Consumption Diary August 2026

MUSIC

 

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE #1

My fourth book, Offshore Service & Other Stories (OS&OS for short), is out in the world.

The launch on the 19th was fun. Here's the abbreviated version, including a reference to the reviews on this here website, LOL.

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(I gave my daughter my phone to film the speeches, but we neglected to get much footage of the before and after, but I was happy with the turnout and John at the book sales table was kept busy.)

More on OS&OS's life out in the world in the next interlude further down...

BOOKS

[I read one non-fiction book from NZ in a physical format, but will reserve comment on that as I'm reviewing it for Landfall Review Online]

Sophia, Standing There by Meg Mason (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2026)

Yeah, she did it again. Sorrow and Bliss was the favourite book I read in 2021. A good indication of that book's impact is I can't believe that was five years ago, it still feels like it's a part of my short term memory.

S,ST is the right amount of similar and different from S&B. The protagonist of S&B is a big personality who leave chaos in her wake, and suffers from a genetic, mental illness referred only as "--" (or verbalised as "x" in the audiobook). Sophie, in this new novel, is working hard to be the opposite, a character vacuum that avoids notice and doesn't cause any one fuss. The unnamed part is "the author" that Sophia becomes fascinated with, then obsessed. But, thankfully this unnaming trick is only maintained for some of the book, because we actually meet the author in the flesh, wherein she is given a name, Lilac Dunn. Dunn is in some ways like Martha Friel in S&B as they both seem to be incredibly intelligent and insightful about other people, but at heart suffer from an acute lack of empathy.

Glyph by Ali Smith (novel, audiobook, UK, 2026)

I felt like I needed to re-read Gliff again to get more out of Glyph. And maybe audiobook wasn't the best way to consume both. But I think I enjoyed Glyph more than Gliff (sorry to anyone using a text-to-speech app to consume this post).

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2025)

I mean, yeah, okay. It's got all the constituent parts. Plants are amazing. Climate change is an existential threat. The subantarctic islands are fascinating. A mysterious woman washes up on Macquaire Island, I mean whatever its made-up name is in the book. She uncovers mysteries of her own relating to the father and his three kids that remain on the island tending to the global seedbank that will be abandoned due to rising sea levels...

But the plot and the characters never really seemed to be operating on the same plane of existence. The sexual/romantic entanglement felt perfunctory and unearned. The madness of the [redacted] character was convenient, not convincing. 

Oh well. Reece Weatherspoon liked it! 

Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman (novel, audiobook, US, 2026)

I tried with this one. I also tried reading Dungeon Crawler Carl as a ebook on my phone through the Libby app, but that's like trying to eat soup with a sex toy.

I can see why people like the DCC series, but I'm gonna use the 'p' word again: PERFUNCTORY.

Climate Wayfinding by Katharine K. Wilkinson (non-fiction, US, 2026)

I struggled with this for a different reason. Like, shame on me for thinking this book would incorporate aspects of Polynesian maritime wayfinding, which has been adapted to other uses through the work of Spiller et.al. in Wayfinding Leadership -- a book I return to often in my life as a climate / sustainability professional. 

Instead, this version of wayfinding is like some kind of vision quest with all the white American cultural appropriation vibes that brings with it. 

The subtitle - Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home - should have tipped me off.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE #2

There's only been one review of the collection so far (a very positive one from the legend Paula Morris in the Listener, with a longer version promised on the Academy for NZ Literature's website one day soon). Hopefully there's one or two more.

In terms of media coverage so far, we've had:

• Two short stories from the collection republished: 'The Waikato Farmers' in Newsroom and 'The Kick Inside' in Sunday Star Times
• Two radio interviews, with Emile Donovan on RNZ and Jeff Harford on OAR
• Two print interviews, one in the Sunday Star Times to accompany 'The Kick Inside' and one in the Otago Daily Times.

I also did one of those Book Confessional things for The Spinoff, which I haven't seen appear yet. When I wrote my responses I was about to start Sophie, Standing There, so this blog is officially more up-to-date that the big ol' Spinoff.

FILM & TV

Colin From Accounts - Season 3 - normally, I love when TV shows make a huge leap in time between seasons (final season of Parks and Rec ftw), but the payoff of this leap petered out quickly and felt more like a way to pad out the will they, won't they phase. Still had some good laffs.

The Dark Wizard - Season 1 - I possess neither the strength, the courage or the desire to rock climb, but this was fascinating. Alex Honnold comes across as a sociopath, which on some level he must be. 

Monsters of God - Season 1 - I see what you did there... Are the monsters the reptiles or the people? (It's always the people).

One Battle After Another - I read Vineland some time in the early 2000's, but looking for any connection between that novel and the adapted screenplay made me feel like the baked-ass present day Bob Ferguson in the movie... Maybe if they'd kept his name as Zoyd I would have liked the film more.

It's weird to be left cold and unentertained by films like this, Sinners and Weapons, which seemed to get the average moviegoer hyped and also did well with the Academy. Like, on one level it's cool that there's some overlap between what both sides think is cool... but it'd be better if I also thought these things were cool, rather than... passable. Another P-word!

Archival activity II

Since I last updated my personal website (craigcliff.com) in May 2013, not a lot has changed in terms of my writing career. No new books have been published (funny that, since I've completed none in that time). Only two short stories have been published, and two translations (a Spanish version of 'Copies' and a Romanian version of my novel) which, in truth, represents not effort on my part (at least not in the last three years). I went to Iowa for a writer's residency and didn't write enough. I quit writing my Dom Post column and wrote an essay about how blah I felt about four years of output. I read a lot about watching video games and wrote an essay about it.

And that's it.

(I think. I haven't been a fastidious blogger over this period either, so my records are sketchy.)

But my online bio and bonus blather is more out of date than all that. I got promoted twice at work (and turned down a third promotion). I co-created another human being. That first human being that was but a pooping, suckling lump in May 2013 is now a singing, twirling Frozen reenactment. I sold a house and bought a new one. I am so fucking middle class it hurts.

(Or maybe I'm just really committed to researching the bourgeoisie?? Seed of doubt: planted.)

