Sydney novelist pledges to vote wearing Hi Vis vest

Sydney novelist Stuart Campbell took a break from writing today to try on the Hi Vis vest he plans to wear when he casts his vote in Australia’s Federal Election on 2 July 2016.

Interviewed this morning by emerging social commentator Lesley Latte*, Campbell said, “Like the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the campaign trail, I like to slip on the Hi Vis when the going gets tough. I’ve come up with some of my best stories wearing this outfit”.

You can read more about books written by a man in a Hi Vis vest here.

*Lesley Latte reserves the right not to disclose h** gender.

The memoir that inspired my new novel Cairo Mon Amour – get it here for free.

My third novel Cairo Mon Amour is still under wraps, but I will release publication details in the near future.

Before I started Cairo Mon Amour, I wrote a memoir called Cairo Rations about my time in Egypt during the 1973 war, to bring back memories of the settings that I wanted to use in the novel.

I’ve just published a new version of the memoir Cairo Rations, which I am distributing free. Click here to sign up for my newsletter and get a copy of Cairo Rations in pdf, mobi (for Kindle) or epub (for many e-readers).

If you have comments about any of my books, please respond through this blog or by email at stuartcampbellauthor@gmail.com .

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Dave Stanton’s ‘Stateline’ free download for a few more hours

I really enjoyed Dave Stanton’s Hard Prejudice earlier this year*.

Dave’s novel Stateline is free on Amazon for a few more hours. Get it right here.

I just downloaded it, and I’ll be reviewing it in the next few weeks.

*My review of Hard Prejudice is here.

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Learn about Stuart Campbell’s books at http://www.stuartcampbellauthor.com

Diners of the world unite!

Here’s a story of mine from With Gusto!

Diners of the World Unite!

I had misgivings at the first whiff of Worcestershire Sauce. My order of Cypriot Mushrooms, as it was called, comprised overcooked fungus drowned in half a pint of the sour liquor.

During my English childhood, every pantry had a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce in the larder. The old-fashioned label suggested colonial gents in the era of the Raj, sprinkling a few drops of the brown elixir on their breakfast chops. But this brute of a dish was knocked up in a restaurant in the Troodos Mountains, where Mount Olympus watches over ancient Byzantine monasteries. And there was the main course still to come.

This and many other meals have helped frame my view that attitudes to national cuisines are as much to do with politics as with alimentation. Let me go back a few decades.

In the early seventies, a shop in London called Habitat started selling little kits of curry spices. You could buy the same spices in Indian and Pakistani grocers if you cared to enter such a store, but people like me – white people – didn’t. Habitat was the precursor of the cool homewares stores that are nowadays ubiquitous. It was one of the first shops to sell a lifestyle of lightness, quirkiness, ultra-modernity, pop art colours, brushed aluminium. The curry spices were emblematic of the Habitat lifestyle: Adventurous but safe, the Orient without the runs.

If I’d been a clairvoyant I’d have known that in 1978, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said would publish his Orientalism, in which he theorised that Europeans had invented the notion of the Orient as a means of asserting the cultural dominance of the colonisers over the colonised. I’d have considered with foresight – in 1973 – that in cooking up a Habitat Chicken Korma, I – along with people like me – was one of a new breed of colonialist. We were remodelling a cuisine using a limited range of ingredients, cooking methods and named dishes; we were turning the gastronomy of a vast and varied land into three curries: Korma, Madras and Vindaloo, with a spoonful of Sharwood’s to garnish. The depressing thing was that Habitat curry was tasteless. You’d get a much more satisfying feed at the local Paki with its maroon flocked wallpaper, Bombay Duck, and cold lager.

But the taste of culinary conquest was on my lips, and those of many of my friends: Over the decades we colonised new cuisines: South Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Egyptian. Our spice racks were full, our veggie plots sprouted galangal and coriander. Our kids learned to use chopsticks before they enrolled in school. When we travelled we learned new variants, discovered pockets of cuisines we hadn’t conquered, rooted out new stinky delicacies to surprise our dinner guests back home.

