Every day is World Mental Health Day at my house. Take heart everyone. You are always stronger than you think. People aren’t thinking mean things about you. That’s just you being too hard on yourself. : )
Aimee Mann released an album last year called ‘Mental Illness’ – the best name check since ‘Thank God For Mental Illness’ by The Brian JonesTown Massacre. This is a great song with a lot of cat in it.
Melton friends, I will be giving an author talk at the Melton Library next Wednesday Oct 10. Now with refreshments. Bookings HERE.
I’ll be in Canberra launching my old University of Canberra’s writing anthology Analecta. Smith’s Alternative Bookstore, Monday November 19, 7pm.
Get Up Mum has gone into a second printing. Thanks everyone for your support, retail and otherwise. 
Check out the latest promo video featuring excerpts from Montello Primary School Book Week 1992!
Get Up Mum will be relaunched at Melbourne Writers Festival Sunday September 2. I’ll be conducting a service in memory of my child self. Tickets available HERE. I’ll be appearing on a panel at Brisbane Writers Festival Sunday September 9. Tickets available HERE.
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Snavel a possie at the Get Up Mum Brisbane launch at Avid Reader Bookshop this Friday and be wowed and dazzled. Come for the insight, stay for the Le Snaks. There will be mental health, show ‘n tell and quizzically handsome gentlemen. Hosted by David Stavanger. Click HERE for Facebook event.
And the winner is…SYDNEY when I rock up with my treasure-trove cavalcade of nineties delicacies. Featuring Moroder ballads, bickie n dip, Benjamin Law & my childhood. We’re taking it one memoir at a time and reading is the real winner on the day. Better Read Than Dead, Thu July 19, 6:30. Click HERE for Facebook event.
I have a new book coming. It’s a memoir about my childhood. Think Angela’s Ashes meets The Castle. The Melbourne launch is Sunday June 10 at Northcote Uniting Church. I will be conducting a service in honour of my child self. All welcome. Men bring a plate.
For Book Week in 1991 the theme was ‘Book Into The Future.’ Get Up Mum is a time capsule crossed with a time machine. This is one of the first songs I wrote, ahead of its time.
I made up a hand gesture for the summer Smith Journal. (illo by Indigo O’Rourke.) My new book Get Up Mum will be released by Affirm in June.
I micro-reviewed the Australian classic for The Lifted Brow a few years back.
204 pages – feels like a short read.
Schoolteacher goes on a dark bender in an Australian desert town.
Mood: Hot, dark and claustrophobic. The hazy mash of inebriation. Trapped in a car with foul men. Face to face with a stabbed kangaroo.
Best sentence: Things half remembered and terribly feared, shrieked at him; tears of mystic terror rimmed his eyes.
Previous review: “A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.” Robert Drewe
Funfact: A keen amateur lepidopterist, Cook established the first butterfly farm in Australia on the banks of Sydney’s Hawkesbury River in the 1970s.
Best Australianism: “What the blazes…”
Suggested food pairings: Overdone steak from a hot bonnet. Lashing of cold beer.
Four of my columns are featured in Frankie’s new anthology ‘Something To Say.’ I talk about graffiti, grandpas and growing down.