Ahem.

Like I did last time, I'm posting the old version of the Q&A section here (well, after the jump) because I am bad at filing things / have trouble knowing what to be embarrassed about / get public and private mixed up.

You can read the new version (small tweaks for now; some bigger changes will appear if I can think of bigger questions) on my website.

This ends the New Zealand portion of our programme

...almost.

I'm off to the States tomorrow. WLG - AKL - LAX. We're having a 2-night layover in Los Angeles (wise, methinks, given the 7.5 month-old in our party) before getting to Iowa City (via Dallas and Cedar Rapids).

The travel trauma should rule a nice thick line under the first few weeks of The Mannequin Makers' life in the big bad world. I'm looking forward to fully immersing myself in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and writing some butt-kicking stories.

But for now it's probably worthwhile just noting down how The Mannequin Makers has fared thus far.


Sales

Well, it was #4 on the bestseller list in its first week. Okay, so the New Zealand Fiction list is quite a specific category, but A Man Melting never made it to the top 10... The Mannequin Makers also made #5 on the list of all books sold at independent books stores in New Zealand for the week.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed how a certain book is #1 and #2 of both lists (paperback and hardback). Feel free to bump me up a spot if you think that's cheating (I don't - in the great wash-up it's pretty cool to be fighting for airtime with a favourite for the Booker Prize).

One last musing on sales... It'll be interesting to see how things go in the coming weeks. Whitcoulls is selling The Mannequin Makers for $30, $8 off the R.R.P. They'd even moved it up from the "What's New" table near the back of the Lambton Quay store to the "What's Hot" table near the entrance. Which is all good (especially since Whitcoulls never bothered to stock my last book except for in airports), but Whitcoulls is no longer signed up to Nielsen Bookscan, which is used to compile the bestseller lists.

I'm just gonna forget about all that sales stuff until my next royalties statement comes through in March-ish next year.


Reviews

I've seen seven reviews so far, and apparently there's one in the new North & South which came out today, but they didn't have it at Countdown yet.

(All I know is what RHNZ tweeted: 'In THE MANNEQUIN MAKERS, @Craig_Cliff “has crafted a brilliantly structured and evocative story.”' Sounds promising, but you can never trust those publishing types and their money quotes.)

The other reviews have been:

The Listener, 1 August 2013
Highly favourable. Money quote: "it’s tremendous, darkly entertaining and original from start to finish."

The Press, 3 August 2013 (not online)

Highly unfavourable. Money quote is an indignant text from my father-in-law in Christchurch: "Who the hell is Phillip Matthews?"

Radio New Zealand (Nine to Noon), 7 August 2013

Mostly favourable (didn't like the fourth part as much as the others). Money quote: [the bit where she gives away why the Carpenter is mute, and about six other meaty plot points].

The Hoopla, 9 August 2013

Highly favourable. My first Australian review (for any book), that I'm aware of. Money quote: "This is a superb novel of parental obsession, the lure of the unattainable and the tragedy inherent within human nature." ALso, the bit where she compares TMM to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda and Tim Winton's Cloud Street. Nice company, I reckon.

SwampThing, 9 August 2013

Highly favourable. Money quote: "Much like his craftsmen, Kemp and the Carpenter, Cliff has crafted a lovely bit o' story – well built and polished."

The Australian, 10 August 2013

Highly mixed (if that's a thing). Money quote: This twitter exchange, where bookseller Martin Shaw managed to draw both the reviewer and me into a conversation about the review... Ha!

Also of note: the fact I was compared to Peter Carey again (though this time it was meant to be disparaging). If that's the mud people wanna sling, I've no fear sticking my head above the parapet!

Aside: until this week, I'd only been compared to Peter Carey once before. It was in Sydney and I blogged about it:

When I said it was an honour to meet him [Tom Keneally], he said, “I am reminded of another young short story writer who approached me with reverence many years ago... who turned out to be Peter Carey. If I can offer one piece of advice: One booker is an honour; two is just an indulgence.”

Otago Daily Times, 10 August 2013
Mostly favourable (found Part Three a bit long: "just another shipwreck story", but liked the other parts). Money quote: "With The Mannequin Makers [readers are] being treated to a tale that has characters and a plotline even Dickens would have been proud of."

Also, right at the end: "Let's hope it sells a few copies and stirs the interest of TV drama and film-makers." To this I would add, "Just a few?" and "TV drama and film-makers, my people are waiting by the phone."

If you've seen any other reviews, lemme know and I'll hunt them down (though that might be hard in the States).


Other publicity

I wrote about my uneasy relationship with historical fiction for the New Zealand Book Council.

I did this interview with Lynn Freeman, which ran on the Arts on Sunday (4 August) on Radio National.

I did an event at the Palmerston North City Library (a place that used to be a department store, and I've previously described as my spiritual home as a writer) on Sunday 11 August.

There's an interview with Joan Fleming/The Lumiere Reader that should be online in the next day or so.

There'll also be a write-up about me in the Herald on Saturday 24 August (I think). And something in APN's regional newspapers one day soon (if I haven't already missed it).


And now...

To read through the 30 or so stories for the BNZ Literary Awards (Novice Category) that have made my longlist. There were 607 entries in total, and I'm hoping to trim down to 12 or 15 that I'll take with me to the states and mull over for a few days before I make my final decision.

And then pack... 16 hours to my first flight leaves. Better hop to it.

2013 University of Iowa International Writers Program Residency

Big news Thrillsters, I’m off to Iowa in August. Look, there’s even a press release.

Don’t worry. It’s just for a couple of months. I’ll be back in Wellington soon enough to whinge about how busy I am and apologise for not blogging more often.

