Blog Archives - Liam Livings

New Forest Writing Retreat 2015 aims

19/2/2015

Hi everyone,

I meant to post this before starting the writing retreat, but things happened, so here I am half way through the first week finally posting this.

I’ve got a few weeks in the New Forest for a secluded writing retreat and I have decided these are my aims.

On 27 February I’m at the Purbeck Literary Festival with Clare London and Charlie Cochrane doing a session on gay romance and gay fiction. Come on over and see what we have to say, and ask us a question or two.
Self edits on Kev 1, 2, 3 so they’re ready for submission. I fast drafted these in 2014, but they’re very rough first drafts so I need to spend time tidying them up before anyone else sees them. This may be way too ambitious to try and do this, but it’s a clear block of time I have with minimal distractions so I’m going to give it a go. To be honest if I get half way through these edits this week I’ll be pleased.
Finishing my current WIP - The Other Man and typing up the hand written notes I wrote while in Australia so it's all in one document. At the moment it's 2 Word docs (one pre and one post Oz) and one half full notebook of hand written words.
Reading writing ‘craft’ books (when I’m too tired to edit). I’ve a couple of these which are gathering dust on my shelf, so I’ll spend time to read these and reflect on any learning from them.
Beta reading a story for another author.
Among all this hard work, it’s important to rest and recuperate, so I’ll build in some time to watch films and dramas (working my way through Gilmore Girls as I can pretend it’s work because the dialogue is so damned great I can pick up a few tips while I’m with the wonderful characters in Stars Hollow).
I will walk for 45mins to an hour every day. I started this in December 2014 and noticed my moods have improved from the exercise, the light, and change of location from my desk all day.
Catching up with friends from Hampshire/ Bath. I’m at the writing retreat on my own, so it’s important to meet real people and not just fictional ones in my imagination and in TV series.

Let’s see how that pans out. I’m sure I’ll have the odd day shopping in Southampton Salisbury/ Winchester/ Bournemouth, who knows, but I don’t want to fritter away the time so hopefully these goals should help.

Have any of you gone on a writing retreat, alone or with others? How did it go? I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

Best Friends Perfect book three cover reveal

19/2/2015

Hi everyone,

I'm pleased to announce the cover of the third and final part in the Best Friends Perfect series. Adrian Nichols has done a wonderful job of continuing the ongoing theme and showing how the action has moved on to London with Kieran, Jo, and friends. This will be published in spring 2015.

Escaping From Him blog tour FINAL STOP - Becausetwomenarebetterthanone

11/2/2015

Hi everyone,

I'm worn out from this blog touring business. Anyway, this is the final stop. If you'd like a chance to win an ebook from me comment on their website. I'm talking about where the secondary characters came from in Escaping From Him and listening to music while writing.

Liam answers some questions… There are quite a few secondary characters in Escaping From Him, where did they come from?

Darryl’s social life with Chris is quite restricted, because, reasons. He only really has Lena, his Swedish friend to talk to. So when he leaves, I wanted Darryl to become the fully sociable person he truly always was. When he went to the new places in Scotland I knew he’d quickly make friends, and integrate himself into a new family.

I try to make my secondary characters interesting, so if wanted, I can write their story in a separate book. I also think who wants to read about boring characters, when you can make them quirky, odd, interesting, just like real people are. As usual with my characters they’re a mix of elements of people I’ve met or know as the centre of the character, then I build from there from my imagination. Why not have a big hairy bear of a gay man who’s really into Kylie? I know I’ve met plenty. I don’t understand this gay shame thing, where people say things or people are ‘too gay’. No one says straight people’s taste is ‘too straight’, so why be ashamed of liking a bit of Kylie or anything a bit camp if that’s what you enjoy? Gavin’s obsession with The Contest came from a friend who always used to hold parties that night, and who’d travelled Europe visiting the host countries. This friend took it very seriously, so Gavin’s obsession built from there I suppose.

Chris’s prejudice about certain things being too gay is my way of exploring how some people really do feel that way. I had a friend whose boyfriend told him he couldn’t hold a plastic carrier bag by the handles as it was ‘too gay’, and he never watched any musicals, or Eurovision Song Contest, or kissed gay friends on the cheek to greet them, all because it was ‘too gay’. Yet, there he was, sleeping with my friend, living with my friend for years. I don’t understand this. I think it’s really a bit of prejudice against camp, gay men, and anything that is camp, which I’ve blogged about before. http://www.liamlivings.com/blog/why-does-society-still-have-a-problem-with-camp-men

Lena – I have a thing for Abba (again, no shame, no guilt, I love it) and the deliberate accent, and how as a culture Swedish people do darkness and melancholy very well, leading to all sorts of wonderful art. Bjorn Ulvaeus once said in an Abba documentary, ‘I think it is good to be sad.’ I wanted Lena’s creativity and ability to make the best of darkness to inspire Darryl to change.

