Avid Reader, Boundary St West End. I’m having my launch at the lovely Avid on the 9th March. It’s shaping up to be lots of fun. More on this later.

the two Love That Book stores on the Gold Coast – Southport and Helensvale

Mary Ryan’s at Milton and New Farm. I’ll be doing a signing at New Farm on the 17th of March too!

Riverbend Books at Bulimba

and Better Read than Dead in Newtown, Sydney.

I’m really grateful to these wonderful stores for helping me get Thrill Seekers out into the world.

Matty

This is a photo of my little brother Matty, taken in 1980 or 81 when he was 12 or 13 in the first year at high school. When this picture was taken he’d already started smoking dope, as had most of his friends. A couple of years later Matty was diagnosed with full-blown schizophrenia. He killed himself not long after his twentieth birthday. Thrill Seekers is dedicated to his memory.

Matty and I were very close, only 17 months apart. I don’t remember ever feeling jealous of him or us competing for our parents’ attention. No sibling rivalry. In a snapshot taken when my mother first brought him home from the hospital I look as if I’ve just been given the most wonderful present, my own real live dolly to look after. We were good mates – the “biggies” to our younger siblings “littlies”. Matty wasn’t much chop at school but he was amazing with his hands, particularly anything mechanical. He loved animals and they loved him. One day he clambered over the fence at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and cuddled a wombat! He was always a risk taker. At the age of two he found Dad’s car keys and took us both on a joy ride that almost took us over a cliff. He was lots of fun.

Matty started smoking dope before me. I was worried but it seemed harmless enough. I know better now. Many researchers are stuck in the “what came first the chicken or the egg” conundrum, arguing that people with a predisposition to mental illness are drawn to cannabis and other drugs in an attempt to self-medicate. I’m not. Matty may have had a predisposition to schizophrenia (one of our father’s cousins had the disease) but surely not all of his mates did too.

Anyway, these guys were 12 and 13 years old. They weren’t self-medicating, they were playing! They’d have a smoke and play war in the long grass by the horse’s paddock or race remodelled dragsters through squirted hose water; then head up the corner shop to feast on Twisties and lollies. They were kids.

The statistics say that the chance of developing schizophrenia is one in a hundred. If there’s a relative then your odds up to 6%. But what I saw was not just one of those boys going mad – Matty was only the first. It wasn’t two of them. Not three. But MOST of them. Upping their odds to around 90%. Even those who managed to escape full blown psychosis still wrecked their health and happiness because of the destructive power of their addictions.

It isn’t just sad, it’s a tragedy. All these young men killed and damaged, as if there’d been a war.

Researcher Professor Robin Murray has found in a recent study that people are 4.5 times more likely to be schizophrenic at 26 if they were regular cannabis smokers at 15, compared to 1.65 times for those who did not report regular use until age 18.

The risk is much greater the younger you start using.

It wasn’t, and isn’t, just Matty and his mates but other clusters of kids in developed societies all over the world. Boys, and girls too, mucking around, being tough, playing cool, searching for thrills and instead finding only the torture of mental illness.

Further criminalisation of cannabis isn’t the answer. It hasn’t worked. It won’t.

Kids need to know what they’re risking when they start having bongs for breakfast.

They need to know there’s nothing cool about going crazy.

 Schizophrenia fact sheet http://www.sane.org/information/factsheets-podcasts/187-schizophrenia

INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN MURRAY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPB7fCth6U

SCHIZOPHRENIA AND STREET DRUGS article http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html

 For further info or support see these sites.

Beyond Blue  http://www.beyondblue.org.au    Community Services: http://www.communityservices.qld.gov.au/youth/

Youth Affairs Network: http://www.yanq.org.au  CYMHS: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/rch/professionals/cymhs.asp#service

 Headspace: http://www.gpqld.com.au/page/Programs/Mental_Health/headspace/ Mental Illness Fellowship: http://www.mifa.org.au/mifq/

Schizophrenia Fellowship Qld:http://www.mycommunitydirectory.com.au/Queensland/Gold_Coast/Health_Services/Psychiatric_Services/101021/Mental_Illness_Fellowship_Of_Queensland__Schizophrenia_Fellowship_of_QLD_Inc_-_Gold_Coast_/?aid=Lifeline

 Black Dog: http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au  NISAD http://www.nisad.org.aub  SANE http://www.sane.org  DRUG ARM http://drugarm.com.au

Thrill Seekers

What more could a girl ask for Christmas than a launch date?

