Curiosity led me there. Back in 2014 I wanted to know more about fellow Australian author, Christian Baines, so I googled. I discovered he had a short ebook titled The Prince and the Practitioner. What struck me first was its cover. I'm a visual person and the quality of the artwork sparked my interest. Who was the publisher? Art …
Slipping between genres.
"You're mixing genres." This wasn't said to me as a negative. It was an observation from an editor when I had the initial draft of my first novel assessed. At the time, I didn't realise this was such a big deal. Cinema had made an art of combining genres for a long time. Surely, literature was equally as experimental. But …
Sharing Advice from Writers
Over the last seven weeks I have been blessed by a team of talented authors who shared their tips in a series of guest blogs. This has been a wonderful experience, not only because of the feedback I received from readers, but in making myself rethink some of my own practices. I'm a member of the Australian Society …
Review equals publicity
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the importance of reviews to an author. In fact, next week, Bold Stroke's author Michael Vance Gurley has his own views on the topic as my guest blogger. But this week I want to share some experiences I've had in the past month regarding reviews. Reviews equal publicity. Part …
Someone out there, give me a review!
Last week's guest blogger, 'Nathan Burgoine, once posted his Christmas wish list on his own website. Quiet simply, he wanted reviews. Any author with a book newly released understands his sentiment. When my ebook Nate and the New Yorker came out, I spent weeks searching for reviews. Any writer will admit that this becomes a habit. You're …
Rejected by a Reviewer
I had a unique experience recently. There's one reviewer who I like to read, especially when he's writing about one of my books. It's one of the rare vanity moments we have as authors. What I like about this reviewer is that within his critique, he offers advice to the writer. In the past he hasn't …
Literary Speed Dating
This blog was originally posted before the release of my novel, Social Media Central. At the time I was with Wilde City Press who only published stories where the main character had to be a gay male. Okay, I'm cheating. I have a non-gay novel which is up to fourth draft and is not suitable for …
Are we talking more but saying less?
About a year ago, an author friend posted up the potential cover for her upcoming novel and asked for feedback. I said that although I loved the individual graphic elements of the design, they didn't work together. To me this was a fair comment to the question that had been posed. The same question that had been …
Queermance
This blog post was originally published in 2015, the last Queermance sadly. I was keen to be part of this each year, but even as I looked forward to the event in 2016, it was cancelled and hasn't been resurrected. I'm still promoting it as it talks about genre and at the time, two of …
Reviews – A Living Terror!
When I was studying acting many years ago, one of our drama teachers put us through an interesting exercise. She asked each of our classmates to critique each other's acting. So one by one we sat and heard advice from each of our fellow students. Did the sky fall? Did we want to bury ourselves …