Do you listen to music when writing? What kind?

I normally listen to Enya while writing, (I’m listening to it now as I write this) as it’s quite relaxing and the lyrics aren’t something I have to listen to. People can be very snobby and dismissive about Enya. I don’t care. I love it; she and her soothing tones have been with me since Mum heard the first album on the radio and bought the record. I’ve bought every album since then.

Sometimes I write in silence as I need to be with the story, with the characters and no distractions. However, while writing almost all the first 30,000 words of Escaping From Him, I listened to I Love It by Icona Pop, and watched the video too, pretty obsessively, again and again. Look it up on youtube, it’s a great song! This song was the original thing that sparked the idea of the story, so while I was writing it, I wanted to stay with the song and the feeling it gave me to write the initial parts when Darryl escapes from his life, the high octane running away and throwing things in a black bin bag to escape his life. And the song really got me into that place well.

Extract Darryl and his boyfriend are talking in bed just afterwards

We lay on the slightly broken futon, laughing and panting together. He propped himself on his elbow, kissed me and asked if I wanted some water.

“I really should tidy up in here. I can hardly see the floor. How long do you think it’s been since I did laundry?”

He looked at the floor, hardly any carpet visible for clothes strewn everywhere. “Judging by those pants you were wearing today, I’d say about two to three weeks.”

I slapped his chest gently. “They weren’t that bad were they?”

“They’d seen better days; they were Superman ones – the first time round, so Christ alone knows how old they were.”

“Rude!”

“True though. What do you think I wanted them off a ya so quick?”

He ran to the bathroom down the corridor, wrapped in only a towel and returned to the bed with a glass of water each, which we greedily gulped before falling asleep.

Escaping From Him is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Escaping From Him blog tour - Hearts On Fire interview

11/2/2015

Come on over to Hearts On Fire blog to hear me talk about the films that inspired me with Escaping From Him and whether the jobs of characters matter or not. Comment on their website for a chance to win an ebook.

What films did you watch that inspired the story?

Escaping From Him has a touch of the road trip film about it, I think, Connie and Carla, or maybe Thelma and Louise. In both these films the main characters jump on the road and drive away from their lives because they have no choice. Darryl’s life gets to a point where he no longer has a choice, he literally cannot be that person any longer, so he has to leave to become another person.

No surprise to anyone who knows me, but Muriel’s Wedding. Muriel is the ugly duckling stuck in her room in Porpoise Spit, listening to ABBA songs all day, and she escapes all that, moves to Sydney with her friend and finds herself a man, she even changes her name to Mariel. Muriel reinvents herself because she’s sick and tired of being the person she was in Porpoise Spit. Darryl is sick and tired of the person he is in London, living with Chris.

Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. Just because I love it. That is all

Why is Darryl a photographer and Chris an estate agent? Why do their jobs matter?

I often seem to think about my main characters’ jobs! I think a job says so much about a person’s personality, what motivates them, what defines them as a person. I wanted to show the contrast between the sort of jobs/careers these two characters find important.

Darryl is all about using his creativity, and isn’t so bothered about the money. For him the thought of just getting a job, any job is like a form of slow death. For Darryl, being able to have a job that’s creative and matters to him is as important as the air he breaths.

For Chris, the job is incidental to the money he gets from it, and therefore the things he can buy. Chris doesn’t enjoy being an estate agent any more than he would enjoy any other job, but he enjoys the money it brings. He’s can easily disengage his morals, the part of him that gets meaning from his job, and simply get on with selling houses every day. By the way, I don’t have anything against estate agents, but it was a contrasting job to photography.

It is just one of the many ways that Darryl and Chris are incompatible, only it takes Darryl a while to realise how incompatible.

EXTRACT

“Why don’t you get a normal job?” Chris would ask me as I ended another unpaid work experience placement.

And because I didn’t want to say, “Because I can’t think of anything worse than doing what you do,” I just said, “It’s not my dream. It’s not who I am.”

“Dreams are all good and well, but they don’t pay the rent or the council tax, do they? Or pay for food? You need to think more practically, babe.”

