brush pen + wrestling + comics + brisbane... it has to be good

Yippee! My new brush pen with ink cartridges (Pentel GFKP) arrived from Will's Quills in Sydney today. I'm still enjoying its less fancy sister, the Pentel Aquash, too. Mmmm... Very big thanks to Matt Huynh who put me onto this shop, which specialises in nibs and calligraphy brushes.

A bit slack with the blogging this past week, and we can blame that on mister J and the Fabulous Sebastian, whose emails are truly a force to be reckoned with. In between emails, I managed to turn 33 and the Big Squid turned 40. Food played a large part in our celebrating.

The next week includes events of all flavours:

Friday 12 October, 8 pm (in Melbourne)

The fun continues at the Aggressively Strange Fables exhibition, at North Bazaar, 222 High Street Northcote. North Bazaar is a great bar with good beers on tap, comfy chairs, pizza, and some very, very fine drawings on the walls.

This Friday night, the inimitable Bernard Caleo will chair a session about the new bloom of graphic novel publishing in Australia. His guests are the wonderful Erica Wagner, publisher at Allen & Unwin, cartoonist Bruce Mutard, whose book The Sacrifice is due out next year, and me.

Last Friday night, Bernard chaired a session on animation, where we were treated to some wonderful works by Pick Nick, Kirrily Schell, David Blumenstein and Mandy Ord. The films were spectacular (and sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes hypnotic), the conversation was scintillating, and Mr Caleo suffused the whole event with his characteristic warmth and enthusiasm. So I think this week's session will be fun too.

Sunday 14 October - all day (in Melbourne)

On Sunday, Station Street Fairfield goes carnival. This is our local shopping strip, and they turn on a fantastic street festival. Fairfield is a very food-oriented kind of place (for those not familiar with the area) and the eating side of things is well taken care of.

But the BEST thing about the fair is, of course, the wrestling! The past two years they've had a ring set up in the middle of the street. Dodgy costumes, trash talk, outrageous moves and hilarious commentary - it had me grinning like an idiot for days, and not-so-secretly wishing that I could do that. And not just on the page.

So I won't be in the ring this year either... just watching wistfully from the sidelines and trying not to drop souvlaki all down the front of my top.

Next week - Thursday 18 October, 6.30 pm (in Brisbane)

The lovely people at The Avid Reader bookshop have invited me to do a talk there about The Great Gatsby graphic adaptation.

The address is 193 Boundary Street, West End. I'm looking forward to this, because I love going to Brisbane, and the bookshop is, from all accounts, excellent.