As I promised when this site first appeared three weeks ago, I'll be doing a new one of these G'days every couple of weeks. Here's #2. (I'm a writer, so for me 'couple of weeks' means anything between three and six. Well, it does when I'm talking to publishers about deadlines. When I'm talking to you, I'll try to make it between two and three, OK?)

I'm feeling very relieved right now because Paul Jennings and I have just finished the first draft of our new joint story, which is called Deadly! We had a pact that we wouldn't take a holiday till it was finished, and I had an awful feeling we might still be doing it on Christmas Day, which would have made us very unpopular with our families, our publisher, our editor and Santa.

Luckily I wasn't invited to any Christmas parties this year, and Paul can write even while he's dancing with a bowl of punch on his head, so we were able to put a spurt on and get it finished. That's the great thing about getting close to the end of a story, the momentum carries you over the finish line even if you're so exhausted you've forgotten how to type.

Paul and I have been writing Deadly! for about six months, pretty much in the same way as we did Wicked! two years ago. We started off with a character each, and this time mine's called Amy and Paul's is called Sprocket. They're completely different characters to Dawn and Rory from Wicked!, but we agreed I should write the girl again because Paul prefers writing boys and I still had the frocks from last time.

As we did in Wicked!, Paul and I started off putting together an outline of the story, then let our two characters tell the story themselves, one chapter from Sprocket, then one from Amy and so on. It's an exciting way to work, because we never know exactly how the other person is going to finish a chapter and how much poo they're going to leave our character in. But it does mean that we each rely on the other to stick with the process and not, for example, suddenly go overseas for two weeks in the middle of it all. That would be terrible.

And I wouldn't have gone if I could have got out of it, Paul, honest. I tried telling the conference in the UK that I couldn't go because I'd lent my suitcase to Kylie Minogue, but they didn't believe me. You were very patient, Paul, and I completely understand why you wrote that chapter while I was away in which Amy is kidnapped, nearly drowned and gets really bad dandruff.

In the next G'day, dear reader, I'll get into a bit more detail about the story of Deadly! Until then, I hope you have a happy Christmas (with lots of books from Santa) and a safe and joyful new year. I'll see you here in a couple of weeks (see above) unless the Y2K bug turns my website into blancmange. It probably won't, but if it does I'll climb up on my roof and shout.

Oo-roo,

22 December 1999