Emily Paull

This review originally appeared on the AU review 11 February 2019. Zebra and Other Stories Debra Adelaide Picador Australia, 2019 Eccentric, heartbreaking and hilarious- this is how  Debra Adelaide ‘s latest book of short stories is described on the cover by her Picador stable-mate,  Jennifer Mills .  The book is  Zebra and Other Stories ,  a collection comprised of fourteen stories, divided into three sections: First, Second and Third. These sections refer to the point of view taken in the stories. Adelaide covers a lot of ground in just over three hundred pages. Her opening story, “Dismembering” is told from the point of view of a woman who suddenly remembers helping her ex-husband to, at some point during their marriage, bury a body in their backyard. She remembers helping him to cut off the body’s arms, legs and head in order to fit it better into the shallow grave they have dug, but oddly, not whether it was wearing long pants or shorts,...

This review originally appeared on the AU review, March 27th 2019. Exploded View Carrie Tiffany Text Publishing, 2019 The unnamed protagonist of  Carrie Tiffany’s  new novel,  Exploded View , lets us into her life by increments. Immediately, as readers, we are welcomed into her interior world– a place where the only things that make sense are cars, and engines. It is the late 1970’s, and the girl and her brother watch things like  Hogan’s Heroes  on the TV, careful to place a tub of ice cream on the top of the television with enough time for it to cool before their mother or the ‘father man’ can discover that they’ve been using it. Money is tight. Father man– not, in fact, the girl’s real father, nor the romantic hero from the pages of the novels her mother is always reading– makes his money repairing cars. The girl helps, and learns, reading from the Holden manual and studying the exploded views of the engines, in which even the spaces between thin...

Like Douglas Adams, I also love deadlines. Deadlines keep me accountable, and keep me from prioritising binge-watching the entire new series of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina  instead of working on my book. Because that's the thing about writing-- sometimes, it's the only thing you want to be doing, and other times, you will literally think of any excuse to get out of it. Up until now, a lot of the deadlines that I have been working with have been self-imposed.  Things like doing Nanowrimo, or entering competitions have provided the external deadlines, but no one has been waiting for me to enter those things. I chose to.  Now, I have a manuscript to deliver to a publisher, and while that's a big exciting step, it's also a lot of pressure. I want to make sure that the book I hand over in a few weeks time is the best book it could possibly be, and that means making some hard decisions. In this post, I thought I would outline for you a few of the things I d...