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Conversation with a ghost

I had a weird experience the other day. I’m perfectly comfortable talking with people and recording our chats with a view to writing books for them—that’s my job. But, I was taken right out of my comfort zone when Ian Kath, interviewer extraordinaire, decided that he’d like to create a podcast episode about ghostwriting.

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Stranger than fiction

Have you ever read a novel and stopped somewhere thinking, yeah right? That little something that hasn’t quite held water, jerking you rudely out of the narrative perhaps?

I was reading a story the other day when a synchronous moment it described did just that.

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An untimely death

I’ve just finished Barry Forshaw’s The man who left too soon, a biography of Stieg Larsson, author of the runaway bestsellers, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

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Out of your comfort zone

I was reading Ben Elton’s Meltdown the other night when I realised that some of the characters really pissed me off. Well, I didn’t realise it exactly. My wife, prompted by a few too many huffs and puffs, asked me gently if I was alright.

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In a dirty word

If we’re pet lovers and we faithfully pick up our dog’s dropping, we refer to that steaming offering as poo, don’t we? But when we step in a hunk of it on our way to an important meeting, it suddenly becomes dog shit.

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Your first book

Can you remember the first grown-up book you read? I went to see Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood the other day. I’d been waiting for the movie with an uncharacteristic and almost overwhelming sense of excitement that reminded me of Christmas Eve as a youngster.

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In a word – no!

I was having a chat at a good friend’s place the other day when he offered me a cup of coffee. I declined, having already driven caffeine into my system with a powerful long black in one of my city haunts earlier that morning.

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A dog’s view

I was doing a downward facing dog the other night when I noticed something extraordinary. A tiny sign on the side of a timber table leg proclaimed that this product should not be eaten.

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Words of war

I was listening to a loud conversation the other day. I hesitate to say that it was in a café because a number of people have commented recently that rather nice cafés seem to be where I spend most of my time, and have asked if I ever actually write.

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On the phone

In her novel Dreams of Speaking (2005 Age Book of the Year Award), Gail Jones introduces us to Mr Sakamoto, a Japanese survivor of Hiroshima. Intelligent and urbane, he’s also an expert on Alexander Graham Bell, the pioneering engineer credited with inventing the telephone.

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It’s all in the mind

I love the way the vision of a persistent, mocking, relentless, flashing cursor on a blank word processing document so flawlessly represents writer’s block.

The dis-ease of writer being unable to write, whether real or imagined, can strike a disproportionate fear into any scribe.

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Lead in your pencil

I recently thoroughly enjoyed seeing The Last Station, starring Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, and Paul Giamatti.

All about Leo Tolstoy and his meteoric relationship with his wife, Sofya, there was quite a bit of writing going on, albeit in the background and much to Sofya’s ire, as Tolstoy’s acolytes scribbled furiously, recording juicy details of the great writer’s personal life.

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