good worlds

Hurrah! Leon Davidson just won the New Zealand Post Awards: http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/2011-winners

What moved me to tears, many times over, when editing Zero Hour were the words of the soldiers themselves:

'When you next see this I'll be dead: don't worry...Try to think I did the only possible thing, as I tell you I would do again if I had the chance.' Sergeant David Baker

And in Messines, in 1917, 'New Zealander Private Sidney 'Stan' Stanfield saw his mate Private Janes Hallett...get shot as they moved out of a trench. He recalled when he returned the following day to bury him,

poor old Jim was laying there, cuddled up in a heap, as men die. Don't forget we were all young, we didn't die easy. You don't die at once, you're not shot and killed stone dead. We were fit and highly trained, and of course we didn't die easy. You were slow to die, and you'd find them huddled up in a heap like kids gone to sleep, you know; cuddled up dead.'

And Cath Crowley won the Ethel Turner in the NSW Prem's Literary Awards. http://www.pla.nsw.gov.au/awards-shortlists/ethel-turner-prize-for-young-peoples-literature

With the two most beautiful opening lines. 

'Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow.' 

writing tip #3

Carpet.
My second last house (a flat) had beautiful messmate floors and a big window that trucked in beautiful light. The view was over the apartment block opposite, the mirror of ours. Looking out was a little Rear Window, in a downtown pre-renovated Northcote way (ie, full colour, 1960s square block, nothing pretty—and no one opened their curtains but us, so actually there was only a whole lot of imagining.) The floors and the window were lovely, but there was nowhere to get comfortable. It was a bad place for writing.
My last house has been renovated all in white paint and floorboards. It looked pretty, but was cold, echoey, with not a skerrick of carpet in sight. Too cold for creativity.
This new house has carpet. Lots of it. Carpet is warm and comfortable. Forget the baltic pine underneath. It's a great place for writing.

writing tip #2

V/Line trains, window seat, lap top. Desolate landscape, thin sunset.

CBCA 2011

Congratulations Cath Crowley
Congratulations Leon Davidson
Congratulations Leanne Hall
Congratulations Sally Rippin
Congratulations Fiona Wood


Cheers to all the notable and shortlisted authors. Champagne all round, and umbrellas, and boots that don't let the rain in.

I'm breathing again—just. When the notables list came up an hour earlier than the shortlist and I didn't know that they were pulling the shortlist from the notables I was a basketcase, full of breathless, butterfly-like cliches—adverbs even. Then I was walking on sunshine.

http://cbca.org.au/awards.htm

three hours

Three hours and counting until the CBC announces the shortlist. Good luck to all my authors and friends.

pronunciation

Julia Gillard just pronounced 'hyperbole' (hi-perbily) as 'hyper-bowl'. I am not sneering. I once thought that's how it was pronounced. Then I heard someone say it. And then 'apologia'. Really? That's how you pronounce it?

watching trainwrecks

How not to do it (meanwhile being effortlessly entertaining).

http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html