Lian Tanner's Blog, page 33

APA Book Design Awards

Here's some nice news. The Australian edition of Museum of Thieves has been shortlisted for the Australian Publishers' Association Book Design Awards in the Children's Fiction Book category. I'm very pleased, but not surprised. It's a beautiful cover as you can see here, sort of old-fashioned and worn looking and mysterious, as if it has...

Museum of Thieves, the quiz

The deadline for the Museum of Thieves quiz has been extended.  If you get all the questions right, you get your name carved on the wall of the Place of Remembering. The old deadline for this used to be January, but now it has been extended till April. Warning: the quiz is not easy! At...

Writing with a cat on my lap …

It was cold this morning and Miss Mouse came in from the garden and curled up on my lap while I was writing in my notebook. At least, I thought she was curled up. I didn't realise until later that she was tapping away with one paw at the keyboard, adding her own  bits of...

Greater love hath no man …

I want to pay tribute to Russian reader Lert who, on a cold night when the wind was howling, found the Museum of Thieves game on the internet. He then discovered that it was also a book. When he read it (in English), he loved it so much that he translated the entire book into...

Australian Indie Awards

To my great joy, Museum of Thieves has been shortlisted for the Australian Indie Awards, as selected by independent booksellers. The awards are designed to 'celebrate the best of Australian writing of 2010 as chosen by independent booksellers', and Museum has been selected as one of the booksellers' four favourite children's books for 2010. Also...

Holiday

I am on holiday. Actually I've been on holiday for three weeks, ever since I realised that I had absolutely NO IDEA what happened next in Book 3. No, that's not quite true. I sort of knew what happened. I just couldn't work out how to write it. So I stopped. I...

Word. By word. By word.

Ugh. I've been away from my desk for three weeks and it shows. It's always a struggle to get back into it. The words come … very … slowly. But the book won't write itself, so I am sticking to it – with lots of breaks for cups of tea and walks around the garden....

City of Lies – US cover

Can there be anything quite so exciting as receiving a sneak preview of the cover for your new novel? I doubt it, especially when the illustration is done by the amazing and very talented Jon Foster. I would love to put it up, and give you a sneak preview as well, but I can't. So...

Illustrations for City of Lies

I've just seen the new character illustrations for the second book, City of Lies, and they are GORGEOUS. The artist is Seb Ciaffaglione, who did the pics for the first book, and I think he has outdone himself. I'm busting to show them to someone, but will have to wait. Maybe I can sneak one...

Second, Bookaroo

This is a terrific festival. It's only been going for three years, but there were more than sixty authors and illustrators, and thousands of kids and parents. I did four workshops – one at the Shri Ram School, and three at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, a big, sprawling space with lots...