Cranky Ladies of History

So other than my new job, the project keeping me most busy over the past month has been Cranky Ladies of History. This book began last year, when Liz Barr posted a fantastic piece on Tsaritsa Sophia Alekseyevna of Russia, terming her a “cranky lady” – this completely tickled my fancy, and I immediately thought of a bunch of brilliant writers I would love to see write about other cranky ladies of history – and the book was born. With Tansy Rayner Roberts as my co-editor, we have had stories pitched at us from all over the world, and we invited many wonderful writers to be part of the project. We decided we wanted to pay pro rates to the contributors, and to that end, we decided to try a crowd-funding campaign.

Over the course of the process, we realised that March, when we plan to run the campaign, is Women’s History Month, which is just marvellous! During the month we hope to see loads of people talking about THEIR favourite cranky ladies of history, which we will link to over on the FableCroft Blog Tour page. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun! I can’t wait to see the cranky ladies people write about – it’s going to be great!

If you would like to host, post or guest blog about one (or more!) of YOUR favourite Cranky Ladies as part of the official blog tour, please let me know! We want to plaster the internet with cranky women, and the more the merrier!

And a lovely weekend!

This has been my first proper weekend in Canberra. I’ve been home to the family each one since starting, and faced with two empty days not hanging out with the kids, well, that wasn’t particularly appealing! So naturally, I scheduled some socialising 🙂

Friday night I put the call out to any Canberra folk I knew or had connected with through writing circles to meet up at 5ish at a cute little vegetarian cafe/bar I’d found just down the road in Watson. David & Rob from CSFG and Kaaron Warren with Rebecca James in tow heeded the call and we spent several hours chatting over a couple of wines – great start! Well, it would have been though Kaaron and I compared notes the next evening and realised we’d both felt a LOT more affected by the small amount of wine (including headaches the next day!) than was quite logical, so now we’re a bit suss about the place! Otherwise it was excellent though 🙂

Saturday I had booked myself into several scheduled viewing of rentals – not that I’m actually looking right now, but I wanted to start getting a feel for the market and it’s also a good way to do some exploring. Thoroughly disheartened after THAT, luckily I organised to drive out to Donna and Matthew’s place at Conder, which is absolutely lovely, where I was fed and watered very well, with an accompaniment of great conversation. Couldn’t stay to continue enjoying their marvellous view, as I had to stop by Lorraine’s place for afternoon tea, more chats, and, perhaps most importantly, baby cuddles! Took bubs a little while to warm up (her brothers made up for that in spades!) but I did eventually get lovely hugs, which was very nice. I dashed home to pull my washing off the line and freshen up, before braving the local streets to find my way to Kaaron’s house. Canberra is terribly easy to navigate, so I made it there despite Google Maps trying its best to lead me astray, and some six hours later, after copious amounts of great food, wonderful wine, and smart conversation interspersed with raucous laughter, was dropped home by one of Kaaron’s fantastic friends. An utterly enjoyable evening to top of a really lovely day!

Despite the wine (and probably because of the water that flowed as freely!), I jumped out of bed feeling very chirpy indeed, albeit after a rather pleasant sleep in (8am is a Sunday sleep-in when you’re usually up at 6!). I did my housework (took about 15 minutes…there are definite advantages to tiny living space!) and wandered off for a walk around the suburb. This was somewhat delayed when I discovered another lovely cafe at the same complex as the vegetarian one and stopped for brunch, but I did then continue on and thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant weather and peaceful streets.

Home again for a Sunday afternoon of work – FableCroft and Aurealis work mostly, and still something I enjoy, so I have to say, on balance, this has been a great first weekend in Canberra! Look forward to many more 🙂

Not dead!

It’s been fairly quiet around these parts (though pretty active over on the FableCroft site, for reasons which will become clear!), but I’m still alive, still banging on! There’s no way I can cover all the stuff that’s gone on in the past couple of months, but here’s a little roundup:

• decluttered and thoroughly went through the entire house (this was planned for January, but we decided also to put our lovely house on the market *sigh* so was even more important!).
• caught the Spirit of Tasmania and drove up to Canberra to start new job! (it’s fantastic, I love it, both the job and Canberra itself!).
• started brilliant new job in lovely big boys’ school (was a bit intimidating at first, but the students, and the staff, are really nice).
• applied for some Arts funding by way of forthcoming Pozible campaign for Cranky Ladies of History project (we find out tomorrow if we have the potential to succeed!).
• worked on several FableCroft things, including Jo Anderton’s forthcoming novel, Insert Title Here slush wrangling, Cranky Ladies stuff, Hobart book launch for Tansy and Dirk’s books (March 9, Hobart Bookshop!) and loads more.
• Started to meet up with Canberra friends at various times.
• Flew home on weekends to hang out with the family (and friends in Tassie).
• Finished initial CBCA reading for the Book of the Year awards, in anticipation of the judging conference in early April.
• Probably about 8 million other things I now can’t remember!

So yes, it’s been a really busy time! I’ll try to keep up 🙂