Kathleen Jennings

I'll be on ABC Western Queensland talking to the lovely Heather Hale tomorrow morning! (c7:20)

It is my firm belief that the correct musical instruments for mice are anything that could legitimately be called a contraption. The hurdy gurdy is 100% a contraption.

Hurdy Gurdy mouse by tanaudel | Redbubble A mouse playing the hurdy gurdy.

Hurdy gurdy mouse!
(The black-and-white version, on stickers etc)
www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/4169...

"Well, it's awfully récherché for ordinary burglars, wouldn't you say? They appear to have taken only paintings and objets d'art. No silver, for example, and

"Well, it's awfully récherché for ordinary burglars, wouldn't you say?

CLAMBAKES. BOAT RACES. AND SUNMER MÜRDER A full winter season spent solving* cases of suaden death has left prettyl widow Sarah Kelling sorely in need of a vacation Her summer estate at historic reson's Landing seems the perfect place, There's sea air and sailing for rest:and relaxation. • and her favorite almost-fiancé, ' art investigator Max Bittersohn, * for romance. But a strange antique mirror found hanging in the house's front hall makes reson's Landing the sinister setting for a brand,new mystery. When the Kelling clan of dotty aunts and eccentric coysins shows up on Sarah's doorstep her best-laid plans for moonlight and Max get swept out to, sea... and what washes in is a dreadfully nasty. murder.

a dreadfully nasty murder

:)

For someone... New England's seashore is the perfect place for murder. The Bilbao Looking Class CHARLOTTE MACLEOD Author of WRACK AND RUNE

Also currently reading:

(Be)wilder — journeys in nature, by Darryl Jones

Currently reading:

Also I just picked up @wenyilee.bsky.social's When They Burned the Butterfly at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

The central band of busy-ness. The solitary translucency of the bottles... The weird formality of a Leonora Carrington without the obviously disconcerting
#artthoughts

So splendidly unsettling! The way everything detailed and ornate is divided by blank (but so textured, so lined) planes. The contrast of modern and old, of curve and line. Where everyone is looking. The fleck of red. The highlight on the vase. The way the tables barely touch the floor

#artthoughts

You too!

deer, night, hand, plants, black, danse macabre, skeleton, carousel, merry go round, horse, shark, nursery, dancing, academia, academic, silhouette, damask, jewel tone, frog, summer, star, raven, crow, dandelion, flower, mod, graphic, frolic, pink, seaweed, little mermaid, water lily, tapestry, haunted, toile, purple, gold, town, city, architecture, skeletons, boho, bones, roses, traditional, bold, heraldic, heraldry, folklore, green man, green woman, bright

A snippet of my Spoonflower shop tags, because they please me
www.spoonflower.com/profiles/tan...

42+ ways to fix a story Here is a list of ways to fix a draft or story in progress…

42 ways to fix a story
tanaudel.wordpress.com/2024/02/09/4...

The pink! The green! The very tiny threads of pink in the green. How *busy* the space is and how the colours (first) and then the shadows simplify it (narrow your eyes and see how it breaks into tidy spaces), and how all is simplest and clearest where the lightest green falls.

#artthoughts

The glow of this one! Not just the contrast of the sunlit neck and shadow, or the thread of light along head and neck, but also the middle-gold glow up the distant green, which gives photographic depth to what isn't a phot-real style.

#artthoughts

from publishers marketplace: "Sarah McCarry's POSSESSION ISLAND, a queer gothic thriller pitched as INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE meets Heavenly Creatures, in which a woman comes home from college to her family's mansion on a Pacific Northwest island, haunted by the legacy of her late mother's bestselling vampire novel, and as her estranged best friend is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect; she then finds an unexpected ally in her high school nemesis who has secrets of her own, to Sara Goodman at Saturday Books, in an exclusive submission, for publication in summer 2026, by Andrea Morrison at Writers House (NA)."

do u like stories about young ladies making very bad decisions in a gothic environment while under the nefarious influence of lesbian vampire novels? well boy do i have a treat for u

writing residency at a grocery store where you’re surrounded by food & drinks & people watching opportunities

In the anteroom, the girl takes what she needs, and then she leaves the house, as promised.

A Town, A Creek, A History: Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings - Reactor Honeyeater, a "precarious, lush, elegant, and visceral" novel, is one of Molly Templeton's favorite books of the year.

Mysteries, ghost stories, and a hungry creek: Kathleen Jennings' dark fantasy Honeyeater is a sublime Australian Gothic 🍃

reactormag.com/book-review-...

Postcard of HONEYEATER on top of book open to story "Moon", and a print-out of tracked changes of the first paragraphs. The final version begins: "When my wife’s grandmother (says old Mr Eising) was a girl on the other side of the world, no one dared leave a dish of water uncovered to the night, for the mirrored moon was a door. As for what could enter through it? A few said it had long spidery legs, or was an impossibly handsome man. Others claimed it was both at once. My wife’s grandmother said her grandmother was either lazy or enterprising. She put a basin in her window one full moon, and caught herself a husband. But she was cleverer than kind. He begged to leave, promised to return with pearls and white gold. She wouldn’t tell him the way. She emptied bowls at evening, threw pebbles at reflections in the stream."

There are tiny ghost stories and urban legends caught between the chapters of HONEYEATER. I wanted them to fit on single pages, title and all. So between first and final versions, "Moon" was halved in length.

Cut paper silhouette of a girl grasping a knife and diving towards a skull

Diving — a test illustration for HONEYEATER , although the final interior art took a different direction.

More about that here:
tanaudel.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/b...

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings book cover features a portrait of a woman on a black background wearing a white blouse, bugs crawl across. Her face and head are covered in flowers and birds. a vine grows up out of her shirt around her throat.

Your favorite new dark feminist fairy tale w/ dual unreliable narrators living in a crumbling mansion in a wild, haunted wood. One knows there is evil. But which enigmatic character is the true villain? Ethereal, dark, mysterious. Perfect for spooky season & T Kingfisher fans #Booksky #Honeyeater

Blue faced honeyeater

No. As a general rule, I reserve top third for type and the publisher handles the rest. We dedicated a newsletter to the topic recently if you'd like a more detail on that:

theartofmichaelwhelan.substack.com/p/setting-type

#artthoughts

#artthoughts

I am not seeing enough art!

Also the more you do this the more art I will see.