Books

HONG KONG LOVER

Against a backdrop of gradually increasing chaos in Hong Kong, tall pale blonde Julia sets sail on serene waters.

Julia is an enigma: daughter of Queensland landed aristocracy, destined for the world of ballet.

Loud-mouthed Lee is straight from the bars and brothels of Kowloon.

The two women cement their unlikely friendship making ‘art movies’ and visiting warships at anchor in neutral Hong Kong.

They party hard and sleep with everyone from movie stars to Naval officers, to Filipino playboys and Russian émigré talent scouts.

They ignore the turmoil around them, the Cultural Revolution in China, the war in Vietnam, but gradually the riots, murders, destructive landslides and typhoons intrude into and encompass the lives of themselves and their men.

Against all odds, they find love.

And experience great loss.

ISBN  1 42511699-x  9781425116996

Published 2007 by Trafford Publishing www.trafford.com

North America and international: email to orders@trafford.com

Order online at: Trafford.com/07-0162

United States:  amazon.com

United Kingdom: amazon.co.uk

Australia: www.coop-bookshop.com.au

Readers say:

"I thought I was walking down the streets of Hong Kongand Kowloon in the Sixties. The smells, the buzz, the sheer funk."

"Read Hong Kong Lover and if you didn’t have a reckless youth you will wish you had. This is as close and real as it gets. Funny, gritty and right there in your face." Helen McMahon

"This is the hard-boiled and exciting Hong Kong of the other Expats – the blow-ins, the drifters, the opportunists, the people you never hear about. It’s funny, and sad too. I loved it."

"the lovers, the sex, the crazy morality, the music – they all have their own special music, the cattle station, Macau, the war, the riots, R&R, Buddha’s birthday, friends, fun, sorrow, man, what a time! What a place!"

"the characters start off all jolly and then wham! Life whacks them. This is a really appealing coming of age story in a very exotic setting"

"I lived there for the years of Hong Kong Lover, so of course, some of the events are probably based on some sort of reality" Marya Glyn-Daniel

Click here to read Professor Di Yerbury's speech from the launch of Hong Kong Lover in Sydney on 16 Nov 2007

FLOATING IN FOYERS: Coralie Wood Lashes Out

"Get Coralie!"

Showbiz entrepreneurs know who to call when they want a big show promoted right.

She chauffeurs ‘Sir Les’ Patterson to present his credentials at Government House, and dines with Marcel Marceau. She’s played Mata Hari among the eucalypts during The Cold War and toured with Peter Ustinov, David Kossoff, the Pirates of Penzance and the Great Moscow Circus.

Here’s how Coralie Wood vacated the kitchen, invented her own corporate ladder to climb up and fall down, became fabulously wealthy and broke, and single, and had a lot of fun with the stars along the way.

Click here to see the Star index

Quotes...

"Coralie dahling! Your lashes are bigger than mine!"
Jeanne Little

"There is nobody like her in any other city. If there were, there wouldn’t be so many shows closing this month. So, long may you reign, Coralie."
Toni Lamond AM

"Darl, look at it this way Darl, she’s given all of us a hell of a lot of fun, laughs and good times. And yet, at the same time, she’s provided plenty of others with a focus and meaning to their whole lives by trying to sue the poor darling for all she’s worth Darl."
Charles Oliver, Coralie’s dear friend, travelling companion and hairdresser to the stars.

"Coralie opened up doors we’d never have known about."
Norma Allen, friend

Marya with Coralie Wood

"It’s nice to work with Coralie. There is always something funny, and good things happen."
Nick Van Zomeren, friend and caterer for most of her shows.

"This is a woman who had a good education, who became a hausfrau and did all those sorts of things that happen to so many women in Australia and then suddenly, at a moment, she bloomed. And other women do it too, not in the same way she has, but discover mid-life that they can do things they never thought of."
Brendan Kelson, friend, author  Kelly Country: Photographic Journey UQP 2002.

"I couldn’t believe what I saw. I was just a young kid and I’d never met anyone like Coralie before.

She had an office in some basement in the city so you went down these rickety stairs and sort of sidled past boxes and piles of newspapers into a room full of feathers. I mean it! There were feathers floating about everywhere, and you can’t begin to imagine the mess with papers and stuff everywhere.

She was sitting in there somewhere on the phone, huge hair, I think it was black then, and two black eyes – I thought maybe her husband gave them to her. She waves me in with these great long fingernails and points at something that’s probably meant to be a chair for me to sit on but isn’t, talking all the time, stitching up deals. I was really impressed."
Bill Brassell, Coralie’s young assistant for four years in the Seventies

"Coralie outlasts them all. This book encapsulates everything good about our business. It reads as a piece of Australia’s theatrical history."
Michael Edgley, MBE, Cit. W.A.

Reviews:
"a world where visiting professional companies and singers bump against locally produced amateur shows......Glyn-Daniel's style throughout is...'gossip-columnese' peppered with conversations between the biographer and subject en route to a press call.. with a visiting circus and a Russian singer.

