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By Gabrielle Blondell Gil padded across the thick grass of the quad, past students sprawled under trees, reading, chatting, smoking, sleeping. No one noted his passing. He was already a ghost. He stopped in the middle of the stone path. The clock tower rose above him against a big ‘ sky. Birds swirled above it, so frank in their freedom, so very sure of their position against that impossible blue. ‘Gil, old man! I’ve been looking for you.’ William Bright strode toward him. Gil didn’t want to like his friend today. He started off again toward the archway leading to his office. William fell intoRead More →

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By Gabrielle Blondell “John.” He made my name a statement, nothing more. “Pete.” I said. He shut the passenger door and sat stiffly, staring along the road leading out of Cunungra barracks. I reached toward the GPS, selected Dangarsleigh Road, Armidale, and pressed START. “Four hundred and forty-one kilometres to go,” I said. Pete was a distant cousin, so distant, I wasn’t sure how we were related except that my Aunt Jas on my mother’s side was involved. It was she who suggested Pete and I share the expense of a trip to her daughter’s wedding. “So….” I said, pulling out onto the main road.Read More →

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Catch the Moon, Mary is more than a love story. It’s a story about the nature of love … and of sacrifice and perseverance. Young Mary is a gifted musician, living with an abusive father, when her music attracts the attention of a fallen angel, Gabriel. A deal is struck. He will protect her from her father, if she gives over her rights to her music. It is through the music he may redeem himself and re-enter heaven. This work of magical realism is parable-like; musical in its rhythm and glorious in its language. It requires one to slow down, take snippets and sample themRead More →

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By Gabrielle Blondell ‘I think you would be perfect for the television, Uncle Merv. I could help, if Maisie doesn’t want to do it.’ I was already pretty sure Maisie would say no. Ever since the twins, my cousin worried that her arse was too big and, in my opinion, she was right to. Plus, Mum said it was unseemly at her age to squeeze herself into her little satin costume and flounce about on stage. But I could tell my uncle was still unsure. He was standing by the kitchen door, not propped against the wall or anything, just standing, his arms hanging byRead More →

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By Gabrielle Blondell Anna Florin nodded her satisfaction as each guest took their seat. She had gathered the most interesting of people, the artist, the neurosurgeon, the novelist, the musician, a collection who needed to seem as if money didn’t matter by giving it away. She smiled at them in turn for she was the socialite, the person bred to gather such people and nudge them toward each other so they may learn the significance of other people’s lives. In her fashion, she continued her visual reconnoitre of the table until she came to the empty seat beside her daughter.   Anna raised an eyebrow atRead More →

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“They will be great!” we think as parents of newborns. “They will go on to live exceptional lives!” But sitting on our shoulder whispering in our ear is our less certain self. It may not turn out the way we would like, it says. It may not turn out at all. I’ve been thinking about broken hearts and lost dreams, since reading Chigozie Obioma’s, The Fishermen. It is impossible not to think such things having spent time between the pages of this beautiful book. Obiama’s novel is set in the town of Akure in southwestern Nigeria during the 1990’s. It follows the fate of one family,Read More →

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by Gabrielle Blondell He tried not to think on what was coming and put his mind to about other things. Julianna mostly. Her fine shoulders, the way they dipped midway and rose again to meet the joint of her arm. He had rested his own arm there when they rode the ferry to the mouth of the Brisbane River last September. They had lived there together in Brisbane’s thickened air until she was seconded to London. These days it was just him in the little old weatherboard with its long slim back garden. It was he alone, who sat on the back porch watching theRead More →

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We think they don’t move, but they do. We think they don’t communicate, but we are wrong. They live on a different time frame, that’s all; one that takes in the great vistas from an age before people. Their gaze is farseeing, beyond us (over our heads, so to speak), and hopefully will persist long after we are gone. That is, if the world is lucky. They are trees and this novel from Richard Powers allows us to get close to something marvellous and infinitely more valuable than the surfaces of our floors, the frames of our houses, and our own front doors. You see,Read More →

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In: The Making of Numb, Uncategorized

There is a lot involved in getting a book into the world. It’s exhausting I tell you and there have been many times when I thought I’d sighed that final sigh. I’ve thought it was done and dusted. I was wrong and below is the story of the making of a story. ! I remember it now, getting to the end of that first draft and dancing a little jig and then discovering how far from the finishing line I really was. Disheartened, I wrote THE END is Only the Beginning. I had a book of sorts, but I didn’t have a story, not yet.Read More →

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A reader might feel that a story is flawed, a book reviewer might be able to tell you why, but only an editor can help you to fix it. While, a sense of story may be crucial to homo sapiens, the ability to craft one usually isn’t. It takes work and requires help. As editor, Jenn Zabinskas, puts it, ‘another set of eyes’ is needed. ‘Editors provide a critical and impartial eye and will pick up on things that might have been overlooked or not even considered,’ she says. It’s true. A writer gets very close to a work. Immersion is required to be ableRead More →