My finest moment was, I think, in about 2002, when I cooked Indonesian food for twenty guests at my house in the Blue Mountains. Perhaps it was the big Mudgee reds being sloshed back that night, but I didn’t see the irony of a table of Australians eating Javanese street food while they competed to read the verse of William McGonagall in their best Scottish accents.

It was when I lived in the Blue Mountains that a critical light was shone on my immature postcolonial sensibilities. If you look at census figures for the Blue Mountains, you will discover that the area has a minuscule Asia-born population. From a culinary point of view, this was brought home to me when I found that the waiters in a local Chinese restaurant were Europeans. My first reaction was that I had been cheated; shouldn’t Chinese restaurants be staffed by Chinese people? How could the food be authentic?

And this from the white guy who had mastered – or perhaps remastered – half a dozen national cuisines ranging from the Atlas Mountains to the Yangtze River. This was the white guy who was just beginning to understand that eating is political. I hadn’t learned those Oriental cuisines; I’d invaded them, pillaged them, and brought them home as trophies.

I’ll go a little further with my postcolonial analysis, and claim that white guys like me only conquered the cuisines of the colonised world, or of the bits that we would have liked to colonise. I am persuaded of this by the fact that the acquisition of French culinary expertise is seen as difficult, and part of the learning of high culture; indeed we talk about haut cuisine. Anyone can make Indian food, but French – that takes real art, n’est-ce pas?

And so I found myself in Cyprus, yet to taste Cypriot Mushrooms, travelling with a companion who had lived there as a child and still cherished sweet memories of the food. We started our journey in the southern Greek part of the island where, my companion told me, we’d wander the beachside food stalls in the evenings seduced by the fragrance of lamb kebabs grilling on charcoal braziers. The tender pink meat, singed at the edges, would snuggle up against yoghourt and mint in warm pocket bread.

Perhaps that was the case then. Now there was pork, lots of the stuff, white and fibrous and dry, tasting of almost nothing. And there were cappuccinos topped with aerosol cream and powdered cinnamon. It was time to go north.

We crossed the border by car and meandered through the northern part of Cyprus, enjoying delicate pastel tinted Turkish food as well as robust tourist grub. The fourth day found us crossing back into the Greek south; we would cruise down the Troodos Range and end up at Paphos, where we were to stay with family. It was the end of the tourist season and the fragrant pine clad hillsides were still pleasantly warm. We stopped to look at exquisite little churches – squat and rough-walled, interiors painted with glorious two-dimensional depictions of saints. The roads were empty.

Our accommodation – a tiny hotel carved into rock walls – had been booked long in advance in our usual neurotic fashion. We were the only guests, we were told in the troglodytic reception niche. And the restaurant was closed for the year. Try down the hill. They’re still open.

Taking the winding cobbled lane past shuttered windows, spilling geraniums and sleeping cats, we met a sweating couple passing us on the climb up – English, middle-aged, underdressed and red. A single scooter clattered by and was gone.

The restaurant was one of those sadly anachronistic places, a faded faux Swiss chalet, out of place, out of time.

“I bet there’s a huge menu,” I said.

There was. It was half a yard across, cracked and stained, the plastic coating having given up the fight against greasy fingers. There was a large ‘local specialities’ section, a small burger-and-chips list, and unexpectedly, a standard Indian selection of Korma, Vindaloo and Madras. We were the only diners.

“Does it get busy later?” my companion asked the waitress.

“Not really. It is not so full this time of year,” she replied. What was her accent? Not Greek, I thought.

“I’m famished. I’m having an entrée first,” I said to my companion.

“You might regret it. I’ll just have the fish.”

My culinary antennae were bristling: A Greek restaurant, notwithstanding the curry and burgers. Might I get something resembling honest Greek grub of the kind my companion remembered from her girlhood?

When the waitress brought me a pint of lager (“You’ll be full up before the food comes,” my companion said) I asked the young woman if she was from the village.

“I’m from Romania.”