There it was, that word he was so fond of. Practically.

I wasn’t so big on practically. I was more into dreams and hopes…

Escaping From Him is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Escaping From Him blog tour - MMgoodbook reviews

11/2/2015

Another stop on the blog tour. This time I'm talking to MMgoodbookreviews about romance and writing with other people around me. Comment on their website for a chance to win an ebook.

Do you feel the need to apologise for writing genre fiction, or are you all, “kiss my romance writing arse”?

I never apologise for writing romantic fiction. I am a proud member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. I’m not against literary fiction, or other fiction genres, I think anything to encourage people to read more and do less of passive forms of recreation (watching TV etc) the better. By reading you use your imagination, by watching TV you don’t need to imagine anything as it’s all shown to you on the screen.

People read romance for a variety of reasons: escape from real life, comfort during periods of stress, to experience a happy ever after etc. And these reasons are just as valid as wanting to read for all the reasons people read other types of fiction: to be challenged, to expand vocabulary, to read beautiful words, to be thrilled/scared, to learn about someone’s life. They are just different reasons for reading. The magic about books – all books, is it gives you the option to live other people’s lives, to travel through time, and experience feelings of other people. So if my books give someone comfort or escape during a difficult period of their live, I am pleased to have helped in a small way.

Can you write with other people around?

If I only wrote when I was alone I would write about 100 words a year. I write when my BF is in the house doing other things. I write on trains, I’ve written on planes to Australia and from Australia. I’ve written in departure lounges in train stations. I write wherever I have time to write. I like to make the most of these little bits of time to write. So yes, I can write with other people around. When writing in public places I have Enya music on my headphones to block out the noise, but the presence of other people around me doesn’t bother me. I can’t let it bother me, or I’d never write. And I love writing.

Excerpt

We arrived at The Birdcage cabaret bar. It had a large red door in the corner of a Victorian building which had probably at one point been a department store, or part of a hospital, such was its air of faded grandeur. At the top of the steps, a drag queen in blue sequinned evening dress, slit to the hip, and glass stilettos checked our names against a list on a clipboard she held. “Who’s the chicken?” she asked, before making clucking noises at Charlie.

“Never you mind, D. Sit anywhere, is it?” Charlie handed some money to the drag queen door whore, and led me down the stairs, through silver tinsel curtains into the club.

As we arrived, I tried to hand him some money for my ticket, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He kept pushing it back into my hand. In the end, I said it didn’t feel right and I didn’t want any treatment as if we were dating, ’cause we were most definitely not dating. And that I’d had enough of older men paying for me, so if he wouldn’t take my money, I would leave.

“Older man was it?” Charlie raised one eyebrow. “The ex? Older, was he?”

“Dunno what you’re on about.” I looked away and tried to occupy myself by searching for a good seat, not too near the stage.

Escaping From Him is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Escaping From Him blog tour - RJ Scott interviews me

11/2/2015

I'm on RJ Scott's blog talking about the colourful cast of characters around the main couple in my stories, and which songs inspired Escaping From Him. Comment there for a chance to win an ebook of mine.

Author Q&A
Your stories tend to have a cast of friends and colleagues surrounding the main couple, why is this do you think?
Apart from at the start of a new relationship, when you may disappear to Planet Boyfriend for a month or so, who doesn’t have friends? I find it more interesting to read and write having a circle of friends / family around the main couple. It allows for the main characters to ask their opinions on what to do, and what not do to. It means you can show different sorts of gay relationship, apart from the main couple – because there are as many different types of gay couple as straight couples. I wanted to have Gavin and Big Gav as another gay couple in the story too. I have some very rough plans to tell their story too at some point…

By having a circle of friends around the main couple it gives you space to write some interesting sub plots so it’s more than only about the main couple. I like TV dramas like Brothers and Sisters, which is quite soapy, with all the ups and downs and conflict between the different characters, so I suppose I tend towards writing more like that.

At the heart of the story I always want to have the romance between the two men, but as in life, I want to show the great variety of things that happen around a relationship too.

What songs inspired the story?

I Love It by Icona Pop was the inspiration for the whole story. The lyrics at the start, I threw your sh*t into a bag and pushed it down the stairs, gave me an idea of an opening scene where a man threw his boyfriend’s stuff into a black bin bag and pushed it down the stairs, and then I was off!

Fernando, by Abba. No way can I get this far without mentioning Abba in some way! Lena is Swedish, obvs, and she misses Darryl when he moves to Scotland, she says how long they’ve not seen one another. I imagined them being best friends for many years to come, like two soldiers, putting up a fight against life together.

