A new book by the fabulous Radha Chadha!!!!!!

Radha Chadha co-author of The Cult of the Luxury Brand Inside Asia's Love Affair with Luxury (publisher Nicholas Brealey) has been put on the New York Speakers List.

Radha is a luxury guru and her book explores how and why an amazing “luxeplosion” is rocking Asia, sweeping up not just the glitzy upper crust, but secretaries toting their Burberry bags, junior executives sporting Rolex watches, and university students in Ferragamo shoes." (quote from the publisher).

Dahling Radha (air kiss, air kiss) is currently very busy attending conferences, doing brunch and oh yes, flying here there and everywhere giving talks on her insights into luxury.


Read more about the book at the official website by clicking here:

How to be a prolific writer

Julia C-T has suggested reading this very thought provoking article on how to find inspiration all around us:

http://www.writersdigest.com/articles/formichelli_steal.asp

Sample writing exercise

Tim designed the following 20-minute writing exercise:

"For reasons that you do not neccessarily know, a group that you normally associate with has turned against you. Describe the various ways in which you become aware of your being ostracised."

Tim, Beth, Hoi Yee, Janette, Norma and Radha participated over a fine Merlot. Keep scrolling down to read everyone's pieces.

Ostracism by Tim Maitland

I tapped in the code into the panel at the side of the forbidding entranceway, all steel and fortitude, and stepped through the smoked-glass doors into the reception area. As I did I prepared the best smile I could manage with which to greet Susan, the receptionist, whose sunny disposition was - unusually for the corporation - genuine, rather then a nine-to-five-Monday-to-Friday affectation.

I shouldn't have made the effort.

She hurriedly picked up a phone that I could have sworn wasn't ringing and began furiously to take copious notes as if her life - or someone else's - depended on it. She acknowledged my arrival only with a vague turn of the head.

Emerging from the lift on the 16th floor, I followed the dirty strip on the carpet, darkened by a million foot soldiers marching to, and from, the daily war. Passing the kitchen, a conversation disintegrated instantly into hurried activity. A back turned and a cup was washed with fervour and a cupboard suddenly became worthy of urgent attention.

As I walked through the rows of cubicles heads shrank down, or turned, frantically searching for anything or nothing in particular providing it meant facing the opposite direction.

I attempted a few greetings. 24 hours earlier these would have been met with, at the very least cordial responses if not the genuine warmth of true friendship. Today, at best, I got grunts or grumbles; at worst, silence.

Further down the room Pete Swales, novelty mug in hand, had been about to stride into the main thoroughfare en route to his first caffeine fix of the day. It was a trek so routine that you could set your watch by him: two minutes to power up his computer + two minutes to scan for the more important ones + one minute for a quick replay promising a more detailed response shortly = 9.05 a.m. (pick up the mug and head for the kitchen).

This migration was driven by a force as natural as the wildebeest sweeping across the Serengeti, only on this occasion, sensing my impending arrival, he executed an elegant pirouette and returned to his desk.

By the time I neared my six-foot-by-six-foot cell, I was the condemned man being walked down death row past endless faces peering through the bars unable to take their eyes off the horror that haunted their every nightmare and yet unwilling to make direct eye-contact in case doing so might hasten forth the day that they too walked that road.

It was no mean feat in a country where capital punishment had ceased to exist 40 years earlier, but as I passed the way and each head turned involuntarily towards the open office door at the far end of the room, it took no great leap of faith to imagine that inside stood an electric chair.

Ostracism by Beth McNeilly

With one long, bony finger, Mrs. Maxtead struck middle C several times in succession.

"Children, children, quiet please!"

Pages rustled, chairs scraped against the worn wood floor.

"Open your hymnals to page 51, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. We’ll be singing this on Sunday, so I want to hear loud, clear voices, crisp enunciation…"

Somewhere behind her, Jean heard Angela mutter to Amy, "e-nun-c-ation, what’s that, granny?" chased by a flutter of giggles. She turned from her lone perch in the front row, the chairs behind her having all filled up, hoping to catch their eyes and join in. But they straightened up and stared past her, po-faced, at the choir mistress.

"Jean," Mrs. Maxtead snapped, "stop fooling around. We’ve had just about enough of your silliness lately." Jean flushed a deep, confused crimson. "Me?" she gasped to herself.

The intro vamped on the piano.

"Like bells, girls. Like bells!"

As the first verse wound down, Jean felt something small and hard strike the back of her shoulder. She glanced sideways to see a cherry lifesaver candy land and break in half on the floor beside her. She craned her head round again, her face still forming a question, but Angela only sneered and swung her long hair back.

