So what's next?

I have spent the last week in Auckland, doing interviews for radio and TV, catching up with my editor Jo, all the while fielding the most common question, “So what’s next?”
 
It is not that I haven’t contemplated that question; indeed it has been humming under the daily demands of promoting Dancing on The Tundra. However this current trip - I am writing this at Wellington airport en route from Auckland home to Nelson - has given me time and distance for clearer focus and so, ta dah de dah, I have finally decided what’s next!

You see the beginning of this serious writing to publication journey that now seems ages ago, was my desire to finally publish the book of memoirs about my childhood growing up in New Zealand that started as an oral tradition while I lived in Australia. I first began to share these stories with my class at an alternative school in Sydney. I told them tales that magically kept those bright and precocious children quiet and enthralled. This allowed me to hone my storytelling skills into a powerful teaching tool that I successfully used as a reward when my class's behaviour warranted an unexpected break from the usual timetable.

These stories always managed to bring the 8-13 year-olds to a total hush, while I teased out the climax, sometimes not finishing the story till the following day. “To be continued, ” I would tell them.
I imagined their interest was spawned in hearing stories about their teacher’s childhood growing up in Whanganui; some of the painful, funny and naughty things she did (too)?  I have since shared those stories with Aboriginal, Eskimo and Kiwi children, and their universal appeal has remained as strong as ever.
 
One of my pupils from my alternative school days recently wrote, “Your stories were always engrossing Emma, they contained a simple but profound message. I loved them!”

​So now gentle reader, you can say, “I know what Emma is publishing next!”

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