Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

Ovarian cancer day

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This Sunday, Mother’s Day, is world ovarian cancer day. It’s appropriate timing – one of my closest friends, Leane, mother of three daughters, has just passed her five-year anniversary of being diagnosed with cancer. You can learn more about the wonderful Leane and her story in the video above – Leane has worked tirelessly to raise awareness and funds for an early detection test.

And my lovely Mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year – now healthy after an operation and chemo, but still receiving treatment.

Supporting the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation with their Witchery white shirt day is very important to me. Witchery donate 100% of their gross proceeds from every white shirt sold to the OCRF. I love this year’s shirt – crisp and classic, perfect for tailored pants and a skirt for work or with jeans for a casual look!

I bought my white shirt for Mum, for Leane, for women already diagnosed with ovarian cancer and for women yet to be diagnosed. Perhaps a Witchery white shirt is the perfect gift for yourself or another special woman…

A publishing contract with Hachette!

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I’m so thrilled to share with you that this week I signed a publishing contract with Hachette for my debut young adult novel, Even the ocean! It’s due to be published in February 2023.

This is a verse novel about two fifteen-year-olds living in Melbourne during 2020, trying to hold on to their creativity despite being restricted by both lockdowns and their families. Crux wants to be a street artist but it’s illegal for kids to carry spray cans in public. Talia wants to become a professional violinist but her family has academic expectations. It’s a book about self-expression and resilience.

Oceans of thanks to Danielle Binks, my agent, and Kate Stevens, Hachette publisher, for their belief in this story from the very beginning. Their enthusiasm came through my screen in Zoom meetings during Melbourne’s lockdowns!

Hachette publish some of my favourite young adult and middle-grade authors – Danielle Binks, Pip Harry, Cath Crowley, Jessica Townsend – I’m in excellent company!

I’m looking forward to sharing more details about my research into street art and my violin lessons. Warning – I do not share my characters’ talents in these fields!

It was so wonderful to receive the contract this week – I’m almost five weeks past getting Covid (hence my silence on the blog) and I’ve been struggling through Covid brain fog and physical exhaustion. The Hachette contract is absolutely a highlight for my year!

Hello, February!

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January is such a lovely time for dreaming and planning the year ahead but February (even halfway through!) is much better for putting in action all that dreaming.

Here’s all my dreaming/planning for 2022:

  • teaching Stewardship – a customised ten-month program for writers, offering support, mentorship and writing craft. We had our first online meeting this week, and I am so excited to be working with these talented writers on their books.
  • editing my middle-grade book to be published by Allen & Unwin in June 2023. I’m expecting the structural edit in a couple of months, and then the copy-edit a little later. I don’t know what I don’t know – so to have an editor work with me to improve my book after working on it by myself is such a blessing!
  • tutoring a couple of Yr 11 and Yr 12 students in English. I’m always impressed by how insightful older teens are about the texts they’re studying.
  • continuing with my freelance editing projects, always a wonderful mix of books. So far this year, I’ve worked on an adult novel and a non-fiction business book – both such interesting projects.
  • writing my third book, another young adult book – I’m hoping to write a decent chunk of this in the next month, and do a little research around the edges, before all the other ‘things’ start to intensify.

Isn’t that a wonderful creative bookish year ahead?

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas, dear blog readers!

Thank you all so much for the lovely congratulations messages last post. I’m looking forward to sharing more about the process of publication as I experience it for the first time.

I’m taking a break from blogging for a few weeks, and will be back towards the middle of January.

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones!

Giveaway – books to win!

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I have been generously supported by the writing community recently – in particular, Kate Forsyth, Nova Weetman, Emily Gale and Bren MacDibble.

So I am giving away a copy of their books! I have my own copies of their books – and I think you should as well!

