Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

It’s amazing how absorbed you can be in stuff and you lift your head up and realise you’ve been absent (smack, smack) from your blog for an unforgivable time. The main culprit has been the activity and effort involved in preparing my house for sale. Long nights after days at work. Weekends spent painting, packing, cleaning. Then when it’s ready there’s house hunting. My partner, Matthew Farrer, and I are moving into together. It’s a big commitment and a lot of work. Finding a house is difficult. We were gazumped on the first house, just a day or two before were were to exchange contracts. Right now we are biting nails to see if the current deal goes through. I was so active during the last couple of months that I lost 5 kilos (without the gym).  Go me. Mind you now that I’m not so active I have to watch the weight. I’m also addicted to a clean and tidy house. Imagine that. (it’s tidy because half my possessions are in storage and my study is naked of books).

I’m in the last four weeks of my Masters so I’m pretty flat out there and also in the last and important stages of my work project. At least my masters involves some writing and that story is coming along nicely. We have an intensive class tomorrow. I need to work on my presentation tonight and I have to go to work in the morning after all, beforehand.

Due to illness in the family, we’ve had to call off our trip to World Fantasy Convention in Brighton. I’m sad about that as I had been planning it for two years, but it also didn’t go well with buying and selling houses. So early Saturday morning I’m heading off to Genrecon in Brisbane. I’m looking forward to showing off my under bust corset at the Cutlass and Kimonos banquet. We hope to rebook our trip next year. There is a World SF convention on in London in late August 2014.

In writing news, I sent off the sequel to Rayessa and the Space Pirates to the editor. I guess I’ll hear in due course. This weekend I’ll be signing a contract with Alex Adsett Publishing Services. Alex is very lovely and is going to represent a few of my manuscripts. I also signed a contract with Escape for one of the paranormal romances I’ve been working on. That will be coming out under another name next year. I’ll keep you posted. It’s going under another name because my young adult stuff is under my name and the sexy paranormal has, you know, sex in it.
All in all everything is busy but positive.