After a whirlwind few days down in Melbourne at the HNSA conference, it was such a pleasure then to visit the beautiful old St Patricks Seminary / Hogwarts Castle in Manly yesterday to celebrate books and reading with over 200 excited students and their heroic teacher/librarians. Pictured: organiser Belinda Murrell and her sister Kate Forsyth along with…
Our HNSA conference weekend in Melbourne was absolutely fabulous! A lot of hard work went into its organisation, but it was a wonderful weekend with so many author friends to catch up with, and so many new people to meet, both writers and readers but all of them lovers of historical fiction! The conference kicked…
If you love reading and/or writing historical fiction, there’s still time to book your ticket for the upcoming Historical Novels Society of Australasia conference at Swinburne University in Melbourne next weekend, from Friday night to Sunday 8-10th September. You’ll find out all you ever wanted to know about researching and writing great historical fiction from such luminaries…
This week I’ve had fun talking to a couple more schools, entertaining Ermington Primary School students with stories based on my novels under the title ‘Dragons, Penguins, Magic and Mischief’. The students were great, so eager to ask and answer questions and showing great imagination and creativity, especially when I produced my bag of magical…
Book Week is always a busy time for authors and illustrators of children’s fiction but it’s an exciting time too, as it’s an opportunity to visit schools to talk to students about our books and how we go about researching and writing them – or illustrating them. I’m looking forward to my visit to Kambala tomorrow…
And so they were at a wonderful writers festival at Tradies in Gymea, South Sydney, organised by Julianne Miles-Brown and her keen volunteers. Presenters included Deb Abela and Gabrielle Lord who both gave a fascinating talk on researching and writing their novels, while the ‘mystery pumpkin’ challenge seemed to go down particularly well at my own…
These last few months have been difficult while I’ve been recovering from a full knee replacement (aftermath of a skiing accident long ago) which meant several weeks in hospital and rehab, plus intensive rehab since – but at last I’m feeling ‘normal’. And I have so many good things to look forward to, starting with Writers…
There’s a treat in store in September for all lovers of historical fiction with the upcoming Historical Novels Society of Australasia in Melbourne in September. For further details of the conference, plus booking, please go to http://hnsa.org.au. And for Sydney-siders there’s a special satellite event at Gordon Library on Wednesday, 26th July from 6 – 8 pm to give…
While in hospital I also heard from Ali Albazaz who has put together a list of 100 writing competitions from around the world in a variety of genres which provide a great opportunity for authors, especially aspiring authors, to test their work against international writers and, perhaps, take out a substantial prize at the same…
Apologies for the long silence from me: I’ve been in hospital having a knee replacement (ouch!) followed by two weeks at rehab and am now on an ongoing rehab programme to get my knee bending and stretching again. A work in progress, and a painful one, but things improve day by day so I’m trying…
