Month: August 2023

Coming Soon: Regret Horizon

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Planned for publication in November 2023, this is a project I have been working on for several years. It has changed over the time of writing, and I have changed along with it.

REGRET HORIZON

BOOK ONE IN THE SERIES “OUTSIDE THE FRAME”.

It is a true story of a single year, 2008, when both my mother and my ex-husband died within two weeks of each other. It is a meditation on contemporary rituals of death and its aftermath and the inability of our narratives to prepare us for the impossible dilemmas of mortality.

Publication of new memoir Regret Horizon expected in November 2023.

The narrator, who is and is not “me”, is caught by the desire to be objective and tell the truth, to admit her failings and obsessions, but also to acknowledge the social and medical issues around very old age in our society.  It is an exploration of the complicated nature of family loyalties, a book about failure and delusion, inter-generational conflict, and the cruelty of old age.

REVOLUTIONARY BABY: paperback now available

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After some glitches the print (paperback) version of Revolutionary Baby is now available. You can purchase from Amazon.com.au or place an order online with Booktopia. Or go to your local bookstore and order a copy to pick up in person, to save postage.

Revolutionary Baby is a collection of fictional stories about the revolutionary changes people experienced from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Women and men, younger and older, richer and poorer, are caught at moments of decision, unexpectedly resulting in the transformation of their lives. They must confront their past expectations and change the way they look at options in the present and the future. All the stories and characters are entirely fictional. This is not a book of hidden autobiography or memoir in disguise. Nevertheless the stories reflect my own experiences from the 1960s into the 2000s, as a student, an activist, a mother, an academic, a traveller, an onlooker and participant in many elements of those transformative times. These stories reflect an Australian history, culture and awareness, although they are not all set in Australia.

As a preliminary quote for these stories, I was drawn to the words of Gil Scott-Heron, now an almost forgotten figure of Black American consciousness in
the sixties and seventies.

“The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown. What you see later on is the results of that, but that revolution, that change that takes place will not be televised.”

Listen to his achingly powerful poem/song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, from 1971, readily available on Youtube.

REVOLUTIONARY BABY: paperback now available

/ annettehamilton82 / Leave a comment

After some glitches the print (paperback) version of Revolutionary Baby is now available. You can purchase from Amazon.com.au or place an order online with Booktopia. Or go to your local bookstore and order a copy to pick up in person, to save postage.

What is it about? Revolutionary Baby is a collection of fictional stories about the changes people had to make to their thoughts, beliefs and expectations from the mid-twentieth century onwards. It takes a collection of different characters, women and men, younger and older, and explores aspects or ordinary lives in the moments of transformation, when people had to confront their expectations from the past and change the way they looked at their options in the present and the future. All the stories and the characters in them are entirely fictional, but many aspects reflect my own experiences growing up in the 1960s, being a student, a mother, an academic, a traveller, an onlooker and participant in the many transformations swirling about us. The stories reflect an Australian history, culture and awareness, although they are not all set in Australia and the presence of “overseas” looms large.

As a preliminary quote for these stories, I was drawn to the words of Gil Scott-Heron, now an almost forgotten figure of Black American consciousness in the sixties and seventies.

“The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown. What you see later on is the results of that, but that revolution, that change that takes place will not be televised.”

Listen to his achingly powerful poem/song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, from 1971, readily available on Youtube.