Category: writing
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Locus Spotlight
Locus interviewed yours truly a few weeks back, and the spotlight is now up online. ‘Yours truly’ means me, btw. Do people still use ‘yours truly’. In other recent news, my novella sale to PS Publishing (as reported in the recent PS Publishing news which I cannot identify online) is due for publication in early…
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Exotic Gothic 5: pre-orderable and pretty amazing
Let me be up-front and say: this blog post exists solely to show off the awesome covers and awesome contents of Exotic Gothic 5, available in TWO BIG VOLUMES OF GOTHIC GOODNESS available for pre-order from PS Publishing. Buy Volume 1, Volume 2, or both in a slipcase. And hurry, because this may well be…
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In preparation for Melbourne Writers’ Festival
… and with the generous assistance of Twelfth Planet Press’s resident designer, Amanda Rainey, I made bookmarks. If you’d like a bookmark of your very own – and I can’t blame you, they’re adorable – make sure you come to the Twelfth Planet launch Sunday 26th August, 5:30pm at the Yarra Building, Federation Square, Melbourne.…
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Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL
“Elizabeth got used to the sound of her own laughter, which she had at first found faintly improper.” (From “Cliffs of Fall”.) Ugh, I hate reviewing Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL. What words can be used to describe such beautiful, lyrical, bittersweet, intelligent writing? Better, surely, to just read the words themselves. And I think…
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Alan Ball on creation
Was lucky enough to attend the Alan Ball interview at the Opera House tonight. He’s a warm, funny man & down to earth, surprised, I think, by the event & the crowd. I thought: this is what you get when you talk to a real writer, that acknowledgement of how hard won the successes are,…
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Flowers and candy and other rewards of the business
Ask a roomful of successful authors why they decided to write and not one of them will answer “for the money,” any more than a hooker would say she chose her profession “for the flowers and candy.” — Paul Carr, “Mr. Swift’s Moronic Proposal: Ebooks Will Keep Writers from Writing“, The Awl And this…
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The War of Art
Years ago I stumbled across Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART (no, I didn’t write that down wrong) & loved it. Loved its passion & determination. Loved it so much I bought a copy for a friend’s birthday. Only to shortly hear that he didn’t want gifts that birthday. So I shelved it until an…
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The irony of writing: Joss Whedon
Not so shiny: Plenty of drama for Buffy creator Joss Whedon — Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2010 More seriously, he says that the cancellation of Firefly not only made him “the sourest man alive” but had an unexpected and potentially devastating side effect. “I stopped having ideas, which for me is an…
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Woohoo!
How cool, A BOOK OF ENDINGS has made the shortlist for the 2010 William L. Crawford Award! I’m assured the readers are ‘very picky’, so a heartfelt *hug* and congratulations to fellow short-listers, Kari Sperring (LIVING WITH GHOSTS), and Ali Shaw (THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET — wow, I love this title) and an even…
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Well, that’s kinda cool
Look at that, two of the new stories from A Book of Endings (now available, etc) are on the nomination list for the British SF Awards. Woot! *Not* the shortlist, I hasten to add. It simply means, I think, that some kind member(s) of the British SF Association has (er, have) nominated ‘Diamond Shell’ and…