I’m working on three different books at the moment, which is more than a little confusing. I’m doing the copyedit for Hidden #3, Fetcher’s Song, for my Australian publishers, the copy edit of Hidden #2, Sunker’s Deep, for my US publishers, and I’ve just started on something completely new which doesn’t yet have a title.

Things always seem to work out like this. The new book is pulling me forward, the other two are dragging me back, and yet the copy edits must be done! Deadline for the US one is this coming Friday, which I should make without too much trouble. And then I’ll only be working on two. 🙂

Deadline for the Australian one is mid-August – there are still some changes in the story that I need to make, so it’s more complicated than the American copy edit. But I should make that one okay, too.

As for the new book, it’s in the earliest of early early stages still. I wouldn’t even call it foetal, not yet. Pre-foetal. A few cells floating around, waiting to be turned into something. A time when anything is possible. It’s a stage that’s both wildly exciting and deeply frustrating, because I have the urge to sit down and WRITE, but it’s much too early. And it can’t be forced. It needs lots of beach walks and daydreaming and questions, and probably some cutting out of pictures and some drawings and all those other things that spark ideas.

This is what it looks like at the moment, on the floor of my office:

Oh, and I’m preparing a residential workshop as well, for people who want to write a novel. That’s at the end of this month, up on the east coast. Christina Booth (who wrote the very beautiful Welcome Home) and I are the tutors.

And I’m still reading the pile of books for the Premier’s Literary Awards. I’ve had a couple of minor rebellions, tucking up for the evening with one of Barbara Hambly’s fantasy novels (she’s high on my list of favourite authors), but am now ploughing through the last couple. The meeting to finalise the longlist is this coming Friday. Then of course we have to cut the longlist down to a shortlist of three, so it’s not over yet. (Weeps silently into sleeve.)

Apart from all this, we are having a coooooold winter. A couple of frosts last week, and I had the wood heater going all day. Harry barely moved from beside it. Last couple of days haven’t been too bad, but I think the cold is coming back this week. And I’m about to get a load of firewood, just in time!