Guest Post: Cath Crowley + Giveaway

About the Author:

Author of A Little Wanting Song (Chasing Charlie Duskin), Graffiti Moon and the Gracie series. Cath lives in Melbourne, Australia and is writing her next book. You can also find her at cathcrowley.com.au.

I'm currently reading Graffiti Moon and it is beautiful so far; oh gosh, THE WRITING. I'm so happy to have Cath Crowley here today for Valentine's Day. Please give her a spectacularly warm welcome!

CC: I get up early in the morning to make new characters. I like to write in dream-slicked skin, before I’m fully awake. My computer faces the window and I can’t see anything but shapes of plants in darkness.

What do you love? I ask them over and over but they don’t tell me.

The click of words, loud sun, shade, figs, trees with branchy armpits, mystery novels, romances, birds, shadows, flight, sun? What, what, what?

It takes all day before I get an answer that I think might be true.

‘Corners,’ a boy says. ‘I love the corners.’

I write it down and wait for something else. I eat quite a bit of chocolate while I’m waiting. They won’t even tell me if they like chocolate.

Who doesn’t like chocolate? I write for something to write.

‘Me,’ one of them says. It’s a girl. Both of them are seventeen, I’m sure of it. I think she has a bit of an attitude. I’m not sure she likes me.

Do you know each other?

‘Yes.’

Have you kissed?

‘No.’

Do you want to?

No answer.

I give up and go to bed.

I get up in the dream-slick and try again.

Today, before the sun, I pull one memory out of the girl.

She’s lying on the grass shining a torch tunnel at the sky. Looking for words in the stars, I think, but I’m not sure. She has a light blue dress with a white bird sewn onto the corner and a dog with three legs lying next to her. He’s called Fat Harvey. She loves Harvey but he’s dying. He’s got the wise look of a dog that’s close to the other side. She swings the light around and makes the stars look like they’re something she can control but she knows she can’t.

I’m writing a lot of Valentine’s Day posts this week so I ask her about love because it’s on my mind. Because I think it might be on her mind too.

She moves the torch around and tells me about a boy she kissed at a party last night. She snuck out her window and cut through the trees and arrived at the same time as her friend. ‘It was a coincidence,’ she tells me.

They went inside.

She skips the house that the party is in. She doesn’t tell me who is holding it.

She takes me out to the back yard where there’s a clothesline and a boy underneath. I can see the stars and the shape of shirts and trousers hanging.

She tells me he is the best-looking boy in the class and I can see that. He plays sport but I don’t know what. His hair is black and his eyes are green, I think. The moon isn’t bright enough to see.

She kissed him that night and thought of another boy, an ugly boy. He’s crooked and strange and no one at school talks to him except her. She talks to him in secret, though. His voice is honeyed gravel.

‘I imagined,’ she tells me, ‘that while we kissed that I could taste honey.’ She imagined that she was in a corner, kissing someone else. The crooked boy. She calls him Crow.

Somewhere, Crow is hiding in the corners. I have the start of him though.

I have the start of them both.

And in the quiet of the mornings I know that if I am patient, I will find them.

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This post was absolutely beautiful, Cath! Thank you so much! And Cath continues to be amazing by offering up a copy of her book!

Be sure to to catch my review for Graffiti Moon later.

Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight, she's going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. He's out there somewhere—spraying color, spraying birds and blue sky on the night—and Lucy knows a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for. Really fall for. Instead, Lucy's stuck at a party with Ed, the guy she's managed to avoid since the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells her he knows where to find Shadow, they're suddenly on an all-night search around the city. And what Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes.

Purchase Graffitti Moon today!

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Official Giveaway Info:

• you do NOT have to be a follower
• there are extra entries available
• all entrants must be at least 13 years old or older
• giveaway deadline is March 13, 2012
• giveaway is open to US + INTL*
• read my Contest | Giveaway page, as well as my Privacy Notice

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