Here are a few lines from the sequel to The Midnight Pianist … called Playing with Keys, set in Sydney, 1961. I’ve written about 48,000 words. At least when I painted with watercolours, I knew when I had done enough and needed to stop … how does a writer know when to give up on sharpening the blade?
Baby Boomers might recall this kind of scene after school? Do today’s students still do this kind of work?
FROM CHAPTER FOUR:
Sandra spread her Geography homework on the dining table: black Indian ink, thin-nibbed mapping pen, and coloured pencils. How ridiculous and irrelevant to be asked to draw a map of Africa’s mineral deposits. She could hear the rapid d-d-d-d-d of her mother’s treadle sewing machine in the next room. That would be the flannelette pyjamas for her and her sister. Hopefully hers wouldn’t be yellow with stupid mice like last winter.
She looked at Prue, curled in an armchair with a Three Musketeers comic.
‘Does Mum know you went to the Stadium last Saturday afternoon?’ She had wanted to ask since she’d spied Prue with a group of girls last weekend on the footpath outside the Sydney Stadium, but she wanted her parents to be out of hearing.
………… That’s all, I said it was a tiny taste. Keep in touch via Facebook [The Midnight Pianist book]