Very exciting. My story “You Lose These” is included in this new anthology. Congratulations to Miryam for bringing this project to completion!

buy the book (at www.randomhouse.com) »

This morning, at Liz Ellis’s, she mentioned how fun it would be to have a dictionary where you could look up Australian words and flora and fauna in my novel that you’ve been wondering about. I was excited. True enough, I think that would be fun. My only concern is not exactly knowing which words are Australian. That happens to me all the time. Like, “Open the boot please”, which, I am still not sure what the word is for the thing in the back of the car where you put your luggage, but I DO know that this word is Australian. I didn’t, in the past. Twenty years after coming here I still don’t know what I don’t know. Ha! Mostly that’s because I’m a curmudgeon and don’t chat with lots of folks on a regular basis. Partly that’s because I love the sound of Australian language so much that maybe I don’t hear the American words…

Well, anyway, I wanted to start at the beginning of the book and add a couple of words a day, or maybe some pictures of tress or bushes or birds or whatever comes up next.

Here goes:

FOGEY: Um, is this Australian? It means an old conservative person, the kind who might gossip about you if you got your hair dyed blue.
BLOKE: a man. A good enough sort. Rough around the edges, like a kettle made out of a kerosene tin.
COCKIE: a cockatoo. or a land owner. They both make a lot of noise.
PODDY: an animal that has been abandoned by its mother. A poddy lamb is the little stinker who walks around after you, butting your bum, trying to get you to give it more milk. Leaves droppings all over the verandah.

It’s like a birth, this book thing. You’re not sure what’s going to happen, or how the baby is going to look, or even if it’s going to be a healthy baby or a sickly one. Folks cluster around, cooing in front of you, possibly saying “MY G-d! Did you see the pink hair on that one? The squashed nose??” when they have gone home. Like a parent, you say it’s the perfect baby for you, but secretly, silently, you wonder if your baby is average enough. If you have the courage to be a good parent and learn from your mistakes, and not be one of those Mums at the park who smile as their child flings sand in the two year old’s eyes.

My novel, for better or for worse, is coming out in the US tomorrow. It scares me and excites me. I want to hold the book in my hands, a weight, what many years of work feels like. I want to walk past a bookshop and see it in the window and get a little jolt of recognition: That’s my work. That’s what I spend the day (and night!) doing. I want to think that those words between the covers might touch someone far away. I want to gloat and do a war dance…see…I wasn’t slacking off all that time! I was doing SOMETHING.

Mostly, I want to lie in my hot bath and be still and thankful for all the fine twists of fate and kindness that have brought me to this place, because I know, really know, that there are many much finer writers than me who have not had the same good fortune that I have.

The cat, in the night, sticks her paw under the door and claws at the edge of the wood, waking me from a bad dream, a dream I didn’t want to be dreaming anyway. “Mraw?” she says. Let me in! Aren’t we all like that? Wishing for a little more than we already have, not content with the warm familiar side of the door but curious about what lies on the other side.

I’ve done that. I know I have. Asked a question when I know the answer is going to hurt. Gone someplace fully aware that it isn’t a place for me. Wanted to live a slightly different life. Stuck my paw under that door and clawed at the woodwork. Let me in.

Snow, like being knocked unconscious, stars and flurries descending from foggy grey night, falling softly in your eyes and melting there, paralysis of thought, just sensation, pure sensation, cold tattooing skin, cold eaking leaking breaking in to the nooks and crannies of your neck, your wrists, your ears, your ankles, getting all up in your face and bullying you, faster faster run on home to mama, tell her how I hounded you all the way, blustered, flustered, chased you down the slipshod road, frozen fingers round your throat, crying chill within your ears, don’t stop or you’ll be trod into this slushy puddlestuff with me.