Oh, boy! It seems I’m a teeny bit behind on this post, since I’d planned to send this off at the end of October. So much for my monthly updates! OOPS! I promise to do better coming into the New Year!

A reason why this is so belated is simply because I’ve been so incredibly busy over the last couple of months that I’ve struggled to remember my own name at times! EEEK! So here’s a brief glance at all the seriously cool stuff that’s been happening:

First up, Akarnae was listed as one of the Top Ten YA Fiction Books for 2017 by Bookseller+Publisher, which completely blew my mind (and I still have trouble actually believing it). My publishers sent me the most GORGEOUS rainbow roses as congratulations and they stayed alive for ages, which was so nice! (The roses, not my publishers — though they’re still alive, too, haha.)

I also finished the final read-through of Graevale (coming February 1st) and the absolutely STUNNING cover was revealed across social media, as well as the blurb:

My US ARCs of Whisper arrived in the post, and it was so amazing to hold the international version of this book in my hands for the first time!

Since then, the Australian version of Whisper has also arrived, along with Graevale, so I’m surrounded by books — which is so cool!

In amidst all that, I finally took the holiday that my doctor told me to take a year ago (oops!), and I went to New Zealand for a couple of weeks. I honestly have no words for how incredible that trip was, and I got to do all kinds of fun things like kayaking (both sea kayaking along the Coromandel Peninsula and then again in a glacier-fed lake on the South Island), horse riding near Glenorchy (through Lord of the Rings scenery), a day trip out to Milford Sound, a helicopter ride up to Franz Josef Glacier and hiking over the ice for 3 hours, climbing all kinds of mountains and walking all kinds of trails, visiting Hobbiton, seeing glow worms — honestly, I just did so much and it was all AMAZING!! PLUS there was a freak snow storm that blew in and it was MAGICAL!!!

And don’t even get me started on the scenery itself! It was just like I’d stepped into a fantasy novel!! Photos do NOT do it justice!!

Once I was back from NZ, I did the final read-through of the US version of Whisper (coming May 1st) and then I flew to Sydney for “Holiday Part 2” which was seriously awesome as well:

Then, about a week after that, there was a surprise opportunity to fly to Melbourne to speak at the YA Showcase (which spotlights some of the books coming out next year), so I did a quick Q&A there:

If you want to watch the 4 (ish) minutes, you can do so here, because someone was kind enough to film an Instagram Live recording of it! (Boy, am I glad I didn’t trip and fall on my face! Just the day before flying in, I sprained both my ankle and my hand, so there was a very real possibility, haha):

While in Melbourne, I also snuck in a trip to see Aladdin the Musical with my amazing publisher, and omigosh it was soooooo awesome!!

And, also super unbelievably cool and fantastic, that same day I learned that Draekora has made it onto the longest for the Indie Book Awards, which is SO exciting!!

So that was all a crazy-crazy-crazy few weeks, and in amongst it all, I also did a Q&A at Avid Reader bookstore in Brisbane, as well as spoke on a panel at the Future Librarians Conference about the future of the book industry from an author’s perspective.

… AND THEN, on top of all that, just last week I finished writing a whole new book — in just 18 days! 

So, yeah, things have been a little busy of late, haha. (Understatement of the century!!) But I’m now sneaking in a few days of R&R for Christmas before jumping into everything again next week! And I have some SUPER exciting news coming up regarding launch events for Graevale, so stay tuned! It’s SO CLOSE now!!!!

Aaaaaand, because I’m a horrible person, I’ll leave you with a teaser quote for Graevale from the Rebel Prince we love to hate — or hate to love!