One of the things I love is having my books turned into plays. It's great. I get money, I get my picture in the programme, I get to watch actors bringing my characters to life, and best of all I get to watch the audience. Authors don't usually get to watch people reading their books, so we're hardly ever able to see people experiencing our stories first hand. At a play we can.

If you ever go to a play based on one of my books, and you see a bloke in the front stalls turning round and gawking at the audience, that'll probably be me. I love seeing if other people are having the same feelings about the story as I did when I wrote it. There's always the risk, of course, that a whole theatre full of people will be sitting stony-faced during the bit that I think is the funniest in the whole story, but luckily that hasn't happened yet.

I've been very fortunate with the plays based on my books. A few years ago Mary Morris did superb adaptations of three of my books – Two Weeks With the Queen, Blabber Mouth and Misery Guts. Two Weeks With The Queen travelled the world, with productions in Canada, the US, Britain, Japan and Cuba. Then a couple of years ago Mary-Anne Fahey did a wonderful adaptation of Water Wings, which she performed as a one-woman show.

Now, I'm delighted to say, Glenn Perry's play Second Childhood has just been published by Puffin Books. I say Glenn's play because he's added loads of new material to my original story. Even if you know the novel well, you'll be amazed how he's developed the story even further. I was. Good on you Glenn.

Some of you may have seen Second Childhood last year when the Melbourne Theatre Company and Hothouse Theatre did a great production. (If you didn't, you might be interested in the NSW and Victoria tour of the play at the end of this year. You can get details from Hothouse Theatre.)

Second Childhood The Play works really well on stage (I studied the audience closely) but it's also good for schools who want to perform bits in the classroom. (So, come to that, are Two Weeks With The Queen The Play and Blabber Mouth The Play, both published by Currency Press). If you do a bit of Second Childhood in class and you see a bloke down the front turning round and gawking at the audience and it's not your teacher ... it could be me.

Until then, oo-roo and happy reading

12 February 2002