“How interesting,” I lied. “Is the chef from round here?”

“He’s from India.” Aha, that explained the curries.

A little more questioning revealed that the regular Greek chef had finished for the season. The Indian guy in the kitchen was filling in till tomorrow.

“What happens tomorrow?”

“The restaurant closes for the season.”

“What does he normally do?”

“He cleans the place. He drives the van.”

And so I found myself with two pints of lager on board, and before me a bowl of mushrooms braised in Worcestershire Sauce. It was as vile as it looked and smelt.

“You’d better eat it. You’ve got to pay for it,” my companion sniggered.

I consumed the solids.

My companion’s fish arrived – light and reasonably edible, she reported. But there was no so sign of my ‘Cypriot Meat Platter’. I had another pint of lager.

When at last the dish arrived – enough for four diners – I guessed that the ‘chef’ had cleared out all the remaining meat in the freezer, laid it out on a zinc slab – lamb chops, pork cutlets, cowboy steaks, sausages – and run a blowtorch up and down the row.

I miserably picked at the charred edges of something.

“Serves you right. Why don’t you send it back and ask for something else?” Did I detect the mildest hint of schadenfreude?

Later I said, “Next time we’ll find a Greek restaurant with a Greek chef.”

“You know that’s nonsense. Half the Italian restaurants in Sydney are run by Anglos, not Italians.”

She was right of course.

“Why don’t we just find a restaurant with a chef?” I said.

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You can buy With Gusto! here, a collection of stories and essays by the Write On! writers group in Sydney.

Learn about Stuart Campbell’s books here.

The secret recipe behind a successful writers group?

In my fourth year with the Write On! writers group in Sydney, it’s time to reveal the ingredients. The basics are simple: A committed convenor, eight writers, a weekly three-hour meeting, and a room in the NSW Writers Centre.

But turning the basics into a successful writers group takes more than just a quick stir and a bit of heat. Here’s my attempt to list the secret herbs and spices:

Simplicity: We do the same thing every week: Each writer reads aloud 1000-1500 words of their work in progress. The rest of us listen and annotate the handout of the text, and then go round the circle giving our critique. We’ve tried varying the model on the odd occasion, but we always revert to the basics.

Time management: We don’t waste time chatting about the weather or politics. We keep a firm but not too firm eye on the clock to make sure that everybody’s work gets a fair exposure.

Diversity: Our group includes traditionally published and self-published writers, as well as what we like to call ‘emerging’ writers. We cover novels, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry. Our novels probably cluster around the upper ranks of ‘general fiction’, but we have our fingers in thrillers, chick lit, historical periods spanning two thousand years, and lots of exotic locations. Our members are professionals, working or retired, with backgrounds in business, diplomacy, academia, design, nutrition, and other areas.

Honesty and respect: It’s not unusual for a few of us to go home each week having been told that what we’ve read is a pile of junk. Inevitably, someone else will go home with a D-minus the following week. We are honest in our critique, and we respect the opinions of our work. It isn’t always easy: I kept bringing back to the group a chapter of ponderous claptrap, cutting bits off each time until just a couple of sentences of the original remained.

Humour: This is reserved mainly for sex scenes. Most weeks we laugh our socks off. Especially when togas are involved.

Leadership: Our convener has been running this group since 2009, and our turnover of members is very small. She maintains it as a closed group, so you have to apply to join when we have a vacancy, and you are admitted only after a trial period. Exclusive and cliquey? Yep!

In my four years with Write On! I have written three novels. About fifty percent of my output went through the critical grinder in our room at the NSW Writers Centre, and it came out fifty percent better. I’m still searching for that final secret ingredient of our success. Is it the serenity of the Centre itself in a Victorian era sandstone building, part of the former Callan Park Hospital for the Insane? We work surrounded by parkland. The chairs are uncomfortable. There is no coffee shop. No distractions.

Or is is just serendipity? That sweet spot in life when the right group of individuals comes together with a common aim? I’ve experienced this a couple of times: The brief golden era of a community theatre I once belonged to; the early years in the foundation leadership group of a School in a university I worked at. It’s rare, but you know when you come across it.

