sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Cheers!

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I’m delighted to announce that Toppling has been named on the Shortlist for the CBCA Children’s Book of the Year Awards (Younger readers category).  I was in the classroom just starting a year 8 English lesson when the list was announced, and my poor students had no idea why I suddenly started whooping and dancing around the room – until I drew breath long enough to explain. They were very good about celebrating with me (I suspect I may have some trouble getting back into boring old routine next lesson, but hey, stuff happens).

Luckily Tuesday is a day where I finish early, so have been able to come home and continue happy dancing. Have been flooded with beautiful well wishes from so many lovely people.
I  am delighted to be part of such an awesome list – there are some brilliant books in all categories – and, as always, lots of books on the Notable list which could just have easily been the shortlisted ones. I don’t envy the judges who have to make these decisions.
Congratulations to all authors, illustrators and publishers with Shortlisted Books.

Crowd Control

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I’m in the midst of finalising school and library bookings for Bookweek, so really enjoyed the post by SchoolVisitExperts on Crowd Control.

As someone who has been on both sides of the crowd – as an author, and as a teacher, I found this a great sum up both of the kinds of situations that can arise and of the best way to deal with them.

Making Time

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After my post last week about how busy I’ve been these past few months, I have been really trying to clear my desk and my head to get back into some writing projects which have been pretty much on hold.  And, like so many time-strapped people, I’ve been searching for the magical formula to find more time. If only I could conjure up an extra hour, half hour, even ten minutes in my day, of COURSE I could write more.
And I can keep telling myself that more time will be more output – but who would I be kidding? Probably nobody, and certainly not myself. Sure I’ve been busy and I’ve needed a break from writing in order to sort out a house move, change of job and all the rest of it. But in the end, if I want to get those projects working again, I don’t need to wait for time to magically appear. All I need  is to make that time happen.

Need an extra hour in my day? Turn off the television after dinner. An extra half hour? Stop reading the daily newspaper (which depresses me anyway). An extra ten minutes? Stop checking if it’s my turn in online Scrabble games.  
So yeah, I have time. Not the perfect blocks of time I would like, and which I would have if I was able to give up my day job.  Or if I could give up sleep and write through the night when my family are all at rest. Or if I lived in a perfect world where authors were given little writing bubbles to work in eight hours a day, sealed off from the distractions of the real world. Or…okay, you get the picture. So, I’m working hard to capture those little morsels of time and put them to good use.

What about you? Where can you capture an extra five, ten, fifteen minutes for your writing dream?

Anybody home?

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Goodness me. I am shocked, aghast, appalled to realise it has been four whole months since I last posted here. A blog without fresh content is not really a blog, is it? 
 In explanation, those months have been very busy ones for me personally. My beloved had Achilles replacement surgery, which saw us both pretty housebound for quite some time, and me  honing my good-wife skills as I nursed him. Then I finished up at one day job, packed up house and moved three hundred kilometres, unpacked, and started a new day job. Oh, and did I mention settling four kids into new schools, worrying about unwell parents ….
So, time for blogging has been limited, as has time for writing. And I’m telling you this not to complain (okay, perhaps I am whining just a tad) but because if you are reading this and are an author, or an aspiring author, you can probably relate. Writing may be a job, but its irregular hours, and even more irregular pay packet, mean that there are times when life intervenes and writing is put on hold. 
For me, I’m trying to see this forced hiatus as a good thing. Whilst I’ve had little time for writing, I have had time for thinking, and dreaming and planning. And now that I can see a few little chinks of free time opening up, I’m determined to take all those plans and dreams and the pent-up frustration of being away from my desk and unleash them onto some empty pages. And, of course, one of those pages is this blog, so hopefully you’ll be hearing more from me in the weeks to come than you have in the past four months.

Snowy’s Blog Tour: The Rerun Part 11

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Tomorrow is a special day – December 1, the start of Advent, and officially time to start preparing for Christmas. Yippee!  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I LOVE Christmas. But of course, I’ve been a bit naughty (shhhh – don’t tell Santa) and have been celebrating Christmas for the past 11 days here on this blog, and elsewhere. My excuse is a good one -I’ve been celebrating not just Christmas in general, but also the release of my Christmas book, Snowy’s Christmas  in paperback.

But all good parties – and all series repeats – must come to an end, and today marks the final stop in my rerun blog tour. Today I take you back to the final stop in last year’s blog tour, and a post which brought joyful, Christmassy tears to my eyes. My delightful friend Mabel, took Snowy to a school near her, and this blog post is the result.

Awww – isn’t that just lovely?

Thank you so much for joining me on this trip down memory lane, this Christmas party and this celebration of Snowy’s Christmas paperback release. Remember, if you want a lovely Aussie Christmas gift for a child in your life, the book is available in brick and mortar stores, as well as online.

Merry Christmas!

Snowy’s Blog Tour: The Rerun Part 10

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Snowy the little white rooooooo, had a very shiny coat… (to the tune of Rudolph the Rednose reindeer).

Yes, I know, I am singing (badly) again. But I can’t help it – because, as I’ve said before, I LOVE Christmas, and I’m busily celebrating the release of Snowy’s Christmas in paperback. Today, the second last day of my rerun blog tour, I’m taking you back to  one of the most fun stops of last year’s blog tour – when Snowy himself visited the Aussie Christmas blog to talk about what it’s like to be Santa’s helper AND the star of a book. Snowy always manages to make me smile – hopefully he’ll make you feel the same.

See you tomorrow for the final day in my rerun tour.

sallymurphy.com.au