Totally Twins Taking Off!

These are the brand new covers for my Totally Twins series - renamed from The Fabulous Diary of Persephone Pinchgut. I hope you like them.

This morning, I met with Sophia Whitfield, publisher at New Frontier. I'm setting up a blog spot for the series, which will be 'written by' Persephone, the main character in the books.

Sophia and I had lots to talk about and we also discussed the second book in the series, Model Behaviour, to be released quite quickly after the first book, Musical Mayhem, which comes out in September 2010.

I also saw the illustrations Serena Geddes has done for the second book and they look awesome. Loads of new characters, gorgeous animals and quirky elements - all the things I love about Serena's work. Musical Mayhem goes off to the printers in the next few weeks. Very exciting!

It's a great feeling to be at this stage in my writing career, on the cusp of real-life author-dom and publication of my first few children's books. Sure, I've got a busy few months ahead, but I figure it's all part of getting my name out there and establishing myself.

Yesterday, I spent half the day presenting at Literature Live! practise session at Balgowlah Heights Public School, along with other children's book creators: Susanne Gervay, Sue Walker, Nina Rycroft, Laurine Croasdale, Jeni Mawter and Serena Geddes.

The fun part for me came when I was talking about the characters in my Totally Twins series, and discoverd that I had two real-life identical twins in the audience. Georgia and Lucy were lovely girls and although they looked as identical as Perse and Portia from Totally Twins, they were also very different. Glad to know I got something right!

Publishers, Persephone & Puggles

Today I met with Sophia Whitfield from New Frontier, the company publishing my junior series for girls aged 9+: The Fabulous Diary of Persephone Pinchgut. The lovely and delightful Serena Geddes, illustrator for the series, was also in the meeting.

We talked about lots of things including the book covers, how well the books were received at the Bologna Book Fair (great response there!) and our plans for marketing the series. We obviously have loads of work to do, but that's the fun of it. I'm really looking forward to September when the first book, 'Totally Twins' is released. Serena and I will be visiting schools, libraries and bookstores all around Australia.

A real thrill for me was to see the New Frontier catalogue, which has a page dedicated to the Persephone series. Just imagine, my books are in a publishers' catalogue! And when I got home, I had an email from another one of my publishers, Rochelle Manners at Wombat Books. She sent through a pdf of the Wombat Books catalogue, which is about to go to print, and it features a write up on my picture book, Puggle's Problem. So, I guess you could say that's a good day.

Well, best sign off now, lots of work to do and maybe some writing can be squeezed in there, too!