Posted on 09/03/201429/02/2016 by Jenn J McLeod — 7 Comments

Bar Yarns w/ Author Kylie Kaden

The things you find on Goodreads! Like Kylie Kaden, whose debut novel, Losing Kate, is coming out at the same time as my Simmering Season (April 1).

So I thought… why not share the love of good books and a beer or two?

First, here is a beer coaster, Kylie! Take a minute to jot down the blurb for your book. I must say, this blurb intrigued me on Goodreads and reads even better the second time around. (Readers – Kate’s book is on Goodreads as a giveaway, too. ONLY UNTIL 10 MARCH. Simmering Season giveaway goes until March 23 – see the link on my home page.)

Losing Kate

I’m the most authentic version of myself when I’m around Jack. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and our relationship was always one of mudpies and mocking. Then everything changed. Beautiful Kate, my best friend, disappeared on a moonlit beach after Jack dumped her for me. Jack was a suspect and, sure of his innocence, I lied to protect him. I know Jack didn’t kill her. Our betrayal did. Thirteen years later, I am thirty, childless and single, attempting to renovate my life rescuing a rundown worker’s cottage. All is as it should be in my safe little world – until Jack buys the vacant lot behind my house… and the feelings that we buried all those years ago – the guilt, the love and the pain – resurface. We can’t keep running away from the past – and to move forward we have to know what really happened to Kate.

This mesmerising debut is part love story, part mystery, telling the captivating story of two lovers torn apart by tragedy and the secrets they kept of one devastating night.

Okay, grab a pew. I invited your super CP, Lily Malone, for a drink too. She should be here soon. In the meantime, what can I get you to go with your beer nuts? (Shandy? Wine Spritzer? Pink Lemonade?)

Sav Blanc thanks!

Hey, did you hear the one about …

I preface this joke with a warning that the source was my 6yo.

What’s brown and sticky?

A stick. (It was either that or How do you get Pikachu on a bus – Pokemon, so you can see what my dilemma was?!)

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

Can’t go past cheese!

Ahh, that beer hit the spot. Let me slip a drink coaster under your glass while you tell us—on a scale of 1 to 10—as a writer are you a messy desker or tidy desker?

10. My desk is my lap. It walks around with me, so I can’t really keep mess on it, but is a little more padded than it used to be.

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

Which do you choose?

Considering I do an hour of dishes a day for squat, number three sounds like a deal! (If I’m doing the first two, I’ve already drunk too much and someone should put me in a cab.)

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.

Throw your arms around me – Hunters and Collectors.
These Days – Powderfinger
Stayin Alive – Bee Gees

(Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! – yeah!)

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

The chicken; the author would be at home Googling themselves, and the agent would be lost under a pile of manuscripts!?

There’s a stapler on the bar. Tell me what it’s doing there.

It’s doing what staplers do; trying to keep it all together, just like the rest of us 🙂

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?

Laptop
Chocolate
Wine.

(Okay, I am kind seeing why you and Lily are CP partners!)

There are a few good prizes up for grabs in the bar jackpot. Do you have a lucky number?

(83? Weird, but okay!)

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.

The official blurb of Losing Kate can be found at Random House Australia.

You can find me at: www.kyliekaden.com.au

Or check out Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/KylieKadenAuthor

Or buy Losing Kate from:

itunes , Amazon or Angus & Robertson

All the best with Losing Kate, Kylie.

In the meantime, watch out … It’s on the way …

This storm season, in Calingarry Crossing, a perfect storm is heading Maggie Lindeman’s way.

Find out more, right here. Simmering Season: April 1, 2014

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

Posted on 13/11/201325/10/2014 by Jenn J McLeod — 5 Comments

Author Bar Yarns w/ Walter Mason – Writer. Scholar. Dreamer

Walter Mason – Writer. Scholar. Dreamer. – Author of Destination Saigon and Destination Cambodia.

Welcome. You are my very first travel writer. Yay!

You are also supposed to be a calming spirit. Instead, our bar yarn has made me splutter my beer over the barmaid! You are one funny guy with a beautiful and unique outlook on life, travel writing and the universe. So lovely to meet you.

Here’s how our chat went…

Come on in. Grab a pew. What can I get you to go with your beer nuts? (Shandy? Wine Spritzer? Pink Lemonade?)

I’m afraid my formative years fell in the early 90s, so Long Island Iced Teas are my tipple of choice. It’s a terribly expensive habit.

Hey, did you hear the one about …

I laugh at almost everything – it gets me into terrible trouble. I am completely undiscriminating and roar with laughter at the jokes of 7 year-olds. I did smirk recently when I heard an author, asked to describe his early life, say: “I was born at a young age, in a hospital so I could be close to my mother…”

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

In Vietnam they toast dried cuttlefish over coals – perfect with hot cans of beer poured Walter Mason over ice. I once lived on this for four days in a row.

Ahh, that beer hit the spot. Let me slip a drink coaster under your glass while you tell us—on a scale of 1 to 10—as a writer are you a messy desker or tidy desker? (NB: 1 = “I am a neat nut case” and 10 = “What desk? Where? Is there a desk here somewhere?”)

