When is a blog not a blog...

This blog is suffering from a lack of sailing. When I began it, I thought it would be more of a writing project than a sailing log, but seeing as this is the first post since last November, it's not managing to be either! To tell truth, I've been too busy writing.

The Secret of the Lonely Isles, my new children's novel, was published on the 1st of February this year. It's off to a good start with 3500 copies already pre-ordered by a national school bookclub list. This book is a slight departure from the style of Brumby Plains and Castaway. It starts off in a town setting rather than the bush and then heads out to sea, but continues to put kids in situations where they have to make decisions and take actions independently of adults. I love writing these books, but I'm taking a break from them for a bit, and writing some adult fiction. That is, fiction aimed at adult readers, not eroticism! Every time I've said I was writing adult fiction, I get raised eyebrows and knowing grins. My husband has already offered to write any sex scenes but I have politely declined...

Coming up with a title is harder than writing the book, I reckon, and this current work in progress is no exception. It's about a forensic anthropologist who is engaged to identify the missing Australian soldiers at Fromelles, northern France, scene of Australia's first battle on the 1916 Western Front. In the process she discovers a lot more about her own - slightly dysfunctional - family, and herself. It spans a hundred years and four generations, and I still like it so that's a good sign! (My agent likes it too so that's an even better sign) I'm about three quarters of the way through, and I hope to get it finished before the end of the year. Along the way I've learnt a lot about police procedures, forensics, identifying dead bodies, the process of decomposition, and World War One, amongst a host of other miscellaneous bits of information. Researching is one of the great joys of writing, except that it can be hard to stop reading and start writing.