Blog Tour – Second post

Lots of news at the moment. The second post in my informal blog tour for WHEN WE HAVE WINGS is now up – a Q&A for Shearers Bookstore with the very lovely Mark Harding.

http://shearersbooks.blogspot.com/2011/10/interview-claire-corbett.html

 

 

NASA CSIRO Tweetup for launch of Mars Rover

This is big news. I am one of 50 tweeps selected to attend the first CSIRO tweetup ever to celebrate and watch live launch footage of NASA Mars Rover: Curiosity and take a behind the scenes look at the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex.

The tweetup will take place over 24hrs from Fri Nov 25-Sat Nov 26 2011.

You can follow the event on Twitter: #CSIROTweetup

More news as it becomes available.

 


Blog Tour – First Post online at 24 October from 6am

I am doing an informal blog tour for WHEN WE HAVE WINGS.

First post is online tomorrow from 6am at Melbourne philospher and writer Damon Young’s blog, Darkly Wise, Rudely Great, here:http://damon-young.blogspot.com/

The post is about a most unusual writers’ tool.

Hope to see you there and please feel free to comment. More stops on the blog tour soon.

Speculative Fiction Festival

I will be at the Speculative Fiction Festival on Saturday, Nov 5, at the NSW Writers Centre. I will be on the Different Voices, Different Journeys panel from 12 – 12:45 in the Judith Wright Room. If you’re in Sydney, come along. It will be fun.

2nd Book

I signed the contract for my second book this week. Very happy with my lovely publisher Allen & Unwin. It was quite funny because I was at a tweetup for Charlotte Wood and her new novel Animal People (which is great and you should read it – I am enjoying it very much) and I was given contract to sign and I did on spot without having time to read it.

Signing without reading would not normally be recommended but my wonderful agent is more on top of contracts than I could ever be so if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for me.

Time was, getting published once meant that was it, you were through the door, you were a writer and could expect that pretty much whatever you wrote would be published – very likely by the same publisher. No more. The second novel is not a given. So yes, I should pause and be glad.

Varuna Writer-A-Day app

A great initiative by Varuna the Writers’ House in Katoomba – 365 writers reading from their work, one a day, for two minutes. You can download the app and hear a new writer every day or you can go to the Varuna blog and just choose the writers you’d like to hear. There’s a transcript of each reading if you’d rather read it. Hope you enjoy it.

 

There is a link to me reading from WHEN WE HAVE WINGS in the reference at the foot of this post and also on the Links page.

National Library Australia

We had a great time in Canberra – I went to Conflux and the rest of the family went to Questacon. We all visited Cockington Green and Parliament House and the Fred Williams exhibition at the National Gallery.

 

The roof garden at Parliament House is a fantastic mix of overwhelming natural and built environment. Very clever architecture/vision. The Australian flag on the huge pole towering above us was looking a little tattered; the guard said it was time to replace it and said there were bits of blue from the flag, shredded by the wind, blown up against the fence to our left. I don’t envy the people who have to climb that flagpole.

 

This photo was taken at the National Library of Australia bookshop; I was thrilled to see When We Have Wings displayed there as the bookshop has a fairly small collection of Australian fiction. I met a manager, Matt, and he kindly invited me to sign the copies of WWHW that they had left.