My nephew and his wife know how important it is to read to your baby. I read to my baby. Two stories before every sleep!

I believe that children who are read to regularly end up associating books with love. It is the most wonderful thing to do too. Watch their face light up when you speak.

​Ian has great taste in literature! Can't you just see his neurons connecting?!

I am very excited! (As you can see.) I've been invited to join a 'blog hop'. I have to tell you why and how I write and then three of my colleagues do the same. It's a neat way to share our craft and our passion as well as tell each other how wonderful we are!!! Time is a wasting. Better hop to it!

Firstly I have to thank Lara Morgan for asking me to be part of this blog hop - How writers write! Lara wrote the Rosie Black Chronicles for young adults and they are cool dystopian stories. (I have to say I'm surprised you look so sweet and pretty in your photo, Lara, considering what you write!) 

Lara and I met at the Asian Festival of Children's Content a couple of weeks ago and we shared drinks in the pool, butter squid at Maggie's restaurant, and we were all kinds of happy cats at the local markets. Lara is a great writer and blogger. You should check out her website/blog. I was really impressed with how she promotes herself on the interweb. Click on her picture or her name and you'll see what I mean. Now I'd better answer those questions...

What am I working on?
Now that I'm back from my year in New Zealand I'm delving more deeply into my West Australian experience. I'm on a bit of a mission to 'write' WA and so far it has produced two picture books - Hello From Nowhere, due out any day, and Something Wonderful, the story of a 6yr old physicist growing up on a farm in rural West Australia. A third picture book manuscript has leached out of me now too, like the salty water leaches out of our red, dusty soil. It's called The Boot Tree and it is about a fly-in-fly-out Dad and his son, Jai. Like most little boys Jai likes to stomp around the house in Dad's boots... I'm still working on that YA novel set out at the roadhouse too. A more grim look at life out in the Nullarbor, it is called Straight to Nowhere. Got to stay busy!

How does my work differ from others in the genre?
Everything I'm writing these days is about place and I think that's what sets these stories apart - the awesome setting and how it impinges on my character's lives.
We have a remarkable landscape here in WA and you can have adventures and experiences here that you can't have anywhere else in the world. 

Why do I write what I write?
I've struggled to come to terms with being a Kiwi/Australian (I've spent half my life in each country) and writing about people and place has helped me figure it all out. My hope is that by writing about it I might help a reader struggling with the same things. It's also a chance to celebrate everything cool about New Zealand and Australia too! From a very young age I wanted to make a difference so that's another good reason why I do what I do, and I get to do it here, in my comfy chair, with my cat, Ginger Fish, and my pretty, green fern garden out the window.

How does my writing process work?
It's all a bit spooky really. I sit down and on a good day my characters sit right down with me (along with Ginger Fish) and together we head off on some new adventure or other. We explore places and feelings and I go over it all a brazillion times until everything feels real. Somehow there is a neat, kind of circular story to show for all my hard work at the end so I guess it's kind of non-thinking and instinctive, but that only comes after careful preparation and planning. I always have a mental image of the whole story before I begin the channelling thing!!! Oh, and like Lara I need lots of tea. Rooibos with manuka honey is my favourite.

Now it's time to tag some folks so here we go!

I met Susanne Gervay 20 years ago and I always knew she was rather wonderful. Now-a-days she is ambassador of this and chairperson of that but she was always going to make a difference. 

Susanne signed a copy of her first book in her incredibly successful I Am Jack series for my son, Jack, when he was still swimming around in my womb and later in life I used it to teach him how to handle bullies at school. You would be very proud of the young man my Jack turned into, Susanne!

Liliana Stafford is one of my best friends and she once gave me the best writing advice anyone has ever given me. 'Stay with your character' is what she told me when my work was drifting off and becoming more about me and overly heavy with description. 

When I was learning how to write picture books I looked long and hard at Liliana's book Amelia Ellicott's Garden (illustrated by Stephen Michael King) so I could get it right!

And now for Norm Jorgensen whose name is just a delight to say! (Try it. You will instantly sound like a knight or a viking!)

Norm wrote another 'Jack' book that again left a huge imprint on my Jack's soul, (as well as my own.)

Jack's Island is about two great friends, Jack and Banjo, who find a Japanese soldier's helmet and rifle on Rottnest Island where they lived back in WWII. My Jack walked in Norm's character's shoes as if he was right there, messing about with Banjo and their delightful friend, Dafty.


Norm also wrote The Last Viking, illustrated by James Foley. Doesn't look like much of a viking though, does he? Smile's too warm and friendly. Thank goodness for his name!

