This beautiful cover landed in my in-box just as I was frantically getting ready to jump on ta plane to Darwin, in the Northern Territory.

I am thrilled to bits with it. It’s absolutely perfect for the story. Okay, she wasn’t wearing short sleeves in the snow, but I don’t care — in all other respects, it really suits the story.

The cover designer is Kim Killion, and honestly she’s brilliant. I didn’t give her much of a detailed brief but she nailed it in one.

So here it is. 

I’m in Darwin now, and am about to have dinner with an agent and another author friend, so not much time to say much more. But I will try to get a link up to a jigsaw, as soon as I can. Staye tuned.

I also have audio news, but I’ll keep that for another post.

Suffice it to say that two exciting emails this morning has really sent me off to a great start at this conference. I’m grinning all the way!

So, what do you think of my new cover?

Recently I watched an old clip of Hugh Laurie reciting a poem, a fairly incomprehensible one, made more incomprehensible (and funny) by the way he gabbled it out so fast.  It reminded me of when I first started teaching. I was in an all-boys high school, and we junior teachers were often rostered on to supervise detention.

Detention was for all kinds of reasons — giving cheek, being late, not wearing the school tie and many other reasons. The boys in detention ranged from ages 11 to 17. Theoretically they were supposed to spend the half hour doing homework, or at least some kind of work, but of course they either claimed they had no homework or had done it, and since they were from all levels and all subjects, there was no way to check.

I hated seeing them just sitting there bored, so I came up with a plan. The next time I was on detention, I brought in a pile of poetry books. I told the boys that they could leave as soon as they learned some poetry off by heart and could recite to me 12 or 20 lines (I can’t remember exactly how many I set) of one of the poems in one of the books.  They weren’t happy about it — they were sure they’d never be able to remember that much — but their only other alternative was to sit and do nothing.

So they scoured the books, looking for a poem they liked and thought they could learn pretty quickly, and one by one they came forward and recited their lines. They had to be word perfect, and when they were, I’d let them go. They were thrilled, thinking they’d got out of detention early. I was delighted to have exposed them to some free-range poetry.

Months later I’d be on yard duty (supervising) at recess and lunch time as the boys ate, played sport or whatever, making sure there was no trouble or dangerous play, and every now and then a boy would come up to me and say “Hey miss, I still remember this.” And they’d proudly recite (or rattle off) their lines of poetry.

These were often the naughty boys, who had a bit of a reputation, and I loved that they’d be bailing me up to proudly recite a bit of poetry.
Thanks, Hugh Laurie, for sparking that memory.

We’re still in winter here in Melbourne, but in the last week my neighbor’s jasmine has begun to flower.

I love fragrant flowers and jasmine is one of my favorites, so I picked a few sprigs and popped them in a vase in my bedroom.

And every time I walk in, I can smell the jasmine and it always makes me smile, knowing sprintgime is coming.

I love the changing of the seasons. I’ve never wanted to live in the tropics, where they usually have only two seasons — wet and dry. I don’t care how gloomy and cold and wet it gets here in winter, I know it will eventually change.

And it is. The change has started.

Do you have a favorite sign of the changing seasons? What’s happening in your neck of the woods?