The final posts of my Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom have gone up. Here’s the complete list – and thanks to all the people who volunteered space on their blog for me to chatter away. I was particularly grateful for the various topics I was given to write on – I certainly couldn’t have blogged that much without being so inspired by the topics.

The Shattered City Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom.

Craft, Magic & Women’s Work (Voyager Online)
The Long and Short of It (Intrepid Reader)
Friday Hoyden: Jean Marsh (Hoyden About Town)
There And Back Again, by A Fantasy Author (The Journeyman Writer)
My favourite Creature Court outfits (Egoboo)
Australian Women Writing SF (The Best Audience)
On Getting an Australia Council Grant (K A Bedford)
Why the Creature Court & what Sources Did I Use? (Castle Books)
The Mega Tansypost of Doom (Helen Merrick)
Fandom: The Next Generation (Jo1967)
On Middle Books and Broken Cities (Kate Gordon)
Of Swords and Breakfast (Fablecroft)
Aufleur and Rome (Random Alex)
The Story of Book 2 (Trent Jamieson)
Backstory and the Ties That Bind (Larvatus Prodeo)
My Urban Fantasy is a Little Further Away (Nicole R Murphy)
The Fabric of the Universe (Lauredhel)
Living With a Writer (Bridal Cupcake)
Every Book is a Special Snowflake (Champagne and Socks)
Contemplating Other (People’s) Worlds (Adventures of a Bookonaut)
When is a Vampire Not a Vampire? (AsIF)

I’ve also had some great reviews go up recently of my books, of which two of my favourites are by Jason Nahrung and Stephanie Gunn.

And I’ve been reviewing again over at Last Short Story, with posts on Aussie YA anthology The Wilful Eye and stories from various anthologies & Nightsiders by Sue Isle.

So basically it’s all about me!

Here I am again (still), bloggiting away. The exciting development this week is that books seem to have actually been appearing in bookshops around the country, and going home with people! I have particularly loved receiving pictures tweeted to me from friends & readers showing off their new copies. Love you all!

And of course I actually received a couple of copies of The Shattered City in the post which are just for MEEEEE – I had almost forgotten that I hadn’t seen a real copy myself. It’s very pretty, quite my favourite book yet, but I would say that, wouldn’t I? Also this week I caught sight of the artwork that will appear on Book #3 – anyone care to guess who will be featuring on the cover and what colour the “iconic frock” for Reign of Beasts will be?

Alex asked me to blog about Aufleur and Rome, two of my favourite cities!

Trent asked for The Story of Book Two.

Over at Larvatus Prodeo, I talk about how backstory created the people that my characters are today.

.And at Nicole Murphy’s blog, I talk about the delicious cocktail that comes from blending traditional & urban fantasy

Yes, still here, still blogging! Here are some more guest posts of mine which appeared throughout the week.

This one was teed up before the Mighty Slapdash Tour began, but I’m counting it anyway. Over at the blog of Kate Gordon, author of new YA paranormal Thyla (also released this month!) I talk about the difficulties particular to the underappreciated middle book of a trilogy, and some of the particularly mean things I have written into this one.

Tehani totally tried to bait me by challenging me to write about the differences between men and women writing fantasy, and I think I acquitted myself reasonably well on that topic.

Jo inspired me to write about my daughter’s response to Star Wars (if I’d gone with Doctor Who, you all know it would have turned into a book, right?).

Helen Merrick gave me four topics and of course I couldn’t choose between them, could I? So she got a mighty, jam-packed blog post!

The posts each come with a little cookie from The Shattered City, out NOW from all good Australian/NZ bookshops (I hope!) and also available as an e-book in iBooks and Kindle (I hope other ereader sites too, let me know if you source it!)

I still haven’t heard any evidence that The Shattered City *is* in bookshops yet, but I really appreciate everyone who has tweeted me or commented to let me know that they have it on order, and that their local bookshop is apparently getting in lots of copies (or wasn’t getting in any until they ordered it). Release month is a nail biting thing, and you have definitely made it more fun!

Tarran at the Castle Books blog [formerly Angus & Robertson Edwardstown blog] asked me Why the Creature Court, and what sort of sources did I use in coming up with the idea?
[updated with replacement link from replacement blog, hooray!]

Deborah at The Best Audience Award asked me to talk about Australian women writing SF

Sarah at Egoboo WA asked me to talk about my favourite outfits in the Creature Court series! (seriously, best question ever)

Adrian Bedford asked me to talk about what I did to get an Australia Council grant (a rare thing for a fantasy author!), and particularly how to talk about work you haven’t written yet.

The posts each come with a little cookie from The Shattered City, out NOW from all good Australian/NZ bookshops (I hope!) and also available as an e-book in iBooks and Kindle (I hope other ereader sites too, let me know if you source it!) Sarah gets the biggest cookie of all because, you know, she asked me about frocks.

I’ve always liked the idea of a blog tour, but cringed a little away from the formality of it all. And, you know, despite knowing for nine months or so that this book was coming, I turned out to be completely unready to launch any kind of publicity about it. (cough, this is sounding familiar, she said, remembering the lack of birth announcements for both babies)

At the last minute I decided to do something casual and fun and utterly slapdash. I called out on Twitter and Facebook for anyone with a blog who wanted a guest post from me (they get to pick the topic!), and got back a lovely collection of volunteers. Now, of course, I have a week’s work of writing said posts ahead of me, but I’m having a lot of fun tearing through them all.

Some of them have cookies (or, well, crumblets) from the new book, to tantalise new readers. Hope you enjoy! And while we’re at it, I’d love to hear from anyone who has seen or bought The Shattered City in the wild.

Here are the first few:

“The Long and Short of It,” over at Reading Adventures, who were nice enough to make mine their launch post for Aussie Author Month.

Hoyden About Town asked me to provide a geeky Friday Hoyden for them, and after discovering to my dismay that they had already done one on Nanny Ogg and the Witches of Lancre, I decided on the extremely awesome Jean Marsh

Julia B, who is currently embarking on a goal of writing a million words in two years (omg!) asked me to talk about how I got to where I am, which turned out to be a crazy long post about the ups and downs of my writing career so far.

Also, in case you missed it, (though not technically part of the tour) I posted recently at the Voyager blog about the portrayal of craft in fantasy and my own sewing background, with a sneak peek at a piece of my current work-in-progress, a Creature Court crazy quilt.