Hullo lovely people!

I’ve had a bit of feedback that some of you are having trouble finding Vulpi in the wild. I’m not surprised. Those foxes are wily little sneaky things! But I do WANT you to find them, and give them good homes for me! So here are a couple of hints and tips for locating those slippery little suckers!

1. If your local bookshop doesn’t have any copies, ask for them. Your friendly bookseller will be more than happy to order them in for you, and usually it only takes a week or so. I used to work in a bookshop, so I know the lovely person behind the counter won’t mind in the least doing this for you!
2. If your library doesn’t have a copy, you can often fill in a form to ask them to order it too! Your super-wonderful librarian can give you a hand doing this.
3. Random House has a great list of places you can buy Vulpi online. Go here for more details, and click the “buy now” button.

I hope you’re able to get your hands on a Vulpi all of your own. Trust me, much as they like hiding, they also love being read! If you do find More >

Hullo!

Just a quick note to share the news that there are now Vulpis IN THE WILD! The lovely folk at Random House have nurtured and raised them, and given them lots of cuddles, and they are now huddling in little Vulpi clumps in YOUR favourite bookshop or other place-that-sells-books.

The Vulpis might look big, tough, sly and foxy but they’re really quite shy little cubs (until you get to know them) so please treat them well and give them lots of love!

My thanks, as ever, to Zoe, Kimberley, Dot, Sarana and all the other Wonderfuls at Random House, to my indescribably awesome agent, Nan, and to my first reader and general best-person-of-all-time, Husband Bear. Without you all, Vulpi would still be in captivity inside my head.

I hope you all find a Vulpi, and that you enjoy it very much

I wasn’t a child of the sixties. I was born in 1982, two years after John Lennon died, more than a decade after The Beatles split up, thirteen years after Woodstock and sixteen years after The Monkees first leapt, skipped, bounced and jived on to television screens.

I was a child of the eighties so, by all rights, I should have spent my childhood listening to Bananarama and Wham.

Instead, I was a child of the eighties who felt vehemently and deeply that she should have been a child of the sixties.

I was the one kid at my sixties-themed social who dressed as a “mod” and not a hippy. I was the only one who knew what a mod was! I had a picture of John Lennon above my bed that I used to kiss every night, and I spent many, many hours as a thirteen year old pulling sultry faces at the mirror and pretending to be Janis Joplin.

These were the years before YouTube, so all my musical knowledge came from my parents, in particular my dad who, back in the day, had sported some very groovy sideburns and a funky pair of horn-rimmed glasses. My dad was cool! He was More >

Well, that’s it! All over, Red Rover. The Fat Lady has sung. The curtain has been rung down and the choir invisible has been joined.

This is an ex-parrot!

Or, should I say, manuscript.

Yes, that’s right, I’ve finished. Book Four in the Thyla cycle has been written.

Now, I should probably qualify this. When I say that Diemen is “written”, what I really should be saying is that the very, very rough draft of Diemen has been written. There is still months worth of editing in front of me – painstaking hours of changing this word for that and cutting horrible sentences and beefing up some characters and diminishing others and just, generally, realising that my first draft is not,in fact, as awesome and magical as I thought it was.

But the actual imagining, the researching, the decision-making and the hours and hours of actual writing … that’s done. The ending is set in stone. The people who were going to die are dead and the ones who were meant to survive live on. Loose ends have been tied up, further mysteries have been hinted at. A spin-off sequel has been (timidly) suggested.

But, apart from pipe dreams of spin-off series, that’s the end, my More >

Just a quick note to announce the wonderful news that I’ll be an ambassador for the National Year of Reading!

“What is the NYR?” I hear you ask (if you’ve been living under a rock … or a large pile of books).

The following is from their (awesome) website:

“The National Year of Reading 2012 is about children learning to read and keen readers finding new sources of inspiration. It’s about supporting reading initiatives while respecting the oral tradition of storytelling. It’s about helping people discover and rediscover the magic of books. And most of all, it’s about Australians becoming a nation of readers.

