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Snap Judgment is storytelling with style. It's an American radio show that mixes personal stories with great music. The result? Powerful.
5 reasons to read Girl Defective by Simmone Howell:
1. The girl on the cover is very important to the story. Like a non-lame episode of CSI, the characters connect (and are connected) to her. There's a mystery afloat and you will be intrigued.
It's still a whole 10 months until The Hunger Games: Catching Fire hits cinemas but that doesn't stop them releasing all sorts of teasing pictures, and me getting ALL EXCITED.
The latest project? Capitol Couture, which is showing off the amazing fashion world of Collins' Capitol one portrait at a time.
First, there was Effie:

Doesn't she look poodle-tastic?
Next up was Caesar (click image for large version... which lets you see his purple eyebrows!):
Hi, my name is Francesca, but I’m usually known as Fran, Franny or even occasionally Frandog. Seriously.
I go to Northcote High School and I am currently in year 9. My friends would describe me as funny and not boring, but also that I need to stop telling my same jokes over and over. I love to write, read and blog on tumblr (frannys-gone-mad.tumblr.com, you’ll love it on your dashboard).
My life's ambition is to have my name recognised by Microsoft Word spell-check.
Welcome Francesca, this month's You're The Voice contributor! I can tell by your pseudonym we're going to be very good friends.
So I just finished a book by one of my favourite authors. About one of my favourite subjects. I won’t tell you who it is, or which book it is, or even what it’s about because this will most definitely ruin it for everyone else. But the thing is I can’t NOT talk about this… It really made me mad. Like, really mad.
I, Inky, offer you my most humble apologies. I am not feeling well at the moment. Maybe I ate too much spam. Maybe it's my tennis elbow acting up again. I'm really not sure. Whatever it is, it's causing what you may know as technical difficulties.
Common symptoms include:
- Problems accessing book clubs (especially any forums within a book club).
There is a temporary solution for this particular problem - the book club Manager can fix the forum access issue by:
- In the book club, clicking 'Manage group forums' from the menu on the right.
- Then, on the main part of the page, clicking 'make public'. (Confused? See image here.)
- There is no step 3. That's it! All fixed.
- Comments appearing blank.
Unfortunately I do not yet have a solution for this. The vet has been called. I will let you know the diagnosis as soon as I do.
Update 5/3/2013 11am: The problem has been found - apparently I'm allergic to new versions of Internet Explorer. I'll be receiving some special medication this afternoon. They assure me it tastes like liver.
Update 5/3/2013 4pm: It didn't taste like liver. But I am feeling much better. (The Doctor fixes everything!) This issue should now be sorted, so if you do encounter it at all please let me know.
Once there was a girl.
She was completely into Pride and Prejudice, owning every edition of P&P on the screen and the need to purchase every reminagined cover. Perfectly normal, right?
I’ll start by saying that I’m sure many of you are eagerly putting on your boxing gloves and waiting in line to whack me. Sorry to spoil your fun, but I WROTE SOMETHING. Admittedly it’s not great - it’s not even good - but it’s a start. It needs a lot of editing but I think it can be salvaged.
Also that story idea I’ve been meaning to co-write with my friend is making progress. You need magnifying lens to see the distance it’s covering, and it’s moving so slowly it’s actually gathering moss, but it’s still moving.
So, MWAHAHAHA - *chokes* - HAHAHA!!
Okay. I’m still working on my evil laugh.
5 reasons to read Fire in the Sea by Myke Bartlett:
1. It's the kind of fantasy book where ancient creatures are covered in blood, not glitter.
2. It's action-packed and amazingly visual. Like a movie. Only with words.
Once upon a time there was an author who wrote many many books.
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and they were very very good.
Neil Gaiman once said You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
Once upon a time (i.e. before VCE), I used to have this little challenge of writing at least one short story a month. A little ambitiously, I thought that this year I should make it my goal to write one a week. As someone wisely advised somewhere, if you write one story a week, that’s fifty two in a year – and they can’t all be bad. It sounded wonderfully logical and simple in my mind.
I lasted… well, I didn’t. I couldn’t even make the first week. Oops.
I think the mass essay writing last year in literature robbed me of words.

