residence
This competition is simple and won’t take you long [in fact, a sentence will often be enough] but I need to give you some backstory first.
A few years back. I was reading a book by a very famous children’s writer and I was struck by one of the pages that preceded the actual story. It was a long list of favourable reviews by readers [as opposed to critics]. They were gushing, without exception. Things like: You are an absolutely brilliant writer or You are my favourite writer in the whole world or I can’t put your books down or You make Shakespeare look like a dumbass [I exaggerate only slightly]. Now, I couldn’t help but feel this was somewhat tacky, a “hey, everybody thinks I am hot poo” type of self-publicity [to be fair, it was probably the publisher’s idea, rather than the writer’s – anything to sell books].
I was starting to write a series of books for younger readers [boys aged 10-12] and I thought it would be cool to do something similar. Except, rather than saying how brilliant I am, I would make up reviews that came to a different conclusion. Here are some examples:
- I have always hated reading. Then I read your book and now I understand why
- I used to think Brussels sprouts were the most disgusting thing in the world until I picked up one of your books
- I laughed and laughed until I thought I would die. Then I started reading your book
- Amazing characterisations, enthralling plots, vivid use of language. You might want to give any of those a go
- My sister thinks you are a brilliant writer. She also believes she is from a small planet near Alpha Centauri
- Hilarious… fascinating…amazing. Just three words I wouldn’t use to describe your book
- My teacher caught me reading your book during maths class. She was going to give me a detention, but reckoned I’d suffered enough
- Your new book is pitiful, pathetic and poorly written – a huge improvement on your last
You get the general idea. Funnily enough, a few of my readers took great pity on me: “Didn’t you feel bad about those reviews at the front of your books?’ I didn’t have the heart to tell them I wrote them myself.
So, the competition. Submit a clever or witty put-down of one of my books in no more than three sentences. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO READ ANY OF MY BOOKS, WHICH IS AN AMAZING ADVANTAGE! But if you want to check out what I have written [and some details about the books] then go to my website, here. The winner will receive signed copies of the American versions of my first three novels for Young Adults [rare – could be worth a fortune in years to come ... he dreamed]. Just remember, I am looking for something slightly clever and well-expressed [“Jonsberg’s writing is crap” won’t win!]
If you are interested in harsh reviews, there is an annual competition for the nastiest review of the year. Read some. The shortlist section of this website [Hatchet Job] makes for cringeworthy reading.
Enjoy.
Ghost Story: The Hands Part 3.
‘Something evil?’ I said.
‘I was in my study,’ he replied. ‘It was probably about eight in the evening and I was doing paperwork related to work. It was a very cold night, so I had my central heating cranked up full. It was VERY toasty in that room. Suddenly, the temperature plummeted. It must have dropped thirty degrees in the space of a minute. I could see my breath misting the air.’
‘Spooky.’
Richard scratched his head.
‘It wasn’t so much the cold that bothered me. It was the feeling that there was something in the room with me – something evil. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my cat crouching just outside my opened study door. It was snarling and hissing and its back was arched, the fur standing upright, eyes fixed on a point behind my chair. And I just knew that if I turned around I would see someone or something looming over me.’
‘And did you turn?’ I asked.
He paused, shuddered and took a drink.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did.’
To be continued…
The time has nearly come for a competition where you can win a prize of such staggering mediocrity it will make your eyes water. Hone up your review skills [but with a difference]. Check out some reviews within the pages of Insideadog, but be prepared to go the extra yards. Details coming soon.
How to survive the new school year:
Did you ask the question about the car? Any interesting replies?
In English, write a poem and hand it in to your teacher. The poem doesn’t have to make any sense whatsoever [in fact, much better if it doesn’t], but the key is it should LOOK like a poem. Something like this:
I hoot
like a bullfrog on the moon with A.D.D.
and see the lights
Of the universe
Blink … Out.
Tell your teacher that your poem is a microcosm of man’s search for commitment in a hostile cosmos and ask for his/her opinion. You will be surprised how often the teacher is full of praise for compete gibberish. What are they going to do? Destroy a budding writer’s confidence? I don’t think so.
Now, I'm not having a go at the wonderful people of Insideadog, but it is sometimes difficult to see when someone has made a comment [you have to click on Residence first and then navigate to 'comment', rather than it coming up on the Residence page itself].
