I hate doing ‘update’ blogs and yet sometimes they are a necessary part of every blogger’s blog feed. I will attempt to demundane the experience by using headings. Let’s see how I go at the whole demundaneification. (Ooh, I should go patent that word).
THE BLOGGING
It’s a while since I’ve been on this blog. Sometimes writers must take time off writing so they can concentrate on their writing. Y’know? As well as working on Book Number Two I was also blogging over at the Inside A Dog website last month. Among other things I did during my month-long blogging residency over there, were interviews with all the authors who have been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers award. Here are all of the blog posts I did:
The Blog Post with the Boring Introductions
The Blog Post with the Cereal Boxes as Book Covers
The Blog Post about how CBCA Shortlisted Authors are the Rock Stars of YA
The Blog Post with Penny Tangey, author of Loving Richard Feynman
The Blog Post about Bad Book Ideas
The Blog Post interviewing Justine Larbalestier, author of Liar
The Blog Post about the Girl With The Dragon Book Tattoos
The Vlog Post where Lucy Christopher talks about her books Stolen & Flyaway
The Blog Post with My Guide to the ‘Other’ Graphic Novels By Well-Known Graphic Novelists
The Blog Post interviewing Glenda Millard, author of A Small Free Kiss In The Dark
The Blog Post about That One Book You Did at School and Actually Loved
The Blog Post ‘doing coffee’ with David Metzenthen, author of Jarvis 24
The Blog Post interviewing Judith Clarke, author of The Winds of Heaven
The Blog Post about Middle Grade Fiction and its Place in the World (Which Seems Obvious, But Isn’t)
THE BOOK LAUNCH
In other news I attended the launch of fellow writer Kim Kane’s picture book Family Forest last week. Family Forest is a real charmer – a picture book about a modern family that is more like a family forest than a family tree.
You might have heard of Kim before because she wrote the excellent YA novel Pip: The Story of Olive a couple of years ago. Family Forest is her first and only picture book, although that won’t be the case for long as her second – The Vegetable Ark: A Tale of Two Brothers – comes out in August. She’s a picture book machine right now.
That’s Kim and the illustrator of Family Forest Lucia Masciullo above at the book launch at Readings Port Melbourne. Lucia was raised in Tuscany, now lives in Brisbane and is also the illustrator of (name drop alert) Sonya Hartnett’s new picture book The Boy and the Toy.
THE COOL STUFF HAPPENING SOON
And I’m appearing at the Dog’s Bar in St Kilda, Melbourne next Thursday night as part of the Dog’s Bar’s ongoing Storytelling nights, which have been getting a bit of press lately. I’ll be ‘spinning yarns’ as the warm-up act for another great YA author – Kathy Charles – from 8pm. Kathy’s cool book Hollywood Ending was published here last year (which has since been shortlisted for two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards) and is being published in the US in August as John Belushi is Dead.
Oh and the Emerging Writers’ Festival is on later in May in Melbourne too. The full program can be seen here and as part of one the festival’s From Here to There sessions I’ll be chatting to Melbourne artist Stephanie Brotchie about a project she ran last year called A Novelty, which was a literary treasure hunt/interactive novel that took place in and around Melbourne.
And that’s all I have. Hope I managed to demundanelize the common ‘update’ blog post. And now I’m off to patent every demundane suffix I can think of.