Simone Clare Bailey's Blog (65)

It's Friday night here in the land of Oz. My two sons are messing about in the loungeroom with the young lad who is having a sleepover, and I am pondering the imminent signing of the contract for my next book, 'Silver Studs & Sabre Teeth' - the title is a homage to the song 'Megal Guru' by T-Rex. One of my secondary characters is a Marc Bolan impersonator. Who, like me, is of the view that we need more Marc Bolan impesonators in fine literature? Who cares about boy wizards and vampires?…

I haven't been doing as much writing as I would like lately because I have to attain a qualification to enable me to continue working as a carer.  Yes, I am an author, but like most Australian authors can't make a full time living from it.  I work part time as a community carer, and my employer is training me in the appropriate qualification.  Don't know what you call it in the US, but in Oz it's a Certificate III in Aged & Communitiy Care.  Some of the old people whom I assist with…

It is my long held belief that the Eighties were the worst decade ever.  Really, puffball skirts (pfffft!), androgynes who sang crappy songs (yes, you, Boy George and Marilyn!), shoulder pads that made you resemble a grid iron player, ozone-depleting hair product, skinny leather ties (I remember my cousin received one as a favour from a girl he partnered in the local deb ball, and a jealous friend upon hearing of this just slavered, 'Yum!'), mullet hair (actually, I live in a town populated…

In Australia we haven't exercised the death penalty since 1967.  The Act itself was repealed, I think, in the early 1970s.  There are good reasons for not having the death penalty.  Of course, there is the heavy possibility that somebody INNOCENT may get executed.  There is the fact that it is not a deterrent, because most  murders are committed in the heat of the moment, ie, crimes of passion.  Well, I have found another one.  It just may inspire songs like 'Womens' Prison', performed by…

So many impediments to getting the writing done.  Writers moan about lack of time, lack of inspiration, distractions.  Here's another one to add to the list: kids spilling freaking yoghurt on the keyboard!  Had to clean the rotten thing, unless I wanted it to smell like Satan's effluvium and have a dozen repetitions every time I pressed the '8' key.  So I did what every good woman does.  Cleaned up after the kids.  I also cursed them, as I damped a cloth with white vinegar, wrapped it around…

I've been reading a  novel about a writer, and the story describes his book sales as 'modest'.  Well, I guess my book sales can be described that way, too.  But you know what?  I don't want them to be modest anymore, I want them to become 'slutty'.  I guess if people use the word 'modest' to describe less-than-spectacular sales, then I would imagine that 'slutty' would be a good word to describe multitudinous sales.  Yep, I want 'em to be slutty; slutty as the gangbang moll that used to…

          Before reading 'Abernethy' by Simone Bailey, I can't say I had ever read what is called Young Adult…

Black Dog

Review 

The importance of family, the life-and-death cycle, friendship, and the struggle to understand divinity are

some of the themes explored by former high school science teacher turned musician and author Matt Syverson in his novel Black Dog, ISBN 978-0-615-42806-2 (published by Backstage Pass Publishing…

This is a major piss-off: having no time or energy to write these days.  When not writing, I work as a carer.  This is rewarding and helps pay the bills, at least until my novels pay a bit more of my bills (and there goes a pig steering a hang glider).  Not only have I been mega-busy, I have come down with a beast of a head cold.  Just the sort that makes you feel as though a medicine ball is blocking your sinuses, and a large invisible vise has grabbed your head.  I would have preferred to…

So.  Tonight's the big night.  School reunion - thirty years since Year 10.  Hoo boy.  I didn't get to do all those tummy crunches I planned in order to slim down.  I was actually a somewhat hot-bodied teenager.  I guess I'm passable as a middle-aged woman.  Tonight the big questions will be answered: Who got fat?  Who went bald?  Who had a sex change?  Now, what I'm fantasing about is that my old classmates will rock up with copies of my novels for me to autograph.   Pie-in-the-sky pipe…

