So it turns out that April is Blog Every Day April. It’s a fun lil bandwagon that I have decided to jump onto. New York YA writer Maureen Johnson is heading up the BEDA (I love a good acronym) action and bloggers around the world are taking up the challenge, because, really, who can resist a silly online gimmick?

Personally, I hope BED will bring some kind of regularity and structure to my life. I just  hope I can see the month out. Unlike the failures that were Do Push Ups Every Morning March and Stop Eating Apples That Don’t Belong To Me February.

While the world salivates over the new pics of the Where the Wild Things Are movie I thought I would share an illustration of one of the characters from my upcoming book The Greatest Blogger in the World.

Let me introduce you to Barcode. This little guy (as drawn by the clever Gregory Baldwin) plays the important role of ‘family duck’ in the book. He also makes an illustrative apperance at the start of each of the book’s chapters too.  Good job Barcode. And nice beak-clenching-newspaper skills too.

I was raised in an outer suburb of Melbourne called Watsonia. The only real thing of note in Watsonia is the Simpson Army Barracks which began life as the Watsonia Military Camp in WWII. Apparently there’s lots of communications equipment at the Army Barracks which means that if Australia is ever invaded Watsonia would be one of the first places likely to be bombed. At least that’s what I think I heard some kid at school say once.

Apart from the Army Barracks and the Watsonia Library – be kind to your local librarian – there’s not much else happening in Watsonia. Although the sight of Jenny Macklin MP campaigning outside the Watsonia Bakehouse during election times is worth visiting town for. If Watsonia was my biological father then I could be said to have Daddy Issues.

They say that Australians have a love-hate relationship with the ‘burbs and  I have a love-hate-lust-domestic violence relationship with Watsonia. And when I visited the place this weekend past I was confronted by the sight of an abandoned TV sitting on top of a boulder, around the corner from the Watsonia BP.

It was sooo Watsonia. I loved and hated and lusted for and wanted to beat that TV on the rock. But I should stop ragging on my hometown now. Thankyou blog for the therapy times. See you next session.

The good ol’ author pic is the ire of almost all authors. Often found on the back sleeve of a book, it’s easy to see why the common author treats their back-of-the-book pic with general disdain. There’s a reason movie directors don’t flash their portaits onto the big screen at the end of their movies. I mean, would the final scene of Thelma & Louise have the same impact if it was followed by this?

But to undigress (not an official word) my label mate at Hardie Grant Egmont, author Chris Morphew, recently blogged about his own author pics and proceeded to label one of my author pics as a ‘Classic Mope’.

I think he’s probably right. Some other favourite classic author poses include:

The Guru Pose.

The ‘I’m so doey-eyed how could you not believe me?’ Pose.

And the ‘I signed a movie contract and hired a stylist” Pose.

If a classic author pose cannot be struck the next best way to show yourself as an author is to turn the author photo black and white.

Nothing says ‘author’ more than grayscaling the author pic.

And here’s my label-mate Chris Morphew author-ised.

Although I guess there are some people who are just never going to look like authors.

I don’t know why I like the Sad Clowns so. Ever since Housemate #1 acquired the painting of the clowns sitting on clouds of bald ogre-type man-heads I have liked them.

Clowns are the poor occasion’s Santa. They come out for birthdays and country fairs – things which become less awesome as we grow old. So it seems appropriate that these clowns should appear so despondent. Which is just why I like them. They are my friends. No matter how miserable I feel they always look worse and I love them for it. And I thought the Sad Clowns should cheer other people up too. So I created the below motivational poster.

Good on you Sad Clown and little midget-Sad Clown. You make me live!