International Tweet Fest With a Famous Person

Crazy things can happen. Sometimes I love the barrier-less world of social media. I especially love twitter where there is no fine line between the haves and the have-nots. You can follow anyone you please, in a weird voyeur kind of way perhaps, because they cannot de-friend you. They can avoid replying to your tweets. But a tweet is easily overlooked so should not offend your easily crushible-constantly-seeking-likes-pageviews-and-other-SM-positive-affirmation mentality.

So on Wednesday when, UK Children’s Laureate and author of 50+ books (mainly in the YA genre), MALORIE BLACKMAN tweeted:

@Malorieblackman If you'd like me to visit your school/library/literary festival please visit http://www.childrenslaureate.org.uk/about-us/request-an-event/ … for more info.

I cheekily, after an agonizingly long and lonely internal debate, trying to remember if I’d ever read ‘how to tweet famous people without being rude, crass or sounding like a crazy’, replied:

@malorieblackman would you ever consider visiting New Zealand?

Then I went on about my day wasting hours of precious writing time, avoiding writing and chewing through broadband, while keeping myself up to the minute on bookish debates of the kid lit kind.

Lo and behold. Later that night…

Ms Blackman tweeted back.

@janeebloom I visited New Zealand about 6 years ago and loved it. I would certainly love to go back. :-)

I let out a shrill cry of delight probably audible in Auckland. Pa-poppycock to all those lesser, huge and important people who’ve ignored me to date. A REAL life famous person tweeted ME. With a smiley face even. Possibly only because I happen to live in a fabulous clean green squeaky clean and currently teenage sex free country called Godzone, Aotearoa, New Zealand. 

Little did Ms Blackman know that I immediately suggested to the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival organizers that they might like to consider asking her to speak at their May 2014 event. I pictured a healthy panel debate with our top YA authors, our OWN newly appointed NZ Children’s Laureate and Ms Blackman discussing: The Treatment of Sex and Four Letter Words in YA literature, or similar.

I do realize, in her capacity of UK Children’s Laureate Ms Blackman will be rushed off her feet in England’s pastures green, until she hands on her tenure in 2015. But you can but ask. And the organizers had already. And her publishers said, NO, she’s tied up. 

Actually, I’d been daydreaming at my computer screen (5+ tabs open waiting to be read) about Ms Blackman making a trip down under, before our tweet-fest and before the sex in Ted Dawe’s, Into the River, became hot news. She’s been outspoken already about intimate matters in YA Literature and I like her views.

Ms Blackmans believes it’s partly the responsibility of YA authors to empower teenagers through literature. To provide them with a cache of sexy bits to tuck away and carry with them on their inevitable path of intimate experimentation. Like me.

I’m okay with the darker stories being told like, Into The River. In fact, I’m looking forward to reading it and seeing it climb up the bestseller list. Move over Wonky Donkey.

I want to understand how the young Maori protagonist, smart and keen and supposedly on the right path for a great future, after winning a scholarship to an elite boy’s boarding school gets lost? How and why his isolation sends him on a path of self-loathing and self-harm? Most of all I want to know if he recovers?

But I want to see some positive heart-warming coming of age YA books in the market place too.  

Ms Blackman spoke of reading about a teenage girl whose boyfriend was brutalizing her because that’s what he thought sex was from watching porn online. She said, “It made me angry and it made me sad. I thought well, this is exactly why we need not just sex education in schools but also books that tackle the subject of relationships and your first time”. “I would rather my daughter read about a loving sexual relationship in a book - whether it works or whether it doesn’t - but in that context…”

TV and Film doesn’t help. Puberty Blues, the Aussie drama set in the 70’s, for example. I watched it gob-smacked. Where on earth had the young surfer dudes got their performance ideas from? Their fathers? Older brothers? Farm animals? ‘It gets better,’ my 14 year old assured me (who’d already watched it online unbeknownst to me). Thankfully after several episodes, one high school couple did separate from the wanna-root-in-the-back-of-the-ute group. Moving away to share intimacies and conversation alone, gently flowing down their own sweet path of discovery.  Who was that programme aimed at? But more scarily, what message was it sending young people (especially girls) at that all-knowledge, no-experience stage of life?

At a SCBWI conference in Sydney 2011, an LA Agent when asked what the market wanted said; YA stories with romance, real romance. I can’t remember her exact words but I’m sure she mentioned ‘loin stirring’. 50 Shades of Grey was still on the bestseller list at the time (and doing the rounds of Year 12 at high school). I sat there thinking, I really hope there isn’t going to be a new genre along the lines of some weird YA pop-corn-porn. 

Luckily not. Nevertheless, I think we can expect a lot more racy, hopefully empowering YA novels. 

BTW I did tweet Ms Blackman again. Hey I was on a high. I’d been asked if I had connections.

