I am absolutely thrilled to announce that my first picture book is being released by UK based publisher Books To Treasure this year.

Most of you probably aren’t even aware that I have a number of children’s publications to my name. Indeed, writing for primary school children was my first love. I’ve also written a number of children’s picture book manuscripts and had a dream to publish one of them but it never happened as I got sidetracked into writing for adults.

My dream has finally been realised when Books To Treasure publisher, Adrianne Fitzpatrick gave my story Serious Sas and Messy Magda the nod. This was made all the more meaningful by the fact that Adrianne taught me most everything I know about children’s writing over a decade ago, back when she ran classes.

She’s gone on to have a long career as an editor in Australia and the UK and now has her own publishing house.

In the coming weeks I’ll be able to share the cover with you, but for now please join me in a cheer that when dreams do come true, it feels as good as you imagined it would!

I’ll update you with release date and buy details in due course. I’m so excited that I’ll be able to share the book with all my new great nieces and nephews.

My apologies for radio silence. I’ve been travelling for three weeks and had full intention of posting regulalry while I was away. I found that my tablet wasn’t really up to the task, and that anyway, I was getting so little time to upload that it wasn’t happening!

Some of you will have seen my posts on Facebook, but for those who haven’t, I’ve just had three weeks in the USA with so many highlights including seeing Rock of Ages on Broadway, and a New York Knicks play-offs game at Madison Square Gardens. I met a bunch of wonderful people and now have a raft of memories that have made my life much richer.

And now it’s back to work. Normal posting will resume, plus some updates on where my writing is headed.

Hope you’re all well and happy. It’s good to be back!

Reviewed by Jamie Marriage

If given the opportunity to avoid extinction would you take it? Even if it meant abandoning or even destroying everything you know?

This is the major question that David Brin’s novel Existence doesn’t so much try to answer as investigate from every angle.

During a routine space-junk collection mission astronaut Gerald Livingstone goes against protocol and lassos a crystalline object that has been drifting in Earth’s orbit for longer than anyone imagined. And when the crystal egg begins to speak with the voices of alien entities, welcoming humans to join them, the already precarious balance of Earth society is thrown into chaos.

Existence is a complex entity built primarily CyberPunk and Hard Sci-Fi components, but they aren’t the only elements that have been crafted together to tell this tale, and with stunning cohesion.

Hamish Brookeman, acclaimed novelist and director, is tasked with unravelling a plot that risks the plans of his secret society. And in turn exposes far more than he expects.

Hacker, an eccentric playboy, ends up in an extreme sporting accident that results in falling into a world of strangeness and grants him a new sense of purpose.

And Tor Pavlov, pop-culture reporter extraordinaire, prevents a terrorist bombing and becomes immersed in an online culture of unimaginable proportions.

But these are only a few of the many varied characters intertwined within Existence; each of whom have a vital part to play in the overall scheme of things. The tangle weave of betrayal, suspicion and subterfuge is constantly tinged with the hint of hope and progress. Especially when a second egg is discovered that refutes the grim tale of the first.

The writing of Existence is amazing, the characters flawless in their scope and the setting a fascinatingly erratic ride through worlds often difficult to comprehend, but never hard to picture with this level of storytelling. But be warned, this is a dense parable; filled from end to end with twisting points of views and narrators-a-plenty.

It isn’t a fast book, but it is a great book. And one worth taking the time to enjoy.