

Lists
I had a day-long meeting in Auckland yesterday (I know: Sunday. It’s a writer’s life…). A lot of my meetings these days are online or conference calls. It’s efficient but lacks the extras: the ‘around-the-edges’ stuff and the chance to step outside your own space. Like sharing a few laughs with the shuttle driver about Auckland’s excess of meetings and traffic and unsatisfactory weather, and discovering we'd double-booked with the Christmas Parade (it passed us by mid-agenda,


Carnivals and coming treats
Time might fly when you’re having fun, but it flies faster when you’re mega-busy. Of course, the ideal is when you’re having fun being busy, and the last month has seen plenty of that. NZ Book Week, Bookshop Day and the inaugural HB Arts Festival filled a frantic but fabulous three weeks in late October-early November: action packed, event-filled and totally entertaining. The Festival was held in the globe-trotting Spiegeltent, a 1920s confection of fancy woodwork, stained gl