Baby Boomers Still Rule

The most recent attack on GenX media personalities Jackie O and Kyle Sandilands makes one thing perfectly clear: The Baby Boomers are still calling the shots.

Despite anyone's opinion on whether the stunt was bad, whether Sandilands is an idiot or whether a parent should put their kid in that situation in the first place, the bottom line is that the Oldies have put their conservative foot down for the second time in this year's Australian media circus.

The Board of Directors of 2Day FM's parent, Austereo contains at least 10 "super-experienced" Baby Boomers, between 45 and 65 years of age, and the remaining directors, I dare say are on the fringe.

No doubt their advertisers, likely with similar demographics, have had a similar reaction to bad press, threatening to withdraw much needed advertising revenue if the show was not axed.

Ten Holdings, the parent company of Channel 10's Australian Idol is not as heavily laden with Oldies, but considering the "family show" is viewed by thousands of Tweens and their parents (and funded by the same Oldie advertisers as the 2Day show), did Channel 10 really have a choice?

Channel 9 bowed to similar Boomer pressure in May, when Oldie Tracy Grimshaw attacked co-worker GenX'er Matthew Johns for an incident some seven years before. Johns was subsequently sacked from his sports role with Channel 9, while Grimshaw's A Current Affair ratings soared.

No longer content to control most of the money in the free world, Boomers have decided they now want to use that money to parent. They clog the top tiers of corporations, refusing to retire, and continuing to draw massive salaries and golden parachutes. They hold on tightly to their 80's Gordon Gecko greed tactics, refusing even to give their own children the right to excel and think for themselves.

No wonder GenX'ers like Sandilands and Johns never stood a chance.

Assimilation

14 July 1788. The Borrowdale, Alexander, Friendship and Prince of Wales sail for England from Sydney Cove. Three of these ships carried convicts, and the fourth brought stores for the settlement. In my historical novel Letters of Duty, the Prince of Wales transports the heroine to Australia, and sails away with her hero.

Though the story is fiction, the event actually occurred 221 years ago today. I actually felt sad thinking about it. I feel for the heroine and everything she has to endure without her beloved. I feel the sense of pride in the hero as he takes his dutiful place in the ship's command.

This story has become a part of me. The characters are my friends. And my enemies. Their actions make me worry. Will they be happy with their choices? Who will comfort them? How do I help them?

What's more is that I am somewhat cautious of completing the story. It feels like I am getting ready to move house, shifting my gear to another far off location. Once published, I will only be able to visit my friends, and not really be a part of their lives. This is my only chance to be an influence on them and make a mark for the rest of my life and theirs. I'm not ready for them to be out of my life.

But they need to move on and so do I. They have another 6000-7000 words left to tell their story. Then I will shift house to another task of getting them published. Their fate in the hands of editors and agents.

I wonder if anyone else has assimilated their characters and story so much that they found it hard to let go. Share your comments.

Sydney Writers' Festival

Well, it's true, I am published. There was the letter in the Sydney Morning Herald about Obama. I've had photos published and used in websites, marketing material and album covers. But there is something daunting about getting a request for 500 words. The fear of not getting it. The fear of getting it, then having to write it. Maybe I should give in now and stick to my Project Management roots.

I enjoyed the Sydney Writer's Festival. I attended for the first time, and expected thousands of skinny, bespectacled, Emo uni students with French cigarettes and Macbooks. While there was a fair share of those, the majority were baby-boomers, at or near retirement, looking for their next reading feast. They came to meet their literary heroes; become a a part of the scene. This was my audience.

Historical fiction is not often found on the New York Times Best Seller List. But one only has to look at the overflowing venues at the SWF for writers such as David Hill and Kate Grenville to know that Sydney, and Australia loves to read detail of its own stories, true or fiction. The packed house for Kate Grenville's discussion of her novels The Lieutenant and The Secret River based on the founding of Australia as a penal colony proves that Aussies love their home-grown fiction.

But as I have often mentioned to people that I am writing a novel based on the First Fleet, many of them remark, "What does a Yank know about the settling of Australia?" The answer: probably more than most Aussies.

When we are in school the historians dig up the facts. The educators then translate the facts to palatable stories for the correct age of the children. The curriculum and the constant re-telling of this "history" water down the adult truths. I was never taught the "education" version of Australia's history. I researched the actual documents left by the people who were there, aided by some translations by popular modern historians like Tim Flannery, Robert Hughes and David Hill.

It is with this Ground Zero and Plus One focus that I have attacked my first novel. It is a tale of love, honour and duty, set in a time and place where happiness was elusive, but the dream of starting anew was truly alive.

The story is complete. I am now checking the landscape for the details that will make the story alive and give the reader that same sense of wonder about the time and place as I have. Maybe everyone will be able to picture Sydney Harbour with the eleven ships of the First Fleet firmly anchored in Sydney Cove.

In the coming months I will blog excerpts from the book Letters of Duty. I hope you will enjoy it.