My year has been full of grandchildren, writing, gardening, school library and a small time travelling in New Zealand.
My most recent news happened yesterday when I visited Room 5 at Oropi School as a 'famous author' to talk about my book. The class had studied Tui's Friends as a literary and native bird resource.
I was impressed with their knowledge of the book. They knew all the birds' names, what they looked like and how they behaved. I had some native bird finger puppets (purchased on Tiritiri Matangi) with me and they knew which ones weren't featured in the book.
As a part of their study, they created a tree full of the featured birds, with information boxes about each bird.
The tree even climbed out over the ceiling!
"How do you become a famous writer?" one little girl asked.
"Just write, write, write, and write some more," was my reply. "And have a magnet on the fridge saying, "One day Jan will be a famous writer."
Another asked why I wrote my story. I told them about the tui in my garden and how he hassled the other birds. But it really started as a writing assignment for my writers group in 2006.
A year later a friend was looking for a project for her artistic talent so I suggested she do some illustrations for my story. My book was born.
Bear in mind 'famous' is their interpretation, not mine. About 300 books have been sold, so I'm hardly famous.
However, I'm working on it!
