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By now, the last of those cleverly crafted Book Week costumes are washed and tucked away. Authors and illustrators all over Australia are reaching for mugs of hot lemon and honey tea to soothe raw throats, and children are undoubtedly curling up with pen and paper or else reading a brand new story, inspired by […]

Australian publishers Ford Street Publishing are running an international competition to mark the publication of the first three books in the new fantasy Warlock’s Child series (The Burning Sea, Dragonfall Mountain and The Iron Claw) written by Paul Collins and Continue reading ... →

  A couple of days ago I blogged about The Warlock’s Child, a great new kids’ fantasy series from authors Paul Collins and Sean McMullen (read post). Now I’m giving you the chance to win a copy of one of the books. Interested? Read on… The Iron Claw is book 3 in The Warlock’s Child […]

The Warlock’s Child is a new series of six children’s fantasy books co-authored by Paul Collins and Sean McMullen. Each of these authors has a sterling reputation in children’s and genre literature. But the two of them together… well… was there any doubt that these books would be anything short of brilliant? I went along to […]

I've just read this year's Hugo and John Campbell Awards, which are up on the Locus web site. Go take a look.For once I've actually read a little of what's on the list. I loved the Connie Willis books and am slowly savouring Cryoburn. Connie Willis's time travel stories are always wonderful. The first I read was The Doomsday Book, then To Say Nothing Of The Dog, then some of the short fiction. These two were really one very long novel broken up, in which the time-travelling heroes are in wartime Britain. Lovely stuff! I'm going slow with the Lois McMaster Bujold book because it has been so very long since there was a Miles Vorkosigan novel. And nice to see a couple of Aussies there too. Shaun Tan for Best Professional Artist - yay! I've been a big fan of his work for years now. Well, why wouldn't I be? I'm a teacher-librarian, after all. I was lucky enough to have a long chat with him at last year's Aussiecon.Sean McMullen and I used to be in a Melbourne SF writers' group together; he was the one, by the way, who persuaded me to join the SCA and learn what you could and couldn't do with a sword and shield! Good on him for getting on the Hugo short list. I couldn't be more proud of him.

The thing about book signings is that you never know how many books will be sold, if any. You can only hope. And if you're with other writers and nobody buys your book, but buys the others, how depresssing is that! But you have to give it a go.

Last night, I went to the opening night of Continuum 6 on the request of my publisher, Paul Collins. The new Ford Street novel, Solace And Grief (soon to be reviewed here!) was being launched and Paul had hoped that some of his other writers might also be able to sign some books. And Paul has been very good to me over the years, so I went, though normally Friday nights are family-only for me.

The con organisers kindly agreed to let us do this. For once I wasn't going to the con; I just don't have the energy right now, though I am going to Aussiecon 4 later this year. Not after Dad's passing.

After the Chronos Awards had been handed out, Paul got up to speak briefly before heading out into the foyer to set up the book stall. Sean McMullen, who had to go elsewhere afterwards, spoke briefly about his Ford Street novel, Before The Storm, a thoroughly entertaining novel centred around time travel and a fanciful attempt to blow up the first Australian Parliament in 1901. I went up after him to talk about my own Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. It wasn't like my launch last year, when I had a fair amount of time to talk (they sold just about all the books on the stall that time), and in all fairness, it was the evening of someone else's launch, so I did my best with a minute or two, and did manage to get some chuckles when talking about the idiocy of crooks, especially those in my book.

Then Foz Meadows, the author of the book being launched, got up to speak. Lucy Sussex was supposed to launch her book, but was a little late - due, it turns out, to public transport delays. The author spoke about her attempts to sell, her writing at work because the boss qwas less likely to catch her than if she was on the Internet and read the opening chapter. Finally, Lucy got there and did a good launch.

After that, we went out into the foyer. George Ivanoff, Foz Meadows and I sat down to sign. Sean hung around for a little while, but had family commitments. He did sign some books, but not sitting down.

I told him about my good news, because I have known Sean since before he became a bestselling writer - actually, since before he sold anything at all! - and he was very pleased for me. It was because Sean persuaded me to join the SCA that I learned to write fight scenes convincingly.

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