Robert & Jarred at the Harry Potter shop

Here's me and Jarred standing outside the Harry Potter shop on the Gold Coast. Couldn't find the CHERUB shop for some reason...

Baby teeth & the last post

I've been doing events for four years and nobody has lost a baby tooth in my presence, but then:

1. Friday, Auckland signing, kids standing in front of me goes 'owww' and produces a tooth.

2. Saturday, Auckland, at dinner with my friend's daughter Lucy when suddenly, 'Oh my god, I just swallowed my tooth!'

3. Sunday, Brisbane, kid riding in the hummer, 'Ahhh.... that wobbly tooth has finally come out.'

How wierd is that...

Anyway, the tour ended with the event at Brisbane Grammar this morning. The seemed a pretty sleepy lot, but it was Monday morning and they were almost all fans.

Thanks to Janet, Chris, Suzy, Teresa and Kathryn who put together a great tour and also to Andrew back in London and all the librarians teachers, parents and fans who came out for events.

Now I'm off for a week of Aussie sun (hopefully). Any kid who's been to one of my events will have heard of my nephew Jarred, and it's kind of cool that this tour ends with me meeting up with the person who inspired me to write CHERUB in the first place.

(If you're lucky, I'll log back in and post a pic of us so you can see what he looks like these days!)

So, signing off until the next Australian tour!

Robert Muchamore

The final Hummer ride.

Another early start, another aeroplane, another customs form and another customs officer saying, 'So you write children's books do you?' while suspiciously raising one eyebrow.

The best thing about Brisbane is that after all the rain and cold weather, it's warm and sunny and I finally feel like I'm in Australia!

After checking into my hotel (eighth of the tour so far) I headed off for the final Hummer event. The car wasn't as fancy as the Melbourne and Sydney ones, but the kids were a great bunch.

We ended up at the Riverbend bookstore where I arrived to find the huge queue in the pictures above. Stepping out of a stretch Hummer in front of a massive queue of cheering CHERUB fans was definitely the most rock starrish moment of my life so far!

Finally a special mention to the two girls in their homemade CHERUB shirts, complete with my interesting vegetables page on the back!

Just one school event and one interview tomorrow morning before the tour ends. Then I have a week to enjoy the sun properly!

Radio New Zealand interview

Just a quick post to say that you can listen to my Radio New Zealand interview by clicking on the link HERE and doing a search for MUCHAMORE

Broken Aussie planes, old friends and wierd NZ airport curfews...

Sorry I haven't posted more on the NZ leg of the tour, but things didn't get off to a brilliant start.

First off my Qantas flight from Sydney to Wellington was delayed by 2.5 hours because the plane was broken. Then an hour after takeoff, the pilot announced that the flight was being diverted to Auckland because Wellington airport has a 1:30 curfew (Wellington is the capital and apparently the politicians there don't like being kept awake by aircraft noise...)

So instead of arriving in Wellington at 11:40 at night, I arrive in Auckland at 3:30 in the morning with no hotel and a bunch of interviews set up from 9am the following day. Fortunately heroic Hodder employee Suzy got out of bed to meet me. She whisked me off to an airport hotel, arranged for all my interviews to be done by telephone from Auckland and then we boarded a flight to Wellington at noon.

This meant that I barely made it to my Wellington events on time. I did a great signing at The Children's Bookshop (Run by the very nice John and Ruth) followed by an evening event for 500 people at a local school.

This was great, except for the dodgy microphone and me getting hissed for saying, 'The great thing about being here in Australia,' at the start of my speech. It seems Kiwi's don't like getting accused of being Australian!

I had to belt through the signing in record time in order to make my flight back to Auckland. After arriving in the hotel at 1am I was so knackered that I slept through my alarm the next morning and almost missed an interview with Shine TV, followed by a live spot on Radio New Zealand.

In the afternoon I spoke to and signed for 800 kids at Blockhouse Intermediate school, then signed for 100s more at Borders.

And that's why I haven't posted on this blog for the last few days.

Today was my first day off since the tour began 14 days ago and I spent it with my old friends Jim & Jude plus their kids, Sam, Lucy and George and Cilla the dog. It was very cool catching up with them after more than nine years and spending the day hanging out at their house, watching the kids football matches, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows, walking on the beach and finishing up with a flash meal at the swanky and frankly rather awesome Westin hotel.

I'd love to say I was able to spend Sunday with them too, but I've got to get up at 6am and fly to Brisbane for the final two days of my tour.

Straw hats in Sydney...

I'm flying off for the NZ leg of the tour later this afternoon.

The last couple of days have been fun, though my voice is getting pretty scratchy from all the talks, interviews and signings. I'm starting to sound a bit like a rusty gate and I hope my vocal cords hold out until my final event in Brisbane on Monday.

Here's a few pics of more schools (De La Salle, Newington Grammar and Knox). I liked the fact that the kids at Knox wear straw hats! I had no idea that there was anywhere in the world where kids still did that.

Also another Hummer ride. This time we got the
full pimped up Hummer with lasers, smoke machines etc inside, and for the first time the girls outnumbered the boys. The driver took us out to Bondai beach where we got plenty of stares from passers by.

Hummer riders Darcy and Ashley bought me a cool leather wallet and a boomerang, which no tourist should leave Australia without!

Also pictured, Sam Kool (aged about 12ish) gave me a copy of his own book at my Pages and Pages signing. I haven't read it yet, but hopefully he'll be a rich and famous writer some day and this will become a valuable first edition!

The Morning Show - Channel 7

Here's a link to my appearence on The Morning Show. Sadly I was upstaged by a swimmer called Grant something promoting his own brand muslei and a performing poodle...

CHANNEL 7 VIDEO LINK -NOW DEAD

Sadly I think it'll only be watchable until the next show goes out tomorrow, so for posterity here's a couple of images:


EDIT - You can no longer see the clip on the channel 7 site, however someone has uploaded the interveiw to Youtube. It's a bit scratchy, but you can basically follow it:

YOUTUBE LINK