Things I’m excited about

• Meeting with the 30+ other writers on the International Writing Program (and becoming buddies with as many of them as my social skills can handle)
• The packed programme of readings and other events around Iowa City
• Writing some freakin’ fiction – I haven’t managed to expand the 'The Cloud Seeder' beyond its first sentence, or write anything else, lately. Nine-ish weeks of solid writing (amid all the other activities) should let me finish at least three stories, and get me well on the way to finishing my next collection in 2014.
• I may even be able to do a spot of research for my project-after-next (the time travel family saga romance novel).
• Having plenty of material to write about for my fortnightly Dom Post column.
• The mid-residency and end of residency travel around the US.
• Weaselling myself into other parts of the creative writing programme at Iowa – meeting the workshop leaders, maybe a few guest speaking spots.
• A stopover in San Francisco on the way to Iowa (one of my favourite cities: El Taqueria in Mission, here I come).
• A bit of travel after the residency, before flying home (Plan A: road trip the length of the Mississippi)
• Having my wife and daughter with me (the length of their stay and where they stay are still being sorted out… there’s a chance of a house swap with a dude in Coralville, which would be awesome if it happens - please send positive vibes).
• Finding those US dollars I decided not to exchange a couple of years ago because I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll go back to the States sometime in the next five years,’ AND SPENDING THEM.
• Getting a bike and riding it everywhere (until the snow comes at least).
• Getting a new wardrobe (clothes are so much cheaper in the States, and it saves having to lug cold weather gear over there to arrive in 25 degree heat).
• Escaping the tail-end of the NZ winter.
• Birds (photos to be posted here!), squirrels, skunks, chipmunks (I haven’t actually researched the Iowa wildlife, but I’m sure they’ve got some cute/interesting rodents).
• Iowa Hawkeyes Football!



Kinnick Stadium, capacity 70,585

• Being within four hours drive of at least 4.5 hours drive of three NBA franchises when the 2012/13 season starts.
• The food (hence the need to cycle everywhere, if I wanna brave the beach upon my return to NZ).
• Cut and paste: "Creative New Zealand is keen to encourage emerging writers to apply [for the residency] (particularly, those who are on the cusp – with local publisher support – of breaking into the American market)" - who knows how far I am from the cusp, but being in the States for a few months might bring me closer to it, eh?
• Leaving NZ a fortnight after The Mannequin Makers comes out, so I’ll be available for any and all publicity opportunities that might present in the weeks either side of the launch, but will be completely preoccupied when the great slab of silence and disinterest that follows a new book inevitably falls.
• The timing also means I’ll avoid a lot of awkward conversations with people at work as they work through the novel (especially after they read pages 278-9). Better to just pretend they've all read the book and loved it when I get back at the start of the NZ summer.

Things I’m less excited about

• Getting Lia to Iowa – if she comes with me in August, she’ll be 8 months old. Not the best person to share a seat with for 16+ hours of flights (and the terminal downtime in between).
• Getting Lia home.
• If I can’t fly with Marisa and Lia there and back: letting the team down / being a long distance daddy / Skype father, even if it’s just a couple of days. Sob.
• The inevitable hassle that comes with going to another country for a block of time (visas, sorting out what to do with our house while we’re away, tax returns...).
• Having to pull out of an event at the mini-writers festival as part of this year’s Christchurch Arts Festival (last time I was booked to appear down their the festival was gazumped by the first Chch earthquake; next time, Canterbury, next time) [NB: this is what I was talking about when I said I’d finally said no to something the other month].
• Not being able to attend the awards ceremony for the BNZ Literary Awards and shake the hand of the winner I will have picked for the novice category (though I’ll try to pre-record a speech and tee up a meeting with the winner when I get back).
• Going back to work in late Nov/early Dec and finding out all the things I was working on before going that haven’t gone anywhere in my absence.

Craiggate / Mulling the cloud seeder / zipped lips

Craiggate, or It's no longer paranoia when your fears are realised

The few months before a book launch can be nervy. Chances are publication day is swiftly followed by reviews that miss the point, interviews that misquote you and photo shoots in bright sun (squinty eyes!) or weird locales (hey, how about you pose by this construction site!).

The last few months I've had a very specific anxiety: that people will mix me up with Colin Craig,  leader of the NZ Conservative Party. He's been in the news a bit lately, whether it's promising a day of reckoning after Parliament sanctioned gay marriage, or threatening a satirical news website with legal action for defamation.

At the risk of getting my own letter from Chapman Tripp, Mr Craig is a bit of a plonker.

Unfortunately, his name bears a number of similarities to mine.

CRAIG CLIFF

COLIN CRAIG

(To confuse things further, I have a great uncle called Colin Cliff.)

It's one thing to be little known in a small country. It's quite another to be little known and confused with a plonker.

I told myself it was just me being over sensitive. People weren't that stupid. No one would ever read 'Craig Cliff' and think, "That homophobic, litigious git who shelled out $1.3 million of his own cash for the last election but never got near a seat in parliament?"

I told myself I was being paranoid.

But then it happened. Perhaps the first of many befuddlements.

My latest light-entertainment column in the Dominion Post appeared on Fairfax's news website stuff this morning with the byline "Colin Craig".

Luckily it was still filed under "Craig Cliff" and the sidebar showed other columns by me. Two astute commenters picked up the anomaly and the Stuff editors fixed it.

In all, the faux pas was online for six hours and I only knew about it for two of those. It was small biscuits. A bit of a laugh really.

But I can't shake the thought that this is not the last time something like this happens this year...


Mulling the cloud seeder

Current word count of my latest short story: three.

Number of short stories other than the cloud seeder I've worked on: one. Oops. And it wasn't even one of the ten options I put on my poll.

Bad blogger!


My lips are zipped

Back in October 2011, my to do list included the item: "Say no to something."

I can now cross this item off. I initially said yes, but then I said yes to something else, something bigger, which meant I had to say no to this other, smaller but still exciting and worthwhile thing. Does that count?

Archival Activity

One for the archives

I'm in the process of updating www.craigcliff.com, which means sloughing away a lot of the A Man Melting-centric material and adding more current stuff about The Mannequin Makers and my general awesomeness (it won't take long).

In the interests of nothing much, except my own curiosity in twenty years time (what did my website actually say in 2010-13?) I'm plugging the soon-to-be-excised text here.


