Before European settlement, the river was clear. But due to intensive land clearing and development after the 1800’s, the water now contains tiny clay particles which makes it appear muddy.

Our destination was a secluded spot on the river bank. I had planned to work on my novel with the occasional lifting of my head to contemplate the tranquil river. My husband was going to do some fly fishing. It was also the perfect opportunity to introduce our new puppy, Hero to the bush.

After we parked the car we walked through a meadow that followed the river. I don’t think there is a more invigorating sound than the deep hollowness of rushing water as it slips over boulders on its way to the sea. It was going to be a perfect day.

And it was.

As soon as Steve cast his line in the water, he had a strike. It was a good sized brown trout too, big enough for the table. But as is his custom, he released the fish back into the water. Again he threw out his line and again caught a brown. He was pleased. I watched him wade around the bend of the river and began setting up my things – my comfy canvas chair, thermos flask of hot tea, a slice of fresh baked rhubarb cake, grapes, editing notes.

By this time Hero was down at the water’s edge doing what dogs do best, digging in the mud. But then I realised he’d have to be on a lead as the river bank suddenly fell away into deep water. I had horrible images of him being swept downstream.

So much for my tranquil time of writing, reading and contemplation.

After that it was downhill all the way. In half an hour I saved him from ingesting a plastic bag full of fishing tackle that he had dug up, picked leeches off his body – one which was already full of somebody’s blood, removed a number of bush ticks ready to do the vampire thing on him, and pulled out an army of grass seeds that were already advancing on his ear canals. Added to this were horse flies the size of cicadas, ready to bite any exposed piece of flesh.

I decided that the only safe place for him was up off the ground in my nice comfy canvas chair.

So while Hero contemplated the quiet river, I pulled out grass seeds, ticks and leeches and shooed the horse flies away.

But the highlight of the day was a walk through the forest of Californian Redwoods. These trees were planted in the 1930’s by the Board of Works for experimental reasons. There are more than 1400 of them with the tallest being 55 metres high. A gold plaque states that the Redwoods are listed by the National Trust.

I found a number of humpies in various stages of completion. I thought of my Poppy books in the Our Australian Girl series. The aborigines used to build temporary shelters like these.

I wondered who had built them. They were like wooden sculptures, quite beautiful and they added a mystery to this already magical place.

But the excitement of the day didn’t end there. At midnight I had to rush to the animal emergency center. Hero was beside himself with itching, racing around the house like a mad dog with rabies. $180 later, dosed with phenergan (the dog that is, not me) we finally made it home at 1.30 am. Whether it was because of the grass seeds or because I washed him for the first time with Oatmeal shampoo when we got back from Warburton, or perhaps there was residual clothes washing powder in the trough, I don’t know. But I gave him a wash with plain warm water when we got home and he finally settled.

It was a day full of adventure and surprise. But these are the things that feed us writers.

I finish this post with a piece by Ernest Hemingway. It arose from a bet he made with colleagues that he could write a six word novel.

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

In May, our daughter Lei Lei left home to live in New York. She has been away before on a gap year in France after Year 12, then an exchange in USA while she was studying at Monash University. But this time, she has really left the nest.

For years she has wanted to live in New York City to pursue a career in fashion. She is lucky to have dual citizenship. In a very short time she found a job working at StyleLikeU, an exciting, innovative online fashion magazine, and then an apartment with great roommates on the Lower East Side. And, like many young New Yorkers, she works two jobs. At night she hostesses in a restaurant frequented by movie stars. There is never a dull moment, she tells me.

We are very proud of our Lei.

Our son, Ren and his band Bleaches have gotten a number of gigs around Melbourne. It’s been a full year of surfing, snowboarding and playing music, with the occasional university lecture.

As for books published this year. Four novels came out. They are the Poppy books in the Our Australian Girl series – Meet Poppy, Poppy at Summerhill, Poppy and the Thief and Poppy Comes Home. While I was on the plane to Europe, I was still working on the final edit for Poppy Comes Home and sent it off just in the nick of time.

I spent two beautiful weeks studying Italian in San Giovanni val d’arno. I was also researching the small medieval town in Tuscany for my new novel The Wish Bird. This was followed by a week at a friend’s two hundred year old farmhouse in the same region. I felt as if I was in Bernardo Bertolucci’s dreamy movie Stealing Beauty.

After Italy it was back to London for a quick stopover before flying to New York to visit my daughter and some publishers. All I can say about New York is that it’s an amazing city.

I heart New York!

But as a bright sunny day can suddenly turn dark, I heard when I was in New York that my dog, Saffy had died. She would have been 15 years old on the 16th December.

