Fifi's Wearable Art 2009 entry

I can finally show you what I did for WOW now that 
the show is almost over...

Kunugi Kodama: The tree where insects gather…

The Japanese saw tooth oak, Kunugi, oozes sap which attracts moths, butterflies, stag beetles and the occasional tree sprite. Kodama are invisible to human eyes but they quietly listen to visitors in the garden, so be careful what you say!

When Patrick and Carol Toner (Made in Nippon, Japanese supplies) had 1000 kimonos in bales on their carport deck, I was invited around to pick through them and see what I could use. I picked out lightweight silk and rayons, all of which were ripped and stained. Carol tells me that Japanese villagers rarely throw out kimonos, instead they fold them carefully, tie them into bundles and store them in their garden sheds. So what might you find in a kimono down the bottom of the garden? A little wood sprite maybe…

I was very excited to see it featured largely in the official programme, because that usually indicates a prize is in order- but then it wouldn't be me if I got up there and scooped a whopping great cheque now would it? I didn't get inspired to write Glory because I perenially scoop awards. The winning piece in the section ' The Dandelion Clock' by Tracey Koole was clever, gorgeous and performed really brilliantly, so I could hardly be green eyed in the garden of delights that was the Children's section this year. Congratulations to all the designers for getting their work a) finished and b) on stage. It really is something!

Spinning Gold

It’s Thursday. One week since the day before the start of the Spinning Gold Conference (18^th, 19^th & 20^th September). As the co-convenor I am just coming right now- sleep restored, equipment back in boxes, coffee levels topped up with the inevitable post-event bill paying and administration still to be done. Judging by the e-mails flooding in from satisfied, inspired and invigorated delegates, we delivered the conference we promised.

Our awesome committee is exhausted but elated - Maureen Crisp my co-convenor says it all in her post I won't do a run down of the weekend- Melinda Syzmanik gives a much better precise of the conference in her blog. Go and read it. As for me, now that the 18 months of planning is over, you might ask what I plan to do now? Well, apart from hauling out two unfinished manuscripts I’ve had no chance to work on during that time, and visit some more schools to talk about my writing and a forthcoming Spring Festival workshop to deliver and my usual beloved spot on the Good Morning Show to make crafts for, it’s the WOW awards tomorrow night, so I plan to drink. Salute.

God Defend our Freeland

I’ve been thinking about the planned cuts to night classes.

As a consumer of Community Education, I learned how to use a computer and relevant software when my need was great because it was imperative as a writer, artist and communicator to get with the digital age or financially die. Being a freelancer meant there were no handy work place all- expenses-paid- whilst- you- get- paid kind of courses. Night classes made this essential world available to me.

I learned to type with more than two fingers at a night class. This was pretty useful in writing up my thesis and three novels. My education as a girl was focussed on Latin and French rather that the keyboard (Girls' School streaming into everyday uselessness) and a Pittman course was priced out of my self employed $50 professional development budget.

At Te Reo classes, learned my mihimihi and how to pronounce to names of books I illustrate, greet teachers and children in schools properly on my author vists and to say Morena on the Good Morning Show without fear of mangling vowels with my Pakeha tongue.

I taught life drawing one night a week and watched students gain confidence and joy in their ability to observe and document the human form when some thought they might never find a new skill and talent in their lives.

So I have sent Stop Night Class Cuts postcards to my MP Annette King (Labour) and the Minister of Education. Annette sent me back a personal letter sympathising and suggestions on how to make my protest more visible by way of a petition- I’ve signed lots of them for others too. I haven’t heard back from Anne as yet- I expect her pigeon hole is swamped…

I wrote the following poem years ago when there was no threat to continuing education at a price the average punter could afford. When education was not the preserve of the rich or safely salaried. When getting out of the house and learning something new was encouraged. I could laugh and joke, tongue in cheek, because I never imagined for a moment that it might be taken away. Auē.

Night Class

I thought I'd do an evening class,

So went and checked them out,

At our local high school,

Which left me in no doubt;

That 'Accounting for Beginners',

Was too sensible for me,

As the purpose of my life,

Is to have one and one make three.

'Culinary Cordon Bleu',

Had appetite appeal,

But I don't get time to grocery shop,

When would I cook a meal?

