Went for a surf this morning and when I returned to my car afterwards, there was a yellow Laser parked right next to me. The exact same car – the exact same model – that Carly drove in Raw Blue (and they’re not common, least not any more). Parked exactly where she would have parked it. How weird. Sort of Lunar Parky (that Bret Easton Ellis novel). The owner turned up and I told him why I was checking out his car. He was nice enough to look chuffed, like his car had this whole history he didn’t know about. I didn’t have anything to photograph it with, but next time I will.

Anyway, I’ve got no segue between that and why I’m playing this a lot today. The two things will just have to go together. Hope you’re having a good one!

One of the very nice things about writing Night Beach was that if I needed to get myself in the mood, all I had to do was run around the net searching for the sort of art that would inspire me. I looked at Dan McCarthy’s art a lot. To me, his work is similar in feel to the paintings from the Romantic Era that I love*. It often features the human figure dwarfed by the natural environment – woods, mountains and the heavily starred (and so beautiful!) night sky. And, of course, he had me at ultramarine blue.

One of the chapters in Night Beach is called The gloaming in his honour (after a series of paintings he did with the same title).

I figure the internet must have completely transformed the playing field for new artists. In addition to the gallery system of exhibiting and selling paintings, they have the option of self-managing the distribution of their work. So, in plain English, Dan releases screen prints regularly for sale. I bought three of them, and now I get to enjoy his work every day. It’s even better in the flesh. Another thing I found is that the same word is hidden in each of them. Disguised and embedded. I like that.

His posters are beautiful, too:

If you like Dan’s work, and are interested in seeing more on his process, check out his Facebook page. And you might also like another Dan’s work – Dan Danger. The two of them are exhibiting together in San Francisco in April, and it’s one show I would love to see.

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*I did a post a little while ago on how the Romantic Era artists, poets, writers were big influencers on Night Beach, see here.

**All Dan’s work shown here with permission.

This is for you. (Only because everybody in Australia already knows this song by now).

For flying, or breathing, or whatever else you want to do. Summer! Finally!!!

Centre for Youth Literature! The celebratory program looks hot, so if you’re down that way (Melbourne) get on it.

Apply this liberally to your ears.

Thanks to an excellent review post by Alpha Reader, I’ve just read this article: Sex Education: far from decent, and also a related article which discusses the extent to which violent pornography is now accessed on a regular basis by regular teenagers. No. More than that, it argues that porn is now our main sex educator, during a period in which porn content has become increasingly violent and disrespectful towards women.

The only way this is going to be redressed is by talking about it. Bad things flourish when good people stick their heads in the sand because they find the issue (understandably!) difficult to address.

I can’t say it better than Benjamin Law (author of the first article – “Sex Education: far from decent”):

Teenagers are smart. They instinctively know when you’re patronising them. Cast your mind back to when you were a teenager yourself: you appreciated it when adults trusted you with sensitive information, and assumed you could make choices based on that information … Frightening things are only combatted by shedding light on them.

Raw Blue has the glitter skin, but it was only as I looked at the previous post I realised Night Beach has the glittering lights. Huh. Funny how you find patterns. It’s a recurring thing through the story. What do you call that? Motif?

At seventeen, I’m in‑between. Staring at the carnival from a distance. Not sure if I want to go forward and become an adult; liking the view too much to turn back. Drinking and cars and Kane and freedom. All those glittering lights … (from Night Beach)