About Craig

Standard author's bio you'll find all over the place

Craig Cliff was born in Palmerston North in 1983. Since then he has accumulated three university degrees, experienced office life in Australia and Scotland, swum in piranha-infested waters, slept at 4,200 metres above sea level, tried to write a million words in one year and learnt there's not much to do in Liechtenstein. His short stories have been published in New Zealand and Australia; one of them made it into Essential New Zealand Short Stories edited by Owen Marshall. These days he lives on Wellington's south coast and works for the government.

Bonus Q&A — exclusive to craigcliff.com

You attended the International Institute of Modern Letters MA programme back in 2006. Did you write the stories in A Man Melting during your MA year?

No. I actually tried to write a novel that year — a great experience but I think it was a mistake to try and write a novel from go to whoa in eight months. Too many decisions were made for the sake of expedience that then became so integral to the fabric of the novel that it was beyond fixing. The manuscript now sits in my bottom drawer along with the novel I tried to write when I was twenty-one.

So when did you turn your attention to short fiction?
I've always written short fiction. It's a natural progression to start with the shorter form and work your way up to the longer, if that's your goal. I mostly read novels when I was younger (Douglas Coupland, Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk), so that's what I grew up wanting to write. Tastes change, of course, and eventually I found an appreciation for subtlety (though I still love me some Vonnegut). After finishing my MA, I really wanted to keep writing, but didn't have the reserves of energy needed to start another novel. So I returned to short fiction. The two stories I wrote were 'Copies' (already anthologised twice before appearing in A Man Melting) and 'Another Language' (won the novice section of the 2007 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards). After that, things began to fall into place. In 2008, while living in Edinburgh, I tried to write one million words in 366 days (it was a leap year). I only wrote 800,737 words, but it was a very successful failure. Almost every story in A Man Melting was written or revised during that year.

But to write 800,000 words, you must have written more than short stories?

Oh, sure. There were long rambling blog posts about the Tragically Hip, audiobooks, life in Edinburgh and the places I was travelling that year. There were also a couple of aborted novels and screeds of poetry.

Travel is a common thread in a lot of the stories in A Man Melting. Are these travel stories based on your own experience?

Some more than others. I've never been to Equador or Cambodia, two places characters find themselves in A Man Melting. I used my experience in similar countries like Peru and Thailand, and read a lot of travel blogs and guidebooks to try and get the key details while keeping a tourist-eye view. Fiction, and short fiction in particular, works best when things are called into question. An easy way to do that is to take a character and pop them in an unfamiliar country. I guess I'm less interested in where people travel than what they might find out about themselves when they get there.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a novel set in the past. I hesitate to call it a historical novel as that phrase isn’t quite right: ‘history’ shouldn’t come before ‘novel’. It’s fiction with a research element. Fantasy tethered by the occasional fact. No corsets are removed. No street urchins or rich benefactors. There is a lighthouse, though. If everything goes to plan it should come out in this part of the world in 2013.


A Man Melting

The blurb

A son worries he is becoming too perfect a copy of his father. The co-owner of a weight-loss camp for teens finds himself running the black market in chocolate bars. A man starts melting and nothing can stop it, not even poetry.

This terrific collection of stories by an exciting new talent moves from the serious and realistic to the humorous and outlandish, each story copying an element from the previous piece in a kind of evolutionary chain. Amid pigeons with a taste for cigarette ash, a rash of moa sightings, and the identity crisis of an imaginary friend, the characters in these eighteen entertaining stories look for ways to reconnect with people and the world around them, even if that means befriending a robber wielding an iguana.

Why you really oughta buy the book 

Variety. Is it the spice of life, or is that cardamom? Either way, you've gotta love a book that covers house hunting and celestial mechanics, cheerleader porn and travel blogs, tug of war and car crashes, pregnancy tests, dwarves, hermits, cooking shows, dodgy teachers, the poetry of Sappho and the artistic potential of photocopiers.

Like animals? You'll find a veritable menagerie: cockroaches, fleas, lions, trout (rainbow), kittens (dead), apes (Planet of the), meerkats, whales, kereru, dodo, Yangtzee sturgeon, the indefatigable Galapagos mouse and many more.

Music aficionado? Well, there's references to Blur, The Beatles, Debussy and Dire Straits, but there's also Nelly Furtado, Neil Sedaka, Van Morrison, U2, Styx, and... urr... Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

Want a dose of kiwiana? What about Cameo Cremes, Raro, Ford Escorts, PVA glue, New World Supermarkets, Rashuns, Ka Mate, Minties, cricket at the Basin, MAF consultants, Nick Harrison and those breast cancer t-shirts you get from Glassons?

Other reasons to buy A Man Melting

1) You're related to Craig by blood or marriage
2) You are Craig's mechanic, accountant, dentist, supervisor-one-removed, former teacher, or best friend from kindergarten
3) You collect books by authors with two first names
4) You have read the other 56 works longlisted for the 2010 Frank O'Connor Prize
5) You have read the other 99 books in The Listener's Top 100 Books of 2010
6) You love lists.

Common people / reading grumpy / see me go

The first ever issue of Common, "The biannual magazine for those with a creative bent and an inquisitive eye", arrived at my house a while ago. It looks a million bucks and was helped into existence thanks to a Kickstarter campaign. Here's hoping there's a second issue (and a third).

Inside there's an interview with me that includes the question: "What do you like about photographing birds?" and, coz the mag has an arty/visual bent, goes on to include a couple of my bird photos...

Regular readers of this blog will know about my birdy-bent, and may have even noticed the lack of bird photos of late. Well, dear readers, it comes with the lack of posting. 

I did manage to take this photo of three silvereyes out of my bedroom window the other day. Anyone who has tried to snap a single silvereye will know how tricky the buggers are to capture, but three in one frame, in focus? I was stoked.

Instead of being behind the camera or at my writing desk, it's been the dayjob, the bike commute (see today's Your Weekend column), fatherhood and the occasional piece of housework-cum-modelling...

Reading summary - February/March

I've been a grumpy reader these past few months. It's probably to do with the fact I haven't had much time for books (biking to work means I can't listen to audiobooks as often as when I rode the bus) and I've spent so much time re-re-re-re-re-re-reading my tedious, flaccid, opaque, snore-fest of a novel (remind me to hit reboot on my emotions re: THE NOVEL closer to the launch date).