Anyway, someone has made a comment! Here it is:
Dear Author
Thanks for your interesting, but very twisted and strange post. Though you may not help us discover how to get inside a dog, I'm sure you'll help us get inside the mind of a nutter. No offence, of course. (You can't help it.) As to your photo quiz, C is one of the living dead.
Yours faithfully, Dr Hackenbush.
I am thrilled that someone has read what I've written. Twisted and strange? I certainly hope so. The mind of a nutter? You are too kind, sir. In fact, I am so pleased, Dr Hackenbush, that I am prepared to have your babies.
By the way, the third instalment of the ghost story will be posted tomorrow...
I’m working on the assumption that there are plenty of people out there who would like to be published writers. Do you dream of that moment when you get your first novel published? The delirious joy of seeing a book with YOUR name on it in your local bookstore? The first magnificent reviews – “A writer of enormous talent has emerged…”? Being asked to a literary conference for a panel meeting with John Marsden and Melina Marchetta?
Ah, yes. Heady stuff.
But a word of warning. Sometimes it can be positively humiliating to be a writer.
A good number of years ago, I went to a festival. Amongst the company of writers were Morris Gleitzman and Markus Zusak, fabulous writers both. It was clear I had arrived as a writer if I was in such august company.
My first session was in a large tent on the school grounds and it was packed to the rafters [if tents have rafters – which they don’t]. There was an excited buzz around the tent as I made my way to the podium and started my staggeringly witty, clever and brilliantly informative talk: “Good morning, my name is Barry Jonsberg and I am delighted…’ [a stunning start, I’m sure you will agree]but then noticed eighty percent of the audience leaving. Now, even by my own high standards, this was quite remarkable. Ten seconds and people are nearly being trampled in the mass exodus? “Sorry,” said one teacher as he passed. “We thought you were Morris Gleitzman.”
Now, I have placed a picture of Morris here, so you can see where the confusion arose. Do I look anything like Morris? Were we separated at birth? I don’t think so.
Anyway, I continued my talk to the remaining ten people [who almost certainly wanted to see Morris but couldn’t be bothered to move] whilst hearing roars of laughter from the adjoining tent where Morris, presumably, was inviting everyone to laugh at me. Or he could simply have been brilliant, witty and engaging about his own writing…
Later, I sat between Morris and Markus for a book signing. The queue of kids for Morris possibly exceeded the length of the Great Wall of China. The queue for Markus almost matched it. My queue was… well, what is the length of a queue with no people in it? Zero? Occasionally, a small child queuing for Morris would break out of the line and ask me to sign the paper bag containing his/her copy of one of Morris’s books. The paper bag! So I signed it “Morris Gleitzman sucks.”
I apologise, Morris. Humbly.
Now, other writers have had similar experiences. For an excruciatingly funny Youtube song by the American writer Parnell Hall, click here:
Happy Valentine's Day!
Are you looking for that perfect gift for your loved one? Tired of cliched chocolates and flowers? How about something romantic, a love story that will bring tears to his/her eyes?
I have JUST the thing for you.
A book.
What's more, an award-winning book.
What's more, an award-winning book about a love that survives death.
Ah, how sweet.
It is purely coincidental that I happened to write it.
Wrap it in something gorgeous and when you hand it over, say "Thank you for Being Here for me."
I tell you, you won't believe how many brownie points you wil rack up.
Have a beautiful day...
Ghost Story: The Hands Part 2
We left our intrepid hero, Richard, investigating the sounds of fingernails scratching against his bedroom wall…
‘As soon as I go into the bathroom, though, the sounds stopped,’ he said. ‘I even examined the walls for signs of scratching, but there was nothing there. When I went back to bed, they started again.’
‘That must have been scary,’ I pointed out.
‘Nah. I’m not a believer in the supernatural. Maybe I had rats inside the walls. The weirdest episode, though, was when I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the sounds of a party going on downstairs.’
‘A party?’
