Today's blog is not about books or writing. Instead, I want to share news about our time in Daylesford for the Chill Out Festival, a queer event in rural Victoria which has been running for twenty-eight years. We attended this year. It's one of several such festivals which follow the Sydney Mardi Gras in March, …
Review: Proud Pink Sky by Redfern Jon Barrett
Berlin in the 90s, but not as we knew it. This is one of those alternative history tales. In this story, gays and lesbians flock from all over the world to the safety of Berlin because they are accepted and celebrated. Several new residents include young couple, William and Gareth, who have escaped their homophobic …
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Realising your manuscript needs work!
I've just edited the initial draft of my novel set in the 1990s. Like any novel at this early stage, some scenes work, some need work. But for the first time I sense this manuscript needs more work than my recent novels did at this early stage. It's not because it's bad. It's because I …
The IQARUS Book Con
We did a thing. A while back a group of authors decided to put on an online book conference. I raised my hand to help. As this group were in various locations around the world, I couldn't attend the regular weekly Google Meets sessions as they were held in the early hours of Monday morning. …
Researching the Sydney Gay Scene of the 90s – Part 2
Writing these blogs is helping with my research. I realised this during the past week. It's a great way for me to categorise the different themes I want to explore in my novel set in the 1990s. In the last blog I talked about my first impressions of the pages I copied from the Sydney …
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Researching the Sydney Gay Scene of the 90s – Part 1
A whole box of microfilm was waiting for me at the State Library of NSW. A lovely librarian arranged copies of the Sydney Star Observer from the 1990s, as well as a couple of years' worth of Capital Q, at my request. Both were significant street press which covered queer issues. The former still exists. …
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When Romance Rules! (Guest blog by Hans M Hirschi)
My husband told me I can use any part of our own relationship in my books. While all my books do include a love story, they are not traditional Romance novels. But somehow, if you write about romantic themes as a gay author, this is how you are often caterogarised. At a recent forum, I …
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Why we love the TV show ‘Work In Progress’.
Me and my husband had to watch this after it was reviewed on Foxtel's review show, Screen. Self proclaimed butch dyke, Abby McEnany, is the creator, executive producer and star of this endearing series. Oh, and she's a comedian. Her character, also named Abby, suffers from depression, but trust me, this is not a series …
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Getting a manuscript ready for submission
A father and daughter team were on the radio the other morning. Like me, dad obviously enjoyed the house party days of the nineties. He told his daughter (and us) about the Primal Scream track, 'Loaded'. Hearing people still affectionate about that decade is why one of my WiP's is set in that era. I'm …
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Just finished a Fifth Draft
These days, that's more that I usually do. But this manuscript is special. This story, The Midnight Man, took me a year to finally start as I was revisiting my earlier works for a new publisher at the time I came up with this story. And while I'm more efficient in my writing these days, …
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