So, what's been happening? I had a great meeting in Sydney last week with my publisher, and met quite a few of the fantastic team who will be working on and marketing my book.
I went up to Sydney from Canberra, where I went to give a paper at the conference of The Australian Association of Writing Programs, and also to take the opportunity to see the family - especially my niece, who's off to France tomorrow for a 3 month stay with a host family. I had fun, shopping for shoes and clothes for her, and helping her to pack!
I've submitted my resignation from my day job, and will finish up there next week. I'm planning to take the opportunity to focus for the next 12 months on building my writing career. I'll probably be doing some casual work and maybe some short-term project work as well, but the writing will be top priority. I'm almost counting the hours until my freedom, next Thursday! I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to take this opportunity, so I'm intending to make the best of it. I have another novel to finish by July, and I'm hoping to have the third one well underway, if not almost finished, before the end of next year.
Spring is about to give way to Summer here, and as we've had good rains recently, the landscape has a fair amount of green, and the dams are close to full. The wildlife is doing it's thing - one of the two wallabies we see around has a little joey, the turtles are laying eggs, the swallows in the carport are raising their second brood for the year, and this afternoon, when I took the dogs for a walk, we saw this:
Koalas are very shy creatures, and hard to spot when they're up in the trees, so we only see them a couple of times a year. Today was my lucky day!
