As a senior I must admit it is thirty years since I last attended a 'summer school.'  I will be doing this once seminar on Wednesday, however I intend to bring a grey nomad flavour to it and create a pair of grey nomad cartoon characters as a result of winning a place in this seminar.   I used some open sourse web illustrations for today until I create my own characters in the train trip on Wednesday morning.

I am looking to create a pair of gray-nomad cartoon characters to take with me into a cartoon writer's seminar and emerge with me into an unknown world I am sure they will love as I am planning to tour north again this year and have a wonderful location to use as the base for our adventures - but more about that in this blog once I write and confirm the bookings.

For now I am planning a trip from Northern Victoria though the Goulburn Valley and the Dandenong Ranges to visit my family in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne and to attend a Cartoon Writers seminar that I have just won.   This should be a great way of combining my artist skill with my novelist and travel writer professions. Writing and illustrating a children's story book that tackles some of the aspects of learning difficulties, has been a plan of mine for a while though my Australian novel has rather taken over from this, in importance this year. This will be a good break from writing and planning the pitch to publishers of my completed novel.  

If you were to spell Kathy in an exaggerated form - as in a cartoon - a little like Coo-eeee ot Crikey! How would you write it? I'm playing with the idea for an Indigo, Red (always accidentally spell Reg and Red) and Kat-eeeeeeeeeeeeee, I want a long drawn out Eeeeeee sound at the end so thought I would ask for advice :-) on how you think it should be spelt.
Oh and their daughter Dyslexia and son.....Hoolie?  Plus a couple of gray nomad grandparents, Excenrica and Detour

Thank you Writers Victoria. I just won a place in this seminar and I am TRILLED. Organizing the trip to the big city and my notebooks, now :-).

I had best go pack out bags, leave tomorrow, home on Thursday. Need to be a big girl and learn how to catch a train from the outer suburbs into a city I usually avoid like the plague...lol...'country girl here.' :-).
Will be staying over nights with our daughter in the suburbs and Reg can stay with her while I take off for the day.. :-) WOW! Haven't done anything like this in a couple of decades. summer-school-cartoon-writing

My novel is going well.  I have finished it and while it is now with the Beta readers for proof reading I am writing the book proposal to go to the literary agents. I have also booked into another seminar, this time one within my comfort zone, in the country.  This seminar is about pitching your novel to a publisher and agent. Great timing for me.

This is a part of the 'pitch' I am planning. 

“Children begin and then try to stop an escalating culture of payback in this compelling story of treachery and love during European settlement of Australia.”

My book is calledDreaming Billabong. It is complete and consists of 100,000 words.

Dreaming Billabong fits firmly into crime genre.

Type of Book:  Crime fiction involving an inland Australian family.

Readers of my book would also read,
The Help by Kathryn Stockett,
A Painted House by John Grisham and
To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper.

Brief 150 word description of the plot:

            1880-81, The Peaceful inland settlement of Fife Springs erupts following a chance encounter between a naked Alan Fife and Charlotte both 10. Following the birth of his half brother, Aboriginal Australian Kanga, Alan swears vengance.

            1945s -1953’s --- Eight years in the life of Kanga’s grandson, Jarrah 13. --- Eight years punctuated by the Stolen Generation and post-WW2 European migration. Alan and Kanga are now embittered old men. Alan’s grandchildren Emily 8, her brother, Harry 14 are in danger. Alan’s son, Ian Fife, the Cattle King, wants to protect them but it is Jarrah’s cultural heritage and Emily’s innocence that combines to end the terrible culture of payback.  

            Dreaming Billabong explores big themes, and Shell chooses to tell it by showing the effects crime has on children. The result is a tough and tender novel of the struggle for justice for race and gender, and the pain of growing up.