My uber-talented pal Katie Rowney chatted with myself and Kirsty Eagar about setting in novels over at Writing Queensland. Article online here.

Why yes, that stack of books is nestled upon a carpet I bought in Iran! How savvy of you to notice.

Sorry for the silence, but I’ve spent the last couple of weeks traipsing about Iran researching book 2: talking politics with young activists in Tehran cafes, getting chased by camels in the sand dune desert and staring in wonder at the centuries-old mosques and shrines swelling with the faithful and devoted.

It is another place, Iran, so different from the Iran of the Western media and political fear mongering. It is a place of history, proud of a Persian culture that spans far before the arrival of Islam in the 7th century. Of a language that survived the Arab invasion through the determination of its people and the power of poetry as a form of resistance. Where poetry still is a passionate act of subversion, alongside theatre, the arts and the internet as the populace refuse to be restricted by a revolution hardly anyone seems that taken with.

This was the thing that struck me most in Iran – the many daily acts of defiance of its people. I met religious conservatives and Tehrani hipsters, elderly villagers and well-off city folk, and everyone seemed determined to show me that Iranians are not their government and will not allow their government to limit their freedoms. Whether it be making their own wine at home, pushing the limits of what is considered a headscarf or striking up conversations with strangers in cafes to encourage them to enrol and vote in the elections, people find ways to voice their protest and demand their freedoms – to demand the choice to decide what they do, how they dress, how they practice their religion and who governs them. And more than anything, what people tried to convey to me through their frank openness, their friendly conversations and their boundless hospitality was their frustration at knowing how the world sees them. As one woman told me: We hate that people think we are terrorists or that our government represents us. We just want people to know that we are people, some good, some bad, but people like everyone else.

My big brother and sister-in-law were kind enough to ask me to do a reading during their wedding ceremony last night. We joked about me pulling the reading from my own book, but there’s nothing really wedding appropriate in TBIB at all, plus I’m conscious about being that person.

Instead, I read a wonderful passage from Louis de Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a subtle shout out to my family’s Greek heritage. I love the book, and, as I said in my introduction to the reading, ‘it is a beautiful story of love and war and Mussolini and syphilis, so perfectly apt for a wedding.’ Here is what I read (affixed to the back of a copy of TBIB because everyone loves a good self-promotional jape.)

“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day… For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.” – Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

As for the rest of the wedding, I danced as if no one was watching which made all the people who were watching laugh.

A couple of weeks ago I locked myself in a beach house, tried to finish the first draft of manuscript 2, had an existential crisis, wrote about it and today it is in edition 501 of The Big Issue. Because write what you know…

The Big Issue is one of my favourite magazines and every time I buy it I have the most interesting conversations with the vendors. It is such an important magazine and does so much to promote empowerment, self-esteem and opportunity.

This Saturday afternoon I’m super excited to be talking at the Lerderderg Library in Bacchus Marsh about my various travels and how these influenced writing The Bit In Between. Joining me is Anthony McGrath talking about his fly-fishing adventures in the Amazon. If you love both quaint explorations of the benefits of travel to the artistic muse and/or fly-fishing, why not come?! More info here.

I send myself emails all the time: reminders, shopping lists, ideas for stories or manuscripts or choice bits of conversation I’ve overheard. Sometimes I even send myself emails to remind myself to respond to an email I have just read, which is something I need to do now because the internet has ruined my memory-thingamy. So it took me several befuddled minutes to work out why, a few weeks back, I emailed myself a long self-addressed correspondence that I had no recollection of writing. Turns out there are many Claire Varleys in this world. Ego placed back into box.

Other Claire Varley – for this is how I refer to her in conversation so as not to sound like either a nut job or royal – was happily going about her business on Twitter when suddenly she started getting linked to tweets about my book. At this stage I wasn’t on the Twitter-beast so any Claire Varley’ll do, right? She ignored it for a while and then when it wouldn’t quit, wondered what to do about it. She contacted me, thereby doubling the number of Claire Varleys currently emailing my account, and we caught up to both ponder this conundrum and stare into the infinite abyss that opens up before you when you realise you are neither unique nor special.

Mostly, we chatted about who gets to be Claire Varley. Clearly we both do. It’s not really a prize, seeing as we’ve both been Claire Varley since birth, and unless one of us does something really demented or shameful it’s not much of a curse either. Undoubtably there are many other Claire Varleys out there and perhaps one day I shall organise a convention or some such. A Festival of Claires or Varley-palooza. The UN could declare an International Day for us. It’d be great, and long overdue.

Because Other Claire Varley is a savvy journalism student, she knew a story when she was one. She’s written about the whole thing here. (Just for everyone’s reference, in response to her question ‘Would the real Claire Varley please stand up?’, clearly I am the real Claire Varley because if I start to think otherwise I will no longer exist. Nietzsche et al etc etc)

The good people at Readings were kind enough to include me in this list of Aussie women writers you should read right now. This is pretty much my summer reading list, with the exception of my own book which, after the editing process, I am sick of reading.

Fun fact: Tomorrow night myself and fellow list includee Lucy Treloar are taking part in the Wheeler Centres ‘Next Big Thing‘, alongside non-list includees Rafael SW and Luke Beesley.

A lovely piece from The West Australian.

Warning: The image is quite big so initially it appears my big smiling mug is coming through the screen The Ring style, but don’t worry. It’s not.