I spent the year behind on deadlines and everything else. It's only now in December that I feel even slightly caught up. 2016 has to be better.

Some worked in collaboration with each other to produce comics as well as short stories.I was partnered with Anita Roy. We critiqued each other's stories. Hers is a corker: future Masterchef. I chortled. There's not a single dud in Eat the Sky.

I'm almost back to being able to write as much as six hours a day .

A difference in self loathing? Please. The only difference between a gun and a rope is the time it takes to tie the knot.

I give people If You Came Softly when they demand proof that novels for teens can be as good as the best novels for adults.

I've never read a book [ Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon] like it before. Big and sprawling with a million points of view, including sea creatures. It's about an alien invasion that starts in Lagos, Nigeria but, really, that's just the starting point.

In Australia we have a government actively undoing what little progress had been made on climate change and stripping money from all the important institutions such as the ABC, CSIRO and SBS.