Category: News

It’s all happening over at the sister site today.  www.burnbright.com.au is launched and featuring giveaways and an exciting press release about my collaboration with unique singer/songwriter, Yunyu.

This collaboration actually began two or three years ago and has been slowly coming together bit by bit. I’m so happy to finally be able to talk about it openly. Yunyu, is a friend and an artist for who I have huge respect. She was ‘unearthed’ in Perth the same year as Missy Higgins, and is as talented and unique a performer. Think Kate Bush but darker, more contemporary and with huge depth.

The song, Angel Arias, she has written for the novel is simply stunning.

Lenore’s Song by Yunyu

Sorry I’ve been absent for a few days. Had a quick trip to Sydney in which I managed to cram in an awful lot, only to return to two days of kids-sport-driving-duties.

Anyway… the shooting of the segment for the SBS doco was a HUGE amount of fun. Julie Zemiro really was a fabulous host and the production team were friendly and helpful. Sean, Karen and I had our ten cents worth about how sex will be in the future and I believe the documentary will be aired mid next year, so you’ll have until them to find out what we think! Kaaron and Sean were a little more optimistic than me about the notion that we will retain a need for connectedness and romantic love.

I got a ridiculous thrill just being in the replica space shuttle even though it looked like something from a Star Trek set. The photo above was taken there on Sean’s phone, so a little blurred.

I stayed in the heart of China town at the Quest apartments. Managed to tick two weeks on my internet instead of twenty four hours and had a nasty surprise when they tried to charge me $135 when it should have been $20. Was great to be able to wander into the Sussex Food Court and have dumplings though.

I also popped into Random House and had an exciting meeting with sales and PR about my forthcoming YA novel, Burn Bright. All sorts of good stuff in store for you all. Then had lunch with my publisher at Allen and Unwin, which was a great catch up as we plotted the next Tara Sharp books.

Did a fly-by of Galaxy Bookshop to sign some books and had a nice chat with Mark Timmony. Tara Moss had been in signing The Blood Countess, her new paranormal novel, the night before and I just missed catching up with her which was a shame. But the evening was spent well with Yunyu working out out project details for next year, which we should be able to talk about soon.

I was delighted to discover that Gloria Jeans had free wifi and then remembered that my battery was buggered, so I read for the free hour I had in between meetings.

Back home then and immediately forced to forget that I even have a writing career… it was all, I think, a dream…

I was doing my weekend work on Peacemaker and passages kept stopping the narrative from where it was going. Not de-railing it exactly, but making it take longer than a mere ‘a’ to ‘b’ as-the-crow-flies type of journey. That was because the minor characters started having things to say. Sometimes in first draft, I find that the minor characters can be fairly quiet and they get noisier on subsequent drafts. When they start having a presence in first draft it can be a really good sign for me. It tends to mean the story is much closer to my front brain than normal and easier to tap.

It’s times like these I wish I could just sit for a couple of days and let it pour out but that is not the way of things, young grasshopper. I’ll just hope that the next time I sit down to work on it the front-brain magic is still there.