I don't normally solicit feedback on my works in progress. Yet I have used Beta Readers twice in recent years, and my first novel was professionally assessed several times. This paid assessor gave feedback over several drafts before I decided to have another draft looked at by a team at a publishing house, for the …
Waiting to see if your new book is selling.
There's a unique anxiety after the release of a novel. It doesn't happen straight away. We are on a buzz when our new book is in the public arena. We're busy marketing while finding new promotional possibilities. We're updating our website and searching for new reviews. Then searching for new reviews again. And again. But …
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Thoughts on ‘Strangers On a Train’ by Patricia Highsmith
This is not a book review. It's about what I learnt from reading this classic novel and has some elements of critique in it. A month ago I posted a blog about how anything you read influences your work in progress. My current project is written in third-person. All but one of my published works …
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Eurovision 2022
Yes, I'm Australian, so of course I love Eurovision. I was in New Orleans early last decade where a local had to tell me about this song contest they just discovered and how as a gay man, I'd really be into it. I finally worked out he was talking about Eurovision. He had no idea …
Swimming in the indie author pool
This is a topic I’ve been thinking of blogging about for a while. But something happened recently which really put this in perspective. A review of my audio book was shelved because the reviewer assigned to it couldn’t get into it. The reason is because it is not a Romance story. I have a small …
Anything you read helps your work in progress
Sometimes I choose what I read carefully. For example, I read H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury when I worked on my first dystopian novel. My assessor got me to read Joe Keenan as she wanted me to hone in on the farcical elements of my first book. But when I'm reading for pleasure, whatever style …
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I’m replacing an entire character
In my last blog I wrote about writing a summary for a book submission. And although it's for a novel I'm still working on, it hasn't stopped me considering how to pitch it to potential publishers. I've created a 500 word and a 300 word synopsis, and a 200 word summary, in line with what …
Help! I’m writing a synopsis for a book submission.
I've learnt the value of working on a synopsis while you write your book. I've also learnt to work on a blurb long before I need to send it to my publisher, but that's not what this blog is about. I'm working on a novel that's not suited to my publisher, so for the first …
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Book Review – They’re a Weird Mob – Nino Culotta
I discovered 'youse' is actually a word! My parents used to use youse as in 'all of youse', and even wrote it in handwritten notes. And like Nino, the main character in They're a Weird Mob, my parents were born in Europe. Early in life I had to teach myself the difference between borrow and …
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Hearing your Audio Book for the first time
I've found the cure for Impostor Syndrome. One of my novellas has been recorded as an audio book. My publisher, NineStar Press, put out the call for narrators to audition, and after several voice-over artists submitted their recordings, we chose British actor, Jon Bolitho-Jones. Jon has a Masters in Acting and has tread the boards …
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