Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

The last few weeks, Spring budded and then blossomed. Temperatures rose, and we tasted the first dusting of heat, heralding the dry summer meteorologists have forecast. Bushfire warnings were posted in our region. My husband and I organised our annual fire security assessment and planned the first of our summer fire drills.

Bushfire Australian-style is frightening. It is wild and unruly. The fire rages out-of-control, hungrily consuming the dry, straw-like grasses of summer, licking up trees, leaping along treetops, billowing in its fury, enveloping the landscape.

Bushfire is a fearsome thing. I felt the fear and heat of bushfire as a young child, and in my adult years lived through the devastation that such fire can cause. It is an environmental feature here that underscores life Downunder where we live with the breathless heat of the sun.

Snow is a rarity in the Australian landscape. Of course, Australia has its alpine regions, but for a good part of the ski season, snow has to be manufactured.

So this Friday morning, it was a huge surprise when I threw off the bedclothes and trudged sleepily to the windows to open the curtains. Instead of an azure blue sky and bright light of Spring, I experienced the mute white light of a snowed-in morning.

The end-of -week tiredness that I had felt disappeared as I absorbed the snowy landscape. Excited, I grabbed my camera and chronicled the scene. Snow holds the same promise of magic that white fairy lights hung on Christmas trees holds. I look at both in wonderment.

Apart from the whitewash added to the natural colour of the landscape, I was struck by the quiet after a snowfall. Have you heard it? Amazing, isn’t it? Definitely magical! So different from the sounds of a country Spring morning in my part of the world.

I've also uploaded this blog at where there are some pcitures taken that morning on my camera and then on my iPhone as I was leaving for work.

Preview ‘Life Song�
‘Life Song� is a work of fiction, my second novel, and due for release early in 2013.
Preview

Turn the pages of ‘Life Song� to experience a glimpse of Australian life in the 1990s with a twist, entering the lives of Mavis Mills and her friends. ‘Life Song� explores the identity conflicts and demands that come with being a woman, mother, wife, and daughter and the ways individuals and the community shape our realities.

So many people are reluctant to hope for something better for fear they will become disappointed and that disappointment crushing robbing the breath out of what life they have. Not Mavis Mills. She believes that fulfilling her own dreams can secure a better life for those who matter to her most.

Mavis was born to be a song bird, her parents named her after one, a bird with a distinctive song worthy of poetry. With her wings clipped by circumstance, Mavis spent six year of life caged, the dream of flight almost forgotten. Grounded, she came to realise that wings can grow back. After a time of making do, Mavis knew she had a life-changing choice. Be like 99 precent of the population of ‘ordinary� people or be amongst the one precent that shine.

Will she be held back or moulded by others expectations or will she follow her own path and sing to revive her soul?


'Life Song� traces Mavis� journey, her challenges and triumphs.

I loved the journey with Mavis, the joy of music, and the release that creativity brings.

While ‘Life Songâ€� is a standalone novel, it follows my first novel ‘In and Out of stepâ€� which is available from Booktopia, Amazon, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ as an eBook, and can be ordered in by your local bookstore.

Booktopia because of a bulk purchase have a great sales price for 'In and Out of Step'.
Now is the time to buy.

I thought I'd share one of my poems with readers.


Growing up in Australia,
I saw, but didn't 'see', the seasonal changes,
The effects of temperature and light,
The landscape palette:
Summer's orange wash,
Winter's mauve hues.
I gave little thought to
Birdlife feeding one day
Then disappearing the next
Before the skeletal starkness,
The muted cold of winter.
I responded reflexively to the thaw,
Welcoming daylight's edge toward Spring.
I heard birds return with a song and a screech,
Signaling the seasonal shift.
The warbling, glottal throaty harmonies of currawongs,
The antiphony undersong of dawn,
The variegated native grasses,
The masses of wildflowers decorating roadside and grassland
Were the unrealized backdrop to my life.

