2024 Week 15: Dog Tales

Posted on April 18, 2024 by mgbauer

Well it’s Thursday and I normally post my weekly Blogs on Mondays but … yeah this week I forgot, didn’t I.

But I do have an excuse! We’ve been down in Melbourne for nearly a fortnight staying with my daughter’s family and only flew back this week.

In Melbourne we spent a lot of our time with our two gorgeous, non-stop grand-children. Some of that time involved re-watching some of our favourite BLUEY episodes as well as catching up with the most recent ones.

What a brilliant series BLUEY is! Such a rarity for a show to appeal to three generations and bring so much laughter and joy, along with plenty of happy and sad tears, to adults and kids alike. It deserves every acclaim it receives. I love it.

Now we are back home in BRISBANE and in case you didn’t know, Brisbane of course is also the home city of Bluey and the Heeler family. So it’s always fun to watch the show and spot local landmarks and to see settings and places you instantly recognise like South Bank and the City Skyline.

In fact the suburb I grew up in, the suburb where my wife and I met as teachers and where we mainly raised our children – ASHGROVE – features prominently in the BLUEY series as do the surrounding suburbs of Bardon (my wife’s home suburb), Paddington, Red Hill, the Brisbane CBD and other areas of South East Queensland.

Here are just some favourite examples.

Our previous house was in Hawthorne Ave Ashgrove about 100 meters from the Golden Crown Restaurant in Waterworks Road (now closed down) where Bandit takes the girls one episode for a chaotic takeaway pick-up. We also used to get takeaways there and from the Fish and Chip and Indian shops beside it.

The library the Heelers go to is the council one in Ashgrove. It’s our local library and when it first opened (back in the late 60s I think it was) my sister Helen was one of the librarians there.

The playground where Bandit takes Bluey for her bike riding lesson is based on Woolcock Park at Red Hill. We’ve taken the grand-kids there.

The hardware store Hammerbarn that the Heelers go to is based on Bunnings at Keperra. We’ve also shopped there. And in an example of life imitating art recently Keperra Bunnings was temporarily transformed into Hammerbarn! They quickly sold out of gnomes.

And of course it was great to see that like us the Heelers are big supporters of the MIGHTY MAROONS of Queensland!

But that’s not all. I have some other (very tenuous) connections to the Bluey universe!

The first is that JOE BRUMM the incredible creator of Bluey did his secondary schooling at Marist College Ashgrove – and so did I (albeit decades apart!). I also taught at Marist Ashgrove when Joe would have been in Year 11 and 12. (I don’t recall coming across him at all but surely it’s possible I could have inspired him from a distance!)

A second connection is that like Joe Brumm, I also wrote a story about a dog, which although nowhere near as astronomically successful as Bluey, was a Honour Book in the CBCA Awards, won a Queensland Premiers Literary Award and made its way to some other countries. (By the way, if by some miracle you are reading this Joe, I’d like to make it clear that Mr Mosely is very open to a guest appearance on your show at any time! I’d suggest you get your people to call my people except I don’t have people so I’m guessing that they probably wouldn’t answer.)

A third tenuous connection is that my story The Running Man is also set in Ashgrove. So I’d like to think that I’ve also done my little bit to promote my home suburb overseas, particularly in Germany where the book has been used as an exam text over the years. (Images of pages below featuring Ashgrove are from a wonderful German language study guide by Thorsten Utter and Elinor Matt)

All of which goes to prove that I’m basically the poor man’s answer to BLUEY.

Daaah Da Da Dah Da Daa Dah Dar Da! (Or something like that.)

Cheers
Michael

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    2024 Week 14: In which I tip my hat to illustrators.

    Posted on April 8, 2024 by mgbauer

    Over the last few weeks I’ve been receiving rough drafts of the illustrations for the two Pictures Books I’ve written. They are both due out next year. The illustrations are now being adjusted and refined following reactions, comments and suggestions from my editor, my publisher and myself.