After rehearsal, as they made their way down the old creaking staircase, Jean padded quietly behind. She paused a few steps away while the others took turns at the drinking fountain.
When they had finished, she followed them out into the cool evening, to the stone steps outside the sanctuary where everyone waited for their parents to come pick them up. Angela usually got a ride home with Jean and her father. But as Jean approached her to ask if she needed a lift, Angela turned away and started whispering with Amy.

A car pulled up, Amy’s mom at the wheel; the girls clambered in and drove off. Soon she was the only one remaining.

Mrs. Maxtead, who stayed behind until all the children had been collected, sighed heavily beside her. Sensing her impatience, Jean offered, "I’m sure my dad will be here soon. You don’t need to wait with me." Then in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, she laughed, adding "It is a church after all. I feel quite safe."

Mrs. Maxtead’s eyebrows jumped. "Safe?! You’re the most dangerous girl to come through this church in a long time." With a crisp turn she walked off to wait, alone, in her own car.

Jean stared down at the sidewalk. But it stared back, equally cold and hard, no help at all.

The Party by Radha Chadha

"Aren’t you going for the party, Ma’am?" my helper asked.

"What party?" I enquired.

"Cynthia’s helper came to borrow the large cake plate, as she always does," she said. "The party’s tomorrow. Quite big, ma’am. Fifteen ladies, they are expecting. Everyone’s bringing a dish. Do we have to make something too?"

I took this piece of information in, aware that the well-informed amah-net in Parkview was rarely wrong. I had certainly not been invited. Could it have slipped Cynthia’s mind? Unlikely, I thought. Cynthia lived three floors above, and I had bumped into her in the lift coming down just today.

The odd thing was, I had run into Thelma too at the Park’n’Shop earlier this morning, in the eggs aisle. We had parked our shopping-carts side by side and had a quick catch-up, but she hadn’t breathed a word about the party. Thelma it seems was getting a quiche, her helper continued.

Ann hadn’t mentioned it either. It was my turn at the school carpool and we had chatted as usual when I picked up her daughter. Ann was in charge of the salad, my helper bubbled over, spilling more details than I cared to know by now.

Then there was Mona at the Pilates class, strangely silent about the party, although we had spent the hour together with our instructor. Mona was hopelessly talkative, hardly able to hold a secret. Yet not a word, and apparently she was bringing cookies.

This couldn’t be happening, I told myself, as the evidence piled up. Even Tanya, my close friend, seemed involved. She rode the bus with me to Central this afternoon, and I had taken the seat next to her. A good 20 minutes together, exchanging the latest tidbits in Parkview in her usual spirited manner. How could she have failed to talk about the party then, especially as we had organized the pre-Christmas do together last year?

"Ma’am, Tanya is bringing mulled wine," her helper informed.

"And who is bringing the turkey?" I quizzed my helper.

"No idea, Ma’am. Cynthia’s helper didn’t say anything about that."

Perhaps, I should send in a large platter of hot chicken tikkas, I thought. With a triple dose of chilly.

Ostracism by Norma Connolly

"I’ll take Mary."

"Margaret."

"Stella."

"Hilary."

I stood in my brand new black and white boots with that unmistakable swoop on the side, brilliant white socks bunching above them, as the crowd of girls around me dwindled.

"Felicity."

The lanky red-haired giant we’d nicknamed "Alice the Goon" shuffled with relief to the team beneath the basket.

"Megan."

Megan Dunphy, a dumpy bad-permed, spotty girl who didn’t even own a pair of sneakers, much less basketball boots, trudged her way to Muriel’s team.

"She'll mark the court in those bloody brogues," I said to Gladys, standing beside me.

Poor Gladys. She never gets picked. I’d always thought it was because of her mouthful of metal braces. A head-on collision with her face on the court could scar you for life. We’d all laughed about that in the cloakroom. I’d suggested we call her Metal-head. The nickname had not caught on though, despite my best efforts.

"Gladys."

"Oh, come on," I said, rolling my eyes and staring straight at Mairead, the team captain. A joke’s a joke, but this was going a bit far. There were only four of us left, standing in the middle of the court. I’d been team captain during every other gym class. Who did that new temporary teacher think she was, making Mairead Scott and Murial Makepeace the captains? What did they know about basketball? They may be able to play it well enough, but they had no idea how to pick a team. It took skill, it took political knowledge, it took an understanding of school hierarchy, it took a willingness to put people in their places.

"Frances."

The myopic, five-foot tall dwarf beamed widely and literally skipped across the court, throwing her arms around Megan. Like a mutant Laurel and Hardy duo, I thought.

"Siobhan."

The school’s most unpopular girl looked up shyly and then looked around at the two remaining girls standing beside her with an apologetic smile.

"Go join the other freaks," I snarled. "Glad she’s gone. It was beginning to smell around here," I told Valerie.

