Hello again, with blushes—

I often read other people’s websites and always tut-tut if they’re out of date. So go on, feel free to tut-tut over mine. I think I last updated it in late February but I must have done something technologically stupid because I see no February entry here! The fact that I’m 61 and learnt to write in 1951 by drawing letters in the red earth, under a tree at a mission school in Africa, may partly explain my cyber-mistakes in 2007. Still, here I am, so let’s move along, going backwards…

Last week Judy Horacek and I were invited by Penguin books to an excitingly grand dinner in Melbourne to celebrate 100,000 sales of WHERE IS THE GREEN SHEEP? Those figures were reached by December 2006, but they don’t include the board book edition, nor even the USA edition. Thrilling.

When Judy and I had finished creating the book in 2003 (it was published in 2004) I admit that I did email her and suggest that we might have written a classic, a move which I immediately regretted, thinking I might have jinxed the sales with my over-weening confidence. Happily that didn’t occur. GREEN SHEEP lives! Let me say right here a huge thank you to Laura Harris, our beloved Penguin editor, who embraced this book from the start and has never stopped working to ensure it sells and sells and sells. I adore it. And her.

More exciting news is that my other beloved editor, Allyn Johnston from Harcourt books in San Diego, California, came to stay for ten days over the Easter period and a new book was written from start to finish: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAY TODAY. I had a vision (drug-induced—yes!—of which more later, although it’s only asthma drugs I’m talking about…) of a little toy blue horse coming through the railings of my bed as I was falling asleep. It pranced over my head. I thought it was a wonderful way to end the the day and lay there re-capping the day’s events from early morning onwards, sort of telling the blue horse about my day. And so the idea was born.

Allyn and I worked intensively indoors in my office, and out on our deck (even by candle light when it got dark because the air was so lovely outside), and at various cafes during the day, moving from huge handwritten scrawl to typed script and back again, over 21 drafts. It was a heady experience and I loved every minute of it. I often tell you, I know, that I detest writing picture books. I don’t. I just detest writing them alone. Bouncing off another person is so different, so energising, and so encouraging that I wanted to write every waking minute. I couldn’t, of course: meals had to be made, laundry hung on the line, emails answered, shopping done, and so on, as usual. A writer’s ordinary life doesn’t stop in the middle of creating fiction, especially if that writer is a woman—just ask Virginia Woolf. Malcolm, it’s true, hovered in the background doing a thousand quiet errands, longing for food and our company several times a day. From time to time he even contributed a line or two, here and there, and is already demanding royalties. Outrageous!! The book will probably only come out when I’m about 70 since there are so many others in the pipeline. I’ll keep you posted.

Allyn and I have been working togther for over 18 years so we think alike and read each other’s thoughts in an amazing way, and often suggest changes that the other person is already typing. It raises the hairs on our arms sometimes. I wish we lived next door to each other—I’d be far more productive.

In the same two weeks another story came to fruition, written by a divine ex-student of mine, and me. But until that’s all firmed up I will keep it a tantalising secret even though I am truly DYING to spill all the beans.

Allyn brought with her the mocked-up copy of my next book which is due out in the USA in September, and in Australia in late October. It’s a sort of lullaby, and even thinking of it just then made me feel a little tearful: all that gorgeous bedtime story stuff with my darling Chloe so many years ago. (She is now 36.) Good grief, to think that some parents don’t read aloud to their children! It beggars belief that anyone could let themselves miss out on the love and laughter that reading aloud provides. Anyway, the name of the book is WHERE THE GIANT SLEEPS and the exquisite, lustrous pictures are by the American/Russian/Italian illustrator Vladimir Radunsky.

Before Allyn arrived I had been overseas. On on my way home via Europe, on the long-haul flight from Dubai to Melbourne, I had what I call a “major asthma event”. There isn’t enough oxygen on planes for chronic asthmatics, especially on long flights and I had forgotten to take a dose of cortisone prior to the flight to help me along. Cortisone is ghastly, but it saves my life so what can a person do? That was three and half weeks ago and I have been terribly unwell ever since although I can now ride my bike again. Somehow the bike makes me feel as if only my legs are moving, not my chest. And yes, I know, two were books written, and I had a house guest and all that, breathing less than perfectly, and weary from the effort. You just do it. You have to. Perhaps I should have gone to hospital off the plane. Perhaps I should have gone to bed for a week. Oh well, I didn’t, and I am now drugged to the eyeballs until the end of the month, hence, I believe, my “vision” of the little blue horse. Every cloud has silver lining, wheeze, wheeze.

My overseas trip was to three events in the USA: the Michigan and Illinois Reading Association conferences and two talks at Judson College on the outskirts of Chicago. I dreaded leaving home yet again, particularly as security is now so irritating and tedious, but once I was in front of my audiences of course I loved it all over again. Thanks to all who made me so fantastically welcome: five standing ovations in six speeches. In particular, huge thanks to Dr Steven Layne, a gem of a man, and my angel friend Annie Wilson, who sells my books.

After the USA, Malcolm and I had four days rest and recuperation in Lyon in France which was an enormous delight: a gorgeous city, mixing old and new brilliantly, and with an incredible system for hiring bikes in one part of the city and returning them in another. Chloe and Malcolm have both spent years in France but I’m not often there so it was especially good fun. I understand most of the French that’s spoken to me but struggle to reply in an accent that must grate on French ears, although French people seem to appreciate the effort. It was freezing cold, with hard winds and wet snow so I bought a hysterical little cap which made me look ridiculous, rather like an elf in a picture book. Now you know how I really look when no stylist is around!

I probably got a virus in Lyon that made me ill but that’s okay: I’d go back any day. And Malcolm is excellent company. We still find things to say to each other after having known each other for 42 years. (We have been married for 38.)

Chloe has decided that marriage is not for her at this time. She and Leon have broken up. Amicably. They are both fine. They are public figures, elected politicians, doing great things in our state of South Australia so they have to have the gift of my silence on this occasion. Chloe told us the night before I went overseas. It’s been quite eventful here in the Fox household.

Earlier this year I went to several events in other states in Australia which I just adore doing: shorter flights, home sooner to my own pillow, a culture that’s mine, people that I understand completely, and the good-missionary feeling that I am contributing fairly significantly, I hope, to the betterment of my own country and its literacy.

Talking of literacy, one of my gurus, the New Zealander: Dr Marie Clay, who was worshipped across the world, died last week. I felt incomplete. Hollowed out by the news. Her influence was incalculable and we will all miss her guiding hand and sharp intellect dreadfully. Vale, Marie. Rest in peace.

Our government will not rest in peace, however, for what it has done over the David Hicks affair. I am so sickened by its actions that I cannot talk about it. Find David Hicks on Google and read all about it, with a bucket close by in case you want to throw up.

Last of all, right now in Canberra, in parliament itself, there is an exhibition of photographs of thirty powerful women of Australia, curated by UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women. I’m the only woman from my state which can’t be right, surely. But I do love the photo by the wonderful photographer Yann Le Berre who has given his permission for me to display it. (No stylist was around for this one either!)

I think that’s about it for tonight. I hope I didn’t go on and on and on and on.

Heaps of love, and may the sun shine on you in the morning, and forever.

Mem Fox