Here, there and everywhere: an author update.

​It’s winter. My daffodils are beginning to shoot. I’ve pulled out my favourite scarves and popping a soup in the slow cookers seems a perfect thing to do. It also seems a good time to do an authorly update, especially as this year has brought some new opportunities for me.

University lecturing
One of those new opportunities has teaching the Writing for Children unit of Tabor University’s Master of Creative Writing and Communication program. It was inspiring sing the students grow in their understanding and appreciation of children’s literature, and we had some robust discussions about the issues and challenges of writing for young people. Another highlight of working with Tabor was being part of their inaugural Parents and Kids Write Together event, where myself, Rosanne Hawke, James Cooper and Pete Court led a group of enthusiastic writers through a day of character building, plot development and editorial input. It was a lot of fun. ​

More author visits
Another author event I did recently was an author visit at Thomas Hassall Anglican College. This year, the school decided to invite all their visiting authors on the same day which was a lot of fun. I worked  with the Year 2 students and we had a great time coming up with characters (and magical pets) for Pet Sitters style story writing! In the next few months I’m looking forward to visiting an even younger age group with a couple of playgroup visits planned. 

Equipping children’s writers
Coming up this week, I’ll be at the Greenhouse Training Ground launch event.  This is a new initiative of Anglican Deaconess Ministries where professional development and training is offered by many different experts. I’ve been invited to teach some informal classes on Writing for children from a Christian worldview and will also be offering some one on one mentoring for new children’s writers. For more information visit this link.

Working against distraction
It was exciting to be a featured guest on the Your Best Writing Life podcast recently. The amazing Linda Goldfarb and I discussed the 8 strategies for distracted writers. You can listen to the episode by following this link, and the accompanying downloadable Surviving Distraction - a writer's toolkit can be found here. 

​New books at the Librarian’s conference
Fellow Ella Shine author, Cecily Paterson, and I took our newest Pet Sitters book to the Australian Christian Schools Librarian’s Conference last month. It was great to show off Billy Goat Boogie and to connect with the attending librarians, especially as we’ve had to be a little creative this year on terms of our distribution. If you are a school or library, you can now order copies of the Pet Sitters books direct from Puddle Dog Press at wholesale rates.