Now we’re old and grey Fernando

And since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hand.
Your Disco Needs You by Kylie. Big Gav is a massive Kylie fan and I remember some years ago there was a trend for people – mainly gay men in fairness - to wear T shirts with Your Disco Needs You across the front. It was, as they say, all the rage. For some reason that popped into my head when I was thinking about Big Gav and I imaged how great it would be to have a big hairy man mountain of a bear with that T shirt on, years after it was fashionable, and as soon as I’d thought of it, I knew that was *exactly* what Big Gav would do.

Excerpt Darryl goes clubbing with his new group of friends

We went to Truvy Jones, the night club. Lena danced with Big Gav - the enormous hairy bear of a man mountain, full beard, long hair and a T-Shirt with Your Disco Needs You in silver glittery letters - after he'd lifted her over his head and danced with her on his shoulders for two songs. Gavin got drunk on gin, which I already knew meant tears, but he wasn't listening to us earlier. He ended up crying into his tonic, sucking his slice of lime and saying how much he still loved his ex - despite telling me, every time I'd seen him before, that he was a bastard. At its peak, we divided and conquered: Lena took Big Gav and danced with him, while I followed Gavin to the gents' toilets to hear his woes. Mid-story, Charlie joined us, leaning against the sinks in the gents' and said, "At it again, is he?" He looked at Gavin. "He does this every time he has gin. Every time. I told him last time, I wasn't looking after him, next time he was on the mother's ruin, and look who's doing it tonight."

I frowned at Charlie for not helping the situation. "Just because Big Gav is like your ex in some ways doesn't mean he's like him in all ways. They're two different people? I mean, I could do you a drawing but it would be a very simple one." I smiled and he looked at me, attempting a smile. I misted up the mirror and drew two stick men, writing 'Big Gav' under one and 'Ex' under the other.

Gavin stood, wiped his eyes with some paper towel. "I didn't expect to be in another relationship straight after, you know. I thought I'd have chance to do all the things you do when you split up with someone. Then the computer's rhythm throws up him, and I'm arse over tit, in up to my neck in love. I can't imagine being with anyone else.”

Escaping From Him is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Escaping From Him blog tour - My Fiction Nook giveaway and interview

9/2/2015

Another stop on the Escaping From Him blog tour, this time it was My Fiction Nook. For a chance to win an ebook comment on My Fiction Nook website in response to the question at the end of the interview.

Excerpt:

Lena couldn't wait to visit me. At first I had used the weather as an excuse for putting off her visit. "I am from Sweden. It snows all winter, and there is no sunlight. I think I can be okay with your little Scottish winter." So, on a bright but cold February Saturday, I met her at the station in the middle of Glasgow. She ran across the concourse, her bright blonde quiff rock solid with hair spray, pink ear warmers, a puffy pink jacket which was like a duvet with arms, and dark pink jeans. I hugged her and asked what was with all the pink. "I have listened to Pink’s music very much lately, and I realise I like the colour, so I go a bit mad. Brightens up the winter?" I couldn't argue with that. "It's great." "Where is this shop selling the kilts? You said we would see one?" "Let's drop your stuff at mine, and there's one round the corner from there." I looped my arm through hers and we left the station. "I've missed you." "And I have missed you, too." She smiled. "Since how long has it been?" "Six months. I've been here six months. Seems like a couple of weeks. What about for you?" "Since many years, I have not looped my arm through yours. Since many years, I have not seen your smile … " "Now we both know that's a lie, we've Skyped all the time."

"Yes, but you cannot do this can you?" She leant over to me, kissed my face and squeezed my cheek, it stung slightly in the cold air.

A short Q&A

What are the main themes in this book?

Escaping from a relationship that’s not right for you. Darryl jumped into his relationship with Chris with two feet and gradually he realises he’s not going to be able to be that person, with that boyfriend, for the rest of his life, so he has no choice but to leave, and face the consequences.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It would have been easy for Darryl to have stayed with Chris and put up with it, but he takes a leap of faith and fortunately Fate favours the bold, with the helpful colourful characters he meets in Scotland.

Rebuilding yourself as a new person. When Darryl goes to Scotland he knows nobody, so he can be who he wants, he can do what he likes, with no one’s preconceptions to hold him back. I often wonder how differently people would behave if they didn’t worry about what their friends thought about them. Darryl is able to do just that, when he leaves London behind for his new life.