Living in San Antonio, Texas,
Seasons assumed new meaning.
From Spring to Fall
As daylight lingered,
Faded,
Skeins of bats unfurled,
In the unyielding darkness of caves,
Responding to a pre-programmed call.
In twilight, they emerged,
In whorls,
Flying overhead,
Wave after wave,
Devouring in a frenzy the insect horde,
The sky a flickering canvas of bat shadows and twilight.
In Autumn,
Monarch butterflies migrated,
In a light flurry of stained-glass wing,
Southward,
Sensing their way to roosting havens
Before the freeze of winter.
In Spring
Flocks of birds,
Over two miles long,
Peppered the sky,
Surged on the pulse of air currents,
Northward bound,
Fireworks bursts of black against the brilliant sky.

Life:
Goings and comings,
Ebb and flow,
The dying and blossoming of nature,
Dark moments when all seems lost,
Light days as hope returns.
Dark lines, shades, and shadows
In Life's landscape,
Do more than focus the eye,
They define the scene and seen.

Christine M Knight

As the title 'In and Out of Step' suggests, the plot is built around character relationships and the themes of:
� belonging and alienation
� loss and gain
� change

Central to the theme of BELONGING is the ripple effect of life events on relationships and in a community and the way those events and relationships shape people and their perceptions of belonging or not belonging.

The central plot revolves around Cassie Sleight's quest to belong against a backdrop of a world undergoing social change.

The story opens with Cassie arriving in the seemingly idyllic coastal NSW town of Keimera. She has discarded her dream of a career in dance and left home. Dance influences how she interprets the world and how she deals with its adversities.

Having left the familiar circle of family and friends in search of a seachange, Cassie starts her teaching career in the English faculty of Keimera High. Her workplace represents one of the last bastions of male supremacy and her male co-workers want to keep it that way. She boards at Madison House, historically significant and representing something of the former pastoral glory of the region.

In the high school setting, Cassie comes into contact with Mark Talbut, a man struggling to be modern yet threatened by power shifts in the workplace and society.

At Madison House, Cassie experiences new perspectives on relationships and is challenged to become the woman she was meant to be and not what circumstance made her.

While readers learn about Cassie's new world and the barriers to her fitting in and becoming accepted, the secrets of her past surface through a series of flashback scenes. Those scenes reveal why Cassie felt she no longer belonged in the world that she left behind in Sydney and why she chose to be in exile.

As the story unfolds, Cassie realises something potentially sinister is happening in her new community. What should she do about it? Is the so-called 'good guy' really a wolf or just a man out of step with the times? Is she out of step with the times? Those questions complicate her quest to belong.

Cassie's quest to belong occurs in the workplace, in her new social and personal arenas, and in the world she left behind.

In the novel, Cassie’s journey to belong contrasts with the journeys of Mavis Mills, Michael Madison, Mark Talbut, Kate Denford, Samantha Smith, and Rajes Chandran. The stories of secondary characters adds dimension to my exploration of the novel's themes. Absolutely every character experience serves a function in this tale about life and love. You may have to think about how and why.

'In and Out of Step' is also a snapshot of Australian life and some key issues in play at the time. It is based on extensive research and placed within a fictional context.

Life:
Strands of colour,
Separate yet interwoven.
Each hue
Influences the weaving,
Defines the other.
A complex tapestry:
Indiscernible when close;
Recognisable at a distance.

Hi,

Would you consider clicking the LIKE button on my fan page and asking people you know to do the same?

Thank you for reading this request.

Christine

It’s late autumn here in Canberra: hard frosts, clear blue skies, warm still days, and freezing nights. I’ve been quite sick in 2012 and have not written much for my blog for what seems ages. So with renewed vigour, I return to my conversation with readers.

I missed summer this past year, not because I was ill but because it just didn’t arrive. The meteorologists tell us that we had a total of fourteen days of thirty degrees Celsius or more for the last six months. It’s the first such season in my memory.

In past years, summer arrived with a dragon-like breath in early October. Temperatures would soar well above forty degrees Celsius for a week or so and then would swing back into the thirties for a while and then follow an oscillation cycle until the official calendar date for summer. After that date, the heat stretched endlessly throughout the summer months and well into autumn. Indian summers were a common. I loved those summers and the weekends spent at the beach with extended family and friends. There seemed to be a lot more time in each day then as well as a sense of time for leisure. Of course, with the climate change to much milder weather this past year, there have been other benefits.

