“Rider & the Hummingbird” #WABIAD @KidsCancerProj #TheKidsCancerProject

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Yesterday, my wonderful Northern Beaches Writers’ Group and I wrote a book in a day to raise money for The Kids Cancer Project. It’s something we’ve done for the last few years to support research in curing childhood cancer, and to give the children at Westmead Children’s Hospital a page-turning adventure to read.

The deal with ‘WABIAD’ is that we are challenged to write-a-book-in-a-day by The Kids Cancer Project – we don’t know anything about the story we have to write in advance. At 8am, we’re told two human characters, a non-human character, a setting, an issue, and five random words. Then we make up a story: write, illustrate, print and bind it all before 8pm, and you applaud our efforts by donating money to the charity. As of right now, we’ve managed to raise over $3,000 this year for The Kids Cancer Project – woo hoo!

The best news is that you can still donate until the end of August!

Just click here and select ‘Northern Beaches Writers’ Group’:

Write-a-Book-in-a-Day

You get a receipt to use at tax time.

This year The Kids Cancer Project challenged us to write a book about a monk and a computer nerd, involving a ferret, a skatepark and jail break. Here’s what we came up with, it’s called Rider & the Hummingbird:

Fourteen-year-old Lan is a computer genius… and a prisoner. After poking around in exactly the wrong websites, Lan’s interest in drones has landed him in the High Country Youth Correctional Facility.

Not a good start.

Lan is resigned to his fate until he discovers that the mysterious hacktivist who framed him is part of a plot to kill thousands of people, including his mum and dad. With the help of Monk and his ferret, Lan breaks out of jail, and races to prevent a disaster that could change the face of Australia forever.

Here’s the opening…

Lan tossed his dog-eared copy of CNET magazine over the side of his bunk. It hit the floor with a thunk and a crash. A crash? He glanced over the edge. His roommate had left half a glass of blackcurrant cordial on the floor and now it was rolling over the tiles while a small purple puddle seeped across the magazine’s headline: Cool Tech.

He grunted and laid back down. Technology was only cool when it was new, and this magazine was already months old. Of all the downsides to being in juvie, the worse was not knowing the latest news. On the outside, Lan could have simply surfed the magazine’s website for the latest tech buzz. But no one in the High Country Youth Correctional Facility was allowed internet access. For a computer nerd like Lan, that was like telling him not to breathe.

To read on… you’ll have to wait! It takes time to prepare a book for commercial publication. But you can read the two books we’ve already written – our award-winning books from 2014 and 2013: Scribbles in the Dark and A Dolphin for Naia. Sales from these books also go towards The Kids’ Cancer Project, and they’re available from all good online retailers (such as Amazon).

Grab your copy, and read a story full of wonder, today!

To make a simple donation, just head over to the Write-a-Book-in-a-Day website and click on ‘Northern Beaches Writers’ Group’.

Here are some photos from yesterday… enjoy!