The Writing Room

Well, I am now the proud renter of a room just for writing. Small matter of a desk to be cleared up, but apart from that, I'm equipped. I'll have my first full day in there tomorrow, although I've sat there a bit and even checked the US White Time proofs there yesterday. And made a few tentative, does-this-really-work-this-room-thing notes for the novel. The interim desk is under a tall, narrow window looking out into a tree and across to next-door's roof, and I can look out the kitchen louvres practically to the mountains, through more trees. I'm rapt.

I finished Christos Tsiolkas's Dead Europe - crawled out from under all the blood and semen and excrement and corpses and ghouls, coughing from the cigarette smoke, nostrils stinging from the drugs, a bit hungover too. Still thinking about that one. Now I'm launching into Nike's new book (N. A. Bourke, The True Green of Hope, UQP), which promises pain right there on the front cover in the SMH blurb. So far (end chapter 1) nobody's been either buggered or turned into a vampire by their experiences. Come on, Nike, you're letting these people off too lightly.

Thought about reading Maria Tumarkin's Traumascapes in tandem, but you've got to draw the line somewhere, eh.