The importance of friendship. When Darryl goes to Scotland he soon meets a whole host of new friends who help him on his way. For reasons I won’t go into, this is the first time he’s really felt part of something, and he calls this group of friends, family, because to him, they are exactly that. A strange, mixed up, odd collection of fantastic and fabulous individuals who all love Darryl for different reasons and give him different things, but allowing him always to be himself. And if that’s not a definition of family I don’t know what is.

Was it difficult to write this book?

As hard as any story is to write really. *shrugs* Because my inspiration was from a song, I first used the lyrics to sketch out different sections of the story. Under each new line of the song I wrote what happened in the story related to that lyric, expanding and building on the lyric so I had a whole scene to write, inspired by that line of the song. I didn’t use my Post It note method for this story, for some reason, the plan was typed on a Word doc.

I think it’s because I never thought it would amount to much more than a man throwing his boyfriend’s things down the stairs in a black bin bag, and that, clearly isn’t a story. But I wrote and wrote, and that technique got me the first draft by the end of January 2014, which was about 25,000 words, then sent it to Sue Brown to beta, who suggested I expand the happy relationship part a bit. I did that, writing another 5000 words and playing with the structure slightly. Then I submitted it to Manifold Press and discussed it at UK Meet 2014, Julie Bozza and Fiona Pickles like it, but asked me if I could add an additional 20,000 words to bring it up to a short novel length of 50,000 words, concentrating on the part once Darryl is in Scotland and has left the controlling relationship.

By then I had the other characters worked out, so it wasn’t too hard to think of 4 scenes I could add of approximately 5000 words each, which I wrote in July 2014.

****

Buy Links for Escaping From Him:

Amazon UK ~ Amazon US ~ All Romance Ebooks

Escaping From Him blog tour - giveaway at Love Bytes Reviews

9/2/2015

Hi,

Next stop on the Escaping From Him blog tour was Love Bytes Reviews. There's a giveaway of one of my ebooks if you comment on their website, as well as an interview, and an extract.

Darryl and Chris are very life like characters, did you make them up completely, or did you base them on anyone in real life?

My friend had a boyfriend a little bit like Chris in some ways. He complained about things being ‘too gay’ and would never kiss other gay men to greet them, it was just a firm hand shake. He also banned my friend from carrying anything in plastic carrier bags by the handle, instead insisting they were carried crumpled up and not swinging about. Again, ‘too gay’ otherwise. But most of Chris is a mixture of small elements of other ex boyfriends of mine, or my friends, a bit from him and bit from him, making a whole monstrous picture of Chris. He was such fun to write!

I think, like most of the main characters I write, there’s elements of me in Darryl. The wide eyed wonder at the gay scene at his young age, was something I felt as a teenager coming to London’s gay scene. I also think Darryl’s desire to have a job that’s creative, interesting, and fulfilling is a classic millennial generational thing, which I also agree with. Millennials are those born from 1980 to 2000, sometimes called generation Y. I’m also a great believer in asking for the kindness of strangers, and also being a kind stranger too. I’ve often given someone a few coins if they’re short for the parking meter, or let someone go in the queue in front of me if they’ve got one item and I have a basket. I think lots of people doing little things like that all around the world make it a better world to live in.

Of all your characters in Escaping From Him, who would you most like to push downstairs, who would you like to share a taxi cab with, and who would you like to move next door so you could see them every day?

I’d like to live next door to Charlie, because, who doesn’t want a sexy gay cowboy living next door to them, even if he’s a bit too flirty? I’d be able to handle that on a daily basis, because his heart’s in the right place. I’d push Chris downstairs, just like Darryl does with his stuff in the black bin bag. Chris is a petty, vile individual and although I don’t condone violence, but just because that was the option, definitely Chris would go down the stairs. But I wouldn’t want him to be hurt though, just a gentle push I think. And I would share a taxi cab with Darryl, because with his luck, and his fortune favouring the brave attitude, I’d want to see where we ended up. I’m sure his optimism and grab life by the balls attitude would lead to an interesting conversation about his photography, or maybe a night out at the cabaret club in Scotland, or about one of his friend’s life dramas. I’m sure we’d end up having a much longer taxi ride than at first planned, leading somewhere much more fun than we’d first thought, because, that’s what Darryl is like.

