Happy 2018 to you!

It is a year since the launch of Before You Forget. The video, produced with the help of so many of you, is being used far and wide to help convey what it’s like to be a teenager with a father developing Alzheimer’s, and the book is doing likewise. I will be speaking about Before You Forget at A Night With Our Stars, organised by Joanna Andrew (and Children’s Book Council folk) and now going into its second decade, if memory serves me correctly. It’s like speed dating: each writer and illustrator gets three minutes to spruik their wares, and punters can stock up their school libraries in the break. It’s a bunch of fun for everyone. If you’re interested in hearing the varied and wonderful books written for children and young people in Western Australia, you could do worse than come and have a listen.

I started a fabulous new day job in the new year, just after frantically finishing my middle grade manuscript and sending it off to my publisher. Now we wait, with fingers crossed, or with thumbs pressed together, as they say in German (she adds, apropos of nothing). It really doesn’t get any easier, sending off your work to see what reception it’s going to get, although it is probably marginally less nerve-wracking than the first time (marginally).

It is Perth Festival time, my favourite time of the year: so far I have seen Il N’Est Pas Encore Minuit, a French company of acrobats whose show was clever and warm and mindboggling in equal measure; and yesterday the Barbershop Chronicles, energetic, funny, thought provoking. It was a wonderful way to start Festival frenzy.

This year I will be doing fewer school gigs, but I am delighted to be heading to Geraldton again in May for Big Sky. More details when they are available.

My daughter is starting a business doing portraits, mostly of older people. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is her latest.