VIOLENT VIOLET

Kate Eltham, guest blogging

I saw the first jacaranda blooms today. Years ago that used to mean it was time to shit my pants because end of year exams were looming. These days it means the only thing looming is summer. Within a few weeks there will be violent explosions of purple all over the city. The jacaranda trees blossom in Brisbane when spring slides into summer, and weather that was balmy and breezy and give-a-shit begins its inexorable descent into sultry, sticky, and troppo-licious. This is the sort of weather that elicits a certain kind of rabid psychosis in the Clarion South students.

Kate Eltham lives in Brisbane, Australia. She works as a creative industries consultant which is a fancy schmancy way of saying she helps creative people to make a living from their creativity. She is a founding member of Fantastic Queensland, a ragtag band of adventurers developing and promoting speculative fiction in Australia, and co-convenor of Clarion South Writers Workshop. Kate is chairing the 2006 Australian National Science Fiction Convention in a most disorganized fashion. She writes short stories, mainly during West Wing ad breaks.