EXTRACT – Darryl meets Charlie for the first time

My stool stopped and in front of me stood a man in his forties, a well-preserved forties. He wore black Levi jeans that clung in all the right places, and bulged in the right other places too. His light-blue denim short-sleeved shirt had small shiny buttons down the front, and a flourish of metal on the shoulders. I looked up to his face, expecting a cowboy hat but was disappointed at its absence. Instead, I was greeted with an open neck of dark blond chest hair, and a necklace nestled among the hair. He had light blue eyes and close cropped dark blonde beard, with just the odd fleck of ginger in it. Well, everyone has their crosses to bear, don’t they?

“Charlie.” He held out his large hand with a dusting of blond hairs on the back.

We sat at the bar, established he’d been playing peacemaker between two different groups of friends until he was exhausted. All his friends had left and he’d spotted me sitting all alone for the whole time I’d been there. And he didn’t have any drugs to sell me.

I told him I’d moved from down south after a nasty breakup, and that I wasn’t ready for another relationship.

“I wasn’t after one of those either.” He smiled and put his hand on my knee.

*****

Liam's Australian Adventure part 3/3

6/2/2015

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the final part in my Australian Adventure. I hope you're sitting comfortably.

In case you missed them, part one and part two are there if you want them.

Adelaide

We both loved Adelaide. It’s built around a river, rather than a port, like Melbourne and Sydney are. It’s also much more planned than the other two large cities we’d visited. There was a shopping area – Rundle Mall – which I loved, as Muriel’s mum mentions it in Muriel’s wedding. (I know this is, odd and a bit sad, but it made me happy, so I went with it) There was an area of boutique shops and cafes that sold amazing cakes and iced chocolates. There was a bars and clubs area. And there was a restaurants area too. All neatly laid out, in a grid pattern, with loads and loads of park and green space between it. It was like a cross between those towns you see in western films, the Victorian architecture seemed to have remained largely untouched, unlike in Sydney and Melbourne where quite a bit of it had been pulled down to make way for larger glitzier tower blocks, and a new town in England planned in the 1920s. Adelaide didn’t really have any high rise buildings. I ‘discovered’ Target and they had a sale on, so bought some shirts and T shirts for very little.

The botanical gardens were so interesting, and a welcome respite from the heat. I sat in 30C in the shade and the sweat poured off me. Coming from a country where a day of sun and temperatures above 27C results in traffic jams as everyone clamours to get to the beach, I think it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Much above 32C and it becomes hard to do anything really. And at 42C it’s dangerous to be outside. The guided tour of the botanical gardens was cancelled as always when it gets above 35C.

Kangaroo Island

This is an island off the coast from Adelaide. A 21/2 hour coach trip to the coast, then a 40min ferry ride and you’re on Kangaroo Island (KI as it’s called). The total population of the island is 4200, there’s no public transport or taxis on the island, and many of the roads aren’t sealed, so they’re basically dirt tracks. We weren’t picking up the hire car until the day after we arrived, we thought walking the suitcases the 0.8 miles from the ferry terminal to the house would be fine. Big mistake. Huge. After dragging our bags for a while the BF left his bag and tried to scout ahead to find our rental house. I slowly wheeled our bags until a car stopped alongside and offered me a lift. ‘It’s really hot for you to be doing that, come on, put your stuff in and we’ll give you a lift,’ said the smiling Australian woman, her husband driving next to her, and their son in the back staring at a Gameboy/whatever they’re called nowadays. My London safety antenna pricked up, thinking, is this going to be like that film, Wrong Turn, where they drive me to a log cabin in the woods and that’s the last anyone ever hears of me? I said I’d be fine, but she was very persuasive, and friendly. I thought if they are psychopaths, they’re a family of them, including the little boy, so that’s probably quite unlikely.

They drove me to the house, where we met the BF, unloaded the bags, wished us luck, and said, ‘Kangaroo Island is the sort of place that reveals itself to you slowly. Hope you enjoy it,’ And they were gone, in their big 4x4 car.

The house had a sea view balcony, the sea was 200 yards away. Having been in small hotel rooms for the last few nights, it was wonderful to have a three bedroom house all to ourselves. And more importantly to have a washing machine to wash our clothes in, having been managing by washing things in the sink and drying them over a chair since Sydney.