'Belly Dancing' looked like fun,

With tinkly bra and veil,

The thought of baring stretch marks though,

Left me feeling pale.

'Italian Made Easy',

Made me smirk a lot,

I could tell a nice young waiter,

That I like my pasta hot…

But all of these required,

Me to rush about at six

And organise a sitter,

Whilst I fed my hungry chicks.

I think I'll just create a course

That's tailor made for me,

Called 'Relaxation Methods'

-where I blob out after tea!

An Invitation to Glory!

We're having a launch for 'Glory' at the Storylines Family Day in Wellington this Sunday. Come and join us in bringing Florence Bright into the world of junior fiction readers. Award winning author, great friend and mentor Mary McCallum is doing the honours. The launch will be followed by a craft afternoon where you can make the award you always wanted. Every book sold on the day gets a cool badge and a Pinky Bar, because Florence is a generous gal and she likes to make sure all her passions are shared!

Why Aye?

So with a third novel done and dusted I am turning my thoughts towards the unfinished YA novel I have sitting on my hard drive. I blogged about this last year with ‘Write a Novel in a Week’- which is of course impossible, but I did write 30,000 words in a month…and then went to the osteopath. He must have done a good cranial manipulation because I forgot I was writing anything at all and in my usual highly distractible way, turned my attentions to painting velvet, conference organisation, Wearable Art and making book trailers. But with those things in hand and thinking about October (my life after the conference and WOW) I’ve had a gnawing thought at the back of my mind that maybe I should rewrite my 48,000 words in first person, ditch the paranormal element and avoid the blended family and gay parent references. So I dragged up the file from the depths of my ‘Writing and Publishing’ folder and had another look. I found strange words in front of me; whole chapters that I had forgotten writing. Was it a case of Being Steve? Stephen King wrote a lot of novels he couldn’t remember whilst completely stoned. But given that I cannot so much as drink a glass of wine without incurring a vicious migraine these days, I think not. And far from being completely cringed out by my efforts, I was quite intrigued. Its like by walking away from my characters for half a year, they have continued living their lives and I have just dropped by to visit. I think I’ll pop in again and have a cuppa with them- if I’m cool enough for three teens grappling with pressing issues …

From chapter 8

‘What was all that about shuffling your cards anyway?’ said Jono, picking at a bit of cone still stuck to the sofa arm. Becka hesitated.

‘Sometimes stuff happens when I play them. Shuffling seems to stop it.’

‘What, like the fortunes?’ said Jono remembering secret loves and square boxes, ‘I thought they were just fun stuff, you know, co-incidences. They’re not some kind of occult shit are they? I hate that stuff.’

‘No, no’ said Becka, ‘nothing like that. I’m sure they’re absolutely harmless.’

‘But I keep seeing things,’ Evie broke in, ‘like ghosts and creepo people. It didn’t happen until Becka got those cards. I thought I was going mental.’

Becka pulled the deck out of her pocket and fanned it out. Moonlight shone though the window of the shed, landing on the upturned faces of the cards. The joker was less bright despite the glow.

‘I think you should chuck them away,’ said Jono, ‘trash ‘em.’

‘No!’ Becka cried, ‘I think they are important,’ she stroked them, ‘and quite beautiful in a way too.’

‘Important enough to drive my sister crazy, important enough to nearly kill you?’

Jono stood up, his frame filled the window, a silhouette of disgust, ‘if you don’t ditch those cards Becka, I can’t be around you anymore.’

‘But we’re family!’ said a desperate Becka, still holding the cards, caressing them.

‘Not enough to include those too,’ said Jono. He opened the door and walked through it into the night.

Glory...the movie

Here it is- my foray into movie trailer land- well book trailers to be precise. It’s to promote my new novel; Glory.

Making a trailer is quite a bit of fun, and I thought I’d share with you how I did it. To start I did a bit of a storyboard in my moleskine diary. This was a dozen or so thumbnails to figure out what kind of images I wanted to show. I also looked at Brian Falkner’s great book trailers to see what he did. Brian and I have very different subject matters we are dealing with; his is action/thriller and mine relationship/comedy so obviously I wanted different shots.

