Phew, are we nearing the end of the year, or what? We’re having to screw our thoughts to the sticking place in order to complete one job at a time of the fifty waiting. We’ve moved house but the books are waiting in boxes for shelves. The beds are waiting for legs, the garden for compost, the cooking device for an electrician. And while we wait, there are books to be launched and authors applauded.

On Thursday evening, Jane Woodham’s Twister will be set loose on the world, starting at the Otago University Bookshop with the hard copy Mākaro Press have so beautifully put together (am expecting one to arrive in the mailbox any minute), with the ebook (and info and excerpts) available here. It’s a mystery/crime/love/LGBT genre-buster set in Dunedin. Here’s the interview with Jane, who’s very sensibly gone surfing this week.

We’re testing out RMB’s ability to manage ‘pre-ordering’ as we wait for the ebook of Maggie Rainey-Smith’s delectable Daughters of Messene to be prepared. If you buy one now, you’ll pay $1.50 less than the eventual NZ $12.

In other RMB author news, Melissa Green recently went to St Lucia in the West Indies to visit and read poetry with her old friend and mentor Derek Walcott. Fantastic. Anyone who’s read her spellbinding memoir The Linen Way will know just how fantastic. I read this interview with her yesterday, marvelling at the intricacy of her poetry writing process, the way she handles each word and collection of words as though each were a living creature … which is, of course, the case.