Recommended reading

August is always a busy month, filled with everything but writing. I have a couple of annual teaching commitments and no less than three festivals and two award ceremonies, all absorbing a day's travel to and from as well as the events themselves. In the lead-up to the days away I often find myself resenting the intrusion - until I'm standing in front of a group of students. Then I remember how much I love teaching. This year's Wairarapa Schools' contingent was very impressive, and their finished stories are starting to trickle into my inbox.

Speaking of which, stories aren't the only thing to be arriving. Yesterday I received this recommendation from Amazon... !

Donnel's Promise

My new title, sequel to Cattra's Legacy, hits the shelves this week. This book seems to have come into being very fast - partly because I wrote it at speed, partly because in the interim I've been frantically busy - and on the other side of the world - causing time to concertina. It feels as if I've barely finished it, and yet here it is, a hard copy in my hands.
Looking forward to reading reviews and hearing from readers. And to the launch, which is delayed because of my stint overseas, but will doubtless be a heap of fun nonetheless...

London Calling

Grubby old London is neither so grubby nor so ill-tempered as I remember. The crowds are worse - but a few blocks back from the Monopoly board streets you can find leafy little parks and quirkily meandering streets. Step off the footsore tourist trail and there are treasures lying in wait: Sir John Soane's extremely quirky Museum, the rooftop garden and woodland of Queen Elizabeth Hall, Ladywell's water meadows. It's often the small and unexpected that delights: scattered sunlight on Victorian facades, the soaring voice of a soprano practicing scales in a church, a late night meeting with a suburban fox.
The Queen was out and about yesterday. I didn't see her; I was busy admiring sycamore trees and a photo of Wilfred Owen.
The AusNZ Festival and subsequent days of meetings have been fun, fast and curious. This weekend I have something altogether trickier in mind: Winston Churchill and Will Shakespeare are on my meeting agenda - wish me luck; I've heard they're elusive. But here somewhere.

Festival tripping

A hectic few months of completing a novel, editing a magazine, catching up with my family, and I'm off again, heading to London for the Australia & NZ Festival of Literature & the Arts.
It has been more than a smidge stressful getting to this stage - the schedule for signing off on Donnel's Promise was punishing (18-21 hour days in edits and proofing: maybe this will be one long-haul where I really will sleep on the flight) and the delays over ticketing for the festival added to the stress. But on track now for a fun and work filled month in the UK. If you're in London at the end of the month, come along and say 'hi'.

Juggling

A month of dedicated writing time disappears more quickly than you can imagine. But not without trace: 50,000 words, thousands of photographs, a host of new friends and memories and ideas and focus. Retaining the last as I squeeze back into life on the opposite side of the world, especially at the frenzied festive season, proves a challenge.
But here I am in the first week of 2014, once again writing, juggling work and family and editing and any number of commitments, wishing it was less hot and that I had fewer interruptions, and that Paris and Ieper and Scotland were only a train ride away. And an email arrives from Vollezele; one of the writers who shared the Villa reminding me of that time and space, and I am once again standing in the narrow kitchen, looking out at lawn and woodland and thinking about artillery fire while I wait for the coffee to brew and the world a hundred years distant to shape itself in my mind.