I’d be delighted to hear of other experiences of writers groups: Feel free to reveal your secrets.

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You can buy the Write On! writers group collection of essays With Gusto! here.

Learn about Stuart Campbell’s books at http://www.stuartcampbellauthor.com

Climate change and language change?

Climate change and language change: That’s the issue I’m pondering as I embark on my fourth novel. Having written two books with contemporary settings and one set in 1973, I’m launching myself into the future with a dystopian story. Without revealing too much, my new book (working title The Twilight Principality) is set in Australia and England, and has a climate change theme.

One of the challenges is dealing with the language spoken in my dystopian world in 2065. Well, it’s only fifty years from now – my grandchildren are more than sixty years younger than me and they understand me perfectly. So why is there a language issue?

The reason is that part of my story is set in an isolated enclave around a town in Australia inhabited by descendants of local townsfolk and climate refugees from Vietnam and the South Pacific. I have engineered this micro-world so that a generation of children have grown up speaking a creole language based on English, Fijian, Fijian Hindi, and Vietnamese.

There is a long tradition of constructed languages in literature and film: The Game of Thrones’ Valyrian and Dothraki are widely known contemporary examples. Tolkien’s Elvish languages were created over a century ago.

I chose to create a creole language to suit the special circumstances of my imagined micro-world. I’ll resist the urge to give a lecture on creoles, other than to say that linguists find them especially fascinating because they seem to develop similar grammar systems even when they develop in different parts of the world. Readers who want to follow this up should have a look at Derek Bickerton’s bioprogram hypothesis.

My micro-world has a growing vocabulary, including zazzy (stomach), doublegranny (two-roomed house), and larka (boy). And I’ve written the basic grammar rules so that I can make sentences in past, present and future time.

But the other challenge is not to bore my readers stiff! You’ll only get glimpses of my creole language in the novel, but you can be assured that like Elvish, Klingon and Valyrian, there’s a linguistics expert toiling in the background to make sure that it is plausible. The real point of the exercise is to add authenticity to an imagined world in which global warming has passed the tipping point.

As I write this, I note that every mention of Australia has been deleted from a recent UNESCO report on climate change: Another reason to write this book.

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Read about Stuart Campbell’s novels here.

Australia and the plight of the Armenians

Vicken Babkenian, co-author of Armenia, Australia and the Great War, gave an excellent presentation at the Sydney Institute this week on a new work that details the efforts of Australians to provide relief to the thousands of Armenian refugees following the massacres of 1915.

Even with a reasonably good knowledge of the plight of the Armenians, I was completely unaware of this Australian-Armenian connection. Babkenian and historian Peter Stanley have done extraordinary work in uncovering this slice of social history, using a vast and comprehensive body of resources ranging from soldiers’ diaries, memoirs, parish newspapers and the archives of forgotten charities.

Highly recommended.

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Learn about Stuart Campbell’s novels here.

My very short career as a playwright

Just for fun, I wrote the opening scenes of a play based on my novel An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity . Although I spent years in community theatre, it was a weird experience because none of the conventions of prose writing apply. See what you think. You can compare it with the book by looking at the free sample here.

Scene 1: A well appointed eat-in kitchen in a middle class British home. Offstage, the sound of children leaving the house for school.

Thea [offstage] Now, no squabbling on the way to school. And mind that crossing.

Jack [wearing a dressing gown and speaking on the telephone] Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t need you in the shop today. Yes, I know you need the job. Yes. Yes. I do understand. What? You don’t need to take that sort of line. What? Stuff you too, Susan. [he slams the phone down.]

Thea enters, wearing conservative work clothes and fixing her hair. She is carrying a grey and magenta cocktail dress, which she tosses over a chair.

Thea I’m not sure they’re old enough to walk to school on their own. I wish we still had the au pair. Who were you talking to, by the way?

Jack Nobody.

Thea Nobody talks to nobody, unless they’re mad. Are you mad, Jack? After last night, I’m wondering if either of us is in our right mind.