  • Elsewhere Girls by Emily Gale and Nova Weetman – middle grade. This is the story of two swimmers living in different times. Fanny Durack is from the Sydney of 1908 – she lives over a pub with her parents and eight siblings and regularly escapes the chores of skinning rabbits and washing bedlinen by hand to swim instead. Cat Feeney lives in Sydney, 2021, getting up early every morning for squad training, even though she’s not as committed as she should be. Thanks to an old timekeeping watch, they somehow swap bodies and timeframes. While both are swimmers, their lives are different and each girl has a greater understanding of her own life while living someone else’s.
  • The beast’s garden by Kate Forsyth – historical fiction (adult). Ava is a young German, living in Berlin during the Second World War. She is deeply concerned about her closest friends, who are Jews, and does what she can to look after them. She marries a Nazi officer, Leo, in order to save her father. Ava abhors everything Leo supposedly stands for, but falls deeply in love with him at the same time. As Ava does what she can to support an underground resistance movement, she gradually discovers that Leo is not as he seems – he is doing his part to stop Hitler. Their lives, along with their friends and family, descend into madness and chaos, as the war progresses. Ava uses all her courage and intellect to help Leo out of the brutality of war.
  • How to Bee by Bren MacDibble – middle-grade. This is set in a dystopian world, where nine-year-old Peony is desperate to become a ‘Bee’, someone who climbs the trees, waving a wand to collect the honey. She lives and works on a farm with her sister and grandfather. But trouble arrives in the form of Peony’s mother, who wants to take Peony away to a different life. Peony’s voice is strong and compelling and whisks readers away into her world where you just want everything to work out for her because she is such a hard worker and so determined to support her family.

To enter, please leave a comment below – tell me about a book you’ve read recently and loved. Three winners will be drawn out of a kitchen bowl next Thursday, 25th November and each sent one of the three books mentioned above.

Good luck!

Seven tips for Yr 12 English students

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The Year 12 English exam is less than two weeks away. Many students all over Australia but particularly in Victoria and New South Wales have spent a decent chunk of their year studying from their bedrooms instead of the classroom. Here are my top seven tips for VCE English students, based on my knowledge of the Victorian curriculum and my experience tutoring VCE students. And my experience with my Yr 12 son!

  • Remember – your score for English will be included in your top four subjects. Make English a priority for study!
  • Flick through your texts. You should be familiar with them by now, but perhaps less familiar with the ones you studied earlier in the year. Flick through them, slowing down to note the underlined words or your notes in the margin.
  • If you haven’t already written out quotes from your texts, write them out now. Memorise them – record yourself reading them into your phone. Ask a family member to do this for you, if you’ll learn better from someone else’s voice. Listen to them on a walk, while shooting hoops, while playing with your dog. Write them on small cards and stick them to the back of the bathroom door. Use different colours to highlight different themes, different characters. In your exam, an attempt to remember a quote is better than no attempt at all – put quotation marks around the words you’re sure of.
  • Look at as many essay questions as you can. If you can’t write essays for all of them, write five minute plans. If you’re stuck on a few questions, spend more time on these ones.
  • Language analysis – in your exam, do this one first, as you can use your valuable reading time to read the articles. If you read the articles in reading time, write the other two essays, then go back to the language analysis, the articles won’t be as fresh in your mind.
  • Allow time for proofreading at the end of each essay. If you have gone off track, rewrite what you need to in short, simple sentences. If your sentences are too long and convoluted, break them into two sentences. Check you have an opening topic sentence and a concluding sentence for each paragraph that link to each other.
  • Watch your timing. Work out how much time you have for each essay, then divide that time into seven. For each essay, you need to allow time to plan, write an introduction, write three body paragraphs, write a conclusion, proofread. That’s seven distinct steps – time yourself in a practice essay so you can move through each step at a measured pace.

Good luck, wonderful year 12 students who have already been through so much! Back yourself! You have been writing text responses for a few years now from Year 8 or 9 – you know how to do this. Slow your breathing, focus your thoughts, hear your teacher’s voice in your head reminding you of what you already know. You’ve got this!

Kind eyes

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I’ve been working at different levels through my three books – revisiting my first book in preparation for a couple of online conferences this month, polishing the second draft of my second book and gathering ideas for my third book, at this stage a fragile bubble of an idea.

Looking at these three separate ideas, I’m observing both the influences from other writers as well as the experiences in my life which, although separate, have grown into connections, plots, characters, books.

A constant thread is my need for kind eyes – in writing and in life. Look at these characters, I want to say, look at what they’re going through. See how they suffer through their own unknowing or the circumstances they find themselves in.

It’s the same way I look at my friends, my family, my community. Look at these people, I want to say, look at what they’re going through. See how they suffer – she is worried about her widowed mother in another state, he is not happy in his job, she is lonely after her divorce, he is at a loss as to how to parent his child, she weeps at being separated from her children.

And there are always the smaller moments, my favourite ones to write and observe. Look at my character, see his joy at playing basketball with his daughter – this moment is everything he thought parenthood would be.