He topped up his wine glass. ‘Sounded like one. Music, chattering, chinking of wine glasses. Trouble was, I was alone in the house and it was three in the morning.’ He swirled his glass and looked into the liquid. ‘I went downstairs and the noise just got louder. I stopped outside my living room door which was closed. When I turned the handle and opened the door the sounds of people talking just washed out. I flicked on the light switch and the noise…’ He tilted his head as if searching for the right description. ‘…well, it just blinked out. You know, like the turning on of the light turned off the noise. When I went inside there was nothing there. Nothing out of place. Empty.’ He put his glass down. ‘Thing is, when I turned the light off and closed the door, it all started up again.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘Not much I could do,’ he replied. ‘I called out “Please keep the noise down, guys. I’m trying to sleep” and went back to bed.’
‘You must have been scared by that,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get scared until the following night when something evil made an appearance in my study.’
To be continued…
It has come to my attention that my fellow-writers, Michael Gerard Bauer and Steven Herrick, have made some personal comments regarding a certain picture I posted last week. I believe it has something to do with "Home detention."
Okay. Bring it on!
All I ask, my socially-challenged colleagues, is that you use the Residence site, rather than being sneaky and using a social network site [aka Facebook] that has few followers and, frankly, will never catch on.
I eagerly await your responses. Scary pictures below {Michael's is small - no accident there]:
Inside a Dog readers might like to to participate in the Australian Christian Teen Writer Awards. A $1,000 prize is given for the best unpublished manuscript by an Australian citizen under 18 years of age.
Supplementary awards may be made.
The winning work will explore a Christian perspective or theme and incorporate, explain or encourage Christian life and values. Entry forms can obtained by ringing 1300 13 7725 or visiting www.spcka.org.au.
I thought I’d give the ghost story a rest for the moment, but I’ll take up the story in my next posting.
For this one, I thought you might want to know what I’m working on at the moment. In my first post I quoted from it, so it’s probably okay to give a little bit more information. It’s called My Life As An Alphabet and it is based on an English assignment that my wife often gives to her students. In that assignment, students have to write an autobiography in which each paragraph is based upon the letters of the alphabet. So, twenty six paragraphs in all. For A, for example, a student might write: A is for Alan, my dipstick brother. He is twelve and a complete pain in the backside. I remember when he...
It is a very cool assignment and students get right into it. In fact, even reluctant writers have been known to write 3,000 words when normally it’s a struggle to get a sentence or two out of them [teachers take note!]. My novels often come from small beginnings and My Life As An Alphabet is no exception. What if, I thought to myself, a student was given this assignment and decided she couldn’t just do a paragraph for each letter but had to write a chapter? What if this student was very strange and saw the world differently from everyone else? What if she wanted to tell the story of her bizarre life through this assignment: her relationship with her mother, father, her Rich Uncle Brian, her pen pal Denille, her best friend Douglas Benson From Another Dimension and her pet goldfish, Earth-Pig Fish?
I am three quarters of the way through it and I’m having fun. So here is Candice’s first letter to her American pen pal, Denille [Denille never replies, for reasons that may become obvious, but that doesn’t stop Candice writing every week. She’s that kind of girl]. And this may give you some insight into the character of my heroine:
Dear Denille,
My name is Candice Phee and I am thirteen years old. I go to school in Albright, Queensland, a small town about forty kilometres from Brisbane. I suppose you don’t know about kilometres, because you deal in miles. Forty kilometres is about twenty five miles, I guess [I put in “I guess” because I’m told Americans use this phrase a lot. See, I’m trying to connect].
So. About me. Well, I’m kinda average height for my age [‘kinda’ is another example of linguistic connection] and I have long, dirty blonde hair. I don’t mean ‘dirty’ in the sense that I don’t wash it, because I do. Every day. But more in the sense of its natural colour which, to be honest, makes it seem as if I don’t wash it every day. Which I do. I have freckles. All over my face and my body. I can’t go out in the sun unless I use cream with a sun protection factor of about one zillion. Dad says I should only go out in the sun when I’m wearing the kind of full body armour favoured by the SAS, but that’s just a joke. I think. I have piercing blue eyes. Two of them [joke!]. Some people say they’re my best feature. Actually, it’s mum who says they’re my best feature. She says they are like corn flowers. Or is it cornflours? Cornflour is white and you use it for baking, so it’s probably corn flowers. Anyway, they are a light blue which is striking. Mum says they are striking.
I used to have a sister but she is dead. This makes me an only child.
