It was a huge honour, about a month back, to receive two nominations for the Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier prize for speculative fiction. I got category nods for ‘Best Science Fiction Novel’, (Aliens: Bishop) and ‘Best Fantasy Novella,’ (A Marked Man).
It’s important that Australia has a respected award for speculative fiction, and the consequent opportunity to celebrate our writers and artists. The awards are juried, taken very seriously, and it’s tough to be shortlisted. I’m proud to be a part of it.
The Good
‘A Marked Man‘ was my first foray into a new genre, fantasy (a very dark and gritty fantasy, of course). I wanted to indulge myself, have some fun, and write a 10,000-word sword fight (honestly, that was my original intent). I did that, but couldn’t help myself and ended up with an incipient rebellion, flashbacks, trauma, magical tattoos, surly belligerent mouthy blacksmiths, an honourable duel, and a dishonourable swirling melee.
Á Marked Man is written so it seems to be a self-contained story (which you can find in Grimdark Issue #36), but also, as it happens, forms the 
opening few chapters of my current WIP, an epic dark fantasy novel. That work won’t be finished for another year – more likely two – but if you’re curious about what the new work will look like, then that Grimdark issue is worth picking up (I don’t get paid anything extra if you do, I just think it’s a great mag and deserving of a bigger audience).
‘Aliens: Bishop’ was my first tie-in (and possibly my last). Tie-ins are often seen as a ‘lesser’ form of the novel by many readers, so it was a welcome surprise to see it make the shortlist. At first I didn’t even submit it, assuming it wasn’t eligible. Fortunately, the long-time convenor of the Aurealis asked
me, the day before nominations closed, why I hadn’t, informing me that yes, a tie-in is eligible as long as it is an original story, not a movie novelisation. Apparently a Doctor Who novel was shortlisted some twenty years previous. Now we can add an Aliens novel to the honour roll.
I nearly broke myself writing Bishop in five months, but at the end of that creative fevre dream, I found myself proud of the final product. Never hurts to have five objective judges agree with the sentiment.
The Bad
But while I’m talking about Aliens, I have to say that I’ve never been subjected to so many bad-faith criticisms as I have with this book. By bad faith I mean people who, for example, lie about what I wrote, and then mock the book for that reason (yes, I mean completely fabricating the content, and then telling others, who haven’t read the book, hey listen to what this guy did). I mean personal attacks. Denigrating me as an individual and as a writer. I mean utterly bizarre attacks on Australia. Yes, you read that right. Not just one person, some demented outlier. Maybe a score, now, who have complained bitterly about the book having an Australian 
character, and then who go on to express some very dated and very stupid stereotypes about Australians in general. It’s fucked and it’s a shame this tiny minority of readers is so toxic.
I don’t like dwell on this sort of behaviour, nor talk about it. As a rule, I think the best you can do is ignore it, and I almost always do. Don’t wrestle with a pig, as the saying goes: you’ll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Nor am I after sympathy (god no – another reason I try to avoid discussing it). I’ve just found it so striking. I’ve never received anything like it for my original fiction. The reality is that this type of toxicity is built into a lot of fanbases, and Aliens is no exception. I avoid a lot of forums now, and many websites. Another Aliens author warned me about it early on, but I went ahead and had to find out the hard way.
I’ll end by saying this: the overwhelming reaction from the Aliens fanbase has been fantastic. Enthusiastic reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, messages of praise on social media, and in my inbox. I’m always thankful for those. And from the big guns in fandom, as well, both Alien Theory (YouTube) and the Perfect Organism Podcast, for example have been hugely supportive. As have places like the Bob Rush Network, Project Acheron, Borg, heaps of others.
Accentuate the positive, like the song says, eliminate the negative. And fuck the haters.
The Ugly
My writing process. Holy shit. Been a mess lately. My general philosophy is this: there’s no blueprint in this gig. Every writer gets to the endpoint in a different way. Different paces of writing, ways of editing, approaches to research, plot, inspiration, work ethic, drafting, all of it. I watch a lot of interviews with authors on YouTube (genre, ‘literary,’ non-fiction, anything I can find), and almost always discover some weird quirk or method I hadn’t heard of before. You watch enough of these things and it start to feel like anything goes.
It fucking doesn’t. There’s method in the madness, discipline in the creative chaos.
I found myself just a couple of days back with four major manuscripts open on my screens. Four. Making notes on all of them. 1) The current novel I’m editing (The Escher Man – due out September this year, which I am excited about and dreading in equal measure), 2) my current work-in-progress (a short cyberpunk/military SF novel), 3) the document I should be working on (epic dark fantasy), and 4) a novel I finished and then put aside for a couple of years to think about (another cyberpunk/military SF novel)(yes, I put away a finished draft for one to two years before I go back to it, and I’ve come to accept that yes, this is a good and necessary part of my particular writing process).
But anyway: No. Fuck no. Four works is not how you do it. Certainly not how I do it. I only have the creative space for one manuscript in the forebrain, with my backbrain maybe working a second, down there in the subconscious. Problem was I was struck by the lightning bolt of inspiration while in Japan researching the fantasy novel, inspiration for a completely new project.
In retrospect I should have written some notes down about the new idea, and kept on with the old. ‘You must finish what you start’ was one of Heinlein’s writing laws, and even though I tend to reject any absolutist dictums about the process, I think he was right. Finish what you start. Good ideas are a dime a dozen, even brilliant ideas are common enough. Execution is what matters.
You see this lack in the numpties and shills who advocate for AI as writer. The “I have great ideas, it’s just the writing part that gets in the way” crowd. Well, I have news. The bit between the idea, and the final work, is the whole thing. It’s everything. Being an author is execution.
And I’ve wavered a little, these last couple of months. Allowing myself to get excited by a shiny new idea, and letting slip the hard slog of the current project. But that’s cool. Because now I’m going to follow Heinlein’s iron law and finish what I started.
Which means I will have a short novel done this year. It’s set in the same universe as 36 Streets, though takes place about 60 years later, in 2160, and has all the good stuff: immersive simulations and Japanese mecha and high octane warfare and betrayal and conspiracy.
It means I will go back to the fantasy novel straight after. I’m at about 124k words right now, and should be around the 200k mark by the end of the year. That’s not the final number, which I reckon to be closer to the 250k mark. So in 2025, a draft will be done! Shame I usually take about five drafts before I’m content to send it to my agent, but let’s not dwell on my neverending editing process here.
The iron law also means I’ll have to take that novel that’s been sitting in the hard drive for two years and spend a few months getting it ready for my agent. In so doing, a burr in my mind will finally be removed.
There, I suppose, is the paradox of being an author. We’re not known for our organisational skills, or, necessarily, our ability to focus on the day-to-day. But what I’ve just outlined in the few short paragraphs above is two years’ worth of work. Three, really, if I include the edits on the fantasy novel. And that’s what it means to be a writer: the desperate gamble made when setting off on a multiple-year journey based on an idea, and then having the discipline and patience to see it through.
So wish me luck.