Jack It was just the book wholesalers. There’s a delivery this morning. God, I feel like my eyeballs have been boiled in toilet cleaner.

Thea I’ve had worse anniversary dinner hangovers. Do you remember that filthy Spanish stuff we drank on our – what – fifth, was it?

Jack Rioja with notes of blackberry and kerosene … and you spewed all the way down Kensington High Street …

Thea No, that’s enough! I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to remember it. Look, I’ve got to give a lecture at ten. Can you drop the dress into the dry cleaners on the way to the shop? Ask them to repair the seam under the arm while they’re at it. But tell them to take care. It’s not Marks & Spencer.

Jack Thea, just sit down for a minute.

Thea I haven’t got a minute.

Jack You always have precisely five minutes up your sleeve for unforeseen circumstances. Give me one of them. It’s important.

Thea looks at her watch and sits down stiffly with her briefcase on her lap.

Jack Thea, darling. Did I imagine what you told me last night?

Thea Let’s talk about it after dinner tonight.

Jack No, Thea. Now. Did you tell me that you found the Chancellor’s wallet by the Memorial Lake at the university?

Thea nods

Jack And did you tell me that you relieved Sir Percy of nine hundred pounds, and threw his wallet in the lake?

Thea nods. Jack cradles his head in his hands.

Thea Nobody saw me.

Jack Thea, my sweet. You have a PhD in Ethics. In an hour from now you’re going to be teaching the flower of England’s youth about the difference between right and wrong.

Thea That’s not really what ethics is about, not in an academic context.

Jack grips Thea’s wrists

Jack Thea, I may be a simple bookseller, but I know a crime when I see one. You can’t rationalise it away with ‘nobody saw me’!

Thea I’ve got to go.

Jack And you spent the money on that dress? To wear for our wedding anniversary dinner?

Thea And your eyes were popping out when you were watching me put it on. And when you peeled it off me – well, that was after you half tore it off me in the taxi home – I didn’t know where to put my face when the baby sitter let us in.

Jack Thea, this isn’t you. You’re not like this. Is that what you meant – neither of us being in our right minds last night? Oh God. I remember, in bed. Did we …? Oh God. It was like we were twenty year olds, like wild animals. I need an Aspirin.

Thea Jack, pull yourself together. We’ll sort this out.

Jack Sort this out? Sort it out like a little misunderstanding? Sorry, officer, the money just sort of jumped out of the jolly old Chancellor’s wallet?

Thea Jack, shut up.

Jack What?

Thea Shut up.

[Thea stands up and hugs herself, walks up and down staring at the floor]

Thea Shall I tell you something, Jack? Something that bloody well shook me to the core? I finished a lecture the other day, and a student put her hand up to ask a question.

Jack What did she say?

Thea She asked me if I actually believed in anything. I stood there like an idiot, and then I switched to autopilot. Said it wasn’t relevant what I or anybody else actually believed in. What was important was that the question be asked.

Jack And what did the student say?

Thea She rolled her eyes up and gave me the finger.

Jack The rude cow.

Thea Not a whole finger, just the slightest gesture, but as clear as daylight. The whole episode left me in a spin. I haven’t been right since – not about anything, about who I am, about why a lecturer in philosophy suddenly doesn’t appear to believe in anything. So Jack, I’m not in the mood for moralising about right and wrong right now.

Thea picks up her briefcase and walks out. Jack picks up the dress and holds it to his face, breathing its scent, then tosses it to the floor. He sits at the table and dials a number on the telephone.

Jack Major Handwell! Yes, it’s me, Jack.