One of the big things I learned from the Asian Festival of Children's Content last week was what this guy taught me about reaching your audience. His name's Bill Belew. A professor of Social Media Marketing in Silicon Valley, CA, his sites have garnered more than 90,000,000 unique visitors. This is us talking about finding commonality. So what did we find? Well, we both want to reach people, share our dreams and visions, and we both think we have something important to say. We do it joyfully and enthusiastically because it is our passion. If nothing else I learned that if you're going to do a presentation MAKE IT FUN! 

At long last, here it is! The advance copy of Hello From Nowhere has just arrived.

If you've never been to the Australian Outback now's your chance. Come and see how wonderful Nowhere is. Eve would love to show you...

I have been a bad, bad blogger. Sorry. And I've had so much to blog about. So far this year I've climbed many volcanos, (yes, that is Mt Doom beyond the snow angels,) I've written two seriously 'Kiwi' books, (Dingle Dell and Brydie's Bach,) I've gone Black Water Rafting, I've eaten many a custard square and many a cream bun with daily doses of Tip Top icecream, (yes, daily,) I've woken every morning to tuis warbling, I've smelled freesias that still smell like they used to, I've watched fireworks on the Skytower from my deck, I've dug for cockles then steamed them open while drinking cold Steinlager, I've been to Eden Park and seen the All Blacks, I've listened to some proper rain, I've had a beer with Frodo Baggins in the pub at Hobbiton, I've stood before his round door and walked in the footsteps of Gandalf, I've taken High Tea on more than one mountainside, I've admired the sparkling waters of the Waitamata, floated beneath glow worms, bought gumboots, and I've learned to celebrate the comma... 

Well this blog entry is way overdue. I've been in New Zealand for 9 months now and I haven't blogged a blog. Now I don't know where to start. Maybe with Dingle Dell, the book Jack and I wrote together at the beginning of our amazing gap year. It all started when Jack's friend, Ned, came over for the school holidays and they found a body in the bush reserve up the road. They poked it with a stick, because they were 12 and that's what you do. When we went back it was gone of course but a little while later I came across a huge rugby league jumper and a bag full of bits and pieces - a shoe lace, some insect repellant, a movie stub, an empty box of crackers and a medicine bottle. Enough to spark a story? Of course it was! Not only was it the most fun I've ever had writing a story, (because I shared the experience with Jack,) it was also my coming home. New Zealand, how you've changed. The gap between rich and poor is a yawning chasm now. What a place you still are though. Where else could you see a volcano out your window? Where else can you walk up the street and, without leaving the city, be surrounded by tuis and fantails and punga ferns and streams and soggy, Kiwi bush... And bodies... Apparently...

I was in a library the other day and I noticed one of these lovely little stickers on one of my books. I'd forgotten that Top Marks was nominated for the West Australian Young Readers Book Award in 2007. Monkey Trix and Karate Star were nominated for similar awards in their day. Made me think I must be doing something right.

Heroes in Pantyhose

Hi! I’m Gerald and I’m a superhero. I’m 32 and you don’t get paid enough for being a superhero anymore so I can’t afford tights. Instead I have resorted to stealing my wife’s pantyhose. This is the story of the first time I wore them.

On that particular day Ace Dodgers, (the hottest hero in the US,) had swooped over and was giving me some hardly appropriate names for my pantyhose when my hero watch went off and told me that Dr Gonbad had created a giant fire breathing robot and was using it to attack the Empire State Building in New York!

We were there in an instant. Me and Dodgers could fly while the new recruit, Thunderfist, had to take the stairs because he was only strong. On the way up the robot began to breathe fire. “This is getting hot,” said Dodgers. Thunderfist was beginning to get scorched so I lent him some pantyhose. “Such freedom of movement,” he said as he smashed the robot aside. “Hey, let me try some of those,” said Dodgers, seeing Thunderfist try the pantyhose on. Once he tried them on himself he said, “Woo, so much cooler,” then thumped the robot. I ripped out the eye of the robot and Dodgers flew in and destroyed it from the inside. “GLORY BOY,” I thought.

We flew back to Superhero H.Q. and found Superman there. “What are those things you’re wearing?” he said. “They’re literally the coolest thing around,” said Dodgers. “Well what are you waiting for? Let me try some on,” said Superman. “Wow,” he said as he pulled them on.

Gillian O’Shaughnessey from the ABC radio had an interview with Superman about a week after he learned about the wonder of pantyhose and asked him what he was wearing and Superman, the man of steel, the greatest hero of all, replied, “They are called pantyhose and I LOVE them!

From that day on the squadron of heroes were well known for their all round freedom of movement.