Cowboys Herding Cats

Everyone knows you can't lead a cat to water. Unless you're a cowboy.

Heart of Darkness

Are you a frequent Googler? Concerned about energy usage? Well, set your home page to http://www.blackle.com. It's the same old Google, only the background is black. It takes more power to display a white page than a black one.

Smarty-pants Doogie Houser used a blue background in Word when writing his electronic diaries. It was quite irritating to look at. I wonder if he did it to earn carbon credits.

Sowing the Seeds of Success

(Corny title, I know... )

My uber talented colleague Kate Mulvany won the 2004 Philip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award with The Seed, and tonight the play opens at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre. She also stars in this drama about the effects of war, based on her family history. If you're in town, please go along and check it out. I'm so excited for Kate. She was with me when my agent offered representation. As a writer, she knew just how much the offer meant to me. We jumped around and screamed for ages (after we double-checked the email to make sure I read it right the first time).

Congrats, Kate! Thanks for your support. Break a leg.

Goodness Gracious!

While cruising my favourite blogs for pitching tips, I read this exchange in the comments trail of a recent Pubrants post. An anonymous poster criticised the Publishers Marketplace blurb for YA author Kelly Parra’s Graffiti Girl. Expressing an opinion is fine. But what I found memorable was Kelly’s gracious response. It would’ve been all too easy to shoot back with a scorching reply. Instead, she killed 'em with kindness. I think that says a lot about her and how to win fans and influence bloggers.

In other news...
Writing victory of the week: finished a YA ms. Hooray!