Like many of my female friends, I’ve been trying to not-hear the details of what’s been going on re certain rugby league events – and not succeeding.  I am horrified by the way fans will automatically take the side of the players, that they have had all the media airplay, and that even Dave Faulkner from the Hoodoos appeared to defending him against the wicked media at the airport.  Turning one of the perpetrators – even if you’re giving him or them the benefit of the doubt – into a victim makes my stomach turn.  It’s The Accused all over again.

As these things come down to the issue of consent, I was even more horrified to read about a study that suggests that most teenaged girls don’t have the skills to say no, and that they feel pressured into having sex before they’re ready – by their boyfriends, and by peer pressure (real or imagined).  This failure to educate has to do with the age-old denial that young people are having sex – and of what happens when they do.  Hurrah, I suppose, that the message about pregnancy and STDs is getting out there, but the nuts and bolts are the least of it, I would have thought.

On a more cheerful subject, I’ve finished the redraft of Chess Nuts.  I cut out four thousand words and tackled the chess games (on the first draft, I’d just put [describe more of game]!) – hopefully to satisfy non-chess players and chess nuts alike.  And my editor sent me this picture: what a shame there’s no rollercoaster in the novel, or else we could have used it for the cover!