'LOOLA' Illustration in pastels

It’s been a hectic few weeks with a panel discussion on story telling at the Victorian State Library, a meet the artist’s day at the beautiful Dromkeen, then I flew off to Cairns for the Cairns Literary Festival at Trinity Bay High School. The kids there were great and the older students from years 10-12 who had booked themselves into my workshop were particularly inspiring. Luckily I was able to fit in one glorious day snorkelling off a tropical island over the Great Barrier Reef. Then last night it was the launch of Kids Night In 3 - a collection of short stories and illustrations to raise money for War Child. Some of the other authors and illustrators there last night were Jane Godwin, Michael Wagner, Andy Griffith, Doug Macleod, Jessica Adams, Paul Collins, Meredith Costain, Leigh Hobbs, Sally Rippin, Shaun Tan and Mitch Vane.

Over the next week, beginning today, is the Spring Racing Carnival leading up to the Melbourne Cup where a whole nation stops and bets on one horse race. Ever since I saw a horse break its leg, I can’t watch it anymore. The horse kept running on three legs until the end. It was pitiful and cruel and heartbreaking. Of course he had to be shot on the track in front of thousands of people. So while all this is happening I’ll have my head down finishing off editing first pages for Little Paradise which will be published by Penguin Books in March 2010.

In the meantime, my picture book, The Race for the Chinese Zodiac illustrated by Sally Rippin and designed by Regina Abos, is coming along nicely. I went to Black Dog Books to check it through yesterday and it’s looking beautiful. It goes off to the printer next week for a February release. And a bit of good news – it’s been selected by Australian Standing Orders which is a great recommendation for schools ordering the book into their libraries.

Then just one final public engagement next Wednesday as an Ambassador for the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge and I’m done for this year. This awards’ ceremony and reception held in the Great Hall of the National Gallery, celebrates those schools and students who most successfully completed the challenge.

Yay to all these great young readers.

For the past 2 weeks my kitchen table has looked like this.

My family has had to eat their meals between first pages and old manuscripts of Little Paradise. At least there’s no lack of reading material. I don’t have a big office and you need a lot of table space at this stage of the game because first pages come in the large A3 format. But today is our monthly writers’ meeting and the cleanup begins.

Being an author, locked away like a hermit for most of the year, I don’t have many visitors, so it’s nice to be forced to do a bit of housework sometimes. I’m not a housework kind of person, maybe that’s why I’m an author. Or is it the other way around? If I worried too much about the state of things at home, I wouldn’t have time to write. When your work involves being locked inside your brain, you don’t see the mess around you anyway.

But no matter what things are like in the immediate vicinity, it is essential for authors to be highly organised on the inside. That’s why you don’t need the perfect office to write in. All you need is a quiet corner in your house. I wrote my first 2 novels in the corner of our small bedroom.

So my goal for the day before my writer friends come is to write 500 words of my new novel, then go through a few more 1st pages before I clean up the kitchen table.

Oh, and thank you, my lovely, wonderful family, Steve, Lei Lei and Ren, for being so tolerant of me and my passion.

Writing is hard work. There are many stages in the life of a novel, from first drafts (of which there are too many to count), to structural edit, to copy edit, to cover design, to first pages, second pages, third pages and then final print. Of course many of the work is invisible and hard to record like all the hours spent researching in books and on the internet, or the discussions and interviews with family and friends. Here are a few of the stages that I have gone through while writing Little Paradise. The ultimate pleasure after all that work is holding the finished product in your hand for the first time.

As the novel takes place over 6 years in Mirabel's life and is set against the backdrop of World War 2, I had to work from a timeline. Much has changed since I wrote the timeline eg. Rose no longer gets murdered, but the dates remain pretty much the same.

Part of a chapter written in my favourite chai latte cafe

A page from the manuscript with editor's notes

The same page after another edit with editors notes.

And again the same page but now at 1st pages stage. I am still editing this. Then the book will go to 2nd and 3rd pages before it goes to final print.

Some of the cover concepts. There were 12 in all.

This is photocopy that I pasted onto a book to see what it will look like when it's published. I'm thrilled with it. The photograph is one taken of my mum when she was 20 which is a perfect match because the story was inspired by her love affair, her courage and her spirit for adventure .

This is the finished front and back covers for Little Paradise. The girl in the photograph is my mum taken in 1944 when she was 20. On the back is the blurb and a fashion illustration that my mum drew when she was 14. She was crazy about fashion. The end papers will feature more of her drawings.

My mum was way ahead of her time. In the forties, there was no such word as ‘teenager’. Young people in their teens were not recognised as a separate group like they are today. While other girls her age had to buy either children’s or ladies clothes to wear, my mother designed all of her own. She also designed clothes for her family and friends. She would buy the material at Myers, then have them made up by her dressmaker, Mrs Poon. In all the photographs of her, she is the most stylish.

Below is a picture taken in a dress that she designed when she was just 14.