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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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In: The Making of Numb, Uncategorized

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 →

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By Gabrielle Blondell He ignores it there on the seat beside him. Instead, he sits high looking over the cars strung out before him. And beyond them is the sea. On this hot, fine day, it’s an impossible blue; it’s Le Mans Blue Metallic. Stephen breathes it in, goes so far as to crack the window and point his nose toward the gap, but all he can smell is Rex’s leash on the seat. It’s musky, a mix of cow leather and dog. The car ahead crawls even when there is a space to fill. Stephen knows the game. Try not to use the brakes.Read More →

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In: Book Reviews, Uncategorized

What takes us back to another time? I’m not talking about a memory, something viewed from afar. I’m talking about us slotting back into the skin of our younger selves, looking through those younger eyes and taking it all in with our younger minds. It’s so rare, I think, this kind of transportation, but when it does happen its powerful. It lingers for days. This is how I felt after reading Tim Winton’s, The Turning. My own childhood, my adolescence came back to me. I know it is partly because he is Australian and a coastal dweller and that he is just a tad olderRead More →

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In: Stories, Uncategorized

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash By Gabrielle Blondell It crept out of my mouth before I’d thought to reel it back in. I was like that back then. I’d say anything if it sounded right, if the rhythm was right, you know. Like a pop-song lyric. It didn’t need to make sense. And I saw the blood drain from Phil’s face and then rise again, dark red. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck what your mother used to say.’  His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. The weird thing was I didn’t either. I hadn’t listened to my mother in years. This oneRead More →

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In: Stories, Uncategorized

By Gabrielle Blondell Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash Harriet is rushing through the smoky streets toward the pub. ‘You’ll love him, Harry! You will,’ Sylvie had said that morning. Standing beside the smudge of red which is the DON’T WALK sign on the corner, Harriet is hoping Giles isn’t too inquisitive, not too much of a talker. Sex is a better icebreaker, she thinks. Doesn’t require a personality. A woman huddled at the 114 bus-stop coughs, a deep rasping sound, and Harriet feels her own throat tighten. Perhaps she should buy some of those surgical masks people seem to be getting around in.Read More →

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Review by Gabrielle Blondell It can be weird, eerie even, after a relationship breaks down. Try as we might to stay singular in a partnership, there is a blurring of lines. We borrow from each other – ideas, beliefs, underpants. It’s easier that way, economic. So when the relationship dissolves, it’s a wrench. We are left with pieces missing. It’s not just who we are now that is the challenge. It’s how we have changed since the last time we were single. A metamorphosis has occurred and moving on seems so difficult with our newly partial selves. Haruki Murakami’s novel, Killing Commendatore, reminds me ofRead More →

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In: Reading, Uncategorized

We yearn. The best of us do anyway and we struggle. Most often the struggle is carried on inside our minds as we attempt to bound and then rebound off walls we’ve built ourselves from beliefs we’ve had or adopted from…..goodness knows where. And this could be seen as futile and perhaps wisely so, if it were not for there being something noble, something best called human in the most fragile sense of the word, in the yearning and the struggling. It is the fact that we may not succeed which is the thing. We teeter on this knife’s edge, windmilling our arms this wayRead More →

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In: Stories, Uncategorized

By Gabrielle Blondell Alapai watches the young people enter. It is his first sight of them and he is careful with it. He makes sure to notice the one who holds the shoulders curved forward and defeated. He looks too for the one who holds them high to the ears, defensive. He knows on sight who is dating whom by the way they move together.   They sit as if their race chooses for them. Tongan with Tongan. Maori with Maori. White with white. Samoan with Samoan. Somali with Somali. “Good morning, students,” Alapai says. “Please settle yourselves.” He takes a whiteboard marker and writes inRead More →

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In: Human Nature, Reading, Uncategorized

There are special books, so strong in time and place, they transport us into the past. We walk with the characters through cities and landscapes. We smell the bakery on the corner or the mud of the riverbank. We hear the voices around us and we are immersed. We can begin to feel like Gump, a part of important moments in history.  It’s strange to think we really can live for a time in the past. It’s extraordinary to know that as long as there are people to tell these stories, those times cannot fade away. All readers need to do is pick up theirRead More →