On the BF’s birthday we drove to Seal Bay where we saw camels...no, of course we didn’t, we saw sea lions on a protected beach they return to year after year. Their dexterity on the land was amazing to see from such close quarters. We drove into Flinders chase national park to see the Remarkable Rocks which are just what their name suggests. Then onto Admiral’s Arch, where a large colony of New Zealand fur seals makes their home. They were 100 yards from us, doing their thing, swimming, basking in the sun, fighting, playing. We stopped at a wildlife sanctuary and saw kangaroos very close and koalas with their babies sleeping in the trees. It wasn’t a zoo, the animals were free to leave, they just generally chose to stay as the trees and fields were just what the koalas and kangaroos wanted. We also saw an echidna on the floor of the forest. An echidna is one of only 3 mammals that lays eggs. It’s like a hedgehog, with a beak and claws. Pretty amazing.

The hire car’s insurance wasn’t valid after sunset and before sunrise, because of the large amount of wildlife on the roads at night it’s not advised to drive then. We drove slowly on the un-sealed roads as per their advice, but I did wonder if perhaps a Ford Fiesta automatic wasn’t quite the best car to have for hire on an island with those roads. But hey ho.

The ferry back to the mainland was very rough. I just about kept a lid on it all, by staring resolutely at the horizon and sipping my hot sweet tea. No reading occurred on that crossing.

Adelaide has one main train station called Adelaide Railway Station, which shows how much smaller it is than Sydney or Melbourne. I liked this country town charm to Adelaide. Imagine London having a ‘London Railway Station’!

The final day of the holiday was spent in Semaphore, a seaside bit of Adelaide with a long pier with two very greedy pelicans who kept stealing fish from the people who were fishing. It didn’t have any developments or shops along the seafront, which gave it a rural unspoilt feel. The shops and restaurants were on Semaphore road which ran from the train station to the beach. It had a laid back charm. We ate in a Swedish cafe (meatballs, mashed potatoes, lingunberry jam and gravy, what else) and read at the end of the long pier.

Had a look around Port Adelaide, which had the city been built around the sea, not the river, would have been the city centre, rather than a quiet suburb.

And then it was time to pack, eat and book a taxi for the airport.

Flight home

Too tired to write much. However, I came home with 87 hand written A5 pages of my current story – The Other Man which I’m pleased with. That’s about 20,000 words in old money.

I savagely read one of my guilty pleasure doorstopper glitzy books, which suitably distracted me from the horror of flying. I also, unlike the journey to Oz, managed to sleep a bit, since we’d been up all day before flying.

The weather

38C in a city is not fun. I sat in the shade of the botanic gardens in Adelaide with sweat pouring off me.

The hottest it got was 42C in the outback. I managed a few minutes of that, with a hat on, before running back to the air conditioned car to continue our drive.

I think you can have too much of a good thing, but that’s just me.

The cars

If you’re not into cars, feel free to scroll on past this bit. If not, then fasten your seatbelt for a drive through car geekery (see what I did there...)

Because I am a car geek, I enjoy ‘getting to know’, the cars in a country I travel to. For me it’s an integral part of the holiday. Like, how in Morocco they have Renault Clio saloons and Fiat Unos which were made until pretty recently. Anyway, I digress, I like to look at how they differ from in the UK, if they’re the same. What the most popular ones are. I think the cars a country buys in great numbers usually reflects the country itself – the people’s cars if you will. The Citroen 2CV6 for French peasants to drive a basket of eggs over a ploughed field, while a VW Beetle was designed to speed along their autobahns to the state arranged holiday camps, and in the UK we had the Austin Mini.

They seem to have more of a fondness for automatic cars. No idea why, similar to in America. Both countries have much cheaper fuel costs than in the UK, and automatic cars tend to have worse fuel consumption than manual cars. *shrugs*

Lots of Fords and Holdens, and Japanese cars, but very few French, Italian cars and some German cars.

A Holden Barina is sometimes a Vauxhall Corsa, and sometimes it’s a Hyundai.

They didn’t have Ford Fiestas, instead they had Festivas which is a Mazda with a Ford badge on.

They didn’t have Ford Escorts (from 1980 onwards) instead they had the Ford Laser, which is essentially a Mazda 323 with a Ford badge and wheel trims. Who knew Ford owned 25% of Mazda at one point? I didn’t, and I’d have thought if anyone was going to know that, it would have been me. I’m quite disappointed with myself about not knowing this...

They have a lot of Ford Falcons – which are about as big as an average sized studio flat in London. Imagine a Ford Granada from the eighties and nineties then double it. Apparently they were built and designed to withstand the Australian climate and conditions – rough unsealed roads, high temperatures, sudden storms.