Here is the letter I wrote to Saffy the day I found out.

“New York 2nd July 2011

My darling Saff, my gorgeous girl.

You have been with me for 14 years, 14 beautiful years, I can’t believe you are gone.

You shared my dreams. You listened to my stories. You were my constant friend.

Remember when we would go to Lorne, just the two of us? Remember how you loved it there, not the surf or the beach but the St George River where you would wallow in the calm water of the estuary.

Remember too, how you curled up in my suitcase because you were afraid of the dark.

Death comes at the most inopportune times. How I wish I could have been there for you at the end.

You always smelt so good, like a new fluffy toy, not doggy at all.

You came into our lives when Lei was 10 and Ren was 8. That seems like such a long time ago when I think of how much they have grown.

There is such a special bond between dogs and humans like a gift from God.

Remember all the tricks you could do – be a bear, roll over, shake hands, bow, and the cleverest trick of all was how you would get into a bucket to have your paws washed after we came back from a walk in the rain.

Are you with my Rusty now? You know he was my other doggy love.

Make friends with him. I think you will get on well together. Have heavenly babies even and send a little one down to me for when I’m ready to get another dog. Do you think I ever will be?

I will miss you. I will always be saddened for missing out on those last moments we should have had together. That is my only regret. Death comes to us all and I was prepared, but not prepared to not be there when it was your time.

I dreamt about you the night before you died. I dreamt that you were lying dead over cardboard boxes and you were young again and your fur was beautiful. When I woke up I was relieved that it was only a dream.

Was it a premonition? Was it a message?

And these are all the little things I remember:

I remember the look on your face when you were waiting for the microwave to heat up your dinner. You would blink and move from one front foot to the other, just three little steps. I remember the noise of the doggie door, the noise of your toe nails scraping against the wall in our bedroom at night. I remember how sometimes you would be standing at the gate when I drove in. I don’t think you were waiting for me, just looking out, watching the world. I remember the sound of your name tag dinging against the water bowl.

I dreamt about you again on Sunday 17^th. I dreamt that you were running and I was chasing you. But it was as if you were being called because you didn’t wait for me and you ran in between the wall into a dark space then you were gone.

You will be in my heart always, dearest friend.”

I illustrated that dream. It’s titled ‘Calling Me’ and will be published in Ford Street Publishing’s Trust Me Too next year.

Here is a sneak preview.

So to end this post on a happy note, here is Hero, our gorgeous new puppy on his second adventure to Central Park, that’s Central Park, Malvern, not Central Park, New York.

Have a Joyous Christmas and wonderful New Year shared with family and friends.

“One of the nicest things about being involved in children’s and YA writing is the people you meet. Gabrielle Wang, the author of several lovely, gentle fantastical books for young readers, is a Melbourne writer, so we’ve met at a number of events at the Centre for Youth Literature and other places. Two of my students, Pepa and Shane, absolutely loved her novel, A Ghost in My Suitcase, which they read for English as part of Literature Circles – so much that they hunted up her other books to read. Pepa is currently enjoying Little Paradise. It seemed a logical follow-up to ask her some questions – and Gabrielle very kindly agreed to answer them – not only that but to publish the interview on her own website.

Take it away, girls!”

P/S: Did you write this book to help children face their fears against ghosts they are afraid to find?

G: I wrote A Ghost in My Suitcase to explore ghosts and ghost hunters and the Chinese idea of death. Hopefully along the way, children will also be able to overcome their fears. The idea came from the character Por Por in The Pearl of Tiger Bay. She was so strong she needed a novel written all about her.

P/S:  Have you seen ghosts?

G: I haven’t seen a ghost but I have heard them calling my name. I’ve also had strange, ghostly things happen like doors opening and even words that suddenly appear the next time I open the word document on my laptop.

P/S: According to your site, you have used ghost-hunting equipment. What equipment have you used?

G: Did I say that? I’ve never actually used any ghost hunting equipment but I do have some coin swords, mirrors and bells.

P/S: Why was the sequel The Pearl of Tiger Bay published before this one?

G: I have already answered this in Question One. When I wrote The Pearl of Tiger Bay I had no idea I was going to write a prequel.

P/S: Okay, I’m going to ask about the characters now, the places and the culture.

About the Characters -

How come Celeste is the only one who has the ability to fight ghosts with her voice? Is she the chosen one? Because according to Por Por, she never found information about this ghost ability she has.

G: Yes, Celeste is the chosen one. It came naturally to her. That’s why she was destined to be a ghost hunter. She was the first ghost hunter to use her voice as a weapon.

