It was a tough few days but we came through the other side. These stairs were usually under sand to the first landing…

March Update

It’s remarkable how much disruption one storm can cause.

Hong Kong is hit by cyclones (typhoons) at least once and up to three times every season, but it’s rare to see the level of disruption that we had here in South East Queensland: here, most of the  beach is now gone and people are still without power, a week later.

If you look at a photo of Hong Kong, you’ll see that most of the high-rises there aren’t ‘glass curtain-wall’ construction – although some of the newer and more trendy office buildings are. Hong Kong’s buildings have concrete surrounds to stop the windows from being blown out by typhoons.

Some of them have really tiny windows because they know the damage that glass can cause when it falls.

Just before I returned to Australia, there was a massive typhoon that broke many windows in Wan Chai and everybody was sharing opinions on the stupidity of glass curtain walls on these new buildings.

Most of the power cables are underground in HK as well (and constantly being dug up in Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui!). I lived there for ten years and we never lost power once. Here in SEQ many of the powerlines are above-ground and they led to massive power outages when they went down.

I’m not criticising South East Queensland, as a cyclone here is such a rare event – and the infrastructure so spread out – that it’s probably not economically feasible to have underground power lines everywhere.

But having lived in Hong Kong and experienced only minor inconvenience from typhoons did make me a little more blasé about cyclones here. I did charge everything up but I walked right past the little gas steamboat stoves in the Chinese grocery without buying one because I thought I wouldn’t need one (when I absolutely did).

I did have a workshop booked for Saturday the 8th at Helensvale, and power was out everywhere, and the government asked us to stay home. That was completely cancelled, which was unfortunate.

We came through other side, however, and now I’m preparing for Oz Comic-Con Perth in April.

I’ll be at Perth Convention Centre April 5 and 6, and I will have many hardcover and special collector’s edition copies of ‘Serpent Princess’! If you’d like to order a foiled copy to collect at the show, that’s an option on my store. Isobelle Carmody, Katie Lowe and Amanda Bridgeman will be there so come and say hello!

You can order the special foiled edition, standard hardcover, and paperback copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ on my store. My theme updated and broke everything on my site and I had to rush to sort it out and when I find time I’ll redo my site to make the store easier to use.

The foiled edition is just gorgeous!

Patrons are already reading the sequel to ‘Serpent Princess’ and once I’ve sent out all of their gift copies for being Patrons, I will definitely be adding to the story. Hm… maybe a love <ahem> scene between Simone and Michael? My job is the best in the world.