Tag: Alison Stuart

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School Daze – your favourite authors

Playgrounds, pencils and Perkins Paste remain a hazy, crazy, daze for many of us. In Calingarry Crossing this storm season, a school reunion brings home more than memories for publican, Maggie Lindeman, so I’ve decided to ask a few authors to reflect on their own    school daze.

What do you think about school reunions! Love them? Hate them? Do you agree with Maggie (Simmering Season) that such events push you to question everything — your worth, your achievements … your life.

To celebrate the release of Simmering Season, I’m holding a school reunion and you’re invited to catch up with your favourite authors, or find a new favourite author. If you have an Aussie author you’d like me to feature, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

The school bell is ringing, and first in class we have…

Jennie Jones – THEN

“When I left school I also left my best friend, Jane. We each trod different paths after that but had spent our high school years together; dreaming, dodging, wishing, loving boys and getting giggly over just about anything. Our formative years were filled with sighing, laughing, crying, arguing, wondering and planning.  We’re still in touch, after thirty-something years. This special school friendship we share is what I call a seasoned memory.”

NOW: www.jenniejonesromance.com

Sara Foster at school
Sara Foster – THEN

‘Throughout my primary school days we used to play elastics at every opportunity, coming up with more and more imaginative ways of jumping on and over two strips of elastic, which were either wound around people’s legs or tied to drainpipes and chairs. At some stage I’m planning to drag my daughters away from technology to show them how it’s done. (Although let’s just hope I can still do it!)’

 

Rachael Johns at School Rachael Johns – THEN

I’m one of the lucky ones. In my first weeks of high school I found my ‘group.’ You know the people who stick by you through thick and thin, who laugh and cry with you, put up with your crazy and embarrassing sometimes outlandish personality, and whom you feel confident sharing your deepest and darkest secrets? These are my girls – there are six of us. Four of us met in year eight, another came in year ten and the final (but just as important) member of our group found us in year eleven. We spent our high school years hanging out at school and whenever we could outside of school. We shopped for our all important formal dresses together, we were there to laugh over crushes of boys and support each other when hearts were broken. We had the BEST ever sleepovers – where sleep wasn’t on the agenda at all. We scared each other silly with thriller movies, while we ate junk food and drank Fanta. One sleepover we even rung the local radio station and dedicated songs to our then crushes – whether they have heard them or not, we’ll never know. The song was ‘I Swear’ if you were wondering.
Although we now are all married with kids, we are still as close as ever. Maybe closer. We’ve been through joyous times together – weddings and babies – and we’ve been through some tough times too. In many ways we are as different as a bunch of women can get, but we still get together as much as we can. We laugh over old memories and share what’s currently going on in our crazy, hectic lives. Now we even get together on occasions with our kids and there is nothing more amazing than watching my children enjoy spending time with my best friends’ children. I know we’ll be BFFs until the end. Yep, these women are the best thing I got out of high school!

Alison Stuart – THEN

“Unpick it and do it again”… Mrs. Plummer, sewing teacher. But seriously I think I owe my biggest debt of thanks to Miss Robinson who had the misfortune to try and teach a bunch of Year 9 girls English grammar. She was the first teacher who encouraged my creative writing.”

NOW:  www.alisonstuart.com

 

Cathryn Hein – THEN

“I suspect that without Mr Costello as my English teacher I wouldn’t be a writer. He was amazing. He also gave me a B+ for my cringe-worthy short story A Day In The Life Of A Feminist Cockroach. Not quite sure what he was thinking that day…”

 Nicola Moriaty – THEN

I thought it might be fun to quote directly from my diary that I kept all through my schools years, the following extract is from when I was eight years old, I’ve kept the spelling mistakes in!!
“i dont beleav it today mr. Connolly let us talk for a bit! We have this new sports teacher who is mean. But we playd lots of running games. We started school two days ago. We’v done lots of work but Mr. Connolly thinks we’v hardly done any he sais where gonna work our buts off. He already toute us two songs and a poulm. At lunch i got tipped when I was b.a. then everybody said to me that i was in so i said i was b.a. They said there was no b.a. I said i did not know. They said I had to take it. i got mad and cryed. But we made up.”
I think I still remember the injustice of that game of tip! But I also remember Mr Connolly as one of my favourite teachers because he gave me a hug when I cried after getting in trouble for throwing grapes on the school bus.

 

Dawn Barker – THEN

“I had two favourite subjects at school: English and Latin. My reasons for liking English are probably obvious, as even in primary school I was entering competitions reciting Scottish poetry and winning certificates like this! In high school I studied Latin for five years and loved it. Latin opened up the world of literature when I learned the structure and cadence of the language, the mythology, and the poems of Ovid, Cattalus and Virgil. Essential for anyone who wants to understand stories and language, I think!”

 

Fiona Palmer – THEN

“I hated maths and I had some real doozy maths teachers over the years but then Mr Gow came along in Year 11. He was awesome and my favourite. My friend took this class photo, maybe that’s why I was game enough to ‘bunny ears’ Mr Gow.”

NOW:https://www.facebook.com/FionaPalmerRuralAuthor?ref=hl

Christine Stinson at SchoolChristine Stinson – THEN

“I met my favourite teacher in primary school. Sister Justinian looked a lot like a bull dog, with a particularly pugnacious bottom lip and a habit of throwing exercise books out the window (and onto the road) if she wasn’t happy with the standard of homework. Bless her, she gave me pictures to write stories about and didn’t mind how long those stories were, and my exercise book never ended up on the roadway.”

