Wishing you all a merry midsummer! Or, for those friends in the northern hemisphere, a merry midwinter.

Here in Sydney it is warm and bright and blue, and I've swum in the ocean for the first time this season. As I sit at my desk I can see sulphur crested cockatoos squabbling in the giant gum tree, and my peach and apple trees are laden with fruit, keeping the birds and the possums happy. My herb garden is flowering, and there are zucchinis and eggplants and rocket in the vegetable patch. I have started wrapping Christmas presents – books, books and more books! And one fairy castle for a little fairy princess.

Christmas is, of course, based on a far older, pagan tradition once called Yule, which means 'wheel'. Yule – or the Midwinter Solstice – is when the sun is at its furthest distance from the earth and so it is the shortest day of the year … and the longest night.

The Midwinter Solstice was a mysterious and powerful time. Even though it is the darkest point of the year, it is a time when the wheel of the year begins to turn once more towards summer. Yule was celebrated with the lighting of fires and candlelight to fill the house with warmth and light, and with the hanging of evergreen wreaths and garlands to feign the fresh green of summer. Traditionally, Yule is a time to look back on the achievements of the past year.

And 2008 has been a fantastic year for me! In January, five of the six books in 'The Chain of Charms ' series won the 2007 Aurealis Award for Excellence in Children's Fiction, enabling me to say, quite truthfully, that I'm the only author ever to win five Aurealis Awards in one year (a bit cheeky, I know). This was a truly wonderful moment for me, and one that I will never forget. A little while later, Book 5: The Lightning Bolt was chosen as a Notable Book of 2007 by the Children's Book Council of Australia.

In March, The Gypsy Crown came out in the UK and I flew over to London with my gorgeous husband and three children to attend the London Book Fair, spending a hectic week talking to media, booksellers and librarians. I love London, and cannot believe I didn't have time to go to a single shop! That shows you how busy I was.

After that, the family flew to Scotland to do the research for my upcoming book, The Puzzle Ring , a story about a girl who discovers that her family was cursed long ago. To break the curse, Hannah must go back in time to the last tumultuous days of Mary, Queen of Scots … a time when witches were burnt and queens were betrayed and the dark forces of wild magic still stalked the land...

I have longed to go to Scotland all my life, having been brought up on tales of lochs and moors and mountains by my Scottish grandmother and great-aunts. It was just as wild and mysterious as I had ever imagined, and I got some fabulous material for the book. We stayed in a real 14th century castle near Gatehouse of Fleet, a place where John Knox himself had once stayed. That's me standing at the front door of the castle!

Then we had four nights in a cottage on the shores of Loch Lomond, in the grounds of Arden House which, as you can see by the photograph, is a grand old Scottish baronial mansion. Wintersloe Castle, in The Puzzle Ring, was partly inspired by it ... and the kids and I all wished we could live there!

We spent the days driving round Scotland going to all the places that appear in The Puzzle Ring – the fairy mountain Schiehallion; the whirlpool known as the Hag's Washtub; and the village of Fortingall where a five-thousand-year-old yew tree grows. We drove over the Rannoch Moor to Glencoe, a place that looks as if it has not changed in a thousand years, and along the sea road to the Isle of Skye, where we occasionally saw the most extraordinary mountain crags looming out of the mist and rain. We stayed in a fantastic old house with antlers and tiger heads on the floor, and an elephant's foot being used as an umbrella stand in the front hall. You can be sure that'll crop up in a story one day!

Three days staying in an old monastery on the shores of Loch Ness was definitely a highlight of the trip, particularly as the rain cleared and we had some beautiful warm, spring sunshine. We went monster-hunting, and ate some great Scottish cuisine in the local pubs, and then headed to Edinburgh for a few more days.

I loved Edinburgh! I think it's one of my favourite cities in the world. One of the highlights was the Beltane celebrations on Calton Hill. We listened to a wonderful Scottish storyteller who told us that Calton Hill was once believed to be a gateway to fairyland. This solved a massive problem I had with the plot of 'The Puzzle Ring ' and so it turned into one of the best nights we had in Scotland (though we still cannot get over all the mad Celts with their bare arms and bare legs in the freezing cold of a Scottish evening.) That's me and the boys above, all rugged up, while the Scots cavorted quite happily in a few wisps of silk or fur.

We flew home to Australia in early May, and the rest of the year was spent working on the final drafts of The Puzzle Ring. I have always wanted to write a story about a curse, and so this book was so much fun to write.

In June, Sea Magic, the third of Ben and Tim's Magical Misadventures, was released, and I spent quite a bit of the year flying round to promote the books – the Perth Writers Festival, the Gold Coast Literari Festival, the Sydney Writers Festival, and Whitsundays Voices Youth Literature Festival.

Later in the year, The Gypsy Crown came out in the US, Italy and Germany, and got some great reviews (it's soon to be released in Spain too, which is very exciting!) Then, in December, I heard that it had been nominated for the 2008 Cybils Award in the middle-grade fantasy/sci-fi category.

The Cybils (short for 'The Children's And Young Adults Bloggers' Literary Awards') are the premier web awards for children's literature. I'm very proud to be the same nomination list as some of my all-time favourite authors, including Diana Wynne Jones, Philip Pullman, Cornelia Funke, Joanne Harris and Angie Sage. That is definitely one of the highlights of my writing career so far!

Now I am looking forward to The Puzzle Ring being released next year – in Australia in May and overseas in June. There'll be a trip to Singapore, and another trip to London to promote the book – and meanwhile I've started a new book, tentatively called The Wildkin's Curse, which is a sequel to my YA fantasy The Starthorn Tree. I'm hoping 2009 will be as wonderful a year as 2008!

To find out if I win the Cybil Award, or where I will be and what I'll be doing next year, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter, 'Diary of a Daydreamer', or just check our my website at www.kateforsyth.com.au.

I hope you all have a very safe and happy holiday, wherever you are in the world, and thank you for all your support over the past few years.

My very best wishes

www.kateforsyth.com.au