P/S: What caused Celeste’s mother to die?

G: She died of cancer. Even though this is not written in the novel, a writer has to know her characters’ complete background.

P/S About Ting Ting, how did you develop her character?

G: When I first began writing A Ghost in My Suitcase, Ting Ting was Celeste’s Shanghai cousin, a university student called Ky. He was also a boy. But I grew bored with Ky and I thought that if I’m bored with him so will my readers be. As soon as I changed Ky into a moody girl, the story suddenly took off.

About the places –

P/S Does Isle of Clouds exist? It seems so real! I want to visit it!

The Isle of Clouds is based on an ancient water town near Shanghai called Wuzhen.

P/S: Does Bao Mansion exist?

Bao mansion is based on an old house in the hills overlooking West Lake in Hangzhou, China. When I was writing the scenes with Bao mansion, I pictured the old house in my mind.

P/S: Is the story based on true events?

G: Everything in the novel is made up except for the historical parts about China and the international settlements.

P/S: If you caught a weak ghost, can you actually turn them into goldfish?

G: I made that up too. I thought it would be fun and far less violent than destroying the poor ghosts. Only Shen Da Pai needed to be destroyed because he was Celeste’s enemy, and an enemy of her family for generations.

P/S: If you were trapped in a mingshen mirror, could you really get out with the help of pure or holy water or tears?

G: I am told you can trap a ghost in a mingshen mirror but the part about using tears I made up.

P/S: What do you think it would be like to be trapped in a mingshen mirror if it was possible?

G: It would be like being trapped in a goldfish bowl. You would be able to see the world outside but not be able to escape. It would be like torture.

P/S: Celeste’s mom made a short appearance in the book. During that short appearance, she was planting tomorrows. What are tomorrows? I tried surfing the net about it and I ended up with ‘How to plant tomatoes’…..-_-.

G: I made up ‘tomorrows’ to symbolise the future. Celeste’s mum was planting them because she knew she didn’t have many ‘tomorrows’ left. She died young.

P/S: About the types of ghosts: were those types of ghosts (such as fat belly etc.) real in Chinese culture? Are there more types of ghosts?

G: All the different ghosts came out of my imagination. It’s so much fun writing novels!

P/S: Are there different techniques to catch or fight ghosts?

G: Some of the techniques I researched are real, like trapping ghosts in mirrors and controlling them with coin swords.

P/S : With all the ghost and supernatural books you have been writing, do you actually believe in supernatural things such as spirits and an afterlife?

G: I do believe in an afterlife. I am not Buddhist but I lean towards that belief – that we are reincarnated.

P/S: Do you celebrate any of the things the Chinese culture celebrates, such as hungry ghosts, mingshen mirrors and others?

G: We celebrate Chinese New Year with a big family dinner, the Autumn Moon festival with moon cakes and grave sweeping day where we clean the grave of my father.

P/S: Do any of your books describe yourself or any of your own memories?

Much of what I write is from personal experience. For example the scene in A Ghost in My Suitcase where Celeste is in the bus on her way to the Isle of Clouds is from a real experience. While I was studying painting in China we went to sketch in the mountains. To get there we rode for hours in a rusty old bus. That chapter is exactly how I experienced it including frogs jumping around our feet and the big hole in the roof. I really did have to put up my umbrella! My YA novel Little Paradise was based on my mother’s story. And my first novel, The Garden of Empress Cassia is based on how I felt when I was a child.

P/S: In the middle of your writing, do you feel that you are the characters or the main character?

G: I am definitely all the characters – even the bad ones. They are parts of myself.

Thank you, Pepa and Shane for the fantastic questions!

The house is a mess. The floor is covered in leaves and dirt from the garden. And there are child proof gates on all the doors leading from the kitchen/breakfast room to the rest of the house. But Hero is adorable as you can see from the photos.

And very smart too!

In three days he has learnt to come when he’s called. He can sit and beg and drop. And he sits before his meals. What a clever little puppy! It’s actually very easy to teach puppies to do all these things if you give them treats.

Tonight is his first puppy training class.

When Hero sleeps, which is a lot of the time, I try and work on my new novel, The Wish Bird.

I am rewriting the first draft. It is slow going but at least the story is progressing. Anne Lamott’s advice from her fantastic book on writing is always good to keep in mind. “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

I’m really looking forward to this day where I will be presenting with authors and illustrators such as Paul Collins, Meredith Costain, Susanne Gervay, Dianne Bates, Michael Panckridge, Phil Kettle and Michael Salmon.

Topics discussed will be:

Reading into the Future,

Issue Based Novels,

Illustration Techniques for Schools and Libraries

Creating Picture Books with Students

VCE Texts and Primary Texts

Sports Books for Boys.