It has been fantastically wet the past two years and the surrounding landscape has become lush � lush that is in an Australian sense. The mobs of kangaroos in our area have never looked better: plush coats and well-fed bodies. The temperate climate of the past seven months has also meant that my husband was able to spend more time outdoors working on converting our seven and half acres of paddock to parkland. I’ve always enjoyed landscape paintings but never really appreciated gardeners created such landscapes for others to capture on canvas.

Having grown up in south-western urban Sydney, I never realised that country life had such sensory pleasures. Fragrance really stands out as does the many hued splendour of the surrounding landscape. I’m not being euphemistic when I say fragrance. I live in a rural-residential area that is short on cattle and therefore none of those distinctive smells.

As I’ve recovered from illness (yesterday being the first day I ventured outside for a while), the landscape scents functioned as a form of aromatherapy. I’d never given much thought to it before but fragrance really is uplifting. Although there has been a big downside in feeling sick, I appreciate wellness so much more now that it is returning. I’ve also re-examined my life goals and committed to putting aside the petty worries of life (have you noticed they are like an insidious vine?) and rededicated myself to embracing the simple joy of being alive.

I've been asked by a number of Goodreaders to discuss some of my narrative choices for 'In and Out of Step'. So here is the first of a series of articles.

EXILE

Discussion - the background circumstance underpinning the story and revealed through flashback

Cassie Sleight, a championship dancer, in seeking a seachange at the start of her teaching career, chose exile from her familiar circle of family, friends, and the dance world for compelling, personal reasons. Finding herself in an impossible situation, she opted to remove herself from the pain of it. Her pain stemmed from a change in relationship dynamics. She had found herself ousted from what had previously been a close relationship between three friends, one of whom she had considered as her soul mate (affinity). Feeling alienated and bereft, she left.Bereft has connotations not just of a gnawing sense of loss but of an emptiness tinged with resignation to the new circumstance. That sense lingered on the edge of Cassie's consciousness even when she sought to block it.

To appreciate Cassie's situation, you need to know about her past with Jake Dominguez and Melissa Pratt. Cassie's relationship with them shows how personal values and expectations can cause conflict and result in the breakdown of relationships and alienation.

All three characters grew up in patriarchal homes - male dominated with women in traditional subservient roles. Cassie rejected the adult male and female role and relationship models of her parents' generation. She had seen the pain and disempowerment the women in that world experienced.

As children, Cassie had an affinity with Jake Dominguez and grew up with him as 'best mates'. Melissa, though a member of the friendship group did not share the close bonds held by Jake and Cassie. This is shown in the text through a flashback scene to their childhood:

The bite of winter certainly had little effect on Cassie and Jake’s games. Matched in indomitable spirit and rugged in woollen jumpers, they scaled monster trees, teeter-tottered on bikes along dam edges, and gallumped through paddocks, startling rabbits while cattle ruminated in the bending grasses.
Melissa, timid and more interested in playing Barbies than adventure, lagged behind them, complaining. Under pressure from Leonie, Cassie and Jake modified their games to Hide-and-Seek so Melissa could play.
Immersed in her novel, Leonie knew little of the children’s friendship beyond the daredevil spirit of the duo and their resentment of Melissa’s intrusion. In later years, Leonie knew only that dance forged Cassie and Jake in partnership with Melissa an envious outsider.

Cassie and Jake's affinity when children is demonstrated by their like-mindedness in games, their shared desire for adventure, their inseparable friendship, and indomitable spirit. The word indomitable refers to a fearless and unconquerable spirit. By contrast, Melissa's desire to be included in the group is reflected by her complaining which equates to a form of protest that her participation and interests were not considered. The fact that the children's games change to accommodate Mellissa is a reflection of her claim on group membership. The excerpt also shows that from an early age, Melissa accepted and acted the role models and values in her world through Barbie games. The Barbie games symbolically represent preoccupations with body image, attractiveness, and acceptance of traditional female roles.

Jake's affinity with Cassie was also demonstrated in their teenage years when Cassie at sixteen experienced the grief associated with the death of a grandparent.

