the same chapter sixteen times. No more editing the same scene for weeks on end. A break from contests and rejections, at least for awhile. A new set of possibilities.

I have no idea what my new story is going to be about. I have a few half formed ones bouncing around in my head. I have a couple of semi formed characters with possibilities. A line that sounds like it could be a winner if it found the right home. That's all.

So blogger world, sometime soon I'm going to do something that I haven't done on my Mac for a really long time.

File. New.

Besides, I'll have a new name soon so that feels like reason enough for a new book and who knows? Maybe Kara Isaac will channel some sort of writing muse that this Kara never had :)

Friday Night Lights

2009-11-30T16:08:00.003+13:00

I'm at home. Saturday was my hen's party and so I'd made a date with my sister-in-law, bridesmaid and all round fun person to hang out since my brother was out of town for the night. I also had a date with an enormous batch of brownies :)

So I get home. Change from work gear into slob gear (aka trackpants, slippers and a really ugly polar fleece that I've had since last millennia) and pull all the brownie ingredients out (aka two boxes of Betty Crocker and some eggs).

Then Bec texts; "Your engagement present is here. Come over and get it!"
Kara: "I'm at home. I thought you were coming here?."
Bec: "No, you need to come here to get it."
Kara: "I'm making a brownie!"
Bec: "You can make it here."
Kara: "Can't you bring the present with you when you come here?"
Bec: "Just come and bring the brownie with you."
Kara: "I can't bring it. It's all mixed up in the bowl!"
Bec: "Come on. It's really really cool!"
Kara: "But are we coming back here."
Bec: "Yup, no worries."
Kara: "Okay, I'll be there soon."

Now my sister-in-law is one of the most easy going people in the world so it should have struck me as odd that she was being so high maintenance. Especially when the last time I was being so high maintenance to her was the night my brother proposed and I was the lynch pin of some complicated ruse involving keys that he had left behind that I couldn't pick up, she had to bring to me!

I did start getting suss in the car on the way over because I couldn't think of anything the present could possibly be that would mean she couldn't bring it to me, but that I had to go to her, especially when she had the bigger car! At one point I almost turned around to go home and get changed, thinking that maybe my hen's night was actually starting on Friday night and my and my slippers and polar fleece were about to get humiliated. Then I started wondering if they'd bought us some trick present, like some huge hideous piece of art. And then I gave up because it was Friday and all I wanted to do was bake brownies and eat batter, not unravel the inner gift workings of my brother and sister-in-law's minds.

So I get to their house, and Bec opens the door (note the gorgeous polar fleece - proving that this was not a night I was expecting any cameras to be nearby!).

In the centre of the lounge there's this long thin TV box, and now I'm definitely thinking it's some ugly art because I knew that unless Bec and Christian had won Lotto and not breathed a word, there was no way it was a TV.

So with Bec dancing around wielding a camera and chating "Open it, open it, open it", and me now convinced it must be a hideous piece of abstract art because nothing else could fit in there, I opened the box and screamed a scream that I only hope I can manage if some maniac with a knife is chasing me because it would send them to their knees...

This is my little sister Melly who lives in Australia

This is how far I jumped back when I saw her

This is me still hyperventalating two minutes later

And this is my scheming sister-in-law Bec who arranged the whole thing :)

Blending Tradition

2009-11-23T20:49:00.000+13:00

Before I met Josh, one thing that I never thought about was marrying someone from a significantly different culture than mine. Sure I thought that I might marry an Australian, hoped for an Irishman (favourite accent) and could see myself being swept off my feet by some dashing American but it never, ever, occurred to me that I would be marrying into the Middle Eastern equivalent of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

It's great and I love it even though I sometimes get overwhelmed by the sheer exhuberance and intensity of it all. I love the Assyrian culture and their warmth and openness and hospitality and focus on family and community. And man do the put those of us with sedate Anglo-Saxon backgrounds people to shame when it comes to how to party and celebrate. If you've seen the photos of our engagement party, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The thing that we've been talking about, ever since we got engaged, is given that our cultures do things so differently, how do we make this both our wedding? How do we take the best of the celebratory Assyrian culture and blend it with the more traditional and create something that is uniquely ours. How do you mix the 600-1000 all singing all dancing, with the Christian ceremony and 150 sit down meal.

The one thing that I've learned as we've weaved our way in and out and around a number of traditions is never say never when it comes to your wedding. If there was one thing that I would have always thought I would have been non-negotiable on it's this - the opening of the church doors and the first time Josh seeing me being when I walk through those doors, on my Dad's arm, and down the aisle. Friends and family on both sides, Josh standing up front with the minister, the soaring church ceiling, the whole shebang.

But Josh's family has this tradition where the grooms family and friends pick up the bride from the bride's house. Much like my engagement party, I haven't quite got my head around this yet, but suffice to say it involves a lot of singing, a lot of dancing, a lot of noise, the mixing of both families, some form of feast and then the bride and groom head to the ceremony together.

So, there are two questions. Firstly - are we going to try and do this? Am I prepared to give up my thing about the first time Josh seeing me being at the church and my wedding day looking a whole lot different than I ever imagined? And, if we do, how? My parents don't live in Wellington, so it would mean asking some friends if we can borrow their house for about 150 strangers (to them) to sing and dance through. It would mean inconveniencing their neighbours (they block the street with the dancing procession). How do we get all the Australians to wherever it would be and then to the church (on time)? How do we make it work with the rest of the day? Who do we involve from my side? How do my parents feel about it?

So far we've reached a tentative yes on the first. It sounds like fun, an after our engagement party, I'm happy to admit most of their traditions are way more joyous than ours and this symbol of two families joining beats the mothers lighting the union candle by a long shot (no offence to those of you who did). As for the logistics. I have absolutely no idea how we're going to make it happen. But if you check back in early February their will hopefully be some awesome photos!

What about you? Been in, or at, any weddings with some traditions that you'd never known existed before? How did they work out?

Gone!

2009-11-19T13:45:00.000+13:00

I realise that I've been pretty quiet for the last few days. The reason? Well beyond the wedding dress meltdown, I was getting my manuscript ready to send off to both the editor and agent that I met at the ACFW Confernce.

I was determined to gt it to them in less than two months post conference (you hear all the time about writers who get requests a conferences for proposals or manuscripts who never follow through and you just want to kick them for squandering such a great opportunity). So as soon as I got some feedback back from my critiquer in the US I got stuck in. And Jaime had already sent hers so I couldn't let the team down!

This was the first time she'd seen it "relocated" to the US and pretty much all of her suggestions revolved around phrases that I thought everyone used, but apparently people living in the US don't! Holiday becomes vacation, rang becomes called and don't even get me started on trying to translate phrases like "spat the dummy", "lost the plot" and "back on form"!!!!

Then yesterday evening I finally reached a point where I thought it was ready to go. The hard thing about proposals is you know that it will never be perfect when it's sent into the ether. Despite having proof read it 435 times somewhere there will be a spelling mistake, despite having rewritten the synopsis about 200 times, the next time you read it, you will find another way to make it stronger, and despite having being anally retentive in your formatting, something will happen to it in cyber space that will make it look at the other end like you let a toddler loose in the font and font size functions.

There will always be something. But if you wait until you reach perfection, it's never going anywhere, so instead what you're aiming for a close enough to greatness whoever is on the other end will forgive the occasional mispelt word, or missed comma or that weird paragraph will TNR 12 has somehow morphed into Arial 8 and keep reading anyway.

So it's gone. With a deep breath and a prayer it got sent out into the big wide world last night. And Josh and I went out and gorged ourselves on garlic naan and butter chicken to celebrate.

I've heard back form the agent saying that they probably won't get back to me until January. I would imagine that it will be even longer for the editor. So worst case scenario - between now and my next set of rejections I'm going to acquire a husband and have a luxury Pacific Island honeymoon :)

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm going to do if I get another two solid rejections from here. But that's something that, right now, is sitting squarely in the "think about post-wedding, post-honeymoon, upon return to "real" life in 2010" basket!

The Dress

2009-11-14T01:55:00.002+13:00

I have a confession to make.

I don't love my wedding dress.

There.

I've said it.

Quite possibly committed the ultimate wedding hari kari and am about to have cupid stab me with his arrow.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't dislike it. I even like it. I just don't have that warm goey feeling that this little girl princess part of me was always expecting when she looked in the mirror and saw the dress that she was going to walk up the aisle in.

Want to know what the problem is? Apart from it being nothing like the dress I always imagined I would wear (I always thought I'd go more for sophisticaled and elegant and this one is definitely more on the froo froo princessy side) The real problem? It's that I found my dream dress and did the pragmatic thing instead of the princess thing.

I did. I found my dream Maggie Sorrato dress in Sydney in June (the same day I found this one) and fell in love. But it was $2000 more than this one and, at the end of the day, I just couldn't justify spending that much money on a dress for one day. And this dress, well sure it wasn't all my dreams come true, but it was gorgeous in its own way, and everyone else loved it, and I didn't not like it and it was on S A L E.

And I know that I made the right decision, and it's not that this isn't a beautiful dress, and once I have hair and makeup and everything I'm sure it will all be fine, and since only three other people saw me in the dream dress it's not like anyone else knows what to compare it to, but the really spoilt part of me just really wishes that that was the dress I was wearing on 7 January.

Actually what I really wish is that I could have a fitting and be excited about what I'm wearing instead of looking around the bridal salon and wishing that I could have a do-over!

Three Years All For Nothing

2009-11-12T15:37:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I discovered that I've been listening to the same music for the last three years for no reason whatsoever.

I'm sure this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, so let me explain. About four years ago my entire CD collection was stolen by some cheeky monkey out of the front seat of my car while I was getting some stuff out of the boot. To this day that still makes me laugh since I would say a stash of Christian music would have been the absolute last thing that person was hoping for.

It was a bit of a pain but, having been an early adaptor to the cutting edge technology known as the i-Pod, I still had most of my music. And so on I semi-merrily continued.

Then two years ago disaster struck. My iTunes lived on my work laptop. I would like to say I not only did this with the full knowledge of my IT team, but that one of the IT support guys actually loaded it onto my laptop for me. Then, someone who obviously had far too much time on their hands to dream up nasty things to do to poor hard working public servants, issued an edict than all non work related programmes were to be removed pronto.

I was named an offender of the edict and so duly two IT guys showed up to remove my iTunes (I'm really not sure what the second one was for - to hold me down if I tried to stop them??) and it was verily dumped into cyberspace.

And therein lay the problem. You see I don't own a pc, I'm a Mac girl baby, and someone who I trusted had knowledgeable told me that there was some major difference between Mac compatible i-Pods and PC compatible i-Pods and that the moment I plugged my i-Pod into my Mac, my entire library would be wiped, gone, finito, poof away to join i-Tunes in cyber space.

Having had my cds swiped by i-Pod was the only device remaining that housed my music collection. And it wasn't just any collection. It housed classics such as SClub7, the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys and numerous other pop bands that, while I might mock them in public, actually have music that is quite good to run to.

And so, for the last two years, I have been held hostage by an i-Pod trapped in 2006. The same 467 songs and 12 sermons for almost 1000 days.

Then last week I broke. I couldn't do this anymore. I no longer cared if I didn't hear one of those songs for as long as I lived. In fact wiping the thing would be a blessed relief from the torture of having to hear the opening bars of S Club Party for the 600th time.

Yes there were a few songs that I could still tolerate, that I wasn't sure if I would be able to get again, but on the whole, enough was enough.

So on Tuesday night, I finally did it. I plugged my i-Pod into my Mac and waited for the message telling me that, for my unfaithfulness to the Apple, my music had to go.

