I have nothing but praise for Becoming by Michelle Obama. It is an intelligent, layered, comprehensive and fascinating biography, about which I’ll go into more detail in a moment. What I first want to mention is that this was also my first Audible audiobook. As I’ve been training for Oxfam and spending long hours out walking, I…
This post is sponsored by amaysim Riley had been asking for a mobile phone for at least the latter half of last year. We heard all the typical pleas for getting one, including the evergreen ‘Everyone else has one except me’, which I also used to throw around as a teenager. But Adam and…
To quote the International Women’s Day website, “International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – while also marking a call to action for accelerating gender balance.” For me, it’s a day where I think of the women in my life and those I admire, many…
Read / February 25th, 2019
Two things stood out about this first title when I first saw it on the bookstore shelf before Christmas. First the title – Hell Ship – in that evocative block font and the author, Michael Veitch, who I’d known best from 80s and 90s sketch comedies. This book is a well-done and thoroughly researched account of the…
Life / February 18th, 2019
My father passed away on the 19th of February 2009 while I was somewhere up in the sky on a plane, trying to rush home and see him before it was too late. But I was too late. My original plan was to write a new poem to commemorate the occasion. I’m still working on…
There’s a little over two months to go until our team and dozens of others line up to attempt the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker here in Melbourne. I won’t lie – I’m nervous. *touch wood* On the whole things have been okay so far – I’ve suffered less of the health dramas I had during the…
If you’re a beginning or emerging writer, you might have heard of Submittable already. In case you haven’t, here’s a brief explanation: Submittable is an online submission management platform, designed to streamline and simplify the submissions process – which can be oftentimes problematic for writers and publishers. It is free to get an account to…
This post is sponsored by Philips I’ll never forget the afternoon Riley walked out of class after the home bell and complained that his tooth was hurting. He is rarely sick and has a reasonable tolerance to pain, so you can imagine my terrible, sinking feeling when he pulled back his lip to reveal one…
Welcome to the annual blog monetisation recap – this is the sixth (!) time I’ve written such a post and I hope that it provides a bit of insight and information for anyone who’s interested in doing the same for themselves in 2019 and on whatever scale – small, medium or large. As always,…
