The Escher Man took me ten years to write. Aliens: Bishop took five months. Ghost of the Neon God was a short short story, then two short stories, then a final expansion into a novella. Three books, three radically different …
I really enjoyed this interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) with host Kim Huynh. Kim is a man of many talents. He lectures in international relations at the Australian National University; has written about the refugee experience – both …
The space between selling your first novel, and publication day, is long and exhausting. For me, the gap was about 18 months. I’ve written this article throughout the process, while the experience is fresh. It is fair to say …
Ideas had always come easy to me. So-called ‘blank page’ writer’s block had never been a problem I’d faced. The reason was, in part, because I started writing relatively later in life – in my mid-30s, and had a career …
To be a writer is to face perpetual defeat and lingering self-doubt. The default in this profession is failure. Rejections come (I’ve had around 300 for short stories and novels) and they don’t stop coming. Agents are indifferent, and the …
You’d be forgiven for thinking the pandemic would be a boon for writers. With so many people confined to their homes, and only so many hours of decent streaming content to consume, computer games to play, and sourdough to bake, …
Failure
Two-and-a-half years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve sold a short story*. Thirty damn months since one of my new tales has found a market. In the first five years of my writing career, I sold an average …
You will know the name Thomas Piketty via his seminal book on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Like Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Piketty’s was a best-selling work read by almost no-one.
Here’s the gist. …
It’s time to put the world into WorldCon. Time to include geography and national culture in the definition of diversity. Past time.
This here is just a discussion in good faith. Remember those? There’s no outrage; no political side. All …
I’ve fallen in love with dungeons and dragons again, descending once more into the depths of the nerd.
As I’ve written previously, I am employed as a dungeon master to run a D&D campaign for a group of NDIS-funded …