Want to know what happened? NOTHING. Well not nothing, but after a couple of moments thinking, up my i-Pod popped with all its contents intact, up popped my Mac Library with all its contents intact. Just sitting there, great friends, all harmonious in one happy screen. Not only that, but I can move things from my Mac library to my i-Pod and nothing happens.

N O T H I N G

I have been torturing myself with the same songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over for the last almost three years for absolutely no reason.

I almost cried.

And I can only say to the person who gave me that assured piece of i-Pod advice - you a REALLY lucky I can't for the life of me remember who you are!

Temporarily Relocated :)

2009-11-10T17:38:00.001+13:00

Today I Am Blogging Over At http://www.internationalchristianfictionwriters.blogspot.com/ so jump on over and say hi :)

Skip This One If You're Already Bored Senseless By My Wedding :)

2009-11-04T16:52:00.000+13:00

As I write this, I’m sitting here staring at four cases of wine that have just been delivered for our wedding. Yes, yes, I know it’s still two months ago but when it comes to alcohol acquisition Josh and I are taking a somewhat ad hoc approach. Also know as the see-something-we-like-on-special-and-buy-6-bottles option.

We figure this will hopefully be a lot more painless than getting a large bill in January when we’re already broke. So the great news is there’ll be lots to choose from. The not so great? If you happen to be at our wedding and find something you really really like - good luck getting any more!

Anyway, while I’m sure you’re all sick and tired of my wedding, so am I. And so I am going to bore you some more with “Kara’s Wedding Tips”

1) RSVP early. Yes E A R L Y. As in before the date listed on the card. If you know your definite answer, please just tell us. Especially if you’re a no!
2) Which leads me to the second, if you’ve said yes, you can say no but not like the day before unless someone is ill with the plague or something terrible like that). But if you’ve declined, you can’t turn around later and accept, no you can’t! Why? Because either (a) someone else has already been invited in your place or (b) the invite list was oversubscribed to begin with and they were secretly counting on your no.
3) Don’t ask the bride if she’s planning to go on a wedding diet. Especially not while eyeing her up and down. For all you know she’s been slaving away for the last month and you’ve just told her that all that denial of chocolate and hours on the treadmill are all for nought.
4) Keep your opinions to yourself when it comes to wedding dresses. Telling her all about how you went to a wedding last weekend and the bride wore this hideous meringue froo froo dress with puffed sleeves could have you lined up for a world of pain when she marches down the aisle in its replica (don’t worry I’m not – but it has happened!)
5) There’s a BIG difference between food allergies and preferences. Yes, I want to know if simply being in the same room as a nut is going to put you ten steps closer to the great hereafter. Unless you are my mother or my fiancé, I really really really really don’t care if you don’t like tomatoes in your salad, or have strong opinions about mixing fruit with meat or chocolate versus vanilla. It’s a buffet. Find something.
6) If I don’t tell you where I’m going on my honeymoon, it’s because I’m afraid you might show up.
7) I love you, I thank you for travelling such a long way for our wedding. But I just can’t organise anyone else’s New Zealand holiday. At the moment I can barely work out how to catch the bus to my new place. Yes I realise I work in tourism. I suggest www.newzealand.com
8) If another guest happens to be your mortal enemy. Suck it up. I’m not going to seat you beside them and there will be 150 other people there. Put on your big girl panties and get over it. (I say this because guys don’t ten to have mortal enemies, they have a fight, and life is all good again).

Anyone else got anything they think I should add?

Where For Art Thou Hairdryer?

2009-11-02T16:48:00.003+13:00

This morning it took me twenty minutes to try and find my hairdryer. And that was after it took me 15 minutes to find some underwear.

I hate moving at the best of times. Not even when buff burly guys show up and pack everything and move everything for me. Though I would like it a whole lot better if that was what happened this weekend, along with someone to unpack the boxes at the other end.

Alas, this move was total chaos, to say the least. Aka the kind where you wake up on Sunday morning, look around you and think "I'm moving today and I have not packed a thing" and promply start running around your apartment in circles throwing things in boxes,w ith no rhyme or reason.

Which is why this morning I wandered around my new house able to find plenty of things that I either didn't want, should have thrown out or couldn't even remember owning, but nothing of any practical use. And yes, my hairdryer is still MIA, and yes, I'm a tad grumpy because of the very bad hair day that resulted.

The house, however, is gorgeous and I love every square inch of it. Hopefully I'll soon get around to taking some photos so you can all covet my new palace :)

On the not so great front, it's further away, and so tonight I am about to embark on a brand new adventure entitled "commuting on Wellington public transport". Wish me luck!

Also this week I'll be blogging about engagement party #2 on Saturday night which was about as different from the first as you could get, but still heaps of fun. And my friend Elizabeth made the most AMAZING cake in the world.

Finally, for today, great news - a bunch of us writing internationally have banded together to start our own blog. Starting from tomorrow, you can find a group of us blogging at www.internationalchristianfictionwriters.blogspot.com . It's a great bunch of people, lots of them are published, a few of us (me included) are lucky enough to be included on their glorious coat tails in the hopes that maybe, one day, we'll get to join their ranks. And if not, hey we get to have fun with some great and very illustrious company :)

So come say hi, we're kicking off with a book giveaway, and all going well it will just be the first of many many more to come.

You Are Cordially Invited...

2009-10-30T16:59:00.000+13:00

When we started on this whole wedding planning thing I was warned about the invite list. This was usually by someone who got married in the last twelve months and their first-up “have fun with the invitation list” was accompanied by semi-hysterical laughter.

Foolishly, I wasn’t too worried. Getting married in New Zealand, and having my beloved blithely inform me that there was no way than any more than 30 people would come from Australia, let me 98% certain that I wouldn’t have to face pretty much any of the invitation list dramas that many of my friends had.

I’d already checked out my parents and they only wanted to invite a very reasonable 10 family friends, not even close to the 70 another friend’s parent’s insisted on – the majority of whom she had never met. I don’t have a large extended family and there was no expectation of inviting second cousins, or those people who you think you’re related to but you just can’t quite remember how.

Many of my high school friends had gotten married and, as I hadn’t been invited to their receptions, I knew I wasn’t expected to invite them to mine if numbers got tight. Ditto with church friends.

So I admit, I was somewhat smug that we would easily cruise in on our 115-125 guest list. No dramas. No fuss. In fact quite the reverse – I imagined I was going to spend far more time sad about the people who couldn’t be there, than stressing about the numbers of those who could.

Ha! And the universe laughed!

What was my fatal flaw in my reasoning blog world?

Yes, of course, it was the boy.

The adorable, earnest and obviously very unassuming guy who plainly had no idea how many of his friends and family either (a) loved him to distraction and wouldn’t miss his wedding for the world or (b) really really wanted an excuse to have a holiday in New Zealand and finally had one.

The people who Josh had sworn red, black and blue would sooner allow leeches to eat their extremities than get on a plane? Yup they’re all coming. The ones who he swore there was no way they’d be able to afford to come? Yup, must have secretly robbed a bank or won lotto or something, because they’re all accepting “with delight”.

At last time I check the “absolutely definitely no more than 30 from Australia” was 65. And all up, while the maximum our reception can seat 138 people, we have 160 invites out in the big wide world and NO ONE HAS DECLINED.

Cue hysterical laughter. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely thrilled for Josh that so many people are coming and fortunately for him, I am not a bridezilla, otherwise I would be having some kind of terminal meltdown right now. What on earth are we going to do if more than 138 accept? I have no idea. I figure we’ll work it out when that happens. Though I am beginning to develop a bit of a spastic twitch every time I open another RSVP and see “We are thrilled to accept…”

Even with all that, do you want to know what’s really lead us to the pinnacle of teetering on the brink of wedding chaos? The people who have invited themselves. I’d heard rumours of this phenomenon and, as with most other things wedding related, been entirely unsympathetic. As far as I was concerned if someone assumes they’re invited and you weren’t planning on inviting them, you just need to suck it up and tell them so.

I mean, be nice about it, don’t slap them down. But surely something along the lines of “Of course you’re welcome at our wedding, but unfortunately due to the size of the reception venue/combined size of our families/budget constraints/etc etc we haven’t been able to invite you to the reception.”

But people are sneaky! And I don’t mean that in a manipulative way. I just mean that a number of people have just assumed that they were going to be invited and, rather than checking first, have just gone ahead and booked flights and accommodation and then dropped the “Oh by the way we’re flying into Wellington on X for your wedding” bomb!

And I’m not talking about close friends and family who would be rightly offended if they weren’t invited. I’m talking about people so far down the list that if we’d been having a wedding with 600 people, they would have been invites #478-490! I wish I could tell you all the wonderful and varied ways that they’ve informed us they’re coming to our wedding but, on the off chance that someone who reads this knows someone and says “guess what I read in Kara’s blog the other day” and they realise I was talking about them I’m going to resist.

But if we end up with more than 138 people they’ll know who they are. They’ll be the guests in the roped off “standing room only’ zone :)

So since I can’t (for another year at least anyway) tell you the tales of my guests to be, can anyone out there cheer me up with any of your own (or friends/families) invitation dramas???

Good Byes and Other Sad Things

2009-10-28T11:49:00.001+13:00

I feel bad. We totally ripped Josh’s Mum off her big goodbye to her first child leaving home (and the country).

To be fair, it wasn’t my fault. It was Sydney traffic, combined with a massive amount of rain.

Discovery of the weekend? Sydneysiders have no idea how to drive in torrential rain. It’s like they all slow down to 30k/hr and try to navigate around puddles, as if getting the underside of their car wet is unthinkable.

Which is why that, instead of checking in two hours before our flight and having a relaxed coffee at the airport with Josh’s parents before we flew out, we ended up doing one of those frantic kerbside jump, grab and sprints for check-in an hour before departure.

I felt terrible, standing on the kerb as Josh’s Mum started to tear up and attempt to say goodbye to her eldest child, whilst knowing that a prolonged emotional farewell could potentially cost us two airfares.

I was 17 when I left home to go to university. From memory my parents waved me merrily off at the airport with the joy of wooohoooo one kid down, two to go!

It was a mad weekend. On one hand it was crazy exciting in a surreal kind of way. Finally, after a year, long distance was over. No more time differences, no more trying to synch calendars just to talk to each other for 20 minutes, no more weeks and weeks between visits, and tears and airports and fighting over the phone and wedding planning over email and trying to live two lives in two countries.

On the other hand, it was definitely a big reality check in all the things that Josh is giving up to move to New Zealand and marry me. His family, his friends, his church, his job, his entire life as he knows it. And he handled it all much better than I would have!

So the next part of our story is going to be pretty interesting. Josh adjusting to a new country, finding a job, making new friends and everything else that comes with moving. Me adjusting to having my fiancé actually in the same city as me and no longer being the sole ruler of my own universe.

Honestly, right now it’s pretty blissful. Last night I got home from work to Josh cooking dinner for me and, as I type this, he’s packing up my apartment for my move this weekend before coming to take me out for lunch. Can't really beat that :)

P.S. In actual writing related news I just found out yesterday that I came second in the Inspirational Category of the Lone Star Contest.

The Julie/Julia Question: What Am I Doing?

2009-10-22T09:25:00.002+13:00

Last night I went to see Julie & Julia. Which I’ve been waiting to see for months.

Unfortunately, one of the downsides to living in NZ, is that movies arrive here about 3-6 months after they start in the US. My Sister’s Keeper and The Time Traveller’s Wife? Yup don’t get them until Christmastime.

Anyway, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, it’s based in Julie Powell, an about-to-turn-30 year old in modern New York City having a bit of a crisis in the face of her seemingly dead end life, while all her friends are fabulously successful with high flying corporate jobs.

So she decides to cook through all 524 of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipes in a year and blog about the journey.

In parallel, the movie tells the story of Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) in post-war Paris and how the journey to the publication of the book unfolded.