So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger (novel, audiobook, US)

This was okay. A bit sprawling and unfocussed. And what/who the heck does the title refer to? Hood Roberts? You mean the fourth most important character? Or am I missing something? Surely I missed something.

The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard (play, audiobook, UK)

Listening to a play on your iPod should work. I mean, it’s better than reading a script, surely. But, for me at least, listening to a play is a sure way of making it seem thin and lifeless. Sorry Tom S, but this was nowhere near as good as the real thing.

Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James (novel, audiobook, UK)

My god, the prologue! What a bore. At least old PD will hit her straps in the first chapter: a dead body, a cast of shifty upstairs/downstairs characters… But no. The text kept circling back to moments “six years ago” (i.e. stuff that happened in Pride and Prejudice), as if this was one long, insufferable cliff note on Austen’s novel. And when death finally came to Pemberley? I wanted to shake the hand of the perpetrator!

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (short stories, Nigeria/US)

These stories did little to arouse any great feeling in me, except perhaps 'Jumping Monkey Hill', which played with the idea of writer’s conferences, the colonial influence still existent in ‘African’ writing, and the old story-within-a-story trope. Things were laid on a bit think with the lascivious, condescending, decrepit English patron of the workshop. Like many of the stories in the collection, he felt functional, formulaic. And there were two - repeat: two - stories written in the second person. I'm sorry, but that's now way to win me over.

We others, new and selected stories by Stephen Millhauser (short stories, US)

Hey, I actually liked this one. I’d read Millhauser before, but clearly not his collection In The Penny Arcade, which features the story ‘August Eschenberg’. It’s a darn good story – insofar as it’s masterful and anyone would be proud to have it in their back catalogue – and it’s got A LOT in common with my quaint wee novel The Mannequin Makers that’ll poke it’s head out of its burrow in August: department stores, window displays, the quest for mastery, a rivalry between two practitioners, the old art vs life divide. There are a few differences: Eschenberg makes clockwork figures, the dudes in my novel just make mannequins (hence the title), my novel roves widely, Millhauser’s tale is long for a short story, but sticks to its singular focus on the life of its title character. I’d have no problem if I had read this before (or during) writing my novel, because I think there’s worse things to do than be inspired by great fiction, but that’s not the case. Great minds and middling minds sometimes think alike, I guess.

*

And finally, for no good reason, here's NZ's answer to Gang of Four:

Advice to young (female) writers

I was recently searching through my emails for the name of someone and came across a request from Dolly magazine last year for a writing tip. Yes, that Dolly. The one that asks questions like Justin Bieber vs. Cody Simpson: Who has the hottest Instagram pics?

But they also, apparently, ask about writing. Which is cool. Since I can't imagine a magazine for male tweens even acknowledging the existence of fiction, let alone cultivating the dangerous, time-consuming, maddening urge to write.

Benevolent soul that I am, I offered Dolly three tips, but never saw the final article. Seeing this email, however, I did a quick Google search and managed to find it.

Here 'tis:

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[TOP SECRET] WRITER Tips. (Dolly 1/9/2011, Issue 489, p144)

We conned some amazing authors into handing over their best writing tips. You can thank us when you're on the bestsellers list!

* "Set a designated writing time and stick to it. Think of it as a date with yourself, and honour it. Even a two-hour chunk once a week is great. Don't be afraid to use treats to get yourself through - I do. It might be some time online skimming my favourite blogs, or going out to get a coffee, or a new magazine after a particularly good session. (When I finish a whole book, I treat myself with something extraordinary. I shan't disclose what for fear of judgement.) (SHOES.)" - Zoe Foster, Amazing Face

* "Read, read, read - you learn so much from what other authors do, and you'll also find yourself inspired, challenged and eager to read more." - Georgia Blain, Closed For Winter

* "The reader should always be inside the head, or sitting on the shoulder, of the most interesting person in the room." - Craig Cliff, A Man Melting

* "Write as often as you can, even if nobody will ever read it. Every journal entry, essay, short story and blog post helps you finetune your skills," - Kelly Gardiner, Act Of Faith

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The other two tips I offered were probably more useful (and less disputable):

• Finish things. A story's not much use without an ending.

• Set yourself challenges. Write a character's life story in 100 words. Write a story  using only dialogue. Write a story that goes backwards in time.The more constraints, the easier it is to fill those blank pages.

Now to work the fact I've been in Dolly into my author's bio...

While I was sleeping

In the mail the other day I received a package from Random House containing their rights catalogue for the Frankfurt Book Fair. Right at the start (authors are listed alphabetically, with lit-fic first) there’s this page:

This is the first official document spruiking my new novel. Note: The Mannequin Makers is still a working title, but it may stick.

RHNZ did ask me if it was okay if they tried to sell my novel’s rights at Frankfurt (I said yes), but I wasn’t involved in the 32-word blurb. It’s clearly based on the 40,000 word chunk I sent them back in November 2011 and even though the book has grown and morphed since then, I’m not offended by anything.

The interesting thing is to flick through the rest of the catalogue and see the other RHNZ writers with “Forthcoming 2013” titles in the catalogue. I’m already self-conscious about the number of recent New Zealand novels that are set in the past, and it seems this trend is set to continue into 2013. Fiona Kidman has a novel, The Infinite Air, based on the life of Jean Batten. Carl Nixon has The Virgin and the Whale, set in 1919 and about a woman whose husband is missing in action.

Okay, so that's only two other novels set in the past, but what about the books from Penguin, VUP, Huia and whoever else chooses to front up in 2013? 

This trend for looking backwards to make things up may be buoyed by technology (Papers Past et al make immersive research quicker and broader) and publisher's willingness to fork out for old-timey books, but ultimately:

• writers who don't lean on the same genre book-in book-out are lead by ideas, not the market
• some ideas need to be set in the past (like me and my sailing ships and department stores)
• the lag time between beginning a book and it getting published is so long that it's foolish to try and write for what's hot now.

