Zombies take over the world!

There have been quite a few articles on the rise of zombies in literature and I've just discovered another one in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that gives a shout out to me, Stacey Jay and Carrie Ryan - hooray! Okay, so I probably fare the worst in the article but I'm still quite happy with it! Go zombies!

Not much else to report. I've been doing loads of writing lately, hence why you haven't seen much of me. Also, there's been lots of reading. Willow by Julia Hoban is fantastic and I'll be talking more on that soon, as was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. In fact I think I've been spoilt after reading two such amazing books so I'll have to choose my next book carefully in case I'm let down!!!!

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NZ music month continues

I figured that I might as well keep sharing some awesome NZ songs. I'm actually from Australia (think US vs Canada) but when I was younger I saw Split Enz in concert quite a few times before they split up. Anyway, they were such a great bands and this is one of my fav songs. Enjoy!

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A quickie and a competition

Actually the competition isn't one of mine but it is being run by my lovely buddy, Joanne Rendell and if you head over to her blog and leave a comment then you'll go in with a chance to win a copy of The Real Real by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin (aka The Nanny Diary girls!!!!). Also, if you haven't read Joanne's book yet The Professors' Wives' Club, then you might want to add that to your list as well because it's fabulous!

In other news I was very excited to discover that Zombie Queen of Newbury High will be out in Australia and New Zealand at the end of August with Penguin - yay! The idea of finally being able to walk into a bookstore and see my book is just too cool for words. And if some of the people I went to school with happen to see it and think, 'wow, she's not such a loser after all' well, that's okay as well (and yup, I really am that shallow!)

And now because I'm still deep in the writing cave I am once again going to love and leave you but I will be back soon. Perhaps with a youtube song. Any requests? Retweet this button on every post blogger

GCC presents Melissa Walker

Yay, so today (as opposed to yesterday when I had planned to post this!) I've got the wonderfully awesome Melissa Walker. Melissa is one of my TFC buddies not to mention all round extraordinary ya writer and blogger. And although she has told me on numerous occasions that she is very fond of sleep I struggle to see how she manages to get any when she is so busy. One of her latest ventures is Iheartdaily.com, which if you don't already get your daily hit then I suggest you sign up quick smart.

But today we're actually here to talk about her next book, Lovestruck Summer.



Lovestruck Summer is the story of Quinn, an indie rock girl who came out to Austin, Texas for a music internship. She also plans to spend long, lazy days in the sun at outdoor concerts--and to meet a hot musician or two. Instead, she’s stuck rooming with her sorority brainwashed cousin, who now willingly goes by the name “Party Penny.” Their personalities clash, big time.

But Sebastian, a gorgeous DJ, definitely makes up for it. Sebastian has it all: looks, charm, and great taste in music. So why can’t Quinn keep her mind off Penny’s friend cute, All-American Russ and his Texas twang?

Sebastian is the kind of guy Quinn wants, but is Russ the guy Quinn needs? One thing’s certain: Quinn’s in for a summer she’ll never forget!


1 How did you first get the idea for your current book?

When I traveled to Austin, I just adored the music, the heat, the bats, the summer feel. Sigh. It's a FANTASTIC town, prime for summer love.

2 I often say that everything I know about writing has come from Buffy. Is there any movie/tv show/book/author that you think has helped your writing career?

All of them. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for letting me get cable in my room when I was 10. I seriously think that shaped my life in a good way. Favorite of all time? Maybe My So-Called Life.




3 What's a normal writing day for you?

1000 words before lunch if I'm on deadline. It's a weird rule I have! But lunch is sometimes eaten at 3pm if I'm struggling.

4 The best blooper I've ever done as a writer was when I had my heroine hand the hero something. Problem was they were sharing the same body at the time! So to help lessen my embarrassment, I'd love to know what your best writing blooper is and did someone catch it before your book went into print?

One blooper I made in the last Violet book, Violet in Private, was that I said afternoon tea at Vassar was at 4pm. It's really at 3pm, and a student called me on it! Shoot! Well, it's been 10 years since college, so being an hour off isn't too bad, right?



5 And now for the big question. Zombies - love them, hate them, couldn't eat a whole one? Enquiring minds want to know

I loved the spate of zombie movies in the last five years or so, especially Shaun of the Dead! And now, with books like yours coming out, there are more of the undead to love!


