Snow Gum River

Snow Gum River is a literary short fiction piece that unfolds around a bushranging gang in New South Wales, Australia during the late 1800s. I recently entered into the daunting world of publishing and this is my début short story which is available for free download through Smashwords here. After the break, I'll be discussing a little bit about how I came to write Snow Gum River and the process behind it. Spoilers below in case you haven't read it.

16 Female Musicians You Definitely Need to Know Exist

I’ve decided to highlight some female singers and songwriters for y’all this week by sharing a collection of my favourite songs with female vocalists. It was so difficult to narrow it down, but I’ve managed to keep it to just 16. There’s a mix available here on 8tracks of the songs I ended up choosing, and if you love any of them, I 100% recommend checking out their other work and supporting them!

And now, in no particular order, the ladies who made this mix possible.

On Stress and Worry

If my degree had any units based around studying worry and stress, or anything along those lines I would be a high distinction student, totally averaging around 80-90% (after all experience is the best teacher right? I wouldn’t even have to attend classes!) It’s amazing how often my thoughts can be consumed with stressful thoughts and worries; worries about Uni and Uni work, worries about work and figuring out how to balance it with Uni, worries about my family and friends, worries about money, worries about my car (which has a tendency to break down at the most inconvenient times, such as last night) and yeah…just worries about all aspects of life in general.

At some point in the last few weeks I have realised that too often those thoughts, worries and stress were stopping me from doing things that I would really love to do (like moving away, which I did anyway but that’s another story,) and that it might actually be possible to build a life free from an insane amount of worries and stress. I realised that I was lying awake at night worrying about things completely out of my control… worrying years into the future (what will I do when I graduate Uni? Where will I live? Where will I work?), worrying about members of my family (should I have moved away? How’s my brother coping at school? What if something happens to mum or dad and I’m hours away?), worrying about money (What if something happens at work and they decide to fire all the night fillers? How will I pay my rent? What if something goes horribly wrong with my car?)…you can see the picture.

I Need A Hero(ine)

With the recent success of Marvel (and to some extent DC) Comic Films, superheroes have once again captured the attention of a wide audience outside the usual fanbase. I've read only a few comics because the graphic novel and comic format has been hard for me to get into (weird, huh?) and because I've never known where to start, there are so many layers and reboots that it’s a daunting project to try. The comic genre had also never felt accessible to me and even now I still feel deterred from entering it. It wasn’t until Iron Man (2008) that I began to feel like it was something I could begin to involve myself in, and from there, the other Phase 1 (Iron Man - Avengers) and Phase 2 (Iron Man 3 - Avengers 2) movies and my first tentative steps into the comics themselves.

So what about my superheroines? There are plenty of female superheroes in both the Marvel and DC comics and yet, even in 2014, there is a resistance to the idea of making a female superhero movie; either from the belief that the movie wouldn’t make enough money, that women don’t watch comic book movies or there wouldn’t be an audience for it. We’ve had female superhero movies before in Elektra (2005) and Catwoman (2004), both of which did rather badly. They weren’t that great in many aspects. It’s been nearly ten years; a lot has changed since they were released, and there are many other ladies to choose from. It’s time that women finally get to see female superheros on the big screen who are the lead, rather than sidekicks or love interests.