It was the first time I’d ever spoken to Valerie. She didn’t have a father and everyone knew her mother took in what she called "lodgers". We knew better through what she was really charging them for.

"Valerie."

So, there I stood on my own in the middle of that enormous court, which seemed to grow larger by every passing second that I wasn’t picked.

Muriel Makepeace, that jabbering swot who I’m sure did theorems and algebra in her sleep, stared impassively across the court at me.

"Miss Johnson, do we have to pick anyone else? We have enough players already. Anyone else would just be a substitute. I promise none of us will get injured or drop out."

Snorting with derision, I lowered my head to make sure no-one could see my eyes filling momentarily with reluctant salty tears, and flounced off the court. Johnson would be gone next month and I’d be back on top, back in charge of picking a team. Then those ungrateful bitches would see where they belonged. I joined the spectators group, pushing one of the second-years off the end of the bench so I could sit down. The game was already on, with Mairead bouncing the orange ball up the court before passing it to Frances.

I shouted: "Come on, you’re crap. Call that a pass? My grandmother dribbles better than that..."

Blue by Julia Courtenay-Tanner

This classic tale was originally published in Dimsum Magazine.

Blue by Julia Courtenay-Tanner

Blue; the dull shade of a cold slender girl sprawled over a dingy bed in a filthy, dank room, that was piled high with cartons of drinks, old magazines and worn clothes. Cockroaches on the grimy floor feel comfortable in this atmosphere of dirty gloom and peer up at her. The girl’s large brown eyes stare out from the squalidness. A deep royal blue sheet, draped over the boxes behind her, is a stark backcloth to her thin, pallid nakedness; her chilled nipples of purple blue, stand erect upon her childishly small smooth breasts.

Through the dreary window, level with the roaring concrete flyover that stretches into central Hong Kong, she glimpses the oppressive sky, filled with heavy thick grey clouds. From her crouched position on the bed, she covertly watches the merest shining speck of a plane heading west, towards Thailand.

She begins to shiver. The aircon, as always, is turned up too high. Clenching her fists tightly behind her, out of sight of the clicking lens, she tries to instill warmth through her body, through the marrow of her bones. If she can press her hands together tightly enough, she knows that a warmth, then later, a numbness, will spread over her.

Blue; the colour of her mother’s gipsy ear-rings swinging rhythmically as her squatting body, clad in a loose sarong, moves evenly back and forth. Her small rapid hands pass the thin carved shuttle quickly over the long colourful threads of the wooden loom to weave swathes of silk that later adorn the homes and bodies of the rich and glamorous.

She remembers, too, the dull blue of her father’s veins as they pulsed furiously on his forehead. He did not hate her, any more than he loved her – he cared only for the poppy seed. That black obsiquious seed found nestling so patiently, so potently, in the folds of the deceptively sullen mauve poppy flower. Walking over the rugged hills of her homeland, she passed through fields of that illicit love plant swaying gently, beckoning to those who passed. Her father, like the Siren’s lost sailors, had been one who could not resist the charm of their enticing entreaty.

Once gathered, he crushed them between two rugged stones till they became a dusty, white powder. Then, carrying his love gently to the long brass instrument balanced on a tiny wooden stand placed in the farthest corner the low dark hut on stilts that was their home, he pressed it into the bowl. He lay, almost reverently beside the pipe, on the wooden slatted bed and gazed in hypnotised awe at the long conduit, as a lover might first look on the body of his enchantress. He then lit the small charcoal fire beneath it and, in a reclining position, almost foetal, he sucked long and slowly on the pipe, staring vacantly at the hazy blue smoke that rose from it.

She has trouble imagining that he once had another passion; a passion for the woman with blue earrings; a passion, now forgotten, that had created her. She knows only the meager, fleeting passion of the aroused men that enter this fourth floor flat in Wanchai.

The plane, continuing its journey, moves out of her line of vision. Yet, still the camera clicks, capturing her blue despondency. Unresistingly, she moves her legs, her arms, her buttocks. She twists and contorts herself as commanded, feeling the scratchy blanket beneath her scraping like rock against seed at her cold flesh. The breeze from the conditioner strikes a different part of her body each time she turns, chilling her still more.

Blue; the colour of the notes that passed between her father, lying on his bed, and the Chinese visitor who had arrived early one morning in her tribal village near Chang Mai. The blue of her hands that were bound by thick tight ropes to the rusting metal bar fixed half way up the sides of the truck. Tethered among twenty one other girls from the north, she sat in stupefied silence throughout the long, rattling journey to Bangkok, that distant city of ancient, exotic beauty. Huddled, she watched as her companions’ brown hands, also tied tautly to the bar, became a dark dull blue – the blue of death, she thought. The colour of her father’s face.