Early in the movie, Julie and her husband are talking about what she could blog about. The key features being that it had to be something interesting, challenging and (since she wasn’t known for finishing things) there had to be a deadline. And voila along came Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year.

Which got me thinking about my blog in 2010, and whether I want to continue on my merry way, doing what I’m doing, or come up with something a bit more purposeful.

As my sort-of byline states the purpose at the beginning of this blog was the road to publication (or not). Obviously chosen when I was exceptionally naïve and had no real clue how slow the wheels of this journey take (in Julia Child’s case, almost ten years!)

If you’ve been reading this blog, for any period of time, you’ll know that if that was all I talked about, then you’d either here from me about once every three months. Either that or this blog would be an endless cycle of one sentence posts.

Writing. Still writing. Editing. Sent in proposal. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Rejected. Rewriting. Entered competition. Finaled. Placed. Another rejection. Entered competition. Judges hated it. Period of self pity and introspection.

Yawn.

So what else could I do? My job is strictly off limits. Definitely no secret squirrel on the inner workings of parliament and power here. The next big adventure staring me in the face is getting married. But I highly doubt that Josh would be impressed with me blogging about the first year of married life. I could return to the tried and true book reviews and giveaways, but there are already squillions of people doing that.

And it was about there that the hamsters stopped turning the wheel. I love wine and food. But neither our budget, nor my small stature, could handle something like drinking my way through the white wines of Australia in a year. Love travelling, but once again, would need much bigger bank balance. I could tell you about New Zealand but once again, entire websites dedicated to that.

Anyone else got any ideas? You can't alter my apperance and it can't be something that is crazy time consuming, because I really don't have a lot of it going spare!

The End Of An Era

2009-10-19T13:41:00.002+13:00

Okay, since I’m bored of my own conference drivel, here’s the short version of my agent meeting. It went great, my 15 minute appointment lasted for an hour (don’t worry I was the last one of the day so didn’t steal anyone else’s time!), he made me laugh so hard that I cried and also wanted a proposal. So success all round on the appointments front J

The plan is that I’ll send my proposal into both of them in the next few weeks, which means I probably won’t hear back til after Christmas what they think, but I’ll keep you posted either way on how things unfold.

So moving on. This week is the end of an era. I spent a lot of time over the past weekend contemplating this, whilst eating chocolate afghans and generally attempting to relish my last weekend in my apartment doing the single girl thing.

On Friday I fly to Sydney for the weekend, and on Monday I fly back, WITH Josh. Yes my friends, in four more sleeps long distance dramas will finally be over, and Josh and I will be located in the same city.

It’s a pretty big change. Okay, understatement of the year, it’s a VERY big change. For both of us. Obviously that’s a no brainer for Josh – the poor guy is moving out of home, cities, countries, churches and jobs all in one big hit, for me.

Wow. I seriously love this guy.

I am changing, well nothing, except moving house in two weeks, which doesn’t really count compared to Josh.

Let me be upfront here. We have absolutely no idea how we’re going to do this. We’re taking our relationship from three days of intensity, every three-four weeks, to real day to day life. And we have nine weeks to get the basics sorted, before we find ourselves not just in the same city, but in the same house, and whole new level of complexity gets added.

As well as being crazy about each other, we’re both independent, stubborn, opinionated, and used to being the sole dictators of our own universes for a very long time aka doing pretty much what we want, when we want and how we want.

This probably makes us both sound really selfish which, fundamentally, I’ve decided I definitely am. I spend my money on what I want, and am accountable to no one for it. I decide what I want to do with my spare time and don’t have to really consider someone else in making those choices. In fact, pretty much every choice I make in day to day life is about me, myself and I. Right down to whether or not I make my bed in the morning or brush my teeth at night. (For the record I always brush my teeth at night - but I'm just pointing out that if I didn't no one would ever know!)

And somehow I’m going to have to learn how to make it about Josh, we, then me. Especially over the next few months as Josh is settling into New Zealand.

Don’t get me wrong. I am incredibly excited and I can’t wait to enjoy getting to hang out with him on a random Wednesday night, or know that he’ll be around to give me a hug at the end of the bad day and no longer have to sit at the "odd" peoples table at every formal event I get invited to. But it’s been almost five years since I had a boyfriend in the same city as me. I honestly can’t remember what it’s like or what the rules are!

I have no doubt, this is going to make for some pretty entertaining blog posts as I manage to screw it all up royally. But before I begin this new adventure – anyone got any advice on how to do this so I don’t get knee capped at the first hurdle?

Happy Friday

2009-10-16T14:50:00.004+13:00

I'm exhausted.

And so, this Friday afternoon, I am escaping work early to go and finally see..

I've heard great things and right now, in the face of finding a new home, wedding planning, work and rewrites, a dose of Pixar accompanied by some form of chocolate is exactly what I need.

Have a great weekend everyone.

First Time Pitching: Part Three

2009-10-15T16:02:00.001+13:00

Apologies for the delay in posting this – last week my moulding, rotting, leaky apartment flooded and so this week has been somewhat caught up with looking for a new home. Which I will tell you all about next week!

So continuing on…

As you’ll remember, I spent the morning rewriting my first chapter to try and get the first lot of real “action” in by the fifth page because of the unwritten writing rule that that was what you need to do.

So Susie and I are heading off to lunch and she says offhandedly “By the way, one other thing. I know that people seem to think that you need to get things moving in the first five pages, but I actually like having a bit more time to get to know my main character before we throw them into turmoil.”

Big lesson. Sometimes it’s best to go with your gut instinct. I’d liked my first chapter, I hadn’t through it needed to be cut, but in the face of prevailing opinion, I folded, instead of sticking with what my gut told me was best for my manuscript.

Served me right really for my smugness after Donald Maas’s workshop thinking I had already got that down, to go and chop myself off at my own kneecaps the next day!

Okay this is just a quick one. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about my agent appointment and hopefully, computer malfunctions allowing, either then or Monday will finally be able to post a few more photos!

First Time Pitching: Part Two

2009-10-12T06:43:00.000+13:00

Blank as, I don’t know, a card? I should probably have a really good metaphor to go in here but I get so few of them I’m busy hording them all for my manuscripts!

Yup blank. I had spent pretty much the entire plane ride from San Francisco trying to figure out exactly what I was going to say in this situation and, by the end of it, had even come up with something that I even thought was pretty good, and now the one editor I want to pitch to is asking me the magic question and I’ve got nothing.

Anne is giving me an encouraging smile, Susie is waiting and so I open my mouth and speak and pray really hard that it makes some kind of sense.

I have no clue what I’m doing. I honestly don’t even remember what I said, except that I do remember that it started off okay but quickly went south. Badly. I have no idea when I’m supposed to stop and so I keep talking. Susie is as impassive as pro poker player while I basically verbally dump the entire plot of the book from beginning to end, in seemingly random order. It’s not pretty. And it was definitely divine intervention that saw it all take place with a glass of wine within reaching distance.

Anne, God bless her, interjects a couple of times to assure Susie that the actual writing is about 100 times better than I am at pitching it. Susie makes a couple of non-committal comments about a couple of aspects. Then we started talking about me having to rewrite my book to be based in the US which meandered into general conversation and my first not-wonderful-but-not-a-total-disaster pitch is done.

From there it was great – Susie was funny and smart, incredibly knowledgeable about the industry and pretty much just a great person to have a drink with on a Thursday night. Plus I got a pretty good idea of what kinds of things she wanted from people who pitched to her. Which only added a whole lot more pressure to my “official” appointment the next day because, by the end, all I could think was how great it would be to have an opportunity to work with her.

Noon the next day was show time. Have to admit that I completely freaked out at breakfast, missed the first part of my continuing education class (sorry Susie and Rachel), had a brainwave about everything that was wrong with the first couple of chapters and spent two hours frantically rewriting. Back to that later.

So I show up at my allotted time, so nervous I feel like I’m about to puke all over the hotel’s gorgeous carpet. I had thought, the night before, that I would be less so, since I’d already had the chance to mangle my pitch in front of her, so at least she had some vague idea of what my book is about. But nope, now having met her, it was even more crucial that this go okay.

I was under no illusions, she is not the type of person to ask for more to be nice, she definitely wasn’t going to ask for more because I was the friend of a friend who said I was good, I had to put my baby in front of her, and the only way she would ask for more would be if she liked what she read. In show time terms, in 15 minutes or so, I would know whether I got a call back or not.

Oh and I was the right before lunch appointment, so I was also the only thing standing between her and food. Now I don’t know about Susie, but nobody wants to stand between me and food when it’s lunchtime.

So the good news was that, thanks to my less than inspirational pitch, she at least had some idea what the book was about, so no one needed to suffer through that again. So, essentially, once we made a couple of minutes of chit chat, I handed her my first couple of chapters and held my breath while she read.

And read. And read. And read. She smiles a couple of times. I figure this is good when you’re trying to be sort-of funny. She gets to the end of the first chapter, asks me a couple of questions, and then keeps reading. I’m halfway through answering the second question when she cracks up laughing. I have no idea what she’s found so funny, but I figure it’s a very good thing. She doesn’t strike me as the type of person who laughs out loud easily.

Then she gets to the end of chapter two, puts it down, looks at me and asks “So, what would you like to know?” Um, in a nutshell, whether it was horrible, mediocre or other? I think I say “I’d like to know what you thought.”

Whatever it was she makes a couple of comments about some weaknesses, and some things that could be stripped out, makes a couple of positive comments about the voice and then says, “Having said all that, I am interesting in reading more.” And then the clouds part, a chorus of angels sing, a rainbow bursts forth across the room, all the other editors stand and applaud, okay not quite, she gave me her business card, but it FELT like all those things happened.

I managed to restrain myself from some form of spastic interpretive dance that would have put Simon Cowell into convulsions while we discussed what she wanted to be sent. In fact, I think I may have even managed to not burst forth with anything embarrassing, but stayed pretty collected.

Which was pretty impressive if you ask me (and apparently you do since you’re reading this) considering I had just somehow miraculously achieved my one big Denver dream, to pitch to Susie Smith and have her ask for more.

But, as we were walking to lunch I also learned one of my biggest conference lessons…

First Time Pitching: A Three Part Story

2009-10-09T10:40:00.000+13:00

So, I’m finally going to chat about what I know you’re all wanting to hear – pitching. This is also known as survival of the fittest – the navigation of 15 minutes with an editor of agent, without their eyes glazing over, them pointing out the grammatical and/or spelling errors on your one sheet and/or any combination of a number of other things that lead to a sentence beginning with “I’m sorry but…”

The way that it works for ACFW is that you select three options for the editor and agent that you want to meet with, and then find out when you show up who it is that you’ve got your appointment with.

For me the editor pick was a no brainer. Having read pretty much every book in my genre, I was pretty clued up on what kind of book each publisher was releasing, how conservative they tended to be and where mine would probably be the best fit. So, on that front all I was doing was praying really hard that my appointment was with the editor with that house!

Picking my three agent appointments was much harder. The list was handily culled by the fact that a couple had already rejected me, then I had some recommendations from a couple of people in the know of who probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me and that left five.

From there I did my research, read as much as I could, looked at who they represented and what kind of books they had sold to what publishers and then, honestly, aimed high. I figured that since I was flying 20 hours to be at ACFW I had might as well go for the stars and so put my number one pick someone who represented a lot of great authors, had sold a lot of books to the publisher that I wanted to pitch to and who, even if my pitch crashed and burned, would have lots of great insights into the publishing industry.

Honestly, the editor thing was the biggest stress. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I didn’t get my appointment with Susie Smith (for the purposes of this blog). The more I learned about the other houses, the more certain I became that either we wouldn’t be the right fit, or that they already had someone writing something very similar to me and so wouldn’t be looking for anyone else.