Very well. Very well indeed. And how’s the leg, Major? … Oh dear, sorry to hear that. Well, the medicos do marvels these days, you know… I beg your pardon? No, Major, not marbles. Just turn up that hearing aid a touch, if you will…

[becoming more patronising] Yes, lovely. Now, Major, I’ve tracked down that book. I talked to one of my contacts – just between ourselves of course – and they have a very tidy signed first edition… How much? Well, a few bob more than I’d hoped. I could do you a hundred and fifty quid. How does that sound? … Marvelous. What if I pop round this afternoon? … I beg your pardon, Major? … No, this is Jack, not Francis. I don’t know any Francis… I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. You’re saying that you’ll call me Francis from now on? … I see. And it’s just our secret, you say? I’ll be your nephew? … How much a month?

[aside] Bloody hell. Give me an allowance? He has lost his marbles. [To the Major:] Very generous of you indeed. Now, shall we say three o’clock? … Yes, a first edition, signed. See you anon, Major.

Jack takes a fountain pen and practices writing signatures on a sheet of paper. At last, satisfied with his work, he opens an old book and writes inside the front cover. He picks up the book and closely examines the signature, then puts it down, and rubs his hands.

Scene 2: The same kitchen, late in the evening. There are wine bottles and two glasses on the table.

Jack They’re asleep. They seemed a bit disturbed tonight.

Thea Pour me another glass, darling.

Jack Steady on, Thea. You usually stick at one. Is there something wrong?

Thea Nothing’s wrong. Just pour.

Jack [Making a foolish face] Not even the smallest something? The teeniest?

Thea Jack, can we have a serious talk? I mean a really serious talk?

Jack Should I put on a special serious face. Like this perhaps? [grimaces]

Thea No, and I don’t want to hear any of the other delaying tactics that you drag out whenever there’s something important to discuss. Don’t go all philosophical on me, either. You’re an amateur in that department.

Jack Fair enough. What’s the topic of this serious talk?

Thea It’s money, Jack. I got a phone call from the school, the bursar in fact. He told me that the cheque for the children’s fees had bounced. What’s going on, Jack? Is the bookshop in trouble?

Jack Trouble? Oh no! What an idiot I am! I must have got the wrong cheque book out of the drawer. Actually, now I think of it, I did have a feeling I’d done something wrong when …

Thea Jack, are we in trouble?

Jack We? This is from the ethics lecturer who pinched nine hundred juicy smackers from a wallet. I’m not sure about the ‘we’.

Thea Jack, that’s a lousy thing to say. I explained what happened.

Jack Did you? Well, I must have missed it. Here, I’ll write a new cheque straight away. [He writes a cheque] There, all done, no trouble.

[They silently drink their wine, Thea looking slightly tipsy. She sighs deeply.]

Jack Why the big sigh?

Thea I hardly dare tell you, Jack.

Jack Thea, what’s it been? Ten years? Do we have secrets? Come on, tell me the worst.

Thea I paid the school fees myself, in cash.

[Jack leaps to his feet, spilling his wine]

Jack Cash? What cash? We don’t have any cash!

Thea It was Freda’s money.

Jack Who’s Freda?

Thea The lecturer I shared a filing cabinet with. The one who died. From Denmark.

Jack Died? Dead? From Denmark?

Thea Departed. Deceased. On the ferry from Dover.

[Jack refills their glasses]

Thea Her cheque book was among her things in the filing cabinet. I – borrowed it. Well, I suppose I took it really.

Jack And you wrote a cash cheque? Where did you present it?

Thea At the bank by the industrial estate. I wore a headscarf and dark glasses. I practised copying her signature from a letter I found.

Jack Forging’s the more accurate word. How much, may I ask?

Thea Five hundred pounds.

Jack Did you ask for a balance?

Thea Ask for a balance? Do you think I’m a crook? What, you think I’d planned to milk the account until it was empty?

Jack Just checking, covering all the angles. So, where’s the chequebook now?

Thea In the Memorial Lake at the university.

Jack Keeping company with the Chancellor’s empty wallet? Bobbing up and down together having a chat, are they? ‘Hello, you don’t happen to have seen nine hundred pounds, my good man?’ ‘Sorry guv, some lady just had it away wiv five undred quid so I’m a bit short meself’.

[They refill their glasses and drink. Thea sniggers and Jack joins in. They burst into laughter.]

