I got lost on the way to my happy place...

It has been a week of menial tasks and attending to the needs of others. A week of to'ing and fro'ing, ferrying, and sitting in parked cars. On Friday I sat in a hot, airless car in a featureless carpark in an industrial area for two hours, waiting. Sometimes it is what you have to do. I read a lot but conditions were not conducive to writing. It is hard to create when you feel like your brain is melting and your hungry stomach is about to turn on you and eat you from the inside out. Navman could not give me directions to my happy place. But then last night I understood how to bring the hero in one of my three projects back from an impossible place. Man did that feel good. I hope I get the chance soon to put that thought into words in my manuscript. Solutions come when you least expect them. The important thing is to know that the solutions will arrive. I keep the faith. It is my job as a writer. And sometimes it is the time away from the computer and the writing that yields the best results.

I am a fan of epiphanies. Sometimes they arrive close together and it leaves you wondering if they are not as important and starry as you think they are. Or perhaps they are and it is just part and parcel of the creative life to have as many as I do. Yesterday I had two. One when I realised how to rescue my hero, the other when I read this. Nicola Morgan knows how to explain things. It is clever and enlightening stuff. Go read it, it will improve your writing.

My next picture book Made with Love will be out next April (yay!!).

And over at Tall Tales and Short Stories you can read a review of my young teen novel The Half Life of Ryan Davis.

On the surface the story seems fairly straightforward, but boy is there a twist that I didn't see coming.  With any good thriller you try to work it out and, yes, with hindsight the clues are there, but the denouement took me by surprise and I loved the dark, rather disturbing twist and psychological sting in this tale.


This book is currently available as an e-book from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and I-tunes and should be available for the Sony e-reader soon. The print version is currently available from fishpond.co.nz and should be in bookshops and on amazon soon. If you want a copy and are having trouble getting it let me know.