So, Hit List being out and all, I figured I might have a little party to celebrate. And then I thought, you know what would be better than a party? Two parties!
And then I thought, you know what would be better than two parties? Three parties! And then I realised how much effort would be involved in that, so I went back to two.
The point is, you’re invited! Here are the details.
If you live near Canberra:
7pm, Tuesday the 21st of September The Front Gallery and Cafe Wattle Street, Lyneham (Facebook event page)
But if you live near Sydney:
5pm, Wednesday the 22nd of September Sam I Am Cafe 99 Glebe Point Road, Glebe (Facebook event page)
It’s a huge thrill to be able to announce that Ashley Arthur is finally back. Her brand new adventure, Hit List, is now selling in bookstores all over Australia and New Zealand, and on websites all over the world (including this one.)
What sort of genre is it? My usual genre is scifiactionhorrorcrime.
That’s not a real genre. Shut up. Hit List fits into it, although there’s less sci-fi than the Agent Six series, and way more crime.
Students at a school in Western Australia were recently given the following assignment: plan out a terror attack on “an unsuspecting Australian community.” Assume that you have access to chemical or biological weaponry, and that “your goal is to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across.”
My initial reaction was the same as the one you probably just had. Is that teacher insane? What a sick, disturbing assignment to give a bunch of kids.
And then I remembered what I do for a living: I plan out hypothetical terror attacks. (As well as thefts, murders, and other evil events.)
Well, it’s election time again. Two people appear on the TV, and each denounces the other as a lying, backstabbing hypocrite who’ll destroy this country. The voters are presented with a ballot paper that has neither of their names on it, but that’s okay - we all arbitrarily picked a party when we were teenagers anyway, so we just vote for whoever has familiar letters next to his or her name. The votes are counted, and half of us are disappointed, but only momentarily - soon it becomes apparent that the winning candidate has no intention of doing any of the things he or she promised to do, and the country goes back to business as usual.
This time around (as with every previous election since the beginnings of democracy), much of the debate has revolved around taxes. The question most voters seem to be asking is this: which candidate would make a more expensive Prime Minister?
But it doesn’t sound selfish as long as you mention your kids.
You know how some people get songs stuck in their head? Can’t stop thinking them, can’t stop humming them, can’t stop saying the lyrics under your breath? Actually, I think that happens to everyone. It certainly happens to me. At the moment, I have the theme to “Boston Legal” stuck in my head, which is particularly annoying, as the only lyrics are “Bow, bow, bup-bow-uh-booooowww-wup!”
A Google image search yielded this. I do not remember this episode, but it looks awesome.
At last, here is the trailer for HIT LIST! Embed it on your blog/profile/site and post the URL in the comments section to win a signed copy. YouTube users, please rate it, favourite it, etc.
There’s now just over two weeks to go before the release date. Loyal readers, thank you for your patience - I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been working on this past year!
Disclaimer: This post isn’t going to be about whether God is real or imagined. But just the same, if you hate having your beliefs challenged, you might not want to read it. (Then again, if you hate having your beliefs challenged, then what’s the point of reading anything? You might as well just go to bed and hide under the blanket with your fingers in your eyes until you’re ninety.)
According to this article in the New York Times, a group of American Muslim scholars has made a YouTube video arguing against militant fundamentalism. “The Prophet Muhammad, when on the battlefield, saw that amongst the enemy there were innocent women and children killed, and he was openly angry,” one of them says. “He is prohibiting us from killing the innocent. It is very clear.”
Apparently most terrorists in the USA are internet-educated, so the scholars have decided that the best change of getting these peaceful messages to the people who need to hear them is to put them online too. Good plan - when a terrorist types “theological reasons not to commit terror-attacks” into Google, perhaps he’ll be converted.
I spent the weekend in the Blue Mountains for Literary Salon 6 - a quarterly gathering of writers wherein we discuss two books and try to impress one another by reading our work. Also, there’s usually cake.