    The drawings are still just black and white sketches at this stage, but both illustrators are doing a wonderful job of bringing the story and characters to life. It’s always great to see such talented people adding their own ideas, interpretations and special creativity to something you’ve written and making it better and more than it was.

    I am in awe of picture book illustrators and it made me think of the very first thing I ever wrote and sent away. I even attempted the illustrations. Not always a good idea.

    I’ve blogged about it previously so I’ve updated it a little and included it below:

    My first and attempt at writing anything for possible publication was a picture book was called Joseph’s Discovery.

    The story was about a little boy called Joseph (what a shock!) who was obsessed by dinosaurs and dreamed of discovering a dinosaur of his own. In the story Joseph attempts to draw his favourite dinosaur, a T-Rex, with some surprising and alarming results.

    The book was inspired by my son Joe who loved dinosaurs and who, at Kindy, when others kids were drawing stick figures and mutant-looking cats and dogs, was drawing anatomically correct T-Rexes etc. At one stage he also started a journal where he was attempting to draw every individual dinosaur bone in every dinosaur known to science and label it with its correct scientific name.  Joe was a constant source of amazement and wonder to Ard and me. He still is.

    As well as writing the words I also added simple pencil sketches just to show how I thought the story would work. Here are two pages from near the beginning.

    Every day Joseph read his dinosaur books, sang his dinosaur songs and played his dinosaur games. Sometimes, he even became a dinosaur.

     

    And every night Joseph dreamed of discovering his own dinosaur …

     I liked the story and it was fun creating it. Unfortunately though it was rejected (along with some encouraging words) by each of the four or five publishers I sent it to. I didn’t have the confidence to send it to any more. 

    Reading it now I think I know why it was rejected. Or at least, I can see things in it I would change to improve its chances of publication. These days too, I understand a bit more about how expensive picture books are to produce and why many are written but few are chosen. I realise too, that I’m no Shaun Tan. Or any of the illustrators my books have been blessed for that matter. 

    In the end, I made a special, one of a kind, picture book just for my special, one of a kind, son. And Joe’s always loved it.

    Gotta be happy with that.

    Cheers
    Michael

     
     

     

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    2024 Week 13: Winners are grinners (hopefully).

    Posted on April 1, 2024 by mgbauer

    COMPETITION NEWS!

    Congratulations to Jill and Anon who entered the DCM Ishmael competition via the comments. A copy of the new edition will be coming to each of you shortly.

    As well as that, two more copies will be heading off to Chantal and Abbie who contacted me via other means because apparently there was some difficulty uploading comments.


    And since today is the actual release date of the new edition (Yep, no joke, April 1st) maybe it’s time for a trip down memory lane.

    Following DCM Ishmael’s shortlisting for the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers, it won both the South Australian Festival Award for Children’s Literature and the Children’s Peace Literature Award and I got to appear in the paper alongside Gregory Peck. Didn’t see that coming.

    And here’s my Acceptance Speech for Children’s Peace Literature Award in 2007

    I want to start off with a confession if I may. I just hope it doesn’t disqualify me from being able to receive this wonderful award. My confession is this: when I was a young boy I didn’t dream of being a writer – that came later when I left school. I’m afraid that my ultimate goal in life in Primary school was to be a Samurai Warrior and failing that I wanted to be a Ninja. Probably not a good start for someone receiving a Peace prize.

    The reason that I wanted to be a Samurai Warrior was because when I was young my favourite TV show was called The Samurai. It was set in Medieval Japan and followed a Samurai called Shintaro as he battled clans of bad Ninjas with the help of his trusty side-kick a good ninja called Tombei the Mist. I wanted to be Shintaro. That was my dream.

    And I have to confess that I wanted to be a Samurai warrior so much that I made myself a long samurai sword out of wood and every afternoon I would come home from school, watch the Samurai and then I’d run back and forth across our yard in Brisbane yelling, screaming, leaping and attacking our Hills Hoist clothesline with my sword. This didn’t help my writing at all but my swordsmanship improved dramatically and I was very confident that if I was ever walking down a dark alley and was set upon by a gang of clotheslines, I could fight them off.

