Heather Haylock, Raymond McGrath, Andrew Crowe and I took to the road today, ably commandeered by Libby Limbrick and Peter Mercer to visit seven schools and a library in South Auckland. This is my very first time on a Storylines Tour and my first time meeting the other authors and I was nervous. But I needn’t have been. Libby, Peter, Heather, Raymond and Andrew made me feel part of the Storylines family straight away.
On my leg of the tour I started with a visit to Bombay School where I met with 120 children from Years 2 to 4. We talked about creativity, books and my author origin story which everyone agreed was bananas.
Next up, Heather and I stopped off at Mauku School where we both spoke to over 100 kids from Years 2 to 6. I loved hearing Heather read from her picture book ‘Granny McFlitter: A Country Yarn’ so much so that as soon as we were dropped off to our hotel in Auckland, I popped to Little Unity Bookshop to get myself a copy.
My absolute highlight of this event was hearing one of the pupils say they were inspired to write their very own book.
My final visit of the day was to Waiuku Library where, after a delicious humungous egg mayonnaise, chicken, tomato, coleslaw and lettuce sandwich lunch, I spoke to 30 children from Sandspit School. This was a group of budding young authors, aged 9-11 years old, who came armed with questions about agents and advances, ready for book deals of their own!
My favourite question of the day: what is your fattest book?