 All these years I’ve been hoping and dreaming that one day I would stand in front of a crowd at my favourite bookstore showing off a copy of my very own book.

Writers often use birth analogies for their creations being born into the wider world, leaving the mother and making its own friends, way, place. 

Well, this has been one hell of a long labour but at last I have a date when my very first book baby will make its appearance.

  Friday 9th March at Avid Reader, West End in Brisbane.

Thrill Seekers

Two big boxes of books have arrived at last! It’s very exciting to see so many of them.

 Looking forward to sharing them with the world.

Off to the beach now for a well-earned rest.

Danger Mines!

At the moment, I’m calling it, “When it Rains” but it’s had many other names – including Bittersweet, Chocolate Brown Vanilla,  Sugar Cane Juice, and A Lesson in Darkness. Which one do you like best?  Any new ideas welcome! It’s based on my time living and working in Cambodia in the mid-nineties when there was still a lot of Khmer Rouge activity and Westerners were being kidnapped and killed. Despite the ever-present danger, I feel deeply in love with the country and its people. It’s the most intriguing, captivating, perplexing and frustrating place I’ve ever been. Recently, I found a wonderful book  by Joel Brinkley, Cambodia’s Curse,  which helped add another dimension to my novel. Thanks Joel! He’s writing a novel set in Cambodia too. Fingers crossed the two of us will start some kind of vampire-like literary craze!

Khmer sugar cane juice vendor

I’m so looking forward to seeing my story of Cambodia become a book too.

After I sent that off, I gave my blog a new look and even joined Twitter, thanks to the advice I received from the delightful Lisa at Twine Marketing. In just one hour she helped me focus in on what I really needed to do to pull myself together as a “brand”.  As irksome as that initially was, I now realise it’s a reality of the modern writer’s world.

Thrill Seekers

Favel Parrett, acclaimed author of Past the Shallows recently read Thrill Seekers.  This is what she had to say.

 From “The Spring Tune” in Tales From Moominvalley (Puffin Books 1973)

Snufkin

“It’s the right evening for a tune, Snufkin thought. A new tune, one part expectation, two parts sadness, and for the rest, just the great delight of walking alone and liking it.

He had kept this tune under his hat for several days but hadn’t quite dared to take it out yet. It had to grow into a kind of happy conviction. Then, he would simply have to put his lips to the mouth organ, and all the notes would jump instantly into their places.

If he released them too soon they might get stuck crossways and make only a half-good tune, or he might lose them altogether and never be in the right mood to get hold of them again. Tunes are serious things, especially if they have to be jolly and sad at the same time.

But this evening Snufkin felt rather sure of his tune. It was there, waiting, nearly full-grown – and it was going to be the best he ever made.

Then, when he arrived in Moominvalley, he’d sit on the bridge rail and play it, and Moomintroll would say at once: That’s a good one. Really a good one.”

I love this piece. It reminds me how important it is to keep the tender shoots of first drafts protected and under your hat, to keep them all to yourself, till it is fully grown, and ready to be shown to the world – hopefully to a reader who is as appreciative as Moomintroll. 

Moomin Bridge by Maria Hobbit

The discipline of yoga has been instrumental in my writing. Not only does it relieve my body of the knots and tightness caused by sitting at the computer for hours every day but it also helps me weather the storms of rejections and rewrites and endure the endless waiting.

My yoga teachers and influences have included Iain Clarke at Paddington AstangaYoga Shala, Graeme and Leonie Northfield, Simon Borg Olivier, Clive Sheridan, Duska Jefed, Natalie Morris, Dave Ridgeway and most importantly my teacher for over eight years, Peter Douglass at Astanga Yoga West End, Boundary Street Yoga, and the Yoga Den. My practice has synthesised these teachings and is active, strong and safe with an emphasis on the importance of breath and core stability. I have over seven years experience teaching yoga at a variety of studios in Brisbane. Last year I ran my own yoga studio but found it was taking too much time from my writing, so now only teach privately.

Except for the upcoming course at the QLD Writers Centre!

I’ll be teaching a six week block combining gentle restorative yoga and easy writing exercises to get your creative juices flowing. It will be held on Tuesday evenings from 5:30 till 7pm starting on the 4th of October. It should be lots of fun. You don’t need to be fit or flexible. You don’t need to have written anything longer than a postcard. But you do need to have a sense of humour and be willing to relax and let go, and see what it’s like writing in that state.

I’m really looking forward to it.

If you or anyone you know would like to give it a go, please contact the Qld Writers Centre at www.qwc.asn.au or call 07 3842 9922

I’d love to see you there.