Of course, I was aware of the flood of (*deep, sonours voice please*) serious, literary fiction set in the past when I was a quarter / a half / three-quarters of the way through my novel. Once I was underway, the other books out there helped me to better define my niche. There was a slice of New Zealand life a century ago that was under-represented (the urban, the modern) and a type of story ('tale' might be a better word) that wasn't being employed when dabbling in the past (the adventure). So I felt encouraged to steer towards that type of book.

(Of course, the book had other ideas, steering me back to the mythology of the rural and underpopulated, the rough and savage, in the final section, but these things happen).

Aha! Now you can watch my interview on Good Morning...

The Man in The Mirror

You can watch the two minute "The Write Space" feature on me and my home office that featured on The Good Word on Tuesday night here (towards the end of part two).

Or, for a do-it-yourself version, you could:

1) watch this youtube clip of Michael Jackson:

2) read the first response in the Q&A published in Saturday's Dom Post:

(I did the interview with The Good Word and the newspaper 10 months apart and forgot I'd told that anecdote before. Also, I spoke for half an hour with The Good Word and had no idea how they'd cut it or what'd they'd have me say. In all, I think I sounded okay... coulda been a lot worse!)

3) look at this gallery of antique guns.

Et voila!

Funnily enough, that's exactly what I see all those hours I spend looking in the mirror: a gun-toting, GI Joe collecting, pop legend.


Loosely connected

I may be appearing on Good Morning this coming Tuesday (around 9.45am on TV1).  I'm being cagey because these things tend to change.  Good news: TVNZ does place some portions of the show online afterwards, so my huge international fanbase mightn't miss out either.


Poetry competition update

As per the comments in my previous post:

1. No, a yak is not a forest animal.
2. There's at least one other 'move' (besides forest animal references) I reckon I pulled in this old yak poem.
3. The prize to the first non-anonymous commenter to correctly cite a move from this list in the above poem wins their choice of A Man Melting, The Long and The Short of It or Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd (a freebie from Random House when I went to the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival; it's a beautiful book but I won't read it because I have this hate-hate thing with Venice... long story, by me a drink some time and I'll tell you).
4. I've probably scared of any potential commenters/entrants by being a hard-ass.

Worksheet #77, or "Kay Fabian Phone Home"

Today's anxiety brought to you by the fact that...

...in about an hour I'll be on a digital-only TV channel for two minutes. And when I say "I" I mean snippets of my face, interspersed with stuff in my office (Cuban cigar, Maasi warrior doll, pictures of antique guns?), while snippets of my voice ramble on about antique pictures of guns and writing on weekends. And by snippets of my face and office and voice, I mean the face and office and voice as it was one afternoon in September.  So it's my old laptop I'm pretending to type profound words on (but I'm just typing: "So, this is weird. Don't you think this is weird') in the body of a story I've long since put to bed (and roused for publication in January).

I don't like hearing my telephone voice on radio. Seeing my face-for-radio on TV at the same time... ugh.

You know you've made a small dent in the psyche when... #14


...when you are a dummy answer in the Stuff daily quiz:

Of all the books in all the world, I walk into this one?


Failed Radiohead covers #2

I don't plan on making a habit of this, but I came across another cover of a Radiohead song this week after Weezer's too-similar version of 'Paranoid Android' last week.

Today it's Sarah Jaroz doing another OK Computer track: 'The Tourist'. It passes the not-too-similar hurdle by virtue of it's jangly Americana feel (but do I hear ukuleles? aren't they Hawaiian? I guess that's part of America), but fails in my jaundiced (and slightly sick of Americana to begin with-) eyes because that very same jangling is far from euphonous.


Video I haven't watched yet but I will

The gala opening of the 2011 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, which I missed because I was still in Wellington - but everyone who I spoke with up there said it was the bomb.


A long-ish poem that employs move #14 in the first line...

...and probably the title, but gets away with it. Jenny Bornholdt's 'Poem About A Horse'.  I am a sucker for poems featuring yaks!!

One day I'll have my own yak photos. This one's from www.project-himalaya.com 

Impulse competition corner

Here's my yakky poem from 2008. I'll give a free book to the first person to identify any moves from the 41 Moves in Contemporary Poetry which I've deployed (having not scoured it myself yet... so this may be an unwinnable prize).

Snippet from the internet that I came across while conducting legitimate research but have no idea how I got there or how it links to vaudeville tours in 1902-03, but continues to interest me both conceptually and linguistically

Kayfabe:

The origin of the term is uncertain. Pro wrestling can trace some of its stylistic origins back to carnivals and catch wrestling, where the term "kayfabe" is thought to have originated as carny slang for "protecting the secrets of the business". With money tight, a carny would call home collect, telling the operator their name was "Kay Fabian". This was code letting the people at home know they had made it safely to the next town. The family would then deny the call. This was a method of communicating without paying for the cost of a phone call or telegram.
However, another tradition holds that "kayfabe" was merely Pig Latin for "be fake", and thus an instruction by one carny to another not to break character at the moment a "rube" or "mark" was close by.

Asked and answered

My Q&A with Unity Books is up on their website, replete with terrible mixed mythological reference and questionable capitalisation ("up Mt Olympus to join the Pantheon").

The newly expanded Unity Books in Wellington is the only place right now you can buy a genuine signed and officially stickered "2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book winner") copy of A Man Melting.


Perfunctory wrap-up

I had other things to say/link to, but it's now 30 minutes till showtime and I think I might go play with the fusebox or something...

Worksheet #74, or When I Grow Up To Be A Mannequin

Today's theme song



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Examples of me getting around

• I have a guest post over on the Rosa Mira Books blog to tie in with the impending release of slightly peculiar love stories, an e-book anthology for which you can probably guess the theme.

• I'm the subject of the Q&A in this weekend's Dom Post. (It'll be a double dose of me, actually, as it's my week in the Your Weekend mag). A photographer just came and visited me at home and made me stare into the sun for twenty minutes.

• You can scroll down here to see my Five Questions with the NZ Book Council.