LOL – every couple of days I am a tidy desker and then things deteriorate as it gets crowded with cosmetics (I always like to look good while I am writing) unpaid bills and boxes of Fruit Loops.

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

Which do you choose?

I would gladly do all three. I can see the particular pleasure in each. I am the perfect guest.

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.

‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme’ by Abba – the ultimate song of sexual desperation
‘Rapture’ by Blondie – the worst rap ever. Never fails to please – something about eating Subarus.
‘What’s Goin’ On?’ by Marvin Gaye – to reassure everyone that I am cool and smooth after all.

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

The author, definitely – they could never afford a taxi to take them right to the door. The bus dropped them off four blocks away.

There’s a stapler on the bar. Tell me what it’s doing there.

To collect all my expenses claims. Which I will carefully file and discover six useless years later underneath an old copy of ‘Men’s Fitness’.

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?

Liniment – wherever I am in the world I head straight to the local herbalist to get their patent mixture that cures everything – I am a terrible hypochondriac and always looking for the miracle cure.
Self-help books – I am always reading a dozen. I like to think I will one day do everything listed in them and thereafter be incredibly successful. After I have read my back issues of ‘Men’s Fitness’.
Cologne – cheap or expensive, I don’t care. I just need to mask the smell of liniment. I love perfumes, and always have a couple of dozen bottles in various rooms around the house. I will pause in between hanging out the washing and taking leaves out of the gutter to douse myself in Calvin Klein’s latest. When I was a child my mother had an accident with a bottle of Charlie in the back of our car and I’m afraid I have been hooked on scents ever since. Oh, and my Aunty was an Avon lady. That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.

There are a few good prizes up for grabs in the bar jackpot. Do you have a lucky number?

Your lucky number is: 1111 or 888 – of course

Walter, here’s a beer coaster. Take a minute to jot down the blurb for your book.

Join intrepid traveller, Walter Mason – author of Destination Saigon – on a colourful adventure to one of the world’s hottest new destinations. Meet writers, drag queens and monks as he traverses this extraordinarily beautiful country.

The ancient and mysterious ruins of Cambodia have long captured the imagination of visitors, more so now than ever before. In Destination Cambodia, Walter Mason charts an affectionate, intimate and deeply personal look at a Kingdom that has drawn him back again and again since his youth.
Whether he’s watching young monks recite the Buddha’s life stories, visiting shamans and fortune tellers, or discovering the darker alleys of Phnom Penh with a romantic novelist and a world-weary street hustler, Walter takes the reader straight to the heart of this famously unknowable country. As heat, dust and weariness take their toll, he remains alive to the charms, and even seductions, of a place that was once a byword for misery and human suffering.
Destination Cambodia takes us on a joyful and constantly fascinating literary journey in which Cambodia is vibrant and its people excited about the future while never denying their haunted past.

Last drinks, my friend! It’s been great.

I’m adding a link to Kirsten Krauth, Wild Colonial Girl where she did a great blog post on your writing and books. (Go to Kirsten’s blog.) Kirsten will be here having a yarn with me soon with a great Christmas Giveaway.

Walter, before we go, tell us how we can find out more about you and your writing/books.

You can read about my latest book, Destination Cambodia, at Allen & Unwin:

My website is at: www.waltermason.com

On Twitter you can find me @walterm

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waltermasonauthor

My fabulous and slightly scandalous Tumblr (overweight cats, highbrow books and pics of tiramisu): http://waltermason.tumblr.com/

Oh, and I also run the Universal Heart Book Club with Stephanie Dowrick at: www.universalheartbookclub.com

Posted on 30/10/2013 by Jenn J McLeod — 14 Comments

Bar Yarns w/ Josephine Moon (& her tea-riffic giveaway!)

The Calingarry Crossing pub welcomes Josephine Moon, author of the 2014 release The Tea Chest — out around the same time as Simmering Season, so there will be some serious ‘shelf-elfing’ in book stores required to get pics of us together. Looking forward to that!

Come on in, Josephine. Grab a pew. What can I get you to go with your beer nuts? (Shandy? Wine Spritzer? Pink Lemonade?)

Cocktails all the way — the fluffier, fruitier, chocolatier, more umbrella-ed the better.

Her’s a beer coaster. Would you mind jotting your blurb on the back for us?

‘The Tea Chest’

Rows of teapots and Turkish tea glasses lay out for taste tests. Roasted marshmallow, chocolates, gingerbread men, Turkish delight, chocolate-coated raspberries, crystalised ginger and truffles all sat in tall glass jars, just begging for someone to pluck them for themselves.

Kate Fullerton is the lead tea designer for The Tea Chest, a boutique tea store in Brisbane, but inherits half the company after her mentor, Simone, dies. Now, she’s faced with the enormous task of going to London to set up a new store from scratch in just six weeks and prove to her family, her hostile business partner and herself that she’s worth the risk.

