More pie charts in the arts: How did the 2012 Perth Festival rate?

Cut and paste! The 2012 Perth International Arts Festival finished last week and my two-year-old son and I used the 100-page brochure as cut-and-paste fodder for his big-boy scissors. It’s a fab brochure for this: brightly coloured, full of stunning photography and creative, interesting people. But as we chopped and pasted and chopped and pasted, [...]

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How many people in this photo?

Answer: 5.5? I love this photo…it was taken about ten minutes before my presentation for the Perth Writers Festival started. Do I look nervous? NO! Am I nervous? VERY! (Check out my white-knuckled hands!!) Thanks to everyone who turned up early…It was great to meet you and chat, and you helped settle my nerves too [...]

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Happy snaps from the 2012 Perth Writers Festival Family Day

It was awesome!!! I want a writers festival every weekend please!!! My presentation was on the beautiful Tropical Grove Stage, which looked and felt like a jungle clearing. It was the perfect setting to tell spooky stories of Miku’s school camp (and my school camp!) and I think everybody jumped (or laughed) in all the [...]

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How to get published: a second year of secrets at the Perth Writers Festival

The secret’s out! This time, last year, I was secretly pregnant and attending the 2011 ABC of Publishing seminar at the Perth Writers Festival. This year, my secret is literally out, so I took him (3-months-old already!) and sat at the very back of Publishing: The Whole Shebang. Since I could only sit for as [...]

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Finland, here we come

Exciting times ahead! 1) I’m performing at this year’s Perth Writers Festival Family Day…yee ha! I’m working on all-new material, including a super-spooky Japanese ghost story and some stories from my own super-scary school camp. I’m hoping to spend as much time as possible at the festival (baby permitting). Heaps of fab childrens writers will [...]

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More writing tips from the Perth Writers Festival: crime and fantasy

After the festival was over… I’m sitting at home, taking out my metaphorical glass eye. And I’m procrastinating wildly, because I now know for certain that I have to ditch the first 20,000 words of my new novel and start again. It’s not that the start isn’t good; it’s just not the right start for [...]

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How to get published: secrets revealed at the Perth Writers Festival

I am EXHAUSTED and I didn’t present a thing today! Instead I attended the Perth Writers Festival’s day-long workshop, the A-Z of Getting Published, and it was great! There were 200 people there and the entire session was MCed by Angela Meyer of Literary Minded, who kept things cool, calm and interesting all day long, [...]

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Perth Writers Festival and Writing WA: celebrating West Australian writers and illustrators

Celebrating WA writers The Perth Writers Festival pre-launch kicked off last night with the launch of the Natural Selection MMXI Art Exhibition, an awesome collection of 48 Western Australian writers and their most recent publications, put together by WritingWA and WA’s Literary Lions (thanks!). And guess what? I was one of those authors…what a buzz. [...]

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8 bits of great news: HOORAY!

Long time – no post! But I have heaps of great news to make up for it: GREAT NEWS #1: Takeshita Demons and The Filth Licker are being translated into Indonesian! YAY! GREAT NEWS #2: I’m performing at the Perth Writer’s Festival on Family Day: YAY! More details soon… GREAT NEWS #3: I’m also appearing [...]

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Simply the best: tips from the Perth Writer’s Festival

I’ve just spent the last few days living the dream at the Perth Writer’s Festival: wandering the green UWA campus, listening to some of Australia’s most brilliant writers for children and young adults, meeting with my Australian distributer (Walker Books)(exciting and inspiring stuff!), sharing laughs with theatres full of children, watching massive queues of kids [...]

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