• I also had to help out my publisher write discussion questions on A Man Melting for book groups that'll pop up in the next issue of the Book Council's Booknotes.

• And I have a stack of questions to answer for Unity Books' website...

It makes a change from all the FAQ documents about school buildings I write at work, and I know I'm going to miss talking about myself when it's all over (hey, there's always the blog...) but there's only so many interesting ways to talk about what is essentially a boring time-sponge (sitting alone in my home office writing about things that never happened).

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Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

Ashley Young, an NZ writer in London who has taken to blogging like a NZer in London takes to proper Marmite, has posted 'Things I've Wanted To Write', following the lead of Bill Manhire's 'From an Imaginary Journal' in Sport 39 (which you can read if you click here and then click "preview").

I seriously considered writing "'Abandoned blog posts' after Ashley Young after Bill Manhire'" but I guess I'll have to add that to the list of abandoned blog posts.

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Musical aside

Weezer has covered Radiohead's 'Paranoid Android'. It's inoffensive, perhaps even neat (a very Weezer-y word) but sadly falls into my first category of bad covers by not differing enough from the original.

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All The Moves

This is ancient in internet terms (it's so 2010!), but I only came across it the other day when it was batted around on Twitter:

41 Moves in Contemporary (American) Poetry.

Calling them "moves" implies some sort of chicanery on the part of the poets who have employed these techniques. And it's a problem if a poet or a nation's poetry overuses any of these "moves", but there aren't many surveys out there that grapple with what a lot of contemp. poetry (especially on that published online) is up to.

I wonder what a similar list would look like for NZ poetry?  A good place to start would be Best NZ Poems, which has been going for 10 years and now has a best of the best print edition. You can listen to a heap of poets reading their BNZP work here.

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Fun Fun Fun

Yesterday a bailiff snuck up our drive and put a sticker on the window of our car saying, "You have unpaid fines and I totally could have clamped your car, pay up now you dirty crim!" [Slightly paraphrased].

Turns out we had a speeding fine from 10pm on Christmas Eve near Pukerua Bay and they'd been leaving the "D" off our address on the infringement notices.  Thing is, M. and I were in Christchurch at 10pm on Christmas Eve.

My brother/flatmate has some 'splaining to do when he gets home!!

(He was only clocked at 105kmph in a 100k zone and he's getting a root canal tomorrow, so I'll think I'll go easy on him).

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Snippets from Papers Past that prove I'm doing research but also that I'm easily distracted^

1. "R.B. Williams, Wellington's barrister-vocalist, doesn't believe in encores. He bows his acknowledgements but won't 'oblige again.'  Encores are a heavy tax on the good nature of public favourites." From the Observer, 2 June 1894.

2. "Another applicant [for the job] forwarded a testimonial which stated that he had nearly lost his life while rescuing sheep during a flood, but the Council did not consider this conspicuous act of bravery had any connection with the appointment of a caretaker for the reserves." From the Manawatu Times, 19 January, 1901.

3. "[A boy named Taupaki] missed the coach taking the team to Waitekauri, and walked and ran there, a distance of 14 miles, arriving as the first spell ended. He was allowed to play, and scored no less than three tries..." Reported in several papers, June 1902.

^I think this may become a regular feature!

An embargo, a flying visit and a mystery barge: my Commonwealth Writers Prize experience

Newsflash: A Man Melting has won the Best First Book award for the South East Asia and Pacific region of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Actually, this isn’t that much of a newsflash. It was announced in Sydney on Wednesday night (I was there, more on this later) and the results were published in Australian newspapers (like this from the Syndey Morning Herald) on Thursday morning. It took a bit longer to break the news here in NZ, but by Thursday afternoon it was doing the rounds on Twitter. I got a phone call from a Dom Post reporter yesterday (Friday) and today a tiny piece appeared in my local paper.

But the news is even older than that for me.

I found out (by reading Beatties Book Blog rather than any direct correspondence) that I was short-listed for best first book on Friday 11 February.

For the next few days I was over the moon with making that far. I circled March 3 in my moleskine as the day the regional winners would be announced and began tempering my expectations.

As I blogged here on 16 February, the press release from the Commonwealth Writers Prize on the short-list mentioned that the first book nominees included "a comic treatment of the Rapture in the US, a story of Aborigines, a detective thriller involving an historical right-wing militia culminating in the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge, an obsessive cartographer and her twin sister living down trauma from the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the laconic lives of casual grape pickers in rural Australia."

No mention of anything from A Man Melting = no chance of winning. Or so I thought.

When I blogged on the 16th, I was actually being a bit disengenous. This was what I'd thought in those first few days of being short-listed, but by the time I posted it, I knew I’d won!

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Musical interlude:

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Don’t feel bad, general public to whom I lied. I also lied to my mum, my brother (who lives in the same house as me), my in-laws-to-be, my boss and workmates, my friends, the Wellington Branch of the NZ Society of Authors, Creative New Zealand (I applied for a residency, but could only put that I’d been short-listed), the Auckland Writers Festival and probably a couple more trusting souls. It’s called an embargo, and I certainly wasn’t going to break the first one that applied to me! It was a test, and I passed.

I think.

When I was invited to the announcement of this region’s winners on 3 March in Sydney, I asked the Sydney based administrator if I got any travel assistance, since, y’know, I’d won and all? It seems only the 3 SE Asia and Pacific judges and the UK based administrator who was organising the week of activities for all the regional winners in May knew the results... But if I hadn’t have spilt the beans, I may not have made it to Sydney for 23 fun-filled hours to collect my prize and take a whole heap of selfies.

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Example of a selfie from Sydney:

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Sidenote: Not telling someone you’ve won something when the information is strictly embargoed probably isn’t lie. Proper lies do damage to the receiver, whereas in this case, most of the time I was damaging my own chances of getting a residency or attracting people to my session at the Auckland Writers Festival or getting my friends to buy me beer.

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Sydney

I caught the 6am flight from Wellington (which entailed getting up before 4am), arrived in Sydney around 9am, but couldn’t check into my hotel room until later because there were no rooms ready yet.