So I get handed the magical sealed envelope a registration. Retire to my room and pray really hard that if Susie isn’t one of the names inside, that I don’t turn into one of those scary stalker conference attendees that you hear about pitching over bathroom stalls, slipping proposals under doors in the middle of the night or getting into some kind of WWF Smack Down for the last chair at her table during a hosted lunch.

You laugh, but trust me, I am definitely capable of such appalling behaviour.

Besides, I had to figure that God had gotten me into this crazy adventure, that he’d opened the doors that found me in the Denver in the first place, so whatever the names were, they were what they were for a reason, and I just needed to roll with whatever came my way.

Which was a good plan because, as it turned out, my first pitch wasn’t even during either of my appointments on Friday or Saturday, but instead over a glass of wine in the bar late Thursday night.

Right after Anne and I had been hit on by a guy from Texas while I was attempting to introduce Anne to the joys of Pineapple Lumps.

Now that, I was definitely not prepared for. Not the hitting on, I mean that’s been awhile so it took me awhile to even work out what was going on. But definitely not Susie, editor extraordinaire and 90% of the reason I’m in Denver, sitting down across from me (for the record – she’s a friend of Anne’s so it wasn’t completely random), ordering a beer and saying “So what are you working on at the moment?”

And my mind just went completely blank.

The Conference Day One

2009-10-07T16:42:00.000+13:00

Day One of conference was the Donald Maas Earlybird Special. Mr Mass is a literary agent from New York who is the author is The Breakout Novel, which is basically a book on how to write a great novel.

It would be fair to say I was in despair after about the 30th minute of six hours as with every other sentence, I saw something else in my ms that needed to be fixed. Don’t get me wrong, having never attended any kind of writing workshop before, it was absolutely brilliant. But, having finally got Gravity to a point where I thought it was halfway decent, incredibly overwhelming to realise how many flaws it still had (and how much work would be required to fix them).

One of my co-attendees commented that she couldn’t face taking everything he had done and reworking her current ms, so was simply going to apply it to her next one. Which I guess is great if you don’t really want to sell the one already done (disclaimer – having never actually read her ms, I’m not saying it won’t, it could be a work of brilliance that needs absolutely nothing done to it) but since I really really want to sell Gravity, I’m pretty much stuck with rewriting it and reworking it to be the best that it can.

I think the most important thing that I got out of the whole day was the importance of having a filter and knowing your writing well enough to know what will (or won’t) work for you and for your manuscript. He made a lot of wonderful points, but there were a couple of things that won’t work for me. For example at one point he basically said that if you feel your book is lagging/sagging you should kill someone. Ideally someone unexpected.

Obviously, that might be brilliant for some scenarios but not for me. For a start my book is meant to be funny, so someone dying unexpectedly and the upheaval and grief that follows, really isn’t going to work (and there’s really no way to make it funny). Secondly, I need all my characters! I “killed” all the unnecessary ones a long time ago and killing one of them off just leaves a gaping big hole in the rest of the book!

Want to know what the other blinder was??? THE PEOPLE! Hundreds of them, all wearing the ACFW badge things. They were EVERYWHERE. Which is probably a pretty obvious statement considering I was at a writers’ conference but I live in New Zealand. I write in my own little isolated semi secretive hole. I don’t know anyone else who writes for “fun”, my writing group is me, myself and I, my critique group is virtual and Mr Maas was my first ever writing related workshop.

So being surrounded by hundreds of people all on the same journey, at different places in the process was a lot of fun, but also a massive big reality hit. In theory, I knew it wasn't just me trying to achieve this crazy thing, but I'd never actually met anyone else! More on that next time…

Conference Week

2009-10-05T13:03:00.000+13:00

So, as many of you know, I spent from 16-20 September in Denver at the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers') Conference to try and see if there's any hope for my baby out there in the big wide publishing world (and recklessly splurge before I get married and officially have to consult someone else on how we spend our money!)

Over the next week I'll be blogging a bit about the whole fantastic, overwhelming, crazy event and hopefully finally sorting out the issues that I'm having trying to download the photos with my camera.

However, it was such a crazy week that I know that I'm going to completely forget to talk about some really important things so if you have any specific questions for me, please write a comment, and I'll definitely be sure to answer in one of my posts!

But first we'll do a bit of a set up. The conference was held at the Denver Marriott Tech Centre and I was all lined up to be sharing a room with the lovely Kimberly Buckner (gotta love random internet connections). However, at the last moment someone else's roommate couldn't make it and so we added the gorgeous Jaime Wright-Sundsmo (and Baby Chloe) to our suite.

It was the perfect fit - we are all at the same writing stage (wanna published but not quite total newbies), similar ages and well, we agreed that we were all pretty fun, which is very important.

Anyway let me talk to you about big conference problem #1 - trying to be cool and not turning into a grovelling simpering groupie when faced with multitudes of your favourite authors. And they're just there! Wandering around EVERYWHERE like normal people in jeans and t-shirts, drinking Starbucks and smiling and, honestly, it's like dying and going to wannabe writer's heaven.

In the first five minutes I saw Rachel Hauck (Sweet Caroline, Love Starts With Elle) wondering through the lobby. The poor woman has no idea what a near miss she had. If it hadn't been for the fact that I'd just run over my foot with my incredibly heavy suitcase and was slightly distracted, she would have been accosted by my very uncool, massive fan, alter ego. Which would have been awkward the next day when I was in her and Susan May Warren's continuing education class.

And then they just kept on coming, hordes of multi-published, incredibly talented authors, swarming, everywhere! I managed to hold myself together for Julie Lessman, but
Anne Dayton received what could only be described as 30 seconds of incoherent verbal diarhea, Brandilyn Collins a complete star struck grin and Kristen Billerbeck pretty much got the gaping goldfish.

Rachel Hauck I did finally get to meet on the Saturday night but, of course, I was trying so hard to play it cool and not launch myself at her raving about the greatness that is her writing, that I didn't even manage a lame compliment (she's also incredibly funny and her's and Susies workshop was the best one I took all week and has helped me fix a whole lot of things in my ms, so now I will buy their books forever in gratitude).

And these were the authors - they weren't even the editors and agents who I really needed to try and hold it together for! (And who, unfortunately, would remember me if I managed to make a monumental idiot of myself since I was quickly christened the girl "with the accent")

More on that next time...

Birthday Fun

2009-10-02T07:01:00.001+13:00

As you read this, I’ll be in Sydney with my wonderful fiancé (who surprised me with a visit last weekend after I completely spat the wedding dummy, but that’s a whole different drama) racing V8 Supercars.

Correction, he’ll be racing a V8 supercar, while I’ll be strapped in beside a professional rally driver for my laps. As much as I like to think of myself as a pretty foot to the pedal to the metal kind of girl, I was under no illusions that I would wuss out at about 180k and have a comparatively sedate drive, while my fearless fiancé raced around the tracks at 300+k. Hence the professional to scare the pants off me so that I wouldn’t have any regrets after the event.

Why are we driving V8 cars? It’s pretty simple. If there’s one thing that Josh and I have in common when it comes to birthday presents it’s that we would rather be given something to experience over some thing, any day.

Hence we have a deal that birthday and anniversary presents will always include once highly impractical, but very fun, experience of some kind.

So, for my birthday this translated into quad biking and a getaway to the Wairarapa (and a proposal – which admittedly did come with a very impressive ring thing) and for his birthday in July it meant vouchers to go V8 car racing. And yes, I know that I could have given it just to him, but I figure that all things are better shared and why pay for one of his friends to go when I could! Not to mention I don’t cope with experience envy at all well and would have been practically green having to sit in the grandstand by myself and watch him race.

Besides things are just things. And I rate memories way more highly. Books, clothes, even my wonderful Wii Fit, are all great. But they are nothing compared to spending six hours quad biking in the mud and rain, or going 300K an hour in a massive souped up car, or a night out at a show. For my 21st my boyfriend gave me a aerobatics flight – one of my favourite presents to date. Who needs a vacuum cleaner when you can spend 20 minutes doing loop the loops and plummeting to earth in a death twist?

So wish us luck, and that Josh doesn’t flip the car or something crazy, since I know that he’d sooner do that than use the brake pedal!

Next week we'll be chatting about the ACFW Conference so look forward to seeing you then :)

You Know It's Going to Be An Interesting Day When This Is Headlining The News

2009-09-30T09:49:00.001+13:00

BREAKING NEWS
Coromandel residents told to shift to higher ground immediately because of tsunami threat

Tsunami on the way to NZ; deaths after Samoa quake
'Everything is gone... Nothing is left'
LATEST - 9.45AM: A massive 8.3 earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific has resulted in a number of deaths in Samoa, it has been reported.» Estimated arrival times for tsunami in New Zealand

Welcome To America

2009-09-28T10:29:00.001+13:00

So before we start chatting about conference and how much fun I had in the US I figured we should start with mission #1 – actually getting into the country.

I landed at San Francisco International Airport on September 11th and promptly chose the absolute slowest immigration line in the history of the world. I kid you not. My immigration guy moved with all the speed of semi-set Jello.

Want to know how slow he was? At the time that I was in his line, about eighth in the queue, there was a line behind me consisting of about 600 people that snaked through the entire immigration hall. In the time that it took him to clear the seven people in front of me, the other ten or so immigration officials cleared the entire queue.

So I get finally get up to him and he does he usual chatty but really checking you out thing while he’s processing me. Why are you here? Holiday and writers’ conference. How long are you here for? Ten days? What do you do back in New Zealand? I work for the NZ Government. What do you do for them? I’m an advisor to the Minister of Tourism. And so on and so forth and I get waved through.

So I pick up my ridiculously heavy suitcase, and join the now very short queue for customs checking, since everyone else is long gone, give my card to the Customs official and automatically go to join the line to get my luggage X-rayed.

Then another officer steps from the side “Excuse me ma’am, I need you to come with me please.” Now we’ve all seen the movies, everyone knows being asked to step aside with any official in an airport is never a sign that things are progressing smoothly.

So we “step to the side” a long way down the hall where I am told exactly where to put my luggage, where to stand and grilled. Why are you here? How long are you here for? Who are you visiting? How long have you known them? How did you meet them? What do they do? How long have they been in the US? Have you been to the US before? How long ago? How much money do you have on you? How much access to you have to money still overseas? What is in your luggage? Is there anything that could be deemed hazardous, illegal or dangerous?

So I’m reasonably relaxed. Very curious at to what it was about me that tagged me for such special treatment but I’m not stupid, I packed my own bags, I know exactly what’s in them, and unless I’m either about to be frame a la Bangkok Hilton or Tim Tams and Pineapple Lumps have recently been designated weapons, I know I’m fine.

To be honest my biggest concern was that this search also came with the automatic rubber glove special treatment, because that is not a border courtesy that I ever want to experience. I love Americans, but that is just a level of closeness that I would prefer to only hear stories about.

I need you to take two large steps back while I search your luggage ma’am. And then I watched as he started looking increasingly nonplussed as he searched my luggage and, in line with what I told him, only found clothes, a whole lot of NZ confectionery and the assorted travel accompaniments that any girl going away for two weeks would have.

At which point he looked up and asked me again what it was that I did. I work for the NZ Minister of Tourism, I answer again. Tourism? Yes, you know, come visit New Zealand, gorgeous place, lots to do and see, tourism. At which point the clouds on his face part and a visual epiphany takes place. Tourism. Not terrorism?

Um no. I manage to smother the urge to laugh out loud and simply shake my head, um no definitely not. I also managed to restrain from making a few very obvious statements starting with – even if I was an advisor to our Minister of Terrorism (NZ being the international cesspit of terrorists that we are) I would truly have to be the stupidest person in the world to say so.

At which point he uttered some very uncomplimentary words about his immigration colleague and promptly became very concerned about what I might report back home about my experience with US Customs.