Leila Morton has just been fired from her job. Elizabeth Clancy has just found out her husband has betrayed her in the most awful way. Both need to start again.

Can the three women succeed against the odds?

They have to. The Tea Chest is just too precious to lose.

I’m in a bar and I have a sudden hankering for a cuppa! Hey, did you hear the one about … Got any good pub jokes?

Oh, I’m so bad at jokes I wouldn’t even try. I refer you to my Dad, however, who is always ready with a joke to share over a beer or glass of wine. 🙂

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

There are snacks at the bar? I thought the bar was for cocktails.

Ahh, that beer hit the spot. Let me slip a drink coaster under your glass while you tell us if you are a messy desker or tidy desker? (NB: 1 = “I am a neat nut case” and 10 = “What desk? Where? Is there a desk here somewhere?”)

Shamefully, I’m going to say an 8. Right now, I share my writing room with the baby’s change table (so lots of little man shorts and shoes and smelly nappies) and my 18-year-old cat (so lots of drool and smelly kitty litter), and occasionally my husband (lots of coffee cups and lunch plates). But I’m creating a new writing room in another location so stay tuned for much improved surroundings.

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

Dance to Gangnam Style
Sing John Denver’s ‘Take me Home Country Roads’ – Karaoke style
Spend an hour washing dishes

Which do you choose?

John Denver, without question. I actually HAVE sung ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ at karaoke (sober, big mistake) and it was truly awful. (Funnily enough, I didn’t get any free drinks either…hmm.) That song is a lot harder to sing than you think it is!

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.

Michael Jackson — Blame it on the Boogie
Michael Jackson — Don’t stop til you get enough
Michael Jackson — The way you make me feel

(Did I mention I love Michael Jackson?)

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

Oh my gosh… can I answer this with a story? (If you throw in ‘an actor’, you would be right on track.)

A funny thing happened on the way down Oxford Street in Sydney, after I flew down there to meet my literary agent for the first time.

I was walking along, soaking up the bliss of chocolate shops, wine bars, T2 and more, when I noticed a black chook trying to make its way across the four lanes of traffic of Oxford Street. I knew immediately that the chicken was ‘for me’ (because, as a rescuer, this type of thing happens to me all the time), so I began to herd it gently to the footpath. Lots of people gathered around, taking photos, and a couple of ‘city folk’ tried to catch her by running at her. Now, if you’re a farm girl, like me, you know that is the worst thing to do to try and catch a chook because all they do is run in zig zags, so I took command and guided her gently to a stairwell and then picked her up. By this time, another rescuer type woman was there and saying we should take her to the vet (the chook had a damaged wing) and asked if I wanted to get into her car and she’d drive me and the chook (now nestle peacefully in my arms). I trusted her immediately (no fear of ‘stranger danger’). She was so lovely and warm. So we got in and off we went.

We were getting on fabulously and chatting away when I said, ‘I’m Jo, by the way,’ and she said, ‘I’m Penny.’

I looked at her and she suddenly looked really familiar. I told her as much and she said tea 2 she was Penny Cook, who played the vet, Vicky, on A Country Practice. I totally adored that show as a kid so felt quite thrilled that I was on a secret chook mission with a famous actor! We dropped off the chook at the vet, went to a local preschool to see if the chook came from there, and she drove me back to Oxford Street.

So, there was an agent, an author, an actor and a chicken, and the chicken definitely was the one that crossed the road.

There’s a stapler on the bar. Tell me what it’s doing there.

Emergency repairs to fallen hems due to all the robust dancing to Michael Jackson post cocktail drinking. (That’s what I use staplers for… is there another use?)

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?

(Well obviously, my husband, son and family (furry and human)… but let me think a bit wider…)

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Earplugs. Every night. Also an eye mask. And my own pillow. These are the three things I pack first whenever I go away. (I’m a high-maintenance sleeper.)
A good book to read and fluffy socks.

(This was more than three, sorry.)

Shhh! The last race of the day is on the TAB screen and I reckon I’ve picked a winner. I browse the race guide with the jockey colours influencing my bet. When browsing a bookshop, what influences you?

Author (especially if they’re Australian)
Cover design
Title
Tagline/blurb
First chapter (I actually rarely even read part of a book before I buy it.)
Last page (Never! It’s a sacrilege to read the last page!!!)

There are a few good prizes up for grabs in the bar jackpot. Do you have a lucky number?

Your lucky number is: 8

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.

My first novel, The Tea Chest, is published by Allen & Unwin and will be on shelves in April 2014 in time for mother’s day!

You can keep in touch with me at:

www.josephinemoon.com
Twitter @josephine_moon
or on Facebook

GIVEAWAY: Jenn, I have no books yet, but since my book is centred on tea, I’d be really happy to post someone some of my favourite tea. 🙂 Can we ask for chicken stories? I love chooks!

Take it away readers… Give us your best chicken story.

And if you enjoyed this Bar Yarn, there are lots more to come. So you never miss a post, why not whack your email in the TELL ME! box above.