Your Mid-Week Art Break: Adrian Dadich

How great are these cyborg girls by Adrian Dadich? Immensely creative, his representation of weaponry and technology infused with character is doing things to me. Also, I'm totally obsessed with the fox hoodie. *chinhands*

A Turns 15

My little brother, A, turned 15 over the weekend.

I got to co-chaperon a party for his friends alongside my Dad which is always pretty hilarious. Fifteen isn't exactly a forgiving age, one that shows itself in the stretch of gangly limbs and the new canvas of oily, pimply skin. The joke of small jaws and mouths crowded with metal braced teeth. That said, they were a nice bunch of kids. Bright smiled and polite and good friends to A, which always scores bonus points in the tallyboard of  Overett family life.

Poor A's had a rough hand, the only boy and the youngest of the three of us, and by quite a bit too - he's eight years my junior, ten younger than M. Even though my cousin's been off making babies of late, A's still such a kid to my extended family - someone who needs care and a specific type of teasing, not the balls on the line mockery we normally engage with each other. That's changing though, and he's started to bait us all a little too keenly, a smart grin on his speckly face.

A's had the mixed blessing of my sister and I both having moved out of home by the time he hit thirteen, and sometimes I wonder what that's like. Not having the arguable blessing of being an only child, but having sisters who didn't so much live in your pocket as they paraded in and out of your life. It doesn't help that M and I are chaotic personalities at best - loud and big and total time sucks. It's not like what we had growing up though. With us only two years apart, my life was defined by my sister, just like it became defined by A when he was born too. Which is an interesting concept of itself. I was seven when he was born and have a clear, stark memory of it - of Mum on the couch, flushed pink and grinning and then of her after, drained of colour, and I remember thinking she must have leaked it all out into this tiny, red thing that had come out of her. He was so squished up and even though my hands were only small, I could hold his whole body in the space between my sweaty palm and fleshy elbow.

He grows basically an inch a day at the moment, having recently broken the 6' line, and it always surprises me when I come around to see him and he towers over me. Somewhere in the back of my head he's still barely at my hip, tugging on my pant leg to play house or cops and robbers with him. It's weird like that - being a big sister though. So much of my childhood and teen years were teaching him things - how to play Monopoly and Jenga, bake, how to clean the lizard tank. It's all swings and roundabouts I guess though, and I'm excited to see what the next few years are going to unleash - what man's going to climb out of my brother's broadening chest. Excited to see what, exactly, this kid's going to teach me.

Sunday Short: Underwater by Romy Ash

She picks a strand of noodle-like weed off her arm and begins to cry. Swimming has always cured her of hangover, melancholy, tiredness. She’s grown up making her decisions underwater, in the quiet there, or out the back past the breakers, with the water surging around her and the about-to-break waves lifting her way up high and back down again. This is the first time that swimming has made things worse.

If I'm perfectly honest, I have mixed feelings about Romy Ash. She's quite the golden child of Australian writing at the moment and she is, doubtlessly, incredibly talented. That said, I feel she can rely on easy exits sometimes to get you connected to a character - particularly abuse, molestation, etc. It seems to be a feature of a lot of what I've read about her, including her Miles Franklin + Stella nominated novel, Floundering (which is good! And definitely worth reading! I just continue to believe that the sex abuse in that one is entirely unnecessary).

Underwater is a short story of hers published in both the Griffith Review and Best Australian Stories and it really is a lovely and emotive piece of writing. The bond between two siblings traveling to a beach in Japan is biting and sweet, as opposed to just bittersweet, and the relationship of the protagonist with the water is the best kind of beautiful. It's a lovely short story. You can read Underwater over on Ash's website here.

Friday Finds

By now a lot of people have heard about the rape joke made by a creator to a manager at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It's all pretty hideous, but, on maybe a positive note, it's generated a lot of dialogue about rape language and misogyny in gaming which is always something worth talking about. The Mary Sue has a good breakdown of the situation here as does Gamers Against Bigotry.On a better gaming note, Princess Peach will be a playable character in a mainstream Mario game for the first time since 1988!

- The Wheeler Centre brings it again with Tara Moss talking about evil women. Fair warning: she is super gorgeous and seems to snap her lips a lot? Lovely piece of writing though.

- Chuck Wendig tells you 25 Things You Should Know About YA Fiction

- These six tips for finishing your novel are pretty great too.

- I'm totally enamored with the photography of Robert Kaczynski. Miss Moss has a lovely collection of the pics over on her blog, so check them out.

- 10 Great Books Starring Cats! Because what's not to love about that?

- What your favourite Shakespeare play says about you. Apparently I find unisex t-shirts convenient?

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Riikka Auvinen

How great is the artwork of Riikka Auvinen? A graphic designer from Finland, she utilises water colours beautifully to create these dense, dark worlds and wonderful creatures. Her stuff is pretty excellent. You can check out more over on her deviantart page.

Sunday Short: We Make Women Out of Snow by Tara Cartland

Are you waiting for me to say that she looks like you, Jane? She doesn’t. She looks like whatever is hiding behind the wall of Fitzjames’ chest. She looks kind. He cradles her in the crook of his arm as he climbs the tall stepladder, and places her, gently, atop her own body.

I'm really enjoying Seizure's flash fiction series, Flashers (only a little because I've had one of my own pieces published by them). Tara Cartland is one of those writers you can see exploding over the next few years. Her wonderful time-stop story, Frank O’Hara’s Animals, won the Overland / Victoria University Short Story Prize late last year, and she's since gone on to be shortlisted in the QANTAS Spirit of Youth awards. Her ability to capture brief, scattered moments of life and infuse them with so much weight is pretty marvelous. We Make Women Out of Snow is only a little thing, but it tells of lost loves and aches that rings wonderfully true. You can read We Make Women Out of Snow care of the Seizure Flashers series here.

Friday Finds

- Justine Larbalestier has written a great post on twitter etiquette.

- Despite the dig at Brisbane, Spook Magazine has a pretty great article on being a writer (which is a bit NSFW? Idk. There are a couple of butts).

- This post on 11 Most Kickass Literary Heroines is really interesting and comprises a lot of unusual (but awesome) picks.

- These lady puns are basically the best thing.

- The photography of Marina Refur is doing things to me emotionally. It's so whimsical and just lovely. 

I'll also be reading at Whispers: Out of the Frying Pan on Saturday afternoon. It's my first public reading and I'm pretty excited. It's a free event, so, if you're around, you should swing on by. :)