So, for the record, I would just like to say that Mr Border Security was very polite and professional at all times and didn’t even create a fictional excuse to confiscate my Tim Tams, even though he did mention how much he enjoyed them.

Home Time

2009-09-21T13:04:00.006+12:00

I write this sitting in San Francisco International Airport. I've just come in from Denver and have three hours here before the 13 hour flight back to New Zealand.

I'm exhausted and exhilarated and overwhelmed and excited and I promise I'll tell you all all about it once I feel capable of forming coherent meaningful sentences!!

It has been an amazing week. In some ways I'm ready to go home, in many ways I'm not. I've met wonderful people, learned a lot, had some amazing experiences and some very encouraging conversations.

I've drunk margaritas in SF, eaten amazing sushi in Colorado, been to Alcatraz, laughed until I've cried and cried when I definitely wasn't laughing. I met agents and editors and didn't make an idiot of myself, shared a room for five days with two very amazing, super talented roommates, met Anne and May (yes BOTH of them!), been reminded what the sun feels like, and averaged 20,000s steps a day in SF (and 1000 a day in Colorado, so it kind of events out) and had more God set up interactions that I could ever count.

I'm returning home with one more suitcase than I left NZ with, about 10kg of books and with heaps of new ideas about how to make my book better. I got to chat with some of my absolute favourite authors, get a no holds barred insight into the publishing industry from one very on-to-it (and fun) editor and soak in a hot tub.

The conference was worth every single cent. And, depending on how things go, I'm crossing everything that I possibly can that I will get to return to Indiana next year. Maybe even with my gorgeous husband!

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a photo of my mascot, Bruce, chilling out in San Francisco :)

Greetings From San Francisco

2009-09-16T16:27:00.004+12:00

So tonight is my last night in SF and this post has been kindly sponsored by May Vanderbilt who bought me not one, but two, maragaritas the size of goldfish bowls. Of course it was all for a good cause (as all the best Tuesday nights are) - in aid for Room for Reading.

And yes, for you avid Anne and May fans, I did actually get to meet May (twice!) and yes, she does exist and yes she is just as fabulous in person as she is in blog world. The great news being that not only do I get to meet her, but as life would have it, I also get to meet Anne - her partner in crime, in Colorado in a couple of days. So I may be the only person in the world to get a Miracle Girls book signed by both of them ;)

For those of you who are wondering what on earth I'm up to over here. Well the short answer is giving this writing thing one really good (aka EXPENSIVE) shot before I get married and have to get all responsible with my money. Not that Josh doesn't totally support me in my writing, but there is definitely something about having to explain to someone else about why you should get to spend $5,000 to pursue your almost impossible dream and go to the USA for a three day writer's conference instead of putting the money toward a house deposit that makes you think twice, or a hundred times.

So yes, tomorrow I fly to Colorado. Which I'm really excited about because I've always wanted to go there (admittedly I am pretty much only to get to see the inside of a hotel but still). It's the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) Annual Conference and it's basically three days in which I steel myself for rejection and put myself out there in the hope/prayer that someone, anyone, who matters in the publishing industry who matters, might like it enough to want to see some more. In 15 minutes or less. No pressure.

Kind of like speed dating but worse. I mean speed dating you spend what? Maybe a couple of hours getting ready for? Gravity has been almost four years in the making and if it gets no bites here well, apart from some serious divine intervention, I really have nowhere else to go. Apart from starting my own company and publishing it myself but, honestly, even if I won Lotto, I'd still have better things to do with the money.

So yeah, it's exciting and terrifying. This time next week I'll either be super-excited and getting it ready (again) to send to some editor or agent who showed some potential interest or else giving myself "well you did all you could" pep talks and doing the where to from here? soul searching.

But, regardless, I've had an amazing time in SF. Gotten ridiculously sunburnt, reacquainted myself with some amazing American fast food, gone on a shopping spree at Old Navy (and, as of now, have no idea how I'm going to fit it all in my suitcase) gotten to hang out with May and done some terribly touristy things like visiting Alcatraz.

I'm missing Josh like crazy but at the same time, it seems completely surreal to think that this is my last big trip as a single gal. Which is a good thing since I don't technically have to fess up to him exactly how much I got conned into spending on some ridiculously expensive facial product today (hey I looked like a lobster and was feeling particularly vulnerable!!)

Runour has it the Colorado has free Wifi in the lobby so hopefully will be able to catch you up with all the drama from Denver. Fingers crossed!!

In Ten Hours

2009-09-11T07:46:00.002+12:00

I get on a plane to the States.

My apartment is rotting, we've been robbed and this morning I woke up to find that someone had smashed into my car. My one-sheets haven't showed up, my proposal isn't finished and, right now, I can't event remember what my book is about, let alone talk about it coherently.

This blog may be on hiatus for the next ten days, or it may not, I have absolutely no idea! Hopefully I'll find free Wifi access somewhere so that I can let you guys know how things are going at my first ever writers' conference or, at the very least, write rapturous prose of the greateness of San Francisco sourdough.

No Please, Come On In

2009-09-08T15:01:00.008+12:00

Blogworld, meet the charming person who decided to visit us early Monday morning while we slept. Actually, I have no idea what he looked like and for that I am eternally thankful. It's bad enough going home at the moment without actually having met the nasty piece of work who got closer to my bedroom than I care to think about.

First a bit of background. Our apartment is leaking and rotting and, at the going rate, Jesus will return before anything gets done to fix it as our landlord and body corp are in a standoff about who should foot the bill for getting someone to investigate it, let alone actually fix it.

Thanks to our mouldering, leaking apartment we have to have one window open permanently to try and get rid of the continual mouldering, leaking, smell. Unfortunately we forgot to shut said window on Sunday night and someone decided it was a nice night for visiting our house.

At 4.42am Josh was woken by nasty piece of work (NPW from now on in) knocking stuff off a beanbag and onto the floor. Thinking it was Kristen up getting a drink he didn't go out to investigate, but instead woke me up as it was only a few minutes before we had to get up anyway as he was on the 6.30am flight back to Sydney.

NPW, hearing Josh get up and then wake me, scarpered, fortunately his only profits from his little escapade being Josh's cell phone and all the money in his wallet.

Josh is very mad he missed his chance to confront a crook, I'm eternally grateful that he did since I figure that anyone prepared to rob a house while the owners are present and sleeping is unpredictable and given that Josh would have been between him and the front door, and there's no way he would have been able to get out the window and over our fence before Josh got him, who knows what he might have done when cornered?

Kristen no longer wants to live in our apartment and who can blame her? Not only is it leaking and rotting but now our option appears to be either suffocate in the stench or risk nasty strangers pilfering our belongings while we sleep. So, by the time I get back from the US, I could have lost my only roommate.

BUT the good news is that we were being watched over and everyone is safe and sound, which you can't really take for granted, especially considering that when he knocked the stuff over that woke Josh up he was moving from the lounge toward our bedrooms which is pretty scary.

One Small Piece of Paper For The Bank... One Giant Leap For Kara

2009-09-04T12:35:00.004+12:00

Blogger world, today Josh and I took a VERY big step in the world of coupledom. This one in fact, for a very independent girl such as myself whose been taking care of herself for a long time without issue, is right up there with changing my name.

Yes blogger world that's right, we opened a joint account. With money in it and everything. In a mere five months someone else in this world is going to find out exactly how much money I spend on everything from lunches to haircuts to shoes to books to that random transaction that rings a bell so you know it's legit but you just can't quite remember what it was...

When thinking about this big event I thought I would put my toe in the water last week in a conversation about new boots (which I did honestly need!). Having seen a pair that I quite liked in a store which were on sale, but admittedly still quite pricey, I flash forwarded about a year and wondered what the reaction might be from Josh upon seeing a transaction of $369 on our bank statement at Shoe Connection.

And so the tentative question was posed one night on the phone "Bub, what do you think is the most I should ever spend on a pair of boots?" He pondered for a second before coming back with "I don't know - about $500?"

At which point I figured that I was marrying a guy with at least some concept of the scale of how much it will cost him to have a wife and that a joint account with Josh wasn't nearly as scary a proposition as one of my friends whose husband, looking for a way to cut costs, suggested forgoing her contraception and replacing it with "the power of prayer"**.

And now, a mere three hours after opening our account it will soon have it's first transaction - a long lunch in a nice restaurant. I figured we might as well start things as I plan for them to continue ;)

** NB not that I don't believe in prayer, but I figure relying on the same God who gives the commandment to "go forth and multiply" to be your birth control method is probably one really good shortcut to babyville.

Kara Will Return In A Few Days When She's Regained Control Of Her Life

2009-09-02T17:27:00.004+12:00

Sorry - I kind of sort of (very) temporarily forgot about writing a speech the PM's giving Friday, we've just found out that we live in a leaky apartment and parts of the lounge and bathroom are rotting, Josh arrives in six hours for five days and has to sleep in aforementioned leaking rotting lounge, tomorrow the landlord, body corp and assorted builders are descending on our house to argue about (a) whose fault it is and (b) who should pay to fix it, I leave for the US in nine days and my hairdresser went a bit nuts with the scissors and lopped off a bonus three inches of my hair and I hate it and my skin hates me.

Oh and at the moment my shares look like this...

HELP!!

2009-08-28T13:49:00.002+12:00

So it just suddenly hit me that in two weeks I’ll be on a plane to San Francisco which is both a YAHOOOO and an oh my gosh.

So I need your guys' help. From San Francisco I am heading to Denver for the American Christian Fiction Writers' conference and, in the next four days, I have to lock down my “pitch sheet” to use when meeting with editors and agents.

I’ve stared and rewritten at the over view so many times I can no longer be objective. Below are two possible options for the book I'm trying to pitch. If anyone could tell me which one they like better and why, that would be much appreciated!

As a reward if the sucker is ever published I’ll thank you in the acknowledgements for your geniusness. Sorry you can’t have the dedication – that’s already been bagsed by about six people!

Overview One:

Dee Kennedy has finally achieved everything she has ever wanted — until the wife of a national hero takes the one thing she never thought she'd lose. Her boyfriend.

Carolyn Hunter lost her soul mate with the pull of a trigger. The pregnant widow of a policeman killed heroically in the line of duty, she moves cities in search of a new life and unexpectedly finds a new love.

With a church and friendships divided, both find their lives resembling bad B-grade soap operas when the story hits the national headlines. Only one person knows the truth about what really happened. And he’s not telling.

One guy. The jilted girlfriend. The tragic widow. Nemeses by definition. Or are they?

Overview Two

Dee Kennedy has finally achieved everything she has ever wanted — until the wife of a national hero takes the one thing she never thought she'd lose. Her boyfriend. But how can she hate a woman who has been through more pain than she could ever imagine?

Carolyn Hunter is desperate to escape the spotlight of her husband’s public death. Moving cities in search of a new life, she finds the last thing she ever expected - a new love. But she can’t help shake the niggling feeling that it’s all a bit too perfect.

With a church and friendships divided, both find their lives resembling bad B-grade soap operas when the story hits the national headlines. Only one person knows the truth about what really happened. And he’s not telling.

One guy. A jilted girlfriend. A tragic widow. Nemeses by definition. Or are they?

Feel free to critique, pull apart, interchange paragraphs or completely rewrite!! The more help I can get on this the better!!

QANTAS I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!

2009-08-26T16:19:00.001+12:00

Back on 16 July I found my way to Wellington Airport at 5am in the morning to catch my Qantas flight across to Sydney for Josh’s birthday.

To be honest I wasn’t stoked to be flying Qantas anyway. Their planes on the Trans-Tasman route are old, their entertainment pretty much non-existent, their food is awful and they specialise in especially long and painful check-in queues.

But, when I booked it was a couple of hundred dollars cheaper and no, not being so foolish that I’m prepared to spend that much more to fly Air NZ, I decided to suck it up and make sure I had a good book.

