Celebrate good times come on

It has been a tricky week for me, for various reasons, and I have been feeling very down. Today things are looking brighter, however - hooray! To celebrate, I wore one of my very favourite vintage dresses this afternoon.

A few congratulatory messages are in order today!

My friend and mentor (and agent buddy - as in, we share an agent, rather than one of us being a secret agent of some kind) Rachael King's new novel Magpie Hall is now available in New Zealand. Described as a 'modern-day ghost story with a twist', Magpie Hall "explores the fleshly taboo around class and tattoos in the Victorian era; the intimacy and atavistic nature of a marriage and contemporary relationships; the potentially obsessive/ compulsive behaviour of collecting flora, fauna (and other things) that can decimate native species and ruin lives."

Another lovely mentor and friend, Coral Atkinson, has just released her Young Adult novel, Copper Top. It tells the story of orphaned, red-headed Irish immigrant Aisling Lynch, who searches the goldfields for her missing brother Tim and friend Rory. I love the fresh, generous approach Coral took when it came to publishing this book. She is a tutor of the Whitireia Post-graduate Diploma in Book Publishing (which is how I met her - I took the course in 2007), and she worked with four students to take the manuscript all the way through the publishing process - from editing and typesetting to production and publicity.

And, on a different note, LOML's brother and his wife have just had their first baby: Thomas Owen. He was born three weeks ago, but I didn't want to announce it on the blog until I was sure that all the family had heard about it through the normal channels (nothing worse than someone stealing your exciting-news thunder!). I am extremely excited to be an auntie, although I still have no idea how to hold a baby properly. And probably never will.

P.S. Whopping-Great-Mother-of-a-Nanowrimo post is coming tomorrow, as I feature some of the participants and open up the comments for discussion - be warned! Alert the media.