PS-For a chance to win Lovestruck Summer, plus 3 other great beach reads, your readers can go to iheartdaily.com/Harper2009.html Retweet this button on every post blogger

In the cave

Sorry for the lack of posts - I seem to have been very busy lately. As well as working on the weekends at the library, and trying to get a load of writing done, I had to go and be a judge at a Kid's literary quiz on friday.

There were about twenty teams of four from local schools and they had to answer about 100 different questions about books. All I can say is that boy, the kids of Hawke's Bay don't just read a lot but they remember a lot and I'm embarrassed at how badly I would've done if I didn't in fact have the answers sitting in front of me!!!!

Tomorrow I'm going to be touring the ever fabulous Melissa Walker with her new book so don't forget to swing by for that. I've also just started reading The Hunger Games which I'm loving, and in even more exciting news Julia Hoban sent me a copy of her book Willow - which is even more gorgeous in real life than in a photo. And me being me, I accidently started to read it and I'm already hooked! Will report back as soon as I've finished it! Retweet this button on every post blogger

I'm back

Thanks again to everyone for your lovely messages and support. I of course feel quite guilty since we are all feeling much better, where as the family and friends of Len Snee who was the policeman killed, won't ever feel back to normal again. But still, I really appreciate it.

Anyway, life is getting back to normal and my lack of blogging is mainly because I've been doing loads of writing and have a whole lot more to do, so if you don't see me much, then it's only because I'm dealing with a temperamental girl called Sophie Campbell who thinks she knows best. She does not!

In other news, the very lovely Adele Walsh invited me to take part in her Sarah Dessen birthday blog party and so today I'm over there talking about the movie How to Deal (which I love, love, love).

Also, don't forget that Linda Gerber's blog party starts tomorrow and you most defintely don't want to miss that because no one knows how to party like Linda does!!!

I finished reading Evernight by Claudia Gray the other day and ended up really enjoying it. I don't always like when things are hidden from the reader, but I will forgive it this one time because I know I want to read Stargazer! Anyway, I'll definitely be recommending this one to all the Twilight fans at the library. I'm currently reading the new Jonathan Stroud book and then it's onto The Vampire Academy. What's everyone else been up to??? Retweet this button on every post blogger

Happy Song

First up I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all your lovely comments. I can assure you we're all feeling much better now. Anyway, long time readers of my blog will know that this is one of my favorite songs (don't judge, I've been through an ordeal!) and what better time to break out a song that makes you smile. Enjoy it

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Worst week ever

Normally when I write a title like that I'm joking, but unfortunately it really has been a very hard week.

On Thursday morning we found out that a man had killed a police officer and badly injured two others as well as a civilian. This is horrible enough but then I found out that he was close to our house and we were told to lock all our doors and stay away from the windows. Unfortunately my eight year old daughter was home sick so she was pretty scared. The police then rang to say they would be evacuating us because the street was in lock down and no one could come and go.

Our street is very odd and it starts on one side of the hill and goes up and over the other side. Anyway, because of a suburb they mentioned in the news, I assumed that the gunman was on the north end of the street, well away from us. However, no one came to evacuate us and then we started to hear a lot of gunfire and the police trying to negotiate with the guy.

The street was still on lock down and so my six year old son had to be collected from school by a friend and both he and my husband had to stay there the night. I was woken up in the night by more shooting and the next morning we discovered the siege was still on. I tried to get evacuated but the police couldn't do it and by the afternoon not only did I realize we were going to be stuck for another night but that the gunman lived 20 doors up the road on the hill facing down to us. He also had lots of balconies and therefore a clear shot of our entire road - hence why we hadn't been evacuated sooner.

By Friday night there were reports he had died but since police were worried that his house was booby trapped with bombs, it was slow going. Also, because we have a house in front of us, we can't see the road and so it was like living in a ghost time we no sign of anyone else around apart from gunfire. It wasn't until we watched the news and could see all the police and armed defenders at the bottom of our street that we really realized how serious it all was.


We were finally evacuated on Saturday morning and got to see my husband and son. However, while they finally entered the house and confirmed the death on Saturday afternoon, the street was still on lock down because the house really was full of explosives and bombs. Thankfully my wonderful friend Sara Hantz and her equally wonderful husband invited us to stay in their gorgeous motel, which made my kids very excited!

By this stage we were all exhausted from the worry and were very happy to go home Sunday morning, only to discover that while the cordon had been moved back, our house was still on lock down and it looked like we were going to have another night away. Thankfully by the time I finished work (sorry Napier Library customers but I was not at my glowy best) we were finally allowed home.

