It’s been too long between posts again and that may continue for a while. Sometimes there is a limited number of words to go around and I have to use them all for the more important stuff, being the books themselves.

I have my head down on a deadline at the moment, which is equal parts energising and terrifying. If you had told me a couple of years ago that in October I could strip back and rewrite a book scheduled for publication in March, I would have laughed.

I’m not laughing now. In a secret place, I may be weeping. But I’m writing, and that’s good. It’s the main thing, after all.

So it’s a quick post from the trenches, to poke my head up briefly and share three things that have made me smile mightily over the last few weeks of bloggy silence.

1.  Seeing The Truth About Penguins face-out in bookstores all over the place.

2. This review of Duck for a Day. I’ve had many satisfying reviews lately, but in this one I particularly I love that the reviewer foregrounds the last line of the book and its metaphorical capacity. I was so happy when I hit upon this line; it felt like the perfect ending, as if it had been waiting there for me all along – more discovery than creation, somehow, in a way that was very satisfying.

(oh, and I also love this informal review, offered by a friend who also happens to be an editor at a local publishing house:
“Never has the duck been so lovingly rendered in contemporary literature. Roll over, Ping.”)

3. This “Duck Full Body Child Costume“. Firstly, I love that such a thing exists. Secondly, I love that underneath the description of the costume are the following lines: