Hectic beginning to the year after moving back home from Vietnam. Started a PhD, second child on the way, so much cricket to watch.
My writing output has suffered: it’s the worst start to a year, in terms of words, I’ve ever had. As I’ve discussed previously, my approach to writing is establishing a routine and getting a minimum number of words down each day (500). I’ve been pretty good at keeping to it.
Not rocket science, this writing gig; just discipline – maybe the most underrated aspect of being an author.
Though writing a coherent novel with fully formed characters, compelling plot, and snappy dialogue – that may well be fucking rocket science. I recall a writer’s conference a couple of years back where Australian author Cat Sparks was ranting about novel writing. My favourite quote was: “They say everyone can write
a novel. Bullshit! It’s like saying everyone can be a brain surgeon!”
I love Cat. Always great value.
On the positive side though I’ve sold three stories, and finished and submitted a novel (late addition: and been nominated for an award). In that sense it’s been the best start to a writing year I’ve had yet.
My first ever solicitation for a reprint. I don’t mind that. Professional Australian Magazine Grimdark needed a story for an upcoming issue. I sent them my Writers of the Future winner ‘Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang’; they bought it. If only selling stories was always so easy.
Austrian Magazine Visionarium accepted a story I submitted to them last year. I’d forgotten about that one, so that was a pleasant surprise. German will be my second translation – my first is about to come out in French mag Galaxies Science-Fiction next 
month. My name on the front cover is pretty much the only thing I’ll be able to read, but still. (Edit – after first publishing this article I had a story accepted by Blipanika magazine that will be translated into Hebrew. Cool).
I sold a new story to Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction. I’m particularly pleased about this as they are the only spec-fic magazine in Southeast Asia. Plus – as the majority of my stories are set in SEA – it’s a publication I’ve wanted to be involved with. The story in question: “Hoan Kiem Blues” is about an exiled Jazz musician living in Chinese-occupied Hanoi.
And, just today I woke up to see I’ve been nominated for a Ditmar Award in the ‘Best New Talent’ category. For those of you unfamiliar, Ditmars are the national Australian speculative fiction awards. The Ditmars are voted in by editors, writers, and readers 
active in fandom (the other major awards, the Aurealis, are a juried prize).
I’d assumed, living in Vietnam for the past three years, no-one in the Australian genre scene knew who the hell I was. Pleased to be proved incorrect on this.
Finally, I finished a damn novel and it may even be good. It’s the third novel I’ve produced, but the first I am confident about (the first two are languishing in the ‘to be extensively re-written, but will probably still suck anyway’ file). I recall when I started out writing, the thought of having to write a couple of novels (or more) before churning out something good was abhorrent. Fuck that, I thought, I’ll just get the first novel sale like Stephen King with Carrie, or Morrissey and List of the Lost.
Morrissey. Actually, on second thoughts…
Anyway, the novel is out there now, floating around the aether with another five million unpublished novels doing the rounds, carrying the dreams of their authors aloft.
Believe me when I say, fellow aspiring novelists, believe me when I say I hope your dreams are shot out of the air and come to crashing to the ground, Hindenburg-like. There can be only one – or a few thousand anyway a year at respectable publishers – and the only way for me to get there is over the smoking carcass of your gritty-urban-catpunk-mermaid-YA-romance.
Joke, I joke. Mermaid catpunk ain’t in competition with my chosen sub-genre. Happy to see that one pass the gatekeepers.
So everything is going well except the writing. Hopefully that’ll be back on track soon.
