Virtual promotion and ocean waves

Hello everyone and happy new year. This month on Compulsive Reader Talks, I’ve interviewed one of my favourite authors, Emily Ballou, who spoke about her new novel Aphelion. I also interviewed cartoonist Roland Harvey, who spoke about his book In the City. Why not drop by and have a listen. You can download the shows to your favourite MP3 player and listen to it when you’d otherwise be bored in traffic or waiting in a long line/queue, and can even subscribe via iTunes. While I was jumping around in ocean waves with my gorgeous children, a lovely review of Art of Assessment was published at JustLocal, and two terrific reviews of Sleep Before Evening were published – one at Moondance (“The writing is deep and memorable making the novel a true page-turner. The words are chosen masterly; the narrative and the imagery are excellent. The book sounds like the music Marianne wants to compose.”) and one at Boychiklit (“what we have here is a full-on rush of ambitious literary fiction. That it largely succeeds as such is no consolation to horny but bookish males hoping for a bit of fluff or a few chuckles while killing time in the airport departure lounge.”). I had a lovely interview at Virtual Book Tour de Net, and was awarded a 2007 Noble (Not Nobel--dream on!) Prize for Sleep Before Evening. This prize is for books that “show excellence in use of the English language, present themes or premises that might help even one reader recognize and curtail bigotry, or explore the human condition in other important ways” and I’m very excited to be included in this prize list for the second year in a row (last year I won for my poetry book Quark Soup). Finally, I’ve been named poetess-in-residence for the magazine Escape Velocity. They're real sci fi, and I hardly ever write (or even read) sci fi, but I suppose there's a strong science edge to my poetry which seems to trail along the edge of quantum physics and astronomy, and I must say I’m chuffed to be able to have a presence in this arena. All the best. Maggie