The wheels on the bus go round and round...

The New Zealand Book Council have invited me to be the fiction writer on next year's Words on Wheels bus tour. I'll get to spend six days on the road visiting every town and village on the road between Christchurch and Queenstown between the 2nd and 8th of March.

And who are the poor unfortunates that get to put up with me for so long?

My fellow road tripees are Anna Mackenzie (Teen Fiction), David Geary (Scriptwriting), Janet Charman (Poetry) and Steve Braunias (Non-fiction).

We'll get to visit libraries, schools and town halls, and hopefully the odd restaurant and pub too.

But sending a crime writer on a road trip, is it such a good idea? It conjures up images of a closed room kind of a murder mystery on wheels. The publicist is dead. Who dunnit?

Was it the crime writer? Everyone assumes someone who spends all day imagining how to kill people would be the fiend. But what about the poet? Can you trust a poet? Or that guy who writes about birds? Those teen fiction writers can get up to no good, and don't get me started on script writers.

Hmmmm, could be fun.

Heh, heh, heh.