S2E2: Three
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Double, double toil and trouble, join the two of us on the pod to make a throuple – this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast is all about THREE.
We’ve chosen THREE as the theme of our second episode of the season not because we can’t count, but because we both have exciting bookish news for our THIRD novels.
Tracy’s third (and as-yet unpublished) novel – which is full of triplets and other threes – has been shortlisted for the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. And Jenny’s third novel will be out in the world next month – Hurdy Gurdy is available now for pre-order, and out soon wherever you get your books. Huzzah!
So with our minds full of thirds, we talk about good things coming in threes – wishes and witches, fates and furies, three-ring circuses and three dog nights. We contrast the strength and stability of triangles – geometrically and structurally speaking – with the usually destabilising presence of a third person in a relationship. (“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”)
We each read from our own diaries, on the theme of THREE. We wonder if we laugh less as we get older. Jen pens an ode to Inverloch. And we finish nostalgically, reigniting old friendships, Jen riding off on a horse, Tracy on (or perhaps being) a Shetland pony.
We’ve got fab guests lined up for you in coming episodes – so join us on the podcast each month, for more diaries (and diary-adjacent) content. Catch you next time!
In this episode:
Jen’s third novel, Hurdy Gurdy, published 4 June 2024, is a feminist revenge tale about the choices that women have to make, and it asks the big questions: Can beauty be found in times of great darkness? How do we go on? – read more about it, or pre-order, here
Tracy’s third (as-yet unpublished) novel, Wonderland, has been shortlisted for the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize
We sing the praises of libraries, and of Public Lending Right (PLR), which compensates authors (and illustrators and editors) for copies of their work held by public libraries – we love PLR (and digital and educational lending rights), rights that have been and continue to be hard-won (thanks Australian Society of Authors! Thanks New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa! Love your work!)
Triangles are strong and stable, structurally (here’s a simple explainer)
We can’t help thinking about the crowded marriage that very famously had three people in it – Princess Diana’s 1995 interview with Martin Bashir for BBC Panorama – watch the vid clip below, or here
Three Dog Night – the band, the myth, the legend
Macbeth’s Three Witches
Tracy and Jen grew up on My Three Sons and The Brady Bunch, 1960s-80s US TV shows (on high rotate in repeat through the 70s and 80s in Australia) and could very probably sing you the theme tunes
Tracy was weirdly obsessed with the TV show Charmed (premiered in 1998), which featured three witchy sisters
Jen was thinking of the film Practical Magic (1998), starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as sister witches (she was trying to remember the third sister, but there wasn’t one)
The marvellous Varuna The National Writers’ House, in Katoomba, near the Three Sisters
Brenda Walker’s debut novel, Crush (1991, Fremantle Press) won the T.A.G Hungerford Award in 1990
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Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.
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