This 'n That! :-)

I've just finished reading Kathy Reichs's YA novel Seizure, which will be reviewed on this site soon. What a hoot! It took me a while to get started, then i read the lot in a day.

The book giveaway hop has started and for the next few days, folks will be wandering through in hopes of getting a copy of Wolfborn. I'll look forward to meeting them, and some will also receive some bookmarks. I've just unearthed a stash of Wolfborn bookmarks to add to the Crime Times.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet Lan Chan of The Write Obsession. a blog I read daily. We took a stroll through the State Library, one of my favourite places in Melbourne, and Lan joined. If anyone reading this lives here and isn't a member I do recommend it - there are so many wonderful on-line resources you can use, even if you never step in the door again (and you can join on-line if you can't get in). We did try to join the Victorian Writers' Centre, but it's closed for holidays till next week.

Then we went for lunch and sat down in the Melbourne Central food court to talk writer shop - agents and the difficulty of getting them, markets, problems of focusing on writing, researching... (As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to be doing my copyedit of "Call Him Ringo" for Trust Me Too! and will be doing that as soon as I log off here)

Any Melbourne YA writers who'd like to get together over coffee to critique each other's work? Lan would like to have a face-to-face writing group, so if you're interested, stroll over to The Write Obsession and make contact.

I don't blame her. I know a lot of groups these days are on-line and that's fine, but it's just not the same as meeting in person, having a good group bitch about publishers and sharing the excitement of a sale when it happens. I was in one of those groups, years before the Internet, and it was exhausting but exhilarating. Some of us did end up selling and going professional. Besides, it was one of those group members, Carole Green, who let me know I was a children's writer. If I'd been in on-line groups I'm quite sure I would never have discovered this. Carole passed away long ago, but I owe her one for that.

So if anybody reading this is always at their computer and all their writing friends are on-line, do consider getting out from the house and meeting others like you at a cafe somewhere in Melbourne.