Today I assembled a rag-tag team of colleagues (think Ocean’s Eleven, but community workers instead of international criminal masterminds, and three instead of eleven) and marched them to our local Target so that I could watch them buy my book. Seeing my book resting alongside Tim Winton and Graeme Simsion made me want to happy-cry but my colleagues advised me not to for it is a particular breed of person who cries in the local Target at 11:30am. (ie me. Everything makes me cry these days. I am Michael Stipe’s original Shiny Happy person. The shine is from my tears.) Back at the office they asked me to sign their books. As I had been signing petty cash claims earlier I didn’t panic as much as last time.

I arrived home to a lovely review by fellow Pan Maccer Annie Seaton which is full of very kind things and made me teary yet again. I can’t read it again, though I’d like to, as I have to pop off to Wednesday night social netball (it’s fun and fitness!) but you might like to have a gander.

I’m doing a blog tour all throughout the month of August! Why not jump aboard the tour bus and be my blog groupie – or bloupie – as I’m sure it is known in the biz. Continue reading →

I’m not even going to pad around this – here’s an excerpt from The Bit In Between!

The Bit In Between extract

The rest of it (ie the whole book) comes out August 1.

Yesterday I popped by Sydney* for a celebratory lunch with my lovely agent and the fine team from Pan Macmillan. These are the people who have dried my tears, answered my insane 1am emails and crafted The Bit In Between into everything I could ever have dreamed it would be. It was my first time meeting many of them in person and we had a wonderful lunch before they took me for a looksy at Pan Mac’s office** and pointed me in the direction of Kinokuniya, which is probably the most incredible, dense bookstore I have ever seen. There’s no point to this blog other than to send a massive blubbering thanks to each of them because they have been so kind, passionate and supportive.

* ‘Cos that’s how I roll. Me? Flush with cash, y’all. Took my private jet. It’s like Clive Palmer’s but bigger.

** It’s in the CBD. 25th floor. City views. Etc.

I rambled into the camera on my laptop for a while and the good people at Pan Macmillan turned it into an intro promo for the book! There are a lot of facial expressions happening in this video. I’ll probably get an Oscar nod. Enjoy!

Editor’s note: I am home sick today because I seem to have caught some of that winter that has been going around. If anyone from work is reading this, I am genuinely sick and am writing this with a tissue planted up either nostril and the kettle on permanent rolling boil. Please excuse any incoherent sentences as most of my brain seems to be congested amongst my sinuses at present.

As part of promotion for The Bit In Between Pan Macmillan have organised a blog tour. Initially, to me, this sounded as if I would be sucked into my computer screen in the manner of an eighties teen movie and then forced to spend eternity traipsing from one blog to the next in search of an exit route back to the world of the living. Turns out it is actually a series of reviews, Q&A’s and guest posts hosted by the very kind people of the blogosphere.

My blog tour kicks off (posts off?) at the start of August so I’ve been working on the guest posts early in order to not explode from the brain outwards come end o’ July. This has made me discover something very intriguing about myself: I have two very distinct blogging voices. The first – for blogs that ask about myself, my background, my story etc – that voice is gleefully playful, happy to self-deprecate and drop borderline crap puns with ease and abandon. But for those that ask about my writing and the book itself, I seem to suddenly transform into a well-tenured humanities professor who has long ago lost touch with the flesh-and-blood world and uses phrases like ‘affording each literary character dignity’ and ‘respecting the process as much as the outcome’.

I’ve been trying to think on why this is (not today. Today I’ve just been trying to breathe without sneezing). I’ve come to the vague conclusion that whilst I am happy to throw myself on the flippant altar of humour, my characters and the underlying themes of my writing are serious messages masquerading beneath the Trojan horse of comedy. For a long time I’ve appreciated the strategy of Terry Pratchett, Caitlin Moran and Cosmo from Singin’ in the Rain, which is if people are laughing they might not notice the serious socio-political commentary you are scattering amongst their literary bickies and cheese. And in that way I don’t feel it is fair to laugh at or tease my characters because they are really trying to do so much within my little stories.

So perhaps this is it. Regardless, you can all see for yourselves from August 1 in the Claire Varley Bit In Between Blog Tour ’15: coming to an internet near you!

As a child I was always asked to refrain from scrawling my name across the pages of my books. In fairness to my mother’s pleas, my handwriting has never been neat and for a long time I had trouble spelling my own name which has a glut of letters for something monosyllabic.* Picture books just aren’t the same when all the characters have ‘cLAiRE’ tattooed across their eyes and stomachs. So it has long been drilled into me that You Don’t Write in Books.

Last week the Willy Lit Fest designated a period of time for us authors to sign copies of the Love Stories anthology for the punters. And, very generously, people wanted our scribbles. While Alexis and Susan, the other two authors, raised their pens with the poise of true professions, I felt markedly anxious. Firstly, You Don’t Write in Books, and secondly, what was I meant to write?

When the first book was laid open before me I panicked and just signed my name exactly as I would if signing for a parcel or completing my timesheet at work. So there’s definitely one person in the Greater Melbourne region who can now forge my credit card signature. The second I hastily scrawled my initials, then realised everyone else was writing nice little comments in theirs, and that I, on the other hand, was giving nothing more than a faint touch of barely legible ink as if I were Angelina Jolie acquiescing to the request of my adoring public who had come to LAX especially to greet me. For the third I spent a large amount of time just staring at the page before finally writing something as poetic as ‘I hope you enjoy the story’. I mean, you can see why people pay me to write, right?

Soon, I was on a roll. Alexis gave me her book and I wrote ‘I like your story better than mine.’ Susan gave me hers and I wrote ‘Your story makes me happy.’ David, the MC, gave us his and I wrote ‘Thanks David.’ It was like Shakespeare himself had taken over my body like a benevolent poltergeist and was reinvigorating the world with words.

I have now made the commitment, with 6 weeks until The Bit In Between hits shelves, to practise signing my name every night, alongside flossing my teeth, mediating and doing my pelvic floor exercises. And, just like all the others, I have remembered to do it once this week. So bring on future book signings and may we all enjoy my concise, uninspiring messaging.

*Contrary to most people’s preference, my version of Claire has both the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ because why not? Why not let’s break the bank buying vowels in life’s version of Wheel of Fortune…

I’ll be joining the talented Susan Pyke and Alexis Drevikovsky to read from our contributions to Australian Love Stories as part of the Williamstown Literature Festival, 13 June, 10.30am. Details here.