Nearly half our population can’t read with any fluency. It’s a shameful and worrying statistic. We’ve identified three goals which will help us turn Australia into a nation of readers and encourage a reading culture in every home:

• For all Australians to understand the benefits of reading as a life skill and a catalyst for well-being;
• To promote a reading culture in every home; and
• To establish an aspirational goal for families, of parents and caregivers sharing books with their children every day.

Next year will see a whole heap of amazing, fun, reading activities taking place around Australia and online, so people of More >

Two of my three loves (Bear was at work)

For those of you who follow me on Twitter of Facebook, or don’t follow me (because that would be weird and stalkerish), but just know me in the “real world”, you’ll know that last week my darling boy, Mephistopheles Danger Gordon was in the hospital (for non-animal-lover, the “vets”). You’ll also know that, for the three days I was without him I was on tenterhooks. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t work. My boy wasn’t curled up beside me making cute little sleepy-moany noises and I was BEREFT.

Your reaction to my frequent, anxious posts and tweets about Mephy’s condition probably went in one of three directions:

1. Sympathy. Those of you who know me at all know hoe precious Mephy is to me. Or, if you have a precious cat, dog or marmoset yourself, you may have felt empathy. You might have gone through something similar and felt my pain.
2. Ambivalence. “What is she getting so worked up about? Mephy is JUST a cat!” or
3. Disdain. “Can’t she bloody shut up about that stupid feline? After all he is JUST A CAT!!!’

I have to explain that, before I met Mephy, I never thought of myself as a More >

Leunig - just one more thing to be grateful for!

Hullo!

Just a very quick note to say Merry Christmas! I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has been so supportive to me over this very big year! And, to paraphrase Eddie McGuire, what a very big year it has been in Kate land! Starting with the huge Authors for Queensland auction, then the launch of Thyla, my first big Book Week, another auction for the Tasmanian Devils, engagements, weddings, babies … Gah! No wonder I’m tired! And through all of it I’ve been so heartened by all the kindness, humour and general awesomeness of all you gorgeous people, in the “real world”, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on this blog. You’re super lovely and I’d be nowhere without you. And to say thank you, here are two of my favourite things: One Christmassy and one just beyond cute.

If you’re anything like me, you may need some tissues!

Mummy and baby!

I hope you all have the best of all possible Christmases. Stay safe, hug your loved ones, eat cake, sing, love, laugh and cry and live big. And see you all next year!

Much love,

Katie xxx

I write books for young people. Sure, the odd older (but young at heart) person might read and enjoy them (and to you, I say a HUGE thank you) but I don’t write my books for adults. I write my books for teenagers because when I was a teenager it was books that got me through. They got me through bullying, unrequited crushes, illness and personal crises. If it wasn’t for writers like Tamora Pierce, Terry Pratchett, Thomas Hardy, Brigid Lowry, Maureen McCarthy, Sonya Hartnett, Libby Hathorn, James Moloney, Nick Earls, Anne Rice and, of course, Judy Blume, I really don’t know how I would have survived those years. Because being a teenager is tough. I don’t know if it’s tougher now than ten years ago, or if it’s a different kind of tough but there’s not denying that for many teenagers every day is a struggle.

I’m not one of those adults who says that they should just cheer up because they will look back on these as the best days of their lives. Because I don’t.

I’m not one of those adults who says it’s just “hormones” or “immaturity” or “selfishness” that makes life hard for teenagers. Because I know More >

Just a quick post to let you all know my lovely news. About this time last year you might remember I was thrilled to receive an Arts Tasmania grant to work on Book Three in the Thyla series, Sarco. Well, the first draft of Sarco is done and dusted and is now being read by my amazing agent. It has been the most wonderful experience and privilege to spend the past year writing full-time on this draft, something I would never have been able to do without the grant. My next task? To draft the fourth and final book in the series, Diemen.

And yesterday I received a very wonderful letter in the mail, from Arts Tasmania, to let me know I had been successful in receiving a 2012 grant to work on Diemen!

Words can’t express my gratitude to Arts Tasmania for their support of my work. Through their assistance I have been able to establish myself as a full-time writer and produce work of a quality I never would have been able to achieve if I was still juggling writing and full-time work. It is so heartening to me to have the backing of the Tasmanian government in producing my More >