Kathryn's Inbox

A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathrynsinbox) on Jul 5, 2017 at 7:00am PDT This week I am sharing a photograph I took recently of a stylish but unusual lamppost that lives down at the Glenelg end of Anzac Highway.

Ha! This one is funny because it's true. I've never really thought about it before, but all of Nicholas Sparks' novels do look rather similar ...

Actually, I just lied in the title. Weird Al doesn't piss me off. I find his parodies clever and entertaining. But you know what does piss me off? Having those same lyrics pushed at me by his fans. You know the deal. The radio is on, you're humming along to a classic rock song like Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, or maybe you're just nodding your head to the music, listening or otherwise appreciating their musical genius and the whole mood of the song. Maybe it even brings up memories of some great day or experience that you've had. Or you know, it just puts you in a good mood. And then some fuckwit comes running in the room and starts shouting, "Another one rides the bus!" over the top of Queen's lyrics because Weird Al's version is just. So. Much. Better.  Except that it's not better. It's parody and there is a time and place for it. And that time and place is when you're listening to a Weird Al song or album  and not when you...

Reading The Delinquents was a lovely reminder of just way I take part in the Aussie Author Challenge every year. This book shook me well out of my comfort zone and took me to a part of Australian history that I knew little about--Brisbane in the years following the Second World War. This was a Brisbane that I knew little of, where trams rolled through its main streets, where the locals were still reeling from the American soldiers that had occupied their city during the war, where the currency was still the pound and where the hardest and edgiest youths were bodgies and widgies. In the middle of all of this are Brownie and Lola, two kids from Bundaburg whose only crime was to fall in love too young. Kept apart by their mothers, and by the state, the pair eventually find one another again and do their best to stay together and survive a tough life in Brisbane, fending off police officers, nasty landlords and a host of other colourful characters. Before purchasing this book, I w...

A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathrynsinbox) on Jul 14, 2017 at 1:15am PDT Following on from last week's Furby find, this week I am sharing another find--the wicked Odlaw from Where's Wally (known as Where's Waldo in some parts of the world.) Where's Wally in Adelaide is a fun game that a number of people have been playing in recent times. Most of the stickers are on the sides of cafes and other fun places. 

Ha! Now that's telling Grumpy Cat!

When bestselling American author Colleen Hoover decided to self-publish Too Late online chapter by chapter as a side project, she had no idea just how she would enjoy writing it, or how popular the story would become with fans. Inevitably, the came demand for a paperback version. Lucky for her fans, Colleen Hoover is no stranger (or no snob) to print-on-demand and produced a paperback version, publishing under a slightly different name. Too Late is a little bit darker, and perhaps a bit less polished that some of her other work, but it makes for fast and addictive reading. Too Late tells the story of Sloan, a young woman caught in an abusive relationship with Asa. At first, one might think that Asa is simply a jerk, then it becomes apparent that Asa is a criminal, then we learn that he is a narcissist and then, finally, Hoover delivers the final shocking revelation--Asa is a paranoid schizophrenic. Sloan, meanwhile, is a young college student who has grown up without a great d...

A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathrynsinbox) on Jul 12, 2017 at 6:56pm PDT I spotted this Furby outside Her Majesty's Theatre during the week and just had to share it! Over the past few months, the Find a Furby movement has been quite popular and these little Furby shaped stickers have been popping up everywhere around Adelaide and the inner-suburbs, with people sharing their finds on social media.

Sweet and sad is the flavour of the day in this tale of a young woman who is coming of age just as her life is falling apart. Amelia is in year twelve at a visual arts school in Perth. She loves art, but her teacher hates everything she does. Her best friend has stopped talking to her, and it soon becomes obvious that Gemma is suffering from a serious illness. At home, her parents marriage is strained and her father is acting peculiarly--and he seems to be forgetting a lot of things, including Amelia. The year will prove to be a challenging one for Amelia, and she learns some valuable life lessons along the way ... Though this novel was quite sad, and a bit depressing, I found myself lapping it up. The author perfectly captures something that a lot of novels and authors have missed--just how lonely year twelve can be. The author offers a sympathetic look at a year in the life of a young woman who is expected to behave like an adult, yet treated like a kid, just as her life is f...

