 |
|
Mink, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us and answer my questions.
Tell us a little about Just Another Manic Mum-Day
I’d love to! I’ve been talking about little else for the past few weeks, and I see no earthly reason to stop now! Just Another Manic Mum-Day is the sequel to The Pissed Off Parents Club (my first novel) and sees Roxy, Jack and three-year-old Joey move to sunny Sydney. But when Roxy falls pregnant again (over 40, over there and, quite frankly, over it), her world is turned upside down. How will she cope? And what about her fab new job? Will up-until-now only child and Olympic champion tantrum-thrower Joey adjust? And what about Jack? What exactly has he been up to every day since the family arrived in paradise? Roxy ponders these questions and more over cappuccinos and cupcakes with her new best friend Shoshanna, until they are unceremoniously booted out of their favourite cafe. Seems mums with babies and kids just aren’t welcome anywhere in Bondi. So the two mum-preneurs put their heads together and come up with the ideal cafe for mums, dads, kids and carers everywhere – a coffee shop that has a crèche and counsellors and sells Freixenet alongside the friandes. Another kind of Bondi rescue, Just Another Manic Mum-Day (that’s the name they come up with for the cafe) serves as a sanctuary for stressed-out mums. But can Roxy and Shoshanna make their own family lives as happy as they make their customers? You’ll just have to read the book to find out!
When and how did you decide writing was what you wanted to do?
When I got sacked from the bakery and the post office within weeks of each other.Eventually, I landed a job at the brilliant Australian men’s magazine The Picture as the only girl writer there – and even though I was terrified of walking into the office every day, let alone all the genius writers there, I managed to leave before they axed me and went to work in London. From then on, even though I constantly feared I was never any good, I was determined to learn at the feet of the greats, so I tried my best at such legendary publications as More!, Just Seventeen, Bliss, Sky, Minx, Dare! and FHM until I had my first baby. Then we moved out of London and I wrote The Pissed Off Parents Club. When my agent told me Sphere wanted to publish it, I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. Because writing for a living is a dream come true. And now I’m hooked on losing myself in my characters’ worlds, I can’t give it up – it’s too much fun!
How do you manage to write with two young children? Is routine important?
Important? It’s critical. I just wish we had one! I always surprise myself by being a bit of a drill sergeant about our schedule in my head, particularly in the school holidays – but in reality, I never fail to be so disorganised, that it all goes horribly wrong and we’ll still be at the playground at lunchtime, which means my toddler will miss his window of opportunity for sleep which, in turn, means another day will go by without me getting any words down. So my answer to your first question is sometimes I just don’t. If it happens, great – but if it doesn’t, you just have to try to be a half-way decent mum, suck it down, let it go and try to look overjoyed about yet another game of hide and seek. Which is really hard to do when you’re bursting with ideas and plot twists and turns and you can’t even find a pen and an un-scribbled-on piece of paper, let alone quiet, focused time in front of the computer. I mean, I can’t even manage to go to the loo by myself these days! It wouldn’t be so bad if I could work at night when both kids were asleep, but then my evening routine of collapsing on the couch, catching half an episode of Corrie and being comatose by 8:30 every night would fly right out the window! And we all know how crucial it is to stick to a routine...When my toddler does sleep and my daughter is at school, though, it’s amazing how disciplined I can be. And quite astonishing how frequently I manage to resist the temptations of Facebook/daytime telly/the entire contents of the fridge and just sit there writing. Not always (the council wants to attach a ‘wide load’ sign to my bum - something about health and safety), but enough!
Mink Elliott will be back again on Thursday, publication day, with a UK Giveaway!
No comments:
Post a Comment