    However my dreams of being a Samurai ended one day when a careers man visited our school and when he interviewed me he asked, ‘Michael if you could be anything in the world, in your heart of hearts, what would you be?’ Of course I answered, ‘a samurai warrior.’ The careers man stared at me for a while like I’d just stepped off the alien mother ship, then he looked at my report card and said the most devastating thing I had heard up to that point in my life. He said, ‘Michael, unfortunately you have taken the wrong subjects to be a Samurai – have you ever thought of being an accountant?’

    As it turns out I didn’t become an accountant I became a teacher first and then quite recently a writer. This has been a dream come true for me to be able to call myself a writer. I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to write for a living and on days like today I feel doubly blessed.

    I am thrilled and honoured to be receiving the Children’s Peace Literature Award for 2007 for Don’t Call Me Ishmael. It’s an honour just to be included on this year’s award shortlist alongside such a talented group of Australian writers and it’s an honour to receive an award that recognises the power of stories to make a difference in our world.

    I would like to pay tribute to the Psychologists for Peace in South Australia and the Australian Psychological Society for their generosity and commitment which have made this award possible and I would like to thank them for their wonderful support of children’s writers in Australia for the last 20 years. These days when we seem to be bombarded with disturbing images of violence on the news, YouTube and other places, the goals set down by Psychologists for Peace of encouraging non-violent means to resolve conflict and of promoting peace at the global, local and interpersonal level have never been more relevant or crucial.

    I would also like to thank Omnibus Books and Scholastic Australia for allowing me to send Don’t Call Me Ishmael out into the world. Especially I would like to express my immense gratitude to Dyan Blacklock and Celia Jellett my publisher and my editor at Omnibus books. Those two ladies are the reason I am standing here today.

    Finally I’d like to say that I had a great deal of fun writing Don’t Call Me Ishmael and it’s been a joy to find that others have had fun with it too. I am proud that it’s a book that hopefully makes people laugh and I’m also proud that it’s a book that says something about the destructive nature of revenge, the importance of friendship and family and the right of everyone to be accepted for who they are, so that in the words of Herman Melville we might all stand forth our own inexorable selves.

    And as for my boyhood dreams of being a Samurai Warrior – well today if I had to choose between being a Samurai and being a writer, I’d choose writer every time. I guess I’ve just discovered what the great people in the Psychologists for Peace group have known all along – that the pen is not just mightier, it is also smarter, more effective and more noble than the sword.  

    Cheers
    Michael

    PS: As I mentioned at the start, some people said that they had trouble leaving comments. I’ve now adjusted the settings so that you don’t have to be registered or provide a name and email. I hope that helps. So if you want to try it out and let me know if it worked, that would be great. Feel free to ask a question about the books or writing or whatever or leave a comment or make a suggestion for future blog topics or just say Hi.

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    2024 Week 12: Competition time!

    Posted on March 25, 2024 by mgbauer

    Ok as promised last blog, this week I have two copies of the new edition of Don’t Call Me Ishmael (officially released April 1) to giveaway.

    To be eligible you need to (1) have an Australian postal address that I can send the book to and (2) complete a simple Ishmael related task.

    GOOD LUCK! (Although considering that it will be a shock if more than two people actually respond, if you do happen to enter and then miss out on a book, you might just be one of the unluckiest people in the country.)

    SO – all you need to do to enter is to complete the sentence below and post it in the comments section:

    I’d love a copy of the new edition of Don’t Me Ishmael because …

    Any answer is acceptable. All replies go into the draw. No favoritism will be shown. (It might be there but it won’t be shown.) Flattery won’t work. (But don’t let that stop you!) And nor will bribes. (However any money and/or valuables received will be gratefully pocketed.)

    Winners announced next blog.

    Cheers
    Michael

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