But I’m totally in it for the literary discussion. I swear.
I recently read a newspaper article by Alexandra Adornetto (young author of Halo) about how Edward Cullen is the most desirable man who never lived and how he’s raising the bar for smelly teenage boys everywhere. Then I read a follow-up article by William Kostakis (young author of Loathing Lola) about how Edward Cullen is a creepy, sexist, manipulative pedophile, adored by moronic teenage girls everywhere.
In reality, they’re both right about Edward Cullen - yes, he’s incredibly desirable, and yes, he’s a sexist creep. But the thing that intrigued me was a follow-up follow-up article by Steph Bowe (young author of Girl Saves Boy) in which she asked why both Alex and Will felt the need to make such broad generalisations about teenage boys and girls. “Everyone has this crazy need to put everybody else into little boxes,” she says. “The world’s too complicated for people to be so neatly pigeon-holed. Do you ever like people assuming things about you? Why do you do it to other people, then?”
Why indeed? I did some digging. And now, this is my follow-up follow-up follow-up article about the answer to Steph’s question. But be warned - you’re not going to like it.
Do you remember when I said I was working on a secret project and I would announce it soon? No? Me neither. It was so long ago that I remember writing it, but not when I wrote it, otherwise I’d be hyperlinking to the post right about now.
I have trouble predicting which things will be deemed acceptable in my books and which won’t. For instance, in The Lab, I was allowed to portray Agent Six, my teenage superhero protagonist, shooting someone in the head. (Although he felt really bad about it afterwards.) But when a character used the word “bitch”, I was asked to remove the line. My readers, apparently, are too young to hear swear-words.
“I am shocked and appalled, Mr Heath. Shocked and appalled.”
It’s so easy to confuse poetry with wisdom. The other day I found this phrase on a website of quotes about love: “If you can’t understand my silence, you don’t deserve my words.”
That’s a catchy turn of phrase, with nice symmetry. I found myself nodding in agreement, until I thought about what it actually meant, which was this: “Never tell anyone what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling. If they really cared about you, they’d be able to read your mind.”
Criss Angel: the only man who’ll ever care about you.
There are four types of men in the world. Tall pansies, short pansies, tall jerks, and short jerks. The difference between pansy and jerk is obvious; the difference between tall and short is less so. It’s not just a difference in height - short people are conditioned by society to feel like they have something to prove. Like they have to compensate. So, when you put these four types of men in a situation where there are women, such as a party or a nightclub, the heterosexual ones try to attract women in various ways:
TALL PANSY: Stands around hoping a cute girl will notice him. TALL JERK: The same, only he laughs louder. SHORT PANSY: Approaches the girl he’s interested in and tries to strike up a conversation. SHORT JERK: Picks a fight with the tall pansy.
The latest season of Australian Idol (more commonly known as “the Big Brother kareoke championship”) has concluded. For the purposes of seeming informed I have attempted to discover the identity of the winner, but Google has failed me, and I don’t know where else to turn. Lord knows I’m not turning on the TV.
Say what you will about the tape that kills you when you watch it - at least it doesn’t have Kyle Sandilands in it.
People write to me for a number of reasons. Sometimes they hate my books so much that they decide to punish me by clogging up my inbox. Sometimes they love my books so much that they decide to reward me by clogging up my inbox. And sometimes they just want to complain about something called “income tax”. (I can tell those types because they use bizarre words like “arrears,” “fraud,” and “you’re going to prison, Mr Heath.”)
Many emails also come from people who have read my books, over-thought a minor detail, and now need me to explain how something is possible. The sender usually won’t take “because I said so” or “because I failed physics in high school” as an answer. But these emails are the most fun to answer, because they give me the opportunity to release my inner nerd. His name is Doug and he’s even nerdier than my outer nerd.
This is me, without Doug. I suppose you could call me Doug-less.