I can honestly say this has been one of the toughest things I've gone through and I had no idea how stressful something like this could be (not least because we'd run out of toilet paper and the box of tissues was almost empty by the time the police came to get us).

It really did bring a whole town to a standstill and my heart goes out to the family, friends and collegeues of the police officer who was killed because not only did they lose a loved one, but they then had to wait over 24 hours to retrieve his body since the gunman kept shooting at them every time they tried.

One of the seriously injured policeman was the man who was so good to us last year when we had our neighbours from hell and not only did he calm me down on more than one occasion he also worked with the landlords to get the people evicted. He is also younger than I am and I just hope he pulls through.

Anyway, the whole situation was made a lot easier by all our friends who were so quick to help out - not to mention everyone else who kept texting and emailing to see how we were doing!. Thankfully, we're all feeling much better now that it's finally over but I can tell you, it has certainly made me even more grateful for me and mine. You can read more about the story here. Retweet this button on every post blogger

New Zealand Music Month

Just a quickie because I'm about to go and have coffee with a friend but since it's New Zealand Music Month I thought I'd play Smashproof and their beautifully sad song Brother which has broken a 23 year old NZ record by staying at number 1 in the charts for ten weeks.

Also, I'm blogging over at Teen Fiction Cafe where I'm sharing a very embarrassing travel story.

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GCC presents Lucienne Diver

Okay, so you've probably started to notice that I get very excited when I do a GCC tour but today I'm extra excited because I've been looking forward to reading this book ever since I first saw it had sold! So what's the book? It's Vamped by Lucienne Diver and it seriously looks amazing - in fact I have the feeling that Lucienne has purely written this book for my reading pleasure (yay!!!!!!)

Now, for those of you who don't know, as well as being a writer, Lucienne is also an agent with The Knight Agency, not to mention a very funny person- which will soon discover when you read the interview (and she's a Joss fan - more on the yay!!!!). But first let me whet your appetites with a little bit about the book:


From “Valley Vamp Rules for Surviving Your Senior Prom” by VAMPED heroine Gina Covello:

Rule #1: Do not get so loaded at the after prom party that you accidentally-on- purpose end up in the broom closet with the surprise hottie of the evening, say the class chess champ who’s somewhere lost his bottle-cap lenses and undergone an extreme makeover, especially if that makeover has anything to do with becoming one of the undead.

Gina Covello has a problem. Waking up a dead is just the beginning. There's very little she can't put up with for the sake of eternal youth and beauty. Blood-sucking and pointy stick phobias seem a small price to pay. But she draws the line when local vampire vixen Mellisande gets designs on her hot new boyfriend with his prophecied powers and hatches a plot to turn all of Gina’s fellow students into an undead army to be used to overthrow the vampire council.
Hey, if anyone's going to create an undead entourage, it should be Gina! Now she must unselfishly save her classmates from fashion disaster and her own fanged fate.

See - now do you understand why I'm so excited about reading it? So let us move onto the hard hitting questions that justify the three years I spent getting a journalism degree!!!!

1 How did you first get the idea for your current book?

I didn’t so much get an idea at first as a character, Gina Covello, talking in my head. She started out as the big-haired girl in high school with the reputation who tormented my sister. I tried to get her out of my head by giving her a story. She wanted more. My writers group, who was pretty mercilous when they didn’t like something, asked for more. “It wants to be a novel,” they told me. Darn if they weren’t right.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure I could stand Gina for an entire novel, and so she had to change. She was still head of the fashion police with a been there, done that, but the T-shirt was totally too lame to buy kind of attitude, but underneath it all is a heart that she’s been hiding. Her parents don’t believe in emotion (it messes with their costly botox treatments, causing unsightly wrinkles), and she’s learned to rely on herself and herself alone. I had a lot of fun playing with her. Because of our rocky beginning (yes, I talk about her as though she actually exists), I enjoyed tormenting her as much as I enjoyed spending time with her. It was a lot of fun to see her grow and change over the course of the book.

2 I often say that everything I know about writing has come from Buffy. Is there any movie/tv show/book/author that you think has helped your writing career?

Oh, sing it, sister! Joss Whedon is god (note, little “g” – no need for excommunication). He’s got fantastic dialogue, a wonderful sense of the absurd and fearless writing. He doesn’t play it safe or expected. Joss can and will kill anyone at any time, or suddenly swing the show in a complete U-turn. The Whedonesque fan mantra, “Trust Joss; Joss lies.” I’d like to say I learned everything I know from the master, but in truth I’m still learning to be fearless.