When her grandfather died a few months before her sixteenth birthday, she had not cried. At his funeral, the rest of the family had been awash with emotion. Her mother had been inconsolable and leant on her father. Leonie, her older sister, make-up tear-tracked and mascara running, had tried to provide support to Cassie who looked ill, but as the emotion of the service built, Leonie’s grief had given way to sobs. During the wake, Jake, Cassie’s soul mate from childhood, had found her sitting silently in her grandfather’s closet, inside Pop’s dark blue overcoat. (page 17)

Their affinity in the above excerpt is demonstrated by Jake's recognition of Cassie's emotional need, his subsequent search for her, his understanding of where she would seek solace, and his desire to comfort her. These behaviours are aspects of characterisation selected by the author to show the close bonds shared by this pair.

Cassie and Jake's relationship became increasingly contaminated by the transmitted values and expectations of the adult world in which they lived. Cassie and Jake increasingly clashed in the teenage years because Jake unthinkingly accepted the values of the male adult world around them while Cassie rejected them. In particular, Jake accepted his father's values and tried to live up to his father's expectations which were shaped by his father's culture (Spanish) and the attitudes of his father's generation. This is shown in the novel by:

Cassie knew all too well Mavis� look. Jake’s mother and hers assumed the expression whenever their husbands flirted. Cassie had guarded against it when Jake followed his father’s lead. She knew even more the feeling: acid eating away the inner core of confidence. Was it always this way? Once possessed, always insecure?(page 144)

The metaphoric comparison to 'acid' emphasises the destructive impact of unfaithful male behaviours on women and their relationships. The use of the word 'possessed' equates marital relationships to male ownership rather than a relationship based on a mutual sense of belonging.

Those transmitted parental values also affected Jake's behaviour in his teenage years in and outside of school, and his friendship with Cassie. This is shown in the novel by:

Girls had discovered Jake in Year 7, his confidence and roguish smile the lure. They clustered around him like fish in a feeding frenzy. Cassie had felt as if her minnow friend was in shark-infested waters. It had been difficult relinquishing her place to breasted girls who mocked her for immaturity. So she drifted away to the grassed lawns earmarked as havens of girl gossip. On the bus trip home, Jake had sought her out, draping an arm over her shoulder, mostly around her neck, and reproached her for abandoning him. That had been enough for her, then. She had been happy. (page 25)

The temporary break in the bond shared by Cassie and Jake in the above excerpt is reflected in Jake's loss of interest in her as a companion and his interest in 'breasted girls who mocked her for her immaturity'. Jake's interest in the opposite sex also reflected his maturational as well as his physical separation from Cassie's stage of development. Cassie was sustained in this period of separation by comfort from other groups to which she belonged - 'havens of girl gossip.' The word haven has connotations / associations with safety and comfort, and acceptance, inclusion - all features of belonging. Jake's later resumption of his friendship with Cassie is shown in the text by his behaviour 'draping an arm over her shoulder, mostly around her neck' and through his language, his mock reproach of Cassie for 'abandoning him'. The use of the word abandon refers to Jake's total withdrawal from their relationship in what was their public arena. This shows that belonging is based on the benefits a person gains from a relationship and that the state of belonging can be transitory. It also shows that a sense of belonging can be tenuous and negated by the presence or actions of others. It also foreshadows the potential for future breakdown of their relationship.

Cassie's childhood friend, Melissa Pratt, was her rival for Jake's affection. Although belonging to the same generation as Cassie and therefore also a beneficiary of the women's movement, Melissa adopted the values and female roles of her parents' generation as reflected in her preoccupation with Barbie games and later in her adult behaviour. This shows that there aren't clear demarcation lines in attitudes and values between generations. It illustrates that the assumption that belonging to a generation means you hold the values of that generation can be false.

As an aside, Melissa was more interested in having a boyfriend than being treated as an equal or a modern woman. Melissa thought her personal power lay in her sexual appeal and ability to cater for Jake's sexual appetite. From her perspective, she competes with Cassie for Jake's affection.

The importance of values and attitudes in sustaining group cohesiveness or in destroying it is shown in the novel through a flashback sequence to when Cassie and Jake won the National Dance Championships.

