Today has been a very big day for me! I have been confirmed as an Alan Duff’s Books In Homes Role Model. I will start my journey with Books in Homes at Van Asch School for the Deaf in Sumner on April the 10th. As you can tell I am excited about it, and I feel really honoured to be part of this programme, which gives kids in lower decile schools hundreds of thousands of books per year.

This is pretty special as today is also the day Deputy Dan & the Mysterious Midnight Marauder comes off the press. I am exhausted, and happy, and utterly enthralled to be starting my journey as an author.

Tomorrow, Deputy Dan goes into final print production. All 2000 copies of the First Edition will have been printed by 2am the next day. It feels amazing, and unreal, and I can hardly wait to have the day safely over with. It’s so hard to believe that this time is finally here.

I check of the quality of black and white pictures about noon. We had some issues with them but I think the design team have sorted them out. At some time after midnight I should get a call to go in and check the colour run. Then it’s all in the hands of the team at Rainbow Press.

They will print each page four times, hand trim pages and glue them into their covers, and then hand stitch each section of the book to the spine twice  to make an extra strong, high quality book. I’m really proud of how much care and commitment has gone into each stage of creating Deputy Dan.