I’ve been wanting to get back to semi regular blogging here since I finished my stint as writer in residence over at the Booktrust, where I blogged incessantly for ages. However I’d been having trouble starting. Partly because I really wanted to avoid that ‘Hey guys, I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath for me to write another entry, many apologies for your sleepless nights worrying about where I’ve got to’ type intro but mainly because nothing has grabbed me to moan write about.

However, last week, I received a very disgruntled email from a lady who said that while she enjoyed my novel, she found the language I used very upsetting, distressing and ultimately disappointing. At first I was nearly sick in to my hat, as I thought she was going to tell me that I’d got some aspect of the Australian dialect in the book completely wrong. Or at the very least, that she really didn’t like my description of a tree. (more…)