As the year winds down...

The year is winding down at my end - as I've finally started handing out Christmas presents, I'm believing, at last, that it must be nearly Christmas and that 2012 has almost zipped by.

Every year I talk about how quickly the year seems to go, but this one has been quite extraordinary in that way. Everything since early June has been a blur. I don't usually talk about very personal things here, and I won't on this occasion either (happy snaps of birthdays, etc., are not very personal, in the sense that I mean, I suppose mostly because they don't invade privacy). Suffice to say that, as I've alluded to from time to time, family health matters have often seemed all-consuming over the past six months or so. This has also been a time when I've been immersed in working on two full-scale books, and on other projects, including taking on a leadership role with the Hunter Writers Centre. The latter has had its own issues, which have received a bit of press here in Newcastle.

Still, it's been a productive year, as I was saying yesterday. I expect to have some more announcements in the coming days and weeks. For readers in Newcastle, do click on the link to the writers centre, above, as it will take you to the announcement that there will be residencies for Marion Halligan and Margo Lanagan in January/February. I hope to get out the news about that and to generate the buzz it deserves, so would local people reading this please pass it on.