today is the day i've been waiting for - 'the bollywood beauty' got a review in the age - and it's goooood. you can either follow the link from the age homepage, in the 'entertainment section' under the title 'confronting the ties that bind and divide', or you can read the full text of the review on my other blog. woohoo!

last night, first my heart swelled and pulsated with love, then it was crushed into a million-trillion pieces: tim missed out on winning big brother. what is wrong with the world? why didn't i vote? will i ever get to watch the god of all lefty nerds flex his tanned biceps on telly again? these are but a few of the questions in my confused head right now. ah, tim. it was a pleasure to watch you blossom from pasty geek to sleek adonis and not lose a brain cell in the process. i hail you, and hope against primetime-tv-logic hope that you get some sort of recurring role in the media as a result of your time on big brother - you're probably the only one to have come out of that compound who deserves it.
now, i must away - australian idol is on. ta-raah!

you know when you have one of those nights where you go out thinking 'this should be fun', and then you wake up the next morning and go 'oh my god what an amazing night that was!'? well, that was my weekend. the bollywood launch-week party was saturday just gone. and let me tell you, it was a doozy. i'll give you a quick rundown of saturday:
cousins dropped in around four-ish to kick-start the giggly vibe, and we were joined by a friend who came down from sydney for the party. many doses of mango skin and several rounds of gossip later, it was time to start getting ready. my sydney friend blow-dried my hair for me, then i put on my blouse and skirt and waited for my mum to arrive so she could help dress me... let's just take a moment to remember that i *was* wearing a sari, people. anyway, my parents and family arrived, there was a flurry of takeaway (some of the containers of which were saved for late use, of course), then half the party departed and mum secured me into my sari. after all the tweaking and faffing about was over, we were whisked off to the bedford - and the evening began.
i had said on the invites that it was a dress-up party, but i really didn't much - you should have seen the effort people went to. it was more bollywood than bollywood! the dancing started about an hour after we arrived, and i swear it didn’t stop till the very end of the night, round 1ish. my dad was on the dancefloor every chance he got, and my mum would've been up there too if it hadn't been for the pain in her leg. my brother's friend gaurav created quite a stir with his energetic dance moves - his kurta was soaked with sweat by the time he left, and i found out the hard way when i went to hug him goodbye. i even ended up the night with my sari in ship shape - i thought i'd come undone at some point in the evening, but i lasted the whole way and still managed to stay decent.
i'm sorry it took me so long to get this post up, but i've been savouring the memory. again , do you blame me?

i found my first white hair today.
i found my first white hair today.
i found my first white hair today.
i found my first white hair today.

... and all i could think as i admired its shiny whiteness in the bathroom mirror this morning was, 'i'm glad my first novel came out before you did.'

launch recollections, part one
on initially walking in to readings in port melbourne, it was a bit of a shock to see a whole bookshelf laden with multiple copies of my book (apart from the bottom shelves which still housed some jk rowling, but i had more shelf-space than her for sure!). i turned right to the counter, where more copies were stacked; it seemed that the staff at readings had propped them around the shop wherever they could. aimee had also made some a3 size copies of the cover, and these were pinned up around the venue, too. the whole place had been taken over by 'the bollywood beauty'. i was understandably a little jellified by the whole thing, but people began to arrive and distracted me from my own unstable state. so many people turned up! i am still overwhelmed just thinking about it. bob sessions opened the talking, followed by clare forster (who launched the book), and it was surreal to listen to the things they were saying and digest that it was me they were talking about. then clare called me to the mic, and i proceeded to thank everyone for coming and then two people in particular - clare and mark. mark tried to hide behind the video camera, but i found him! i walked off thinking 'you didn't thank aimee! you didn't thank cathy larsen for the cover! you didn't even thank bob!', but it was done, and i apologised and thanked everyone one one-on-one later. after that it was signing time... and i was there till the end. there was an actual queue. it was insane.

afterward, a small group of stayers moved on to molly bloom's, so i talked my parents into going there for a meal - luckily we caught their kitchen just in time. after dinner we had a couple of drinks, took a few more happy snaps and then came home. the whole evening felt like three minutes. i wish i'd had time to catch up with more people, to chat more, but i guess that's what saturday's party is for. i am so looking forward to it!

so, the counter on my blog right there is all counted-down. right now we're roughly five hours away from the official launch of the book, yet it's been on shelves for longer than that. last week trhursday, mid afternoon-browse i spied a copy in mary martins southbank's australian fiction section. i yelped audibly (the sales person near me turned around suddenly, presumably to see if i'd stepped on a chihuahua, or turned into one) and ran out the store bellowing 'mark! maaark! come here!'. then i pointed at the shelf from across the store. he went over, knight in shining armour that he is, and fetched it off the shelf. my knees were seriously jelly... i blushed and ran to hide behind the greeting card shelf in a move i later recognised as a classic bollywood over-reaction. then the bubbles subsided, and a voice in my head said
hang on! one copy, spine-out? does that really warrant a bollywood duck-and-cover?
than the knight came through again, gathered me up in his muscular arms and whispered, i found the other four. face-out, new release section. and that was it, i had to leave.

i have also heard that at dymocks in collins street, 'phoebe' has picked my literary debut as her read of the month. thank you, gentle phoebe. let it be known that i am in no way connected to this obviously highly intelligent dymocks-person with very good taste in books. long may you live, phoebe, and long may this month be.

yes, i am going a little silly in the head. but really, do you blame me?