A loooong queue awaited me. A long queue with a lot of disgruntled looking people and one check-in person who looked about as clueless as we were.

Ten minutes later, during which I stood in exactly the same spot and struck up a conversation with the guy ahead of me who was already sweating about missing his connection to South Africa in Sydney, a very confused voice came over the intercom.

“Qantas would like to apologise to customers flying on QF178 to Sydney. Unfortunately, we don’t appear to have a plane.”

The very befuddled and bewildered way in which they announced this immediately bought about visions of a pilot standing on the tarmac of Wellington Airport scratching his head and saying “But I’m sure I parked her here last night.”

I mean really? It’s not like you can just misplace a plane. Either it landed last night or it didn’t and, if it didn’t, which presumably was a much more logical answer than someone stealing it overnight, then would it really have been that hard for someone in Sydney to pick up the phone, call Wellington and say “You’re not going to have a plane for the 6.30am flight tomorrow.”

After another twenty minutes of waiting it became blatantly obvious the (1) there was not one Qantas staff member who had the foggiest clue of what was going on and (2) odds were 100/1 the flight was going to be cancelled.

Having been on this situation before I knew the game. There was an Air NZ flight at 6.40am and so they’d be transferring as many passengers as they could. The pecking order being (1) business class/frequent flyers (2) people with connections in Sydney then (3) the plebs like me.

Given that there were about 20 people in the frequent flyer queue and a 30 member soccer team with a connection to make, the odds of my getting on the Air NZ flight and making my fiance’s birthday if I relied on Qantas were about 1/100.

And so I jumped over to Air NZ and bought a ticket, being promised by Qantas that yes absolutely, we will reimburse you our half of the ticket and hoping that, since the flight was cancelled, my travel insurance would cover the difference.

The next week I rang Qantas to find out how long it would take to refund my ticket, thinking maybe a couple of weeks. After being told that my booking number didn’t exist, that I didn’t exist etc etc we finally found me. The good news wasthat yes, apparently they did have a refund request lodged for me. The bad news that it would take a month to process.

Okay, I can be reasonable. I mean it’s not like you give me a month to pay for my ticket but hey I get that you’re the big important airline and I’m just the pleb that you owe a few hundred bucks. Josh told me that I was dreaming. Apparently he’d had a similar issue with Jet Star (Qantas subsidiary) and after months of battling he just gave up because it was costing him more in cell phone bills than his ticket was worth and he wasn’t getting anywhere.

Anyway five weeks later I would just like to say QANTAS, THE HOLDER OF E-TICKET 081 2481219287 BOOKING REFERENCE 3DWO5L WANTS HER MONEY BACK.

I have a wedding to pay for, I can barely afford to pay for the flights that do show up, let alone the planes that don’t!!

Want To Make Lots of Money Fast?

2009-08-24T16:08:00.002+12:00

We had might as well call last week Kara unleashes her inner domestic week and be done with it as, following on from the indulgent night in the kitchen on Tuesday, there was Kara’s Tupperware Party on Thursday, Kara cooks up a storm on Saturday finally rounded off with Kara’s early morning market trip on Sunday.

Firstly yes, I know, Tupperware. I hosted an honest to goodness Tupperware party. With real people and everything. Though the overwhelming majority were there under duress and as the result of an enormous amount of arm twisting (the key I found was to whip out a Tupperware catalogue in a very public place and wave it around until your mortified friends promise to do anything you want to you’ll just put that thing away).

Not that I can blame them. A mere six weeks ago I would considered myself more likely to run off with a gang of cyber crooks than open my house to the world of double sealing, air tight, lifetime guarantee, insanely expensive plasticware.

And then a whole lot of things magically collided. Josh offhanded mentioned that we’d need some Tupperware in our new home, within two days a friend had sent me a text inviting me to a party that she was holding, I went and, hey presto, in I was sucked.

However, now I have an ahem slight confession to make. I think the Tupperware demonstrator might possibly maybe think that I’m about to join her pink shirted army of plastic consultants.

I didn’t mean for it to happen! And I’m not sure how it did. But she was so nice andI kind of thoughtlessly answered her questions at the first party (I mean hello – who wouldn’t want to make $100 an hour?!) and then before I knew it I had some kind of potential recruit Tupperware missile pointed at me and her manager was calling and then there were the pamphlets and the no cash outlay and oooo the Tupperware discount and before I know it she’s standing in my kitchen on Thursday night saying that she thinks that we should make tonight my Tupperware “Announcement/Coming Out Party”.

Melissa practically choked on her drink, I almost went through the floor and my flatmate, with whom I had spent the last hour practicing my “No, I’m sorry, I’m not interested” lines had this look of glee on her face that was just unconscionable.

Meanwhile, the demonstrator, kept on barrelling along, while I’m frantically trying to come up with words that say, but don’t say, that there are about 100 things I would rather come out as, than a Tupperware Saleswoman.

I finally managed to scrape my mouth off the floor, find a coherent sentence and quite firmly nix that idea. But oh my gosh this woman is persistent, but she’s so nice about it! It took like four nos before she (very reluctantly) let go of the idea that that night was not going to be the night she welcomed a newcomer into her Tupperware family.

But here’s my problem. I only bought myself time! She was so lovely that I STILL couldn’t bring myself to say a complete no. Instead I came up with some wussy excuse about needing to talk to Josh about it. As if, if it were up to me, I’d be right in there Tupperwaring away, but I just needed to do the nice little wifey thing and check with my fiancé if it was okay.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the magical boxes that are going to keep my veges fresh forever, but why can’t I just summon up the ability to say NO I DON’T WANT TO SELL TUPPERWARE?!

Discovering My Inner Nigella

2009-08-19T14:38:00.003+12:00

Okay everyone who has no idea who I'm talking about, meet Nigella Lawson. We love Nigella because she's a great cook, isn't a size 6 and has amazing hair. And she makes the most incredible cherry chocolate trifle in the world.

Seriously, if I had one totally shallow wish, it would be either for Elle MacPherson's body of Nigella's hair. Go watch her on You Tube if you don't believe me - it's thick and bouncy and looks amazing and, well is pretty much everything all good hair should be.

Anyway, so last night I got to do something I had been looking forward to for ages - I went to a cooking class. Believe it or not, I actually love cooking, I just don't have time to do it much. And this wasn't one of those $20 shivering in a freezing school hall while we learn how to make nachos with $5 mince classes. It was a drink wine and get to play with lots of ingredients that I'm probably never going to have in my kitchen kind of class.

It was crazy amounts of fun. First we made bread, then spring rolls, then seafood bouboullaise, then beetroot risotto with roasted duck breast all topped off by the most amazing apple tart tatin with a vanilla marscapone cream and sesame biscuits.

Um okay so admittedly the mixture for the sesame biscuits was a bit runny to bake and we had to resort to something that may have been ahem prepared earlier, and admittedly a whole lot of butter and sugar went down the drain in Kara's three attempts to get the tart tatin right but give me a couple of years, some great hair and pouty lips and I think I could give Nigella a run for her money!

You know what I liked best though? Just creating something. It's not that I don't like my job but at the end of the day, I deal with a lot of paper and people. I don't make stuff, I don't build houses, I don't design beautiful homes, or deliver babies or heal sick animals or anything like that. Pointing to a pile of paper in my "out" tray just isn't quite the same.

Admittedly I may never, in my entire life, make a duck breast with beetroot risotto, but at least now I know I could if I really wanted to!

Turning Into That Girl

2009-08-14T15:54:00.003+12:00

So last weekend was our Sydney engagement party. An event which was, obviously, pretty awesome. To be honest, I'm afraid that, having seen the engagement photos the actual big day is going to be a bit of a let down for a few people!

I mean a low key chilled out event with 150 people doesn't really compare to an all singing, all dancing affair with 400!

So it was a great weekend. The only not so great thing about it? I didn't actually really get to see my fiance. Which, when you only get to see each other once a month or so, is kind of like going all the way to Disneyland and finding Space Mountain closed (yes I know it was three years ago, one day I'll get over it!)

To be fair, I did get to see him, I just didn't get to *see* him. Those of you who also have quality time as your number one love language will understand exactly what I mean!

This was our weekend:

Friday
5.30pm Kara and Kristen land in Sydney, picked up by Beau and Josh, drive to Nana's for dinner.
6.30pm: Big family dinner
10pm: Leave dinner to go pick up Melly.
11.30pm: Get back from having picked up Melly, get twenty minutes alone with Josh before going to bed.

Saturday
9am: Josh goes to work
All day Saturday: Grocery shopping / errands / go try on and pick up wedding dress / lunch / go to hairdressers / get make-up done / get ready for party
6.15pm: Leave for party
7pm-1am: Party
1am: Get 20 minutes alone with Josh before crashing

Sunday
Crawl out of bed, opens cards/presents, have breakfast, pack and clean up, drop girls off to go shopping, drive to Nana's for family lunch, family lunch, pick girls up, drive to airport, goodbye.

So on Saturday night, totally exhausted and staring down another day in which I knew I wouldn't be getting to spend any real time with Josh, I turned into that girl aka the girl who cries because her boyfriend didn't say she looked pretty.

I never thought I would be her. To be honest, I always thought the girls who needed guys to tell them they looked good were needy and kind of wussy. I mean, I know I scrub up okay, I'm no Cindy Crawford but I'm not exactly at the Cruella De Ville end of the spectrum either, I'm perfectly capable of looking in the mirror and giving myself the thumbs up.

So here's the deal. You know how some guys don't really have any strong preferences about clothes / hair / colours or anything like that? Well Josh is not that guy. Both his parents are quite styley and so Josh has some very strong preferences on everything from my hair length, to styles, to perfumes, to clothes, to jewellery to well everything.

Not that he doesn't like me in other stuff (apart from my flanellete pyjamas and puffer jacket) he just has things that he likes better. And it's really not that big a deal because it's not like I don't have preferences about exactly the same things on him. And so everything to do with our engagement party - from my dress, to my shoes, to my hair, to my jewellery was chosen with what he likes in mind. Because at the end of the day, he was the only person I really cared about thinking I looked hot, anyone else was a bonus.

And I guess this was a big thing for me because I'm really not the dress up kind of girl. I'm way happier in jeans and a t-shirt, the whole cocktail dress and all the admin that goes with it isn't really my thing.

So, after like four hours of combing and teasing and primping and taping and stressing I walk out and he says... nothing.

I thought my sister was going to kick him.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a mental stocktake of what I had gotten wrong, finally settling on the Dolly Parton hair because everything else I was pretty sure I had gotten right.

And it wasn't that I didn't think I looked good. I knew I did. I just really needed him to notice, because he was the one it was all for and his opinion was the only one that really mattered.

And we had an amazing night, and I had approximately 350 people tell me I looked amazing, but none of it changed the fact that I needed him to.

Of course, he's totally oblivious of all of this and so appropriately dumbfounded when I burst into tears and 1.30am in the morning and wail "You didn't tell me I looked preeeeeeeeeeetty."

And there was nothing that he could do or say to change the fact that of course he thought I did, for some reason he just didn't say it. And nothing that I could do to change the fact that even though I knew that, it still hurt.

Here's the realisation tht I came to after mulling it over over a few days. We don't know how long we're going to have together - maybe five years, maybe 50 and maybe something in between. Whatever it is, both of us are going to end up hurting each other. Sometimes inadvertently and sometimes on purpose.

We're both going to do things and say things, or not do things and not say things, that upset and frustrate and disappoint the other person. All the time. It's life. Neither of us is ever going to be everything in every moment that the other needs. And when the tears and dried and the fight is over and the sorries have been said and it's all been worked through, and whether or not one person has accepted they were wrong, we're going to have to let it go.

