Celebrating Jenny Pattrick's historical showbiz novel, Skylark

Jenny Pattrick reinvented herself in mid-life as a novelist when arthritis made her delicate work as a jeweller too difficult.

Now I wouldn't wish arthritis on anyone. It's a horrible affliction and the world would be a better place if arthritis slit open its miserable belly and was swallowed by a cane toad. The planet can do without arthritis, thank you very much.

However, wonderful books have been born partly as a result of mild arthritis. (Jenny Pattrick has said she was ready for a career change regardless, after 30 years of working with metal.) 

Her first novel, Denniston Rose, was 10 years in the writing, but once published was an instant hit. Readers were hungry for tasty, well written, well researched historical novels about New Zealand, and that's what Jenny Pattrick has been feeding us ever since. Luckily she loves research, as do most writers of historical fiction.

Now her talent has flowered again in Skylark. Marvellously mingling fact and fiction, Skylark tells the story of Lily Alouette, born and bred to perform in theatres and circus rings—indeed, addicted to the life. Nineteenth century theatre comes alive in technicolour, and singers, acrobats, pirates, settlers, horse breeders and gold miners populate the pages. 

Skylark must surely be another well-deserved hit for our favourite historical novelist. She comes from a show-biz family—theatre and music have always been central to her own life. The story and characters are as wild as any she has ever written, and yet they are beyond credible: they live, breathe and turn somersaults on the pages. 

As the old lady laughing, I must point out that this New Zealand literary heroine was born in 1936. 

Yes, you can buy Skylark online

Thank you for your comments!

Cyclamen wilting: water me!

If you have commented on this blog and not received a reply, please forgive me.

I really appreciate your comments. It's great to know you are reading this blog and care enough to talk to me.

That's unexpected, you see. These thoughts are just my thoughts. I'm not looking for an audience—but there you are, you wonderful people, stumbling upon these ideas and sometimes responding to them.

Cyclamen reviving: thank you!

So this is a big
Thank you!
to everyone who has commented on Old Lady Laughing.

Frankfurt Book Fair: adventure 2012

I wondered why I wasn't trying harder to find a small adventure for 2012 and now I know.

My book Scarlet Heels has been chosen for the Frankfurt Book Fair! New Zealand is Guest of Honour at the fair, with a special national pavilion and various interesting events. The New Zealand Society of Authors will have a stand, and that's where my book will be on display.

So, that was the great adventure of 2012 waiting to fall into my lap: 

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012

There is no reason why I need to travel to Frankfurt, because the NZSA will promote all the books on their stand. But I would like to attend, just for the hell of it. I will do my best to find a foreign publisher or two for Scarlet Heels, and yet I am taking the project light-heartedly. That's one of the advantages of advanced age. 

Booking a hotel any minute now... Old Lady Laughing is going to the fair...

For the rest of the year I'm going to have a parallel persona running all year in the background—my literary persona, slightly neglected over these last few years. I feel energized and cheerful about this change, as you do.

More about Scarlet Heels

When will I die?

Bother. I've just taken two online tests that calculate how old I'll be when I die.

The Deathclock said I'll die at 99, but I didn't believe that, because the calculator is ghoulish and ridiculously simplistic.

Dr Thomas Perls, on the other hand, has credentials, and his Living to 100 Life Expectancy calculator is much more detailed. So what's his verdict? According to Dr Perls, I am doomed to live to the age of 98.

Now this dubious prophecy is not entirely welcome. I'm not particularly keen to live that long. In fact, I recently revised my desired date of death upwards to 92, for the very good reason that I became a grandmother again.

'Is it OK if I die at 92?' I asked my daughter. 'That means I can give your son 20 years of grannying. Will that suffice?'

Kind girl thought about it seriously and then nodded. And now it seems her poor lad may have to put up with my interfering grand-matriarchal ways until he is 26. We'll see about that.

See that scruffy old tomato plant aging on my deck? Last summer's weather was so vile that I never expected the tomatoes to ripen. Indeed, I had been studying recipes for green tomato chutney, because those tomatoes have been sitting on the vine, glowing green, for nearly three months.

And now look at them! The fruit grow redder and sweeter every day, even as the plant withers and fades and flops. Where is this metaphor leading me... Maybe it's reminding me that many writers produce their best work in, ahem, maturity. Bring it on.

Deadlines all in a row

Lately I have been stressed. I know very well what stresses me. It's absurd, and I can't stop it, but I can recognize it and do my best to settle down. Early nights, exercise and ticking off the to-do list help.

When too many obligations stud the calendar, that's what stresses me. I'm programmed to do one thing at a time. One enormous problem is not an issue: I can handle that. Show me a terrorist or a book to write by Friday, and I will cope on automatic pilot. Show me a calendar with 50 deadlines and to-do tasks, no matter how small, and I crumble.

Right now all is well again. Aaah... When stress lifts, I feel an electro-chemical change surge through my body.

We are nearly half-way through February and I have been ticking DONE beside small items and large. It even helps that three of my to-do things will be over by Sunday night.

1. Tomorrow, a rehearsal for our role in the Chinese New Year show at the TSB Events Centre
2. Sunday, the performance
3. Sunday, an open home for Novella, the apartment I'm selling by private sale.

Odd: as if nearly done is done.

And as if stress is a computable arithmetic progression. Now I'm working backwards. March is equally busy, and in April another progression will begin. It's all logarithms, I suspect. Or logarhythms.

This pattern I cannot blame on age, as I recall spotting exactly the same pattern in my thirties, when I began to perform in public.

What stresses you, I wonder?

Of dancing and books

Last night I went to Dancing in the Wake, a 3-person, 4-performance play by Jan Bolwell with much creative input from all involved.

It was terrific. Unusual in that dancing by Sacha Copland (inspired, demonic, confronting) is welded seamlessly into a literary script (hilarious, rich, shapely).

I say literary with reason, for with Lucia Joyce, her father James and Samuel Beckett as the central characters, how could it be otherwise? The play created a big buzz afterwards, even for an opening night. Insights into the works of Beckett and Joyce abound, but they emerge from the action: nothing didactic, do not fear.

Inspiration bubbled up in our group of dancing grannies. We found an excuse to spend more time with each other in future: we will start our own dancing book club. That means, I think, every couple of months we'll have dinner together and then—yay! Each granny will dance a book she has been reading. Or a chapter. No pressure and purely for fun.

The first book I interpret in a dance will be The Information by James Gleick. Probably Chapter 3, celebrating the miracle of logarithms and Charles Babbage's doomed attempt to create a computer in the age of steam. Bring it on!

So Jan read a book and created a play built around a dance, which inspired us to unite books and dance in another way. The wheels turn.

Advice to a 20-year-old

What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? The Listener asked some prominent Kiwis this question and plenty of good advice was forthcoming.

But now the time travel problem pops up: what if your young self actually took that advice? History would be changed. Then you would not be quite yourself as you are now.

In real life I happily dish out buckets of advice to young people, confident in the knowledge that they'll absorb any advice that they happen to want at that moment and nothing else. (Just like you and me.)

So I won't tell that child bride a thing except what I'd say to anyone younger. If they choose to hear me, so much the better:

'You are perfect just the way you are. Be kind, be happy, be yourself, do your best, have fun and have adventures.'

Which is pretty much the message I got from my parents, bless them.