Do not adjust your set

There will now be a short intermission while I spend a week lying on a beach in Port Douglas.
Talk amongst yourselves for a while.

G.L.O.R.I.A.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
~ Gloria Steinem

Picture this

I'm sitting here with the dining table covered in luscious colour illustrations for my new picture book.
I didn't do the illustrations, I hasten to add - they are by Jobi Murphy, perhaps most famous for bringing Deborah Abela's Max Remy to life.
Max the superspy and my character, a crusty old stockman called Billabong Bill, couldn't be more different, but the drawings are sensational.
You'll have to wait until November to see for yourselves.

Distant shores

Just got home from a trip back to Auckland for some schools and bookshop visits and the Storylines family day. Storylines is a riot of thousands of small excited people, some dressed as pirates and mermaids (there was even one rather sleepy unicorn), mixing it with their favourite authors and illustrators and story characters in one extremely frantic day.
While my more intelligent colleagues relaxed in the authors' room between gigs, I was on pirate queen duty with a whole team of volunteers helping said unicorns and pirates and over-excited passers-by make pirate ships, parrots, eye patches, flags and even ships' rats from cardboard and string and textas and imagination.
I had fun. Don't know about the kids.
You don't get a chance to make your own rat at the Sydney Writers' Festival.