First of all, don’t worry, I’m not going to review my own book. Could you imagine? I haven’t even been able to recommend Movie to customers who come in asking for something for a ten-year-old who likes real-life stories with a bit of a mystery, or something for a twelve-year-old that loves watching movies. It feels a bit sneaky, somehow, like I’m cheating. It also makes it much sweeter when I accidentally hear a nice thing–like when Movie came out and my co-workers put a pile on the front counter, and a lady came up to buy something, saw the pile, and said happily, ‘Oh, my daughter loved that book!’ while I blushed furiously in the background.

I’m already getting sidetracked! This post is to tell you all that my second book, How to Write the Soundtrack to Your Life, is out now! Obviously not in person if you live in Melbourne, like me, but it is available online from many shops. And if you buy it from the BEST shop (yes, I am very biased) there is a very cool competition where you can win a keyboard, keyboard stand, and headphones. I think I would have actually exploded if I’d won something like that as a kid.

Getting a book published is a lot of work, and a lot of editing, and a lot of deciding your book is, in fact, the worst book ever written, and then laughing at your own jokes even after you’ve read them twenty times over, and fixing mistakes, and overthinking things and then underthinking other things. There are a lot of people involved, and I am so pleased to be working with all of them, but also it’s this really singular feeling of being terribly proud of myself for working hard on something and achieving it. I always, always wanted to be a writer, and seeing the real thing–TWICE, TWO BOOKS!!!–is nothing short of sublime. I hope you all get to feel very proud of yourself for something this year, too. In a year like this, it might just be getting through it, to be honest, and you should feel very, very proud of yourself for that as well.

Good luck out there, book!