She didn’t reply. It was twelve hours after her tweet, she’d probably gone to bed.  However, the seed is sown, it may be a very long gestation but you never know.

As for me, I will now crawl back into my Juliet tower, pull up my artic blonde ponytail and sit before my blank screen, disconnected from the wretched internet with my timer set for 30 minutes.

Before I climb the 136 steps I’ll leave you with this, Huff Post YA list for the beach warning: contains lust, love and tension.

Teenage Dream

At 8.40pm on Wednesday 19^th June, I officially became the mum of two teenage daughters. It’s about time I wrote YA novel I thought. I should know my audience.

A few days prior I'd hosted a coming of age party. Fifteen, 12 and just 13 year olds. It was an eye opener. But quite frankly what stage of parenting isn’t?

As I served the drinks I stated the rules. ‘First rule: No drinks in the living room please. Second rule: have fun.’

‘And have a sugar high,’ squeaked a smiley girl, stuffing her fluro striped face with a handful of party lolly mix.

‘Go crazy,’ I said. And they did.

As soon as I’d served red Fanta in paper cups and retreated to my holding pen. The kitchen. Some of the girls started a burping competition. Fair enough. They were thirsty young things and that drink was obviously carbonated. But even the three boys present were shocked by the volley of throaty belches emanating from these pretty tweenies all togged up in their fluro skinnies and white T-shirts.

It was a glow in the dark party. Oh yes. We had glow sticks, glow glasses, glow-earrings, glow necklaces and glow-bracelets. Thanks K-Mart. We had a happy birthday banner painted with glow paint. And as already mentioned we had a lot of faces covered in glow-paint. Thanks Whitcoulls; and FYI that pink colour leaves orange stains on coloured concrete floors. We had gazillions of white balloons with lcd lights inside. Thanks Warehouse.

And the piece de résistance, reminiscent of 80’s nightclubs, the black light. $23 to hire for the night from Party Plus. If you stood too close to it you looked like an Oompa Loompa whose teeth had just been lasered Ultra White. Sick.

As Justin Bieber screeched out ‘Girlfriend’ for the third time, I busied myself with heating an array of nasty premade party snacks. My daughter wanted a dinner tray of freshly made sushi. I said that would cost too much. The kids gobbled up chicken bits the size and shape of popcorn and freakishly long oven fries. It was comforting to see Alison Holst’s youthful face on the packets of frozen sausage rolls I’d selected. They were good too. Blast them at 220 and the pastry’s all crunch and yum.

One boy complained the playlist was terrible. I was with him on that, but I wasn’t allowed near the stereo. I wasn’t allowed near anything actually unless required for photography or food replenishing. I had to bite my tongue and put Katy Perry on the stereo near the kitchen, loud. When in Rome.

They moved outside and toasted marshmallows over a brazier. Things started getting out of hand. An eleven year old male had taken his shirt off. The girls were jeering. He was taking selfies. For whom I wondered? They ate smores (molten marshmallows squashed between Chocolate Wheatens). Then they disappeared into the dark armed with only their glow in the dark arsenal to play spotlight. It was practically snowing. Some fell down banks, others in gravel. I let them get really wet them called them inside. Then I mopped mud off the floor.

The big screen we borrowed from a friend was a hit. They played One Direction parodies mostly to annoy the resident almost 15 year old. Hardened Beliebers all of them. Next they projected facebook and chatted to outsiders. Stranger things have happened I suppose.

Some of the photos were telling. Like the one of the lass gyrating with the empty wine bottle in her mouth. Now deleted. The bottle in question had been used to play spin-the-bottle-whose-present-will-I-open-next?

At the time I thought perhaps a plastic one would have been more suitable but her father assured me it was washed. And I was a bit preoccupied getting the oven to frozen pastry cooking temperature. Maybe plastic doesn’t spin as well? I can’t remember what we used when I was a young lassy. But it must have been glass; those midsize bottles we returned to the dairy then bought a ten cent mixture. Heady times back in the 70’s, when spin-the-bottle was a kissing game.

The party lasted three hours. It could have been three weeks. When the birthday girl said it was the best party, I knew my job was done. One parent arrived 45 minutes after the allotted pickup to collect four girls. I was lying on the sofa by that stage, wishing I hadn’t had the urge to try all the high salt high fat food on offer. At least I’d held back on the red Fanta. Having that cocktail of processed preservatives repeating would have been lethal.

A few days later the actual birth date arrived. Darling daughter announced at breakfast, ‘hey mum I’m legal.’

The words ‘For what?’ started flashing across my frontal lobes like a cheap Vegas neon.

I swallowed my toast, ‘For what?’ I asked, taking a swig of coffee.

‘Facebook,’ she beamed.

Now, about that YA novel...to be continued