Author Bar Yarns with Kathy Mexted

Meet a freelance writer, journo and photographer who likes to fly! Yes, Kathy Mexted does it all and she’s been flying pretty high with the news her latest short story was shortlisted in a recent Qld Rural Writers comp. Just like some other emerging authors who appeared on Author Harvest last year (yes, you Juliet Madison)! I think we will soon start hearing a lot more about author Kathy! (Just take a look at her ‘stapler’ answer and you’ll see what I mean. (Yes, you, Allen & Unwin!)

I remember ‘meeting’ Kathy online. She had won a copy of House for all Seasons from Helene Young’s blog and I then found her blog, loving her wonderful, witty (but more recently poignant) way with words. I just had to have a yarn.

So, what can I get you to go with your beer nuts, Kathy? (Shandy? Wine Spritzer?  Pink Lemonade?)

Hanging Rock pink bubbles (Macedon NV Brut Rosé)

Hey, did you hear the one about …?

How do you sell a rabbit to a deaf man?  WANNA BUY A RABBIT? (OK. That was a joke that worked well in the bar of the British High Commission in Singapore in 1985. Even though everybody heard Graham screaming ‘Wanna buy a rabbit’, everybody seemed to fall for the joke. It lives on in his memory).

I’m a beer nut nut! What bar snack would you be and why?

Twisties. When I lived overseas I craved them and no two Twisties/nights in a pub are ever the same. They also take no preparation. I am not much for cooking.

The publican offers you free drinks all night if you will:

• Dance to Gangnam Style
• Sing John Denver’s ‘Take me Home Country Roads’ on the Karaoke machine
• Spend an hour washing dishes

Sing – definitely. It’d be a first. OK. Maybe second, oh hang on… well, there was this one night in Brisbane when I first met my husband-to-be’s family at a wedding and in a bar at 2am Uncle Greg and I were singing Khe Sanh on Karaoke. You’ve gotta do it at least once, don’t you?

Time to liven the place up. Got a buck? We can crank up the old jukebox in the corner. You get to pick three songs.

1. Springsteen, ‘Pay Me My Money Down’ (The Live in Dublin version). I’m all over Springsteen since he played at Hanging Rock at Easter 2013 and I walked over to both concerts. I’m completely converted now. What a performer. I’d have gone every night for a week if he’d been playing for a week. Current favourite is the Live in Dublin album.
2. Spiderbait, ‘Black Betty’ for my brother’s fantastic banjo riffs. We have spent some cherished creative moments recently. Not on the banjo though.
3. Chisel or Sarah Blasko singing ‘Flame Trees’.  That song jumps into my head every time I drive into my old hometown of Finley.  My young daughters now demand it on the way to Tocumwal/Finley.

An author, an agent and a chicken walk into the bar… how do you know which one crossed the road?

Let’s hope it was the agent running across the road waving a contract, but we all know it would be the author running in circles, one of which happened to be intersected by a road. Chickens don’t cross roads. That’s a myth.

There’s a stapler on the bar. Tell me what it’s doing there. (Buckle up, readers. This is one tall and terrifically told yarn!)

An author is stapling business cards to manuscripts and, sinking a Whisky, she sings the blues to an ever-sympathetic barman. The supportive regulars slap her on the back, ‘It’s a g-r-e-a-t book, hunny. You know you’re gonna be famous one day.’

The clock ticks over 6pm and in the corner a solo banjo player twangs and tunes his instrument. The black vinyl on his three-legged stool is frayed at the corners. The small crowd grows expectant and the author senses a more immediate urge. The urge to sing. Sing away the blues. Sing to the anticipation of a good night in the small pub. Sing to Saturday night. She calls her mate the trombonist and whips a harmonica from her handbag. By 9pm the place is jumping and the growing crowd raise their glasses with a yahoo, grateful for the distraction from harvest. A toothless shearer lurches at the musicians who momentarily fall silent. He rifles in an old duffle bag and produces a squeeze-box.

A stranger’s anchor-tattooed arm ripples as he strokes his snowy flowing beard and then joins the fracus on the lagerphone and by midnight the owner doesn’t recognise his normally subdued crowd. The revellers spill onto the footpath. A young girl falls in love. A mother of three is dancing on a table for the first time in ten years, and the publican has run out of glasses. In the back bar, three Allen & Unwin commissioning agents were having a quiet country weekend. Like swaying cobras drawn to the snake charmers tune, the intoxicating Irish music entices them out and as they succumb to the madness, their cold beers come to rest on the manuscripts on the bar. Above the damp type, the author’s name is unfamiliar to them from a recent slush pile. Surely this girl on the microphone must be able to write though because, against the menacing ping of the banjo, she sure as hell can hold the raucous crowd with a joke.

By 3am there is no more rum and the remaining glasses are disappearing up the road in a swaying chorus to Dirty Old Town. The shearers have stopped fighting and the local cop is acting as a courtesy bus. The barmaid throws the regulars onto swags in the dining room to sleep it off and as the owner stands in stunned after-shock, a lost and lone chicken wanders through the carnage. Bork-bork-bork-bork. Hosing out the bar, the owner stoops to pick up his stapler. He places in on the bar with a set of Holden ute keys, a black jacket, four cigarette lighters and the musicians upended three-legged stool. He’s not handing any of them over until next Saturday night.

The pub is the heart of a small town and most locals would be lost without one. What are three things you’d be lost without?

1. Laptop
2. Camera
3. Phone

Last drinks, my friend! It’s been great. But before we go, tell us how we can find out more about you and your writing/books.

I write magazine articles and usually provide my own photos. I can’t decide which I enjoy more. I have a completed Memoir manuscript draft titled ‘The Misses and Me’. It is waiting for me to send off for a manuscript appraisal.

You can follow Kathy’s blog called The Outer Barcoo.

Why not nick over there now?http://kathymexted.typepad.com