Observe my friend – she is tired, her work is overwhelming, she doesn’t have the energy to go grocery shopping for her family, her hair is greying at the roots (that hair I once braided for her in Year 8) but see how she lights up when her child sidles up to her for a cuddle and see how he smiles when she whispers she has a bolognaise sauce to defrost from the freezer.

See my fifteen-year-old girl character, see how she banters with her bestie on the way home from school and steals a chip from the greasy box from the fish and chip shop.

Look at my friends, this couple – watch how she beckons him in a crowded room with her eyes, see how he smiles, walks towards her, places his hand on her hip, see for a moment their younger selves.

Look at them with kind eyes – see them all.

Choose your own village

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I’m lucky enough to be part of many villages – my Easter crew, writing group, school communities, bookclub group and of course, family groups. Not only do the lovely humans in these groups care for me, but they are also wonderfully interesting people with a variety of skills, talents and occupations.

I’ve been musing on the idea of creating your own old-fashioned fantasy village, full of people with different occupations. (Every now and then I dabble in a fairy-tale/myth type of story.) Who would you choose if you had to people a village of ten occupations?

Here are my choices:

  • writer/librarian – to record the stories for prosperity and provide old knowledge and wisdom, to offer words for the unsayable
  • cook/forager – to gather food, grown from the surrounds, and prepare it to feed the crew
  • builder – to provide shelter and homes, fix things
  • scientist – to research, experiment, offer news ways of thinking
  • doctor – to heal, care, advise on all health issues
  • artist – to provide colour, tell stories through art, provide beautiful objects of meaning
  • teacher – to teach the young, guide their ways
  • environmentalist – to care for the land, manage our resources
  • psychologist/wise person – to look after our mental health, provide wisdom
  • musician – to sing stories, reflect our feelings, create community.

Who would make your top ten? Would you choose two cooks or two environmentalists? Would you skip the artist but add a trade/barter specialist? Maybe you’d choose someone with a boat or wagon as a travel guide? Perhaps you need a spiritual adviser?

And who would be the leader? The doctor? The teacher? Or would your village value music so much that the musician would lead?

Would your village have been different before Covid? It begs the question of who is an essential worker!

Tell me about your village of choice – I’d love to know.

Memory stories

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We celebrated twenty years of spending Easter together with three families at the beach – technically it was nineteen because we missed Easter last year due to Covid – but that’s a minor detail!

We started with eight adults, and now we have accumulated nine children between us, ranging from ten to nineteen. We’ve stayed at a few different houses as our crew has grown.

Looking at these beautiful kids and some of our oldest friends filled me with a hundred stories. The play the kids put on one year where Miss 14, then Miss 3, was too shy to participate but ‘helped’ behind the scenes instead. The year we had an Italian theme based on the movie Big Night and ate way too much pasta. Twenty years of eating fish on Good Friday, with each fish given a different name – Percy Poisson, Sammy Salmon. Many, many craft activities to keep little people entertained. The annual Easter egg hunt, even for the teenagers now!

I attended a talk by psychologist Andrew Fuller a few years ago where he talked about the importance of memory for learning. This included not only tips and tricks for helping students to memorise facts and concepts but also the importance of remembering stories as emotions are tied to memories.

When I remember to remember this(!) I can bring up memories for my kids at dinner, in the car, walking the dog. During the lead-up to Easter, when we’re talking about what to pack, what we’ll cook, we often remember other Easter stories.

  • Remember when M played his guitar and we all sang?
  • Do you think L will cook tacos on our first night like she usually does?
  • Remember when we stayed at the other house and all the kids slept in one room?
  • Remember when we put on plays with the shadow puppets and torches?

By reliving memories, we create a strong narrative about who we are and what’s important to us – important enough to remember. I hope you created or relived wonderful Easter memories, too.

Poetry workshop for kids – school holidays

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This is a quick post to let you know I’m teaching a poetry workshop for kids in the school holidays on Tuesday 13th April. The workshop is for 8-12 year-old kids, the cost is $10, the venue is Now and Then cafe in High St, Kew. Bookings are through the Kew Junction Traders Business Association here.

We’ll be looking at different types of poems – and not all of them will rhyme! Kids will have the chance to write a black-out poem and a poem based on an image. Our theme is poetry in action.

I’ll be supported by Henry, a student writer, who brings a lot of energy and fun to the workshop.

Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested!

Happy Easter, happy reading!