I've got my school reunion in a few weeks.  And notwithstanding I considered myself to be something of a fuck-up at high school (the syndrome affects many teenagers, I guess), I found myself on the committee to organise the reunion.  And learned that perhaps I wasn't the fuck-up I believed myself to be.  A few people I tracked down and made contact with have emailed me, having read some of my material, and told me they remembered me for a sense of humour, and being an art-and-literature…

The other week, having exhausted all other avenues for publicising my work, I suggested to my husband we have a reality television show to publicise my novels.  He said, 'It would be a pretty boring show.'  He's right.  But that does not stop anybody else from having one, does it?  And unlike most people who have reality TV shows, I'm pretty certain I'm not an oxygen-thieving waste of space. 

I've not long completed the first draft of my next novel, but I've put it in…

Some things just don't make a lot of sense.  Today a FB friend of mine posted a clip from Dead or Alive, with a comment that today is the lead singer's birthday.  I think the androgynous one is 52.  I shouldn't care about this, and to be honest, I don't.  But they had a mainstream hit in the mid-80s with 'You Spin Me Right Round'.  Now, I have an innate loathing of just about all things 80s, and this dude encapsulates the bulk of them, particularly the 80s androgynous fad.  As you can…

Some things are not so good at the moment.  First of all, I read the the paper that Hugh Hefner's ex spoke about their life between the sheets, and said he lasted, 'like, two seconds.'  Hey, he lasted.  I thought only arteries got hard in men his age.  But it gave me a visual I just really did not need.  And neither did you, reader, and for that I apologise.

My uncle is sick, and gravely so.  I visited him yesterday, and stayed with my father and his sister.  But what was…

Just a quick random musing before I lay me down to sleep (it's almost 11.00pm here in Australia).  I've had it brought to my attention that yesterday was the birthday of actress Lynda Carter, aka Wonder Woman in the 1970s television show.  She was, and still is, one gorgeous broad.  Does anybody else think that Major Steve Trevor, WW's love interest, must be one of the stupidest men alive?  By this I mean Diana Prince (I forget her ranking) would always contact Wonder Woman (from memory),…

I'm a member of a Facebook page that is dedicated to songs, and every day we have a theme and post a song pertaining to that theme.  It's always fun when we have a theme about songs we can't stand!  Today, we posting songs from bands we have seen in concert.  It got me thinking about some concerts I attended many years ago.  My cousin took me to see an Aussie band at a North Sydney nightclub.  I won't say the name of the band, but I will say that they encapsulated to me all that was wrong…

Just thought I might write about some crap movie lines, or movie lines that have just made me want to throw my popcorn at the screen.  This is bizarre; I don't like popcorn, so won't buy it.  It's probably the popcorn of the poor spectator sitting next to me that I will seize and throw with force at the screen.

1.  'Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get' by the titular character of the nausea-inducing 'Forrest Gump'.  Every box of chocolates I…

I'm an old-fashioned type of gal.  I like to read a book the physical way.  I love the feel of a book between my hands, and the smell of the pages when it's brand new.  A bit like the way people go wondrous over the smell of a new car.  I probably won't read an e-book.  But I have just signed a contract with my publishers Zeus Publications for my two novels to be published in e-book form, as well as the old fashioned way they are already available.  There's definitely a market for it, ie,…

When I'm not working as an author, I do paid (!) work as a community care worker.  This involves maybe showering an aged or disabled person, or taking somebody shopping, or preparing a meal.  Sometimes I take them to another town for 'social support'.  I did this on Thursday, drove a guy with a light mental disability to a nearby town to go shopping.  I saw a major bookstore (you all know the one, it's had administrators close in) where I had done a book signing some months ago, so I thought…

It's been an interesting couple of weeks.  I've finished the first draft of my current novel, and before I start a rewrite, I've decided on a project for my next novel.  This is all good.  What is not good is that my past few days have been motifed with dog faeces.  Yep, you read right.  Dog poop everywhere.  I babysat my mother-in-law's shitzu/maltese terrier, whilst she and my husband attended a function in way-out-west New South Wales.  I took it outside several times, and it did its…