My Very First Blog

Well, this is my very first post in my very first blog - what an auspicious occasion! A writer friend of mine told me she uses her blog rather like it is a diary and I think that's what I will do, too.

While today was a bit of a domestic day, looking after the kids at home during school holidays, I did manage to squeeze a bit of work in in between vacuuming and cooking and washing.

About a year ago, I was asked to write an article about maternity fashions for the Sydney Morning Herald and although I wrote the article they ran out of space for it in the end. But rather late Wednesday night I received an email from the editor of Essential Style (Thursday liftout in SMH) to say that they would like to run a new version of the article and would I be interested in re-writing and re-submitting it. Of course, I said yes and so for the next two days I scurried around obtaining new images from the winter catalogues of three top-notch maternity shops: Fragile, MBC and Szabo.

Finally at about 3pm this afternoon, the story was put to bed. The images, the article and all the outfit descriptions, pricing and stockist information to appear alongside were finalised. Phew! Now I just hope everything is correct! We will see, I guess, on Thursday 15 April because that is when the article will appear in Essential Style. Don't miss it!

Writing material for fashion magazines is not my normal style of writing, but it was still loads of fun. And working to a very, very tight deadline was certainly a challenge.

Back to my usual occupation of children's writer, I embarked on a bit of a research trip yesterday to the Australian Reptile Park at Gosford. Again, I had the kids in tow, so it was a bit of a 'kill two birds with one stone' adventure in that I could entertain the kids whilst also making sure I had a photo taken with a Tasmanian devil. Yes, you read that right!

I am currently working on a mentorship, which I won through the Australian Society of Authors, with Kate Forsyth. The book I'm writing, 'Sebastian Smee and the Tassie devils' features a kid who is trying really hard to help save the Tassie devils from extinction. When I read that the Australian Reptile Park was also working to save the Tassie devils from extinction, I knew I had to go up for a look. They have bred a number of baby Tassie devils, which they include in their keeper education talks to visitors at the park and which they offer photographs with.

After we listened to the keeper talk, my three kids and I headed straight over to get a photo taken with a gorgeous baby Tassie devil. He was a little smelly, but still cute. Check out the photo above. By the way, I thoroughly recommend a visit to the Australian Reptile Park. They have heaps of keeper talks throughout the day and kids can really get up close and personal to all sorts of animals. They have baby wombats at the moment that kids can pat, too. Very special!