Only one more sleep (and a full day at the office) before I can enjoy a term break. Don’t get me wrong: I cherish my job at a P-12 school where I work as a school counsellor. I LOVE it. But when the term breaks come, I get to devote my energy and focus to writing. I don’t get up any later, and I really don’t work any less. What is different is I can choose how to spend my days.

This term break I will be working on my middle-grade novel, Summer of the Silk Dragon: An American Teen in Beijing. I’m at the stage in the project where I’m ready to cut loose and just write, so I have high hopes of making big progress. Here’s hoping all goes according to plan.

To update my regular readers, I have put my YA novel, A Thousand Miles to Meet, on the shelf while I take advantage of the wonderful opportunity to work with a literary agent in New York on Silk Dragon. The concept is similar, but this book is targeted at a younger reader and its protagonist is American instead of Aussie. I am determined to create great, young, Aussie, female protagonists; don’t you worry–I will return to that concept as soon as I am able.

I kick the school break off on Friday evening in true writerly fashion. I’m attending my first gathering as a card-carrying author at the Australian Society of Authors conference “Digital Rights–My Rights or Your Rights?”

What a life.