3 What's a normal writing day for you?

Wake up at 5:30 a.m. (before both my family and my perfectionist inner editor), write for an hour, go back to sleep. Wake up later as my literary agent self. Find some time before or after work to type in what I wrote that morning. I freehand everything first, type later. Because of that, what actually gets saved is more like a second draft than a first. Not that I don’t have a bunch more to go through after that! 5.30??????????? I have no words!!!

4 The best blooper I've ever done as a writer was when I had my heroine hand the hero something. Problem was they were sharing the same body at the time! So to help lessen my embarrassment, I'd love to know what your best writing blooper is and did someone catch it before your book went into print?

One of the members of my writers group once hit me over the head with a rolled up manuscript for using “shutter” time and again instead of “shudder.” It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the difference, just wasn’t paying enough attention! There’ve been some much better bloopers, but I can’t remember any of them off hand. hahahaha - I love it! I do the same thing with closet - I always write closest (though in my defence we don't call them closets over here, they're wardrobes!)

5 And now for the big question. Zombies - love them, hate them, couldn't eat a whole one? Enquiring minds want to know

Oh, I could eat one whole. Anyone who’s ever seen me at Thanksgiving dinner can attest to that. It’s the decomp I object to! Retweet this button on every post blogger

Any Cathy Cassidy fans out there??

One of my lovely ya book reviewer friends is interested in knowing if there are any Cathy Cassidy fans out there because she's thinking of a running a competition!

So what's the verdict? Do you like her and would you entered? Anyway, I will keep you posted if the comp goes ahead and don't go to far because later on tonight I'll be doing a GCC tour with Lucinerne Driver and her new book which I have been looking forward to for a very long time! Back soon my too cool for school bloggy friends! Retweet this button on every post blogger

Another quick one

The library was crazy busy today so my head is spinning (and dinner isn't cooked) but just thought I'd remind you all that it's promo week over at Teen Fiction Cafe and Melissa Walker, Susane Colastani and Stephanie Keuhnert have great competitions going, so if you like to win things then check them out!!!

I forgot to take my current book to work today so ended up starting Evernight by Claudia Gray when I was on my lunch break. Anyway, I like it a lot! Has anyone else read it? Does it end as well as it starts???

By the way does anyone use places like Library Thing or Shelfari? I want something to keep track of all the books I read each year- though I don't really want to review or grade them. Also, I'd love if they had widgets that I could put the covers up on the side of my blog. So I'd love to hear if you guys have any recommendations! Retweet this button on every post blogger

Round up

It's sort of a bits and bobs post today so I'm just going to mush it all in together and see how we go (a bit like my cooking techniques actually, so watch out for charcoal!)

First up I'm blogging over at Carol-Bookluver's blog to help her celebrate her blogoversary. I actually wrote the post ages ago when I had guest blog posts coming out my ears and as a result it could stand to have a good edit, however the sentiment is there!!!!

There are also a couple of nice reviews for Zombie as well (yay - nice reviews always welcome here!). The first one is over at Book Divas and the second one is over at Liyanailand (who strangely enough has the same template as I use to have on my website. We are obviously as one in our thinking!!!!)

Also, my awesome agent, Jenny Bent has another wise post up that anyone who is looking for an agent should definitely read.

Next on the list is that I went to see 17 Again the other day with Sara Hantz and it was awesome. I'm not really a Zac Efron fan but I think I might accidentally be one now because I totally bought it. Plus anything with Mathew Perry in it has gotta be great. Has anyone else seen it, what did you think???

And lastly but by no means leastily, the fabulous one who is Alyson Noel is number one on the children's NYT bestseller list for the NINTH week!!!!!! And how totally deserved, not only do Alyson and I have a joint custody arrangement as the two extra wives that David Bowie never knew he had, but she is also an amazing writer.

I mentioned the other day how much I loved Evermore but I didn't really go into details about it. Anyway, the thing I loved best was Ever herself. Of course Damen wasn't bad either but there was so something so real about Ever and her pain that I just wanted to wrap her up and help her figure it out. So if you haven't read Evermore yet then you honestly must, not least because Blue Moon will be out soon and you don't want to get caught napping!!!!!!!

Right, and now I'm off to write! Retweet this button on every post blogger