Gettin'... Swampy

Wow. The Writers 4 Queensland auction I wrote about in my last blog raised AUD $20,000 for flood relief. Thank you to the sweet people who bid on Burnt Snow, as all proceeds went into a very deserving pot. Poor Queensland - first floods, now cyclones - they need all the help they can get. It was an honour to take part. Muchos kudos to the magnificent organisers.

This woman is a spy.

Now, a little more news. While White Rain, the Burnt Snow sequel, races towards its TOTALLY SPOOKY climax with snakes, bad guys, knives, even more snakes, magic rocks, shapeshifting, demons, snakes and some more snakes along the way, something VERY GOOD has happened to me.

I have been writing a play for the fantastic Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, USA. I have been writing this damn play for FIVE YEARS because it is about Valerie Plame, the American CIA agent who was outed as a spy by the Bush Administration in order to discredit claims that there were no reasons to go to war in Iraq. Remember that? That Iraq thing?

Well, when I started the play in 2006, the "truth" of what happened in Iraq was a very different thing to what the truth turned out to be. So over five years, the play has changed form, story, characters, content... until last year the dramaturg flew out from Philadelphia and the Finborough Theatre in London gave me some actors and a director and I forced this nutty CIA-agent play called Swamplands into the world. We did a reading as part of the Finborough's annual Vibrant! season... and then I hid under my blanket for a while.

Anyway, I've done some more work on the play, and now a NEW director and a NEW group of actors is going to set to work making it beautiful as part of the National Play Festival 2011 in my home town of Sydney, Australia. Whoohoo! It's a big honour for me to be selected for the festival, and if you're in Sydney in March, it would be GREAT if you could make it along to one of the two public rehearsed readings the actors are going to do on March 16 (4pm) or 18 (7pm). 

You can read all about Swamplands at #NPF11 here... and I sure hope I see you there.

Do it for Queensland!

Hi there. Remember me? I used to be your friendly neighbourhood blogger - but then I went into Deadline Mode for my new book, White Rain, and then I got swine flu. AGAIN.

It is no longer a family secret that my parents' nickname for me is 'Piglet'

So, I've been quiet for a while. But, then, a tragedy overtook all of my concerns about stressing about my new book or spending all my time in a stripy dressing-gown, greeting the postman with swollen eyeballs. Stuck here in London, I've been incredibly distressed to read about everything that's happening in flooded Queensland.

This was how high and violent the floodwaters got. That's a RUBBISH BIN in a POWERLINE.

Now, I really like Queensland. I spent a wonderful few days at the Brisbane Writers' Festival last year and it was fantastic. I've got some incredible friends who live there, and Brisbane in particular is a city I associate with fabulous food and youthfully wild times. The image of it with BINS IN POWERLINES breaks my heart.
Fortunately, some amazing writers who also love Brisbane had the brilliant idea of finding a way for writers (not exactly a group one first thinks of as coming to the rescue when the front lawn has washed away) to help the relief effort.
What Queensland needs to combat a disaster that has affected an area THE SIZE OF FRANCE AND GERMANY COMBINED is money. It needs lots and lots of money to rebuild, actually, everything. That's when writers Kate Gordon, Katrina Germein, Emily Gale and Fleur McDonald had the idea that what writers could do to help was auction their wares to raise money. You can read about them here, in this press release in the Tasmanian Times.
So I, like a GAZILLION writers from around the world, are giving what I can for flood relief. I am auctioning two specially-signed copies of Burnt Snow with original hand-drawn-by-me book plates, as well as a day-long script clinic for anyone out there who has written a play and wants to make it fabulous/maximise its chances of getting a production (I'm very good at this, I'm a theatre Literary Manager - I should point out if you love someone who writes plays, my expertise makes a GREAT PRESENT). Bids start at $0, and you bid just by signing up on the website.

You can start your bidding here.

Please do it for Queensland. If you love books, do it for Queensland - so many libraries and bookstores have been destroyed it is even more painful than having swine flu. And, trust me, that's saying something. Oink! Oink!