Just back from two wonderful weeks on remote islands in Fiji, with lots of great snorkeling. Saw quite a few sharks, white and black-tipped reef sharks plus a grey reef shark that circled and circled around us and made me VERY nervous! According to our snorkeling guide, George, grey sharks are ‘curious’, he said they like to have a look but then they’ll go away. And it did. Thank goodness! The reefs at Fiji have suffered some after the recent cyclone and also the coral bleaching that happened some years ago, but there are still beautiful reefs to see, and the underwater world is truly amazing.
I’ve come back to all your blog messages and emails and, as always, my thanks for your thoughts. At this stage, ‘truth’ seems more popular than ‘trust’ so this is something I’m really going to have to think about. Things are bubbling along on the Janna front; it all takes time but there is progress. I can’t say too much more at present.
Now that I’m back I’m getting ready for my May Gibbs fellowship residency in Adelaide in June. But the first thing I did on getting home was talk at a Richard III conference on Saturday. For those of you unfamiliar with English history, Richard is supposed to have killed two young princes in the Tower of London so that he could become king. The Richard III society firmly believe he was framed and subsequently discredited by the Tudor kings, aided and abetted by Shakespeare, and there’s a major controversy raging about it. I was lucky enough to visit the Richard III museum while I was in England last year, and read the case for and against Richard who, in the museum, is put on trial for his so-called crimes. No doubt in my mind who really dunnit! Richard was the last of the Plantagenet line, founded by the Empress Matilda and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou – and I know you’ll know about them!! My talk centred around ‘an author’s journey’, basically about my research while writing The Janna Mysteries. And I’ll be doing a variation of that talk when I speak to students at Flinders University in Adelaide early in June.
I’m looking forward to my month in Adelaide. Time to dream about and plan a new book (with the working title Hearts in Chains) and time to start writing it. I’ll also be talking to students at Seymour College while I’m there, and conducting a crime-writing workshop at the Writers Centre. So if you live in Adelaide please drop in and say hi; I’m staying in the May Gibbs Writers Studio while I’m there.
Thanks heaps for your support for the Janna series everyone; it’s much appreciated.

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