About

Hello! I’m Karen Andrews. You’re after some information? I am happy to help.

This site is primarily about two subjects: family life and my love of reading and writing.

Morsels of dazzling biographical insight:

I was born and raised in the small town of Kempsey, New South Wales. Now, I live in Melbourne. City life is great, but I miss the country as well.

I was raised a strict Catholic. Now I suppose I’m what they call ‘lapsed’ but let’s not get into semantics, okay? I think I still shock members of my family by what I’m willing to talk about here. I’m pretty open.

I enjoyed university so much I had a Master of Arts (Literature) by the time I was twenty-one years old. In sum: I am a book nerd.

A few crappy things have happened to me to round me out a little as an individual. I used to have an eating disorder. I have a mild form of anxiety (GAD) and there’s been a few illnesses along the way that are too boring to mention but are in their own way still relevant.

I spend far too much time on the computer and have done so ever since since the 1980s.

I am a writer. I try not to be too pretentious about my writing and I’m certainly not here on Miscellaneous Mum. If I had a dollar for every time some snark has written to say, “You call yourself a writer? Don’t you know how to write a complete sentence? YOU’VE PUT THE APOSTROPHE IN THE WRONG PLACE!” it would be a nice addition to the coffee fund. I am very serious when it comes to my offline work, but this has always been my playground. Fine? Good.

Speaking of my offline work, you can read more about it here.

Hate mail and spam are deleted immediately. Just saying.

If you’re interested in seeing what I plan on doing with my blog profits, read this.

I proudly support the following…

For old-fashioned snail mail – which I adore – I can be reached at:

PO BOX 679
ELTHAM VIC 3095
AUSTRALIA

Disclosure Alert!

This is a personal blog written by myself and reflects my own honest personal opinions. I am contacted daily by businesses and organisations that wish to be featured here in some sort of capacity, and I say no to most of these. However, as my contact page plainly states, I accept private advertising and charge administration fees for giveaways. I also accept the occasional sponsored post if I feel that the compensation offered in return (either monetary or goods/services) is acceptable and the post itself falls within the realms of what I deem to be relevant not only for myself, but my audience too.

So what does this all mean? First, in the interests of transparency, I’m happy to be open about this here. Second, because I realise not everyone will actually read this section, so I’m clear, each post that has been initiated by a third-party will disclose that arrangement, in whichever form it takes.

Now and then free stuff gets sent to me. It’s nice. It’s a perk of being a blogger, I must say. I do not ask for these, and thus do not in any way feel obliged to talk about them if I don’t want to. However, if I like a product I’ll say so.

I enjoy working with brands, either for short-term campaigns or long-term relationships. I have brokered my own blogging partnerships in the past, and will do so in the future. These too are disclosed right from the get-go.

And last, all opinions expressed on this blog are my own, and do not represent the views of any organisation that I work for.

Wait! Can you explain what ‘Objective Correlative’ means?

From the dictionary:

[It is] something (as a situation or chain of events) that symbolizes or objectifies a particular emotion and that may be used in creative writing to evoke a desired emotional response in the reader.

The phrase has been around for a long time but is known primarily from the famous essay by T.S Eliot on Hamlet. At its essence, I suppose it is the ability to make meaning found by observations of life and making sense of these within your own personal context. This is what this blog seeks to do.