Feeling Inspired

Dear Happy Readers... here 'tis, finally. A posting on my blog after all this time. I guess that after meeting the esteemed Alexander McCall Smith, I lost my impetus to write, so humiliated was I. Well folks, I'm back on track. I've just spent the past 9 hours at the Brisbane Writers Festival in my role as Assistant Venue Manager. It was an exhausting yet exhilerating day! Total K.A.O.S ruled but in general, it was just fantastic and of course, here am I writing SOMETHING. Today I had the pleasure of listening to Louis Sachar, a writer of young adult fiction, all the way from Austin, Texas (my old stomping ground). He was great and there were quite a lot of kids there clutching their books. Then we were treated to Kevin J Anderson, author of the Dune series AND of the Star Wars novels! Wow! I am not that into sci-fi but this guy was really interesting and pretty "normal" despite confessing that he is sure he suffers from hypergraphia (the sickness of writing too much). One of the speakers I enjoyed the most was Michael Morpurgo, a British laureate writer of childrens' fiction, who was extremely animated & enjoyable to watch. The kids were loving him & it's obvious that he is very passionate about his writing and his subjects. In fact, one family had travelled all the way from Melbourne just to watch him and had already attended every session he was giving! I think I will buy one of his books tomorrow (if I get a minute!). The Lord Mayor of Brisbane opened one of the sessions - a launch of another young adults' book by Emily Rodda. I took a minute to tell him how much I love Brisbane City Council which prompted a look of complete anxiety from him as he pondered the mental status of some of his constituents! One of the most enjoyable sessions of the day for me was a panel discussion by three writers of speculative fiction. My old tutor, Kim Wilkins, was one of them and was joined by Michael White and the hilarious John Ajvide Lindqvist from Sweden. He is Scandinavia's only "horror writer" but this session was just hilarious, despite the genre & subject matter! I was thinking that I would never get everyone out of there (I was a full blown Venue Manager by this time, having replaced a bolshy previous holder of the crown who was never going to win any points for Public Relations. Back to the Festival tomorrow morning to be an Artist Liason person and to man the info desk - though that could all change any minute as per K.A.O.S mode. At least it's something to look forward to!
It's been so long since I blogged that I haven't had a chance to tell you about my brush with fame (!) This is a photo of me in the dressing room of a famous star of the stage! Okay, okay so it was a production of "Pirates of Penzance" by the Toowoomba Choral Society but here I am in a dressing room and looking the part - sort of! It was a great show & had me inspired (again) to be a singer and dancer. This was further confirmed by tickets to "Miss Saigon" last night with mum. What a grrrrreat show! The only bummer really was that neither mum nor I could hear the lyrics (??) but the overall effect was brilliant! Oooo, I want to get into set design (in between singing and dancing and being an archaeologist & famous writer and ....)
Oh, I can smell someone having a barbie. It's the most gorgeous spring evening. Here is a gorgeous magnolia that I snapped whilst in Toowoomba the other weekend. Aren't they just fantastic? Hmmmm....