I don’t like much of the stuff that other people my age like. Computers don’t interest me. Most music is boring. I don’t have a mobile phone because hardly anyone talks to me in real life, so I can’t imagine anyone would want to ring me or text me. What would be the point? I only like movies that make me cry. I don’t have friends who think they are my friends. Apart from Douglas Benson From Another Dimension who I will tell you about in a later letter [see, I’m being mysterious].
What is it like being American? I only know from watching TV [another thing I’m not keen on. What am I keen on?] and it seems to me that being American must be very hard. Dad says that Americans are arrogant pricks who think they are better than everyone else and couldn’t name the countries to the south or the north of them. I’m not sure this is true [but if it is, the answer is Mexico and Canada]. What TV I’ve watched gives the impression of Americans as shallow and obsessed with image. Are you shallow and obsessed with image? New York must be an exciting place, what with all that violence and bling. Have you been mugged? Please let me know because I am interested in things like that.
Albright is not like New York, even if I don’t know what New York is like. We don’t have bling, for one thing, and violence is limited to a punch up once a month at the local pub on a Saturday night. It’s a sleepy place. They say New York never sleeps, so we will be a good match, what with your town never sleeping and mine constantly sleeping. We will be like Yin and Yang.
Write soon. I am very much looking forward to hearing from you.
Your pen pal,
Candice.
It is fun being a writer...
Desperately sad losers? Maybe so. But the picture to the left shows not just your current writer-in-residence, but also three teachers at his senior school [including the Head of English]. As this is the first week back at school in the Northern Territory I felt it incumbent upon me to mark the occasion by humiliating my colleagues in as comprehensive a manner as possible.
Believe it or not, this strange bunch of people, plus a few others who refused to be photographed, achieved the best results last year of any English department in the NT. In fact, ANY department, English or otherwise. Judge not a book by its cover? Good advice. But we DO look weird. And, let’s be honest, a little scary. Speaking of which:
The Hands: A Ghost Story, Part 1
As promised, here is the start of my TRUE ghost story. It happened about thirty years ago, back in the UK and I had been invited round to someone’s house for a meal. I didn’t really know her very well but her husband was a French chef at a local restaurant that supposedly served fabulous food [I couldn’t afford to eat there] so I felt that at least I would get a damn good meal. Unfortunately, he had been called in to work that night, so when I rocked up there was just his wife and a guy called Richard who I didn’t know. We finished the food [pretty good, I remember, even if not cooked by the renowned chef] and sat chatting for a while. It was getting late, the candlelight created just the right atmosphere and we were all mellow after a couple of glasses of wine. The conversation turned to ghost stories. Now I have always been a sucker for ghost stories. I love them, even though I’m the kind of person who can’t watch horror movies without covering my eyes with splayed fingers and hyperventilating.
‘Richard lives in a haunted house,’ said my host. ‘He’s got some cool stories to tell.’
‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘Tell me all.’
Richard fiddled with his wine glass. ‘Well, most of it is pretty unremarkable,’ he said finally. ‘I moved into the house about six months ago. It’s only about ten years old and for the first five months it was all fine. I live there by myself, you see, unless you count my cat. But then I started to hear strange things at night.’
‘Clanking chains?’ I suggested.
He smiled. ‘Nothing so dramatic,’ he said. ‘Footsteps, mainly. From downstairs. I would be lying in bed and hear the sounds of someone, or something, moving around. I’d get up to investigate and there was never anyone there. The sounds would stop but as soon as I went back to bed they’d kick in again.’
‘Scary,’ I said.
‘More like annoying,’ Richard replied. ‘I just put it down to the normal sounds that houses make late at night. You know, timbers settling, metal contracting. Maybe I had too much imagination and believed that ordinary noises had a sinister significance.’
‘But?’ I said.
‘But then I heard the sounds of fingernails scraping along the wall next to my bed. There was no mistaking that. It came from the bathroom next to my bedroom. Trouble was, there was no one in the house except me. So I got up to see what it was…’
To be continued.
By the way, I hope you had a fabulous first week back at school [second week for some, I guess]. I’m teaching part-time this year and met my two new classes who seem lovely. Then again, it was the first week… maybe they’ll give me the occasional nasty surprise once they’ve settled in.
