Rebecca Langham and I were interviewed by Rhianna Patrick for ABC radio. This is the first of two major author opportunities for me this year, and although I have played radio presenter many times, being an interviewee was a little more daunting. I suggested a chat about queer literature to Rhianna over a year ago. …
I signed a new book contract.
The week before writing this blog I signed a book contract. It was for an eBook titled Winter Masquerade. At one stage I wanted to expand this book but after reading it for editing, I liked its pace. I didn't want to bloat the story. Someone asked me during the week which of my novels …
Selling Books at a Smaller Con
It's Sunday morning when I'm writing this. We're at Hubcon, the small pop culture con in the Blue Mountains. This is its inaugural year. There are only eight of us in Author Alley which means better sales for our books, compared to the larger festivals where there's more competition. Of course, I'm asking the best …
Obsessing over Chapter Four
As you may know, my writing is more sporadic these days. Gone are the days when my fingers regularly tapped frantically in the hope of churning out a best seller. Now there is more time to obsess over each chapter before I return to my trusty laptop. In the past I have lived with the …
Looking back at my Writer’s Notebook – Part Three
This week I'll be sharing notes from a workshop on editing between drafts. Over the last two weeks I've been going through my first writer's notebook and rediscovering my musings on improving my manuscripts, and sharing dot points from seminars I attended on writing. Today's blog is a hybrid of the two from an author …
Continue reading "Looking back at my Writer’s Notebook – Part Three"
The cliff hanger
Do you round up your chapters or add a cliff hanger? This was a question posed by someone using the #writingcommunity hashtag on Twitter. My answer is that I initially rounded up chapters until an editor made me stop. Her reasoning was that if you round up your chapters into neatly self contained stories, then a …
Plotting love affairs and break ups
One WIP has been submitted, one is on the back-burner and one I've just started plotting. I'm taking my time with this. With my other two works in progress I found I plotted too quickly, then went back and tried to expand them. One of them paces well, so I changed my mind and submitted …
Starting a new novel
I'm at the ideas stage. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog about the research I'll do for this. You can find it here, but basically it's a story set in the 1990's and centres around a group of friends. My husband and I have been casting people we know as characters and …
Stories should have conflict.
Today's blog was sparked by a tweet from Kev St John (@Kev_away) He had given his work in progress to a Beta Reader who didn't like one character because she wasn't a good friend. He couldn't believe this response. This character is supposed to be a bad friend. That was the point. I had a …
EMPATHY and the Brain-Computer Interface (Guest blog from R. R. Campbell)
Author R. R. Campbell and I are doing something interesting together. We're hosting guest blogs for each other. The one I wrote for his site is HERE. But here, at my place, Mr Campbell wants to talk about science and its role in his new book, Imminent Dawn. While the internet is changing the world …
Continue reading "EMPATHY and the Brain-Computer Interface (Guest blog from R. R. Campbell)"