That's the only way you're going to survive each other, or this thing called marriage. It's an adventure and a challenge and it's not going to be easy and sometimes that means you finish up the night of your engagement party by snotting mascara and foundation all over your fiance's shirt. But I know it's still going to be one of the best things I ever do.

Engagement Party Photos Part Two

2009-08-12T16:13:00.000+12:00

More photos as promised...

Um yeah, that's me, sitting down.

No idea what we were up to here but obviously it was funny!

Josh's friend Tom made us this awesome card with the Australia Flag (picture) + New Zealand Flag (picture) = Love

Some of Josh's colleagues from church - Michael, Darla, Wayne and Rick

The dreaded slow dance. Josh told me to relax and my answer was "I have 400 people staring at my butt, this is not a relaxing moment!!"

My favourite photo out of all of them

Good thing I got him first - apparently some competition coming up in the next generation!

Mmmm cake

And yes, there was a cutting of the cake, and no I promise that I didn't get married over the weekend and aren't telling anyone!

Engagement Party Photos Part One

2009-08-11T15:47:00.007+12:00

Well they say a picture is worth a thousand words - and to do justice to Saturday night I'd probably have to write about 20,000. So here's some shots - feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to explain because it was definitely the biggest, craziest, funnest party I've ever been to!!

My wonderful parents-in-law to be - Leonie and Steve

This is the room where our party was held - it looked absolutely amazing. Will try and have a better photo for you tomorrow!

This was all a big surprise to me. Josh and I had to make an "entrance" - what no one told me was that this involved his relatives lining both sides of the path to the dance floor and Josh and I having to dance our way down it!

One of the many photos that made me very glad I had remembered to wield a razor in the shower that morning!

Josh's Uncle Paul (shaking it bottom right corner) was our MC and general dance maniac for the night. He bought four shirts so he could change betweens dances!

Josh's sister Beth and her boyfriend Anthony. Yes, I'm well aware that my sister-in-law to be looks like Angelina Jolie.

From left - Josh's Aunt Nora, Nana, Mel, Sam, (cousin) Jason and Ben. I keep telling Josh that with our genes our kids are going to have hair this red too!

Dancing, dancing and more dancing!

Josh and his best man Ryan share a moment... or a dance...

Hmmm those pictures don't even really begin to do it justice. I guess it's just one of those things that you have to be at. But I'll add some more tomorrow and then start telling a few stories!

It's Party Time!!

2009-08-07T09:44:00.005+12:00

Okay this post is going to be short and sweet because I'm frantically trying to fit a day's work into five hours before I fling myself out the door, swing home, grab Kristen and my suitcase and jump on a plane to Sydney.

You see, my friends, tomorrow is the insanity that is my all-singing-all-dancing-400-people-pretty-much-identical-to-a-wedding-reception-except-we're-not-getting-married engagement party.

And I have no doubt that, when I return next week, I will have so many stories (and photos) that they'll pretty much keep us going from here til the actual real big event.

Have a great weekend :)

The Question Of Chemistry

2009-08-05T17:14:00.004+12:00

I have a friend whose on tenterhooks at the moment. She's been emailing and chatting to this guy over in the UK for the last six months or so (he's the friend of a friend so it's not a random as it sounds!). Over that time they've built up a pretty great friendship, seem to have a really good connection and in two weeks he's on his way over here.

And so today she's busted out the big C question, that everyone, whose ever found themselves fancying someone they haven't actualy met, asks - what if we have no chemistry?

Since I'm one of the "successful stories, I get asked the question a lot, more in the form of "When you and Josh first met, was it instant chemistry?"

The answer is no, well not at least in the way they're thinking, which is the I-laid-eyes-on-him-and-almost-melted-from-the-combined-heat-of-our-mutual-physical-attraction kind.

Did Josh and I have chemistry when we first me? Well yes, of course we did. We'd been chatting for weeks via email and on the phone, we got along great, and definitely had some kind of connection, so when we first met we already had "feel like I already know you" chemistry, the big question was was it going to turn into "do I or might I or could I fancy you on the kind of level that you need to fancy someone that you might contemplete being in a relationship" kind.

For Josh, that chemistry was there on our first date. For me, well it took a little bit longer. Not because I didn't think he was great, not because I didn't really like him, not because I didn't think we had a great connection, but because I was (1) incredibly jetlagged, exhausted and in no state to be making big life decisions and (2) I was shallow.

Yup shallow. You see I had a pretty well defined type from guys I had previously dated. Tall, lanky, glasses, clean shaven, short kind of ruffled hair and kind of geeky looking but in a trendy kind of way. Josh was pretty much the opposite of my type - not much taller than me (which turns out to be the perfect height - tall enough that I can wear high heals and he's stall taller but not so tall that it hurts my neck to kiss him when I'm in flats), bald with facial hair (which I now completely love) and built like a rugby player.

It wasn't that I didn't think he was attractive, he just didn't look like the guy I'd always imagined I'd end up with, and it took me the time between our first and second dates to get my head around that. In fact I remember praying on the way into Sydney airport something along the lines of "God, I think Josh is amazing and we have this great connection and I really want this to go somewhere but I also need to be crazy attracted to him" and bam I walked into the arrival area, saw him and my immediate reaction was "Wow, he's totally hotter than I remembered" and I've found him insanely attractive ever since :)

Which was probably part Kara getting over herself, part jet lag and exhaustion fog clearing, part answer to prayer, and part that in the intervening three weeks since I'd last seen him we'd spent a lot of time on the phone and I'd fallen for him pretty hard. So yeah, who knows, he possibly could have showed up with a mullet and I still would've thought he was hot but that's how it worked for me.

When it comes to physical chemistry it's all about balance. Should you be attracted to the person that you've with? Uh yeah. No one wants to spend the rest of their lives rolling over and finding themselves next to someone they find about as attractive as a box of All Bran.

BUT

I've also had friends stay in completely destructive stupid relationships for way too long because they had great chemistry and absolutely NOTHING else.

In fact I've stayed in one of those relationships too long.

Way before I met Josh I'd decided that I was never going to be either blinded by chemistry, or overlook a potential because of lack of it ever again. Chemistry is just one piece of the pie or the many that you need for something to really work. It's a vital piece, it can't be missing all together, but it also isn't the whole pie.

Let's face it, when the baby's screaming and the two year old has just projectile vomited all over the kitchen wall and you haven't slept in three days and you really don't care if you never have sex again, chemistry count for jack, you want the guy who going to make the bottle, clean up the puke and think you're cute when you snore like a baby rhino in a coma.

So my answer to her? If everything else is there and the idea of kissing him isn't repulsive then give it a chance, you never know what can happen :)

What do you guys think?

Coming Up With The Perfect One Liner

2009-08-03T16:01:00.003+12:00

First of all congrats to Linda W and Sugar and Grits who won a copy of Bonnie Groves Talking to the Dead. Drop me an email with your address and I'll get them in the post to you :)

So the challenge of this weekend was that of trying to come up with the perfect one-liner. You know, that magical, witty, brilliant line that you come up with about two minutes after you really needed it? Yes one of those, but this time I have to come up with it six weeks beforehand.

You see, when you go to a writer's conference you apparently (I say this not because I doubt it's true but because I seem to be finding out something else every day that I'm going to need) have to have something called a one pager.

That one pager includes things like your bio and a synopsis of the book you're trying to pitch and right at the top of the page if the one liner, basically something that, in ten words or less, makes the person you're pitching to go "Wow! I want to know more about this book!"

Short and succinct have never been my thing. That's why I run half marathons, not 100m sprints and why I write novels, not short stories. So trying to come up with something witty, funny, brilliant and attention grabbing in under 10 words to descrive something 90,000 words long is feeling like trying to force my brain through a sieve.

I've come up with a couple of ideas but, like my writing, no one can agree. Some people love them, others well not fans so much.

So, here I am with three days to come up with something (because some wonderful soul has offered to design my one-sheet for me) to come up with it. And I've hit a total blank wall. Below is the overview of the novel I'm planning to pitch.

Overview:

Dee Kennedy has finally achieved everything she has ever wanted — until the wife of a national hero takes the one thing she never thought she'd lose. Her boyfriend.

Carolyn Hunter lost her soul mate with the flash of a knife. The pregnant widow of a policeman killed heroically in the line of duty, she moves cities in search of a new life and unexpectedly finds a new love.

With a church and friendships divided, both find their lives resembling bad B-grade soap operas when the story hits the national headlines. Only one person knows the truth about what really happened. And he’s not telling.

One guy. The jilted girlfriend. The tragic widow. Nemeses by definition. Or are they?

Does anyone have any ideas for a totally genius one-liner for it? Any good ideas - or even vague directions - will have my never ending love and devotion!

Winter Blues

2009-07-29T12:13:00.005+12:00

At the moment we're in the middle if winter. It's freezing. Not like 10 feet of snow freezing, but just generally cold and wet and cold freezing. My flannelette pyjamas, hot water bottle, gloves and coat are my dearest friends. I have literally forgotten what it feels like to wear anything less than two layers and be covered up from my neck to my ankles.

But now, I have yet another reason to smile in the face of the cold and wind so strong it you have to do the weird tilt-your-body-at-45-degrees thing to stay standing upright, you see yesterday Josh and I booked the second week of our honeymoon and in approximately 176 more sleeps coats, mittens and my hot water bottle will be a distant memory as we spend eight wonderful, blissful days here...

Every Little Step

2009-07-27T10:21:00.003+12:00

At the moment it's International Film Festival time, one of the (few) highlights of the usual freezing, windy and wet Wellington winter.

Yesterday I saw my favourite so far (five down, three left) Every Little Step, a documentary following people trying out for the new version of the hit Broadway musical A Chorus Line.

And oh my gosh, you think trying to break into publishing is hard and takes a long time, Broadway is brutal! First round, then four months until call backs, then another four months until next call backs, then another eight months until the final call back. So, if you're one of the last ones standing, you can work your butt off for 15 months and then it all comes down to ten minutes on one day.

And it doesn't matter what else is going on - if your boyfriend just ditched you, your Mum just got diagnosed cancer, you just got fired - you have one shot, knowing that there are three or four people who are every bit as good as you, if not better, just as desperate as you are, for this big break.

And the cameras follow all these people over all this time and so by the end you feel like you know them, and you want them all to get the part, and they all deserve it so much, but they can't all get it. Not this time. Not ever.

The one that absolutely got me was the a girl called Rachelle. You see in the second call back she absolutely nailed it, the casting people absolutely loved her, she got the character, she was the character, she could sing, she could dance, she was pretty much a shoe in. The director, the casting agent, everyone is like "She's it. She's the one we've been looking for."

Then, at the final call-back, it's down to her and one other girl. The other girl, this time, nails it and is just amazing. The Rachelle comes on, and you can see all the crew leaning forward, rooting for her, wanting to give her the part, willing her to do exactly what she did last summer.

And she's good, but it's not quite the same. She gives the character a different emphasis and it's not what they want. And you can see them all looking at each other like "What do we do, we know she's got it, we know she can do it, but not today."

Then the director goes and talks to her and basically says "It's not that what you just did wasn't great, but what you did last summer, that was it! That was exactly what we wanted, can you do it like that?"

And he walks off leaving her and she completely freaks out. She's like "I don't know what I did last summer! It was eight months ago, my boyfriend had just broken up with me, I was in a totally different place, I don't know what I did differently. How can I go out there and do what they want when I don't know what I've done differently?"

And you can see her, standing there, realising that she's possibly about to lose her dream, all because they want her to do what she did eight months ago, and she doesn't know what that was.

And she goes out there, and she gives it her best shot, but it's not it. The part was hers to lose, and she has. And she knows it and they know it and it's horrible. Oh and I'm crying like a baby in seat L19.

