Gob-smacked by this snippet I just read in one of my travel writers’ newsletters:

Virgin Atlantic today announced that Alan Watts, a former electrician, will be the first person in the world to become an astronaut using his frequent flyer miles as payment.
Alan has earned the two million Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles required to qualify for the offer and will be redeeming them on a trip to space with Virgin Galactic, the world’s first privately built,commercial space tourism company, in 2009.

I’m not sure what’s more astonishing: the idea of commercial space travel or the idea of two million unused frequent flyer points. Such willpower. Never tempted to pop off to Mallorca for a weekend. Let alone those alluring offers of a new electric kettle or a mixed case of wine.
Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of redemption.

A group of US bloggers* on children’s and YA lit have taken the law into their own hands and set up their own literary awards: the Cybils.
The democracy of the blogosphere in action: anyone can nominate a book in one several categories, and these all go to specialist panels of volunteer judges who make the final decision. It’s all very transparent, but we’ll wait to see if their decisions are greeted with the same level of debate as other awards announcements.
Take at look at The Cybils here.

* That makes me wonder: what’s the collective noun for bloggers?
A gaggle of bloggers?
A coven?
A pod?

Whew.
It’s been busy lately.
Day job. A few school visits. A few radio interviews. The final assignments for my course this year. Long days, late nights, no writing.
It feels like ages since I’ve sat in one spot, even on the ferry, and simply read a book instead of rifling through stacks of paper or scribbling notes.
I have one final exam, and then two weeks of (mostly) writing, although there are a few more schools scheduled, and paid work will no doubt intervene.
I visited a school event this week (hello, Kohimarama) but it was in the evening and the crowd was grown ups. I hadn’t realised, and rocked up with eye patch and my usual props to explain that there really were women pirates in history, just like in my books. Instead of nine year-olds there were all these (lovely) parents standing about having a wine tasting.
Uh oh. Time to improvise.
One of the things I love most about school visits is when I look up while I’m reading and see spellbound faces: eyes wide, mouths open.
There were a few parents like that at Kohi the other night. But maybe it was the wine. Cheers.
Now that I’m hawking around a second book, it’s interesting to see how kids react to the idea of a series of books – they expect such a thing, now, and lobby very very hard to be given a sneak preview of what might happen in the third book.
I’ve even been offered bribes. Ten bucks. Hard to resist, I know, but that’s a lot of money to a ten year-old, so I had to consider for at least half a second before saying “No way”.
A few reviews trickling in now for The Pirate’s Revenge, too. I won’t bore you with them this time, unless they are fabulous or really vile.
Now I’m about to collapse into a bath (cup of tea in one hand, chocolate in the other) and hope to be more like my normal blogging self next week.

I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is – my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.
~ President George W Bush, CNN Late Edition (no, I’m not sure, either)

Just writing an essay on whether “poetry of the past” is relevant to today’s children.
I begin to detest that word “relevant”. It’s like the academic (and also political) version of “whatever”.
If a poem/book/painting/welfare centre/educational program/cultural argument/concern is not relevant in the narrowest possible terms to educational/political/funding/cultural authorities, you get the big “whatever”. The newspapers will run a campaign to ask why on earth that artwork or youth refuge cost so much. The Prime Minister will raise an eyebrow on early morning TV. An inquiry will be called.
Is history relevant? Is literature relevant? Is art/youth/age/gender/culture relevant?
Air, water, wildlife? People?
Do we really need them, after all?
Prove it.
Can’t?
Whatever.

The aim of poetry is for me simply to keep the child from its television set and the old man from his pub.
~ Philip Larkin, proving relevance

Well, I’m chuffed. Just heard I’ve been awarded a New Work grant from the Australia Council Literature Board, for work on my next novel, An Act of Faith.
I’m classed as an “Emerging Writer” (emerging from the primeval slime, or perhaps obscurity, I imagine) and am the only kidlit writer on that list.
So now, to work!

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
~ Robert Penn Warren

I wrote earlier that I’d blog about Kate Grenville’s personal history wars, but I’ve changed my mind: there’s a fine discussion happening already amongst those vivisectors over at Sarsaparilla, and plenty of background in yet another Jane Sullivan feature in The Age.
My earlier comments on the dust-up are here and here.

Just back on Waiheke after a whirlwind visit to Melbourne which included a book launch, several school visits, at least six kids’ basketball games (“Go Redbacks!”), a spot of gardening in the country, and not a single antique shop nor garden visit. How did that happen? Ripped off.
Poet (and friend) Judith Rodriguez very kindly launched The Pirate’s Revenge upon the world at Readings in Port Melbourne. Everyone stared at me. My mother didn’t cry. What a waste. Must try harder next time.
My brother got back from Nepal safely on Sunday, with 750 gorgeous photos. About 500 of them include a glimpse of Everest. I’m so jealous. Any hint of that famous plume of snow blowing off the summit and I’m a goner.
There are a few other things that are compulsory for any visit to Melbourne for me: driving discreetly past our house; buying more white and black Bonds t-shirts; and sneaking into my favourite secondhand bookshop, The Old Bakery Cottage in Warrandyte. I did manage all three this time, and picked up a couple of books in a relatively brief and uncharacteristically restrained spree: The Cruel Way, Ella Maillart’s 1930s trek from Switzerland to India; and – at last – Prospero’s Cell, Lawrence Durrell’s Corfu memoir. Those old Faber paperbacks really are the sexiest book covers ever. I still can’t get over the time I nearly bought – but didn’t – early copies of the individual books of the Alexandria Quartet for the whopping price of $6 each. What was I thinking? They are just right, those covers – much more appropriate than my bloody great compendium copy. It’s only been about six years. I’ll let it go one day. When I find another set.
I also finally grabbed Kate Grenville’s The Secret River.
More on recent reading and Ms Grenville’s history wars later. I need more coffee first.

I’m flying to Melbourne tomorrow – hopefully some of yesterday’s 250 bushfires have receded. There I’ll be eating evil but delicious things, looking at gardens, hanging out with my family, reading at lots of schools, rummaging in bookshops and antique stores, having afternoon tea, picking up the kids from school, cheering at basketball games (“What’s that noise?” asked one of Conor’s team-mates last time I was there – “That’s my aunty”), bushfire-proofing my little place in the country, launching the new book, driving nonchalantly past my dream house to make sure all is in order, and possibly not blogging.
But someone’s emailed to complain that the podcast of the interview with Radio NZ’s Lyn Freeman has moved. The new link is here.
Oh Lord, I’d better pack. Ciao.