WARNING: May contain spoilers. I have done my best to avoid TSSH spoilers, but I accept no responsibility if you are too smart for your own good and inadvertently deduce key plot… Read more Killing time: on character deaths →
I’ve never even held a cigarette, let alone smoked one. It’s not because I think smokers are a filthy subset of humans that deserve to be vilified for their choice.… Read more Up in smoke →
A truly surreal thing has happened. My kind publishers have sent me a copy of my book, literally fresh off the press. It was an event which I have imagined many times over, often swiftly followed by a warning to myself not to get too attached to the idea. Getting a book published can be horrifyingly difficult, something I know too well after a brief stint as a publishing assistant. It was my job to sift through the unsolicited manuscripts, read synopses and more often than not, write rejection letters.… Read more Cigars, Wayne’s World and the wisdom of NRL players →
It looks as though The Sky So Heavy will be released at the end of July. I have relinquished it for good and it’s strange to think that I won’t be working… Read more Next… →
I once read that Peter Carey needs complete uninterrupted silence for eight hours a day to write. My first thought was: what luxury, the second was that he needs to… Read more Writing and music and radioactive snow →
First, some background. This post was going to be about my over-use of the phrase ‘for a moment’ in my writing. As in ‘She stared at the aardvark for a moment.’. It then occurred to me that this subject was probably of very little interest to just about anyone unless they happened to be an aardvark. (In which case they would have been thrilled to have been mentioned, because lets face it, aardvarks don’t get a lot of press.) The topic did, however, remind me of the time I went… Read more Character, voice and aardvarks →