I walked around town, basically doing a circuit down George Street (checking out camera shops: I plan to spend the prize money on a digital SLR camera) to Circular Quay and back up Pitt Street, then hanging out in Hyde Park.

It was 2pm when I finally got to check in and have a shower, shave, iron my shirt and compose myself for my first ever acceptance speech.

I didn’t write anything beforehand and just winged it. People said it was good but afterwards I realised I totally missed a trick. If I had the chance again, I would begin thusly:

Thank you Elizabeth [the person who handed me the award]. I’m not used to giving acceptance speeches. The only other time I’ve won anything to do with writing was the novice award at the BNZ Katherine Mansfield short story competition in 2007, which just so happened to coincide with the time I was in Europe. So I sent my mum along to receive my award. Unfortunately my mum couldn’t be here this evening, so I’ll just muddle through...

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I actually have video of my mum’s speech (I wrote the speech at a friend’s place in Hamburg; she read it, with one small extemporaneous addition) on a DVD somewhere. I’m not sure where though.

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At the awards ceremony there were some of the other short-listed writers and their publishers, from both the first book and big boy categories – but not all of the short-listed writers. I was the only representative from New Zealand, so I guessed early on that Lloyd Jones and Patrick Evans hadn’t won the non-first book prize. No one from Random House NZ came over to cheer me on, which some of the people there thought was a bit off – me: I understand money’s tight at the mo with the whole RED Group thing, and I think they trusted me to equip myself well at such a shindig. I hope I don’t become one of those authors who expects to be coddled... I’m not sure publishers will have the luxury of coddling authors in the brave new world of books anyway.

Also in attendance were people involved with the Commonwealth Writers Prize, such as  current and past judges (most of whom were Australian academics), sponsors (the event was at Macquarie’s offices), publicists, literary agents, the odd reporter and other Aussie writers.

I had a surreal conversation with the two publicists who had worked on the regional prize. One clearly knew I’d won, and kind of asked if I knew I’d won, but I was still so used to demurring in such situations that I kind of shrugged and grabbed a mini Yorkshire pudding and beef canapé and shoved it in my mouth. I can;t remember the other publicist saying a single word.

The speeches started with the obligatory thanks to the backers, then Dr Paul Sharrad, the chair of the judging panel, said a bit about each of the six short-listed books in the two categories.

Speaking about A Man Melting, he mentioned three specific stories, though not by name: ‘Unnatural Selection’ (“the story of a woman returning home after living in the United States...”) ‘Manawatu’ (“a story that tackles suicide...”), and “my favourite, the trials of a woman cooking for a tribe of London school kids on a barge in bad weather.”

Thing is, that story is not in my book, nor is it one I’ve written. When he was giving his speech I thought maybe he’d mixed up the elements of ‘Fat Camp’ (a man moves to Scotland with his partner to run weight-loss camp for teens and ends up running the black market in chocolate bars), but it's also mentioned in a press release... he’s clearly talking about another story.

Perhaps it’s a story in Amanda Lohrey’s collection of short stories, Reading Madame Bovary, which was short-listed for the non-first book award. We were the only short fictioneers amongt the twelve short-listees, and I can see how books may blend into one another..

So I’m just writing that down as weird, and will not freak out that the chair of the judging panel’s favourite story in my book is not in my book.

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Fact-checked excerpt from the press release post-announcement

“A Man Melting marks the appearance of a lively new voice in New Zealand writing, wry, punchy, filled with fresh images [this sounds like me], and providing an engaging mix of fantasy and gritty realism [uh-huh]. It handles both male and female characters convincingly [why thank you] and tackles serious social concerns such as suicide [tick] with a combination of delicacy and dramatic directness [if you say so]. The stories cover a range of situations [definitely] from the emotional process of returning home from overseas [see ‘Unnatural Selection’], to cooking for a tribe of London school kids on a barge in bad weather [um...]. These are extraordinary stories [I couldn’t possibly comment] about ordinary people [tick], and they are told with a great deal of affection [I am a big softy]. It is a consistently powerful and entertaining collection [*blushes*] and is awarded the prize accordingly.”

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After the prizes were announced and the acceptance speeches had been delivered (Kim Scott said: “I’d just like to echo everything that Craig said,” which made me feel good, and means Kim Scott also thanked the New Zealand Ministry of Education for being a flexible and supportive employer), it was time for a few photos. They had a small number of all the short-listed books for sale and they all sold out. I signed about five. My Australian sales figures increased exponentially in one night. Then we finished the free booze and canapés and I went to dinner with some of the Commonwealth Writers Prize people, including Dr Paul Sharrad (I didn’t mention the barge story), the administrator for whom I spoiled the surprise of my victory (we discussed this at length), and a bunch of other good people to know in Australian letters. Much wine was consumed.

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I flew back to Wellington on the 8.45am flight the next day.

I know the burning question you all have: What movies did I watch on the plane?

Going there: The Social Network. Verdict: A very good movie, well put together.

Coming home: 127 Hours (aka the one where James Franco is trapped in a canyon and has to cut his hand off). I was interested in how the movie would handle a story which is ultimately like Titanic (we know it’ll sink) but with less characters and less movement. I thought it did a good job. Only problem was I mistimed things and got served my breakfast right when he starts hacking off his arm. I can’t watch surgery shows on TV, so this wasn’t a good thing. Even averting my eyes from the screen, I still got the electric screech through my earphones every time he snipped a nerve or tendon. When I tried to open the little capsule of milk for my cup of tea, the ends of my fingers were all numb and the capsule when flying under the feet of the person seated next me.

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So, that’s my Sydney story.

Work on Friday was a real struggle. Back to earth with a thud – even though there was carrot cake for morning tea and people congratulated me throughout the day, it was still work.

Now that the other region’s winners have been announced, I’m even more excited about the week of activities in Sydney in May. Amongst the winners are Emma Donaghue (Canada) whose novel Room was my favourite to winner the Booker Prize last year (I was wrong), and one of my favourite writers, David Mitchell (UK). Eep. I’ll have to work on how not to sound like a fanboy now that I’ve got this whole embargo thing mastered.