Happy new year!

It's Saturday morning one week into 2012, rain is falling gently outside, and I've just signed up to attend Thrillerfest in New York in July. Woohoo! I've been to Europe a few times before but never to the US, and to be going to New York particularly just thrills me. Thrillerfest is a fabulous annual festival featuring some of the biggest names in crime and thriller writing: stars this year include Karin Slaughter, James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark and the one and only Lee Child. It's run by the International Thriller Writers, an organisation of which I'm a member, and goes for four days. The first two days are allotted to Craftfest, a series of workshops and talks in which some of the world's bestselling authors share their writing secrets, and Agentfest, a session where aspiring authors pitch their work to agents. I'm going along to Craftfest, because you should always grab the chance to learn from others, and the panel days, and can't wait! I can tell it's going to be a long six months.

The other great US news is that all my work will soon be available there as ebooks! They'll be up on Amazon first, and should be there any day now. I'll post again when I hear for sure, or if you are in the US and download one, I'd be grateful if you could let me know please  :)  

My author copies of Silent Fear arrived the other day. What a moment that is, opening a box of your new books for the first time! That was the fifth such time for me but it never gets old and I don't mind admitting that I cried. It's such a thrill to hold it at last, and think of all the work that went into it, not only by me but by my wonderful editor Bri and publisher Cate, cover designer Deborah Parry who always does an incredible job, and everyone in Pan Macmillan who helps along the way. I can't wait to see it on the shelves on Feb 1st, and am delighted that Bolinda Audio are releasing it as an audiobook the same day. I have a few tour dates posted now, but there are more to come, including all the events in WA and SA. I'll put them up as soon as I get them. I also post on Facebook, so if you 'like' my page you can find out there if you prefer.

I'm looking forward to the start of my next Year Of The Edit class on January 21st. The previous class concluded mid-December and one student said to me, 'forget about a learning curve, this was a straight line upwards!' If you live in or around Brisbane and have a manuscript you'd like some help with editing, I really recommend this class; it teaches skills that help you handle what is often a big unwieldy mass of story and understand what works and what doesn't and why. I certainly wish it had been available back when I was struggling with editing my early novels. More info is here.

And now it's back to work for me. I'm charging towards the end of book 6 andhave left our Ella at a particularly precarious moment ... ah the joy of writing fiction!

Cheers,
Katherine.