Another book with my name in it

This week I received my contributor's copy of Trust Me Too, a Ford Street title which will be released in early June. It's always a thrill to see a book with something you wrote in it, no matter how often it happens. This one, though, has so many big-name Aussie YA writers in it, I think, "Hey, they wanted me in here! Wow!"

One story I think will certainly arouse a lot of excitement is the Obernewtyn novelette by Isobelle Carmody. Mwa ha ha! You have to buy this book if you want to read it! ;-) There are plenty of others, too - Gary Crew, Sean Williams and Sean McMullen, Kerry Greenwood, Lucy Sussex (I got both their autographs on my copy last Tuesday at Nova Mob), Justin D'Ath, George Ivanoff... oh, just go and look at the list on line.

There should be plenty of the authors and artists wandering around at Continuum 8 on the Queen's Birthday weekend in Melbourne, and the book will be available by then, so if you're coming to the con, you can get your copy signed. I'll sign for you. :-) My story is the one I have mentioned, about the Beatles visit to Melbourne in 1964.

I have already written a post about my research for this, but I should also mention that people in my life were in it. The heroine's music teacher, Mr Pearl, who goes to the Beatles rally at the Southern Cross hotel, is my brother-in-law Gary. I use him in any of my stories where a teacher is required. As it happens, he was a teenager at the time, but he was at that rally, and at the concert, though he says he couldn't hear a thing, due to all those girls screaming. Like the mother in the story, my mother was pregnant at the time, with my brother Maurice, though Maurice wasn't born till November of that year. he loudly laments not having been around at the time of the visit. Monash University was very well known at the time for protest marches although I didn't go there for some years after, by which time it was a lot quieter, much to my disappointment, but I couldn't resist mentioning it in the story as the place where the heroine's sister goes. I mentioned a book called New Writings In SF, which was published in that year, with some well-known Aussie writers in it, and the Vietnam war which was on the point of erupting. Conscription happened in Australia later that year.

More when the book is in the shops and you can all read it!