I downloaded royalty free images from the sxs photo library. I’ve used Photoshop to add to them- Queen Kong for instance (it’s pretty hard to find gorilla shots complete with lipstick and underwear). When I was happy with my images- some of them from my book cover (designed by the ever brilliant Vida Kelly), I googled about for a free movie maker. There is one that comes with Windows, but I found it kept crashing and tried Videospin instead. I found it quite workable. You can drag your pictures onto a timeline and add different transitions between them.

Next, the audio... my character Florence Bright is very fond of a track by a Pop Punk band The Screeching Weasels called Cool Kids. Now I was stuck with a dilemma- having bought the CD at one stage (o.k, o.k, it was my daughter that bought it), I looked for someone I could contact to ask if I could use it as the background music for my book promo. I kept coming to virtual dead ends, so decided to use it and credit them at the end of the video. Ben Weasel, if you ever find this article, contact me and I will give you some books! In the meantime, Florence, Haley and I love your music and play it with enthusiasm.

Videospin also has a selection of sound effects so I was able to add swan, cat and bird noises into the track. There are audio controls to you can change the levels, cut and paste and generally drive the family nuts with sounds of your editing. The cat was very confused by it all and kept looking at my laptop alternately with terror and delight.

Next- the voice-over, which I wrote with the superb input of my script editor, Maureen Crisp who had no idea she was one until I sent her a rough cut of my trailer. Being very close to your book has the added disadvantage of trying to put too much in there. Maureen pared it back to a suitable teaser. The rough cut had my voice pretending to be a 13 year old on it. Now I had to find a better, more authentic voice. Hannah Copeland, the very able daughter of a friend was persuaded and we did this over her dining table with my laptop, a skype headset and Audio Recorder for Free. I recorded it in one line chunks and pasted them into my audio track.

You can play and replay it back and change things about until it is done, adding titles and fades where appropriate, then click the option to make it into a movie and its done. I’ve posted it to You Tube and hope that it might make its way to a 12 year old audience somewhere. I’m still working on optimisation and I can see a few glitches, but for a first try and costing nothing but time, I’m happy!

Yuuuummmm.....

The link is working now! Sorry about that...go check out the scones!

It has been blowing and raining and the winter's recession is hitting our household budget.
So what better thing to do this Sunday when cafe brunches are out of reach, than to warm up with a delicious batch of freshly made scones, slathered in lashings of jam and cream (can you tell my Devonshire roots are showing?)

Now I am the worlds worst baker, but with Janie Olive's Disaster Free Scone Recipe, I assure you I am Queen of the Kitchen; a veritable Domestic Goddess! And you can be too.

Have a deliciously warm and cheap weekend!

WOWing it again

I have just heard that my entry for this year's Montana Wearable Art Awards has got into show. Wow, that make 16 entries over um... 14 years I think. I can't show you my entry this year until showtime- otherwise it would spoil the surprise wouldn't it? But I can say it's in the Children's section. Thats all until September 24th- opening night. So if you haven't bought a ticket, go online now and find a seat if there are any left for the greatest creative show in Wellington from NZ's talented artists, performers and musicians.

In the meantime here's a slideshow of my past entries. I'm experimenting with free online stuff from Slideroll so I can make a trailer for 'Glory'. All I can say is from my writing and creating, is I am learning one heck of a lot about the internet!

Rachel...

Well it was a tough one...
I loved the beauty contests, sad Ophelias, talking, singing and dancing your way to second place, all of you. None of you determined to miss out on anything again...
But Rachel, you get a copy of Glory because you fessed up about always being in trouble. Florence Bright gets herself in to a fair bit of trouble too, and she also find out what she needs to do to step up and get out of it. Happy reading!

Glory at last!

Well isn't it nice to get home and find amongst the bills, a package from your publisher with multiple copies of your book inside it? This one has been a long time coming and I have to say....I'm very happy with the result! Scholastic and I are launching 'Glory' next month at the Storylines Festival Family Day in Wellington. You will get the opportunity to make your very own prize with me through the wondrous medium of arts and crafts of which I am so very fond.

Not getting awards can be very motivating- if I had, for instance, got the 6th Form Art History Prize (instead of that other girl!!!!) I never would have written this book. What prize did you miss out on that has bugged you for months or years? I will give away a copy of 'Glory' to the most entertaining story of missing out- but you have to leave it in the comments box!