This week Puffin NZ published my first book for children, Hene and the Burning Harbour. I’ve noticed it’s also available online in the UK, as well as in New Zealand and Australia, and in both print and e-book editions.
Also new: the main characters from Trendy But Casual have resurfaced in a new blog, Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends. It’s about publicity, celebrities, and nonsense – not necessarily in that order. Please visit!
Thanks to the great blog Backyard Books for an in-depth discussion of RUINED and some of my other work. There are lots of links on the page, too, for those of you with burning questions this web site doesn’t answer!
I have a couple of new things posted online this week. The first is a blog post on ‘Inspired Openings’ for a great YA publishing site.
The second is quite different, a review of for Landfall Online of Your Unselfish Kindness: Robin Hyde’s Autobiographical Writings, edited by Mary Edmond-Paul. Hyde is an important New Zealand writer from the early part of the twentieth century, and I found this new collection fascinating.
Thanks to a very kind invitation from the New Zealand Embassy in Germany, I’ll be back in Berlin in early April for an event at the English Theatre. The NZ ambassador, Peter Rider, and I will be presenting a wide-ranging programme on NZ books and writers (and culture, history, sport!) as part of the theatre’s Berlin Sofa series.
UNBROKEN, the sequel to RUINED, is now available in book stores in the US, and has this review from Kirkus. I’ve also got a Wikipedia page now – useful for those site visitors doing a school report! – and there’s a new page on this site as well, Writing Services, for anyone seeking manuscript assessments or help with editing, copywriting, social media, etc.
On Wednesday night RANGATIRA won best work of fiction at the New Zealand Post Book Awards.
As a result I’m doing lots of radio/TV/newspaper interviews this week, and yesterday sat down with Guy Somerset of the Listener for a podcast about the novel.