It's NZ Book Month!

It's time for the book nerd in me to celebrate my love of books! Her in NZ, it's Book Month, with a bunch of bookish events happening around the country, touring authors and people just generally loving and appreciating books. So I thought I would give myself a little interview to start things off - feel free to join in on your own blog or in the comments, even if your not from NZ, I'd love to hear from you!

What have you just finished reading?
Flashback Forward by John Cairney

What did you think?
Started of brilliantly, then went downhill from there with weak characters, dislocation from the central issues and an anticlimax.

What are you reading now?
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield.

What do you think?
I fell in love with Katherine Mansfield after watching the movie about her early life, called Bliss, and I do love her writing, although I haven't read much of it yet - I've only just started.

Top five favourite books?
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, One Day by David Nicholls, Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen, Goodbye Sarajevo by Atka Reid and Hana Schofield, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Sallinger.

Favourite book that's been made into a movie?
The romantic in me says The Notebook... but Water for Elephants was truly amazing.

What's on your 2013 To Be Read list?
They're all New Zealand books, because I just decided to explore a bit of my local literature for a change: The Edge of the Alphabet by Janet Frame, Scented Gardens for the Blind by Janet Frame, I got his Blood on me by Lawrence Patchett, Tamar, White Feathers, Blue Smoke (series) by Deborah Challinor, The Girl Below by Bianca Zander.

What's your favourite place to read?
I can read anywhere really - growing up in a noisy family I trained myself to be able to read even when the TV was blaring, siblings arguing, mum cooking dinner. But in summer I do enjoy a nice comfy chair outside in the sun with a glass of orange juice beside me and in winter it's always nice to curl up in front of the heater in mountains of blankets and a cup of tea. Simple pleasures really.

What was your favourite book as a child?
That would have to be Go Dog Go! Even though Dad would read it to me like, every night, I still got so freakin' excited when he would slooooooowly turn the last page and there it was, A DOG PARTY!

If you could be any character from a book, who would you be and why?
Claire from the Outlander series because she's just so damn fearless! And she's married to Jamie Fraser..

Happy Monday :)

Morning all, and a Happy Monday to you! Hope you all had a fabulous weekend! I spent most of my weekend preparing stuff for moving into my new flat in two weeks, very excited about that - finally get to use all the stuff that's been collecting dust in the back of the garage since my 21st.

It also proved to be a very inspiring weekend in terms of my author dreams. I read a really inspiring story about the changing face of publishing. It was about these three Wellington women who got fed up with publishing houses rejecting them because their work wasn't "trendy" so they decided to self-publish both eBooks and real books, and the great thing is, they're actually making money from it! So it's nice to know that there are other options out there if you want to get published these days. I guess the key is knowing how to market yourself, and, for me, this knowledge has made me so much more inspired to get on with my writing because self publishing is slowly losing its stigma - the one that says "if you have to self publish, that must mean your work is no good". Although I'm sure there's a lot of bad self published stuff out there, the ones that make money off it obviously have something well worth reading, so that's positive.

I also found a trilogy that sounds really good and that I'm planning to read next year (I've decided I'm reading only New Zealand novels next year) called Children of War by Deborah Challinor. It's based in New Zealand and explores our country's history from the late 1800's through to the 1930's, so I'm really excited to dig my claws into that one.

So I hope you all have a fabulous week, and make sure you check in on Wednesday for my second installment of Wednesday Writers, where I'm talking to Sydney-based Chick Lit author Manique McDonell. (See last week's interview here). I'm also planning on putting up some more of my Strawberry Jammin' story, along with a delish recipe or two!