Two small, good things

One

I got a text message from a friend: 'The violinist from your story is in the mall today. And she's hot!'

It's really something special when someone recognises a fictional character from one of your stories. The story is 'Silver and the Red Box Waltz' published in the Spineless Wonders Escape  anthology. It's about a young man who falls in lust with a sexy fiddle player burning out gypsy tunes in the mall. My friend looked around for the young man, Silver, but couldn't see anyone in a hi-viz shirt and steel cap boots  that day.

Two

Yesterday, after I finished the third draft of a story ('The Piano Lesson') I was looking through a book on the Australian artist John Perceval. (Who is John Perceval?  I discovered a painting by him in the South Australian Art Gallery  a few years back then, when I went looking for some more info on him I found a book by Margaret Plant in a second-hand bookshop but hadn't looked at it for some time. I'm reading Patrick White's The Vivisector this month, his fantastic novel about the artist Hurtle Duffield, and maybe that's why I went to the book); But the point is I have an angel in my story 'The Piano Lesson' and what a joy it was to discover him in one of John Perceval's paintings. Here he is:

John Perceval: Little Boy in the Night 1965

And here is something else of him:

detail from: Still Searching 1961

And this:

detail from: Jacob wrestling with the Angel under the Rainbow 1967

John Perceval was the last surviving member of the Angry Penguins, a loose-knit group of Australian painters who radically changed the local art scene in the 1940s and early 1950s. He drew a lot of angels and created many more out of ceramics, like this:

Angel with Legs and Arms Astride (Stolen Angel) 1961

Isn't she hot? 

So they are two, small good things that have happened in my week. What about you?

Caroline xx