What a busy but fulfilling month! I’ve judged three short story competitions, attended one festival, two presentation ceremonies, featured in one local newspaper and one local magazine, agreed to one free writing workshop for kids, and have signed a book deal! Wow!
Wanna see some photos?
Last Wednesday I presented the Mosman Literary Awards, having judged the primary prose section. So many wonderful stories! I read 93 tales about castles, wizards, pigs, pirates and dragons, magic jewels and trees, carpenters, princesses, trolls and aliens, tsunamis, unicorns, terrorists, gaming, mountains and avalanches, time travel, more dragons and more pigs. I think the pig thing is something to do with Minecraft.
Inspiring young writers!
All the wonderful winners. I’m just in from the right.
Chatting to enthusiastic writers after the presentation.
Chatting to more enthusiastic writers after the presentation.
A few weeks prior to that I presented the Manly West Short Story Prize. This time I got to read 52 stories by primary school writers about time capsules, tree houses, magic, secret places and portals, secret dreams, dragons and worlds, mutants, murder, trolls, tigers, refugees, volcanoes, shipwrecks, aliens and ballerinas. Quite a mix! I said the same thing to the Manly Daily when they asked me about the event…
Talking in front of the whole school.
I got a lovely box of chocolates as a thank you!
In my presentation speeches, I got to pass some writing advice on to young writers too. I encouraged them to develop their writing as a healthy life habit. Kids are taught at school about nutrition and how it helps them maintain their bodies, about exercise and how it helps keep those bodies fit and healthy. Writing, I said, is the key to a healthy mind, body and soul!
To prove my point, I’m running a free workshop for young writers during the upcoming spring school holidays at Manly Library, designed to enable writers (11yrs+) to take inspiration from their life and with it make their writing unique. ‘Vividness & Voice’ will be on Wednesday 28 September, 10am-1pm. Click here or phone the library to book…
Also this month, Peninsula Living did a lovely feature on my amazing Northern Beaches Writers’ Group, and our continued efforts to raise money for The Kids’ Cancer Project. This year we managed to raise $2,500 in sponsorship and we’re still going with book sales to add to that. Wanna buy a book to help out? Choose from the ‘middle grade’ fiction here: Amazon.
Of course I can’t wait until I can post a link here to my own awesome novel, Towards White, to be published next year by the International Fantasy Writers’ Guild, or IFWG. Read more about that here. Woo hoo!
Has your month been busy but fulfilling too?
