THE CITY AT OUR FEET...

Every morning, in the city, in the dark, I walk two dogs and collect stray thoughts. This is where I put them, before I start work – the only place I write when I’m not writing a book.

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Markus Zusak: 'I was just failing and failing, over and over again'

The follow-up novel to The Book Thief was much anticipated. But suddenly the stakes were higher. Everyone was watching – and waiting. For 13 agonising years.

Tim Elliot did a great job extracting what the last 13 years were like for me - even the joy. Thanks to all my readers for being there too.

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My publishers unearthed this great typewriter, then asked what Bridge of Clay is about...I'll post the video answer on Facebook in 15 minutes or so. #bridgeofclay @penguinrandomhouse @getunderlined @macmillanaus

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrNdgewb_3A)

I'm was so excited and grateful to post this today on my facebook page! #BridgeofClay

To EVERY SINGLE READER who's written to me over the years: I wrote this book for many people, and one of those people is you. THANK YOU!

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Bridge of cities. #bridges

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Do you know the legend of Pont du Gard?

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Bridge of home.

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Two decades late to reach these astounding, heartbreaking pages, but what a way to start a year: "to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier." How do you forget a line like that? You can't.

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Tiger's Nest, Bhutan: spiritual wonder, unforgettable...and proof that @mikazusak is always right. Karin chhe @mountainechoes

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A thousand great moments in Bhutan at the @mountainechoes festival, but meeting these kids is easily the best. So many miles between us, but also just the distance of a book. #mountainechoes

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Celebrating 20 years of Harry Potter

Two decades after Harry Potter first appeared, five Australian authors celebrate and critique the boy wizard.

Blog Post / Owl Post

It was impossible to resist having at least a small hand in celebrating twenty years of the boy who lived (and lives!) down here…Nothing but a joy to write about something that’s a joy to read, and share, and live your life around while you’re in it.

And for the record: I’m a Ravenclaw.

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Stay like this. Don't grow up. Kid with a lot of sparks.

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Between chapters. Bright dog, black sky.

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Dog & Floating Girl: second miracle this week...(I will only cry "Name of the Sharks fits you!" for the first one and you'll get it or you won't)...

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Vale, W.P. Kinsella

Dear Mr Kinsella,

This is the small letter I should have sent you when you were alive, and I was eighteen, reading your glorious masterpiece, Shoeless Joe, on the train, to and from university, in the winter of 1994. It was a gift. It was a gift and I remember the cold tunnels of the underground railway, and the pressure of wind from Town Hall, and Martin Place. I remember the crowded carriages, and me, in Iowa in there – a whole damn state, and its cornfields, in a single suburban train.

Some might say the writing was too lyrical, too strange or overwrought…but forget that, forget that, because to me, you taught me imagery. You taught me a theory of get-colour-down-onto-the-page. You wrote like a painter. Without looking in the book at all, I remember a sky of robin’s-egg-blue. I remember Silas Ermineskin and Frank Fencepost, from the stories you gave us, too.

It’s a hell of a thing to be missed, but even better not gone at all; you even wrote J.D. Salinger as a character, and Salinger was still alive! Never let them say you didn’t have heart. You made many of us want to be writers, and as merely one, I can’t thank you enough.

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eno & lanois talking beauty

I stumbled back across Daniel Lanois’s beautiful album from a while ago - ‘Here is What is’ - and had totally forgotten Brian Eno’s talking parts between songs. This one, track #5, titled ‘Beauty’, is a real gem. And true as hell. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We1Cvs44i-Q

I also remember seeing Daniel Lanois in ‘From the Sky Down’ - the U2 documentary about making Achtung Baby - and there’s this great moment where he’s eating a banana in the control room (I don’t know why I remember that detail) and he’s watching Larry Mullen playing a drum track and signalling a great thumbs-up in time with what he was bashing out. It was after Mullen was struggling with the changes that were going on at the time, and you see Mullen mouth the words ‘THANK YOU!’ with a huge grin on his face, and it’s just, I don’t know, a great sense of camaraderie. 

That, and on the ‘Here is What Is’ album, I play Where Will I be? and Duo Glide over and over. Good work music. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjpFjkYKtkI

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sun&run&light&trees

Sometimes it’s easy; you’re just out, in the morning, and it strides straight through the trees.

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Personally, I like a beach-coloured sky

A rainy day in Sydney feels like the right time for this one...

You look at the sky and realise:

You don’t know anything about anything.

If nothing else, you walk two dogs and they’re your personal trainers, and they take you to see the sights...You’ve seen whales climbing from the sea like dark and windowless buses, then ploughing, driverless, back down. You’ve felt rain like broken glass. You’ve seen multitudes of skies, and never one the same.

You remember being in a plane once, on the Gold Coast, at sunset, and after take-off, there was nothing but endless channels of cloud and colour and sky. People were eating their meals. Better sunsets in their dinners.

Here, two different dawns.