NOW: www.christinestinson.com

Heather Garside – THEN

“Before- and after-school jobs included feeding the occasional poddy calf. My primary schooling was done by correspondence school as we lived too far from town to attend normal school. My mother taught all four of us and often battled with getting us into the school room. One morning we had gone off playing some distance from the house and poor Mum was calling and calling us to come home. How naughty were we! One of our cats came up to join us and began meowing at us. Then he turned around and starting walking back to the house, looking back at us and meowing every so often. We were so intrigued, we obediently followed him home!”

NOW: http://www.heathergarside.com

Jenn J McLeod – THEN

“The strongest memory for me at High school relates to that plot in the playground, our group’s patch of ground that no other group dared occupy. A recess oasis where battles were fought and friendships were forged.”

 

 

School’s out for the day. If you have any questions or 

suggestions, please raise your hand, leave a comment, share!

A word about that OTHER school reunion in Calingarry Crossing. 

Poor Maggie. She has no idea the perfect storm is

Find out more, right here. Simmering Seasonheaded her way.

For emergency alerts and warnings for Simmering Season, subscribe to Jenn J McLeod’s blog before you go, or LIKE her Facebook Page.

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Author Harvest ‘bales’ up Alison Stuart

I first fell in love with Alison’s writing after reading a short story (The Promise). It may have been short (and I mean short) but it packed such a punch that I cried. I have since learned there is much more to this author and definitely time for a cuppa and a chat.

Given I have been less than impressed with the Arrowroot biccies of late, I asked Alison what I might expect of her hospitality at home. She said:

If you were to appear at my place for elevenses you would of course be met by an elegantly dressed woman with immaculate makeup and plied with French champagne and a plate of cucumber sandwiches. The reality is you may well be met at the door by a scruffy personage in tracksuit bottoms, red ugg boots and one of her son’s old rugby jumpers and if you’re lucky we may be able to rustle up a cup of Twinings Australian Afternoon Tea and a rice cracker.

(Crikey! How does one live on rice crackers? I guess it’s a change from Arrowroot!)

At home with Alison…

My mum says garden gnomes make a house a home! Are you loud and proud in your love of garden gnomes at home – or a closet gnomer?

No gnomes but I do have a couple of concrete frogs and some large pretend owls we bought to scare the possums—like that really worked!

(Fake frogs, pretend owls AND crackers masquerading as food! Perhaps leave the rice crackers out, Al. That’s sure to scare the possums away.)

What vegetable (or fruit) have you always wanted to grow at home?

Would love to grow decent tomatoes. Our little inner suburban garden doesn’t get enough light.

(If you had tomatoes right now and sold them at the market price you could retire.)

If you sorted your wardrobe by colour, what colour would stand out? (Ahh, do you sort your wardrobe by colour?!)

I am a Melbournian…what colour do you think stands out? That would be black.

What are you wearing now? (Be honest!)

Trakkie daks, ugg boots and my oldest sweat shirt. A picture of sartorial elegance!

(Ugg boots are trending here in Author Harvest.)

 

Country curiosities…

We love a sunburnt country (slip, slop, slap and all that). What’s your ideal hat? Or are you a boots person?

I am a proud owner and wearer of a classic Akubra for wearing in the country, but in the city I have a black (see answer to clothes above) woollen hat I bought fifteen years ago from a street stall in London.

If you were a tree (or animal) what kind of tree (animal) would you be?

An oak tree of course.

(Okay, am now visualing yellow ribbons and singing that damn song!)

About you…

Your turning point: when was that point in your life that you realized that being an author was no longer going to be just a dream but a reality and a career?

The day my boss told me I didn’t have to come into work on Monday!

What is the hardest part of writing for you?

Actually getting around to it. So many other distractions, reasons to procrastinate. Too hot…too cold etc etc. Once I start I’m fine.

If someone was to write your biography, what do you think the title should be?

I rather like “A Life Well Lived”.

Fun stuff…

What does your protagonist think about you? Would he or she want to hang out with you, the author, his/her creator.

I can see my heroes flinching every time I come near them. What did we ever do to you? What is it this time…a sword? A musket ball?

(A rice cracker?)

When my characters are talking back to me, all is well with my writing world.

If I said to you, “Just entertain me for five minutes, I’m not going to talk,” what would you do?

Sing.

(Is this going to be a torturous rendition of ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree’? Oh, no, I…I didn’t mean… Sorry, Alison…no, I’m not calling you old…really!)

Name 5 uses for a stapler that has not staple pins.

A hammer

A worry ball (or thing for fiddling with while thinking)

A paper weight

An object for hide and seek (mostly under the paper on my desk)

A bookmark

How weird are you? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 (not) to 10 (very).

Hey, I’m a Capricorn, we don’t do weird…but then again I am a romance writer. That’s pretty weird!

Lovely chatting, Alison.

Alison’s latest release – Gather The Bones – is a stunning book (one look at the cover and the title tells you that).

The horrors of the Great War are not the only ghosts that haunt Helen Morrow and her late husband’s reclusive cousin, Paul. Unquiet spirits from another time and another conflict touch them.

A coded diary gives them clues to the mysterious disappearance of Paul’s great-grandmother in 1812, and the desperate voice of a young woman reaches  out to them from the pages. Together Helen and Paul must search for answers, not only for the old mystery, but also the circumstances surrounding the death of Helen’s husband at Passchandaele in 1917.

As the mysteries entwine, their relationship is bound by the search for truth, in the present and the past.

 

For more about Alison and her writing: www.alisonstuart.com

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