When I first set out to be an author, I thought the job would be a dignified one. You know, lots of thinking, a bit of writing, the odd interview with a small literary magazine and quite a lot of elegant pipe smoking. It all sounded very nice (apart from the pipe smoking), but not very exciting.

Boy, was I wrong. What I didn't know was that authors have to go out and do publicity tours. Which is how I've come to have the following experiences:

1. Diving off various items of hotel furniture onto a bed covered with my books so a Brisbane newspaper photographer could get a snap illustrating that I'd written Belly Flop.

2. Appearing in a large number of schools, bookshops and other venues in my pyjamas, including a restaurant in a country town where they thought I'd escaped from the local psychiatric hospital, and a bookshop in Dublin where people complained to the Archbishop.

3. Standing on stage with Paul Jennings while he showed me how to take off a bra without removing your shirt first.

Then I discovered that authors sometimes get to appear in videos about themselves. If you've seen The Morris Gleitzman Video made a few years ago, you'll remember seeing me have a number of exciting and not very dignified experiences including sitting up a tree with no clothes on, nearly getting swallowed up by a book-printing machine and having a cream pie splatted in my face.

I've just had quite a few more exciting and not very dignified experiences making a new video. I don't want to give too much away because The Morris Gleitzman Story Writing Video has only just been released, but I will mention that it's a first for me in several ways. It's the first time I've ever tried to use my story-writing experience to help other people write better stories, and it's the first time I've ever sat in a bath full of compost. It's also the first time I've ever stuffed a mechanical plastic frog in my mouth. And had tinned spaghetti thrown in my face (Not in the tin, fortunately).

If you'd like to see these and other not very dignified moments, ask your teacher or librarian if they can get a copy. They (or you) can find out more on the Morris On Tape page on this site. Or contact Insight Profile, the people who made and are distributing The Morris Gleitzman Story Writing Video.

Until then, oo-roo and happy reading

PS In August I'll be doing lots of school visits in Melbourne, Sydney, regional NSW, Brisbane and regional South-East Queensland. If your school is interested, you can contact the people doing the bookings in Melbourne, Brisbane and SE Qld, and Sydney and NSW.

13 March 2002