A quick-round-up of bits and pieces from the past week or so:

My university job finishes up next Friday, and although I’ve enjoyed many aspects of it, it’s been a heavy load, so I am looking forward to being able to concentrate full-time on writing and life in general after that. I still have a large pile of assignments to mark over the next couple of days, though, so it’s not over yet – but I am on the count down!!

We had a wonderful visit from cousins I haven’t seen for many years on Tuesday night. It was lovely to catch up and spend long hours over dinner and well into the evening talking with them. We’ve seen other family members every few years, but not them, however in recent months we’ve connected again via Facebook, which has been a great way to keep in touch and renew the bonds.

Of course, for a couple of days before they came, I kept busy mounting an archaeological dig in the guest bedroom, excavating the guest bed from underneath piles of papers and books, and cleaning up the site room ready for them. However, that’s now done (mostly – we won’t mention one pile of unsorted papers stuffed into the new filing cabinet) and now that I have two filing cabinets, I’m hoping it will be easier to keep tidy.

Our next lot of guests arrive tonight – my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew. My niece is going to stay for the week, while the others head up to Queensland for a few days, before coming back through and picking her up on the way home. My niece is now 18, at uni, and has just today got her driver’s licence – and I’m looking forward to spending some time with her. Gordon is off to Queensland as well, for a conference for the week, so Lauren and I will have girl-time together.

Our major drama for the week was the discovery on Monday that our two vehicles had been attacked and damaged – by a rat! Yes, you read that right. A rat (or rats) have been munching on the various rubber hoses and plastics around the engines in both vehicles, although Godon’s was by far the worst affected – to the point of being undriveable, as there was coolant leaking out at a great rate when he set off on Monday morning. So, we had to wait for a tow-truck to come and take his LandCruiser in for repairs. Fortunately, mine isn’t as badly munched, and although there’ll be some repairs, it’s not urgent, and can wait until next week. In the meantime, we’ve been putting out rat poison, which we don’t really like doing, but don’t have other options.

Speaking of Gordon, he’s been putting up photos from our outback trip on his photoblog – he posts one per day, so if you’d like some sense of our travels, hop over and have a look. Or try the direct link for the outback series. I still haven’t gone through my photos properly yet – it’s on my (long) To Do list – maybe after next week!!

And, in book news, it’s now less than two months until Dark Country hits the book shelves. I’m starting to get quite excited – and a little nervous!

I’ve seen this meme around on quite a few blogs, and thought I’d give it a try. The idea is to take just fifteen minutes to think of fifteen books that will always stay with you – listing the first ones that come to mind. So, my time starts now…

1. Mister God This is Anna – Fynn
2. Little House series – Laura Ingalls Wilder
3. A Many-Splendoured Thing – Han Suyin
4. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaman
5. The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula Le Guin
6. The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin
7. Call Me When the Cross Turns Over – D’Arcy Niland
8. Brother Cadfael’s Penance – Ellis Peters
9. When Was Wales? – Gwyn Williams
10. The Eagle and the Raven – Pauline Gedge
11. The Shiralee – D’Arcy Niland
12. The Shattered Rose – Jo Beverley
13. Summer of the Red Wolf – Morris West
14. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
15. The Year of Living Dangerously – CJ Koch

Done – in 14 minutes. Looking over that list, it’s quite a mix. There’s one non-fiction there: Gwyn Williams’ superb ‘When Was Wales?’, a passionate, poetic and grittily realistic history of Wales. The rest are fiction, with probably only one or two of them counting as ‘literary’ fiction. (I’m assuming Mockingbird is part of the literary canon; Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously is probably part of the Australian literary canon – the book is much better than the film.) Koch and Niland are both Australian authors, so those titles may not be familiar to some.

When I look at that list, it’s mostly characters that stand out for me, more so than ideas or themes or language. The challenging ideas are there – especially in the Le Guin books – and there is some beautiful writing in all of them – but it’s the characters, and the emotion of them facing the various situations, that resonate for me.

One of the things on my “To Do” list is to refresh/redesign this blog – hopefully, in the next month or so. There’s a few things that have always been a bit rough, and I want to fix those, streamline a few things, and maybe create a fresh look. I am contemplating getting a professional designer to do the basic design, but could also do something myself, although my graphic design and CSS skills are not sufficient to do anything other than follow the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Sweetie.*

I need the blog design to be easy to navigate, to handle multiple book covers and book pages, which the current theme isn’t doing so well, and to look good, with both pages and posts accessible. In terms of possible expansion, I do have photo gallery software installed, and I’m planning to upload more photos into it and link it to the blog, as the photos of my travels seem to interest people. I could also possibly install discussion forum software, to enable readers a place to discuss books and reading in general (not just my books). There’s still a lot of capacity with my web host that I’ve come nowhere near using yet.

So, what do you look for in an author blog? What works for you? What doesn’t? What kinds of features would you like to see here?

*Yes, it’s usually translated less politely. But I try to avoid calling people names. (Unless they really, really deseve it…)

Each year in March, when the Golden Heart finalists are announced, the finalists organise themselves an email group, and often form a strong group of friends, long before the winners are announced at the Romance Writers of America conference in July. The year I finalled – 2007 – was no exception. My fellow finalists are a fantastic, wonderful and supportive group of writers, and it’s been great to meet many of them at Dallas and San Francisco, but also to be in regular contact as we negotiate the writing and publishing life. Many of the group are now published, and I’ve got some great books sitting in my TBR pile that I’m looking forward to getting to, now that my uni job is almost over, and Dark Country proof pages are in. (Since I’m not going to the RWAmerica conference this year, I’m planning to read my fellow finalists books in July, and feel ‘in touch’ that way!)

Since we finalled in 2007, we’ve had a bit of fun playing with the 007 theme. We’ve also been planning to establish a group blog – and I’m proud and delighted that this week, our blog has launched. So please hop on over and visit us at: Nobody Writes it Better.

There’s quite a few of us involved, writing a range of romance genres, and as it’s aimed predominantly at readers, there will be giveaways and interesting posts. I’ll be contributing posts every six weeks or so.

Bookmark it, add it to your feed reader, feel free to spread the word: Nobody Writes it Better.

The UK edition of As Darkness Falls will be published in September, and the cover is now up on various online bookstores. It’s quite different from the Australian cover, but very striking nonetheless:

As Darkness Falls (UK Cover)

I find it interesting how different countries approach book covers, each taking a style that reflects the different readerships and the way in which the publishers are targetting the market. As I understand it, romantic suspense isn’t as big in the UK as it is elsewhere, so they’ve taken more of a thriller approach, without the emphasis of the Australian setting on the cover, which was a key element of the Australian cover. I really like both covers – the Australian, and the UK. The UK one, while it isn’t Australian, is very atmospheric. Here’s hoping UK readers will be tempted to pick the book off the shelf… and read on!

For my friends overseas, the book is now listed as available for pre-order at The Book Depository. I use The Book Depository a lot – they don’t charge shipping, and have good prices and fast service. There’s only 84 days to go until UK release date – 4 September.