And the winner is ...

Tarantara!! The competition has closed and I have selected a winner. Clare Scott will receive a signed copy of My Elephant is Blue. It would be very cool to have the book in Te Reo! You weren't the only one to suggest this but you got in first with this most excellent idea. 

The book is launched, and has bravely gone forth into the world. It's a scary time for an author - I've talked about the book, reviewers have talked about the book (you can see some at Poetry Box here, at My Best Friends Are Books here and at What Book Next here) and now it's over to the readers and the book buyers. While our little book meet the moment and be embraced? 

Soon I'll be talking a bit more about my next book, Batkiwi (Scholastic NZ), illustrated by Izzy Joy Te Aho-White. This book is out July 1st and is a bit of a love letter to our native fauna and flora. I've always wanted to write a kiwi story and I'm thrilled Scholastic are publishing this. The illustrations are lush and beautiful and cute as anything. 

Being a writer is quite the roller coaster ride both in terms of the ups and downs of the faith you have in your own writing and the feast and famine of being published. I've had more than twenty years of this wild ride and I have not yet found any means of flattening the journey out. Right now I am in the unusual position of having three books out this year and it is quite the whirlwind with a touch of overwhelm. When you send things out you never know how it's going to go. One book was delayed from 2020 to this year, and I just wasn't expecting things to be so swift with the other two so here we are. And I'm so proud of all of them. I love writing picture books - there is so much poetry and refining and crafting involved - a balancing act to find the right ratios of word play, meaning and story, knowing all the while that ultimately illustrations will share the job of telling. I feel sad when picture books are dismissed or trivialised - I put so much into them and I know the illustrators do too. It is all too easy to forget that picture books contribute mightily to kick starting the career of a reader. That's where my love of reading began ...

I've had a bunch of questions running round my head recently ... and I am thinking about these as the basis of some future blog discussions. If you want to hear more about any of these let me know.

1) Is it problematic for children's writers to have adult opinions on social media? Is there a line that shouldn't be crossed?  

2) Are twitter book pitching opportunities evolving in to a less functional creature? (sub question - is writer twitter good or bad for us?) 

3) Do we influence boys' reading choices right from the get-go in unconscious ways? (Are we part of the problem?)

And if you have any questions you want me to add to the list please comment below.

 

'Time Machine and Other Stories'

Publishing has a slightly strange trajectory. No smooth parabolic arc here, no sirree. It is more like some terrifying mountain range that only the most foolhardy attempt. You write your stunning work(s) of genius (small, slightly bumpy but upward rise), and once polished and primped, send it off to publisher(s). At this point your arc might continue up (small, almost imperceptible gradient), or it may crash and burn. A publisher says yes and your internal arc soars, but really, outwardly, it just hiccups along with mostly slow, gradual, but occasional step-like upward movements. Contract sent? Take a step up. If it's a picture book, illustrator confirmed, it's a step up. Then you almost forget you have a book coming out (but not really because all the key dates are burned into our brains), and the arc is more plateau at this point. "My book?" you reply to polite enquiries, "Oh, yes. The book. It's something, something, some time distant," and you wave at the air in front of you, as if the publication date is somewhere out there visible if they look hard enough. Then suddenly edits are sent (giant leap for mankind!), a cover is decided upon, release dates and launches become a thing and finally this project looks like a book and you can see the midnight ink beyond the stratosphere approaching rapidly. And the stars are shining. And your heart skips a beat because the book is more than you imagined it could be.

Well here we are folks. And I am so proud and excited. Time Machine and Other Stories by yours truly is coming out August 11th. There are thirteen previously published short stories that have been gathered together here in one handy-dandy tome. There are an additional six new stories, one of which is a novella that I heart so much that it partly drove the determination to make this collection happen. I thought these stories were pretty good before but editor Mary McCallum from The Cuba Press has really made them sing and shine. I cannot wait to share them with you.

Published by Ahoy (an imprint of The Cuba Press), with cover and internal artwork by the very talented Theo Macdonald. Out August 11th. Launch details coming soon to a blog near you.