Big year. It started relentlessly, and never really gave up. January kicked off with my finishing a tie-in novel, Aliens: Bishop.
Never thought I’d write a tie-in novel, never thought I could write any novel in 4.5 months, never thought I’d be writing canon in a universe I was obsessed with as a teenager. Never say never, 
hey? I cover my experience writing the tie-in here. Not sure I’ll ever do it again, but I’m glad I did it once.
For the foreseeable future I’ll be focussing on my cyberpunk, and the universe I’ve created. Speaking of, my debut, 36 Streets, won both major spec-fic awards in Australia – the Aurealis (juried) and the Ditmar (popular vote). The Aurealis Award for Best SF Novel is probably the critical highlight of my career. It was enormously gratifying to be recognised my peers, but more than anything, it was a relief. The path to publication for the novel was brutal – even cruel – and there were many times I’d resigned myself to it never seeing the light of day.
I signed a two-book deal with Titan UK back in June. Both works were already written, and – as I alluded to above – both are set in the world of 36 Streets. The first is a novella, Ghost of the Neon God, which will be out in June 2024. Two petty crooks, a rogue AI, and a desperate flight across the harsh Australian wilderness. It has no direct connection to 36 Streets, other than the events occurring at roughly the same time (around the year 2100). Then comes The Escher Man. This is a stand-alone novel set in Macau, but is connected to my debut insofar as the protagonist from that, Linh Vu, makes an (important) appearance in the new book. She’s not the (anti) hero of this one though. That would be the the titular protagonist. Out late 2024.
No, I’m not this productive. Three books inside of 12 months seems prolific, but it’s all an illusion. Yes, I wrote Bishop in 5 months, which nearly broke me. But Ghost of the Neon God took 5 years (on and off), and The Escher Man 10 years (again, and and off – it was on the inside of a trunk marked ‘abandoned’ for a long time). Several years, dozens of edits, and a period of abeyance – where the book remains untouched – is my usual method for producing a longer work.
I closed out 2023 by doing the final edits (from the publisher) for Ghost of the Neon God. It’s off to the copyeditor now, and out of my hands. I’m proud of the novella, and eager to get it into the brains of readers.
I was a guest at several conventions and festivals during the year. I do sometimes question the time and resources that goes into travelling to these. And I certainly think there’s an argument for limiting the number. But talking to readers is always energising, and meeting hardcore fans rewarding. Knowing that a book touched someone – perhaps it spoke to their own experience, perhaps they were moved by the work, perhaps it made them think about the world in a different way – this is the reason you write. Well, a major reason, at the least.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here: never feel reluctant to contact a writer and tell them that you enjoyed their work. Almost all of us appreciate it (I certainly do). And while I’m on the
subject – tell others, as well, when you love a book. Whether that be in person, on social media, goodreads, wherever.
Anyway, the cons I went to could not have been any more different. Supanova is a fucking humungous pop cultural spectacular, with tens of thousands of people coming through the door. International A-list actors are the main drawcard, followed by local actors, voice actors, comic book artists, people who worked on movies in some capacity, and then there, right down the bottom of the list, the authors (note we do appear above ‘guests who’ve cancelled’, which is something). We sit at a signing table all day, do the occasional panel, watch the cosplayers saunter by, and hob-knob with the A-listers in the Green Room (or, at the least, gaze at them surreptitiously from across the room). It’s a surreal experience that feels something like a dream once you’ve unpacked the bags at home and flopped down on the couch.
Luke Arnold – from Black Sails fame – was one of the guests. I’d never seen Black Sails, but had read his novel, The Last Smile in Sunder City, and thought it a very good debut. I sat next to Luke for a full day at a couple of the cons (I think it was Gold Coast and Melbourne), and discussed noir literature and writing with him. He’s a good guy, enormously generous and gracious with fans (and he had a lot of fans over the weekends – I had no clue about the popularity of the show), but also very switched on. I’ll be reading more of his work in the future.
At the other end of the spectrum was the small, regional literary festival, Write Around the Murray. They’d get no more than a few hundred guests over the weekend, I’d imagine. I love going to WAM. The staff are excellent, the panels well-chosen, the vibe welcoming and engaged. The festival also takes risks, which is how I ended up a guest in the first place.
Twice now I’ve run a live dungeons and dragons one-shot for them, in front of an audience, and by god it is easily the most stressful event I’ve ever been involved with in any con or festival, ever. If you know anything about D&D, you know that fitting an entire adventure into two hours is 
no easy feat, for starters. I write a bespoke adventure for the festival, run it with a group of three people I’ve never met before (or, in the case of this year, met once before – at the one-shot in the previous year), make it explicable for an audience largely unfamiliar with RPGs, and have it be exciting and entertaining to boot. Good lord. Anyway, I’ve pulled it off twice, and am not sure if I have the nerve to try for three. I sometimes ask myself whether there is any dignity in slapping on a D&D shirt, busting out the Monty Python accents, and hamming it up in front of a bemused crowd. Well, of course there isn’t. That’s kinda the point, hey?
I also undertake the regular duties of a guest at WAM, in this case panels and a workshop. The pick of the panels was one called ‘Artificial Realities’, moderated by Kate Mildenhall. I was joined by another Australian cyberpunk writer, Grace Chan (there’s maybe five active cyberpunk writers in Australia, max). We discussed simulation, the tech in our books, uploaded consciousness, and artificial intelligence. I usually try to appear normal and erudite during these types of panels, but I did lose my cool a little at the end, when Kate asked us our thoughts on AI on the arts. I’ve embedded the audio of my answer here (47:00 – 50:40):
After I’d finished, the audience burst into spontaneous applause. It was the only time during my panels – or any panel that I watched – that the audience did so.
It was a telling response. This was more and older and literary crowd, but they were clearly deeply concerned about the ethical issues of AI. We received feedback about the panel a few weeks afterwards, much of it to the tune of: “I didn’t expect much going in, as science fiction doesn’t interest me, but this ended up being my favourite panel of the festival.” We (speculative fiction writers) don’t often get a chance to appear at literary festivals. For the most part it is down to snobbery, the outdated idea that speculative fiction (horror, science fiction, fantasy) is low-brow, and
unworthy of serious attention. While it is of course true that our genre has some bad fiction, and some fiction purely for entertainment, this is also true of every genre. But the best of what we do is up there with the best any writer is producing in the world today. We are, as Ursula Le Guin said: “realists of a larger reality”, capable of imagining future histories, of understanding the ramifications of technological and social trends, of sounding the warning bell on our approaching dystopia. We should be at every writer’s festival, no matter how ‘high-brow’.
But enough of that. The literary and social virtues of spec-fic are a topic for another day. Today, I will say that I had a good year. Sometimes it didn’t feel like it, when I was down in the trenches. The industry can be frustratingly slow and opaque. Writing never comes easy (for most, and most certainly for me). It’s a hard graft of a career, financially precarious, like almost all of the arts these days. Sometimes it’s all tunnel, and no light.
Until I look back, on a year such as this, and see I didn’t do so bad. Now I’ll take a brief respite, well-earned. For in 2024, the trenches beckon.
