Han-loo!

I’ve had to put on my teacher hat last week and teach, knowing that it’s two and a half weeks of holidays. Holidays means that I can do some writing without teaching or school visits. Though I am doing a workshop in St Marys Corner on Thursday. Oh and I’m also going to the CBCA AAA event tomorrow at the Menzies Hotel. I’ve been going since 2009, when I rocked up as an ‘author’ even though I hadn’t got a book published yet. Fingers crossed for Thai-riffic! to get a shiny silver sticker tomorrow :-p

I met so many cool authors at the Newington Festival, including Simon Higgins. I love the Moonshadow series and heard about Simon being an expert in all things Japanese. He told me that many Japanese people actually lived in Thailand and there’s a little Japanese influence in Muay Thai. Awesummi! Of course, he let me win this battle 🙂

I had a little chaos in every class I taught at the festival. One highlight was getting kids to dance in the corridor to distract Lucy Christopher’s class next door. There are glass walls you see and I could tell that her class was actually calm and settled…that soon changed though hehe.

I’m going through the second draft of Punchlines, this is where I really flesh scenes out and fill those gaps…namely the ones that have tags that say ‘FILL IN THIS GAP.’ I’m loving writing about comedy and stand up…and every gig I do is research for Punchlines, whether I do well or not. I had a fun weekend doing gigs at the Comedy Store, as Sydney gets ready for their own comedy festival.

I’ve been reading lots of books. I’m a reviewer for Buzz Words so I’ve got a broad range of books to bite my teeth into. I really enjoyed Kate Gordon’s Thyla (an Aussie paranormal book, fair dinkum) and Marianne de Pierres’s Burn Bright. I’m currently reading Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich, recommended by Amelia from Better Read Than Dead. Her suggestions in YA haven’t let me down yet, it’s a really clever book. I also like it because it’s set in 1999, when Sega still made consoles…sigh, go to Wikipedia kids, check it out 🙂 It’s gotta be turned into a movie too!

Neways, keep on juicin’

O.W