A Handbag??

Last night I did a talk about Gatsby at the Avid Reader bookshop in West End, Brisbane. It's a gorgeous shop, run by the equally gorgeous Fiona and her lovely crew (special thanks to Anna Krien and Ben), and I had a wonderful time.

The experience was all the sweeter for the fact that it came after an extremely stressful day. I am usually a very organised person. I am also not generally much interested in handbags (unlike my buddy Scootergrrl). But in a brief lapse of judgement when packing on Wednesday night, I decided to transfer all my girly junk from one handbag to the other. All dandy... until two hours into my (delayed) flight, I realised with a sensation not unlike unexpected turbulence that I'd left my data stick - with my Gatsby presenation on it - in the Other Handbag. Cue Lady Bracknell. It didn't just look like carelessness - it looked like a fkn disaster!

There ensued a epic scramble to convey this enormous file (100mb) from a handbag in Fairfield, Melbourne, to a data stick in Brisbane. This involved getting my neighbour to break-and-enter (well, sort of), after which our internet, then hers, failed. She took the stick to her husband's work (is this going beyond the call or what?) where he managed to upload the file to the publisher's ftp site (which took 2 hours) after which the wonderful people in the IT department of my work very, very kindly downloaded it for me and sent it to Brisbane. This entire process took almost seven hours. During which time I also had to do a full day's work at the office. At 5pm on the dot I had my presentation on a borrowed data stick, and I needed a drink.

I left the office, still a bit goggle-eyed and quavery, and who do you think was standing just outside the building? In a beautiful bit of Brisbane serendipity, I almost fell over my favourite cranky bastard, Eddie "thanks for roning" Campbell, patron saint of forgetting stuff when you catch a plane, along with his lovely wife Anne.

Eddie and I then walked to the Avid Reader, where the wonderfully calm and friendly atmosphere of the shop instantly smoothed the day away. I was really tickled that Eddie wanted to attend this talk. We've presented together a few times and both enjoyed it very much, but I've never done a solo presentation with my sometime sparring partner in the audience. Anne had previously said that if she were doing the talk, she'd have him removed from the room before it began, so I have to admit to some trepidation. One mention of the words "graphic novel", I feared, might send him into a frenzy of objection and correction - or worse, he might just look at me from the back row with that pained rictus of horror on his face.

But no. I was very happy to note Eddie nodding in agreement and smiling throughout the talk. Afterwards, over a much-desired glass of pinot gris at a lovely West End bar, he said "That was great. You talked about your book without saying 'graphic novel' once, or getting into the whole business about what these things are called". Well, of course! It's not a topic that I tend to talk about anyway (!), but with Eddie in the audience, well, I'd have to be completely stupid to venture into those waters!

A particularly delightful aspect of this event for me was that it was held outside on the back porch of the shop, in the balmy Brisbane evening. The audience was friendly and enthusiastic and gave some great feedback. I was especially touched by the super-excited reaction of the charmingly-named Lucia Bee of the Somerville School, who asked me if I'd like to be their writer/artist in residence for a few days next year. You bet I would. I love Brisbane.

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PS - also received this lovely review recently. Beam!