And suddenly trying to get published looks easy. At least here, rejection gets delivered by email, not on a stage, or in front of a bunch of friends and strangers. At least in publishing you don't have to sit on the sidelines and know exactly who your competition is for a part and watch as they nail it. At least in publishing you don't have five people, the people who hold your big chance in their hands, sitting right in front of you, and be able to see the disappointment, or just total lack of interest, in their eyes.

At least in publishing, when you hear that your voice isn't strong enough, your plot not twisty enough, your main character not sympathetic enough, or your descriptions not riveting enough, you know that you can go away, learn, work hard, rewrite and re-edit and maybe, just maybe, have another shot one day. Broadway? Once is all you get. The decisions are made, the players are cast and that show is never coming around again, at least not this decade.

At least in publishing you can still manage to hold down a full time job and have a life while you pursue the dream, in Broadway, this is there whole life. Audition after audition, singing lessons, dance lessons, barely being able to make ends meet, all for this one thing.

And so for now, all I can say is thank God I'm a wannabe writer, not a wannabe Broadway dancer, because I am in complete awe of how those people, after fifteen months of working so hard, of knowing that they had their big break, and lost it, manage to pick themselves up and keep going.

The Prodigal Returns

2009-07-20T17:26:00.004+12:00

Okay, so admittedly I was AWOL last week. Not because I had a decent excuse like being struck down with the plague, aka swine flu, but simply because, well I was completely exhausted and had absolutely nothing interesting at all to say.

Unless you wanted to hear about wedding stuff, in which case I have plenty to say, but last week I was so over the whole event that I didn't want to think about it anymore, let alone inflict it on anyone else in the universe!

But since I know a few of you are dying for the details I'll give you a few :)

My wedding dress is designed by Demetrios and I found it in Sydney back in June. One day I may write about what a traumatic event that was. Maybe.

We are getting married on Thursday 7 January (have I mentioned that already?) at 1.30pm in the afternoon. Not sure about the church yet but our reception is going to be at Erskine - an ancient restored Catholic girls' boarding school which looks a bit like an abandoned mental asylum from the outside but is completely gorgeous on the inside.

So far our "cut down" guest list sits at 176 and our dining room can only take 138. Um yeah. Slight problem. So if you would like an invite I can guarantee you one if you promise you won't actually say yes ;)

Oh and Josh and I chucked in a couple more wedding domestics (music and number of speeches) on the weekend to add to the cake saga. It was good. Call me weird but I quite like domestics - it reassures me that we aren't living in la la land and that, when he moves here in October, we aren't going to suddenly hit the real world and have no experience of having to work through conflict.

This is good, because at least we already know that we're both stubborn sulkers. Case in point, on Saturday night we had a half hour drive to dinner. The first five minutes we had a domestic, the last 25 we sat in silence sulking. And btw that wasn't about the wedding, it was about something actually worthwhile - what constitutes a "plan" and why anally retentive type A Kara gets really frustrated when Mr Laid-back-go-with-the-flow changes them without consulting her.

So single girls just remember - as great as having a wonderful guy is, it makes life a whole lot more complex when you don't have only yourself to think about and you don't always get to do what you want!

Finally and on a completely unrelated note - today I found out I placed second in the Romance Writers' of America Faith, Hope and Love Contest in the Contemporary Romance category :)

Interview With Bonnie Grove

2009-07-17T09:55:00.001+12:00

I don't say this lightly. In fact, for those of you who have read my blog for awhile you will know I have never made this statement before. If there is one book you MUST read this year it's Bonnie Grove's debut novel Talking To The Dead about a young widow, Kate, whose husband dies suddenly and she starts hearing his voice.

I'm telling you, I can't imagine what kind of book could possibly topple this one from being my pick of 2009. It's sad, it's funny, it's haunting and it's truly the most skilful writing I think I've ever read.

Talking To the Dead is prefaced with about three pages of endorsements by a veritable who's who is great authors, and not one of them, in all their gushing praise, does this book justice. And so it's my great pleasure today to have Bonnie Grove here on my blog to chat about Talking To The Dead.

And no, for the record, no one has given me anything or paid me anything to give it such a glowing review, I emailed Bonnie after I'd starting reading her book telling her how wonderful it was and asking if she'd be prepard to do an interview and she graciously agreed :)

1)Bonnie, Talking to the Dead is about a young widow who hears the voice of her dead husband. How did you come up with the premise for this book?

My inspiration is difficult to nail down. In part, the story came out of my experiences as a counselor, sitting with people who were attempting to articulate their pain and distress who were concerned that what they were experiencing wasn’t “normal”. I’ve also been close to a few people who suffered debilitating mental illness, and been inspired and amazed by them as they struggle to maintain their life and dignity in the midst of chaos. What struck me about all of these situations was how, in the midst of mess, illness, pain, and loss, God was always present. He mingles with our humanity. And that is the story I wanted to tell; God in the midst of our lives.

2) Talking To The Dead covers a lot of "dark" topics - grief, betrayal, depression and mental illness to name a few yet is still incredibly engaging and funny. How on earth did you manage to balance off such deep issues while making it so accessible?

Fiction is about the human experience – which means in multi-dimensional. Even when we are experiencing a difficult time, life moves forward and we are called upon to deal with lots of other things on top of the problem we are having. I’ve tried to write the book with that view in mind – in the midst of difficult problems, we aren’t going to completely lose our sense of irony, or even humour. They shine through in bursts of relief. I’ve tried to show that in the way I’ve told Kate’s story. Another thing I believe helped was that I worked hard to allow the story to tell itself – in other words, I didn’t preach or try to drive home a particular message. I’ve left much of that up to the reader. By telling the story in an “as it happened” fashion, without lecturing helps.

3) Was Talking To The Dead your original title? If not what was it (or them)?

It was the title I came up with, yes. I loved it because it tied in well with the end of the story (I know you’ve read the book Kara, so you know which line in the book I mean). Of course there was concern over an evocative title like this one, so there were discussions and brainstorming sessions about re-titling the book. Some great ideas were batted around, but it kept coming back to the original title. It just fit. After some checking around with retail stores and sales people, the decision was made to keep the title Talking to the Dead. I think it was the best choice, but it was a wonderful learning experience for me to work on coming up with a different title.

4) If you had unlimited money to fund a holiday of no more than two weeks, where would you go and what would you do?

We have young children, so we’d want to do stuff that was fun for them. With only two weeks – I think we’d try to do it all and jump on a cruise ship going north to Alaska, or South to a hot spot. One of those Disney cruises would be great!

5) What has been the hardest thing about getting this novel published? The best?

Waiting for people to get back to me. Ick to waiting! But I can’t complain. My road to becoming published was a quick one – Talking to the Dead is my first novel, and my first real attempt at a novel (although I have been writing in one form or another for years), and my first attempt to becoming published. I’ve had wonderful people in my corner and that has made all the difference. I think that is the best part – the team of people that I’ve been fortunate enough to build around me. From my supportive family, to my amazing agent, to my publisher, to my editor – each of them has and continues to be the best part of the journey of publication.

6) Everyone has quirks (like mine are ordering lollies by colour and then eating them by colour order from the most to the least). What are a couple of yours?

My ridiculous need for silence when I’m thinking – truly, I think it’s a sign of aging. I have young kids who like to make lots of noise of no reason and I’m batty about silence when I’m trying to follow a logic trail in a story line, or worse, trying to recall something.

I make up funny voices all the time. My poor husband never knows who is talking to him. I’m forever coming up with weird voices – a throw back to my acting days, I suppose. Keeps him on his toes. I also have a habit of blurting out thoughts and ideas completely unrelated to what is happening around me.

Thanks heaps :)

Thanks so much, Kara! Great to chat with you.

So everyone it's been awhile, so because I love this book so much, and because I'm all about doing my best to support debut authors who I think are amazing, and well because it's Josh's birthday and I'm only one more sleep away from seeing him after a painfully long month apart, I'm going to be giving away two copies of Talking To The Dead.

Just leave a comment and I'll make the draw next Wednesday.

I Used To Be...

2009-07-10T15:36:00.003+12:00

One of those horribly unsympathetic girls about weddings. You booked a venue, found a photogrpaher, bought a dress and had a few friends round to celebrate. Hardly rocket science. How could something which was effectively just a fancy party take up so much time and cause so much grief?

In short. Weddings were not the problem, brides who got obsessed with napkin colours and menus and table plans were the problem. And since I'm not the girl who's been planning my nuptials since I was six, mine was going to be pulled together over a couple of wines a few emails to firm things up and hey presto tada there you have it.

I am now convinced that I am being paid back triple fold for my previous hard heartedness. I now completely understand how this one event can bring the toughest of girls to tears and bring couples to the verge of war.

As of today we are;

1) On our second reception venue
2) The venue for our engagement party is double booked and we have to find a new one
3) Sample invitations gone missing in post
4) In process of changing churches
5) Venue max = 138, "cut down" guest list = 170 (due to Josh's mum getting so excited when we go engaged that she invited pretty much everyone she knew, not thinking they would come and guess what? they apparently are!)
6) Not that anyone has even officially been invited yet (see 3)
7) The ongoing cake debate

So now I would like to say to the universe, I take it back. Weddings have a life of their own. And I'm sorry for every mean thought I ever put out there about someone being a high maintenance bride. Apart from the girl who dressed her bridesmaids in skin tight fuschia, you know who I mean.

My Nightmare Proposal

2009-07-08T08:20:00.001+12:00

Someone once asked me what my nightmare proposal would be and my response was "anything really really public".

I'm sure there are some people whose dream proposal involves a full restaurant, their entire family, a ballgame and the big screen and that's great. But me? I just wanted it to be me and Josh. Oh and I totally didn't mind the lovely waiter who served us champagne afterward :)

The worst I could come up with was a story I'd heard about a guy who proposed to his girlfriend while she was worship leading in front of their 600 odd strong church (though that was made equally horrible by the fact that she wasn't sure she even wanted to marry the guy, but with her whole church watching she couldn't say no!). That, I thought that, would be about as bad as I could get, but then I saw this...

What about you guys? What would be the one thing that, no matter how much you loved the guy, would have you tempted to say "are you kidding me?"

Moments That Make You Proud To Be A Kiwi

2009-07-06T16:53:00.003+12:00

Like when our national airline goes to #1 on You Tube after doing their latest round of ads and safety videos with their crew (actual crew members) wearing only body paint...

When Exes Pop Back Up Again

2009-07-03T17:29:00.001+12:00

I thought that I was almost beyond surprises, but something this week managed to catch me; an email from a guy who I dated for approximately six weeks over two years ago.

We haven’t seen, or had anything to do, with each other since. Not because it was a particularly bitter or terrible parting but because we lived in different cities, it was a particularly chaotic time in my life and, well, once we’d decided that we were far from long lost soul mates, there really wasn’t any reason to stay in touch.

So you can imagine my surprise when, two and a half years later, this email found its way to my inbox.

Dear Kara,

I'm not quite sure why but I've been wondering lately if I ever gave you a proper apology for how I treated you during our relationship and especially when we broke up.

I didn't honour you the way I should have and I'm really sorry for any pain that may have caused you.

You definitely deserved better.

Humbly,

Now first of all kudos to the guy for apologising, even if it was so far after the event that I had to rack my brain to try and remember whether he ever had previously! And yes I did email him back with a very grown up, water-under-the-bridge email (and I didn’t even mention the $200 he owes me even though it would almost pay for my engagement cake!).

Anyway my real question is what’s up with the two year mark? This guy is the third guy who has contacted me two years post-relationship to apologise. The first one rang, the second one took me out for dinner and now we have Mr 2009 on email.

Has this happened to anyone else? Or do I have some kind of amazing ability to dig my way out of a guy’s subconscious around the two year mark and haunt him until he gets in touch to make amends?