Some of you may have noticed that I was a bit quiet on here last week. That happened for a number of reasons, the most relevant of which was that I was preparing my short story Searching For Audrina for publication. It may have been a 7000 word short story, but it was a heck of a big deal for me. It is the first thing that I have released since 2015, apart from anthology inclusions, most of which I had already written and signed contracts for back in 2015. One of these experiences was quite unpleasant, which is why I do not promote or mention the anthology on this blog.  As far as writing and self-confidence goes, the past eighteen months of so have not been easy for me. There is no logical reason for this, I've had very few rejections or negative reviews during this period, in fact I've had some great reviews coming in for my books from around the world, particularly for Best Forgotten which has struck a chord with a diverse cross-section of people, far more than wha...

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Ulysses  by  James Joyce

Exciting news! This week I published a brand new short story, titled Searching For Audrina and it is now available for sale from most online book retailers, including Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes, Kobo etc. Searching For Audrina is a story that's dear to me, as it features some of the characters from a manuscript that I have been working on for some time now. (The working title of that one is The Other Side of the Story is Already Taken and I hope to have some news about it soon.) Excluding anthologies and various publications that I have been contracted to, this is my first release in a long time--can you believe that it has been almost two years since I released Of Frogs and Lovers and more than three years since I released Cats, Scarves and Liars which is still my most popular book? (Being Abigail comes a close second, just in case you are wondering ... and even that celebrated its seventh anniversary a few months ago.) Anyway, a bit about Searching For Audrina ... ...

Giggle. I must get myself one of those 101 Dalmatians colouring books.

Short, deceptively simple and unforgettable are the first words that spring to mind as I think about When the Night Comes.  Set in both in Tasmania and onboard the Nella Dan, the novel tells the story of two people--Isla, a girl on the cusp of adolescence who moves to Tasmania with her mother and brother following the divorce of her parents, and Bo, a cook aboard the Nella Dan, a Danish ship that is en route to the Australian Antarctic Territory. During a stopover in Hobart, Bo, meets Isla's mother, and he becomes a source of support for the lonely Isla. In a funny way, each gives help and comfort to the other when they need it the most. When the Night Comes tells two very different stories. The first is that of the final two seasons of the Nella Dan before it ran aground on Macquarie Island, and what life was like aboard the ship. The second is that of a girl who finds herself in an entirely new and different part of Australia in the wake of her parent's divorce. Both ...

He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. Sense and Sensibility  by  Jane Austen

Readers of a certain generation, or should I say, generations would immediately associate Ann M Martin with her beloved best-selling series The Babysitters Club . However it was the work that Martin did after the series (and its many spin-offs,) came to an end in the very early twenty-first century that defines her as one of the best writers of her generation. First came the Newberry Award winning A Corner of the Universe and more recently she penned the brilliant Rain Reign (which is also published as How to Look For a Lost Dog in some parts of the world.) Rose Howard is twelve years old, in fifth grade at her local school. She is obsessed with homonyms and has purposely given her beloved dog Rain a name that has two homonyms, something that she believes is very special (For the record, the homonyms are Rein and Reign.) Not everything is going so well in Rose's life though. The other kids at school don't understand her, and neither does her Dad, who appears to be so...

If you ever thought that your relatives were bad, then be thankful that you're not twelve year old Stella Saxby, the rightful heir to Saxby Hall. Not only does Stella have the most disgusting, despicable aunt on the planet, but Aunt Alberta will stop at nothing to make sure that she gets hold of Saxby Hall, even murder ... This is the first book that I had ever read by David Walliams. I've seen him on television, of course, and I've heard great things about his books--in fact the staff member at Dymocks who sold me the book was absolutely raving about it. I was pretty sure that I would like this one, so it wasn't that much of a surprise when I found myself giggling at all the jokes and savouring the illustrations. There really is nothing quite as enjoyable as reading the occasional children's book. The rules are different, the plotting is often more outrageous, and, of course, there is a greater sense of fun and playfulness. Aunt Alberta truly is the most di...