I feed my kids to a hungry tyrannosaur

ROAR!

Great news! I’m writing the text panels for an exhibition on TYRANNOSAURS with the Australian Museum. I never knew there were so many species of tyrannosaur! T. rex had cousins, and lots of them.

Things I’ve learned so far:

- Dinosaurs like T. rex may not have had vocal chords. Which means they probably went raging through the jungle, roaring whimpering gnashing their teeth.

- Dinosaurs aren’t actually extinct! The hot theory is that avian dinosaurs (A.K.A birds) survived the mass extinction and evolved in to chickens and emus.

- And while we’re on the subject of birds, dinosaurs probably had feathers. Cute, fluffy, fuzzy feathers. Even the blood-crazed meat-eating giants. How adorable!

Seriously, dinosaurs have a lot of secrets for dudes who’ve been dead for hundreds of millions of years.

The exhibition opens late 2013 and it’s going to be AWESOME.
Think up-close-and-personal Walking with Dinosaurs. Think OMG I hope I don’t wet my pants.
It’s going to be scary (and fascinating)(and seriously interactive).

See you there!

Thanks so much for making me feel so welcome, and for all your terrific stories. I had such a lovely day and really enjoyed meeting you all. And I *love* your theatre arts room! Yee ha!

Keep up the great writing and I hope to see one of your theatre productions one day soon!

With loads of thanks to the lovely folks at the Singapore National Arts Council for organising such a terrific program (and for springing a TV camera on us with at the last minute…nothing like a heart attack to encourage spooky writing xx)

xx

Are you cleaning your bathrooms? Are you taking care of your umbrella? Are you reading late at night, all alone under the covers, listening to your house creak and leaves rustle and creatures move…?

Are you writing some spooky stories to scare your friends (and me!)?

Thanks for a great day at your ENORMOUS school…I nearly got lost in the swimming pool!

Happy writing!

xx

Keep up the great writing!

xx

Hi to the kids from Chatsworth East International School! Thanks for a great couple of days!!

One of the best things about being a children’s author is inspiring other children to write down their incredibly cool ideas. Each workshop, I’m always amazed by how many different ideas can come from the same few objects. And so many terrific stories…
Keep writing you guys! Write diaries, write poems, write me emails…and one day, I’ll be reading your books

Thanks to the National Arts Council of Singapore for creating such incredible opportunities for children and writers alike!
xx

Thanks to Vanessa for taking great care of me the entire week (and introducing me to matcha latte bubble tea), to Kiru for making me laugh (and letting me use her jokes), to Sarah for giving me a heart attack with the TV crew (but seriously, I loved it: nice work sister!), and to Paul, Amanda and the rest of the National Arts Council team for organising such a great festival. THANK YOU!!

Hi everyone from Chatsworth East International School! Hope you had a great book week! I sure did

It was great to read all your stories and hear your ideas…Keep up the great writing!!

xx

It was FABULOUS!!! So many great schools, great people, GREAT FUN! Thanks to everyone I met and worked with! I hope you had as much fun as I did And I hope you’re still writing those stories…Keep those words coming!

Over the next few days I’ll post more, but to get you started…here’s a shot from our visit to Bukit View Primary School, which will be featured on tonight or tomorrow’s TV news in Singapore. Bukit View has an incredible theatre room complete with brilliant props, Hollywood-style change rooms and glamorous couches. Perfect for getting in the mood to write deliciously exciting stories.

And of course, props and couches are no good without creative, dedicated and enthusiastic students and teachers. THANKS to Miss Pamela Kiew for the opportunity to visit Bukit View Primary, and to Singapore’s National Arts Council for the amazing schools’ program they run.

Now…let’s get writing!

If you’re like me, you’ve set yourself a few writing goals for 2013. 

If you’re like me, you’re now a week or so into these goals and it’s starting to get hard. The new feeling has faded. Your everyday success in completing your goal has become an everyday slog.

But fear not!

If you fall down, you can always get back up.

If you miss one day or one week or one month of your goal, no worries. You can start again with a New Month’s Resolution. Or a New Week’s Resolution. Or a New New Year’s Resolution.

Give yourself a break: no one’s perfect.

Just keep going!!!

So while you’re psyching yourself up for today’s writing session, here’s a little inspiration

It’s my first ever letter of acceptance.

About a hundred years ago, The New Zealand Herald was running a writing competition for young writers. I entered (with a homemade riddle), was accepted (with this letter), and banked my first ever writer’s cheque (for about $17, if I remember correctly). I was *STOKED*. 

There’s no date on the letter, but I think I was around ten years old. $17 was a lot! And the success was a buzz that went a long way to encouraging my writing habit.

(That’s one of the reasons why I encourage writers to enter reputable writing competitions…everyone needs a buzz every now and then!)

So what are you waiting for? Keep writing! Acceptance letters do arrive! Have faith and keep writing!

xxx

xxx

It’s been a wild ride for the last few weeks.

First, I managed to pour water all over my laptop. Second, since I failed to properly back-up this laptop, I lost all my files.

I lost:

- all photos and videos of the last six months

- the first 20,000 words of my work-in-progress novel

- months of work I’ve been doing on my writing courses and workshops

- basically everything I hadn’t emailed as an attachment.

Trying not to cry…

I was prepared to start the New Year by rewriting all those files, by redrafting from scratch, by treasuring the eleven photos I did have backed-up. This would have been hard. (It would have been horrible…I feel ill just thinking about it.) But I would have done it.

Thankfully, I’m married to an absolute genius with the patience of a saint and a passion for computers. Over the course of a week, we (he) managed to recover 90% of these files. It was a slow, clunky, my-hard-drive-is-totally-stuffed series of late nights. But he did it. Words cannot explain the relief, joy, whirling-madness I experienced.

It was no ordinary recovery. It required decrypting, hacking, Linux (not the kid with the blankie…that’s Linus), constant restarts and about five litres of espresso. 

Did I mention he’s a genius?

(This is the same guy who recovered a friend’s wedding photos when others said it couldn’t be done.)(He also makes a damn fine flat white…that’s right. I married extraordinarily well.)

So, instead of spending these next few weeks weeping over my blistered fingers, I can pick up almost exactly where I left off.

I still have all my favourite lines, my clever ideas, pictures of our boys covered in cornflour slime. I lost a few files and all of our kids’ videos. But, rubbish-backer-upperers can’t be choosers. 

So, as you go into the New Year, keep your eyes firmly on the future, be grateful for the present, and don’t forget to back up the files from your past. 2012 deserves to be archived, properly.

New Year’s Resolution #2: Grab a copy of Parlour Games for the Modern Family

It’s been 40 degrees C for the last few days, and our aircon is broken. No worries!

Remember playing knucklebones? Need some card games to play with your kids? Want hilarious games that will even get teenagers involved? This book will have chapters of ideas and more. Get a copy.

Parlour Games for Modern Families by Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras.

Our eldest is three and he’s loving these games. We’ve played War, Snap, Flip the Kipper, Memory, Interrogation…heaps! 

And there are a stack of games I’d love to play with larger groups, and older groups, and camping, and when it’s colder than it is now (a round of Squeak, Piggy, Squeak somehow does’t appeal when it’s this sweatingly hot).

I’ll be keeping this book in handy reach. It’s fab. Keep it on the kitchen table.

Have a great New Year people!

xxx