A recent week­end spent down at Point Lons­dale and Queen­scliff yielded four new, second-hand books pur­chased from Bar­won Book­sellers — a tidy, slightly expensy second-hand book­shop found within what used to be a small church. Quaint, indeed.

I now look for­ward to read­ing for the first time ever The Choco­late War and Har­riet the Spy. The two Philip Pull­man books I just had to buy because of their pretty, under­stated and not-fantasyesque cov­ers. Now to find The Amber Spy­glass ver­sion to com­plete the series.

Firstly I should men­tion that, yes, I do suck for not see­ing out Blog Every Day April (BEDA). I blogged right up until April 28 and then I could blog no more. Like a marathon run­ner who gets to the fin­ish line rib­bon, looks at it for a while and then sits down for a rest.

But let’s move on.

I started my mov­ing on this week­end when I stayed a friend’s house on the Morn­ing­ton Penin­sula with a few writ­ing bud­dies. It sounds like we were at the beach but I believe the place we actu­ally stayed is called the inlandy-bit-of-the-peninish: a nice big pad­docky prop­erty that included a col­lec­tive noun of hay bales (It’s a truss of hay but I’m not sure what it is for hay bales).

That’s me and House­mate #1 work­shop­ping some ideas on said trusses of hay. I really wanted to sleep up there too but was put off my the sounds of tiny mice play­ing within the trusses.

Truss!

The Great­est Blog­ger in the World went to press yes­ter­day. Noth­ing will stop it now. Fate, des­tiny, some­thing else, yada yada, etc.

And to really kick home the sub­tle ‘jour­ney’ theme of this blog post, here’s the first notes I made about the book, late in 2007.

So I offi­cially suck at BEDA (Blog Every Day April). Blog­ging every day is hard work espe­cially when the world offers dis­trac­tions like french toast, Fleet­wood Mac and Han­nah Mon­tana. Plus the Mel­bourne weather decided to cut to the chase this week­end and sent us head­long into Win­ter. Which meant it was time to get out the ulti­mate piece of protective/comfort gear — the Womb Jacket.

Call it Mummy Issues, or maybe just plain old Issues, but for years now my Womb Jacket has been a stal­wart of my torso come Win­ter. Water­proof on the out­side, warm and sheep­skinny on the inside, wear­ing the Womb Jacket is just like being back in the…well, you get it by now.

Now that the Emerg­ing Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val pro­gram for 2009 has been announced I can let y’all know that I’ll be par­tak­ing in a EWF ses­sion with YA author Anthony Eaton:

Into White Silence – Young adult fic­tion
Sun­day 31st May 11am to 12pm
Writ­ten after a res­i­dency in Antarc­tica, Anthony Eaton’s book com­bines his­tor­i­cal events with fic­tional ele­ments. He inter­laces of his­tory and the present through two young men’s jour­neys of cow­ardice and courage
In con­ver­sa­tion with Andrew McDonald

Anthony’s book Into White Silence has been short­listed for the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Read­ers and we’ll be chat­ting about the process the book went through from, well,  here to there, as the event title says.

It should be a fun con­ver­sa­tion. Anthony’s book is — I think — an excel­lent read that focuses on an anony­mous author’s quest to unravel the mys­tery of William Downes who joined an expe­di­tion to the Antarc­tic in 1920 and never returned.

www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au