Holdens were sometimes Vauxhalls (the Astra, Omega and Vectra) sometimes huge like the Commodore which was their version of the Ford Falcon, Australian made and designed and a definite force to be reckoned with, and sometimes they were a whole different kettle of fish – Holden Nova which was a Toyata Corolla with a different badge

The cost of things

Eating out was cheaper than in London. A revolving restaurant three course meal in the tallest building in Sydney was $70 which is £35. You can easily pay that for a decidedly mediocre two course meal in London, nowhere near a revolving restaurant or a tower.

Cars, used and new were more expensive. A 2001 Holden Barina (this one really was a Vauxhall Corsa) was $3800 (£1900) which in the UK would be less than £500. New cars are about 20% more expensive than in the UK too.

Petrol was between $1.10 a litre to $2.00 a litre (more expensive in the outback than in cities.) Which is about 55p to £1 a litre, so about half price of UK petrol.

Coffees and iced chocolates – my new favourite drink – were $4

So that was my Australian adventure, and sad as it was for it to end, it was lovely to come home, to be back to familiar surroundings. It made me realise how much I like living in the UK.

Have any of you been to Australia? What is your dream holiday destination?

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

The Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island

An echidna - an egg laying mammal with claws and a beak

A koala, first called the New Holland Sloth. They eat about 1kg of eucalyptus leaves a day, and discard another 1-2kg as they're very fussy which ones they eat.

Australian sense of humour. Outside a bar in Adelaide :-)

Escaping From Him blog tour - JL Merrrow & Charlie Cochrane

5/2/2015

Hi everyone,

Another two stops on the Escaping From Him blog tour. I'm sharing a sneaky extract on JL Merrow's blog, and Charlie Cochrane is interviewing me about whether my characters take over from me while I'm writing or if I'm in charge. I'm sharing another little sneaky peek of the story too on Charlie's blog.

The interview with Charlie is copied below:

Do your characters feel like they have minds of their own, or are they putty in your hands?
*balancing hands, palms turned to the sky* Half and half. That’s a bit of a cop out isn’t it? So, I write character biographies before I write my novels, all the basic info about the characters. I also plan my novels, scene by scene, Post it note by Post it note. So, usually I know what they’re going to do. However, sometimes while I’m writing I find out something new about the character which means the original plot idea wouldn’t make sense. In this case the character does take over in the driving seat – for a bit. I may stop writing, then plot out the new scene befitting of the new aspect I’ve found out about the character, and then I’ll write it.

When I’m really writing fast, and the words are flowing faster than my fingers can type, I sometimes feel as if I can *see* the characters in my mind’s eye, acting out the scene in front of me and I just have to write down what I see. This often happens when I’m plotting too – so there’s plenty of fun and creativity for me at the Post it note plotting stage too. And then when I’m writing, I see/hear the characters talking to one another in my imagination and all I do is type it down. Blimey, that sounds pretentious and weird doesn’t it? I’m not all *closes eyes and pinches nose* ‘I wait for the muse or I can’t write’ about it, I’m really not. I sit down and write, whether I’m in the mood or not, when I have allotted time to write, I make the most of it and I write damn it. If I’m not sat at the laptop there’s no way I’m going to write, so by sitting there, and writing my way out of a block, just free writing anything, rubbish I know I’ll have to edit loads later, I often write myself back into the scene, and into that magic bit with the mind’s eye working its sparkles. And it’s in that magic sparkles part when the characters sort of take over things. But often I’ve had a bit of magic with the characters when I was planning their journey with Post it notes anyway. So you see, sometimes I’m in charge of them and sometimes they’re in charge of me…as I said, half and half. 

EXTRACT – Darryl gets in his boyfriend Chris’s car which jogs a memory

I ran to the car, I started it, glanced at my bag on the back seat, containing all I gave a shit about in the world, took a deep breath. Am I this person? Am I going to be this new person, or am I incapable of doing it?
I stared at the kitchen window where I'd stood making dinner for my Bath friends one evening. The same evening Chris had refused to eat what I'd cooked because the pasta was little bow ties, and not little twists. "You know I don't eat the bow ties, babe. What can I have instead?" he'd asked, the guests looking at their plates intensely.
"We don't have any little twists left." I had looked at the bowl of pasta in the middle of the table.
"What about spaghetti, I like spaghetti."
"We don't have any left. I checked. I thought it'd be fine."
And he'd grabbed the car keys, shouted, "It's fine, I'll get it," before slamming the door.
The memory of that night in the bedroom, once my friends had gone, still couldn't wipe their faces from my memory as he slammed the door. No amount of tantric up-all-night-sex could do that.

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