It was on her (Cassie's) way back to the hall that she saw them. Jake’s trousers were open, and he was re-buttoning his shirt. The girl, blonde and voluptuous, struggled with her bra hooks. Her flimsy dress was half-mast. Absorbed, they failed to register Cassie in the distance.
Standing there. Cassie realised it was Melissa: blue eyes, perfect teeth with a hint of gum, smiling back at her. Cassie was not in Jake’s sightline.
Returning to the ballroom, Cassie’s footsteps matched pace with her pounding heartbeat. The dance floor was crowded; the seated area around it congested. Her group’s table was empty.
With her legs threatening to buckle under her, Cassie pulled out the nearest chair. The room seemed unbearably hot ...
Positioned with Jake, his arm around her waist, as the centrepiece in the grouping, Cassie survived the laughter and vivacity of the shoot with its eye-blinding flashes somehow.
As the group separated, Jake pulled Cassie to him. ‘I love you. This is just the beginning!� Cassie was unresponsive to his kiss.
Coming out of the embrace, Cassie registered Melissa’s hard stare. Melissa reached for Jake as he passed her. Cassie did not hear what he said, but she saw Melissa’s anguish as she stood alone, the crowd thinning. Cassie said nothing about the car park incident then. She’d had enough though. There had been too many such incidents, too many girls. In the car park that night as their families separated, Jake said to Cassie, ‘I’ll come over tomorrow.�
‘There are no tomorrows for us, Jake. I saw you with Melissa tonight. You’re too much like your father and mine.
'No � don’t touch me. We’re done!� (pages 125-126)

The novel shows that values and expectations play an important part in the ability of a relationship to endure. Cassie did not see why she should have to 'put out' to hold Jake in a relationship and so did neither. Conversely, Jake did not understand or accept Cassie's need for fidelity and so the relationship broke down. Melissa was prepared to use sex as coinage and therefore had the ability to break-up her friends' relationship. The flashback scene shows that understanding another person's perspective as well as what is valued is also important if bonds within the relationships are to be maintained.

Differences in values and expectations meant that Cassie became increasingly alienated from Jake and Melissa. Add to this the expectations of the adults who applied pressure to her to conform; the more pressure applied to her, the more passively resistant she became - the more alienated from friends and family.

For a while, Cassie got through life as if she was controlled remotely. Nothing moved her: Jake’s pleas, her parents� haranguing, the arguments of their dance coach. Jake pursued her, and, for a while, Cassie toyed with the idea of forgiving him again, until it occurred to her that Jake was faithful only when he did not have her. (page 126)

Ultimately, the breakdown in Cassie's relationship with Jake and her termination of their dance partnership coupled with his engagement to Melissa gave Cassie compelling, personal reasons to choose exile away from the familiar circle and support of family and friends.

As she drove south from Sydney, Cassie Sleight wondered, How many people make decisions based on the emotion of the moment? Fed up with her impossible situation, when she had seen a means of escape the year before, she had taken it. Ticking the box anywhere in New South Wales on her application, she had left it to chance where she ended up in the approaching Bicentennial year. Cassie hoped now that she would not regret acting on that impulse. (page 3)

Cassie's story shows that a person is able to remain in exile despite 'the gnawing sense of loss' (page 16) when there are strong motivations or passions underpinning the decision that led to the exile. Her experience during the plot action shows that she was sustained when in exile by her ongoing family connections, phone calls and visits home (pages 43-44 and page 79) and through developing bonds in a new community (page 213).

Cassie's journey during'In and Out of Step' shows that choosing exile because of loss or the metaphoric death of something does not resolve the issue. She had to face and deal with her traumatic past as she built a new life. She had to find a way to regain inclusion, move beyond the issues in her past, and forge new bonds so that she could move on with her life.

The characters and cultures that she experiences in the New South Wales coastal township of Keimera were fundamental to her growth as a person and to her ultimate empowerment.

The novel gives meaning to Tennyson's statement: 'I am part of everything I meet'. Cassie's experiences show the corollary is also true. The challenge for her is whether or not she can step away from the shadows of and shaping influences from her past.

Personally, I like Cassie because, although initially a shy young woman, she finds the courage to deal with her fears and the strength to be the person she was meant to be and not what circumstance had temporarily made her.

You can sample the novel, if you haven't arleady read it, through the eBooks facility offered by Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.

Hi,
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ has 'In and Out of Step' available as a eBook for its readers. Free-of-charage, you can read the opening chapters online in Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to get a feel for the narrative direction, characters, and writing style.

I've provided a glossary of Australian terms and some linked imagery for overseas readers of 'In and Out of Step' at

Please let me know of any other terminology or references from the novel that you'd like explained.