So…catching up

A very dear friend wandered through my website and suggested I get busy and up-date it. Dear friends can do that – they see the bits of you that have fallen behind and, while you mightn’t want to hear about it, they are the only ones who have the courage to tell you.
So here I go … the website, dear things, has to wait for my webmaster to come up from the dungeon and shine a light on some of the things that I need to do.
Like:
* letting you know that I have written more books since this website went up. My most recent ones are the fabulous Princess Peony and her Adventures, One and Two in which she encounters trouble with bears and frogs and princes. My newest book, which won’t be released till next year because we’re just starting on the actual illustrations and edits and getting the pages all set up and right and ready for you to read, is going to be about D’Lila LaRue … wow, wait till you meet her. She is a real hot TOMATO!
* Next – letting you know that I am busily involved in judging work which is … gotta say … a lot of work. Reading books and reviewing them and placing them in or out of a competition is a huge responsibility and, I have to say, calls for a lot of knowledge I didn’t know I had. And, have to say this too, if there’s stuff that I didn’t know then I have to get busy and go and find out about it. Sometimes it is the layers in a book and working out how to see if they are there or not. Some books are a super-fun read and that’s great – that’s what its all about really. But some books are not only a super fun read, they have hidden meanings in them in one layer and more hidden insights in another. And, of course, the trick is that the reader doesn’t really see those little hidden bits – they don’t know about them until a light-bulb moment when they smile or say ‘ah’ because, gee, now they get it – or they get something they didn’t know before.
Next – letting you know that I have been undertaking illustration courses as I’m intending to illustrate my own picture book. At the moment there are two of them that I’m struggling with – one about a pink pig and another about a lonely boy. I love them both and they are both so different, and so tricky, that I sometimes simply throw my hands in the air and go back to just writing. I have a ghost story about an island in the middle of a river where strange, dreadful things happen and its not the ghost that gets blamed.

Finally I have managed to collect short lists and awards that have not been entered on the website. There’s the White Raven (for My Silent World, and The Smallest Bilby) and short list for Speech Therapists with Princess Peony First Adventures (Princess Peony has been pulled out of the CBCA because I am judging this year and, you know, it wouldn’t really be fair) – I am very grateful to Lucinda Gifford, Princess P’s illustrator, for agreeing to let her slip by for a year. Long listed with The Prime Ministers’ for The Innocents which is a bit of a hit, I must say … and that’s about all of them. Hope more roll in … I do like a good award now and then.

So, dear things, when I am not writing or drawing or judging or writing reviews or preparing for a wonderful work-shop that is going to be held in Brisbane in March … it’ll be a good one and I’ll write more about it soon – I am going to be working on my web-site … adding a few more facts and maybe, just maybe, an updated photo or two …