The camera goes on clicking. Soon, the session will be over. The sky outside the dirty window is opening its arms to night. The neon lights of the clubs and bars are beginning to shine limply in the tepid twilight. Twilight, that elusive blue grey moment that links death to life.

The cars on the concrete flyover beyond the smeared panes become shadows; an endless trail of shadow. She, too, is a shadow; a nebulous, twilight shadow. The clicking stops. She waits. Nothing happens. Nothing is said. The aircon continues its relentless cycle. Reaching beneath her, she pulls the grey blanket up and around herself. Modesty is incongruous in a prostitute; yet she is a child; used, abused, innocent – dreaming still of obsessive love found among the swaying mountain fields, of draped silk and the blue glint of gipsy ear-rings.

Swing by Radha Chadha

Swing by Radha Chadha

She pulls up the swing and lets it go in an arch. Minnie screams in joy. The swing settles into its back and forth rhythm. She leans against the bright red pole alongside, relaxed, one hand reaching out every now and then to give Minnie’s swing a nudge.

How these three years have flown, she thinks, looking with a mixture of pride and detachment at her daughter. I hope I switched off the oven… damn, it’s always when you are far away from home that you remember. The cookies are cooling on the kitchen counter, she pictures clearly in her mind, but can’t picture herself turning off the knob.

Another nudge at the swing. "Higher Mommy," Minnie yells. She gives it quicker and harder pushes, and then leans back.

The cookies are for Minnie’s class tomorrow. She’s helping with snacks for the art show in the kindergarten, along with young Jimmy’s mother, who she has known from years ago, since they worked at Deutsche Bank together. Those were heady times, she thinks, as if of another life in smart skirt suits and pumps and evenings unwinding over a drink at LKF. Days before, a chapter closed.

Another nudge at the swing. Another peal of laughter. Unfettered girlish joy, as Minnie’s thin wispy hair flies back.

What shall I do for dinner tonight? Pasta is quick and Minnie will eat it for sure. Perhaps a salad, one of those pre-washed ones that you just add dressing to. She’ll stop by at the Park’n’Shop on the way back. The toilet rolls are running low too. Kitchen towels too. She may as well do a "big shop" and have it delivered.

Another nudge on the swing. Another peal of high-pitched giggles.

She thinks of the impromptu dinners at nice restaurants after work, relaxing, discussing the day’s events with her then boyfriend, Minnie’s father.

Her thoughts swing back and forth, like the swing she nudges, yearning for her old self alternating with thoughts of the future.

Show, don't tell

Er, I've always had a mental block about the art of showing and not telling (not good, since it's one of the first rules of great writing!). So here's a good primer to get it straight, once and for all.

http://users.wirefire.com/tritt/tip1.html

Free email newsletter

Julia C-T sent in the following link to Writer's Relief, Inc.'s free email newsletter, which is chock full of upcoming calls for anthologies and theme issues (both poets and short prose writers) and agent and publisher updates:

http://www.wrelief.com/newsflash.asp

Subscribe today and start submitting!

Creative writing prompts

Writing prompts usually have me rolling my eyes and end up giving me a big writer's block.

However, the ones offered up by Writer's Digest are not bad:

www.writersdigest.com/writingprompts.asp

Character and plot

Reprinted with the permission of the lovely Vicky B:

Hi all and Happy Chinese New Year coming to you from sunny LA,

I'm doing a short writing course through UCLA (not a degree, just a single subject) and a couple of the things discussed so far are really useful, so I thought I'd pass them on.

Character. Did an exercise where we all told the class one thing about ourselves that you would not guess by looking at us. Turns out one girl has two brothers in jail, there's a black guy who is Jewish, the teacher is a "paint your face baseball fan". These are far more memorable than the standard introductions we had given earlier. The lesson being that characters' hidden passion is what makes them interesting.

For anyone who wants to write a novel (wouldn't apply to a short story) there was this way to think about the traditional plot in a very simplistic way. Part one is an introduction the character and what they want. In this case 14-year-old Bob wants 17-year-old lifeguard at the local pool, Lola. He thinks he can impress her by doing a dive off the high board.

The second part is the difficulties Bob faces in doing the task and how he deals with them, eg no bathing suit, can't swim, parents won't let him go to the pool, Lola is on a break, fear of heights etc. Think of each conflict/difficulty as a rung on the ladder.

At the top of the "ladder", the reader should really despair for Bob's chances. There is doubt about whether he can reach the goal.

As Bob and the plot goes along the "board" after all the tension of the ladder, there is a chance for the writer to ease up on the tension for a while if desired. Then, at the end of the board, the character MUST face a choice. (To dive or to climb back down.)

The choice, whatever it is, leads to the resolution --- part three, eg Bob knows Lola is on a break but decides to dive anyway, thereby overcoming his fear of heights.

XXX
Vicky B.