This is the lieutenant's view from the front line, not the commanding vista... The best tales are not familiar ones about superstars who insist on champagne they never drink; rather it is the fable involving a Pizza Hut in Phillip, ASIO and a funeral parlour across the road from the Russian embassy that linger in the mind."
Peter J. Casey, The Canberra Times, 2006.

"My life with the luvvies, minder tells of treats and tantrums, a minder to the stars has lifted the lid on the bizarre demands made by American acts such as Shirley MacLaine, Whoopi Goldberg and Dr Hook."
Paul Weston, Sunday Mail, 2006.

Cover photography: Graham Tidy
Cover Design: David Whitbread
Cover photo: The Capitol Theatre Sydney

Published by  Ginninderra Press  www.ginninderrapress.com.au ISBN 1 74027  365 6 9 781740 273657

Available from: The University Co-operative Bookshop
www.coop-bookshop.com.au

THE MACAU GRAND PRIX AND MY PART IN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA

As official cinematographers of local events for Portuguese television, Lucy (the author’s alter ego) and her boss Geoffrey Powell were right at the centre of action when one of the Twentieth century’s most tumultuous events spilled over into their own backyard, giving this intimate and affectionate, wryly humorous memoir a harder, journalistic, and totally gripping finale.

The Cultural Revolution in China spread into Macau with frightening and far-reaching results, culminating in the arrogant Governor of Macau apologising publicly to the Chinese people and effectively, in all but name, handing the stewardship of the tiny enclave to the men from Canton, thirty-two years before its official handover in December, 1999.

Even more significant was the implied threat to the economically powerful Hong Kong, an important facility in the United States’ war with Vietnam.

ISBN 1 74027 001 0

Published in 1999 by Ginninderra Press www.ginninderrapress.com.au
Reprinted 2007

Available at the University Co-operative Bookshop www.coop-bookshop.com.au

Reviews:

 "You get a tremendous sense of the place – the cobbled streets, the pedicabs and their drivers, the blend of Portuguese and Chinese, the closeness and vulnerability of the tiny enclave……it is only decidedly personal books like this which can make you understand that history happens to individuals." 
Anthony Mason, Monitor. September 1999  

Anthony added: "It reminded me of my own travels overseas as a young idiot. I went to Russia and different things happened to me, but I had that same sense as Marya of thinking you know everything when really, you know nothing."

This was a time of deep unease about foreigners.  Glyn-Daniel is a keen observer and we read of the turmoil in Macau in 1967 as the Chinese Cultural Revolution’s vibrations begin to be felt……a book about China but also a book about the 60’s with it’s ideas, attitudes and beliefs well represented.
Christopher Bantick, The Canberra Times  November 1999.

Plays

THE BALL’S UP - One-Act play, running time 40-50 minutes.

Alex has taken advantage of her boss J.T’s absence to set up some point scoring of her own with the owner and manager of the publishing company, Cyril.

J.T. returns to find that, while he was in Bali, Alex has taken over the production of a book on Aussie Rules Football by well-known sporting commentator, Crackers Groves, including arrangements for its launch, which will be a football match between two teams – one, famous retired AFL stars and the other, celebrity sports commentators.

J.T. is initially appalled at the entire concept….but true to form, he takes credit when things go well, and distances himself when they go badly, putting the blame on Alex.

And the first sign that Alex has that things are going pear-shaped is when the retired Stars ring up one after the other and say they’ve torn their hamstring while waddling the dog round the block in an attempt to get fit again.

Then Crackers receives a dozen bottles of whisky which the players ho into at the pre-match breakfast...

Review:

….slightly zany one-acter…highly reminiscent of Alan Ayckbourn’s style, is a neat script which caricaturers the management of book publishing.
Frank McKone, Canberra Times February 2001.

Published by Ginninderra Press www.ginninderrapress.com.au

ISBN tba

Available from: The University Co-operative Bookshop www.coop-bookshop.com.au

Performing rights: email marya@glyndaniel.com.au

GULF COUNTRY - A play in One Act - running time 40-45 minutes

It’s hot, dry and dusty in Normanton, the pride of The Gulf Country in North Queensland.

Two eighteen-year-old girls, Anne and Tess, are on their way to a casual job over Easter at Karumba Hunting Lodge, on the Gulf of Carpentaria.

After a night of movies and dancing with the locals in nearby Normanton, they head off to the Gulf and a confrontation with their own prejudices against their workmates at the lodge, the local Aborigines.

Gulf Country is based on an incident that occurred when I was on a working holiday in North Queensland, Australia.

Published by Ginninderra Press www.ginninderrapress.com.au

ISBN 1 74027 029 0

Available from: The University Co-operative Bookshop www.coop-bookshop.com.au

Performing rights: email marya@glyndaniel.com.au

Reviews:

…confronts an issue that has moved into the political realm of Australia as a divisive force – racism.   Handled with grace and warmth…. There are no villains, only humans who react to issues differently because of their backgrounds. An excellent piece of theatre.
Emily Robertson, The Canberra Times February 2000.

Marya’s first play is clever and thoughtful…….neither preachy nor heavy, leavened by humour broad and subtle. All ends well, but not until ambiguities in race relations are skilfully examined….
Bill Mandle, Monitor March 2000.