Jack [composes himself] Since it seems to be time for confessions, I’ve got one of my own.

Thea Don’t tell me. You short changed an old age pensioner by 20p.

Jack It’s a bit more serious than that.

Thea You mean … Chancellor serious? Freda serious?

Jack More or less. More, actually.

Thea [Thea gets to her feet unsteadily] You too, Jack? So we’re partners in crime? The Bonnie and Clyde of suburbia? That’s rather exciting, don’t you think? In fact, that’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to us in years.

Jack [Takes the bottle and wraps his arm round Thea’s waist] I’ve never been to bed with a criminal. I’ll tell you the details upstairs.

[Curtain]

@ Stuart Campbell 2016

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You can read about my novels here.

Government arts funding: Slow-motion slaughterhouse

This week saw a wave of criticism of the Australian Government’s funding cuts for small to medium arts projects, although the real wash-up is a perhaps a little more nuanced than the disaster scenarios painted in some reports in the Sydney Morning Herald. But the defunding of entities like the literary magazine Meanjin and the Centre for Contemporary Photography was a shock. Eliza Sarlos argues in The Guardian that arts workers will bear the brunt of the cuts by having to do more unpaid work.

The implicit back-story in much of this discussion is that governments have a responsibility to support the arts for the benefit of society’s broader good. I think there might have been some truth in this decades ago, but the neoliberal project (I’m feeling really cynical this week) has weakened this back story to a fading myth. Understanding the falsity behind this ‘truth’ might provide some consolation to shocked administrators wondering how they will survive the loss of grants: Arts funding is a slow-motion slaughterhouse.

What arts supporters may have missed in the media is the final cut to the Office of Learning and Teaching. During my tenure as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) between 2006 and 2011, my team at Western Sydney University leveraged small grants from the OLT and its predecessors to put our university in the top echelon for teaching. We proudly saw Associate Professor Roy Tasker awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year at the Sydney Opera House in 2011.

The 2016 budget cuts the last $20 million dollars of funding from the OLT, demolishing the naïve dream that government ‘cares’ about improving university teaching. To put that $20 million in perspective, a private sector college has been ordered to repay $44 million to the government because of its enrolment practices, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is pursuing $460 million of taxpayers’ money from a number of private colleges. Ironic?

The arts community aren’t the only ones in the slaughterhouse.

Stuart Campbell is nowadays a novelist and higher education consultant. You can read about his novels at www.stuartcampbellauthor.com .

Why I tore up my book cover

I’ve relaunched An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity on Kindle with a new cover. The evolution of the cover is a story in itself.

My working title for the book was Forty Apple Trees, the name of the house in the West of England where most of the third part takes place. The name hung around for so long that it stuck, and I asked my wife to paint the imagined cottage to incorporate into the cover. The version on the left was my favourite.

But some of my beta readers and writing friends thought the title was meaningless. I had to agree, and I spent a month throwing ideas around until I settled on Magenta Falling. They threw this one out too. An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity hit me like a brick when I was out walking one day. It references a book written by one of my characters, An Englishman’s Guide to Fidelity. He’s a complete swine, by the way.

Being an expert on everything, I roughed up a sketch and asked my cover designer to see what she could do. Here’s the before and after:

But I’d miscalculated. First, the cuckold hand gesture seemed unknown to most people. I was asked a few times if the book was about heavy metal . Secondly, the subtitle a novel was a wasted opportunity to add a hook; it obviously wasn’t a cookbook! And despite it being a lovely cover, it lacked impact compared to others in the marketplace.

AEGTI 2016 cover A year or so later I went back to my designer and asked for the blockbuster treatment. She gave me two bits of advice: (1) Don’t try to tell the story on the cover, (2) Leave everything to me this time.

So here it is, and I think it’s brilliant. I love the way the title punches out of the centre, and I love the sense of anticipation as the figure walks into a landscape that is both bright and forbidding. And best of all, the cottage is back!

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Find out more about my books here.

My covers are designed by Rachel Ainge at Tribe Creative Co.

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