Your dog ate what?
My book ‘The Dog That Ate The Bathroom’ with illustrator Guy Harkness is in full swing. It’s been fun choosing images. Above are some mock ups. Once the script was finished we opened up the phone lines on our breakfast …
Better than flicking snot? I’ll take that
I’m stoked with the new cover for ‘Shot, Boom, Score,’ a kids novel I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s published by Allen and Unwin in February 2013 and is mostly aimed at 8-12 year olds. My daughter …
3 important words from Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is a literary hero to many. What then, is his advice when you ask him the most important thing he’s learnt when it comes to writing? A man of many words, though in this case few. Nice one.
5 things not to say to a writer
You should write a book about a wizard! Great idea. Let’s pitch it to J.K Rowling’s publisher Bloomsbury and watch the cheques roll in. They would never have seen anything like it. What do you do for the rest of …
Bieber needn’t be worried
Somehow I made it onto the soon-to-be-released music compilation Kiwiana Goes Pop. Anyone who knows me knows this is a complete accident, mainly because I’m a writer first, part-time music hack second. However, because it helps to be honest about the …
Distract me one more time…and I’ll probably thank you
In his book A Week at the Airport Alain De Botton confirmed something writers have always known: we don’t need the perfect study with the perfect view to do good work. It makes sense. How many times have you written a surprisingly …
A gift from Kiwi kids to Indonesia
Recently I was sent a personal invitation by APP (Asian Pulp and Paper) to visit their mill in Perawang, Sumatra, Indonesia. As an author, my main job as part of the ‘Cottonsoft Books for Change’ was to take books donated …
Do not search Amazon for the book you haven’t written yet
Brilliant. Among Roddy Doyle’s ten rules for writers : Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages …
What every writer’s career looks like
Okay, everyone apart from J.K Rowling’s – but you get the idea. In every career there will ups/downs, broke publishers and deals gone bad. Accept it and write the next sentence. Have fun, that’s the reason you do this, remember?
Never meet your heroes – unless it’s Lee Child
This is Lee and I in the green room at the Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland. I was emceeing and he was the main attraction. That’s a new suit he’s wearing, one of two he bought that day. His story of …