Chocks away...

I had such a fun visit to Viscount School in Mangere yesterday and I was greatly impressed by the students. They treated me well, were really engaged and asked great questions. Cool kids, cool school - thank you so much for making me feel so welcome.

The day before I had posted my essay off for my university paper. With assignments I often circle round and round the question for a while trying ideas out and experimenting until things start to fall into place, to gel, to coalesce and turn into a whole that hopefully makes sense and addresses the issue at hand. I circled for a long time on this one till I seemed to be running low on fuel and thought I might have to ditch in a nearby paddock. I managed to land that thing but it wasn't elegant. Oh well... it's done now. On to the next (and last) one due Halloween. I contacted the tutor today and checked if my proposed essay topic was gonna fly and got the thumbs up. Chocks away.

Things have gone a little crazy on the internet recently with hostilities breaking out between some authors and some reviewers. Nathan Bransford blogged about it on September 3 and the long thread of comments is sobering reading. Emotions have been running pretty high. I want people to say what they really think about my books. I understand that sometimes they won't like my books. Negative reviews do hurt but on the plus side even a negative review is an engagement with the book.  And I always hope that reviewers will accord me the same respect that I accord them. I don't ever want to interfere with the process. I acknowledge them all, good and bad. Then I go back to the keyboard and write some more. I don't know that I've really been tested though. And if things went beyond just a review how would this feel.  Fellow blogger Maureen Crisp posted an interesting link to a post on the Popular Science site which stated they were turning off comments on their articles as research had revealed that reading insulting comments can artificially skew a reader's perceptions about a topic. Yikes. I know reading comments like those on Bransford's blog had an impact on me. And freaked me out a little.  I'm worried about where this is all heading. Be careful out there people.

My latest title While You Are Sleeping is still a few weeks away from release but I have had my first review which you can check out here. Sweet!