And I will be discussing the Experience of Race and Culture in my writing.

Books will be available for signing.

It’s subsidized for the day at $110 which includes dinner, talks, cocktails and canapes in the beautiful RACV Melbourne. Near the railway station.

Booking: Rob Leonard rob@ozkids.com.au
ph: 03 5282 8950

Love to see you there.

Gabrielle

The students produced some beautiful work. I was very proud of them all! And what a wonderfully polite year level they were too!

The paintbrush is one of the four treasures of the painting studio.

Step one when painting bamboo and baby chickens.

Students at work

And here are some of the wonderful paintings produced by the students

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Last week, my publisher Jane Godwin, Our Australian Girl series editor Davina Bell, my editor, Katie Evans and I travelled up to Wahgunyah to launch the final book in the series, Poppy Comes Home.

The launch took place at the Wahgunyah Primary School. After the launch I did an illustrating workshop with the students from Year 3 to 6.

You can see by the smiles on all of our faces that we had a lot of fun.

Katie Evans and Davina Bell

One of the books in the Poppy series, Poppy and the Thief, is set in and around Wahgunyah as my great grandfather, who came from China during the gold rush, settled, then married there.

I am very proud to say that my grandfather and all his brothers and sisters went to Wahgunyah primary school.

My great grandmother seated on the right with her children. I'm not sure which one of the boys is my grandfather.

Katie Evans and Jane Godwin

Students with their drawings of Peng from my book The Hidden Monastery

Thank you so much to the principal, Sandra Rosenbrock, the staff and all the students for helping me launch Poppy Comes Home!

In 1984 I went back to live and stayed until 1986.

I was studying Chinese painting in Nanjing, then in Hangzhou at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art. There was very little to buy except for food items. Heating was rationed, even though it was snowing outside, and so was the hot water for showers.

But there was always a plentiful supply of art materials – paper, brushes, inkstones and inksticks.

This was my first night in China, in a Sichuan restaurant in Nanjing. You can see from the hovering waiters that foreigners were a novelty. The dishes were washed in a bucket of dirty water and the table was greasy and had the remains of the previous customers' meal. We asked the waitress if she could wipe the table. She sullenly agreed and brought over a filthy grey cloth. 'See,' she said with a sneer. 'The more I wipe the dirtier it gets!' She wasn't joking.

Outside the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou.

In the foreign students' canteen. Students came from Germany, Switzerland and Japan. Our common language was Chinese. I was the only one studying Chinese painting. The others were studying printmaking, chop carving and calligraphy.

I was lucky to study with the local students who were all brilliantly talented. The Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art was considered the best place to learn traditional Chinese painting in the whole of China. This photo was taken with our teachers. In the background is West Lake.

On a field trip into the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province. Watching our teacher painting.

Taken with the Abbot of a Taoist Monastery in the Wuyi Mountains where we ate a delicious, but simple vegetarian meal.

In the 80’s there was nothing to buy. We couldn’t even get instant coffee, so each month we would take the train to Shanghai, to the famous Peace Hotel to purchase a supply which was kept in a glass cabinet at reception.

As foreigners, we were always closely watched, and had to be careful what we said in public. My friends, who were local students, had to be particularly on their guard.

No local Chinese were allowed into the big hotels unless they had special permission to meet relatives. There were guards on the gates and big fences surrounding the property.

How different it is today!

Who could have imagined…

Twenty five years on, this TED talk, given by the brilliant Yang Lan, otherwise known as the Oprah of China, demonstrates what China is like today and the attitudes of young people. There may be no Twitter, but social blogging is alive and well and playing an important part.

It feels as if I’ve come home and am thawing out in front of a warm fire with a hot cup of tea.

This illustration is a visual representation of the first few chapters of my new novel, The Wish Bird. It begins at the bottom right hand corner in a forest of birds. I did the illustration in a creative journaling workshop run by authors, Simmone Howell and Lisa D’Onofrio. Not only was the workshop great fun, but I had never plotted a story visually before, so this was a wonderful discovery. I’ll probably end up covering my writing room with sheets and sheets of illustrations as the novel progresses.

This is a detail of an illustration I’m working on. It’s called Leaving and is based on a dream that I had after my dog, Saffy, died. I dreamt that the wall opened and she was being called, summoned by a higher power. When she went inside the wall, a whole other realm opened up to her and off she ran. The illustration will be in a grey scale wash.

This rough is for an illustration that will eventually appear in The Wish Bird. I don’t usually do the illustrations first but going with the flow is my motto.