Getting the flu will do all sorts of strange things to you. Not only have I done nothing more strenuous than walk up and down a few flights of stairs in the past two weeks, but I’ve also lost my writing muscle, which had started to firm up through writing this blog, some freelance pieces and, as a hired gun, lots of strategic research papers and funding applications.

The upside of having the flu? Catching up on my plastic-wrapped airmail New Yorkers. Well, almost – which is as good as it will ever get with that magazine.

In the most eclectic collection of recommendations I’ve seen in a long time, my book is one of five selected for the current Shortlist by the Borders bookstore chain, a curated selection of titles emailed to their 300,000 or so online subscribers. The email features extras – an author Q&A and a download of Chapter One – that my publisher UQP submitted some months ago in the hope of eventual selection. So it’s a thrill to see my humble first offering among such fine if strange company – a vampire love story, a collection of titles on property investment and tax avoidance, a book of short stories, and 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama.  I suspect that’s about as close as I’ll ever get to His Holiness.

As of a few hours ago I am the newly elected President of Sydney PEN. I am honoured to hold this position and hope I can do justice to my colleagues on the incoming Management Committee (who will be listed on the organisation’s website in the next day or two), and also to the aims of this prestigious international organisation, which works to uphold the freedom to write and the freedom to read around the world.

Any budding philanthropists interested in supporting our development of a web 2.0 presence and online community for the work of Sydney PEN, particularly so we can make more convenient the ways in which people can protest the detention of writers around the world – for example, around 40 writers are imprisoned in China as I write this – please don’t hesitate to contact me here.

Spent two days in BrisVegas over Friday and Saturday, flown there and back by my generous host the University of Queensland, who invited me to be the guest of a literary lunch hosted by their new Vice-Chancellor’s wife, Louise Greenfield. I was the “guinea pig” of a proposed series of events of this kind. If mine was anything to go by, I would recommend trying to get on the invitation list.

The literary lunch was held in the magnificent mid-19th Century Customs House building, which is part of the campus but is smack bang in the middle of Brisbane’s CBD. I arrived early to sign 80 copies of the book, and thought I had stumbled upon a wedding, so resplendent in tones echoing my book’s cover artwork were the tables. Despite the heavy rain the guests appeared, and seemed to enjoy my brief presentation and subsequent “Q&A” with my publisher, Madonna Duffy, about the road to publication. She and I certainly enjoyed ourselves on stage. There were plenty of questions and it didn’t end until 3pm, which is a long and relaxed lunch for a workday.