Chit-chat Wednesday and Don't Judge a book by its cover

I am sitting in our local medical centre. I am surrounded by little birds reading out-of-date magazines as I wait for blood tests and arrange for bone density tests. This is not how I planned to spend our January holiday time together. We had thought of picnics, art galleries and beach trips. Life always likes to surprise me.
I like to be surprised by people. I love it when I see young Goths reading from Bibles in the street, old women with tattoos and big tough mean-looking guys who do voluntary charity work. People who don't fit the stereotypes and are true to themselves are people who inspire, amaze and surprise me.
Last week, the ever-cool writer and musician Talie Helene from the Blog A Girl Made of Truth & Wild Horses awarded me The Creative Blogger Award which I was totally TICKLED PINK and chuffed with. In her little blurb about me she said something along the lines of 'don't be fooled by the Victorian scrapbook lavishness of her Blog this woman writes some really killer crime fiction.'
I am so grateful that Talie didn't judge me by my cover. Yes, I do write some very graphic and dark crime and sometimes horror but I do also love pink and girlie frou-frou things.
Several years ago, I won The Scarlet Stiletto Award which is quite a prestigious award for crime writing in Australia. A disgruntled short-listed finalist and her charming boyfriend heckled me as I accepted the award drunkenly whining that 'I didn't need to win as I was already rich (!!!) and 'It was a set up, as I wouldn't have written anything dark enough'.
This little tantrum from the pair gave the Scribe and me much amusement for months and we still get a good laugh out of it. I wish more writers would have public dummy spits! And of course my winning story was very dark. It was called Birthing the Demons and it was about how mothers are often blamed in society for violent acts performed by their children. It was inspired loosely by the James Bulger case and you don't get much more distressing and dark than that.
I'm a Scorpio and fascinated by death and violent acts. But I do love my pink, my pretty, my vintage toys and dolls. I'm not about to start wearing black and baying at the moon to suit other people's perception of what I should look like or write. Don't you think we are rather more complex people than that? I hate limitations set by others or by our ownselves.
And as a writer, I know too well the folly of judging books by their covers. I was never fully satisfied with the covers of some of my published books. Believing their images never matched my words and the tale I was telling. A couple of reviewers even wrote, 'ignore the covers as these books...' etc, etc. Sadly, an author in my position doesn't have a lot that will be listened to when it comes to their covers.
And so Talie's award was even sweeter for me because it meant that somebody out there didn't judge me for my cover. That means a lot.
I am still slowly adding my awards to my Blog and so if you have been kind enough to present me with an award and wondering where it has gone it should be up shortly.
How about you? Do you like to be surprised by people and literature or do you judge books by their covers?
Enjoy your week my sparrows and swans. xx

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