I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to join a writers panel for the About the Book festival in Merimbula on Saturday 11 March  2017. The topic of discussion will be: Giving voice to ourselves: the changing face of publishing. The panel will discuss the world of digital publishing and its impacts. I will be speaking about my work as an emerging author along with my experiences as a member of the Andromeda Spaceways Magazine Association.

I will be in high company – others on the panel will include Kate Liston-Mills, whose beautifully written book The Waterfowl are Drunk was published last year; Gabrielle Stroud, a teacher and YA author whose essay ‘Fixing the System‘ in The Griffith Review went viral; and Meghan Brewster, author, blogger and founder of Manuscrapped.com. The fabulous Michelle Pettigrove, who has been successful as an actress, playwright and author, will be facilitating.

Halloween in Australia isn’t the all-out holiday it is in America, but it can still be fun to play dress-ups and choose some spooky stories for bed-time reading. Here’s a list of picture books that blend horror with humour for young readers.

1. My Dead Bunny by Sigi Cohen, illustrated by James Foley (Walker Books Australia, 2015). This book was shortlisted for the 2016 CBCA Children’s Book of the Year Awards, and tops my list as the scariest book for youngsters. Think Pet Sematary for preschoolers. Read it yourself first to be sure your little one can handle it, and laugh out loud at the gory zombie bunny Brad, complete with smiling worm poking out of the skull. I love rhyme when it’s done well; Sigi Cohen nails it here.
2. Inside Mary Elizabeth’s House by Pamela Allen (Penguin Books Australia, 2001). Mary Elizabeth is an adorable yet sinister girl who lets her classmates, ‘the boys,’ in on a secret: there’s a monster living at her house. The boys scorn her, so Mary Elizabeth counters with more and more details about her monster friend. At last, she invites the boys over for ‘dinner’. Pamela is an author-illustrator who really knows her stuff. This book uses rhyme without being a rhyming book, which is easier said than done. Kids will be firmly on Mary Elizabeth’s side as the boys find out what happens to people who don’t believe in monsters …
3. I’m Going to Eat You by Matt Mitter, illustrated by Jimmy Pickering (The Five Mile Press, 2006). This spooky pop-up book features bogeymen, sea serpents, ghosts, skeletons and werewolves, but the last page reveals something even more terrible. A fun introduction to scary creatures that will appeal to even the youngest blooming horror aficionados.
4. Fright Club by Ethan Long (Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2015). Vladmir (a vampire, of course) is the leader of Fright Club, and on the eve of Halloween he has ideas about what kinds of creatures can be in on ‘Operation Kiddie Scare’. A clue: monsters, witches, ghosts and mummies are in. Bunnies, tortoises, butterflies and squirrels are out. This book has the beautiful interaction between text and illustration that happens when a skilled author-illustrator has a good sense of humour. Will the equal rights movement win the day? Have fun finding out.
5. Wake Up Do, Lydia Lou by Julia Donaldson (Macmillan Children’s Books, 2013).Lydia Lou dozes through a ghost’s increasingly desperate efforts to stir her. When she wakes, her response to the scream-seeking ghost is perfect. Julia Donaldson is the current Queen of the rhyming picture book. Wake Up Do, Lydia Lou won’t disappoint kids looking for a wild and spooky Halloween read.

This week is World Breastfeeding Week.  I believe breastfeeding is something that needs to be talked about. I’m writing this post while breastfeeding. It’s often my best chance. I’m using my left hand to write, which results in awkward typos such as ‘beastfeeding’. To be honest it does feel like beastfeeding sometimes, when she’s hungry and goes for my jugular instead of my jugs.

No-one should be belittled for the way they feed their child. This still happens often. For every story that hits the media and instigates a feed-in there are so many women who stay quiet about their experience. Some feel shunted out of public life or pressured to stop breastfeeding altogether.

Breastfeeding my second child has been a relatively easy experience so far. In this case, that means I only had the normal quota of clusterfeeds, blisters, painful contractions and lumps to deal with in the first month or so.

Breastfeeding my first child was very different: I don’t know if I could do it again. I had bad supply problems when E was a baby. She did not feed well. By her fourth day she had lost 14% of her body weight and was exhausted, so I was instructed to pump 30ml of milk to give her by bottle after each full breastfeed.  If I couldn’t pump enough milk (which was usually the case) I was to supplement with formula. We needed to use a syringe at times to dribble the milk into her mouth. My husband and I spent 12 hours of the day each just feeding her over the following weeks. E had sleep problems on top of this. I was getting between four and six hours of very broken sleep in a day. It affected us all both physically and emotionally. Eventually E began to outright refuse the bottle so we gave up the supplementary feeding although her weight was still a concern. It could have gone the other way – she could have rejected the breast. We started E on solids early, but I kept breastfeeding her until she was two.

Breastfeeding problems are not uncommon. My point is this: don’t judge someone for feeding their baby with formula. You don’t know what they may have been through. And don’t judge someone for breastfeeding. You don’t know how hard-won it might have been. Just let the baby eat.

The kids in my daughter’s class were asked about what their mums did for work. What does my daughter think my job is?

‘Holding the baby and I think something on the computer’. Sounds about right.

I am a professional writer and a mother of a three year old, with another child on the way. We live on the coast of South East Australia with my husband, my mother, my dog, seven chooks and three alpacas. We’re on a bush property and live surrounded by wattle, gums, grevillias, warratahs and banksias. I spend a lot of time thinking about parenting, writing and human rights, so this blog will include posts on all three topics. I hope you have a great day, there will be more to come!