A Week Away in Wanaka...

Well, that was way cool. Wanaka in autumn is stunning and the name of their biennial arts festival - The Festival of Colour - is apt. The trees had traded in their summer green for a broader palette of reds, yellows and oranges. The descending sun left haunted shadows stepping down the hills toward the town. It was beautiful. The weather was fine and mild.And I had fantastic company - history professor/author Kate Hunter and author/illustrator Bob Kerr - with whom I shared a house, great conversations, dinner making duties and events. Meeting other writers has to be one of the key highlights of tours like this.

After three days of school visiting, we met up with Wellington playwright Dave Armstrong and local writer/poet Liz Breslin for a Speed Date the Author event (always one of my favourite gigs) on the thursday, talking to school students from Queenstown, Alexandra and Arrowtown, and then True Stories Told Live at the temporary 'Crystal Palace' venue in Wanaka to a mostly adult audience on the Friday. The True Stories event involved all five of us speaking for ten minutes each, unscripted on the topic 'Don't Talk About the War'. Of course we all did. We hadn't shared our talks with each other beforehand but they seemed nicely complementary. I spoke about my Mum's childhood during World War 2. After all I'd told my Dad's story in my book A Winter's Day in 1939. I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to share my Mum's story, although it was hard to avoid the talk being taken over by my great grandmother. I believe she was a little like that in real life. The crowd was sizeable - more than 210 folk. And they'd paid to hear us talk. I think they liked it. After some nerves, especially about the unscripted aspect, I felt pretty comfortable talking. And now? I would jump at the chance to do this type of event again.

 It was a good note to end our Words on Wheels Tour on. What a week!

We interrupt this broadcast....

I would like to interrupt this interlude with a brief return to normal service (well, as normal as you can ever hope to receive from me). I have been having a bit of an interesting time of it lately and thought I would share some of it with you folks.

The residency, I am very happy to say so far, has been providing me with the perfect environment for 'getting on with the story'. It is a reminder of what is needed to do this job - a quiet place, surrounded by beautiful things both natural and made, with no distractions. While my home meets some of those criteria, it is woefully short on some of the others. I am thinking of enforcing office hours when the residency is over. At least between the hours of 1pm and 5pm intruders will be required to talk to the hand (the one not tapping on the computer keyboard that is).

I have been signed up to take part in a very exciting project with MTG Hawke's Bay and last Tuesday I popped down to Napier for the day to check out some of the pieces in the Museum's collection in storage with the Museum's curator. Some of the things were rather cool and incredibly fascinating and have prodded my brain into all sorts of interesting cogitations which I will be writing about soon. And Napier is a beautiful place. If you haven't been there, you should go!

This week I am in Wanaka for the NZ Book Council's Words on Wheels Tour with some terrific people - writer/illustrator Bob Kerr and writer/academic Kate Hunter. Yesterday I visited Wanaka Primary School with Bob. I gave all the children a very tricky, brain-stretchery task to do and was most impressed with their response. Nice work folks!!

This morning I trotted up the road to Mt Aspiring College and chatted with the year 8's and year 10s and found myself in the company of another awesome switched-on group of students. Tomorrow I'll be visiting Hawea Flat School, again riding shotgun with Bob Kerr and then Thursday we are taking part in a speed date the author event. The week culminates in a Festival of Colour True Stories Told Live Event. It's an unscripted event so my script has been told it will have to stay home.

There are all sorts of cool events on every day this week for the Festival of Colour here in Wanaka - plays, shows, puppetry, cabaret, music, and much, much more. I'm feeling pretty honoured to be taking part. It is fantastic to see a variety of these incredible cultural feasts popping up all over the country. Nice work New Zealand!!

Oh! And last, but by no means least, I am super thrilled to say my book with awesome illustrator Dominique Ford The Song of Kauri has become a finalist for the Librarian's Choice Award in the 2015 LIANZA Children's Book Awards.