Libraries rule!

I'm sitting at my desk watching the snow fall outside the window with the glee of a kid. Don't know what it is about snow, but it always makes me smile.

Yesterday I took the boys in to the Dunedin City Library to stock up for the next few days of predicted bad weather (the Met Service got it right!) So far, so normal. What I absolutely loved was that when we arrived about 10 minutes before opening time it wasn't just us waiting to get in - there were 40 to 50 people all lined up, chomping at the bit, queuing. And when the doors did open it was like what I imagine is like on sale day at Harrods - a stampede! I commented to one of the librarians about libraries being closed down in Britain and America and what a huge loss to a community that was. If you wanted evidence of how important libraries are to people you only had to look at the crowd eager to get into our library. It warms a girl's heart.

Win great NZ crime fiction!

I'm a sucker for competitions, I enter lots of competitions, and win enough bits & pieces to urge me to keep on entering more. I've won lots of chocolate and books over the years, but are still waiting for that car...

Here's your chance to win a set of books of the long listed novels in the 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best fiction. (Unfortunately I didn't have a book published in the relevant year so wasn't eligible to be in the running this time. Next year...)

Visit the excellent Crime Watch Blog for details. All you have to do is email Craig a photo of yourself reading a NZ crime fiction novel. Too easy. Go on, you know you want them...

I'm back...

...not that I actually went away! After all that busy time racing for a book deadline, I then had two weeks till an academic deadline! So now both are passed and handed in, I finally get to breathe...briefly. I've got my feedback on the novel from my agent and publisher, and it's great, but of course, there are a few revisions to do, and soon, so it's straight back into it. But I will do a bit of relaxing with the kids over the school holidays, and I will continue with operation 'sort the shambles.' We've been in this house for over a year now and there are still boxes unpacked and things that haven't moved since we bunged them there on the day we shifted in. Then there is the disaster that is my desk - apparently there's a wooden surface under there somewhere - but it's all rumour...

Finished!

It is always such a wonderful feeling...

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